Mousike & daimon
In Greek mythology, the Muses (Greek Μουσαι, Mousai) are nine Greek goddesses of the arts and sciences. They were associated with the Roman Camenae.
According to Hesiod's Theogony, they are the daughters of Zeus, king of the gods, and Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. For Alcman and Mimnermus, they were even more primordial, springing from Uranus and Gaia.
Functions
Greek mousa is a common noun as well as a type of goddess: it literally means "song" or "poem". In Pindar, to "carry a mousa" is "to sing a song". The word is probably derived from the Indo-European root *men-, which is also the source of Greek Mnemosyne, Latin Minerva, and English "mind", "mental" and "memory".
The Muses were therefore both the embodiments and sponsors of performed metrical speech - mousike, whence "music", was the art of the Muses. In the archaic period, before the widespread availability of books, this included nearly all of learning: the first Greek book on astronomy, by Thales, was set in dactylic hexameter, as were many works of pre-Socratic philosophy; both Plato and the Pythagoreans explicitly included philosophy as a sub-species of mousike (Strabo 10.3.10). Herodotus, whose primary medium of delivery was public recitation, named each one of the nine books of his Histories after a different Muse.
For poet and lawgiver Solon (fragment 13), the Muses were the key to the good life, since they brought both prosperity and friendship. Solon sought to perpetuate his political reforms by establishing recitations of his poetry - complete with invocations to his practical-minded Muses - by Athenian boys at festivals every year.
Muses in Myth
According to Pausanias there were three original Muses: Aoide ("song", "voice"), Melete ("practice" or "occasion") and Mneme ("memory"). Together, they form the complete picture of the preconditions of poetic art.
The canonical nine Muses are:
Euterpe (music)
Calliope (epic poetry)
Clio (history)
Erato (lyric poetry)
Melpomene (tragedy)
Polyhymnia (sacred poetry)
Terpsichore (dancing)
Thalia (comedy)
Urania (astronomy)
Together, they form a complete picture of the subjects proper to poetic art in the archaic period.
The Muses judged the contest between Apollo and Marsyas. They also buried the dead body of Orpheus, son of Calliope and nephew of the other eight. They blinded Thamyris for his hubris in challenging them to a contest.
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The "musical" education of the Greeks is stressed by all writers. It must be remembered, however, that the word "music" had a much wider application at that time than it now has. The Greek word mousike at first referred to the arts of the nine Muses. Gradually its meaning was extended to include everything connected with the training of the mind, just as the word gymnastike included everything pertaining to the training of the body. To speak of a Greek as having a good "musical education" is equivalent to saying that he was trained in all the liberal arts, including mathematics.
The Greek ideal of education was based upon the idea of universality, of the integration of all branches of learning. That is an ideal which our modern educators could well emulate. Hendrik van Loon, in his recent volume The Arts, makes an observation which finds an echo in the heart of every Theosophist who is interested in the subject of education. "There is one thing we can do," he says, "and there the Greeks can be our masters and teachers, as they have been our masters and our teachers in so many other things. They can show us the way back to a consciousness of that universality that underlies all human achievements. They can make us once more realize that nothing in this world exists quite in and by and for itself, but that everything pertaining to the human spirit is correlated and interrelated with everything else. And by so doing they can once more give us a feeling for something that is in truth the beginning and end of all wisdom."
http://www.blavatsky.net/magazine/theosophy/ww/additional/ancientlandmarks/TheGreekDrama.html
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Philosophy
http://www.csudh.edu/phenom_studies/greekphil/greekphil_lect7.htm
Besides
his intellectual and personal charm, Socrates possessed an unusual
"spiritual revelation" (daimonion
sémeinon).
For example, on his way to Agathon's house for the celebration of the
victory of his speech in Plato's Symposium,
Socrates was described that he suddenly stopped to walk, fell in a
deep thought for hours and not answering even if others tired to talk
to him. Socrates had thus a unique ability of spiritual
concentration. Once he fell in this pensive concentration, Socrates
had a habit of losing contact with his surrounding world. An episode
about this was quite famous, as Socrates, standing at a military
post, started thinking of something in the morning and continued
thinking until next morning, when Socrates as a soldier went out to
Potidaia.
It
was also reported that Socrates
had a special spiritual power. Socrates often dreamed a premonitional
dream and was able to make divination.
Thus Socrates usually believed in what he dreamed of. It was reported
that Socrates often became self-ecstatic: When
Crito asked Socrates, in Plato's Crito,
if he had to drink the hemlock tomorrow, Socrates replied that his
dream told him
that it would be the day after tomorrow. That became true because the
return of the ships delayed. Also while Socrates was imprisoned, he
dreamed of being told to do mousiké,
but he thought first philosophy was the greatest mousiké,
then later he reconsidered the meaning of the dream and wrote a
poem.
To
dream of something and act upon it with belief in it was nothing but
the so-called to receive and have faith in "daimonion
sémainon."
This phenomenon, according to Socrates in Apology,
occurred already when he was a small child, whenever he tried or
intended to do something wrong, the voice of
demon
or spirit told him not to do so and never said what he should do.
This voice of daimonion
(spirit) intercepts something even trivial according to Socrates. For
example, at the gymnastic hall, Socrates talked to a youth and
finished the discussion and wanted to go home, then he heard the
voice of his
daimon
not to go home. While he was waiting there, a friend came by
accidentally, whom he had not seen and wanted to see for a long
time.
Thus,
we may say that, on
the one hand, Socrates possessed a mystical, non-rational character.
On the other hand, Socrates apparently did
not make out of this voice of his
daimon
a religion and
was quite "scientific" and "rationalistic" in
personality and his pursuit of knowledge. Strangely the both elements
were harmonized and well synthesized in him.
The
best example may be found in his interpretation of and search for the
meaning of the oracle of Delphi stated in Apology.
Socrates' friend Chaerephon went to the Shrine of Delphi (= the
Shrine of Apollo) and asked the priestesses if there were anyone else
wiser than Socrates. The answer was "No!"
On
the one hand,
Socrates, without questioning, believed in this oracle.
This attitude reveals his religious faith or his belief in the
supernatural (from a narrow rationalistic point of view).
On
the other hand, Socrates acted very rationally and attempted very
hard to confirm this oracle by questioning the politicians, the wise
men (=sophists), the poets, the craftsmen, whereby Socrates
came to the conclusion that the
wisdom which is allowed to the human beings
(= the knowledge that we know that we don't know)
is
minimal in comparison to the divine
wisdom,
which Apollo wanted Socrates to demonstrate.
Here
we see in Socrates the synthesis of his non-rational,
mystical character
of believing in the oracle and the voice of daimon
and yet attempted to rationally and philosophically search for and
confirm the truth of the oracle.
Although
the formal accusation of Meletus, Anytus and Lycon was that Socrates
corrupted the Athenian youth and did not believe in the gods that
Athens as the polis did believe in, the real motive of the democratic
politicians to try Socrates was to be found entirely somewhere
else.
Socrates
was closely associated with the politicians of the Oligarchy (the
thirty). He
was a good friend of Critias
for example, who was the leader of the oligarchic thirty.
Socrates was
also a good friend of Alcibiades
who became the enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian War (431-404
B.C. ), the prolonged difficult war between the Greek powers, Sparta
and Athens. After the Peloponnesian War, those aristocratic
politicians whom Socrates was associated with lost the power due to
the democratic coup
d'etat
taken place in 404 B.C. This
coup
d'etat
was supported by Sparta (the enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian
War) and was lead by Anytos (one of Socrates' accusers)
and Thrasyboulos. Among the Spartan politicians, there were opposing
two opinions about how to rule the post-coup
d'etat
Athens and about the fates of those aristocratic ruling politicians.
And yet the overwhelming majority of the people in Sparta were of the
opinion that those oligarchic thirty were to be given their amnesty
after the success of the democratic coup
d'etat..
They imposed the condition of amnesty to the Athenian Oligarchic
aristocrats for supporting the Democrats of Athens, once the coup
d'etat
was successful.
Although
Critias died at the coup
d'etat,
the
thirty and their associates could not be prosecuted by the new
Democratic government due to this amnesty agreement with Sparta
(the
backer of the coup).Those
Democrats were afraid that Socrates was very influential among those
aristocratic politicians and that his critical spirit to speak out
the truth would be highly detrimental to the newly established, still
shaky Democratic government.
The
Democrats thus could not prosecute Socrates for the political reason
as he was also covered by that amnesty. Therefore, they chose a
radical fanatic poet, called Meletus, as the main accuser of Socrates
with the above mentioned formal accusation.
One of the difficulties of Socrates' defense consisted in this
historical political background. It was certain that those who
supported the accusation of Socrates were fully politically
motivated, i.e., they were the Democratic government supporters.
We need to look into Plato's Apology more closely in order to understand Socrates as a man and a philosopher in his mature period.
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The
Crito
and the Laches
are short dialogues, and the discourse contained in these two works
is written so as to be accessible to the broadest readership; Plato
wanted to bring home to the Athenians what they did to themselves, to
the whole city, and to their young in particular, when they condemned
Socrates to death. Both dialogues remind the reader of Socrates as he
thought and behaved facing the death sentence. In the Crito
the connection is obvious; Socrates in the dialogue prefers death to
subverting the laws of Athens by escaping from prison. That Plato in
the Laches
wants to remind the reader of Socrates’ last day is for the modern
reader harder to detect, but it becomes clear when we compare the
Laches
with the Phaedo.
In
the Phaedo
Socrates
says that throughout his life
he had a recurrent dream that commanded him to do art
(mousikên,
60e6), which he interpreted as an exhortation to do philosophy, for
he
considered philosophy to be the greatest musike
(hôs
philosophias men ousês megistês mousikês,
61a3-4).
In the Laches
Laches says that he
is delighted beyond measure when he compares the speaker and his
words and finds them in complete harmony (harmottonta,
188d2): ‘And
such a one I deem to be a man of music (mousikos),
attuned to the fairest harmony
(harmonian
kallistên hêrmosmenos)
... whose
life is truly harmonious because his words accord with his actions
(ton
bion sumphônon tois logois pros ta erga,
188d3-6)’.
If the Laches
was written prior to the Phaedo,
as is generally and rightly assumed, then Laches’ words cannot echo
the Phaedo;
instead, they must be reminding the reader of what Socrates actually
said on his last day.
The
Laches
thus corroborates the authenticity of the dream episode in Plato’s
rendition of Socrates’ last day, but even if we view the Phaedo
on its own, the manner in which the dream is introduced and the
immediate setting within which Socrates refers to it strongly
indicate that Plato relates something that actually happened. For
Socrates’
words in the Phaedo
concerning philosophy and mousikê
are
part of his reply to a poet and philosopher Evenus, and to some other
people (kai
alloi tines,
60d2) who wanted to know why Socrates wrote poems after coming to
prison, when he had never written poetry before
(60c8-d7). Socrates replied that he did so in response to certain
dreams that had often visited him in his past life
and always said the same thing: ‘Socrates, make art (mousikên,
60e6) and practise it.’ In the past he had thought that the dream
was urging him to do exactly what he was doing, that is to do
philosophy, for he believed philosophy to be the greatest art. But
now,
after he had been sentenced and with his execution delayed because of
the festival of Apollo, he thought it safer (asphalesteron,
61a8) not to depart from life before fulfilling his sacred duty, if
by any chance the dream was urging him to do art as it is normally
understood, that is to write poetry.
(60d8-61b1).
http://juliustomin.org/insearchofsocrates1.html
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Role played by music in the Mystery cults. Music was not only a simple accompaniment of the rituals, but rather a way of conveying privileged knowledge and wisdom to the initiated. Particular attention is paid to the idea that music could put men in touch with the gods, and ensure a sort of afterlife through the power of memory (not by chance were the Muses said to be daughters of Mnemosyne).
http://www.ircps.org/publications/aestimatio/pdf/Volume2/2005-10-01_Raffa.pdf
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Politics book VII
music is a powerful instrument of moral formation: by learning to associate the admirable and virtuous characters depicted in music with the pleasure given by its performance, the audience is encouraged to imitate what it sees and hears, and so becomes virtuous itself. Aristotle shared Plato's views in Republic bkIII and Laws bk II - the belief that since mankind is essentially imitative, particularly in childhood, the arts are not merely 'entertainment' but exercise a crucial influence in education, and need therefore to be controlled or 'censored'. In brief, a man's taste in music (or dress or anything else) is worth training; for its part in his character.
A. uses mousike primarily to indicate performances which appeal to the ear, but mousike also covered dancing and could be used in the wider sense of 'the arts' in general; ... towards the end of this chapter A. includes the visual arts of painting and sculpture as mousike.
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The Politics By Aristotle, Thomas Alan Sinclair, Trevor J. Saunders |