Divine Madness__ Plato's Case Against Secular Humanism - Josef Pieper
Short Description
h...
Description
"Divi d
JOSEF IEER
''Divine Madness Plato 5 Case against Secular Humanism Tanslad by oha Kah
IGNATIU RE
AN FRANCICO
Title of the Gemun original:
"Cttcher Wls e Ptrprtt © Schwabenverlag AG Ostde/Stttgart, Geany
Cover y Roxanne Mei L
© 5 Ignati Pre San Francico Al right reerved ISBN o- 7o-557-6 Library of Congres cataoge nber 575667 inte in the Unte Stats of Aia
Contents
stabshng the Theme 7 Prophecy
Catharss"
oesy 29 ros 37 Concuson 57
ransator's Note 59
ESTLISHING THE THEME
" THE HGHEST GOODS coe to
n the anner of the mni, nasuch as the sae s bestowed on us as a dvne gft" Ths pronounceent by Socrates wth ts centra ter mi reanng untransated for nowcontans an entre word vew t procas above al a fundaenta opnon about the eanng of huan exstence t shows that an s ndeed of such a nd as to possess hs own self in freedo and sefdeternaton that he s abe and aso obged to exane crtcay everythng he en counters that he s above a abe and obged to deterne based on nsght hs own fe Yet it furter ndcates tat an at te sae te s n s persona seood ntegrated nto te whoe of reaty n such a way that he can very we be shaen out of hs sefpossesson and ts not ony n te for of forced oppressn but possby so ong as 7
US
8
DIVINE MADNESS
man on his pat does not baicade himself in efusal, also in such a fom that th v l f p thee is bestowed on him a fullment not achieved in any othe way. This concept of man, with the tension of its stuctue, can of couse neve be captued in some smooth fomula; its inheent explosive potential indicates, athe, an implacable and distubing challenge And this concept of man, in a unique way, occupied Plato's mind all his life. Yet he was fa fom placing his emphasis on the same aspect. Like evey tue philosophe, he was conceed not so much with nding some satising and handy fomula as with not ovelooking anything. Thus he neve denied o disegaded the fact that bth apct ae essential to man, selfpossession as well as its loss though the iuption of a highe powe. But he was not always disposed to intepet such loss of self diected autonomy as a gain. In his earlier writings, he seems inclined to a the state of beingbesideoneselfinenthusiasm" a sickness", even though he would have consideed it a wose sickness t to be able to be sick" in such a way. (The sicness that consists in the inability to be sick"this expession of moden psychology comes to ind.)
STABSHN G TH TH M
9
The foowng reectons are an attempt to nter pret prmary the ate Daogue Phadru In ths Daogue Socrates dscusses four derent forms of the tha aa, by whch he means precsey ths godgven state of bengbesdeonesef
PROPHECY
T IRST DISCUSSION concens pophetic cstasy divination" in the stict sense the tprt prp t qu Thee es ae identied by name: the pophetess at elphi the piestesses of odona and the Sibyl They all have in common that, while they wee in a state of ecstatic fenzy they accomplished eat thins thoh thei tteances, bt when they wee of clea mind and calm selfpossession they we nable to say anythin impotant At the time of Socates, elphi had been a sanctay fo moe than a thousand yeas, etendin its nence a into Asa and ypt. eadess o te ntepetation of details we now know that the eects of the elphian Oacle, especialy when aimed at the political aena can hadly be oveesti mated Its oacles contaned eliios and etical II
12
DVNE MADNESS
demands found practically nowhere else in the preChristian world formulated with such consistency and intensity For example not only is the inviolable right to asylum proclaimed here and not only is the custom of the blood feud denounced but the earliest rules for a more humane conduct of war indeed for some ind of international law" can also be traced bac to the elphian Oracle The most ancient folaic hymnic wisdom of the Gree religion originated with the priestesses of odona in northern Greece Zeus was Zeus is and Zeus will ever be0 Zeus thou art most power ful!" Al too easily do we tend to overloo such things in favor of those entertaining stories about the gods of the Homeric mythology stories that Plato dismisses as a perversion of the true divine doc trineaccording to the Grk conception of course And naly the Sibyl The most ancient testimony nown to us derives from one of the great preSocratic philosophers Heaclitus it is itsel cast in Sibyline obscurity The Sibyl with raging lips uttering things unamusing and unadorned and unanointed resounds through the millennia driven by the god" Plato's contemporaries are so familiar with al this that the text states explicitly Let us not tal at
PRO PHCY
13
length about things nown to eveybody. And then ecapituating the text says it woud be good to eect on the fact that the ancients who gave names to al things assigned to this oacula at of the seepiestess and the Sibyl the name aa as a name of hr A few lines ate this tite is conmed once again the ancient ones testied that moe veneabe than human easonabeness is the tha aa, the godgiven and enthusiastic state of beingbesideonese We atteday eades of Pato ae at st incined to connect the Patonic commentay on the pophetic tance ony with Delphi Dodona and the Siby theefoe with the histoy of Gee ei gion"and thus to et it est Suveying the academic iteatue on Plato we ae lagey conmed and encouaged in this appoach But in doig this we depive ouseves of the genuine gain we might vey wel deive fom studying Plato's wods o even simpy eading them attentivey. am e minded hee of C S ewis' Scrwtap Lttr A devil caled Scewtape" gown wise" though extensive expeience ipats instuctions and advice to his nephew inexpeienced in the ways of humans n ettes expessng a philosophica anthopoogy atogethe as huoous as t is pofound but
4
"DIVINE MADNESS
of couse, uned usde down One of Scewae's lees deals wh sudyn he ancens Ony he leaned ead old books, and we he uned demons of hel] hae now so deal wh he leaned ha hey ae of all men he leas lkely o acque wsdom by don so We hae done hs by nculcan he Hsocal Pon of Vew Pu bey, he Hsocal Pon of Vew means ha when a leaned man s esened wh any saemen n an ancen auho, he one queson he nee asks s whehe s ue He asks who nuenced he ancen we, and how fa he saemen s conssen wh wha he sad n ohe books, and wha hase n he we's deelomen, o n he eneal hsoy of houh, lusaes, and how aeced lae wes, and how ofen was msundesood (secaly by he leaned man's own colleaues) , and so foh Bu as soon as I, n ew of Plao's commens on he s fom of enhusasc benbesdeoneself, ose he queson whehe somehn s saed hee ha descbes he ealy of a suaon; whehe somehn comes o he foe hee ha n acual fac s found n he ealy of he human essencehen mmedaely becomes mossble o conne Plao's esmon meel o the hso of Geek
PRO PHECY
15
religion Such a quesion righ away sweeps aside he arrw catgry of being merely somehing of he pas. For example alhough he modeday hrisian has encounered he Sibyl in he sequence D !ra, righ in he middle of he hurch's [former] funeral liurgy where she is menioned in one breah wih he biblical king David boh propheicay esiing o he caasrophic end of hisory (tt Davd cu Sbyl/a), his connecion may si be aken as a quain owery ornamen wihou any paricular implicaion. In order o address seriously he quesion of he ruh of i all we have o ranslae Plao's words and meaning more resoluely ino our own menal framework. Incidenally here does exis such a ranslaion" daing from prehrisian imes ino a language closer o ours: he language of he Romans Lain. In he sixh book of he Ad, which conains a descripion of Aeneas consuling he Sibyl of umae he tha aa is indeed presened as sacred renzy": n e enormous cavern o umae perforaed a hundred imes and having a hundred mouhs ha carry wih rushing voices" he responses of he Sibyl here she herself sood a e enrance and as she spoke
6
DVN MADNSS
..neither her face Nor hue went untransformed, nor did her hair Stay neaty bound; her breast heaved, her wild heart Grew arge with passionTaer to their eyes And sounding now no onger ike a mortal Since she had fet the god's power breathing near Apolo Pulled her up raging, or ese whipped her on, Digging the spurs beneath her breast.
Even so, wold not yet call ths a tanslaton nto tems famla to s nstead, ths s accomplshed thogh one sngle wod sed by Vgl t appeas n the rst verses of the same book, whee t s sad abot the Sbyl that the Delan god Apollo beathed nto her the chness of the spt" . The name fo ths breath", of cose, s prat, nspraton! n efeence to ths wod we ae now able to take eon foun n e Pon Doue Phae dru and efomlte t n contempoary and moe specc tems Hman nate s so postoned wthn ts exstental ealm as to be essentally open towad the sphee of the dvne an s constted n sch a way tht, on the one hand, he needs o be forced thoh nspraon, out of the sef
PRO PHEY
7
sucency of hs thnngthrough an event therefore that les beyond hs dsposng power an event that comes to hm only n the form of some thng unpredctable On the other hand t s pre csely n ths oss of ratonal soveregnty that man gans a wealth above all of ntuton lght trth and nsght nto realty all of whch would otherwse reman beyond hs reach ere we are explc tly loong not at the results of human genus bt at the eects of a derent a lofter a dvne power . Such overwhelmng nspraton s possble not only n the abstract t really happens every now and then. Whenever t does happen t happens n such a way that the phr} selfpossesson as well as everythng mpled by t s beng forcefully sus pended no matter how much the dgnty of the human person s ordnarly based on t nspraton as an event occurs n the form of bengbesdeoneself a thia a nia hence that nspraton le wse appears to the mlttude" as madness t s mmedately obvous that such a statement nvtes dscsson of the etaphyscal structre of man' natre whch les all but beyond the grasp of scence" e who would dscuss the truth of ths dscourse has to be prepared to declare hs ultmate convctons That s to put t brey and n blnt -
!8
"DIVINE MADNE
erms a hrsan confroned wh such saemens and pursun a phlosophcal nerpreaon of Plao, canno easly escape he necessy of ncludn n he dscusson eachns of he hrsan fah hese eachns, for her par, clearly aree wh Plao ha, ndeed, he lmaons of mans naure, as well as s nne openness and capacyboh oeherare manfes n he occurrence of revelaory dvne nspraon he queson remans, of course, wheher hs areemen mh also end o he specc ways and means of revelaon and nspraon ould a hrsan heoloan really accep Plaos alk of enhusasc benbesdeoneself or even hs alk of aa, no maer how ofen be declared a "dv madness"? How, n any case, does hrsan heoloy conceve of revelaon and nspraon as an even happenn o he rs recpen? I have o adm ha I epeced, compared wh Plaos descrpon of he ta aa, an answer much more composed and, as were more de ached, more raonally unmpassoned Bu hen I encounered, o my surprse, almos lerally he same descrpon of he revelaory even as found n Plaos Padru, n homas Aqunas, whom no one could accuse of a lack of sobre
PRO PHECY
9
Thomas dscusses the nstance of evelaton and nspaton unde the headng of prphta and raptu The vey tem raptu, havng a clealy dscenble connotaton of somethng ntusve and volent, s obvously not fa emoved fom tha aa Ths connecton s conmed mmedately by Scholast csm's denton, quoted by Thomas beng lfted up though a hghe powe, away fom those thngs that petan to natue, and towad those thngs that ae aganst natue" ( d ud t ctra atura) Pophecy as well, seen as an event n the mnd of the one who expeences evelaton and nspaton, s descbed by Thomas n tems not only of pa but even of falue, gvng way" He asks, fo nstance, whethe prpha s a habtu, belongng to the pophet" lke a possesson, a talent, a skll He answes No, the pophetc lght appeas n the pophet's soul as a ecepton o a eetng engav ng Pophecy, nsofa as t efes to the seeng on the pat of the pophet, s n a cetan sense admttedly a mental acton but n efeence to the lght that s eceved suddenly and n the manne of somethng passng though (lke the sun's lght n the atmosphee), t s somethng eceved In the pocess of pophetc evelaton, the pophet's mnd s beng moved by the Hol Spt
20
DIVINE MADNESS
le an nstrument that submts . . . ." And naly t s an entrely unexpected dscovery that Thomas the accepted model of the most unmpassoned ratonalty declares cognton durng sleep to be more powerful as regards receptvty than the cog nton of one who s awaethus postonng hmself by one sngle surprsng step squarely on Plato's sde. Ratonalsm however because t dstorts the entre realty of human lfe necessarly nds both thners equally ncomprehensble and naccessble.
''CATHARSIS
T of divinely caused beingbeside oneself discussed by Socrates has been characterized as cathartic mania" Any comparison and connec tion with certain tenets we ourselves deem true is possible of course, only if we hod an opinion at all regarding the topic considered here At rst sight we seem not to have such an opinion What then is meant by the term cathartic mania"? First of all, what does the text say? The passage in the ialogue Phadru reads thus: Again, for hose sore pagues and dire aicions, which o ae aware ineed in ceain famiies a he wraih of some od ancesra ui, mania devised a remed afer i had enered ino he hear of he proper persons and o he proper persons reveaed is secres; for i ed for refuge o praer and services of he ods, and hence oaining puricaions
22
DIVINE MADNE
n tonng rtes me ts possessor wole or tme present n tme to come, by sowng m te wy o escpe rom te evls tt encompsse m, only e were rgtly renze n possesse
On this point, the iteate on Plato oes only some etemey meage and stammeing wods. Wilamowitz candidly declaes this to be not ndestood" as yet Nowhee did I nd an eplanation, and I am at a oss myself." Of cose, one cod popose simpy to disegad this matte altogethe if it wee not athe veing that we shold be so ttely incapable of ecognizing as meaninl, that is, as connected to eality, a thesis pononced by Plato with obviosy seios intent. his wod be distbing not so mch becase of the gap in intepetation, iking to the histoian and phiologist, bt athe becase we wold have eason to sspect that we have developed a blind spot as egads eality, if we in factconfonted with sch a specic pononce met, whh to evdty demd dm do ot ndestad at al what he is taking abot. At this point, two qestions shold be asked. Fist Looking at o cent total knowedge of man, is thee in t something that coesponds to what Plato caled those soe plages and die acto", ooted ome od et t "
CATHARSIS
23
Some ranslaions (eg K Hildebrand) also say owing from an ancien crse"; a, indeed means boh gil and (divine) wrah The mos appropriae erm combining boh elemens may be he German Vrhg [doom] The second qesion: Looking a or knowledge of man is here in i somehing ha corresponds o wha Plao says abo he divinely appoined aa, which he declares o be alon able o relieve man of sch an ancien brden Oy if sch corresponding elemens eis wil we be a all prepared o ndersand wha Plao is alking abo here; above al ony hen can we apply Plao's discorse o hose noions we orselves deem re oncerning he rs qesion we shold recognize a once ha he ailmens brdens aicions plages and miseries menioned by Plao are obviosly no or no primarily o be seen as physical inrmiies serings and wonds b raher as br dens of he sol which oppress and darken he hear One conemporary commenary on he Phadru Daoge hods that Pato probaby was hinng of somehing like the sory of Oreses who is haned by he avenging specers he Eud [rinnyes] B i is no only in he ragedies of antiqiy ha we enconer hese Eud The odernday
24
DVN MADNSS
spectator can watch them appear in T S. liot's Faly Runn, as the chorus stepping out of the window alcoes of a contemporary nglish country manor : And weter in Argos or England, Tere are certain inexible laws Unalterable, in te nature of music
It is of course less important to nd agreement in ocabulary than in the matter itsel Regarding the subject matter here we should recall for instance the ndings of modern psychoanalysis. These ndings indeed did not bring to light any totally independent and new insights On the contrary they simply conrmed to a large extent those things already nown and uttered since ancient days by renowned authorities on the human heart and in sapiential traditions of nations. These ndigs con rm this too: In the life of the soul there are indeed burdens tribulations and ailments that can be shown to ow from ancient doom in which the aicted idiiduals themseles as well as preceding generations are caught up in some unspecied participation and in which moreoer a certain inner corruption impossible to dene coincides with an inescapable ad fateful external destiny In short any
cATHARSS
2
reecton on the totaty of mans exstence wll even today ead to the nsght that such burdens owng from such roots are rea Furthermore ths nsght suggests that man s unable to free hmself from these burdens by eans of mere ratona technque that, on the contrary, such an attempt would render the burden even more burdensome Lberaton can occur only through a process of healng characterzed, at least negatvely, by the necessty for the one desrng healng to relnqush temporarly the steerng wheel of ratonal selfcontrol and selfpossesson ndeed t s not some busly pursued actvty that s here n order but, on the contrary, a wngness to submt to beng led and aectedfor nstance, by delvng to the doman of the unconscous and of dreams Plato was no doubt aware that Asclepus healng art orgnally had a magca character, oerng the supplcant advce and healng n dreams A dream, however s somethng we do not orgnate ourseves We suer a drea" hs sentence s not an ancen ponouncemen s auo s none ote than C. G Jung Le Plato, he too mentons te necessty for the sae of heang and restoraton, of abandonng oneself to a state of bengbesdeoneself of mi; and he quotes hee the ancent
2
DIVIE MADESS
oracle Let o of what you possess and so you shal receve' he ift of receivn, then, has been iven the same name in modern psycholoy as n Platonc teachn the ift of cleansin, cathar Aanst ths attempt to draw an analoy beeen Plato on the one hand and modern psychoanalyss on the other, one could certanly obect as follows o matter how much the lberaton of the subconscious in modern parlance mht resemble the benbesdeoneself of the Platonic aa, the decsve pont for Plato conssts n ts ben a dvly caud benbesdeoneself, a tha aa and reardn ths the theory of the subconscous does not utter a word As much as ths objection s usted in vew of the eplcitly declared or, rather, eplctly undeclared poston of modern psychoanalyss, would try to counter it wth this question nasmuch as the soul tself certainly knows its wants and needs, does not ths sou's eistential foundation, lyin beyond any ratonal calculaton, at least slently ntmate the possblty of a superatural, divinely created orin also of the healin process? an, by lettn o of hmself, does not at al abandon hmef nto the realm of what is merely irratonal. He enters the hean darkness of his own divne orin.
"cATHAS S
27
One more aspect should be mentioned here. Plao if he reay had in mind the story of Oreses the matricide could have understood the burden rooted in ancestral guilt" specically as guilt in the literal sense of the word or at least as including such personal guilt n that case his thesis would asser that guilt crime and sin canno be undone and that we cannot get rid of such burdens simply through a rational program of inner discipline or through some external regimen no matter how sublime Gult is wiped out by means of the tha aa Contemporary man however f he s a Christian (once again here the ultimate existential roots have to be brought into the discourse and not only when agreement prevails but also in the face of disagreement!) can hardly avod taing Plato's side and speaing of his own conviction whch liewise asserts that gult can be absolved only through ta, through repentance and converson Mta means rst that one surrenders and aban ons t ssny o mn tt ms tot ndependence Mtna s precisey the opposite of the attitude dened by Seneca and spanning the centuries tht t s th frit of phosophy never to regret anything" Second the noton of ta
"D V MADSS
impies ha sch conversion can never be fy decided by a mere ac of he wi; raher, i is besowed on man as a divine favor.
POESY
TH TH D R M of dvnely prompted beng besdeoneself dscussed by Socrates s the poetc aa, the ecstasy nspred by the uses and sezng upon a tender and vrgn soul strrng t to raptur ous frenzy" And a clear note of cauton s added mmedately Genune and grand poetry s not possble uness born out of dvne madness Whosoever wshes to be a poet by hs own devces wll never experence the blessed ntaton The poetry of those who are reasonable and sensble fades nto obscury before the poetry of those who spea n the ecstasy of bengbesdeonese ow can ths econton o poetr stand sde by sde wth the condemnaton found n the Rpubc, whch would ban omer and Traged from the deal commonwealth" Ths obsevaton (by Wlamowtz) appear agan and agan n the lt 9
3
"D V N MADNSS
erature on Plato in dierent variations. There may be no real problem lurking here at a along, as in the ialogue M, which was written much earlier than the Rpublc, Plato distinguished between divine poets" and those who have no claim to this title Among those other, nondivine, poets, he evidently counts also omer, because omer attributes ungodly things to the gods Genuine poesy, then, originates with divine inspiration it ows from a condition of the soul closer to a state of beingbesideoneself than possessingoneself and this beingbesideoneself is not the result of wine, poison, or some other drug but is caused by some higher power Poesy, if it is true poesy, ows from enthusiasm" in the strict sense of the word Can we moderns look at this Platonic thesis in any way other than merely historicay? After we consider everything we know scienticaly about psychological requisites and other relevant conditions for poetic creation and artistic production as such, can we still seriously assert that poetry ows from divine inspiration? n this context, we" does not mean simply contemporary ma in general but, above all, the Christian. Can a Christian accept a thesis that puts poesy
PSY
3
on the same level as revelaton and nspraton? In a bogaphy on Rle we read: Rle s the quntessental gure of a poet n the smple sense of beng a vessel for dvne nspraton One necessarly has to beleve ths n order to do justce to Rle" You do not have to lac a poetc nclnaton after a or be speccally unsympathetc toward Rle to consder such words as at the least romantc exaggeraton f not smply blasphemy And yet does not Plato say the very same thng? The reecton here ponts out the sad decency of our not havng avalable any theologcal or phlosophcal doctrne on the nature of the ne arts whch would provde the framewor for dscussng Plato's thess n more adequate crtcal terms Such a theology or phlosophy of poetcs ncdentally mght have to be reconstructed ever anew accordng to the derent sprtual condtons of each epoch and ths would probably turn out to be le theology and phlosophy n genera a tas becom ng ever more dcut Reinhod Schneider shorty before his death
stated that he never ceased searchng for the ature of poesy but that n hs experence as the years go by t becomes more and more dcut to d an answer" To purue ths queston ere s of course
32
"D V MADSS
mpossble At ths pont of our Phad nterpretaton however we must emphasze one partcular aspect In spte of all scentc" analyses of poetry; n spte of all the supercal popular success of manfest pseudopoetry (no matter wheter t presents tself as lterary art or poltcally engaged propaganda or entertanment") n spte of the fact that we no longer have any llusons when we consder ersonages such as Brecht or Bennn short wthn the framewor of our spontaneous atttude towrd poetry there remans nevertheless one element entrely unaected an element clearly tendng to sde wth Plato and hs thess. Ths element obv ously cannot be attaced and elmnated ether through our acquantance wth degenerate poetry or through any dose of analytcal and caustc crt cs In all the reectve medtaton on poetry even as ts result ts element every now and then coms to the fore. Ths fact ndeed must most rcefully be called to mnd to prevent us from gvng n to our mmedate reacton of tang Platos thought as merely hstorcal and thus dsmssng t. Ths partcular element s attested hundreds of tmes n the wors of such poetc masters as Nvals or Hlderln It s so selfevdent tat we see no need to beabor t at any length. It s approprate at
P SY
33
any rate to consder the unromantc precson of the foowng sentence n derlns Comments on Antgone: t s of great benet to the sou workng n secret that at the heght of conscousness t moves away from conscousness But t s altogether more surprsng to hear a ratona thnker such as essng decare about hs own creatons that t woud be too much of an honor to ca them poetry and hmsef poet: Tht lvng sprng do not fel t nsd msef Smlar utterances came from Adalbert Stfter aways so eveheaded he says that at no tme dd [he] regard [hs] own wrtngs as poety nor would he ever presume to ca them poety There are vey few poets n ths word The mpressve reasm of Goethe the great wrter of etters s not content wth such merey negatve characterzatons e oers al but Patonc formuatons: The poet s n fact out of hs senses and n keepng wth the humbe truth he has to admt that hs condton s atogether a trance between wakng and dreamng n eect do not ny that many a thng appears to me e a dream As the man prerequste for true poesy he sts an overwhelmng nature an rresstbe urge an nsstent passon s not al of ths smpy another descrpton of the
34
"D V MADSS
same poetic aa discussed by Plato m his Pha dru? nd yet, there is no need to dig into the past. Een a poet such as Gottfried Benn, who clearly loed to destroy, with a heay hand and with his Berlinesque diction, any romantic atmosphere (a poem ery rarely comes about; a poem is made"), een Benn is completely aware of the compulsion inoled in poetic creation, a compulsion that can neither be controlled rationally nor aoided. Many eplicit remarks to the contrary notwithstanding he epresses in specic words the ery elements of the tha aa, the beingbesideoneself rooted at least beyond the human sphere The essence of poetry is perfection and fascination . . . that such perfection eists in and of itself, this do not afrm." t sounds rather grotesque, really, when Ma ychner de clares, in his epilogue to Gottfried Benns Slctd Lttr . . . his eening ritual of walking to the neihbohood taen, with its owl popuous one liness, resuted in some kind of incantation, when he totally absorbed into hiself became a mystic, and his beer stein a chaice." Neethees, think this is probably an accurate description of the inner reality fter al, this is an expeence that might happen to anbod at the er moment we are touched
PSY
5
and oved by the voice of genuine poesy m the creations of Gottfried Benn, or Franz Kaa, or Georges Bernanos, we now that it is not the two insurance agents Kaa and Bernanos to who we ascribe any such authority The cichstae by nowof saying according to the poet" is not entirey istaen! Of course, who woud this poet" be, if not the deratoogist Dr Benn? We wi certainy not go so far as to cai a divine voice speaing sipy and directy through the ediu of the poet And yet, woud we consider ourseves to be copetey correct if we ared that the intense eotiona power of great poetry is entirey without any connection to the utiate, aebracing divine foundation of the word? This precisey is the question Pato chaenges us to face when he speas of the poets divine mni.
EROS
FIN FINALLY, oc ocA AS S PAKS of the erotc experence
through whch we humans f crcumstances are rghtly ordered and favorable can also encounter and expect somethng healng enrchng even dvne hs means not that every nfatuaton between any Jac and Jll s eo ipso a dvne gft but that n every erotc emoton there s contaned the possbl y the c o ntext ntext and the promse of s o m ethng reachng nntely beyond ts mmedate sgn c a n c e Ye Yett man wll truly truly parta partaee of the proms pr omsee d gift gift oly oly on o n c ond on dto tonn that that when wh en rec re c evng evng the th e mpetus born of emoton he accepts and sustans t n tn pur n t ontet te pote o corrupton adulteraton dsmuaton pretenson and pseudoactualzaton le dangeroul closeas they do do nci n cide denta ntally lly n the case of the th e prophetc prophetc the cathartc and the poetc mania. 3
"DIVINE MADNESS
Much wose, of couse, and moe hopeless than an honest No" is a faked Yes", when pehaps the semblance of inne emotion is being deceptively upheld, pechance even deceiving one's own think i ng, as if thee th ee wee ee enc en c hantme han tmennt with be b e auy auy wheeas in ealiy thee is nothing but totay unemotional, calculating caving fo pleasue Nonetheless, Plato holds that fo the tue love a gift awaits that is entiely compaable to what man eceives in divine evelation, in catar, and in poetic inspiation Goethe, afte having discussed, in Dctug ud Wart [Po [P o ety and and uth uth]] , his his own eotic eoti c epeiepe iences, states the same he sincee loving yeanings of uncoupted youth take quite a spiitual tun Natue seems so to aange things that one gende would sensibly peceive in the othe whateve is good and beautiful hus when I beheld this maiden, when my heat yeaned fo he, a whole new wold of beauty and ecellence unfolded befoe me" t is an evil thing when lustful desie comes befoe eotic emotion, suocating it! As soon as lust intudes, love cannot claim pema nence"so wote And Gide in his diay o make this point evident is the intent of the discouse that now foows in Plato's Padru At the
OS
9
outset however he states that ths dscourse wl deed soud covcng to the wse yet uncovcg to the clever" The Greek term employed here s d6, whch our dctonares s redered as dreadful terrble tremendous" as well as power ful ecent exceptonal" Obvously somethng s meant here that s at one and the same tme admrable astoshg ad terrg; and such ca deed be ascrbed justably to the purely ratoal md" A clever man Socrates states wl always cosder unconvcng the noton that true lovers ther bengbesdethemselves are promsed ad mght receve a dvne gft But then Socrates starts al over agan ad the them th emee of Eros" Eros" seems see ms at rst rst to get hopelessly hopele ssly lost lost Before anythng else" he says we must vestgate the truth wth regard to the nature of the s oul by observg ts condtons and powers" Someone else el se had ha d once onc e begu begun a dsco dscou urse on Eros the same sam e manernamely Arstophanes Plato's Syp siu: Before anythng else" that s before you ca say anythg substantal about Eros you must kow the natu nature re of man and reect reect on o n al al that that has aected ec ted t (pathata) To aswer the questo rased here can ever be easy Ad Plato's multlayered explaato makes
4
"DIVIE MADESS
use of course of the ancent lore" preservd n the mythcal tradton Thus do begn my demonstraton" we read n Phadru; every sprtual beng s mmortal" The thngs we are famlar wth do not prepare us for Plato's noton of mmortalty whch refers not only to the future but to the past as well The human soulths s hs meanngs not only wthout end but also wthout begnnng agt We are wont to dsregard ths dea for t appears alen to us and outsde our customary thnkng as somethng above all ncompatble wth the Chrstan and Western concept of the human soul. And yet does not the Chrstan doctrne n the end agree wth ths Platonc noton? We too conceve of the sprtual soul as somethng that strctly speakng does not become". The theologcal teachng that the human soul lke every sprtual beng comng nto exstence s drectly created" contans wthout doubt the correct nsght that unlke everythng ese which eveops" and "unfolds, te sou oes not actually orgnate" A geness" of the soul would be nconcevable. Ths thess by the way has a drect contemporary relevance t oes not merely approxmate Plato's concept t obvously expresses the very same thought! This saeness is being underlined here ot
S
for the purpose of forcing it into some modern pertinency but in order to prevent the contemporary student of Plato from thining that such reading eercises perhaps dealt with to the point of weariness are by now ony of historical interest and hence no longer relevant Plato's genius manifests itself in the very fact that his insights cannot easily be dismissed even though their verbal epression may seem questionable They have ept their rele vance and we are unable to replace them with insights more pertinent The same applies to Plato's philosophical dictum that the natural habitat of the soul is the universe of all that eists ven though we do not appropriate Plato's formulation that the soul reigns throughout the entre cosmos" we cannot on the other hand bring ourselves to understand and describe the spirit as anything but an essence whose nature includes eisting within the universal horizon of all there is To be endowed with spirit" means specically this to be dealing with all there is As Thomas Aquinas formulated t: te nature of tis spirit is manifested rst and foremost in its cnvnire cum mni nt (anity with all tat is) Plato tried to gain some insight into the primor dial accidents and fates that befell the soul by
42
"DIVI MAD
employing severa illstrations, which, in the end, al bring ot the same idea that man has lost, throgh his own oense, the perfection originaly reseved for him as part of his spernatra destiny and that, in conseqence, he is now incessanty chasing after the original ideal form The primordial condition, being at the same time the tre goal and end of hman eistence, constittes the object of man's rmmbc as wel as his lgg However, both remembrance and longing can nfold ony if man, be it ever so briey, eaves behind the bsyness of his activities and steps otside the concerns of his workaday world And so, naly, we shal speak of r, the rtc m, the basic form of man's beingbesidehimself occrring specicaly in his enconter with sensal beaty For beaty, specically physica beaty, if man approaches it receptivey, can aect and strike him more than any other vae", can psh him osde e ream o s famr ad coroed environment, otside his neaty eplained world", in which he deems himsef rather condenty at ome, as ike pts it ommon angage inorms s, frtermore, that beaty is above al attractive" Attracted", then, is e who as ost, be it on for a momet, the cam
EROS
43
contentedness of his selfpossession; he is as we say moved" by something elsehe has to sue" al this This state in which al odely familiaity (togethe with one's selfpossession) vanishes Plato descibes again and again with eve new epessions: a desie t soa on wings whie being uttely unable to do so; being beside oneself whie not nowing what is going on; fement estlessness helplessness We also nd athe unpoetic" compaisons; fo instance Socates speas of the uncomfotable condition of a child who is teething The lovesthis we ead in Aistophanes' speech in the Sympium- not now what they ultimately desie of each othe; it is athe evident that thei souls yean fo something othe than the mee pleasues of love This othe" howeve the soul is unable to name: t has only some vague idea about the tue object of its desie and its own eplana tions ae but iddles" At this point something impotant comes into view the dieence beteen desie and love He who desies nows clealy what he wants; at eat he is calculating entiely selfpossessed Yet desie is not the same as love; the one being loved is in a stict sense not the one who is being desied but the one fo whom something is desied He who
44
"DIVIE MADESS
loves in such a nondesiring way, however, does not determine his actions or initiatives al by himself; rather, he is being moved" whe contemplating the beloved. Whatever is being loved most and moves us most, as Plato states, is beauty, for which reason those who love beauty are caled siply lovers". We latterday, enlightened readers of Plato are all too ready to consider such a discourse to be overly emotional, unrealistic, and romantic. Yet I believe this would be a mistae. Plato's discourse is entirely rational; he has no ilusions about the fact that much, if not most, of what generally passes for love" is nothing but desire. He nows that true rapture enticed by beauty occurs only rarely. Plato insists, however, that this rare event alone actualizes the essential purpose of all human encounter with beauty. Few there are who remember . . . the sacred things they once beheld." Nothn evoes ths remebrance more ntensely than beauty; this is a specic characteristic ofbeauty. In its power to lead toward a reality beyond the ere and now, beyond immediate perception, it cannot be compared to anything in this world. Anyone who has some understanding of Plato's philosophy wil now that, in his conception, whatever we eper
ES
45
ence m ths word as rea true and good s but a reecton that s somethng pontng to an arche type not drecty observabe Stl we may encounter embodments of goodness justce or wsdomno matter to what degree of perfecton perhaps n the person of a just ruersuch that t woud be amost mpossbe not to react wth admraton and devo ton Such experences nonetheess do not have the power to enrapture us they do not transport us beyond the here and now eauty aone can accompsh ths ony the encounter wth beauty evoes remembrance and yearnng promptng n the one so touched the desre to get away from the course of all those thngs that usualy absorb the human mnd hs dstnctve essence of beauty s descrbed by Pato on two leves the eve of otherworldly experence (beauty beyond" ths space and tme) and the leve of the present exstence ( beauty here and now) Plato s obvousy unwng to conceve of the utmate perfecton n store for man n terms other than the encountr wth dvne buty, not as encounter wth the dea of the good" or of beng" or of anythng ese To lustrate ths pont we have ony to quote a few nes from Dotma 's speech n the Syrposiu: Toward ths end of hs
"DVE MADESS
jour ney, he wll see a wondrous vson, beautful n ts nature "; beautful not n the guse of a face or of hands or any other porton of the body ", but as prmordal beauty, estng ever n sngular ty of form ndependent by tself . . ! Are you not convnced that at that pont he s destned to become the beloved of the gods"? And n the alogue Phadrus we read: At that tme" (lngustcally, ths epresson denotes the past, ncludng the prmordal past, as well as the future, ncludng the eschatologcal future), at that tme, we, for our part, followed n ths band of Zeus and beheld that blssful sght and spectacle, and were ntated nto that mystery, whch by eternal rght s pronounced the most blessed of all mysteres . beauty, beheld at that tme n ts shnng splendor" Even on the level of our earthly estence, beauty s somethng ncomparably eceptonal. It s the one thng most emnently vsble; we perceve beauty thouh ou eyes, the most lhtlled of ou senses Pulchrum s qud visu beautful s that whch pleases the eye of the beholder. Ths s a straghtforwad answer; nethe a scent, nor a taste, nor anythn tanble, not even a specal sound can n the strct sense, be called a thng of beauty" No other sptual real comes before ou eyes wth such
EROS
7
mmedate vsblty. Wsdom, for nstance, cannot be seen" Plato adds here, f wsdom were as vsble to our eyes as beauty s, then a fearsome love would ngh be enkndled", a love apt to upset and destroy our exstental structure, to transport us n total rapture outsde our earthly exstence. Nether wsdom nor anythng else worthy of love but only beauty was destned to be most vsble and most lovable at the same tme". Plato, to repeat, does not hold that beauty moves man's ner core nevtably and, as t were, automat caly, wthout fal; not even that ths happens wth regulartyhe s very much aware that beauty may well awaken an rreverent, selsh desre Only those who open up to remembrance wll be shaken to ther core. Lke gentle ran passng through the wndows of the eyes, beauty prompts the soul to sprout wngs agan, to soar to the dwelng of the gods, from where the soul orgnated. n ths very experence, n the opnon of Plato's Socrates, the nature of ros s experenced and actvated For ths reason o the gos ca os no e wnge one but te wnggver", an expresson Plato quotes from an ancent poem. he essence of beauty, therefore, f wat has been sad here s true precsely does not consst n pro
DIIE MADESS
v dng satsfacton, lke somethng that grates" , no matter how hghly sprtual a gratcaton t may be Goethe, rather surprsngly, captured ths Platonc noton n an admrably succnct sentence: Beauty s not so much a fulllment as rather a promse." In other words, by absorbng beauty wth the rght dsposton, we experence, not gratcaton, satsfacton, and enjoyment but the arousal of an expectaton; we are orented toward somethng notyethere" He who submts properly to the encounter wth beauty wl be gven the sght and taste not of a fullment but of a promsea promse that, n our bodly exstence, can never be fulled Ths last formulaton n turn closely echoes a quotaton found n Paul Claudel's wrtngs: Woman s the promse that can never come to pass: ths very fact consttutes my grace" Claudel's statement, as wel as Goethe's, seems to express accurately the thouht of Plato who holds that the deep erotc emoton ted to the encounter wth beauty s a form of hia mania, the godgven bengbesdeoneself, nsofar as the actual occurrence does not produce a fulllment"any satsfacton n dwellng here and nowbut instead entces our nner exstental space to reach for some nnte ful
EROS
49
llment not avalable here and now except by way of yearnng and remembrance He who n contemplaton of earthly beauy remembers the one true beauty agan sprouts wngs . . " and thus the true lover long before our common exle has lapsed s trasported nto communon wth the gods And ths ndeed s sad not only of the lover but of the phlosopher! Ths connecton at rst sght rather puzzlng s found also n the Sympsium Ths s not the place to dscuss t n detal yet at the very least we must notce that Plato here s not thnkng at all of somethng noncommttal and poetc on the contrary he envsons somethng very specc. Lovers and phlosophers are connected by specal tes nsofar as both erotc exctement and genune phlosophcal quest trgger a omentum that n ths nte exstence can never be stlled n an encounter wth sensual beauy f man opens up totally to the object of the encounter a passon s born that n the realm of the senses whch at rst would seem to be the only adequate realm can never be satsed. The same holds true for the rst moment of phlosophcal wonder the wonder that rses from our contact wth realy") a queston arses that n our nte worldwhch may mean for example wth the tools of scence"wll also
50
"DIINE MADNESS
never receve an answer. The phlosopher and the true lovernether wl nd fullment ecept through a dvne favor f, n retrospect, you consder the core of what has been sad, you may be tempted to conclude that al ths, whle admttedly mpressve, s at the same tme an deal" concept that hardly apples to the realy of any lvng and breathng human beng. t s pontless to argue wth such an mpresson. verythng depends on how one dees human realy" and a genune" human beng. ncdentaly, Plato does not n fact mae a seres of apodctc assertons. He smply descrbes a possblty Hs own convcton, however, s clear Man has the capacy to eperence n erotc emoton, accepted and sustaned wth puryand possbly n no other conteta unque promse pontng to a fullment more deeply satsng than any fulllment n the realm of the senses. And ths, too, s asserted n Platos haus as ndsputable act ony when ths happens has the true meanng o eros" become manfest. How lttle danger there s for Plato to stray and lose touch wth real lfe s shown, n the haus, n the closng passages of Socrates' speech Ths tet s so astonshng that lamowtz hmself s at a loss or words to epress hs surprse these closn pas
ROS
sages he says smply represent a cotradcton to everythng Plato has otherwse taught A close scrutny of the text shows that Socrates ( Plato) speas of four derent experences n whch ros s gured or dsgured The rst form he mentons s the brutalty of the many who desre nothng but pleasure n the most vulgar sense of the word No trace here of romantczng and dsregardng realty! In second place he dscusses the rened sensualty of a ratonal hedonsm whch n essence ams at pleasure alone The thrd form s an s that renounces pleasure beng love's heroc fullness and ts most blessed realty Those whose love s of ths nd wll upon ther death leave ths earthly lfe as f on wngs and wthout oppressng burden" they wll be able to rse at once aloft to the dvne sphere agan to partcpate n the heavenly processon and the great banquet of the gods Most astonshng however s the Pars' ds cusson of te fourt form of ros Socrates speas of love that s not entrely contnent yet at the same tme s not mere cravng but true lovng yearnng enchantment selfgvng and noncalculatng rap ture Those possessed by ts nd of love we are
"DIVINE MADNESS
told will gain no mean victory trophy thanks to their maa, their readiness to rise above their own selshness. When they die the soul will leave the body not with perfect wings but at least with sprouting ones Because the soul had already set foot on the path of the heavens it will not get lost in darkness. Most clearly this is meant in an eschatological sense; the notion of salvation" is involved; and salvation" takes place onlybut also always in circumstances where true love is present. Cast into perdition into darkness is that form ofration ality" which greedily calculating assigns earthly and imperfect things to the soul thus breeding in it only vulgarity". he learned literature on Plato asks in amazement where else in the Platonic Dialogues we can nd such leniency toward the weaknesses of the esh". his question I think entirely misses the substance of the discussion. he point is not that Plato would he eue here emm rom the wee of the esh. Rather it is stated that such weakness can be compensated even transformedthrough the winggiing power of true love. Modern man a Christian especially may at rst nd it rather strange that the powers attributed to rue love"mely the abilty to remember" and
OS
53
the winggvg capacity o f eros eading bac t o the dweling of the godsshould reside in such coseness to what is physical sensua even bioogi ca And yet this Patonic thought is not reay foreign to Christianity's traditiona moral notions on the contrary we nd there its cear parale Thoas Aquinas is equay convinced that neither eevated" nor spiritua" loveneither dilci, resuting from a conscious choice of the wi nor caias, based on divine gracecan become a iving reality without the passi amis, that is without the sou's being moved by a concrete sensory presence. True this view does not necessarily impy that elevated and spiritua ove is no more than the progression or subimation" of the erotic passi without doubt Thomas woud insist rather that an eevated and spiritua ove is capabe of puriing and controing this passi amis. Stil this great magis of Christianity not unie Pato is of the opinion (dicut to expain to a Christian" consciousness prone to embrace Manichaeism and spiritualism) that caitas, when cut o from the vita root of the passi amis, can neither come about as a truy hman act nor endure in iving expression This conviction is by no means ony of theoreti ca iportance for a conceptua dnition of human
4
"DIVIE MADESS
natue. ndeed, t nds ts clea ecaton tme and agan n the expeences of the psychoanalytcal pofesson. Such expeences, fo nstance, eeal that the aggesse suppesson of a peson's potental fo sensual, eotc emotons makes loe u mpossble and also suocates dilti and rit Smlaly, the ntoleance, the hashness, and the stubbonness often found n people who clam to be ey sptual could well be the esult of an unnatual suppesson of the i mri Man, een n hs most sublme sptualty, s always an ncanate beng. hs bodly ealty, whch makes each peson ethe a man o a woman, een on the hghest leel of sptual lfe, does not consttute smply a bae and a lmtaton; t s at the same tme the beautful wellspng of all human actty On ths, homas Aqunas and Plato thooughy agee One othe dscepancy, much dscussed, between Plato's concept of r and what the hstan sees as the uh us ou o be, whe cose examned, of no consequence Platos noton of r, t s sad, amounts n ths end to nothng moe than a selshness that ams to ench ad sats the self, whle the hstan dea of rit and g, n con tast, means a loe that s geeous, unselsh, and v o su such cos, se eady
EROS
55
an almost nadmssble smplcaton nvtes ready challenges from both sdes of the queston For one ros, ascendng to the contemplaton of archetypal beauty wll also n Plato's concepton be trans formed nto an atttude that leaves far behnd all selsh desres and s most approprately called a form of worshp" The concluson of Dotma's dscourse n the Smposum can hardly be nterpreted derently bove all moreover t s questonable whether man s at all capable of a totally unselsh" love Chrstan theology too denes the hghest form of caras as that state n whch God s loved as the source of all blss Such blss however whch ultmately s the quest of all love s nothng other than the nal quencng of man's most profound thrst Man s by nature a beng that thrsts and yearns and not only because he moves n the world of the senses" as Kant has t but precsely nsofar as he s sprt To be so uselsh" as to be ready to renounce the ultmate fulllment eterna blss s ry mo o us u w as homas qunas has formulated many tmes s uable 10f to desre such blss
CONCLUSION
I S EASY to see that our dscusson here covers questons of strng relevance To apprecate ths pont one has only to focus on a certan understandng of man that already appears on the horzon of our possbltes a type of man who says: We do not need any supernatural answers; we ourselves tae care of any psychologcal probems that cal for ree any art" that nether satses a specc need even f ths need s only entertanment nor serves the potca and technoogca control of the world s not wecome; and above al sexualty must not be hndered n ts expressons or dealzed romantcally t s qute event that the present te especay cres out for a eener awareness of the Socratc Patonc wsdom as scusse n ths essay It cres out for resstance to the attempt an the temptaton to estabsh the autocratc rule of man who deludes 5
"D V NE MADNESS
hmsef ha he possesses soveegn powes ove he wod and ove hmsef and hus squandes hs ea esena pamony Such pamony s acheved and peseved ony hough a wngy acceped openness openness fo dvne eveaon, fo he saluay pan of cthr, fo he ecoecng powe of he ne as, fo he emoona shock bough abou by r and crt n sho, hough he aude ooed n he myse ous epeence ha Pao called th m
View more...
Comments
