Myth of Er
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The Myth of Er is an analogy used in Plato's Republic. It is mentioned at the end of the last of the ten books in The Republic (10.614-10.621).
With the analogy, Plato seems to have been attempting to introduce the concept that morally good people should be rewarded after death, and morally bad people should be punished after death. These rewards and punishments are self granted or inflicted.
Within the dialogue Socrates introduces it by telling the interlocutors of the "Myth of Er." In this story, a man named Er dies and sees the judgment of the dead, and the reward of the morally good after a one thousand year journey, and at the same time punishment of the bad. Er is returned to life, to report what he has seen.
At the end of the tale each character chooses a new life for their next life and Odysseus prefers a life of an ordinary citizen.
This section of the Republic is particularly significant in that it is one of the first extant texts to deal with the issue of responsibility and choice concerning personal action, which has become one of the central questions of Western philosophy.
Comparing something to a "Myth of Er" is saying that it began a new series of thought or action where there was none before, and all others can be traced back to it.
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[edit] Story
Er was a warrior who died in battle and was brought back to life after ten days. After the resurrection he told everybody what he saw in the world after death.
After the death every soul is led in front of four judges who decide whether the soul is worthy of going toward heaven where it will be paid for every good deed or it is damned to go down in the bowels of the earth, where it will pay ten times every sin it committed. After being rewarded or punished, every soul reaches a green meadow where it can rest for seven days and tell each other their experiences. Later the souls gathered in the meadow begin a journey toward a marvellous column of light, the "hinge of the Universe", Parcae's spindle. Here every soul gets a number and is free of choosing his future human fate in an order defined by the number he got. Finally, after the choice, the souls reach a hot plain where they drink the water of two rivers, Lethe and Amelete, forgetting everything. They fall asleep and in the middle of the night they are thrown on earth like falling stars. Everyone except Er, who has the privilege of returning back home remembering what he has seen.
[edit] Spindle of Necessity
The myth mentions "The Spindle of Necessity". The cosmos is represented by the Spindle attended by sirens and the three daughters of the Goddess Necessity known collectively as The Fates. Their duty is to keep the rims of the spindle revolving. The Fates, Sirens and Spindle are used in The Republic, partly, to help explain how known celestial bodies revolved around the Earth according to Plato's understanding of cosmology and astronomy.
The "Spindle of Necessity", according to Plato, is "shaped is like the ones we know." In other words, it was the same as the standard Greek spindle. It consisted of three main parts; a hook, shaft and whorl. The hook was fixed near the top of the shaft on its long side. On the other end resided the whorl, which acted as sort of a base. The hook was used to spin the shaft, which in turn spun the whorl on the other end.
Placed on the whorl of his celestial spindle were 8 "orbits." Each of these orbits created a perfect circle. Each "orbit" is given different descriptions by Plato, which no doubt represent known bodies within our solar system.
Based on Plato's descriptions within the passage, the orbits can be identified those of the classical planets, corresponding to the Aristotelian planetary spheres:
- Orbit 1 - Stars
- Orbit 2 - Saturn
- Orbit 3 - Jupiter
- Orbit 4 - Mars
- Orbit 5 - Mercury
- Orbit 6 - Venus
- Orbit 7 - Sol
- Orbit 8 - Moon
The descriptions of the rims accurately fit the relative distance and revolution speed of the respected bodies as would appear to an observer from Earth.
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Biesterfeld, Wolfgang (1969). Der platonische Mythos des Er (Politeia 614 b - 621 d): Versuch einer Interpretation und Studien zum Problem östlicher Parallelen, Münster : Diss.
| Concepts of Heaven | |
|---|---|
| Christian | Kingdom of God | Garden of Eden · Paradise | New Jerusalem | Pearly gates |
| Jewish | Gan Eden | Olam Haba |
| Islamic | Jannah | Houri | Sidrat al-Muntaha |
| Mormon | Celestial Kingdom | Spirit world |
| Ancient Greek | Elysium | Empyrean | Hesperides |
| Celtic | Annwn | Tír na nÓg | Mag Mell |
| Norse | Valhalla | Asgard |
| Indo-European | Paradise | Svarga | Aaru | The Summerland | Myth of Er | Fortunate Isles |
| Related concepts | Nirvana | Millennialism | Utopianism | Golden Age | Arcadia | The guf | Well of souls |
