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Permalink Reply by Jenn on April 11, 2009 at 9:49pm

Yes, well personally I wouldn't equate Plato's Idealism with Jung's Archetypes. Both live in the realm of the abstract though, which is where they get confused.

Plato talks about the eternal Idea or Ideal as the ultimate truth--a local river is merely a manifestation of the idea of River. I can see what he means, as we have begun to develop our higher minds, but if you stay in this state of Idealism, then I think disassociation and disconnection are inevitable. For example, once human language was based on its environment, set in context of time and place (which for ancient peoples were inseparable for there was no concept of disembodied idealistic "Time" per se) .... as oral became litteral (litteral, quoting Blake, to mean, written down) then written language was still connected to the natural world because at first whole words were depicted as what they were (a horse was drawn as a horse to signify a horse) .... but eventually the natural was watered down into letters ... (like in Egyptian hieroglyphs, letters still look like the sounds they represent ... the sound 'b' looks like a bull, etc). Then writing became something else. (booooo!) Writing became disembodied letters that were divorced from the natural world and came to represent purely the sounds, not the things themselves. This was marvelously clever, but it also meant that now we could sit in our little noosphere of human thought and not give a rat's arse about what was going on around us. Disconnection! So on that level, I don't particularly like the Platonic Ideal. I think it does indeed set up dualistic thinking.

Archetypes are different. Distinctively so in my opinion. Archetypes are not merely disembodied eternal ideas. They are based in the realm of the relational, like the channel through which the Ideal can flow. In that sense, yes they are like prototypes which pre-determine the shape an idea or eternal energy will manifest in the lower realms.

Jung broadly described archetype as numinous energy taking form. Now I really like the word "numinous" because it refers to what German theologian Rudolf Otto called the mysterium tremendum, terribile et fascinans (the terrible, fascinating and fearful mystery). Numinous is more about the divine mind, the higher mind, the perception of greater, higher qualities that draw us out— bring us to a place of awe. In this sense, an archetype then is this higher perception concentrated into a compact relational form. Or rather, what I should say is, it is a form which gives us easier access to the energy behind it. Therefore an archetype is not to be confused with the energy (or the eternal truth) perceived through it, just like a telescope gives us a greater concentrated view of the heavens, and should not be confused with the stars themselves. An archetype is merely the image through which the numinous speaks to us.

The famous example is that archetypes are like riverbeds. They predetermine where the river (the 'energy') will go or manifest, but they are not the energies themselves. The actual manifestations are all unique and you cannot equate them with one another, only relate them archetypally. For example, there is the archetype of the Sun God, which manifests through many cultures as Lleu, Apollo, Mithras, even Christ, etc –all "sun gods" within their own context. But to actually say that Lleu, Apollo, Mithras and Christ are all the same person or deity is a blatant disregard for the cultures from which they spring.

As James Hillman says, "They tend to be metaphors rather than things. We find ourselves less able to say what an archetype is literally and more inclined to describe them in images." .... Having said that, Plato perceived his Ideas to be abstract Things, not metaphors. Socrates, Plato's teacher, was always asking "What is Truth?" "What is Virture?" etc ... description was not enough. WIth archetypes, all you can do is describe. Yet another difference.

So to me, Plato's idea of Idea is more the numinous energy whereas archetypes are more the form they take. To say it another way, the Ideal lives in the realms of the eternal, but the Archetypal is more the bridge between the Higher and the Lower. Because Archetypal is about both realms, to me it is less dualistic than the Platonic Ideal and more about communion, or oneness. This is why the Archetypal works best in things like mythology, religion and real-life stuff, whereas the Ideal works best in things like science and philosophy.

Personally although I feel there is a need for both and for balance, I do feel more drawn to the archetypal because I feel it is where we can reach the edges of our present presence and move into our potential presence, thanks to the bridge-work of the archetypes. Ideas are almost too idealistic and unattainable otherwise--- too 'thing' or 'form' oriented and not enough 'verb' or 'action' oriented. Heck, our consumerist society is already too obsessed with Ideals and Things. We need less of that, not more.

Having said all this babble though, Archetypes can be just as dualistic as Ideas. Perhaps I have skewed the difference between the two of them a bit too far, because I'm really splitting hairs. Archetypes and Ideas are more similar than I'd like to admit! But really, I suppose what I'm hair splitting over is that archetypes are more related to the Image, than the Idea.

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Permalink Reply by Jenn on April 11, 2009 at 10:17pm

haha btw, after all that ... I suddenly realised that my views on archetypes are not exactly like Jung's original ideas. Just to clarify, my interpretation has been influenced heavily from James Hillman and his Archetypal Psychology, which re-visions the whole concepts of Psyche, the Imaginal, the Platonic Ideal and Archetypes.

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Permalink Reply by Katinka Hesselink on April 12, 2009 at 1:57am

Thanks a lot for your elaboration. I agree: archetypes and Platonism are two different things - I lumped them together in the question - because well, one can do that in questions.

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Permalink Reply by Jenn on April 12, 2009 at 4:19am

*nods* I realize that and thought that you thought they were different. I suppose it was just useful to approach it in the way I did because it felt like the best way to "explain them".

Otherwise, not sure if I was on target with your original question. :S I think I went a bit off track hehe. I'm still thinking of more to say.

I was delighted when you posted this topic though! :D

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Permalink Reply by Katinka Hesselink on April 12, 2009 at 4:40am

Let me answer my own question then :)

I like your explanation of archetypes as a form of psychology (paraphrasing here): where it's easier to act like other people have acted. We tend to follow ancient patterns of behavior that are hard to step out of. This is linked, in a cosmic scheme, to Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance. In other words: there are patterns to all of creation and even the laws of nature are probably nothing more (nor less) than habits in nature that have become so strong we cannot step out of them.

Plato's world of ideas was rather crude in his explanation. But if you take it to another level of abstraction there does seem to be a point: that mathematical relationships are essential to the way the universe is shaped. For instance the importance of the number 3 in quantum mechanics/physics. proton+neutron+electron = 3 essential particles to matter.
I don't know the quarks by heart, but I do know that there are supposed to be a multiple of 3 types. (that is 6 or 9, forget which).

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Permalink Reply by Martin Euser on July 29, 2010 at 8:00am

According to some Neo-Platonic scholars,such as Siorvanes, Plato's Ideas (sometimes equated with Forms) are *Gods*.
Proclus, the great Neo-Platonic sage, makes this identification.
Maybe, more precise, Forms are Noetic patterns which are embodied in some kind of Celestial Light.
This Light, then, is an expression of a Divine entity, or a hierarchy of such Gods.
The above assumes levels of being, an ontology, which is probably best described by Proclus.

As some theosophical writers have remarked, the "laws of nature" actually are the habits of Gods.
This is totally consistent with the theosophical philosophy of life, which states that consciousness-life is universal and omnipresent. Even minerals are alive, but in a kind of stasis ("trance-state"). Their focus of consciousness seems to have been transferred to another level of being.
The Noetic pattern can be likened to the Paradigma worked on or with by the Demiurgus (Zeus). It is copied, probably in part and in stages, to the lower spheres of existence where worlds such as ours are built or have been built.
This copy feature is being discussed by Proclus in his grand commentary on the Parmenides. It results in *eicons*, or images, which are used to model our world and take part in the processes maintaining our world.
We literally live in an image-world.
Is this a strange idea? No, not at all. One can observe this copying everywhere in life. From the DNA in the cell (the "master-pattern", from which partial images are extracted, via the RNA-protein synthesis pathway) to the human Imagination (from original idea to detailed plans to stepwise realization of as much as one can of the idea).
In raising a child one will see endless copying of behaviour and speech by the child, where the parents, etc., serve as a role-model. Example and copy, or Pattern and form (copy), seem to me to be integral to all processes of life.

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