Olympiodorus and Taylor on Suicide

[sdi]

I've been sick—on top of the last few weeks of bad summer allergies, I caught a pretty bad cold a few days ago—and since Proclus is pretty tough going at the best of times, I've been turning to Plato for light reading. (Yes. Yes, I know. I know. Shut up.) People have been reading Plato for a long time and for all that time they've had opinions on the best order to read his books in. (On the one side we have Thrasyllus, from ~100 BC, and Albinus, from ~AD 100; on the other side, the list I selected to work from was from a few years ago.) I started by reading them in such an order, but man oh man was it boring. The point of this is to be fun, right? So why waste time on pesky politics or ethics (or even Alcibiades, sweet treat though he was), when what I really care about is metaphysics?

So I gave up on the reading order (I'll get back to early dialogues eventually—maybe) and jumped right into the books that Plotinus references. So right now I'm reading the Phædo (a better title would be On the Immortality of the Soul) and I'm enjoying myself. It's good.

But that's not why I'm writing right now. While I'm reading a modern translation (Jowett's, as it happens), I of course have Thomas Taylor's copious notes to hand, and it is of little surprise to find gems in there. Since I just went back over Plotinus on Suicide, it was convenient (to use no stronger or more mystical term) to find a four-page long footnote containing Olympiodorus' and Taylor's thoughts on the same. Since it's interesting, I figured I'd transcribe it for you all:

Socrates says, that perhaps the philosopher will not destroy himself, for this is not lawful. This the text shows through two arguments, the one mythical and Orphic, but the other dialectic and philosophic. But before we consider the text, says Olympiodorus, let us show by appropriate arguments that suicide is not lawful. Divinity possesses twofold powers, anagogic and providential; and the powers which are providential of things secondary are not impeded by the anagogic, and which are converted to them, but he energizes at once according to both. In like manner, nothing hinders but that a philosopher, since he is an imitator of Divinity, (for philosophy is an assimilation to Deity,) may at once energize cathartically, and with a providential care of secondary natures: for there is nothing great in living cathartically when separated from the body after death; but, while detained in the body, it is generous to be intent on purification. The second argument is this: As a divine nature is always present to all things, and some things participate of it more or less, through their proper aptitude or inaptitude; so also it is necessary that the soul should be present to the body, and should not separate itself from it. But the body participates or does not participate of it, through its proper aptitude or inaptitude. Thus, in the Theætetus, the Coryphæan philosopher is represented as not knowing where the Forum is situated, but as being even ignorant that he is ignorant of sensible particulars; and this while he is in the body. The third argument is as follows: It is necessary that a voluntary bond should be voluntarily dissolved; but that an involuntary bond should be dissolved with an involuntary solution, and not in a promiscuous manner. Hence a physical life, being involuntary, must be dissolved with an involuntary solution, i. e. by a physical death; but the impassioned life in us, which subsists according to pre-election or free will, must be dissolved with a voluntary solution, i. e. with purification, or the exercise of the cathartic virtues.

With respect to the text, it shows through two arguments, as we have observed, that suicide is not lawful; and of these the mythical argument, according to Olympiodorus, is as follows:—According to Orpheus, there are four governments: the first that of Heaven, which Saturn received, cutting off the genitals of his father. After Saturn, Jupiter reigned, who hurled his father into Tartarus. And after Jupiter Bacchus reigned, who they fay was lacerated by the Titans, through the stratagems of Juno. It is also said that the Titans tasted his flesh, and that Jupiter being enraged hurled his thunder at them; and that from the ashes of their burnt bodies men were generated. Suicide, therefore, is not proper, not, as the text seems to say, because we are in a certain bond the body, (for this is evident, and he would not have called this arcane,) but suicide is not lawful, because our body is Dionysiacal: for we are a part of Bacchus, if we are composed from the ashes of the Titans who tasted his flesh. Socrates, therefore, fearful of disclosing this arcane narration, because it pertained to the mysteries, adds nothing more than that we are in the body, as in a prison secured by a guard; but the interpreters, when the mysteries were declining, and almost extinct, owing to the establishment of a new religion, openly disclosed the fable.

But the allegory of this fable, says Olympiodorus, is of that kind as when Empedocles asserts that the intelligible and sensible worlds were generated according to parts; not that they were produced at different times, for they always are, but because our soul at one time lives according to the intelligible, and then the intelligible world is said to be generated, and at another time according to the sensible world, and then the sensible world is said to be generated. So likewise with Orpheus, those four governments do not subsist at one time, and at another not, for they always are; but they obscurely signify the gradations of the virtues according to which our foul contains the symbols of all the virtues, the theoretic and cathartic, the politic and ethic. For it either energizes according to the theoretic virtues, the paradigm of which is the government of Heaven, and on this account Heaven receives its denomination from beholding the things above; or it lives cathartically, the paradigm of which is the kingdom of Saturn, and on this account Saturn is denominated as a pure intellect, through beholding himself; and hence he is said to devour his own offspring, as converting himself to himself: or it energizes according to the political virtues, the symbol of which is the government of Jupiter; and hence Jupiter is the demiurgus, as energizing about secondary natures: or it lives according to the ethical and physical virtues, the symbol of which is the kingdom of Bacchus; and hence it is lacerated, because the virtues do not alternately follow each other.

But Bacchus being lacerated by the Titans signifies his procession to the last of things; for of these the Titans are the artificers, and Bacchus is the monad of the Titans. This was effected by the stratagems of Juno, because this goddess is the inspective guardian of motion and progression; and hence, in the Iliad, she continually excites Jupiter to a providential attention to secondary natures. Bacchus also, says Olympiodorus, presides over generation, because he presides over life and death. Over life, because over generation; but over death, because wine produces an enthusiastic energy, and at the time of death we become more enthusiastic, as Proclus testifies together with Homer; for he became prophetic when he was dying. Tragedy and comedy also are referred to Bacchus; comedy from its being the sport of life, and tragedy through the calamities and the death in it. Comic [writers], therefore, do not properly accuse tragic writers as not being Dionysiacal, when they assert that these things do not pertain to Bacchus. But Jupiter hurled his thunder at the Titans, the thunder manifesting conversion: for fire moves upwards. Jupiter, therefore, converts them to himself. And this is the mythical argument.

But the dialectic and philosophic argument is as follows:—The Gods take care of us, and we are their possessions: it is not proper, therefore, to free ourselves from life, but we ought to convert ourselves to them. For if one of these two things took place, either that we are the possessions of the Gods, but they take no care of us; or, on the contrary, that we are not the possessions of the Gods, it might be rational to liberate ourselves from the body: but now, as neither of these takes place, it is not proper to dissolve our bonds.

On the contrary, however, it may be said that suicide according to Plato is necessary. And, in the first place, he here says that a philosopher will not perhaps commit suicide, unless Divinity sends some great necessity, such as the present: for the word perhaps affords a suspicion that suicide may fometimes be necessary. In the second place, Plato admits that suicide may be proper to the worthy man, to him of a middle character, and to the multitude and depraved: to the worthy man, as in this place; to the middle character, as in the Republic, where he says that suicide is necessary to him who is afflicted with a long and incurable disease, as such a one is useless to the city, because Plato’s intention was that his citizens should be useful to the city, and not to themselves; and to the vulgar character, as in the Laws, when he says that suicide is necessary to him who is possessed with certain incurable passions, such as being in love with his mother, sacrilege, or any thing else of this kind.

Again it may be said, from the authority of Plotinus, that suicide is sometimes necessary, and also from the authority of the Stoics, who said that there were five ways in which suicide was rational. For they assimilated, says Olympiodorus, life to a banquet, and asserted that it is necessary to dissolve life through such-like causes as occasion the dissoution of a banquet. A banquet, therefore, is dissolved either through a great necessity unexpectedly intervening, as through the presence of a friend suddenly coming; or it is dissolved through intoxication taking place; and through what is placed on the table being morbid. Further still, it is dissolved after another manner through a want of things necessary to the entertainment; and also through obscene and base language. In like manner life may be dissolved in five ways. And, in the first place, as at a banquet, it may be dissolved through some great necessity, as when a man sacrifices himself for the good of his country. In the second place, as a banquet is dissolved through intoxication, so likewise it is necessary to dissolve life through a delirium following the body: for a delirium is a physical intoxication. In the third place, as a banquet is dissolved through what is placed on the table being morbid, thus too it is necessary that life should be dissolved when the body labors under incurable diseases, and is no longer capable of being ministrant to the soul. In the fourth place, as a banquet is dissolved through a want of things necessary to the entertainment, so suicide is proper when the necessaries of life are wanting. For they are not to be received from depraved characters; since gifts from the defiled are small, and it is not proper for a man to pollute himself with these. And, in the fifth place, as a banquet is dissolved through obscene language, so likewise it is necessary to dissolve life when compelled by a tyrant to speak things arcane, or belonging to the mysteries, which a certain female Pythagorean is said to have done. For, being compelled to tell why she did not eat beans, she said, "I may eat them if I tell." And afterwards being compelled to eat them, she said, "I may tell if I eat them;" and at length bit off her tongue, as the organ of speech and taste.

What then shall we say?—for the discourse is brought to a contradiction. And how can it be admitted that suicide is unlawful? Or, may we not say that a liberation from life is not necessary so far as pertains to the body; but that it is rational when it contributes a greater good to the soul? Thus, for instance, suicide is lawful when the soul is injured by the body. As, therefore, it is unholy not to give assistance to a friend when he is scourged, but, if he is scourged by his father, it is not becoming to assist him, so here suicide is unlawful when committed for the sake of the body, but rational when committed for the sake of the soul; since this is sometimes advantageous to it.

I only add, that according to Macrobius it is said, in the arcane discourses concerning the return of the soul, “that the wicked in this life resemble those who fall upon smooth ground, and who cannot rise again without difficulty; but that souls departing from the present life with the defilements of guilt are to be compared to those who fall from a lofty and precipitous place, from whence they are never able to rise again.” [Somn, Scip. cap. xiii.] Suicide, therefore, is in general unlawful, because it is not proper to depart from life in an unpurified state.

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[sdi]

See? SEE? I told you that the myth of Dionysus was about the descent of the soul!