Last evening I was reading some essays by Aldous Huxley, whom I now count amongst the hallowed few writers by whose essays I have been literally mesmerized. Some years ago, I taught a course at the University of Antwerp on Dystopic Novels, which included Huxley's Brave New World. At the time, I was not overly impressed with Huxley, and neither were the students who much preferred Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale or Orwell's (who, as a young impressionable young Eric Blair was a onetime pupil of Mr. Huxley) devastating 1984.
However, once I discovered a few volumes of Huxley's essays from a quaint little bookshop in Amarillo, Texas of all places, I became a believer, or at least rather impressed and have since been deeply immersed in his essays which were written for Advaita Vedanta journals as well as more mainstream publications such as Esquire and The Saturday Evening Post.
Huxley's adroit hand is at its best when he begins with something quite mundane and then explodes out to the upper limits of human interaction and enterprise with soaring observations, only to come deceptively floating back to Earth, grounding his final thought with a jarringly solid, "thump" that is hard to ignore once he has made his point.
One of the essays that I was reading last evening while contemplating my own Sunday-morning posts, was "The Oddest Science," in which Huxley takes no quarter with Freud and Jung and their adherents to modern psychology and psycho-analysis of the time (the article was from 1956) and what Huxley sees as a most unforgivable oversight when dealing with the realm of the Mind, that is the Body. Elsewhere, most notably in his vastly scanning work The Perennial Philosophy, Huxley goes into more detail about his belief that body type (three in number for him) is part and parcel with how we are both received in society and how we ourselves act as a result. Endomorphs, Ectomorphs, and Mesomorphs rule the world of Huxley and this is what he sees as grossly missing from either the Freud camp or the Jungian field. In other words, how can a therapist even begin to approach the mind of a patient if the body has not even been taken into consideration?
Therapy itself, comes from the Greek therapeuo, which means to attend to, and originally a therapaina, or therapist, was a handmaid of sorts, taking care of the bodily needs. Psych-iatry, on the other hand, is the iatrics of the Psyche, in other words, the medical curative of the Soul. Psych-iatric Therapy, as a result, should really be a tending to of the Body and the Soul. However, as Huxley rightly points out, this is more often than not not the case at all. Huxley champions F. M. Alexander, the progenitor of the Alexander Technique as an example of someone who did recognize this connection.
However, I would like to introduce and unlikely participant into this discussion, namely Socrates. Socrates is much maligned by the proponents of the Body, saying that he haughtily casts aside the Body from the Soul like a dirty rag. Yes, and No. That would be too easy.
In the Phaedo, the supposed story of the final day of Socrates' mortal life, leading up to his drinking of the Hemlock and indeed sloughing off his mortal coil like the dead skin of a snake, the relationship of the Body and the Soul is discussed at length, for that is the final message that Socrates wished to impart before departing, namely, the Body is just a Body, but the Soul is Eternal.
Now, it would be quite easy to say that Socrates was a mere fanatical dualist, saying that the Body and the Soul were not connected, but that would a very cursory response to what he had to say. Throughout all of Plato, there is a distinction made between Logos and Mythos. We eventually smash the two together to get Mytho-logy, but for Socrates, the two could not be more different. And, in every single dialogue that Socrates makes some grand statement, such as that there is a Heaven above and a Hell below, as he describes in the Phaedo, it is ALWAYS followed by, something to the effect of, "or so the story (Mythos) goes." Not once does Socrates claim that what he says is Logos, or the Word/Argument/Story, later Truth. For to claim that he, Socrates, as a mortal, knew the Logos, would indeed be blasphemy.
And, this is quite easily seen in how Socrates treated his own body. One may say that he treated it as a necessary Evil, but that would be odd at the least, cynical at best. Socrates was in prime shape when he drank the Hemlock at the age of 70. Given the accounts, it seems that he probably would have pushed 90 had he not been condemned to die. He was widely known for being in excellent physical health and is praised for his physical exploits as a soldier and his ability to slough of a night of wine and food (both seen in the Symposium) and begin the day with his normal vim and vigor. Not really what you would expect from someone who supposedly did not care about the Body as much as the Soul. Rather, Socrates was acutely aware that with a sick body, the risk of having a sick mind could be the result. Detractors of such a theory can easily point to exceptions such as the truly remarkable way that Steven Hawking has cheated death and dementia, but he is that, an exception.
Socrates took care of his body for the very reason that at least while alive on this Earth, that is all we have, our body. Now, whether that Soul is completely separate from this Body and therefore immortal, that, at best is a Mythos, because, for all intents and purposes, Socrates was betting upon a sort of Pascal's wager that his Soul was immortal. However, what is also grossly overlooked is that within the Phaedo Socrates says that it MIGHT be the case that the Soul is immortal. He also says that it might NOT be, and in that case, Death is a Great Sleep, and No-thing more. Curious what is usually remembered from the Phaedo, namely that Socrates was dogmatic, by the Dog, about his views. Yet, he was aware enough to know that even his most cherished belief, the Immortality of the Soul, was as far as he knew, only a Mythos, a nice story.
When Socrates drinks the Hemlock, and the rapid Death spreads over him, he does utter one last phrase that has kept the Philosophers and Scholars scratching their heads for millennia.
The last thing that Socrates said was, "My dear Crito, we owe a rooster to Asclepius. Do not be careless, and see to it promptly."
Asclepius was the patron deity of Medicine, the medicine of the Body, not the Soul. There is quite a lot of speculation on these final words, but for me, I am inclined to think that Huxley would have perhaps agreed, that Socrates sees that his body had run its course, and it was a good run, and for that, he should be Grateful, for what lay beyond that Body, was at best a good Mythos, and as Socrates said, whether he goes to a better place after that, no mortal can know. But, while we are still running that course, we should be Mind-ful of the Body, for both the welfare of the Mind and the Body are essential for the collective health of our Soul.
However, once I discovered a few volumes of Huxley's essays from a quaint little bookshop in Amarillo, Texas of all places, I became a believer, or at least rather impressed and have since been deeply immersed in his essays which were written for Advaita Vedanta journals as well as more mainstream publications such as Esquire and The Saturday Evening Post.
Huxley's adroit hand is at its best when he begins with something quite mundane and then explodes out to the upper limits of human interaction and enterprise with soaring observations, only to come deceptively floating back to Earth, grounding his final thought with a jarringly solid, "thump" that is hard to ignore once he has made his point.
One of the essays that I was reading last evening while contemplating my own Sunday-morning posts, was "The Oddest Science," in which Huxley takes no quarter with Freud and Jung and their adherents to modern psychology and psycho-analysis of the time (the article was from 1956) and what Huxley sees as a most unforgivable oversight when dealing with the realm of the Mind, that is the Body. Elsewhere, most notably in his vastly scanning work The Perennial Philosophy, Huxley goes into more detail about his belief that body type (three in number for him) is part and parcel with how we are both received in society and how we ourselves act as a result. Endomorphs, Ectomorphs, and Mesomorphs rule the world of Huxley and this is what he sees as grossly missing from either the Freud camp or the Jungian field. In other words, how can a therapist even begin to approach the mind of a patient if the body has not even been taken into consideration?
Therapy itself, comes from the Greek therapeuo, which means to attend to, and originally a therapaina, or therapist, was a handmaid of sorts, taking care of the bodily needs. Psych-iatry, on the other hand, is the iatrics of the Psyche, in other words, the medical curative of the Soul. Psych-iatric Therapy, as a result, should really be a tending to of the Body and the Soul. However, as Huxley rightly points out, this is more often than not not the case at all. Huxley champions F. M. Alexander, the progenitor of the Alexander Technique as an example of someone who did recognize this connection.
However, I would like to introduce and unlikely participant into this discussion, namely Socrates. Socrates is much maligned by the proponents of the Body, saying that he haughtily casts aside the Body from the Soul like a dirty rag. Yes, and No. That would be too easy.
In the Phaedo, the supposed story of the final day of Socrates' mortal life, leading up to his drinking of the Hemlock and indeed sloughing off his mortal coil like the dead skin of a snake, the relationship of the Body and the Soul is discussed at length, for that is the final message that Socrates wished to impart before departing, namely, the Body is just a Body, but the Soul is Eternal.
Now, it would be quite easy to say that Socrates was a mere fanatical dualist, saying that the Body and the Soul were not connected, but that would a very cursory response to what he had to say. Throughout all of Plato, there is a distinction made between Logos and Mythos. We eventually smash the two together to get Mytho-logy, but for Socrates, the two could not be more different. And, in every single dialogue that Socrates makes some grand statement, such as that there is a Heaven above and a Hell below, as he describes in the Phaedo, it is ALWAYS followed by, something to the effect of, "or so the story (Mythos) goes." Not once does Socrates claim that what he says is Logos, or the Word/Argument/Story, later Truth. For to claim that he, Socrates, as a mortal, knew the Logos, would indeed be blasphemy.
And, this is quite easily seen in how Socrates treated his own body. One may say that he treated it as a necessary Evil, but that would be odd at the least, cynical at best. Socrates was in prime shape when he drank the Hemlock at the age of 70. Given the accounts, it seems that he probably would have pushed 90 had he not been condemned to die. He was widely known for being in excellent physical health and is praised for his physical exploits as a soldier and his ability to slough of a night of wine and food (both seen in the Symposium) and begin the day with his normal vim and vigor. Not really what you would expect from someone who supposedly did not care about the Body as much as the Soul. Rather, Socrates was acutely aware that with a sick body, the risk of having a sick mind could be the result. Detractors of such a theory can easily point to exceptions such as the truly remarkable way that Steven Hawking has cheated death and dementia, but he is that, an exception.
Socrates took care of his body for the very reason that at least while alive on this Earth, that is all we have, our body. Now, whether that Soul is completely separate from this Body and therefore immortal, that, at best is a Mythos, because, for all intents and purposes, Socrates was betting upon a sort of Pascal's wager that his Soul was immortal. However, what is also grossly overlooked is that within the Phaedo Socrates says that it MIGHT be the case that the Soul is immortal. He also says that it might NOT be, and in that case, Death is a Great Sleep, and No-thing more. Curious what is usually remembered from the Phaedo, namely that Socrates was dogmatic, by the Dog, about his views. Yet, he was aware enough to know that even his most cherished belief, the Immortality of the Soul, was as far as he knew, only a Mythos, a nice story.
When Socrates drinks the Hemlock, and the rapid Death spreads over him, he does utter one last phrase that has kept the Philosophers and Scholars scratching their heads for millennia.
The last thing that Socrates said was, "My dear Crito, we owe a rooster to Asclepius. Do not be careless, and see to it promptly."
Asclepius was the patron deity of Medicine, the medicine of the Body, not the Soul. There is quite a lot of speculation on these final words, but for me, I am inclined to think that Huxley would have perhaps agreed, that Socrates sees that his body had run its course, and it was a good run, and for that, he should be Grateful, for what lay beyond that Body, was at best a good Mythos, and as Socrates said, whether he goes to a better place after that, no mortal can know. But, while we are still running that course, we should be Mind-ful of the Body, for both the welfare of the Mind and the Body are essential for the collective health of our Soul.
Thank you for highlighting the body, Robert. This goes unacknowledged or just unknown to many people, including therapists. And many of these people already think they know a thing or two about psychology/psychiatry.
ReplyDelete“You can’t do something you don’t know, if you keep on doing what you do know.” - FM Alexander
Have you ever read "Man's Supreme Inheritance" or "The Use of the Self" by FM Alexander, Huxley's teacher? Good stuff..
Thanks Joshua.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that particular reference, but indeed Alexander was one of the few teachers Huxley acknowledged. Both had very interesting ideas on integrative psychology and physiology. Yet, once again, turn back a couple thousand years and these conversations were going on then. Somewhere in between, the message got lost, or was repressed, suppressed or otherwise oppressed.
I'll check out Alexander's work you mentioned.
Thank you.
Robert