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The Way of Pathei-Mathos
A Philosophical Compendiary
Contents
- Preface
- I - Pathei-Mathos as Authority and Way
- II - The Nature and Knowledge of Empathy
- III - The Nature of Being and of Beings
- IV - An Appreciation of The Numinous
- Conclusion
- Appendix I - Some Explanations, Terms, and Definitions
- Appendix II - The Change of Enantiodromia
- Appendix III - The Principle of Δίκα
Preface
The philosophy of πάθει μάθος (pathei-mathos) is
my own weltanschauung, and may be said to represent both the
essence and the substance of what I have retained after refining
and reflecting upon 'the numinous way' I developed between the
years 2006 and 2011.
This year-long process of refinement and reflexion [2011-2012]
led me to not only discard most of that 'numinous way' but also to
re-express, in a more philosophical manner, the basic insights and
the personal pathei-mathos that initially inspired me to develope
that 'numinous way', a re-expression contained in
this recuyle and which recuyle contains all I feel is
required for a reasoned understanding of my philosophy. This work
should also (hopefully) serve to distinguish the philosophy of
πάθει μάθος from The Numinous Way
This new
philosophy, however, is not a conventional, an academic, one where a
person intellectually posits or constructs a coherent theory -
involving ontology, epistemology, ethics, and so on - often as a
result of an extensive dispassionate study, review, or a criticism
of the philosophies or views, past and present, advanced by other
individuals involved in the pursuit of philosophy as an academic
discipline or otherwise. Instead, the philosophy of pathei-mathos is
the result of my own pathei-mathos, my own learning from diverse -
sometimes outré, sometimes radical and often practical - ways
of life and experiences over some four decades; of my subsequent
reasoned analysis, over a period of several years, of those ways and
those experiences; of certain personal intuitions, spread over
several decades, regarding the numinous; of an interior process of
personal and moral reflexion, lasting several years and deriving
from a personal tragedy; and of my life-long study and appreciation
of Hellenic culture, an appreciation that led me to translate works
by Sappho, Sophocles, Aeschylus and Homer, and involved me in a
detailed consideration of the weltanschauung of individuals such as
Heraclitus (insofar as such weltanschauungen are known from recorded
sayings and surviving books).
Given this appreciation, and as the name suggests, the philosophy
of πάθει μάθος has certain connexions to Hellenic culture and
I tend therefore to use certain Greek words in order to try and
elucidate my meaning and/or to express certain philosophical
principles regarded as important in - and for an understanding of -
this philosophy; a usage of words which I have endeavoured to
explain as and where necessary, sometimes by quoting passages from
Hellenic literature or other works and by providing translations of
such passages. For it would be
correct to assume that the ethos of this philosophy is
somewhat indebted to and yet - and importantly - is also a
development of the ethos of Hellenic culture; an indebtedness
obvious in notions such as δίκη, πάθει μάθος,
avoidance of ὕβρις, and references to Heraclitus, Aeschylus,
and others, and a development manifest in notions such as empathy
and the importance attached to the virtue of compassion.
In addition, and possibly somewhat unconventionally since in accord
with the Hellenic etymology of the word and the Homeric sense of φίλος
[a] I view a philosopher as someone who is
a friend of – whose companion is, who seeks to find, to acquire, to
follow, to befriend – σοφόν. Thus in this sense, a
philosopher is someone seeking to acquire a certain skill (such as
the learning/reasoning that is λόγος) and discover a
particular knowledge, such as a knowledge regarding Being and
beings, rerum divinarum et humanarum; a
knowledge acquired or found by means of both using λόγος and
from life itself via practical experience, practical learning; a
dual sense evident from the meaning and usage of σοφός.
Thus my personal understanding of philosophy is that it is the
result of the activity and the life of a philosopher; more correctly
perhaps, it is both the written or the recorded or transmitted
results of the lucubrations that such way of life (that such a
following, such a seeking, of knowledge and wisdom) engenders, and
of what the living of such a life (that such befriending of σοφόν)
brings-into-being and/or reveals. And it is in this sense that I
consider my way of πάθει μάθος a philosophy.
All translations from Ancient Greek in this work are mine, and I
have, at the suggestion of a friend, added an appendix giving some
brief explanations and definitions of some of the Greek and English
terms used, some of which explanations and definitions are taken
either from the body of the text or from footnotes and/or which may
expand upon the body of the text or footnotes.
David Myatt
14th May 2012
[a] For example, Odyssey, Book I, v.301-302
καὶ σύ, φίλος, μάλα γάρ σ᾽ ὁρόω καλόν τε μέγαν τε,
ἄλκιμος ἔσσ᾽,
ἵνα τίς σε καὶ ὀψιγόνων ἐὺ εἴπῃ.
Thus should you, my friend - who I see are strong and
fully-grown -
Be as brave, so that those born after you will speak well of
you.
I
Pathei-Mathos as Authority and Way
The Greek term πάθει μάθος derives from The Agamemnon of
Aeschylus (written c. 458 BCE), and can be
interpreted, or translated, as meaning learning from adversary,
or wisdom arises from (personal) suffering; or personal
experience is the genesis of true learning.
However, this expression should be understood in context [1], for
what Aeschylus writes is that the Immortal, Zeus, guiding mortals
to reason, has provided we mortals with a new law, which law
replaces previous ones, and which new law – this new guidance laid
down for mortals – is pathei-mathos.
Thus, for we human beings, pathei-mathos possesses a numinous, a
living, authority [2] – that is, the wisdom, the understanding,
that arises from one's own personal experience, from formative
experiences that involve some hardship, some grief, some personal
suffering, is often or could be more valuable to us (more alive,
more meaningful) than any doctrine, than any religious faith, than
any words one might hear from someone else or read in some book.
In many ways, this Aeschylean view is an enlightened – a very
human – one, and is somewhat in contrast to the faith and
revelation-centred view of religions such as Judaism, Islam, and
Christianity. In the former, it is the personal experience of
learning from, and dealing with, personal suffering and adversity,
that is paramount and which possesses authority and 'meaning'. In
the latter, it is faith that some written or transmitted work or
works is or are a sacred revelation from the supreme deity one
believes in which is paramount, which possess meaning and
authority, often combined with a belief that this supreme deity
has appointed or authorized some mortal being or beings, or some
Institution, as their earthly representative(s), and which
Institution and/or representative(s) therefore are believed to
possess or are accepted as possessing authority or are regarded as
authoritative.
Thus, the Aeschylean view is that learning, and hence wisdom,
often or perhaps mostly arises from within us, by virtue of that
which afflicts us (and which afflictions could well be understood
as from the gods/Nature or from some supra-personal source) and
from our own, direct, personal, practical, experience. In
contrast, the conventional religious view is that wisdom can be
found in some book (especially in some religious text), or be
learnt from someone considered to be an authority, or who has been
appointed as some authority by some Institution, religious or
otherwise.
The essential difference between these two ways is therefore that
pathei-mathos is the way of direct learning from personal
experience, while the religious way is often or mostly the way of
secondary or tertiary learning, from others; of accepting or
believing what is written by or taught by someone else or laid
down in some dogma, some creed, some book, or by some external
authority, such as an Institution.
For The Way of Pathei-Mathos, it is the personal learning that
pathei-mathos provides or can provide, combined with - balanced by -
the insight, the knowing, that empathy provides, which are
considered as possessing authority, and which can aid us to discover
wisdom.
The Way of Pathei-Mathos
The fundamental axioms of The Way of Pathei-Mathos are:
1) That human beings possess a mostly latent perceptive faculty, the
faculty of empathy - ἐμπάθεια - which when used, or when
developed and used, can provide us with a particular type of
knowing, a particular type of knowledge, and especially a certain
knowledge concerning the φύσις (the physis, the nature or
character) of human beings and other living beings.
2) This type of knowing, this perception, is different from and
supplementary to that acquired by means of the Aristotelian
essentials of conventional philosophy and experimental science [3],
and thus enables us to better understand Phainómenon,
ourselves, and other living beings.
3) That because of or following πάθει μάθος there is or
there can be a change in, a development of, the nature, the
character - the φύσις - of the person because of that
revealing and that appreciation (or re-appreciation) of the numinous
whose genesis is this πάθει μάθος, and which appreciation
of the numinous includes an awareness of why ὕβρις is an
error (often the error) of unbalance, of disrespect or
ignorance (of the numinous), of a going beyond the due limits, and
which ὕβρις itself is the genesis both of the τύραννος
[4] and of the modern error of extremism. For the tyrannos and
the modern extremist (and their extremisms) embody and give rise to
and perpetuate ἔρις [5] and thus are a cause of, or
contribute to and aid, suffering.
4) This change, this development of the individual, is or can be the
result of enantiodromia [6] and reveals the nature of, and restores
in individuals, the natural balance necessary for ψυχή [7]
to flourish - which natural balance is δίκη as Δίκα
[8] and which restoration of balance within the individual results
in ἁρμονίη [9], manifest as ἁρμονίη (harmony) is
in the cultivation, in the individual, of wu-wei [10] and σωφρονεῖν
(a fair and balanced personal, individual, judgement) [11].
5) The development and use of empathy, the cultivation of wu-wei and
σωφρονεῖν, are thus a means, a way, whereby individuals can
cease to cause suffering or cease to contribute to, or cease to aid,
suffering.
6) The reason as to why an individual might so seek to avoid causing
suffering is the reason, the knowledge - the appreciation of the
numinous - that empathy and πάθει μάθος provide.
7) This appreciation of the numinous inclines or can incline an
individual to living in a certain way and which way of life
naturally inclines the individual toward developing, in a natural
way - sans any methodology, praxis, theory, dogma, or faith -
certain attributes of character, and which attributes of character
include compassion, self-restraint, fairness, and a reasoned, a
personal, judgement.
II
The Nature and Knowledge of Empathy
Empathy is, as an intuitive understanding, what was, can be, and
often is, learned or developed by πάθει μάθος. That is,
from and by a direct, personal, learning from experience and
suffering. An understanding manifest in our awareness of the
numinous and thus in the distinction we have made, we make, or we
are capable of making, between the sacred and the profane; the
distinction made, for example in the past, between θεοί
and δαιμόνων and mortals, and thus
manifest in that understanding of ὕβρις and δίκη
which can be obtained from the works of Sophocles, and Aeschylus
[12], and from an understanding of Φύσις evident in some
of the sayings attributed to Heraclitus [13].
Understood by reference to such classical illustrations, empathy is
thus what naturally predisposed us to appreciate δίκη and be
aware, respectful of, the goddess, Δίκην
[14], and thus avoid retribution for committing the error of ὕβρις,
for disrupting the natural balance necessary for individual and
communal well-being.
That is, a certain empathy is, and has been, the natural basis for a
tradition which informs us, and reminds us - through Art,
literature, myths, legends, the accumulated πάθει μάθος of
individuals, and often through a religious-type awareness - of the
need for a balance, for ἁρμονίη, achieved by not going
beyond the numinous limits.
As a used
and a developed faculty, the perception that empathy provides is of
undivided ψυχή and of the emanations of ψυχή, of our
place in the Cosmic Perspective: of how we are a connexion to other
life; of how we are but one mortal fallible emanation of Life; of
how we affect or can affect the well-being - the very being, ψυχή
- of other mortals and other life; and how other mortals and other
living beings interact with us and can affect us, in a good or a
harmful way.
Empathy thus involves a translocation of ourselves and thus a
knowing-of another living-being as that living-being is,
without presumptions and sans all ideations, all projections. In a
simple way, empathy involves a numinous sympathy with another
living-being; a becoming – for a causal moment or moments – of that
other-being, so that we know, can feel, can understand, the
suffering or the joy of that living-being. In such moments, there is
no distinction made between them and us – there is only
the flow of life; only the presencing and the ultimate unity of Life
itself.
This knowing-of another living-being and this knowledge of the
Cosmic Perspective - this empathic awareness of Life - inclines us
toward compassion; toward the human virtue of having συμπάθεια
(sympatheia, benignity) with and toward other living beings. For
such an awareness involves being sensitive to, respectful of, other
Life, and not arrogantly, in a hubriatic manner, imposing ourselves
or trying to impose ourselves on Life and its emanations. That is,
there is the cultivation of the natural balance that is wu-wei
because of our awareness of how other Life, other living-beings, can
suffer, and how some-things, some actions, are unwise because they
do or can cause suffering or have caused suffering.
In effect, empathy uncovers or can uncover the nature of our being
and the nature of Being itself.
III
The Nature of Being and of Beings
Empathy uncovers the a-causal nature of Being; of how, as Heraclitus
expressed it in fragment 53, beings have their genesis,
Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι, πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς, καὶ τοὺς
μὲν θεοὺς ἔδειξε τοὺς δὲ ἀνθρώπους, τοὺς μὲν δούλους ἐποίησε
τοὺς δὲ ἐλευθέρους.
Polemos our genesis, governing us all to bring forth
some gods, some mortal beings with some unfettered yet others
kept bound. [15]
and how
πάντα δὲ
γίνεσθαι καθ᾽
εἱμαρμένην καὶ
διὰ τῆς ἐναντιοδρομίας ἡρμόσθαι
τὰ ὄντα
All by genesis is appropriately apportioned [separated into
portions] with beings bound together again by enantiodromia [16]
and why σωφρονεῖν is important:
σωφρονεῖν ἀρετὴ μεγίστη, καὶ σοφίη ἀληθέα λέγειν
καὶ ποιεῖν κατὰ φύσιν ἐπαίοντας
Most excellent is balanced reasoning, for that skill can
tell inner character from outer. [17]
Empathy also reveals why the assumption that abstracted, ideated,
opposites apply to or should apply to living beings - and that they
thus can supply us with knowledge and understanding of living being
- disrupts the natural balance, resulting in a loss of ἁρμονίη
and συμπάθεια and is therefore a manifestation of the error
of ὕβρις.
The Acausal Nature of Being
The empathic perception of an undivided ψυχή and of living
beings as emanations of ψυχή, and the knowledge of ourselves
and one affective and effecting fallible mortal connexion to other
life that such a perception provides, leads to an understanding of
Being, of ψυχή, as a-causal: as beyond the linearity of a
simple and direct cause-and-effect and beyond the supposition that
we are separated beings. This perception - and this knowing of the
acausal nature of Being deriving from it - is numinous; that is, of
how beings are part of Being and of how they come-into-being, are
affected and affecting, and so Change and are Change: of how Life
flows and ebbs and continues undivided, unseparated, a-temporal, and
is only temporarily manifest in particular beings only erroneously
perceived by us as discrete entities, as separated beings.
As Heraclitus mentioned as recorded in fragment 52:
αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων πεσσεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη
For Aeon, we are a game, pieces moved on some board:
since, in this world of ours, we are but children.
For the perception and the knowing of causality in respect of living
beings is that of the-separation-of-otherness; a notion of causal
and linear separation, of past-present-future, of independent beings
that gives rise to two things. (1) Of how we human consider we are
different from or similar to other individual human beings. A
difference or a similarity deriving from posited, manufactured,
ideated, categories to which we assign others and ourselves and from
which we often or mostly derive our identity, our self-assurance,
and our belief about their and our φύσις, or at least what
we assume is a knowledge of such things. (2) Of how such separately
existing human beings are not subject to - or can and should make
themselves not subject to or can overcome or ignore - any external
supra-personal non-physical (non-temporal) force or forces, and thus
of how these separated human beings have or can acquire the ability,
the skill, to 'determine their own destiny/fate/life' by some means
if the right method, or some methodology, or some tool - such as
some idea or theory - can be found or developed, or if they develope
their physical prowess/intelligence/cunning or acquire sufficient
wealth/power/influence/followers.
Such a purely causal perception and causal understanding of living
beings - lacking as it does an awareness of, an appreciation and a
feeling for the numinous, or wilfully ignoring the numinous - is the
genesis of ὕβρις and can thus bring-into-being the τύραννος
[4].
An example of this reliance on causal perception and causal
understanding is Oedipus, as described by Sophocles in Oedipus
Tyrannus. In his singular desire to find the killer of
Laius, Oedipus oversteps the due limits, and upsets the natural
balance both within, and external to, himself. He is blinded by
mere causality (a linear thinking) and subsumed by personal
feelings – by his overwhelming desire for a simple
cause-and-effect solution to the plague and his prideful belief
that he, a mortal, a strong man, and master of the riddle of the
Sphinx, can find or derive a solution. What results is tragedy,
suffering, for himself and for others.
ὦ πάτρας Θήβης ἔνοικοι, λεύσσετ᾽, Οἰδίπους ὅδε,
ὃς τὰ κλείν᾽ αἰνίγματ᾽ ᾔδει καὶ κράτιστος ἦν ἀνήρ,
οὗ τίς οὐ ζήλῳ πολιτῶν ἦν τύχαις ἐπιβλέπων,
εἰς ὅσον κλύδωνα δεινῆς συμφορᾶς ἐλήλυθεν.
ὥστε θνητὸν ὄντα κείνην τὴν τελευταίαν ἰδεῖν
ἡμέραν ἐπισκοποῦντα μηδέν᾽ ὀλβίζειν, πρὶν ἂν
τέρμα τοῦ βίου περάσῃ μηδὲν ἀλγεινὸν παθών.
You natives of Thebes: Observe – here is Oedipus,
He who understood that famous enigma and was a strong man:
What clansman did not behold that fortune without envy?
But what a tide of problems have come over him!
Therefore, look toward that ending which is for us mortals,
To observe that particular day – calling no one lucky until,
Without the pain of injury, they are conveyed beyond life’s
ending.
(Oedipus Tyrannus, vv. 1524-1530)
Another example is Creon, as described by Sophocles in his Antigone.
Creon's pride and stubbornness, and his rigid adherence to his
own, causal (temporal), mortal, edict – which overturns an
ancestral custom established and maintained to 'please the gods'
and implement a natural edict of the gods designed to give and
maintain balance, harmony, among the community – leads to tragedy,
to suffering.
The same thing occurred to Odysseus, who for all his prowess and
mortal cunning could not contrive to return to his homeland as he
wished nor save his friends, and
kπολλὰ δ᾽ ὅ γ᾽ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν,
ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.
ἀλλ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ὣς ἑτάρους ἐρρύσατο, ἱέμενός περ:
αὐτῶν γὰρ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο,
νήπιοι, οἳ κατὰ βοῦς Ὑπερίονος Ἠελίοιο
ἤσθιον: αὐτὰρ ὁ τοῖσιν ἀφείλετο νόστιμον ἦμαρ.
…whose vigour, at sea, was weakened by many afflictions
As he strove to win life for himself and return his comrades
to their homes.
But not even he, for all this yearning, could save those
comrades
For they were destroyed by their own immature foolishness
Having devoured the cattle of Helios, that son of Hyperion,
Who plucked from them the day of their returning.
(Homer, Odyssey, vv.3-9)
Such emphasis by mortals on causality, arising from a lack of the
acausal, the numinous, perspective that empathy and πάθει
μάθος provide, is in effect an ignoring of, a wilful
defiance of, or a forgetfulness of, the natural balance, of our
own nature, and of the gods. Expressed un-theistically, it is a
lack of, or a covering-up of, or an ignorance of, the the nature
of Being and of beings, of who and why we are, and why wu-wei is a
wise way to live.
Our nature - which empathy and πάθει μάθος can reveal -
is that of a mortal being veering between σωφρονεῖν
(thoughtful reasoning, and thus fairness) and ὕβρις.
As Sophocles expressed it:
πολλὰ τὰ
δεινὰ κοὐδὲν
ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον
πέλει...
σοφόν τι
τὸ μηχανόεν
τέχνας ὑπὲρ
ἐλπίδ᾽ ἔχων
τοτὲ μὲν
κακόν, ἄλλοτ᾽
ἐπ᾽ ἐσθλὸν
ἕρπει
There exists much that is strange, yet nothing
Has more strangeness than a human being...
Beyond his own hopes, his cunning
In inventive arts - he who arrives
Now with dishonour, then with chivalry
Antigone, v.334, vv.365-366
Yet as empathy and πάθει μάθος also reveal, our nature
is such that we also have hope and a choice. We can choose to be
fair, rational, beings who appreciate and cultivate σωφρονεῖν;
who appreciate the numinous and ἁρμονίη and who
understand ὕβρις for the error, the misfortune, the
unbalance, it is. Or we can, like Oedipus, Creon, Aegisthus, and
the comrades of Odysseus, foolishly, recklessly, veer toward and
embrace ἔρις and ὕβρις.
We can appreciate the numinous - be wary of Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι
μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες. We can kindle and rekindle the 'fire
of reason', and appreciate that when 'more is obtained than is
necessary it is not kept'. Or we can take short-cuts, foolishly
overladen ourselves, and in our recklessness believe we are immune
to injury:
τὸν δ᾽ ἄνευ λύρας ὅμως ὑμνῳδεῖ
θρῆνον Ἐρινύος
αὐτοδίδακτος ἔσωθεν
θυμός, οὐ
τὸ πᾶν ἔχων
ἐλπίδος φίλον
θράσος.
σπλάγχνα δ᾽
οὔτοι ματᾴ-
ζει πρὸς
ἐνδίκοις φρεσὶν
τελεσφόροις δίναις κυκώμενον
κέαρ.
εὔχομαι δ᾽
ἐξ ἐμᾶς
ἐλπίδος ψύθη
πεσεῖν
ἐς τὸ μὴ τελεσφόρον.
μάλα γέ
τοι τὸ μεγάλας ὑγιείας
ἀκόρεστον τέρμα:
νόσος γάρ
γείτων ὁμότοιχος
ἐρείδει.
καὶ πότμος
εὐθυπορῶν
ἀνδρὸς ἔπαισεν
ἄφαντον ἕρμα.
καὶ πρὸ
μέν τι χρημάτων
κτησίων ὄκνος
βαλὼν
σφενδόνας ἀπ᾽
εὐμέτρου,
οὐκ ἔδυ
πρόπας δόμος
πημονᾶς γέμων
ἄγαν,
οὐδ᾽ ἐπόντισε
σκάφος.
πολλά τοι
δόσις ἐκ Διὸς ἀμφιλα-
φής τε καὶ ἐξ ἀλόκων ἐπετειᾶν
νῆστιν ὤλεσεν
νόσον.
τὸ δ᾽
ἐπὶ γᾶν πεσὸν ἅπαξ θανάσιμον
πρόπαρ ἀνδρὸς
μέλαν αἷμα
τίς ἂν
πάλιν ἀγκαλέσαιτ᾽
ἐπαείδων;
οὐδὲ τὸν
ὀρθοδαῆ
τῶν φθιμένων
ἀνάγειν
Ζεὺς ἀπέπαυσεν
ἐπ᾽ εὐλαβείᾳ;
εἰ δὲ μὴ τεταγμένα
μοῖρα μοῖραν
ἐκ θεῶν
εἶργε μὴ
πλέον φέρειν,
προφθάσασα καρδία
γλῶσσαν ἂν
τάδ᾽ ἐξέχει.
νῦν δ᾽ ὑπὸ σκότῳ βρέμει
θυμαλγής τε
καὶ οὐδὲν ἐπελπομέν-
α ποτὲ
καίριον ἐκτολυπεύσειν
ζωπυρουμένας φρενός.
And so, although I have no lyre, I sing:
For there is a desire, within me - a self-taught hymn
For one of those Furies,
With nothing at all to bring me
That cherished confidence - hope.
And my stomach is by no means idle -
In fairness, it is from achieving a judgement
That the beat of my heart continues to change.
And so there is this supplication of mine:
For this defeat of my hope to be false
So that, that thing cannot be achieved.
In truth, that frequently unsatisfied goddess, Health,
Has a limit - for Sickness, her neighbour,
Leans against their shared fence;
And it is the fate of the mortal who takes the short-cut
To strike the unseen reef.
And yet if - of those possessions previously acquired
A fitting amount is, through caution, cast forth by a sling,
Then the whole construction will not go under -
Injuriously over-loaded as it was -
Nor will its hull be filled, by the sea.
Often, the gifts from Zeus are abundant
And there is, then, from the yearly ploughing,
A death for famine's sickness.
But if once upon the earth there falls from
A mortal that death-making black blood -
What incantation can return it to his arms?
Not even he who was correctly-taught
How to bring back those who had died
Was allowed by Zeus to be without injury.
Were it not that Fate was ordained
By the gods to make it fated
That when more is obtained it is not kept,
My heart would have been first
To let my tongue pour forth these things.
But now, in darkness, it murmurs,
Painfully-desiring, and having no hope of when
There will be an opportunity to bring this to an end,
Rekindling the fire of reason.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, vv.990-1033
The Error of The-Separation-of-Otherness
The essence of the faculty of empathy is συμπάθεια with
other living beings and which συμπάθεια involves a
translocation of ourselves for a duration or durations of causal
moments. There is thus a perception of the acausal, the numinous,
reality underlying the causal division of beings, existents, into
separate, causal-separated, objects and the subject-object
relationship which is or has been assumed by means of the process of
causal ideation to exist between such causally-separate beings. That
is, and for instance, the implied or assumed causal separateness of
living beings - the-separation-of-otherness - is causal
appearance and not an expression of the true nature of Being and
beings.
The-separation-of-otherness obscures and disrupts our relation to ψυχή
and thus obscures the nature of our being and the nature of Being
itself, and amounts to ὕβρις. For, in place of an
understanding, a knowing, and thus an appreciation and acceptance of
what is numinous - and thus of the natural balance and of what/whom
we should respect - the-separation-of-otherness
results in the positing of abstract categories/idealised forms to
which we, as living beings, are assigned and which categories and
forms are regarded as what we should aspire to and/or compare
ourselves to and what we are judged by or judge ourselves by.
In classical terms, the natural balance and those whom we should
respect - manifest in ψυχή and θεοί and Μοῖραι
τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες and δαιμόνων
and in those sacred places guarded or watched over by δαιμόνων - are arrogantly replaced by
human manufactured, and fallible, ideations and which ideations do
not in any way re-present the nature, the φύσις, of our
being, the φύσις of other living beings, and φύσις
of Being, and which φύσις is one of the living connexions,
the numinosity, of ψυχή and thus of the Cosmic Perspective,
a nature manifest, for we mortals, in an appreciation of the
numinous and thus in living in a certain way because we understand
the nature, the importance, of δίκη, of fairness, of not
being excessive.
The result of such ὕβρις - of the-separation-of-otherness
and of the arrogance assigning living beings to and judging them by
lifeless abstractions, ideations; of neglecting θεοί and Μοῖραι
τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες and δαιμόνων
- is ἔρις: strife, discord, disruption, conflict, suffering,
misfortune, and a loss of ψυχή and ἁρμονίη.
As Aeschylus mentioned, over two thousand years ago:
ἔστω δ᾽ ἀπή-
μαντον, ὥστ᾽ ἀπαρκεῖν
εὖ πραπίδων λαχόντα.
οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ἔπαλξις
πλούτου πρὸς κόρον ἀνδρὶ
λακτίσαντι μέγαν Δίκας
βωμὸν εἰς ἀφάνειαν.
βιᾶται δ᾽ ἁ τάλαινα πειθώ,
προβούλου παῖς ἄφερτος ἄτας.
ἄκος δὲ πᾶν μάταιον. οὐκ ἐκρύφθη,
πρέπει δέ, φῶς αἰνολαμπές, σίνος...
λιτᾶν δ᾽ ἀκούει μὲν οὔτις θεῶν:
τὸν δ᾽ ἐπίστροφον τῶν
φῶτ᾽ ἄδικον καθαιρεῖ
For unharmed is the one
Who rightly reasons that what is sufficient
Is what is allotted to him.
For there is no protection
In riches for the man of excess
Who stamps down the great altar of the goddess, Judgement,
In order to hide it from view.
But vigorously endures Temptation -
That already-decided daughter of unbearable Misfortune.
And all remedies are in vain.
Not concealed, but conspicuous -
A harsh shining light -
Is the injury...
But not one of the gods hears the supplications:
Instead, they take down those persons
Who, lacking fairness, turn their attentions to such things.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon. vv.379-389, vv. 396-402
IV
An Appreciation of The Numinous
Empathy by its very nature - by its relocation, translocation, of
ourselves into, and συμπάθεια with, the living other
- naturally inclines us toward compassion, for to intentionally harm
the living other is to feel, to know, that harm. Such harming
might also upset, unbalance, hinder, or harm, the ψυχή we
share with that and with other living beings and so in some way
cause, or contribute to, or result in harm, suffering, or misfortune
to us and/or to others now or on some future occasion or occasions.
In effect, compassion is a means to maintain ἁρμονίη and
the natural balance of Life and thus to aid or contribute to our own
ἁρμονίη and well-being as well as that of others.
Empathy - like πάθει μάθος - also inclines us toward
treating other human beings as we ourselves would wish to be
treated; that is it inclines us toward fairness, toward
self-restraint, toward being well-mannered, and toward an
appreciation and understanding of innocence, with innocence being
regarded as an attribute of those who, being personally unknown to
us, are therefore unjudged us by and who thus are given the benefit
of the doubt. For this presumption of innocence of others – until
direct personal experience, and individual and empathic knowing of
them, prove otherwise – is the fair, the reasoned, the numinous
thing to do.
Thus morality is, for The
Way of Pathei-Mathos, a result of individuals using the faculty of
empathy; a consequence of the insight and the understanding (the
acausal knowing) that empathy provides for individuals in the
immediacy-of-the-moment. Or, expressed another way, morality
resides not in some abstract theory or some moralistic schemata
presented in some written text which individuals have to accept
and try and conform or aspire to, but rather in personal virtues
that arise or which can arise naturally through empathy, πάθει
μάθος, and thus from an awareness and appreciation of the
numinous. Personal virtues such as compassion and fairness, and εὐταξία, that
quality of self-restraint, of a balanced, well-mannered conduct
especially under adversity or duress, of which Cicero
wrote:
Haec autem scientia continentur ea, quam Graeci εὐταξίαν
nominant, non hanc, quam interpretamur modestiam, quo in verbo
modus inest, sed illa est εὐταξία, in qua intellegitur ordinis
conservatio
Those two qualities are evident in that way described by the
Greeks as εὐταξίαν although what is meant by εὐταξία is not what
we mean by the moderation of the moderate, but rather what we
consider is restrained behaviour...
De Officiis, Liber Primus,
142
In practice, therefore, justice is not some abstract concept, some
ideation, which it is believed can and should be administered by
others and requiring the individual to accept, passively or
willingly, some external authority. Rather, justice, like εὐταξία, like goodness, is numinous,
living in the individual who - because of empathy, πάθει μάθος,
awareness and appreciation of the numinous - is inclined to be fair,
who is capable of restraint especially under
adversity or duress; the individual of σωφρονεῖν
who thus "can tell inner character from outer" and who thus has
those personal qualities which can be expressed by one word: honour.
The Numinous Balance of Honour
In many ways, the personal virtue of honour, and the cultivation of
wu-wei, are - together - a practical, a living, manifestation of our
understanding and appreciation of the numinous; of how to live, to
behave, as empathy intimates we can or should in order to avoid
committing the folly, the error, of ὕβρις, in order not to
cause suffering, and in order to re-present, to acquire, ἁρμονίη.
For personal honour is essentially a presencing, a grounding, of ψυχή
- of Life, of our φύσις - occurring when the insight (the
knowing) of a developed empathy inclines us toward a compassion that
is, of necessity, balanced by σωφρονεῖν and in accord with
δίκη.
This balancing of compassion - of the need not to cause suffering -
by σωφρονεῖν and δίκη is perhaps most obvious on
that particular occasion when it may be judged necessary to cause
suffering to another human being. That is, in honourable
self-defence. For it is natural - part of our reasoned, fair, just,
human nature - to defend ourselves when attacked and (in the
immediacy of the personal moment) to valorously, with chivalry, act
in defence of someone close-by who is unfairly attacked or
dishonourably threatened or is being bullied by others, and to thus
employ, if our personal judgement of the circumstances deem it
necessary, lethal force.
This use of force is, importantly, crucially, restricted - by the
individual nature of our judgement, and by the individual nature of
our authority - to such personal situations of immediate
self-defence and of valorous defence of others, and cannot be
extended beyond that, for to so extend it, or attempt to extend it
beyond the immediacy of the personal moment of an existing physical
threat, is an arrogant presumption - an act of ὕβρις -
which negates the fair, the human, presumption of innocence [15] of
those we do not personally know, we have no empathic knowledge of,
and who present no direct, immediate, personal, threat to us or to
others nearby us.
Such personal self-defence and such valorous defence of another in a
personal situation are in effect a means to restore the natural
balance which the unfair, the dishonourable, behaviour of others
upsets. That is, such defence fairly, justly, and naturally in the
immediacy of the moment corrects their error of ὕβρις
resulting from their bad (their rotten) φύσις; a rotten
character evident in their lack of the virtue, the skill, of σωφρονεῖν.
For had they possessed that virtue, and if their character was not
bad, they would not have undertaken such a dishonourable attack.
Wu-Wei and The Cultivation of Humility
The knowledge, the understanding, the intuition, the
insight that is wu-wei is a knowledge, an understanding, that can be
acquired from empathy, πάθει μάθος, and by a knowing of
and an appreciation of the numinous.
This knowledge and understanding, being of the wholeness,
is that of the healthy, the interior, inward, and personal balance
beyond the separation of beings – beyond πόλεμος and ὕβρις
and thus beyond ἔρις; beyond the separation and thence the
strife, the discord, which abstractions, ideations, encourage and
indeed which they manufacture, bring-into-being. Among these
ideations - and one which can often distance us from an appreciation
of the numinous and thus from ἁρμονίη - is that of a
measured Time of fixed durations; and one which thus has a tendency
to both artificially apportion out our lives, urge us to hastily
strive for some ideation, and cause us to live and/or work at an
artificial, un-harmonious, pace.
Empathy, wu-wei, πάθει μάθος, and a knowing of and an
appreciation of the numinous, also incline us toward the
cultivation of humility as a prerequisite for us not to repeat our
errors of ὕβρις, or the ὕβρις of others, and
which mistakes of ὕβρις - ours and/or of others - we
either are personally aware of or can become aware of through the
recorded πάθει μάθος of our human cultures, manifest as
this transmitted knowledge and personal learning often is in
literature, Art, poetry, myths, legends, and music.
For our personal πάθει μάθος makes us aware of, makes
us feel, know, remember, in a very personal sense, our
fallibility, our mortality, our mistakes, our errors, our wrong
deeds, the suffering we have caused, the harm we have done and
inflicted; how much we personally have contributed to discord,
strife, sorrow. Similarly, our appreciation of the numinous,
together with empathy and the cultivation of wu-wei, makes us
aware of, and feel, and understand, ὕβρις and the errors
of ὕβρις in others past and present.
There is then, or there develops or there can develope, a
personal inclination toward σωφρονεῖν; toward being
fair, toward rational deliberation, toward a lack of haste, toward
a living numinously. Toward a balanced judgement, and honour, and
a knowing and appreciation of the wisdom that the only effective,
long-lasting, change and reform that does not cause suffering -
that is not redolent of ὕβρις - is the one that changes
human beings in an individual way by personal example and/or
because of πάθει μάθος, and thus interiorly changes
what, in them, predisposes them, or inclines them toward, doing or
what urges them to do, what is dishonourable, undignified, unfair,
and uncompassionate. That is what, individually, changes or
rebalances bad φύσις and thus brings-into-being, or
restores, good φύσις.
Conclusion - The Way of Pathei-Mathos
It is the cultivation by
individuals of empathy, of wu-wei, of a reasoned judgement, combined
with (i) an appreciation of the numinous and of our accumulated
pathei-mathos - evident, for example, in Hellenic culture, in other
cultures, and often manifest in Art, literature, music, myths,
legends, poetry - and (ii) the living of a compassionate life
balanced by honour, which are the whole of The Way of Pathei-Mathos.
The Way of Pathei-Mathos is thus an ethical, an interior, a
personal, a non-political, a non-religious, a non-interfering, way
of individual reflexion and individual change.
There is nothing else. No given, no required, praxis. No 'secret
wisdom' or 'secret teachings', no enlightenment to be taught. No
methodology, no theology, and no need for faith or belief. There are
no theories, no goals, no dogma, no texts and no one to be revered.
Notes
[1]
Ζῆνα δέ τις προφρόνως ἐπινίκια κλάζων
τεύξεται φρενῶν τὸ πᾶν:
ὸν φρονεῖν βροτοὺς ὁδώ-
σαντα, τὸν πάθει μάθος
θέντα κυρίως ἔχειν.
If anyone, from reasoning, exclaims loudly that victory of
Zeus,
Then they have acquired an understanding of all these things;
Of he who guided mortals to reason,
Who laid down that this possesses authority:
Learning from adversity.
Aeschylus: Agamemnon,174-183
[2] An awareness of the numinous is what predisposes us
not to commit the error, the folly, of ὕβρις. As
Sophocles wrote in Oedipus Tyrannus:
ὕβρις φυτεύει τύραννον:
ὕβρις, εἰ πολλῶν ὑπερπλησθῇ μάταν,
ἃ μὴ ‘πίκαιρα μηδὲ συμφέροντα,
ἀκρότατον εἰσαναβᾶσ᾽
αἶπος ἀπότομον ὤρουσεν εἰς ἀνάγκαν,
ἔνθ᾽ οὐ ποδὶ χρησίμῳ
χρῆται
Insolence plants the tyrant. There is insolence if by a great
foolishness there is a useless over-filling which goes beyond
the proper limits. It is an ascending to the steepest and utmost
heights and then that hurtling toward that Destiny where the
useful foot has no use… (vv.872ff)
In respect of the numinous, basically it is what
manifests or can manifest or remind us of (what can reveal) the
natural balance of ψυχή; a balance which ὕβρις
upsets. This natural balance - our being as human beings - is or
can be manifest to us in or by what is harmonious, or what reminds
us of what is harmonious and beautiful. In a practical way, it is
what we regard or come to appreciate as 'sacred' and dignified;
what expresses our humanity and thus places us, as individuals, in
our correct relation to ψυχή, and which relation is that
we are but one mortal emanation of ψυχή.
We are reminded of this natural balance, of what is numinous - we
can come to know, to experience, the numinous and thus can
understand the nature of our being - by πάθει μάθος and
empathy. That is, by the process of learning from personal
adversity/personal suffering/personal grief and by using and
developing our faculty of empathy.
An aspect of this learning is an appreciation, an awareness, of
the Cosmic Perspective: of ourselves as one fallible, mortal,
fragile biological, microcosmic, nexion on one planet in one
Galaxy in a Cosmos of billions of galaxies; one connexion to, one
emanation of, all other Life. In essence, πάθει μάθος and
empathy teach us or can teach us humility, compassion, and the
importance of personal love.
[3] The essentials which Aristotle enumerated are: (i) Reality
(existence) exists independently of us and our consciousness, and
thus independent of our senses; (ii) our limited understanding of
this independent 'external world' depends for the most part upon our
senses - that is, on what we can see, hear or touch; that is, on
what we can observe or come to know via our senses; (iii) logical
argument, or reason, is perhaps the most important means to
knowledge and understanding of and about this 'external world'; (iv)
the cosmos (existence) is, of itself, a reasoned order subject to
rational laws.
Experimental science seeks to explain the natural world – the
phenomenal world – by means of direct, personal observation of it,
and by making deductions, and formulating hypothesis, based on such
direct observation, with the important and necessary proviso,
expressed by Isaac Newton in his Principia, that
"We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as
are both true and sufficient to explain their appearance….. for
Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of
superfluous causes."
[4] The sense of τύραννος is not exactly what our fairly
modern term tyrant is commonly regarded as imputing.
Rather, it refers to the intemperate person of excess who is so
subsumed with some passion or some aim or a lust for power that they
go far beyond the due, the accepted, bounds of behaviour and thus
exceed the limits of or misuse whatever authority they have been
entrusted with. Thus do they, by their excess, by their disrespect
for the customs of their ancestors, by their lack of reasoned,
well-balanced, judgement [σωφρονεῖν] offend the gods, and
thus, to restore the balance, do the Ἐρινύες take revenge.
For it is in the nature of the τύραννος that they forget,
or they scorn, the truth, the ancient wisdom, that their lives are
subject to, guided by, Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες -
τίς οὖν ἀνάγκης ἐστὶν οἰακοστρόφος.
Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες
Who then compels to steer us?
Trimorphed Moirai with their ever-heedful Furies!
Aeschylus (attributed), Prometheus Bound,
515-6
[5] Heraclitus, fragment 80:
εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην
ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα πάντα κατ΄ ἔριν καὶ χρεώμενα [χρεών]
One should be aware that Polemos pervades, with discord δίκη,
and that beings are naturally born by discord.
See my Some Notes on Πόλεμος and Δίκη in Heraclitus B80 and
also The Balance of Physis – Notes on λόγος and ἀληθέα in
Heraclitus.
In respect of the modern error of ὕβρις that is extremism,
an error manifest in extremists, my understanding of an extremist
is a person who tends toward harshness, or who is harsh, or who
supports/incites harshness, in pursuit of some objective, usually of
a political or a religious. See Appendix I - Some Explanations
and Definitions.
[6] See Appendix II - The Change of Enantiodromia.
[7] The meaning here of ψυχή is derived from the usage of
Homer, Aeschylus, Aristotle, etcetera, and implies Life qua
being. Or, expressed another way, living beings are emanations of,
and thus manifest, ψυχή. This sense of ψυχή is
beautifully expressed in a, in my view, rather mis-understood
fragment attributed to Heraclitus:
ψυχῆισιν θάνατος ὕδωρ γενέσθαι, ὕδατι δὲ θάνατος γῆν
γενέσθαι, ἐκ γῆς δὲ ὕδωρ γίνεται, ἐξ ὕδατος δὲ ψυχή. Fragment
36
Where the water begins our living ends and where earth begins
water ends, and yet earth nurtures water and from that water,
Life.
[8] In respect of the numinous principle of Δίκα, refer to
Appendix II - The Principle of Δίκα.
[9] Although φύσις has a natural tendency to become
covered up (Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ - concealment
accompanies Physis) it can be uncovered through λόγος
and πάθει μάθος.
[10] Wu-wei is a Taoist term used in The Way of Pathei-Mathos to
refer to a personal 'letting-be' deriving from a feeling, a knowing,
that an essential part of wisdom is cultivation of an interior
personal balance and which cultivation requires acceptance that one
must work with, or employ, things according to their nature, their φύσις,
for to do otherwise is incorrect, and inclines us toward, or is,
being excessive – that is, toward the error, the unbalance,
that is hubris, an error often manifest in personal arrogance,
excessive personal pride, and insolence - that is, a disrespect for
the numinous.
In practice, the knowledge, the understanding, the intuition, the
insight that is wu-wei is a knowledge, an understanding, that can be
acquired from empathy, πάθει μάθος, and by a knowing of
and an appreciation of the numinous. This knowledge and
understanding is of wholeness and that life, things/beings, change,
flow, exist, in certain natural ways which we human beings cannot
change however hard we might try; that such a hardness of human
trying, a belief in such hardness, is unwise, un-natural, upsets the
natural balance and can cause misfortune/suffering for us and/or for
others, now or in the future. Thus success lies in discovering the
inner nature (the physis) of things/beings/ourselves and gently,
naturally, slowly, working with this inner nature, not striving
against it.
[11] Heraclitus, fragment 112:
σωφρονεῖν ἀρετὴ μεγίστη, καὶ σοφίη ἀληθέα λέγειν
καὶ ποιεῖν κατὰ φύσιν ἐπαίοντας
Most excellent is balanced reasoning, for that skill can tell
inner character from outer.
[12] In particular, The Agamemnon of Aeschylus; and the Oedipus
Tyrannus, and Antigone, of Sophocles. In respect of Oedipus
Tyrannus, refer, for example, to vv.863ff and vv.1329-1338
In much mis-understood verses in The Agamemnon (1654-1656)
Clytaemnestra makes it known that she still is aware of the power,
and importance, of δίκη. Of not killing to excess:
μηδαμῶς, ὦ φίλτατ᾽ ἀνδρῶν, ἄλλα δράσωμεν κακά.
ἀλλὰ καὶ τάδ᾽
ἐξαμῆσαι πολλά,
δύστηνον θέρος.
πημονῆς δ᾽
ἅλις γ᾽ ὑπάρχει: μηδὲν
αἱματώμεθα.
The aforementioned verses are often mis-translated to give some
nonsense such as: 'No more violence. Here is a monstrous harvest and
a bitter reaping time. There is pain enough already. Let us not be
bloody now'.
However, what Aeschylus actually has Clytaemnestra say is:
"Let us not do any more harm for to reap these many would make
it an unlucky harvest: injure them just enough, but do
not stain us with their blood."
She is being practical (and quite Hellenic) and does not want to
bring misfortune (from the gods) upon herself, or Aegisthus, by
killing to excess. The killings she has done are,
however, quite acceptable to her - she has vigorously defended
them claiming it was her natural duty to avenge her daughter and
the insult done to her by Agamemnon bringing his mistress,
Cassandra, into her home. Clytaemnestra shows no pity for the
Elders whom Aegisthus wishes to kill: "if you must", she says,
"you can injure them. But do not kill them - that would be unlucky
for us." That would be going just too far, and overstep what she
still perceives as the natural, the proper, limits of mortal
behaviour.
[13] Two fragments attributed to Heraclitus are of interest in this
respect - 112, and 123. For 112 refer to my The Balance of
Physis – Notes on λόγος and ἀληθέα in Heraclitus. For 123,
refer to my Physis, Nature, Concealment, and Natural Change.
[14] Hesiod, Theogony v. 901 - Εὐνουμίην
τε Δίκην τε καὶ Εἰρήνην τεθαλυῖαν
In effect, a personified Judgement is the goddess of the natural
balance - evident in the ancestral customs, the ways, the way of
life, the ethos, of a community - whose judgement, δίκη, is
"in accord with", has the nature or the character of, what tends to
restore such balance after some deed or deeds by an individual or
individuals have upset or disrupted that balance. This sense of δίκη
as one's ancestral customs is evident, for example, in Homer's
Odyssey:
νῦν δ᾽ ἐθέλω ἔπος ἄλλο μεταλλῆσαι καὶ ἐρέσθαι
Νέστορ᾽, ἐπεὶ περὶ οἶδε δίκας ἠδὲ φρόνιν ἄλλων
τρὶς γὰρ δή μίν φασιν ἀνάξασθαι
γένε᾽ ἀνδρῶν
ὥς τέ μοι ἀθάνατος ἰνδάλλεται εἰσοράασθαι
Book III, 243-246
I now wish to ask Nestor some questions to find out
about some other things,
For he understands others and knows more about our customs
than them,
Having been - so it is said - a Chieftain for three
generations of mortals,
And, to look at, he seems to me to be one of those immortals
[15] Πόλεμος is not some abstract 'war' or strife or
kampf, but rather that which is or becomes the genesis of beings
from Being (the separation of beings from Being), and thus not
only that which manifests as δίκη but also accompanies ἔρις because
it is the nature of Πόλεμος that beings, born because of
and by ἔρις, can be returned to Being, become bound
together - be whole - again by enantiodromia.
Thus πόλεμος - like ψυχή and πάθει μάθος
and ἐναντιοδρομίας and ὕβρις
and δίκη as δίκη/Δίκην/Δίκα
- is a philosophical principle and should therefore in my view not
be blandly translated by a single word or term, but rather should
be left untranslated or be transliterated, thus requiring for its
understanding a certain thoughtful reasoning and thence
interpretation according to context.
In respect of such interpretation, it is for example interesting
that in the recounted tales of Greek mythology attributed to
Aesop, and in circulation at the time of Heraclitus, a personified
πόλεμος (as the δαίμων of kindred strife) married
a personified ὕβρις (as the δαίμων of arrogant
pride) and that it was a common folk belief that πόλεμος
accompanied ὕβρις - that is, that Polemos followed Hubris
around rather than vice versa, causing or bringing ἔρις.
[16] See Appendix II. The saying - attributed to Heraclitus - is
from Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of
Eminent Philosophers (ix. 7)
[17] Fragment 112.
[18] For an explanation is what is meant here by innocence, see the
entry in Appendix I, which entry is based on the brief mention of
innocence in the first part of section IV - An Appreciation of
The Numinous.
Appendix I
Some Explanations, Terms, and Definitions
Acausal
The acausal is not a generalization – a concept – deriving from a
collocation of assumed, imagined, or causally observed
Phainómenon, but instead is that wordless, conceptless,
a-temporal, knowing which empathy reveals and which a personal πάθει
μάθος and an appreciation of the numinous often inclines us
toward. That is, the acausal is a direct and personal (individual)
revealing of beings and Being which does not depend on denoting or
naming.
What is so revealed is the a-causal nature of some beings, the
connexion which exists between living beings, and how living
beings are emanations of ψυχή.
Thus speculations and postulations regarding the acausal only serve
to obscure the nature of the acausal or distance us from that
revealing of the acausal that empathy and πάθει μάθος and
an appreciation of the numinous provide.
ἀρετή
Arête is the prized Hellenic virtue which can roughly be
translated by the English word 'excellence' but which also implies
what is naturally distinguishable - what is pre-eminent - because it
reveals or shows certain valued qualities such as beauty, honour,
valour, harmony.
Compassion
The English word compassion dates from around 1340 CE
and the word in its original sense (and as used in this work) means
benignity, which word derives from the Latin benignitatem,
the sense imputed being of a kind, compassionate, well-mannered
character, disposition, or deed. Benignity came into English
usage around the same time as compassion; for example, the word
occurs in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde [ ii. 483 ] written
around 1374 CE.
Hence, compassion is understood as meaning being kindly disposed
toward and/or feeling a sympathy with someone (or some living being)
affected by pain/suffering/grief or who is enduring vicissitudes.
The word compassion itself is derived from com, meaning
together-with, combined with pati, meaning
to-suffer/to-endure and derived from the classical Latin passiō.
Thus useful synonyms for compassion, in this original sense, are compassivity
and benignity.
Cosmic Perspective
The Cosmic Perspective refers to our place in the Cosmos, to the
fact that we human beings are simply one fragile fallible mortal
biological life-form on one planet orbiting one star in one galaxy
in a Cosmos of billions of galaxies. Thus in terms of this
perspective all our theories, our ideas, our beliefs, our
abstractions are merely the opinionated product of our limited
fallible Earth-bound so-called ‘intelligence’, an ‘intelligence’,
an understanding, we foolishly, arrogantly, pridefully have a
tendency to believe in and exalt as if we are somehow ‘the centre
of the Universe’ and cosmically important.
The Cosmic Perspective inclines us – or can incline us – toward
wu-wei, toward avoiding the error of hubris, toward humility, and
thus toward an appreciation of the numinous.
δαίμων
A δαίμων is not one of the pantheon of major Greek gods –
θεοί - but rather a lesser type of divinity who might be
assigned by those gods to bring good fortune or misfortune to human
beings and/or watch over certain human beings and especially
particular numinous (sacred) places.
δίκη
Depending on context, δίκη could be the judgement of an
individual (or Judgement personified), or the natural and the
necessary balance, or the correct/customary/ancestral way, or what
is expected due to custom, or what is considered correct and
natural, and so on.
A personified Judgement - the Δίκην
of Hesiod - is the goddess of the natural balance, evident in the
ancestral customs, the ways, the way of life, the ethos, of a
community, whose judgement, δίκη, is "in accord with", has
the nature or the character of, what tends to restore such balance
after some deed or deeds by an individual or individuals have upset
or disrupted that balance. This sense of δίκη as one's
ancestral customs is evident, for example, in Homer (Odyssey, III,
244).
The modern numinous principle of Δίκα - qv. Appendix III -
suggests what lies beyond and what may have been the genesis of δίκη
personified as the goddess, Judgement.
Empathy
Etymologically, this fairly recent English word, used to translate
the German Einfühlung, derives, via the late Latin sympathia,
from the Greek συμπάθεια - συμπαθής - and is thus formed from the
prefix σύν (sym) together with παθ- [root of πάθος] meaning enduring/suffering,
feeling: πάσχειν, to endure/suffer.
As used and defined by the philosophy of pathei-mathos, empathy - ἐμπάθεια
- is a natural human faculty: that is, a noble intuition about
another human being or another living being. When empathy is
developed and used, as envisaged by that way of life, then it is a
specific and extended type of συμπάθεια. That is, it is a
type of and a means to knowing and understanding another human being
and/or other living beings - and thus differs in nature from
compassion.
Enantiodromia
The unusual compound Greek word ἐναντιοδρομίας
occurs in a summary of the philosophy of Heraclitus by Diogenes
Laërtius.
It is used here to refer to, to name, to describe, the process - the
natural change, the reformation - that occurs or which can occur in
a human being because of or following πάθει μάθος.
For further details regarding enantiodromia refer to Appendix II -
The Change of Enantiodromia.
ἔρις
Strife; discord; disruption; a quarrel between friends or kin. As in
the Odyssey:
ἥ τ᾽
ἔριν Ἀτρεΐδῃσι
μετ᾽ ἀμφοτέροισιν
ἔθηκε.
Who placed strife between those two sons of Atreus
Odyssey, 3, 136
According to the recounted tales of Greek mythology attributed to
Aesop, ἔρις was caused by, or was a consequence of, the
marriage between a personified πόλεμος (as the δαίμων
of kindred strife) and a personified ὕβρις (as the δαίμων
of arrogant pride) with Polemos rather forlornly following Hubris
around rather than vice versa. Eris is thus the child of Polemos and
Hubris.
Extremism
By extreme I mean to be harsh, so that my
understanding of an extremist is a person who tends toward
harshness, or who is harsh, or who supports/incites harshness, in
pursuit of some objective, usually of a political or a religious
nature. Here, harsh is: rough, severe, a tendency to be
unfeeling, unempathic.
Hence extremism is considered to be: (a) the result of
such harshness, and (b) the principles, the causes, the
characteristics, that promote, incite, or describe the harsh action
of extremists. In addition, a fanatic is considered to be someone
with a surfeit of zeal or whose enthusiasm for some objective, or
for some cause, is intemperate.
In the philosophical terms of the way of pathei-mathos, an extremist
is someone who commits the error of hubris; and error which
enantiodromia - following from πάθει μάθος - can sometimes
correct or forestall.
Honour
The English word honour dates from around 1200 CE,
deriving from the Latin honorem (meaning refined, grace,
beauty) via the Old French (and thence Anglo-Norman) onor/onur.
As used by The Way of Pathei-Mathos, honour means an instinct for
and an adherence to what is fair, dignified, and valourous. An
honourable person is thus someone of manners, fairness, natural
dignity, and valour.
In respect of early usage of the term, two quotes may be of
interest. The first, from c. 1393 CE, is taken from
a poem, in Middle English, by John Gower:
And riht in such a maner wise
Sche bad thei scholde hire don servise,
So that Achilles underfongeth
As to a yong ladi belongeth
Honour, servise and reverence.
John Gower, Confessio Amantis. Liber Quintus vv.
2997-3001 [Macaulay, G.C., ed. The Works of John Gower.
Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1901]
The second is from several centuries later:
" Honour - as something distinct from mere probity, and
which supposes in gentlemen a stronger abhorrence of perfidy,
falsehood, or cowardice, and a more elevated and delicate sense of
the dignity of virtue, than are usually found in vulgar minds."
George Lyttelton. History of the
Life of Henry the Second. London, Printed for J.
Dodsley. M DCC LXXV II [1777] (A new ed., cor.) vol 3, p.178
Innocence
Innocence is regarded as an attribute of those who, being personally
unknown to us, are therefore unjudged us by and who thus are given
the benefit of the doubt. For this presumption of innocence of
others – until direct personal experience, and individual and
empathic knowing of them, prove otherwise – is the fair, the
reasoned, the numinous, the human, thing to do.
Empathy and πάθει μάθος incline us toward treating other
human beings as we ourselves would wish to be treated; that is they
incline us toward fairness, toward self-restraint, toward being
well-mannered, and toward an appreciation and understanding of
innocence.
Numinous
The numinous is what manifests or can manifest or remind us of (what
can reveal) the natural balance of ψυχή; a balance which ὕβρις
upsets. This natural balance - our being as human beings - is or can
be manifest to us in or by what is harmonious, or what reminds us of
what is harmonious and beautiful. In a practical way, it is what we
regard or come to appreciate as 'sacred' and dignified; what
expresses our humanity and thus places us, as individuals, in our
correct relation to ψυχή, and which relation is that we are
but one mortal emanation of ψυχή.
Πόλεμος
Heraclitus fragment 80
Πόλεμος is not some abstract 'war' or strife or kampf, but
rather that which is or becomes the genesis of beings from Being
(the separation of beings from Being), and thus not only that which
manifests as δίκη but also accompanies ἔρις because
it is the nature of Πόλεμος that beings, born because of
and by ἔρις, can be returned to Being, become bound together
- be whole - again by enantiodromia.
According to the recounted tales of Greek mythology attributed to
Aesop, ἔρις was caused by, or was a consequence of, the
marriage between a personified πόλεμος (as the δαίμων
of kindred strife) and a personified ὕβρις (as the δαίμων
of arrogant pride) with Polemos rather forlornly following Hubris
around rather than vice versa. Thus Eris is the child of Polemos and
Hubris.
Furthermore, Polemos was originally the δαίμων (not the
god) of kindred strife, whether familial, of friends, or of one’s πόλις
(one’s clan and their places of dwelling). Thus, to describe
Polemos, as is sometimes done, as the god of war, is doubly
incorrect.
Physis (φύσις)
φύσις suggests either the Homeric - Odyssey,
Book 10, vv. 302-3 - usage of nature or character of a person, as
in Herodotus (2.5.2):
Αἰγύπτου γὰρ φύσις ἐστὶ τῆς χώρης τοιήδε
or Φύσις (Physis) as in Heraclitus fragment 123 -
that is, the natural nature of all beings, beyond their outer
appearance, and which natural nature we, as human beings, have a
natural [an unconscious] inclination to conceal; either because of
ὕβρις or through an ignorance, an unknowing, of ourselves
as an emanation of ψυχή.
In terms of the nature or the character of an individual:
σωφρονεῖν ἀρετὴ μεγίστη, καὶ σοφίη ἀληθέα λέγειν καὶ
ποιεῖν κατὰ φύσιν ἐπαίοντας
Most excellent is balanced reasoning, for that skill can
tell inner character from outer.
Heraclitus fragment 112
ὕβρις
ὕβρις (hubris) is the error of personal insolence, of
going beyond the proper limits set by: (a) reasoned (balanced)
judgement – σωφρονεῖν – and by (b) an awareness, a
personal knowing, of the numinous, and which knowing of the
numinous can arise from empathy and πάθει μάθος.
Hubris upsets the natural balance – is contrary to ἁρμονίη
– and often results from a person or persons striving for or
clinging to some causal abstraction.
According to The Way of Pathei-Mathos, ὕβρις disrupts -
and conceals - our appreciation of what is numinous and thus of
what/whom we should respect, classically understood as ψυχή
and θεοί and Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες
and δαιμόνων and those sacred
places guarded or watched over by δαιμόνων.
Wu-wei
Wu-wei is a Taoist term used in The Way of Pathei-Mathos to refer
to a personal 'letting-be' deriving from a feeling, a knowing,
that an essential part of wisdom is cultivation of an interior
personal balance and which cultivation requires acceptance that
one must work with, or employ, things according to their nature,
their φύσις, for to do otherwise is incorrect, and
inclines us toward, or is, being excessive – that is, toward
the error, the unbalance, that is hubris, an error often manifest
in personal arrogance, excessive personal pride, and insolence -
that is, a disrespect for the numinous.
In practice, the knowledge, the understanding, the intuition, the
insight that is wu-wei is a knowledge, an understanding, that can
be acquired from empathy, πάθει μάθος, and by a knowing
of and an appreciation of the numinous. This knowledge and
understanding is of wholeness, and that life, things/beings,
change, flow, exist, in certain natural ways which we human beings
cannot change however hard we might try; that such a hardness of
human trying, a belief in such hardness, is unwise, un-natural,
upsets the natural balance and can cause misfortune/suffering for
us and/or for others, now or in the future. Thus success lies in
discovering the inner nature (the physis) of
things/beings/ourselves and gently, naturally, slowly, working
with this inner nature, not striving against it.
ψυχή
Life qua being. Our being as a living existent is
considered an emanation of ψυχή. Thus ψυχή is what
'animates' us and what gives us our nature, φύσις, as
human beings. Our nature is that of a mortal fallible being veering
between σωφρονεῖν (thoughtful reasoning, and thus
fairness) and ὕβρις.
Appendix II
The Change of Enantiodromia
The Meaning of Enantiodromia
The unusual compound Greek word ἐναντιοδρομίας
occurs in a summary of the philosophy of Heraclitus by Diogenes
Laërtius:
πάντα δὲ γίνεσθαι καθ᾽ εἱμαρμένην καὶ διὰ τῆς
ἐναντιοδρομίας ἡρμόσθαι τὰ ὄντα (ix. 7)
This unusual word is usually translated as something like 'conflict
of opposites' or 'opposing forces' which I consider are incorrect
for several reasons.
Firstly, in my view, a transliteration should be used instead of
some translation, for the Greek expression suggests something
unique, something which exists in its own right as a principle or
'thing' and which uniqueness of meaning has a context, with both
context and uniqueness lost if a bland translation is attempted.
Lost, as the uniqueness, and context, of for example, δαιμόνων becomes lost if simply
translated as 'spirits' (or worse, as 'gods'), or as the meaning of
κακός in Hellenic culture is lost if mistranslated as 'evil'.
Second, the context seems to me to hint at something far more
important than 'conflict of opposites', the context being the
interesting description of the philosophy of Heraclitus before and
after the word occurs, as given by Diogenes Laërtius:
1) ἐκ πυρὸς
τὰ πάντα συνεστάναι
2) εἰς τοῦτο
ἀναλύεσθαι
3) πάντα δὲ
γίνεσθαι καθ᾽
εἱμαρμένην καὶ
διὰ τῆς ἐναντιοδρομίας ἡρμόσθαι
τὰ ὄντα
4) καὶ πάντα
ψυχῶν εἶναι
καὶ δαιμόνων
πλήρη
The foundation/base/essence of all beings [ 'things' ]
is pyros to which they return, with all [of them] by genesis
appropriately apportioned [separated into portions] to be bound
together again by enantiodromia, and all filled/suffused/vivified
with/by ψυχή and Dæmons.
This raises several interesting questions, not least concerning ψυχή
and δαιμόνων, but also regarding
the sense of πυρὸς. Is pyros here
a philosophical principle - such as ψυχή - or used as in
fragment 43, the source of which is also Diogenes Laërtius:
ὕβριν χρὴ
σβεννύναι μᾶλλον
ἢ πυρκαϊὴν
(ix 2)
Better to deal with your hubris before you
confront that fire
Personally, I incline toward the former, of some principle being
meant, given the context, and the generalization - ἐκ πυρὸς τὰ πάντα. In
respect of ψυχῶν καὶ
δαιμόνων I would suggest that what
is implied is the numinous, our apprehension of The Numen, and which
numen is the source of ψυχή and the origin of Dæmons.
For a δαίμων is not one of the pantheon of major Greek
gods – θεοί - but another type of divinity (that is,
another emanation of the numen; another manifestation of the
numinous) who might be assigned by those numinous gods to bring good
fortune or misfortune to human beings and/or who watch over certain
human beings and especially over particular numinous (sacred)
places.
Thus the above summary of the philosophy of Heraclitus might be
paraphrased as:
The foundation of all beings is Pyros to which they
return, with all by genesis appropriately apportioned to be bound
together again by enantiodromia, with all beings suffused with
[are emanations of] the numen.
Furthermore, hubris disrupts - and conceals - our appreciation of
the numen, our appreciation of ψυχή and of Dæmons: of
what is numinous and what/whom we should respect. A disruption that
makes us unbalanced, makes us disrespect the numinous and that of
the numinous (such as δαιμόνων and θεοί and sacred places), and
which unbalance enantiodromia can correct, with enantiodromia
suggesting a confrontation - that expected dealing with our hubris
necessary in order to return to Pyros, the source of beings. Here,
Pyros is understood not as we understand 'fire' - and not even as
some sort of basic physical element among other elements such as
water - but rather as akin to both the constant 'warmth and the
light of the Sun' (that brings life) and the sudden lightning that,
as from Zeus, can serve as warning (omen) and retribution, and which
can destroy and be a cause of devastating fire and thus also of the
regeneration/rebuilding that often follows from such fires and from
the learning, the respect, that arises from appreciating warnings
(omens) from the gods. All of which perhaps explains fragment 64:
τὰ δὲ πάντα οἰακίζει Κεραυνός
All beings are guided by Lightning
Enantiodromia in the Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos
In the philosophy of pathei-mathos, enantiodromia is understood as
the process - the natural change - that occurs or which can occur in
a human being because of or following πάθει μάθος. For
part of πάθει μάθος is a 'confrontational contest' - an
interior battle - and an acceptance of the need to take part in this
battle and 'face the consequences', one of which is learning the
(often uncomfortable) truth about one's own unbalanced,
strife-causing, nature.
If successful in this confrontation, there is or there can be a
positive, moral, development of the nature, the character - the φύσις
(physis) - of the person because of that revealing and that
appreciation (or re-appreciation) of the numinous whose genesis is
this pathei-mathos, and which appreciation includes an awareness of
why ὕβρις is an error (often the error) of
unbalance, of disrespect, of a going beyond the due limits, and
which ὕβρις is the genesis of the τύραννος and of
the modern error of extremism. For the tyrannos and the extremist
(and their extremisms) embody and give rise to and perpetuate ἔρις
[1].
Thus enantiodromia reveals the nature of, and restores in
individuals, the natural balance necessary for ψυχή to
flourish - which natural balance is δίκη as Δίκα
[2] and which restoration of balance within the individual results
in ἁρμονίη [3], manifest as ἁρμονίη is in
the cultivation, in the individual, of wu-wei and σωφρονεῖν
(a fair and balanced personal, individual, judgement).
Notes
[1] Heraclitus, fragment 80: εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα
ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα πάντα κατ΄ ἔριν καὶ χρεώμενα
[χρεών]
One should be aware that Polemos pervades, with discord δίκη,
and that beings are naturally born by discord.
See my Some Notes on Πόλεμος and Δίκη in Heraclitus B80 and
also The Balance of Physis – Notes on λόγος and ἀληθέα in
Heraclitus.
[2] In respect of the numinous principle of Δίκα, refer to
Appendix III.
[3] Although φύσις has a natural tendency to become
covered up (Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ - concealment
accompanies Physis) it can be uncovered through λόγος
and πάθει μάθος.
Appendix III
The Principle of Δίκα
Δίκα is that noble, respectful, balance understood, for
example, by Sophocles (among many others) - for instance, Antigone
respects the natural balance, the customs and traditions of her own
culture, given by the gods, whereas Creon verges towards and finally
commits, like Oedipus in Oedipus Tyrannus, the error of ὕβρις
and is thus "taught a lesson" (just like Oedipus) by the gods
because, as Aeschylus wrote -
Δίκα δὲ τοῖς μὲν παθοῦσ-
ιν μαθεῖν ἐπιρρέπει
The goddess, Judgement, favours someone learning
from adversity.
Agamemnon, 250-251
In respect of Δίκα, I write - spell - it thus in this
modern way with a capital Δ to intimate a new, a particular and
numinous, philosophical principle, and differentiate it from the
more general δίκη. As a numinous principle, or axiom, Δίκα
thus suggests what lies beyond and what may have been the genesis
of δίκη personified as the goddess, Judgement – the
goddess of natural balance, of the ancestral way and ancestral
customs.
Thus, Δίκα does not mean nor imply something
theological, but rather implies the natural balance, the reasoned
judgement, the thoughtful reasoning – σωφρονεῖν – that πάθει
μάθος brings and restores, and which accumulated πάθει
μάθος of a particular folk or πόλις forms the
basis for their ancestral customs. δίκη is therefore, as
the numinous principle Δίκα, what may be said to be a
particular and a necessary balance between ἀρετή and ὕβρις
– between the ὕβρις that often results when the
personal, the natural, quest for ἀρετή becomes
unbalanced and excessive.
That is, when ἔρις (discord) is or becomes δίκη
– as suggested by Heraclitus in Fragment 80 -
εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ
γινόμενα πάντα κατ΄ ἔριν καὶ χρεώμενα [χρεών]
One should be aware that Polemos pervades, with discord
δίκη, and that beings are naturally born by discord.
cc David
Myatt 2012
(Third edition)
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