Heraclitus (6th-5th c BCE) and Shakespeare (images in public domain)
By Walter A Borden, M.D. –
“Character is destiny”. This is a simple, enigmatic aphorism written by the Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus (ca. 540-480 BCE). It is a powerful message for all peoples, a message for then and now, as Heraclitus always seems relevant regardless of the epoch. The primary ancient Greek word Heraclitus used for “character” was ethos, meaning which can be variously translated as underlying “behavior” or “ideals”, but was also derived from and related to “customs” and “morality” (from mores as social norms). Morality – which too many in the present time think is relative or merely culturally bound – should result in respect for all persons, and avoidance of any act including words that diminishes them. This one word ethos with its depth of meanings reflects Heraclitus’ sophisticated psychological understanding of human nature 2600 years ahead of our time. It is important to note that our use of the term ethics includes a foundation of agreed-on morality.
Character is not personality. “Personality” refers to behavioral traits, ways of expressing feelings and thoughts, all of which may tell us something about the person, but which can be deceptive. It is well to keep in mind that the origin of the word personality comes from the Latin persona, a theatrical mask that served to express a temporary performative role rather than any real identity, itself a word and idea derived from the Etruscan word phersu. We still have much to learn about what, even psychiatry, so blithely terms personality and character.
Heraclitus also said, “nature hides”, meaning surfaces, appearance, can be misleading, the real nature is deeper. Some persons project a wished-for “personality” or role to the public. The most striking example is the politician who projects a “populist” surface while gorging himself/herself at the public’s expense. At the heart of personhood are the beliefs and values held dear that direct the nature of choices, not by chance but spring from the heart. Over time, the choices become a pattern of behavior. We can think of repeating patterns as themes and have come to identify and name themes as character. The life course of a person comes from within the person, his/hers values and how they are lived through daily choices. That determines the nature of a life. There is no predetermined fate.
Anticipating the consequences of our choices is also part of character. The context of any one choice can be complicated, and results not always foreseen. As an example, our American founding fathers had to make a choice about slavery when creating our Constitution. They believed they had to choose between one nation, or a split into two, one free, the other slave-holding. They appear to have chosen inaction, merely shutting their eyes to the disturbing humanitarian issues, and left them to future generations to resolve. They chose, based on a glorified sense of humanity, that future generations could and would solve the issues of slavery after doing the historic idealist math that progress would win out over prejudice. They also listened to the Slave States justification that, after all, ancient Rome and Greece, so admired by the founders generation, also had slaves.
But slavery under Greece and Rome was quite different than in America. Ancient slavery was non-racial at its basis! It was a by-product of conquest rather than ethnicity.The Classical slaves were considered persons, unfortunate enough to have been captured in war, although some ancient slavery was also a result of debt and indentured status as in the term doulos as “bond-servant” although it was usually understood as a temporary state and not necessarily extending to the next generation if there were offspring, unlike slavery in America’s “Southern” culture between the Eastern Seaboard and the Mississippi-Missouri watersheds. The majority of American slaves of African descent were considered non-persons, solely property, purchased for economic gain. The founders of our Constitution chose, without realizing it, based on Slavery’s inherent greed, tribalism, and racial-caste based in part on ethnic prejudice, that these post-Slave State wounds would continue to fester. American slavery was an abomination and not condoned by religion despite their misreadings of Judeo-Christian scripture (where and when it was slavery by conquest or economic poverty, not ethnicity from Africa). So the current question is whether we as a nation can now face these wounds and do the hard work to heal? That takes empathy, courage, and resolve. The jury is still out. And we the people are also the jury.
During antiquity, mythology and the supernatural were the popular understanding of nature’s fluctuations. Heraclitus, however, reflected his neighbor, Thales of Miletus’ (7th- 6th c. BCE) scientific bent applying the revolutionary concepts of natural law to human nature. Thales proposed that storms, tides, weather and natural disasters were neither chaotic nor due to the gods’ distemper. Thales said that true understanding of nature could only come from realizing that nature had underlying laws. To Heraclitus, character referred to deeper psychological laws that shape a life. He equated character with personhood.
Who and what we are, character, is formed by daily living, not the result of grand actions. A “good enough”, character takes time and patience to create, step by step, day by day, week by week, month by month. There are no shortcuts, and missteps are bound to occur. Add patience to the list of requirements. What we do is who we are. It takes effort and courage to really face inner feelings, to know thyself and the impact our choices have on others. The two essential ingredients are empathy and respect. Both are double edged swords. Much as in a dyad relationship it takes work. Relationship is often the medium in which character can grow or fade. The past as prologue and character meet when we look at the developmental history of character. The history of the child-parental-community relationship tells the story.
Hippocrates (ca. 5th – 4th c BCE) said it was just as important to understand or know the person who carried the disease as to know the disease the person carried. As character develops over time, this is often expressed in a relationship history. One way of understanding a character is a detailed relationship history. Character issues tend to get acted out in personal relationships.
Human nature endows us with at least the potential for deeply held values that bubble up through our psyche and confront situations that challenge those values. We then choose, character being the theme of our choices. The history of our day-by-day actions (or inactions), and the consistency with which we hold to our theme is character.
Biological evolution can be witnessed in the embryo as a map of our biological development. We can start at the end of the map, trace back and come to an understanding of how we began—and, following the map forward, evolved. Psychological development is analogous, starting with an internal genetically determined structure, and then influenced by a variety of external factors over a lifetime. Social and cultural development, what we call civilization, is analogous. The history of civilization is social evolution, a roller coaster of an historical map. If we paid attention to that map we might learn about obstacles and how to prevent repeating problems.
Embryology, evolution, and history have a common conceptual core: The history of a tree begins with the seed, as does the embryo. History, too, has seeds. Discoveries of agriculture, writing, printing press, of dynamite, the wheel, the internet are examples. In nature, causative factors in one stage leads to the next. This is development, evolution, history. While “destiny” implies a pre-ordained fate, Heraclitus, like other scientifically minded natural philosophers, believed the idea of predetermined fate was myth.
The phrase “The past is prologue” comes from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act 2, Scene I. Antonio uses it to suggest that all that has happened before that time, the “past,” has led Sebastian and himself to this opportunity to do what they are about to do: commit murder. Shakespeare was not the first to articulate historical causation. That goes back to antiquity, of causative linkages over time. The tragic theatre device of the trilogy (Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Eumenides, Libation Bearers, these three plays thematically-linked each set the stage for the next play, constituting dramatization of mythology to contemporary history. As Robert Fagles, translator of Aeschylus’ The Arrestee (Penguin Classics,1977) said, “The Oresteia is our rite of passage from savagery to civilization”, interpreting The Oresteia as a history of the development of democratic justice. In this tragedic trilogy, Aeschylus depicts the Greek social evolution from vengeance via the Furies to jury-determined rational justice based on circumstances as well as motives and scaled results as the cycle of homicide from filicide (child-sacrifice of Iphigenia) to uxoricide (Clytemnestra killing Agamemnon) to matricide (Orestes killing Clytemnestra) and beyond came to an end with Athena casting the deciding jury vote as the Goddess of Wisdom.
The Harper Magazine (October 2014)article by Wyatt Mason, ‘“You are Not Alone Across Time: Using Sophocles to Treat PTSD,” describes the use of Greek tragedy to treat the trauma of military combat. This is part of “The Theatre of War”, an innovative five-year Pentagon-sponsored program initiated by Bryan Doerries that has staged more than 250 dramatic readings of Sophocles’ dramatic tragedies Ajax or Philoctetes at military installations and veterans groups all over the world. These plays echo the rage, agony, grief and terror that smolders in the unconscious minds of witnesses to combat tragedy, connecting repressed emotion with the memory of the event that brought it about. In Greco-Roman literature Tragedy – from tragoedia or “goat-song” (tragus “goat”+ ode “song”) – invokes Dionysus-Bacchus as the mediatorial god of drama, since literary tragedy was not as much entertainment as philosophy encounter with profound ideas or divine paradox. In this ancient philosophic encounter, Tragedy was rehabilitation through catharsis. When an audience of veterans witnesses tragic drama, there is emotional resonance, identifying with the actors, frozen emotion is thawed, exhumed, allowed to be felt, suffering is given expression, an outlet. It is not merely vicarious but often visceral. These ancient literary tragedies are excellent examples of “history is prologue” that served basic psychological needs. Whether in an individual or a people, pain needs to be voiced, to cry out in order to begin healing.
The psychological consequences of trauma are not confined to physical trauma or combat. Our culture has difficulty accepting psychology where emotions are involved. I sometimes think our culture is made of concrete. It seems there have to be bullets, bombs, blood on the floor, broken bones or bruising to qualify as traumatic. Emotional abuse is much more easily hidden; words hurt, damage, may not leave visible scars, but the psychological impact can be devastating. Humiliation, abandonment, rejection, betrayal leave deep emotional scars. Yes, nature hides. Our cultural blind-spot to emotion may explain why it has taken so long to realize that being a witness to other’s trauma has such a meaning-full effect. This occurs in military combat, but also in domestic combat where child witnesses are also victims. There is also the trauma of grief. Unfortunately, our culture seems to have a blind spot about the strength of loss on mind-body. Grief has been and remains a major cause of emotional pain, mental illness, acting out, from suicide to homicide, and a variety of bio-psycho-social expressions.
There remains ongoing controversy about the relationship of Shakespeare and his understanding of Greek ancient tragedy possibly through a Roman and Humanist lens, with some scholars pointing to direct connections and others claiming any connections are coincidental. But more relevant is a broader perspective considering periods of fundamental cultural upheaval resonating with prior catastrophes triggering the human nature response of self-healing through tragic drama. It does seem like such eras bring forth worthy drama. We are currently in a perfect storm of cultural earthquakes with the aftershocks of slavery, racism, wars, isolationist protective tariffs, and regression to primitive thinking with flourishing cults, authoritarianism, anti-science, social injustice and obvious climate change, and as a country desperately in need of healing. How can we heal as a nation or world given the proven cathartic effects of Classical or Shakespearian drama which set the boundaries of a unifying ethos that a majority of people could embrace? Heraclitus, Shakespeare et al., where are you?
Walter Borden, M.D. is a Distinguished Life Fellow, American Psychiatric Association; Diplomate, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and Diplomate, American Board of Forensic Psychiatry