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.
Yes. People who love God would never accept a state trying to pass itself off as the redeemer and perfecter of the human condition or, more accurately, the tyrant pushing such an ideology. To a Christian, any tyrant/state with such presumptions is an idol, a false god, to whom one does not owe any obligation.
It used to be the general understanding of people within the Western cultural orbit that all states, all governments, functioned under explicit divine sanction, or they ceased to be legitimate. States/governments/monarchs who slipped the bonds of divine law were understood to be unjust, illegitimate.
There is the view -- certainly it was the view of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution -- that effective opposition from the people against the tyrant could be justified. "A little revolution now and then...." conceivably is restorative of the divine order for man and society.
PH, I strongly doubt that Hobbe's Leviathan could pass basic muster with faithful Christians.
Hank, you are absolutely driving me crazy. For mostly I agree with most of your analyses. Yet at the end of the day, I just can’t help but feel that something vastly important has been left out. Frequently in your posts you refer to the “nature” a particular entity has. Every entity has a nature. Yet it seems to me that nowhere do you define what “nature” is, or from whence it derives. I cannot find at the level of “entity” any way to fully specify what is meant by the concept “nature.” Arguably, entity – a material effect – is not the cause of nature – an immaterial cause. These are two categorically different things.
js1138, recently on another thread you demanded to know how a non-material cause could produce a material effect. I wasn’t able to give you a satisfactory answer. I seem to have the most difficulty finding the language to express those things that are most obvious to me. It turns out that this question is quite germane to the subject of this thread, What Is Man? So it’s good to revisit it here.
On your point, js1138, I’d like to offer the following reflections from a first-rate thinker -- profound and gracious in my view:
* * * * * *
[From: “The Fundamental Principles of Existence and the Origin of Physical Laws,” Grandpierre, Attila, Konkoly Observatory, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest; in Ultimate Reality and Meaning, 25(2):127-147; 2002 June.]
3.3 Matter or principle? Is materialism physical or spiritual?
The fundamental principle of materialism, or “physicalism,” or the physical world concept [i.e., the worldview of scientific materialism], is the principle of inert matter. The science of physics derives all its results due to this “inert material principle.” This principle made it possible to recognize the real connections between seemingly discrete phenomena, and this principle made it possible to represent and describe the physical phenomena in a mathematical and logical form.
There is a significant difference between talking of the atom with the knowledge of the laws and principles of physics and, generally, with logic in mind on the one hand, and talking of the atom without such knowledge on the other. Without a comprehensive and inevitably spiritually organizing factor, physics would have no laws, nor would logic – and thus we would simply to unable to conceive of something as sterile and abstract as the notion of the atom.
Without the factor of an organizing principle, materialist nuclear physics would never get further than the sterile concept of the atom. Materialism, being “matter-principled,” is founded on corporeal/material and inevitably on principal/spiritual grounds at the same time. Materialism builds up on a material and spiritual factor; on atoms and on physical laws. There are no atoms without physical laws, and this fundamental fact shows that there is no materialism without spiritualism.
Sheer materiality, the concept suggested by materialism, is essentially a self-contradicting concept, denying its own generating factor, the principle behind which the concept generates itself. It is easy to see that a sheer materialistic view, one that would deny all reality to spirituality, would be like the perfect embodiment of closedness and readiness: it would be an eternally inert, inanimate world without laws and understanding. Therefore, we have to keep it in mind that actually materialism essentially represents a kind of obscure spirituality, but that in fact this spirituality has declared the denial of its own spiritual nature as its basis.
3.4 Are interactions material?
Important conclusions can be drawn here. According to the materialist view, apples fall to the ground because the Earth attracts them. But how is the Earth able to exert attractive force? By what device? Does it emit an attractive effect? What is the nature of that effect – is it material or spiritual? How can the attractive effect exert this attraction? Does it let out some kind of matter from itself, for example gravitons in the case of gravitation?
But if this would be so, the amount of gravitation of bodies should decrease over time. Similarly, electric charges could not remain strictly static at a constant charge, because they would have to emit electromagnetic energy permanently, and thus the force field of the charges would have to diminish.
Even if one would acknowledge the fact of energy and mass emission from gravitational and electrical charges, one could speculate that they could get back the same amount of energy-mass from the quantum-vacuum field of the universe.
Even in this case it would be necessary that a principle should exist [that] would continuously regulate all the charges of the universe so that the energy-mass exchange input and output would be balanced. In this case, we again would reach a picture in which a principle regulates the mass and energy flows of the universe.
But how can a spiritual principle exert a material effect?
Another example would be the fact that contemporary science regards the value of electric charges as a universal and unchangeable constant, although there are some theories about gravitation diminishing over time.
If we disregard the hypothetical universal balancing mechanism, then we have no other choice but to admit that the influences, be they electromagnetic or gravitational, that bodies emit are not of a material nature, since all matter has energy and a corresponding amount of mass. Now since a nascent charge has a material influence, it should emit a material influence, therefore produce energy from itself, and so its charge should decrease, which is not the case.
From this we can deduce that we are dealing here with effects that can be described with mathematical exactness, but which are not material effects. In both of these cases, the question arises: Where does the ability of matter to exert influences come from if its material substance remains constant?
Clever matter?
How do atoms know the laws of physics? How does the wind know which way to blow under any given circumstance? It knows this because the power arising from the differential pressure drives it towards areas where pressure is lower. But why does matter migrate to places with a lower pressure?
The standard response is because the laws of physics prescribe this. Eventually, this comes down to the principle of least action.
But then again, how can a principle cause a physical effect? How can a spiritual factor be able to move matter?
And the ultimate question of physics is why there are physical laws at all. How can any body follow the principle of least action? The answer to this question is similar to the explanation given to the path that light follows.
Light travels between two points along the shortest possible route, even if there is a mirror in its way somewhere along its course. How is light able to select the shortest route?
When Feynman introduced the path-integral principle, he pointed out that to be able to follow the principle of least action, light (or any other quantum process) must “virtually” go over all the possible routes, over all the possible histories, and then these add up to the “actual” shortest route.
The precondition of such an adding up is that in the course of surveying the possible routes, light virtually has to travel over all the routes at a speed much larger than the velocity of light, so that by the time it comes to the adding up, the traveling speed of light on the actual route should be equal to the velocity of light.
Feynman has put all this into a mathematical formula – but how is it possible that a lifeless and sterile atom can do all that? How can a perfectly abstract atom perceive a principle and behave according to it? Is there such a spiritual factor that is capable of exerting physical effects?
These questions raise the problem of the origins of physical laws. In the contemporary physical world concept, apparently this problem cannot be accounted for on a scientific basis.
But excluding the question of the origin of the physical laws from the scope of science is a refutation of the original aim of science, namely to understand nature. Science cannot declare that it is a scientific taboo to examine the laws of these levels of Nature than are deeper than the physical level. If present-day science does so, we can be sure that that is an unscientific and anticognitive attitude….
* * * * * *
Probably some readers will have stubbed their toe on Grandpierre’s use of the word “spiritual.” What he means by this has nothing to do with religion or theology. It is simply his way of referring to real yet non-physical, intangible principles or laws, and the realm of consciousness generally. Must leave the question there for now.
Except to note the following in anticipation of “materialist” outcry to the immediately foregoing – also from Grandpierre, who rebuts a commonly prevailing attitude, stated thus:
“There are no physical laws in the Universe: the apparent lawfulness is a result of an extremely rare ultimate coincidence of random events….”
To which Grandpierre replies:
“I do not think that we can be satisfied with such a description, which does not reach the causes and remains in the realm of phenomena only. The term chance expresses in that context only that the cause of the phenomenon studied is not known. Therefore, chance cannot explain any phenomena since “explain” implies setting up a relation, which explains the yet-unknown with a known. So we do not think that the interpretation of the origin of physical laws as being the result of a mere chance would explain anything.”
I'm sorry. By the "nature" of any thing, I only mean, whatever it is, that is, whatever its qualities, characteristics, and attributes are.
When we identify something, "a tree," what we mean is, an entitiy that has the nature of a tree, that is, whatever qualities, characteristics, and attributes trees have.
When we say something has a particular nature, it only means, it has a particular set of qualities, characteristics and attributes. To discover the nature of any thing, or any aspect of that nature is to discover those qualities, characteristics and attributes.
It is not necessary to know all of an entities qualities, characteristics, and attributes to know that it has them and that it has a particular nature. Some things we know the nature of very well, some we know less well, the degree of that knowledge is determined by how many and how precisely we know an entity's qualities, etc.
Hank
Very interesting insight, Consort. It seems to come close to Dr. Grandpierre's own view. In a private communication, he wrote:
"In my opinion, "Universe" (with capital letter) refers to material+vital+noetic universe; "universe" [with no capital letter] refers only to the material universe; and Cosmos is in deep relation to the Universe, in its concept, the relations, the order, the beauty and the moral world order are emphasized. Therefore, although life is substantially (but not completely) outside of (material) space and time, it is not outside of Cosmos, and not outside of the Universe, but [only] outside of the universe."
It is not necessary to know all of an entities qualities, characteristics, and attributes to know that it has them and that it has a particular nature.
OK, Hank. Tell me what, then, are "qualities, characteristics, and attributes." Can we discern such in entities without a principle by which they may be identified, recognized? A principle that is not itself physical?
I think you are trying to derive the idea of "nature" from the study of "entity," so as to avoid dealing with issues of the supernatural (in the literal sense); or as Grandpierre puts it, the "spiritual."
You're kidding.
Can we discern such in entities without a principle by which they may be identified, recognized? A principle that is not itself physical?
To "discern" anything (not sure what you mean by "such entities," since what I said applies to any entities) requires no principles at all. My kitty discerns all sorts of things and has never had a principle in her life. (Nevertheless I love the unprincipled thing.)
So, frankly, I am not sure what you are asking. Identification, for example, is not the same is "discerning" in the normal sense of the word. Identification is a conceptual process by which things are differentiated from all other things. That differentiation is by virtue of a things qualities, however.
I think you are trying to derive the idea of "nature" from the study of "entity," so as to avoid dealing with issues of the supernatural (in the literal sense); or as Grandpierre puts it, the "spiritual."
My use of the word "nature" to mean no more than what a thing's qualities, characteristics, and attributes are is the common meaning of the word, when used about entities. I have no idea how that can be an evasion of anything.
Rocks have a certain nature. What is that nature? They are hard usually randomly shaped innaimate objects comprised of minerals, found in all parts of the world. How did we desribe the "nature" of rocks. By listing a rock's qualities and attributes.
Trees have a certain nature. What is that nature? They are living organism of the plant family, growing higher than most other plants, usually with one central supporting "trunk" with roots at one end to gather nourishment from the earth and leaves or needles at the other end to carry out photosynthesis. How do we describe the "nature" of trees? By listing a tree's qualities and attributes.
Is this all there is to know about rocks and trees? No. Are there other things about the nature of rocks and trees to know? Of course. But as much as is listed is nevertheless true of the nature of those things.
I do not know what your objection to this is.
Hank
I dunno, Hank. My lingering doubt pertains to the fact that you shed no light whatever on what "qualities, characteristics, and attributes" are, or how they came about.
BB, you have aroused my curiousity. Regarding rocks and trees, what light would you suggest is missing from the previous post? (As to how rocks and trees came about, that's the domain of geology and biology, which I assume you agree is a very different issue.)
I'm glad you asked the question. I was beginning to think I had a hole in my head, and was missing something. I really wanted to satisfy bb's question, but do not know what it is. As for what qualities, etc. are and how they came about, since there are infinite qualities and an equal variety of ways they came about, the question is certainly beyond my capacity to answer.
I will add one thing to what I said before. I include all existents under the principle that the nature of anything is whatever its qualities, charactersitics, and attributes are, and this includes not only physical enitites, but concepts as well.
Obviously the attributes of concepts will not be the same as the attributes of physical entities.
Let me give you one more example of what I mean. The philsophical definition of man is "rational animal." That definition means, men have all the qualities that pertain to the "butes" (non-rational animals) plus the attribute of rationality. Animals are defined as sentient organisms, so all animals, including man are sentient (today, we wold say conscious). Organisms are defined as living entities, therefore all organisms including all animals, including man, are living. The full definition of man, (with "all the notes" as classical logic would put it,) is, rational, sentient, living, entity.
This does not mean or imply that these are all of a man's attributes, only that an entity that does not have at least these and all of these, is not a man, because it would not have the nature of a man. These qualities serve to differentiate man from all other existents by virtue of man's essential differentiating qualities, which is man's essential nature and the way that nature differs from the nature of all other things.
Hank
"Regarding rocks and trees, what light would you suggest is missing from the previous post? (As to how rocks and trees came about, that's the domain of geology and biology, which I assume you agree is a very different issue.)"
I gather you wrote this in resonance to Hank's take, as follows:
Rocks have a certain nature. What is that nature? They are hard usually randomly shaped inanimate objects comprised of minerals, found in all parts of the world. How did we desribe the "nature" of rocks. By listing a rock's qualities and attributes.
Trees have a certain nature. What is that nature? They are living organism of the plant family, growing higher than most other plants, usually with one central supporting "trunk" with roots at one end to gather nourishment from the earth and leaves or needles at the other end to carry out photosynthesis. How do we describe the "nature" of trees? By listing a tree's qualities and attributes.
But then all I can really say to this is: You want to talk about rocks and trees; and then of attributes, qualities, and characteristics; as if all these things denoted equal objective entities existing in the same ontological and epistemological space/time frame. And yet the first two and the second three denote entirely different orders or categories of existents in reality. And so, it seems to me, they may not rationally be equated for the sake of prosecuting an argument.
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