ἐκ δὲ τούτων τὰ ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ καὶ αὐτὸν τὸν οὐρανὸν νύκτωρ ἂν ῥᾷον θεάσαιτο,
Plato, like Aristotle, appeared to have a conception of a "really real" heaven, totally apart from the spheres in which the sun and planets travel. And this passage is talking about the progression required to come to an understanding of such "really real" existence. It's possible to read it as Plato being a bit clever and saying that observing things in the heavens is the final step before contemplation of αὐτὸν τὸν οὐρανὸν, where really real ideas are.“Then there would be need of habituation, I take it, to enable him to see the things higher up. And at first he would most easily discern the shadows and, after that, the likenesses or reflections in water of men and other things, and later, the things themselves, and from these he would go on to contemplate the appearances in the heavens and heaven itself (ἐκ δὲ τούτων τὰ ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ καὶ αὐτὸν τὸν οὐρανὸν), more easily by night, looking at the light of the stars and the moon, than by day the sun and the sun's light.”
On one occasion, Plato's dialogue (Plat. Phaedrus 247c), in a parable, apparently has it such that this is called "the region above the heaven" (apparently something that Aristotle further distinguished by claiming that it has no place or limit):
On another occasion, another dialogue (the Timaeus 28b, 31a, 92c) sees fit to exchange words between "cosmos" and "ouranos" and by either to designate what we call the universe, that which contains all things."pass outside and take their place on the outer surface of the heaven, and when they have taken their stand, the revolution carries them round and they behold the things outside of the heaven. But the region above the heaven (τὸν δὲ ὑπερουράνιον τόπον) was never worthily sung by any earthly poet, nor will it ever be. It is, however, as I shall tell; for I must dare to speak the truth, especially as truth is my theme. For the colorless, formless, and intangible truly existing essence, with which all true knowledge is concerned, holds this region"
Now the whole Heaven, or Cosmos, or if there is any other name which it specially prefers, by that let us call it,—so, be its name what it may, we must first investigate concerning it that primary question which has to be investigated at the outset in every case,—namely, whether it has existed always, having no beginning of generation, or whether it has come into existence, having begun from some beginning.
Are we right, then, in describing the Heaven as one, or would it be more correct to speak of heavens as many or infinite in number? One it must be termed, if it is to be framed after its Pattern. For that which embraces all intelligible Living Creatures could never be second, with another beside it; for if so, there must needs exist yet another Living Creature, which should embrace them both, and of which they two would each be a part; in which case this Universe could no longer be rightly described as modelled on these two, but rather on that third Creature which contains them both.
Yet this appears to be an unrelated usage. If we look at some other references (part of an analogy about how one at the bottom of the ocean thinks its observations of the ocean's surface would be observations of the heavens themselves--thus we are similarly confined to appearances):And now at length we may say that our discourse concerning the Universe has reached its termination. For this our Cosmos has received the living creatures both mortal and immortal and been thereby fulfilled; it being itself a visible Living Creature embracing the visible creatures, a perceptible God made in the image of the Intelligible, most great and good and fair and perfect in its generation—even this one Heaven sole of its kind.
Now we do not perceive that we live in the hollows, but think we live on the upper surface of the earth, just as if someone who lives in the depth of the ocean should think he lived on the surface of the sea, and, seeing the sun and the stars through the water, should think the sea was the sky, and should, by reason of sluggishness or feebleness, never have reached the surface of the sea, and should never have seen, by rising and lifting his head out of the sea into our upper world, and should never have heard from anyone who had seen, how much purer and fairer it is than the world he lived in. I believe this is just the case with us; for we dwell in a hollow of the earth and think we dwell on its upper surface; and the air we call the heaven, and think that is the heaven in which the stars move. But the fact is the same, that by reason of feebleness and sluggishness, we are unable to attain to the upper surface of the air; for if anyone should come to the top of the air or should get wings and fly up, he could lift his head above it and see, as fishes lift their heads out of the water and see the things in our world, so he would see things in that upper world; and, if his nature were strong enough to bear the sight, he would recognize that that is the real heaven (ὁ ἀληθῶς οὐρανὸς) and the real light and the real earth. For this earth of ours, and the stones and the whole region where we live, are injured and corroded, as in the sea things are injured by the brine, and nothing of any account grows in the sea, and there is, one might say, nothing perfect there, but caverns and sand and endless mud and mire, where there is earth also, and there is nothing at all worthy to be compared with the beautiful things of our world. But the things in that world above would be seen to be even more superior to those in this world of ours.
This still doesn't bring us back to the τὸν δὲ ὑπερουράνιον τόπον concept mentioned earlier.For I believe there are in all directions on the earth many hollows of very various forms and sizes, into which the water and mist and air have run together; but the earth itself is pure and is situated in the pure heaven in which the stars are (δὲ τὴν γῆν καθαρὰν ἐν καθαρῷ κεῖσθαι τῷ οὐρανῷ ἐν ᾧπέρ ἐστι τὰ ἄστρα), the heaven which those who discourse about such matters call the ether (αἰθέρα); the water, mist and air are the sediment of this and flow together into the hollows of the earth.
But it does provide another possible explanation of the phrase 'heaven itself,' as meant to contrast with the things in heaven as they are seen. The perception is just a shadow of the reality, which can be perceived only with the mind/soul.
Plato's Symposium (210) has a woman speaks of the "really real" and how anything that is such would exist neither in heaven nor on earth. (Apparently the proper method of loving boys is just one step on the journey to true enlightenment and the contemplation of pure beauty. And yes, there is a pun where it is said that this activity has created the child of "a true virtue.")
Okay so much for my anachronistic astonishment. The Perseus site has a note with some relevant references on Plato's ideal objects (link):“‘When a man has been thus far tutored in the lore of love, passing from view to view of beautiful things, in the right and regular ascent, suddenly he will have revealed to him, as he draws to the close of his dealings in love, a wondrous vision, beautiful in its nature; and this, Socrates, is the final object of all those previous toils. First of all, it is ever-existent and neither comes to be nor perishes, neither waxes nor wanes; next, it is not beautiful in part and in part ugly, nor is it such at such a time and other at another, nor in one respect beautiful and in another ugly, nor so affected by position as to seem beautiful to some and ugly to others. Nor again will our initiate find the beautiful presented to him in the guise of a face or of hands or any other portion of the body, nor as a particular description or piece of knowledge, nor as existing somewhere in another substance, such as an animal or the earth or sky (ἐν ζῴῳ ἢ ἐν γῇ ἢ ἐν οὐρανῷ) or any other thing; but existing ever in singularity of form independent by itself, while all the multitude of beautiful things partake of it in such wise that, though all of them are coming to be and perishing, it grows neither greater nor less, and is affected by nothing. So when a man by the right method of boy-loving (παιδεραστεῖν [!]) ascends from these particulars and begins to descry that beauty, he is almost able to lay hold of the final secret. Such is the right approach or induction to love-matters. Beginning from obvious beauties he must for the sake of that highest beauty be ever climbing aloft, as on the rungs of a ladder, from one to two, and from two to all beautiful bodies; from personal beauty he proceeds to beautiful observances, from observance to beautiful learning, and from learning at last to that particular study which is concerned with the beautiful itself and that alone; so that in the end he comes to know the very essence of beauty. In that state of life above all others, my dear Socrates,’ said the Mantinean woman, ‘a man finds it truly worth while to live, as he contemplates essential beauty. This, when once beheld, will outshine your gold and your vesture, your beautiful boys and striplings, whose aspect now so astounds you and makes you and many another, at the sight and constant society of your darlings, ready to do without either food or drink if that were any way possible, and only gaze upon them and have their company. But tell me, what would happen if one of you had the fortune to look upon essential beauty entire, pure and unalloyed (τὸ καλὸν ἰδεῖν εἰλικρινές, καθαρόν, ἄμεικτον); not infected with the flesh and color of humanity, and ever so much more of mortal trash? What if he could behold the divine beauty (τὸ θεῖον καλὸν) itself, in its unique form? Do you call it a pitiful life for a man to lead—looking that way, observing that vision by the proper means, and having it ever with him? Do but consider,’ she said, ‘that there only will it befall him, as he sees the beautiful through that which makes it visible, to breed (τίκτειν) not illusions but true examples of virtue, since his contact is not with illusion but with truth. So when he has begotten (τεκόντι) a true virtue (ἀρετὴν ἀληθῆ) and has reared it up (θρεψαμένῳ) he is destined to win the friendship of Heaven (θεοφιλεῖ); he, above all men, is immortal.’
The Phaedrus, by the way, also has the story about the hierarchy of souls, reincarnation, and how terribly difficult it was to get it all right.The Ideal object is distinguished by three leading characteristics, viz. (1) eternity and immutability; (2) absoluteness, or freedom from relativity; (3) self-existence. Compare the accounts of Ideal being given in Phaedo 78 C ff., Phaedrus 247 C ff., Crat. 386 D, 439 C ff., Rep. 476 A, 479 A ff., Soph. 249 B ff., Phileb. 15 B, 58 A, Tim. 51 D ff. The description has, necessarily, to be conveyed by means of negative propositions, i.e. by way of contrast with phenomenal objects. See also the parallels in Plotin. Enn. V. viii. 546 C, VI. vii. 727 C.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... edrus+248c
Plato describes the gods, who don't suffer such uncertainties.And this is a law of Destiny, that the soul which follows after God and obtains a view of any of the truths is free from harm until the next period, and if it can always attain this, is always unharmed; but when, through inability to follow, it fails to see, and through some mischance is filled with forgetfulness and evil and grows heavy, and when it has grown heavy, loses its wings and falls to the earth, then it is the law that this soul shall never pass into any beast at its first birth, but the soul that has seen the most shall enter into the birth of a man who is to be a philosopher or a lover of beauty, or one of a musical or loving nature (εἰς γονὴν ἀνδρὸς γενησομένου φιλοσόφου ἢ φιλοκάλου ἢ μουσικοῦ τινος καὶ ἐρωτικοῦ), . . . Now in all these states, whoever lives justly obtains a better lot, and whoever lives unjustly, a worse. For each soul returns to the place whence it came in ten thousand years; for it does not regain its wings before that time has elapsed, except the soul of him who has been a guileless philosopher or a philosophical lover; these, when for three successive periods of a thousand years they have chosen such a life, after the third period of a thousand years become winged in the three thousandth year and go their way . . .
From Plato's descriptions in the myth of Er, there are also afterlives spent under the earth, as well as in the heaven, between incarnations (1000 years from birth to birth, seems to be the general rule here).Now the divine intelligence, since it is nurtured on mind and pure knowledge, and the intelligence of every soul which is capable of receiving that which befits it, rejoices in seeing reality for a space of time and by gazing upon truth is nourished and made happy until the revolution brings it again to the same place. In the revolution it beholds absolute justice, temperance, and knowledge, not such knowledge as has a beginning and varies as it is associated with one or another of the things we call realities, but that which abides in the real eternal absolute; and in the same way it beholds and feeds upon the other eternal verities, after which, passing down again within the heaven (δῦσα πάλιν εἰς τὸ εἴσω τοῦ οὐρανοῦ), it goes home, and there the charioteer puts up the horses at the manger and feeds them with ambrosia and then gives them nectar to drink.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... p.+10.614b
The description of the "craftsman" in the Republic has him making all things in the triple division heaven, earth, and under earth:“It is not, let me tell you,” said I, “the tale1 to Alcinous told2 that I shall unfold, but the tale of a warrior bold,3 Er, the son of Armenius, by race a Pamphylian.4 He once upon a time was slain in battle, and when the corpses were taken up on the tenth day already decayed, was found intact, and having been brought home, at the moment of his funeral, on the twelfth day5 as he lay upon the pyre, revived,6 and after coming to life related what, he said, he had seen in the world beyond. He said that when his soul7 went forth from his body he journeyed with a great company and that they came to a mysterious region1 where there were two openings side by side in the earth, and above and over against them in the heaven two others, and that judges were sitting2 between these, and that after every judgement they bade the righteous journey to the right and upwards through the heaven with tokens attached3 to them in front of the judgement passed upon them, and the unjust to take the road to the left4 and downward, they too wearing behind signs of all that had befallen them, and that when he himself drew near they told him that he must be the messenger1 to mankind to tell them of that other world,2 and they charged him to give ear and to observe everything in the place. And so he said that here he saw, by each opening of heaven and earth, the souls departing after judgement had been passed upon them, while, by the other pair of openings, there came up from the one in the earth souls full of squalor and dust, and from the second there came down from heaven a second procession of souls clean and pure, and that those which arrived from time to time appeared to have come as it were from a long journey and gladly departed to the meadow1 and encamped2 there as at a festival,3 and acquaintances greeted one another, and those which came from the earth questioned the others about conditions up yonder, and those from heaven asked how it fared with those others. And they told their stories to one another, the one lamenting and wailing as they recalled how many and how dreadful things they had suffered and seen in their journey beneath the earth1—it lasted a thousand years2—while those from heaven related their delights and visions of a beauty beyond words. To tell it all, Glaucon, would take all our time, but the sum, he said, was this. For all the wrongs they had ever done to anyone and all whom they had severally wronged they had paid the penalty in turn tenfold for each, and the measure of this was by periods of a hundred years each, so that on the assumption that this was the length of human life the punishment might be ten times the crime; as for example that if anyone had been the cause of many deaths or had betrayed cities and armies and reduced them to slavery, or had been participant in any other iniquity, they might receive in requital pains tenfold for each of these wrongs, and again if any had done deeds of kindness and been just and holy men they might receive their due reward in the same measure; and other things not worthy of record he said of those who had just been born1 and lived but a short time; and he had still greater requitals to tell of piety and impiety towards the gods and parents2 and of self-slaughter.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... ep.+7.530a
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... p.+10.596b“Do you not think,” said I, “that one who was an astronomer in very truth would feel in the same way when he turned his eyes upon the movements of the stars? He will be willing to concede that the artisan1 of heaven fashioned it and all that it contains in the best possible manner for such a fabric; but when it comes to the proportions of day and night, and of their relation to the month, and that of the month to the year, and of the other stars to these and one another, do you not suppose that he will regard as a very strange fellow the man who believes that these things go on for ever without change1 or the least deviation2—though they possess bodies and are visible objects—and that his unremitting quest3 the realities of these things?”
A note:“And are we not also in the habit of saying that the craftsman (ὁ δημιουργὸς) who produces either of them fixes his eyes1 on the idea or form, and so makes in the one case the couches and in the other the tables that we use, and similarly of other things? For surely no craftsman (δημιουργεῖ) makes the idea itself. How could he?” “By no means.” “But now consider what name you would give to this craftsman.” “What one?” “Him who makes all the things (ὃς πάντα ποιεῖ) that all handicraftsmen (τῶν χειροτεχνῶν) severally produce.” “A truly clever and wondrous man you tell of.” (δεινόν τινα λέγεις καὶ θαυμαστὸν ἄνδρα) “Ah, but wait,2 and you will say so indeed, for this same handicraftsman (οὗτος χειροτέχνης) is not only able to make all implements, but he produces all plants and animals, including himself,3 and thereto earth and heaven and the gods and all things in heaven and in Hades under the earth.” (καὶ πρὸς τούτοις γῆν καὶ οὐρανὸν καὶ θεοὺς καὶ πάντα τὰ ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ τὰ ἐν Ἅιδου ὑπὸ γῆς ἅπαντα ἐργάζεται).
This is naturally an influence behind the Marcionite division between the maker and the true God, something Plato talked about five centuries before.It is a tempting error to refer this to God, as I once did, and as Wilamowitz, Platon. i. p. 604 does. So Cudworth, True Intel. System of the Universe, vol. ii. p. 70: “Lastly, he is called ὃς πάντα τά τε ἄλλα ἐργάζεται, καὶ ἑαυτόν, ‘he that causeth or produceth both all other things, and even himself.'” But the producer of everything, including himself, is the imitator generalized and then exemplified by the painter and the poet. Cf. Soph. 234 A-B.
This wraps up together the doctrine of the really real forms and the doctrine of the craftsman who cannot hope to contain them accurately, while also providing a fairly good parallel for the illumination of the quote regarding coming to know of the things in heaven and of heaven itself:
And the nice thing about this is that it is part of the context of the same passage:“Thus,” said I, “these sparks that paint the sky,3 since they are decorations on a visible surface, we must regard, to be sure, as the fairest and most exact of material things but we must recognize that they fall far short of the truth,1 the movements, namely, of real speed and real slowness in true number and in all true figures both in relation to one another and as vehicles of the things they carry and contain. These can be apprehended only by reason and thought, but not by sight; or do you think otherwise?” “By no means,” he said. “Then,” said I, “we must use the blazonry of the heavens as patterns to aid in the study of those realities, just as one would do who chanced upon diagrams drawn with special care and elaboration by Daedalus or some other craftsman or painter. For anyone acquainted with geometry who saw such designs would admit the beauty of the workmanship, but would think it absurd to examine them seriously in the expectation of finding in them the absolute truth with regard to equals or doubles or any other ratio.” “How could it be otherwise than absurd?” he said. “Do you not think,” said I, “that one who was an astronomer in very truth would feel in the same way when he turned his eyes upon the movements of the stars? He will be willing to concede that the artisan1 of heaven (τῷ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ δημιουργῷ) fashioned it and all that it contains in the best possible manner for such a fabric; but when it comes to the proportions of day and night, and of their relation to the month, and that of the month to the year, and of the other stars to these and one another, do you not suppose that he will regard as a very strange fellow the man who believes that these things go on for ever without change1 or the least deviation2—though they possess bodies and are visible objects—and that his unremitting quest3 the realities of these things?” “I at least do think so,” he said, “now that I hear it from you.”
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... ep.+7.529c
This seems to definitely say that the realm of the really real ideas (called a pattern here) can be called heaven:
“Well,” said I, “perhaps there is a pattern2 [παράδειγμα] of it laid up in heaven (ἐν οὐρανῷ) for him who wishes to contemplate it and so beholding to constitute himself its citizen.3 But it makes no difference whether it exists now or ever will come into being.4 The politics of this city only will be his and of none other.”