Posted on 09/24/2003 11:25:56 PM PDT by betty boop
This shift of attention to the individual psyche marks a decisive, revolutionary break with the characteristic habits of thought of the ancient world, the cosmological consciousness, which conceived of man mainly in terms of his connections to units larger than the individual, and envisioned a cosmos filled with gods. For Plato’s life-long meditation on the psyche – the human soul -- was deeply implicated in his speculation on the nature of the divine, which radically departed from the Hellenic people’s myth of the gods. Psyche also was the basis of Plato’s life-long meditation on “the best possible” political order.
Platonic thought can probably best be understood as a kind of spiritual autobiography. Great philosopher that he was (perhaps the greatest), Plato was not a “system builder”; he did not propound any positivist doctrine on any subject at all.
This aspect of Platonic thought is difficult for the modern imagination to grasp; for when we moderns think of a “philosopher,” we think of an intellectual who investigates propositions about truth and draws conclusive answers about the objects of his investigation. The philosopher then assembles his insights into systematic form allegedly useful in telling us about the real nature of things. (Plato called this sort of thing “philodoxy,” – love of transitory opinion -- the specialty of the Sophists, his adversaries. He would not call it “philosophy” – love of wisdom. This issue, however, is beyond the scope of the present essay.)
Although Plato is usually classed as an Idealist, his own instinct in philosophizing was uncompromisingly Realist, in the sense that he knew that certain questions can never be “closed” in principle. For the truth of existence, of Reality, is the object of zetesis -- of a search or quest -- that cannot be completed by any human being in the time of his own existence. Rather, it is a quest engaging all mankind proceeding through countless generations. Plato could point out the way. But the student must engage in the quest by and for himself, and understand it as he experiences it, according to his love for divine things.
On that note, we turn now to the consideration of psyche proper. Plato conceived of the individual human being as psyche-in-soma: an eternal soul incarnated in finite bodily existence.
The soul has a characteristic structure, a hierarchy of dynamic forces: the rational element, whose ordering power is sophia, wisdom; the spirited, whose ordering power is andreia, or manly virtue/courage; and the appetitive, whose ordering power is to “feel the pull” of physis, or bodily nature. The well-ordered soul is the healthy integration of the three forces, giving each its proper role and function.
In addition to elaborating a hierarchy of forces in the soul, the Platonic meditation also elaborates its hierarchical “structure”: At psyche’s “summit” is nous, intellect; followed by the conscious mind – including feeling, sensation; and “at bottom,” the unconscious mind, with its root in the “depth” of the soul, in which the soul’s “ground of being” can be found.
I’ve used a lot of quotation marks in the above passage for a reason. To use language like this is to intend as reified objects what are really processes on-going in the soul. We aren’t speaking of “thing-like objects” here. Processes aren’t things at all. But they are real all the same.
With that caution in mind, we have, so far, a “force field” and a “structure” for the soul, and importantly, the suggestion that the soul ought to be well-ordered.
And so the question arises: By what criteria does the soul order itself? And why would it even want to order itself?
To answer such we questions, we have to remember that the Platonic speculation maintains the immortality of the soul. The soul coming into bodily existence, however, does not remember its pre-existence at all; for at its birth into the present existence, the “circuits of the brain” become “deranged,” so the soul cannot remember anything about its life prior to its birth in this one. So it comes as a shock to the soul to discover that its body will die someday. The anxiety is acute, for the soul does not yet realize that its life is not dependent on the body, and is not destroyed with the body.
It is here (The Republic) that Plato inserts a drama in which the soul must act, the Pamphylian myth.
In the myth, “dead souls” – that is, souls separated from the body at physical death – receive reward or punishment according to their conduct in life, the bad souls going to their suffering beneath the earth, the good souls to their blessed existence in heaven. Then, after a thousand years, all the dead souls are brought into the Judgment of Lachesis, the daughter of Ananke (Necessity). And there the dead souls must draw their several lots and choose their individual fate for their next period of incarnated existence:
| Ananke’s daughter, the maiden Lachesis, her word: Souls of a day! Beginning of a new cycle, for the mortal race, to end in death! The daemon will not be allotted to you; but you shall select the daemon. The first by the lot, shall the first select the life to which he will be bound by necessity. Arete has no master; and as a man honors or dishonors her, he will have her increased or diminished. The guilt is the chooser’s; God is guiltless. |
Now a soul that had just spent one thousand years in purgative punishment in the netherworld would be most anxious to choose his daemon rightly, lest at the conclusion of the next life, he find himself returned to the suffering below for another thousand years. On the other hand, the blessed souls do not necessarily make better choices than the purged souls. And they are just as liable to wind up in punishment in the next round if they do not choose wisely.
But choose they must, and thereby bind themselves to their fate over the next cycle of life and death. A soul’s only guide in the choice is the character it had acquired during its preceding life. The choice is free, but the wisdom to make a good choice may be deficient. Under the circumstances, the best course would be to make the best choice one can, and then follow Arete – Virtue. To “diminish her” – to dishonor her call to justice, temperance, courage, love of wisdom, zealous search for true being – is to incur culpable guilt. The daemon is there to warn the soul when it wanders from Arete, endeavoring to push the soul up into the light.
The daemon might be thought of as the mediator or agent of cosmic spiritual substance in the soul, a little spark of the divine in man. Plato’s symbol for the divine substance is the Agathon, the Good.
The Agathon is utterly transcendent, so immanent propositions about it cannot be constructed in principle. Yet the soul, in an act of transcendence, may have a vision of the Agathon, of its eternally divine goodness, purity, beauty, truth, and justice. Such experiences of transcendence inform the soul, building up its just order by fortifying the Arete in the soul.
Thus the soul is drawn upward into the light of the vision of the Agathon, and participates in the divine life so far as that is possible for a man.
It is important to bear in mind that the Agathon is not God. Though Plato often refers to the One God “Beyond” the world of created things, and “Beyond” the generations of the intracosmic gods (the gods of the Age or Chronos, subsequently replaced by the Olympians under the rulership of Zeus), and strongly suggests that the Logos of divine Nous is the ordering principle of the Cosmos, he does not elaborate. That elaboration had to wait for the Revelation of Christ.
For Plato, the vision of the Agathon was the basis of the idea of the human family, of a common shared humanity, of the idea of the brotherhood of mankind. As Eric Voegelin noted (Order and History, Vol. III, Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1957), “The understanding of a universal humanity originates in the experience of transcendence; and the ineffable kinship of men under God revealed in the experience can immanently be expressed only in a myth of descent from a common mother or father….”
In this, Plato seems to anticipate St. Paul’s one body of Christ, interjecting the idea that, despite their differences, all men are equal as brothers in the sight of God.
For Plato, the daimon-mediated tensional suspense of the soul “in between” (metaxy) its cosmic ground in the “depth” of the soul and its extracosmic height in a transcendental “beyond” in the one God, was the site and sensorium of human spiritual reality. The form of the metaxy might be seen as a faint foreshadowing of the mediating process of Christ in the salvation and perfection of the soul, uniting souls to the Father through Himself, as declared by Christian revelation, most clearly in John’s Gospel.
It is possible to imagine that there are certain seed ideas in Plato that could not come into full bloom until Jesus Christ irrupted into human history four centuries after Plato’s death.
And man is unique among creatures, for he alone possess nous; and thus is capable of being drawn to the paradigm of divine Nous -- to the contemplation of divine things. Thus man is uniquely capable of ordering his soul according to the divine paradigm, in justice and in love. And by a process of transcendence, to attain wisdom, freedom, and true Being in the contemplation of the divine Idea, the Agathon.
Well, master, why does God require the rabbits to eat theirs? They already seem pretty humble.
(grasshopper) Hank
-Sam Clemens
It is a common mistake. Nothing is, "just preferrable." It must be preferable for something, some end, or goal, or purpose. There is no such thing as an intrinsic value.
For example, why would one want to "be" in suffering for eternity, or "be" in boredom for eternity. It would be better in those cases not to be.
Hank
Of course, but in the context of my previous post it was implied, I thought, that eternity would be w/ God, obviously eternity in Hell would be the worst of all possible situations.
A-G, I agree that to love God (w/ all of one's heart, mind and soul) is the highest purpose, hence my statement, in an earlier post, that one must walk w/ Christ. I'll take fault in implying a separation of means and ends. In my mind they are not separate; to love God and to be w/ God eternally are both means and end.
RightWhale, 82 years in this world are probably more than enough, but I'm not speaking of this world.
I apologize for the confusion folks, but that's what happens when I throw out glib one-liners in the midst of doing other things. Hank's question deserved a more thoughtful response, hopefully this post clarifies some things a little.
Since Luke 10:27 actually says: "And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself," and the same form is used in Mat. 22:38 and Mark 12:31, are you saying we ought to love ourselves, unconditionally? I do not think so, and do not believe to love your neighbor as yourself means "unconditionally."
You cannot love both good and evil, just as you cannot serve to masters, loving one and hating the other, one cannot love both God and God's enemies.
Psalms 139:21-22 Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
To be Godly means to love and hate the things God loves and hates, and God hates the evil:
Psalms 5:4-5 For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.
And Paul wrote:
Rom 12:9 Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.
Because that which loves evil is a phoney love.
A little earlier, betty boop described Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Mao Tse-tung as "brutal, vicious dictators, the very spawn of Hell,' to which I certainly agree.
Do you believe we ought to love such "spawn of Hell," in the same way as we love God, our wives, our children, the decent, and the victims of such monsters?
I am curious because this "unconditional love" concept is so frequently used as way of covering up evil and of requiring us to pretend what is really evil is not. I know that is not your use of it, but I think it needs to be made clear what is meant by unconditional love, because most people think it means letting anyone get by with anything and still saying they are just lovely people.
Hank
I would not stop it even if I could!
The first roadblock to unconditional love is judgment. Whereas we are to judge the matters of life, we are advised against judging other beings:
Blessed [are] the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. - Matthew 5:7
I love all beings - even while sometimes hating what they say or do. And yes, I pray for the same good things for those who are my enemies that I pray for my dearly beloved husband and daughter.
Long ago a man did a terrible thing to me, so bad that I did not know how to forgive him. My brother suggested that I pray for this man every night right after praying for the family, all the same good things. He said I wouldn’t mean it at first – but if I kept it up, I’d be able to truly forgive. He was right.
Now I always pray for family, friends, associates and enemies. I pray for Bush and I pray for Osama bin Laden – the same good things: a saving knowledge of Christ, growth in the Word, protection and guidance in the spirit, soul, mind, emotion, body and peace.
After all these years, the love flows through me with no strings attached – and forgiveness is virtually automatic.
Well, prayer is good, but what I am talking about is what I actually do relative to people. When I say I love my wife and children, I mean I value them very highly. What a person loves or values is not determined by what they say or what they pray for, but where they spend their lives, that is, their money and time.
If I want to know what somebody really loves, I don't ask them, I simply observe what they do, where they spend their time, what they expends their energy pursuring, what they nurture and what they ignore. I do not treat those who would harm my family the same way I treat my family.
Since I have never really known what other people mean by, "hate," (maybe something missing in me), I only mean by it, despise, as in "Esau despised his bithright." He didn't 'hate' it, he only held it as valueless. That is exactly my view of those who would harm me, or mine, or anyone else. I only have so much time and so many resources in this life, I beleive it would be wrong to waste them on those who are evil, when those same resource ought to be used to serve the good. It is still wrong to take the children's meat and cast it to the dogs. The dogs are welcome to lick up the crumbs.
You did not comment on these two verese. Would you please.
Psalms 139:21-22 Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
Psalms 5:4-5 For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.
And this:
1 Cor 6:3 Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?
Thanks!
Hank
You asked me to comment on the following verses, presumably with regard to loving God absolutely and my fellow man unconditionally:
Psalms 5:4-5 For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more [than others]? do not even the publicans so?
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. Matthew 5:43-48
For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed [the righteousness] of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast [it] from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not [that] thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast [it] from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not [that] thy whole body should be cast into hell.
It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.
Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have [thy] cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, [even] to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not [in] the oldness of the letter. – Romans 7:4-6
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. - Romans 8:2-4
If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church. I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers.
Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather [suffer yourselves to] be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that [your] brethren. – I Cor 6:1-8
Christ made it clear that one must know the Scriptures and the power of God and must also think things through. In the following example, He shows the import of the tense of the word, am:
But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, [even] those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. – Hebrews 5:12-14
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither [can] a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. - Matthew 7:15-20
Hello A-G! Noticed you and Hank were chatting, and he dropped my name. I thought my description of Stalin, Hitler, et al., accurately reported by Hank, was a pretty objective one. You can tell it's true simply by looking at the victims. Hank asks if we have a Christian duty to love these men "in the same way as we love God, our wives, our children," et al.
It is easy to love one's spouse, one's child, etc. -- "do not the publicans likewise?" Yet Christian love sets a much higher standard, to love others as ourselves even when it's difficult, even when we find people to be wholly repugnant, even when they are our enemies. The point is God asks us to love our neighbor as a witness to our love of Him. He asks to to forebear judgment, leaving that up to Him.
Basically, Christian love calls us to acknowledge the common humanity that we share with all God's human creatures, to not forget that they are still our fellow men, despite the fact that we may hate the things that they have done or may do. They may treat their fellow men as animals; but we must not forget that those who do so are still men, still God's human creatures -- despite the fact that they revile God and have turned away from Him.
The turning away from God's ordering Word pertaining to human kind is the reason why they can treat their fellow human beings in the manner they do. They reject God and His law, setting up their own "laws" instead, and ordering their own lives according to those "laws."
And thus does evil enter the world that God made "Good." The willful rejection of the Good is the mystery of iniquity, spreading evil and disorder throughout creation. Men do not cease to be men when they do this. And God will judge them as men, not as the animals they so often appear to resemble.
When men utterly reject God's ordering law of love and justice and live according to their own "wisdom" and ways, they become disordered; and can only act disorderly toward others precisely because they do not recognize those others as their fellow men. Thus the "unfavored" classes that become their victims may be treated like animals with impunity, for with the rejection of God comes the rejection of the idea of accountability for the Judgment that God renders.
But "freedom from God" is an illusion. God cannot be "killed." Men can turn away from God; but God does not turn away from men. His Judgment falls on each and every man, be he a believer or an unbeliever.
This insight is much older than Christianity, dating back at least to Heraclitus. He observed that the divine Logos "was one and common" for all men. But that "the many" withdraw into their own "private worlds," as if dreamers asleep.
This may be a good opporunity to renew my dialog with Hank:
Q: “…a strict individualist is self-sufficient and never uses coercion against anyone else. Tell me how that leads to personal and social disorder.”
A: “Because the concept isn’t capacious enough to describe human existence.”
It seems to me that a person who can think of himself as a “strict individualist” is focusing on only one aspect of human personality. Arguably, to omit “the rest” of what affects the human condition and experience is to develop a false picture of human reality, personal and social. In effect, to let self-selected moral criteria supplant the absolute authority of the Logos is to turn way from reality into a "private world."
Clearly, there is an individual self, a psyche. But there is also built deep down into human nature – into individual psyche -- natural connections to larger wholes, such as family, community, society, nature, and God.
To say that our entire moral duty consists in non-aggression and self-sufficiency may well be an abstraction designed to relieve us of any further obligation to our fellow men, such as the duty to respect and honor them as our brothers in the sight of God.
There have been some incredibly cynical and contemptuous things that have been said about man on this thread. To the extent that such views seem to become increasingly common, even "fashionable" these days, is an indication of how far we humans have gone in expressing contempt for our neighbors, and thus of God's law. How a decent society can be expected to result when the common opinion turns on contempt for our fellow human beings is, to me, the main question of our age.
I can't help but think such views may evidence a certain self-contempt. For the things we say about others may be less indicative of the actual status of the person(s) being criticized, and more indicative of our own existential experience of order (disorder). Such comments may, in a certain sense, amount to a confession of character.
I'm not criticizing anybody here, just trying to shed light on problems. Though it does hurt to read some of the "slanders" that have been written about man on this thread. FWIW.
I’m only 57 and I can remember being able to walk safely in downtown San Antonio as a teenager, unaccompanied. But now, at least one shopping mall has a sheriff’s office to deter the random violence.
And I suspect this cynicism is why we have so many legal agreements these days, to anticipate what may go wrong – not what may go right. It used to be that a man’s word was his bond.
IMHO, it is sad testimony to our modern society that we are forced to consider the worst possibilities. At least though - even now in this small rural town, we still leave our houses unlocked. But for how long?
I think it is important to remember that Christ selected the disciples - including Paul - knowing how different they were. Jesus could have chosen or made them all alike! And, in Revelation, Christ speaks to the churches, each one having a different personality. This demonstrates to me that He accepts those types of differences.
Some people relate closely to Paul; others, to Peter; others, to James, etc. As for me, I wish to be more like John.
Me too, A-G! ...the beloved apostle.
Because you matter, Hank. Your thoughts, beliefs, and actions have consequences beyond your immediate, personal existence.
Pietro, your "i moving to I" is an extraordinarily beautiful and truthful insight. To refuse God's appeal to us essentially involves the refusal to be what we are.
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