Thumos, The Spirit as Fire
Impressions of the Greek Mode
These are fragments I’ve compiled from beaten down notebooks and strangely labelled documents. Not going to polish or heavily edit. I was cross-referencing Homer and the Pre-Socratics to uncover a “Greek Mode.” As for formatting, I separate journal entries and thought experiments by roman numeral.
DCLXXXVIII. Homer and his poems indicate . . . -> "nature as foundation, excellence as goal, beauty as horizon."
Excellence is, the greek aretē
Goal is, the greek télos
Beauty is the human striving toward télos. Or, we could say: “thrashing.” That this (life) entails excruciating pain is what actually makes it beautiful. There is an ethical, metaphysical and aesthetic quality in both the Greeks and Romans that posits a HARMONY OF TENSION IN OPPOSITES . . . and so it is struggle and overcoming that makes a life meaningful; not ease and pleasure.
DCLXXXIX. The myths are rife with heroes (male and female) that left affluence, comfort and the like—or, they were exhorted to by a god or goddess. There is a notion of “rejecting the Hero’s call,” and it is typically out of fear, cowardice, love of pleasure and the like. As death approaches, they lament that they never did anything difficult!
DCXC. Greek words are charged and lose their power when we render them in English . . . Aristotle’s eudaemonia is the most annoying case of this. Since it is usually rendered “happiness,” we come away with an ethic of hedonism, ergo: the purpose of life is to be “happy.” But if the average person attempted to act out Aristotle’s ethics, they’d not be happy at all; they’d throw themselves to the floor and weep, finding his standards painful.
Those minority of scholars that render eudaemonia as “flourishing,” are closer to the mark. The purpose of life is not to be happy, it is to flourish. To flourish requires Excellence (Aretē), and it is Excellence that brings one to telos (ultimate goal).
[I discussed the Logos in depth here]
DCXCI. Arete is the realization of full potential (we can get Platonic and say that this when someone or something approaches its Form). Telos is the final cause as necessitated by the Logos or Nous (what is "God" intending for existence?)
Both have an ethical implication. The Greeks and Romans associated Goodness with Strength and superabundance. This is not . . . Will to Power, in the wanton sense of stepping on all and others. Rather, it is being charged by the essential goodness of all existence (Logos), finding out that this Goodness is also the self (soul, spirit, animus, pneuma). This then compels one into Virtue and Acts that achieve one’s Telos and their “portion” of the Logos.
DCCXIV. The Greeks and Romans regarded the self, or rather the Spirit, as being Fire. With the advent of philosophy, they began to regard it as either Air, or Air-Fire called Pneuma. Eventually, humans stopped regarding themselves as having or being a Spirit, and began to call themselves "souls." In the early Abrahamic conception, the soul is breath breathed into clay. Mud, dirt. In the attempt at "fixing" Judaic theology, Christians applied Neo-Platonism to it, which gave it this attitude of finding transcendence within (although they phrase this as "through christ"). It's at this point that the soul is regarded in much the same way as water . . . formless, will-less, helpless, in need of redemption, or in need of being "formed" by something superior.
This is a long way from the Greco-Roman who conceived of Himself as Divine, and all nature as Divine—rooted in one supreme Truth. In some traditions and philosophies, “God” and the human being are comprised of the same substance (Pneuma/Fire). Today such a notion would be blasphemous.
DCCXV. Seneca: "Dull minds, tending to sleep or to a waking state exactly like sleep, are composed of sluggish elements."
Anaximenes: "Rarefied it becomes Fire; condensed it becomes [...] water, earth and then stones."
Literal. Earth and water sink.
Beyond Reason and Ancient Greek “Science,” the Olympians are typically associated with Fire and Air; while the titans, and those titans pretending to be olympians, are clearly derived of water and earth. (I detailed this here)
This harkens to the Apollonian and Dionysian as outlined by Nietzsche, and Solar versus Lunar attitudes (as found in art and literature.) Your alignment is an ethical choice. This is not to say that one or the other is objectively correct . . . but that you will view the one you CHOOSE as being ethically correct, and war—in some fashion—with its opposite.
DCCXVI. When Wheelwright analyzes Heraclitus, he says:
There may well be a connection [...] between Heraclitus' acceptance of ontological paradox and the aristocratic pride which shows itself especially in the Fragments grouped under "Men among Men." For the aristocratism which Heraclitus' social aphorisms express is something sturdier and worthier than a mere attitude of disdain toward those whose souls are moist; the attitude shaped by what Nietzsche has called a 'passion of distance.' By this phrase, which can serve as one of the main keys to Nietzschean philosophy, Nietzsche means to include at once the "Dionysian" […] passionate yet self-controlled affirmation of one's own selfhood with its peculiar values and the "Apollonian" power of self-overcoming, of utter serenity in the midst of battle.
We ought to stop and make several corrections here. There is nothing in the Dionysian that is self-controlled. In fact, the role of Dionysus is to break down the forms, one's sense of self, and all being. This point ought to be especially driven home by the basic knowledge that Nietzsche himself could not maintain his Reason and sanity . . . as was the case for all who trifled with Dionysus in the myths.
Wheelwright is aware of this next point but let us further emphasize that the "aristocratic attitude" in Ancient Greece is not a social one. It is not based in race or wealth, but rather in orientation. Upward or downward? Does one prefer the cold, mountain air of Apollo and Athena? Or Demeter's womb and Aphrodite's whimsy? Does a small farm and flock of sheep with seventy festivals a year bring you joy? Or do you covet Fire like Prometheus?