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Topic: angels and beasts
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Amy
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2210
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posted 29 November 2005 01:10 AM
I'm doing a course about the commentators on Plato and Aristotle (called Nature and Human Nature), and this idea comes up a lot. The most common way to think about this, in terms of my class anyway, is that since angels are closer to God, they have "a lot" of rationality -- not as much as God though. Beasts, being further from God, don't have much (or any) rationality. Humans are, by many of the people I'm reading right now, considered to be Beasts BUT Beasts who posess a special capacity for rational understanding. We're a sort of compromise, with each person having their own 'balance' of rational and non-rational. I'm not saying that the expression comes from that (since I don't have any clue), but I wouldn't be suprised if it did.I think that most people using this expression are more commenting on behaviour, but I'm also inclined to think that the philosophers I'm reading would say that the behaviour is a result of rationality or lack thereof.
From: the whole town erupts and/ bursts into flame | Registered: Feb 2002
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MartinArendt
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9723
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posted 29 November 2005 01:13 AM
I think it also creates a polarity between our more visceral nature and our capacity for what you could call "higher thought". In other words, our instincts versus our moral frameworks. Some people would characterize this debate as rationality vs. emotions, although I think that's a false construction, and generally meaningless.Mostly, I think the phrase can have a few meanings. It can mean, as Andrew pointed out, our potential for good or evil. It can mean, as Amy pointed out, rationality versus irrationality. I think it can also mean our ability to conceive of ourselves and create guidelines for our own behaviour, as well as our visceral, instinctual natures. I would also suggest that being a "beast" is not necessarily "evil", nor is being an "angel" necessarily "good".
From: Toronto | Registered: Jun 2005
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nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402
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posted 29 November 2005 02:02 AM
Is the 'beast' here some particular creature, akin to the devil (who has often been called 'The Beast'), or an ordinary animal, like a llama, a sealion or a groundhog?
If the latter, do bears and rabbits behave in a way that is somehow wrong? (But how could they, having no free will?) Or do they merely behave in ways that are okay for them, but inappropriate for humans?If angels are closer to God than whales are, why? Did He not create both, and did He not give both their special natures?
Is rationality better than emotion? If so, why? Why 'high' and 'low', for that matter? Has this to do with evolution? [ 29 November 2005: Message edited by: nonesuch ]
From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001
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Jacob Two-Two
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2092
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posted 29 November 2005 02:33 AM
It has more to do with the old mind-body split of western culture. Remember, we ARE beasts. Animals, all of us, with animal instincts that determine the vast majority of all our actions despite how we like to rationalise everything. As Amy said, our capacity for rational thought has led to the notion that we are "above" other animals, but this was not an abstract concept for the platonists, or the medieval thinkers who emulated them. Our ability to reason was a direct result of having an immortal soul, something that animals lack (according to this way of thinking). Angels, of course, are all soul. Entirely non-corporeal and hence pure and perfect. The body is bad, the spirit is good. So beasts are all body, and angels are all spirit, and only humans are both, or "in-between". Unlike other creatures, we can choose our path to be like a beast or like an angel. To follow the flesh or follow the spirit. Just for the record, it's all nonsense as far as I'm concerned.
From: There is but one Gord and Moolah is his profit | Registered: Jan 2002
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Jacob Two-Two
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2092
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posted 29 November 2005 11:39 PM
Empirically observable? That's a good one. Is there a test we can do to see how good or evil we are? Maybe a DNA analysis?We can clearly see that some actions cause suffering and others create happiness. That we might call empirical, though it would probably still be stretching the term. If we choose to do so, we could brand these actions as "good" or "evil", according to the suffering or happiness, but it would be a rather murky set of value judgements we'd be making, and going from that to judging the nature of fellow humans would be far more esoteric still. For my money, the only way that humans are at war with themselves is the same way that they are at war with the entire natural world, which we are an inextricable part of. Our amazing ability to imagine and rationalise allow us to delude ourselves in ways that other animals wouldn't be able to comprehend. We can force ourselves and others to go against our own natures, and do horrible things in the belief that we are doing good. In this way we are always at war with our natural selves, imagining that we can make better worlds than millions of years of evolution have done. I'm not saying we're wrong necessarily, but the track record is not good.
From: There is but one Gord and Moolah is his profit | Registered: Jan 2002
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Rufus Polson
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3308
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posted 30 November 2005 05:23 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Jacob Two-Two:
For my money, the only way that humans are at war with themselves is the same way that they are at war with the entire natural world, which we are an inextricable part of. Our amazing ability to imagine and rationalise allow us to delude ourselves in ways that other animals wouldn't be able to comprehend.
Oh, bah! The "war with the natural world" thing is just instinct, one common to every creature out there. Reproduce! Make more of yourself! Most other creatures don't happen to have ways of getting around natural checks and balances as well as we do, but they'll do it if they get a chance, from zebra mussels to millfoil weed to cane toads. Indeed, they can't *not* do it. The difference is that we berate ourselves about it and make predictions about outcomes and plans, if ineffectual ones, to curb what we're doing--an indication to me that our instincts are stronger than our reason, and our instincts are built to cover short-term operations. Any critter that got an ace as effective as, but different from, intelligence and technology would be expanding its biomass at the expense of all the other biomass on the planet just like we are, but would have no idea this was a problem--would not even realize what happened when the crash came. To me the most interesting version of the angel/beast metaphor is the reason/instinct distinction. It's related to the Apollonian versus Dionysian split you might get from the Greeks. And I think there is a distinction to be made. Most creatures with any brains seem to be able to want things, and the brighter ones can make rudimentary plans to get what they want on an immediate basis. And at that level for humans, too, reason is in many ways not in conflict with instinct but rather there as a tool for instinct to increase its effectiveness.
But we also have the capacity to do things like reflect on what we want, and various other meta-thinking that represents a real split from direct instrumental cunning. The typical state of human politics suggests that this sort of reflection doesn't guide our actions that much of the time--but it is there, and it does have an impact.
From: Caithnard College | Registered: Nov 2002
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nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402
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posted 30 November 2005 04:27 PM
So, Rufus, you're saying that the instinct/reason split, or internal war, came into human thought quite recently. I agree - though i would put it a thousand or so years earlier.Suppose it was a result of writing?
Suppose it happened when we were able to pool and externalize knowledge.
Before, knowledge was organic; had to be carried from one generation to the next by spoken word and example. Thus, the accumulated experience of a tribe was an attribute of that tribe. Once we could record our experience, it was available to people from other tribes, who could also add their own thoughts and experience. So knowledge (and conjecture, and law, and legend) became a thing apart from the knowers; a creature in its own right.
Maybe the angels are fish who live in the knowledge-pool.
From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001
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DrConway
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 490
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posted 30 November 2005 05:01 PM
The "angel and demon" dichotomy (or "angel and beast", if you like) has been a common feature of human society, mythology and literature for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.It is an externalization of the battle each of us faces with our own selves, as there are constant appeals to the kindest or the basest motives in each of us, from many others around us. We are asked to give charity, to give hope, to give kindness, the hand of help. Yet we are also asked to give the iron fist, to give hate, to give despair. It may not seem like this because the appeals to kindness and charity can come in the open, unhindered by the revulsion one feels for openly-couched words of destruction of the common bond of humanity. But nonetheless, the appeals to the basest motives of humanity do come. They come in the form of absolutist rhetoric about who is on "our side", or in the form of carefully-worded statements about those who are defenceless and powerless in our society, or the so-called "alien elements" who bring different ideas and concepts and values to the tapestry of humanity. It has been said that human cruelty is unmatched by any animal's because we humans can predict the consequences of our actions and nevertheless choose to act a certain way. I would agree. But it can also be said that human kindness is equally unmatched, because it can come at great personal cost, yet be rendered in any case. This, too, is the product of humanity. [ 03 December 2005: Message edited by: DrConway ]
From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001
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MartinArendt
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9723
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posted 30 November 2005 05:12 PM
quote:
Originally posted by DrConway:
The "angel and demon" dichotomy (or "angel and beast", if you like) has been a common feature of human society, mythology and literature for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
True! And it always pops up in some way in philosophy too. Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic, Nietszche's Birth of Tragedy, Socratic morality, etc. Philosophers love to sit around, contemplating our baser instincts. Hmmm.... quote:
It's related to the Apollonian versus Dionysian split you might get from the Greeks.
You've been reading The Birth of Tragedy, haven't you? 
From: Toronto | Registered: Jun 2005
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Rufus Polson
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3308
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posted 03 December 2005 05:01 AM
quote:
Originally posted by nonesuch:
So, Rufus, you're saying that the instinct/reason split, or internal war, came into human thought quite recently.
No. I am saying no such thing. While I respect the power of ideas and metaphors, I do not buy notions of their shaping consciousness to that degree. And there have been mythologies since long before we began recording them. I just noted that the Greeks had symbolism representing a similar basic idea in their mythology. That doesn't mean the Egyptians, Babylonians and others still further back couldn't have had similar notions; I believe they did. Thoth would represent a vaguely Apollonian figure in Egyptian myth, and perhaps Marduk in Babylonian if I'm not getting muddled. I didn't actually take a firm position on whether the split really existed at all in that kind of way--it's an interesting and persistent idea and reflects something that's going on, but that doesn't make it accurate. The general existence of conscious self-reflection and meta-goals that could be associated with non-instinct intellect, Apollonian thought, or an "angelic" side I would figure to have existed about as long as language. I would figure the *notion* of such a split to have been around since relatively shortly after the beginning of oral traditions and mythologies, which probably would still push it back somewhere in the neolithic at latest.
From: Caithnard College | Registered: Nov 2002
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