Professor John Dillon at the foot of a statue to Plato outside the Academy of Athens

JOHN Dillon’s lifelong professional academic pursuit of Plato and his philosophical legacy has led him up many interesting avenues not usually associated with the study of the classics and scholarly discourse. 

“I’ve been most interested of late in reminding people that Platonism advocates a sensible approach to the environment, particularly Plato’s Laws, his most serious political work,” Dillon,  professor emeritus of Greek at Trinity College Dublin, says. “It’s really quite strict in the sense of not distorting our relationship with the environment.”

The Irish academic hails from a family that has played a long and illustrious role in Irish politics through the generations: his great-grandfather John Blake Dillon was one of the organisers of the unsuccessful 1848 Young Ireland rebellion against British rule, while his grandfather John Dillon was a leading land reform agitator. 

Dillon, however, went into academia, following his father, Myles, a noted Celticist. His journey to Plato was a backward journey from a teenage interest in the works of Plotinus, through the works of Iamblichus, then to the immediate students of Plato, before reaching the great philosopher himself. 

However, the political stream of his ancestors is still evident, and in recent years, Dillon’s views have brought him firmly into the green political camp, a move that’s fully in tune with his philosophical endeavours, he says.

“Plato’s operating in a much more simple framework than we would be,” Dillon admits, “but, basically, he’s saying don’t put too many people in one place, don’t impose more on the physical environment than it can bear, make the maximum use of resources like water and replant trees if you cut them down.”

The Platonic ideal is about “retaining a steady state”, says Dillon, who adds that he’s been influenced by his recent reading of the works of James Lovelock, whose Gaia hypothesis postulates that the biosphere is a self-regulating entity with the capacity to keep the earth healthy by controlling the chemical and physical environment. 

“Obviously, Plato had no notion of the complexity of the modern world or of the use of non-renewable resources, but he can be positively applied in this way,” Dillon points out.

As he explains, it wouldn’t be the first time that the ideas of the Classical Greek philosopher have been adopted for contemporary needs: “Right into late antiquity, the three great religions of the book - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - all adopted Platonism in various ways and modified it as required by them.”

Dillon adds that Platonic thought, “a message of essential optimism and reasonableness”, is ever more necessary in our modern world, which seems spellbound by the modern idea of progress. 

“It was Christianity that actually introduced the idea of progress - the idea that we are progressing towards the last day,” Dillon explains. “However, the modern secular version of progress eliminates the last day and it just becomes progress: things will get better and better and better, the gross national product gets larger and larger and larger, the percentage of growth gets greater and greater, like in China, and you don’t ask where this is ending.”

The results of this blind pursuit of progress for progress’ sake are all too evident, he continues; the great Greek philosopher argued that a certain course of study would enable one to make almost infallible calculations about practical issues. 

“A Platonic sage would probably be able to solve the Greek economic crisis,” says Dillon, rushing to add that he himself is far from this level of insight. “I’m working on it!” he jokes.

Dillon is a regular visitor to Greece and has been director of the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens since it opened its doors in Exarcheia, an area whose “general grottiness” he says he finds appealing. 

Although he’s been coming to the country since the 1960s, his lack of awareness of modern Greece was “brought home to him” after a meeting in the early 1980s with the late British writer and translator Philip Sherrard, who had lived in Greece since the 1950s.

“Philip was a man with strong views on most subjects,” Dillon recalls, “and he told me that I was a disgrace. He said: ‘You classicists come here looking at ruins, but there’s a people here, with a history. It’s still going on, and you have to consider what’s here.’” 

Affected by the comments, Dillon decided to take summer course in Thessaloniki in 1984 “to get the Modern Greek going”. 

His linguistic efforts have failed to match the excellence of his academic endeavours, he jokes, although he claims he can order lunch and read the newspaper in the language.

A strong friendship has formed with Sherrard, who died in 1995, and his wife Denise Harvey, and their home in Katounia, Evia, is a port of call during his almost annual visits to Greece. “It’s one of my favourite places - we’ve even called our house in Dublin after it. There’s something about it.”

His visits have made him aware of the country’s strengths and difficulties. Again, he suggests Greece seek some solutions in its Platonic heritage. “Reason will tell you not to live beyond your means to be aware of what the environment can support,” he points out. 

On June 15, in recognition of his significant and original contribution to the study of Greek philosophy, Dillon was officially elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Athens, whose title hearkens back to the ancient Platonic Academy.

He is one of the few foreigners and the first Irish academic to have received this singular honour. “It’s enormously gratifying and humbling, and I wish to live up to it,” he said.