Tim Addey is the co-founder and chair of The Prometheus Trust, a UK charity that supports scholarship in the Platonic tradition. Just like the ancient Academy, the group meets throughout the year and engages in discussions on and readings of Plato’s dialogues. Unlike other philosophical organisations, the objective of the trust is the promotion of Platonism as something that can be practical and useful for living. The largest criticism of Platonism stems from its perception of its abstract or overly idealistic teachings but Prometheus trustees believe they are helping to break down these misconceptions.
The Custodian: How did the Prometheus Trust come into formation?
Tim Addey: My father was actually a Platonist. He was interested in the cycles of time and the philosophy of astrology. In particular, Plato’s affirmation that time is an eternal flowing image of eternity; itself flowing to number. When I was six I thought everyone was a Platonist! At a certain point a couple of friends and I decided to set up a school for children based on Platonic principles. In fact we did. Although it as very short-lived mostly because of lack of funds, but also because there wasn’t that much parental support. As soon as they heard the phrase, ‘alternative school’ it pretty much collapsed.
The Prometheus Trust rose from that and for many years we’d been fans of the English Platonist and commentator Thomas Taylor. Our first project to print his works took us eleven years. We also started running weekend seminars and conferences. Part of our aim is to try and bridge the gap between standard academia and philosophy that speaks to the inner self. We were delighted when Professor John Dillon, who’s a highly respected and mainstream scholar, agreed to become our patron.
C: Within the long timeline of Platonism are there any philosophers you most incline to?
T: A lot of our formal work is done on the dialogues of Plato. But we always find ourselves looking at Proclus. Proclus was the flowering of a thousand years. Within forty years of his death, the Academy was forced to close by imperial edict.
C: In the arts, the term ‘genius’ is very much related to Platonic conceptions of an inspiring force or presence. Do you have a particular opinion about this idea? Is it something that’s more a personification of insight, a spiritual essence, or is it something to do with the psyche?
T: There were people who said the daimon (genius) was the conscience. My view much more veers towards the late Platonists who saw it as an independent reality; an accompanying intelligence, a manipulator of things. Plato’s Myth of Er talks about how the soul chooses a life and that there are certain paths that a life must take, and the daimon enable those paths to be unfolded. Whether or not you’ve chosen like Oedipus (a particularly harsh path) you have to work through your own karma. So in a sense what the daimon has is a clarity of vision. I would say that the daimon is a genuine independent being. It’s not something you imagine and not merely an appendage. We tend to see intelligence in our own terms. That’s our standard. We have this idea that only human beings are intelligent. It’s a bit like the flea on the back of a huge tiger. Does the flea recognise the thing it’s sitting on is actually alive? We don’t recognise what’s happening around us as being the outcome of anything other than chance or lower nature.
C: What kind of other things does the trust publish?
T: We have got thirty-two volumes of Thomas Taylor and six or seven student books. We also have more recent scholarship. We also have an eight book text and translation series, and our last series is a five volume work of pocket-sized books, made up of quotes and sentences from Platonic authors. They’re deliberately designed for contemplation and meditation.
C: So what do you say when you have students coming to you and trying to differentiate between Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Early Christianity? What would you say are the core tenets of Platonism?
In a sense it doesn’t matter. A lot of these traditions approach the same goals. We don’t say that ‘somebody out there is going to rescue me’, even though I’m not against the idea that the universe is supposed to help us. Primarily the tradition offers its adherents nothing except what they themselves want to draw out. Important parts of the tradition include the idea that we hold eternal truth, that we are immortal, and that ‘everything is full of the gods’.
The Prometheus Trust meets every two weeks or so at Cecil Sharp House in Camden. It also runs annual retreats to Italy and Greece.
Hello Tim, I appreciate the simplicity of your reply in this interview and was hoping that we might hone in on your conception of the genius or daimon.
Allow me to begin in this manner and do pardon me for leaving out the weightiness of the context, for it is only the core that truly matters here, namely a statement made by Proclus.
In the ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA of Proclus’ commentary on Alcibiades I (2nd edition) the translator & commentary, William O’Neill writes –
“concerning the position of the Daemon relative to the human soul, Proclus briefly mentions and rejects the view of Plotinus that the Daemon is the active element in the soul, and concludes with the observation: ‘Not even these seem to me to aim at the truth of the realities’.”
Tim, could you share a few words about Proclus’ observation? {Not even these [Daemons] seem to me to aim at the truth of the realities.}
It baffles me that our Daemon would lead us not into correct thinking, be that ‘the truth of the realities.’
Regards,
Jason
Hello Jason – sorry if this reply is very late (I wasn’t aware that any comments had been sent in regarding what I had said). So here I am a mere 18 months late in responding!
I think you’ve probably misunderstood the meaning of the phrase – it comes in the middle of a discussion which is aimed at rejecting any concept of the daemon as a mere part of the human self – even if a “higher” part. A variation on this rejected concept is that whatever is our active part the daemon is the level of ourselves immediately above that (i.e. if we are rational, then the daemon is the intuitive part, if we are emotional the daemon is rational, etc). It is here Proclus says “Not even these seem to me to aim at the truth of the realities (or the truth of the matter, or the truth of the issues).” So the “these” is not referring to daemons, but the views of the unnamed upholders of the opinions Proclus is arguing against
The basic Platonic view is that daemons are intermediaries between ourselves and the Gods, and that their powers are directed towards our upliftment into a better condition. From that point of view they offer the opportunities of discovering truth which we can take or not, depending on our willingness to do so.
The ancient world had a term “evil daemons” which misleads here: even these daemons are essentially good – it’s just that they stand as guardians of those areas into which humans who do evil voluntarily enter. For example there must be daemons who look after the necessary powers which arise in the natural world when animals fight, arousing in the combatants the passions of anger in order to bring the fight to its natural conclusion. In nature these passions are lit for a time, and are then dissipated; but human beings can deliberately maintain brutal and murderous passions by their semi-rational will-power – in which case such people place themselves in the hands of the so-called “evil daemons” who will do short-term damage (in the same way that a fire will do damage to us if we throw ourselves into it). The damage which results will eventually lead us away from the tendency to violent rage.
Thus the daemons will, one way or another, lead us to correct thinking – but will not override our own intrinsic powers of volition.
Thank you Jason. Allow me to address your question on the behalf of Tim… for he is a very busy man and must keep up with appearances.
Proclus sometimes uses the statement ‘seem to me’ in places where it might imply that he is speaking from the perspective of the common irrational man, i.e. it appears so, rather than the enlightened or awakened Proclus that allows him to expound on things that the far maturity of us are oblivious too. But even if this is not the case, do consider that our souls are constantly changing but can the same be said of the guardian spirit or daimon? This is where Tim would be of necessity, for it would require some convincing to reveal that the spirits are not the same as souls, and neither are they subject to change because their likeness is in accordance to the gods.
“For intellect, as we said, is participated by the rational soul, but not by the body, and nature by the body but not by the discursive reason, and further, the rational soul rules temper and sense-desire but not chance incidences. The guardian spirit [Daimon] alone moves, controls and orders all our affairs, since it perfects the reason, moderates the emotions, infuses nature, maintains the body, supplies accidentals, fulfils the decrees of fate and bestows the gifts of providence; and this one being is ruler of all that lies in us and concerns us, steering our whole life.” Proclus commentary on Alcibiades 77 – 78
So if the Daimon is responsible for ‘steerinig our whole life’, then it would make sense that it would also lead us to the ‘truth of the realities’. And neither can it itself be subject to the fluidity of matter, for then it would be without consistency and nothing could possibly be established in this life or the next.
Is the Daimon a personification of the Good? Is the One or the experience of union with the ‘ONE’ similar to Truth? Tibetan Emptiness Practice?
Is this the Mysteries and Secret Doctrines, the impulse to the Good and the experience of union or ONE, Platonically speaking? thanks, robert thibodeau
ps. love your book Seven Myths of the Soul. Still pondering Dionysus and both its source and metamorph into modern times.
Hi Robert
There are some huge questions here, so let me answer the first one.
Is the Daemon a personification of the Good? – If by personification you mean a human construct to symbolise the Good, then I think not.
But every daemon – and indeed everything in the whole of reality – is a particular manifestation of the Good: some manifestations are of a very limited order, and some not so limited and very close the power of the Good Itself. We are part of that overflowing of the Good, and each of us has a certain reality and existence – and so with daemons, at least according to Proclus, So if that is what you mean by personification, then I think so.
Then is the daemon an objective in between to my eventual getting it, awakening a universal mind, and also simultaneously the daemon is a once removed vantage point, a universal no respect for personality acting out of separateness from the universal oneness? Is the Daemon then simultaneously, what later is called angel and archangel?
The Daemon is an honest response to whatever we think, feel, do in virtue or descent?
The full theurgic philosophy of Iamblichus and the late Athenian Academy of Plutarch-Syrianus-Proclus recognised various grades of souls which perform mediating functions. Generally they are all called daemons, but one division of them is according to the usual abiding-proceeding-returning triad so familiar to Platonic philosophers. According to this division the abiding intermediaries are called Angels, the proceeding are called Daemons and the returning are called Heroes. Within these grades there are many subdivisions and Iamblichus certainly mentions Archangels in his ‘On the Mysteries’ work.
Much of the tradition’s teaching on daemons is centred upon what is written in the Symposium – especially in the reported speech of Diotima (201e-207a) – but also hooks into what Socrates says in the Phaedrus (246a-250d and 253c-254a) where souls such as ours are portrayed as attempting to accompany the Gods through the heavens in a procession. Because we are unable to hold our place in this heavenly procession we fall to Earth and are born in bodies. But there are souls, he says, “which always accompany the Gods.” The difference between human souls and these daemonic, angelic and heroic souls is, according to the Phaedrus, that we sometimes accompany the Gods, where they always accompany them.
The last half of the last book of the Republic describes in highly symbolic language the choice of the human soul before each incarnation. Once the soul has chosen its coming life a daemon is attached to that soul in order to direct that life within the great scheme of unfolding time – as such it acts as a guardian, and the teaching emerges in Christianity as that of guardian angels.
One final elements worth mentioning is the distinction between something which is identified according to its essence and something which is identified according to its activity. Angels, daemons and heroes are identified as such according to their essence, and will always be what they are. But human souls who purify and uplift themselves can direct their energies and activities upward and are therefore sometimes called angelic, daemonic or heroic – for example, Aristotle is often called “the daemonic” while Plato is called “divine”.
Since daemons are always conscious of their connection to the Gods and to eternal intellect, even in their particular tasks they have access to what we might call universal truth. A useful parallel is how the foreman of stonemasons or of carpenters must have a universal understanding of the building they are working on and must be in constant communication with the architect in order that the work performed by those under them fits in with the whole. These foremen, like the daemons, are charged with caring for the parts within the whole.
The Greek tradition has a fluidity of language so that anything acting as an intermediary can be called a daemon. So when reading ancient texts one needs to be careful about whether the word is being used in a strict sense or in a more descriptive sense.
Beautiful, thank you. Love the abiding, proceeding, returning