Ellissa Hubbard Mr.

Mosher HMN 102 4 June 2012 The Pale Horse and the Charioteer

Hubbard 2 It has been said Princes learn no art truly but the art of horsemanship. The reason is the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom."1 Truly, to master a horse is a great achievement. A beast, nearly 10 times larger than a man, chomping at his bit and foaming at the mouth, ready to listen to his masters demand, ready to meet his death, charged into battle with the war-hardened docility of submission. But is this enough? A Team of horses and their charioteer must have both horses pulling the same direction and not only must they share the load with each other, the direction must be that which was chosen by the charioteer. If one horse fails to follow the whip and reign, the chariot is lost, meeting its crashing end on the ground, broken to pieces. Plato uses the two horses and the charioteer to describe the nature of man. Through this representation, the reader sees both the Greek idea of philosophy, one in which man severs the black horse from the chariot in death, and the Christian view in which the only way one truly flies is to the extent one learns to master the Black. The beast, the body, is constantly distracted from the riders cue, dragging the chariot, White, and charioteer through bumps and fences of his demonic tendencies on earth. This is what Plato describes as the inevitably painful business of learning to master ones self. The soul has two aspects: the spirit, which leads the mans mind to lofty and godly things, and the passions, which are intrinsically linked to the body. In his soul, it is Man v. Beast in the dual between mans fallen animal-nature in his bodily appetites and his pure spiritual nature. First let man be seen as the White Horse. Plato sees this part of mans nature as his spirit, the part of him which leads to contemplation of the heavens, to look on God and soar with the angels. He is controlled and elevated. He is obedient and excited, still willing to exert effort for the sake of his masters call. Man in love and men not in love desire that which is beautiful ... man is in love and

Hubbard 3 man who is not... ruled by two principles our acquired judgment that one which pursues that which is best.2 It is coined by Socrates as being in your right mind.3 The gods, Plato says, have two horses of the same breeding, both noble and obedient. They soar in the heavens, and to the extent that man is able to tame the Second Horse, to the extent he is able to master his physical appetites; that is the extent to which he is able to follow the gods chariots. The second horse, the Black, is mans inborn desire for pleasures, seen by the Greeks as the bodily or animal[lian?] appetites, outrageousness,4 rhome, eros.5 It is the quarrel between lust and love, the Ill tempered passions that which drags the chariot back to the earth. So it is the soul which falls and forgets and misremembers and wrongdoing and falls prey to its own opines because of incompetence of drivers is the one which eagerly strains to keep up but is unable to rise, it is noisy, sweaty and disorderly.6 The Greeks, recognizing this horse was the fall of many great men, sought as much as possible to master him, but not only to master him, but to sever him from the chariot. In the Greek mind, one which does not even begin the true philosophical journey until one is able to completely sever that cord through which the passions are tied to earth. Death, the Pale Horse, is the completion of the separation of the mind from the body. Death is the final frontier for the philosopher, a total separation from the attachment to the physical, loving true wisdom to so great an extent that one is able to remove completely the temporal body and move into the mind more fully. Philosophy attained by the separation of the body and soul. With total resignation of his body, Socrates attained this separation both physically and ideologically. Socrates reasoned his philosophy of justice and the ultimate end of a philosopher, separation of body and mind. Because of this he resigned to his death as he has grappled with truth and justice and won over his physical
2 3

Plato, Phaedrus 516 d Ibid. 238 4 Ibid.248 5 Ibid. 242d 6 Ibid.238 a, c

Hubbard 4 limitations in the Crito. The philosophers sought to ground the truth, in its objectivity and transcendence, on the rational nature of things.7 To Socrates death is not the end, but the beginning of his philosophical journey. That was the ultimate vision, and we saw it in pure light because we were pure ourselves, not buried in this thing we are carrying around now, which we call a body, locked in it like an oyster in its shell.8 In the Symposium, Phaedrus believes that only a lover would die for the beloved, citing the story of Alcestis, even if she is a woman.9 Therefore what better reason for a Greek to die than for his beloved? He died for Lady Philosophy. Alcestis, even if she was a woman, could attain the highest end due her nature as a philosopher and recognizing that she was noble in her love, the gods granted her souls return from the dead. It is not just Plato who sees the philosopher is he (or she) who can best step aside from his (or her) passions and body and can then fulfill that which is pious. Antigone faced the same sort of battle. It seems this is where the Greeks fell short. For it is natural to man to be both body and spirit, to sever that body creates some other creature than man. In the Phaedrus, Plato seems to propose a glimpse of this need of man for both spirit and body. The charioteer, the mind, the intellect, guides the horses. The soul too, my friend, is itself a sort of seer. 10 It is interesting to note that in most all the other works of Plato, Socrates supports the intellect as being the highest being, but only in the Phaedrus does he say that the spirit must stay tied to the passions; perhaps even Plato himself did not realize what he was saying. In his own way he admits this, without his understanding perhaps, but the philosophers mind...prone to see truth11 brought him the closest of the Greeks to the Christian perspective. It is necessary to work both horses together. The dual-ness of man as spirit and body requires the charioteer according
7 8

Herburg. Phaedrus. 250 c 9 Plato. Symposium. 179 c 10 Phaedrus. 242 d 11 Ibid. 249 c

Hubbard 5 Socrates the Intellect or intelligence12 as Socrates calls it. The charioteer is the mind behind the madness. There is no greater good than this that either human self-control or divine madness can offer a man....if they adapt a lower way of living with ambition in the place of philosophy, ... the pairs undisciplined horses will catch their souls off guard and together bring them to commit that act. 256 c The chariot shows that the natures are the same, not different; they both must reach the goal together. The black may not be severed from the white. Who then is the master of the beast? He is the philosophical nature of man. It is a matter of taming the wild horse, the passions, and rising as man with both body and spirit to the heights of heaven. As it has been said, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. One must be truly the master of his flesh; it seems he may only do this in heaven, when the Black Horse is truly subjected to the will. It is a hard thing to be run away with by a horse. It is even harder to hit the ground. Flying on horseback is an amazing feeling, as long as the rider is in control. It seems to some down on earth that flight of the soul is not possible, but the reality is they have not stretched their wings in quite a while and they must give it time to work out the winter bugs. It is time for spring cleaning, time to wipe the moth balls from the harness and put some grease on the hinges of the chariot. It is time to train the wild beast and master the flesh. It is time to fly.

12

Ibid. 247 d