1. Healing is rooted in love insofar as love desires the other to be restored to wholeness, and this restoration process presupposes the primary and primal significance of wholeness. Disease, depression, sin, and alienation are all impediments that compromise wholeness. Healing involves the removal of these impediments.
Plato regarded all impediments to wholeness as "alien" factors that do not belong to the human in which they have lodged themselves. In the third book of his Republic,[1] he refers to all such impediments as "evil" and specifies such evil as "an alien thing in alien souls". Evil is that which does not belong in a person and inhibits his proper functioning. Consequently, it should be removed so that the person can be truly himself again.
The process of healing for Plato, therefore, is the removal of that which is alien to a person in the interest of restoring him to wholeness. Plato's conception of personal wholeness is evident throughout his many writings. In his dialogue, Charmides,[2] he insists that healing must always begin in the soul. Accordingly, he writes as follows:
Plato regarded all impediments to wholeness as "alien" factors that do not belong to the human in which they have lodged themselves. In the third book of his Republic,[1] he refers to all such impediments as "evil" and specifies such evil as "an alien thing in alien souls". Evil is that which does not belong in a person and inhibits his proper functioning. Consequently, it should be removed so that the person can be truly himself again.
The process of healing for Plato, therefore, is the removal of that which is alien to a person in the interest of restoring him to wholeness. Plato's conception of personal wholeness is evident throughout his many writings. In his dialogue, Charmides,[2] he insists that healing must always begin in the soul. Accordingly, he writes as follows:
2. In considering another of the Deadly Sins, lust, we find the same transition from self to non-self taking place. A person who is driven by lust may welcome this potentially ruinous disposition because it is convenient or because it promises pleasure. But lust fractures the personality, allowing one part to dominate or even displace the whole. Temperance, on the other hand, is the moral virtue that holds the self together. It ensures that various desires and inclinations are brought into harmony with each other. It honors the value of human wholeness. |
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