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Essay 8 The mythology of Love
Adam, Eve, and Satan were all exiled from the presence of God and it has been suggested that their sins were breaches of commandments to love and obey only God, above all else. In the case of Adam and Eve it is clear that their sin was of disobedience, but perhaps also that of human hubris or pride. In the case of Satan, given the fact that he was a god himself, we might well have expected better things of him than disobedience. His punishment certainly appears more severe than that suffered by Adam and Eve and the talking serpent of the Garden of Eden.
Eros, Campbell claims was both the oldest and the youngest of the gods but this latter characterisation, for Plato, means that Eros was born in very human circumstances, having been conceived at a drinking party by parents representing the “virtues” of poverty and resourcefulness. and pictured poetically thereafter padding barefoot about the streets of Athens in a melancholic search of human love (Psyche?)
Campbell argues that love during the medieval era of Europe, in Aristocratic circles, was a family decision sanctified by the Church. It was the troubadours of this era that celebrated the release of love from this form of social bondage, regarding amour as:
“A divine grace altogether higher in dignity then the Sacraments of the Church, higher than the Sacrament of Marriage, and if excluded from Heaven, then Sanctified in Hell.”(Page 158)
What we may have been witnessing in this change of attitude toward the Church, is a fall in the prestige of religious institutions and practices. Love was certainly brought down to earth with Platos account of Eros in the Symposium, in which Eros was made more human. The famous tale of Tristan and lsolt sedimented this changing social attitude by situating it on earth, not on the plane of animal appetitive desire, involving the genitals, but rather, in the sphere of the spiritual involving the organs of the eyes and the heart. Tristan, we are told, accepted the consequence of death as a result of choosing to love, and Campbell cites William Blake and his acceptance of strolling in hell, enjoying genius and being where one was meant to be (Page 161).
Was this connected to the level-headed acceptance of Socrates in the Symposium that Eros was not a God? Certainly Freud reasoned in this spirit when he claimed that the work of civilisation was in fact a battleground where two Giants, Eros and Thanatos were engaged in a conflict that will settle the fate of civilisation. What message was Freud intending to send to us moderns? Perhaps the message that civilisations future is uncertain because of the oracular proclamation:
“Everything created by humans is destined for ruin and destruction.”
Or, this message is also consistent with the Kantian claim that civilisation, the greatest of human projects, is proceeding according to the “hidden plan” Kant referred to? It seems as if Freud, in 1929,(the date “Civilisation and its Discontents” was published) may be suspending judgement on this issue, noting simultaneously that both the Soviet Union and the USA were unhelpful agents in the process of civilisation (wherever it might be leading).
Campbell closes this chapter ambiguously with a reference to Heraclitus:
“To God all things are fair and good and right: but men hold some things wrong and some right. Good and Evil are one.” (Page 168)
Campbell connects these words to the words of Jesus: “Judge not that you may not be judged”, restoring thereby some clarity amounting to the proclamation that the judgement of human affairs is best left to the gods and not to humans whose projects are as flawed as their characters. This ought to be read against the background of the human project of emancipation from the Garden of Eden, and the free choice to lead human life in accordance with the knowledge of good and evil. Aristotle certainly did not believe that such knowledge was purely the province of the Gods. Such knowledge, in accordance with principles, and in conjunction with self-knowledge and its principles, amounts to wisdom for Aristotle, If these principles fall into the “scientific” areas of ethics, politics and rhetoric, then this is sphere of influence of the phronimos (the great-souled man) who is able to do and say the right thing in the right way at the right time(areté) –the kind of wisdom Aristotle calls phronesis.
Human judgement, for Aristotle, then, is capable of the kind of wisdom we need, if we are to avoid ruin and destruction, but not very many of the human species is capable of such wise judgement. If, for example, the judgement is related to the initiation of laws for the polis, the outcome if it is not the judgement of a Phronimos, may well be the ruin and destruction prophesied by the oracles. Judgement in relation to matters of the spirit such as Amor, however, may either be in accordance with principles or not. If not the act of loving someone passionately may led to ones personal ruin and destruction, as Freud predicted for example, if we followed the apostles command to love our enemies. Run and destruction may even follow if ones passionate love is unrequited or rejected or the object dies and our egos do not have the strength to process the loss without succumbing to Thanatos in an act of self destruction. Campbell notes St Pauls claim that:
“Love bears all things” (Page 168)
But this claim might not be true if the ego is weak.
The love of an abstraction such as love for ones polis/country, according to Freud, can be a form of substitute satisfaction. For the Ancient Greeks such love was necessary for the maintenance and protection of the polis/country as well for the fulfilment of ones own safety and belongingness needs. Plato notes in his dialogue “The Symposium”, that the unconstrained passions invested in another person may be likened unto a sickness, and when such passion resides in the heart of a tyrant who yearns for the power of his city, this too is a sickness of the soul, a disease. The consequences of such an abstract passion however, may be far reaching and devastating.
Romanticism of the Modern Period, had its roots in Eros which in turn had its classical roots in the virtues of poverty and Resourcefulness, but this passion in the minds of the modern Romantic, when it is prepared to tolerate eternal death or damnation to experience it, is certainly a sickness of the soul where Thanatos has defeated Eros in the battle for that soul. In the soul where Eros has triumphed, with the assistance of the Principle of the Golden mean, the natural telos of such passion may be a thriving polis if one is a Phronimos, or a thriving life if one possesses the virtue of areté (doing and saying the right thing in the right way at the right time). For Plato, and perhaps for Aristotle too, the telos of the spirited part of the human psuché, lodged in the eyes and the heart, must harmonise with both the appetitive and rational parts of the soul. The account does become somewhat more complex in Aristotle’s Hylomorphic account of eudaimonia (the good spirited flourishing life), partly because there are many cognitive and aesthetic powers associated with both the spiritual and rational parts of the soul, and all of these must be integrated with each other in accordance with principles if the good spirited flourishing life is to be actualised. The hylomorphic Theory of Change views the relation between the three parts of the soul as complex, but the result must be that the spirited passions and the appetites must be satisfied in the right way and at the right time.
Love (Amor)—according to some modern Romantic poets is Hell, but as we saw in the case of Tristan and William Blake Hell is not that bad, and Amor may be in the mind of the lover such a good-in-itself, that it is worth the terrible consequences even if one describes them in terms of an eternal death in eternity.
The Hell of the Poets and the picture we have of Satan as an anthropomorphised animal-devil is provided for us by the power of our imaginations, in spite of the fact that, in reality a half human half horned animal is not a biological possibility, and the “burn in hell forever” description, could only be a real punishment if, in some curious fashion, our bodies as well as our souls had another life after this, and in that life in hell the Spiritual nerves of the body experienced sensations and pain in an analogous way to that which happened in a physical body affected by the heat, as depicted in some Romantic tales. But souls, surely, do not have anything like physical nerves carrying spiritual signals to a purely conscious human being. This would be very similar to the Religious use of analogy where the physical is spiritualised as part of a religious/moral lesson. We recall that Kant used analogy of the fathers love for his family to explain Gods love for humanity. More abstractly, for Kant, this analogy does not cover the love that God expects from us on pain of either being banished from the Garden of Eden, or even, as was the case with Satan being banished to Hell or Hades.
In the Garden of Eden it looked as if the choice to exercise our free will to choose to lead our lives in accordance with the knowledge we now possessed of good and evil, sufficed for our exile, and also sufficed to convince God that our characters were flawed by Sin. For many moderns such divine justice sufficed for us in turn, to develop an independent attitude of mind, an attitude we pictured with the aid of the power of our imaginations: in terms of an image of Deus Absconditis.
In such a modern frame of mind we may no longer believe either in a religion within the bounds of reason or a “Philosophical” Hidden plan. Insofar as the test of our love for God was concerned we certainly failed that test, and insofar as Gods love for us was concerned, that may well depend on whether there is a Kantian hidden plan operating to transport humanity to eudaimonia—the good spirited flourishing life.