David Sedley, 'The Ideal of Godlikeness,' in Plato 2, Gail fine (ed.)

The official moral goal (τελος) of Plato’s philosophy is ὁμοιοσις θεοι κατα το δυνατον AKA becoming like a god so far as is possible.

This idea is barely discussed today even though the ancient scholars gave it much importance.

With this, Sedley’s main arguments are:

A) Homoiosis theoi IS an important part of Platonic thought.

B) It had great influence on his successors (esp. Aristotle), and so it must be considered when interpreting their works.

Section I

The basis for homoiosis theoi started before Plato—Pythagorean philosophers like Empedocles talked about the soul’s progression through reincarnation and its recovery of divinity.

But lots of this earlier thought is challenged by Plato.

THE SYMPOSIUM

The Symposium (207c-209e) is Plato’s first writing about homoiosis theoi:

207d: the priestess Diotima tells Socrates that “mortal nature seeks so far as possible to live forever and be immortal.”

-immediately differs from the Pythagoreans by saying that the goal homoiosis theoi is strictly within one life-time, not something to achieve over many incarnations.

-here Plato interprets the normally negative Fear of Death as a positive: human striving towards a higher ideal—divine immortality
-Interesting contrast with the Christian ‘God created man in His own image’

-this is another challenge to the previous Greek religious belief that immortality is the one feature of god unattainable to humans
and is also an interesting contrast to Christianity, instead of god created humans in his image, that god sets the standard for life to emulate

-in the Symposium Plato also introduces the detrimental question: “if immortality is already guaranteed, the need to strive for it by biological, moral, or intellectual procreation starts to look redundant.” (Sedley 310)
-I couldn’t figure out where/if he followed up on this

The Symposium has two main takeaways:
The strive towards divinity exists, and it is one type of immortalization.

Section II

THEAETETUS

The Theaetetus is the best authoritative text on homoiosis theoi

-Sedley acknowledges that the order of Plato’s writings are debated, but insists here that the Theaetetus was written after Plato had fully cemented his theory of the Forms and tripartite soul

-another challenge to his predecessors occurs here where ‘Socrates’ debunks Protagoras’s “man is the measure of all things”
-by saying that this can’t possibly apply to judgements of expertise, and can’t apply to itself

-concedes somewhat and ends by turning Protagoras’s argument into “man is the measure of all values” (just, lawful, beautiful, holy)
-but then Socrates seems to take even this back with the declaration that “even for these values there are objective standards” (Sedley 311).

THE ABSOLUTE STANDARDS (παραδηγματα)

Theaetetus (176e-177a) Paradeigmata is translated here as standards, but in other places can refer to the Platonic Forms. Sedley strongly insists it does NOT (Sedley 312).

-despite being written after his discussion of the Forms, Sedley writes that this use of paradeigmata is NOT an abandonment of the Forms but is instead Plato writing a historical view of Socrates disproving relativism and proclaiming the same sort of moral standards which Plato will write about.
-Plato is writing a narrative of how Socrates had paved the way for Plato’s own moral absolutism with his ideas, just that his ideas were intertwined with religious beliefs (life as service to god; unattainable immortality) where Plato’s view god as both he overseer and perfect exemplar.

-this interpretation also shows that Sedley at least partially supports the viewpoint that Plato is writing a historical account of Socrates and not just using him to speak his own philosophy.

VARIATIONS ON HOMOIOSIS THEOI

Variations of the theme show up in many more of Plato’s works including Phaedrus (252c-253c), Republic 10 (613a-b), Symposium (212a), Apology (41c-d), as well as Aristotle’s works like Nicomachean Ethics 10.8.

EX: Homoiosis theoi is used in the Phaedrus (252c-253c) as assimilation to a specific god/goddess
-here individual Gods represent eleven different ideals of character—there is not one but many ways of being good
-Sedley calls this a radical accepting of polytheism
-unsure why this is radical for a polytheistic society; interesting that this is a variation/outlier and that all other mentions of god are singular, at least in Sedley’s descriptions
-but still manages to stay true to Plato’s ideas because these ideals are still guided by the moral Forms

TIMAEUS

Given that “The true aim of moral action should be the embodiment in one’s own life of certain Forms—justice, beauty, etc. and, through them, the Good itself” (Sedley 315)

And that homoiosis theoi is merely one way to achieve this,

‘Why does god need to exist at all?’

Plato answers this in the Timaeus by explaining how the soul’s ability to ‘pattern itself after a divine mind’ must be evidence of its own divine nature, and the intentional teleological structure of the world

HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY AND COSMOLOGY IN THE TIMAEUS

-Intelligent presence is in everything from the world soul down to the atom – Timaeus 29e: “the divine creator, being good and therefore altogether ungrudging, wanted everything to be as much like himself as it could be.”

-in humans the rational soul-part is created from the same stuff as the world-soul: sameness, difference, and being

-the immortal rational soul-part exists in the head, and has circular motions which mimic the heavens. 43a
-this is why the head is round 😊
-the heads of lower life-forms are too elongated and cause the revolutions of intellect to get squished and not function ☹

-from birth these motions are disrupted by perceptions, which move in straight lines from the eyes, ears, and throat. 43a

- in infants the senses overpower the rational and little reasoning happens.

-as one matures the circular motions are re-established until the rational recovers its place over the sensory.

-the circular motions of the heavens are the visible evidence for the circular motions of the world-soul: the Creator placed celestial bodies into the revolutions of the world-soul so that we could see them and learn from them. 36a

-‘diseases of the soul’ like ill temper occur when bodily humours get mixed up in the motions of the two mortal soul-parts (spirited and appetitive). 86e-87a

-imbalances between the soul and body are remedied by physical training. 86b-89d

-imbalances between parts of the soul are remedied by correcting the motion of each part. 86b-89d

<<>>These aspects help support Sedley’s argument that “the circular motion of thought is to be taken literally” (Sedley 317)
These aren’t metaphors like the mythology-based ones Plato uses. With physical movements applying to incorporeal things, the Timaeus shows us that the gap between corporeal and incorporeal isn’t wasn’t as important to Plato as we thought!

-as the thinking subject resembles the object of thought, by studying astronomy we can make the motions of our head resemble the motions of the world-soul. 90c-d ß This is the process of becoming god-like (as far as possible)

Along with the always-present caveat ‘as far as possible’, Plato also includes a warning not to overreach ourselves and usurp god’s role: that “to try to reproduce natural processes in the laboratory is to play god, in ignorance of the fact that in this respect we can never replicate god’s work (68d).” (Sedley 321)

The rest of the Timaeus section is dense. Sedley ends it by agreeing with Plotinus that Plato’s homoiosis theoi leaves moral virtue behind and focuses on the intellectual – which seems to contradict the wording used in the beginning of the article. Sedley interprets this as an evolution from a moral goal to an intellectual one.

Section III

ARISTOTLE AND PLATO’S CONTEMPORARIES

The main structure of Aristotle’s ethics deeply reflects the Timaeus’s passage on homoiosis theoi
-Aristotle’s later hostility to the Timaeus shouldn’t make us overlook the affect it had on his philosophy

Aristotle’s own telos/human end goal is eudaimonia
-focuses on a life of moral virtue, but eventually places this at lower importance than intellectual contemplation (just like the Timaeus)

contemplation: only possible because of the presence of the divine in us. A life of contemplation is how one achieves eudaimonia

-only in contemplation—not even in virtuous action—do we resemble god (godliness – another tie to the Timaeus)

-other actions/virtues like courage and temperance are below and unnecessary to the gods.

This restriction of the god’s virtues and actions comes directly from a problem left by the Timaeus:

“On one hand, his cosmic god, the world-soul, is enmeshed in world government, and hence concerned with the particular and the changeable… On the other hand, in recommending assimilation to that cosmic god Plato is advising us to emulate him, not as an administrator, but as something better, a pure intellect directly contemplating eternal truths” (Sedley 324-325).

Leads to the problem ‘why would god concern itself with the particular and changeable at all?’

This is what Sedley argues led to Aristotle’s own idea of god as exclusively intellectual.

Seemingly out of spite, Aristotle uses the phrase ἐφ᾽ ὅσον ἐνδέχεται ἀθανατίζειν (1177b33) (to the extent that one can, immortalize) which contains no vocabulary from Plato’s ὁμοιοσις θεοι κατα το δυνατον, but is pretty obviously the same concept.

“Although Aristotelian essences may not have the same metaphysical status as Platonic Forms, and although Aristotelian research methods may differ from those favoured in the Academy, there is every reason to believe that, mutatis mutandis, Platonic and Aristotelian contemplation are very much the same intellectual activity” (Sedley 238).