ABSTRACT
Pickstock's reading of Plato plays a crucial role in this critical rethinking of the past. According to Pickstock, Plato's thought, formulated as a theological response to the scientific and sophistic nihilism of his day, offers an example of pre-Christian liturgical theory and practice, anticipating, if only incompletely (AW, p. 169), the liturgical unity of divinity and humanity/nature through his quest to show how the Good is intrinsically present in all reality as its origin and end. Her interpretation of the Platonic philosophy is intended to serve her antimodern philosophical programme: the subordination of philosophy and reason to theology, myth and ritual, and the deconstruction of the modern subject. This essay aims to distinguish between what is genuinely illuminating in Pickstock's reading of the Platonic philosophy and what is merely a reflection of her own ambiguously post-modern and pre-modern position.
