Cupid and Psyche: Part One

Cupid and Psyche is the myth that represents the joining, and opposition of will or desire, and intellect or abstraction. Will and intellect are the terms in the dialectic of consciousness in Western philosophy. In the ancient Greek myth, Psyche is a human woman who falls in love with Aphrodite's Son: Cupid. It was a favorite myth for interpretation by the Neoplatonists. Let us take a very brief look at the myth; with my attempt to at interpretation. The first point that one notices in the myth is that Cupid and Psyche originally only meet in total darkness. It is Psyche (Intellect) that first violates this condition by desiring to see her lover. She suspects he may be ugly, but instead Cupid turns out to be the most beautiful entity she has ever seen. Of course, the word for "intellect" originated as terms for sight. So it should come as no surprise that it would be Psyche would want to see her lover. By seeing him. she also limits him. Before Psyche sees Cupid, he could have been beautiful, ugly, or somewhere in between. Thus intellect (the creation of abstractions) are always limiting factor for desire. Universals are always necessary, thus not free. The second point that one notices about the myth is when Aphrodite finds out about the relationship; of which she disproves of thus trying to separate them; she sets up a series of trials for Psyche. This is of course standard stuff of Greek myths, but the interesting point is; is how incapable Psyche is of preforming the trials. Psyche always needs outside help to triumph in each trial. She never triumphs on her own. It seems the Classical Greeks believed intellect without desire is impotent. It is too bad our modern A.I. theorists did not study the myth of Cupid and Psyche. The classical mythologens (creators of myths) regarded desire as the moving term in the dialectic of will and intellect. This is of course the crux of the dispute in western philosophy, and the subject of this essay. Whether will or intellect move the dialectic, and whether final term in the dialectic is will or intellect. The final term was termed the Absolute in the Idealistic philosophies that we shall examine later. Before moving to examining philosophers, let us take a quick look at one more classical myth concerning abstract thought. That of the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus. Athena is the goddess of wisdom and strife. As we will observed with Empedocles strife is often identified with abstraction, because abstraction is a separation or a tearing apart of the scenarios that we think in. The rest of the myth seems transparent: that abstract thinking can give one a splitting headache. As with most issues in western philosophy, we must go back to the Physicoi (PreSocratics) to understand how the debate between will and intellect began, and how it developed. We start with Parmenides. Parmenides invented the law of non-contradiction, and the dialectic method. He is also the first and best example of the Wheeler principle (named for Prof. Mark Wheeler of S.D.S.U.). The Wheeler principle states: If you make the law of non-contradiction the center-piece of your epistemology; you shall end up with a One in your metaphysics. The law of non-contradiction always leads to the metaphysical entity know as a One. Unless like Kant speculation is cut off at observation. As Prof. Wheeler teaches: there must come a point in metaphysics where opposites must be reconciled as part of a greater entity (the One). So Parmenides after going through his primitive dialectic of being and nothing; logically proves there must be something, and not nothing. Thus, we have the Parmenidean One; time, motion, change are all illusion. There is only the solid fused One. For Parmenides this is an intellectual exercise, where being cancels out non-being, there is no feeling attached to The One. The One is an abstraction created by logical reasoning. Of course, Parmenides thought of himself as a discoverer of the one, and not as the creator of the One. This brings up another important development in the dialectic of will and intellect; that there was no line in the thought of the Phyicoi between internal and external states.This was recognized by Empedocles, who attempted a justification of this position. The result was the doctrine that became to be known as the microcosm and the macrocosm.That which is above is like that which is below, or that a human is a small copy of the cosmos. Humans are though to be a small parallel of God or the cosmos. This should provide us with a bridge to our examination of Empedocles. Empedocles tried to reconcile the dialectic of Parmenides with appearances; in doing this he also diverged from Parmenides on some key points. To reconcile the existence of the One (a fused sphere) with the plurality that is experienced in everyday life, Empedocles introduced time or time cycles to the dialectic. That the One is achieved at a certain point in a cycle; when the cosmos becomes fused when love rules the sphere. This is when the Holy Mind is achieved. When strife rules the sphere everything is separated. For Empedocles it is the four classical elements (Fire, Air, Water, and Earth) that are separated and united in the cycles. Empedocles also differs with Parmenides on the meaning and experience of the One. The One is not an abstraction,instead it is a comprehensive feeling of Love. For Empedocles it is emotion that moves the dialectic and is its final term. Empedocles recognized that abstraction is always a separation from a comprehensive feeling. Here we observe the difference between Parmenides and Empedocles. For Parmenides the One is an intellectual entity, it is the ultimate reality that is separate from the plurality of everyday experience. The One is realized through reason, while in Empedocles the One is realized through emotion (Love). It is worth a moment to pause, Parmenides and Empedocles shall become exemplars for what is to follow. the heart of this essay shall be the rivalry between those thinkers that champion emotion against those that champion intellect. We shall examine several pairs of thinkers that if not contemporaries are close enough together that they their philosophies are intertwined on this issue. It shall be centuries before the doctrine of the microcosm and macrocosm is abandoned. The human mind shall be taken as a paradigm of the cosmos or the mind of God. They are the exemplars of the dispute whether it is emotion or intellect that moves the dialectic of consciousness and whether the two can be reconciled into a higher unity. Before this position can be defined and articulated further, we must examine the defining moment in Western philosophy: When Protagoras broke subject and object apart. As I have said elsewhere: "the history of Western philosophy is a series of answers to the riddles of Protagoras." Protagoras broke subject and object apart and Western philosophy has been trying to put them back together ever since. Protagoras showed to have consciousness there must be a duality; a subject that is perceived and and object that is perceived. To jump ahead some, this led the Neoplatonists to deny that the cosmos was created, if there was a moment of creation that would imply conscious decision. Since consciousness demands a duality; God could not be a One. Therefore the cosmos is eternal. This example shows how far reaching and subtle was the insight of Protagoras. But, we get ahead of our ourselves it is time to move to Plato, and Aristotle. Protagoras's insight allowed Plato to posit a real world (the realm of the Forms), existing alongside the sensible world ( our everyday world). Instead of the Holy Mind only existing at certain time in a cosmic cycle like Empedocles, The Holy Mind (realm of the Forms) could exist eternally with the sensible world, thus reconciling the problems in Parmenides. The two realms exist in a hierarchy the real world (realm of the Forms) creates or sustains the sensible world (everyday world). It is both interesting and important to note that Plato realized he was an innovator. It is worth quoting the only passage I know of where Plato talks about his vocation. In the "VII Letter" Plato compares himself with Dionysus the Tyrant: "If on the other hand he supposes that he has already discovered or been taught the doctrine, and considers it valuable for the cultural education of the mind how, unless he is a monster among men, could he ever so callously have insulted the one who has been the pioneer and arbiter in this realm." It should be clear that Plato saw himself as an apostle of the new way to thinking: reason. That the "Dialogues" are an invitation for humans to embrace reason, and put away the mythological mind-set. Plato was the prophet and proselytizer for reason against the older mythological consciousness. For the purpose of the present essay; Plato regarded abstractions as the higher term in the dialectic of will and intellect. This is made clear in the "Philebus": "To maintain that reason orders it all does justice to the spectacle of the of the ordered universe, of the Sun, the Moon, the stars, and the revolutions of the whole heaven, and for myself I should never express nor conceive any contrary view on the matter." Plato's most important student: Aristotle disagreed with Plato on this as well as many other issues. We find Aristotle's answer to the question of the moving term of the dialectic in his cosmology. It is desire or will that moves the dialectic. Aristotle's cosmology is Earth centered, with a series of concentric spheres expanding out from the center, to the last sphere of the fixed stars. What moves the fixed stars, which translate their movement to the rest of the system, it the sphere of the fixed stars desire to be like God (the One). Aristotle's God does nothing but think and contemplate himself. This idea of God thinking himself is going to become an important issue later in this essay, when more modern thinkers try to explain how this works. The higher the form the more it approaches pure thought (God). So for Aristotle it is desire to be like God that moves matter to take on form. At this point in this essay I am going to introduce an analogy that shall be used through out the rest of this essay. That of a video-game player (gamer). Although I am sure every thinker I shall discuss would disprove of this analogy, I am loathe to give it up, because of its illustrative value. In Aristotle's system no one ever reaches absolute knowledge, no one ever becomes one with the One. To go back to our analogy: it is like a gamer that never reaches the highest level of his favorite game. So is Aristotle's cosmos, no one can ever know what absolute knowledge would be like. The gamer that never knows what it is like to conquer the highest level of the game. So we do not know if absolute knowledge or comprehension would be an abstraction like Parmenides, or a comprehensive emotional feeling like Empedocles. We now move to the third giant of ancient philosophy, and a person that also claimed the have become one with the One: Plotinus. Plotinus claimed that several times in his life that he became one with the One. For a description I can do no better than quote Franz Cumont. (taken from his book:" After Life in Roman Paganism") : "The ecstasy of Plotinus does not stop short at the visible gods (planets) of the firmament; in it the soul is transported beyond even the world of ideas and reaches, in an upward rush of love, the divine unity in which it merges ridding itself of all consciousness and all form." As I stated earlier one of the reasons that the Neoplatonics denied the One consciousness is the need for unity of the One. A divided One is a contradiction. Even though Plotinus stresses the use of reason to reach the One, when reached the experience goes beyond reason. In our analogy it is the like the satisfaction the gamer has when he has conquered the final of a most difficult game. This idea of satisfaction shall also become an important issue with later thinkers. End of Part One