The Ideal in the West

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The use of sto­ry­telling, par­tic­u­larly that of the quest myth, is one of the fun­da­men­tal human approaches to express­ing the inex­press­ible. I’ve addressed this pre­vi­ously on my blog, explor­ing the myth of The­seus and the Mino­taur, and the alle­gory of the Cave in Plato’s Repub­lic, but I wanted to take this oppor­tu­nity to exam­ine it in more detail, and also bring it out of the realm of the heroic to some­thing that can be applied to our every­day lives.

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The Ideal of Justice

The promi­nence of the sub­ject of jus­tice in the Ideal tra­di­tion, or at least up through Plato, is one that I think frankly baf­fles most peo­ple in mod­ern democ­ra­cies.  Well, of course, jus­tice is impor­tant, and we have a sys­tem for that.  When some­one is wronged or harmed, things need to be set right.  We even acknowl­edge our debt to the ancient Athe­ni­ans: equal jus­tice before the law, trial by jury, pre­pon­der­ance of evi­dence, pre­sump­tion of inno­cence.  And per­haps just because the Athe­ni­ans were so pas­sion­ate about imple­ment­ing jus­tice, and really so suc­cess­ful at it (with the glar­ing excep­tion of Socrates), it can be hard for us to under­stand why it still played such a big part in their think­ing and writ­ing.  It is, after all, the nom­i­nal sub­ject of Plato’s Repub­lic, which goes on about for 10 books.

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Hell is all desire with no pos­si­bil­ity of ful­fill­ment; heaven is all ful­fill­ment with no pos­si­bil­ity of desire.

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In an update of an arti­cle from The Onion, we can report that the world death rate is still hold­ing steady at 100%.  So you might want to read the following.….

Our birth is but a sleep and a for­get­ting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had else­where its set­ting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire for­get­ful­ness,
And not in utter naked­ness,
But trail­ing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

From Ode on Inti­ma­tions of Immor­tal­ity from Rec­ol­lec­tions of Early Child­hood,      William Wordsworth

    That we as human beings are immor­tal souls is axiomatic to the phi­los­o­phy of the Ideal.  The Ideal is “infi­nite in all direc­tions,” includ­ing time, so immor­tal­ity is a given.  How­ever, we’ll take a look at a num­ber of the dif­fer­ent expres­sions given to this prin­ci­ple by some of our favorite Ide­al­ists through the ages.  (I’ve treated the sub­ject before in both the book and also my blog,  but I hope to expand on it here.)  As I expressed in the book, I believe this to be one of the most press­ing issues fac­ing us today, when med­i­cine can keep a heart­beat going almost indef­i­nitely, and it is not uncom­mon for hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to be spent pro­long­ing life of the body for just a few days or weeks.  Not to men­tion the whole sad phe­nom­e­non of cryo­gen­ics and other sup­posed ways to achieve immor­tal­ity for the body.  We need to come to terms with the fact that bod­ies are tem­po­rary, and look at what hap­pens when they stop.

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Socrates:I sus­pect, as indeed you seem to think your­self, that you are in labor–great with some con­cep­tion.  Come then to me, who am a midwife’s son and myself a mid­wife, and do your best to answer the ques­tions which I will ask you.  

Plato, The­ate­tus

In this episode, we’ll take a look at some of the philo­soph­i­cal move­ments that have bloomed over the cen­turies in the West­ern tra­di­tion, as well as some of the prac­tices they devel­oped to help stu­dents inter­nal­ize their teach­ings.  A point I’d like to make early and often is that the way phi­los­o­phy is stud­ied today is very dif­fer­ent from the way it was stud­ied in antiq­uity when many of these schools were founded.  They were not so much “schools of thought” as “schools of being,” where like-minded peo­ple would come together to share good com­pany and par­take in a largely oral tradition.

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The Ideal of Love is very closely tied to the Ideal of Beauty, as I explored in my book of the same name, and the quote from John Vyvyan in his Shake­speare and Pla­tonic Beauty with which I opened that book bears repeat­ing: Con­sid­ered philo­soph­i­cally, love and beauty were invented by Plato.

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Among philo­soph­i­cal or spir­i­tual mas­ters, Plato is unique in mak­ing Beauty an inher­ent qual­ity of his Supreme Being, the Ideal. Indeed, he uses the terms almost inter­change­ably. Given the grim ori­gins of most systems–born from sor­row, suf­fer­ing and sin–it is not dif­fi­cult to see the endur­ing appeal of his teach­ing, espe­cially in other ages which were more pre­dis­posed than ours to the love of beauty.

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Episode 39: The Ideal before Socrates, Part II     Stream Audio

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Episode 38: The Ideal before Socrates, Part I  Stream Audio

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Episode 37: The Ideal and the Estab­lish­ment  |  Stream Audio

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Episode 36: The Ideal and Reli­gion  |  Stream Audio

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Our real nature–the Ideal–is Truth, Con­scious­ness and Bliss.  But we set­tle for facts, think­ing and pleasure.

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I received a nice email from Joshua Sell­ers, who is also a fan of Plot­i­nus and oth­ers in the Ideal tra­di­tion.  He wrote a fine poem inspired Plot­i­nus’ last words that I think cap­tures his spirit well.  Read the poem here, and lis­ten to a read­ing here.

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Our first day in Heaven will be an orgy of for­give­ness.  That day can be this day.

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The Shake­spearean Ethic by John Vyvyan has just been reis­sued by Shepheard-Walwyn Pub­lish­ers in the UK, and I highly rec­om­mend it.  First pub­lished in 1959, it is an analy­sis of a num­ber of the plays, par­tic­u­larly the tragedies, from the view­point of rise or fall of the soul in rela­tion to its “true self,” the “thou” of the son­nets.  It has the kind of insight that can come I think, only from some­one out­side the acad­emy, and it will send me back to the plays with fresh eyes.  Two more of Vyvyan’s books, Shake­speare and Pla­tonic Beauty  and Shake­speare and the Rose of Love, will also be reis­sued if this one is successful.

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The Ideal in The West

The Cave as Hero’s Quest  |  Stream Audio

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Episode 33: The Hero’s Quest  |  Stream Audio

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Episode 32: Bot­ti­celli and Raphael  |  Stream Audio

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Episode 31: Michelan­gelo  |  Stream Audio

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Episode 30: Shake­speare  |  Stream Audio

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Episode 29: Her­mes Tris­megis­tus  |  Stream Audio