International Journal of Hindu Studies 0, 0 (Month Year): 00–00© 2005 by the World Heritage Press Inc.

The Roots of Platonism and Vedånta:Comments on McEvilley

John Bussanich

This encyclopedic study tracks the emergence and development of virtually allthe major thinkers and schools in ancient Greece and India by means of complexcomparative and historical schemas—a truly monumental achievement in thecomparative study of philosophy. This essay has the limited objective ofassessing Thomas McEvilley’s account of the trajectories of the Platonic andVedåntic traditions, with a particular focus on the various sources of thesereligious philosophies. I shall examine his treatment of these genealogies: (i)Orphic-Pythagoreans and Presocratics @ Plato @ Plotinus @ later Neoplatonistsand (ii) Upani‚ads @ Brahmas¨tras and Purå~as @ Çaπkara @ later Vedåntins.(The valuable analyses of the Buddhist and Jaina traditions and, in the West, ofAristotle and the various Hellenistic schools are beyond the scope of thisinquiry.) According to McEvilley’s comparative criteria these traditions share acommitment to a tripartite metaphysical doctrine: (i) the self is identical to theultimate ground of reality; (ii) the self has lost its original unity with the ulti-mately real and must seek to regain it through the pursuit of knowledge and theachievement of self-mastery; and (iii) the self attains final union or identity withultimate reality through an experience which transcends knowledge and alllimitations. His cross-traditional comparisons of the expression and of thecontent of these themes are embedded in a diffusionist model of historicaldevelopment according to which Vedic India and to a lesser extent Iran, theAncient Near East, and Egypt comprise the sources of archaic and classicalGreek wisdom traditions. I shall comment on these themes in McEvilley’sexposition: (i) the cogency of the diffusionist model, especially as it pertains toarchaic Greece; (ii) traditional texts, oral teachings, and spiritual experience assources of philosophical doctrine; and (iii) the fundamental principles ofPlatonic and Vedåntic metaphysics.

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ARCHAIC GREECE AND VEDIC INDIA

McEvilley begins his adventurous project with reflections on the momentoustransition in both Greece and India from mythopoeic to rational and abstractmodes of philosophizing in the first half of the first millenium BCE. He drawsilluminating parallels between (i) substrate monism among the Milesians andin the early Upani‚ads, (ii) the quasimythic articulation of the cosmic personin late Vedic hymns and in Orphic poetic theology, and (iii) macrocosm/microcosm homologies in the Pythagoreans, Heraclitus, and Parmenides and inthe Upani‚ads. With regard to the first theme, he compares Anaximander’sapeiron (the “unlimited”) both with the ¸g Veda’s Aditi, “the Unlimited”Mother of the gods, and with Brahman, as in Taittir⁄ya Upani‚ad 3.1.1. Anattractive feature of his approach at the outset is that it eschews facile analogies.He recognizes that Aditi is a goddess whereas Anaximander’s apeiron is anabstract principle, which is designated with a neuter form and thus is “essen-tially postmythological, like Uddålaka’s brahman” (32). With the removal ofconcrete imagery from the characterization of the ultimate principles in botharchaic Greece and India, we can discern, McEvilley argues, the emergence ofthe abstract idea of pure being, exempt from qualities, which displaces ortranscends the mythical divinities. He also compares Thales’ first principlewater with the primordial role of water in late Vedic and in Babyloniancosmogenesis. Unfortunately, he undercuts these mythical associations byoverreliance on Aristotle’s materialist interpretation of the Milesians, leadinghim to embrace the standard protoscientific reading of the Milesians as physi-calist reductionists, which thus places them at odds with the basic tenor ofUpani‚adic thought.

Attention to B®hadåra~yaka Upani‚ad 1.1.2 and related passages, where theprimordial waters symbolize the divine potentiality of all existence, would haverevealed even more clearly the metaphysical affinities of early Greek and Vediccosmology. He would have profited greatly from consulting the revolutionaryand still fundamental comparative work of A. K. Coomaraswamy, whomMcEvilley completely ignores. Most relevant to the comparison of early Greekand Indian thought is his A New Approach to the Vedas (Coomaraswamy 0000)and the classic essays “Vedic Exemplarism” (1977) and “Vedic Monotheism”(2002). Coomaraswamy’s vision of Vedic metaphysics provides a more compre-hensive perspective within which to situate McEvilley’s specific comparisons ofthe nature and function of individual physical elements in Milesian thought withtheir Vedic counterparts. Coomaraswamy argues, for example, that “Mitrå-Varu~au, Sun, Fire, Spirit, etc., are all denotations of one and the same first

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principle of manifestation, and the Waters, often called the wives of Varu~a, ormothers in relation to the Son, are the possibilities of manifestation” (2002:31n15). From the more sophisticated perspectives of Upani‚adic and Platonicmetaphysics, the first Greek speculation on the One and the Many involvesmonism to a lesser degree than McEvilley supposes, inasmuch as it specifies onestuff as the symbol for cosmic potentiality but lacks a clearly articulated notionof the absolute.

Heraclitus deconstructs earlier cosmology by radically reformulating theinteraction among the elements in striking, paradoxical poetry. McEvilley’sanalysis displays the characteristic strengths and weaknesses of his method. Hispiecemeal comparisons of Heraclitus’ flux-doctrine to the Buddhist concept oftransience and his introspective search for hidden unity to the Vedåntic åtmanare useful but superficial. Much more effective, in my view, is the detailedcomparison of Heraclitus’ obscure account of the cycle of elemental transforma-tions from fire to water to earth to water to fire (40–44, 304–00)—the ancientreports of which make it sound like primitive meteorology—with the moreelaborate presentation of a similar cycle by Uddålaka in Chåndogya Upani‚ad 4,which is connected with the eschatological teachings of Pravåha~a Jaivali inChåndogya 5 and B®hadåra~yaka 6. McEvilley skillfully employs the complexVedic scheme of the Path of the Gods (the way of fire) and the Path of theFathers (the way of smoke) as an interpretive aid to explicate Heraclitus’ theoryof exhalations according to which the bright exhalation of souls goes to the sunand produces day and summer and the dark exhalation of souls goes to the moonand produces night and winter. He convincingly challenges the standardphysicalist interpretation of Heraclitus’ theory by showing its affinities with theBråhma~ical interiorization of the sacrifice and even with the emergence of afull-fledged reincarnation theory in seventh century BCE India. Now, Heraclitusdoes not explicitly espouse a theory of reincarnation, but McEvilley’s exposi-tion should stimulate further reflection on this question.

Consideration of Heraclitus’ thinking on the destiny of the soul is postponeduntil the comprehensive discussion of reincarnation in chapter four. ThereMcEvilley lays out in great detail the multifarious aspects of Upani‚adicreincarnation theory which are lacking in the earlier discussion of Heraclitus.1

This long chapter is a kaleidoscopic excursion through Upani‚adic, Egyptian,Orphic, and Greek references to metempsychosis, reincarnation, and astrophysi-cal eschatology which investigates whether Greek theories of reincarnation andtransmigration depend on non-Greek sources. I agree with the judgment that theGreek theories more closely resemble ancient Indian ones than ideas found inThracian shamanism, in Mesopotamian cultures, or in Iranian Zoroastrianism.However, besides Pythagoras and Empedocles, reincarnation is poorly attested

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in other thinkers before Plato. Moreover, the diffusion of Indian ideas throughIran may be a more complicated process than he suggests, not to mention thatdifferent ideas arrived from the East at different times with different degrees ofborrowing and assimilation on the part of the Greeks (cf. 126).2 A furthercomplication is McEvilley’s reliance on the traditional view, now discredited,that Zoroaster lived in the sixth or fifth century BCE instead of millenia before(see Kingsley 1990).

Another theme about which McEvilley speculates rather loosely is monism.Indeed, he claims that Upani‚adic monism and reincarnation theory aretransmitted together to archaic Greece (122). In certain cases, the doctrinalcomparisons are compelling, most notably in the section “Parmenidean Monismand Indian Thought” (52–55) on the metaphysics of being in Parmenides and innumerous Upani‚adic texts.3 But besides Parmenides (and the later EleaticMelissus) few scholars would claim that any other Presocratic is a radical monistof the Upani‚adic type. (Milesian material monism is quite a different sort, assuggested above.) Nevertheless, McEvilley thinks early Pythagoreanism ismonistic (44–00)—which view is flatly contradicted by our earliest sources—and also the thought of Heraclitus. Despite the latter’s enigmatic references tothe unity of opposites from the divine point of view and to the “One-Wise”(Fragments 10, 67, 32, 41), more argument is required than McEvilley offers toclaim him as a monist. To summarize, these opening chapters of the bookarticulate striking cosmological analogies between various Presocratics andseveral Upani‚adic texts, but McEvilley has a tendency to homogenize the viewsof the Presocratics and press them too far in a monistic direction. This judgmenthas the effect of making the historical dependence of archaic Greece religiousthought on Vedic India seem inevitable. I say: not so fast.

While reading through this impressive collection of parallel passages onehungers for an explanation of what motivates and grounds the metaphysical andcosmological speculations of these remarkable early Greek thinkers, one thatdoes not simply refer us to even earlier source-texts. McEvilley consistentlyneglects the experiential sources of Greek teachings and practices, an oversightthat is most problematic in the case of Parmenides. Only briefly does he mentionthe crucial proem, that is, Fragment 1, which recounts Parmenides’ descent tothe underworld where he meets the Goddess beyond the gates of Night and Day(57), which symbolize phenomenal duality in general. Indeed, he ignores mostof the proem’s account—embodied in subtle imagery drawn from contemporaryGreek poetry—of Parmenides’ inner transformation and the dramatic trajectoryof his shamanic, mystical transport. The mystical approach to Parmenides and toother Presocratics like Empedocles and to the Orphics occupies a prominentposition in the work of classical scholars like Walter Burkert, Albrecht

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Dieterich, and especially Peter Kingsley, who stress the centrality of incubationin Orphic-Pythagorean esoteric piety. Kingsley (1999, 2003) has delineated astriking picture of Parmenides as a priest in the cult of Apollo with its focus onhealing, both physical and spiritual, and its proximate roots in Anatolia thatreach as far as Iran. However extensive the borrowing of images and concepts,the practice of incubation and related techniques throughout the Mediterraneanworld in the first millennium BCE is in my view the ultimate source of thereligious metaphysics disseminated in archaic Greece. To his credit, McEvilleymentions the practice of silence among the Pythagoreans and Parmenides(178–79, 598), but he is more interested in the theory of reincarnation and sorefers to incubation, and its central symbol of the descent, primarily in order todistinguish it from the former doctrine’s image of the ascent. But what is crucialfor understanding the spiritual orientation and the doctrines of the Orphic-Pythagoreans—as indeed also of their Vedic counterparts—is their mysticalpractices and experiences. We need only recall that incubation—withdrawing tocaves and other quiet places to enter transcendent realms through dreaming oraltered states of awareness—is just another name for meditation or trance. Itseems to me that the interpretive regress implicit in McEvilley’s approach—andin other comparativists—must stop somewhere: Did the Vedic ®‚is derive theirinsights from reading even older, anonymous, prehistoric texts; or did they, atsome point, have direct access to the gods and transcendent states of conscious-ness through the practice of meditation and psychophysical disciplines likeyoga? McEvilley appears to accept the second alternative, which I applaud, butthis does not justify or require claiming Vedic India as the source of all Eurasianreligious metaphysics. So if he wishes to assert that India is the source of archaicGreek doctrines, he needs to provide explanations why the Greeks, or otherancient cultures, were incapable of gaining access to the transcendent withoutinstruction from Indian texts or teachers.

It seems to me that doctrinal similarity is insufficient grounds for adoptingsuch a “horizontal” explanation according to which Greeks or Etruscans orEgyptians require contact with Hindus or Buddhists or Jainas from South Asiato entertain or accept the truth of monism or reincarnation or divinization.Surprisingly, McEvilley does not even mention, let alone refute, the perennialistclaim that most saints, sages, and philosophers discover for themselves andexpress the same core metaphysical doctrines and promote similar ethicalpractices with only variations of local color. Not that this rules out cross-culturalinfluences and borrowings. But his “history of ideas” presentation of metaphysi-cal doctrines ignores the possibility that exceptional individuals in any and everyculture have direct access to transcendent realities through spiritual practiceslike contemplation under the direction of a guru or divine being. This “vertical”

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model of explanation does not exclude the “horizontal” diffusion of new ideas orpractices through reading scriptures or dialectical exchanges—whether in one’sown tradition or imported from another. But even where such contacts play arole it must be recognized that religious experiences are expressed throughsymbols indigenous to a culture or region and that spiritual practices becomeactual only within the soul of the seeker. In commenting on Upani‚adic doctrineCoomaraswamy points out that

the realization of the corresponding state in which the Intellect does not intel-ligize, which is called in our text “the Eternal Mystery” [ÇU VI.22] and in KUVI.10, “the Supreme Goal” and which “cannot be taught,” is the ultimate“secret” of initiation. It must not be supposed that any mere description of the“secret,” such as can be found in Scripture or exegesis, suffices to communi-cate the secret of “de-mentation” (aman⁄bhåva) [that is, the cessation ofthought]; nor that the secret has ever been or could be communicated to aninitiate or betrayed to anyone, or discovered by however much learning. It canonly be realized by each one for himself; all that can be effected by initiationis the communciation of an impulse and an awakening of latent potentialities;the work must be done by the initiate himself…until the very end of the roadhas been reached (1977: 213–14).

From this more inclusive and vertical perspective, written and oral teachingsmay be taken as preconditions, but the individual must tread the path himself orherself. Moreover, the essential teachings in any tradition themselves derivefrom the great souls who have already achieved the goal and embodied theirexperiences in them. I suspect that McEvilley would agree with much of this.Yet he gives the impression that what’s most important is the diffusion ofconcepts and images from one region or culture to another.

Let’s consider another case where an individual’s religious experience contrib-utes to the emergence of philosophical views. A few fragments of Heraclitusstrongly suggest a radically new interest in archaic Greece in exploring the selfas subject of inquiry which is distinct from the natural world: “I searched outmyself” (Fragment 101); “You will not be able to find the boundaries of the souleven if you walk every path, so deep is its measure” (Fragment 45). Virtuallythe same idea is expressed at Kau‚⁄taki Upani‚ad 4.1: “A certain wise man insearch of immortality, turned his sight inward and saw the self within.” Bothexemplify the new symbol of the self that emerges from direct experience of theinner infinite. McEvilley adduces other passages in the Upani‚ads as parallelsto this theme in Heraclitus but concludes, correctly I think, that they do notconstitute an argument for diffusion (39). Nevertheless, because he sees no

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precedent in earlier Greek cosmological speculation for Heraclitus’ (and theOrphics’) theory of elemental and psychic transformation, McEvilley concludesthat it is “in terms of Greek evidence, unaccountable” (40). On the basis of hisexcellent comparison of Heraclitus’ and the Upani‚adic theories, he observesthat Heraclitus

may be presumed to have had some familiarity with the central doctrines ofUpani‚adic Hinduism.…This extraordinary parallelism is a strong and clearlink between a pre-Socratic and an Upani‚ad. It amounts to a scholarly“proof”—meaning the most reasonable interpretation of the evidence as itcurrently stands. The Heraclitean system…has not been accounted forhistorically by any other approach. Until the evidence changes, it should standthat elements of Heraclitus and of the Upani‚ads came either from each otheror from an unknown common source (44).

Besides the point that the last sentence appears to contradict the first, the argu-ment begs the question by asserting that Heraclitus’ system must be accountedfor “historically,” namely, through literary borrowing from an earlier text, be itGreek, Indian, or Mesopotamian. Speculating on broader historical patterns atthe end of the section, McEvilley concludes that because “the process frompolytheism through Orphic pantheism to philosophical monism seems to havetaken a century or so,” whereas in India the analogous transition took five toseven centuries, “there is some reason to look for a special cause” that precipi-tated such a development, namely, diffusion from India or Mesopotamia toGreece (61). I share with McEvilley, and with daring scholars such as WalterBurkert, Eric Voegelin, and M. L. West, a fascination with the development inthese and other ancient cultures from mythical to more abstract and differenti-ated forms of experience, thought, and literary expression. But we must be verycautious about the duration of the developmental stages, given the paucity of theevidence from archaic Greece and the insuperable difficulties of constructingchronology in Vedic India. Again, in my view, we need not rely primarily ontenuous historical connections to understand these texts or their experientialsources. What is crucial for archaic Greece are the spiritual breakthroughsexperienced and expressed in powerful transformational language by Heraclitus,Parmenides, Pythagoras, and Empedocles. Heraclitus explored himself andfound a soul without limits—just as the Vedic ®‚is did. Parmenides learned“stillness” from the Pythagorean Ameinias—the same mental cessation referredto throughout the Upani‚ads and later in the Yogas¨tras—and it awakened himto the revelation of truths from the Goddess. Empedocles presents himself as agod, an enlightened being, to the citizens of Acragas, and he functions as a guru

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to his student Pausanias to whom he teaches Orphic-Pythagorean meditation andthe secrets of nature.

Another example of ambitious Orientalizing is McEvilley’s claim that theOrphic doctrines of soul-body dualism, karmic bindings, transmigration, andheaven and hell states for the just and the wicked respectively, which influencedPlato and later Platonists, can be traced to Jaina missionary activity. Thecomparisons of Jaina, Buddhist, and Orphic doctrines are compelling, but thehistorical dependence of Orphic ideas on Jaina is based primarily on unsup-ported speculation by Alain Daniélou in his Ç⁄va and Dionysos (1979). Weencounter breathtaking inferential leaps like the following: “The transition fromJain missionaries to proto-Orphics such as, perhaps, Pherecydes, is still largelyinvisible…, though it must have occurred” (204). Unfortunately, McEvilleyrefers to Pherecydes primarily to supply a link in the chain between the Orientand Orphic-Pythagoreans. Significantly, he does highlight the guru-disciple rela-tionship by reference to stories that Pherecydes was a teacher of Pythagoras andAmeinias the Pythagorean of Parmenides (171). But he implies that even thenotion of teaching lineages is imported from India. More emphatically he assertsthat

It is certain that Pherecydes imported Oriental ideas into the Greek tradition,including some from India. The Indian doctrines he brought entered Greeceenmeshed in a net of Persian ideas. It is a plausible hypothesis that Phere-cydes called them the teachings of Orpheus in order to naturalize them. In thisway he passed them on to Pythagoras…[who] combined them with elementsof number religion, which was derived from other Oriental influences closerto home, and established an organized brotherhood to practice the path topurification (171; emphasis added).

Classicists in particular will be troubled by the apparent arbitrariness with whichMcEvilley fits relatively obscure figures like Pherecydes, Pythagoras, and evenOrpheus into a spiritual lineage that reaches back into the Asian hinterlands.They will also lament the absence of a sustained discussion of the fragments ofPherecydes and any reference to the definitive book on him by Hermann Schibli(1990). Unconvincing also is the suggestion that Pherecydes indulged self-consciously in a kind of PR by labeling Oriental doctrines “Orphic.” Finally, thenarrow range of Orphic texts and themes he analyzes is a limitation that couldhave been mitigated by wider consideration of recent scholarship (see, forexample, Parker 1995).

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PLATONISM AND VEDÅNTA

McEvilley’s multifaceted comparisons of Plato, Plotinus, and the laterNeoplatonists with the Vedåntic tradition take greater account of religiousexperience as a doctrinal source than his survey of Orphic-Pythagorean andUpani‚adic figures. This focus is quite welcome, given contemporary scholars’preoccupation with abstract and theoretical problems, especially in Plato’sphilosophy. He begins with the observation that Plato synthesized various pre-Socratic tendencies “into a syncretic whole” analogous to the synthesis ofPurå~ic Hinduism by Vedåntins like Çaπkara and Råmånuja. In his view, thePlatonic synthesis “although it seems to have emerged, ultimately, out of Indianprototypes, nevertheless took shape much earlier than the parallel syncretism inIndia” (164). To evaluate this developmental hypothesis, one must consider thepossibility that the distinct trajectories in the development of the two traditionsfrom the classical to the medieval periods depend at least in part on the indige-nous features in each culture, including the originality of geniuses like Plato andthe authors of the Upani‚ads and the local literary histories.

Regarding the literary expression of philosophical ideas, McEvilley says verylittle, which is understandable given the vast scale of his project, but a fewpoints are worth noting. Despite the lack of canonical scriptures in archaicGreece, many Greek philosophers—including Plato and continuing through thelate Neoplatonists—invoke archaic wisdom teachings, especially those transmit-ted in the Orphic-Pythagorean tradition, as quasi-scriptural sources for much oftheir own discursive philosophizing. Also, Plato’s dialogues are much closer inform and style to some Upani‚ads and early Buddhist texts than they are to theclassical Vedåntic texts of Çaπkara and Råmånuja, which comprise commen-taries on the Upani‚ads, Brahmas¨tras, and Bhagavad G⁄tå. The dialectical,psychological, and literary brilliance of Plato’s dialogues is unmatched in Hinduor Buddhist literature, though Indian philosophers easily match the Greeks inlogical sophistication. Indeed, there are hardly any direct precedents in Greekliterature for Plato’s dialogues. Once again we must consider factors unique toPlato and his age, for example, Socrates, the agonistic features of Greek culture,and perhaps Greek tragedy. Another distinguishing characteristic is that unlikethe Vedåntic commentators neither Plato nor Plotinus are involved in writingcommentaries on scriptural texts, noted by McEvilley in the case of Plotinus(552). There is however a revelatory dimension to early Greek religious thought,as I have argued above, which is embodied in a variety of forms: mysterydoctrines, traditional oral teachings, Delphic maxims (for example, “knowthyself” and “nothing in excess”), the Socratic paradoxes (derived from his

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Apollonian daimonion), and so forth. Orphic-Pythagorean teachings aboutthe nature of the soul and its transmigration, purification, and divinization,Parmenides on being, just to mention the most prominent, are embraced byPlatonists as revelatory truths and in certain instances are similar in contentand function to the Upani‚adic “great sayings” or mahåvåkyas, for example,“not this, not this” or “you are that.” Thus, the Orphic-Pythagorean tradition isanalogous in some respects to Vedic çruti, at least for Platonists, though becauseof the decentralized nature of Greek religion as regards scriptures, authority, anddoctrines, the teachings are treated more eclectically than in India.

I should emphasize that in characterizing these teachings as “revelation” I donot mean to suggest that they preclude or are opposed to rational or philoso-phical inquiry. Such a “faith vs. reason” debating point is an artifact of post-Medieval or even post-Reformation dogmatic theological debate and thus has nodirect claim on ancient Greek or Indian speculation. In any case, here I onlywish to point out some of the ways in which mystery teachings are assimilatedand unpacked by Plato and the Neoplatonists, because McEvilley tends to reifyconcepts and doctrines for ease of comparison and to neglect the literary andhistorical contexts within which each writer worked. Ascertaining their attitudestowards their Orphic-Pythagorean heritage will also help defuse an interpretivedilemma that McEvilley has constructed for himself. Because he conceives ofOrphism as a movement distinct from Pythagoreanism he is puzzled how Orphicideas can coexist with Plato’s “logical and analytical side” (197). Getting to theroot of the alleged tension between “Orphism and analysis” requires that weproperly understand Parmenides’ metaphysics of being, for example, which ispresented in logico-deductive form but which is inspired by a mysticalrevelation from the Goddess Persephone. McEvilley does not fully recognize theinterdependence of the mystical-magical-eschatological “Orphic” streams andthe rational-abstract-dialectical tendencies in early thinkers like Parmenides andEmpedocles, and hence arises the imaginary dilemma how they can coexist inPlato (cf. West 1971: 230–00).4

Plato’s repeated visits to South Italy no doubt provided him with direct accessto Orphic-Pythagorean teachings and practices (and teachers), which permeateentire dialogues, like the Phaedo—a text which is rich in abstract metaphysicalthought and also in Orphic mysticism—or frame many dialogues with conclud-ing eschatological myths. Curiously, McEvilley does not have much to sayabout Plato’s myths, perhaps because their literary form and sensibility are aliento Indian texts, at least any I know of. Because these accounts of the afterlife arein Plato’s estimation incapable of rational demonstration, Plato’s Socrates aimsto inculcate faith and hope in the esoteric stories (derived from anonymoussources) about the soul’s posthumous journeys. Careful study of the myths

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reveals many details indigenous to the South Italian spiritual milieu that Platohas embellished and imaginatively woven into a unique tapestry.5

An examination of how Plato employs ideas from the Orphic mystery tradi-tion in dialectical contexts is a valuable supplement to McEvilley’s outline ofPlato’s religious philosophy. Sometimes Plato introduces these ideas as dialec-tical starting-points or premises. For example, Socrates begins his argumentagainst suicide in the Phaedo by invoking the Orphic maxim that we arepossessions of the gods (62b7–8), an idea which Plato embraces also in the Lawswhere the Athenian Stranger, when he becomes inspired, frequently refers to ushumans as toys or playthings of the gods (Laws 644d, 803c–804b, 902b8).Particularly in the early and middle dialogues, Plato’s dialectic is imbued witha playfulness that aims to charm and seduce worldly types with the attractionsof philosophy and the possibility of attaining true freedom. At times Platoinvokes mystery teachings to help interlocutors find a way out of an impasse,for example, Socrates invokes the immortality of the soul, transmigration, andthe theory of recollection in order to rescue the inquiry into the nature of virtuewhen Meno’s paradox threatens to block the way forward. He also tests themin arguments with skeptics or nihilists in order to unfold their intellectualimplications or to show the limitations of dialectical argument. This strategy istypical of the Socratic elenchus (refutation argument) when testing definitions ofthe virtues vis à vis the Socratic paradoxes, some of which as Delphic maximsare popular redactions of esoteric Orphic-Pythagorean doctrines. PropheticApollo is the divine source of these traditional sayings and also the divinity thatspeaks directly to Socrates through his personal voice, the daimonion. Onemight suppose that the paradoxical combination of “Orphism and analysis” issomething Plato learned directly from Socrates.6

The existential dimension of Plato’s philosophy is embodied in the figure ofSocrates and in the ways he intervenes in his interlocutors’ lives. In dialecticalencounters and through the impasses (aporia) induced by Socratic questioning,the desire to seek the truth either grows or is thwarted: one either responds toSocrates or resists. Many dialogues in the Upani‚ads are also provoked by thevicissitudes of life, though traditionally this aspect of these texts has beenignored by Indologists.7 Grinshpon’s recent study skillfully unveils the conflictsand crises in the stories and dialogues of the Upani‚adic characters, therebysupplementing the universalist context-free metaphysics, which dominates theVedåntic commentators and modern scholarship, with a “contextual meta-physics” that reaches into the human heart. Such a literary and dramatic way ofreading the Upani‚ads, as well as dialogues in the Mok‚adharma, providesfertile ground for comparing the early Vedånta with Plato.8 Both would agree, Ithink, that simply identifying and stating timeless truths is insufficient to awaken

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the desire to seek or attain the truth. McEvilley stresses the core of classicalVedåntic teaching: over against the “older” Vedic practice of sacrifice andasceticism, “what is needed, according to the new doctrine, is not to becomebrahman but to come to know that one already is” (558; emphasis in original).But as McEvilley himself shows, because this knowledge is transcendent andsuprarational, it cannot be achieved by intellectual means, by perusing doctrinalsummaries, or without the complete transformation of one’s psyche. Hence, thepath involves withdrawal from normal life and the quieting of the mind throughthe practice of meditation and, in Vedåntins like Råmånuja, through intensedevotionalism. Certainly, there are significant variations in textual strategiesand doctrinal formulations, not only between the Greek and Indian traditionsbut within each as well. Discontent, tragedy, and crisis motivate many of theUpani‚adic characters to seek the truth, whereas Çaπkara and his successors,having perfected a literary style devoid of human voices and feelings, systemati-cally coordinate doubts, objections, counter-objections, and dialectically refinedtruths in their scriptual commentaries (see Clooney 1993).9 We find a similarprogressive reification and abstraction in the history of Greek philosophizingalso. The aspiration to seek the truth is prominent at the very beginning ofParmenides’ poem (he will be carried “as far as his heart aspires”) and in thefragments of Empedocles. This psychological focus continues to live in Plato’scomplex notion of metaphysical eros, while it is rationalized in Aristotle:Socratic aporia becomes an “intellectual puzzle” and ecstatic eros for the goodbecomes sober desire for the good.

The role of Socrates as wise man and teacher in Plato’s dialogues calls formore attention than it receives in McEvilley’s account of philosophy as a way oflife in chapter 6 “Platonic Ethics and Indian Yoga.” He effectively demonstratesthat the standard view of a profoundly ignorant Socrates (193) fails to explainSocrates’ search for knowledge of the self, one of the great themes in theUpani‚ads (190), and that this is a type of knowledge which transcends whatDescartes and most contemporary philosophers seek (180). He cites a fewpassages (179) from the Phaedo to illustrate how Plato’s views on the with-drawal of the mind from sense-objects and the inner concentration of awarenessin order to achieve a direct apprehension of transcendent objects of pure thoughtparallel countless texts in the Upani‚ads and in the Yoga tradition which iden-tify knowledge of the self as the goal and meditation (dhyåna) and absorption(samådhi) as the means. This higher type of knowledge is neither objectiveknowledge of the external world nor, ultimately, of anything distinct from theself. Thus, passages like the following support his assertion that Platonicphronêsis specifies transcendent wisdom, which is analogous to Vedåntic vidyå(189) and Buddhist prajñå (609):

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When the soul investigates by itself it passes into the realm of what is pure,ever existing, immortal and unchanging, and being akin to this, it always stayswith it whenever it is by itself and can do so; it ceases to stray and remains inthe same state while it touches things of the same kind, and its experience(pathêma) then is what is called wisdom (phronêsis) (Source? 79d1–7).

Note the concrete language: the soul concentrated in itself touches pure beingand its wisdom is an experience. For Platonists the highest knowledge isexperiential, nondiscursive, nonpropositional, and incommunicable (seeBussanich 1997). Thus, I heartily concur with McEvilley’s judgment that“Plato’s descriptions of out-of-the-body knowledge have more in common withthe practices of Indian yogis than with that of Descartes” (181). This pithyobservation captures nicely the interpretive myopia that afflicts much contempo-rary Plato scholarship. An excellent account of the meditative tranquility atwhich Platonic dialectic aims is this remarkable passage from the Republic, notcited by McEvilley:

I suppose that someone who is healthy and moderate with himself goes tosleep only after having roused his rational part and feasted it on fine argu-ments and speculations, and having attained to clear self-consciousness;second, he neither starves nor feasts his appetites, so that they will slumberand not disturb his best part with either their pleasure or their pain, but they’llleave it alone, pure and by itself, to get on with its investigations, to yearnafter and perceive something in the past or present or future that it doesn’tknow. He’s also calmed down his passionate part and doesn’t go to bed inan emotionally disturbed state because he’s been angry with someone. Andwhen he has quieted these two parts and aroused the third, in which reason(logistikon) resides, and so takes his rest, you know that it is then that he bestgrasps the truth and that the visions that appear in his dreams are least lawless(571d6–572b1).

Remarkably, Plato relies on the Greek religious idiom of incubation (enteringthe liminal dream-state) and divination (apprehending the future and the past) toevoke the intuitive dimension of what he here blandly calls “reason,” which is infact the organ of visionary perception. It would seem to be a rough descriptionof Platonic concentration of awareness and meditation which are similar toyogic pratyåhåra and dhyåna (180). These are the goals of the emotional andpsychological training which comprise the theme of the impressive survey inchapter 25 of the “Ethics of Imperturbability” throughout the Greek and Indiantraditions (597–641).10

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McEvilley justly remarks that “Socrates…became the primary saint of theethics of imperturbability in later Greek philosophy” (599), though he seemsreluctant to acknowledge that Plato’s portrait of Socrates as impervious toextremes of weather and to pains and pleasures and to his uncanny states ofabsorption provide just the sort of evidence we need to connect Socrates’concrete behavior with his own comparison of the theoretical account of the sixsteps of the ladder of love in the Symposium with the stages of samådhi inPatañjali. Socrates is another wise man in the tradition going back to Parmenides,Pythagoras, and Empedocles. But rather than asserting his own divinity as hispredecessors had done—and his Neoplatonic successors like Plotinus andIamblichus did—Plato’s Socrates denies that he is wise: like a midwife heassists at the birth of wisdom in others.11 Nevertheless, he offers guidance to“become like God so far as is possible,” the aim of the virtuous person who“becomes just and pure, with understanding” (Theaeteus 176b1–3).12 Though itis generally ignored by Platonic scholarship, the famous parable of the Cavehints at the intervention of the Platonic guru in the life of the cave-dweller in theascent to the sun: “when one of them was freed and suddenly compelled to standup, turn his head, walk, and look up toward the light” (515c5); “if someonecompelled him to look at the light itself” (515d8); “and if someone dragged himaway from there by force, up the rough, steep path, and didn’t let him go until hehad dragged him into the sunlight” (515e5). Interpreting passages like these notas mystical experience but as “emotionally overwrought descriptions of ordinaryreasoning processes” is a distortion as McEvilley justly remarks (187). I wouldadd that the teacher who drags the disciple does more than engage the studentdialectically.

NEOPLATONISM AND VEDÅNTA

McEvilley’s comparison of Neoplatonic and Vedåntic mystical metaphysics isimpressive but condensed. He sketches a few parallels between Tantra andtheurgy (586) and between Plotinus’ spiritual exercises and Indo-Tibetan medi-tation techniques (588–90), but he focuses more on doctrinal metaphysics thanmystical experience or the divinization theme. Yet Plotinus’ Enneads alonecomprise more evidence for the practice of meditation and the awakening ofthe higher aspect of mind than all the Greek philosophers before him takentogether. He is clear about the importance of experience: “whoever has seen,knows what I am saying” (6.9.9). Plotinian metaphysics is heavily indebted toPlato and Aristotle, but much of his writing offers strikingly original accounts of

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the immediate apprehension of transcendent realities. Once again McEvilley ispreoccupied with establishing the Indian origins of Neoplatonic metaphysics toovercome what he sees as unjustified scholarly skepticism. His judgment thatPlotinus “was philosophizing in an Indianized tradition” (550) because he isdependent on Plato and the Presocratics is dubious if my claim is true that theprimary sources of Greek religious philosophy are local and experiential. Healso seems unaware that many Neoplatonic scholars are familiar with Asianwisdom traditions and are sympathetic with the comparative approach heemploys (see Bussanich 1997; Findlay 1967; Shaw 1995; Wallis 1976).

Chapter 22, which is continuous with chapter 5 on Plato’s monism, is veryinformative about Neoplatonic and Vedåntic views of the metaphysical structureof reality. Generally, McEvilley suggests that the hypotheses of Plato’sParmenides, which provide the superstructure for Neoplatonic metaphysics,represent contracted and expanded aspects of the One and thus are analogousto nirgu~a and sagu~a Brahman (164). Specifically, he argues that Plato’sOne (he has in mind, I think, the second hypothesis of the Parmenides),Demiurge, and Indefinite Dyad (the passive, material principle) correspond topuru‚a, ⁄çvara, and prak®ti (or Upani‚adic åkåça), respectively. McEvilleyadeptly traces the close similarities between Plato’s cosmic theism, with itsactive creator-god crafting progressively differentiated levels of manifestedreality, and the qualified nondualism of the Viçi‚†ådvaita Vedånta. The distinc-tion in the cosmic divinity of the Timaeus (the Demiurge) between world-souland its cosmic body is like the Viçi‚†ådvaita idea that god is the world’s souland the cosmos is his body (164). Platonic and Viçi‚†ådvaita ontology construethe relation between the real and the phenomenal in a similar vein: Platoexplains the relation between transcendence and immanence as the interdepend-ence of sameness/being/unity with difference/nonbeing/multiplicity as do theViçi‚†ådvaitins, who in their concept of Bhedåbheda assert that difference andnondifference are mutually entailing. Both also subsume the archaic pantheon ofmythological divinities on the level beneath that of the supreme cosmic divinity.(Neoplatonists follow this pattern.)

Despite the cogency of his analysis of Plato’s metaphysics, its doctrinalapproach has the perhaps unintended effect of revealing the unsystematic char-acter of Plato’s philosophy by drawing analogies with practically every schoolof Indian thought, orthodox and heterodox. Sometimes McEvilley links ideasthat are dissimilar or he draws analogies imprecisely. For example, his compari-son of Plato’s theory of explanation through universals with Sarvåstavådindharma-theory (167) seems to work on the level of intellectual training, but heneglects to mention that Plato has a realist theory of universals whereas theBuddhists are nominalists. In the case of orthodox schools he mixes and matches

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Såµkhyan and Vedåntic ideas rather freely. In his comparison of Plato’s “One”to Såµkhyan puru‚a and the Dyad to prak®ti, he does not address the difficultiesthat the One is not a self in any obvious way and prak®ti is not just a materialprinciple of differentiation. In fact, it includes buddhi, which would seem to besimilar to Platonic nous if anything; and the latter is a transcendent, activeprinciple, closely related to the Demiurge and thus comparable to ⁄çvara and notprak®ti. These issues remain unresolved perhaps owing to McEvilley’s lack ofclarity on important differences between Såµkhyan and Vedåntic metaphysics.

A similar pattern of insightful, broad cross-traditional comparisons combinedwith occasional missteps is evident in McEvilley’s excellent discussion ofPlotinus. Insofar as the Many appear to be transformations of the One and sincetranscendent principles contain immanent effects, Plotinus’ metaphysics (andthe Neoplatonists in general) approximates Vedåntic parinamavåda andsatkåryavåda (553). Moreover, since all the Neoplatonists are extreme realistshe is right to doubt that the strongest forms of the måyå-doctrine, for example,Çaπkara’s, correspond to the Neoplatonic attitude towards appearances. Theshadows on the wall of Plato’s cave and the flickering insubstantiality ofsensible particulars are not, it seems to me, the right ingredients for a radicaldoctrine of illusion. However, there’s a bit more room for illusionism inPlotinus’ metaphysics. The productive power (dynamis) of the higher principlesis similar to the divine creative power of çakti (554); on the other hand, thetheme of deceptive divine play does not fit well anywhere in the spectrum ofPlatonic theology, one of whose main principles is the truthfulness andunequivocal goodness of the gods.

On the so-called positive and negative theologies in Plotinus, McEvilleyarticulates well the use of what he calls “bipolar contradictions” in both theEnneads and in the Upani‚ads, Brahmas¨tras, and Viçi‚†ådvaita Bhedåbheda.Thus, of the One Plotinus says “it is none of existing things, yet it is all”(VI.7.32) and “it is both present and absent” (V.5.9), and in the Upani‚ads “themany is a part of brahman,” “yet…brahman has no parts” (Ûça Upani‚ad 2.3.43,2.1.26) (556). However, all the Vedåntic schools are, I think, more emphatic-cally monistic than Plotinus’ metaphysics. This point is supported by the factthat neither Plotinus nor any of the later Neoplatonists explicitly identifies thesoul with the One as, for example, in the Vedåntic Brahman = åtman identity.Plotinus does not even quite express the milder form of the paradox: “the indi-vidual self is different…from Brahman but at the same time not different” (ÛçaUpani‚ad 2.3.43). The differences between the two traditions are not simply oreven primarily terminological, but I think it is revealing that Vedåntins can drawa distinction between åtman and j⁄våtman which is unavailable to Platonists.And they readily conceive of Brahman as the Supreme Self. On this point

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McEvilley bends and twists Plotinus’ ideas to fit Vedåntic orthodoxy. First, tosupport his claim that something close to the Vedåntic brahmåtman formulaappears in the Enneads he quotes passages like VI.5.12 (564) which mention thesoul becoming the All. But here “the all” refers to intelligible reality, not theOne. Indeed, for Plotinus, and arguably for Plato as well, the true self is nousor intellect, not the One. In the Greek idiom the ultimate goal is beyond theself. Second, McEvilley does not present a convincing defense of his claims thatthe One is a self and that apprehension of the One in Plotinus represents theattainment of ultimate self-knowledge. For Plotinus self-knowledge is perfectedon the noetic level, where there is a perfect fit between thought and being (cf.especially V.3 and V.5). McEvilley implies that this highest knowledge issimilar to Vedåntic parå vidyå (560). But union with the One is a hyper-onticstate that is explicitly said to be beyond thought and knowledge, as he notes(561), so no type of vidyå quite fits. I note, finally, that McEvilley agrees withthe received view on which soul never achieves ultimate union with the One butis eternally condemned to transmigration and reincarnation (567n29; cf. contraBussanich 1994). Oddly enough, here McEvilley misses an opportunity torecognize that on this point Plotinus is very close to the Advaita Vedånta viewthat the liberated soul attains identity with the absolute.

The fact that this review contains many criticisms, requests for expansion ofkey points, and occasional clarifications signals my admiration and gratitude forMcEvilley’s achievement. No other book offers so much illumination on thestriking parallels between ancient Greek and Indian philosophy.

Notes

1. He also notes in passing (121) the importance of West’s comparison of theUpani‚adic Path of Five Fires and the Paths of Gods and Fathers in hispathbreaking Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (1971: see especially62–00, 173–00).

2. For example, in his most recent book, which McEvilley was not able toconsult, Burkert stresses the difficulties of identifying specific borrowings, since

among Iranian, Egyptian, and Pythagorean elements, the intermingling ofsimilar motifs and tendencies is too dense, and the determining contacts goback too far as against the extant Greek texts, so that a neat sorting out ofitems and ways of transfer becomes impossible (2004: 113).

On Egyptian religion the works of Assmann (2001) and Hornung (1996) are

18 / John Bussanich

fundamental.3. McEvilley acknowledges his indebtedness to West for this comparison,

though he does not mention the extensive earlier scholarship cited by West.4. Kingsley 1995 and 2003 demonstrate in massive detail how these two

“sides” of Empedocles’ thought are interrelated. He shows how the supposedly“scientific” aspect of his thought, prominent in his poem “On Nature,” aims atteaching his pupil Pausanias the inner workings of the realm of nature so that hecan make us of this magical esoteric lore to achieve enlightenment, the subjectof his other poem “Purifications.”

5. See Kingsley (1995: 79–132) for the Orphic-Pythagorean sources of thePhaedo myth and their combined impact on the later Neoplatonic commen-tators.

6. On Socrates’ religious experience, see Bussanich (2005).7. Grinshpon (2003: 36) cites Hermann Oldenberg’s view that the characters

and their interchanges amount to only “clumsy sketches” of everyday life. Thetendency to depersonalize the Upani‚ads is evident even in Halbfass’ India andEurope, which contains no references to its great spiritual heroes such asUddålaka Åru~i or Yåjñavalkya.

8. See, for example, Sulabhå’s Refutation of King Janaka in Mahåbhårata12.308 with Fitzgerald’s study (2002). The literary approach to Plato is nowalmost a mass movement. For recent outstanding examples of the genre, seeBlondell (2002), Kahn (1996).

9. In this respect they are similar to the Medieval scholastics.10. The discussion of Hellenistic moral psychology is impressive (see further

on this topic, Knuuttila 2004; Sorabji 2000).11. “I never express my own views about anything, because there is no

wisdom in me.…God compels me to attend the travail of others, but has forbid-den me to procreate. So that I am not in any sense a wise man; I cannot claim asthe child of my own soul any discovery worth the name of wisdom. But withthose who associate with me it is different. At first some of them may give theimpression of being ignorant and stupid; but as time goes on and our associationcontinues, all whom the god permits are seen to make progress.…and yet it isclear that this is not due to anything they have learned from me; it is that theydiscover within themselves a multitude of beautiful things, which they bringforth into the light. But it is I, with god’s help, who deliver them of thisoffspring” (Theaeteus 150cd).

12. More clearly than Plato, but in tune with Parmenides and Empedocles, theNeoplatonists promote divinization as an ideal capable of realization. Compari-son of this theme with mok‚a and j⁄vanmukti in Indian traditions would have fitwell into McEvilley’s project.

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JOHN BUSSANICH is Professor of at the University of NewMexico. < >