[Page 105]
Audio version created with Paper2Audio.
Audio by Paper2Audio
[Page 105]
Plato.
On the Immortality of the Soul.
[Page 106]
[Blank page.]
[Page 107]
Introduction
In a letter from Leibniz to Mr. Rémond de Montmort, dated 1715, one finds the following passage:
“J'ai toujours été fort content même dès ma jeunesse de la morale de Platon, et encore en quelque facon de sa metaphysique — — Si quelqu'un réduisait Platon en systême, il rendrait un grand service au genre humain, et l'on verrait que j'en approche un peu.”
“I have always been very pleased, even from my youth, with Plato's morality, and in some way also with his metaphysics. If someone reduced Plato to a system, he would render a great service to humanity, and one would see that I approach it somewhat.”
This passage struck me very forcibly. Plato's metaphysics, for example in the Sophist, and Leibniz's doctrine of monads—are they supposed to come close to one another? Could the Idea as principle and the numerical unity of the monad be brought together?
I was even more astonished by the letter to Hanschius, dated 1707, in which, among other things, the following are mentioned as “Plato's finest doctrines” *): “that the object of wisdom is what truly exists, namely, the simple substances that are called Monads by me and, once existing, continue forever, the first substrates of life, that is, God and souls, and among these the most valuable, minds,”
[Note: L. I. “Plato's most beautiful doctrines”:
“Objectum sapientiae esse Greek text, substantias nempe simplices, quae a me Monades appellantur et semel existentes semper perstant, Greek text, id est Deum et animas et harum potissimas Mentes, producta a Deo simulacra divinitatis.”
“The object of wisdom is what truly exists, namely, simple substances, which are called Monads by me and, once existing, persist forever; the first receptacles of life, that is, God and souls, and among the latter, most especially minds, products of God, images of divinity.”]
[Page 108]
which are produced by God as images of divinity.”
Here Leibniz therefore identifies, in a remarkable way, the Ideas as what truly exists precisely with his monads, perhaps led to this by a passage in the Philebus, where Plato calls his Ideas Henads or Monads and gives as an example the Monad of the human being or of the ox *).
And at the end Leibniz summarizes his reflection in the conclusion: “I find nothing in Plato from which I might infer that souls did not retain their own independent being” **).
If one compares these passages and similar ones, one must conclude with astonishment that Leibniz, in all seriousness, not only trusted Plato's doctrine of immortality but also found his individual principles in Plato generally; for, in contrast to him, he censures the deification (deificatio) of the mystics, as well as the Stoics and Aristotle, among whom souls returned through death into God, as rivers return into the ocean ***).
[Note: * Plat. Philebus, p. 15 A:
“Greek text.”
“And when someone undertakes to posit one human being, one ox, the beautiful as one, and the good as one, concerning these henads, and so forth.”
And ibid. B:
“Greek text.”
“Whether one must suppose that such monads truly exist.”]
[Note: ** Epistula ad Hanschium:
“Sed nihil in Platone animadverto, unde colligam, animos propriam sibi substantiam non servare.”
“But I observe nothing in Plato from which I might infer that souls do not preserve their own substance.”]
[Note: *** “Morte redeunt animae in Deum ut in oceanum rivi.”
“Through death souls return into God as rivers return into the ocean.”]
Since this conception still has many adherents today, we shall now attempt to trace the signs of the individual in Plato. The individual principles must reveal themselves most clearly and powerfully in the doctrine of immortality; for this reason, we must devote particular attention to that doctrine. We may not, however, begin with it, because the history of becoming necessarily, according to Plato's assertion,eriwa
[Page 109]
...must necessarily veil itself in mythical individualization, but we shall have to return to the ultimate principles, as he himself demands *), if we wish to grasp the true meaning of his doctrine.
[Note: * Phaedo, p. 107 B:
“Greek text.”
“The first hypotheses.”
Compare the detailed exposition below, § 5.1.]
[Page 110]
§ 1.
General Reflections Concerning the Place of the Individual in Plato's Conception of the World
The Two Principles
If one pays attention to the Platonic principles in any dialogue whatsoever, one encounters everywhere being (Greek text ousia) and becoming (Greek text genesis), that which always exists in the same way (Greek text to aei hosautos on) and that which never exists but is always becoming (Greek text to medamos on all' aei gignomenon). (I shall provide the more precise investigation in the following treatise.) Plato himself traces this becoming first to a receptive principle, which he also called the all-receiving mother *), and secondly to that principle of being which is also designated by the name of the Ideas, or of the Father **); from both there springs the Son (Greek text ekgonos), that is, the actually existing world, the image of the Ideas in becoming.
[Note: * Timaeus, p. 51:
“Greek text.”
“Mother and receptacle.”]
[Note: ** Ibid., p. 50 D:
“Greek text.”
“One must conceive of three kinds: first, that which comes to be; second, that in which it comes to be; and third, that from which, being assimilated, what comes to be grows. And it is fitting to liken the receiving principle to a mother, that from which it comes to a father, and the nature between these to an offspring.”]
[Page 111]
The Soul Belongs to Becoming
Whether Plato was logically entitled not to speak of the maternal principle of becoming, or whether that principle belongs among the Ideas *), and whether Plato is therefore to be called a dualist or a pure idealist, does not initially belong to our question. We merely observe that Plato divides everything that truly exists as something mixed (Greek text mikton) into these two principles: an ideal principle and a principle of becoming. If this is correct, then every thing will consequently be both eternal and mortal at the same time; for example, evil, as this particular evil, will be transient and mortal, but as evil in general it will be eternal **). Similarly, this ox is mortal, but the Idea or Monad of it is eternal. The same applies to everything that becomes.
Such a becoming, or something that truly exists, is also the individual soul, and therefore it seems clear to me that it too, like everything mixed, must allow one part to perish, while the eternal factor returns to its eternal nature. This is the most general consideration that can be drawn from the Platonic principles, and which, I believe, already places the general course of all proofs of immortality in the proper light. Nevertheless, before we analyze the individual proofs more precisely, it will be useful to emphasize several other points of view.
[Note: * Timaeus, p. 49 A:
“Greek text.”
“A difficult and dimly discernible form.”]
[Note: ** Theaetetus, p. 176 A and B:
“Greek text.”
“But it is not possible for evil to perish, either; for something contrary to the good must always exist.”]
[Page 112]
Immortality and Eternity
We are accustomed to distinguish immortality and eternity; with Plato, the distinction disappears, for in all his proofs the soul is called immortal only because it is revealed to be eternal. But whenever Plato speaks of the Eternal, he names only the Ideas, and never souls, as Leibniz attributes to him.
There Is No Idea of an Individual Soul
The Idea is eternal, and whatever is eternal is an Idea. If the individual soul is to be eternal, there must be an Idea of the individual soul. But where is such an Idea to be found in Plato? Of the many there is always only one Idea: there are many tables and chairs in the world, but only one Idea of the table or of the chair in the understanding of God *). So too there are many human souls, but they perish as they have come into being; the one Idea of the soul in general, however, remains eternal and is the creative archetype in God. Individuality, multiplicity, and difference do not come from the Eternal but from the principle of becoming **), which is intrinsically variegated and always different (Greek text [poikilon, heteron]).
How the individual is otherwise treated in the sphere of morality and art by Plato will be briefly indicated later. Here we shall first
[Note: * Republic, p. 596 B:
“Greek text.”
“For example, there are surely many couches and tables; but there are, presumably, only two Ideas concerning these utensils, one of the couch and one of the table.”
Compare also the detailed and exhaustive exposition in Zeller, Philosophy of the Greeks 2, second edition, p. 422, note 3.]
[Note: ** How little Plato thought of an Idea of an individual soul is also made clear by Aristotle's criticism, in which he reduces the Platonic definition of the Idea to absurdity by showing that, according to it, one could, against Plato's will, also form an Idea of something individual. Metaphysics A.9, 990b:
“Greek text.”
“The conception is one not only concerning substances, and so forth.”]
[Page 113]
we must first put forward a few more concepts concerning the nature of the individual.
The Place of the Individual in the System
Above all, we must ask: to which discipline does the doctrine of immortality belong? Some historians of philosophy deal with it in physics; but with what justification, if the soul is something eternal? The realm of the Eternal belongs to dialectic. Nevertheless, it is also quite correct to count the soul among becoming and passing away, since physics deals with these. Perhaps the most correct approach, according to our foregoing consideration, is to divide it between both realms; for as something mixed, it is at once eternal and mortal, and Plato himself treats it in this way.
But where does multiplicity, and therefore individuality, come from at all, since what exists is the ever-identical universal? To this Plato answers that it is extremely difficult and altogether impossible to grasp, and that it lies in the nature of the matter that no answer can be given to it. The multiplicity of things is there, but it is incomprehensible, marvelous, and not to be understood conceptually. Insight and understanding are possessed only with respect to the universal, the self-identical and eternal, that is, the Ideas.
If, nevertheless, one is to speak of the many or of becoming, then images and myths must be brought in, and the coherence of the propositions is connected not with necessity but only with probability; persuasion takes the place of truth (Greek text aletheia).
[Note: * Timaeus, pages 50 and 51:
“Greek text.”
“Most difficult in some respect and most difficult to capture.”]
The Many must therefore be drawn from the marvelous nature of the second principle. This principle is in itself neither one, nor two, nor a number at all, but first becomes one or two, and so forth, through participation (Greek text methexis) in the Idea of unity, duality, and so forth. Likewise, it becomes equal through communion with the Idea of equality, white through the Idea of the White, and so forth. A thing is therefore a combination of several Ideas in the principle of becoming, bound (Greek text desmos) by the Idea of unity. Why all oxen are not absolutely identical, nor all wood, nor all human beings and souls, and so forth, is, according to Plato, once again marvelous, and the reason for this must be pushed into the obscure necessity of the becoming principle.
At the same time, however, one can recognize this about becoming: that it always strives toward equality with its Idea and merely falls short of it. Plato therefore calls it the “For-the-sake-of-Something,” and that Something for whose sake it exists and toward which it strives, the “For-the-sake-of-which” *). The former is the lover, the world of Ideas the beloved, and the many things that all resemble one another according to the family-type of the Idea arise and pass away unceasingly in a circle as temporal images of the ideal archetypes.
[Page 114]
From this consideration of the Platonic principles it follows, then, that the individual cannot be found either in the Ideas, where the universal and the self-identical prevail, or in the principle of becoming, which in itself possesses neither unity nor multiplicity but flows continually. It can therefore lie only in the actual, though inexplicable, mixture of the two; and what follows from this at the same time is that it can belong only to what comes into being and passes away.
[Note: * Greek text and Greek text. Compare Philebus, pages 53 E and 54 C.]
§ 2.
The Proofs of Immortality
If it has become evident from the general consideration that the individual and the individual soul are not an independent principle but only a result of the mixture, then it is also to be expected that this Son (Greek text ekgonos) should not possess immortality. Nevertheless, the eternal powers to which he owes his origin are contained within him. The common human being lives blindly in the intoxication of the senses; through philosophy, however, our origin is uncovered, and our nature—which, unlike that of plants and animals, does not remain in blind impulse—reveals the eternal and divine archetype according to which we have been formed.
We mortals can recognize this immortal archetype in time and experience it as our essence. The soul is therefore, according to its principles, something immortal, and its immortality can easily be proved if one looks only at the principles whose mixture or image the soul has become. To be sure, this does not prove the individual soul to be immortal—which would be absurd for Plato—but it does prove the essence or kind of the soul, in which the highest and the eternal become manifest through cognition.
These proofs will therefore also be found scattered through almost all the Platonic dialogues, because the explanation of the essence of the soul naturally forms the center of the entire conception of the world, and because the principles, in their union and completed appearance, likewise lead back to the soul. Six proofs are found in the Phaedo, one in the Phaedrus, and three in the Republic. In these, the Platonic thought comes to complete clarity.
[Page 115]
§ 2.
The Proofs of Immortality
[Page 116]
Basis for the Division of the Proofs
But in order not to consider the proofs tumultuously, according to number and chance, we must reflect that they are all to be divided into two groups, since Plato, whenever he wished to demonstrate the eternity and immortality of the soul, could always rely either on the nature of the Ideas or on the nature of the maternal principle. The multiplicity of the proofs naturally arises from the fact that different predicates belong to these two principles, predicates that, in accordance with the matter itself, must also be found in the soul. By looking now at one, now at another predicate of the Ideas or of the becoming principle, Plato always gains a new proof for the eternity of our nature. We shall now examine the proofs.
a. Proofs from the Eternity of Our Ideal Nature
Every proof must conclude: therefore the soul is eternal. The only question, then, is to find the middle term that belongs, on the one hand, to the soul and, on the other, itself entails the characteristic of eternity. Since, as we saw, the ideal principle is one factor of the soul, and since eternity is assured to it as that which truly exists, we can easily draw out several different predicates from it.
The ideal principle is the cause of all motion; 2) it is an independent principle and did not arise from the material; 3) it can be recognized only through reason, not through the senses, as becoming can; 4) it is therefore the ruling and determining element in becoming; 5) as the divine, it is to be revered; 6) finally, it has its content in the world of Ideas.
These six determinations are just as many middle terms for proofs of immortality; for naturally—
[Page 117]
Proofs through the Middle Term of Ideal Nature
for it will not be difficult to show the soul's participation (Greek text methexis) in each of these determinations.
The Ideal Principle as the Cause of All Motion *)
[Note: * Phaedrus, pages 245 C-246.]
Major premise. In everything that becomes, there is something that is moved but does not itself move of its own accord, and secondly there is something else that moves both itself and that other thing: the cause of all motion. Immortality or eternity naturally belongs to this ground of all becoming; for if it were to perish, the entire world would evidently disappear, since no ground of any coming-into-being or change would remain.
Minor premise. This cause of motion is also evident in the soul; for without the soul the body is lifeless, but through it alive.
Conclusion. The soul, in which the first cause of all motion becomes manifest, must be immortal.
However self-evident the proof may be, it naturally contains not a syllable concerning individual immortality, since the relation of the individual to the universal principle is not even mentioned. It therefore remains entirely undecided whether individual souls, like rivers into the ocean, do not pour themselves back into the universal principle, whose manifestations they were. For no one learned in Plato would dare to dissolve this universal cause into a plurality of such principles of motion, since multiplicity always belongs only to becoming and never to the Idea.
[Page 118]
The Ideal Principle Is Prior to Becoming and Is Not Its Product *)
[Note: * Phaedo, pages 84 C and 95.]
Major premise. When becoming passes away, the function exercised during becoming must also pass away. But that which precedes becoming and is the cause of becoming cannot be overtaken by the fate of what passes away.
Minor premise. Plato conducts the proof that the soul exists prior to the becoming of the body as its independent cause indirectly, by showing, with the full charm of Socratic humor, in a threefold chain of reasoning, how the soul cannot possibly be the harmony or function of bodily becoming.
First, the doctrine of recollection (Greek text anamnesis) opposes the view that the soul is a harmony of the body and therefore later than it. Since the Ideas do not arise from sensory perception, we must have possessed them a priori before birth, and sensory perceptions merely cause us to recollect them. Since the soul possesses something that precedes all becoming, it cannot therefore be a function of the body.
If the soul were a harmony, it could under no circumstances be disharmonious. Thus the firm moral oppositions of good and evil would disappear.
If the soul were a harmony, and therefore a dependent consequence of the condition of the body, the soul could not possibly rule the body and resist its impulses, although this is a fact and is already attested by Homer, when he has Odysseus strike his breast with the reproachful words:
“Endure it, my heart; you have endured worse than this.”
[Page 119]
Conclusion. The soul is therefore not a function or harmony of the body, but possesses an independent position prior to it and is therefore independent of its fate.
It is evident that in these proofs too, only the ideal side in what has become is brought to the fore. There is naturally no question here of the soul's individual independence, because Plato would otherwise have had to investigate multiplicity within the ideal itself, whereas he is concerned only to show the identity of the soul with the ideal factor of the world.
The Ideal Principle Is Recognizable Only through Reason *)
[Note: * Phaedo, pages 78 to 80.]
Major premise. Everything that we recognize through reason is the true essence (Greek text ousia) of things and is always one and self-identical, incapable of any change or temporal or spatial alteration—for example, the Equal itself and the Beautiful itself, and, among all the many appearances, the Idea. While the many things named after the Idea are perceptible to the senses and become at one time equal, at another unequal, at one time beautiful, at another ugly, the Equal itself is always the Equal, the Beautiful itself always the Beautiful, without time or change, and therefore immortal and eternal.
Minor premise. In the human being, however, the body resembles flowing things, which are continually changing; but the soul, when it does not live in the senses and impulses, but recognizes the invisible through reason (Greek text phronesis), must be regarded as akin to these eternal Ideas, insofar as, recognizing them, it is purely separated from the body and from what flows.
[Page 120]
Conclusion. Through its rational cognition, the soul receives the immortality of the essence recognized through reason.
This proof is not entirely exact; for in the major premise, what is recognized through reason is eternal, whereas in the minor premise the soul is only that which recognizes through reason. Thus, only a kinship and similarity between the recognizer and the recognized is inferred; and this can naturally mean nothing other than that the soul has participation and communion (Greek text methexis and Greek text koinonia) in the ideal nature of the world—and only when it is rational or phronetic, whereas it becomes similar to what flows when it looks through the senses.
As one sees, the Son (Greek text ekgonos) wishes to fall neither entirely under the type of the Father nor entirely under that of the Mother. The immortality of the individual soul therefore gains no support from this proof, since it too concerns only the ideal factor of the soul and not its individual essence.
The Ideal Principle Is the Ruling Principle in the World *)
[Note: * Phaedo, p. 80.]
Major premise. The principle governing the world is naturally, as what truly exists, imperishable and ungenerated. But what rules is the Ideal, the Good, according to which everything is ordered and receives its measure and essence.
Minor premise. The soul, however, rules over the body and is related to the ruling principle of the world; for, as Plato says (Philebus, p. 30), it has—
[Page 121]
which reveals the magnificent parallelism: the microcosm of the individual human being receives all its relatively weak and small parts from the mighty and great whole of the macrocosm; from the ensouled body of the All, ensoulment; from the royal spirit of God, and from the power of the cause, the governance of the body.
Conclusion. The soul is therefore most similar to the immortal, indissoluble, ruling principle of the world, just as the body is similar to the mortal, dissoluble, serving principle. The soul is immortal.
Here too, however, the proof is again imprecise; for only the similarity between Zeus and the soul with respect to ruling follows from it. Whether they must also be similar in the matter of immortality has not been proved. In fact, one sees that Plato was not concerned with this at all; for he does not even touch upon the individuality of the soul, but merely demonstrates that the essence of the soul must be traced back in general to the ideal principle that rules in the world.
The Ideal Principle Is the Divine *)
[Note: * Compare also Republic, pages 611 and 612.]
Major premise. The Divine, as what truly exists, is eternal. There can indeed also be mortal gods who were once called into existence through a harmonious mixture of their components; but Plato speaks of such gods only in mythical representations. The Divine that precedes all becoming and first grants being is, as such, eternal.
Minor premise. The soul is something divine. We read this everywhere in Plato; I shall therefore merely recall a few passages that place the thought in a particularly clear light.
[Page 122]
In the Alcibiades, p. 133 C, Socrates traces the essence of the human being back to the soul and considers wisdom necessary in order to discover the essence of the soul; for the thinking soul resembles the Divine, and whoever looks upon this and recognizes everything divine—both God and reason—would thereby also know himself best:
“Greek text.”
“Having recognized all that is divine, both God and reason, he would in this way also come to know himself best.”
This corresponds to the marvelous speech in the Republic 611 E, where Socrates, in order to recognize the true nature of the soul, urges us to look away from the soul's present empirical form and instead to look toward the objects after which it strives in thought and which it touches by recognizing them—namely, the Divine, the Immortal, and that which eternally exists.
For at present it has indeed become so unrecognizable, like a muddy sea Glaucus (Greek text thalattios Glaukos), through the passions and sensory pleasures, as though covered with shells, seaweed, and the dirt of the waves, that, like him, it resembles an animal more than anything else. Through the impulse toward cognition, however, it is raised from the sea to its kinship and carried outward into its true, simple nature, into the Divine *).
[Note: * Compare also Phaedrus, p. 250 C.]
Conclusion. As something divine, the soul is imperishable.
In this poetically beautiful speech, the true and genuine meaning of all Plato's proofs of immortality lies openly before us; for preserving the individuality of the soul is nowhere worthy of his attention. Rather, he wishes only to show the sense confined within the empirical conception of the soul how the soul is in truth
[Page 123]
merely a veiling of the Divine in the garment of the mortal body, and how our work in moral self-mastery and philosophical cognition is required in order to liberate the divine nature within us and to comprehend its glory as our highest good.
But when Plato is supposed to explain this veiling—that is, becoming itself—or when the return from becoming into the divine principle is at issue, dialectical power must naturally abandon him, and he becomes a poet, stammering forth comparisons and myths concerning the indescribable wonder.
The Ideal Principle Has the World of Ideas as Its Content *)
[Note: * Phaedo, pages 73 to 77 E.]
Major premise. The Ideas are what truly exists, in unchanging self-identity, and are therefore eternal.
Minor premise. The soul participates in and has communion with the Ideas. This proposition is established through the familiar doctrine of recollection, which is developed at greater length in the Meno and the Phaedrus.
For we find within ourselves concepts that can never be given by any experience, and upon which all cognition and understanding nevertheless depend—for example, the concepts of equality, justice, beauty, measure, the good, and so forth. All appearances are named and judged according to these concepts, and yet no appearance can fully display the essence of these concepts; they merely approach it and, when we contemplate them, bring us to awareness of the true essence toward which they strive.
Plato calls the objects of these concepts “shapes” or “forms,” and later philosophy has retained from him, down to the present, the name “Ideas.” Since they cannot therefore be given a posteriori through the senses, they must be present a priori in
[Page 124]
the soul, which merely recollects them. If the soul therefore possessed them before all sensory perception—that is, already before birth—then it must already have existed before birth; and if it existed before becoming, then it will also exist after death, like the Ideas themselves, which are untouched by the multiplicity and change of things.
Conclusion. The soul is therefore immortal because of the world of Ideas that comes to recollection within it.
In this proof too, which, like the others, leaves the question of the individual unconsidered, Plato seeks only to show the eternal essence of the soul in general—that is, the ideal ground of the world. For the Divine, which is revealed in the Ideas, is recognized by the human soul, and through this recognition the soul becomes aware of its own essence, which is the Ideal and the Divine. But how it happens that at birth the Ideas become veiled and entirely forgotten must be explained from the marvelous communion with the nature of the Unbounded (Greek text apeiron), of the eternally becoming; for everything indeterminate and inexplicable comes from this, whereas the Idea is determinate and clear.
Result
All these proofs work toward the same goal: to display to the individual soul the ideal ground of the world. The soul is the Divine and the True, the Bounded and the Ruling, the ground of all motion, and the Being that precedes becoming independently, and therefore naturally also immortal and eternal.
Since this applies to all souls, it would of course be self-evident, if the matter concerned the essence of the soul in its generality, but rather about the indi-
[Page 125]
individual immortality, it would first and above all have to be investigated whether this Divine, apart from the worldly appearance of the human being, also divides into a multiplicity of individual substances. But there is nowhere any discussion of this.
Plato's communion of the soul with the Divine does not lead him to such a pantheism that he would allow the divine nature to live only immanently in the becoming souls. Rather, for him the ancient nature (Greek text archaia physis) of the soul, which philosophical contemplation beholds, always remains beyond as a single, undivided archetype, and must veil itself when it enters into communion with the Unbounded *). This doctrine of veiling is very ancient, and just as it was poetically taken up, for example, by the Gnostics, when Achamoth veils herself at the Parousia of the Redeemer **), so it also lies at the foundation of the belief that whoever beholds God must die; for life is possible only through the veiling of God.
[Note: * Republic 611 C:
“Greek text.”
“One must behold it not mutilated by communion with the body and other evils, as we now behold it.”]
[Note: ** Compare my History of the Concept of Parousia, p. 73.]
b. Proofs from the Eternity of Becoming
Since the soul is something that becomes—that is, a communion of the principle that is always becoming with that which always exists, or the Idea—and since, secondly, these two principles necessarily possess eternity as principles, it was very easy, in the proofs just presented, to explain the immortality of the soul by demonstrating only the ideal factor within the soul. But this factor is universal according to its essence; therefore nothing could follow from it for individual immortality.
[Page 126]
Proofs could just as easily be drawn from the second factor; for although it cannot, like the Ideas, be presented through reason as an independent and existing unity, it is nevertheless just as necessary for the becoming of the world and just as eternal as the Ideas. One must therefore demonstrate it indirectly, with Plato, within becoming, insofar as the world could neither become nor pass away if a principle of what is in itself non-being did not exist. For the Ideas by themselves are what exists and are never becoming. But non-being, insofar as it participates in being, is the explanatory ground of everything that becomes. Everything, therefore, that is to be observed in becoming as becoming must be interpreted as referring to the second principle.
Now if the world, as what becomes (Timaeus, p. 33), is a perfect living being and has nothing outside itself that would not be enclosed within its unity, then it is necessarily eternal, without illness and without growing old. It takes no nourishment from outside and neither suffers nor does anything from outside or toward the outside; rather, it has everything within itself in perfectly self-sufficient abundance. It can therefore neither be increased nor diminished in its power, and all the oppositions of coming-into-being and passing-away, life and death, evidently cannot touch it, so that, from this point of view, all the oppositions that occur in its parts are once again canceled in the whole.
If one now looks at this self-identity (identity) of the world, then the life and death of human beings must also appear as something inessential through it, something that has no effect and means nothing for the whole, since in fact neither the Ideas nor becoming itself can thereby perish or suffer any change. We shall therefore now also consider Plato's proofs that are directed toward this aspect.
[Page 127]
Becoming Remains Always the Same in Quantity *)
[Note: * Republic 611 A–C.]
This proposition is self-evident for Plato. I merely recall the Platonic exposition in the Timaeus 33 A–D, where, for example, the destruction of one thing as nourishment for another is described, and the quantitative increase or diminution of the world, both in extent and in power, is rejected as absurd. This is the simplest formulation of the proposition that has today received its exact mathematical expression in natural science, in the so-called law of the conservation of energy.
Major premise. What remains identical in quantity, and therefore is not diminished, does not perish but is eternal and immortal.
Minor premise. Souls become neither more nor fewer in number. This proof is not conducted statistically by comparing tables of population censuses—for the souls of Quetelet, Engel, Oettingen, and others must at that time still have been performing their celestial circuit in the retinue of the gods. Rather, Plato gives simple dialectical arguments that have nothing to do with number.
For, he proceeds from the opposition between the immortal and the mortal. If the immortal could be increased out of the mortal, it would have to retain this increase, and the mortal would thereby be diminished until all mortality had been reduced to zero and
[Page 128]
had become immortal. This is impossible for two reasons: first, logically considered, the mortal is mortal and not immortal, and therefore, because of the identity of its concept, can never become immortal; secondly, because in the mortal, as something affected by the principle of becoming, there is contained the variegation, dissimilarity, and contradiction with itself that cannot belong precisely to the ever-self-identical and simple nature of the immortal or of the Idea.
That souls, however, are the immortal is added from other proofs, and it therefore follows that their number cannot increase.
Conclusion. The souls are immortal because they cannot become either more or fewer.
In this proof one must not be troubled by the logical circle—that immortality is gained in the conclusion only after the soul has already been presupposed as immortal in the minor premise—for the same result would follow from the opposite assumption, as we shall see in the last proof below, since the matter concerns only the enduring identity of the opposites. On the other hand, it is very interesting that at this point Plato speaks precisely of a determinate number of souls and thereby overturns everything that we have hitherto believed to recognize as his true doctrine; for if he assumes counted souls, then he does indeed have individual principles, Leibniz is right, and we must ask forgiveness for a misunderstanding.
With a question so decisive for the Platonic conception of the world, however, one must not hurry. One must first remember that the investigation concerns becoming, in which more and less, number, and quantity in general are distinguished.
Since the soul is supposed to be the immortal, therefore the in-
[Page 129]
in opposition to becoming, the quantitative element evidently falls away for it according to its essence, and the “no more” and “no less” can therefore mean nothing other than the self-identity (identity) of the Idea. This is already confirmed by the fact that elsewhere too Plato never assigns a number to an Idea, but only differences of kind, that is, qualitative distinctions. The number of individual appearances belonging to the internally unified Idea belongs precisely only to the world of appearance.
Just as mathematical sciences, as a lower preliminary stage to dialectic, the science of the Idea, count for him as a lower preliminary stage, so number also has no place where the essence (Greek text ousia) is at issue. It follows clearly that this passage cannot offer any support to defenders of the Platonic doctrine of immortality; for a multiplicity of souls is neither derived nor intended here. The proof says, in brief, only that the appearances of birth and death that arise in the realm of becoming cannot affect the self-identity of the essence of the world.
Becoming Perishes Only through Its Own Evil *)
[Note: * Republic, pages 608 E-611.]
This proof has a different character from the preceding one. The preceding proof testified to the self-identity of the principles; this one brings out, in becoming, a characteristic that does not belong to the soul and by which the soul is therefore excluded from the realm of coming-into-being and passing-away. Nevertheless, the proof does not belong to the first class above, because the middle term is not a characteristic of ideal nature but of becoming, which is why I have included it here.
[Page 130]
Major premise. What does not perish through its own evil is eternal and immortal. If a good is that which benefits a thing and preserves it, while an evil is that which harms and destroys it, then it is clear that every thing can be destroyed only by its own evil and not by a foreign evil—for example, wood by rot, iron by rust, grain by burning, bodies by disease, eyes by ophthalmia, and so forth.
A foreign evil—for example, when we consume rotten food or receive a wound from a sword—cannot dissolve us immediately, but only when the evil proper to each part has thereby been produced in it. This is a principle fully recognized by contemporary pathology.
Minor premise. The soul perishes neither through a foreign nor through its own evil. The evils of the soul are four, corresponding to the four virtues: ignorance, cowardice, intemperance, and injustice. First, however, these are not caused by illness of the body; for people who become ill and die have evidently not first all become unjust and ignorant, and so forth—that is, morally bad—and death is not a consequence of wickedness.
Secondly, the wickedness of the soul does not bring about the soul's destruction and disappearance either; otherwise all the wicked would have to die earlier than the good, which does not accord with experience.
Conclusion. Since the soul perishes neither through a foreign nor through its own evil, it is eternal and immortal.
[Page 131]
This proof, as one sees, does not touch upon the individuality of the soul at all and therefore cannot establish the doctrine of individual immortality. Its result is merely that the soul is excluded from the realm of what passes away; that is, the soul must be counted among the ideal factor, which is what always exists. But whether this ever-existing principle also exists in a plurality of souls apart from human appearance is not even remotely suggested by this.
Everything That Becomes Arises from Its Opposite *)
[Note: * Phaedo, pages 70 C-72 E.]
This principle is proved by Plato through induction; for something can become greater only if it was previously smaller, stronger only if it was previously weaker, slower if it was previously faster, more just if it was previously less just, and so forth. All things therefore move in the transition from one opposite to the other, that is, in two forms of becoming, such as growing and diminishing, becoming warm and becoming cold, mixing and separating, waking and falling asleep, and so on.
Major premise. The opposite from which its opposite is to arise must exist somehow or somewhere.
Plato does not prove this proposition separately, but presupposes it as acknowledged, since it was firmly established for him that what exists cannot arise from what does not exist.
Minor premise. Being dead is the opposite of being alive. Life and death also belong among the opposites, and therefore the living and the dead, as well as the transitions of dying and coming back to life. According to the preceding principle, all of these must pass reciprocally into one another.
Conclusion. The dead must therefore exist somewhere. If the living are to become from the dead, then the dead must exist in Hades (Greek text en Haidou) or somewhere (Greek text pou).
[Page 132]
That Plato cannot have been concerned here with individual immortality is sufficiently clear; for the acute philosopher could not have missed the observation that his conclusion leads to a dilemma. Either the dead, regardless of where they may be, are in any case not their opposite—that is, living—in which case mere existence would be of no value to us; or they are living, and then the principle upon which the proof rests would be overturned, because the living would arise from the living and not from their opposite—thus, rather, like from like, a proposition that is equally correct but naturally nullifies the given proof.
In fact, however, the proof has an entirely different point, as one easily recognizes from the dialogue's progression. Plato proceeds to the theory of cyclical becoming, of which we shall speak below and in which only the self-identity of the world, as above, pages 126 and following., is expressed; for if all opposites arise from one another and therefore both exist, then nothing comes into being at all and nothing passes away, but the universe remains self-identical in its powers.
Some Things Never Receive the Opposite of the Idea by Which They Are Determined *)
[Note: * Phaedo, pages 103 to 107 C.]
Plato distinguished the principles, on the one hand, into the Ideas, which have their essence in another's pres-
[Page 133]
the Ideas bring about their presence (Greek text parousia) *), and are received from them (Greek text metechomena); on the other hand, into that which receives these Ideas (Greek text metechonta) and through them obtains being and determinacy, thereby becoming a thing (Greek text pragmata).
One characteristic of things, as we saw (p. 131), was that they shift between their opposites and pass over into their contrary. Conversely, it is a characteristic of the Idea that it never receives its opposite. This concerns both the Idea in us (Greek text en hemin), by which Plato evidently means concepts, and the Idea in nature (Greek text en te physei). The Just itself can never be unjust, the Good cannot be bad, and equality cannot be inequality.
There are, however, certain things that behave in this respect like the Idea, in that they are determined by an Idea so inseparably connected with them that they can never receive the opposite of this Idea **). For example, fire is so connected with warmth, and snow with cold, that fire never receives cold so long as it is fire, and snow never receives warmth so long as it is snow. Likewise, fever is so connected with the Idea of illness, the number ten with the Idea of the even, and the number three with
[Note: * Compare my History of the Concept of Parousia, pages 9 and following.]
[Note: ** This Platonic thought seemed suitable to the great Church teacher Origen, from which to derive, for his doctrine of the Incarnation, the One Soul that participated inseparably in the Son of God.
De Principiis 2.6:
“Illa anima ab initio creaturae et deinceps inseparabiliter ei atque indissociabiliter inhaerens, utpote a sapientiae verbo Dei et veritati ac luci verae tota totum in se recipiens atque ejus lucem splendoremque ipsa cedens, facta est cum ipso principaliter unus spiritus.”
“That soul, clinging to it inseparably and indissolubly from the beginning of creation onward, as one attached to the Word of God's Wisdom, to the Truth, and to the true Light, receiving the whole of it wholly into itself and yielding itself to its light and splendor, became with it, principally, one spirit.”
The Greek text methexis is here like the way fire participates in warmth. Compare my History of the Concept of Parousia, pages 91 and 93.]
[Page 134]
the Idea of the odd, so that, so long as it is fever, fever never admits health, ten never admits oddness, and three never admits evenness. Plato regards this fact as an exception to the general law of transitions in nature, and therefore never tires of repeating it (“Greek text”); Aristotle, by contrast, had already set these phenomena in order and grasped them in systematic technical terms. I recall the opposition between the species-forming difference (Greek text eidopoion), the peculiar (Greek text oikeion), and the accidental (Greek text symbebekos).
Major premise. No thing can receive a determination that it never admits. For example, snow can never be warm.
Minor premise. The soul never receives death.
For when a body lives, it lives through the soul; and when it lacks the soul, it lacks life. Life and soul are conceptually and materially joined by indissoluble bonds. It would therefore be just as mistaken to think the concept of death together with the soul as to think warmth together with snow, cold together with fire, or evenness together with three.
Conclusion. Death can therefore never belong to the soul; it is without death (Greek text athanatos), that is, immortal.
It is evident that in this proof too no attention is paid to the individual soul, since the issue does not concern determinations capable of preserving the existence of the individual soul. For evidently, according to this proof too, the individual soul can disappear, just as the individual fire disappears and as snow melts when warmth approaches.
[Page 135]
The individual snow is not immortal, but its essence is preserved; for it is eternally united only with cold. Thus the essence of the soul in general is also preserved when the individual soul perishes; for the soul has not received death but has withdrawn from it (“Greek text,” p. 103 D).
The soul is therefore once again recognized through this proof as what we considered above, p. 117, namely, as the universal principle of life and motion; but nothing is thereby gained for individual immortality.
Result
If we survey all these proofs, we see that in the six considerations of the first class the divine nature, or the ideal world, is shown in the soul as its veiling and revelation; while the four proofs of the second class consider the soul in the flow of becoming and establish that becoming must always remain identical in its principles and therefore represents a transition of things into opposite determinations, while the opposites themselves preserve their identity.
The soul, not as an individual but as the ideal principle of motion, is therefore unaffected by the changes of appearances. In a word, all Plato's proofs of immortality offer only a foundation for idealism in general, by demonstrating, in the world that comes into being and passes away and is continually flowing, the ideal principle that cannot be explained from the material but forms the ground of all cognition, all essence, and all good.
[Page 136]
§ 3.
Of the Two Concepts in Plato That Are Incompatible with Individual Principles
The analysis and critique of Plato's proofs of immortality might already be sufficient to lead us to abandon the opinion that Plato was concerned with individual substances and personal immortality. But, in order to ground this conviction more deeply, we shall emphasize a pair of fundamental concepts which, on the one hand, are undisputed and can be grasped with the fullest definiteness and clarity, but which, on the other hand, are just as incompatible with the assumption of individual principles as those taught by Leibniz, or as those silently presupposed in the concept of the soul and personality by belief in personal immortality.
These two fundamental concepts are, first, the principle of non-being, and second, cyclical becoming.
Non-Being as a Principle
In the flow of appearances, Plato discovered the eternal repose of the Idea. If he had now made the Idea, as what truly exists, the sole principle, then all change, the unrest of motion, and the flow of things would have become inexplicable. Plato therefore posited a second principle, non-being, as just as necessary for the explanation of things as being; and since it is always self-identical as non-being, was and is non-being, he also regarded it as an Idea among the many beings *). Are these now the
[Note: * Sophist 258 C:
“Greek text.”
“And so too non-being was and is, in the same way, non-being, one kind, numbered among the many beings.”]
[Page 137]
principles, then we must evidently, and rightly, call all things non-being and, again, because they participate in being, being *).
[Note: * Sophist 256 E:
“Greek text.”
“Accordingly, in all these respects we shall rightly say that all things are not-being, and again, because they participate in being, that they are and are beings.”]
No Dualism in Plato
It is very natural that, because of these two principles, one should have understood the Platonic doctrine as dualism. And in fact, after many passages in his dialogues, one can hardly avoid agreeing with this interpretation. Nevertheless, the Son (Greek text ekgonos) then joins the Father and Mother as a third, so that one would also not be mistaken if one wished to designate Platonism as a doctrine of the Trinity. In my conviction, however, both are nevertheless wrong; for the Son is not a third beside those two principles, but the two are one in him.
Plato frequently abolished dualism, as, for example, in the Sophist **), where he describes separating everything from everything else and abandoning communion as unmusical and unphilosophical; or where he demonstrates, in the case of the older natural philosophers, the difficulty that arises when one posits two principles, since one must then once again wed and equip them in order to explain the appearances ***). The union
[Note: ** Sophist 259 E:
“Greek text.”
“For, my good friend, to attempt to separate everything from everything else is otherwise not fitting, and is indeed altogether characteristic of something unmusical and unphilosophical.”]
[Note: *** Sophist 242 D:
“Greek text.”
“Each of them seems to me to tell us a story, as though we were children: one says that there are three beings, while another says there are two—moist and dry, or hot and cold—and he marries them together and brings them forth.”]
[Page 138]
of the two principles into a living whole is everywhere the Platonic doctrine. And Ueberweg is very wrong when he says *): “The (unconsciously mythical) personification of the Ideas is completed in the assertion that motion, life, ensoulment, and reason belong to them; yet this doctrine (set forth in the dialogue Sophist) seems to belong not to Plato himself, who holds fast to the immutability of the Ideas, but to a portion of his pupils.”
[Note: * Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, second edition, p. 103 above.]
For, first, it is false that in the Sophist Plato ascribes soul, reason, and life to the Ideas, whereas he clearly says that such things must belong to the All, the universe **).
[Note: ** Plato, in the relevant passage (Sophist 248 and following), discusses the communion (Greek text koinonia) of opposites and proceeds from a definition of what exists on p. 248 C that does not fit the Ideas in the least: namely, that it is the capacity to suffer something or to act.
“Greek text.”
“The definition of beings is this: whenever the capacity to suffer or to act, even in the smallest degree, is present in something.”
The necessity derived from this of ascribing reason, soul, and motion to essence (Greek text ousia) therefore has not the slightest relation to the Ideas; for on p. 249 C Plato equally emphatically demands identity and rest (Greek text stasis) if reason is to exist in the world. Plato draws the conclusion in the statement that clearly expresses his own doctrine, which the “Friends of the Ideas” had not yet discovered: one must posit the All neither as merely standing nor as merely moving, but must assert both of it at once.
Compare p. 249 D:
“Greek text (sc. Greek text.”
“Every philosopher who especially honors these things—knowledge, understanding, and intellect—must, it seems, for this reason neither accept the whole as standing still, as those do who speak of one or many Forms, nor listen at all to those who move being in every way; but, in accordance with the children's prayer, must say that both the unmoved and the moved, being and the All, are together.”]
It is therefore impossible to speak here of a personification of the Ideas, and even less of an “unconscious” one, which is a downright comical assumption, since Plato displays more dialectical power in this dialogue than many a modern, and scourges the mythical treatment of principles in his predecessors with irony and humor. One cannot say this emphatically enough, since one so often hears Plato accused of dualism—a fairy tale suitable for children!
[Page 139]
Secondly, the assumption is entirely mistaken that someone who ascribes soul and reason to the All must thereby abandon the immutability of the Ideas; for the immutable Ideas precisely constitute the reason that belongs to the All. If they were mutable, the light of reason would thereby be extinguished for the All *).
[Note: * Plato says this with unmistakable clarity in the same passage, 249 C:
“Greek text.”
“Do you think that what is always the same, in the same way, and concerning the same thing could ever come to be without rest? Not at all. And what? Can you see intellect existing or coming to be anywhere without these? Least of all.”
Thus: without rest, no Idea; without Idea, no reason.]
One must therefore not use such misunderstandings to deny Plato this dialogue.
Plato does indeed teach in no dialogue more emphatically and dialectically than in the Sophist that the All is a living whole. Reason dwells in the All (Greek text enesti) and it possesses reason (Greek text echei); through both expressions, the nature that possesses reason and in which reason dwells (Greek text [to dektikon, echon, to ho enesti]) is simultaneously posited as united with it.
According to Plato, the All is therefore constituted as the children wish their plaything to be: unmoved—that is, identical and indestructible—and moved at the same time **).
[Note: ** Sophist 249 D. Compare above, p. 138, note **.]
But one may scarcely regard this doctrine, which goes beyond unphilosophical dualism, as un-Platonic; for everywhere in Plato one finds it extensively demonstrated that becoming, on the one hand,
[Page 140]
participates in (Greek text methexis) and has communion (Greek text koinonia) with the Ideas, which constitute the essence (Greek text ousia) of things *), and that the Ideas, on the other hand, are present in the world (Greek text parousia), just as the Divinity in our soul is merely veiled and is revealed through philosophy.
[Note: * In the Timaeus, p. 35, Plato describes this unity, as he does in the Sophist, as a mixture:
“Greek text.”
“He mixed a third thing from both in the middle, a form of essence, and so forth.”]
I confess that I cannot understand Plato otherwise than by regarding his world not as a mosaic of dualistic principles but, as he himself so often says, as a living being (Greek text zoion).
Immanence and Transcendence
For this reason, one also usually misunderstands Aristotle's position toward Plato when one assumes that Aristotle first advanced from the transcendence of the Ideas to their immanence; for the Ideas are immanent in things in Plato too, since they constitute the essence of things and are present within them (Greek text parousia). And the Idea (Greek text eidos) is transcendent in relation to the individual thing in Aristotle too—a point that requires little ingenuity to understand, since in Aristotle too the Idea remains unchangeable while individuals come into being and pass away.
The ideal principle therefore possesses both immanence and transcendence in Plato as well as in Aristotle. The advance that Aristotle is so conscious of having made consists, rather, in the fact that he no longer conceived the ideal merely as the logically universal (Greek text katholou), but as the real universal determined to the ultimate species. Aristotle no longer wished, for example, like Plato
[Page 141]
to strive after the Idea of the Good, which is also a good for the fish, but after the human good; nor did he want the universal Ideas of White, Odd, Two, and so forth to celebrate their Parousia in white, odd, and double things. Rather, the ultimate ideal species-substance came to its entelechy in him and, because of the particular purposes of the species, had its own peculiar determinations (Greek text pathe); consequently, he also had to distinguish thoroughly between what was merely abstract and what was real-ideal, which receives its most emphatic expression in the doctrine of generation. For this reason, in Ueberweg, who does not deny his ingenuity in many details, one nevertheless finds scarcely any useful interpretation appropriate to Plato.
Result for the Doctrine of Immortality
Let us now return to our question. If the soul is to be immortal, this must become intelligible from the principles understood monistically or dualistically. The ideal principle, as the archetype, is one and universal, one and the same for all the many souls; but through its Parousia in the second principle it appears veiled in the many individual souls, which arise and pass away in continual flux.
If one now places the soul in the ideal principle, one is right and can rely upon all the Platonic dialogues; but although one thereby gains what one sought—namely, the immortality, or rather eternity, of the soul—one simultaneously loses what casts down hope: its individuality. For the archetype is one and has no number, multiplicity, or difference. One has been deceived; one seeks individual immortality but finds
[Page 142]
only the eternity of the Idea and must, scourged by Plato, first learn to lay aside one's preference for the mortal, variegated, and manifold individual, in order, purified through catharsis, to become capable, as an epopt, of beholding the One.
If one now wishes to rescue the individual soul into the other principle, one comes, as the proverb says, from the rain under the eaves. For non-being has no place in which one could shelter anything that exists, since its being is merely non-being. If the soul were therefore placed under non-being, it would thereby be recognized as non-being.
Thus the Platonic principles fail to serve if they are to work toward individual immortality. But if one thinks that the harmonious communion of the principles in the Son (Greek text ekgonos) can be used for this purpose, then it is precisely the evident fact that the Son comes into being and passes away that leads us to seek, for the faith that distrusts this perception, a support in the principles. The result of this investigation is therefore the dilemma that the individual is not eternal and that the eternal principles are not individual. Leibniz's monads as individual principles are simply not to be found in Plato; for where they could help us, on the side of the real principle, we find in Plato the hopeless abyss of non-being.
Cyclical Becoming
A second concept that also prohibits individual immortality has already been touched upon above. It is the concept of the cyclical or periodic in becoming; for the world can neither grow nor diminish. It always remains identical with itself in essence and in quantity.
[Page 143]
Consequently, cyclically, the dead must become from the living and the living from the dead; otherwise everything would either be dead or everything alive—that is, becoming, or the world, would cease if the flow of coming-into-being and passing-away did not join back together with itself in a circle *).
[Note: * Above, p. 127, the Republic is cited in this connection; here I refer especially to Phaedo, p. 70 C.]
It follows from this, then, that the souls of the dead must be led back to birth, and it is clear that here it must be decided how Plato conceived the being of the dead souls, whether he really wished to grant them an individual, even if brief, existence after death until the time of rebirth in this world. For Plato must say what we take with us into Hades, and conversely what we bring with us out of Hades when we return to birth.
It is, to be sure, extremely difficult here to separate the beautiful myths from the strict concept; yet there are certain established propositions that we can follow.
First, then, what do we take with us into Hades? Plato expressly says: only our education **).
[Note: ** Phaedo, p. 107 D:
“Greek text.”
“For the soul comes into Hades possessing nothing else except its education and upbringing.”]
But what education is, we learn everywhere from Plato: namely, recollection of the Ideas, or knowledge of the Ideas. This, however, is nothing other than what constitutes the essence of the human soul in general, just as the ancient nature (Greek text archaia physis) of the sea Glaucus is simply the divine world of the Ideas. What, then, do we take with us into Hades? Answer: our universal nature.
[Page 144]
If, now, we are to leave behind our individual constitution, then a dissipation, a disappearance, of the individual constitution of the soul must be possible *). Strangely enough, this appears so self-evident to Plato that he does not consider it necessary to provide any proof for it. Forgetting is, for him, a loss entirely without pain, and he regards it as an acknowledged event in our nature, wholly apart from all our knowledge and awareness, willing or unwilling **).
There is no reason to wonder at this; for the individual soul is, for him, a thing that has become (Greek text ekgonos), and so everything individual within it is something that has become. But what has become is necessarily transient. Therefore, when what has become—the human being—dies, nothing remains of what came to be within what had become, that is, the individual constitution; only what was before what became remains, namely, the eternal—or, figuratively, the “ancient”—nature (Greek text archaia physis) of the soul.
In the Timaeus, Plato therefore once again connects his account to this “ancient” nature when, without further ado, he allows the mortal—the individual—in us to pass away and recognizes only the immortality gained through thinking the Eternal and the Divine: that is, eternal life in time, in which the daemon within us has its Parousia, and through which we are therefore eudaimonic, that is, blessed or godly, through the equation between the knower and the known ***).
[Note: * On this question, compare my book The Immortality of the Soul, Duncker & Humblot, 1874, p. 140.]
[Note: ** Philebus, p. 52:
“Greek text.”
“Losses through forgetfulness. B. The affections of nature.”]
[Note: *** Timaeus, p. 90 B–E:
“Greek text.”
“Make the daemon your fellow-dweller, and so forth—make that which understands like to the ancient nature.”
Compare also my History of the Concept of Parousia, pages 138 and following.]
[Page 145]
Secondly, what do we bring with us out of Hades? Evidently, if Plato wishes, mythically, to have the living arise from the dead, he must above all remove the individual element belonging to the concept of dead souls, since otherwise the experience that no one remembers his former life and his condition as a dead person would have created too great a difficulty. This could most conveniently be achieved with the aid of a mythical geography, by having the dead, on their way to rebirth, first pass through the Field of Forgetfulness and pitch their tent beside the river that steals away thought *). From this river all those who are born must drink, in order to forget everything.
Without the myth, this means nothing other than that the person born is in a condition as though he had no individual life behind him, and that birth in general signifies the union of the Idea with non-being, which is indicated here by Lethe and Ameles; for what has become is a veiling of ideal being, which first comes into Parousia through our cognition.
We see here the necessary consequences of the concept of cyclical becoming, which must eliminate the influence of the individual. Into Hades we take nothing except knowledge of the Idea; out of Hades we bring back nothing except the possibility of recollecting the Idea; but the many images of actual individual persons disappear into nothingness.
Does this not simply mean dissolving what has become (the Greek text ekgonos) into its moments? The Idea, which is the essence of the soul, receives the Idea back, and the unbounded nature of non-being, as non-being, takes the individual images back into itself.
[Note: * Republic 621 A:
“Greek text.”
“The Field of Lethe beside the river Ameles.”]
[Page 146]
The ethical modification at rebirth, which myth requires in order to explain the various forms of the actual world, I shall treat below.
§ 4.
Treatment of the Individual in the Realm of Ethics and Art
If we now leave metaphysical questions aside, there are nevertheless sufficient points of support in the ethical realm to cast light upon the lack of individual principles. The Platonic dialogues could not exert such a powerful educational influence if they did not reintroduce the parenetic element through poetic individualization and through the metaphorical adaptation of thought to belief and opinion.
We shall consider especially: 1. the concepts of freedom and evil; 2. optimism and pessimism; 3. the transmigration of souls and apostasy; 4. art.
Freedom and Evil
Human freedom, by virtue of which a person chooses evil, is held to be indispensable to theodicy—that is, to the justification of God on account of the evils that exist. For this reason, Plato's famous words have always been singled out with particular preference: “The chooser is responsible; God is not responsible” *).
[Note: * Republic, p. 617 D–E:
“Greek text.”
“The responsibility belongs to the chooser; God is without responsibility.”
Timaeus, p. 42 D:
“Greek text.”
“So that each might afterward be without responsibility for his own wickedness.”]
[Page 147]
This is the passage in which Plato speaks mythically and allows the souls, for their rebirth, to choose their future lots in life. From the lap of Lachesis, the virgin daughter of Ananke (Fate), a prophet takes the lots and scatters them before the ephemeral souls, then describes the various courses of life that are available for selection.
The first impression made by the poetic story is undeniably that every soul possesses complete freedom and chooses with regard to the experiences of its previous existence, so that chance, necessity, and divine predestination are excluded, and evil and misery fall entirely upon the shoulders of the chooser.
Reduction of the Myth to the Platonic Principles
But one must not interpret the poet and the philosopher in the same way. We ask the philosopher what causes (Greek text aitia) he has, if God is not the cause (Greek text anaitios). God is the ultimate cause in Plato, and he acts according to the Idea of the Good and thereby also according to all the Ideas. One is therefore not mistaken if one regards the Ideas as the ground of everything. Being and thinking are grounded by the Ideas alone in Plato.
Since the Ideas are the principle of form, one understands that Aristotle rightly reproached Plato for lacking causes of motion (principia movendi) *); that is, for not yet knowing the opposition between the cause of motion and the principle of form, since he explains everything from the principle of form. And this is sufficiently evident, because the second principle, non-being, in itself
[Note: * Metaphysics A.6]
[Page 148]
as we saw above, p. 117, is not itself a principle of motion, but, as non-being, could also not possibly choose or do anything. Our poet may therefore be explained by the philosopher only in this way: he absolves God from evil because God is the cause of everything good, and evil lies only in the communion of the good, or of what truly exists, with non-being. This result will emerge more precisely from the following consideration.
What do the ephemeral souls choose their future lot in life according to? Answer: according to the memory of their former life. Orpheus, for example, chooses the life of a swan because he was killed by women and therefore did not wish to be born from a woman. Thersites chooses the body of an ape; Odysseus chooses the life of a simple private citizen, untroubled by public affairs and of no concern to anyone, because through his former life he had learned sufficiently the sad misery of ambition, and so forth.
One must not remind the poet that the souls do not carry these ideas, based upon memory and therefore upon sensory perception, with them into Hades; otherwise he would be unable to compose poetry. But since these decisions are made at the beginning of a new world-period (Greek text arche alles periodou), we may perhaps ask what the souls chose according to the first time, before they had a past life behind them. But here too the poet rightly gives no answer; for this speculative beginning belongs to philosophy. Let us therefore leave the poet free and ask the philosopher.
Looking to the philosophical principles, we immediately see the connection and also the reason for the poetic account. For the Good is what sets bounds and gives measure; evil is the Unbounded (Greek text apeiron), un-
[Page 149]
harmonious; consequently, insofar as God creates according to the Good, God cannot be the cause of evil, but only the second principle, because it is in itself altogether unbounded and without measure.
This also explains the poetic metaphors; for the choice (Greek text hairesis) is nothing other than participation (Greek text methexis), and the responsibility of the chooser (Greek text aitia helomenou) means that the ground belongs to the participant (Greek text metechon) and not to that in which participation occurs (Greek text metechomenon). The participant is not an active principle in Plato; it merely receives—it is the Mother.
In the absolutely first choice, therefore, no motivation on the part of the souls can take place; but variegation, multiplicity, and confusion also cannot lie in the simple repose of the Ideas. The ground can therefore be sought nowhere else than in the Son, that is, in the communion of being and non-being, of self-identity and motion, of measure and the indeterminate, of the One and the infinitely many; that is, in becoming or in the world, both moments or principles are present—not evil, but the necessity and fact of their communion. Evil is inseparable from the concept of the world.
How Plato Explains Himself
That this is indeed Plato's doctrine can easily be demonstrated. For if he had really assumed that transcendental freedom proclaimed by the myth, then evidently, in the ethical considerations conducted with scholarly sobriety, he would also have had to maintain imputation of responsibility and explain evil not from outside, through foreign influences, but from the free self-determination of the personality.
[Page 150]
If, conversely, choice (Greek text hairesis) is merely, as we assume, an image of participation (Greek text methexis), then no one may knowingly do evil; rather, the lack of knowledge must be the ground of evil, and the evil person must act wickedly without guilt and against his will.
Let us allow Plato to proclaim this in his own words:
“No one is voluntarily wicked; rather, because of some depraved condition of the body and an uneducated upbringing, the wicked person becomes wicked; but this is hateful to everyone and comes upon him against his will” *).
[Note: * Timaeus, p. 86 E:
“Greek text.”
“For no one is voluntarily wicked; rather, through some depraved condition of the body and an uneducated upbringing, the wicked person becomes wicked; and these things are hateful to everyone and come upon him against his will.”]
Plato develops this in detail, showing how, through the bad organization of the body, either excessive pleasure arises during sensory stimulation or excessive pain, and how the moral defects then follow from this—intemperance, cowardice, irritability, forgetfulness, a limited intellect, and so forth. For this reason, he places the guilt of society and the state in the foreground and holds the producers and educators responsible, not those produced or educated.
In the face of such detailed considerations, it is not advisable to accuse Plato of contradicting himself, on the grounds that he taught freedom mythically but, scientifically, empirical dependence upon external influences. Rather, it is fitting to interpret the myth in his spirit, in which case, as we shall see, the doctrine achieves complete harmony.
For further confirmation, let us recall a passage in the Theaetetus **), in which the eternity
[Note: ** Theaetetus, p. 176 A and B:
“Greek text.”
“Evil must necessarily be eternal, for it is opposed to the Good; evil itself is not established among the gods, but necessarily haunts mortal nature and this place.”]
[Page 151]
of evil is first taught, since it must always exist as the opposite of the Good. At the same time, however, Plato restates the content of that myth in somewhat clearer words, so that evil cannot have a place among the gods but necessarily haunts mortal nature and this earthly region.
Evil is therefore not to be sought in the principles, but is a necessary consequence of their mixture, or of participation (Greek text methexis, Greek text hairesis); for this reason it has its eternal place in the earthly world.
Result
The result of this consideration therefore confirms the earlier conclusions. The explanation of evil and the treatment of freedom reveal no individual, personal principle in Plato's system. Only the beautiful mythical individualization veils the fact that everything individual, as an “ephemeral soul,” is a transitory product of the mixture of the two principles, possessing precisely as much virtue and value as the Idea succeeds in expressing itself through the many obstacles of the remaining nature in matter.
The individual is not a principle in Plato, but a product; not metaphysical, but merely physical.
Optimism and Pessimism
The question of whether Plato thought of the world pessimistically or optimistically seems at first to lie entirely outside our investigation; it will in fact, however, become clear that precisely from these points of view the place of the individual in the system is peculiarly illuminated.
[Page 152]
Pessimism
The first impression made by the Platonic dialogues will certainly be determined by the deep pessimism that, as with Heraclitus, seems to form the fundamental tone of our philosopher. The soul is so disfigured by mud that it resembles an animal; it is so mocked by obscure images in the dark cave of life that it takes truth for appearance and appearance for truth, and cannot work its way up to the light of the Ideas without the greatest struggle.
All art also suffers under this blindness, since it depicts the empty appearance of life instead of truth. Likewise, we see those who act led astray by the deceptive images of the senses and by the bad physical mixture seeking, in vain desires, goods that can never satisfy. The entire task of education and philosophy is therefore initially an ascetic purification intended to liberate the soul from the prison of the body.
The highest goal of philosophy is death, where the soul, living alone within itself and separated from communion with the visible, achieves what it is now already striving to achieve in the contemplation of the Ideas. In actual historical states, Plato sees everywhere only the rule of misunderstanding, and he places them so low morally that, for him, an occupation in the service of the given political tasks appears unworthy.
When one has become wholly filled with this profound pessimism, which seeks its equal even among the Brahmanic Indians, one will inevitably feel the significance of the individual increasing. For the struggling, self-sanctifying soul is making its way toward the Elysian fields, where, for it, in the splendid dwellings of the aether, in communion with the gods and separated from the body, true life will first begin.
[Page 153]
Optimism
If one feels so after reading Plato, and if one feels spurred on and inspired by Plato's ideal summons *): “Beautiful is the prize, and great the hope!”—ah, how bitter the disappointment will be once one learns the optimistic impulse that in the Platonic system presses toward this world just as powerfully and therefore pushes everything individual aside as inessential.
For everything dead must return to life, so that the identity of the world may be preserved and becoming may not cease, upon whose preservation everything in Plato is directed. The souls that imagined they would enjoy their individuality in the beyond must bravely drink the water of forgetfulness (Ameles) and then suddenly, amid thunder and earthquakes, be driven back to the earth from which they had hoped to escape.
For such hopes, as Plato says, the rational man must merely “sing to himself” (Greek text epadein) in order to soothe the child within him, but he may not assert that things are really so. Rather, the world is precisely without envy and accomplished as well as possible, as an image of God. As the lover relates to the beloved, so the world relates to God, and therefore all becoming is guided by love. Everything in the world is as it is in the best possible way, because everything became as it was best that it should become **).
[Note: * Phaedo, p. 114 C:
“Greek text.”
“For beautiful is the prize, and great the hope!”]
[Note: ** Phaedo, p. 98 B.]
Indeed, if we lift the veil from the myth still further, we learn ***) that
[Note: *** Timaeus, p. 92 B.]
[Page 154]
“this world, which encompasses everything visible and is filled with all mortal and immortal animals—the heavenly bodies—images the intelligible world and has itself become a visible god as a living being, the greatest, best, most beautiful, and most perfect: namely, this one and only-begotten universe.”
Where such an air blows, the Socratic pessimistic longing for death and the transcendent heaven will surely vanish, and one will realize that individuality was badly placed in heaven, where only the intelligible, that is, the universal, rules. For just as the intelligible soul must return to the stream of becoming in order to preserve the identity of the world, so it evidently is with everything intelligible in general, which therefore constitutes only the immanent soul of becoming, and whose transcendence consists merely in the fact that it is not the visible and is not “in another” (Greek text en allo) and cannot be perfectly expressed or possessed by any individual ephemeral appearance.
The speculative Platonic heaven is the transcendent intelligible world that, enlivening and ensouling the visible world, is immanent in it. The God in Plato lives purely and freely within himself, far from the world, but at the same time in such a way that, as his Son, he has been born of the eternal Mother and become flesh.
The ordinary interpretation of Plato is the Arian one, according to which only the participant (Greek text metechonta) exists here eternally, while that in which participation occurs (Greek text metechomenon) remains transcendent. In my conviction, however, the Athanasian interpretation should also be decisive as the speculative interpretation of Plato; for the ideal element of the world, although transcendent, is undivided and entirely present *).
[Note: * Compare my History of the Concept of Parousia, 4. § 5, “Athanasius,” pages 82 and following.]
[Page 155]
and celebrates its Parousia here in such a way that the essence (Greek text ousia) of the world is the essence of the Father, or the Idea. What Athanasius recognized in the essence of Christ must rather be extended to the essence of this entire and only world.
Transmigration of Souls and Apostasy
We have already discussed transmigration of souls in connection with the doctrine of cyclical becoming, and here we wish only to consider the ethical side of the question, in which we shall see that metempsychosis is nothing other than the poetically—that is, dramatically—presented doctrine of the eternal cycle of things.
The perfected creature, the man, comes into the world as a woman at rebirth through cowardice and injustice, and one must naturally refrain from asking the poet whether the first creation therefore consisted entirely of men without families.
The frivolous, foolish men who adhered to the sensualistic explanation of nature are reborn as birds; the land animals and wild animals arose from those men who did not concern themselves with philosophy and the heavenly nature, but took the heart alone as their guide and therefore lost their upright gait and are directed solely toward the earth.
The fish, finally, are formed from the most senseless and unteachable natures, which entirely neglected catharsis and therefore now cannot even breathe pure air. Thus all living beings pass into one another, and indeed in a circle, depending on whether they acquire or lose reason *).
[Note: * Timaeus, pages 90 E and 92 B:
“Greek text.”
“Changing through the loss and acquisition of reason.”]
[Page 156]
The meaning of the myth lies in this brief addition; for reason (Greek text nous) designates the participation that they have in the cognition of the Idea. What is expressed here, therefore, is the unity of the world, whose multiplicity is determined only by gradual differences in the communion (Greek text koinonia) with that one Idea.
If the transitions of beings into one another are ethically motivated by the poet, then from what has been said above we know how this is to be understood **); for the matter is here just as it is with the transformations of political constitutions, except that in the latter case the ethical comes into its own in a more proper sense.
[Note: ** The Church teacher Origen arrived at his fantasies because he took Plato's metaphors literally.]
But even in these transformations, the first apostasy is derived from physical laws of the world, and evil in general comes from a bad natural disposition. The perpetual cycle of beings into one another is therefore independent of accidental ethical decisions; for apostasy has existed from the beginning, just as multiplicity of beings has, and the successive dramatic development is only the metaphorical explanation of the physical and ethical rank-order of beings, each of which realizes an eternal Idea just as well as the others.
The bad comes from the good and the good from the bad, with eternal immanent necessity.
The poetic mode of presentation entails personification; but it would scarcely occur to anyone, in this transmigration of souls, to insist upon the preservation of the individual...
[Page 157]
...principles. But in order also to eliminate the appearance that individual principles are thereby being acknowledged, let us remember, first, that in these metamorphoses, according to Plato's requirement, a complete forgetting of everything individually experienced must always take place first (compare above, p. 145); that is, the reduction of the principle that receives another Idea (Greek text metechon) to the Indeterminate (Greek text apeiron) is first carried out.
Secondly, let us recall Aristotle's criticism, who saw in metempsychosis precisely a complete misunderstanding of the individual and the specific, since a specifically determined soul belongs to a specific body and cannot fit into another body, just as the art of the carpenter cannot fit into the flute. To place a banal human soul into the body of a bee can only be a poetic joke, in which the individual is merely a means of presentation.
Finally, we may recall the complete disregard for the individual revealed in Plato's political theory, quite apart from the other connections, and especially in the question of the procreation of children. One could hardly be more indifferent to the doctrine of transmigration of souls and to the ordinances of Lachesis, the virgin daughter of Necessity, than when Plato sorts the born according only to their excellence and immediately consigns those badly formed to death again.
His marriage regulations proceed from the standpoint that those who are to be produced depend solely upon the physical and ethical quality of the parents, and not in the slightest upon an individual principle that is supposed to reach rebirth. But if the parents are decisive, then the concern is only with the best possible insertion of the Idea into becoming in general, and the individual soul that arises is a mere product of the mixture, which naturally does not prejudice the theory of seed-bearing animals, to which Leibniz, like Plato, also held.
[Page 158]
The result of this consideration, too, can therefore be none other than that we shall seek all individual personification only in Plato the poet, and shall assume of Plato the philosopher that he conceives the individual only as transient and never even dreamed of individual immortality.
Art
The place of the individual in Plato's conception of the world is also sharply illuminated by his doctrine of art; for whoever assigns great significance to the individual in the realm of being will necessarily also value the expression of the individual in art, whereas whoever rejects the individual in metaphysics will also advocate in art only the Typical and the Ideal.
Although, in general, we regard ancient art as ideal in contrast with the realistic character of modern art, we must nevertheless see with astonishment that Plato scourges all Greek art as too realistic, lowers it as a worthless imitation of common reality, and regards it as useless for the higher moral life. For this reason, all these artists are expelled from his ideal state, together with Homer, whom he ushers politely out the door with marks of honor.
All these poets, musicians, and visual artists have spoiled things in Plato's eyes because they lend word, tone, and image to individual pain and individual pleasure, instead of merely reflecting the ideal moral forms of life.
[Page 159]
For Plato regards Shakespeare's demand *), to hold the mirror up to nature and thereby show the truth indirectly, as a temptation and flattery, and demands a direct representation of what is praiseworthy and best.
[Note: * Hamlet, Act 3, scene 2: “to hold the mirror up to nature.”]
His consideration of art also leads to its abolition by another route; for in all art, sensory appearance or the image is always necessary, and with it the worthless semblance. Therefore, if one wishes to behold the truly Beautiful, one must not merely turn away from love for individual beauties but must turn away altogether from particular formation and direct one's mind toward the Beautiful itself **), in which every individual beautiful thing participates (Greek text metechomenon) and which, in its simple form, is grasped in and for itself, not as it is in another, only
[Note: ** Apart from the familiar passages in the Republic, Plato says this most briefly in the Timaeus, p. 30 C:
“Greek text (sc. Greek text.”
“For nothing that resembles something incomplete, namely something naturally formed according to a particular form among the parts, could ever become beautiful.”
All art, however, forms according to individual existences and seeks similarity with them. The words Greek text at that passage do not mean individuals, so that, if one wished to apply the words to art, perhaps only portraiture and realistic imitation would be prohibited; rather, they refer to all kinds of beings, insofar as these are merely a part of the whole and not the whole itself.
For this reason, even the entire kind or species of the human being, toward which a typically idealizing artist might look, is nevertheless only something incomplete; for the true whole, the perfect and the Beautiful, cannot be perceived by the senses or represented sensibly at all, but is intelligible only and is therefore recognized only by reason.
Dialectic is therefore the highest art, and Platonic love belongs to it—the love that produces truly beautiful things, that is, insight into the Ideas, in the beloved.]
[Page 160]
in thought, is grasped. The Beautiful is thus elevated from the sphere of intuition into the realm of pure thought, and art is thereby sacrificed upon the altar of philosophy *).
[Note: * Compare Republic 595 C, 599, 600 E, 602 B, 605; Symposium 210 to 212 C.]
And why must Plato proceed so hostilely toward art? Because, we may answer, he assigns no eternal significance to the individual, but in this ever-flowing, never-existing realm recognizes only the self-identical Idea as the enduring immanent reality and truth.
Everything individual is, for him, only a veiling of the Idea, which purifies itself of this obscurity in various stages, until, in pure thought, it recollects itself as the essence and truth of the world; and this is the immortality allotted to human beings **).
[Note: ** Symposium 212 A.]
Conclusion
If we now look back, our initial conjecture has been sufficiently confirmed: Leibniz and all those who do not carefully enough distinguish the poet from the philosopher could not possibly have arrived at Plato's true opinion.
In Plato, one must not think of individual principles, and personality too, insofar as it is something individual, has no eternal significance for him. All the various considerations from the realms of dialectic and physics, ethics and art, led us to the result, first, that we must regard individual immortality and all personifications of becoming and the Ideas only as metaphors; and secondly, that the Arian inter-
[Page 161]
conception of Plato as a heresy, and that we do well to follow Athanasius and accept the Parousia of the transcendent God in the world as orthodox Platonism.
§ 5.
Myth and Science
May one not assume an inconsistency in Plato?
One might now be inclined to attempt a mediation between the ordinary conception of Plato and the one presented here, by conceding that although Plato's principles do not allow the concept of individual substances, nevertheless the rich spirit of the divine man (Plato divinus) could not have avoided demanding and intuiting, in contradiction to his dialectical doctrines, an eternal significance for the individual soul.
In principle, there is nothing objectionable in assuming inconsistencies and contradictions in a writer when one cannot bring his doctrine into harmony; but, first, this assumption would have the disadvantage, for the Platonic doctrine of immortality, that it would deprive it of all philosophical value, since it would then not be an organic component of the system and, lacking a principial foundation, would also have to be excluded from the history of philosophy and transferred into the history of opinions.
Secondly, however, we would scarcely be entitled to assume an inconsistency where the writer can be understood as entirely in harmony with himself. Plato did indeed teach an immortality of the soul and was thereby in agreement with the
[Page 162]
popular belief, which he everywhere honors; but just as he seeks to purify belief in the gods of its unworthy conceptions, so too he removes from the popular opinion concerning immortality those dialectically untenable elements and elevates belief into the scientific insight offered by his doctrine of the Idea and its Parousia in the world. All his proofs are nothing other than the liberation of pure idealism from the cloudy form of opinion (Greek text doxa) into the clarity of philosophical contemplation *).
[Note: * Heinrich von Stein, Seven Books on the History of Platonism I, pages 240 and following., places the harmony of Platonic philosophy with popular belief in the proper light as an essential characteristic of Platonism. He is right insofar as the peculiar charm of the Platonic dialogues would disappear if we imagined this harmony transformed into a dissonance or entirely removed the element of mythical conceptions.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that he overestimates the significance of myth for the system; for, first, the system itself contains no place for mythical cognition, since Plato regards only thought that exists purely in itself as the organ of certainty and expressly places all other sources of cognition far beneath it. Secondly, there is nevertheless no conception borrowed from popular belief in the Platonic system that would truly have significance for the system without having undergone purification and transformation into the scientific concept. For example, belief in pre-existence and post-existence is precisely such a case, in which one can clearly recognize the labor of philosophical transformation, as demonstrated above.]
The Higher and Lower Natures, Truth and Belief
I must admit that in this respect I am not satisfied with the prevailing presentation of Plato;
[Page 163]
for it does not properly distinguish the double expression that Platonic doctrine must everywhere assume. It would be mistaken to posit a secret doctrine and a public doctrine in his case in the sense that he did not express the secret doctrine publicly or clearly expound it in his dialogues. Rather, it is precisely through his dialogues that we are everywhere instructed in his secret doctrine, which is and will remain secret only because it is not understood by everyone but can be possessed only by the spiritual aristocracy.
Probably no one has emphasized more sharply and forcefully than Plato the difference in natural endowment. Only golden natures are capable, in his view, of philosophy and thereby of freedom and rule, while the others, as he shows everywhere, must be guided by opinions, laws, customs, and partly by lies.
For truth is indeed the most beautiful and best thing; but Plato regards it as impossible to convince the mass of human beings of it, and they can therefore be brought to voluntary obedience only through salutary deception. Thus he sets lying, even as a matter of principle, as a necessary ingredient into legislation *).
[Note: * Compare Laws 2, p. 663 E:
“Greek text.”
“Whether anyone could ever have told a lie more beneficial than this one, and one more capable of making everyone do what is just, not by force but willingly? Truth is beautiful and enduring; yet it seems not easy to persuade people of it.”]
To give an example, he expressly permits the rulers to falsify the lots, because the lower natures are incapable of being governed—for example, of understanding justice in matters of marriage and submitting to it, so that they may voluntarily allot the best women to the best men. This principle of the
[Page 164]
salutary lie Plato expresses with complete awareness, and although Aristotle disputes it, he nevertheless follows it with the same conviction. For example, he recommends as a law that pregnant women should sacrifice daily in a temple to be built before the city—not so that the goddesses ruling there might become gracious and helpful to them, but so that the daily long walk might provide them with healthy exercise.
The pregnant women would not do this from their own understanding, but prompted by the sacred delusion they perform, for their own benefit, what those who understand without delusion have prescribed for them. In these cases, a secret doctrine is indeed acknowledged, but only one that is altogether accessible to anyone capable of philosophy and does not hide itself in mystical symbols. On the contrary, it appears precisely in the clarity of the concept, while symbols and what is incomprehensible, metaphorical, mythical, and poetic are supplied as the appropriate nourishment for the immature understanding.
It is therefore in order when Plato says *), that many are thyrsus-bearers, but few are Bacchae (Greek text bakchoi).
[Note: * Phaedo, p. 69 C:
“Greek text.”
“Many are thyrsus-bearers, but few are Bacchae.”
This is once again the enigmatic language of the Mysteries (Greek text ainittomena); the meaning is that the latter are those who philosophize correctly. Compare p. 96 D:
“Greek text.”
“Those who have philosophized correctly.”]
If, then, according to this, truth is always recognized by the highest natures in its purified condition only through the clearest and most exact concepts, while it appears to lesser natures always veiled in sensory images, then a double proportion follows, with an inversion of all mem-
[Page 165]
bers, which would contain a complete contradiction if the apparent antinomy could not easily be resolved through a change of standpoint. For the highest cognition must appear, from one standpoint, difficult, obscure, and complicated, like sensory cognition, and from the other, light, clear, and simple. Conversely, Plato also describes the highest cognition as light, clear, and simple, while explaining the sensory as difficult, obscure, and complicated.
Through the change of standpoint, the contradiction disappears; for the person proceeding from sensibility stands at the first standpoint, while the person dwelling in contemplation of truth and accustomed to the pure light finds the bright world of the senses rather similar to a dark cave, in which nothing can be clearly recognized *). Aristotle explains first philosophy—metaphysics—in precisely this way, as both easy and difficult **), since our reason relates to what is clear in itself as the eyes of bats relate to daylight.
[Note: * Compare my History of the Concept of Parousia, p. 139.]
[Note: ** Metaphysics alpha. 993a.30–993b.8:
“Greek text (sc. Greek text.”
“The cause of the difficulty lies not in things but in us. For just as the eyes of bats are related to the light of day, so the intellect of our soul is related to what is by nature most manifest of all.”]
Application to the Doctrine of Immortality
If we now apply these considerations to the question of immortality, the contradiction that seems to run through Plato's dialogues disappears; for evidently the proofs that directly lead the soul back to the Divine are, for Plato, the highest and most exact truth, while the images according to which the
[Page 166]
souls travel in chariots with the heavenly bodies, have different horses harnessed before them, lose their wings or have them grow back, and pass through various animals and drink the water of Ameles, and so forth, can only count as the metaphorical cognition of truth as it is appropriate to the lower capacity.
From both standpoints, the soul is therefore immortal; but from the first, this is recognized as the clearest and simplest scientific truth, because the soul is what truly exists, the Eternal, and the Divine; from the second, however, it is recognized in the metaphorical and mythical conception, as though the individual historically formed soul had a prehistory and various individual fates even after death.
Just as time, according to the Timaeus, is the sensory image of intelligible eternity, so temporal or historical immortality, or infinitude, is the sensory image of the intelligible eternal essence of the soul, which cannot be represented sensibly in any other way.
The Athanasian and Arian Interpretations of Plato
If one therefore asks why Plato employs the mythical-metaphorical presentation at all and does not restrict himself to the highest scientific form, I would answer by returning to the dogmatic-historical comparison above and saying: because Plato wishes to be understood not in an Arian but in an Athanasian manner.
For what Christ the God-man is for Athanasius, the world is for Plato: namely, the only-begotten Son of God, a blessed God. For the Arian, the world is torn apart dualistically: here the limited participant in the Idea (Greek text metechonta), there the Idea transcendent as that in which participation occurs—
[Page 167]
(Greek text metechomenon). But for Plato this dualism does not exist; for the world is for him the participant, but at the same time also that in which participation occurs. This transcendent is at the same time immanent, just as Athanasius expressed this in his dogma, so difficult for the heretics to understand: that Christ, although participating, would nevertheless also be the essence of the Father himself, in which he participates (Greek text ousia tou patros, Greek text to metechomenon) *).
[Note: * Compare above, pages 154 and following.]
Since this is so, the world is evidently the continual birth of the God who is both his Son and his Father. In the human being, the pangs of labor appear most strongly as the impulse toward the delivery of God, and philosophy, or the Socratic art, is therefore the art of midwifery (maieutics).
Philosophy therefore regards the sensory world, with everything historical, merely as a dark outline, an image of eternity, and seeks, out of sensory perception and opinion, with the help of ironic mythical form, to deliver truth—the Idea—in its pure (Greek text eilikrines) essence.
If Plato confined himself to the dialectically scientific form of presentation, he would, in an Arian manner, hold fast to the Transcendent in its being-in-itself; but this is precisely for him the eternal essence of the world itself appearing in uninterrupted becoming, and it must therefore be demonstrated in its otherness (Greek text heteron).
Just as the path upward and the path from above are joined, so for Plato the maieutic development of cognition cannot be separated from the purely dialectical; for the archetype (Greek text eidos, Greek text paradeigma) is recognized through the image (Greek text mimema, Greek text pragma) and the after-
[Page 168]
image through the archetype.
The earlier and later existence of one in relation to the other is merely the historical reflection of the essential relation and therefore necessarily implies contradiction, since the essential relations, as eternal, are always simultaneous.
It seems entirely undisputed that one could present the concept in pure cognition without damaging the understanding of Plato—as Aristotle, at least in part, does. Yet two things must nevertheless be observed.
First, one must not forget that in Plato this cognition itself was still developing, and that the poetic man therefore most naturally followed the paths along which he himself, under the guidance of Socrates, had reached the contemplation of truth, especially since he was writing for those who do not yet possess the truth but are first to be raised up to it.
Secondly, it is precisely a Platonic doctrine that only the Eternal is known conceptually, while becoming is known sensibly. Plato therefore always seeks to grasp the Ideas themselves, as the Eternal, as purely conceptually as possible; but the individual soul and its immortality are evidently temporal and therefore, according to his strict doctrine, cannot be represented in purely conceptual form, since otherwise they would contain nothing temporal within themselves.
The only adequate representation of immortality and pre-existence is therefore metaphor and myth. But if one wishes to find the essence of the soul represented apart from the temporal and the individual—as the many—one cannot accuse Plato on account of his metaphors; for everywhere he has provided the conceptual representation, since the essence of the soul is the Idea. But the Idea, insofar as it has its Pa-
[Page 169]
rousia in the historical, always demands the Athanasian dogma and is the manifest secret, or the secret revelation.
It seems to me, therefore, that Plato is neither in contradiction with himself nor to be condemned because of his mythical-metaphorical language; for his system demands both the perpetual apparent contradiction and the distinctive metaphorical form of cognition.
§ 6.
Use of the Mythical in the “Laws”
Use of Religion and Superstition
Since this distinction between the conceptual expression of truth and its metaphorical form in belief is of such decisive importance for understanding the entire Platonic doctrine, one can scarcely do enough by bringing forward still more evidence. I consider it unnecessary to go through all the earlier writings individually, since Plato appears in them partly still in development; for this purpose I shall instead consider the Laws as the most important work, insofar as it stands at the mature culmination of his life and doctrine and simultaneously attempts to apply the results of pure cognition practically to the actual conditions of society.
In doing so, the question must necessarily have confronted him frequently of how he wished and was able to clothe his philosophical doctrine in the garment of belief in a way understandable and useful to the masses. We therefore cannot fail to encounter in the Laws the most numerous examples of his view on this matter.
[Page 170]
Religion as a Political Instrument
We can best begin our consideration from Plato's insight into the power of religion. Plato is convinced that legislation depends entirely upon the belief of human beings. If people believe in the gods and their punishments, then the oath recommends itself, for example, as a swift and secure legal procedure.
But if some do not believe in gods at all, while others accept their existence but do not concern themselves with human affairs, and still others imagine that the gods can be appeased through small sacrifices and religious worship, then the laws must also be changed, since the oath has evidently lost its power and otherwise one would soon make half the city into perjurers *).
[Note: * Laws 948 B and following.:
“Greek text.”
“For by giving an oath concerning each disputed matter, he quickly and securely freed himself from those who disputed it; since opinions concerning the gods have changed among human beings, the laws must also change.”]
Since religion is so decisive for the actions of the masses, Plato recognized it as the most powerful political means of governing the minds of human beings, just as disbelief, conversely, dissolves the power of the laws and undermines the stability of the constitution **).
[Note: ** Laws 7, 839 D:
“Greek text.”
“Because of the power of disbelief.”]
An example in which Plato sets out his views in detail is found in the Laws, whose purpose is to restrict sexual love. For, he argues, if one wished to prohibit all love of boys and all mere enjoyment of women, allowing love only for the purposes of procreation, then the young men overflowing with strength would raise a great outcry against the law. A simple trick,
[Page 171]
however, would provide the law with unquestioning obedience. This means is religion.
Why, he asks, is the unwritten law that prohibits carnal love between siblings and between parents and children observed so strictly that no one dares to sin in such a matter, publicly or secretly, and would even take his own life if such an act became known?
Because, the answer says, a small word extinguishes all these desires. This word is “sin.” Since people hear from youth onward, in life and in the theater and from every side without exception, that such things are hated by the gods, this word has acquired a marvelous power, so that no one would dare even to breathe against the law.
From this example Plato draws the rule that, in order to enslave the entire soul of a human being so that he voluntarily obeys the laws out of fear, one must surround the laws with religious consecration and holiness; for what appears impossible to nature (Greek text adynata) is thereby made into a possible and voluntary way of life *).
[Note: * Laws 838 to 839:
“Greek text.”
“A small word extinguishes all such pleasures. For we say that, once the law has been sanctified as hated by the gods, it enslaves every soul and makes it obey the established laws altogether through fear.”]
Religion and Myth Defended and Purified through Philosophy
For this reason, Plato everywhere now appears as a defender of religion and mythical tradition. But since, to his regret, he finds the greatest absurdities in the native religion,
[Page 172]
he must indeed intervene here and there rationalistically and reformatively. Yet wisely, he never blames religion, but always only the poets and mythologists who have corrupted the true ancient faith and invented stories of theft, robbery, and fraud concerning the gods and their sons **).
[Note: ** For example, Laws 941 B:
“Greek text.”
“Let no one, then, deceived by poets or otherwise by certain myth-makers, be persuaded to act wrongly in such matters, and so forth.”]
In doing so, he naturally always presupposes that philosophy alone is capable of recognizing the truth purely, and therefore also has the task of cleansing religion of these corruptions and limiting it to its genuinely sacred content of belief.
Idolatry and Magic Tolerated
For the same reason, however, Plato cannot avoid making certain concessions to religion, since it lives in the lower element of belief—concessions that already seem rather serious to us moderns. For he not only makes use, wherever he can, of the ancient myths for his instruction and recommendations concerning laws, but also finds himself compelled to regard idolatry and magic as unavoidable.
He therefore strictly prohibits only those magical practices through which one's neighbor would be harmed in health or property; otherwise, he merely wishes, in general, to dissuade people from the use of magic through friendly persuasion, but believes that belief in its influence—for example, the influence of wax images at doors and crossroads—could be—
[Page 173]
and graves, could not easily be eradicated *). Plato likewise calmly permits the worship of images of the gods; for, he says, we believe that the ensouled gods will be gracious and favorable to us when we adorn and honor their inanimate images **). At the same time, he merely warns us not to place the images of the gods above our living parents and grandparents, since the blessing and curse of these living persons would be far more powerful than the influence of the images ***).
[Note: * Laws 933.]
[Note: ** Laws 931:
“Greek text.”
“Although they are inanimate, we adorn them, believing that the ensouled gods thereby have great goodwill and favor toward us.”]
[Note: *** Laws 931 D and E.]
Legal Restrictions against Atheism
He also regards it as a kind of illness, affecting only young people deceived by the Sophists, when they deny the gods who are nevertheless invoked by the Hellenes and the barbarians, with the most beautiful and charming rites of worship, in good fortune and misfortune, and are honored at sunrise and sunset.
“It is difficult for us,” he says, “to master our anger and speak mildly against these deniers of the gods,” and he demands that, for the time being, until they have arrived at philosophical insight into theology, they obey the law and do not offend against religion in any respect †).
[Note: † Laws 887 C-888 D.]
Use of Superstition
Plato uses religion and superstition on every occasion in order to give deeper force to the pale concept of reason through the affects of the soul.
For example, no one is to take possession of a discovered treasure, because he is supposed to believe in the myths that such a thing brings misfortune upon his descendants *). Thus, alongside the ethical motives concealed in the matter, Plato does not neglect to arouse superstitious fear.
[Page 174]
Guardians, too, are supposed to refrain from misappropriating what has been entrusted to them, out of fear of the gods and of the souls of the deceased parents of those orphans, as the ancient legends demonstrate **).
For this reason, his first concern in building the city is that sanctuaries for the gods be erected in the most prominent place, and he unhesitatingly accepts as sacred anything that is regarded among human beings as sacred and worthy of reverence, whether native or foreign ***).
With particular care, superstition concerning burial is used to make the murderer's punishment appear more terrifying—for example, by decreeing that he may not be buried in the homeland of the murdered person +), or that his corpse be thrown naked onto a particular crossroads and that each of the authorities strike its head with a stone ++).
[Note: * Laws 913 C. We have something similar in our old myths in the treasure of the Nibelungs, which becomes disastrous to its possessor and his family.]
[Note: ** Laws 927 A.]
[Note: *** Laws 848 D.]
[Note: + Laws 871 D.]
[Note: ++ Laws 973 B.]
Was Plato Himself Superstitious?
If, however, someone should get the idea that this was not merely superstition being used but Plato's own superstition, he would have to form a strange conception of Plato's philosophy if he were also to include the punishments that Plato prescribes for animals and inanimate objects that kill a human being.
[Page 175]
For example, such an animal, whether a beast of burden or whatever else it may be, is to be brought outside the boundaries of the state and killed there. Likewise, a trial is to be held concerning an inanimate object that falls upon us and kills us, or upon which we fall and die, after which it is to be transported outside the boundaries of the state, just as is prescribed for living beings *).
[Note: * Laws 873 E. This was positive law in Athens. Compare Hermann, Greek Constitutional Antiquities, § 104, 16.]
If this is Platonic superstition, rather than the use of superstition to make murder all the more terrifying and abhorrent, then I understand nothing of Plato. I interpret it in the same way when Plato, in order to increase fear of murder, recommends the old legends, myths, or priestly traditions—for he himself does not know what exactly to call them **)—which, as he says, are believed by many so obstinately during the initiations: namely, that vengeance takes place in Hades, and that the murderer must return to the world in order to suffer at the hand of another murderer what he himself once committed ***).
[Note: ** Laws 872 D:
“Greek text.”
“For this myth—or account, or whatever one ought to call it—has clearly been spoken by the ancient priests, and so forth.”]
[Note: *** Laws 870 D–E.]
Application to the Doctrine of Immortality
[Page 176]
If one now recognizes how Plato uses religious traditions and inherited emotional movements in the service of his legislation, because he is convinced that rational insight will never suffice for the masses to act rightly, but only certain strong and blind affects, then one also cannot doubt that he wished to cultivate and honor in the same way, in his state, the most effective religious Idea as a desirable allegorical mirror-image of the truth—namely, the Idea of the immortality of the soul.
For why would he, as a matter of principle, permit the statesman a pious fraud *), and accordingly make use everywhere of childish superstition, if he had not wished to exploit for his political purposes the noblest religious force of the soul, the expectation of judgment in the underworld?
[Note: * Compare above, p. 163.]
Immortality According to Popular Belief and the Torch-Dance of Life
For this reason Plato says literally:
“One must believe the lawgiver, both in all other matters and especially when he says that the soul is entirely different from the body, and that in this life the soul alone grants each of us our being, while the visible body follows each of us; and that after death the bodies of the dead are rightly called images, but that what each of us truly is as an immortal departs under the name of soul to other gods, in order to render an account, as our native belief teaches—comfort for the good, but terror for the wicked,” and so forth **).
[Note: ** Laws 959 A:
“Greek text”
“One must obey the lawgiver both in other matters and when he says that the soul, and so forth, is...”]