For the first time since 2020, I am now publishing a major literary production of mine here, on this blog — an essay-like academic paper exclusively devoted to a comprehensive analysis of and certain musings regarding what one might style the ontological nature of Plato’s Good, which, as I believe I have come very close to proving, actually consists of two distinct, albeit virtually inseparable ontological entities.

If that sounds a little mysterious, then please allow me to reassure you that the paper itself is, like my master’s thesis of 2020, composed in a fairly easy-to-understand and jargon-free English, and that the claim that the Good (τό ἀγᾰθόν; to agathon) of Socrates and Plato, as extensively outlined in the dialogue called the Republic (the ancient title was the Politeia), in fact consists of two different, but intimately related natures, styled the Idea of the Good and the Good Itself, is likely to look much clearer to you once you have read the initial pages.

I believe I am among the first in modern times to perceive and articulate this distinction that Plato arguably makes between the «inner» and the «outer» nature of the metaphysical and universal Good, and to make the case for this new hermeneutical or interpretive approach to the Republic, and I would venture to say that this distinction is as important to grasp, if not even more important, as the one I established between Nous and Dianoia, Divine, Mental Seeing and Logical, Discursive Reasoning, in my master’s thesis.

In both of these cases, that of the Highest Metaphysical or Divine Entities and that of the highest mental faculties or powers available to the Incarnated Human Being, the original and highly sophisticated conception held by Plato, and partially set forth in his dialogues, appears to have gradually become distorted and misconstrued, partly as a result of the challenges inherent in the act of translating certain crucial Greek terms into other languages, such as Latin or English, partly because of the overarching tendency towards Simplification observable in almost all the fields of human activity since well before the dawn of the Modern Era (and particularly when it comes to the phenomenon of language), and partly as a result of the two merciless prongs of that which has been the increasingly dominant strand of intellectual and academic thought in Europe for perhaps a thousand years now, namely the radically assertive, dogmatically religious one, completely divorced from Contemplation, Inspiration and Knowledge, and therefore a form of Empiricism, and of Irrationality (a development which reached its height in Europe with the rise of radical Protestantism), and the narrowly «rationalistic», purely logical and calculating and deliberating one, which is also totally cut off from Noesis, from Spirit and from Wisdom, and also, therefore, empirically oriented and irrational, and between which the remains of Ancient Platonism, and of the once living Platonic tradition, have now been caught for a very long time.

In addition to the above mentioned analysis of the Nature or Natures of Socrates’ and Plato’s Good, which is really a study of Socratic or Platonic theology (which was styled «philosophy» because Platonic philosophy was, at its core, about the Seeking Out and Loving of Wisdom, Sophia), I go into some detail as regards the nature of the Platonic Ideas in general, and the clues to the ancient spectrum of signification of the term «idea» (ἰδέα; idea) provided by its exceedingly ancient Indo-European roots, as well as by probable cognates of that Greek term in present-day Norwegian.

Hint: The disappearance of the «v» in Greek has obscured one of the likely meanings of Plato’s crucial term, which was probably closely related to the concept of seeing and being seen. Once the implications of this are grasped, the vistas that open up are truly amazing.

The title of the paper is The Nature of Plato’s Good Revealed: Platonic Theology and Its Relation to Christianity and Judaism: The Case for Distinguishing between the Idea of the Good and the Good Itself. You may download it for free here, by clicking on this link to the PDF, or by visiting my profile on Academia.edu.

P.S.: Due to a strange coincidence, my investigations into the concept of Nous, and of the Idea of the Good, have resulted in what is probably a very revealing elucidation of the reasoning behind the adoption of the name VID Specialized University (now my «alma mater» — the school where I got my theology degree), even though this curious outcome was completely unintended.

(Please note that if you are new to my research into Plato, then you may want to read the first part of my thesis before diving into this paper on the Good, since the latter is, in part, a defense of a claim made in the former, and also since the thesis will give you an introduction to my background and my way of thinking.)