Remarks

As I grow older, I find myself increasingly inclined toward the Platonic position that the body is indeed something akin to a prison of the soul. My body is my own, yes. And yet, I and my body are not one and the same thing.

In youth, we experience a false sense of security with the body. We feel boundless, invincible. The body is like a companion who travels the world with us. Youthful ambitions stretch outward, into the world. The young man or woman desires material success—and rightly so—for with it comes financial security, a family, earthly enjoyments.

Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, sickness or some other calamity strikes us. Or we awaken to find that thirty years have passed, and our body is older, weaker, breaking down. Once a source of vitality, the body becomes a source of pain and suffering, a burden that we are forced to carry.

From this, a new desire emerges: To be rid of the body.

This should not be mistaken for suicidal longing. Suicide, in one sense, stems from a state of inner brokenness, oftentimes the result of despair. But such longing may also originate out of the sober recognition of the transitory nature of physical existence, from which the desire arises to find a more firm existential ground to stand on.

Suffering, sickness, the slow decay of the body—under the right conditions—can produce a therapeutic separation of the soul from the body. In suffering, the soul is compelled to reach out beyond the body, to seek spiritual separation from it. 

The desire to transcend the body issues from a principle that proclaims itself to be something more than the body. In suffering, the contrast between body and soul sharpens: The body is a source of suffering. The body is a cause of pain. Would that “I” might be rid of this burden!

Out of the purifying fire of suffering, the soul—like the Phoenix—rises and turns its gaze beyond suffering, beyond the body, beyond death, in search of something more.

We see people today chasing after immortality. They experiment on themselves, inject new and untested medicines, and imagine that their consciousness might one day be uploaded into a digital machine. They identify themselves with the body—and as a result, who they are and what they are becomes increasingly obscure to them.

All living things desire to live. This desire is instinctual, and it is satisfied by the simple fact of being alive—here and now. Beyond that, animals have no concept of continued existence. Apes and chimpanzees do not make New Year’s resolutions. Only the human being seeks to live beyond the now.

In suffering, this desire is intensified. The soul longs to live on—but not in this mortal coil. Like a prisoner, it seeks escape from the flesh, to live beyond the death of the body.

Yet suffering is not the only path to this separation. Plato reminds us, again and again, that the true purpose of philosophy is to prepare the soul for death. By this he meant that the student of philosophy ought to be instructed to turn the gaze of the soul toward what is eternal—the deathless forms, the Good itself.

In doing so, the soul comes to recognize itself as like unto such things.