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Authors: Arthur Koestler
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comfortable and enjoyable, because "nearly all requisites of comfort and social refinement have been secured" and "everything of these kinds has already been provided." 7 Pure science and philosophy "which deal neither with the necessities nor with the enjoyment of life" only arose, in Aristotle's view, after the practical sciences had done all that they can ever do, and material progress had come to a halt.
Even these cursory remarks may indicate the general mood underlying these philosophies: the unconscious yearning for stability and permanence in a crumbling world where "change" can only be a change for the worse, and "progress" can only mean progress toward disaster. "Change" for Plato is virtually synonymous with degeneration; his history of creation is a story of the successive emergence of ever lower and less worthy forms of life – from God who is pure self-contained Goodness, to the World of Reality which consists only of perfect Forms or Ideas, to the World of Appearances, which is a shadow and copy of the former; and so down to man: "Those of the men first created who led a life of cowardice and injustice were suitably reborn as women in the second generation, and this is why it was at this particular juncture that the gods contrived the lust for copulation." After the women we come to the animals: "Beasts who go on all fours came from men who were wholly unconversant with philosophy and had never gazed on the heavens." 8 It is a tale of the Fall in permanence: a theory of descent and devolution – as opposed to evolution by ascent.
As so often with Plato, it is impossible to say whether all this is to be taken literally, or allegorically, or as an esoteric leg-pull. But there can be no doubt concerning the basic trend of the whole system.
We shall have to hark back time and again to Plato, to pick up the scent of some particular later development. For the time being, let us retain this essential clue to Plato's cosmology: his fear of change, his contempt and loathing for the concepts of evolution and mutability. It will reverberate all through the Middle Ages, together with its concomitant yearning for a world of eternal, changeless perfection:
Then agin I think on that which Nature said
Of that same time when no more change shall be,
But steadfast rest of all things, firmly stay'd
Upon the pillars of eternity,
That is contrary to mutability. 9
This "mutation phobia" seems to be mainly responsible for the repellent aspects of Platonism. The Pythagorean synthesis of religion and science, of the mystical and empirical approach is now in shambles. The mysticism of the Pythagoreans is carried to sterile extremes, while empirical science is ridiculed and discouraged. Physics is separated from mathematics and made into a department of theology. The Pythagorean Brotherhood is transformed into the Guides of a totalitarian Utopia; the transmigration of souls on their way to God is debased by old-wife's tales, or edifying lies, about cowards being punished by feminine reincarnations; orphic asceticism curdles into hatred of the body and contempt for the senses. True knowledge cannot be obtained by the study of nature; for "if we would have true knowledge of anything, we must be quit of the body... While in company with the body, the soul cannot have true knowledge." 10
All this is not an expression of humility – neither of the humility of the mystic seeker for God, nor the humility of reason acknowledging its limits; it is the half-frightened, half-arrogant philosophy of the genius of a doomed aristocracy and a bankrupt civilization. When reality becomes unbearable, the mind must withdraw from it and create a world of artificial perfection. Plato's world of pure Ideas and Forms, which alone is to be considered as real, whereas the world of nature which we perceive is merely its cheap Woolworth copy, is a flight into delusion. The intuitive truth expressed in the allegory of the Cave is here carried to absurdity by
Even these cursory remarks may indicate the general mood underlying these philosophies: the unconscious yearning for stability and permanence in a crumbling world where "change" can only be a change for the worse, and "progress" can only mean progress toward disaster. "Change" for Plato is virtually synonymous with degeneration; his history of creation is a story of the successive emergence of ever lower and less worthy forms of life – from God who is pure self-contained Goodness, to the World of Reality which consists only of perfect Forms or Ideas, to the World of Appearances, which is a shadow and copy of the former; and so down to man: "Those of the men first created who led a life of cowardice and injustice were suitably reborn as women in the second generation, and this is why it was at this particular juncture that the gods contrived the lust for copulation." After the women we come to the animals: "Beasts who go on all fours came from men who were wholly unconversant with philosophy and had never gazed on the heavens." 8 It is a tale of the Fall in permanence: a theory of descent and devolution – as opposed to evolution by ascent.
As so often with Plato, it is impossible to say whether all this is to be taken literally, or allegorically, or as an esoteric leg-pull. But there can be no doubt concerning the basic trend of the whole system.
We shall have to hark back time and again to Plato, to pick up the scent of some particular later development. For the time being, let us retain this essential clue to Plato's cosmology: his fear of change, his contempt and loathing for the concepts of evolution and mutability. It will reverberate all through the Middle Ages, together with its concomitant yearning for a world of eternal, changeless perfection:
Then agin I think on that which Nature said
Of that same time when no more change shall be,
But steadfast rest of all things, firmly stay'd
Upon the pillars of eternity,
That is contrary to mutability. 9
This "mutation phobia" seems to be mainly responsible for the repellent aspects of Platonism. The Pythagorean synthesis of religion and science, of the mystical and empirical approach is now in shambles. The mysticism of the Pythagoreans is carried to sterile extremes, while empirical science is ridiculed and discouraged. Physics is separated from mathematics and made into a department of theology. The Pythagorean Brotherhood is transformed into the Guides of a totalitarian Utopia; the transmigration of souls on their way to God is debased by old-wife's tales, or edifying lies, about cowards being punished by feminine reincarnations; orphic asceticism curdles into hatred of the body and contempt for the senses. True knowledge cannot be obtained by the study of nature; for "if we would have true knowledge of anything, we must be quit of the body... While in company with the body, the soul cannot have true knowledge." 10
All this is not an expression of humility – neither of the humility of the mystic seeker for God, nor the humility of reason acknowledging its limits; it is the half-frightened, half-arrogant philosophy of the genius of a doomed aristocracy and a bankrupt civilization. When reality becomes unbearable, the mind must withdraw from it and create a world of artificial perfection. Plato's world of pure Ideas and Forms, which alone is to be considered as real, whereas the world of nature which we perceive is merely its cheap Woolworth copy, is a flight into delusion. The intuitive truth expressed in the allegory of the Cave is here carried to absurdity by
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