Twenty-second International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

In this paper, I outline Plato’s concept of “The Cosmic Soul,” one of the notable achievements of the human imagination. Implied in this concept is the idea of an intelligence inherent in reality itself, a universal, eternal, glorious, and indifferent “Divine Animal,” Plato says, a “breath” always sweeping through reality, organizing it and creating it. Following Plato, I note that the naked eye is blind to this level of reality, the level that, for him, in the end matters. Only heroic knowledge (Giordano Bruno’s coinage) can allow us to have a glimpse, beyond the reach of the senses, into this cosmic intelligence, thereby allowing us to realize our uniquely human potential, namely, to make a connection, however tenuous, with it. I use examples of contemporary science to translate Plato’s ideas, examples that are in turn translated by them. I note that Plato’s perspective, if it is not stereotyped as it often is, provides a guide or even a structure needed to search for, and to unify, scientific, aesthetic, and poetic truth.