Ruling oneself

Not much has changed since Plato's days. Still a great many people say that the universe is one motion that is always moving something else and is always being moved by something else, but never moves itself.

If anything, things have become even bleaker. Does anybody these days recognize the idea that life moves itself?

But I do not want to discuss that question again, instead I'll follow in Plato's footsteps and talk about the soul as the mover of things, what it means to recognize it as such, deny it as such or to be oblivious to the question.

Plato assumes two souls in the Nomoi, one moving things in circles, the other unpredictably. Oddly enough that agrees rather well with my decomposition of life into preference, conviction and conscience, for, as I've explained earlier,

• preference controls involvement,
• conviction controls speciation and
• conscience controls the circle of life.

So conscience is the reasonable of Plato's two souls and preference the unreasonable one. Speciation is a concept of mine that Plato didn't know. Equivalently one could also say that

• dearness controls involvement,
• love controls speciation and
• affection (pride and shame, happiness and unhappiness) controls the circle of life,

which allows me to come to the point of this post.

Before a man rules himself, he'll just follow his emotions. But when he starts to rule himself, he faces a choice, namely either

• to generate the rules on the basis of his emotions or
• to generate his emotions on the basis of rules.

In the former case his soul will still be his mover, but in the latter case it does indeed come second to the means that are being employed to stimulate it. In the former case a man is God-fearing, in the latter godless.

Generating the rules on the basis of his emotions, a man must ask, what it is that his emotions aim for, and having recognized it, he must shape his composure, his notions and his belief accordingly, in my understanding

• his composure to support the circle of life,
• his notions to support speciation and
• his belief to support involvement,

speaking in the most general terms, since here is not the place to go into all the details explained elsewhere.

Such a man has then used his faculties to reason to give himself an understanding of the path that his emotions intend for him and following it, he will know comparable peace. Still he may know sorrow. But a man who subjugates his emotions to exterior rules shatters his soul, no matter how often he manages to feel good.