Harmony, Health and Virtue in Antiquity[467]

Socrates argues for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo and the Republic.

While Plato makes no clear connection between this universal harmony and the harmony of an individual soul, Socrates does draw an analogy between the soul and another macrocosmic unit, the city.

In book four of Plato's Republic, Socrates establishes the relationship between goodness, harmony (meaning, in this case, temperance) and health. Goodness consists of the four cardinal virtues—wisdom, courage, temper­ance and justice.^[484] These virtues exist in the city and the individual soul alike.^[485] Temperance (σωφροσύνη) is understood as the harmony between the higher and lower parts of society and the soul.2^[486] Plato uses a musical metaphor to describe how the three parts of the soul are brought into harmony like high, middling and low notes.^[487] The logic of this analogy is flawed, however, as rea­son has a dominant role in the soul, subjugating the spirited and appetitive parts. It does not follow that the balanced soul is like a three-part harmony, for the high note of a harmony does not act to order and co-ordinate the other notes. Still, Plato's sense is clear—harmony or temperance arises from right relation between parts.3^{[488] [489] [490] [491] Justice consists in each part of either the soul or the city performing the function to which it is most suited.32 Justice in the soul is analogous to health in the body: to have a healthy body is to have each com­ponent in its proper place, in right relation to the others, and likewise, to have a just soul is to establish its components in a harmonious hierarchy, with rea­son presiding over the irrational parts.}

In the Timaeus, too, Plato draws an analogy between harmony in the wider environment and order in the soul. In this dialogue, Plato claims that the divine part of the human soul has an affinity with the motions of the universe.34 The soul, buffeted about by sense impression and disoriented, can be re-aligned with the motions of the universe if the individual learns about harmonies and cosmic revolutions^[492] Humans gain knowledge of these things through their senses: God gave people sight so that they could trace the movements of the heavenly intelligences and imitate their courses.^[493] Speech and hearing were also given for the purpose of accessing external sources of order and concord; the harmonious nature of music, like the revolutions of the universe, is akin to the natural revolutions of the soul^[494] Music should not be used for the purpose of irrational pleasure, but to bring the soul into an orderly state.3^[495]

Music and dramatic performance play a central role in the maintenance of a balanced soul and just society. As Aristotle explains in the Politics, music is exceptional amongst all forms of art for representing the states of the soul most closely. Musical composition can be used to represent certain moods of the soul, and can thereby alter or reinforce the emotional state of the listener^[496] So too, in the Republic, there is a recognition that rhythm and melody can pen­etrate the innermost parts of the soul and affect them for better or worse.^[497] Furthermore, Socrates argues that imitative art can affect the state of the soul. Actors who narrate stories in the first person, regardless of the morality of the characters, who make their own sound effects like thunder, wind, instru­ments, machinery and animals, and who switch between modes and rhythms to suit their ever-changing voice, imitate things indiscriminately^[498] Since imita­tion leads to habituation, mimicking things of a bad or base nature results in degeneration of character^{[499] [500] [501]}

The Stoics believed that passions disrupted inner balance, and frequently used medical analogies which revealed that emotions had the capacity to make the soul diseased or sick.43 Summarising Stoic thought, Cicero remarks that a soul is healthy “when its judgements and beliefs are in harmony” (“cum eius iudicia opinionesque concordant”).44 He defines sickness as a deep and persistent belief that something is desirable when in fact it is undesirable^[502] Sickness arises in the first place out of a state of confusion of belief (“[e]x perturbationibus”).^[503] For the early Stoics, the mind (νους) was not divided into rational and irrational parts, but was entirely rational, and thus even pas­sions—false judgements or beliefs—had their basis in reason.

Stoic texts classify the four basic emotions—delight, desire, distress and fear—into types or species. A word must be said here about a particularly intriguing species of fear, θόρυβος, which is found in tables of species-emo­tions by Diogenes Laertius, Stobaeus and Pseudo-Andronicus.^{[507] [508] [509] [510] The defini­tion given by the former is “φόβος μετά κατεπείξεως φωνής” and Ps-Andronicus gives a similar definition, though he uses the participle form κατεπείγων, which may be translated as ‘pressing down' or ‘hastening’?1 A parallel text edition of Ps-Andronicus gives “festinans” as a Latin translation for this word. Margaret Graver translates the definition as “fear which hastens with the voice,” which is a somewhat unsatisfactory and mystifying translation?2 A Latin parallel text version of Stobaeus’s On the Passions gives “metus cum voce trepidas,” fear with an agitated voice?3 This seems to suggest that θόρυβος can be understood as fear which presses upon the voice, inflecting it with anxiety. Nevertheless, some ambiguity remains. Could these writers also be suggesting that fear is stirred up by the sound of an approaching voice? In the Greek New Testament, θόρυβος is used to mean ‘riot,’ carrying connotations of uproar, noise, trouble.[511] [512] [513] In the Life of Antony, the word appears frequently to describe the commo­tion made by demons (see below). It is worth bearing in mind that the word has a history both as a Stoic and a New Testament term, indicating, on one hand, a species of fear associated with the voice, and, on the other, a clamor­ous gathering.}

While the use of άρμονία varies across texts, it consistently denotes things that held in right relation to one another, whether they be planets, the unlim- iteds and limiters that make up the cosmos, tuned strings of an instruments or parts of the soul. A well-balanced soul functions like a healthy body. Sickness is essentially an imbalance which upsets these delicately adjusted relations.