PHIL 101: What is Man (and can we improve him?)
Your soul's immortal, so you'd better train it well while you can.
As we said last time, Plato is essentially the inventor of the concept of dualism, a belief that a thing is a combination of physical and spiritual substance. We talked about tables and chairs and apples and horses and truth and beauty and goodness, but we didn’t talk about people. What is the dualism in Man?
Plato says the human soul is the Form of the body. This isn’t like the form of Apple though. It’s not that there’s a single form of Human. There is, instead, a form of me as an individual. This sounds obvious to us modern Christians, but our Christian version is fairly different from Plato’s.
Hopefully you can see how Plato’s view of the soul combined with his elevation of reason can easily lead to gnostic tendencies. If physical objects are just pale reflections of the real Forms, it’s not a big leap to get to “physical matter is evil; everything good is spirit.” That’s gnosticism. Early Christianity struggled mightily against gnostic cults that claimed secret knowledge or rituals could help you transcend the body and achieve theosis (oneness with the mind of God).1
Parts of the Soul
For Plato the soul consists of 3 pieces:
Passions or Appetites - These are the instincts and the baser emotions2, many of which we share with other mammals:3 cravings and phobias and disgusts. Modern biology places this in the medula of the brain stem (the “lizard brain” in evolutionary terms). Plato places the passions in the gut.
Reason - This is something unique to man, which Plato locates in the head. In biological terms, this is the frontal lobe of our brains. Humans have a unique ability to interpret the world logically which allows for foresight and planning. Many animals can ask “what is…” questions. Only man can ask “what might be if…”. Later Christians will see this as a quality granted as part of “the breath of life” in the Garden.
However… these first two parts are often in tension: our reason says we should do one thing but our passions pull us in a different direction. (Any dieter who finds himself staring into his fridge between meals can relate.) Thus we need a way to arbitrate between the gut and and head. Plato finds this in man’s heart, in his chest.
Spiritedness - This is our willpower, our emotional motivations (not base instincts like sex but higher ones like fairness and justice) and our sense of virtue and vice. John Wayne would call it grit. Modern biology has no place for this. When your pastor says “turn your heart toward God” though, biology may scoff, but Plato would understand.
Our spiritedness serves as a governor between the reason and passions. Too much of the former and you end up like the Star Trek characters Spock or Mr. Data. Too much of the latter and you will be whipped around by your emotions and instincts almost like an animal. Nietzsche hated Plato, but Nietzsche’s Last Man actually sounds very much like a Platonic soul that has let its passions take over.
C.S. Lewis’ book the Abolition of Man is lamenting the loss of spiritedness (heart) in the modern world. The first chapter is appropriately titled “Men Without Chests”.
The head rules the belly through the chest — the seat . . . of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments . . . these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.
We’ll return to this toward the end of this series. For now, just remember the layout of heart or chest governing between the reason of the head and the passions of the gut.
Education
So how do you train the soul? Oh, the passions are inborn — no training needed. The reason is trained with knowledge, but what kind of knowledge? Knowledge isn’t all good. There’s a funny passage from Book 4 of The Republic that illustrates this:
There is a story that Leontius, the son of Aglaion, coming up one day from the Piraeus, under the north wall on the outside, observed some dead bodies lying on the ground at the place of execution. He felt a desire to see them, and also a dread and abhorrence of them; for a time he struggled and covered his eyes, but at length the desire got the better of him; and forcing them open, he ran up to the dead bodies, saying, “Look, ye wretches, take your fill of the fair sight.”
Is there some problem with looking at corpses? Doctors look at corpses. Da Vinci studied corpses. These are executed prisoners left presumably to be seen by passersby, and yet Leontius is so upset by his desire that he curses his own eyes for driving him to look. Why? Because the knowledge with which you train your soul must be chosen carefully.
The ancient Greeks had two words for knowledge.
Studiositas is a desire for knowledge for its own sake. This is obviously the origin of the English word “student” and this kind of knowledge feeds our reason.
Curiositas is a perverse desire to know. It feeds not our reason but our baser instincts and passions. For Plato, curiosity kills not only cats but men.
It’s the difference between Grays Anatomy and 50 Shades of Grey. So why is Leontius upset by his looking at the dead bodies? Because he knows he’s feeding the wrong part of his soul.
How do we feed the right parts of our soul instead? How do we train people to be able to escape from the cave? It’s not our heads (our reason) that get us out of the cave. Oh, we need knowledge, but that’s not enough. It is our hearts that enable this journey. Thus we need to train our hearts to love and desire the proper things and not be satisfied with the pale shadows that are on the wall. And this starts long before our reason has even developed.
Socrates curriculum for the young is remarkably simple: “gymnastics for the body and music for the soul”. He recommends P.E, competitive sports (with winners), and military training. He recommends fairy tales and myths. He recommends artistic and musical performance. Socrates believes you must appreciate truth and beauty and virtue long before (even as a precondition to) valuing logic or reason. By showing children lots of good and beautiful things, he’s attempting to cultivate their inborn ability to appreciate the Forms of Good and Beautiful. One of the readings this week is Socrates making the case for this type of education. (He also recommends no rich sauces for food, but that one’s a non-starter for me. I like my curries.)
I found myself thinking about this (the pursuit of good part, not the sauces) when reading Live Not By Lies by
a few years ago. Dreher includes interviews with the family of Soviet dissidents Vaclev and Kamila Benda.Kamila made time to read aloud to her children for two to three hours daily. She read them fairy tales, myths, adventure stories, and even some horror classics. More than any other novel, though, J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was a cornerstone of her family’s collective imagination. … “Because we knew Mordor was real. Their story was our story too. Tolkien’s dragons are more realistic than a lot of things we have in this world.”
“Mom read The Lord of the Rings to us maybe six times,” recalls Philip Benda. “It’s about the East versus the West. The elves on one side and the goblins on the other. And when you know the book, you see that you first need to fight the evil empire, but that’s not the end of the war. Afterward, you have to solve the problems at home, within the Shire.”
Socrates would absolutely approve: a perfect example of using fake stories (fiction) to teach real truths about the world. The Bendas built a love of truth and beauty and justice in their children so early that all the Soviet empire’s lies of false logic and reason could never dislodge it.
Today’s postmodernist universities have unintentionally demonstrated the veracity of Socrates theory — the Boomer hippies gave up on the existence of objective truth 60 years ago and their grandchildren are now giving up on logic and reason.
How to apply it
Do you have children? If Socrates idea resonates with you, a classical or Charlotte Mason style curriculum is centered on awakening kids’ sense of beauty. The one we roughly followed was Ambleside Online. Children can be remarkably wise even if they’re not always logical. So show them great art. Listen to great music. Stock your shelves with great books. A Picture Perfect Childhood is a great resource for the pre-literate but good picture books contain truths relevant to adults too. As C.S. Lewis says, “a children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story.”
If you don’t have children, or they’re already grown, it’s never too late to start building your own spiritedness. Since this is a Christian blog, Plato might not be the best source, but paying attention to what you put into your senses (studiositas vs curiositas) is never a bad idea. Do you catch yourself (metaphorically) “looking at corpses”? Christian meditation and fasting practices help. And Plato’s advice of physical exercise to cultivate your body and artistic exercise to cultivate your soul’s sense of beauty can still go a long way even for adults.
Readings
Republic Book 3 - Gymnastics, Music, and Dinner?
Republic Book 2 - Of Fiction and Gods
Republic Book 4 - The Parts of the Soul
The Case for Good Taste in Literature
Review Questions
Socrates says the most important education is artistic. Why?
What are some examples of “looking at corpses” in our modern world?
For someone so focused on pursuing a love of truth, why is Socrates willing to use stories that are clearly false? Can falsehood lead to a love of truth?
What types of stories are so offensive to Socrates that he would banish them completely from children? What stories might meet such a test today?
Dr. Poterack article says “with rap, we may have finally bottomed out.” What does he mean by that?
Is Christian heavy-metal good? Would Plato think so? Would Dr. Poterack think so? Do you think so? (Note, this isn’t the same as “do you enjoy it”. Plato makes a case that books that paint God as less than perfect are objectively bad. Dr. Posterack makes the case that a decline of harmony has made music objectively worse. Make your case for or against Christian heavy metal the same way.)
Is there one thing you could do to build your spiritedness this month? What’s stopping you from doing it?
Not to denigrate the concept of theosis, only the shortcuts the gnostics tried to use to achieve it. Unity with the Holy Spirit should be the goal of every Christian. The Orthodox still call this idea theosis. The nearest Protestant translation would be holiness. I’m not sure what Roman Catholics would call it. But they all have the concept even today.
My discussion here veers slightly from the video. Specifically, I place some of the emotions within the appetites, which Dr. Cooper doesn’t. But the difference is minor.
I recently finished a great book on mammalian emotional lives called A Hunter Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century. As a side benefit, the pair of atheist, evolutionary biologist, authors manage to get very close to Aquinas’ natural law without ever admitting God into their equation. It’s amazing! And hilarious since they don’t even realize they’re doing it.
Thanks again….