Shopping for Soul,
Soul Supply and Demand, or
Metaphorical Merchandise
The capitalistic, coveting, twentieth century Western culture has placed a price on "soul." At
least, the West has relegated a powerful financial exchangeability to the metaphorical merchandise
that is both construed to be "soul" and has an imaginally "soul-related," tangible concreteness
which allows the item to be purchased, handled with care, and displayed in an elevated position of
prominence. This location will be aesthetically pleasing, eye-catching, likely illuminated, and
possibly gently veiled behind glass. Private ownership in the West embraces and entails a sacred
element—and as such, "soul" images are exhibited in the limelight of the home which itself serves
as a display case. They are lovingly touched, dusted, shined, and paraded. They are admired,
flaunted, and cherished. Who, or what, gave "soul" the seductive power of influence over today's
consumers, luring a rash of frenzied shoppers to lay out hard-earned dollars for a symbol, so
dualistic, so pluralistically pregnant with possibilities, presuppositions, and presumptions? In
other words, what's Plato got to do with it?
The history of "soul" in Western tradition is a conflation, or melding, of its two primary
parents, Greek philosophy and Hebraic religion. I find it appropriate to concentrate on the Hellenic
side since here is where the move away from the myth, or metaphorical, and the logos, or rational,
opened the door for the selling of "soul." The great Greek philosopher, Plato, was preceded in time
by another Greek thinker, an Ephesian named Heraclitus. This philosopher was no hedgehog; he
was a fox, and he had some pretty downright foxy ideas about "psyche," or "soul." Heraclitus
recognized the awesome transcendent power of "psyche" and said that "you could not discover the
limits of soul, even if you traveled every road to do so; such is the depth of its meaning." (Wheelwright,
#42) It so happened that Plato was greatly influenced by Heraclitus (class) and exerted, in turn, a
most profound effect on Western thought. In fact, Alfred North Whitehead claimed that "all of
Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato." ("The Critical Tradition" by Richter, 17) Plato was in time for
the unfortunate shift in ancient Greece from thinking in mythical form to thinking in rational form.
Here is the all-important move from "mythos" to "logos" and now we begin to see Plato's relevance
to twentieth century "soul" economy, for when the story goes, we must buy into a rationale.
Now Plato's student was Aristotle and it was Aristotle who himself taught Alexander the
Great. Alexander conquered "the world" and in so doing made of the world a mixing pot, enabling
the trade of goods and thus making possible the original trade of worldviews. Skipping now
through history fairly quickly due to length constraints, we come to Longinus in the first century
C.E. (possibly a Hellenized Jew) who is interested in that which produces "not persuasion but
transport" which I take to be of metaphorical ingenuity and perhaps a refusal to appeal only to the
rational mind. Next I submit Plotinus, the greatest Neoplatonist, who said that "Art at its best can
be a way of knowing the Ideas." What are ideas but metaphorical images?
On to the early eighteenth century where we find John Keats who wrote an ode dedicated to
Psyche and then on to Ralph Waldo Emerson (another "fox") whose "Over-Soul" was a pantheistic
entity in which all was united and seems to resonate with the mystical views of Plotinus. It was
here, in the eighteenth century, that soul was purposefully kicked the rest of the way out the door,
(class) but its spirit there remained as the rational mind. Then, in the middle of the nineteenth
century, Freud appeared. Freud made a giant step with his supposition that human life is composed
of depth. He believed that not everything is on the surface and that to discover what is wrong with
us, we must travel deep down to the repressed part, the dream part, the "story" part of ourselves.
Then his underling, Jung, made an even more important move by not following Freud's lead, for
he decided that there was actually something missing in us (could it be "soul"?). (Are we not all
"yung and easily freudened?" (Finnegans Wake, 115) What that something was is the mythic, the sacred
metaphors, and what was required for the cure was the rejuvenation of these "myths," or stories.
As I recall, Lynda Sexson's prime complaint concerning Jung was that he was so static.
Heraclitus again saves the day because he states that "it is in changing that things find repose."
(Wheelwright, 23) Now, he also noted that "soul has its own principle of growth." (Wheelwright, 45) I suggest
that in this twentieth-century scenario where consumers are searching for a "soul" supply whose
demand for metaphorical merchandise is remarkably high, that "soul" has come of age and it is
time for a move back to the mythos, those indelible stories which in the Hebraic/Hellenistic
tradition are those which are known by heart and "soil the hands." There is, you see, an obvious
need to relearn, to remember, that soul language is not the language of logos, but that logos is one
of the voices of "psyche" and Plato's rationale may be the means for rejuvenation of that "soul."
But there is a catch and Robert Sardello has put his finger on it when he states that "there is nothing
in the world that does not seem to be an economic matter." (84) This society is under double
indemnity for caving in to another gimmick for a cure, for repose, because they are paying for that
which could be, which is already theirs. As such, the expense of searching for "soul" in a
concretized commodity may well exceed the presupposed logos of the search itself. And
Heraclitus, Plato's predecessor, addressed this point as well. "It is hard to fight against impulsive
desire; whatever it wants it will buy at the cost of the soul." (51) And that's what Plato has to do
with shopping for soul.