Man in Plato

[qfnol31]

[b]That Which Is Man[/b]
Well, understanding the soul in the same way: When it focuses on something illuminated by truth and what it is, it understands, knows, and apparently possesses understanding, but when it focuses on what is mixed with obscurity, on what comes to be and passes away, it opines and is dimmed, changes its opinions this way and that, and seems bereft of understanding
-- Socrates (Republic 508d).

In the ancient traditions, the conception of man was a very common and thoroughly discussed topic. Indeed, this question of man has been one of the most common philosophical pursuits throughout the whole of history. Plato, too, undertakes answering what man is, including whence he comes, what his end is, what the ethical life of man is, and other such questions in many of his dialogues. Two works that consider this subject in depth are the Timaeus and the Phaedrus. In both works, Plato explores the notion of man, beginning with his origins and eventually moving to his essence. In these two, however, he approaches the concept of man in what first appears to be contradictory ways. Each has different implications on the life of man and the meaning of his life. Though both of them agree that the end of man is life in accord with the Good or Being, this has diverse meanings in both works. Nevertheless, with all their diverse the two have much in common, especially concerning their universal ideas of man. Between the two different accounts is given an accurate description of man in himself, and also how man should live that he may return to his natural state, in union with the gods and Being itself; they can be reconciled with each other because they give a common nature to man, even though they go about that in different ways.

Plato presents the dialogues of the Phaedrus and the Timaeus with different approaches. The main speaker in the Phaedrus is Socrates, as is common to most of the Platonic dialogues. In the Timaeus, on the other hand, Socrates remains silent for most of the time while Timaeus delivers his speech. This oration, centered on the creation of the kosmos, takes place the day after Socrates talks about the perfect city in the Republic. In the story, Timaeus illustrates man’s creation, its meaning in the kosmos, and his return to his natural state. The Phaedrus, in contrast, begins as a discussion on love and lovers, through which Socrates tries to convince Phaedrus what constitutes a good speech. This discourse, however, promptly shifts to the topic of man in Socrates’ second argument. He describes man’s life before his descent to body and how he can return to Being. Because this work was probably one of Plato’s earlier ones, it is appropriate to begin there.

The account of man in the Phaedrus begins with the soul, both those of the gods and of man. In the Phaedrus, the soul in itself is the defining characteristic of man. Socrates first asserts, “Every soul is immortal. That is because whatever is always in motion is immortal, while what moves, and is moved by, something else stops living when it stops moving” (Phaedrus 245c). Socrates defends this claim that the soul is immortal by saying, “this self-mover is also the source and spring of motion in everything else that moves; and a source has no beginning. That is because anything that has a beginning comes from some source, but there is no source for this, since a source that got its start from something else would no longer be the source” (245d). Socrates argues, therefore, that as a source for motion in the body and itself, the soul can be neither mortal nor possess a source itself. From these two attributes, it follows that the soul is also indestructible as Socrates says, “since it cannot have a beginning, then necessarily it cannot be destroyed. That is because if a source were destroyed, it could never get started again from anything else and nothing else could get started from it—that is, if everything gets started from a source” (245d). The soul is indestructible not only because it is without beginning, but also because it is the source for other things and cannot be started again from anything else.

After asserting the immortality of the soul, Socrates describes the composition in common terms. He likens all souls to chariots with two horses and a charioteer with wings to keep it in flight. For the gods, these elements are “themselves all good and come from good stock besides” (246a). Since they are pure, while everyone else has a mixture, the gods are good in themselves and do not have conflicting parts in their soul. Man’s soul, on the other hand, Socrates posits, has a more difficult time controlling his nature. Instead of the pure mixture in the soul, Socrates tells Phaedrus, “To begin with, our driver is in charge of a pair of horses; second, one of his horses is beautiful and good and from stock of the same sort, while the other is the opposite and has the opposite sort of bloodline. This means that chariot-driving in our case is inevitably a painfully difficult business” (246b). The charioteer is the reason or rational part of the soul, the good horse is the sensing or honorable part, and the bad horse is the appetitive part of man’s soul. As in other Platonic works, the rational aspect holds pride of place for Socrates. The horses of man’s soul constantly oppose each other, trying to pull the chariot in different directions. This remains the same even after man’s fall to the earth, where the horses continue to try to draw the whole soul against the direction of the other. From this metaphor, Socrates shifts to the fall of man, when his soul shed the wings that kept it aloft.

The souls of men, in their natural state, exist in the heaven of the gods. The souls follow the gods in circling the earth, each trying to “go to feast at the banquet” to which “they have a steep climb to the high tier at the rim of heaven” (247b). The purpose of this ascent is to view Knowledge (Being), a place “without color and without shape and without solidity, a being that really is what it is, the subject of all true knowledge, visible only to intelligence, the soul’s steersman” (247c). The normal course of the journey is when the soul ascends and returns, ultimately after (like the gods) “it has seen all the things that are and feasted on them” (247e). However, during this dangerous climb, the charioteer of man must wrestle with the bad horse, and try to keep it steady, which becomes a distraction for the charioteer.

During this magnificent ascent, many souls can manage their bad horse, allowing them to observe Beauty, but some others cannot control this horse and the distraction of the bad horse, which causes them to miss the Beauty, and leads to the fall of the soul to the earth below. Even so, before they lose control these souls are able to catch at least a glimpse of that Beauty. Socrates describes the whole experience to Phaedrus, saying,
[i]As for the other souls, one that follows a god most closely, making itself most like that god, raises the head of its charioteer up to the place outside and is carried around in the circular motion with the others. Although distracted by the horses, this soul does have a view of Reality, just barely. Another soul rises at one time and falls at another, and because its horses pull it violently in different directions, it sees some real things and misses others (248a).[/i]
These souls all see Beauty for at least a moment, but some see more than others. This leads to the differences amongst men on the earth. Those men that do encounter the vision of Beauty return to their Heavenly home to follow the gods on their next journey. There is yet another group of souls in this account, those that never see Beauty. Socrates says these
[i]remaining souls are all eagerly straining to keep up, but are unable to rise; they are carried around below the surface, trampling, and striking one another as each tries to get ahead of the others. The result is terribly noisy, very sweaty, and disorderly. Many souls are crippled by the incompetence of the drivers and many wings break much of their plumage. After so much trouble, they all leave without seeing reality, uninitiated, and when they have gone they will depend on what they think is nourishment—their own opinions (248a).[/i]
These souls, Socrates says, later become the tyrants on the earth—the basest of all fallen men. These souls, like the ones who lost control of their horse, plunge to the earth and take on a body and become men: “If…it does not see anything true because it could not keep, and by some accident takes on a burden of forgetfulness and wrongdoing, then it is weighed down, sheds its wings, and falls to the earth” (248c). Yet, as Socrates later explains, these souls become the souls of men, not of any other living animals. He describes to Phaedrus how these become the souls of the different types of men living, saying, “At that point, according to the law, the soul is not born into a wild animal in its first incarnation; but a soul that has seen the most will be planted in the seed of a man who will become a lover of wisdom or of beauty…and to the ninth a tyrant” (248c). The body consequently becomes a reminder of that fall. So much for the beginning of man in the Phaedrus.

Unlike uncreated soul in the Phaedrus, Timaeus begins the account of man with his creation. Before man there existed three things: the Craftsman, the Eternal Model, and matter. According to this explanation of the kosmos, the Craftsman saw the matter and wanted it to be like himself, who is all good. Timaeus tells his audience, “He was good, and one who is good can never become jealous…he wanted everything to become as much like himself as was possible” (29e). The Craftsman then created the world’s soul followed by its body, which he made out of Same, Different, and Being. This body is necessary, Timaeus says, because there was a “receptacle of all becoming—its wetnurse, as it were” (49a). Since matter was without form before, it was not in line with the Eternal Model. However, after form (id est, soul) was given to it, the matter became a good thing. No longer is the material (or body) a sign of evil, as it is in the Phaedrus, but rather it is a sign of something good. This is one of the differences between the two stories. After forming the world, the Craftsman made the gods because “the resemblance [of the kosmos to the Eternal Model] still fell short in that it didn’t yet contain all the living things that were to have come to be within it” (39e).

To these gods, which he himself made, the Craftsman entrusted the safekeeping of the kosmos and all therein. He also charged them with the creation of man’s body out of the remaining matter. The Craftsman himself then created the souls of man out of the leftover substances he used to form the gods. Timaeus tells the listeners, “…he turned again to the mixing bowl he had used before, the one in which he had blended previous ingredients and to mix them in somewhat the same way, though these were no longer invariably and constantly pure, but of a second and third grade of purity” (41d). He made as many men as there are stars in the heavens, giving a star to each. He then taught man about the universe, showing him the natural order of things and the laws foreordained. These souls, though made of the same substance as the gods, were still less pure than those gods. Though he made their souls, the Craftsman cannot make man’s bodies, for if he did, the men would themselves be like the gods—this would contradict the Eternal Model. This necessity presents the gods’ purpose in creation.

Timaeus also explains that the gods mirrored their creator in completing man. After the Craftsman returns to his proper state (of rest), Timaeus describes how “His children immediately began to attend to and obey their father’s assignment. Now that they had received the immortal principle of the moral living thing, they began to imitate the craftsman who had made them” (42e). Timaeus gives an idea of a participation in the nature of the Craftsman and most especially in the Eternal Model. This parallels the Phaedrus where the gods (and man) seek the vision of Beauty, and even participate in Truth in their actions.

In the Phaedrus, man’s body is not an essential part of himself; rather, the body is a prison for the soul. Timaeus, in his description, does not concur with Socrates by making this claim. If in this account the body were only a prison and meaningless for man’s existence, then the difference between the gods and man would be a difference of soul. Yet, since the only distinction between the souls of men and the souls of the gods is a change in mixture, then it seems the soul would not be of a difference essence. This conclusion that god and men are alike cannot be true because the Craftsman tells the gods, “But if these creatures came to be and came to share in life by my hand, they would rival the gods. It is you, then, you must turn yourselves to the task of fashioning these living things, as your nature allows. This will assure their mortality and this whole universe will really be a completed whole” (41d). This leads the body to be a part of the definition of man.

Another proof for the importance of the body in man’s essence is found in the creation account itself. After admitting that the gods must create man, the Craftsman himself moves to create men’s souls. The gods are therefore left with only the body to compose: “His children [the gods] immediately began to attend to and obey their father’s assignment…They borrowed parts of fire, earth, water and air from the world intending to pay them back again, and bonded together into a unity the parts they had taken, but not with those indissoluble bonds by which they themselves were held together” (42e). Because the gods must create man and do so in his body alone, the body is therefore an essential part of man.

After creating the body, Timaeus recounts that the gods “went on to invest this body into and out of which things were to flow—with the orbits of the immortal soul” (43a). However, because of its encounters with other objects (e.g. external fire of the flow of gilded waters), and most especially because man was born, these orbits were thrown out of alignment. Again, the idea of man in a fallen state arises, echoing the account Socrates gives in the Phaedrus. Moreover, Timaeus later attributes woman to the idea of a fallen nature, as he tells his listeners, “all male-born humans who lived lives of cowardice or injustice were reborn in the second generation as women” (90e). Like the Phaedrus, this leads to a remedy that each philosopher gives.

In the Phaedrus, just following the account of the fall, Socrates gives the answer to how to return to the heavens. He tells Phaedrus, “Of all these, any who have led their lives with justice will change to a better fate, and any who have led theirs with injustice, to a worse one. In fact, no soul returns to the place from which it came for ten thousand years since its wings will not grow before then, except for the soul of a man who practices philosophy without guilt or who loves boys philosophically” (248e). He then gives the account of a beautiful boy whom the man encounters. When the man and the boy meet, the horse of passions “no longer responds to the whip or the goad of the charioteer; it leaps violently forward and does everything to aggravate its yokemate and its charioteer trying to make them go up to the boy and suggest to him the pleasures of sex” (254a). It is that desirous part of the soul that draws the man to the boy. Nevertheless, Socrates gives a surprising account of what follows:
[i]At first the other two resist, angry in their belief that they are being made to do things that are dreadfully wrong. At last, however, when they see no end to their trouble, they are led forward, reluctantly agreeing to do as they have been told. So they are close to him now, and they are struck by the boy’s face as if by a bolt of lightning. When the charioteer sees that face, his memory is carried back to the real nature of beauty (254b).[/i]
The pleasure-seeking horse draws the charioteer near to the boy, through whose face he encounters Beauty once again.

Socrates then describes two different outcomes for the pair. The first is one in which they are drawn to the life of philosophy (the higher choice) and in the other the two get caught up in a life of passions. Socrates describes this last scenario, “If, on the other hand, they adopt a lower way of living, with ambition in place of philosophy, then pretty soon when they are careless because they have been drinking or for some other reason, the pairs’ undisciplined horses will…bring them to commit that act…and they will go on doing this for the rest of their lives” (256c). The danger of the pleasurable approach is that it eventually leads to the entrapment of the souls in the bodies.
Timaeus gives a similar account of how man can return to his natural state.

Because man’s nature was damaged by consummation and other acts, the solution is to look at those things which are properly ordered—the heavenly bodies. Timaeus begins this account saying, “So if a man has become absorbed in his appetites or his ambitions and takes great pains to further them, all his thoughts are bound to become merely mortal. And so far as it is at all possible for a man to become thoroughly mortal, he cannot help but fully succeed in this, seeing that he has cultivated his mortality all along” (90b). Just as in the Phaedrus, the joy of pleasures (and most especially sexual pleasures) leads to the fall of man. Timaeus then finishes, “On the other hand, if a man has seriously devoted himself to the love of learning and to true wisdom, if he has exercised these aspects of himself above all, then there is absolutely no way that his thoughts can fail to be immortal and divine, should truth come within his grasp” (90b). The best way for man to learn wisdom is to devote himself to the study of the stars. Timaeus describes to his fellow interlocutors, “We should redirect the revolutions in our heads that were thrown off course at our birth, by coming to learn the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, and so bring into conformity with its objects our faculty of understanding, as it was in its original condition” (90d). Though this is slightly different from what Socrates says in the Phaedrus, it is in line with the description of man that Timaeus himself gives in the Timaeus.

Plato’s two works each give a unique account of the creation of the universe and most especially of man. They both call for man to turn away from the passions, though in the Phaedrus Socrates gives it some credit. They both tell of a fallen life for man, who should himself seek his original state of being. And as Socrates said in the Republic, they both call for man to enter into a life of knowing Truth and Beauty. It is only through such a life as they describe, free of the passions, filled with a love for wisdom, that man can return to such a state. It is in this way that both the Timaeus and the Phaedrus can be reconciled together.
FINIS

[philothea]

:bugeyes:

I hope I can read this (and your other one!) tomorrow...

[Laudate_Dominum]

Gosh.. I want to read that post really bad too.. But I'm so tired right now.

I'm just gonna veg out on open mic and go to bed.

sheesh.. tomorrow is another day...

[phatcatholic]

if you get a chance, read the papers that my bro has written in the seminary so far:

[b]--[url="http://theschoolofmary.blogspot.com/2005/10/my-phaedo-paper.html#links"]Plato's Understanding of the Human Person as Presented in [i]Phaedo[/i][/url]
--[url="http://theschoolofmary.blogspot.com/2005/10/second-paper.html#links"]The Reality of Christ in Paul's Letter to the Philippians, in [i]Sacrosanctum Concilium[/i], and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church[/url]
--[url="http://theschoolofmary.blogspot.com/2005/10/third-paper.html#links"]Human Knowledge in Plato's [i]Euthyphro[/i][/url]
--[url="http://theschoolofmary.blogspot.com/2005/10/fourth-paper.html#links"]Laurence Berns and the Origins of Philosophy[/url]
--[url="http://theschoolofmary.blogspot.com/2005/11/fifth-paper.html#links"]Church Teaching and [i]Goodridge vs. Dept. of Public Health[/i] on the Negative Impact of "Gay Marriage" on Society[/url]
--[url="http://theschoolofmary.blogspot.com/2005/11/sixth-paper_18.html#links"]Aquinas on the Good and Evil of Human Actions[/url]
--[url="http://theschoolofmary.blogspot.com/2005/12/another-paper.html#links"]On Leon Kass' [i]The Hungry Soul[/i][/url]
--[url="http://theschoolofmary.blogspot.com/2005/12/eighth-paper.html#links"]Descartes' and Nietzsche's Understanding of the Human Person: A Critique and Contribution to Christianity[/url][/b]

note that some of these papers were only meant to be 4-5 pages, others only 6-8, so they are not exhaustive treatments of the topics they discuss. however, i still think they are pretty good : oh, and you can also read his recent article in [i]The Record[/i] on his thoughts on being a new seminarian:

[b]--[url="http://www.archlou.org/therecord/columnists/-1999920600.htm"]Seminarian Describes His New Life of Study, Prayer, and Discernment[/url][/b]

everyone please make sure you visit his blog regularly and post some words of encouragement.

pax christi,
phatcatholic

[Laudate_Dominum]

you should get your brother to be addicted to phatmass!! He seems really awesome.. and so are you :

phatty for church faithful!

[phatcatholic]

haha, ur the greatest dude

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='phatcatholic' date='Dec 9 2005, 02:26 AM']haha, ur the greatest dude
[right][snapback]817881[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]
one of these days you're going to get sick of me and use that axe of yours.

I'd love to see two regulators at war.. maybe cmom and hsmom should have a kind of wizard's duel with their new powers.

[phatcatholic]

yea, i'm extremely tempted to mess with your profile right now.......

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='phatcatholic' date='Dec 9 2005, 02:32 AM']yea, i'm extremely tempted to mess with your profile right now.......


[right][snapback]817888[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]
you'll be sorry. I'll just get worse.

muahahahaaa!!

[Aloysius]

lol that'd be an awesome war.

of course, there'd have to be some rules... if one person just suspended the other for a million days it wouldn't be too fair

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='Dec 9 2005, 02:46 AM']lol that'd be an awesome war.

of course, there'd have to be some rules... if one person just suspended the other for a million days it wouldn't be too fair
[right][snapback]817912[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]
I have a secret weapon. muahahahaa

[phatcatholic]

not secret anymore......

[franciscanheart]

did this get off topic or WHAT

[phatcatholic]

haha, yea, slightly

[qfnol31]

Now that you hijacked my thread, you need to read it.

: