More on Dionysos
Feb. 11th, 2009 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
endymions_bowerPlato quotes an important fragment of Pindar at Meno 81b. I mentioned this previously in passing, but I want to return to it.
The fragment states that “from whomsoever Persephone shall accept requital for ancient wrong, the souls of these she restores in the ninth year to the upper sun again; from them arise glorious kings and men of splendid might and surpassing wisdom, and for all remaining time are they called holy heroes amongst mankind,” (trans. W.R.M. Lamb).
Now, I addressed already the issue of what the “ancient wrong” is; I think it’s reasonable enough to identify it with the Titans’ murder of the Dionysos child. Indeed, even if the evidence for this reading wasn’t strong enough for philological purposes, it is more than justified theologically, because theologically one could accept that there are actual, particular ‘wrongs’ in question for each soul, but that these are, on the symbolic level, all one and the same ‘wrong’, which is the murder of Dionysos.
What I’d like to do here, however, is to move beyond the shallow ‘original sin’ understanding of this myth, toward the Platonic reading. For a Platonist, the primary signficance of this mytheme would not be moral. Rather, its moral significance follows from its ontological dimension. What does this myth say about the being of the soul?
The ‘fragmentation’ of the soul posited by the myth is not pathological: it’s about the differentiation of the soul’s faculties. But there is a form of integration which is an aim for the soul: the virtuous person becomes a unit from out of many (Rep. 443e). Those Persephone restores to the light of day are special on account of their superior degree of psychic integration. In this respect, each one of them is Dionysos, dismembered and then resurrected from their best part, the pure heart held in trust by Athena during all the vicissitudes of mortal being. This is what it is to have reclaimed their Dionysian self.
One question I ponder is whether myths ever actually denote a pathological state of the soul. The Platonic interpretation of the punishments inflicted in Tartaros, for example, is that, instead of sufferings the Gods inflict upon souls, they signify states of the soul that are, in effect, their own punishments. But that doesn’t mean that they are extraordinary ‘punishments’. The states of the souls depicted as being punished in Tartaros do not have to be regarded as post-mortem, either. For Platonists, Hades is the demiurge of the world of images, that is, this world insofar as this world is taken as a collection of (mere) images of the ideal. Zeus is the demiurge of the world of ideas, hence of all that of which the things in Hades’ realm are images, including souls themselves according to their highest mode of being. Thus in the Odyssey (11.601-3), Herakles’ image resides in Hades’ realm, while he ‘himself’ (autos) resides in Olympos. Poseidon, on the other hand, is the demiurge of the world of soul as world of motion, the soul neither as image nor ideal but as process; this is the world in which the Odyssey itself takes place. And so in a sense this is an analysis of any being at any time. Take an offering, for instance, such as a piece of fruit: on the plane of Hades, as mere flesh, it is dead already; on the plane of Poseidon, it is the life it still possesses and the lives to which it is joined; on the plane of Zeus, it is an idealized offering, expressing its form (species) as well as the intentions behind it.
I think that ultimately, if one is to respect the fact that no central protagonist in a myth was not the object of at least a local cult, one cannot regard any of the psychical states portrayed in myths as pathological. But at the same time, all of the soul’s pathologies can be traced back to its fundamental non-identity with itself, which is, however, part of its ideal nature. The soul’s ideality is, in effect, partly non-ideal; this is the message conveyed by the Dionysos myth, too. The soul’s differentiated form only becomes determinate through conflict. Thus in the Republic, Plato arrives at the number of parts, or ‘forms’ (eidê), in the soul through an analysis of the possible conflicts that can occur within a person who remains self-identical (Rep. 436a & sq.). In order to “define the boundary” between the forms in the soul, and “decide whether they are identical with one another,” Socrates invokes the principle of non-contradiction in a special form, namely that
the same thing will never do or suffer [poiein ê paschein] opposites in the same respect in relation to the same thing and at the same time. So that if ever we find these contradictions in the functions of the mind we shall know that it was not the same thing functioning but a plurality.
The tripartition of the soul in the Republic (and by extension, the tripartition of classes in the city) is posited purely from such a conflict analysis; and Plato indicates that further analysis could uncover more soul ‘forms’, because he speaks of the person who has “become one” having “harmonized these three principles [i.e., the desiring, spirited, and intelligent parts of the soul] … and all others there may be between them,” (Rep. 443e), i.e., as though the soul was a continuum, with at least three, but possibly more potentially conflicting sources of action.
It would seem that two deities are primarily responsible (in the Hellenic pantheon; for those who know my approach to things, it goes without saying that a different pantheon will yield a different ontology) for the soul’s formal differentiation, namely Hera and Dionysos, and one deity is primarily responsible for its unification, namely Persephone.
[ … to be continued ]
The fragment states that “from whomsoever Persephone shall accept requital for ancient wrong, the souls of these she restores in the ninth year to the upper sun again; from them arise glorious kings and men of splendid might and surpassing wisdom, and for all remaining time are they called holy heroes amongst mankind,” (trans. W.R.M. Lamb).
Now, I addressed already the issue of what the “ancient wrong” is; I think it’s reasonable enough to identify it with the Titans’ murder of the Dionysos child. Indeed, even if the evidence for this reading wasn’t strong enough for philological purposes, it is more than justified theologically, because theologically one could accept that there are actual, particular ‘wrongs’ in question for each soul, but that these are, on the symbolic level, all one and the same ‘wrong’, which is the murder of Dionysos.
What I’d like to do here, however, is to move beyond the shallow ‘original sin’ understanding of this myth, toward the Platonic reading. For a Platonist, the primary signficance of this mytheme would not be moral. Rather, its moral significance follows from its ontological dimension. What does this myth say about the being of the soul?
The ‘fragmentation’ of the soul posited by the myth is not pathological: it’s about the differentiation of the soul’s faculties. But there is a form of integration which is an aim for the soul: the virtuous person becomes a unit from out of many (Rep. 443e). Those Persephone restores to the light of day are special on account of their superior degree of psychic integration. In this respect, each one of them is Dionysos, dismembered and then resurrected from their best part, the pure heart held in trust by Athena during all the vicissitudes of mortal being. This is what it is to have reclaimed their Dionysian self.
One question I ponder is whether myths ever actually denote a pathological state of the soul. The Platonic interpretation of the punishments inflicted in Tartaros, for example, is that, instead of sufferings the Gods inflict upon souls, they signify states of the soul that are, in effect, their own punishments. But that doesn’t mean that they are extraordinary ‘punishments’. The states of the souls depicted as being punished in Tartaros do not have to be regarded as post-mortem, either. For Platonists, Hades is the demiurge of the world of images, that is, this world insofar as this world is taken as a collection of (mere) images of the ideal. Zeus is the demiurge of the world of ideas, hence of all that of which the things in Hades’ realm are images, including souls themselves according to their highest mode of being. Thus in the Odyssey (11.601-3), Herakles’ image resides in Hades’ realm, while he ‘himself’ (autos) resides in Olympos. Poseidon, on the other hand, is the demiurge of the world of soul as world of motion, the soul neither as image nor ideal but as process; this is the world in which the Odyssey itself takes place. And so in a sense this is an analysis of any being at any time. Take an offering, for instance, such as a piece of fruit: on the plane of Hades, as mere flesh, it is dead already; on the plane of Poseidon, it is the life it still possesses and the lives to which it is joined; on the plane of Zeus, it is an idealized offering, expressing its form (species) as well as the intentions behind it.
I think that ultimately, if one is to respect the fact that no central protagonist in a myth was not the object of at least a local cult, one cannot regard any of the psychical states portrayed in myths as pathological. But at the same time, all of the soul’s pathologies can be traced back to its fundamental non-identity with itself, which is, however, part of its ideal nature. The soul’s ideality is, in effect, partly non-ideal; this is the message conveyed by the Dionysos myth, too. The soul’s differentiated form only becomes determinate through conflict. Thus in the Republic, Plato arrives at the number of parts, or ‘forms’ (eidê), in the soul through an analysis of the possible conflicts that can occur within a person who remains self-identical (Rep. 436a & sq.). In order to “define the boundary” between the forms in the soul, and “decide whether they are identical with one another,” Socrates invokes the principle of non-contradiction in a special form, namely that
the same thing will never do or suffer [poiein ê paschein] opposites in the same respect in relation to the same thing and at the same time. So that if ever we find these contradictions in the functions of the mind we shall know that it was not the same thing functioning but a plurality.
The tripartition of the soul in the Republic (and by extension, the tripartition of classes in the city) is posited purely from such a conflict analysis; and Plato indicates that further analysis could uncover more soul ‘forms’, because he speaks of the person who has “become one” having “harmonized these three principles [i.e., the desiring, spirited, and intelligent parts of the soul] … and all others there may be between them,” (Rep. 443e), i.e., as though the soul was a continuum, with at least three, but possibly more potentially conflicting sources of action.
It would seem that two deities are primarily responsible (in the Hellenic pantheon; for those who know my approach to things, it goes without saying that a different pantheon will yield a different ontology) for the soul’s formal differentiation, namely Hera and Dionysos, and one deity is primarily responsible for its unification, namely Persephone.
[ … to be continued ]
