Homer on the Platonic Tripartite Soul:
The Adultery of Aphrodite and Ares in the Odyssey
Eric S. Fallick
The Odyssey is a symbolic, allegorical, anagogical description of contemplative ascetic, renunciant spiritual practice through successive reincarnations in the soul’s journey back to its origin from its fallen state. All systems or descriptions of spiritual practice presuppose and assume (whether they are conscious of it or not and have understood it or not) a metaphysics or description of the nature of Reality. In the case of the Odyssey, the assumed and understood metaphysics and nature of Reality is the same as that expounded by Plato and Plotinus. Most of the Odyssey is detailing practice, stages on the Path and experiences that have to be undergone and things that have to be done by the contemplative ascetic practitioner, with the metaphysics and spiritual Reality involved already understood and presupposed without the need for specific exposition per se. There are, however, some places where a digression is made for explicit exposition of certain metaphysical topics and facets of spiritual Reality. In an earlier essay, I attempted to explain one such passage covering the three Platonic hypostases. Another expository passage, this time presenting the understanding of the Platonic tripartite soul, is found in the colorful and much discussed song of Demodocus relating the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite at Book 8, lines 266 to 366. Let me attempt to explain the undermeaning of this famously controversial story, which will turn out to be not at all so scandalous as has sometimes been supposed by those not penetrating beneath the surface level of the text.
In the Republic (and the Phaedrus myth), the soul in its fallen embodied condition imprisoned in individuated sensate existence in space-time is described, for functional purposes, as having three parts. The first and most important part, which is the true and separable soul, belonging both to this world, in a sense, and the higher noetic world, is the rational and divine part of the soul, nous, logos or ‘intellect’ or understanding. The other two parts are only attached to this true and higher soul when it is embodied and fallen and stuck here in individuated sensate existence in space-time and are produced from the soul’s mixture with ‘matter’, material and bodily existence and darkness. These are the spirited or passionate or energetic part of the soul and the desiring and sensual part of the soul. These last two form the animal soul, so to speak, in opposition to the divine soul. These can’t be completely eliminated as long as the soul remains in embodied sensate existence, until it has attained release and liberation from rebirth and re-union with the One, but in the contemplative ascetic and more accomplished practitioner they are controlled by and strictly subordinate to the divine rational soul, to one degree or another as best as possible (part of the Path is the constant struggle to control these and subject them to the divine soul), and used only as needed to maintain the psycho-physical organism until it can be transcended. In ordinary worldlings, the animal soul is most powerful and exerts control and is only moderated to some degree by the divine soul and often only to the degree necessary to keep it from self-destructing the whole organism and keep it, and particularly the desiring part, being satisfied and able to attain its desires to some degree. In the more accomplished practitioner, the spirited passionate part is subject to the divine part and used to control the desiring part and protect the divine part from outside hindrances; in mundane people, it is in the service of the desiring part and its own passions, and fights for them against the divine rational part.
In the symbolic description in the story of the adultery of Aphrodite and Ares in the Odyssey, Hephaestus represents the divine, rational part of the soul, Ares represents the spirited, passionate part, and Aphrodite represents the desiring, sensual part of the soul. Hephaestus, representing intelligence and the divine soul, is ‘famed for art’ and ‘of great good sense’. He is also ‘lame’ and ‘not firm on the feet’ representing the non-involvement of the rational soul in the material world and its being separable and really separate therefrom, and is ‘slow’ since intellect isn’t caught up in impulse and immediate passion. Ares, on the other hand, representing the spirited, passionate and angry part of the soul, is ‘destructive’ and ‘hateful’, is ‘handsome’ because this part appeals to worldly desires, is the ‘fastest’ of the gods on account of its mercurial nature, and is ‘sound and swift of foot’ since it is part of this world and functions only within it. Aphrodite, the desiring and sensual part of the soul, is ‘golden’ and ‘fair-crowned’ and ‘smile-loving’ representing the apparent but illusory pleasures of the senses, like a honey coated razor blade.
Aphrodite is lawfully married to Hephaestus. In the good soul, the desiring part is subject to the rational part and not supported or encouraged by the spirited part. However, as the story begins, while Hephaestus is absent, while the rational part is occupied with its own proper activity of noetic contemplation apart from the sense world, Ares enters Hephaestus’ house and wooing Aphrodite with gifts commits adultery with her in secret, the spirited part usurps the rational part’s position in the soul while the latter is unaware and presenting the lures of helping the unintelligent desiring part to fulfil its desire for sensual pleasures joins with the desiring part and makes it autonomous rather than subject to the rational part as is proper. Hephaestus is, however, immediately informed by Helios, the sun, of the goings on. The divine part of the soul in contemplation is informed by the light of the Absolute, the Source of all knowledge, and realizes that the lower parts of the soul are still acting on and out of delusion and immersion in the material world. Hephaestus goes to his smithy and fashions fine bonds that are invisible to others and spreads them around his bed. The rational part of the soul consults its intellectual resources and spiritual understanding and develops the means to reveal and immobilize the lower parts of the soul in their unskilful functioning and deploys them throughout the soul as a whole. Hephaestus then pretends to go off to Lemnos, ‘the well-built city’ that is ‘much dearest to him of all lands’, but really turns back when Helios, who has kept watch, tells him that Ares, who was keeping watch, has seen him leaving and taken Aphrodite to bed. The rational part turns to contemplation of the well-ordered noetic realm that it prefers to this world, but is now aware that it has to keep an eye on the lower parts, and, when in the seeming absence of rational control the spirited part again tries to join with the willing desiring part, he knows it through the light of the Absolute and the knowing it provides. This time, however, the rational soul has prepared things and the misalignment and malfunctioning of the animal soul is revealed and the lower two parts are immobilized in their misconduct through the understanding of the divine soul that they can’t perceive; the invisible bonds made by Hephaestus fall on Ares and Aphrodite and they are caught and bound and are unable to move.
Hephaestus now reappears at his house, the rational soul now makes its presence obviously known again throughout the whole soul, and calls all the other gods to witness, the lower parts of the soul are revealed for what they are and have done in the light of the divine Ideas and the noetic order. Hephaestus demands the return of his bridal gifts and the assembled gods (the goddesses stay back out of modesty, the animal soul is still required to function to a certain limited extent in maintaining the psycho-physical organism prior to liberation) exclaim that justice always prevails and that Ares owes the penalty for adultery, the divine order requires that the parts of the soul be properly aligned and stay in their proper roles, otherwise negative karma is created that must be worked out as regulated by providence. The gods laugh at the scene and joke with each other, the divine order rejoices at the rational soul’s retaking control and the soul’s being recalibrated back to its proper order. Poseidon, however, does not laugh and keeps entreating Hephaestus to release Ares and eventually promises that either Ares or himself will pay the debt for adultery. Poseidon represents ‘matter’, non-being and darkness. He is the ‘earth-holder’ and ‘earth-shaker’ since he governs much of the material world and is the lord of the ocean of material existence and birth and death. He is thus on the side of Ares, material darkness and bondage desires and requires the malfunctioning of the animal soul, and thus assures that karmic retribution will continue since the divine order of things keeps compensating for the mess-up of ‘matter’ and non-being by bringing things back into order through the working out of the karma taken on by souls mixed up with the material sense world. Hephaestus finally agrees and releases the bonds and Ares and Aphrodite at once spring up and depart for their respective separate preferred locations. The rational soul, as long as it is still stuck in embodied existence, has to concede some continued limited functioning to the animal soul, but this now, through the intervention of understanding illuminated from the Good, is more in accord with the workings of the divine order and karma and the two lower parts of the soul are now separated from their illicit collusion and are assigned to their separate proper places.
Thus, Homer and his divine Muse have expounded and detailed by means of the undermeaning of a myth the same tripartite nature of the embodied, bound mortal soul and its proper and necessary alignment and functioning as has the divine Plato in the Politea in a more immediately explicit and accessible fashion.
© 2018 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (gee)mail (dot) com
