MYTH of the WINGED CAR: Summary and Explanation

In this lesson from a TEACHER, we explain the winged chariot myth from Plato, which appears in your dialoguePhaedrus and he uses it to explain his particular conception of the human soul. The interior of the human soul, says the philosopher, is in constant conflict between good and evil, and in this allegory, they will be represented by two winged horses, one virtuous and the other immoral, who pull a winged chariot driven by a charioteer, who would come to represent reason, that is, that intellectual part of the soul, capable of providing human beings with knowledge true. Remember that Plato speaks of 3 parts of the soul: rational, irascible and concupiscible. Guiding the horses in these circumstances will not be an easy task. Do you want to know more about this allegory? So, he keeps reading this lesson.

The winged chariot myth it appears in Plato's dialogue, the Phaedrus, work in which the philosopher will deal with the theme of love, but also death, the destiny of the soul, beauty or ethics. To explain his vision of his soul, the Greek will resort to an allegory in which

a charioteer, which represents the rationed partl of the human soul, drives a chariot pulled by two horses, a good one and a bad one, which would be the part irascible and the concupiscible part. The charioteer has serious difficulties in guiding the horses, which are torn between good and evil, just as it happens in the human soul.

The charioteer, or reason, has to lead the human being towards the truth, towards the light, which will not be easy, taking into account the conflict between the two horses, who want to go in opposite directions, the same thing that happens inside the human soul.

Plato resorts to allegory, due to the difficulties of the subject to be dealt with and, in short, explains that the mission of the soul is the to watch over and protect everything inanimate and, as it has wings, it can fly through the sky and observe everything that happens in the world. In this other video lesson from a TEACHER you can learn more about Plato's conception of the soul.

What happens is that somethey have lost their wings, As the human soul, and have fallen to the ground being trapped in a human body. Thanks to the soul (anima), the human body is able to move itself and, united with the soul, it becomes a human being. The soul is the principle of movement and what distinguishes inanimate beings from inanimate ones. We cannot forget that for the Greeks, the living is directly related to movement.

But the soul has the ability to rise to the divine, that is, the beautiful, the good, the wisdom, all of them virtues that increase the size of the wings of the soul, while the opposite direction, would cause the loss of the wings and everything bad in the world. In the supercelestial world, souls find their food, which is Justice, which is accessed only through the reason, is the one who directs the soul of human beings and represents true wisdom, the true being.

Only the divine soul can ascend without problems towards the heavens, since the horses that guide them are good because their food is wisdom. On the other hand, the human soul is guided by two horses that live in conflict, so guiding it along the path of good can be an arduous and tiring task.

“In the first place, in the case of us, the driver guides a couple of horses; later, of the horses, the one is beautiful, good and made up of elements of the same nature; the other is made up of contrary elements and is himself contrary. Consequently, driving is necessarily hard and difficult for us ”.

The soul is the beginning of movement and, therefore, of life, since for the Greek mentality, everything that moves has life; let's remember the phrase of Thales of Miletus “everything is full of gods”. The divine controls everything that is natural, and the human soul participates in some way in that divinity, since before falling, it inhabited the heavens, where it fed. But once she loses her wings and falls to the ground, remaining prey to the human body, she has to face death, finitude, after which she will return back to the heights.

Plato proposes the theory of the two worlds, a duplication of reality and, thus, he defends the existence of a sensible world, that of physical objects, subject to degeneration and corruption, and the intelligible world, that of ideas or essences, and which can only be accessed through reason; the soul belongs to this last world. At the same time, divides the human soul into 3 parts, one of which, the rational, the most excellent part of the human being, participates in the divine mind and, likewise, feeds on wisdom.

The intelligible world is that of science, and through the dialectical method it is possible to get to know. The physical world is that of science or episteme, and from this it is not possible to obtain a true knowledge, just opinion or doxa. The destiny of the human being is in the intelligible world, because the aim of the soul is to return to the place that corresponds to it and from which it fell.

We end up focusing on this aspect of the myth, since this is one of the main doubts that revolve around it. As we have already indicated, there are two horses in this myth because embody good and evil.

That is, one of them is the virtuous or moral and the other is the one that is given to desire or immoral, so each one pulls to opposite sides. In short, they represent the two main aspects with which the human being struggles in the essence of himself.