Heraclitus Ηθος Ανθρωπος Δαιμων, (Ethos
Anthropos Daimon)
"Character
is destiny" = standard
translation
One
meaning of the Greek concept ethos is ‘to dwell"
(for instance, in
Heraclitus' (ca. 544-483 B.C.E.) famous dictum, ethos
anthropos daimon, or,
following Heidegger's translation,
"the
(usual) place where humans dwell is the openness where the god (as the
un-usual) can appear. ”
But one can also interpret it as “The Character (Ethos*) of Man (Anthropos) is in accordance with the Daimon.”
*Ethos
- the characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or
community as manifested
in its attitudes and aspirations.
* Daimon- the guardian
spirit that determines one’s destiny. According to the “Myth of Er,” in
Plato’s
Republic, after one dies one has to
choose
one’s Daimon for the next life –
after having drunk from the River Lethe
(Oblivion/Forgetfulness) – whereby one drinks according to his
Character from
his just-lived life. One’s choice is therefore governed by his
awareness,
acquired in his life, of Aletheia
(Truth)
– i.e., an awareness that “thirst” – the need to drink from the River –
is an illusion...
Apparently, if this awareness is realized, one will not drink from the
River Lethe, and thus, will not
have to be “born
again” in the circle of life-death. HOWEVER, if we are to understand
Plato’s “story”
in full, it would seem that even when one reaches a higher level of
“awareness”
(i.e., after one has “ascended from the Cave (of illusion)”) one is
still
obligated to return to “the Earth” to act as a “midwife” to others – to
lead
others out of Oblivion (Lethe)...
Eudaimonia – generally
translated as “happiness”
means “literally”: living one’s
life in accordance with one’s Daimon...
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I
Ἵπποι ταί με φέρουσιν, ὅσον τ' ἐπὶ θυμὸς ἱκάνοι, πέμπον, ἐπεί μ' ἐς ὁδὸν βῆσαν πολύφημον ἄγουσαι δαίμονος, ἣ κατὰ πάντ' ἄστη φέρει εἰδότα φῶτα·τῇ φερόμην· τῇ γάρ με πολύφραστοι φέρον ἵπποι ἅρμα τιταίνουσαι, κοῦραι δ' ὁδὸν ἡγεμόνευον.
I
The steeds that bear me carried me as far as ever my heart Desired,
since they
brought me and set me on the renowned Way of the goddess,
who with her own hands conducts
the man who knows through all things. On what way was I borne along;
for on it
did the wise steeds carry me, drawing my car, and maidens showed
the way.
XII
Αἱ γὰρ στεινότεραι πλῆντο πυρὸς ἀκρήτοιο, αἱ δ' ἐπὶ ταῖς νυκτός, μετὰ δὲ φλογὸς ἵεται αἶσα· ἐν δὲ μέσῳ τούτων δαίμων ἣ πάντα κυϐερνᾷ· πάντα γὰρ <ἣ> στυγεροῖο τόκου καὶ μίξιος ἄρχει πέμπουσ' ἄρσενι θῆλυ μιγῆν τό τ' ἐναντίον αὖτις ἄρσεν θηλυτέρῳ.
XIII
Πρώτιστον μὲν Ἔρωτα θεῶν μητίσατο πάντων ...
XII
The narrower circles are filled with unmixed fire, and those
surrounding them
with night, and in the midst of these rushes their portion of fire. In
the
midst of these circles is the divinity
that directs the course of all things; for she rules over all painful
birth and
all begetting, driving the female to the embrace of the male, and the
male to
that of the female.
XIII
First
of all the gods she contrived Eros.
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Democritus' ethical theory
does not seem
consistent with his Atomist theory of Being and knowledge, as far as we
see
from his Fragments.
His
ethics is an Eudaimonism (the
criterion of the moral right consists in pursuing or being conducive to
pursing
happiness -- eudaimonia = the
well-being of spirit (daimonion)).
According to Democritus, this happiness consists in pleasure and
fulfillment of
cheerfulness (euthymié or euesto)
or avoidance of pain or
suffering.
Democritus wrote a treatise on cheerfulness (Peri euthymiés),
which was
later used by Seneca and Plutarch.
"Happiness
dwelleth not in herds
nor in gold; the soul is the dwelling-place of the 'daimon'." (Frag. 171)
"The best thing
for a man is to pass his life so as to have as much
joy and as little trouble as may be." (Frag. 189)
In order to
attain well being (euthymia) or cheerfulness (euesto), it is
required to weigh, deliberate, judge and distinguish various pleasure.
Democritus said that we
should be guided,
therefore, by the principle of symmetry or harmony, thus we shall be
able to
attain health = the calmness for body and the cheerfulness
= the
calmness of soul.
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Daimons were
generally understood to be beings hierarchically posterior to the gods
and
prior to heroes and men.(14) The
Pythagoreans exhorted one
to
Honor first the
immortal gods, in the order
established by custom. Revere the oath. Pay
reverence next to the benevolent heroes and the daimons of the
underworld.(15)
For
a Platonist, the daimon was a protector and guide, acting not from
without, but
from within. This interior guidance and aid could
bring about a great
illumination and upliftment to one who was receptive to it.
As Proclus
wrote:
It must be said
that Socrates
primarily in
his own discursive reason and in his knowledge of reality benefited
from the
inspiration of his daimon,
who awakened him to divine love; and secondarily, that even
concerning the
things of life it
restored and regulated his
providential care for those less perfect; and,
as far as
the daimon's
own activity is concerned, that he received the light
proceeding from it not
only in his discursive reason or in his opinionative power, but in his
subtle
body,(16) the daimonic
illumination spreading suddenly through every part of his
life and then moving sense perception itself. For it is
evident that although
the activity of the
daimon is the same, reason
benefits from it in one way, imagination
in another, and sense perception
in another, and each
of the elements which
constitute us is affected and moved by the daimon in a distinct way.
Therefore
the voice did not act on Socrates
from without, as an impression, but from
within, the inspiration, having traversed his whole
soul and
penetrated as far as the organs of sense perception, finally became a
voice,
discerned by the consciousness rather than by sense perception; for such are the illuminations of good daimons and
of the gods. (17)
(14) See, for
instance, Plato, Republic 392a and 427b;
Iamblichus,
Life of Pythagoras 31, 37 and 100; Diogenes
Laertius, Lives of the
Eminent Philosophers 8:23; Porphyry, Life of
Pythagoras 38.
(15) Golden
Verses of the Pythagoreans
1-3. Translation ©2005 by Robert K. Clark. All
rights
reserved. I have translated cthonious daimonas
as "daimons of
the underworld". Hierocles, in his commentary, interprets
this
passage as referring to terrestrial (ekikthonioi)
daimons.
However, as it has been pointed out, "the adjective ' cthonious'
has no other meaning than 'underground'." (Noel Anjoulat,
Le
Néo-platonisme Alexandrin d'Hiérocles d'Alexandrie (Leiden:
Brill, 1986),
p. 182. This has been noted elsewhere, as in the
translation of the Golden
Verses of the Pythagoreans by N. Rowe included in M. Dacier, The
Life of
Pythagoras (York Beach: Weiser, 1981), p.
202. See also
Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon
(Oxford:
Oxford University Press, Eighth Edition, 1940) and A. Bailly, Dictionnaire
Grec-Français (Paris: Hachette, 1950). The unusual
order followed
here, that of gods—heroes—daimons, is discussed in Johan C. Thom, The
Pythagorean Golden Verses (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp.
103-112.
(16) pneuma.
While the
general meaning of pneuma is "air", "breath" or
"spirit", it acquired special meanings in the Neoplatonic and Stoic
traditions. See G.R.S. Mead, The Doctrine of the
Subtle Body in
Western Tradition (London: Watkins, 1919), pp. 47 &
77; Robert
Christian Kissling, "The ochema-pneuma of the Neoplatonists and the de
Insomniis of Syrenius of Cyrene", American Journal
of Philology
43 (1922), pp. 318-330; G. Verbeke, L'évolution de
la doctrine de
pneuma du Stoicisme à St. Augustin (Paris: Louvain, 1945);
and E.R. Dodds,
tr. Proclus: The Elements of Theology , Second
Edition (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1963), Appendix B, pp. 313-321.
(17)
Proclus, Commentary on the First
Alcibiades of Plato 80. 4-22. Translation ©2005 by
Robert K.
Clark. All rights reserved.
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Empedocles was a
follower of Pythagoras, hence a
believer in the transmigration of souls, and
hence also a vegetarian. He
claims to be a daimon,
a divine or potentially divine being, who, having been banished from
the
immortals gods for ‘three times countless years’ for committing the sin
of
meat-eating and forced to suffer successive reincarnations in a
purificatory
journey through the different orders of nature and elements of the
cosmos, has
now achieved the most perfect of human states and will be reborn as an
immortal. He also claims seemingly magical powers including the ability
to
revive the dead and to control the winds and rains.
5.
Ethics and the journey of the soul
a.
The
daimons and transmigration of souls
Plutarch
cites the following fragment as coming from 'the beginning of
Empedocles'
philosophy’, fr. B 115:
There is a
decree of
necessity, ratified long ago by gods, eternal and sealed by broad
oaths, that
whenever one in error, from fear, defiles his own limbs, having by his
error
made false the oath he swore - daimons
to whom life long-lasting is apportioned – he
wanders from the blessed ones for three-times countless years, being
born
throughout the time as all kinds of mortal forms, exchanging one hard
way of life
for another. For the force of air pursues him into the sea, and sea
spits him
out onto earth's surface, earth casts him in the rays of blazing sun,
and sun
into the eddies of air; one takes him from another, and all abhor him.
I too am
now one of these, an exile from the gods and a wanderer, having put my
trust in
raving Strife.
In fr. 115 Empedocles
describes himself as a 'daimon', a
being to whom long life has been granted, but who has committed the sin
of
meat-eating and bloodshed and consequently is punished by banishment
from the
company of the immortal gods. The banishment lasts three
myriads of
years, either 'three-times countless years' or thirty thousand years.
In either
case he must atone for his sin by being repeatedly reincarnated into
all the
different living forms of the different orders of nature. Elsewhere he
says:
'For before now I have been at some time boy and girl, bush, bird, and
a mute
fish in the sea' (fr. B 117). Empedocles then, has already suffered
this nearly
endless cycle of reincarnations having been seemingly hurled down to
the lowest
rung of the scale of nature but has worked his way up, has been
purified at
last and, as he tells us in fr. B. 112, is himself now an immortal god.
There
are others too numbered among the daimons,
those who 'at the end ... come among men on earth as prophets,
minstrels,
physicians and leaders, and from these they arise as gods, highest in
honour.'
(fr. 146). It is not entirely clear whether we are meant
to imagine the daimons
as an entirely separate class of blessed being with a different
creation and a
different fate from ourselves, the ordinary mortals, or as people who
began as
ordinary mortals but who, having purified themselves and having
achieved
perfection, are now approaching divine status. The latter reading would
perhaps
make more sense in terms of Empedocles' didactic ethical mission: if
we are all potentially perfectable, then his
purificatory teaching becomes much more crucial. Empedocles himself, as
his
life shows, has achieved all four of the states that qualify the daimons
for immortality, he is a prophet, a minstrel, a physician and a leader,
and can
now pass on his wisdom to those on earth whom he is about to leave
behind when
he rejoins the company of the immortals. As can be seen
from the
description above, there are strong similarities between Empedocles and
the
teachings of Pythagoras on the transmigration of souls. Empedocles is
clearly a
follower of Pythagoras, in his ethics and psychology at least, and
shares his
vegetarianism and pacifism.
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while
Socrates was not an
outwardly religious person, he
seems to have maintained an inner religious faith and, in fact, believed
that some benevolent god made periodic
contact with him through a sign, or daimonion.
Through Plato,
we are told that the sign is only negative, informing Socrates when he
is about
to go wrong. While it is not explicitly mentioned, it is probably the
cause of
Socrates' abrupt reconsideration, in Lysis (211e), where he says, "But
then a most unaccountable suspicion came across
me, and I felt that the conclusion was untrue."
Socrates
demonstrates how the Sophists twist meanings and the direction
of arguments by using words irresponsibly and not attending to
meanings, as we
should. At the end, mimicking the Sophist's thirst for aggressive
argument,
Socrates says that he delights like the hunter at the end of the chase.
No sooner has
he said this but Socrates
receives a "certain suspicion" that their conclusions are not true.
This is Socrates' daimon
which keeps him on the path
to truth. At this point (218d), the Socratic
argument begins. In
effect, Socrates suggests that, rather than just pursuing a verbal
argument for
the benefit of winning, we need to discover some first principles that
lead us
to the true meaning of friendship, principles that can help us truly
judge when
friendship happens. These principles are rarely very far away from
traditional
wisdom as conveyed to us by the poets. The issue is one of learning how
to hear
and understand the poets. The Sophists teach a way of using the poets
to one's
advantage; Socrates encourages us to seek the ways that they have
always been
understood.
Though in Homer the words θεοί (gods)
and δαίμονες (divinities) were
practically synonymous, later writers like Plato developed a
distinction
between the two.[5] Plato
in Cratylus (398 b) gives
the etymology of δαίμονες (daimones)
from δαήμονες (daēmones) (=knowing
or wise), though in fact the root of the word is more probably daiō
(=to distribute destinies).[6] In
Plato's Symposium,
the priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that love is not a god, but
rather a
"great daemon" (202d). She goes on to explain that "everything
daimonic is between divine and mortal" (202d-e), and she
describes
daimons as "interpreting and transporting human things to the
gods and
divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and
ordinances and
requitals from above..." (202e). In Plato's Apology of Socrates,
Socrates claimed to have a daimonion
(literally, a "divine
something")[7]
that frequently warned him - in the form of a "voice" -
against
mistakes but never told him what to do.[8]
However, the Platonic Socrates never refers to the daimonion
as a
daimōn; it was always an impersonal "something" or "sign".[9]
Plato [427-347 B.C.E.] asserts that "[a]s
regards the supreme form
of soul in us, we must conceive that the god has conferred it upon
each...as a
guiding genius [daimon] - that which...lifts
us from earth toward our
celestial affinity, like a plant whose roots are not in the earth, but
in the
heavens". (Timaeus
(90-90d))
5) p.
115, John Burnet, Plato's Euthyprho, Apology of Socrates, and
Crito,
Clarendon 1924.
6) "daimōn", in Liddell,
Henry
and Robert Scott. 1996. A Greek-English
Lexicon.
7)
Plato, Apology 31c-d, 40a; p. 16, Burnet, Plato's
Euthyprho, Apology
of Socrates, and Crito.
8)
pp. 16-17, Burnet, Plato's Euthyprho, Apology of Socrates,
and Crito;
pp. 99-100, M. Joyal, "To Daimonion and the Socratic
Problem",
Apeiron vol. 38 no. 2, 2005.
9) p.
16, Burnet, Plato's Euthyprho, Apology of Socrates, and Crito;
p. 63, P.
Destrée, "The Daimonion and the Philosophical
Mission", Apeiron
vol. 38 no. 2, 2005.