In order to depict a parallel between Plato’s Phaedrus sections 247 b-c and Pessoa’s experience of reality, it would be rational to provide the background of Plato’s ideas in these sections. Plato tends to explain the nature of souls by appealing to an understandable – but not complicated and ambiguous – similarity. The souls of gods and people are depicted as chariots that are carried by two horses and guided by the charioteer, the mind (Plato, 1952, 246b). These chariots of the gods’ twelve divisions glide up the celestial slope in perfect harmony and peace. In turn, people’s chariots, or souls, have a virtue horse and the evil one. As a result, they frequently get heavy, fall from heavens to earth, incarnate in mortal bodies of people who are in the state of never-ending search (Plato, 1952, 246c–247b).
The central sections covered in this discussion show a detailed unfolding of this picture. The celestial souls go along with the skies, and their charioteer perceives what is above these skies. It is a genuine being, forever unchanging and lovely, in which fairness, rationality, wisdom, and other qualities exist in their whole (Plato, 1952, 247c-e). Human spirits get the chance to gaze into the divine field of truth on rare occasions.
Hence, it seems reasonable to state that Plato always combines his rationalism – or transcendentalism and dialectics – with a very lively and often even passionate frame of mind. Plato’s ideal love is demonstrated in extremely affective and passionate tones and reaches extreme physiology. Hence, Plato’s ideal world stands out for its rationality, as it is made up entirely of clear and logical notions like justice, wisdom, and other related phenomena. However, on the other side of his vision, there is an ideal love that is blazing, boiling, and furiously surging ahead. The mix of the described two aspects form the core of Plato’s philosophy. At this point, it should be stressed that the mentioned two sides can be viewed as two worlds of human mental dimension – rational and irrational. The transition from the former to the latter takes place due to raging love. This aspect will be important for drawing the parallel between such a vision and Pessoa’s experience of reality.
The very title of Pessoa’s autobiographical work – The book of disquiet – representing aphoristic statements about life clearly indicates fear that leads to restlessness. This state represents a tense, anxious existence. The fear in the life of the hero/author is caused by a huge number of reasons. For example, all the past, parting with which causes death and means “half to die”, frightens the hero of the impossibility of returning (Pessoa, 1982). Fear leads to the dominance of such sensations as sadness, humility, bitterness, insignificance, despondency, uselessness, vain, confusion, depression. The totality of fear leads to the loss of hope, instilling the idea that hope is completely useless.
Fear is a multifaceted emotion and an existential state of personality. Fear is given to the individual by the very (objective and subjective) being. As the ultimate state of the psyche, fear exposes the spaces of manifestation of despair, fear, anguish, anxiety, excitement, etc. The tension of the emotional palette associated with fear exhausts the personality. Fear turns out to be that mental emotion and state that separates the possible and the actual, the objective and the subjective, contributing to the split of the universe in the perception of the individual (Pessoa, 1982). A person, through their will and freedom in dreams and actions, is able to control its level, either increasing or decreasing psychological pressure.
Moreover, creativity helps to overcome fear and the associated split of being. This is what Fernando Pessoa did, writing a book about it on behalf of his own semi-heteronym, Bernardo Soares. It should be emphasized that works of art that touch on the problem of fear contribute to its understanding and the removal of partial stress not only for the author but also for the recipients, as well as the search for algorithms for overcoming or reducing it.
The ontological nature of fear and the awareness of this fact makes it possible to reveal the intellectual, ethical, and aesthetic potential of a person who is able to bear responsibility for his life and has the courage to create, wrapping disturbing states of mind in an artistic and sensual shell. Life at the limit in the space of fear, giving rise to restlessness and fatigue, brings the protagonist of the novel to pessimistic inactivity, the recognition of the antinomy of life, and the relativity of everything in it (Pessoa, 1982). Nevertheless, Pessoa offers ways to release fear or reduce the strength of its pressure. Among them, he refers to a journey in-oneself and to-oneself, a special type of reflection in the form of metaphysical metamorphoses of perception and cognition.
Thus, it might be stated that both Pessoa and Plato recognize a particular split in a person’s mentality between the rational and irrational perception of reality. However, the transition towards the irrational dimension – in this vein – takes place due to the appearance of a specific uncontrolled and raging factor. Here, there is a crucial difference between Plato’s and Pessoa’s vision within the scope given. The former gravitated towards idealistic doctrine and considered love as the factor of the mentioned split. The latter, in turn, sees fear as the primary feeling that puts a person into the depth of irrationality.
References
Pessoa, F. (1982). The book of disquiet. Serpent’s Tail.
Plato. (1952). Phaedrus. Harvard University Press. Web.