And let us now consider the insurmountable theoretical difficulties presented by Plato's anthropology. In this field, too, Platonic dualism was destined to take, from now onwards, a firm hold on all philosophical reasoning in the Occidental world. It was bound to involve the philosophy of that world in problems which would hardly otherwise have presented themselves to thinking mankind, in that painfully disturbing way at least. We are mainly referring to a problem which has simply never been known to exist outside of dualism: the problem of a union between body and soul. How did Plato himself explain that "mysterious" union? For, as a philosopher, he certainly could not avoid it. In fact, it had to be faced as it had perhaps never been faced before.
To theologians the problem would not perhaps present itself in its full force. For they were more likely to discuss why such a union was necessary to man, rather then how it could take place at all.
However, that problem is automatically implied in all dualism, and true philosophers should certainly be the first to face it seriously. Nevertheless, those who had handed dualism over to the Pythagoreans--and even the Pythagoreans themselves--seemed to be mainly concerned with the question in its mythological and theological aspect, rather than in its philosophical aspect. But Plato was above all a genuine philosopher. So we may certainly expect him to make some kind of effort in order to tackle the enigmatic question which is undeniably there.
Now one may of course first ask whether Plato fully admits a union between body and soul as an actual fact. In his opinion, the soul does not really need the body. It accompanies the body as a rather independent entity. Actually there is an abyss separating the two in spite of their apparently intimate union. They never melt together. On the other hand, he does own that the soul may be not only influenced by the body, but even badly polluted by it. In the Phaidon he shows to what extent the soul may be enthralled by the effects of the bodily senses "which are full of deception". In fact, "each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to the body, until she becomes like the body". So long has she been "wallowing in the mire" of these bodily emotions and sense perceptions, that she has simply been "fastened and glued to the body" (Phai., 82-83).
After such expressions it would of course be difficult to deny a certain fairly close union of soul and body for the time being. And now, how is such a union between such absolutely heterogeneous elements to be explained in a rational way? A typically Platonic method is said to be that of dividing in order to unite. Anyway, his very first step here is to introduce a sort of dualism even into the realm of the soul herself. He distinguishes between two very different "parts" of the soul, one which is immortal and truly reasonable, having its seat in the head; another one mortal and ignorant, and actually so deeply affected by its closeness to the polluting body that it has finished by adopting some downright corporeal attributes itself. In fact, it does not even have the dignity of living in the head, that superior part of the human body. The "corporeal" soul is located partly in the breast, partly in the abdomen. So here a further subdivision has proved necessary. Only such comparatively noble emotions as courage and anger have been deemed worthy of the honour of reaching as far up as to the bosom. More typically animal passions and clearly physical appetites have found their natural habitat in the lowest regions of the human body, the belly.
In his Timaios Plato informs us that the demiurgus himself has taken charge of creating the truly immortal soul of man, whereas it was left to some inferior gods to create the lower and essentially mortal parts (Tim., ).
One thing may here at once be stated concerning the essential question, the problem of a union of soul and body: Plato does not give any satisfactory explanation of how one superior part, for instance, exerts its influence on the nearest part inferior to it, or vice versa. And what other result could we have expected? With a dualism as radical as that of Plato, how could anyone be expected to explain the union between a human body and a human soul? Here his successors were bound to fail just as lamentably as he himself had failed.
That marvelous perfection of which Plato had had a vision in astronomical and mathematical order, as well as in the depths of his own moral aspirations, was certainly sublime enough. And there is certainly much to admire in that ingenious system of Platonic idealism--particularly when we take into consideration at what stage of history this was achieved. In that idealism there is a wonderful stretching upwards, not only in a purely philosophical sense, but certainly also with regard to religious aspirations.
And nevertheless we cannot help feeling: here something very, very important is still lacking, considered from our special point of view something which childlike minds possess in environments of any religious creed and at any stage of cultural development. Plato has, not only an outspoken diffidence towards, but even a downright contempt for, a most important part of the world in which his Maker has been pleased to place him, as a human being. That contempt is directed against three things which we have considered essential to alterocentric totality: the physical, the particular, and the outward.
Of course there may seem to be something apparently unfair about comparing Plato's idealism to that of Christ. However, in the history of human ideals the two were bound to face each other sooner or later. And we think it ought to be possible not to forget the merits of the former, even while we consider the crushing superiority of the latter.
To Christianity the human body is a holy temple; that is, nothing less than a dwelling-place for the Spirit of the Most High. As the result of a fatal historical event, man has assumed the full responsibility for degrading and contaminating his body. With Jesus Christ, however, it is God Himself who enters into human history, even to the point of becoming man. This mystery of the incarnation is the means by which man's shame is removed forever. And "man" here still means a perfect union of soul and body. The viewpoint of a "separation" is the great illusion, something entirely foreign to original Christianity, and rather the source of fateful errors.
It is in the light of this anthropology of Christian totality that one thing becomes particularly evident: in separating, as he did, the world of ideas and the world of things, assuming that these two worlds are, not only distinct from each other, but even irreconcilable entities, Plato has actually rendered the union of the ideal and the real impossible.
We would not hesitate to qualify as egocentric that one-sided method of introspection which led to Plato's exaggerated trend towards abstractions. This explains why he was taken entirely captive by the conceptualism of Socrates and by the geometry of Pythagoras, as Charles Werner points out (op. cit., p. 27). Plato finishes by imagining that beautiful things actually exist by virtue of their "beauty", and that strong things exist by virtue of their "strength". How could the theory of final causes help assuming a "purely verbal character", if things are presented in this way?
There is no doubt about it: after Plato a philosophy was needed which could overcome the dualism on which the theory of the Idea had remained hanging. We are not astonished to find that such a philosophy had to base itself on biology rather than on mathematics. For how could an Idea, in terms of a vain abstraction, ever become a principle of real life? It would seem a most sound reaction now to start longing for a philosophy realizing a happy synthesis of the ideal and the real. Such a philosophy ought to be equally capable of realizing the happy synthesis of soul and body.