The concept of participation in divinity, or even, more generally, in a realm of existence superior to this material universe, is a powerful, not to say intoxicating one, and it is very basic to the Platonic tradition, as well as, to some extent at least, to the Judaeo-Christian one, and it is this that this fine collection of papers is celebrating. The concept of ‘participation’ (methexis) in divinity can, of course, relate both to the human individual and to the physical world as a whole, in either case dignifying and conferring positive significance on the subject of such participation. The theory that this world is, in some way, a projection, upon a formless and chaotic substrate, of a ‘matrix’ of Forms, or structuring principles, inhering in, and indeed constituting the contents of, the mind of God, is advanced most fully by Plato in his Timaeus but seems to have been a basic principle of his philosophy, in one form or another, throughout his career.
Early in their introduction, the editors cite that old curmudgeon Roger Bacon as dismissing the ‘Platonist’ notion that the world is created in the image of a paradigm, or of a set of paradigmatic forms in the mind of God; that would be to dignify it too highly. It is merely an artefact, created by God as a craftsman, and therefore not imaging forth the structure of a higher, intelligible world. In taking up this position, Bacon is not only representing a rather grimmer, anti-Platonic version of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but also, mutatis mutandis, the position of the modern, scientific world-view.
Of course, the precise mode of participation of the ‘lower’ in the ‘higher’ is an extremely vexed question, and the papers gathered together here explore this in multitudinous ways, ranging from Plato himself, through various stages of the later ancient Platonist and Platonising Christian tradition, to medieval and Renaissance thinkers and even beyond, to the Cambridge Platonists, including the excellent Henry More, and this collection well brings out that complexity. What seems to me to constitute a common thread, however, running through the tradition of participation, as opposed to that of the physical world as mere ‘artefact’, is the sanctifying, or at least dignifying, of the physical world as, in some way at least, an image of divinity, and, as such, worthy of respect and nurturing, as opposed to either the world-negating rejection characteristic of a certain type of Christianity (the portrayal of this world as a mere ‘vale of tears’) or the ruthless, ever more comprehensive exploitation of natural resources so characteristic of the modern, materialistic world-view – that attitude, indeed, which is currently leading, with ever-increasing rapidity, to the destruction of the delicate ecological balance of this planet, and the consequent termination of all civilised life.
If this volume can do anything to slow, or reverse, this process, it will have achieved more even than its editors set out to do, but at all events it will stand as a fine product of scholarly effort at the elucidation of an important philosophical and theological concept.
