Literary Power: How Greek Poetry and Mysticism Established the Western Mind
An essay by BobafrigginFeet
Many people, especially now in the modern age, seem to underestimate the relevance of the Greeks. When it comes to philosophical discussion, the discussion is usually always between recent ideas or people. We have a bias towards what is old fashioned because we live in a progressive timeline. What many modernists believe now is what’s factual – what’s in front of them. Clear and present, they dislike anything aesthetic or external to the physical world, but despite this they have ignored the origin and development of European philosophy which gave them the tools they have now to make technology. They don’t realize the impact they make when they prefer certain languages over others: when they use specific ‘scientific’ sounding words over others. The Greeks, mystics, and various people in antiquity were aware of this dilemma: the effect of language and mystical aestheticism on the conscience.
Since philosophy’s dawn, the concept of philosophy itself it was parted with, or maybe even indistinguishable from, mysticism. In the scholarly article, “Plato and the Language of Mysteries”, Dinkelaar states,
“Plato made his first trip to Sicily where he encountered Orphism/Pythagoreanism … The Timaeus and Laws were written near the end of Plato’s life. Most of the ideas that Plato had in common with Orphism/Pythagoreanism only surface in his works after this first journey to Sicily” (41).
It’s clear that Plato’s philosophy has mystical roots because they were inspired by Pythagoras’ cult and Orphism -- these were magic cults back in the day. While Pythagoras was known for the algebraic theorem, he was also a cult leader. Furthermore, Dinkelaar writes,
“Plato frequently attributes certain doctrines specifically to the Orphics/Pythagoreans, and, even without naming them, certain wording or imagery, specifically in his writing concerning the afterlife, resembles that of the Orphic/Pythagorean texts to such a degree that it cannot be a coincidence: Plato purposefully adopted Orphic/Pythagorean motifs” (41).
Plato purposefully uses ‘wording or imagery’ in order to convey his teachings. Plato takes advantage of using mystical language to drive the point home better: to make it more receptive to the audience. This is proof that Philosophy has its roots in mysticism and careful usage of language.
Now it’s become clear, that Plato made clear use of mystical imagery for his works. What isn’t clear is whether or not, he actually genuinely believes in the divine or what’s transcendental. Did Plato only use these words and imagery to lure the audience? According to Dinkelaar once more,
“He achieves this, however, not by graphically describing the punishment that awaits the uninitiated in the Orphic/Pythagorean afterlife … but by using this punishment as a metaphor to demonstrate the bad influence of the body on the soul” (48).
Plato also happens to use this imagery in order to emphasize the importance of the soul over the body. Plato’s philosophy is idealistic – which relies on concepts that are intangible. In the dialogue, Phaedrus, Plato writes:
“And that there are two kinds of madness, one arising from human diseases, and the other from a divine release from the customary habits” (265b).
It seems that Plato has decided to create a dichotomy on the topic of ‘madness’, which in our modern society is a monolithic concept ranging from mental illness to low intelligence. Plato says that madness doesn’t have to be a disease, and that the other type of madness is some sort of divine ecstasy. Plato further writes,
“And we made four divisions of the divine madness, ascribing them to four gods, saying that prophecy was inspired by Apollo, the mystic madness by Dionysus, the poetic by the Muses, and the madness of love, inspired by Aphrodite and Eros, we said was the best” (265b).
Plato further categorizes that divine madness into different areas, which in turn are characterized by gods and deities. He writes,
“We described the passion of love in some sort of figurative manner, expressing some truth, perhaps, ... we chanted a sportive and mythic hymn in meet and pious strain to the honor of your lord and mine, Phaedrus” (265b-266b).
Plato expounds that there is truth, philosophical truth, to be found in the divine madness. For the modern reader, there is no difference between the types of madnesses. For Plato, it is different. Even the mouthpiece Socrates admits into being part of the initiation in the Phaedrus, Dinkelaar writes,
“Phaedrus’ subsequent suggestion to walk in the ‘pure’ (καθαρά) river (entering the river is suggested as part of the purification rituals at the Lesser Mysteries), hints that Socrates and Phaedrus are about to participate in the mysteries themselves” (52).
While Plato has mocked poets and mystics alike, he must’ve participated in there himself – to know such detail of the mysteries and having been immensely influenced by Pythagoras in his philosophy is proof of that. It’s almost become a necessity to be a mystic just to philosophize, at least in his time.
Could there be more to it, however? It’s clear that Plato is a mystic, but what is the significance of the Greeks in the development of the consciousness? According to Idris Riahi, in his article “Ancient Minds Not Conscious”, he cites Julian Jaynes and writes,
“There is in general no consciousness in the Iliad, Jaynes (2000, 69) claims, instead antiquity was crowded by people with bicameral minds” (24).
Riahi makes a bold claim that people during the Homeric period, and those before that period were ‘unconscious.’ Riahi further extrapolates on his explanation:
“However, when a more challenging task turned up, and bicameral people were due to make more complex decisions, their stress level rose significantly over a threshold at which it began to trigger auditory hallucinations (emerging from the right hemisphere). Bicameral people perceived this as the voice of a god delivering an answer which was consequently carried out by the other half, the listener part” (24-25).
To be bicameral, it means to be essentially ‘half-awake’ or half conscious, and to let, most likely the right analytical portion of the brain, talk to you as if it were an outside voice. It is as if people couldn’t have conceived of individuality at the time, and that a portion of their brain seemed like an outsider to them. While it does confirm that people thought very differently back in the day, Riahi’s explanation isn’t nuanced enough, and does not explain exactly as to what caused the shift from being ‘bicameral’ to what we are now.
In the book, The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought, Bruno Snell puts forth a radical but similar idea. Bruno Snell writes,
“EUROPEAN thinking begins with the Greeks. They have made it what it is: our only way of thinking; its authority, in the Western world, is undisputed” (5).
Much like Riahi, Snell believes that our current Western mode of thinking had to have started with the Greeks. Unlike Riahi, Snell actually makes a clear explanation as to how exactly this new mindful consciousness developed somewhere around the Homeric age. Snell writes,
“They did not, by means of a mental equipment already at their disposal, merely map out new subjects for discussion, such as the sciences and philosophy. They discovered the human mind. This drama, man's gradual understanding of himself, is revealed to us in the career of Greek poetry and philosophy” (5).
Bruno Snell makes this astounding claim that the human ‘mind’ was discovered – revealed to us by literature and philosophy. The Greeks didn’t discover it in the sense Columbus discovered America, because America already had long existed. Western thinking didn’t come into play until it was discovered. Snell writes,
“We also assert that the discovery was necessary for the intellect to come into existence. … It must be obvious to anyone that we are here using a metaphor … We cannot speak about the mind or the intellect at all without falling back on metaphor” (6).
While it’s said to be ‘discovered’, it isn’t necessarily so. But whenever discussion about the mind props up, the vagueness and abstraction of talking about a ‘mind’ has to fall back to metaphor. The distinction is made clear, however: Greek European thinking that isn’t found elsewhere in oriental nations. Snell writes,
“The god of the Greeks far outstrips the gods of the Jews, the Indians, or the Chinese in inviting his worshippers to equal him” (39).
Unlike most other religions at the time, it was only the Greeks that tolerated and practiced syncretism -- equating different sky gods as one. It’s almost like the Greeks were able to project out to the world – in order to do this first, you had to develop a mind, second to put that mind in other people’s shoes. They’ve essentially created this concept which is almost like empathy, and this is one of the Greek ideals we use to be able to reason rationally and dialectically. The development of the mind by philosophy alone could not be done, it needed poetry. Poetry and philosophy were key in creating these Greek ideals we still know to this day.
In the article, “Poetry, Philosophy, and Madness in Plato”, Benjamin Boysen writes,
“Unlike The Republic, Phaedrus demonstrates how philosophy would be barren and epistemologically impotent without inspiration (ἐνθουσιασμός) and this standing-outside (ἐξιστάμενος), into which desire (ἔρος), madness (μανία), and senselessness (ἔκφρων, ἄφρων, and παράνοια) throw it” (2).
Boysen asserts that philosophy, cold and rational logical deduction, is not enough to discover the truth. There is a role of language-usage in this. Boysen further writes,
“The poetic potential of language is in an essential manner erotic, i.e., both as an erotic force, moving and initiating poetry, and as a bewitching power, emanating from a poetry that excites and casts a spell over the audience” (20).
Language is being described here as ‘erotic’ -- in a manner that could almost be said magical or mystic. Earlier it’s made clear Plato took advantage of this to captivate an audience, but according to Bruno Snell the development of language paralleled the development of the mind. Snell explains,
“The more carefully we distinguish between the meanings of Homer's words and those of the classical period, the clearer grows our vision of the gulf which lies between the two epochs, and of the intellectual achievement of the Greeks” (12).
Snell writes that before the Classical period, the period of great philosophical ferment, the Greek language was different. Snell further writes,
“To sum up: the verbs of the early period, it appears, take their cue from the external qualifications, of the act of seeing, while later on it is the essential function itself, the operation common to every glance, which determines the content of the verb” (15).
Early Homeric Greek is in its infantile stage. The emphasizing or emotion that comes from these words, tend to come from an outward perspective rather than anything from an inner (individual mind).
For example, Snell writes,
“The words which were discarded tell us that the older language recognized certain needs which were no longer felt by its successor. δέρκεσΘαι means: to have a particular look in one's eyes … δρὰκων, the snake, whose name is derived from δέρκεσΘαι, owes this designation to the uncanny glint in his eye. He is called 'the seeing one', not because he can see particularly well, not because his sight functions exceptionally well, but because his stare commands attention” (13).
This is just one of the many examples of the differences between Homeric Greek and Classical Greek. The emphasizing is focused on appearances, looks, and emotions but not towards the things in of itself (which, as a concept, is a philosophical thing). We focus on how the snake looks at us, but not the function of sight itself. There was no word for it at that time. It was the development of Greek literature and philosophy that started the conceptualization of an inner mental life, a developing understanding that humans have a unique and individual inner world of thought.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, the conception of a self, of a mind, to be able to project yourself outwards, was all possible due to literature, and the creation of new descriptions and words to describe ideas in Homeric Greek (i.e. in the creations of epic and lyric poetry, and in the drama, from Homer to Aristophanes to Plato). When we are talking about the mind, according to Bruno Snell, it’s a particular understanding of what reality is. It's this habit that we have that we don't or are not aware of anymore: it's a very humanistic habit. It's the habit of always projecting outside of ourselves. If you are not able to project outside of yourself, you are an incomplete human being i.e. mindless. If you are mindless, you are only driven by passions because you are only concerned with getting ahead in life for yourself. This is why historically Ancient cultures and Modern day ones would practice all kinds of things that we object to. If you can project outside of yourself, you create this concept of empathy. You understand that what I do can hurt someone else, and therefore it can hurt me. A mind that doesn't understand how to project outside of itself tends not to understand that concept of hurt outside the self. Ideas create humanity, and when Bruno Snell says, the mind, is only available to the Greeks, other ancient cultures weren’t able to project the mind outside their own particular world. For the Chinese, there was no world outside of China. For the Indians, it was forbidden to cross the oceans – it's a sin. For the ancient Mesopotamians and Egyptians, these were extremely inward-looking cultures. A problem with consciousness is a problem with language. There are no paradoxes in nature. Just as Oscar Wilde pointed out "It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection." Perhaps, much like Plato had done with language, it’s much better to look at this not from a materialistic perspective, but from one that is transcendental – to use new language and descriptions that can "work" i.e. life affirmation. This is not a case for Sophism like that midwit John Zerzan's personal assertion of what art is, but it is what affirms the good, the beautiful, and the truth.
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