John M. Rist
Man, Soul and' Body
Essays in Ancient Thought from Plato to Dionysius
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John M. Rist
Man, Soul and' Body
Essays in Ancient Thought from Plato to Dionysius
UVVERZITA KARLOVA v haze PiirodovEdeck&fakulta katedsa filozcrfie a dqin piirodnich vdd Alberlov 0: 128 43 Praha 2 I C ~ :00216208, DXC:001-00216208 UK 13-39
VARIORUM 1996
llus edition cop)mght 0 1996 by Iohn M fist Published by VARIORUM Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House, Croft Road,
CONTENTS
Aldershot, Hampshire GUI I 3HR Great Britain Ashgate Publishing Company Old Post Road, Brookfield, Vermont 05036 USA
..) dc 6 / o $ ,7
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0
Introduction Acknowledgements
I
ISBN 0-86078-547 -5
British Lfbrary CZP Data Rist, John M. (John Michael), 1936Man,Soul and Body: Essays in Ancient Thought from Plato to Dionysius. (Variorum Collected Studies Series; CS549). 1. Philosophy, Ancient. I. Title. I80
US Library of Congress CW Data Rist,John M. Man, Soul and Body: Essays in Ancient Thought From Plato to DionysiudJohn M. Rist. p. cm. - (Collected Studies Series; CS549). lncludes index (cloth: alk. paper). I . Philosophical anthropology-History. 2. Philosophy, Ancient. 3. Mind and body-History. 4. Ethics, Ancient. I. Title. 11. Series: Collected Studies Series; CS549. B187. M25R57 1996 96-33 152 128' .0938-dc20 CIP
The paper used in this publicationmeets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanance of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 239.48-1984. @ TM Printed by Galliard (Printers) Ltd., Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, Great Britain. COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES C.549
Plato says that we have tripartite souls. If he is right, what can we do about it?
vii-viii
ix 103-124
Sophies Maiefores: Chercheuys de Sagesse: Hommage c i Jean Pipin. Paris: Institut d'Etudes Augustiniennes, 1992
I1
The theory and practice of Plato's Cratylus Greek Poetry and Philosophy: Studies in Honour of Leonard
207-2 18
Woodbury, ed. Douglas E. Gerber. Chico, Calg: Scholars Press, 1984
22 1-229
111
Parmenides and Plato's Parmenides The Classical Quarterly 20, no. 2. Oxfard, 1970
IV
Arisrotlc: the value of man and the origin of morality Canadian JournaE of Philosophy 4. no. 1. Calgary, 1974
v
On Greek biology, Greek cosmology and some sources of theological pneuma Prudentia suppl. no. 1985. ~ucklnnd,1985
VT
Zeno and Stoic consistency Phronesis 22, no. 2. Assen, 1977
161-174
VII
The Stoic concept of detachment
259-272
1-21
27-47
The Stoics, ed. John M. Rist. Berkeley, Calg: University of CaIifomia Press, 1978
VIII Are you a Stoic? The case of Marcus Aurelius Jewish and Christian Self-Defnifion, ed. Ben F. Meyer and E.P. Sanders. London: SCM Press, 1982
IX
Epictetus: Ex-slave Dialectic 24. Newcastle, NSW, 1985
23-45 190-192 3-22
X
Seneca and Stoic orthodoxy
1993-201 2
Aufstieg und Niedergang der Rijmischen Welt 36, no. 3. BerlidNew York, 1989
XI
INTRODUCTION
Plotinus on matter and evil Phronesis 6. Assen, 1961
XI1
The Indefinite Dyad and Intelligible Matter in Plotinus
99-107
The Classical Quarterly 12, no. 1. Oxford, 1962
XIU Plotinus and the Daimonion of Socrates
13-24
Phoenix. Journal of the Classical Assoication of Canada 17. Toronto. 1963
XIV Back to the mysticism of Plotinus: some more specifics
183-197
Journal of the History of Philosophy 27, no. 2. Atlanta, Ga., 1989
XV
Is Plotinus' body too etherialized? Prudentia suppl. no. 1993. Auckland, 1993
XVI Pseudo-Ammonius and the soulhody problcm in some Platonic texts of late antiquity American Journal of Philology 109. Baltimore, Md., 1988
XVII Pseudo-Dionysius, Neoplatonism and the weakness of the soul From Athens to Chartres: Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honour of Edouard Jeauneau, ed. Haijo J. Westra. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992
Index
This volume contains x + 298 pages
402-4 15 I
The seventeen papers republished in this book range chronologically from Plato in the fourth century B.C. to Ps-Dionysius in the early sixth century A.D. Thematically they are less diverse: the majority of them deal with the ever growing and ever more variegated f latonic tradition both in its Christian and its non-Christian forms. Most, but not all, concern, the interrelated topics of ethics and the spul, but in antiquity such themes are never far from wider questions of metaphysics - and so it is in this collection. A few of the essays go beyond the Platonic tradition, especially in the direction of Stoicism, but late Stoicism overlaps with Platonism both in many of its emphases - and its challenges - and in the mentality of some of its leading exponents. The first three papers deal with Plato himself, the first -concerned with his basic intentions in discussing what others called the 'tripartite soul' - in many respects setting the tone for the entire volume. For Plato raises the question of the simplicity of the good soul, and the increasing 'multiplicity' of the souls of the increasingly evil. The second and third papers are more metaphysical, dealing with Plato's rejection of the possibility of an ideal language, and his own understanding of a dialogue, the Parmenides, which in non-Platonic reinterpretations was to be so fruitful in the development of the PIatonic tradition. The fourth essay is a preliminary treatment of the complex problem of hdw far Aristotle's ethics depend on Platonic underpinnings, while the fifth, the first of a group on the Stoics, opens up the important topic - not only among Stoics, its specific subject - of the relation between ethics and biology, the later being viewed within a specific metaphysical framework. The next essays deal with specifically Stoic topics: their relation to their Cynic predecessors, and the reasons for their dissatisfaction with Cynicism; the famous (and often misunderstood) Stoic notion of detachment, or apatheia; and the orthodoxy (and at times the partially Platonic unorthodoxy) of three late Stoics: Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Seneca. Underlying these last papers - and explicit in the study of Marcus - is an attempt to understand the most fundamental features of the mental attitudes which enabled philosophers to identify themselves as Stoics. There follow four papers, two from thirty odd years ago, on Plotinus, the greatest, though not the most typical, of the later Platonists of antiquity. All treat of fundamental themes: matter, whether sensible or intelligible; Plotinus' attitude to the 'guardian spirit' or duimonion of Socrates, and hence
viii
to 'supernatural' phenomena and 'angelic' beings in general - with some treatment of the post-Platonic background to Plotinus' thinking; and the mysticism of Plotinus - in a paper in which fairly recently I considered criticism of my earlier discussion in Plotinus: The Road to Reality. The final Plotinian paper is somewhat different, attempting both an elucidation of Plotinus' elusive account of the reality, if such it be, of material objects, and critical comment on the relation of his views to a standard problem in the history of philosophy, identified by Locke as the question of whether matter is 'something, I know not what' underlying physical objects. Paper XVI is both the treatment of the growth of a philosophically significant legend, that of the 'Christian Ammonius' (and the relation of that figure to the teacher of Plotinus), and the intertwining of that legend with the persistent debate between Platonists and Stoics in late antiquity about the relationship between the soul and the body. Finally paper XVII reaches the Christian Neoplatonist whose self-identification with a convert of St Paul helped him spread Christianity in a very particular Neoplatonic guise, much influenced by Iarnblichus and Proclus. The main aim of this paper is to consider why Dionysius has been so consistently misunderstood - and the crisis in Neoplatonic ethics lying behind that misunderstanding - not least in the version of his mysticism which predominated in Western mediaeval circles, The papers in this collection have been composed during a period of more than thirty years. I have inevitably had to consider whether they should be revised or corrected, for I certainly would not stand by every word of every one of them now. In the end I have decided to reproduce them unchanged, for two reasons: I have a persistent dislike of two or more versions of published work being in the public domain, with scholars in disarray as to the version they happen to cite; and I think that the collection as it stands is still sufficiently respectable and coherent, as a body, to present both significant facts about the development of ancient thought, and - importantly for me and I hope for others a view of the developing and improving understanding of that thought in our own times since 1960.
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Cambridge
April 1996
JOHN M.RIST
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following persons, institutions and publishers for their permission to reproduce the papers included in this volume: the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (for paper I); Scholars Press (11); P.C. Millett on behalf of The Classical Quarterly (III, XH);The University of Calgary Press (IV); the editorial board of Prudentia (V, XV); Van Gorcum & Comp bv (VI, XI); The University of California Press (VII); SCM Press (VIII); The University of Newcastle, NSW (IX); Walter de Gruyter & Co. (X); the Classical Association of Canada (XIII); Rudolf A. Makkreel, Editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy (XIV); The Johns Hopkins University Press (XVI); E.J. Brill (XVII).
PUBLISHER'S NOTE The articles in this volume, as in all others in the Collected Studies Series, have not been given a new, continuous pagination. In order to avoid confusion, and to facilitate their use where these same studies have been referred to elsewhere, the original pagination has been maintained wherever possible. Each article has been given a Roman number in order of appearance, as listed in the Contents. This number is repeated on each page and is quoted in the index entries.
PLAT0 SAYS THAT WE HAVE TRIPARTITE SOULS.
IF HE IS RIGHT, WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?
The City
Scholars talk about Platonic parts, or parts B, of the soul and of the city. Since Platonic cities are made up of people, a part of the city would seem to be a group of people. But what are Platonic souls made up of? There may be different answers to this question in different PIatonic texts; however one answer, I think, at least for incarnate souls, or souls in bodies, is that they are made up of competing but undeveloped personalities, each personality being generated by our innate ability to set competing life-styles before our eyes, that is to envisage them and feel their amaction. These competing personalities may loosely be called *parts B of the soul, or psyche, though in the major discussion of the matter (Rep. 4), PIato only so calls them twice (442C 5, 444B 3). Of, course, if a Platonic psyche is an immaterial substance of living stuff, then, at least as a metaphor, it is not too odd to refer to its parts, Plato repeated such language ; so did Aristotle; so do modern critics. But, if we believe most of the interpreters of Platonic parts, or rather if we note their widely differing views, Plato was obscure at best, at worst confused. Yet a few patient critics have found him less confused and much less obscure than is usually assumed1. They have often begun by observing that Platonic ((partsw are not Aristotelian faculties or capacities2. I . Cf. especially J. Moline. uplato on the Complexity of the Psychen, AGP 60, 1978, p. 1-26, and L. Gerson, a A Note on Tripartition and Immortality in Plato w , Apeiron 20, 1987, p. 81-96. Gerson (especially p. 86) wmes nearest to my position on Platonic wparts m, though his interpretation of some of the passages from the Timocus is quite different (p. 94). There are still interesting things to be found in J. L Stocks, u Plato and the Tripartite Soul w, Mind 24, 1915, p. 207-221, provided the archaic tone is not allowed to jar : *Of course if Orphicism is Oriental, as some say it is, that would account for a taint of the East in SoaaticPlatonic ethics. (p. 221). 2. See especially Moline (note 1 above) 1.8.
TRIPARTITE SOULS
If Plato thought that we (or our souls) are like cities or nations, composed of many potential individuals, that the psyche is a set of personalities more or less developed, a notorious opinion of Hume's has some interesting similarities : a I cannot compare the soul more properly to anything than to a republic or commonwealth, in which the several members are united by the reciprocal ties of government and subordination and give rise to other persons who propagate the same republic in the incessant change of its parts. And as the same individual republic may not only change its members, but also its laws and constitution, in like manner the same person may vary his character and disposition as well as his impressions and ideas, without losing his identity H (Treatise on Humun Nature I, IV, Of personal identity). Hume is thinking of changes in a sequence, of one character succeeding another; he pays litfle attention to explaining the succession. Plato, on the other hand is proposing simultaneous ( of the soul (442C 5, 444B 2). So it is that we find genuine (noninstinctive) reason and our instincts of acquisition providing us with contrary models of life. How does Plato say that we resolve the conflict? There is no clear answer in book 4 to the question of how, when we know thd higher life and higher action, we can be sure of selecting it regularly, or occasionally, or even at all. There are, however, indications in his account of the city which allow us to answer the question, perhaps to Plato's satisfaction at least for a while - though not to ours ; and we can compare what we can infer from book 4 with what we find more explicitly elsewhere. But before turning to that, there is another way in which we can look at u parts D. Presumably we (though not Plato) should all agree with the proposition e I've only got one Ufe B, at least in this world. But while accepting this proposition, we do not hesitate to talk of our political life, our private life. our sex life, etc. when we use these phrases, we allude to the fact that (e.g.) our political life is what we do, say, in a political party or in public encounters about public policy, or that our private life is what we do at home or with our family. Some philosophers, of course, say that we play different > wins and that it is possible to ensure such a victory. Just as justice within the city can be achieved when the parties agree on which group shall rule and how much the goals of the material-goods-seekers shall be allowed, so within the individual Plato wants to secure a settlement, a constitution (9, 591 E ; 10, 608A), in terms of which we shall all live the life-style in which unbiassed rationality is accepted as the guiding principle. That need not imply, of course, that Plato should expect us all to be Guardians, to be able to rule in accordance with reason; rather that we should all accept the principle that reason should rule. That is the first, not unreasonable point that Plato wishes us to recognize; the second is to recognize (and this time I leave that word anibiguous for the moment) that we are not all competent to hold positions of public authority. Remember that in the city it is precisely the mark of Platonic justice not that each class should enjoy its own property (It is the priority only of the hunters for material objects to enjoy that), but that each class shall enjoy and perform its own task. Educarion and Preference
We have noticed how in a city the rulers and the soldier-auxiliaries should form an alliance. Agreement of the money-makers that proper rulers should rule is dbviously obtainable in a variety of ways. The consent of the ruled may be compelled or willingly conceded. If it is compelled, we have no tyranny hence no slavery - but regal rule, since slavery involves submitting to unjust compulsion (Rep. 9, 577E) both in the city and in the psyche. Indeed in the city those who concede unwillingly may eventually come to see that the rule of the proper rulers is the best for everyone. In the city Plato can easily claim that the dynamics of the situation are clear enough. Rulers can persuade or compel possession-hunters to obey, and we can identify who persuades and compels and what means are at his disposal. But now consider the problems of
113
the individual psyche. We read at 442A 5 that the two higher things in the soul will under some circumstances exercise control over the material appetites, at 4 4 2 E 1 that the honour-driven part preserves what is prescribed by reason, and at 444B 2 that there is injustice when the subject part of the soul rebels. This all sounds like reflectionson the possibility of rebellion against a properly constituted government rather than descriptions of an intra-psychic disorder, as does 442D 1 where we find that the two lower parts, sorts, or whatever, agree that the reasoning part should rule. If Plato really wants to say, as I have argued, that we are dealing with options for the ongoing self, the self in the process of making and unmaking, why does he talk like this? Or rather, perhaps, why does he import the language of the city so strictly into an account of the self? The answer, I think is to be found if we consider who, or rather what, in an ideal psyche, can put pressure on our normal acquisitive urges. The same question arose, of course, in the case of the city, and there the answer was that force, persuasion or fraud is applied by the rulers and the soldiers - as individuals or in groups : but if we consider our own psyche, merely to put the question is to realize its difficulty. Plato in Republic 4 is talking about the achievement of harmony in the psyche, of the achievement of singleness of purpose, and he says that such singleness implies that we live by preferring a lifestyle with goals set by reason to all others. What he does not tell us explicitly in Repub/rc 4 is how and by what means we determine on the preference, In fact, he has already told us by implication in the preceding books : there is a sense in which we do not determine it ourselves at all. Rather it is determined for us by the education we receive: indeed in a sense we are or become the education we recave. What Plato speaks of in Republic 4 is the nature of the alternative lifestyles and the charms and claims of each, and in book 9 he offers an argument that the rational life-style is much happier (729 times happier, 587E 1-2) than the acquisitive. But hc also says in book 6 that when the philosopher-king gets the power to act, he must start from scratch with human characters, wipe the human slate clean of post-natal disfigudngs and rewrite human dispositions on it (501 A 1-7). (Mao and Pol Pot had in some ways the same ambition, though differences of end necessarily governed their differences of means.) Again in book 7 of the Republic we read that nothing can be done with people over ten years old. They must be sent out of the city (541 A) and left to breed. Then their young children must be takcn back and educated from scratch. There is little reason to doubt that Plato means what he says when he implies that, unless such radical measures are taken, there is no chance that the human character can be well developed; no chance, that is, in terms of the theories of book 4, that any of us will in facl adopt the reason-governed life-style. Plato seems to have thought that without such extreme steps an individual of the Guardian sort might appear by luck or grace (0da poipa) ; Socrates had indeed appeared.
115
TRlPARTlTE SOULS
But if we want more than that, if we want to guarantee the regular appearance of such people, we need the radical step. That implies that if right education is essential, and if right education depends on radical acts by a philosopher-king, then if the philosopher-king is an impossible dream, the correct upbringing of human beings becomes, in human terms, an impossible dream too. Plato, as we shall see, comes to think that philosopher-kings are virtually hors concours ; indeed I shall argue that from his premisses in the Republic itself and elsewhere there should not be a philosopher-king. For Plato did not see that within the parameters of his account of the psyche and without a preexisting philosopher-king, any regular and predictable choice of the right lifestyle is impossible. Without the external pressure on our incarnate selves, without our being kept unfree, until the right soul-constitution is established in us (590E4), it is extremely unlikely that we shall ever whole-heatedly act in accordance with reason, even if we recognize the validity of the arguments in favour of such alife. If that is right, Platonic ethics ends up as an inspiring ideal but an impossible reality. We are all condemned to being more or less acratic. Laws, Plato hopes, will provide something of a substitute for the rule of philosophers, but Plato thinks that they are often a >, we can arrange ourselves in accordance with the Republic's ideals of harmony and justice. Commentators have been less impelled to query the latter claim, but it is in fact the more interesting, not only because unless we get a well-ordered psyche (in a philosopher-king) we cannot have the institutions to breed and educate good citizens, but because the discussion of parts of the psyche in Republic 4 might suggest that it is not possible to have such a permanently well-ordered psyche in our present earthly life at all - whatever the educational system. In order to see why this is so, within purely Platonic parameters of thought, we must turn to some other discussions of soul-parts, particularly in book 9 of the Republic and in the Phaedrus, and to Plato's question in book 10 of the Republic about whether the psyche is ultimately simple or multiform in its (< true nature B (+licr~v,612A 3 ff.). Our conclusion will be that in Platonic terms not only can there be no perfect state (or set of individuals), there cannot be a perfect incarnate individual : an altogether much more disturbing conclu12. The phrase is Guthrie's adaptation of Poliricus 295A (cf. A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. V, Cambridge 1978, p. 186).
sion. Indeed the conclusion may be even more disturbing than it seems at first glance: not only can we not hope to be perfect, but perhaps we have no good reason to suppose that in Plato's psychological universe we can experience genuine moral improvement at all. That is not, I hasten to add, a claim which Plato accepts for a moment; my argument is only that the developments in his own account of the psyche make it a claim which he cannot rebut. Simple andlor Composite :Republic 9 , I 0 and Phaedrus At 577D 1, dealing with the tyrannical man and the tyrannical state, Plato reminds us once again of their parallel structures. The language in which he 58OC3 ff.) and of its parts (577D4, 581 A 6; speaks of the types of soul (~i611. cf. 583 A 1, 586E 5) seems indistinguishable from that of Republic 4, though the term uparts H is now applied to the soul more regularly; we are surely by now supposed to know what a part is. We are told at 580D 11 that our ((acquisitive part* or character is often just called lustful (Greek dn&upr)rtxov) because our desires for food, drink and sex are particularly insistent and therefore typify the u part B as a whole; but the phrases money-loving D and u gain-loving e also recur here (580E5 - 581 A 7, cf. 586 D 5). Contrariwise it is said that a that by which we learn v concerns itself least (581 B 7) - note ((least *,not (<notat all*, again suggesting not a faculty but a type of character or life-style - about wealth (the concern of the third part) or about reputation (the concern of the second). Similarly at 581 E 3, in the course of a fallacious argument that only he who has experienced the pleasures of thought can judge between different kinds of pleasures, Plato observes that such a man cannot avoid experiencing the pleasures, say, of ertting and drinking. These pleasures he calls