Pierre Grimes argues that the central task of our age is recovering Platonism as a spiritual discipline, a 'platonic yoga' ignored by the universities. He reads the divided line and the allegory of the cave alongside the alchemical texts Carl Jung examined in Psychology and Alchemy, and traces how the Platonic tradition was suppressed and displaced in Christian Europe.
Pierre Grimes — 1 recording in the archive.
Related reading: Philosophical Midwifery by Pierre Grimes.
We are going to explore a curious problem and I'm calling it the real problem I think of our age is the recovery of Platonism it's a very strange search because it constitutes in fact a lost treasure that takes an explanation the way Plato is taught today and all of the universities is that it does not entertain nor teach the notion that it is a spiritual discipline Plato is a platonic yoga magnificent structured aggressive descriptive and psychologically profound now when Carl Jung did this work called psychology and alchemy which is a real fine work and he did this 1953 let me just make sure yeah 1953 psychology no the reason I call it strange it's because the work we're going to look at in psychology and alchemy Carl Jung describes it and gives the title of it the treatise of platonic tetralogy sets of four he also gives the latin source name for it the liberal Atanas squat or iam obviously there's nothing obscure about its source it's Plato now what I find rather interesting is that when Carl Jung is going to show us how to understand this platonic he doesn't go into Plato he goes into alchemy and he doesn't just go into alchemy he goes into hermetic thought which is a early philosophical movement that flourished at the time of around the first two three four centuries of our era and came back into Europe that around and strength at four ninety five because Pacino's gray translations from the plate from the Platonic school and Florence the first one he translated was the work arnhem Matic philosophy in 1495 after that he translated Plato and many of the great Greek classics and a great number until into the 1500s Europe for the first time had Plato in Latin translation before that there was no Plato in Europe to speak of a few dialogues badly translated or in parts but for the first time we can speak of the Platonic tradition entering Europe begins in the 1500s that's sixteenth century the first English translations the whole thing how to wait until 1805 and huh so that in English we've had Plato for only half as long as we've had Shakespeare but let's go on now first I would like to spend a few minutes on this work called the play tonic trait ologies which…