It would be wrong to intimate that Plato is alpha and omega in the introduction of dualism into Greek thinking. In fact, even Empedocles, with his bipolarity of the forces of love on one hand and the forces of discord on the other, had presented a certain dualism. But only Plato has put dualism into a real system in Greek thought. It is a dualism of the world, and a dualism of man. We freely admit that Plato conveyed to the Greeks a far more elevated conception of deity for instance, than their poets and mythologists had ever done. His God is the cause of good only. As for evil, which fills the greater part of human life, one has to seek elsewhere to find the causes for that. From his Republic onwards, Plato is particularly clear on that point. God is not the one responsible for sending all kinds of evil experiences to man. In his Theaitetos he maintains that conception quite strongly. Nevertheless, it seems impossible that evil should ever come to an end. For it is a necessary opposite to good. But fortunately it is limited to this world here below. That is just why we should be anxious to flee away from this abode of mortality and corruption as quickly as possible. That flight is realized in the same measure as we succeed in resembling God; that is, becoming just and holy and attaining that serenity of the spirit which is of the world above. Here the two great models appear: one divine and happy, the other godless and utterly unhappy.
In his Timaios, the great work of his last period, Plato describes how God has created the world of the senses as a beautiful image of the world of intelligence. All things, it is true, have not been produced by intelligence. Some have also been brought about by a more obscure force, called Necessity. In order to give a complete explanation of the genesis of things one has to take into account a cause which has nothing in common with the truly divine. In his last work, on the Laws, the expression of this dualism certainly does not become less accentuated by any means. The scale of values is that of a rather proud and pagan type of idealism, of course; but how could one possibly expect to meet here the scale of values we know, for instance, from the Christian Agape? This would be an anachronism and an absurd demand. Plato's tending upwards, towards the pinnacles of celestial things, is consistently pagan. It is consistently dualistic and abstracting.
Of all the things which man has, next to the gods, his soul is the most divine and most truly his own. Now, in every man there are two parts: the better and superior, which rules, and the worse and inferior, which serves, and the ruling part of him is always to be preferred to the subject. (Laws, V, 726)
The souls of individual men here actually seem to float into one universal Soul. Or perhaps it is wrong to speak about just one. In book X (896) he says:
We must not suppose that there are less than two-one author of good, and the other of evil.
Despite all the changes there may seem to be, from dialogue to dialogue, the great and decisive Platonic principle remains the same. It is the fundamental conception of the Idea that produces an inexorable distinction between two worlds, one good and eternal, the other evil, corruptible, and hopelessly material. And that duality embraces both cosmos and man. The cosmological dualism simply demands an anthropological one. The human soul becomes similar to the immortal Ideas. The body has the very opposite position. It is sadly ephemeral, whereas the soul is from eternity to eternity, just like the Idea. Accordingly, "the soul is prior to the body" (Ibid.), the latter being born solely to obey the former, the self-evident ruler. The body is composite and subject to eventual decomposition and total destruction. The soul is simple and accordingly indissoluble, precisely like the Idea. Through his body man is drawn irresistibly downwards, to the world of the senses. Thanks to his better part, the soul, he turns upwards, to the eternal realities.
There seems to be no doubt as to what part of man is the essential. It is certainly the soul. But in its splendid immaterial existence that soul must, indeed, have committed some terrible fault, resulting in that deplorable affair of a human birth. Through that fateful event of an indefinite past it has at least been condemned to the miserable lot of being linked to a body. This actually looks like an act of violence practiced against the human soul, and a thing entirely foreign to the divinity of its original nature. Anyway, the conclusion is very much the same at which Pythagoras had obviously arrived: the body is a deplorable episode, a prison, a tomb.
Here we may already seem to have brought up an almost unnecessarily massive range of heavy artillery to launch a murderous broadside against any illusions the reader might be supposed to entertain regarding any trace of elementary totality in Platonic philosophy. But we want to be entirely fair. Therefore immediately after our first attack we hurry to add, with renewed insistence, that it would be very wrong to insinuate that Plato's idealism is devoid of sublime virtues, which ought to be equally conducive to totality in our spiritual conception of the term: It has no end of teleological optimism. It has a mighty incentive towards moral living. It even lays a considerable stress expressly on wholeness sometimes. Just listen to the stirring proclamation made to youth by the Athenian Stranger:
The ruler of the universe has ordered all things with a view to the excellence and preservation of the whole, and each part, as far as may be, has an action and passion appropriate to it. Over these, down to the least fraction of them, ministers have been appointed to preside, who have wrought out their perfection with infinitesimal exactitude. (Laws, X, 903)
Now, the suspicious individualist may have ample reason to consider this with caution. For that nice concern about a "preservation of the whole" might, after all, turn out to be nothing but the common mystic message about a survival of the "pure soul" far out somewhere in that great harbour of a general species; so not at all a preservation of wholeness in the individual being, but rather some "felicitous" fusion of the individual with the endless ocean of a "World-Soul"; and obviously that is a type of wholeness, which a poor naive, the genuine Child of a living humanity, can hardly manage to consider as "meaningful" in his sense of the term. The deepest longings of his heart are simply forced to drown in the ethereal ocean of such a "totality".
One should notice, by the way, the author's context in the present case. We have to do with a message he is particularly concerned about bringing home to "the youth". You might say that a long life has taught him the Adult par excellence--that the spirit of those youthful minds distinguishes itself precisely by one thing: they are simply not "sufficiently adult" to grasp that mystical "peace" in which every passionate individualism ought to merge and lose itself completely. And when? Of course, at the very moment when their personal souls have the ineffable felicity of an absolutely impersonal survival, in fact, the only possible survival found to be compatible with the sublime theory of the pure Idea.
So, face to face with this naive public of his--this extremely childish public, indeed--Plato seems to feel the need of a cautious language, a language equally "childish", as it were; in other words, a language still somewhat "of this world". He is presently seen to condescend, in fact, to the very level of a downright human meaningfulness, a meaning filling even individual destinies with a core of reality in the deepest human sense. You might even be tempted to speak about a meaningfulness of true religious depth and of genuine ethical excellence. The great Physician and Artist of this universe is described as "directing his effort toward the common good". If you are annoyed at this equitable and altruistic principle of "executing the part for the sake of the whole", then that happens only "because you are ignorant how what is best for you happens to you and to the universe". The goal is definitely a moral one. It tends towards perfect justice: "sending the better nature to the better place, and the worse to the worse, and so assigning to them their proper portion." (Laws, X, 903)
And what device is called upon in order to perpetrate this just retribution for personal deeds of good or evil? It is just metempsychosis. Or perhaps we rather ought to call it a metensomatosis. For in this transmigration it is precisely the body that is changed. The soul conserves its identity all the time. But of course the great hope of amelioration is always there. There is a fair chance of climbing upwards from incarnation to incarnation. This is obviously the great "general plan" by means of which the Eternal Being has devised to put in order all conditions that may have disordered themselves.
However, "the formation of qualities" has been "left to the wills of individuals". For "everyone of us is made pretty much that he is by the bent of his desires and the nature of his soul" (Ibid., 904).
One of the major problems we have faced in trying to understand and evaluate Plato with reference to a moral standard, such as true meaningfulness in human life seems to demand it, is precisely his ambiguity with respect to the personal values. Does his system involve a total automatism or not? Could it be said that Plato leaves a real place open for volitional freedom in man? Is there in human existence a true choice between good and evil? Is there a place for personalism and true responsibility?
For our evaluation of Platonism's degree of spirituality in the Christian sense this is of course a particularly decisive point. To be a pagan--does that mean not to have any fixed attitude whatsoever towards the issues of personalism and responsibility? Anyway, with Plato we find a terrible ambiguity in these matters.
At moments we are prevailed upon to think that the great philosopher's universe is one governed by a principle of just retribution. In fact, a serious tone of the severest moral admonition is perceived where he turns to the young skeptic who might be tempted to draw unwarranted conclusions from the apparent impunity of some evil-doers; in fact, they seem to remain great and prosperous in spite of their wicked ways:
You fancied that from being miserable they had become happy, and in their action, as in a mirror, you seemed to see the universal neglect of the gods, not knowing how they make all things work together and contribute to the great whole. (Ibid. 905 b)
Nevertheless, the arm of retributive justice is long enough to catch any man in the end:
If you say: I am small and will creep into the depths of the earth, or I am high and will fly up to the heaven, you are not so small or so high but that you shall pay the fitting penalty, either here or in the world below, or in some still more savage place whither you shall be conveyed. (Ibid.)
All this might lead your thoughts towards a certain moral meaningfulness indicative of totality in the deepest sense. But does this apply to Plato's theoretical system in general? No one can deny that, in the Republic, Socrates makes the soul stand forth as an admirable unity in perfect conformity with the unity of the ideal realities. But he sees himself forced to make a distinction here which we cannot help qualifying as the very opposite of all moral and spiritual totality. For let us notice one thing: reason--the great governess--is not only considered as hostile to the so-called "inferior" passions. No, she is also considered as hostile to the so-called "generous" passions. The latter, you see, however "good" they may be, have the terrible drawback of being attached to the body. Consequently they are in reality evil. But here we should like to ask one little question: "How does it come to happen that a thing can be good and evil at the same time?"
The answer Plato would probably give us is that the emotions, even the most generous ones, are not worthy of survival. The purely intelligible part only, of the soul--be it ever so frigid and god-forsaken an element to some human beings--has the prerogative of surviving. So, clearly enough, the one who wants to immortalize himself--and we are going to see that this is the great scramble peculiar to pagan self-sufficiency--should not choose to be good; he should choose to be intelligent, ingenious!