Immortality and Abstraction

The search for immortality is one of humans oldest and strangest quests. The desire for immortality is universal in humankind; the problem is the way or method to achieve immortality. In order to understand the methods used to achieve immortality ancient Egypt seems the right place to start. Ancient Egypt is a natural starting point for two reasons. The first being that the Egyptians placed a high priority on immortality. The second being that the ancient Egyptians developed and depended on the mythological paradigm more than any other culture. The Egyptian culture was one of the only civilizations that activily resisted the use of reason and logic. For the sake of conciseness instead of using "reasonable" or "logical" thinking we shall use the term"philosophical" thinking. So it shall be mythological thinking versus philosophical thinking. In mythological thinking, objects and activities are connected by physical and emotional resemblences. So let us examine how the Egypteans tried to gain immortality. Everyone knows about teh mummy. The mummy is the embodiement of the ancient Egyptian search for immortality. The Egyptians had not yet seperated the body from the soul. It seems all primal people cone up with the idea of a soul. The reason is that we still seem engaged in activities when we are asleep: dreams. It is the soul that is active in the dream-world. For the Egyptians the dream-world was also the realm of the gods. Now the answer should be obvious of why, the mummy? The Egyptians believed the physical body had to be preserved for the soul to continue to exist. This is of course an example of mythological thinking. A newly dead person resembles a person that is asleep. The connection was made that the soul of the dead man is still active in the dream-world; thus the body must be preserved. Before body and sous could be seperated humans had to reach ahigher level of abstraction. This would happen in classical Greece. So we now move to classical Greece. In classical Greece a revolution happened philosophy was born; people bean to use reason and logic in their thinking instead of myth. A few eccentricl on the Ionian coast decided to try to explain the world by using natural or logical explanations instead of gods and spirits. The Ionian philosophers showe the most lasting contribution a philosopher can make to humanity. All of a philosopher's theories and cnojectures are either going to be invalidated or modified over time. The real lasting contribution a philosopher can make is to raise humankind's level of abstraction. The next figure we must spens some time with is Parmenides of Elea. Parmenides is the person more than any other that is going to divinize abstractions and bring the message to the world. It seems Parminides either was a student or associate of the Pythagorean brothehood, but he rebelled. Now, I am going to enter the realm of speculation, since the truth is lost in the mists of history. It shall be speculation based on evidence, but still speculation. It seems the use of philosophical thinking was the privledge of the few. That it was taught and guarded in brothehoods such as the Pythagoreans. That the use of reason and logic was regarded as a spiritual quest; a quest for truth. Only those judged worthy were admitted and taught, the use of logic and reason: philosophical thinking. In Parmenides poem he is guided and taught by a goddess. It is a goddess that shows Parmenides that through the use of logic we come to the One. Parmenides poem "The Way of Truth" is very much a quest for the divine. So how is the One reached; through the principle of non-counterdiction. For the ancient Greeks all qualities were positive. In other words one would turn on the darkness. In Parmenides time there were only twe principles or elements: Day (Fire) and Night (Darkness). So for the Greeks there could be no such thing as nothing; therfore there was the One. The One was described as a giant sphere tha included everything with no nothing. This leads to all the paradoxes that Parmenides's student Zeno was famous for. The important point to remember is that the One is divine. The divine has become an abstraction reached through the use of reason and logic. The other impotant point to remember is the One is eternal, it never changes. The connection with immortality should be obvious, but we still have a ways to go. Our story next leads to Empedocles, who according to tradition was a student of Parmenides. Empedocles gives the four classical elements of natural philosophy: Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. Empedocles also tells us that he is an immortal god. Empedocles reached godhood not by having a divine parent (the usual way), but by his own efforts: having superior wisdon. Of course, gods are supposed to immortal. The level of abstraction is rising, but it is still just the property of the privledged few. This was about to change According to tradition, Gorgias the sophist was a student of Empekocles. With Gorgias, Parmenides"s rebillion against the exclusivness and seretivness of the Pythagoreans was completed. Gorgias brought philosophical thinking to anyone who wanted to make the effort to learn. Our modern prejudice against the sophists is an example of consensus blindness. Many people in our age view "equality" as the supreme virtue; yet they condemn Gorgias and the sophists. This is because the charge against them is misunderstood. It was not that they were discriminationg by charging money, but that they would teach anyone willing to pay. It is not hard to imagine this would anger exclusive, spiritual brotherhoods seeking purity like the Pythagoreans. The sophists would even teach the money classes; what an affront. With this we can stop our speculation; abstraction became part of the culture. Plato now takes up the thread of our story. Plato follows Parmenides by making abstractions more real than the everyday world we live in. The divinization of abstraction was now complete. The soul could now be seperated from the body. Not only were inner states now able to be seperated from the external world; abstract thinking could be seperated fron bodily drives. So it should come as no surprise that to achieve immortality, it would be necessary to become an abstraction. A quote from Plato shall help us to understand. The "Timaeus" 90B (Burnet's Oxford ed.) "If a man is engrossed in appetites and ambitions and spends all his pains upon these, all hes thoughts must needs be mortal and, so far as that is possible, he cannot fall story of becoming mortal altogether, since he has mourished the growth of his mortality. But if his heart has been set on the love of learning and true wisdom and he has exercised that part of himself above all, he is surely bound to have thoughts immortal and divine, if he shall lay hold upo0n the truth, nor canhe fail to possess immortality in the fullest measure that human nature admits: and because he is always devoutly cherishing the divine part and maintaining the guardian genius (daemon) that dwills with him in good estate, he must needs be happy above all. Now there is but one way of caring for anything, namely to give it the nourishment and motions proper to it. The motions akin to the divine pary in us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe; these therfore every man should follow and... by learning to know the harmonies and revolutions of the worlds he should bring the intelligint part, according to its pristine nature, into the likeness of that which intelligence discerns, and therby win fulfilment of the best set by the gods before mankind both for the present time and for the time to come" With Plato the paradigm is set; abstractions are more real than material objectl. Abstractions dwell in a divinized mental realm. Particular material things are inferior copies of abstractions(Forms). Abstractions are also eternal, while material ojects decay or change. So the way to become immoryal is to become an abstraction. The body and the drives to sustain the bldy are conemned to perish; thus having no immortality. Aristotle also followed in this tradition. Aristotle's conception of God is thought thinking itself. Late we shall view another philosopher making some use of the doctrine for immortality. This conception of God being the master abstraction becomes a foundational belif for western civilization. In an amusing entry in Porphyry's life of Plotinus , Porphyry recunts how Plotinus was embarrassed to have a body,and be a particular. We have one more thinker examine. If ever there was a philosopher that divinized abstractions; it was Benedict Spinoza. Spinoza accomplished what many historians of philosophy claimed Porphyry attempted; to collapse or telescope the differint levels of being into one realm: our everday world. Spinoza accomplished this by asserting that there is no hierarchy of being, but there is a hierarchy of knowledge. Spinoza divided knowledge into three types. The first type is knowlidge of particulars. The second type is more abstract it is knowledge of universals. The third type is the highest and most certin. An example of this type would be the Fibonacci sequence (1-1-2-3-5-8-13...), the next number is always the sum of the two proceeding numbers. In other words, true knowledge is only found in the highest abstraction, but what about immortality? Spinoza asserts that only those who have reached and can maintain this third type of knowledge realize that there mind is immortal. Let us look at two quotes from "The Ethics" (Edwin Curley trans.). "P23: The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something remains which is eternal" and "P30: Insofar as our mind knows itself and the body under a species of eternity, it necessarily has knowledge of God and knows that it is in God and its conceived through God" In other words if we can elevate our mind to the highest abstraction we realize that God is thinking us into existence with the certinty of the Fiboanacci sequence. In the terminology of Aristotle we realize we are God thinking himself.