There are some things that cannot be explained, not because they are unintelligible, but because they are more intelligible than any explanation: Stanley Rosen; Squaring the hermeneutical circle; The Review of Metaphysics Vol 44 # 176

You could not search out the furthest limits of the soul, even if you traversed all of the ways, so unfathomable is its logos: Heraclitus of Ephesus, ca 600 BCE

NB: Socrates is considered the founder of political philosophy – Plato’s dialogue on justice, The Republic, makes this clear. But why are the political things the key to the understanding of all things? His teaching that the soul is the microcosm of the Whole (which I would describe as the mystery of space and time); and that meditation on the soul is akin to cosmology, is something as profound as anything I have ever encountered in my limited reading. Leo Strauss summarises the argument as follows: ‘the human soul is the only part of the whole which is open to the whole and therefore more akin to the whole than anything else’. Owing to this kinship ‘the true knowledge of the souls, and hence of the soul, is the core of cosmology.’

I have extracted below some observations on the link between the soul and the cosmos as conceived by Socrates and written about by Plato, Leo Strauss, Stanley Rosen, and Richard Velkley. The doctrine of the soul includes an estimation of nine kinds of soul, given in Phaedrus; and it is significant that the last two, the lowest in nobility, are the souls of sophists (ideologues, as I would describe them) and tyrants. The soul of the tyrant comes last. Precise references are given along with the extracts. DS

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Extract from Richard Velkley; Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy:

“We have learned from Socrates that the political things, or the human things, are the key to the understanding of all things.” How can one justify giving the study of politics this privileged place
in philosophy? Let us consider how Strauss characterizes the “new approach to the understanding all things.” Socrates identified the science of the whole with the understanding of what each of the beings is, that is, he understood being such that “to be” is “to be a part,” an intelligibly distinct or noetically heterogeneous part of the whole. The intelligible parts are the classes or kinds of things that first become known through their manifest shape or form and that cease to be intelligible if reduced to allegedly more primary elements, as was done by Socrates’s philosophic predecessors.

The surface of things, or what is “first for us,” is the guide to the articulation of the whole. This new approach to the study of the whole favored the study of the human things. The whole as such, however, is “beyond being,” and the roots of the whole from which it arises may not be accessible to human thought. Therefore the knowledge of parts is itself not perfect knowledge. “There is no knowledge of the whole but only knowledge of parts, hence only partial knowledge of parts, hence no unqualified transcending, even by the wisest man as such, of the sphere of opinion.” Thus Socratic philosophy is “knowledge that one does not know; that is to say, it is knowledge of what one does not know, or awareness of the fundamental problems and, therewith, of the fundamental alternatives regarding their solution that are coeval with human thought.” Such formulations do not make immediately evident, however, why the concentration on intelligible parts and the avowal of the elusiveness of the whole should lead to (or be the same as) the view that the political things, among all of the parts of the whole, are “the key to the understanding of all things.”

One must turn to more formulations on Socratic philosophy. “Knowledge of ignorance is not ignorance. It is knowledge of the elusive character of the truth, of the whole.” In light of the mysteriousness of the whole, philosophy articulates the more familiar “situation of man as man,” which does not entail leaving the question of the whole behind, since to articulate the human situation “means to articulate man’s openness to the whole.” To articulate the human situation as including “the quest for cosmology rather than a solution to the cosmological problem” was “the foundation of classical political philosophy.” The crucial term is “openness to the whole,” which is the basis for the quest for cosmology. To articulate that openness is to acquire knowledge of “the fundamental and permanent problems,” which according to Strauss are “the unchangeable ideas.” Human openness to the whole is inherently problematic, and articulating the problems inherent in that openness is the same as articulating the structure of the human soul. Among all the parts of the whole, the human soul has a unique place. “The human soul is the only part of the whole which is open to the whole and therefore more akin to the whole than anything else.”

Owing to this kinship “the true knowledge of the souls, and hence of the soul, is the core of cosmology.” But again one must underscore the problematic character of this knowledge: the true knowledge of the soul is knowledge of the problems inherent in human openness – problems that must be confronted by the quest for cosmology. There is no access to the whole or the cosmos that can bypass or ignore those problems. One could say the problems belong to the possibility of the access to the whole (they do not merely obscure it, much less prevent it). But where do the problems inherent in human openness have their most familiar forms, where are they most manifest or “writ large”? Socrates’s answer, according to Strauss: in the political realm.

Richard Velkley; Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy: on Original forgetting; University of Chicago Press, 2011. Pages 70-71

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Leo Strauss; Socrates and Aristophanes

‘The truth discerned by the poets must be integrated into the all-comprehensive truth with which the philosopher is concerned; or the true knowledge of the souls, and hence of the soul, is the core of the cosmology (of the knowledge of the things aloft). One can easily receive the impression that Plato and Xenophon presented their Socrates in conscious contradiction to Aristophanes’ presentation. It is certainly impossible to say whether the Platonic-Xenophontic Socrates owes his being as much to poetry as does the Aristophanean Socrates (cf. Plato Second Letter 314cl-4). It is almost equally difficult to say whether the profound differences between the Aristophanean Socrates arid the Platonic-Xenophontic Socrates must not be traced to a profound change in Socrates himself: to his conversion from a youthful contempt for the political or moral things, for the human things or human beings, to a mature concern with them. The clearest and most thoughtful exposition of this possibility known to me is to be found in Muhammad b. Zakariyya al-Razi’s The Philosophic Way of Life’….

Leo Strauss; Socrates and Aristophanes, The University of Chicago Press, 1966; p 314:

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Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Sophist; ‘one reason why contemporary philosophers believe it irrelevant to speak of interiority is because they do not take seriously the philosophical relevance of the soul. Instead, they speak of the intellect or mind. For the Eleatic Stranger, however, there can be no intellect except where there is soul. For our purposes, the difference between the intellect and the soul can be stated as follows. The propositional artifacts produced by the intellect, and to the extent that the intellect is identified with these artifacts, the intellect itself, can be modeled by a machine.

Apart from the fact that a model is an image rather than an original, we note that there is no machine-like model of the soul. From the Stranger’s standpoint, to speak of a “living” machine would be an absurdity. Nevertheless, if machines are alive, then, again from the Stranger’s standpoint, they have souls. But the perception of the soul, in both the subjective and objective senses of the genitive, is not the same as the conceptual grasp of propositions. … Those who oppose introducing talk of interiority into philosophical discourse will claim that philosophical discourse is essentially public… It is nevertheless true that public discourse, as distinguished from ideological chanting, is not spoken by the public but by individuals.. ‘

Stanley Rosen; Plato’s Sophist: The Drama of Original and Image; Yales University Press, 1983;  (315- 316)

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Plato; Phaedrus; (tr Robin Waterfield); Sec 245 a to 249 d

‘First we have to understand the truth about the nature of the soul,* whether divine or human, by considering what happens to it and what it causes to happen. This gives us the following starting-point for our proof. Every soul is immortal,* because anything that is ever-moving is immortal, whereas anything which causes motion elsewhere and is moved from elsewhere stops living when it stops moving. It is only something which moves itself that never stops moving, because it never abandons itself.† Such a thing is also the original source of motion for everything else that moves. Now, a source is ungenerated, because everything that is generated is necessarily generated from a source, but there is nothing for a source to be generated from. For if a source were generated from anything, it would stop being a source. Since a source is ungenerated, it is also necessarily imperishable, because a defunct source can never be generated from anything else nor can it bring about generation in anything else, given that everything is generated from a source. And so it is a self-mover that is a source of motion, and a self-mover can neither perish nor be generated, or else the entire universe and the whole of the creation will inevitably run down and stop, and will never again find anything to act as a source of motion and generation. Now, we have already shown that a self-mover is immortal, and so no one need hesitate to claim that selfmovement is the essence and principle of soul.* For no body which is moved from outside itself has a soul, while every body which is moved from within itself, from its own resources, has a soul, since this is what it is to be soul. If this is so––if souls and only souls are self-movers––it necessarily follows that soul is ungenerated and immortal.

‘That is enough about the soul’s immortality. I must now say something about its character. It would take too long––and beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt require a god––to explain its character, but the use of an analogy will make the task within lesser human powers. So let’s do that. In my analogy, a soul is like an organic whole made up of a charioteer and his team of horses.* Now, while the horses and charioteers of gods are always thoroughly good, those of everyone else are a mixture.* Although our inner ruler drives a pair of horses, only one of his horses is thoroughly noble and good, while the other is thoroughly the opposite. This inevitably makes driving, in our case, difficult and disagreeable.

‘Next I must try to explain how one living creature is called “immortal” while another is called “mortal”.* It is the job of soul in general to look after all that is inanimate,* and souls patrol the whole universe, taking on different forms at different times. A complete soul––which is to say, one that is winged––journeys on high and controls the whole world, but one that has lost its wings is carried along until it seizes upon something solid, and it takes up residence there. The earthy body of which it takes control seems to move itself, but that is the effect of the soul, and the whole unit of soul and body conjoined is called a “living creature”, and also “mortal”. No one who has thought the matter through could call a living creature “immortal”, but because we have never seen a god, and have an inadequate conception of godhood, we imagine a kind of immortal living creature, possessing both soul and body in an everlasting combination. Anyway, we can leave the facts of this matter to be and be expressed however the gods like, but we have to come to some understanding of what causes a soul to shed and lose its wings. It is something like this.

‘The natural property of a wing is to carry something heavy aloft, up on high to the abode of the gods. There is a sense in which, of all the things that are related to the body, wings have more of the divine in them. Anything divine is good, wise, virtuous, and so on, and so these qualities are the best source of nourishment and growth for the soul’s wings, but badness and evil and so on cause them to shrink and perish. ‘The supreme leader in the heavens is Zeus. He goes at the head, in a winged chariot, arranging and managing everything, and behind him comes the host of gods and spirits, in an orderly array of eleven squadrons.* For Hestia stays alone in the gods’ house, while each of the other gods who have been assigned one of the twelve positions takes his place at the head of the rank to which he has been assigned.

So there are many glorious sights to be seen within heaven, and many wonderful paths along which the favoured company of gods go and return, each performing his proper function,* and the gods are accompanied by everyone who wants to join them and is capable of doing so, because meanness has no place in the gods’ choir. When they turn to food and go to one of their banquets, they journey skyward to the rim of the heavenly vault. Although the way is steep, the gods’ chariots make light of the journey, since they are well balanced and easy to handle, but the other chariots find it hard, because the troublesome horse weighs them down. Any charioteer who has trained this horse imperfectly finds that it pulls him down towards the earth and holds him back, and this is the point at which a soul faces the worst suffering and the hardest struggle.

‘When the souls we call “immortal”* reach the rim, they make their way to the outside and stand on the outer edge of heaven, and as they stand there the revolution carries them around, while they gaze outward from the heaven. The region beyond heaven has never yet been adequately described in any of our earthly poets’ compositions, nor will it ever be. But since one has to make a courageous attempt to speak the truth, especially when it is truth that one is speaking about, here is a description. This region is filled with true being. True being has no colour or form; it is intangible, and visible only to intelligence, the soul’s guide. True being is the province of everything that counts as true knowledge. So since the mind of god is nourished by intelligence and pure knowledge (as is the mind of every soul which is concerned to receive its proper food), it is pleased to be at last in a position to see true being, and in gazing on the truth it is fed and feels comfortable, until the revolution carries it around to the same place again. In the
course of its circuit it observes justice as it really is, selfcontrol, knowledge––not the kind of knowledge that is involved with change and differs according to which of the e various existing things (to use the term “existence” in its everyday sense) it makes its object, but the kind of knowledge whose object is things as they really are. And once it has feasted its gaze in the same way on everything else that really is, it sinks back into the inside of heaven and returns home.*

Once back home, the soul’s charioteer reins in his horses by their manger, throws them ambrosia to eat, and gives them nectar to wash the ambrosia down.* ‘This is how the gods live. As for the other souls, any that have closely followed a god and have come to resemble him most* raise the heads of their charioteers into the region outside and are carried around along with the revolution, but they are disturbed by their horses and their view of things as they really are is uncertain. Others poke their heads through from time to time, but sink back down in between, and so they see some things, but miss others, depending on the resistance offered by their horses. The rest all long for the upper region and follow after, but they cannot break through, and they are carried around under the surface, trampling and bumping into one another as one tries to overtake another. So there is utter chaos, nothing but sweat and conflict. In the course of this confusion many souls are crippled as a result of the incompetence of the charioteers, and many have their wings severely damaged, but even after all this effort none of them succeeds in seeing things as they really are before having to return and rely on specious nourishment.*

‘The reason why there is so much determination to see the whereabouts of the plain of truth* is not only that the proper food for the best part of the soul happens to come from the meadow there, but also that it is in the nature of the wings which raise the soul to be nourished by this region. It is the decree of destiny that any soul which attends a god and catches even a glimpse of the truth remains free from injury until the next revolution, and if it is able to do this every time, it will continue to be free from harm. But souls which fall behind and lose their vision of the truth, and are for some unfortunate reason or another weighed down by being filled with forgetfulness and weakness, lose their wings thanks to this burden and fall to earth. At this point they are subject to a law that they are not to be planted into the bodies of animals in their first incarnation. The souls which have seen the most are to enter the seeds of men who will become philosophers, lovers of beauty, men of culture, men who are dedicated to love;* the second group those of law-abiding kings or military commanders or civic leaders; the third group those of politicians, estate managers or businessmen; the fourth group those of men who love exercising in a gymnasium† or future experts in bodily health; the fifth group will live as prophets or as initiators into one of the mystery cults;* the sixth group will most suitably live as poets or some other kind of representative artist, the seventh as artisans or farmers, the eighth as sophists or demagogues, and the ninth as tyrants.* (248 d to e)

‘In all these cases anyone who has lived a moral life will obtain a better fate, and anyone who has lived an immoral life the opposite.* For no soul returns to the place it fell from for ten thousand years––it takes that long for wings to grow again––except the soul of a man who has practised philosophy with sincerity or combined his love for a boy with the practice of philosophy. At the completion of the third thousand-year circuit, if these souls have chosen the philosophical life three times in succession, they regain their wings and in the three thousandth year they return. But all the other souls are judged after the end of their first life, and once they have been judged they either go to prisons in the underworld where they are punished, or are raised aloft by Justice to a certain place in the heavens and live as they deserve, depending on how they lived when they were in human form.* But in the thousandth year both groups of souls come for the allotment and choice of their second life and each of them chooses the life it likes.*

This is the point at which a human soul can be reincarnated as an animal, and someone who was formerly human can be reborn as a human being once again, instead of being an animal. For a soul which has never seen the truth cannot enter into human form, because a man must understand the impressions he receives† by reference to classes: he draws on the plurality of the perceptions to combine them by reasoning into a single class. This is recollection of the things which our souls once saw during their journey as companions to a god, when they saw beyond the things we now say “exist” and poked their heads up into true reality.* That is why only the mind of a philosopher deserves to grow wings, because it uses memory to remain always as close as possible to those things proximity to which gives a god his divine qualities. By making correct use of reminders of these things a man, being constantly initiated into the most perfect rites of all, becomes the only one who is truly perfect. But since he is remote from human concerns and close to divinity, he is criticized by the general run of mankind as deranged, because they do not realize that he is possessed by a god… (249 d)

Plato; Phaedrus; (tr Robin Waterfield); Oxford World Classics; 2002; Sec 245 a to 249 d

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Stanley Rosen; Plato’s Republic: A Study

… It is not entirely persuasive to say that whereas the unjust man seems to be happy, he is actually miserable. What Socrates requires is a demonstration of the inner misery of the unjust but apparently thriving person. The demonstration he offers us is the deterioration of eros in the four bad regimes and their correlative human types. Socrates begins with the assumption that the disorderly soul is sick, and that sickness, namely, the unchecked dominance of the desires, is the cause of injustice. This assumption is not self-verifying; it must be demonstrated by a close analysis of human nature. But in the last instance, all such demonstrations rest upon an interpretation of inner health. How are we to see into the soul? It is for this reason that Socrates introduces the analogy between the city and the soul. He claims, surely not without reason, that we can see something of the inside of a man or woman by observing his or her external behavior. This is precisely how we actually judge persons. But the procedure falls short of definitive proof, so long as we cannot see into the soul.

It is this inability, of course, that led to the repudiation of introspection in philosophy and psychology, as well as to the attempted reduction of consciousness to physiological processes. The dream of science is an extension of the dream of rationalist philosophies, namely, to turn the human being inside out, and so to replace privacy entirely by the public. But it is of course impossible to turn human beings inside out. What actually happens is that we replace the mysteries of the interior by public certainties, or what can be demonstrated in public. The ultimate consequence of this procedure is the suppression of happiness and unhappiness as criteria for judging lives, or the transformation of human beings into biological machines (almost a contradiction in terms). If, on the other hand, machines can be happy, it will only be because of their possession of a soul or interior and private experience. And this simply reproduces
the original problem; the machines will have to be turned inside out.

In order to be happy, we must be self-conscious; in order to prove that someone who claims to be happy is actually so, we must see into the interior; ‘‘self’’ consciousness must be extended to the consciousness of others. No matter how we look at the problem, it is not susceptible of a final resolution. Therefore we rely upon deeds and speeches, and the evidence, both of our own responses and those of others, to the events of everyday life. To put this in another way, we know more than we can prove. It is not difficult for us to see that someone is dominated by lust or that cities suffer terrible wretchedness under tyrants. Unfortunately, it is also not difficult to see that whereas some people are miserable because of their dominance by desire, others are not. I would be the first to agree that even those who deny the existence of an interior or soul rely upon their ability to discern the character of a person, that is, his or her inner nature, and not just the external speeches and deeds. All investigations of human nature, including the investigation that seeks to reduce the human to the bestial and the bestial to the mechanical, are based upon introspection into oneself and one’s neighbors. In order to reduce happiness to a certain physiological condition, it is first necessary to know what it is to be happy, and this knowledge we have acquired directly from within ourselves…

Stanley Rosen; Plato’s Republic: A Study; Yale University Press, 2005; p 328 – 330

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The Figure of Socrates and its Significance for Liberal Education in Asia

Socrates: If the whole is ailing the part cannot be well / Kautilya: Disaffection among Subjects

Stanley Rosen (1929-2014). A great philosopher passes

A philosophy professor’s final class

All That Is Solid Melts into Information

Mukul Kesavan: Photobombing death and the banality of evil / Evil, framed. By SLAVENKA DRAKULIĆ