¹ Pascal, Pensées, #277 (Brunschvicg edition).

² An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1988 Meeting of the College Theology Society in the Section on “The Role of Affectivity in Theology.”

³ The Greek periagogē is the classical equivalent to the Hebrew teshuvah, the “turning” or “return” (Umkehr) that Martin Buber so profoundly uttered in the last pages of I and Thou.

⁴ As Walter Hamilton confirms, the ascent of the soul for Plato involves both reason and emotion. The ascent is described on its intellectual side in the central books of the Republic while the Symposium represents the same quest as inspired by love, that is, by emotion (see his Introduction to Plato, , Phaedrus and the Seventh and Eighth Letters, trans. Hamilton, Walter [New York: Penguin, 1973], p. 17).Google Scholar In this light the Phaedrus is certainly complementary to the Symposium, but it would appear that it actually marks a development in Plato's thought beyond these earlier dialogues in that it represents the soul's ascent as requiring both faculties equally. Where in the Symposium sensuality is entirely sublimated—the ideal lover is called to transcend the particular beauty of the beloved in order to gaze upon Beauty itself—the Phaedrus, as we shall see, portrays love as transcending neither the beloved nor the body. In fact in this dialogue Plato understands the philosopher's search for truth, the mystic's quest for God, and the mutual affection of two persons in love (that is beyond mere physical desire) as all being inspired by the same erotic longing. All three activities are grounded in the same impulse and manifested in the intellectual and emotional life.

⁵ See Voegelin, Eric, Order and History, vol. 3: Plato and Aristotle (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957), pp. 135–41.Google Scholar

⁶ These three forms of mania, or heaven-sent inspiration, are the pneumatic sources of transcendent knowledge that is to be distinguished from the noetic insight of the philosopher. Nowhere, however, does Plato integrate so clearly these two sources of knowledge as in the Phaedrus where the mania of the lover is discerned to be the most excellent vehicle for the philosophical/spiritual vision.

⁷ Many scholars have interpreted Plato's tripartite soul as depicted in the Phaedrus myth according to the psychology he developed in the Republic. Thus, thymos, the ambitious and courageous power of the soul corresponds with the noble steed which is the natural ally of the charioteer, while the ignoble steed representing irrational base appetite must be epithymia. If this interpretation is accurate then Plato seems to argue that the “rational” power of thymos is necessary for reason to operate at all, for without the rational emotions that propel the soul upwards, reason alone would be helpless to guide the soul and would inevitably be driven downwards by the power of the irrational passions. This whole theme is later taken up by Augustine who gives great importance to the movement of love on the soul: “My love is my weight. By it I am carried wherever I am carried. By thy gift, we are enkindled and are carried upward. We burn inwardly and move forward. We ascend thy ladder which is in our heart” (Confessions XIII, 9). In this regard Plato's thymos was recast by Augustine's concentration on “heart” and “will.”

⁸ This conclusion follows Herman L. Sinaiko's fine analysis of the Phaedrus. See his Love, Knowledge, and Discourse in Plato (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 96–118.Google Scholar

⁹ Macmurray, John, Reason and Emotion (London: Faber and Faber 1935;Google Scholar reprint ed., Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1978). This work and Freedom in the Modern World are collections of short lectures and radio addresses that Macmurray gave in the early 1930s.

¹⁰ Macmurray, John, The Form of the Personal, vol. 1: The Self as Agent (London: Faber and Faber, 1957);Google Scholar vol. 2: Persons in Relation (London: Faber and Faber, 1961.Google Scholar

¹¹ Macmurray, , The Self as Agent, p. 38.Google Scholar For a concise statement on his turn to the person, see Persons in Relation, pp. 27-28.

¹² Macmurray's treatment of these three primary modes of reflection is scattered throughout his published works. His most elaborate treatment is found in his Science, Art and Religion: A Study of the Reflective Activities of Man (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1961).Google Scholar See also Reason and Emotion, pp. 145-94; and Persons in Relation, pp. 166-85.

¹³ Macmurray spells this out in The Structure of Religious Experience (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1936).Google Scholar This small volume contains the heart of Macmurray's philosophy of religion.

¹⁴ Macmurray, , The Self as Agent, p. 89.Google Scholar This statement is also parallel to Bernard Lonergan's theory of consciousness delineated in his Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972)Google Scholar, whereby the fourth level of value, decision, and action sublates the first three levels of experience, understanding, and judgment.

¹⁵ Macmurray, , The Self as Agent, p. 15.Google Scholar

¹⁶ In this sense, real knowledge is also the fruit of communion: “Knowledge is that in my action which makes it an action and not a blind activity. It is ‘objective’ awareness; or rather awareness of the Other and the Self in relation. It is not ‘knowing that,’ neither is it ‘knowing how’; neither is it ‘knowledge by acquaintance,’ for it is acquaintance. We use the term ‘know’ in this primary sense when we say that we know our friends and are known by them” (ibid., p. 129).

¹⁷ See Macmurray, , Reason and Emotion, pp. 13–65.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Macmurray would claim that our confusion arises because we tend falsely to identify reason with intellect and contrast it with emotion. Actually the proper contrast should be drawn between intellect and emotion, each of which expresses the life of reason. Thus, he speaks of the rationality of emotion of which religion is the most complete expression. See ibid., p. 5.

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 14.

²⁰ Ibid., p. 22.

²¹ Ibid., pp. 21-22.

²² Ibid., p. 25.

²³ Ibid., p. 35.

²⁴ Macmurray discusses this notion in The Self as Agent, pp. 190-202. In a vein similar to the German phenomenologist and ethicist Max Scheler, he argues that our objective valuation of the world is rooted in our “emotional apprehension.” This is a mode of reflection that views the world as an intrinsic value, in contrast with “intellectual reflection” which views it as a means to an end. Intellectual reflection seeks to generalize and know universals. Emotional reflection is contemplative; it is focused on the particular, to know something for itself without generalization. Our primary knowledge of the world is this kind of valuative apprehension and is thus a matter of feeling. See also Reason and Emotion, pp. 31-32.

²⁵ Macmurray, John, Search for Reality in Religion (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1965), p. 28.Google Scholar

²⁶ Macmurray, , Reason and Emotion, p. 34.Google Scholar In the Philebus, Plato seems to share this view when he has Socrates discuss the prevalence of false pleasures. The correlation Macmurray draws between real emotion and real thinking (that are real because they refer to reality) is strikingly similar to Socrates' discussion of true and false pleasures and true and false beliefs (Philebus 36c-44a). Both thinkers employ a version of the correspondence theory of truth whereby something (a feeling or thought) is true if and only if it is grounded in an actual state of affairs that it has as an object.

²⁷ This is underscored in Plato's refusal to condemn those who fall short of the ideal of sublimated love. At 256c-d he surprisingly condones what he elsewhere scornfully denounces (e.g., 250e and Laws 837c, 841c-e) and thus appears after all not to be a severe judge of those who lapse into wanton gratification. The conflict between the spirit and the flesh is a universal human struggle. The attachment between lesser lovers should not be denounced, for their affair can be a stepping stone to the higher blessing as they learn that their true desires remain unfulfilled. These too are termed “dear friends” who indeed remain wingless at death yet nevertheless have taken the first steps on the “celestial highway.”

²⁸ Suzanne Lilar, in her extraordinary study of love, has uniquely underscored this misunderstanding of Platonic philosophy from its very beginning, as well as the attendant disintegration of eros that this misreading led to in Western history. See her Aspects of Love in Western Society, trans. Griffin, Jonathan (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965).Google Scholar She claims that, “Misunderstood Platonism was destined to load the Western conscience with the dualistic condemnation of the flesh, and here bourgeois false idealism had its origin. From that moment began the triumph of the opinion that it is nobler to love with the heart or the brain that with the senses, to love ‘platonically’ than to love totally—whereas the central idea of Platonism, stated again and again in the Symposium and the Phaedrus, had been that ‘stirred by amorous longing a man can rise, starting from the senses and the flesh’” (p. 64).

²⁹ Again this is supported in part by the Philebus where Socrates concludes that the mixed life contributes best to human happiness and fulfillment. Reason and pleasure together are seen as necessary for living the good life. But not all pleasures are acceptable, only those “higher pleasures” that contribute to the pursuit of knowledge and virtue. Plato argues that only those pleasures that directly hinder this intellectual/spiritual pilgrimage are bad and need to be avoided. Again the sensual side must be incorporated since to exclude it would be to deny human nature.