The Practice of Philosophy in Plato and Plotinus

Plato said over 2,500 years ago that “”an unexamined life for a man is not worth living.”” To examine one’s life, on a regular basis, cannot but lead to a consideration of virtue, which in turn leads to a search for the Good, which both Plato and Plotinus say all men naturally seek. What we call a good informs the value system we live by, but a good can only reflect the Good, if it is good for our soul and the soul of our neighbor, any more than we can claim virtue with a mote in our eye. Are the wrongs perceived in society also in ourselves, for where else could they have come from? So we need a different kind of inquiry and a different order of reflection; an inquiry that reveals errors in how we see things and a reflection that seeks a spiritual dimension to how we see things. It does not matter if it is called contemplation or meditation, for the principle of prayer has been with us ever since man first intimated the presence of the Divine. Michael Bennett is a retired secondary school teacher of English, which took up half this working life. The first half of his working life, after leaving secondary school, was spent working in the specialist field of chemical environmental analysis, with a developing interest in education. Previous practical interests have included poetry and painting; current interests are Platonism and the Platonic tradition through the Middle Ages.