Whatever is concrete to the sight or touch, Plato does not include among the things which he believes to be existent in the strict sense of the term. These things are the first that have to do with us: here we have all such things as men, cattle, and things. For they are in a state of flux, constantly diminishing or increasing.
None of us is the same man in old age that he was in youth; nor the same on the morrow as on the day preceding. Our bodies are hurried along like flowing waters; every visible object accompanies time in its flight; of the things which we see, nothing is fixed. Even I myself, as I comment on this change, am changed myself.
This is just what Heraclitus says: "We go down twice into the same river, and yet into a different river." For the stream still keeps the same name, but the water has already flowed past.
Of course, this is much more evident in rivers than in human beings. Still, we mortals are also carried past in no less speedy a course; and this prompts me to marvel at our madness in cleaving with great affection to such a fleeting thing as the body, and in fearing lest some day we may die, when every instant means the death of our previous condition. Will you not stop fearing lest that may happen once which really happens every day?
So much for man—a substance that flows away and falls, exposed to every influence; but the Universe, too, immortal and enduring as it is, changes and never remains the same. For though it has within itself all that it has had, it has it in a different way from that in which it has had it; it keeps changing its arrangement.
None of us is the same man in old age that he was in youth; nor the same on the morrow as on the day preceding. Our bodies are hurried along like flowing waters; every visible object accompanies time in its flight; of the things which we see, nothing is fixed. Even I myself, as I comment on this change, am changed myself.
This is just what Heraclitus says: "We go down twice into the same river, and yet into a different river." For the stream still keeps the same name, but the water has already flowed past.
Of course, this is much more evident in rivers than in human beings. Still, we mortals are also carried past in no less speedy a course; and this prompts me to marvel at our madness in cleaving with great affection to such a fleeting thing as the body, and in fearing lest some day we may die, when every instant means the death of our previous condition. Will you not stop fearing lest that may happen once which really happens every day?
So much for man—a substance that flows away and falls, exposed to every influence; but the Universe, too, immortal and enduring as it is, changes and never remains the same. For though it has within itself all that it has had, it has it in a different way from that in which it has had it; it keeps changing its arrangement.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 58
My first inclination may be to cling to the senses, since their impressions are so immediate and vivid, and that isn’t helped by the way our culture encourages the habit of instant gratification. When I believe the sensible to be the most “real” part of this world, I am likely to neglect the power of the mind.
Note how, of the six categories of “existing” presented in the letter, just one of them, the fifth, is directly about the world of matter. Yes, the senses are indeed the first to act upon me, and yet that is hardly the end of the process. It is only when I actively reflect upon what is universal and necessary that I approach the “essence” of something, and as soon as I ask the questions about what or why, I find myself in the realm of the intelligible that stands behind the sensible.
Platonism sometimes gets a bad rap for being too theoretical, even as its critics are already engaged in the very abstractions which they claim to be irrelevant. As soon as we stop to ponder, we are firmly entrenched in the domain of ideas. Plato was simply trying to show how the quod est is most fully revealed in the workings of the mind, and this is why he attributes greater “substance” to the form than to the matter.
At the very least, I recognize how the objects of sense are in constant flux, while the objects of thought are immovable. Around me, things made of matter are continually coming and going, and the truths of knowledge remain unchanging. I should always reconsider what I accept as being more “real”.
I am aware of my continuing identity as human, for example, but the body I call my own is never the same from one instant to the next. Nothing at all in the range of the senses is fixed, and still, I seek out an absolute meaning and purpose to this diversity and multiplicity. Sound reasoning demands that we judge the many by the one, the changing by the unchanging, the imperfect by the perfect, the relative by the absolute, the effect by the cause.
It is no accident how many Stoics refer to Heraclitus when they discuss the mutability of matter—we never step into the same river twice. To find what is lasting at the core, we must rise to the level of the intelligence that moves all things.
My first inclination may be to cling to the senses, since their impressions are so immediate and vivid, and that isn’t helped by the way our culture encourages the habit of instant gratification. When I believe the sensible to be the most “real” part of this world, I am likely to neglect the power of the mind.
Note how, of the six categories of “existing” presented in the letter, just one of them, the fifth, is directly about the world of matter. Yes, the senses are indeed the first to act upon me, and yet that is hardly the end of the process. It is only when I actively reflect upon what is universal and necessary that I approach the “essence” of something, and as soon as I ask the questions about what or why, I find myself in the realm of the intelligible that stands behind the sensible.
Platonism sometimes gets a bad rap for being too theoretical, even as its critics are already engaged in the very abstractions which they claim to be irrelevant. As soon as we stop to ponder, we are firmly entrenched in the domain of ideas. Plato was simply trying to show how the quod est is most fully revealed in the workings of the mind, and this is why he attributes greater “substance” to the form than to the matter.
At the very least, I recognize how the objects of sense are in constant flux, while the objects of thought are immovable. Around me, things made of matter are continually coming and going, and the truths of knowledge remain unchanging. I should always reconsider what I accept as being more “real”.
I am aware of my continuing identity as human, for example, but the body I call my own is never the same from one instant to the next. Nothing at all in the range of the senses is fixed, and still, I seek out an absolute meaning and purpose to this diversity and multiplicity. Sound reasoning demands that we judge the many by the one, the changing by the unchanging, the imperfect by the perfect, the relative by the absolute, the effect by the cause.
It is no accident how many Stoics refer to Heraclitus when they discuss the mutability of matter—we never step into the same river twice. To find what is lasting at the core, we must rise to the level of the intelligence that moves all things.
—Reflection written in 5/2013
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