Philosophy 201

I am not sure what is meant by leaving the life of philosophy and leading a lower life of ambition. What follows, however, is careless drunkenness and the fulfillment of desire which is not ever fully enjoyed without the approval of the soul. They don’t gain wings and soar to heaven, nor do they return to darkness, but continue lightly together in their journey until, in love, they grow their wings together.

The sex of the charioteer seems to be either female or male in this paragraph, and in the first paragraph is referred to as he/or she. It is confusing to consider in this paragraph that both the charioteer and the beloved are male when it says, “His desire is as the desire of the other, but weaker; he wants to see him, touch him, kiss, him, embrace him…”

This paragraph suggests that what feeds the divine wing is either good: “beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like,” or evil and foulness: “the opposite of good, [the wing] wastes and falls away.” As posted in Melissa Goff’s blog, there doesn’t appear to be any balance (at least not for the divine). The divine soul becomes human when it is fed about evil and foulness, for the wings then waste and fall away.

Long story short…good order and discipline leads to wings and perfection of the soul. Wanton, drunken hedonism leads to no wings and and existence in the underground. Crime doesn’t pay.

I get lost in this section. What I’m reading is after a whole lot of odd description, is that the dark side of the soul (bad horse) wants to give in to his desires but the intellect and good nature (charioteer and good horse) won’t allow it so the bad horse just remains silent.

The soul is approaching a moment of enlightenment and the dark horse is so clueless that he inappropriately races toward it. The charioteer fears reaching that which he/she wants and falls backward stopping the chariot. After a few times, the dark horse learns to take it easy and begrudgingly follows respectfully. In this case.

Boiled down, the white horse is a choir boy and restrained by self-control. The dark horse is shameless and unminding, given to impulse. The charioteer is easily overcome by the sheer persistence of the dark horse and gives in and the good horse does as he is told and follows.

Paragraph 3: Plato describes the wing as the part closest to devine. Only by nourishment by beauty, wisdom, goodness and such will maintain the wing and bring the soul closer to devine. Opposite to this, ugliness, ignorance, and evil will detroy the wing and the soul is earthbound.

Paragraph one is describing Plato’s concept of the soul. He draws the analogy to a chariot drawn by two horses (one good and one bad) and guided by one charioteer (intellect). As the soul achieves perfection it has wings and commands the world. When imperfect, the wings are lost and the soul is bound to Earth in a body. No immortal can have a body/soul so they are excluded.

I like how he refers to the soul as a her…in the bible, patience is referred to as aher..”her ways are pleasant ways…”