The I.E Oedipal Complex and Know Thyself

Triad.

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Plato wrote:

"Let [the soul] be likened to the composite inborn power of a pair (ζεῦγος) of winged horses and of a charioteer. However, both the horses and the charioteers of the gods are all good, and of good descent; but as for those of the others, it is a mixed affair; and first of all our driver leads an ill-assorted pair (συνωρίς), and secondly one of the horses is himself noble and of like descent, but the other is quite the opposite, and of opposite descent: so that difficult indeed and troublesome is of necessity the driving for us [mortals]." [Phdr. 246a–b]

Katha Upanishad wrote:

"Know the self as a rider in a chariot,
and the body, as simply the chariot.
Know the intellect (buddhi) as the charioteer, and the mind (manas), as simply the reins.

The senses, they say, are the horses,
and sense objects are the paths around them.
When a man lacks understanding (vijñāna),
and his mind (manas) is never controlled (ayukta); His senses do not obey him,
as bad horses, a charioteer.

When a man has understanding,
is mindful and always pure;
He does reach that final step,
from which he is not reborn again." [KaU, 3.3–8]

Tracing the progress of decadence within Indo-Europe itself, it becomes clear how the tendency towards nihilistic invention in Vedantic systems, and tendency towards nihilistic discovery in Platonic systems can be traced back to where the tension lay in their respective world-views.

Among the post-Vedics, the world was an uncertain flux, forms breaking down and re-assembling again, and thus religion was a constant sacrificial process of building up forms broken by entropy, that piling up the fire altar symbolized. One had to "re-Build" the self back. Soon the ritual came to enclose and censor the self within pure-referential technicality.

Among the late-Greeks, the world was a certainty of a higher order harmony, and thus religion was a constant process of 'quieting' the body to discover within oneself the certain order of that harmony. One had to "re-Discover" the self back. Platonism soon came to enclose and censor the world from without, in referenceless-transcendentalism.

In the former, the self was closed off in an open world.
In the latter, the world was closed off in an open self.

In the former, the concept of self turned nihilistic in pure subjectivity of Creating meaning from the self;
in the latter, the concept of world turned nihilistic in pure objectivity of Extracting meaning from the world.

In the former, the self was found an illusion in a fluxious world of temporality, thus anchored in Nothing and resulting in self-fashioning will to art and detached disinterested contemplation;
In the latter, this world was found an illusion in a changeless world of eternity, thus anchored in Something and resulting in self-discovering will to truth and intrusive self-interested action.

The root of all this is reflected in the different conception of the horse, chariot, reins, metaphor in the common I.E. inheritance.

While the Indic system maintains a neutral view of the "reins", the "horses" - the sense capacity, the Greek system assigns a negative view to the reins and horses as *already* good and evil - the unconscious animaline is experienced as a threat and irrational danger by the time of Parmenides:

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Accordingly in the Dionysian branch, the hierarchy of Becoming is Rheason > Passion > Appetite [reason is passion's excess/fulfilment and passion is the appetitive excess/sublimation].
Rheason is the vitality of the animaline unconscious.
One holds a neutral view on the senses.

and in the Apollonian branch, the hierarchy of Being is Reason > Passion > Appetite [reason rules passion and passion rules appetite].
Reason is the intelligence of the human conscious.
One holds a skeptical view of the senses.

This ties in with Goux' Oedipal complex of what results in bypassing the initiation with the monstrous unconscious, where like in Platonism as Goux points, the Apollonian truth is already assumed, resulting in the tragedy of intrusive nature (incest), and the Alexandrianism of an optimistic quest to penetrate nature.

This difference has today culminated in

- The dis/ease of post-modernity's subjective will-to-art Inventive mode of fashioning self, true to transitory reality, and,

- The dis/ease of modernity's objective will-to-truth Discovery mode plundering nature for its changeless ready "inner truth".

In Schizophrenia and Paranoia resp.

Whether by confluence or parallel independent development or autonomous self-logic, Indo-Europe was beset with the imbalance of both branches, resolved finally only in Nietzsche who corrects Platonic petrifaction and Schopenhauerian liquifaction into a Lethe-al 'Innocence of Becoming'.

Heidegger 'corrects' Platonic petrifaction and Nietzsche's 'liquefaction' into 'Aletheia of Being'.

The difference being, to N., lethe-argy is a problem of the degree of world determining man - premeditated power of religious domestication to the familiar; solution is in art, and the vital power of one's spirit and will that determined one's being.
To Heidegger, lethe-argy is the problem of the degree of man determining world - blind power of technological estrangement from the familiar; solution is in religion and, and the vital power of one's language that preserved one's being.

N. is a scientific ancient standing with the Rig-Vedic and Heraclitean world view who wants to sanctify the entropic power of life, the flux that has been demonized as evil.

Heidgger is a mystical existentialist standing with the Vedantic and Parmenidean world view who wants to sanctify the resistive power of life, the flow that has been demonized as evil.

Nietzsche fights against Xt. mysticism; Heidegger fights against Scientific nihilism.

In short, N : Heid;

Becoming vs. Being
Knowledge as Art vs. Truth as Knowledge
Science vs. Religion
Magic vs. Mysticism
Spirit-will vs. Language
Lethe vs. Aletheia
Philosopher vs. Poet
Satyr vs. Saint
Edge vs. Middle
Sphinx vs. Hestia
Domination vs. Dwelling
Self-trust vs. Self-care
Sense vs. Essence
Moira vs. Dike



Back to the main subject,

The nihilistic development of the two I.E. branches in detail:

Quote :

"The agnicayana is a complex ritual technology whereby the patron constructs an immortal, extracorporeal self for himself. This immortal self is ‘projected into another ontological sphere, into a loka [“world”] other than the earthly one’, and will be accessible only after death.

In ancient India, there is not one immortal self, but there are as many selves as ritual actors. The ritual performance through which immortality is attained is not regarded as the operation of a particular subject, but derives its efficacy from nothing other than itself. The ritual event is thus foregrounded, whereas the human element is ‘decentred’. Nonetheless, each such performance con- tributes to constructing an individual, immortal self. That is, because the divine self (daiva ātman) is the result of one’s ritual, such a self is individually specific in that it correlates with one’s ritual performances in this world.

In Timaeus, immortality is in essence a process of depersonalisation. It is a return to the primordial moment when all individual souls created by the demiurge were exactly identical to one another (41e). The soul’s diversification into distinct human beings, man and women, animals and lower living creatures results from the individual souls’ behaviour in their successive reincarnations. The individual’s pursuit of immortality, the training for becoming immortal, can thus be seen as the attempt to reabsorb one’s individual chain of reincarnation in a way that corresponds to the reverse order of the development and history of this universe. After death, the individual who has perfected himself by following his immortal soul and living a philosophical life will return to the star with which it was originally associated (42b).

Immortality is represented differently in the two texts under scrutiny.

The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa describes an external, disembodied self, the immortality of which is precarious. The ritual construction of one’s divine self correlates with the quality and quantity of the ritual per- formed, which determines the kind and duration of the ritually constructed divine life. Immortality is not won once and for all, but is provisional and reversible; once the patron dies, his ritually constructed divine self needs his progeny’s ritual acts to continue to exist.

Conversely, in Plato’s Timaeus man’s immortality is a given. The ‘immortal principle of soul (ἀρχὴν ψυχῆς ἀθάνατον)’ (69c) is planted in one’s own constitution. It is true that immortality needs to be regained, as it were, by strenuous bodily and intellectual exercise. Nonetheless, it can be attained precisely because it is already there. In ancient India, on the other hand, there appears to be an ontological rupture between man’s predicament and immortality. Being mortal by definition, man can obtain immortality not by centralising all his efforts on his immortal core – such a thing is in fact absent – but through ritually fashioning a substitute body. For Plato, the path to immortality consists in cultivating something which is already in ourselves; for Yājñavalkya, immortality is a ritually constructed extracorporeal residence.

Even though both kinds of immortality can be fully realised only post-mortem, they differ as to the degree to which they inform the present life. In order to attain their final, sidereal immortality, Plato’s disciples must cultivate their rational soul in this life. A more rational and therefore ethically just behaviour seems to be this training’s necessary outcome. For the ancient Indian practitioners, the pursuit of immortality happens entirely through and within the highly technical domain of ritual. Once he has built a divine body for himself, nothing would seem to change in the sacrificial patron’s daily life. In short, while Plato’s search for immortality emphasises this life, Yājñavalkya’s ritual technology is centred on this ritual.

We must however avoid reading the above observations through the conventional lens magnifying a reified view of the Greek and the Indian traditions. It would be especially misleading, I believe, to read the correlation between immortality and ethics in Plato and the apparent absence of ethical implications in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, as well as the former’s emphasis on self-definition and the Indian centrality of a ritual-cum-knowledge, as reinforcing the die-hard stereotypes about rational Greece and mystical India. While the differences identified above are, in my opinion, real, they do not readily fit that old-fashioned yet still partly dominant model. In this respect, note that Plato’s fundamentally positive belief in the teleology of the cosmos and the highest soul’s immortality appears as more mystically oriented, and perhaps farther removed from our modern sensibility, than the Brāhmaṇas’ vision of a precarious immortality, always in need of reinstatement." [Paolo Visigalli, Technologies of self-immortalisation in ancient Greece and early India / ex. in Richard Seaford, Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought]

In Platonic nihilism, immortality is through discovery of self in a permanent world; in Vedantic nihilism, immortality is through fashioning of the self in an impermanent world.

Quote :

"Not only the classicist, but even the layman with a casual interest in Greek philosophy is familiar with the allegory which Plato employs in the Phaedrus to describe the nature of the soul in terms, as he says, that are ‘within human power’:

Let [the soul] be likened to the composite inborn power of a pair of winged horses and of a charioteer. . . (246a).

Both classical scholars and cultivated laymen alike, on the other hand, have seldom been aware of a strikingly similar allegory occurring in one of the most celebrated works of the final period of Vedic literature, the Kaṭha Upaniṣad:

Know that the Self is the rider in a chariot, and the body is the chariot; and know that the intelligence is the charioteer, and the mind is the bridle. They say that the senses are the horses, and the sense objects are their lanes. . . (KaU 1.3.3)

For their part, Indologists have taken due notice of the puzzling similarity from early on, albeit with differing assessments. Already a century ago, in connection with the Kaṭha passage, Keith observed that ‘the contrast with the Platonic metaphor of the Phaidros is as obvious as the parallel’, further on passing his judgement that in spite of the interesting parallelism ‘the details of the two [metaphors] are perfectly distinct, for Plato uses the conception to illustrate the struggle between the rational and the irrational elements in the soul, and his distinction of θύμος and ἐπιθυμία has no real parallel in the Upaniṣads’. On the other hand, Belvalkar and Ranade evidently did not share his caution, as they enthusiastically aver that ‘the extraordinary resemblance of the two descriptions down to the smallest details staggers us, and we must confess we do not know how to account for it’. Almost in between there is Radhakrishnan’s opinion that ‘in spite of difference in details, the Kaṭha and Plato agree in looking upon intelligence as the ruling power of the soul . . . and aiming at the integration of the different elements of human nature’. More recently McEvilley, who must be credited with the first serious attempt to posit with amplitude and lucidity the question of possible reciprocal influences between early Greek and Indian thought in his path-breaking essay on The Shape of Ancient Thought, confines himself to observing that ‘the similarity in imagery is intriguing’ but answers Friedländer’s wondering whether the figure might have travelled from the Far East to Plato with the milder suggestion of a possible common Indo-European heritage.

Let [the soul] be likened to the composite inborn power of a pair (ζεῦγος) of winged horses and of a charioteer. However, both the horses and the charioteers of the gods are all good, and of good descent; but as for those of the others, it is a mixed affair; and first of all our driver leads an ill-assorted pair (συνωρίς), and secondly one of the horses is himself noble and of like descent, but the other is quite the opposite, and of opposite descent: so that difficult indeed and troublesome is of necessity the driving for us [mortals]. (Phdr. 246a–b)

It is worth noticing, with Robin, that although ζεῦγος is the word usually employed for a pair of horses, in applying the metaphor to the human soul Plato makes use of the word συνωρίς instead (which I have accordingly translated as ‘ill-assorted pair’) to signify that the human horses are not really paired, or ‘on the same par’, so to speak, but they are extrinsically conjoined (συν-ωρίζω) in spite of their different natures.


The steering of the chariot

Both the Phaedrus and the Kaṭha agree in stressing the need for disciplined steering of the chariot in order to reach the journey’s destination. The notion of discipline is conveyed in the Kaṭha through the metaphor of the ‘subjugated’ (yukta) horses, and we have already drawn attention to the close lexical, semantic and conceptual relationship obtaining between the terms employed for subjugating and restraining the horses on the one hand and some key concepts of the burgeoning school of Yoga as a method for subjugating and restraining psychic faculties on the other. The seamless integration of the chariot imagery in the conceptual array of proto-Yoga, which is unparalleled in the Phaedrus, speaks for the native status of the metaphor in the Kaṭha, as we have already remarked.

However, we may perhaps discern some faint echo of it in the lexical usage of the Platonic dialogue. The Sanskrit term yoga, literally meaning a ‘yoke’, is linguistically cognate to the Greek ζεῦγος which designates the pair of divine horses harnessed to the chariot. Although the figurative meaning of ‘subjugation’ is ostensibly absent in the Platonic passage, it may not be devoid of significance that, as we pointed out, Plato employs a different word (i.e. συνωρίς) to designate the unruly pair of human horses of opposite temperaments; so that by implication the word ζεῦγος seems to acquire the additional value of connoting the divine horses as unanimous and obedient to the charioteer: that is to say, ‘subjugated’ in the same sense as yukta.

But the most notable point of similarity with respect to the steering of the chariot is without doubt the one concerning the difficulty caused by the opposition between good and bad horses, although such opposition wears quite different aspects in either case, for in the Phaedrus one horse is congenitally good and the other the reverse, whereas the horses of the Kaṭha do not admit of an internal disparity, but they are only susceptible of being, all of them, well-behaved, or else ill-behaved. This divergence stems from the different symbolic function of the horses, and above all from the paramount difference in the underlying ontology; nevertheless, even the coincidence of the mere idea of the antithesis is worthy of note.

The charioteer, on the other hand, severally corresponds to the mind (manas), the intellect (buddhi) or the soul in different texts both Indian and Greek.

What interests us more is that both in the Kaṭha and in the Phaedrus the charioteer represents the rational faculty: buddhi / vijñāna in the Indian text and νοῦς / διάνοια in the Greek one, viz. the intelligent (or ‘intelligible’, in Scholastic parlance) aspect of the soul (τὸ λογιστικόν, according to the psychology of the Republic).

The bridle, which represents the mind in the Kaṭha, is not expressly mentioned in the Phaedrus, but is implied in the Greek word for ‘charioteer’, which is ἡνίοχος, i.e. ‘he who holds the reins’ (ἡνία).

As for the horses, their correlates are totally different in India and Greece, for in the Indian tradition they stand for the indriyas, i.e. the ‘faculties’ without distinction (in the earliest period), and later, at the time of the Maitrāyaṇīya, when the rising Sāṃkhya cosmo-psychology had started distinguishing between sense organs and action organs, the latter ones.On the Greek side, in the Phaedrus the two horses represent the irrational aspects of the soul[/color], which would later be called in scholastic parlance the irascible and the concupiscible (τὸ θυμοειδές and τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν according to the psychology of the Republic). In the proem of Parmenides according to Sextus’ interpretation, the mares likewise stand for desires and irrational impulses of the soul.

The distinction of three aspects of the soul – τὸ λογιστικόν, τὸ θυμοειδές and τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν – finds no equivalent in the ancient Upaniṣadic psychology. However, the rudiment of an analogous conception may perhaps be seen in the stereotyped pair kāma and krodha (‘desire’ and ‘anger’) which occurs several times in the Bhagavad Gītā in the capacity of arch-enemies of jñāna (‘knowledge’). For example, in a passage which calls to mind the chariot allegory through the use of certain words and images, Kṛṣṇa admonishes Arjuna as follows:

This is desire (kāma), this is anger (krodha), fostered by the element of ardour (rajoguṇa) . . . as fire is enveloped by smoke and a mirror is clouded by dust . . . in the same way is knowledge obfuscated by this relentless opponent of the knower . . . the senses, the mind and the intellect are its abode, as they say, and through them it deludes the embodied [soul] by obfuscating knowledge. Therefore, restrain (niYAM) the senses in the first place, and then kill that iniquitous destroyer of knowledge and science. (Bhagavad Gītā 3.37–41)

Admittedly, the Bhagavad Gītā properly speaking is no Upaniṣad, being embedded in the Mahābhārata epos, datable after the close of the Vedic period, and for that reason must on all likelihood be ascribed to a later time than the Phaedrus. Nevertheless, the couple of kāma and krodha already occurs in one of the most ancient Upaniṣads, in a passage enumerating as components of the (world-immanent) universal Self, in addition to the faculties and the elements, also kāma-krodha and their opposites (BU 4.4.5).

In general terms, it may be observed that the Indian tradition is more interested in articulating the physio-psychic complex in its entirety, in order to account for the ordinary, world-affirming sensory experience as well as for its opposite, the extraordinary, world-negating practice of sensory restraint (yoga) leading to the suprasensory. For its part, the allegory of the Phaedrus only contemplates the nature of the soul with its essential components, the intelligible, the irascible and the concupiscible, represented by the joint agency of the charioteer and the pair of horses.

Against the backdrop of all the varying degrees of similarity between the allegorical correlates examined above, one item of the allegory has been left unreviewed thus far, which appears in one way or another in all Indian texts, but is conspicuously absent in the Greek ones: namely, the idle passenger on the chariot. In all of them (except for the odd Chāgaleya) its regular correlate is the soul: for the soul, according to the standard Indian view, coincides neither with any of the several psychic functions signified by the different parts of the chariots, nor with their joint agency (as is the case with the Phaedrus).

Indeed, here lies the paramount disparity between the Greek and Indian vesions of the chariot allegory, which is rooted in the widely differing ontologies of Plato and of the school of Sāṃkhya-Yoga at its dawn in the Kaṭha. Those ontologies diverge essentially with respect to where they set the boundary line between the respective pertinences of body and soul. According to Plato, the soul is tripartite in its functions, this tripartition being reflected in the image of the charioteer and the pair of horses; but, according to the same image, it is up to the rational faculty to oversee the other two. On the other hand, in the Indian texts one meets the distinct figure of the rathin, that is to say, literally, the ‘owner of the chariot’, or he who makes use of the chariot as an instrument, while remaining distinct and detached with respect to it. The reason for this is that, according to the dualistic psychology of Sāṃkhya-Yoga, there exists a radical opposition between the soul ( puruṣa), which is the pure luminosity of awareness as the horizon of the appearance of objects, and nature (prakṛti), which is the physical substrate of the outer world as well as of the inner physio-psychic complex, inclusive of the rational, volitional and desiderative faculties. To put it succinctly, the intellect is part (indeed, the best part) of the soul, according to Plato, whereas it is non-soul, but merely a part of the body, according to Sāṃkhya-Yoga." [Paolo Magnone, Soul chariots in Indian and Greek thought: polygenesis or diffusion? / ex. in Richard Seaford, Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought]

In Platonic nihilism, intellect is purely of the soul; in Vedantic nihilism, intellect is purely of the body.