Music and Gymnastic/Soul and Body

The kind of music we’re talking about includes sorts of rhetoric and philosophy as well as what is usually called music. In any case, “music” is made up of rhythm and harmony, form and content. For Plato (and I expect many other ancients), music is an art for the soul. Well ordered music leads to a well ordered soul and vice versa. What can a well ordered soul do? Souls it would seem can influence other souls. The teacher influences the student. This is the primary relationship between teachers and students. But can the student also influence the teacher? Sure, why not? Before the teacher influences the student, the student’s soul is disordered in some way. The student thus influences the teacher to take the steps to be a good influencer of souls. Levels of transmission and receptivity are involved. How is one “moved” by a speech, a bit of philosophy, or what we call music? Our best orators, intellectuals, and musicians hold a special place in society, even if it is posthumously. . . . so do our best athletes and warriors.

I probably don’t need to get much more specific when it comes to gymnastic because it follows along the same lines as music does. But here’s the bottom line. Balance is key. Too much music and not enough gymnastic leads to a weak physical condition. Too much gymnastic and not enough music leads to bodily strength but intellectual dullness. For the top citizens a balance between the two encourages smooth sailing.

“Incorporeal” Entities

Thanks to those who participated in yesterday’s poll.

Today I want to talk about the surface, that which opposes depth. This follows from Deleuze’s “Second Series of Paradoxes of Surface Effects” in The Logic of Sense. Most of this material is dependent on Deleuze’s report of Stoic thought. On the one hand, ‘only bodies exist in space, and only the present exists in time’ (LOS 4). What does this mean? In this context, what counts as a body? According to Deleuze’s interpretation of the Stoics, bodies are linked to “states of affairs” and thoroughgoining causality. Bodies “exist” on one level of “reality.” They mix, act, are acted upon. What does ‘all bodies are causes–causes in relation to each other and for each other’ mean? (LOS4) There is a fundamental unity there, bodies, space, present, time. No body is an effect? Well. Right. Bodies in this sense would seem somewhat atomic. Yes there is a “primordial Fire,” but this is the source of the ultimate unity or Destiny. (I am far from an expert in Stoic metaphysics, so I am taking Deleuze’s word for it, which perhaps there is a possibility that I could be distorting.) Imagine an otherwise empty container with some type of gas in it. The atomic particles (bodies) that make up the gas, insofar as they are in motion, act as causes for each other’s activities. ‘There are no causes and effects among bodies’ (LOS 4). The bodies simply ARE (Of course they are not simply “frozen” in space and time.) They move and mix and such in an open space and enduring present. They may affect each other, but one is not an effect of another. 

We now come to incorporeal entities or, in other words, events. It would seem to me that these entities are what is manifest in opposition to what lies beneath the surface, in the depths. The depths being primordial unity where routine or even strange and completely unique mixings of bodies occur. The primordial unity would be the realm of ‘bodies with their tensions, physical qualities, actions, passions, and corresponding “states of affairs”‘ (LOS 4). What is manifest is the surface. But are the depths not in some sense the surface as well? Is the opposition not somewhat artificial? What were the Stoics thinking? Perhaps we could think of it as the difference between three-dimensional and two-dimensional. Being in three dimensions is seriously ”where and when it is at.” The two-dimensional ’plane of facts, which frolic on the surface of being, and constitute an endless multiplicity of incorporeal beings’ is simply the manifestation of events (LOS 5). The superficial difference between the two ways of conceiving dimensionality is that of the rugged versus the flat. Things occur or situations become in the innermost recesses of the rugged at no time other than now. The flat is the surface upon which words slide over and along this strange brew to give some sort of sense of meaning to the “states of affairs” of bodies. Before the end of this post, a word on paradox:

Everything happens at the boundary between things and propositions. Chrysippus taught: “If you say something, it passes through your lips; so if you say “chariot,” a chariot passes through your lips.” Here is a use of paradox the only equivalents of which are to be found in Zen Buddhism on the one hand and in English or American nonsense on the other. In one case, that which is most profound is the immediate, in the other, the immediate is found in language. Paradox appears as a dismissal of depth, a display of events at the surface, and a deployment of language along this limit. Humor is the art of the surface, which is opposed to the old irony, the art of depths and heights. (LOS 8-9)

Heroes and Villians

When I was younger, I caught one of the return waves of the Star Wars phenomenon. This was somewhat before the release of the prequels. So I had gotten a good taste of what a genuine saga of heroes and villians is about. This is not to say that  that I hadn’t before experienced fictional representations of worlds with good guys and bad guys (and all of the marketing hoopla that goes along with it). I was into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles way before Star Wars. One of the rules is that the heroes win at the end of the story. Another rule is that there has to be some sort of love interest or sidekick of some type, and, unless there’s going to be a sequel, everything in the story should be resolved by the end. I have one overarching question, though. How should we, as makers of worlds, generally portray our heroes and villians, and what should we teach our young in the stories that we tell them so as to prepare them for their specific callings in life?

The beginning of Book III of the Republic deals with this issue. Let’s stick with the Star Wars example for this one. Ok. The first item of business is the issue about what we should say about death and the afterlife. (Don’t read on if you don’t want any spoilers to be revealed.) There is no explicit teaching about the afterlife in Star Wars. The closest we get to something like it is when, in The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda waxes philosophical aboout the Force. Even then, we don’t get an account of what happens after you die in the Star Wars universe. We only see certain things that suggest what might happen. Dead heroes are portrayed as “luminous beings.” We never see dead villians. Perhaps their energy (which is lacking spiritually itself) simply dissipates into the void. In any case, we never see or hear about the realm of the afterlife. However, we ultimately take the living heroes and the dead heroes to be decent “men” and, as Socrates said, “We surely say that a decent man will believe that for the decent man–who happens to be his comrade–being dead is not a terrible thing.”[387d] We eventually see that this is the case when Skywalker, Kenobi, Yoda, and Anakin acknowledge each other at the end of The Retun of the Jedi. The Star Wars saga, though, is all about the hero’s journey, and it traces Skywalker’s path from a young man to a lower level warrior towards a philosopher guardian (a similar path is taken by Anakin in the prequels).

[I'll write more on this and Book III later. Right now I have to get ready for the day's errands.]