Plato and the goodness of the body. Part 3. Plato's cosmology and embodiment
II. Plato’s Cosmology and Embodiment
A second line of argument can be made for a positive evaluation of
embodiment in Plato—namely the developed, albeit cautiously offered,[1]
cosmology found in one of his later works, the Timaeus. Here the divine Craftsman (demiourgos), conceived of as pure intellect (nous), creates the cosmos according to the eternal intelligible
paradigms of the forms.[2]
The forms should not be thought of as something existing in addition to and
outside of the Craftsman—the Craftsman is the eternal divine intellect and the
forms are akin to eternal ideas in his mind.[3]
The cosmos is a living creature (30c–31a)—indeed,
a god (34b)—composed of a body and soul.[4]
The human creature partly mirrors this cosmic animal in its own body-soul composition[5]
so it pays to note several things about this divine cosmic creature.
First of all, the Craftsman forges the soul of
the cosmos and then its body. It may surprise us to discover that both soul and
body occupy space: the body in three dimensions and the soul in two dimensions.
As soul has length and breadth but not depth it has literally no thickness at
all and so, unlike the cosmic body, cannot be seen. However, as spatially
extended, the soul of the world is “wrapped around” its body, and extends from
the centre of the cosmos to its periphery (34b).[6]
Indeed, he crafted the body “within” the soul, perfectly aligning them (36d). The
integration of the cosmic body and soul are shown in that the very bodily
movements of the cosmos, the orbits of the planets, are in perfect
synchronicity with, indeed are bodily manifestations of, the circular movements
of its intelligence, its thought, its soul. Body and soul interpenetrate. The
same is true, as we will see, of the human body and soul.
Second, God creates the cosmos out of his
overflowing goodness. “He [the Craftsman] was good, and in the good there never
occurs any jealousy [or grudgingness] about anything whatsoever. Being devoid
of this motive, he formed the desire that everything should become as close in
nature to himself as possible” (29e).
Third, that the cosmos is embodied and not
simply a soul is the divine intention and part of its perfection. Note that
making a cosmos “as close in nature to [the Craftsman] as possible” did not
result merely in a cosmic soul, but in a comic soul and body.
Fourth, the embodied cosmos is, in Plato’s
view, very good; indeed, being based by the Craftsman on the eternal forms, it
is as good, beautiful, and perfect as it is possible for some empirical
particular to be. “[F]or the world is the best of things that have become, and
he [the Craftsman] is the best of causes” (29a);[7]
“Now it was not, nor can it ever be, permitted that the work of the supremely
good [i.e., the Craftsman] should be anything but that which is best
. . . [W]hen he framed the universe, he fashioned reason within soul
and soul within body, to the end that the work he accomplished might be by
nature as excellent and as perfect as possible” (30a-b). “Having received and
been filled with mortal and immortal living things, thus this cosmos, a visible
living thing containing visible ones, image of the intelligible, a sensible
god, greatest, best, most beautiful, and most perfect, has come to be, this
which is the one only-begotten universe” (92c). Notice how overflowingly
positive Plato is about the goodness of creation. It’s body and soul—both of
which are everlasting[8]—are arranged
to function together for the greatest possible good. He is no nature-hating
proto-Gnostic. In the Laws the
citizens of the city must revere the earth: “The land is [our] ancestral home
and [we] must cherish it even more than children cherish their mother;
furthermore, the Earth is a goddess and mistress of mortal men, and the gods
and spirits already established in the locality must be treated with the same
respect” (Laws 5.740, cf. 6.761).
Fifth, as Sarah Broadie has argued convincingly,
Plato’s interest in the Timaeus was
not to use cosmology as a way of getting at his real interest, metaphysics.
Quite the contrary. His primary focus in this text was developing a cosmology,
and he deployed the metaphysics as a means to that end.[9]
So while it is true that Plato can use the sensible world as a stepping-stone
to ascend to a knowledge of the forms, he can also reverse the trajectory and
use the forms as a foundation for better understanding the sensible world. The
sheer detail and attention that Plato has lavished on attempting to understand
the workings of the human body and his reflections on its proper function (44d–47e;
64a–69a; 69d–76e; 80d–89d) suggest that giving an account of the cosmos was his
primary interest in the Timaeus.
And what of humans? The embodied human, a
rational being that is mortal, while less perfect than the cosmos itself,[10]
nevertheless is necessary for the completion and perfection of the cosmos
(41b7–d3).[11]
The implantation of the human souls in bodies is thus considered to be “a
necessity” (42a3). Human embodiment is part of the perfection of the cosmos. In
the Timaeus, embodiment is not a
punishment for human failure, but essential to what humans were created to be.[12]
“[T]he preincarnate state is shown not as a condition desirable in its own
right but as an interlude entirely occupied with preparation for life in the body.[13]
. . . This means that their mortal embodiment will come as a
fulfillment, even though one fraught with dangers. Thus . . . the
mortal soul will enter into the mortal condition as if into its inheritance . .
. . The body is not to be a bunker in which it is trapped against its nature
and from which its most rational wish would be to be allowed to escape”[14] Let’s put the matter this way: let’s suppose we
put the following question to Plato: would it have been a better world if souls
had never been embodied, but had been able to contemplate the forms in an
unmediated way? How would he reply? Whatever we may say about earlier
dialogues, the answer in the Timaeus seems
clear: “Absolutely not!”
The soul for Plato, certainly from the middle
dialogues onward, is not an undifferentiated unity, but is famously tripartite.[15]
Two of these three parts of the soul are essentially tied to embodiment (Republic 518d–519a). The incarnate soul
needs to maintain its embodied self and for this the appetite—the desire for
food and drink and rest and sex—is required. But appetites can get out of hand
and tend not to find their own healthy limits, so the spirited part of soul
develops to keep them in check.[16]
In a healthy person appetite is in submission to spirit, which is in submission
to intellect.[17] (But the
soul is intended by the divine Craftsman to be embodied, and hence to be
tripartite.)
|
|
Parts
of Soul
|
Parts
of body linked to soul parts
(Tim. 44d–45b; 69d–72d)
|
Objects
of desire
|
Nature
|
|
Immortal
soul
|
Intellect
|
head
|
truth
|
Wisdom loving
|
|
Mortal
soul (lesser soul)
|
Spirit
|
heart
|
Esteem, honour, victory, force[18]
|
Honour-loving
|
|
Appetite
|
liver
|
bodily desire and
gratification—food, drink, sex, etc.
|
Pleasure-loving
|
The immortal soul is created directly by the divine Craftsman, while the
body (and hence the mortal soul) are made by created celestial gods, at the command
of the Craftsman (Timaeus 41a-d).[19]
These gods, we are told “built on” (prosôikondomoun)
and “composed” (sunethesan) another,
mortal form of soul by mixing the affections (69c9, d6). The affections in
question are pleasure, pains, daring and fear, passion, hope, perception, and
desire, all of which can create trouble for the soul and all of which arise of
necessity from embodiment. Embodiment thus gives rise to the lesser, mortal soul.[20]
The single human creature is thus a paradoxical and conflicted being, an
immortal soul living a mortal life.
The ancillary gods, by careful and rational
design, linked the different parts of the soul with different parts of the
body. The head had been created to house the immortal soul. They created a
buffer zone (the neck) to keep this away from the mortal soul in the torso. The
organization of the body mirrored the ideal organization of the soul—the
spirited part of the soul is intended to mediate the intellect’s wisdom to the
appetite’s desires. It is located between the head and the lower torso so that
“it might be within hearing of the discourse of reason and join with it in
restraining by force the desires, whenever they should not willingly consent to
obey the word of command from the citadel” (70a4–7). The heart, the location of
spirit, sends blood around the body to communicate between the intellect and
the body as a whole. The liver, with its smooth shiny surface, is intended to
reflect back reason’s image. Johansen observes that the plan of the ancillary
gods was to take the disruptive rectilinear movements that humans undergo[21]
and to make them part of the body’s rational order. Even the disturbing motions
are given a teleological purpose (i.e., nourishing the body, 70d-e) and made
subject to the rule of reason. “Our aim should not be to eradicate the motions
of the mortal parts of the soul but to regulate each part so that its proper
motion neither overwhelms nor is overwhelmed by the motions of the other parts.
The rational order of the soul, post embodiment, is not one in which only the
motions of the intellect thrive but a complex order in which other psychic
motions operate alongside those of the intellect in common pursuit of the human
good.”[22]
Now embodiment does create problems for the
soul. In infancy we are in a state of deep confusion (Tim. 42e–44d), and without proper education and training we will
grow into de-formed adults (as explored at length in the Republic). Being a good human being is a very difficult challenge.
Yet even the struggle may be part of the divine plan. Sarah Broadie has
proposed that the struggles of the soul to orientate itself to embodied life
and to order it is a part of the good that the Craftsman intended.[23]
The Craftsman’s design plan is that the soul
should be ordered hierarchically with the appetites submitted to spirit and
spirit submitted to the intellect. Justice in an individual, according to the Republic, simply is the right ordering of the soul. And, according to the Timaeus, when the soul is rightly
ordered in this way the lower parts of the soul play an important role in
contributing to the purposes of the intellect. The mortal soul, the parts that
arise from embodiment, are not simply restrained, but actually positively
contribute to the good human life. The disorder of the soul can create havoc—a
key theme in the Republic[24]—but
this should not mislead us into thinking that Plato considered the lower parts
of the soul, the parts linked with embodiment, to be bad, only that they are
bad when they are not playing the right role
in human life. There is a mode of rationality that penetrates to the very
lowest parts of the soul, which can cooperate with reason, and hence Platonic
rationality is an embodied rationality.[25]
The psychosomatic unity of the human being is
also revealed in Plato’s analysis of human illness. Wellbeing requires proper
proportion between soul and body, disproportion leads to various illnesses. The
safeguard against the illness-inducing dangers of disproportion is “not to
exercise the soul without exercising the body, nor the body without the soul, so
that one may be balanced by the other, and so be sound. The mathematician, then,
or the ardent devotee of any other intellectual discipline should also provide
exercise for his body by taking part in athletic training, while one who takes
care to develop his body should in turn practice the exercises of the soul by
applying himself to the arts and to every pursuit of wisdom” (Timaeus 88b–c). It is necessary to pay
attention to the needs of both soul and
body. And we need to appreciate that these two are not unrelated. The
philosopher rulers of the Republic
are required to train their bodies, not simply for the sake of their bodies,
but also as a way to train the spirited part of the soul (Republic 410b-c).
As a final aside, the interpenetration of the
parts of the soul finds a social analogy in the city of the Republic. Socrates famously parallels
the three parts of the population with the three parts of the soul (Republic 368c–369c):
|
Parts of the soul
|
Parts of the city
|
|
intellect
|
philosopher rulers
|
|
spirit
|
soldiers
|
|
appetite
|
artisans, merchants
|
Note that those at each level of the city are
themselves tripartite souls—artisans have intellect and spirit, soldiers have
appetite and intellect, philosophers have appetite and spirit. In different
people, different elements of soul come to the forefront, but in all people,
all elements are present. Each section of society, like each part of the soul,
has its own tasks to focus on for the healthy running of the whole. But the
three parts of the society and the soul are not hermetically sealed off from each
other. Thus, to take an instance of the individual soul, eros is not simply key in the appetitive part of the soul but also
the spirit and mind. In the Symposium
and the Phaedrus Socrates goes to
great lengths to facilitate the eros
that pursues divine wisdom. Here the parts of the soul seem to bleed into each
other. Desire is not simply ordered towards bodily needs but can transcend them.[26]
[1] Timaeus explains
that the best that he can offer is “a likely story” (Tim. 29c-d). By this, he means “probable” or “plausible.” A
cosmology could never offer more than this. See Francis M. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato (1937. Reprint. Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1997), 28–32.
[2] Plato never
discusses the relation of the divine Craftsman to the Good. I am tentatively inclined
to think that they cannot be simplistically identified. To cautiously borrow an analogy from Christian theology, it seems to
be that the Good is in some ways akin
to the first person of the Trinity, while the Craftsman plays a role closer to
the second person, the divine Logos. I am not suggesting that this analogy is
anything more than limited. For starters, Plato shows no hint of any interest
in offering straightforward religious devotion to the Good or to the Craftsman
(though the philosophical journey climaxing in the “sight” of the Good should
not be seen as non-religious). He does, however, show normal religious devotion
to the gods, including the cosmos itself (all of which he sees as lesser
divinities than the Good).
[3] On
this understanding of the relation of the forms to the demiurge, see Perl, Thinking Being, ch. 2, sec. 8. It is
surprising how often one reads of the Craftsman having to work within the
constraints of pre-existing forms, as if these were somehow separable from the
Craftsman himself. For instance, here is Cornford: “This [the receptacle, see Tim. 48e–49a] . . . is as
independent of the Demiurge as the world of Forms. The Forms . . . he
does not create; they are not made or generated, but eternally real and
self-subsisting” (Plato’s Cosmology,
37).
[4] The intelligible
form (or complex of forms) of the living creature contains within itself the
forms of all sub-species, the four main families of which are the heavenly gods
(stars, planets, earth), birds, fish, and land animals (39e). The human form is
obviously a subset of the last. All living creatures, from stars to snakes, are
ensouled. The celestial gods are eternal. The other three classes of being “are
neither gods nor everlasting, but subject to birth, change, and death, in the
inferior regions of air, water, and earth” (Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 138).
[5] I
say “partly mirrors” because the cosmos, unlike the creatures within it, does
not exist within some wider empirical environment. (There are echoes of this in
the claims of modern physicists that there is nothing “outside” the universe, and
that while the universe is expanding it is not expanding into anything.) The cosmos is self-contained and lacks the cosmic
equivalent of eyes and ears and limbs, etc. As such its motions are entirely
circular, hence it is more perfect than the creatures it contains (33b–34a).
Nevertheless, our intellect mirrors the divine intellect of the cosmos. Note
that the materials from which the bodies of mortals are composed (air, earth,
water, fire) are a part of the cosmos (42e–43a). However, the immortal souls of
rational creatures are not part of
the cosmic soul—they are irreducibly individuals. Individuality is not a result
of embodiment but precedes it. See Broadie, Nature
and, 95–100.
[6] The
problem of body-soul interaction is of a different order for Descartes—who sees
body as spatially extended and soul as having no spatial properties—than for
Plato. For Plato, body and soul are both spatial and the movements of one can
affect the other.
[7] Interestingly
Timaeus does not argue from the goodness of the Craftsman to the goodness of
creation. Rather, he argues from the goodness of creation, which he takes of
evident, to the goodness of its divine cause (29a). Given that this is only
possible if the creation is made according to the forms (28a), then creation must
be according to the forms. So Timaeus argued from (not for) the goodness of the world. “Since the visible world
is, in fact, good, its maker must have copied a model that is eternal”
(Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 28).
[8]
Clearly Plato thought the cosmic body and soul were everlasting when looking
forward. Whether he thought that the cosmos was sempiternal (extending
eternally in both temporal
directions) has been a matter of debate from the days of the Academy onwards.
The creation myth in the Timaeus, taken
at face value, would suggest that he did not. The debate concerns whether Plato
did intend his readers to take it at face value. That debate need not concern
us.
[9]
Broadie, Nature and Divinity in Plato’s
Timaeus, chs. 2 and 3. The monologue is announced as a cosmology (27a), and
rather than an ascent into the domain of pure intelligibles, there is a descent
into detailed scientific explanations and (in the follow-on monologue Critias) human “history.” These
scientific explanations go far beyond
what is needed for a “gateway to metaphysics.” The metaphysics in Timaeus is in the service of cosmology.
Unless the sensible world of becoming is “based on” the eternal forms,
intelligible paradigms, this cosmos would be literally unintelligible and
cosmology could not even get off the ground.
[10] The
human soul is made of a slightly less pure blend of the same stuff as the
cosmic soul, and is mixed in the same manner (Tim. 41d). Cosmic and human soul is made of a blend of Being,
Sameness, and Difference (Tim. 35a ff.).
It is the nature of the embodiment that makes the human less perfect than the
cosmos. We need to grasp that for Plato, thought moves in circular spatial
motions. In the cosmos these are embodied in the movements of the planets. The
orbits of the planets are (literally) the cosmos thinking. Human bodies also
partake in these circular motions, but in addition they also partake in six
rectilinear motions (up, down, left, right, forwards, and backwards). These
rectilinear motions disturb the circular motions of the soul, causing them to
lose their circular shape. Thus rationality and irrationality mark the embodied
human being.
The
pre-embodied human soul already had the potential for this disturbance. It was
composed of two main moving circles (the Same and the Different), one of which
(the Different) was divided into seven sub-circles that moved in different
senses. This pre-incarnate, differentiated soul was perfect in its circular
movements, with the circle of the Same coordinating the circular movements of
the whole soul. But with embodiment the circle of the Same ceases to be able to
coordinate, leaving the circle of the Different susceptible to the
interruptions of the rectilinear motions of the body—“they barely held together
with each other, and though they moved, their motion was irrational, now
reversed, now sidelong, now inverted.” (Tim.
43e2–3).
[11] For
Plato, a perfect cosmos has to exemplify all kinds of creatures, and this
includes three different logically possible kinds of mortal creature (Tim. 41a-d).
[12] The
idea that embodiment is the result of a fall may be seen in the myth of the Phaedrus. However, on the interpretation
of this, see later in this paper.
[13] Broadie is
referring to the pre-embodied tour of the cosmos given to human souls, getting
them ready for embodiment (Tim.
41d-e).
[15] On
the tripartite soul, see the excellent essays in Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan,
and Charles Brittain (eds.), Plato and
the Divided Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). For a
helpful account of what constitutes the unity of a tripartite soul see Eric
Brown, “The Unity of Soul in Plato’s Republic,”
in Rachel Barney et al. (eds.), Plato and
the Divided Self, 53–73.
[16]
Spirit has an inward-looking task and an outward-looking task. Looking in,
spirit acts as a policeman keeping the appetite in check. With its outward
gaze, spirit is akin to the army. Looking out, the soul has to deal with the
fact that it exists in a world of limited resources with other embodied souls
and needs to know how best to navigate that situation. Spirit in a soul is
behind, among other things, competitiveness, aggression, loyalty, bravery,
generosity, self-sacrifice, and love of status and honour and reputation.
[17] We
need to see that Plato does not separate the parts of a soul into hermetically
sealed units. Rather, they bleed into each other. Thus, intellect can permeate
down into spirit and appetite. And eros—love,
desire, sexual attraction—marks not simply the appetite, but also spirit and
intellect. Indeed, the intellectual soul’s pursuit of wisdom is defined by eros (see Symp., Phdr., Rep.). On the goodness of eros in Phaedrus see Joseph Pieper, Enthusiasm
and Divine Madness: On the Platonic Dialogue “Phaedrus” (3rd ed. St.
Augustine’s Press, 1999) and Martha C. Nussbaum, “‘This Story Isn’t True’:
Madness, Reason, and Recantation in the Phaedrus,”
in The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and
Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1986), 200–233.
[18] I
do not mean to suggest that Plato imagined that honour has some existence “out
there” in the world apart from embodied souls. “[T]here is no realm of facts
about honor at large in the cosmos that needed to be attended to prior to the
creation of the souls themselves. It is the creation of multitudes of
appetitive souls in proximity to each other, in a region where appetitive goods
are moderately scarce, that in turn creates a situation in which there are
facts about differential abilities to acquire and preserve those appetitive
goods, plus possibilities for group sharing and distribution of appetitive
goods, plus facts about the biological or ethnic kinship of various groups.
There is not, in addition to all of this, some further set of facts about honor
in place before spirited souls arrive on the landscape. Rather, it is the
spirited soul’s sensitivity to these other facts that constitutes the landscape
of honor, creates the institutions of reputation, renown, shame, and so on, as
a sort of signaling system to encode and transmit these underlying facts.
Plato, in other words, is a realist about goodness and something like a
projectivist about honor.” (Tad Brennan, “The Nature of the Spirited Part of
the Soul and Its Object,” in Rachel Barney et al. (eds.), Plato and the Divided Self, 102–27. Quote from p. 110.)
[19] A slightly
charming coincidence is the discovery of modern science that the carbon-base of
human bodies requires the formation of carbon in stars. So, in one sense
(albeit not Plato’s sense), even modern scientists see the stars as responsible
for human bodies.
[20] For
this interpretation see Thomas K. Johansen, Plato’s
Natural Philosophy: A Study of the Timaeus-Critias (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), 147–48.
[21] See footnote 40.
[22] Johansen,
Plato’s Natural Philosophy, 152.
[23] Broadie, Nature and Divinity, 90.
[24] In Republic IV (438d–441c) the disordered
desires of the spirit and appetite oppose reason, and the various disordered
human rulers considered in books VII–IX (543a–576b) are explained precisely in
terms of the failure of their souls to be ordered according to justice (i.e.,
in submission to the intellect).
[25] The
city of the Republic, which Plato
explores in detail precisely because he sees it as analogous to the soul (368c–69c), reinforces the point that
immortal souls without mortal souls are not adequate. A city that is composed
only of philosopher rulers would be incomplete, unworkable, and undesirable. In
the same way, a soul that was simply the immortal soul and not the tripartite,
embodied soul, is incomplete.
[26]
Pickstock writes: “desire is not rigidly pre-ordained to be a bondage to the
ephemeral but has the capacity to be transformed. Indeed, a true desiring, even
of finite realities, already involves such a transformation whereby they are
referred to higher realities. Thus, for example, if the beloved is not loved
for the sake of his beauty as such, rather than, as in Socrates’s first speech
[in which he adopts an anti-erotic stance precisely opposite to his own views]
in the Phaedrus, for his usefulness
or potential to satisfy one’s desires, then he is not really loved at all. It
seems that the lower orders of desire and force, far from being necessarily
inimical to the order of reason, are in fact suspended from it, and sustained
by its relay of the contagion of the good.” Catherine Pickstock, “Justice and
Prudence: Principles of Order in the Platonic City.” Heythrop Journal XLII (2001) 269–82,” quote from 279. On passions
in both rational and non-rational parts of the soul see, Jessica Moss,
“Pictures and Passions in the Timaeus
and Philebus,” in Rachel Barney et
al., Plato and the Divided Self,
259–80.
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