THE ARGUMENT OF THE ACTION ESSAYS ON CREEK POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY
SETH
a&NAIIDKTK
Uurl""" .,;,;, a bmwlwti.,. ., Rllflfll &.rp""" Mit:6M( Dnis
Set:h Bcnardete has long been known for his remarkable and pc:neuating interpretations of ancient Greek poetry and philosophy. The essays colleaed in t:his volume, some never before published, ot:hers difficult to find, span four decades of his work and document its imprcssi~ rangefrom Hcsiod's Th«
T1NJwmu. Sophist. S&atm.um. 7imArUi'} and Aristotle's Mttaphylia. More t:han a juxtaposition of writings on ~
and philosophy, Bcnardcrc's philosophic reading of the poets and his poetic reading of the philosophers share a common ground that makes t:hi.t collection a whole. The key. suggested by ni.t reflections on Leo Suauss in the last piece, lies in t:he question of how to read Plato. Bcnardetls way is cbaractcriud not just by careful atttntion to the literary form that scpan.tcs doarinc from dialogue and speeches from deal; ramer. by foUowing the dynamic of t:hesc differences, he uncovcn the argu· mcnr that belongs to the dialogue as a whole. The "turnaround" such an argument undergoes bears consequences for understanding the dialogue as radical as t:he conversion of the philosopher in Plato's image of t:he cave. Bcnardctc's original interpretations arc t:hc fruits of this discovery of "the argument of the action." poetry
THE
ARGUM.NT
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S E T H
B E N A R 0 E T E
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ARGUMENT OF
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SS S AYS AND
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G RSSK
POETRY
PHIL O SOPHY
Edited and u•ith an lntrodurtion by Ronna Burr;er and Michael DIWii
T HE
U N IVERSITY
CHIC AG O
OF
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CH I CAGO
LONDON
PRESS
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BENAJID.,... is profe.sor of dudes .. New Yo
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The University of Cbl<>go p,.,., Chi~ 606J7 The Univeni
go All right1 rcoerved. PubiUhcd 2000 Primed i.o the Unir«l Scuts of Amtrica 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00
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ISBN (doth}. 0..226-04251·0 Library of Coogres.s Caralogin&·in-Publlc:atloo Da12 B=rdtte, Seth. The "SU"''"" of the action : """l" on Gt
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Includes bibliogr.tphical rdmo
. 11. D.tvil, Mlcbad.
Ill. Tide.
PA.3Q61.846 2000 880.9'001-daJ
99-087699
@ The- papt.c used in this publ_ ieuion m«tS t_hc minlmurn rcqulrunenu of tbc Amaioa.n National Srandard fo£ lnfor.nu.tlon S<:knc::es--Pcrmaoc:ncc of Paper (or Prim:ed Libr.uy M2te-rials, A."'SI Z39.48·L992.
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Priface lntrodurtitm
The Fim Crisis in Fint Philosophy ~- AcbiHes •nd tbe llilld 3. The Arisuill of Diomede.< and tbc Plot of rbe lliad 4· The Furies of Aeschylus j. Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus L
6. Euripides' Hippolytus z. On Greek Tragedy 8. Physics and Tragedy: On Plato's Crary/us 9· On Plato's Symposium 10.
n. 11.
IJ.
'+ 15. 16.
Promgom's Myth •nd Logos On Plato's Lysis On lnterprer;ng Plato's Charmilkl l'laro's l..aches: A Quc:Sto's Phaedt> Pl•ro's TYtMeraus: On tbe Way of tbe Logos On Plato's Sophisr
17. The Plan of Plato's Slnttfmlln t8. On the TirnRtliS 19. On WISdom Md Philosophy: Th.c: First Two Clupr= of Ariscode'• Metaphysics A to. Suauss on Plam
Sekcud Work. by Seth .Benartktr
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There are many reasons to welcome a collection of essays by Seth lknardcte. His writinS$ on Grttk poetry and philosophy cover a mnge few have equaled. As ar home with Herodorus as ne is with Homer, and with Sophocles as he is with Plaro and Aristotle, Benardete is never guilry of narrowly specializing even though his command of the tats he interprets is unriva.led. Because be bas not derermin.e d in advan.ce what philosophers, historians, or poets are allowed to say, he i.l open to whuever they do say, scrupulously following their arguments with a care born of the expecrarion chat these autho.rs have everything co reach rum. The essays collected here span more than thirry years' work. from Benardere's studies of the Iliad, the subject of hls dissertation, to his recent rethinking of Plato's Theaanw, Sophur, and Statm1Ulll. Several of these pieces are tmnsctiptions of lccrures, published here for the first time; others appeared in books now out of print. We have long thought that collecting them into one vo.lume would not only make more accessible wha.t we have found in many cases to be the most illuminating commentary on the tat in question, but would also provide a helpful way into lknudc:re's book-length works. Beoardc:te's unique imprint rakes many forms: in the paradoxical formulations through which he sometimes expresses his insights, in the subtle lin.guisric analyses- of puns, erymologies, metaphoric extensions ofliteral usage-through which he uncovers the argument in the very language of the tars h.e interprets, in the Plaronic playfulness char pervades hls thinking. In these and other ways, Benardete's readinS$ seek to caprure "the argument of the action"-the title of this volume-and it is prccisdy in this cap3ciry that they open up a radically new pe1$pective on wha~ might have seemed a f:amiliar wo~. Of course, the very features of Benardere's writing that accomplish this with such brilliance are also a source of its difliculry and resismnce to simplification. On a work of such gmnd scale as Plato's Republic, Benardere's interpretation especially challenges the =der ro keep in mind the manifold threads he weaves inro the intricare pattern of the whole. The essays in this volume, while in some ways no
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less demanding, offer the adV'3Dta.ge to which Arisrode poinrs in the Po~tia when he compares the plot of a drama to a living animal, whose beauty depends nor only on the arrangement. of irs pans, bur also on a size that allows ilie design of ilie whole to be perceived as a whole. G-.iliering ili= studies together is for us an ex:pression of profOund grarirude. Here, as so ofren elsewhere, Benardere has been our guide. In ilie last essay in chis collection, he traces co Leo Saauss much of what seems to characterize his own wotk. This generosity, which might initially strike one as misplaced and excessively modest, poincs rather tO the para· doxical experience of learning from another only after coming to under· St:Uld for ourselves, although we ilien realize that we had been directed in some way by the other from the starr. This experience lies at rhe heart of the pnctice of philosophy as interpretation. What is saikingly characteristic of iliis practice as Benardete carries it out is the depth of under· standing he achieves through an uncanny ability reallr to sec the surfucc of things, which in tum enables him tO see what ordinarily obscures this surfuce. l.n recalling us to the bidden surface of th.ings. these essays, and Benardete's work as a whole, exemplify what he once called " the being of rhe beautiful."
AcknowledgmmtJ We have consulted with Seth Benardete on which writings ro include in this collection and on the order in which they appear. In general we wish co extend our thanks for pe.rmission to include previously published writings. The particulars wiD be found in the bibliography listing Benardcre' s works. The Earhart Foundat.ion provided a grant ro assist us in the prepa· ration of this volume. We would also like to tha.nk Ba.rbara Witucki, who typed the manuscript, and Robert B~rman, whose ad,•ice was, as always, greatly valued.
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For Seth Benardete, all particular qurnions, when one fOllows thetn f.u enough, lead ro the question of philosophy, and "wha.t philosophy is SC'tmS ro be inseparable from the question of how to read Plaro." 1 Accordingly, Benardete's work in general may be said robe concerned wirh articulating the core of Platonic philosophy. It is no wonder, then, that over half of the essays in this volume deal with Plato. At the same rime, since almost half do nor, in what sense can these rwenry essays on Greek poetry and philosophy be said to constirutc a whole? The poetS present an "understanding of the ciry, particularly of it:s subpolitical foundations, and of the law, particularly thc sacred law, [which) would remain in dukness wcre it nor for the light Plato brings ro them. • > Because the Platonic dialogue raises ro the I~ of argument the issues darkly embedded in the smries of the poets-above all those "experiences of the soul that are siruared on the other side of the &onder of the law"' -ir furnishes Benardere with a key to unlock the meaning of these stories. lt does so, however, in a fonn that shows just how deeply the Platonic dialogue is indebted to poetic:: drama.' To discover the path from Plaro tO the poetS requires rccognirion of the parh from the pocrs to Plato; Benardete can make such powerful use of the one bcc::ause he is so atruned to th.e other. For Benardere, as for so many before him in the philosophic:: tradition, the way to poetry lies through tragedy, and "tragedy &«ms to raise a claim that by iiSdf it is the truth of life." ~ The general formula for this truth is path~i matbos-learning through suffering, experiencing, or undergoing• ln its original location in the par:ados of Aeschylus's Agamnnnon (177), patki 11li111Jos is meant by th.e chorus to articulate the universal condition for human understanding. Poerry generally, oud dromatic poetry in particular, presem us with an artificial uperience from which W<: arc to learn something real. We do not have tO commit incest to understand Sophocles' o~dipw Tyranmu. Still, one cannot •imply skip to the conclusion of the play to appropriate irs teoching, for what we get at the end depends on wha.t we have experienced
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in the begiJllling U~d the middle. Sto..y oc plot is rhus the "soul of crngedy."7 Plllhei mat!MsOJrs considembly deeper thU~ this, however. For Benardere, rhe in.icial difficulty of tragedy lies in the tension between plot rod chan.crc:r: Oedipus's fare looks inevitable, bur he does not seem ro deserve it. • The rwo may 6rsr be reconciled by seeing char his sm.y-killing his father and mar.ying his mo.t her-can be understood .., an image of his character-his willful d;sposirion to be his own man. The initial discrep· ancy berween plot and character thus moves u.s to =valuate Oedipus's character. That in a WllY he d.oes deserve his fate is poetic justice and seems ro make che play scill mMe beautiful. Yet when we follow Benardete's lead, we discover troubling details; the pesfect plor begins to unravel. Oedipus arrives in Thebes and is married to Joasra before she can possibly know rhat Laius is dead. And he solves the riddle of me Sphinx ro rid Thebes of a plague that can only bardy have begun-Oedipus may even be che first person to whom the Sphinx speaks. Rellecting on difficulties like these, we discover that it is not just Oedipus whose an.ger and willfulness lead him to i.g nore plot difficulties (for example, thar the one wirness to the killing of Laius claimed that the company was arcocked by robbers whereas Oedipus w... alone), and not just Oedipus whose will ro get at the trurh causes him to embrace a conclusion rhat cannot possibly be true; it is ramer Thebes itsdf that does so, and not only Thebes. Our own willfulness has also been engaged. We are so swept along by what seems the pesfea plot that we suppress our knowledge of troublesome details that do not hang together. As Benardere puu it so vividly, there are "trap· doors" in the way things unfold.' If we somehow contrive to &II through the uapdoor in the plot of the Oulipus with our CfC$ open, we discover that the play means something quite different from wh~t we first thought it to mean. We active at a conclusion- it is not simply the tragedy of an individual man but the tragedy of political life .., such-co which we could come only by first having missed it, blinded by the "obvious." 10 To leam, we must first have erred, for learning arnounu to disclosing th<: underlying reasons for such errors. P111ha r~111.t!Ms. Philosophy generally reft.ec:rs th.ls same pattern; the Platonic dialogue, in its reprc:sencotion of Socratic philosophy, makes rhe patrc.rn thematic. What Benardetc discovers in the PLtconic dialogue is akin to whar Aristode identifies as the "complex plot" of tcogedy, whose incidents must unfold one as the consequence of another and yet contCIIf co expectation." It is, more specifieaUy, the function of reversal and recognition, on which such a tragic plot pivots, that has irs philosophical equivalent in the Pia·
lnuodua:ion
ronic dialogue. u lr is nor sufficienr., therefore, to :miculare the formal srrucrure of the dialogue as a whole consrirured of pan:s; this rtructure must be understood in relation to dte sequenr.ial unfolding of the argu· ment, which-nor despite but because of rhe ~ersal it undergoesproves finally to have been governed by a deeper necessity.·~ There is, of course, an established modern tradition that recognizes the Platonic dialogue as a literary form characteri'Z.ed by the juxtaposirion of speeches and deeds, which are to be interpreted in light of each other. This tradition insists on the inseparable connection of che conrenr of a dialogue wich its form, so chat no proposition can be righdy understood except in its proper place; it is aware rbar speeches in a dialogue must be understood in light of the characters who utter rhent, recognizes Plaro's deliberate use of comradiction as a lire.rary device, and so refrains from any prererue of undemanding Plato better than he understands himrdf." Still, if such interpretation =umes chat a Plaronic dialogue produces among its readers a continuum of levels of understanding in which the reaching deepens but does nor differ qualitatively, it falls short in the decisive respect; for "once argumenr and action are properly put together, an entirely new argume.nr emerges thar could never have been expected from rhe argumenr on the written page." ') h is this new argument, which emerges through an action of its own, rbat makes the Platonic dialogue a who.le. In rttonstructing it, lknardere discloses how every dialogue reproduces in itself che conversion (periagiigi) of che philosopher in rhe cave, wrenched from his position f.tcing shadows on che wall and rurned in the opposire direction toward rhe lighr. An intentional 8aw in rhe Bow of the apparenr argument- Plato's "ttapdoor"-induces us ro drop beneath the surface to uncover the source of movernenc thar reveals the real argument.'' The Pha~o provides a striking example. In one of the most f.tmous passages in Plaro, Socrares ptesents an intellectual autobiography designed ro account for what he calls his "second sailing in search of rhe cause" (99<{). According to Socrar~, he rejected Anaxagorean mind as a ca.use of all thin&' because it did not account for rhe goodness of rhe order that ir imposed. Now, Socraies has just used his own siruation as an example of wbar Anaxagorean cosmology cannnr accoum for. To explain why he is in prison and not running down the road to Megara, we must understand rbar it seems bertcr both to him and ro rhe Athenians thar he remain in prison, take the poison, and die. But Socrares' reasons and the reasons of the Athenians look [jke contrary causes of the same effect: "If Socrates does what he does by mind, the Athenians cannor have done what they did by mind. for otherwi~ mind
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would be irrational in reaching che same conclusion chrough opposite routes." 17 Whatever Socrates' reasons may be for judging his deach at this rime ro be good, he must mean, given the definition of death assumed from the outset of the dialogue, that it is good for his body and soul to be separated. But how, then, could a teleological account ever explain why it is best for rhin~ to be arranged as they arc, with body and soul united in a living being? DiSGOvering this incoherence forces us to leave behind the causal analysis of death as a physiological phenomenon and to reinterpret, in light of the dee~r argument thereby revealed, precisely what Socrates understands by "dying and being dead." In doing so, we turn, with Socrates, to seek "the troth of the beings" through "investigation in logoi." Beoardete carries on this Socratic turn not only by practicing philosophy through interpretation of the Platonic dialogue. His readings exemplify the. Socratic second sailing in a more specific manner, which has to do wich the necessity of its being second: they show what it means for philosophic thinking to have to emerge with the breakdown of one's original way of proceeding, foUowed by recognition of the necessity of that breakdown. but nor in a way that would have made possible avoidance of the error from the Start." To know that this process must be at work in a dialogue is also co know that one cannot aoticipate where ir will appear in the course of the argument. This is the core of Plato's verson of pathti matiJos. The hllmartiu. that the action of a Platonic dialogue sets out ro correct is, in its most general form, "Platonism." Nor Socrates, but everyone else is a "Piaronist.• The "ideas" of justice or pleasure are the offipring of Socrates' interlocutors, and it is Socrates' rask to disabuse them of the "Platonism" of everyday life, or Plato's rask to disabuse us.•• [f polirical philosophy is the "eccentric core of philosophy,"'" it is because it devotes itself to the examination of opinion, which is rhe repository of the "ideas so understood. Opinion, guided by ordinary language, rakes for granted the value of the coin it mints: whatever is under examination in the dialogue- love, death, pleasure, law, courage, moderation, the just, the beau· tiful- is assumed to be an atomic enriry, a monad. The argument of the action of the dialogue undermines this "raking for granted" by uncovering rhe rdarions among such emities and the internal structures that make them bound to slip ou~ from our fixed categories and remain resistant to our "ideas." Benardete succeeds in preserving this slipperiness, or resistance, while revealing the fundamenml forms of irs ardill representation. To give ade-
IntrOduction
quare expression to th~ forms, he has coined his own spec.W vocabulary, speaking of conjunctive and disjunctive rwos, of e.idet:ic analysis, of the indeterminate dya.d, and of phanrom images. 21 In arricularing these foons, he is guided by the double character of thinking as a matter of bringing one and one together a.nd of discerning the implicit rwo in a given one. The Pha~do again provides a concrete illu.srrarion. At the outSet of the conversation, Socrares rubs his leg aher the chains have been removed and re8ecrs on his wonder-inspiring experience: that which is called pleasant is naru.rally relued to the p2inful, which is thought to be irs opposite, in such a way that rh.e pursuit of one makes it uecess:uy to take the other with it, as if they were bound in one head. Aesop, So=tes imagines, might have made a myth about a god who, wishing to end the war between the two but being unable, could only join their two heads. 12 This Aesopian myth presentS what Benardere calls a "conjunctive two," and he proposes that it provides Pla.ro's modd for myth in general. The dements that make up such a pair are assumed to be intd ligible independencly of one another; if, therefore, they are ever found together in our experience, it l.ooks as if some cause must be responsible for bri.n.ging them together. This is precisdy what Socrates denies by the first account of pleasure and .!'2i.a he gives in his own name, according to which the two presumed opposites are na.no.rally bound together "in one head." That account, which illustrates what Bcnardete calls a "disjunctive rwo," describes a n=ry rdation between murually dttermini.n.g parrs of a whole, neither of which ean be wha.t it is apart from the other. In Diotima's myth about the birth of Eros, Benardete again finds these two smtcrures. Diotima begins with a conjunctive two: Poverty, the mother of Eros, and Resource, his father, a.re p=nted as twO independent beings that must som.ehow unite with each orher to generate thcir offspring. Bur once it becomes dear that everything need.e d to account for Eros can be traced ro the resourcefulness of Poverty alone, her selfaware neediness emerges as the disjunctive rwo of eros. Eros, that is, involves ingenuity in the face of need. To represent irs dual narure ro ourselves we separate irs dements and theo pe.rsonilf them; but in fact the aware.ness of our need is never really separ.a.ble from thoughts of how to alleviate it. To recogniu this disjunctive two of erot is to correa for the mythical starting point of the analysis." Jf fixity, atomicicy, and independence are the telling signs of a mythical understanding of things, the Plaronic "ideas," each "itself by itself," would be the mythical version of wh:u must finally he understood as internally rdated demeors of a complex ruucrure: the paradigm, which Benar-
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Lntroducrion dere traces through aU the Placonic diologues, is the triad of me beautiful. me jusc, and rhe good. The procedure by which such a suucrure is opened up in order tO discove.r me relations among its e.lements is what Benardere calls "eidetic analysis." Eidetic analysis is an account of the being of something mar is not meant to be an account of irs coming to be. I! stands tO irs alternative--gen.e tic or causal analysis- as me disjunctive rwo srands tO the conjunctive two: in foUowing it, what " 'aS at 6m a part parading as a whole 6nally shows itself to be part of a whole. The suucrure that emerges in this process Benardae bas termed an "indeterminate dyad."" It shows up in a form unique to each inquiry in me course of "collecting~ and "separating" what cannot be counted up-a one that splits off pan of irsdf and projectS it as something other, or a one rha1 lies hidden behind irs &aaured appearances. The elusiveness of the ~ that mdc from one: conceptual net to another, and can therefOre be approached only by a 6ttingly subtle manner of "hunting." becomes mematic in Benardere's account of Plato's search for the sophisc. The sophist, as the embodiment of the other, solves the problem of nonbeing h.e raises, bur only to reveal, 6na1Jy, thai being is no less problematic. The sophist is not being sought for his own sake: he and the s1aresman together are, Socrates ptopusc:s, nothing but the split phantom images (a conjunctive rwo) behind which lies the reality of rhe single being- the philo..opher--who, like a Homeric god, appears 10 another as what he is not- Soaares wonders whether me Stranger, who has come to rake his place, is not just such a god in disguise. Benarderc argues that what the Suanger actually sets our ro do, in 1he course of the two conversations he conductS, is to clear away 1he double phantom image of SocrattS-th~ re.m:ukably influential two-sided 6gure of Socrates me logic chopper and Socrares the moralist which has come down to w through the centuries. zs Where Pluo's readc:a have typically idenrified Socrates with one side or the olher-each uf which is misleadin.g in Ll$ own way and both together incapable of forming a coherent whole-Benardere discloses a complex apparition and sers our ro undentand what makes ir necessary. The radical revision of received opinion Benardete accomplishes in h.is rea.d in.gs of the Platonic dialogues is due, in no small parr, to his discovery of such a •disroned mirror" of Socrates in aU the variety of shapes it assumes throughout me dialogues. [n some eases Benardere discloses Plaro's representation of misunderstandings or misappropriations of Socratic teachings-the future tyrant Cririas, for =pie, or the general Nicias oblige So<:r2tes to cecognm a principle of his own in an alien d~
lnuoduaion rocm." On other occasion.s, a surprising portrait of Socrates shows itself, under lknardcrc's =inarion, ro ~ the alien ~Socrates Ius ddi~r ately adopted for particular pwposcs.u The privileged case, perhaps- of which lknardcrc provides an especially powc.rful analysis-is the self- presentation at work in the peculiar erotic an Socrates claims to possess, which would enact on a rarionallevd, if it really wc.rc an an, what transpires naturally ~tween every lover an.d ~loved. At the !teart of this experience, as me soul image of the Pluudrus indicates, lies me problem of self-knowledge. Uncovering th.e bidden dynamic in tbar image. Benardctc shows the whit<' horse ro ~ nothing but tbc invention of the black horse of the lover's soul which, in its dcfectivcn.ss and incoroplcten.ess, constructs a beautified image of the nature it shares with the ~loved, meant to attract the beloved, who is unwittingly in love wim ltimself. for me sake of a snared ascent to engage in contemplation of the ~ings. The Plaronic dialogue, Bcnardere suggests, is itself such a beautified image. projected from the black horse at its core thar is Socratic knowledge of ignorance.1.1 Each Plaronic dialogue offers irs own access to me discove.ry of the ltidden ~ing of me pltilosopher. To find it, Bcnardere loo.ks for that point when the action is taken up in speeches and what we discover turns out to differ from what we thought we were searching for-no longer, say, conduCt on the battlefield, but me courage of persistence in inquiry; not a quiet demeanor and sense of shame, but the "hermeneutic wphromni" of the interpreter who • does his own thing" by the paradoxical readiness "to question the wisdom of the authority to wltich one defers."" Bcn:udere thinks through what philosophy must ~ if, as Diotirna indicates, it is really the core of eroJ, and h.ow it could be the tealizarion of eroJ in rhe comprehensive sense, as the desire for happiness; he ~(orcs what philosophy must ~ if it is really "the practice of dying and ~ing dead," and demonstrates the sense of Socrates' arguments once deam in the ordinal}' sense is recognized as nothing but an c:xrension of that priMal}' meaning.JO The discovery of ph.ilosophy, which takes on a distinctive form in each dialogue, begins with turning upside down what was previously assumed to be ~ock reality ao.d its shadowlike derivative." Bcnardete's readings disclose the phantom images of the philosopher in speecb, whi.le rccogniring as essential to the dialogue its prc:seruarion nf the philosopher in deed. A presentation of the life of the poet, by contrast, does not setm to be essential to the work of the poet. This points to a difference that lies ar the heart of the • ancient quarrel berween poetry and philosophy." For the philosopher's ponrayal of the philosophic life
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lnuoducci011 displays implicitly wh:at n:Wces lif~ worth living for a human being, and not our of any illusory optimjsm about r=n, bm in full awareness nf our essenri:U incompleteness.J2 His self-p resentation proves co be nothing less than the presentation of the human soul, "the only part of the whole which is open tO tft~ whole and therefore more akin to the whole than anything else is. •l3 The poetS, on the other hand, at least the tragic poets, do not tdl their own sto:ry; their paradigmatic S\lbjoct is the individual guilty of "criminal piety"'-"-above all one whose crimes reveal the sacred foundations of rhe city. 3s What they depict in connection with such crimes are the tragic passions of fear and shame, which cannot be understood apan from Hades. The shadow wodd of non being, as Benardere leads us ro =. is • rhe soul of tragedy." .!6 Its centrality is inseparable from the perspective the poets portray-even if they do not endorse it- according ro which what appcm best for a hlll111lll being is nor ro be born. Insofar as poetry and philosophy are tWO, what divides them is nothing less than d.1e question of whether human life can be good: "Poetry's exposition of life does nor redeem ir.; rather, it ~ life worth living only to the degree ro which poetry bas not oposed it-"37 Tra.gedy fusr shows us tb~ mearting of ptnh~i m111hos in irs narrow sen~ where depth of learning derives from depth of suffering. And yer, the best of poets, in leading us through progressively deeper understandings of the necessary defeca of the cb• racters they represem, show us why rhe principle plltiJti mathos in its most comprehensive sense belongs at the bean of both poetry ond philosophy. Their bond is all the stronger rhe more the poets have thought tbrough the artful structures that make such represenrarion possible. Heslod, in any case, suggests as much when his Muses worn him of their ability ro "speok lies like the rruth ." The principl.e of all Greek poet!)'. as Benardete sees ir, presuppose.• the philosophic distinction of falsehood from truth and their recombination in mim~sis." Homer, too, has understood the double cbara.crer of rhe beouriful lies by which "the poet divides what is necessarily one and unites what is necessarily r»~o."» The poets, it seems, have alreody reBecred on the duplicity of their form and illi implication for human wisdom. In opening up rhis possibi.Lity, Benardete shows us how logos of Plato unveils the muthos of poet!)' for the /ogM it is. Once, however, this is acknowledged, the Socratic revolution in pbilosophy scents robe coeval wirh G reek poetry, which had realized from the $l3rt.. with its principle of telling lies like rhe truth, the rdation of argument and action.""' In the "poecic dialecric" of image-making, Benard.ere sees the structures of Socmtic philosophizing; in the argument of the action of the PJ-aronic dialogue, he sees
·me
Introduction
the poetic prc&entation of genuine philosophy. He bas made undemanding rbe indererminacy of rb.is dyad-poetry and philosophy-his life's work.
Now 1. "Stl'llUSS on Plato," 407 below. Ibid., 415. The "double. frame" ofGrn:k rragt'dy is, accordingly. "the political in its innocent autonomy and the s.acrro in irs subverslon of thar innocenu'" ("On G""'k Tmgedy," 103 below). 1.
3·
·on Greek T....geciy,' 104 bdow.
4· Socmcs' rripanire division of the soul in &publi&, Book 4, for example, provides a kc:y to the shape of Hcsiod' s The, rbe P~tonic "<emplate" is itself embedded in rbe dynamic unfolding of the alogue as much ,. i< is in the plot of tbe work to which it provides a kc:y. S· "On Gteck Tmgedy," 99 below.
6. The meaning of the formula pathS in the Charmitks: by diminat· ing error, i1 allo rules out altngeth
7· See P..,;a1450>-b for AriStOtle's identifiarion of plot :IS the "soul of trag· edy." Beoardete's rdleainns on Greek rragt'dy lead him to tall H2des- Altk. is the poetic form-the "soul of rrogedy" ("On Gn:ck Tmgedy," t4J below). The <wo are not as different "' thc:y seem at first, for the prominence of plor is the sign of the need to moke visible wbar cannot but be invisible (oltks). 8. See 'On Greek Tragedy." eh>p. 7 below. 9· See "Strauss on Plato." 410 below. 10. In the discussion of O..Jipw Tyramrw in "On Greek T l'llgc:dy" (eb.p. 7 below), Benwere rethinks with radical consequences his earlier reading of the play (see "Sophocles' Otdipw Tymnnus," chap. s below). prtcisely by attending even mo<e closely to the "obvious" perplexities.
xvii
xviii
lnuod:uction
See Ariotode's PHtia, cbopa:n ro-n. n. "On Plaro's SbphiSJ," '!4} below. 13. When Socat<$ appeals in the PhltLiirvs to the principle of "logog,.phic I.L
neccssicy" as a sraodard for tho wtiuen work, it mighr seem to be jUSt anoth.r w;,y of stating the mocld he holds up of the living animal, whose parts are o""" superlluous, but aU in .litting relation to each other and to the whole (PhltLiirus 264b-c}. Pot Bdua/Qns ro rm Dialogue ofPinto [New Y=iry of Chicago Press, 1989]. 67). YttSchltiennachcr assumes only a cfiiference of degrte berw<= the undemanding of the radtt attentive ro those devices and rhar of one who is nor; and rills assumption. Strauos cbargu, Is a sign of his &.ilure to recognize in rhc difFerence among inrerpr:tt.nions the kind of 121iical break that, according to Plaro, se!'"-ratCS the ordinary u:ndenw>ding of things &om that of the pbilO:ording ro mind." Aler<ed to this double sense, we sec that Plaro has captured in a phrase Arinoph~ne&' problemaric understanding of 0'0$, which. in bei.ng "cfi.orccd from man's rationality." aspires to "a wMien... that lacks lordligibility" ("On Plato's S:pnposiwn. •7S below). The sarne exp~ion occun in the first line of the Phikbu.s. whe<e Socurcs invircs his inrcrlocurer tO defend the claim of pleaourc ro be the cause
1nuoduaion of huoun happiness over aj!2insr rhe claim of min.d -unless be 6nds rh~ 01hcr view ltJllJl ntn~n:23 soon as Bcnardcte calls our attention ro it. we see thar langwge iadf, by ttbibiting the inc:xuiCllble mixture of mind and pleaswe rhar the absrn.erions of hedonism and intdlcaualism deny, compds us ro rcrhink the argument (see TIN TrRfti!J trnd Omu:IJ of Lift: P/4Jo i "Phikhus" [Chicago: Univmity of Chicago Press, 199)), 1, n. 1). 17. Serb Bcnardete, Socrarn' S«oml Soiling: On PlaUJi "&publie" (Cbiago: University of Chiago PI'<$$. 1989), j. 18. This is a descriprion lknardete offers of the Eleatic Srn.ngtt' s procedure in the Sophist and Slllmm;m (see "On Pbro's Lyris." :m below).
19. See "On Plato's Phutio," 1.95, n. 4 below. 10. See lknardcte's review of!~ Srrauss's TIN Ciry and Man, in TIN Polirica/ Science Rruim.'tT 8 {Fall •978): 4l.J. See, for cxample, Socrates' S«ond Sailinf, 4-5, and nores n, 2.4, 1j, and 17 below. u. See "On Plato's Ph11Ldo," 182- 83 below. 13. Sec "On Plato's Symposium." r8o below.
we: of the term, see Bena.rdcre's r<Jnark on the formula "the more and less" as it appears in the Phikbw ( TIN Trag$Signed ro the class of theoretical, as opposed ro practical, science. But in the course of the analysis, that dichotomy is repbced by a rwofold science of measure, where poliiilti comes ro ligbr as the :ucbircctonk science of the mea2.4· Concrming Aristotle's
sure of the mean. in conran ro the mathematical measure; yet in this role iJ applies no mort to political pmaice than to the Suanger's discovety of it, which is some kind of theorcrical activity. The gradual slide thar produces this "indeterminate dyad" d.epends on a "deid.eali.. tion" of the original division: a muwaiJy exclusive dichotomy bcrwcen theoretical an.d prncrical only 6u the god of the Stranger's myth, who in one cosmic epoch pilou che universe, in anorhcr wichdraws in conremplation {"The Plan of Plato's Ss:.ztammr." chap. t7 bdow). ~5·
Sec "On Plato's Sophist," 3~5 below. 16. See "On lnrcrprering Pbro's Channitls." chap. 12 below, and "Plato's LllLha: A QuC$tiOn of Dc6nirion," chap. 13 below. 27. While the scholarly uad.irion quesrions how the sa.me Socrares could advocate a punitive morality in the Gorgias and a hedonistic calculus in the Protlrgoras, Bcnardett interprets these presentarions as the phanrorn self-images Socr.tres adopts in the course of his attempt to identify sophistry and rheroric as phantom images of rwo genuine arts (s« "Proragorns's Myth and Logos,• chap. 10 be!ow). 18. This analysis of the chariot inugc in the PhutinJJ (See TIK Rhmric of MoTtllity trtul Philomphy. to49-s1) lies behind Bcnardcre's account of Socrates' par·
XI%.
""
In uoducrion
roo
ticulor inre:ra<:rion with Alcibiadd Plato'' SympDsiun~ chap. 9 below). It IUrnishc:s the modcl foro: description of the Platonic cli.Uoguc in general, from which Benasdete singl.es out the Slltmm4n u a deliber:ue exa:ption r'The Plan of Pbr.o's 5Mtmi!J1n, • chop. 17 bd<>w.) '"9· &<'Plato's L«lm: A Qu<Stion of Ddinition, • 273 below and "On Interpreting Pl;no's Charmkkt." 24' below. ]0. See "On Plato's Plxuila. • 2.78 below. ]I. Compare this with Aelian's nory about the speeches of Socrates, cited in "Strauss on l'laro." chap. 20 below. A movem.e m of thi< sort embedded in language itself becomes theJrutdc in the playful etymologies of the Cwylus: by tracing rhe ~nguistic extension they repr<$Cnt-from an original, corpo~ meaning tO a derivative, noncorporeal one--lknordete reconsrrucu the argument of the cli..Iogue (see, for example, the derivation of "tragedy" &om "goat- incomplere:nc:ss it is in order and good" {"On Plato's s,m;-ium." 173 below). J)- For this citation of Srntws, see ~srnws on Plaro, • 416 bclow. 34- See AntigDn<, 7 -1; O.tfipus 01 Coltmus, 1410. 35· Tragedy brings before our eyes the mconing of Ariscotle's claim char. without the dry, man would be mo<e terrible chan any animal when ir comes to food and se>c (Politics I, n5)2'36-39). Ttllgedy represents, in Benardcce's words, "rhe offi>cou.ring" of the rarionali2edclty in SJl"«h thar Socrates corutrUCU ("On Greek Tragedy," 100 below}. 36. Examining Euripides' presentation of fear in rhe Bacr:/nu, as the coo merpart ro Sop.hodes' presen.arion of dume in the O.tfiput Tyra~mtJs, Benardere finds an "inextricable involvement with Hades" which mark> these tragic p:wioos and explains their "resistana ro enlightenment. " It is, accordingly, an 'antitragic" understanding Arisrodc clispbys wheo h~ conclud.. his aecoum of mo 7, and 1 t below. The playful 6m line of this discussion-"Vii'IWllly everyone knows that Arisrotlc sometimes
Introdw:rion lies" -poinrs ro th~ con.n
x:d
THIE
AltGUMCNT
OF
THE
A C TI O N
The First Crisis in First Prulosophy
VIRTUALLY EVERYONE KNOWS THAT ARISTOTL£SOme-
rimes lies. His account of rhe pre-Socrarics in the first book of the Melliphysia leaves our of account everything that does not suit his scheme, the gradnal disclosure of the four causes, compelled, w; he says, by the truth itself. Heraclitus' fire is there, but nor Heraclitus' logos. Parmenides' Eros is there, but not Parrnenidcs' mind. This triumphant progress, however, comes abrupdy to an e.n d at rhe end of Book I, and Boo.k U ~ins rhe crisis of first philosophy. lr is rhe very triumph of Book I rhat brings about rhe crisis of Book 11, and it is Book II rh11r is first philosophy: ir consists of nothing bur questions. These seventeen questions could nor have been forrnulared had nor Book I preceded ir and confirmed that wisdom ww; the rheorerical knowledge of cause. The knowl.edge of cause:, however, does not establish first philosophy; it merely discloses what still must be known, being. Being emerges as che problem of first philosophy through rbe nonproblcrnaric srarus of the four causes. The emergence of bein.g as the problem is not adventitious co rhe four causes. There lurks within rbe four causes one cause thar is nor an answer bur a question, and rhe q ucsrion is, What is? Formal cause is rbc only cau.<e that. appem among rhe ca.regorial predicates, and of these it is the only one rbat is a question, and whose formulation includes in itself that which the question is about. To ask about being is to acknowledge belatedly that it has come co light w; a question about which one asks questions. If, then, first philosophy is first only the second rime around, where au we to begin? Arisrodc has another name for first philosophy. He calls it rheology. Thoology is
J
4
Chapter One
a tainted word. It is liur used, as far as we know, by Plato, and he puts it in the mouth of Adimanrus, whom Socrates is questioning about whar myths are to be told the future guardians when young (&public). Theology, rhen, is rheomythy. It precedes any true account of rhe gods. Socrates' rheology is set in opposition to the stories of Homer and Hesiod. It is one set of myths against another. Hesiod's myt.h, however, is not Hesiod's bur the Muses', and rhe Muses tdl Hesiod thar they speak (kgdn) lies like rhe truth and pronounce, whenever rhey wish, rhe truth. Before philosophy rhere are lies like rhe uurh. Before philosophy, we say, there is poetry. Poerry has already divided lies &om trurh and put them together again. Poerry is not at the beginning but after the beginning, when the speaking abour rhe speaking about things has become pan of th.e speaking. This double speak puts rhings at a disunce &om us. The th.ings the Muses speak about are rhe beginning. We are nor at the beginning when we hear the Muses about the beginning. At rhe beginning are rhe Muses who sing about tl1e beg.inniog. Hesiod is rhe liut poet we know of who rells us his name and who writes two works. Not everything he knows, he =ens ro be saying, is ro be found in one poem; bur in o:rder thar we pur togerher what he has ser apart he must give us his name, so thar we do not infer from the di.ffe:rences berween the cwo poems that they do nor belong together but are of different poers. Hesiod reils us in what order we are ro rt:1d !Us poems. The Works and D11Js begins with an admission of a mistake.; he now realizes that the goddess Strife is not me.rely rhe mother of Bloodshed and Lies bur also of rivalry and competition withour which there would be no progress in the ans. There is but one Strife in the Theogony; she is the offspring ofNighr and has Nemesis and Old Age as her sisters. But Priendlioess, or Pbilot~, is also a sister. Could Philuier, then, be rhe disguised form of Strife as rivalry, and through her complete separation from Srrife appear more friendly rhan she is? Hesiod, in any case, seems to be warning us that bis genealogies are mythical precisely because as they divide what are in fact united in a complex strucrure so they pull apart what is always rogerher. He seems robe saying that his cwo poems are likewise mythical, and what they have ro say is not what is said in either one of them. We say that Hesiod comb.ined a cosmogony with a theogony, and we mt:ln by that that he combined an a.ccounc of those things we see and know- heaven and earth-with those things we do not see and do not know-Kronos and Zeus-and for the trurh of whose existence we musr rely on Muses who do not reil the rruth and on their mouthpiece Hesiod, who cannot be mo.re truthful than the Muses want to be. The 6rsr th.ings,
The Fint Crisis in Fin< Philosophy we say, are subject ro a double interprecuion; they are the gods of either a "natural" or a conv,cntional religion; bur in the ca~ of Hesiod, we can
go further. HeaYen was on.ce a god, bur as soon as he was castrated be became a neutral being and parr of the perrn:went order within which the Olympian gods are effective. Earth is not di~posed of as quickly, and not until her last offspring is defeated by Zeus does she roo fade into the background. The cxhaust.ion of the generative power of dte 6rst things allows for !heir rcplacem.e nt by gods who~ being is nor tied up with whar they can generate but with what dtey can make. Becoming is thus split between sexwtl generation, wh~ e=ntial nature is that th.e offspring cannot be prtdiaed o.r wiUed by the parmts, and anful making, in which the foreknowledge of the plan allows the maker to produce the pans in whatever order be finds ronvenienr. The maker does not have ro proa::ed in order in order for dte wbo.le ro be in order. From this point of view, the srory Hesiod tells is one of the gradual triumph of art and the defeat of generation. Zeus produces Adtena out of his own head and Hera by hersdf produces Hepbaesrus. The coming of the Olympian gods coincides with the possibility of Hcsiod being a poet. The Muses n=vily cannot antedate Zeus. Whereas in Genesis, God is the maker and there is no maker of Genesis, in Hesiod, the gods whom Hesiod cdebrares finally become makers and bestow on Hesiod the same gift. The TINogtmy thus looks like the story of rhe defeat of Eros, who in being the most beautiful of gods overcomes the mind of gods and men alike. The defeat of Eros does nor entail his elimination bur only his taming. After Zeus, blind coupling is replaced by lawful marriage, and whatever offspring mere are can no longer threaten the Olympian establishment. This fuse reading of the Thtogony is paradoxicaL The Olympian gods, whose beaury is what most distinguishes them from all earlier and later gods, come ro be through the defeat of Eros, whose principle they repre~nr. The demands of reason force the love of the beautiful ro become through the mode of producrion sterile. It would seem. then, that Hcsiod prepares the way for Plato, whose innovation consiSts no less in denyin.g th.e incompatibility of Eros and mind than in assigning 10 produaion a spurious version of Eros. His Socrates is srerile without being a maker. However this may be, the story we have found in Hesiod S<emS nor tO be all of Hesiod's Story. It bas pushed irs way through ro rhe end of Hesiod's stOry and nor rell.eaed on bow Hesiod got there. Ic got hold of the intention without att:eoding ro the plan of Hesiod. The model for Hesiod's naaarive is supplied by the M USe$. Their binh is followed by an account of their function. The being of the god-
5
6
Chaprer One de:.'<~
is not separated from their meaning. For the Muses, who do not antedate the order of Zeus, and whose being is to be the conveyors of meaning, such a tight connection between being and meaning is ine,•itable. In the case, however, of the other gods, the application of this scheme. to them upsetS the temporal sequence and complet.es the parts of the whole before there is any whole of which th.ey can be parrs. The offSpring of Phorcys and Ceto are early in the narrative, but since the role they fill is after Zeus bas usurped power, we do not realize at firsr thar. these monsters are not primitive residues of an older chaos but the beings Zeus bas allowed to be born prior m their destruction through his mortal children. Echidna mates with Typhos, but Typhos was born after the triumph of the Olympians over the Titans, and as soon as he was born Zeus destroyed him, or ar least we are led to believe that that is the case since, u1 accordance with the narrative principle, being and meaning are Linked; but in Zeus did not defeat Typhos before his offSpring were born, all of whom are killed except Cerberus. Herades kills Geryon 's dog Orthus, the Hydra, and the Nemean lion, the last rwo of whom Hera brought up, and Bellerophon kills the Chimera. Zeus allows these monsrers ro be born so that the earth can becom.e civilized through heroes. The earth bad ro be made savage by the will of Zeus before it could be made rame through Zeus. The way in which Hesiod connects the becoming and the meaning of the Muses is not as sinlple as we have described. The proem of the Tluogony, which is devoted to the Muses, is more than one-tenth of the. entire poem; indeed, .i t is longer than any oth.ec section of continuous narrative. Hesiod begins by proposing to begin by singing of the Hdiconian Muses. They OCCUp)' rhe top of the mountain and sin.g and dance around the alrar of Zeus. This is pr~ented as a habitual pra<-rice of theirs. They also habitualJy descend ftom rhe moumain on their usual Wlly, we are led to believe, to Olympus. On their descent. they become invisible and cd ebrare in song the gods. Tbe gods they celebrate seem to fall inro th.ree groups. Zeus and H em bead the first group in which are included many of the Olympians; the second group begins with Themis and ends with Krooos; with one exception, they are all Tit<~ns or co-eme
met
Th< First Crisis in Finr Philosophy On~
the MuSCli arrive at the foothill'i of Helicon, Wf! cxpea rhem ro as~nd; and they do indeed ascend after a shon digt=ion. ln thrir ascent to Olympus, they habitually sing another song, designed to ddigbt the mind of Zeus. This song too is in three pans; but now rhe order is from the lxoginning and nor ro the beginning. They fim sing of Earth and Sky and all their descendants; they then sing of Zeus by IUmsclf; rhe f.uher of gods and men. and how he is the mightiest and Strongest of rhe gods. The rhird pan of their song is devoted to the race of human beings and Gianu. This KCOnd song prepares rhe way for an accnunr of their own binh, dose ro the top of Moum Olympus. and the song they sang as soon as they were born while they went to thrir f.uher at the peak. This song is about how Zeus is king in heaven, and how he conquered his f.uher Ktonos and amnged the laws and honors for the gods. This third song is revealed ro be a song only after Hcsiod has given it in his own words. It is Hcsiod's song before it is declared to be the Muses'. The movement of the proem is so far the disdosuro of the greatness of Zeus along with his juni~; but this movement of dcsccnr and double ascent. from regular descent :md ascent, ro a one-time ~r to the top of Olympus, is breached by Hesiod's onNime encounter with the Muses at the foot of Helicon, where he was gruing his sh«p. The Muses do not begin their ascent of Olympus before they tell Hesiod what they do and wha:r he is ro do. Wh:u they do is to tell lies like the rruth and, whenever they wish, the rrurh. Whar Hesiod is to do is sing of the past and furure. celebrate the gods. and begin and end with the Muses. The distinction Hesi.o d draws bctw<"'n what the Muses do and what he is to do is between direct and indirect speech. Hes.iod seems ro anticipate the objection ofSocrates, who wants rhe poets in the best city in speech never ro assume the guise of anyone bur themselves. Hesiod tells us thar he could have incorporated what the Muses say imo what he says they say; bur insread he lets the Muses speak for themselves, or, if we adopt Soctares' view, he becomes for three lines me Muses. lu soon as Hesiod moves &om narrarhoe ro imitation the issue of imitation emerges in the form of lies like the truth. Either in sq>uating himself off &om another or in becoming mother, Hcsiod roveals that there is a speaking thar is mixed up with a peculiu form of lying. Whatever else this may mean, it calls arrcnrion ro the facr rhar ir is only because Hcsiod blocks the path of the Muses on their way to rhe top of Olympus that the Muses musr be disdosed as who they are. Without H esiod the cckbration of the might of Zeus would not have included the Muses; and without the Muses there would ha~ been no story of the rriumph of Zeus. The disclosure of the Muses through Hesiod fora:s the cc.lebrarion of rhe gods to include the
7
8
Clupr:er On<
srory about the gods. The cfuclo.,we of the being of the gods includes the disclosure of the meaning of the gods. The Muses setve cwo purposes. They favor either kings or singers. The purpose of sin.g ea is ro m~e men forger the evils cltey endwe by recalling me glories of rhe human past and the blessed gods of Olympus. The pwpose of kings, if the Moses look favorably on their birth, is 10 settle suirs in such a way as to reconcile the loser, or him who believes he is the loser, ro his losing our. The Moses are not needed for the kiAgs co know wh2r is right; but they are needed to esrablisb right in spite of the opposition to right by those who belie-oe dtey are in the right. The Ml!Se$ ean fit together right and apparent right. They ean do this 011 eardt; Hesiod doe. not make it clear whether Zeus also needs the Muses to win over those he overthrew ro the new order, or he is $0 pow~ that be can dispense wim rheir help among the gods. but he is srill not so powerful as nor to need them among men. Before Zeus there was Kronos; before Zeus there was rhe golden age, in which there was neither women nor work. Singers eall men baek to a time when there was no need of singers, to a time before Zeus, in order to have them forger their troubles and at the same time rttancile men co what is. The belief that once there was paradise now loSt and the belief that things are just what they are, or rhe bdief in a cosmogony, are all of a piece. It is the purpose of the Muses to satisfy those belie& and point the way to their falsiry. Hesiod asks the Moses for help. They are to celebrate the gods and tell their story. They are to begin at the beginning. At the beginning. there is onl)• one god Hesiod kn.ew of before the Mu~ began; but that god-Earth-is second. The formula used to introduce her as the second is a &tap E'n u'ta, "then thereafter." This formula, we expect, will at least be repeated when.ever the Muses proceed from. one class of gods ro andisappoimed: rhe Titans too are presented other; and we are not at after rhe formula Cl~~.ap E'1t£l ~Cl. Bur after cltis ocewrence the formula vanishes only ro reappear in a ronuaf.tcrual at the end-what would have happened "then thereafter• had Zeus not swallowed Metis and been replaced by their son (897). The apparent temporal succession of the poem is replaced by a narrative succession that remprs us into rewriting the poem in accordance with the mtth of time, for many parts of the story of Zeus are given before he is bo.rn; indeed, his offer to all the gods to overcltrow the Titans and his own h ther is reported in indirea statement long before his mother tricked Kronos into swallowing a srone in place of himself. At the bq;inning, in order, are Chaos, Earth, Tanarus, and Eros. AU
nm
The Fint C
of them came to be. They came to be out of nothing and through nothin,g. The Muses carry the principle of generation-whatever is, came to beso far that it become§ nonsense. Let us suppose, then. that the MUSe§ mean that there was no beginning, for whar was at the beginning was nor cosmogony bur theogony. What was at the beginning were not beings bur meanings. There were always gods. At the beginning, then, there would be Earth, Tarwus, and Eros. Of th.ese tbrc:c, Earth dominates th.e narrative. T artarus does not enter the story before Zeus finds a use for him as the prison of the Titans. Tattatus is the anticipated home of Right as punishment. As for Eros, though it would seem to be at least meant as an efficient cause, as indeed Aristotle takes it ro be, Eros does nor reappear extept as an attendant of Aphrodite, and in verbal form as the love Zeus conceived for Memory in giving birth to the MUSe§. Not only, then, is Right an empty form at the beginning but also Eros, who is the most beautiful of the gods. The beautiful and the just are at the beginning bur they are virtually fruitless. The third is Earth. She alone immediately produces out of herself Ouranos, "in order that be may bide be.r completely, so that be may be the ever-safe sear for the blessed gods.• The only one of the first beings whom Hesiod kne\v of beforehand, and who seems therefore to be completely real, bas rwo purpose clauses attached to her first production. The real involves the good. At the beginning, then, are rhe good. the just, and the beautifuL TI1e story He§iod tells would seem to be accordingly about the ways in which these kinds were split and combined in the experiences of men: Chaos, or "Gap." woul.d be the difference berween any [WO th.em. Although the good, the just, and the beautiful are at the beginning, they are not as such at the beginning. What is said about the beginning only dimly reflects the beginning. Eros seems to be inactive. The possible cxteption is in the birth of Day out of Night and Erebus, the first acr of sexual generation, and it occurred in love (phi/,w). The separation i.nto day and night occurs through the mosr beautiful of the gods. What is to be seen in the light is always at a disranee, but the union in love precludes distance and light. At the beginning, rhe double aspect of Eros is split into day and night: when Ouranos comes ro sleep with Earth, he brings night with him. Whar is to be seen and what is not to be seen in the light are set apart in such a way rhat they cannot be rejoined. Accordingly, Eros as the separator of nighr and day is replaced by hatred as the separator of earth an.d heaven. What ordeu the cosmos is not Eros the god, but hatred, which is first seen to be effective before we hear of any gods who might be thought m cover th.e range of meaning in hatred. Hatred emerges as the orderer of
9
10
Chopt
the cosmos th.rough an apparent failure of narration. Th~ Muses list th~ Titans as born ~fore they are really born, for we l~rn after their birth that their father Oumnos prevemed them from ~ing born. To be born means ro come imo the light. Not tO be in the light is not ro be born. Ouranos loathed his offipring; be bared becoming or rime. The virtual supprusion of Day, which is never for always, forced there to ~ a permanent light imo which the gods could be born forever. This new light required th~ castration of Ouranos, or the ~rmanem separation of the distance and union of Eros. At the beginning, Day comes from Night and Erebos. The light of day is presumably that ofwhich 0lllliJ1os deprived his children; rhis light, once rhey are allowed tO enrer it, will be ~nnanemly theirs. When Day and Night rerum, in the section on the topography of Tanarus, day has ~come the human day. It is no longer something into which we go and abide, but something into which we go and out of which we pass into night, sleep, death, and Hades. Man has become mortal, and mortal is not a neutral term rhat designates the &ct that man dies bur a marked term in a pair, whose meaning is determined by its opposite, immortal. The shift &om the god Death to the god Hades, from a designation of a verb oo a subject, signifies rhe vanishing of ~gas something we simply know intO the experience of ~g about which we know nothing, and whose meaning is supplied by the gods whom we can never become. The intporrance of this shift from neutral being oo loaded meaning can be measured by Soccares, who in Plato's Apology dis1:inguishes himself from all the rest of the Atheni3JlS by his ignorance about death and their un· shakable convicrion that death is an evil Socrates restS his case for philosophy on the arternpr to recover the bein.g of nonbeing from the overlay of irs meaning. which is Hades. Hades is nor rbe truth nf d~th but of philosophy, whose constant effort is ro discover the invisible and deathless aitks. The hatred of time, which is created through Eros. leads to rhe creation of space, into which the Titans can come to be and be in tb.e light. The consequence of this suppression of love in &vor of hatred is rhe coming into being of Aphrodite, who arises from the genitals of Ouranos falling intO the sea. N. the same time as Aphrodite is born from the lOam of the sea, the giant$ and Furies are born from the drops of blood that fell on rhe earth. Eros, we may say, is reborn along with vengeance as Aphrodite. Aphrodite is Eros combined with the desire for punishment. The beautifulllnd rbe just are now together forever. That this bas happened Hesiod indicates by inserting his firsr pair of s~eches. Earth asks who of all her children w!U punish their farber for his crime, and Kronos
The Fim Crisis in First Pbilosophy accepts the challenge, for Ouranos first, he says, devised unseemly deeds. As soon as gods speak, they lie; they imerprer necessity in terms of right. Neither mother nor son says that ro be born means to go inro the lighr; both falsify the light as right. They color becoming with meaning. Such a coloring means that the Cyclopes and rhe Hundred-banders, who are equally the childre.n of Earth and Ouranos, do not come into rhe lighr with the Titans bur are kept imprisoned by Ouranos even after be bas b«n castrated and thus created the distance between heaven and earth into which aU his children should have been able to emer. The Cyclopes and the Hundred-banders have their meaning in the story of the Titanomachy and Typhos. \Vhat they are and what they signify are separated. They are the only case in which Hesiod allows such a separation. Had he followed his usual practice, the overthrow of the Titans and Typhos would have had to have been given before the TitartS had even taken over from Ouranos. Zeus would have been at the beginning, and T arrarus, or the establishment of right, would not have been empty at the beginning. There would have been punishment as soon as there had been crime, and there would never have been rime uninfecred by rhe desire for revenge. Hesiod's failure ro account for rhe Cyclopes and the Hundred-hande.rs staying hid once there is light, so mar they have ro wait for Ztus before they can come into the light, forces us ro conclude rhar Ztus was always, or that a cosmogony mar was not from the first a rheology is impossible. The recovery of the beings is through the meaning of the beings, for our deepest illusion is that we know the beings as they are in themselves. If is immediately after the st.ory of the birth of Aphrodite that Hesiod speaks of the gods whose effecrs we have already seen in that story. There are now Strife, Philotes, Deception, Speeches (Logoi) , and Lies. The same sequence had occurred when Hesiod told the story of the Muses: their names embody the verbs, nouns, and adjectives in the story of their birth. The gods apparendy come after what they really are. Hesiod gives us the evidence against his argument in the srory he tells. \'(/e are forced to use Hesiod againsr Hesiod in order ro understand Hesiod. After rhe children of Night and Strife come the children of Poncos, o r rhe Sea. The most important of these is Nereus, or Truth (Nemerres, or Unerringness, is one of his daughters). At the beginning, there 'vere lies an.d there was rrurh; they were as separated as the sea from earth and night from day. They were nor really separated. There were nor ar the beginning the Muses who tell lies like the truth. That there are lies and that there is truth is a lie like the rrurh the Muses tdl. The belief that we know the beings apart from meaning is on a par with our belief that lie and truth arc aparr.
n
11
Chapter One We believe rhey are apart, say the Muses, because we belie"
The Fint Crisis in Firs<: Philosophy seemed ro be permanent once Ouranos was castrated, by a separat.ion maintained by Arbs: rhat heaven and canh arc separate is now a matter of Zeus's will. The sky may fall at any moment. Zeus introductS terror. The introduction of tenor requires irs opposire, the promis<: of the eternal. Woman is due ro his making; she is the lim being who is norhing but meaning. Her meaning is in both ber appearance and her being. In subsrance she is earth, in appearance she is beautiful. She is a beautiful evil Woman was made ro separate men from gods in rcaliry and reeonnect them in appearance. Before Zeus there were no women, and men lived with the gods. Prometheus tried to hoodwink Zeus by offering him rwo porrions from what would be the fim sacrificial vicrim. One portion is eovered with skin, the other with fin; under the skin there was meat, under the far there were bones. Zeus deliberardy chose the bones. In his apparent anger ar being decrived, Zeus rook fi.re away from men; he eithe.r made Prometheus's gi.ft ro men unusable or he made men ear raw Aesh. Prometheus, however, srolc fire back from Zeus and men accepted it. They accepted botb Prometheus's apporrionmenr and Prometheus's crime; bur tbey agreed ro sacrifice ro rhe gods with fire and leave them the honor and rake for themselves the gain. Men always had fire, Hesiod =ms ro be saying, bur only when fire was taken away and stolen back did they really have fire. Fire ceased to be a be.ing in irself and acquired a lawful meaning. In exchange fo.r that fire Zeus bad woman made. She too is like the double fire. Hephaestus made her. The fashioning of woman leads Hesiod ro make his 6rsr c:xrended simile; ir is the first of three. The second occurs in the eourse of rhe Titanomachy, and separates what Zeus did from what his hdpers did. the Hundred-banders, who really defeated the Tirans. Ir involves a counrerlil.crual and is occasioned by the fire of Ze.us provin.g ro be in.cffecrive as a weapon bur still full of significance. There is a so-called law of Zielinslci which srar<S that epic poetry never gO<S back in narrative time. Hcsiod violates this law rwice. He recalls tbe imprisonment of tbe Hundredbanders by Ouranos in order ro explain how Zeus managed ro conquer the Tirans. Hesiod gUtS back in ri.me ro give rhe Hundred-banders a meaning. In doing so, he rclls how Zeus used his Lightning-bolts ro such effect that ir seemed to rhc eyes and eat'$ tbar be bad reproduced what had been tbe crash when earrh and sky had ori.gi.nally eomc o.ear ro one another. Through a simile rhe 6rsr act of cosmic creation has been charged with meaning, tbe threat Zeus holds our rbat what is now apart is not in truth aparr bur is subject ro his will. To be tOgether is nor rhe unjon of love bur the union of chaos. The power (ouva1u~) of Zeus is the
tJ
4
Chapter One
meaning (Suvallt~) of Zeus. It naruraUy comes om in a simile of the Muses. The third and last simile of the Tht4grmy compares the lighming of Zeus in its deploymem llgilinst Typhos to the mdcing of iron or tin; it is elfeaive against T yphos, who otbeJWise would have usurped b.is rule. T yphos's power consists in his ability to imitate the sounds of all things, including the language of the gocb. T yphos is the false god. ln his case the simile is true and Zeus's power is real. He is followed by the marriages of Zeus, after all the gods ha\<e agreed co his rule. His first marriage was ro be with Metis, or Mind, but it did nor take place; had it gone forward, and Zeus not swallowed her instead, Zeus would have been overthrown by his son. The name of this unborn god muse be Oucis, or No-Cloe. Between the anonymity of Mind and the false god Typhos is Zeus. Zeus is the lie like the truth, or, as Heraclitus says, The one is willing and nor willing to be ealled by che name of Zeus. The accusative of Zeus's name is Dia; it is indistinguishable from the preposition, which with the genitive divides things and wi.th the accusative desi.goaces a cause. ln the whole display of gods and goddesses which is rhe Thtogony. only one god does not come to be. His name is Desire, or Himeros. Concealed within Him-eros is the name .Eros. Himeros accompanies both the Muses and Aphrodite. On the occasion of the birth of Aphrodite, Hesiod explains why she is ealled "laughter-loving," philommridis. She is laughter-loving, he says, because she came co lighr from genitals, or mrdert. The word midea is in fact two words; one names the genitals, the other wise counsels. Wise counsels belong parricul3fly co Zeus. The movement of the poem is from sex ro mind, from mid~a ro midea. Could ir be, rhe.n, that concealed within lau.ghcer-lovio.g Aphrodite ace not jusr genitals bur wise counsds? Could V..OI1!1E1811~ mean <1>1A.6oo~o~? There is only one occasion, and this I am inclined ro believe ends Hesiod's poem, where rhe plans of the gods are in harmony wirb golden Aphrodite. lr is ar tbe birth of Medeia or Wisdom. She is rhe granddaughter of the sun, and her mother is JduU., "she who knows,»
Nott Hcsiod underscores the conncaion bcnveen Hecate, whose lim syUable is the same as the word "wiiling" (h.kon), by speaking of Hecate's possible willing· 1.
ness s·ix rimes (~19, 430, .o132, 43.9· 443, 447).
.••
•
-~,:'>
T, w · o
Achilles and the Iliad
T H E F I aS T Q U EST I 0 N AN 0 AN S WE a
of Porphyry's QUJZntionn
Homrriau run:
Wctt anyone 10 :ask. noting the worth and acdleo<% of Acbillcs. why Homer called his work the !liatl and nor the Ar/,;}kjJ-aJ he did the OJ;=y ofter Odysseus-we would answer that. in one case, the s10ry a>ncemed a •ingle man; while in the other, even if Achilles excelled the resr, yet they roo were exceJient, and that Homer wished to show us not only Achilles bur also, in a way, all hrroes, and what son of meo they we"': so, unwilling to call it aftct one man, he used the name of a cil)', which merely suggnted the name of Achilles.
Achilles is a hero in a world of heroes; he is of the same cast as rhey, rhough we might all him rhe lim impression th:u h:u caught each point more finely man later copies. He holds within hitrudf all the heroic virtues that arc given singly to others (he h:u the swiftness of Oilcan and the suengtb ofTdamonian Ajax), but his excellence is still the sum of rhein. We do not need a separate rule to measllfC' his supremacy. 6ut before we can come into rhe presence of Achilles and take his mta$urc, we must lim ~ presented with rhe common warrior, wbo is not jun $0mething vaguely but specifically heroic, with whom Achilles shares more in common than he knows. The common warrior is the armature on which Achilles is shaped and rhc backdrop against which his story is played. Homer :wumes our ignorance of wha1 tbe her~ arc, the heroic world from which Achmes withdraws and yet ro which he still ~longs. And it
•s
16
Chapter Two
is our intention here to show how rhis wo.rld circumscribes, rhough it does not complere.ly define, AchiUes.
I. Men and Huoa When Hector's challenge ro a duel found no takers among rhe Achaeans, "as ashamed ro ignore as afraid tO accept it," Menelaus, after some time, adopting a rebuke inve.nred byThersites (2. 2H), berares rhem rhus: omoi, apeilrtiret, Athaida. oulut'Achaioi (7.96, cf. 235- 36, tr.389, :l.J-409). Warriors oughr to believe that ro be a woman is rhe worst calamity; and yet Horner seems to mock their belief, in malting Menelaus, who warred to recover the most beautiful of women, and Tbersites, tbe ugliest person who carne to Troy, the spokesmen for manliness. However rhis may be, both the Achaeans and Trojans not only insist on being men as opposed ro women, but also on being andm as distinct from amhropoi. Anthropoi are men and women collectively. and men or women indifferendy, and wharcvc.r may be. the vinues of an anrbropo•. it cannot be martial cournge, which is the specific virtue of men. Nestor urges the Achaeans to srand their ground (.14.661-63): "Friends, be men (andres), and ser shame i.n your heart before other human beings (anrhriipoi), and let each of you remember )'Our children and wives, and possessions and parentS." The Achaeans themselves must be ,zndrts, or "be-men"; others, their own children, parentS and wives, are anJhriipoi. Anthropoi are the others, either those who lived lxfure-proteroi anthriipoi--(s.637. 2J.3J:l., 790, cf. J.2jO, 6.J.02, 20.217, :t:l.O, 233, :1.4·535)-or chose yet co comeoprigonoi an~l.mipoi (3.287, 353. 460, 6.358, 7.87); and if the heroes e.mploy it of the livin.g. they ate careful .not tO include themsdves (cf. 9.134. 276). Othe.rs are anthriipoi, but never is another an ,znrhropor. If you wish co be ao individual, you mwt be either anir or gunl; but if you belong ro a crowd, indistinguishable from your neighbor, you are both cataloged rogether under ~human beings" (3.402, 9·134. 328, 340, 592. 10.213, 14.662, r6.6u, r8.288, l'f.:l., 20.104, 357, :1.4.202). The singular occurs bur th.rice in the Iliad, twice in a general sense and perhaps once of an iodividual, but in aU three cases Hornet s~ in his own name, and two of them occur in similes (t6.263, 3t5> 17.572). And not only do human beings in the heroic view lack aU uniqueness and belong more. to rbe past or the future than the present, but even Odysse.us seems to young Ancilochus, as a membe.r of a prior generation. more IZnfhroponhan 11J1b (2).787-91). Old age is as absolute as death, which deprived Hector and Parroclus of
AchiU<$ and lhe Iliad
their androtita /uri hlbin (r7.857• 2.2.363, cf. 24.6), a heroic manhood char lasts bur an inStant, and with iu end consigns Odysseus ro rhe world of anthropoi and Hector tO Hades. Achilles in the ninth book is found "pleasing his heart wirh the cleartoned lyre and singing the famous deeds of men" (ltka tmdr6n, 9.189, cf. 524-2.7); whereas Aeneas, before declaiming his genealogy to Achilles, remarks that "we know each othds lineage and have heard rh.e famous words of mortal b.uman beings" (prolrlu14. ~~~~ thnif6n anthr6p6n 2.0.203, cf. 6.490-93 with G.3s6-s9). Deeds are done by andra, words are spoken by anthropl>i; and if b.uman beings do anything, it is only the tillage of rhe. fields (cf. 16.392. 17·549-50, 19.1~1 , bur cf. Hesiod Tlxogtmy roo). The b.eroes' contempt for speeches is bur part of their contempt for t111thr6f>Di (c£ 15.741, t6.610-JO, 2J.3S6-68, 248-57) , and yer th.ey depend on them for the immo.rtality of their fame (6.357- 58, ].87-91, cf. 8.579-So). A~~. thr6J>Di are the descendants of andm, rhe shadows, as it were, thar rhe heroes cast inro rhe future, wb.ere rhese poor copies of themselves li\'C on; and as the adular.i on rhey will give would seem tO justify their own existence, it is proper tb.at rhc:se later gener.uioos, extOlling rhe b.eroes beyond rheir worth, should look on rhern as demigods: so the word hbnilheoi occurs but once, in a passage on the furure destruction of rhe Ach•.eans' wall, and nor accidentally it is coupled rhere wirh tZIIdm (hbnithe5n genos andron. u.l:J).' Under one condition are rhe heroes willing ro regard themselves as anthropoi: if tb.ey refer at rb.e same rime to rhe gods. Achilles makes the two heralds, T altb.ybius and Eurybares, wimesses ro his oarh: pros u tht:On >naltirron pros tt thniton anthr6p6n (1.339). The gods are blessed and im· mortal, while anthropDi are mortal, and it is only his weakness. when confronted with rhe power of rhe gods. rhar makes a bero resign himself to being human. "Shall mere be evil war and dread strife," ask the Achaeans and Trojans, "or does Zeus bind us in fuendship, Zeus who dispenses war ro anthropoi" (4.8:1-84, '9-12.4). Whenever the heroes feel the oppressive weight of their mortality, rhey become, i.n rheir own opinion, like orher men who are always human beings (1.339, 3-279• 4.84, 320, 6.123, r8o, 9-[46o], soo. 507, 18.107, '9·94· 1}1, 2.24> 260, 2~.s66, s69. 23-788}. And rh.e gods also, if rh.ey wish to insist on rheir own superiority, or no longer wish to take care of the heroes, call rhem in rum anthropoi; as Atb.ena does, in calming Ares, wb.o b.as just beard of b.is son's dearh (14-139-411, cf. 4-45, 5-442, 21.461-66, 2.4-49): "Someone better than he has been slain before now or will b.ave beeu slain hereafter, but it is grievous ro save rhe offspring and generation of all human beings." If anyone
17
dl
Chaprer Two
had a righc m be called a hero, surely this Ascalaphus, a son of Ares, had; buc Athena wishes to point ouc his worchlessness and deprive b.im of aoy divine status, so that Ares' rcgrer ar his loss might be diminished. For the gods a.re noc concerned wich men insofur as rhcy arc morr-Al, but based on cheh possible divinity. The word "hero." which Homer identifies with tmir (me phase h&oes andm cb.rice occua, S-747• 9·l'1S· '1,.346, cf. Hesiod Wor*s and Days IS9), and which clearly has nothing m do with antbropoi, shows bow far apart rhe Achaeans and Trojans are from. ordinary men: even we can fed how jarring the union bmes anrhropoi would have been (Hesiod, in his live ages of men, never calls the heroes, unlike the other four ages, and1ropo~ Workstnui Days 109, 1,7, 143, r8o). Bur in whar consists the heroic distinction? First, in lineage: the heroes are either sons of gods or c.o.n easily find, within a few genetations, a divine ancestor; and second. in providence: the gods are concerned with their fine. Zeus is a father to them- patir antiron u rhriin te--who pities them and saves rhem from death, while be is not cbe &mer bur rhe ruler of human beings, hos to rheoiri kai anthriipoiJ-i anasui (~.669). Zeus aces toward the heroes as Odysseus is said co trear his subjccrs-patir hiis ipios iLn-and he acts toward tiS as Agame.m· non is toward his men: distant, haughry, i.ndifferenc. As che providence extended O\'et human beings is unbenevolenc (cf. 6.1, 12-19), Zeus dispenses war co anthriipoi, himself careless of irs consequences; buc ir is a "father Zeus" who, Agamemnon believes, will aid the Achaeans and de.fe:u the perfidious Trojans; and as f.lthe.r Zeus he lare.r pities Agamemnon and sends an eagle for an omen (4.84, 19.~~. 4-~35· 8.~5. cf. 5-33, 8.rJ~. 397, 11.80, ~01, 16.:!-50, 17.630). Andmand rheoibelong co the same order; they may be builr ou differem scales, bur they are commensurate with one another (cf. 19.95-96). Achilles is a rheios an& (l6.]98, ci. 5-184-85, 331-r~. 839): theios anthropoJ would be unthinkable. The direct intervention of the gods seems co e.Levare man co an&, whereas the fiux of fortune, in which no caring providence can be seen, degrades him co anrhropo1. "Of all rbe things char breathe and move upon rhe earrh," Odysseus tells Amphinomus, "the earth nurtures nothing weaker rhan a human being (akidnormm amiiTiipoio); for as long as the gods granr him virtue and his limbs ace strong, he rhi.n.ks he will rneec with no evil in the future; but whenever the blessed gods assign him sorrows, then he beaa them, though struck wich grief, with a sceadfast heart" (I8.IJO-H; cf. l-4-49). When, however, Zeus pities the horses of Achilles, who weep for P.atrodus, he regrets char he gave co mortal Pdeus horses ageless a.n d immortal, for • of all the things tbac breathe and move
Achilln and !he flillli
upon me e:arrh, nothing is more pitiful man a he- man. (11i:tur6tmm llndros. •7·4+4- •IS· cf. u .u ). Odysseus talks of tmt1Jr6poi. Zeus is concerned only with llndm. diose among u.s whom me gods favor and uy to raise above me common lot of men. lc is not the uncnt2inry in = 's life which S«ms to Zeus man·s sorrov.~ for me gods can pur an end ro chao<X and ensure his success; bur even me gods uc powerless ro change his fate. no matter how many gifr:s !hey might lavish on him . Mortaliryand morraliry alone makes for the misery of man. Odysseus, on the ocher hand, did uor find man's burden in monaliry (already implied in nnrhr6poi) bur in his inability to guarantee. as long as he lives, his happine$5. Nor his necessary death, in spite of me gods' attention, bur his necessary helplessness, because of rhc gods' willful despocism, seems to Odysseus rhe weakness of man. Even as me IVOrd ll1111Jr6po! is mort frequent in the OdyryY dum in the 1/illli. while me word hir61 occurs almosr twice as often in the Iliad (llluhr6pM: 118 in the ~. 70 in the 1/UuJ: hms: 73 in rhe 1/illli. 40 in the Odymy; che same racios apply lO anir (Iliad 9·714. 15.478), ph6s (Iliad 9-58, 1s-40), lmJtoJ (Iliad 9-415, 1).68)), so Odysseus saw the ci~ of many human beings, and Achilles cast into Hades rhe souls of many heroes. The OdyrJt:y takes place after cbe Trojan War. when those upon whom the heroes had rdied for thei r fame are now living and remember in song the deeds of rhe past (cf. 2..347-52, 8.479-80. 4.91- 93· with 1.35859· :1.1.))1- S)). l'hemiw among the suitors and Demodocus among the Phac:acians cdebrate an almost dead wholly heroic world; and Odysseus also, since he shared in mar past but never belonged ro it., recoums racber chan acts out his own adventures. As Odysseus's deeds are only murhoi, so ne hinuelf is an anrhr6pM (1.119, 1.}6, 7. 2u. 307, 8.S)1, ll.J6J- 66, n.-4J4-l)), not only as opposed m cbe gods, which even Achilles migh< allow to be true of himself, bur absolu<ely so.1 War is the butiness of ~Jiron llMm, peace. of 11nrhr6poi; and as Odysseus never did quite lir imo cbe IliAd and was an obscure figure (his greatest exploit occurred a< nigh<, cf. Ovid MttJtmorphorn 13-9-IS), he becomes in the 0Jyrst'J pr=nincnt, while the former great are mere ghosts in Hades, who depend on Odysscw for their power of speech. The heroes are survivors in the Odyssey; they no longer domiruue the st•ge; they are old-fashioned and our of favor. Menelaus is a hero (he often u.ses the word, 4.1.68, 312, 423, 617, rp 17, 11.1), hut Tdernachus becomes a hero only a< his court (4.21, 303, 312, 1).62), where rhe spell of the past srilllingc.rs. Laencs is a hero, or rarher "hero-old man" (gmin biriiJ. 1.189, 1.99. 19.144, 22.185, 2·PJ4), who putters about in his garden.
19
0
•
zo
Ch~prer
Two
Other old men are heroes: Egyptius, Halisrherse,, Echen.us (2.15, 157, 7·155, u.342, 24-451); and Euma.e ns calls Odysseus, when disguised as an old man, hero (14.97). The wo.r d bas been preserved in the coumry and remains on the lips of a swineherd-an empty tide, without any suggestion of force, nor even an indication of rank; for Mulius, a servanr of Arophinomus, can now lay claim to it (18.413, cf. Eustachius ad kJc.).
il. Achaeans and Trojans To Agamemnon's demand for an equal priz.e in rerum, were he ro give Chryseis back to her lather, AchjJles objects: "Mosr worthy Arreidesmosr rapacious of aU-how will the magnanimous Achaeans give you a prire?" (1.111- 23). The phrase m~a1humni Achaioi would nor at 6rsr arrracr our arrention, though we migh.t doubt irs suitabiliry, were it not that, after Agamemnon has used it in echoing Achilles (9.135), ir never a.gain occurs in the Iliad (cf. Odyssty 24·57) . Not the Achaeans bur the Trojans are m~athumoi (Iliad P ·7• 102., 8.155, 10.105, u .294, 459, 13-456, 737, 17 -420, 2J.I7S• t8I). Why then did Achilles employ ir? As Achilles himself is ofren ~athumos (IIiadtJ.2t4, r8.226, 19.75, 21.153, 23.168, 498, cf. 9.184, 496), he transfers his own epither to aU the Ac:hae,.ns, in the hope that, as his an.ger rises against Agamemnon, the. Achaeans, carried along by his rhetoric, will side with him. "High-spirited" is, as the BT Scholiast remarks, demagogic. The Achaeans should also revile Agamemnon's presumptuousness; they should show as much fury as himself, a fury chat characterizes the Trojans as a whole without even being persuaded. The Trojan leaders use megathumni as an exhortation (p02), even as Hector urges rhem as hupmhumoi ro 6.g ht in his absence, or nor to lee Achilles frighten them (6-rn, 20.366). They are "ovec-spirired" as well as "high-spirited" in Homer's opinion {9..133, n.564, 14.15, 15.1)5, 17.276). Their spirit is nor only great bur oc.cessive; their exuberance in war turns easily into puce fury (cf. IJ.6"21-39l· They are, in the opinion of ochers, though not in Homec's, /mpnphia/Qi, "over-proud" and "arrogan<" (po6, IJ.62I, 21.22.4, 414· 459), a vice amibuted to Penelope's smtors ( OdysJe] 1.134, cf. 20.29t-92, 2L289), who are also called aginores, "super-men" or "muscle-bound"; and this the T rojans also are (Iliad ro.:t99. cf. ·4-176, Odymyuo6 passim).' Magnanimity IJUIY be a vice ora virtue. lr contains, for example, rhe inrran.sigence as well as the fearlessness of Achilles (iliad 9·496. ~0.498). It ~ no obstacles and knows no bounds. lc is so high-keyed thar the slightest jar untunes it; it has oo slack ro rake up nor
Achillos and the llimi any reseNe 10 expend. It is all action and no recoil. Thus rhe Trojans are "!Ugh-spirited" born when !hey see me blood of Odysseus, and when rhey see one son of Dares killed and me oilier in Higlu (Iliad ll.4S9· p6-29). In one case !hey are spurred ro chatge and cluSter round Odysseus, while in me other rhey are cresdii.Jien. Men who are nigh-spirited flourish on success bur cannot withstand adversity. "Their courage rises and fiills wirh !heir animal spirirs," ro adopt Macaulay's description of Morunourh; "it is sustained on me Jield ofbatde by the excirernenr of action, by rhe hope of victory, by me strange influence of sympathy"; whereas those more reserved and less outwardly spirited (menta pneionm Homerically, Iliad 3.8, u.so8, 24-364. but cf. 2.536, S4l) migh< accomplish less in viaory buc would not fall off so much in defeaL They would possess a resilience and a sread.iness me Trojans lack.• After Menelaus and Paris nave finished arming themselves, "they mlked into me space between me Achaeans and Trojans, and their glances were fearful-wonder held !hose who beheld rhern-T rojws tamers of horses and well-greaved Achaeans" (B4L-4~). The Trojans are tamers of horses as the Achaeans are wdl-greaved; buc me epirh.e a are not of the same order. If you see the Trojans, you cannot rdl !hey train hor=; if you see rhe Achaeans, you know rhey are weU-greaved. They appear wellarmed bur may or may nor be brave warriors; bur the Trojans, aU of them, &om Hector to Paris (who share$ rhe same simile of the horse, 6.so6, tp6J), are high-spirited in war. The Trojans show more readily their affections than the Achaeans, who can remove their armor and be dilferent in peace than in war; but the Trojans cannot so easily shake off their temper. Tbe.ir epithets are genc.ral aod do not particularly belong to an army. If we saw them in peacetime, they would still be "high-spirited" and "tamers of borses." Bur me Achaeans' epithets describe only their military aspc:a and offer no due ro their peaceful appearance. We know at once more about the Trojans than about the Achaeans, who are, as it were, many-sided and polutropoi: there is no Odysseus among the Trojans. Not only !heir outward show but the Trojans' inner fiber impre!S Homer; be~ it immediardy. The Achaeans, however, wear long hair, arc wellgreave
11
u
Chaprer Two
end of the second book; and yet we may say that our knowledge of them both is complete by the tenth; for it is rema.rkable how sddom their distinctive epirhers appear in the later boo.ks. Although rhe most sustained and violent engagemeots take place in Books u-17, it is not in these books that the epithets of the T tojaus and Achaeans are found most frequently. they abound instead in the early books, of which only the fifth and eighth books include great batdes, and duster round interludes in the war rather than in the war itself. Euknb>ridn, for example, occurs ninereen rimes in Books r-ro, bur only cwdve in n-14; chalkochitonon sevemeen rimes in Books 1-10, eight afterward; and ltarlltomoonm rwenry-rwo times in Books 2-4, four later. In the case of the Trojans, whose high and excessive spirit bas more of a place in war (hence megathumoi and huperrhumoi occur throughout the //Uuf), only hippodamoi suffen a like decline: seventeen times in Books 2-ro, seven afterward. When the epithets have served their purpose-to introduce us to the Achaeans and T rojans-and Homer becomes more concerned with Achilles, they are more sparingly used. Anorh.cr reason why bippodamoi decreases is that Homer assig.n.~ to the Trojans many more similes (which borh supplement and replace the epithet) after the tenth book than before: they obtain rwo in rhe first half (one in Book 3 and one in Book 4), bur fOurteen from Book 13 ro Book n , and of joint simib-those shared equally with the Achaeans- there are four before Book 10 and nine. afrer. For the Achaeans the opposite holds true: eighteen similes occur in Books 2--9, nine in Books 11-19. The similes complete Home.r 's description of the Achaeans and Trojans, and as we sorr from cbe Achaean side and slowly move across the lines to the Trojan (the plague of the Achaeans turns into the funeral of Hector), so the number of the Achaeans' similes diminishes, while that of the Trojans increases. We musr start then, like Homer, with the Achaean host, which is lim presented in the second book. where almost half of irs similes occur. When the Achaeans first 3SS<'mble, at Agamemnon's command, they seem like a mass of bees issuing in a constant stream from a smooth rock and then fly in grapelike clusrers to spring flowers: so the Achaeans ar first make the earth groan whc.n they come from their rents, and a hum pervades the host, bur then, onoe seated in serious concemrarion, they are perfectly quiet (2.87-.too). But as soon as Agamemnon finishes his disas
A<:hilla and the mad their ships down to the = (2.1:44- 54). In th6r desire to return home, they forget all discipline and become the riot and chaos of wheat 6dd and sea. So much have they been stirred up, that even afrer Odysseus has checked them they return to rhe assembly as they left it, shouting like the tumultuous ocean that breaks against a shore (2.UJ9-10): and later, when they scacrer to their tenrs, meir shout is the crash of waves against a high-jutting rock mat waves never leave (2.394-97). And yet they are now more singly resolved than before, for only rhe east wind (not east, soum, and west as before) moves them, and they center round one object-Troy's caprure-like waves that always drench one rock.l The individuality of me Achaeans, lost after Agamemnon's speech. is slowly restored in the succeeding s.intiles, when they are marshaled and turned once again into disciplined troops. The glint of thw arms is like lire, the stamp of thw feet like the swelling crash of geese, cranes, and swans; the number of th6r host like leaves, flowers, and flies in spring (:1..455-73. cf. 469 with 87). They reacquire in these animal idenrities their forme.r status, although they are not yet distinct unril the next s.intile: as shepherds easily order meir own flock in a pasture, so the leaders ranked the Achaeans for barde (2.474-77). Then the catalogue is made, which completes their ranking, and they seem like 6re spread across the whole plain of the Scarnander, and the eanh quakes like thunder (2.780- 85) . The Achaeans are marshaled noiselessly: the necessary clang of their weapons and tramp of their feet alone are heard, as if their high spirits had been purged in the a=mbly and nothing remained but a quiet resolution. "FortiJsimm in ipto diJCrimmr exmi.t m m , qui /1J'IU discrimm quidiuimu! (Tacirus HimJrin r.84). Homer has made all of the second book as a contrast ro the Trojans, who as noisily prepare for war as they advance with cries against the silent Achaeans (2.81o, J.l-9, cf. Thucydides 2.89.9). And lat~r when the truce is broken, while the Achaeans, in fear of rheir commanders, sileody move like rhe conrinuous roll of waves, and the only sounds arc commands, "nor would you. say they had speech"; the Trojans shouted, like ewes blearing ceaselessly, "nor was thei.r clamor i.n concen, for the voices were mixed, as the men bad been collected from many lands" (4.4U-)8, cf. 2.804, 867-68, Aeschylus Pmians 401-7, Polybius 1p2.8-9, Plurarch D~ ttUdimdit po•ris 10, Arrian Tactica 31, 5-6). As the Achaeans are silenr, th.ey can obey rh~ ordciS they hear; but the Trojans would drown out in their clamor any command. The simile of the Achaeans is deliberare:ly inexacr, for the echoin.g shore, against which the waves break, hllS no counrerpan in themselves, who, as soon as they are compared ro the sea,
1}
1..4
Chapter Two
are distinguished from it. They are-what is inconceivable in narure-an ordered series of silent waves. The Trojans, however, exactly correspond ro their similes, myriads of ewes penY up rogether in confusion. Of rhe Trojans' other similes in the midst of banle, four single out the clamor rhey m2ke, as waves, or winds, or srorm (tJ.79S-8oo, IS-381-84, 16.364- 66, 17.263- 66, cf. 12.J38, 16.78, 373, 21.10); 6 bw rhe noise of the Achaeans, even when they do shouT (n-so, rS-149), only warranrs a simile if the Trojans join in (4-452--16, 1•H93-40l, 16.736-40), and rheyare compared bur once co warer in battle: when their spirit, nor any outward sign, shows vexation (9.4- 8). It is not di:fliculr ro see how the epirhet3 of rhe T rojaos are connected with rheir disorder, or how those of rhe Achaeans indicate their discipline. The high spirit of the Trojans would narurally express itself in cries, and the 6ne greaves of the Ach2eans would indicare a deeper efficiency. The T rojaos never equal the Achaeans in the closeness of their ranks. whose spears and shields focm a solid wall, and shield and helmer of one rest on helmer and shield of another (tJ.u.8- JJ, t6.2I1-17); nor do rhe Achaeans, on the other hand, eve.r retreat like rhe T rojaos: "Each one peered around ro where be was ro escape sheer destruction" {14.50'7, 16.187). They B.ee, as they artack, in disorder, and more by thum()s than by ~pirtimi are they warriors (cf. Thucydides L49·'1> :1.u.8, 874-5, 89.58). They are, in rhe later Gt-edcvocabulary, barbarians. Thucydides' Brasidas, in urging his troops ro &.ce the IUyrians, could be describing rhe Trojans; who "by the loudness of ~heir clamor are insupportable, and whose vain brandishing of weapons appears menacing, bur are unequal in combat to chose who resist rhem; for, lacking all order, they would nor be ashamed, when forced, ro desert any posicion, and a barrie, wherein each man is master of himself, would give a fine excuse to all for saving their own skins" (4.u6.s, cf. Herodotus 7.2n, J.212.2, 8.86). How, rhea, are we ro explain the silent efficiency of rhe Achaeans an.d rhe noisy disorder of the T rojans? Has Homer given a reason for this difference? Some one principle whose presence would force rbe Achaeans into discipline, and whose absence would let the Trojans sink into anarchy? Aidtir, "shame,• seems w distinguish them. There are two kinds of llidtir: one we may call a muYual or military shame. rh.e other au alien or civil shame (c£ Thucydides, where virtue and sbam.e are coupled: LJ7.1, 84.3• 1.51.l, 4-19·3· 5·9·9• 101). The 6rst induces respect for those who are your equals; or, if fear also is presem, your superiors (cf. Sophocles Ajax 1075-80, P~•co Euthypbro na7-c8); the second is respect for those weaker than yourself. The first is in the domain of andre5, the second of aJltln-iJpoi
Achilles and the //Uu/
(cf. Aeschylus Agamnnnon 937-38). Heaor shows civil shame when, in speaking to Andromache, he says, " I am terribly ashamed before rhe Trojans, men and women both, if I cringe like someone ignoble an.d shun battle" (6.441- 43. cf. 8.147-56, 12.3t0- 21, 17.90- 95). And Heaor is killed because be would be ashamed to admit his error (of keeping the Trojans in the field afrer Achilles' reappearance), ashamed lesr someone baser than himself might say, "Heaor, trusting to his strength, destroyed his people" (21.104-7• cf. Aristode Magna Moralia U9Iaj-lj, Eudnnian Ethia t2JOar6- 26). As commander of h.is troops, with no one set above him, Heaor musr either feel the lash of public opinion or become as disobedient as Achilles, who at first lacks all respect for Agamemnon and later all respect for Hector's corpse (2444). When, however, the Achaeans silendy advance against the Trojans, they show another kind of shame, • desirous in their beans to defend one another" (3.9, cf. 2. )62--63). Their respect is not for others but for themselves. Neither those monger nor those weaker than themselves urge them to light, bur each wishes ro help the other, knowing that in "conce.n td virtue" resides their own safety (tJ.2J7). "Be ashamed before one another," shouts Agamemnon (and later Ajax), "in fierce contentions: when men feel shame, more are saved than killtd; but when they 8ee, neithe.r is fame nor any su.,ngth acquired" (5.520- 32, 15.562-64). And even when the Achaeans retreat, they do not scatter like the Trojans, bur they stay by their tents, held by "shame and fear, for they call ro one another continuously" (tj.657-58, cf. 8.354-55• 17.357- 65). Whatever fear they have before thei.r leaders is tempertd by their shame before one anorher; and as, according to Brasidas, three thin.gs make men good soldiers-\vill, shame, and obedience (Thucydides 5·9·9• cf. r.84.3)- so the Achaeans show their will in preferring war ro peace (2..453- 54. u.13-14), their shame in murual respea (5.787, 8.228, 13·95· 122, tj.j02, 561), and thei.r obtdience in the fear of th.eir leaders (4.431. cf. t.J3t, 4.402, 2.4·435). Agamem.non as a good king and Ajax as a brave warrior appeal ro milirary shame when they incire the Achaeans; but the aged Nestor urges them in the name of civil vinue: "Friends, be men and place in your spirit shame before oilier human beings, and let each of you remem.bcr your children, your wives, possessions, and your parents, whether they still live or now are dead; for the sake of !hose who are not here l beseech you ro stand your ground• (ts.66t-66, cf. T acitus Histories 4.18.4, Gtm111nia 7·2S.r). Even as Nestor has plaoed his worst rroops in the middle, so that they would be forctd, though unwilling, m light (4.297-300, cf. Xenophon Mnnorabilia 3.1.8, Polybius rp6.1-4), so here he wishes to regard aU the
25
16
ChAp<er Two
AchaC'.uls as caught becween me Trojans in from and their own families behind them; and he hopes by this necessity, of avoiding death at the hands of one and humiliation in me eyes of the other, that they would resist. Nesror leaves nothing ro personal courage: ir is of a piece ro rely on necessrcy and ro appeal ro civil shame. fo.r to a man who has oudived rwo generarions the bonds of society seem srronger than those of an army, nor would his own weakness give him any confidence in others' strength. As a very old man he has no peel'$, and all relations seem ro him the relations of the young ro the old; so thar in making the Achaeans respc.'Ct rbeir parents he coverdy makes them respect hirosclf Uoable ro inspire his me.n by fear of himself and unwilling ro trust to military discipline, Nesror falls back on the rehearsal of his own past prowess and on bis soldiers' recollection of those absenc (cf. 4-303-9). Military shame never once arouses the Trojans, whom the cry "Be men!" always encour.IJ!es; and once, wh.en Sarpedon cries oo rally th.e Lycians -"Sb.am.e! Lyc:ians. Where are you fleeing? Now be keen!"- the appeal is ro civil shame; for as warriors they are urged co be vigorous, a.nd shame is only invoked to ch.eck their llighr (16....2.2- 30, cf. BT Scholian '3·95· •s.soz). The Trojans rely more on their leade.rs than on their troops (cf. Tacitus Germania 30.:2), for we always read of rhe "Trojans and Hector a.rtacking (•3·'· 129, I5-4:2, 403, 3:27, 449 passi.rn), as if the single vi rrue of Hector more rhan equaled the mass effort of his men (cf. 13.49- 54). If rhe Trojans act in concert, it is rather by the example of one man than by any bravery in themselves; and Hecror himself resembles Xenophon's Proxenus, wb.o · was able to rule rhose who were noble and brave bur was unable r.o instill sharne o.r fear inro his own troops, since be was acrually more ashamed before his men than tbey before him" (At~nbn.si.s 2.6.1'9). Aeneas, for =pie, an rouse Hector and the orher captains by an appeal ro shame, bur it would be unthinkable to employ the same argument before all h n35-41 ); and in this Nestor's call ro the Acha<-ans. though ir is a kind of civil shame, differs &om the Trojan's, which onl)' affecrs tbe.ir grearesr warriors. Lessing expressed rhe dilference between the Achaeans and Trojans very precio;cly io his lAocoon (I); and although rhe passage is wdl-known, • twice and three tb.e beauti:ful things": Was bei deo Barbartn aus Wildhcit und Verbinung enrsprang. d•s wirkren
bei ihm {dem Griecheo) Grundsiirze. Bei ibm war der Heroismus wie die ''erborgenen Punkeo 1m JG..-.,1, die ruhig schl•fen, solange kcine iiu/lerc Gew•lt sic wecket, und dem Stei.ne weder seine Klarbcjt· noch seine Kiilt.c nehmen. Bci dem Barba- warder Heroism us cine belle fresscnde Klamm<,
A<:hillcs and the 1/Urd die immer robte. und jedc andere gute Eigcnscbafr in ihm veruhne, wenigStens schwinte.- Wean Homer die T rojaner mit wildem Gescbrei, die Griecben hingegcn in enrschlol!oer StiJJe rur Schlacht ruhtet, so merken die Ausleger scht wohl an, daB der Dichter hierdurch jent als &ubarcn, dicse als gesinetc VOIIacr schildern woUe. Mich "'"ndert. daB sie an einer andem Stelle cine iihnliche cbarakteriStische Emgcgcnsetzung nichr bemerkt haben. Die feindlichen Heere baben einen Walfe.nSt:illest.tnd gerro!Fen; sie sind mir Verbreonung ihrer Toren beschiifriget, welches aufbeiden Teilen nichr ohne hciSe T ranen abgebet; dnltrua thmrut khtonus. Aber Priam us verbictet scinen Trojanero tu weinen.; oud' tia klaitin Priamos mrgas. Er verbictet ihnen zu weineo, ~die Oacier. weil er besorgr, sie mOchren sicb w sehr trwei.chen, und morgen mit weniger Mut an den Streit gehen. Wohl; doch frage ich: warum mull nur Priamus dicscs besorgen? Warum e.n eilet nicht auch Agamemnon scinen Griecheo das namliche Verbor? Der Sinn des Diehrers gehr riefet. Er will uru lehren, daB nur dcr gcsinete Grieehe zugleich wcinen und mpfer scin konne; indem der ungcsinete Trojaner, um es zu scin, alle Menschlicb.keit vorher ersriekcn mussc. Ntm(fff)umai g• mm oudm It/aw n, liiSr er an einem andern One den vemandigen Sohn des weiscn Nesrors sagen.
IIL Achilles and Agam~mnon Achilles and Hector are heroes, one an Acb.aean, the other a Trojan; bur ro know them better, so that even away from their camps we should nor mistake them, forces us ro find other rrai£S peculiar ro themselves. Who eben is Achilles? Homer begs a goddess to sing rhe wrath of "Peleides Achill.es. "7 Achilles is the son of Peleus. He is marked off !Tom all other men because of his father; as an only son, wirhour brothers, he was entirely Peleus's heir (24538- 40). And were we ro ask, "Who is Peleus?" we would be rold, • Aeacides," the son of Aeacus. And if we persisted and wanted to know who he was, Achilles himself boas£S ir, "Aea.c us was ft:o.m Zeus" (21.189). Achilles then is "Zeus-bom." "Zeus-nunured," or "dearto Zeus." [n three generations he goes back to Zeus, and beyond him ir would be foolish co go. To ask Achilles who he is means ro ask b.im his lineage; and as he can only define himself in terms of the paSt, we're his ancenors unknown, be would be a nonentity (cf. 6.123 with t45- 46, n .rso with 153). In Achil.les' pauonymic is summed up pan of his own greatness. He is partly the work of generations. Achill.es is nor only the son of Peleus bur rhe grandson of Aeacus; and yet to be called "Aeacides" when he is actually "Pdeides" means that he has inherited something that. was common to all his finr aocesrotS.
17
•8
Chapter Two
Achilles is called the son of Acacus firsc in the Trojan cara.log: Ennomus and Amphimacbus were both killed by Achilles in the guise of "swifrfooced Aeacides" (2..86o, 874. but cf. A Scholiast). Achilles resembles his grandfather in his ability to kill. As a warrior he is indistinguishable from his forefathers, for killing is a family profession (cf. how eac.h side exhorrs thc.ir rroops in Thucydides, e.g., 4-92·7• 95.3; see also Herodotus 6.14.), 8.904). But during rhe embassy, when Achilles is most idle, though ironically most AchiUes (for his wrath makes up a great part of him), no one calls him the son of Peleus; rather, people point our 10 him how much he bas f.Uled to follow his father's precepts (9.252.-59, 438- 43). When, however, he returns to the fighting, his father's name is almost as common as his own; and as be ~11mes his ancestral name, he rakes up his father's spear, which no more could be huded by another than "Peleides" could be said of another h9-387-91, c£ 14.9-JJ, r6.140-44, 11.174. 178, 10.1). In the lasr book, however, where his own name occurs more frequendy than anywhere else, his patronymic is hardly present. and be is never called tO his face the son of Peleus. Somehow he bas oudived it. As Hector has many brothers, tO tell us at lim that be is the son of Priam would mean linle: so Achilles, who first mentions him, calls him "Hector the man-slayer" (1.2..p.). Paris concrariwise does not even deserw: h.is father's name, for his only distin.crion lies in his thefr; he is most of all the "husband of Helen" (3-329; 7·355• 8.82, 1).766), alrhough in his braver moments, which do not last vety long, he earns rhe right that other heroes have without questinn-ro be called "Priamides" 6-356, 6.)12).
Bur were we co a._
D
Achilles and the Iliad
claim 10 his kingdom. His patrimony gives him back h.is piety (cf. 1•P70). Ovid understood Odysseus when he made him say (Mmzmorpho!t1 lJ.L!0-41):
nam genus e< proavus c< quae non fecimus ipsi va ea oosua voco.
He is whar Junot said of himsdf. "Moi jc suis mon anccttc"; cf. Tacitw Anna/a 11.11. Odysseus's adventures are his lineage, making his vety name supcrBuous. He is a ttavder who "saw the cities of many human being;s and knew rhcir mind"; and his name, pur almost as an afterthought (withour his parronymic, 1.21), cannot make clearer his identity nor add much lusrer 10 his eminence. He is like Thersires, whose fdcher and country are not given (cf. BT Scholiasr 2.212), his deformity and ourspokenness being title enough; so that 10 haw Odysseus, his closest rival in anonymity, answer his abuses was a masrersrroke. Their resemblance is so close that Sophocles' Neop10lemus, when Philocreres asks him abour a man • clever and skilled in speaking, • thinks he musr mean Odysseus, whereas he accua.lly means Thersires (Phi/.Qcutn 440-41). Moreover, Philocceces, believing ir ro be a uuer lineage, can even call Odysseus the son of Sisyphus; and Odysseus can tell Eumaeus that he is illegitimate (14.202-3). When Odysse.us reUs the Cyclops his name, "No-one is my name; my farher, mother, and all my companions call me No-one" {9.366- 67), he is almost speaking more truthfully than when he rells Alcinow rhar he is the son of Laenes (9.19, cf. IO.Jl)- JO). His anonymity is rhe result of his guile, for Homer has him pun on the likeness of outir and miti1 (9-414. cf. 4o8). His wisdom made him no one and cur all his ties with the past. Alth.ough Achilles, if opposed to Odysseus, seems ro consist in nothing bur his past, yet when opposed ro Agamemnon he becomes more unique_ Indeed, he stands somewhere in berween Agamemnon and Odys-seus. Agamemnon does not even appear, aJ 6rst, as himself bur as "Arreides lord of men," while Achllles is "brilliant" or "glorious" in compuison (q). Nor until he diff"ers from the rest of the Ach2eans (who wish ro restore Chryseis), although he has been mentioned rhrice before, does Homer call him Agamemnon (1.24), even as Achilles calls him • Atreides" after he has convened the assembly (1.59), bur "Agamemnon" wh<:n he wishes ro single him our for his crime (1.90, cf. 94). Agamemnon rises co rebur Achilles, but Homer 6rst clothes him in all possible authority: vHero Arreides, wide-ruling Agamemnon" (J.J
>9
JO
Chapt
ro im.pr:ess Achill<S, who, howeve.r, begins his reply as if he agreed with him: "Mosc worthy Atreides, • but instead of ending the line, as we later realize he should have, he cruelly insem, "most rapacious of all" (1.121.). The proper end-ta.g. "lord of men Agamemnon," ofren occurs, mostly spoken by Nestor, who, old man that he is. knows whar loyalry and respect must be shown to a king. When the Achaeans are about to be carnloged, Agamemnon must have .full power. He must be nor ortly the "most worthy" becau~e of his lineage, but also the "king of men" in his own name (2. 4~+. but note 2.362). Later, when the fortunes of rhe Achaeans are loweSt, Nestor again bolst~ Agamemnon with his titles; and the other kings also, after the embassy to Achilles F..ils. subscribe in cne same way their loyalry (9.96, 163, 677, 697 wixb. which cf. 8.293). Achilles only much later, when he has sloughed off his rage, addusses him properly (19.I46, 199, cf. 23-49). Not unril, however, Achill<S swears an oath by Agamemnon 's scepter (if it is the same as Agamemnon's), does the conftict between rhem come out in the open: "Yes, by rhis scepter, which never again shall grow branches or lea~. since it first left in stump Oil the mountain, nor shall it bloom again, for the bronze blade has srripped it of in leaves and ii:S bark; and now in turn the sons of the Achaeans, the wielders of justice, carry it, mose who procea the laws thac come from Zeus" (1.234-39) . Then he Rings down the scepter, "studded with golden naiLs," the sceptei whose rrue origin we Learn much larer, jUS< before Agamemnon. doing "what is right" (2.73, cf. B Scholiasr [Porphyry]},' rries the Achaeans, fearfullc:st Achilles' refusal to fight and his desire to return home have infected the whole army: "Up srood strong Agamemnon with the scepter, which Hephaescus artfully bad made: Hophaestus gave it ro Zeus lord Kronion, and Zeus gave it to the Treaswer of Riches (who kills with his brilliance), and lord Hermes gave it to Pdops the goader of horses, and Pelops in tum to Arreus the shepherd of his people; and Atreus when he died lefr it to wealthy Thyettc:s, and he in tutn ldi it for Agamemnon ro wieldto rule over many islands and all Argos" (2..1oo-1o8, cf. 453-54). Lessing again in his Laocoon (r6) has beautifully brought out the reason why t:he one scepter receives these. two descriptions {or if there are t\VO scepters, why there are cwo): Jener, ein Werk drs Vulbns; dieser, von einer unbelwmren Hand auf den Bergen gt:$chniuen: jener der alee lk$ia eint:$ cdelo Hawes; dieser bestimmt, die
Achillc:s and the Oiati anvenrauet bane. Oies<s war wirldicb de.r AbsCU'ld, in welchem sich Agamemnon und AchiU von
The cooBict becween them is berween authoriry and power, berween the gifts of nature and those of a heritage. Agamemnon's authoriry consists in m.ere words (in the spell of his ancestry), and were Achilles to yiel.d to them, as if they we.re deeds, he would be thought weak and cowardly (1.293-94, cf. 9.32-39). Briseis is only the pretext for his more serious difference, which must always exisc whenever power and position do not coincide. The usurper Bolingbroke and Kin.g Richard D. for example, work out i.n smaller compass the dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon; for Richard relies as much on his divine appoinrmem as Agamemnon does; and Bolingbroke, like Achilles, truStS more to "blood and bone" than ro ancestral right (cf Richard 11, 2, 54-62; J, 39-53, 73-90).' Achilles swears by the authoriry of Agamemnon-if his scepter is Agamemnon's-in terms of his own power. He swears by the scepter as he swears by the gods, and only Achilles swears (r.86, 339, 23.43). Agamemnon calls upon the gods more cautiously, as witnesses (as those who know, 3-276-So, t9.258-6o), whereas the gods to AchiU<:S are no more than his scepter, which is but the extension of his own power, losing all its force as soon as he casts it aside. Though "studded with golden nails," he holds it in no esceem. Any branch ar all would serve him as well. He does not need the past ro rally the present. But Agamemnon, who has lirde confidence in his own scrength, must lean upon his scepter, unlike l:iecror, AchiJies' equal, who leans upon a spear while he s·peal<s (2.109, 8.496). Hecto r's spear is repla.ceable, while Agamemnon's scepter is unique, and were ir broken, he would be doomed ro obscuriry. He swears neither by scepter nor by gods, but rather he holds up the scepter to aU the gods (7.u2, cf. Aristotle Politics r285h3-u). His lineage, embodied in the scepter, connectS him wirh the gods. He looks to them. Achilles looks to
himself. Odysseus alone knows how ro combine. in the sceprer, rhe rank of Agamemnon with the force of Ach.illes. He scops the. ge.neral rout of the Achaeans, which Agamemnon's speech had caused, by making a disrincrion that AchiUes would not, and Agamemnon could nor, employ (cf. Xenophon Mnnorabilia 1.2.58, 4.6.13- 15). Taking the ancestral scepter in his hand, he speaks to the kings thus: "lf you disobey Agamemnon, he shall oppress you; the wrath of a 7..eus-nunured king is great; his honor comes from Zeus and counseling Zeus loves him" (uSs-97, cf. l.l747S· ABT Scholiasr 2.186). He uses the sceprecr as an emblem of power,
Jl
11
Chapter Two threatening the kings, who would be unimpressed by mere lineage, with divine vengeance. Authority lies in power. But against anyone of the rank and lile, Agan1emnon's sceprer rums intO a weapon: Odysseus drives them before him with it (2.•199• cf. 266-67). He speaks tO them quite differendy: "Sir down without a muanur, and listen to ochers who have more authority: many-headed rule is bad; let there be one head, one king. to whom the son of Kronos gave rule. • Power lies in authority. As Zeus is Zeus ro the kings, bur to the common warrior the son of Krnnos (cf. 1-175· 9·37· 98, 6o8), so Agamemnon musr appear to rhe kings as aurhorirarive might, but to rhe warriors as powerful authority. The three oppositions we have examined-human beings and heroes, Trojans and Achaeans, Agamemnon a<~d Achilles- dominate the Iliad in a double way. We have taken up only one of them-their evidem difference; but their underlying sameness is per.haps even more in1porrant. lr can only be briefly indicated here. Homer gives in each of these contrasted pairs a higher ranking ro heroes, Achaeans, and Achilles; bur that ranking is only a necessary condition for the Iliad T he Iliad itself forces us to rerbink that ranking. as its plot moves altnoSt contrary to it: from Achilles' wrath to Hector's funeral. Achilles, the Achaean hero, 6nally yidds r.o his opposites. He acknowled.ges that IUs power cannor be a substirure fo r Agamemnon's aurborhy (23.890-94); he comes to respect his Trojan enemies (24.628-32); a<~d he sees that be is more related as a human being ro Peleus a<~d Pauoclus than to Thetis and Zeus as a hero {24.jU-u). The Iliad moves from the apparendy higher ro the apparendy lower, wlUch then comes to sight as something beyond the original disrincrions. To clarify char something completely would be co understand the Iliad.
NouJ Cf. W. Schadewaldr, iliasJrudim, Abhandlungeo der Siichsischcn Akademic der Wissenschaften, Pbil.-hisr. Klosse (leipzig. 1938), vol. 43, no. 6. 1.
2. Cf. H. Seiler, "Av9pronot." G/otta 32 (1953): 2JJ, who notes rhar the expressed opposirion of &v9proJtot-8Eoi is more common in the J/Wi than in rbe
Odyttry. 3·
s.., 0. Hoffman, "A>..EI;ttvopo<," G/oru. 28 (1939): 12.
4·
Cf. Hatvey Cmhin.g, From a Surg
Brown 19)6). 1}2-33' "The Frenchmen of course a brave fellow-gets worked up to a 8ame heat for a few moments and is then irresisrible; but the 8ame soon
khiU
me lli4li
goes our and ir ralta an exoeptioaal man to kindk it agoin. Briri1b >Oidim n~ flamt- only a 11C*i)' glow all me ritnt.• S·
a. H. Frinkd, Di~ b.mnischm Gkithnuw (GOningtn, t!Ju}, 10.
6. On~ rht Trojans anadc without mourins ~o11ot auiaxo1). and only thm arc the)• <X>mpmd ro fin: (IIW/14-3?-41); cL C. Robert. Stwlin ,.., llUs (lkdln. l9()t), tJ.4- 1S: u. VOD w.wno...;u.-Modlcndorf. Dir "1/Urs"llntl Ht>mer (lkrlio, 19t6), 151, n. 1. Alrl>ough Hecror nUl1'1Clially riv.ab AcbiUcs in similes
of 6re, he is often like a norm, rivtt, or sea, to nont of which Acbales is compand (U.197• JOj, 12.40, t9.t61 (norm); S·S97 (river); H 9Jo Jt. j Q7, tj .62.4 (w.avcs); cf. 11.17}-8), t9G-99). 7· Whtther "l'ddda," "Arreides," n c., arc pauonymia. or gtnrilicia lw b«n much dispu.ted; cf. K. Mcisrtt, Di~ Homnischt Kumupr4rhe (Leiptig, 1911), 1.48so; P. Chanrraine, Grammllin Ht>m~ (Paris, <948- SJ), voL t, tOj- 6.
8. F. jacoby. "Die Einschalrung d<> Schiffik:twogs in die fli111," Si=mglxrithu tin &yrristhm ~ tlrr W'~tn. Phil.-hin. Kbsse (Munich. t9J:1), 186-949· It is ncx accidena.l that Ag;untmnoo alent calb Od)'$SCUS ~lamiades.• wirhoor ..~ding his proper name (t9.184); oor thar he bMU Mentlaus "aD each mao by his lineace and pauonym.ic, glorifyi.tJ« :all" (to.68-'9. cf. 4·)7G-411: j.6)5~, 7-'lj-2.8. 8.181.-8)). N'ICW, Thuqdidcs' Apmemnon as it ~ doa me wne (8.69.1; cf. Xenophoo, Otant~minu, 7-)). Thtte is in the Caa.log of Ships. I suspecr. tbe same <X>nttaSt between Achilles and Agamemnon. Odyssew is in me center, Achilles and Ag;unemnon arc equally six pl•ces away from him; but tbc number of ships is f.u guater on Agamemnon's side (731) than oo Aclillles' ~); and in accordance wirh !hat prcpondcran.ce, the wealth rather lhan the prowca of those wbo surround Ag;uncrnnon i! stressed: place-nama are twice as frequent there 11.'1 on Athillcs' side, and even rhe cpirhets S\ISS"t their prospertry. On Achilles' side rhc cities rhc warriors rule are ncglecred for stories about themselves (641- 4), 657-70. 673- 75. 687~, 698-703· 71t- 1S): but on Agamcmnoo's •ide link besides tbeir :ano:say is saX! abour the commaodcn.
})
T
E
The Aristeia of Diomedes and the Plot of the Iliad
heroic virtue: "Alas, even a fool would know thar Zeus himself aids the T rojnns: the spea.rs of all, no matt.er whether gO<>d or bad do hurl them, hir their target: Zeus makes all go maigbr" (r7.62.9-3~. cf. 1p.1.1-27, 20.242- 43, 434- 37, Odyssey r8.132- 35). Zeus's partiality makes it almost impossible ro practice virtue. Were Ajax ro recrear, he would be blameless (cf. 16.u9- 22, ' 7-97101). Zeus can render vain and usdess the distinction bcnveen good. and bad, base and brave. What should prove merit- success-may be whoUy undeserved. The javelin casr of Paris, were Zew to wish it, would go as straight as thar ofHecror; if rhe god.s had always fuvored Nireus, be would have equaled Achilles. Were nor rhe providence of the god.s inconstant and fitful (cf. 1).139-41, r6-'!46-47), they wou.ld obscure completely any intelligible order of ucelleoce; but as ir is, they sometimes withdraw and let the heroes run themselves. Then the world proceeds in the way we know it, and we see the heroes for what they would be among ourselves. After AchiUes set the prizes for the horse-race, and urged the best Achaeans to compere, Home.r gives us the order in which they accepted the chaUenge. First Ewnelus, who exceUed in horsemanship and had the besr ho.rses (2p88-89., ~.763-67); then Diomedes with the horses of Aeneas; third Menelaus with one horse ofbis own and one of Agamemnon's; and rheo Antilochus (2.90-304). Before Homer tells us who came lasr, Nester counsels his son oo the power of craft. Although Anrilocbus's horses were swifr-fooTed, they were slower rhan the rhree pairs of horses that enrered rhe race before him, yer f.lsre.r than M.eriones', which were 8 L UN 'f AJAX STAT R S T H E PAR A D 0 X 0 P
H
The Ari11eia of .Diomede:s
the slowest of all (304, 310, 530). Meriones was narunlly reluctant to compete; only after Nestor had spoken ar length (whose praise of era& gave him a chance) could he bring himself ro risk his horses in a contest they could nor possibly win. lf we look at the roce irself, we see that Homer bas pr:=nred the horsemen in the order in which rhey should but do nor win (consider the foouace, 754- 92). That Eumelus should have been 6nt, although he came in !JISt, Achilles, Homez, and aU the Achaeans acknowledge; and were it not that Achilles wished to gratify Antilochus, even in his misfortune. he would have r:aken second prize (m- J7, 556). Had not Apollo and Athena imenered, Diomedes wo
n
''
Cbap«r Three impomnce of the gods to him in the description of the first encoumer between rhe Acha.eans and Trojans. 4·457-5-8) must be taken :u a unit that divides into two pam, 4457-538 and p-83, while 4·539- 44 serves :u a rrnnsition from the figbt.ing char was equally sponsored by Ares on the Trojan side and Athena on the Achaean (4-439), to the figbtin.g after the withdrawal of both gods at 5-19-36. The enth' au of 5.1 poinrs up the balance intended between these two groups of seven killings each , and the near equality in rbe number of lines (82 and 81, respectively-5.42 and 57 are plus-verses) is hat.dly needed ro confirm ir. That 4·457- 538, moreover., as the longest sequence in rhe Iliad where a Trojan death alternate~ with an Achaean, should be Homc.r's lim presentation ofwar cannot be accidental Wu is like char, he seems to be saying; one man dies after another, now on one side, now on the other.' All the differences berween Achaeans and Trojans {4-41Z-38) cannot ourweigh the morrality they shue. And yet the deaths al.rernate because the gods Athena, Apollo, and Ares interfere. When Athena and Ares retire, six Trojans are killed in succession (s.J7-8J), and when the gods are entirely absent (6.1), fifteen Trojans, without the loss of a single Acha.ean, are killed. Throughout these rwo Retions, the men say nothing. Only the gods speak, once Apollo and once Athena, but on both occasions oo one replies (4-507-16, 5-29-36). War is a silent deed, for speech requires perspective, and only the gods have it, Apollo when he shours encouragement ro the Trojans from the city, Arberut when she persuades Ares to leave the battlefield and look on from the banks of the Scamander. The man who would nor find fault with the n-gon (4.5J9), were Athena co lead him unwounded rhrough the midst of the battle, cannot be anyone activdy engaged in the war, Acha.ean or Trojan, for neither would have the impartiality oo praise rhe enemy or rhe distance ro pass any judgment. This man is unique in the Iliad, for nowhere else is anyone but Athena and Ares imagined to be in a position to find Eaulr in a battle (rp27-28, •7·398-99). He rhus stands closest to the poet himself, who bas at rhe beginning let his interested detachment, which enables him ro record the war with exactness, shine through. In 4-457-538, not only do the men kill without speaking ro each other, bur they mostly kiD or are killed without passion. No one desires or fears to fight (cf. 4-421), no one weeps or laughs, no one feels pain on dyiog or grief on seein.g anothe£ die. They retreat but do nor rremble (497, 505, m ), they advance but do nor rejoice (507). Only Odysseus kills in anger (494. sot), everyone e.($e in cold blood. 1 Odysseus is the first whose feelings Homer sees fit to mention. He alone does not rake killing for granted,
The Aristeia of Diom
as something rhar simply is a part of one's makeup and a necessary oonsequence of being armed. That Odysseus's anger distinguishes him from the impersonal actions of everyone dse, forces one ro consider how Homer inrroduces the various ways of killing and dying that form so large a parr of the 1/iai/. Who 6<St dies or lim kills in a certain way, what Homer has to say or refrains from saying about each death, and why he puts rhe deaths in the order be docs, arc the questions whose answers tie down the plor of the Iliad to its episodes.• The answers, in turn, all of which point to Homer's understanding of the heroes as momol human beings, are inseparable from Homer's understanding of the immortal gods, and consequently inseparable from the question with which we began, what effect the gods' presence or absence has on rhe plot of the Diad Of the lim seven men killed in the war, three die with the formula ro11 d~ skotos Oif~ kalup1~ (4.461, 503, 526), three lose their thumos (470, 524. cf. 466, 478), and rwo fall with a simile (462, 482- 87). Only Leukos, at whose death Odysseus gets angry, is killed without adornment (491-93). They all die in silence. Of the next st-ven killed, no death similes occur, one receives the expanded formula ttugtrOJ d' ara mm skotoJ heik (5.47), one utters a groan while death covers him (68), another has purple death and mighry fate seiu bold of his eyes, a fourth takes the cold bronze in his teeth (75, cf. 4.s:u ), and the three others simply die without anything else being reponed bur the character of the wound they recei\"e.d. The ways of rhc .killers in the rwo groups are also differem. In the lirsr group no one rece.ives his own simile, though both sides are. once likened to wolves (4.471), no one succeeds in srripping a corpse of irs armor (460, 492, 532), no one slices off a part of someone's body (cf. 4·525-26), no one spills any blood (cf. 451), and no noneuphemisric or unambiguous word for killing is used. In the second group, however, Diomedes is likened ro an autumnal scar, the scrvanrs of Idomeneus succee:d in stripping the armor from Phaesrus (5.48), the comrades of Diomedes lead rhe chariot of Pbegeus and Idaeus back to the ships (25-26), Pcdasus has his tongue cur our (74), Hypsenor loses his arm, "and rhe bloody arm fell on th.e plain" (81-82), and Meges slays (~~phnt) Pedaeus (70 , cf. 28, 59). The explanation for tho:se differen.ces betwe~n the rwo groups can be found in the mer that Athena and Arcs are each equally at work in 4-457538, whereas in p-83 Athena at first unbalances the barde in her desire ro make Diomedes conspicuous and brilliant (p-3) and chen draws Ares our of the war. Arhena persuades Ares 10 stand aside afrer she SttS Hephaestus, che god of 6re, rescue one son of Dares, rhe priest of Hephaestus, whose other son Diomedes kills just afrer Athena has made him &.ash with
n•.
J7
)8
Chapter Three
fire. Hephaestus rescued ldaeus so that his priest would nor be roo sorely grieved, and Arhena fears that the other gods roo mighr save their own &vorires regardless of which side they are on. The departure of Athena and Ares signals aTrojan rour, in which each Achaean king kills a Trojan. Among those slaio Scamandrius was taught tO bunt by Anemis; Pheredus, the sh.ipwri.g ht of Paris's Beer, was the son of Harmonides, who-the antecedent is unclear-"knew how to make eve.ry curious thing, for Pallas Athena loved him"; Pedaeus was the bastard son of Amenor. whose wife Theano- the Trojans had made her priestess of Athena (6.}00)-honored him equally with her own sons; and Hypsenor was the son of Dolopion, who served as priest tO rhe river Scamander • and was honored by the people as a god." Neither Artemis, Scamander, nor Athena saved the heroes tO whom they were atntched; and rhey are slain along wirh those who had before been less fortunate and always lacked divine proreccion. But the gods' withdrawal seems co email not only the dear.h of those who had some claim on the &vor of the gods, bu~ a change as well in the very climare in which the death of everyone, regardless of divine favor, occurs. The darkness that covers the eyes of three men in the providential sequence 4·4S7-)J8 becomes loathsome as soon as the gods cease robe concerned. Death, though never named as such as long as the gods we.re present (cf. 4·517), was mild and sometimes beauci:ful. Twice doubled in a simile's reflection, it magically lost some of irs horror, for the likenesses subsume dying under the larger and hence less terrifying cace.g ory of &!Ling (cf. s.s)S. s6o). The simile of the poplar is particula rly instructive (4.48287) .s lt grew in a moist meadow, smooth bur for branches ar irs rop, and a chariot-maker cur ir down and let ir dry out on the banks of a river, "in order mar he mighr bend it intO a fdloe for a very beautiful charior.• The cresr on the helmet of Simoeisios is Likened ro the standing poplar, bur the expansion of the simile leaves him behind and replaces the living tree nor with a dead trunk (cf. 4·147) but wirh irs purpose. to be parr of something beautiful again. Simoeisios is lose in a wo rk of art. His death becomes less painful. I r is transfigured in the presence of Arhena and Ares, and borh the lack of si.miles and the death of divine favorires when the gods are absenr srrongly suggesr that ir is uansb.gured because of their presence. The gods, rhen, would be the artisans or poets of the heroic world and an essential in.g redient in Homer's own poetry. One musr digress here to call attention ro a strange reticence on Homer's pan. It is a digression because rhe reticence does nor directly Link up with the plot of the Iliad bur is still necessary because it poinrs to rhe ground tone of the Iliad that irs plor never alfeas. When the gods are
Th< ArisuiJz of Diom<:do
lim abscm from the battle, someone dies with a groan (5 .68), but Homer never goes further than this. We are not told what the groan of a dying man expresses: no one ever dies in pain. Homer never enters inro that asp<:cr of death which is not ro be grasp<:d by rhe sc.nses (IJ.s7o-7J}. He on1its it neither our of ignorance (cf. 10.325) nor, as Thucydides' Pericles apparently docs, in at1 effort ro console: "Cowardice with softness is more painful to a man of pride rhan the death that occurs insensibly with strength and common hope" (2.4).6).6 Homer m t6.sr8, 524. p8}. The heroes suffer no more rhan the gods do U·397· 417, 763) , for there is always a cure; indeed. only Hera is exaggeratedly said ro have suffered from "incurable pain" (5.394). Homer docs meorion pain twice in connection with a fatal wound, bur once he Sp<:aks of the spear itself as being painful and nor of rhe hero's own suffering (s.6s8), and once he says that the area between rhc navel and the groin is the mosr painful to be hir in, bur be phrases it indirectly: "where Ares is espt:cially painful for wretched mortals" (1).568- 69). The god of war as· sumes the pain. He rakes on what Homer th.inks improp<:r to ascribe to the heroes themselves. The cause of pain, whether sp<:ar or Ares, absorbs the pain, in some· what the same way that rhe sin1ile of the poplar overshadowed the death ir was meant ro describe. Aiehmi akgtini and Ari> akgdnos do not falsify the experience of death; they conceal it as much as they re.mind us of ic, and indicate rhe underside that cannot be expressed if the world of the heroes is to keep irs brightness. Only a horse in irs death throes and hit in the most fatal spot (8.81 - 86) is said to suffer pain; but man's most fatal spot, which the same book describes (8.3~5-~8), docs not make Homer say that Tcucer felt any pain when Hectot hit him there, but rather that his ann grew numb, and the blow itself proved not to be fatal, for Hector rb.rew a stone and not a Sp<:ar. Virgi~ in departing once from this Homeric euphemism, suggests thar be understood it. Dupucat virum tTansvtct:a (basta} dollm (Ameid u.645} expands Iliad 1).618 idniithi de pesiin, where nothing corresponds to Jofq,.~; but idnothi occurs twice elsewhere along with algisas, once of Thmites' beating (1.169), and once of an eagle (12.. 205-6).' Virgil, then, deliberately put rogether cwo ot three Homeric passages in order to connect paio with dying. Homer, on the other hand, in order ro keep morral pain away from the bcrocs, resr.ricrs ir to a horse, a weapon, and a god, all of which Sttm to be ways of clothing the human that lies at the heart of the heroic. ln the posrheroic world, however, the
)9
40
Cbaprer Tbr«
su.iror Eurymacbtu dies in pain, anUzz6n {Odyssey ~~.$7), for perhaps the Trojans are only unjust but nor wicked, and hence there can be no sarisfacrion at t.hc:.ir death, while the pain of a dying suitor can be regarded as enhancing rhe justice of his punishment: Polyphemus., roo, suffers from his incw:able wound (Odyssey 9·415• 440). 1be general absence of moral indignation in the Iliad would thus be the other side of Homer's reticence abour pain_ His dispassionate precision would have been inroleJ".ilile if he had not known its limirs. To return now ro the gods. Athena and Hera return to Ol)'lllpus at the end of rhe 61th book, "having sropped baneful Ares from his slaughter of men," and rhe sinh book announas the depa= of all rhe gods (6.1). Each event will now be unconditioned by rhe gods: the heroes will act without them and hence will act diJfereody. Diomedes kills Axylus, who was "a friend to human bein.gs. bur no one of them warded offh.is mournfUl death" (6.11-19). When the gods are absem, it is sadly firring that a philanthropiSt. whose kindness bene6ted orher mortals but not the gods, should die. He doe~ not sh:ue in a divine providence. He is far more alone than those who wen! killed in the absence of Athena and Arcs at rhe beginning of the fifth book. Human beings, one might say. now replace the heroes as rhe subjecc of the Iliad.' Menelaus captures Adrasws alive, whose horses had entangled his chariot and spilled him on the ground (6.37-6s. cf. 83r- 34). As an accidem puts him at the mercy of anyone wbo might find him, Menelaus cannot congrarulare himself on his own prowess. He owes everything to chance and nothing ro himself. and aware of this, he is wiUing ro accept ransom, unril Agamemnon comes up and rebukes him for his leniency, urb>ing him to kill all the Trojans, "even a boy scill in his mother's womb. • Nothing equals the cruelty ofAgamemnon's advice. Though Agamemnon larer kills the two sons of Antimacbus, who plead for rheir lives, be at least defends his d
The Arisuia of Diomcdes
lessly grasps his knees, Horn~.r cells us his opinion: "He was not a S\veetternpaed man nor mild in spirit" (20.463- 69}; and when Achilles slays twelve T roj.ans as an olkri.ng ro Parroclus, be again blames him: "He resolved evil deeds in his heart" (2-3.174-77); for Homer, knowing that some gods disapprove of Achilles, can echo their opinion. But now that the gods have losr all interest in human affairs, no one reUs the heroes what they ought tn do, and without the gods they become bestial. Nesror rallies the Achaeans with the o:y, "l.et us kill men" (70). Heaor, encouraged by Helenus, charg~s th.e Achaeans, who ~treat and cease their slaughter. "They thought some nne of the immortals h2d come down from starry heaven to aid the Trojans" (to8-9). The Achaeans mistake Hector for a god when no gods are present. As gods and man have never been so far apart, the heroes confoun.d them. Diomedes, whom Athena had so recently favored, cannot ~ whether Glaucus is a god or man; he is as uncertain as Odysseus when he confronts Nausicaa (l1919). He asks Glaucus: "Who are you, Oh most mighty power, of mortal human bcin.gs?" Only here does a hero call another to his face an anthro[HIS and not an anir (cf. 9.134 with 1.76, 2r.rso). Diomedes reckons in absolutes: Glaucus is either human or divine; he cannot be, wbar be himself once was, divinely inspired. Critics have been puuled why Diomedes, who bas jusr wounded Aphrodite and Ares, should now be unwilli.ng to 6ght Glaucus if he turns out to be a god.' But th.e~ is no difficulty: the gods hav~ d~rted and left the heroes, Diomedcs along with the rest. alone. His ability to distinguish berwttn human and god depended on Athena's favor (cf. s.nS-3 2., 817-2-B). As soon as she withdrew &om the battle, he knew no more than the Achaeans, 10 whom Hecror ~ed a
god. The burden of their own mortality oppresses Diomedes and Glaucus. One seems at a loss without the gods, the other sees all men as alike and undisringuishabk "as is the generation of leaves, so is that of men. • Genealogy is a mere succession of men, aluirophuUon, but Glaucus wishes co gloss over his own sense of smallness and impress Diomedes with his divine lineage. He deals in superlatives: Sisyphus was the craftiest of men, Belleropbon said his battle with the Solymi was the 6.e re= he hod ever entered, and be slew all the best men in Lycia. Glaucus, the son of Sisyphus, fathered blameless BeUerophon, whose beau.ty and manliness came from the gods, and whom the gods escorted to Lycia and hdped to slay the divine Chimera. Providence sponsored his deeds, and even the king of Lycia was forced to believe in his divine descent. Buc Glaucus knows how fitfully the gods favor men. Bellerophon became hateful co all the
+'
_.
Otaprer Three
gods a.nd wandered alone, "2Voiding the track of human beings"; and two of his children fared wo=: Art:$ killed Isandrus, and Artemis in anger slew L.aodaroeia. And yet all their fares were more than human; Glaucus's ances·rors were nor ordinary mort2k Thus Gl:IUcus bimsdf, in looki•1g back on his past, partly proves rbar men are like leaves, and partly tries, as be bolsrers himsdt to asronish Oiomedes. If be can.nor claim chat he is a god. ar least he has divine ancestors; and Diornedes, who before bad such contempt for the genealogies of Pandarus and Aeneas (p44-s6). now finds an c:xcuse ro break off the combat. As his grandfiuher Oiueus c:mertained and acbanged gifts with Bellerophon, so he and Glaucus should o:change their armor and proclaim themselves "ancesrral &iends." Axylus, a fri.e nd ro stran.ge.ts, dies; Glaucus and Diomedes, whose grandfathers were &ieods, agree ro separate. Axylus had no divine protection, while Glaucus b:ad its shadow, a divine lineage. The gods leave enou.gb of a rrace of memselves to reestablish rhe sacredness of xe11ia. Xmia, which Paris's rape: of Helen had violated, oow renuns. And yet me war goes on. I r can oo longer be waged for the sake of vindicating a principle thar bom sides now acknowledge; ir now must depend on something rhar. as it dispenses with the original cause of the war, is unaffected by. or rather involves, the mu.rw.l recognition of enemies: Diomedes offers G laucus aU rhc Achaeans he ca.n kill (1:1.9). The sacred was before a public issue, whether it underlay the crime of Paris or of Pandarus, but now ir only serves a private relationship that bas no effecr berood itself. The gods, in short, bave ceased in lll)y simple moral way ro be decisive for the eour!K' of the war. Zeus took away Glaucus's wits (234). When Hecror bas returned to Troy and bidden his mother pray to Athena, be CW"Ses Paris: if the earth swallowed up Paris, and he would see him descending tO Hades, Hector would forger his sorrow (28o-8s). Hecror's wish before, though just as vehement, that Paris be without offspring and die =tried (3.40, cf. s6-57), Paris's cowardice bad w·.uranred; bur now, whether he shirks or nor, Hecror longs for his death. Olympius raised Paris a.s a bane for tbe Trojans, for Olympius is gone (6.7.8:1.-83). Everyone feels the ah.scnce of rbe gods. When Helen had heaped scorn on Paris's sm:ngrb, l'aris falsdy attributed his defeat rn Athena; "Now Menelaus has won a victory wirh rbe help of Athena, but ar another time I shall be vicrorious over bim; for there are also gods on our side" U-439-40). He will be vicror whenever me gods so wish it. Alrhough be then was wrong abour Mene.laus, he w:~s righr abour himself-Aphrodite did save hi.m--so it seemed =.sonable ro suppose that some god had protected Mendaus. His mistake was jusri6ablc. Bur now
The Aristtin of Diom«
not cw:n he thinks the gods make for victories: nilti d' q>am•ib•rai andras (6.339). No longer Aphrodite hut Fortune is his goddess: Arhena has just refused the Trojans' prayer (Ju- 12). Helen feels despair more deeply !han Paris. Priam had kindly rece.ived her on rhe ramparu ofT roy; and she, provoked by his kindness, had burst out with: "Would rhar death had been pl<"..sant ro me when I followed your son toTroy• (3-173-74). Bur now, rhough Hector has nor even spoken ro her, her sense of guilt is even greater; on !he ~-ery day she was horn, not on the day she committed her crime, she wishes ro have died; but, she adds, the gods decreed otherwise, for rhe gods no longer prorea her (345-49• cf. 3·173 with 6.344). Hector leaves Helen and .Paris and meers his wife Andromache with his son Scamandrius (403- 4). They form a beautiful but gloomy scene. Despair finally ovenakes Hector; he predictS the fall of Troy: "Well 1 know !his in my mind and spirit, that rhere will be a d11y when sacred ilion will perish, horh Priam and his people (447-49). What Agamemnon had forerold when Pandarus wounded Menel2us, Hecror has come to believe, and in the very same words prophesies; but Agamemnon saw Zeus, shaking his dark aegis, as the cause ofTroy's capture (4.163-68, cf. 1.27-2.9). Hecror sees no cause. His convictions that Troy will fall. and that irs fall will not be a punishment for any crime, rest on !he same basis.: rhe absence of the gods. The absence of !he gods bas made rhe sixth book rhe darkest in the Iliad; and rhis darkness is essential for bringing about the radical change in the direccion of the war. Hector and Paris reenter rhe banle in rhe seventh book, appearing like a fair breeze that a god 10 sends to tired rowers; and after some success on their pan, Athena and Apollo agree to stop the war for a day and ler Hector challenge an Achaean ro a duel (?.t4Z) . The soothsayer Helenus intuits the plan of the gods, who for the first time do not show themselves as anthropomorphic bur assume the shape of vultures, and remain, as in the six.rb book, invisible to men (4361). Hecror, pleased with b.is brother's proposal , offers ro fight anyone whom rbe Achaeans might choose as their champion; he also promises, and in this he goes beyond rhe gods' plan, to give back rhe corpse for burial.. if he should kill his opponent, so that a mound m2y be built near the HcUespont, "and someone of later times, in sailing by .in a large ship over tbe wine-f.aced sea, may say, 'Thai is the romb of a man who died long ago, whom, c:xcellenr !hough be was, glorious Htcror killed'; so someone will say, and my fame shall never die" {87-91) . Hector wanrs immonal fame. Though be believes that Troy will be raken, he wants a
41
4-4
Chapter Three monument ro be left behind for himself. It shall perish, he shall live on. The gloom of the sixth hook, brough.r on by the gods' absence, is dispelled in rhe seventh by the light of fuwre gloty. Hector finch his way out of a godless present in his fame ro come. Fame i.s despair's remedy. lf the gods are gone, if they no long« care, then men must rake care of them· selves; they must adopt a surrogate for them, and H~ror suggests something that Achaeans r:eluaandy accept, immortal fame. Instead of depending on the gods, they wiU depend on other men. They will snacch from the vety uncertainty of war a permanent gain. No o1atter who will be victorious, and regardless of the justice of their cause, both sides can win glory. They can share in the success of their enemy and even find a certain satisfaction in being lUlled. The difference betwttn the combat of Menelaus and Paris, which took place a few hours beforr, and the present oontest of Ajax and Hector indicates a great change in the character of the war. Menelaus prayed to Zeus that Paris be punished for his crinle, while neither Ajax nor Hector prays. Menelaus fought with Paris to settle the war, Ajax and Hector 6ght in a erial of prowess. They fought to decide the litre of Helen, while Ajax and Hector 6ght without any regard for Helen, bur only to determine who is rhe better warrior. They exchange threats and boasts, Menelaus and Paris fought i.n silence. They were in deadly earnest. Hector and Ajax can break off their combat an.d give each other gifts in parting. Menelaus had wished to accept Hector's challenge, bur Agamemnon (with all the other kings) restrained him (7J04- 7), for though he was the right opponent against Paris, he would have lost his life to no purpose. He is no longe.r the champion of his own cause. Had Menelaus killed Paris, he would have recovered Helen; if Hector now wins, the Achaeans would recover Ajax's corpse, which would serve, oncr it was buried, as a memorial to both Ajax and Hecro.r. Fame and renown would seent ro be as precious to Hector as Hden is ro Menelaus, and his new arnhirion so much in8ames him that he can refer qwre brazenly to the Trojan's per6dy (7.6972, cf. }51-jJ). Whatever oaths they may have broken, whatever injustice they may have done, has no relevance now. As long as Hekn was ac the center of the dispute, the Trojans wc.re in the wrong; but now that sh.e is discarded, and becomes merely a theme for heroic exploits, right and wrong no longer apply. Pub/ita virturi.t per m11/a Jacm via ttt. As the cause of the war has changed, so too have the central characters. Hden unleashed a war over which she loses control The war, having worked loose from its origin, now feeds itself. The desi.re for Hden generated the desi.re fo.r &me, but the offspring no longer acknowledges the
The ArisuiJz of Diomede:s
parent. There C3Jl now be, no oth.er end to the war than the destruction of Troy. The restitution ofHden will no longer suffice. Diomedes speaks for all of the Achaeans when, in answer ro th.e T rojaru' proposal of rerurning all the srolen goods except Hden, be says: "Now ler no one accept either the goods of Alexander or of Helen herself; for even a fool would know that the ends of destruction have alrtady b.,cn fixed for the Trojans" (7.400- 402). Not even if the Trojans give back Helen would the Achaeans stop fighting. The war has passed our of her bands and become common property. No longer is the war perry. h bas transcended the bounds of its original inspiration and assumed rbe magnificence of heroic ambition. Paris and Menelaus now have minor roles. and Hden is scarcely m.entioned (cf. u.122-42.). She was a necessary irriranr that has become superftuous, and Hden hel$df knows this. "Upon myself and on Paris," she cells Hector when the gods are absent, "Zeus has placed an evil fare, so that we might be, the theme of song among human b.,ings who shall be," (6.JS7-s8). Nor herself but her fame jusrilies the war: in the perspective of later generations can be, found her own raison d 'eue. What gives putpose to the quarrel is nor a pte$Cilt victory but a future fame. In the third book Helen was weaving into a cloak many contests of the Achaeans and Trojans, "who for her sake suliered at the hands of Ares (J.l2S-J8). As the war bad b.,en sraged for her b.,odir, she bad gone up on the walls to watch her two husbands fight for her; but now an impersonal fame has overshadowed any personal pleasure, although she may srm find some comforr in a future glory. She is the plaything of the fuwre (of her own renown), and no longer manages her own destiny (cf. 6.}2)-24). She is caught up in a larger issue and concedes her own insignifican.ce. And Menelaus, like Hden, realius the change thar Hecror proposes. for he b.,rares the Achaeans and calls them "spiritless and famdess in vain" (7.100), since they are not eager to accept Hector's challenge; for unless they are animated by fume his challenge is meaningless. They must disregard Me.n.elaus and look to themsdves. Their own aggran.d ium.e nt, nor Menelaus's vengeance, must become their aim. As their ambition, in becomr.og more sdfish. becomes more grand, so thc:ir prowess, in advocating imm.orral fame as their end, can at last jusriJY itself. Homer has carefully prepared the shift from Helen ro fame as the cause of the war, a shift that the magical disappearance of Paris lim indicates. When vic.rory is almost within Menelaus's grasp, as be drafl$ Paris toward the Achaeans, Aph.rodire breaks the scrap by which Menelaus held him. and "snatching Paris away, she h.i d him in a great mist, and ser him in the sweet-smdling bridal chamber" (3-369-82). Paris is as clicctivdy
4J
46
Cb•prer Tbr...,
dead as if he bad been killed. Overcome by desire for Helen, he is indifferenr ro lam~ if Athena gave ,,iaory now to Menelaus, the Trojans' gods ac another time will aid him U-439-40). He becomes isolared from the war, which now begins again without him. Although his original injustice began the war, it continues by the injustice of Pandarus, which serves as the cransition berween the recovery of He.len and the desire for fame. Nor Paris bur Pandarus wounds Menelaus, Paris disappears. and the responsibiliry for rbe war spreads among the Trojans, while among the Achaeans Menelaus remains the centml figure, about whom rhey still rally. Bur he too disappears in the seventh book, when Agamemnon persuades him not ro accept Hector's challenge. To tt2nsfonn pettiness into grandeut, a private quarrel into a public war, may require injustice; but once the rransformacion is completed, once both sides accept the new conditions, the demands of justice no longer apply. Were it not glory rhar we more affected Than rhe performance of our heaving spleens I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood Spent more in her deknse. But, worthy Hector, She is a theme of honour and renown; A spur to valiant and magnanimous deed$, Whose present cou.cage may ~ down our foes, And fam( in rime co come canonize us. 11
The change thar rakes place among rhe heroes finds irs echo among the gods. Aphrodite saved Paris, bur Diomedes in the filth book wounds her. and she ne.ver reappears among men. Even as Paris, a man wholly dominated by desire, disappears, so Aphrodite, the divine principle, as it were, which gives him the most support. retires and leaves the war ro Ares and Apollo, Athena and Hera. Aii:er rhe conteSt of Ajax and Hector, Nestor proposes rhar a trench be dug and a wall built as a proteerion for their ships and themselves (7·337 -43). The kings agree, and while they are laboring ar the wall, the gods, seared by Zeus, admire their work, and Poseidon speaks among rhem; aZeus Euber, what morral on the boundless ea.nh shall still disclose his plans for the immonals? Do you not see how the Achaeans have built a wall for their ships and run a trench about it, but they have nor offered famous hecarombs ro the gods? Its fame will go as far as the dawn scarce.rs light, and they will forger rhe wall that Phoebus Apollo and I built for the hero Laomedon" (7.446- 53). Poseidon fears char the fame of rh e Achaeans' v..aJI will outstrip the fame of his own wal.l. He interprets
The ArisuU. of Diom
the wall as an insult ro rhe gods. Fame seems nor to be in the care of the gods; they can neither hinder nor advance it. Nor even rhe desrru.c tion of rhe wall, which Homer describes (12.10-)J), prevents us from hearing of it. As long as the war concerned the qu:mel which Hera and Athena had with Paris (4.)1-)1., 1.4-17-30), the gods are the ultimate authority; bur as 500n as the war turns away from Paris and embodies the desire foe f.une, the gods seem unnecessuy. just as Hecror attempted 10 brm loose from them in chalkn.gin.g an Achaean ro a duel, so Nestor rakes up his suggestion and proposes the buil.d ing of r.omb, rrench, and wall Hecror was unsuccessful , for he does nor kill Ajax. Nestor succeeds for a time, bur even his attempt is thwarted by rhe gods. The wall would have made the Achaean camp as permanent as Troy; whether they won or lost, it would have remained as a record of rheir siege. Nestor improved on Hector, for vicrory was the price of his fume, while Nestor relies on a coDective effort that disregards prowess as well as success. The wall is the moSt glorious attempt to break away from the gods' influence. and ir fails. But Zeus helps the Achaeans along in their b<:lief, for he forbids in rhe eighth book any intervecuion by the gods in the war (8.7-u). In the fourth book Hera was given carte blanche ro do what she wamed, but now that her personal revenge has been transcended, Zeus no longer will brook any interference." Once the transition has been completed to the second cause of rhe war, Homer begins ro lay the foundations for the third cause. lr is now in the eighth book that Zeus outlines the death of Pauoclus and Achilles' rerum to battle (8.473-77) . Even as rhe disappearance of Paris announced the shift to the second cause, so Zeus's prophecy indic.ues rhe final cause. Thus three causes underlie the Iliad: 6rsr Helen (Aphrodite), second fume, which is partly replaced in turn by Achilles' love for Patroclus. From individual reven.g e ro universal ambition and back again to revenge is rhe Iliad's plot. The third cause rhus marks a partial ruum ro the 6.m cause, for Achilles' desire for vengeance seems ro have more in common with Menelaus's than with the cause thar perpetuates the war in his absence. Bur what proves to b<: at stake is entirely different in the rwo cases. lr is nor just rhar Hecro.r's guilt is hardly comparable ro Paris's, but rbar Menelaus wanrs and 6nally gees Helen back while AchjlJes, and this is the shock of the J!UuJ, nor unwillingly gives back Hector's eo.rpse. " Achilles finds our that he cannot have Parroclus back; his soul slips through his embrace (23-97-101, cf. 1.4-J-8). Through the abrupt shifting from the soul of a friend to the corpse of an enemy, Homer forces one to consider the possible connection between rhe second a.n d third phases of
47
48
Chapter Tit=
the plor. The new conditions laid down for the continuation of the war in the gods' absence 111llSt somehow persist throughout the rest of the 1/io.d and thus prepare the way for its ending. The arisuda of Diomedes, therefore, as the uansition between the first and st<:nnd phases of the plot, must be examined in mote detaiL Why Aphrodite must be wounded has, I think, become dear, but why AreJ bas to be as well, and in a scene that seems to duplicate Aphrodite's wounding. is srill obscute. The exp.lanatioo resrs on rwo points, the character of Ares an.d the plot of the [/iad After be bas been wounded, Ares, like Aphrodite, never afterward appears among men. He ceases to be active on behalf of the Trojans, and we next see him in his indignation on hearing belatedly of the d.eath of bi.s Achaean son (xs.uo-42). Ares now becomes solely the god of war, alloproJIJIIos, as Ath.e na and Zeus call hirn (5.8)1, 889). He is generalized. Only after Diomedes has eliminated him as a Trojan god does Hector's saying hold uue, "War is common: he kills the killer (r8.309). The first Achaean to be compared at length with Ares is Ajax, when he advances to confront Hector in a duel (7.zo8-u); but the first instance Ares can be said to be approaching neutrality occurs when Ares stirs up Menelaus with the aim that he be killed by Aeneas (5.563-64). He shows his partialiry for the Trojans by inspirin.g an Achaean. Homer then dfcns me uansition between Ares the Trojan god and Ares the god of war at the beginning of the sixth book. The bude between the Achaeans and Trojans is then left by itself, and "the warring charged hither and thither through rhe plain" (6.1.). This is the 6rst time Homer himself makes any word for 6gbtiog the subject of an active verb (cf. J.6r). Machi becomes personified precisely ax the moment that Ares depans; ao.d when Ares 6rsr rerurns he is seen controlling the degree of force in the cast of a spear (1].444, cf. Uaf, commentary lUi lac.). He roo becomes a personification. He slips into Hector as ikit•os mUIIIUJs (X] .2JO-u). His proper name is now a qualiry that cannot be distinguished from himself. He simply is the essence of rota! war. " Bur why must Ares be generalized? Why does the. shift from Helen ro fame as the motive for war require it? The answer lies in the plan of Zeus. When Zeus first heard Thetis's request. be kept silent for a long time (t.su-u). He kept silent because he knew that Thetis was asking for the death of Achilles. Zeus reviewed in that silence almost everything that later happens in the Jlitu/.11 He had to weigb Achilles' p resent wrath against Achilles' fate that alltOmatically would be ful6lled were he to gratify .Thetis. lr is therefore all the nuder tO understand why he decided at last ro yield ro her importUnities. The wrath of Achilles causes great loss
The ArimW of Diom«<es
of )if, among me Achaeans and Trojans, but it also allows every hero to win as much glory as be can. As long as Achilles W2S in the 6dd, the Trojans never ventured into me plain (p88-91, 9·352-55), and as long as Achilles foughr, no Achaean could hope <0 do anything of consequence {cf. 11.104-ll), let alone be thought superior <0 him {6.98- JOJ, 7·289). Achilles' withdrawal is the indispensable condirion for the shift in me war, while me shift irsdfis me justification for Zeus's willingness [0 honor him. Achllles had undercut the original reasons for me war when he said mar the Trojans bad done him no injury (l.IS0-57). and me Trojans' violation of the truce, though it generalized rhe war, could not by itself adequately compensate for the deam ofAchaeans. The punishment of the Trojans for an injustice, which Zeus could have accomplished wirhout any war, necessarily looks like a punishment of me Achaeans as well. They pay a very high price ro vindicare a sacred principle. Only the possiblliry of winning immortal f.me for themselves can outweigh that price. This is rhe harsh justice of Zeus. 16 The irony implicit in Achilles' f.ue is that that which in his own eyes would have justified his 6.ghrin.g the Trojans can only come about through his absence, and hence be must always be our of phase with himself He must forever long for what he can never obtain (cf 1.490- 93), for when he returns !O me War he fights !0 avenge Parrodus and nor to win f.une. The plan of Zeus, then, does nor start in Book 8 bu.r extends back rhrough Books 5, 6, and 7 ro the beginnin.g of 2, and me elimination of ArC$ the Trojan god is as much a part of this plan as Aphrodite's withdrawaL Ares musr be generalized in order that rhe war be as general as the original motivation for ir. The god who presides over me war must cease to be parochial, for only in. becoming common to bom sides can Ares match me purpose rhar both sides now share. The forrunes of war must be equal if everyone is to have an equal chance ar winning glory. Thus Arhena, in effecting the withdrawal of Aphrodite and Ares, as well as in. provoking, wirh Apollo, Hcct.o r's challenge, carries out (perhaps wirhout knowing it) me plan of Zeus, just as the heroes die for a cause thar is now their own wirhour knowing that thereby they allow Zeus ro honor A.chiUes. The desire for immortal f.me animau:s me heroes because no higher ambition is open to mem. They cannot become immortal {cf. 13.54. 8-ls~s. ].t98. 1+~s8-s9).1fSarpedon the son of Zeus were fared robe immor· ral and ageless, he would not be amon.g the first in barrie; but as rhe fate of dcarh srands over him, which no mortal can avoid, he must nobly act and die. so mat his rank among the Lycians, who now look up ro him as a god, will be matched by h.is deeds {tt.}to- 18). The consciousness of
49
50
Cbapter Three mortality underlies the desi.re for immortal fame. When Hector proposes a single combat with an Achaean, he stipulates the rerum of the corpse, either his own so that th.e T rojaos mi.ght buty it. or his opponent's so that the Achaeans mi.ght ercec a comb and his fame never die (7.77-91). Nothing bad b«n $aid about the recu.ro of the corpse when the conditions for the combat be:nveen Paris and Menelaus were laid down. Indeed, the crucial question as co what consciruted a victory was left obscure (3 .7171-, 9Z-93· 101-z, IJ8, 255, :z.St- 87, 308-9, 451) .' 7 Death is recogni"Led for what iris only in light of immortal fame: rhe wall that Poseidon interprets as a bid for fame is ro be bwlt ri.ght next to the funet".U mound of all rhe Achaean dead (7.337). Mo.rtality, in itS double aspect of glory and burial, necessarily leads one back again co the arisreia of Diomedes, and the aristeia, in ru.rn, divided into three sections (the wounding of Apluoditc, the wounding of Ares, and the exchange of armor with Glaucus), shows one how Homer has connec:red the plot of the Iliad with the ways of killing and dying. The order in which these ways appear then helps co explain why Homer begins the Iliad with ch.e sepamrion of soul and "body" (1.3- 4) and ends it with Patrodus's ghost and Hector's corpse. The overall and partly symme.a ic scheme of 4-457-6.237 in terms of the 6ghring is the following:" a) 4417-538: 7 killing;s, Trojans and Achaeans alternate
b) p-8): 7 killing;s, all by Achaeans c) 5·84-143: Pandarus wounds Diomedes d) {s.144-65: 8 killings, 2 at a rime, all by Diomedes {p 66-296: Diomedes kills Pandarus e) 5-297-310: Diomedes wounds Aeneas s-311-430: Dionled.es wounds Aphrodite e)' 5-431-518: Diomedes attacks Aeneas d)' s-519-6z6: 8 killing;s, by 2 Trojans and 3 Achaeans alternattllg c)' 5.61.7-69a: Tiepolemus killed. Sarpedon wounded b)' 5.669b-78: 7 killing;s. all by Odysseus a)' !5.679-710: 6 killing;s, all by Ares and Hector IS-?U-849= Ares kills Pe.ripbas 5·850-909: Diomedes wounds Arcs 6.1-72: 15 killing;s by n Achaeans 6.73-136: Diomedes and Gl1mcus Once one sees chat Pandarus's violation of the rruce is only a means to establish the second phase of the war, it is not surprising that be must be killed without any menrio.n of his crime." His death is nor so much
The AristtU. of Diome
a punishment as a necessiry t:har liberates the war from me qutStion of right and wrong. After eight men h""" been killed in me pr=nce of t:he gods and six wit:hour them, Homer next deepens our understanding of mortaliry through what occurs berween Pandarm's wounding of Diomedes and Diomedes' killing of Pandarus. Pandarus is me 6m man ro speak since the mrr of the battle; he boasts r.o the Trojans of having b.it Diomedes ().102-j) . This 6.m nonf.ual wound of rhe barrie allows Pandarus time to speak as it forces Oiomedes to retire and ask for aid. Although blood shoors up through his rw1ic when Smenelus pulls the arrow &om his shoulder, Diomedes does nor feel any pain. The heroes are sull without any nerves (cf. 794- 98). Diomedes' prayer co Athena is then answered; she purs new screngrh inro his limbs and grants him me ability to disunguish between a god and a man (128) ."' The discinction is ambiguous, for it can mean either, as no doubt Athena intends it, that Diomede$ will oow be able ro avoid a dash with any ocher god but Aphrodite, or, as the subsequent events suggest, that Diomedes will learn the ground for the difference berwcen gods and men (cf. 6.128-+J). Ir wiJJ prove ro be based on a differen.ce in blood (haima and it:Mr), and it is therefore appropriate that Athena li:lts the darkness &om Oiomedes' eyes just after he has been wounded and blood has scaioed his corseler (roo). Pandarus is the first man ro speak, but no one replies; Diomedes' prayer to Athena is the first that is answered (us- 32); but not until Aeneas an.d Pandarus ralk is there a conversation among men (171- 2'}8) . Pandarns's address to Diomedes is the first to an enemy (277- 79), bur not until he has cast his spear is there. anything resembling a conversation between enemies (283-89). A conversation, however, between enemies in which both speak before they try ro kill one anothe.r does not occur before the meeting between Sarpedon and Tlepolemus, the son and grandson of Zeus (6J2- j4). Their meeting could readily be omitted here were it nor thar it lays the groundwork for rhe meeting between Glaucus and Diomedes. The god their ancestry shares lers them recogniu one anomer bur does nor keep them from trying to kill one another, whereas the man who is the ancestor of Glaucus and was the guesr-&iend of Diom.edes' grandfather does nor help to make them known ro one another bur rather suffices ro keep them apart. The movement, men, coward the mutual recogn
s·•
f1
Chapter Three and Diomedes exchange words whlle fighting, (6) Tlepolemus and Sarpedon talk to one anomer before fighting. (7) Diomedes and Glaucus talk to one another and consequently do nor fight. Diomedes and GhlUcus's conversation is me culmination of one way in which Homer has arranged me speeches of his heroes. There are other purposes these same speeches serve char cannor, however, be understood before one goes back to the next series of klllings, bur one may now remark chat me duel berween Hector and Ajax.. which also results in an exchange of gifts, is unintelligible in terms of me plot wirhour me prior exchange of armor between Glaucus and Diomedes. Heccor's challenge resolves me impasse that me Glaucus-Diomedes parting represents: on me new basis of fighting for immortal fame, it becomes possible once again ro recognize and ro kill one's opponent. Although Homer has up to now usually Stated who was the Iacher of each hero, he has only twi.c e said something about heroes that pertains to me deach of their sons. When Arcs and Achena are present, be says char Simoeisios did not give back the recompense due to his parenrs (4-477-78), and when D iomedes, inspired by Achena, has slain one son of Dares, Hephaestus sa"es the ocher lest his Iacher be angry with him (p4). Bur now that me gods are absent, Homer says of £urydamas, an interpreter of dreams, that he did not interpret any dreams for his rwo sons on their going to war (5. rso). His sons are kiUed withour any awareness of cheir fare (cf. n.JU!-Jz). One cannot but be reminded of Achilles, and all the more so on account of the next pair th:u Diomedes slays (5.15"2.58). They are the sons of Phaenop.s, who was worn our by miserable old age (girai· lugroi) and left no other son to inherit his propeny; and Diomedes in killing them, "left (imperfect) for cheir lather riruallamemacion (goon) and misena:bl.c cares (kltka lugra), since he did not welcome them back alive from me war.• The phrase girai" lugroi is rwice used of Nestor (10.79, 13.644), and once by Thetis of Achilles' lather (18.434), in which same speech she speaks of her own cares as kldea lugra (430), the only othe.r occurrence of that phrase (cf. 13.346, 2+742). More important, however, than these fntm.ulas, whose presence here one can ascribe to chance. is the word goor, whose frequency (12 times) prevents this. its first appearance, from being accidental, for only here does Homer himself employ it without referring to Hector , Patroclus, or Achilles; indeed, apart from t7.37-38, it occ:urs only in speeches of Homer, Achilles, and Priam. Here sorrow first comes to a father. It is the second time since the battle began that Homer has mendoned a ~ion; me first was Odysseus's anger at me death of a comrade (•H94l- Sorrow an.d anger, the rwo spring$ of
The Aristeia of Oiomtdcs
Achilles' action in the poem, are now before us as the elfeas of being killed: anger when the gods are presem, sorrow when the gods are absem. It would not be altogeth.e r misleading ro say that anger is the divioe auribure of Achilles (minis only occurs of Achilles' anger or the gods', cf. u.p.J), and sortow represents his human side. The sorrow the gods have no share in is a ccrrain kind of pity: they never pity a corpse as a corpse (cf. 24-SZS-26). They only had eyes for the wall and not the tomb that the Achaeans were building. Menelaus is the fim to pity (s.s6J, c£. 610, 17-W• 3)2), for he sees the sons of Diocleas &II, who came to Troy in their youth to gain honor for l:timself and Agamemnon (550- 53). The gods of course do pity men in their dying (cf. 20.21), but not when they are dead because they are dead: mey pity Hecror due to Achilles' attempt ro disbgure his corpse (2.4-22-23) . The fourth and last pair ofT rojans that Diomede~ kills in this part are two sons of Priam, and Homer for rhe first rime assigm a simile to a S!"'Ci6c aa of killing (s.159-6sl - Ir is the first simile that compares me slain tO animals: they are me firsr of whom it is implied tl:tar they have a will (ltnlt5s aeltont:JJ.S, 164. cf. 366). Homer's gradual disclosing of the heroes' will precedes their own consciousness of themselves as endowed with choice. The first ro deliberate, as the filS~ ro get angry, in the midst of battle is Od}'iSCus: maimist tk boi pbilon ef()r (s .670). He does nor know wl:tether to :mack the wounded Satpedon or kill several of his followers (671-73) . It does not occur to him any more than to anyone else that the willingness to kill is shadowed by the willingness to be killedconsider the unimerptered dreams of Eurydamas's sons. Diomedes "divines" thar either Aeneas or Pandarus will be killed; that they migbr kill him is not a possibility (287-89). Tlepolemus threatens to send Satpedon to Hades, and Sarpedon in rum threatens to send his soul there, but they do not think of their own lives as at stake (646, 654). Odysseus is again the first, but not until the eleventh book, ro acccpr "kill" an.d "be killed" as belonging together (u.41.0); and he does so on the 6m occasion that anyone talks to his tbumos (403): he is alone (401). The willingness to kiU and be killed emerges in isolation out of a reflection of the bean, and precisely ar that moment when phobos, which in eleven previous occurrences always meant "Right, • slides over into the meaning "fear" (402, cf. S44).11 1mmediately after Odysseus's speech to his heart, the Trojan Sokos admirs to Odysseus that he mi.g bt kiU or be killed (430- JJ). Not until 12.171-72, however, is it acknowledged to be the risk that someone other than oneself has willingly assumed; and not until u.328 does anyone consi.d cr his own dearh as a marter of glory to anothe.r (cf. 13-'Jl-7, 486); and
SJ
H
Chapter Three nor unril 13.424-16 does Homer describe (in enremely euphemistic lnnguage) ll someone as desirous (hiao) of killing or being killed. Odysseus finally sums up this strand in the heroes' aw.~reness of momlity whe.n he rebukes Agaroei))I)On for advising Bight "Zeus has granted u.s from youth to old age ro roil in haah war, unt.il each of us perishes" (14-85- 87) . The 6fth pair of charioteer and spearman that Diomedes meers is Aeneas and Pandarus, who go against him only after they have discussed who be is (s.174- 87). Sthenelus then cries to remain Diomedes from armclcing them on the ground that Aeneas is the son of Aphrodite, but Diomedes refuses to get up into a chariot, wd he advises Srhenelus how be should handle Aeneas's ho.rses if he succeeds in. killing them both (14373) . Tbe killing of Pandarus and Aeneas is only a means '0 win noble f:ame
The Ariiteia of Diom..U.. go to Hades are lphidamas and Koon (u.:z.6J) . lphidamas's death is a "brazen sleep" (2.41), and he himself is "pitiable" (qifttrqs) for ha,•ing died away from his bride (2.42, c£ 5·574). Homer's compassion seems to increase as Hades comes more. and more to light: Parrodu.s, whom Homer addtesses more often than anyone else. is the frrst whose psudJi goes to Hades (t6.Ss6). The soul, however. does not prove ro be more than a manner of speaking before Parrodus's soul speaks ro Achilles, and Achilles acknowledges that it is, after all , even in Hades something (:Z.J.IOJ). 1.1 Pat.roclus's soul reminds Achilles that nis corpse still awaits burning and burial. The corpse roo is progr=ively revealed. Although the b.eroes sometimes view with equanimity the possibility of being killed in banle, no one calmly accepts the possibility of his corpse being left unburied (cf. 11.71-76) . Athena is the first tO threaten someone (he is just any and every Trojan) with bein.g a prC)' to birds and dogs (8.379-80, cf. IJ.8}18:z., u.lh8), and Homer is the first tO say that. the slain are potential carrion: "They lay on the earth far dearer to vultures rhan ro wives" (u.r62). Homer's compassion thar is awakened when Trojans go ro Hades is balanced by a sardonic contempt for Trojan corpses. Diomedes later boasrs that his spear-cast is always &tal, and whoever is hit rots away, reddening the earth with his blood, "and he has about him more birds than women" (11.J9L-95). Odysseus, however, is the first to m2ke such a bo2St wholly particular. He addtesses Sokos: "Your father and mother will nor close your eyes though you are dead, bur O.esh-eating birds will pull you apart as they cast their thickset wings over you; but if I should die, the glorious Achaeans will bury me with all the cusromary rites" (11.452- 55). Odysseus rdls a dead man mar he will detty his corpse burial: ir is the first time anyone h2S spoken to the dead. Odysseus's boast prior ro killing Sokos was that his death would give gloty to himself and Sokos' s soul to Hades; bur after rhe killing he is contem, if he should be killed, with receiving a proper burial. The occasion follows closely on Odysseus's speech to his thumot (401-4), when he decided that the willingness ro be. killed belonged as much as the willingness to kill to he.roic excellence. A proportion, then, is suggested: 2S the addr= to one's own thumOJ is ro one's willingness to be killed, so the address to a dead man is ro the threat ro refuse him burial. To be aware of what is the most honorable course for oneself is connected wirh an awareness of what consrirures the greatest disgrace. That the greatest disgmce, however, is nor simply rhe revenc: of rhe rooSt honorable course-nor Hight bur lack of burial- points to the peculiarity of the Iiiod's conclusion. The llilui does not end with Achilles'
lS
56
Chapter Three
resolve ro die bur with his return ofHeaor's corpse. Achilles' recognition of what it means to be mo:rtal consim in his willingness to give back a corpse. It is precisely because one can be brave all by oneself bur one cannot bury oneself that burial lies at the hearr of rhe human. But the essentially human is nor ro be separated from rhe divine: the gods fOrce Achilles' choice. The gods, wb.o are nor concerned wirh the corpse as a corpse, are concerned rhar ir should be a concern ro men (cf. x6.453-57, 666-70; Sophocles A>~ligo"" tO?Z- 7J)."' Diomedes' wounding of Aeneas prompts Apbrodire to rescue him, and Diomedes, knowing that she was not of rhe goddesses who hold sway in rhe wars of men, attacks and wounds bet. He senses rhat Athena's injunction ro him means thac she has ceased to be eenrral r.o this war. "The immortal (ambrotqn) blood of the goddess flowed, ichor, the sorr that does flow in [rbe veins of] the blessed gods; for rhey do nor eat bread nor drink sparkling wine, and hence they are bloodless and are called deathless" Cs-339-42). M. Leu=nn has explained this apparendy nonsensical passage by poiming co the pair of words brOtos "gore" and broros "mo:rtal" (U4-1-7). The gods are called deathless (athalllttoi) because they are bloodless (a>Jaimo>~n}, fur to be bloodless (ambroroi) is to be immortal (=brotoi). Men give a name to the gods (athmatoi} that replaces an explanation (ambrotQi) with a description. Th.ey have rherefore ceased to be aware of what really makes for the difftrence berween the gods and themselves. Diomede$ woW>ding of Aphrodite restores that awareness. It is a necessary step in freeing the heroes from me illusion that tbe.ir likeness to the gods has fostered (441-4z). The old men of Troy thoughr it no matter for indignation that the Achaeans and Trojans suffered so long fOr a woman's sake, ainos athaTUtdisi tlxisi tis opa toikm. Helen's looks excused and justified the war, but now in rhe light of the substantial diifere.nce between gods and men, they are no longer enough. Something more solid is needed, something thar rakes inro account the blood and fur, flesh and bones of men. Through the wounding of Aphrodite, which makes it impossible for men any longer to compete with rhe gods, the cause of the war begins to shin to immortal &me. The desire for fame acknowledges what the lighting for Helen does nor, the mortality ofburnan beings. The desire for fante, however, is itself only a transition to the complete acknowledgment of mortality, Achilles' return of Hector's corpse. Thar Paris in Book 3 (six times) and Priam in Book 1-4 (eight times) are called thtotidls moSt readily illustrattS how fat the plot of the Iliad moves away from rhe beauty of Hden (cf. Z4.629-3Z, J.JIO, 6.)66}. The retirement of Aphrodite leads to rhe reappearance of Ares,» no
·!'he ArisU:i11 of Diomede longer as hinudfbut with me looks of the Thraciaru' commander Alwnas (s-461); and as soon as Arcs withdraws for good Akamas is slain (6.s-n). Arcs disguiiei hinudf as a man just after Apollo has made a likttless (tid6/on) of Aeneas (S-449-SJl-" Homer's pointing to me insubswniality of appeanoce coincides with his revealing me substantial difkrcncc beMtttl gods and men. Ares, howevu, does more man adopt me looks of men; he ac:u like one. He is the only god who all by himself kills in banle (841- 48). He enters so much into the war that he is indininguishable &om any other Wllrrior (cf. 857). He thus unwiningly prepares me way for men taking over his functions: PylaJmenes is rhe first since me lmde began who Homer says is me equal of Ares (576). The merging of the actioru of Ares imo those of men not only "depersonalizcs" Ares but men as well, both the kil.lers and rhe killed. Homer now presems for me first time a list of those whom Ody=us and Hector killed without saying anything about them except their names; indeed, not one of me men whom Odysseus killed recei•-es either p2.rronymic or epithet (6n - ] 8, 705-7· cf. 6.)1. )6).Z7 This inacasing anonymity accompani<:s me generalizing of Arcs, but it does not reach its height unril much laru, when Antilochus kills the nameless chariot~r of Asius (rJ.J8s-99. cf. uo-u), and Homer bas Patroclus kill twenty-seven men in four words (r6.785, cf. 8•o). The plot of me Iliad depends on Homer's reve-.Uing gradually the relatio•u betw~n gods and men, the first of these revdarious being conrained in me ari.stda of Diomedes. The. next and perhaps more imponanr revelation has me ancient ride, "The Docked &ttle," Book 8," where Zc·us, in disclosing pan of his plan oo me gods, reveals himself as a cosmic deity. Men arc then shown 10 be no• only mortal bu1 earthly beings (cf. 7-99). Here it must suffice to indicate how Homer passes &om me opposition ~ mortal and immonal to that betw~n heaven and eanh. The p2ssag-e is made through the reintroduction of rime:. Tha1 time has ebpsed since Agamemnon woke from his dream is 6m mentioned by me herald ldaeus 21 7.:z.81. The combat ~ Mendaus and Paris, Pandarus's wounding of Mcndaus, me aristda of Diomedes, the mming of Hector and Andromache, and me dud between Ajax and Hector, are all compressed into a single day. The separarion of the mortal from the immonal first occurs independendy of any demonstration by Homer that one must unders12nd it as existing within a cosmic framework. Nestor's proposal to call a truce to buty 1he dead first reintroduces time (7.)31, 371, 381), and me m~ring of the T rojans and Achaeans on me batrle6eld to distinguish betwc:cn Trojan and Achaean corpses 6rst presents 1he sun in its cosmic
S7
s8
Chapter Three relations: the rays of th.e sun mike the earth as it goes up into the sky our of deep-Rowing Oceanus (?.~l-2•h cf. 1.475, 6ot). And yet time is still nor ''elY accurately reclconed; the day of burial passes with hardly a memioo (4JJ}. The coming of the next night., however, is clearly marked (466), and during that night Zeus for rhe first time thunders (479}. This is a far different Zeus from the Zeus who shook Olympus in pledging himsdf ro Thetis (1.530}. Dawn now spreads over the whole earth (8.r), whereas before she was said to have come. only to Olympus 10 herald rhe light of day co Zeus and the other immortals (2.48-49, cf. n.1 - 2). The earth is now parr of the cosmic Setting, and when the heroes renew rhe war, they fight within rhe rime-limirs that the sun determitles (8.66-68, 4l!s- 88, s6s. cf. u.84- 9l). Zeus had referred ro the cities of earthly men as being under t:be sun and the starry sky (4-44- 45), bur he does nor disclose himself as a sky god until now (ouranos occuss 15 times in Book 8}, as he COntrastS his own power with that of all the other gods in terms of the disrances berween heaven and earth, Tanarus and Hades (8.1)- !6). He then sends lightning for the fi.cst rime (?S-76, 133-35) and continues to thunder as well (75, .133, t7o-7J,). Zew is a god of heavenly signs (69]2), whose telacioo to men is established through sacrifices (48, 203-4, 2.38-4.1, 249-50, s
Nom This lack of concern is~~ shown in the way in which Odysseus disregards Athen2's advice oo bow to check the Achaean's liight after Ag-Jmernnon had 1.
tested them. Athen• advised Odysseus, what Hera advis
The Aristtia of Oiomed.. sites is benoth them. The same misr:~ke ruins Ag:unemnon's peira: under rhe cover of urging their Right, he mak.. an appeal for the Aehaeans ro stay char would only be: effective were .U the Achaeans noble and apable of sh=e (uo41). Cf. U. von Wil-a.mowi.tzrModlendorf, Dit "lliat " Homn- (Berlin, 1916), 167-69; P. der Mii.bll, Kritisches Hypomnema tur "/lias" (Basel, 19p.), J7; and espc:ciafly K Reinhardt, Die "1/ias" und ihr Dicht" (Gottingen, 19%<), IUIJ). He too advises that Hight be: soldy checked by words (75; cf. ;j.l,JZ- JJ,
una
..,n
240o-
2. P. Cauer, Gnmd.fagm der Homtrlrritik (Leipzig. 1911), 3=494-
3· C£ H. Jordan, Dtr En4hlungsstil in tkn Knmpficmen der "/lias" (Breslau, 190j), '7 ·
4· \YI. F. Friedrich's attempt in Vmuundung und Tod in dtr "1/ins"(Giircingen. 1956), to distinguish three major kinds of killing (the grotesque, realistic, and severe styles) chat are then robe: 3SSigned tO different Iayen, rem on the unstated 3SSumption char tbe kinds of killing and the order in which they appeu have nothing to do with the plot of the Iliad He assumes that poeuy is the san:t< as style (8- to).
). Cf. H. Friinkd, Die hommschro Cleichnim (Gortingen, 19u), 36-37·
6. Cf. L. Straws, Th< City fllld Man (Chi01go, 1964), 194-91· Winston Churchill is reponed to have once said, "The way to die iJ co pass out lighting when your blood is up and you fed nothing." 7· To judge from G. N. Knauer's liStS in Die "Amtis" und Humtr (Gortingen, 1964}, the source of V~rgil's dolort has hirherro been unknown. 8. C£ G. Broccia, ·u rooti>"O deUa morre nel VI libro ddi'Jliade,• Rroitta di ji/o/ogia < ittrrtriOII< tfanim 9· Bu1 see S. E. &-tt,
l)
(1957) : 6HS9.
·on Z 119-2}6." Clamcal Pllilology 18 (191)):
r;8-
79· This is the lint time thor Homer uses the nominative cllttn. which does not refer to a defutire god. with an active verb (cf. s.78). 10.
u. Shakes]Xare. Troilus and Crmida, 2.2.19112. It seems tO me that Thucydides' mention of the w.Ul .. ha•ing been buih immediatdy on the Achoeans' landing arTroy does not stand in the way of nd half <>f Iliad Book 7• for one first bas to understand bow Tbucydides read Homer bc:fore passing judgment, a coosider:ztion tb>r 0. L. Page unac•-ounrably faiu to mention (Hiswry IHid rh< Hom,-ie Jliaa'[Berke. ley and Los Angeles, 1959), )tS-14). Thucydides is perftctly wiUing ro disreg:ord the plot of the Iliad for hJs own purposes. His eoncem is with the Trojan War and not the Iliad: his single mention of Achilles does not even pertain to the Trojan War (r.3-3) . He assertS rhar A1;2memnon was able tO gather the ocpcdilion togerher nor our of cham (rhe oaths ofTyndarus) bur through feu {•·9·' ·J). He equaUy ignOTd both Paris's raJX of Helen and the meaning of rbe con8ic:t bc:rween
59
6o
O..ptu Three
Aclillles and Agamemnon (Jli4d uss--&l). He rruokes use of Agamemnon's bur nor Achilles' scq>tct (L9-1>· Could it be then tbot he just as deliber.uely ignores the mve been built as soon as the Athas6, • Lusmmr (19s6), 71.. •+ Cf. Cauer, Grundfrat,m tkr Homnluitil:; von Wibmowitt-Moellendorf, Dit "ITiiiJ" JU1d HotMr. and S. Benardere, "Two Passages in Ancbylus' !Xpton, • Wimn- St:ttlim NF 1 (1967)' 2.V-30. 15. I owe this fundamental ob&entodon to Mr. J. Klein of St. John's CoUoge, Annapolis, Maryland. 16. Euripides' Helen says rbat Zeus caused the Trojan war io order ro rdieve the earth of an overpopulation, and 10 moke renowned the bes1 men of Greece (Htklr 36-41). Famine, Rood, or fire would b:>Ye accomplished the 6rsr bur nor the so:ond purpose. wbieb in wm w.u offered ro the Greeks under the guise of fighting for jusric:e; and wh4t Zeus planned w:u jun. but it is not the kind of justice that men would willingly undertake to d&nd. 17. Cf. •-on dec Mlibll, Kritistks Hypomntma eur "1/iiiJ," 66-67. Tbar Mendaus •virtnally" .,.,n, as von dec MiibJI expresses it {67, 68), is nor sufficient: Eumelus "virtually" won the ho...,.r:tee, and Aj.1x the foor-race. Tbar the Trojans may not bave broken the 1tuce shows !he n=ry shifting of the basis of rhe war from a problematic qursrion of right to F.tme. rS. See the ve.ry different analysis of Iliad Book 5 by H. Erose, "Beuaebrungen Uber das s. Such der !lias," Rh15· Sec also Ch. Voigt, Ubtrlegung und En1Stbeitbln~ S=lim cur Se/Jmm.jfassunt, tks Mmu:lm r INi Homn (lkdin, '9H). S7-91..
22.
23.
Cf. M. L.euounn, H~mcriJcbe WOrter (Basel, 1950), u s-Ill. a . Wohmowitz-Mocllendoof, Di~ "Jlim" ,ntf Homtr. I<J9-IO.
1.4· C£ Strauss, Tht Cil] and Man. to8, 70. Despite Homer's prot'm, by which one is led tO expect tO h= about souls of many whom Achilles sent tO Hades, ther< are only two, Pauoclus's and Hector's; and ag:Un, despir< m< ptl'l<.m, only one corpse becomes a feasr, not for dogs and birds, however, bll[ for fi!h and
me
eels (11.201-4) . >s. Cf. Wilamowia.-M.....U
a.
F
R
The Furies of Aeschylus
is Ji/ti. Dike can mean "pun· ishmem," but it never means "acquiuaL " Diltmtiltl--thc science of right- is the an of punishment.' "To condemn" is ltatadikllZO and very common, "to acquit/ apodiltaziJ- "to absrain from diki" - and rare. T H E G RE£ K W 0 R 0 F0 R " RI G H T "
6•
Athena connects the founding of the Athenian system of right with th.e acquinal of Orestes. She rhus g<m ngaiNt the grain of right. The last occurrence of the word "right" in the EwmnUle1 is as a preposition (dikr mentioned as the divine agent of right; but ir is in a simile of the Chorus, who make her stand in reality for the Arreidae (.Agammmtm 59). Athena seenu ro have ensured that the Furies, who finally are before us in reality, never leave the levd of simile. Now thar antidikot (Agamemnon 41)-an advocate of right in a lawsuit-will gain irs rrue meaning in the Athenian sysre.m of righr, there will be no need, ir seems, for the Furies to be the agenrs of rigbL Athena does say, howeve.r, that the Erinys has great power (9so-51), and that this means for some men a dim life of tca.rs while for others songs. Indeed, the Furies are often connecred with song (.Agamnnnon 645, 992, m9, u9o; Eumenidn 331 = 344). They seem to be the tragic Muses whom Athena peauades ro settle in Athens (cf. Eummides 308). The knowledg we ate first given of the Furies comes from the prophitit of ApoUo at Delphi. She is the only character in rhe trilogy ro be
The Furies of A=hylu.s
in no way connected wim ics scory. She seems co be as superfluous as me entire scene at Delphi, and her only purpose to imroduce us to me Furies. No one but Orestes saw mem at the end of rhe CIJo~p!Joroi. They seem to have. been his guilty conscience; but now they are twelve and form the Chorus. There is no evidenr reason why mey should be me Chorus. The issue of right could have been presented without the pr=nce of the Furies. Aeschylus could have scrapped the scene at Delphi .and made the Chorus from the start .Athenians, who would have welcomed Orestes to Athens and then, at Athena's direction, made up the jury. [f the Chorus had been the jury, we would have learned why they voted as they did, and whether the bribes of Apollo or the threats of the Furies, born of which could have been imagined by the partisans of either, had any influ· ence. As it is, whether the jury are aware of their own incapacity to reach a decision is unknown to us. We do not know whether they know why Athena has arranged for their incapaciry to reach a decision. We do not know whether they realize why their first case must be Orestes', over whom they have no jurisdiction and for whom they cannot devise any sanction. We are thus forced ro wonder whether the rrial hal not been arranged for us. We, however, know much more than the jury is ever rold. They do nor know mat Oresres would have killed his mother even without Apollo's oracle; they do nor know that Apollo's oracle was hypo· therical, and, as if it were a parody of a law, its threat of dire punishment was the substitute for an argument based oo right ( CIJoq>IJoroi 298- 3o6; cf. Eummidn 84); and, finally, they do oot .k now why Clyremesna killed her husband. Those who vote for the condemnation of Orestes vote for the right of the mother without qualificarion-she does oot have to be in rhe right; those who vote for the acquirral of Orestes vote for a limited right of the lather-the mother must be in the wrong. The jury therefore vote in a way in which we could not have voted; but we do not .kn.o w whemer the jury ever reaJiu the compatibility of their principles. lf lphi· geneia's sacrifice had been known ro them, they might have condemned Orestes unanimously. Our ignorance of the jury's motives and under· sranding rhus functions as the j ury's own ignorance of the titers of the case and their possible fu.ilure to understand their own principles and Athena's purpose. Our ignorance of the jury makes the jury be wholly in the dark. Prior to entering the san.ctuary, the propiJ&is divides her address to the gods imo two pans. The first she calls a prayer, the second a speech (1, 20, zt). In her prayer she pucs Earth 6.rsr, in her speech Athena. Her prayer is about the temporality of prophe.cic succession; her speech is about the presence of gods in different places. Apollo is a god in and of time,
63
6i
Chaprer Pour Athena in and of place (cf. 6)). ln Iter prayer the prophitiJ de.nics that there bas been any conflict bc.cween the pre-Olympian and Olympian gods. The transmission of the &eat of prophecy tO Apollo bas been wholly peaceful. In her speech, however, the last of the Olympians, Dionysus, employs violence and kills the Thracian Pentheus "in the manner (dikln) of a hare." The pre-Olympian gods reject force, the Olympians do not. They back a matricide and punish an unbeliever. At Delphi a perfect harmony between the old and the new gods prevails, but not at Athens. Athens knows only of th.e worship of the Olympian gods. The Athenians are the sons of Hephaesrus (lJ). The Furies are rhe daughters of Night; they do not share a common ancestry with the Olympian gods through Earth. They do not come &om the castration of Ou.ranos. They are among the oldest gods, but they have never been seen by anyone. Tbe prqphiti.s can make only imperfect likenesses of them. Athena's wisdom does nor consist in working out a compromise between Olympian gods and gods ro whom the Athenians have a prior loy2iry; her wisdom consiSts in intro· ducing the Furies ro Athens. She chooses to dilute the worship of the Olympian gods wirh older gods. Athena effects a transmission of power as peaceful as that ar Delphi. The Furies, then, are the newest gods and wholly under the control of Athena. If Apollo had not hinted to them where tO find Orestes, rhe Furi<>: perhaps would never have shown up (224). Wherever else Orestes went, his purification by Apollo was thought to suffice (184-85). Only at Athens is there some doubt as tO its efficacy. Athen.• becomes a holdout through Athena. Athens is another Thebes. On her return &om the shrine, the prophitU speaks of her terror. We assume rhat the Furies Crighrened he.r; bur the Furies turn our robe asleep, and though her descripdon arouses our loathing, her fear seems ground· less. Athena alone testifies to the frightfulness of their faces (990). The only rhreat in the prophitils account is posed by Orestes, whom she de· scribes first. He is wide-awake and holds a newly drawn sword (4:1). We are thus srarcled into realizing that the prophltiJ is not an intrusion into the story. She muse have delivered Apollo's oracle to Ore.
The furies of Aeschylus names (418). To the prophiti.s, they are and are nor women, they are and are nor Gorgons; and they recall rhe Harpies whom she has seen in paintings bur they are wingless. The Furies are unknown co painters. According co Pausan.ias, Aeschylus was the first to pur snakes i.n the hair of the Furies (ll8); and since Orcsres mentions the snakes ar the end of the Chqepboroi as chat feature which prompts him to like.n them ro Gorgons (r048-49), it must be the absence of snakes rhar convinces the prophitis that they are nor Gorgons (cf. t27-28). The Furies of the Eummitks are and are nor the Furies of the Chotphoroi. They are no longer Orestes' Furies. He is no longer mad, and they can fall asleep. When they recurn ro their rask, they are unsuccessful. Their binding song fails as much to bind Orestes as Orestes' summons of his fiuher had failed to gain Agamern.n on's support.' Oresres defends hin1sdf before the Furies, bur he never refers to them as rigliC in &one of him unril the Areopagus has acquitted him (761). Indeed, Orestes has long since had the Furies behind him; they never got him to express any regret for his crime. Orestes is remorse-proof. He can be punished as the law bur nor as conscience understands punish.mem. If Orestes had refused co obey Apollo, he would have been tortured in body and soul; the Furies were for a time capable of making him mad (cf. Jot). Orestes chose body over soul (cf. 137-)8. 2.67) . He is the perfect vehicle for establishing law in Athens. Apollo's purification of Orestes seelllS co have put a stop ro Orestes' imaginings. He now is clean, and the Furies are all his former impurities. They are, however, asleep; rh~· are harmless. [n order for them ro become agents again, rhey musr be awakened. They are awakened by a dream they have, which we are privileged to see and hear before we hear their ·waking interpretacion of it. We see inside the daughrers of Night and know more than they do about themselves. The reality of their dream is the ghost of Clyremestra; we do not have m reconstruct her out of dernems that their interpretation has transformed; at1d we could nor have done so anyway, for Clyremescra is nor in their interpretation. In the.ir dream the ghost of Clyumescra has become. a charioteer-in the manner of (diltm)-whose goad is a repro2ch to them, and whose lash they feel under their bean and liver. Their viscera are fully human, and they are wracked with guilt. They say the heavy chill that besets them is that of the grim public executioner (155-162). The Furies seem to have come co embody all that they intended Orestes ro suffer. Their further perSttution of Oresres is therefore no longer on behalf of Clytemescra. Her case has been universaliud. Orestes is a source of binerness to parents hs2, cf. Sil-lS); but he cannot become such a source unless the apparendy natural ties between children
6s
66
Chaprer Four
and parents are mought to be an insufficie.m constraint on family crimes, and accordingly the law is thought of as the only bond of rhe fumily (49o98). The Furies, then, must ac this point be perplexed about themselves. They cannot know who they are destined co be. ~fheir lor. • says Athena, "is co manage all things that are wimm the range of human beings• 03oJI, cf. 310-u). We have jusr witnessed the first step roward that destiny. It is initiated through the soul of the dead Clytemesrra becoming a dre-.un. The Furies first defend themselves before. Apollo; their deference to him-they address him as Orestes had (85, 198)-concrascs favorably with his abuse of mem. Although Apollo had told Orestes thar rbeir dwelling· place was Tarrarus below rhe earili. and gods, men , and beasrs lind them equally abhorrent, he now casts about for what place would truly suit them on earth. His first suggestion, that they belong where punishments (dikai) ofAsiatic cruelty are practiced, implies that mcy are nor responsible for mao's inhumanity to man. Nor all men, meo, would find the Furies repulsive. His next suggestion-they should properly dwell in a Lion's cave-implies that nor all beasrs would shun them. Only the Olympian gods truly detest them. The basis of their detestation emerges from the enigma Apollo embeds in his speech. He 6m threatens them with a bright-quivering winged snake; he theo lisrs a series of punisb.me.ocs whose common dement is dismembe.rmenr; he then puts them in a lion's cave, and lase he orders them out as if they were a flock of goars (aipoloummai) without a herdsman. Apollo hints at me Chimera: a lion before. a snake behind, and io the middle a she-goat. The Furies are loathsome, Apollo suggests, because rhey are monsters; they consist of parts mar do not form a whole; rhcy therefore have no understanding of wholes. Theirs is a partial justice (222.-30). The whole ro which Apollo appeals is marriage. His example is rhe "pledges" of Hera and Zeus (cf. Agammmon 879, Choephoroi 977). He musr have recoll!Se ro such a marriage in order to counter the Furies' argument that a wife's murder of her husbaod is not of kindred blood. The Furies assume me prohibition again.~< incest, and Apollo groms r.he point by citin.g a marriage of bromer and sisrer. Since Apollo therefore invokt"S a whole is beyond righr- and that is all bur inevitable if Aphrodite is invoked (215)-he eannoc satisfY me longing for wholeness which he has instilled in rhe Furies. Athena, who is nor the offspring of marriage, will h.ave co adjudicate. The ciry, ir seems, is that kind of whole to which the Furies can comribure. In the binding song, me Furies assert nor only rbat Fate confirmed that they were born for what they do but they ch.ose rhcir cask "whenever Ares, being domesticated, kills a dear one." This coincidence between
mat
Tb< Furies of A=bylus
necessity and &ccdom enra.ils rhar for rhe Furies rhe on.ly rea.liry is moral, and the weal ignorance char is madness follows at once upon its violation (Jn -8o). The seemings (doX11i) of men, no maner how august under the sky, melt to nothing beneath. rhe <'3rrh. The Furies, rhen, identify rea.lity wirh Hades. Hades, however. is invisible £O men. Men cannot help but take rhis world as the rea.lity. The Furies arc amazed ro learn from Athena that here rhere are other than moral necessities (cf. 313- 15). They tell he~ they drive killers of any kind from rheir homes, and rhis is what rhey are doing ro Oresres, who deemed ir righr ro be his mother's murderer. Arhena wants ro know wherher ir was by some orher necessity or in fear of someone's wrath (426). To rheir starded question-"Where is there so great a goad for matricide?" - Athena repljes rhar only half rhe speech has been stared: The speech, in order ro become a whole, musr include Oresres'. The Chorus assert rhat Oresres would refuse ro swear rhar he committed rhe crime. Arhena comrnenrs: "You want ro be spoken of as just rather rhan ro aa (justly]." The Furies now wish tO be insrructed; rhey become aware of Athena's wisdom. Athena instructs rhem in diStinguishing between appearance and reality that is orher than rhe Furies' own, first getting the Furies to acknowledge rhat rhere is a difference berween who they are-the children of Night- and what they are calledCurses who dwell below earth (416-17). The Furies, roo, are seernings; rhey exist only insofur as rhey are summoned into existence by men. They now, however, have the chance ro be in rheir own right and no longer subject to individual men. They can ac.t on their own if they become parr of the city. The Furies do not understand the meaning of oaths. They mistake rhe righteousness of rhe swearer for rhe right of that to which he swears (cf. 488-89). Orestes rrusted in right in embracing Athena's statue; be did not have to know whether be acted rightly or not (4J9, 468, cf. 60913). Half the. jury whom Athena herself selected do not believe Apollo, Zeus, or herself; they believe rhey know whar is right becrecr rhan the Olympian gods whom alone rhe.y worship (cf. 621). They are not going tO be punished for it. This is Athena's mosr powerful argument in dissuading rhe Furies from punishing Arhens for rheir defeaL The right of ignorance must be sacred if juries are to sentence rnen to dearh.4 They must be confident i.n right wirhout knowing ri.g ht. Orestes is i.n a sense rhe model for rhe citizen wirh a clear conscience. His obedience to rhe lawlike oracle of Apollo is his only justification. His act mUSt be shocking if his obedience is to be pure: at the moment be killed his mother, he obeyed Pylades' reminder of rhe oracle rather than his own reverent shame
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Cluprcr Four
{Chotpboroi 899-902). Every l'acrion will henceforth be thwarted from enlisting rhe gods under its own exclusive banner. Th.e right and the holy will oo longer be coextensive.1 The second srasimon summarius what the Furies have learned so far. Although they still insist that terror is good and must sit in warch over the mind, they grant that it must nor become tyrannical. Such unadulterated erulavemem leads to misery, hue unadulrrratcd anarchy leads to nothingness. The mean is neither misery nor nothin.gness: "One will nor be ,..;rhout happiness and would not be wholly destroyed (581- 82). • Terror, then, must be so sofi:ened that one can be just without compulsion {580). Hades cannot be the realiry, madness cannot be the punishment. Jf the text is sound. they put this as follows! ~But what dry or mortal would still revere right in the same way if he should ROt bring up his heart in the lighr {52o-24)?" They now recogniu Remings. Thc.rc must be an anarchic principle mixed in with pure terror. This anarchic principle proves ro be in Athens the right to vote io ignorance. Blind chance mus~ be acknowledged. The Furies no longer believe that if no wrath comes from them, a mao must lead a life without harm (314- 15). Defeat, though armed with right, is now possible. In order for Athena's plan ro work, it is necessary that Oresres be acquitted, fo.r if the Athenians condemn him, rhe Furies will not stay; they will nor $tay if they are not defeated. The votes, however, must be equal if the Furies' dishonor is ro be matched by Apollo's (795-96). Their acquiesoencc in half the vote is ro aa as an example. for the city. The rule of the majority requires the consent wirbour the agree· mcnt of the minority. To give in is not ro give u.p one's principles; bur they are no longer such ccttain principles that they can give o ne rhe rigbr ro get even. The way in which Apollo and Athena use her motherless origin is not the $atllC. Apollo brings it up attCI he has argued that murder is unlike any other crime, "since the.r e is no possibility of resurreccion, and my &.rher made no incanracions for ir, for cv~cything else he arranges and rurns ropsy-rurvy, without gasping for breath in his suengrh (648-Sl)." It would seem, therefore, that the lack of consanguinity becween mother and son , which Apollo argues for next, does not at aU meet rhe point that O ytemesrra was murdered. Should nor Orc:sres pay for that? Apollo's inconsequence conceals a threat: Zeus bas shown through Athena rhar mothen are superJluous. If he wanrs ro, Zeus can cancel the role of the Furies alrogerher by eliminating women. Terror would remain bur nor love. Athena understands Apollo perfectly: she offers to mak-. the Furies rhe protectors of marriage (832- 36). Athena herself, however, does nor
Th• Furies of A=bylus
usc her sexless birth in this way; instead, she cites ir as the reason tor he.r vote. She votes her nature (736), and she alone does so. Those who vored with her denied their nature and obeyed hers; those who voted against her followed no less unnarurally rh.e farh.erless Furies. Right, as men unde.rsrand it, is blind to nature. Men believe in absolute right. They believe the gods support them in this beliet. Athena denies it, asserting instead that the nature of each human being i.s double in origin and single in sex. They are rheretore too complex to vote their nature. The known requirements ot the city must tal."e the place of their own unknowable nature. The male musr take precedence. Clyremesrra, who comes dosest to being male and female at once (Aglllllonnon u, 351) , proves it. She punished Agamemnon for the sacri.6ce of her daughter, bur she neYer connected that crime with the injustice of the Trojan war. She rhus granted implicitly
Notes Cf. Pluo Sophist u!)A; Go1fi.al 4648. 2. That no compound with PytJw. OOCUI$ in the £vmenidl!1coniirms her guilty coi)Scicnc.c (d Choq!horoi 9<>1, 940, lOJO), for it alone would bave cast doubt 1.
on her story of rhe cnnsmisslon.
3· The reason why Or.s<es asks after Clyrcmesm's dream at the moment wh.eo he d~ iJ
69
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Cb2prer Four
thar rhe dtcision w:u unjus<. Demostb
a.
S· Plato E1111Jyphro u . W<. !tam from the PIJIII'do (s8A- C} that Athens forbade public execution whil< tht ~cred ship went wand fiOm Delos every yctr.
6. Clytemtsua must ba•-e known that to save Orest<S was to guarant<e her own dtarh; othtrwis<, it s«ms imposslbl< to explain her consranr sacri.6c<S tO the Furits {,Eummldes to6-JJ,).
E
Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus Eine Sphinx. das igypriscbe Gebilde des Riitsels selbSt, sei in Thcben erschienen und babe ein Riitsd aufgegeben mit den Worte.n: "\Vas ist das, WliS morgens auf vier Beinen g<'ht, mittag' auf zweie.n und abends auf dreien?" Der Grieche Odipus babe das Riirsd gdg geistiger Klarbeit in dem alten KonigthaUS<: ist noch mit Greudn aus Unwissenheit verbunde.n. Es ist die alre parriarcboli.scbe Herrsch.ft, der das Wissc:o tin Heterog<:nes ist und die dadurch aufgdoSt wird. Dies Wissc:n wird tnt gereinigt durcb politi.scbe Gesene; unminelb•r ist cs unheilbringend. Das SdbstbewuBtsein mull sich noch, um ~u w:lbren W=n und sirdicber Klarheit :w werden, durch bilrgerlicbe Gcxa.e und politiscbe Freiheit gesralrcn und tum schonen Geisce ve..Obnen. -G.W.F. Hegd, Phiwsophit tkr WrU,.nrhirbu
o E o r P u s , we must imagine. appears before the Thebans leaning on a Stalf, a sraff that indicates as much his present au· tbority as the use be once made of it to kill his farber (8n, cf. 456). The staff or scepter is rhus uiply significant: a supporr for his io6rmity, a sign of his politial position, aod an instrument for parricide. ln two of irs uses, the sraff points ro Oedipus's strength, in rhe other to his weakness; bur this w•akness no doubt enabled him to solve the riddle of the Sphinx: a man in the prime of life bur maimed sincr childhood and hencr "threefooted" before his time sa~v in himself the riddle's answer. He now, bowever, appeaa before a threefold division of his people, whose enigmatic. character be fuils co see: "Some have nor yet the strength ro Ry far; some are priestS, heavy with old age, of whom I am the pri($t of Zeus; and some are selected from those still unmarried" (16-19). Children incapable of going far, priests w•ighed down with age, aod a group of unmarried T H ll
c
R t P P L E. o
71
71
Cbaprer five
men stand before him. Oedipus is the only man (anir), in the strict sense, who is pre.senr. Two of the groups are weak, the orher is mong. Together they represent an anomalous and defective answer ro the riddle of rhe Sphinx, for rhe aged appear as priesr:s, and the C\OJO-foored men appear as bachelors. The suppliants for the city are either below or beyond generation: the children have not yet reached puberty, the youths have nor yet become fathers, and the priesr:s are presumably impotent. Only Oedipus has been and can be again a lather. The absence of women, which in this way is underlined, pointS to the blight th:u has now fallen on all generation. A bloody rempest, says the priest of Zeus, threatens co swamp rhe dry: "(The city] wastes away in the unopened &uitful buds of the earth; it wastes away in the herds of grazing cows and in the abortive births of women" (25-27, cf. r71-73o 270-72). The fruit and the cattle perish, and rhe women abort in giving birth, Thebes has been struck by a plague that exacdy 6rs Oedipus's crimes, for defective offspring is supposed ro be the consequence of incest.' Oedipus, however, neither understands the meaning of the plague nor sees in the deleg;
Sophod<S' Oaliprn Ty41mw
whereas incest is necessarily, a polirial aime, for rhe city must be exogamous if the f.unily is not 10 be self-sufficient and claim a loy:alty than rhe city. The movement, thc:rc:fore. from the quesrion of who lcilloo l...aius to char of who gcncnrcd Oedipus, while ir goes more deeply inco the f.unily, goes more deeply inro the ciry as wdl. Oedipus violares equally the public and the private with a single crime. He is the paradigm of the ryram. Oooipus is rhe completdy public man. He has an openness and tram· parency rhat leave no room for the private and secret. When Cr:eon asks him whether he should rcpon whar the orade replied while the Cho.rus are present, Oedipus says, "Address it ro all, for I bear a grief fot these even morc than for my soul" (93-94). Tbe city in its public and private aspects alone counts, and Oedipus is a superAuous third: "My soul sonows cogerher for the city, myself. and you (singular)" (6}-~). His own sotrow is ne.ither the city's common nor each citizen's privare sorrow; and ir is in her above and beyond dther (cf. 1414-15). but Oooipus prcsenrs it as if ir were only the union of the public and the priv:are: "I know wdl that all of you are ill, and, though you are ill, there is no one of you who is as equally ill as I am, for )'Out pain comes tO one alone by himself and ro no one else" (s9-6J). Everyone else is ill, bur no one is as ill as Oedipus, for all the resr suffer individually, willie he alone suffers collectively. He is a one like no other one. As ruler (nrch611) be is like che one that wi thour being a numbet is the principle (nrr:hi) and measute of all numbers.' Oooipus's noror ("illness." "disease") is truly unequal roche citizens', for he is the source of cheirs, bur he regards himsdf as ill only because his grief is the sum of each partial grief. Oedipus alwafS speaks for the city as a whole. T uesias refm ro himself emplmically as ~6 eight times, but never to rhc city, whereas Oedipus five rimes in the same =ne refers to the city and only once to himself as ~: " Bw ir was I, the know-nothing Oedipus. who cam~ and stopped th~ Sphinx" (396-97). Oedipus immediately inr:apreu Tiresias's rduaa.ncc to speak as a dishonor to the city and just cause for indignation U39-'!0). Tuesias's silence has noming lawful (mntJmll) in it, nor is ir an act of kindness co the city rhar nurtured him (J:u-LJ). Oedipus's concern for his own delivo:.rance seems ro him to be nodting more than a rhetorical fullness of expression, "Save (rhus11j) yourself and the ciry, save (rhwni) me, and save (rhtUAi) [us) from the entire taint of rhe dead" (Jrl-1), cf. 253-55). The rhird rbwni does nor mean the same as the lim rwo; but the deliverance from the poUurion is in facr the same as the deliverance of
sua=
7J
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Ch>prc:r Five
the cicy &om Oedipu.•. The cicy lll\lSt be saved fi:om Oedipus. whose own safety is incompatible with the safety of those with whom he allies himself (cf. :Lof.ol-45• 25J-S+l- He appeals ro the cicy as though he were che city and no one shared in it o:cept himself (626- 30, cf. 643). His urrer publicicy, his being only what he is as ruler of Thebes (cf. 443), makes him rhink the charges of Trresias are prompred by private gain (380-89, cf. 393-94. cf. 54o-42). He received the kingship as a gifr bur had no desire for ir, for he solved the riddle of the Sphinx wirh complete disinterest (383-84, 393-94. cf. 540-.p.). 1\tJ a stranger but lately enrolled in rhe cicy, he smods above aU F...ctional inrerests (219-2.2.) . His iocorn•pribilicy is the most evident sign that he lacks a private componem; bur the deepest sign is idenriliable as his cri.mes. The cyranr, says Socrates, commits those crimes {among which is in~c) thar most men only dream about {c£ 98o83). The dreams of others are the deeds of Oedipus. "For those awake, • Heraclitus s:~ys, 4 the.re is a single and common order. bur each one rums when aslee-p into his own" (u. 89). Oedipus is always awake and a member of rbc com.mon order (cf. 6sl- All the illegal desires of dreams, by being fulli.IJed in him , leave him empty of evecyrhing that is nor public knowledge. He consisrs enrirdy of doxa, o.r "seeming" (cf. n86-96). Seeming and likeness are opposed ro what does not seem and resemble bur is. In the case of Oedipus, however, seeming and likeness always turn out to be true. He will seek the critninal, he says, as though he were fighting for rhe sake of his own father (264- 65), because he holds the kingship Laius had before, "having the marriage bed and woman of rhe same seedbed" (260). His wile .is indeed homosporos, nor in the transferred sense char l.aius and Oedipus share rhe same wife, bur in the sense that Oedipus is lirernlly kindred with her and sows the same secdb~'
Sophoclco' OdipiiJ TF""'""
the Thebans from finding out who killed Laius (128-1.9). 'The Sphinx or "Constrictor" rhar asked about me four-footed, two-footed, and threefooted animal WliS in the way of their feet (tmpo®n, cf. +15) and endced them to look at what was at their feet (to pros posi) and neglect the obscure and invisible (taphani, 130-}1). Oedipus solved what was at their 1"=: and now he is called upon to solve the invisible. He does not know rhat this distinaion between the n= and the rustant is no longer applicable. ·r shaD make it (aut:>, • he says, • evidenr once more from the beginning"; and while he means taphanl, it is equally true of to pros posi, for his crippled feet finally idenruy him as me son of Laius and his murderer. The truth of Oedipus is right in from of him. There is nothing latent in him. He is the wholly unpoetic man, and hence it seems not accidental that in O~dipus Tyrannut alone of the seven plays we have of Sophocles the word muthos (speech, tale, false tale) never occutS. 7 The nan1e of Oedipus perhaps most dearly shows that the surf.tce rrum of Oerupus is the sign of his depths as well. To be crippled was considered to be a sign of ryranoical ambitions (cf. 878), and the very name of the royal family, Labdacidae, contains within it labda or lambda, the letter that re$etllbles an uneven gait.8 Oedipus's name, then, as a sign of his defect, shows that the general truth expressed in the riddle of the Sphinx does not apply to himself. The. answer "man" fails tO cover the particular case of Oedipus. His defect., howeve.r, by placing him outside. the speciCS"characrerisric of man, allowed him ro see the speciescharacteristic. Oedipus has never re.Bected on his divergence from the species, nor undetStood why he alone could solve the riddle. The solution co the riddle depends on seeing that only one of the three kinds of feet literally holds. Oedipus saw the. hererogeneiry that underlies an arcilicial homogeneiry, but he does not see his own ruspariry. Oedipus never fits the groups in which he puts himself as a third element. The public, the. private, and Oedipus do not make a genuine triad, any more rhao do the altars of Apollo, Athena, and Oerupus at which the Thebans sit (1., 16, 19-21, cf. }1); the alliance of Apollo. Laius, and Oedipus (1.+1-45); or the joint rule of Jocasra, Creon, and Oedipus (577-81).' The speciousness of the riddle's triad oonceals a doubleness in man himself. He is a biped but an upright biped (cf. 419, 528, t385), and his uprightness, which is shared by neither the baby nor the three-footed aged, indica res his ability ro look up and know; 10 and Oedipus, we learn, in spite of a lameness that would rurect his glance downward to his feet, guided his Right from Corinth by looking at me StaiS (794-96). Man is endowed with self-motion and awareness (cf. 6-7, }96-97).11
7!
76
Cbapcer Fh-e
He is an ouu-pous (knows-a fooY) or Oidipous, a pun rhe messenger from Corinrh unknowingly makes when he asks rhe Chorus: "Would I learn from you, mangers, where (mathoimi hoptm} rhe palace of rhe ryranr Oedipus is? And, most of all, say wherher you know whe.r e {ltatisth' hopqu} he bimsdf is" (9~-26, cf. 4~. m.8). 12 Oedipus, who can see man in his motion, cannot set: where (pou} and on what basis he himself rem (cf. 36768, 4J:3). The &rant perspecrive his deftct afforded him ro see man in his three ages kept h.im &om seeing rhe ground on which he himself stood. Oedipus's knowledge is divorced from his own body, bur rhe crimes he committed are bodily crimes. His crimes have rheir origin in rhe privacy of me body (hu mother and hu father), and they are derecred rhrough his body; bur his own lack of privacy, which perfecdy accords wirh rhe absence of all desires in Oedipus, leads him ro look away from rhe body. He seems to sta.nd at an Archimedean point. He somehow is pure mind. Human knowledge, .however, unlike divine or divindy inspired knowledge, does not have the purity and openness thar Oedipus thinks ir has. The Chorus suggest to Oedipus that Apollo should properly disclose who killed Laius, bur Oedipus reminds them thar no one can compel the gods against their will (278-.81). The Chorus have anomer suggesrion, and Oedipus allow'S them even a rhird (28:1.-83). Tiresias is rbe second possibiliry, and rbough Tire.ias is provoked by anger imo speaking, the uuth rhat he tells is completely useless. Tiresias does not offer, perhaps because be cannot, any evidence for whar ne says. He is as enigmatic and teasing as was tne drunken Corinrbian who started Oedipus on his quesr for his origins (779-86). The one clue there is (cf. n8-21)-rbe third suggestion of the Chorus-is me "dumb and ancient rale" thar some wayfuers slew Laius (:z.9o): false, bur still a clue. Human error, like the defecrive feer of Oedipus, leads to rbe uum, while divine knowledge is eirber unavailable or enigmacic.ll The lone survivor of Laius's retinue bad out of fear exaggerared the number of attackers (c( n8-19); but if he had nor, "one could never prove equal to many" (845, cf. no), and Oedipus would not be me murderer. The clue is a false arithmeric. JoCISta is cenain that there were many, for rbe ciry heard it, and not she alone (848-so). What is publicly made manifesr cannot be untrue. Both jocasr:a and Oedipus idenrify the evident wirb me ciry, but the city lies wrapped in opinion char only pandes as knowledge.. And yet Oedipus can test this falsehood, while he finds the rrur:b, which is natutally inborn in Ti.resias (299), refractory to resting (cf. 498-511). T iresias's blindness prevents him from ever knowing where be is, but tne sacredness thar keeps him detached from human and polirical things allows him ro be unconcerned wirb the ground of his knowledge. Oedipus mockingly asks Tires1as why he did nor solve the
Sophocles' O.Jipus Tya11mu riddle of the Sphinx (J9o-94). The answer i• plain: the riddle bas a wholly human answer, and Tireoias knows about man only in his relation to the gods. Oedipus. unsupported by any extrahuman knowledge-"the knownothing Oedipus• (397)-solves it bccau.c he is himself the paradigm (u93-96). Oedipus repr=nrs the human attempt to repbcr the sacredhis f.tilure to rerum to Corinth is his denial of oracles-14 by the purdy human. He is to be the third dement alongside the public and the private (cf. t6, 31-34). The purdy human, ho,.,-e-·er. seems to entail not only the destruction of the sacred. but the c.ollapoe of any distinction beiWCCil the public and the private. The purdy human, :u least as far as Oedipus reveals it. will prove ro be the monstrous. The Chorus are out.raged that anyon< should disobey the oracles (883-910). The oracles are three in number: One foretold that laius would be lcilled by his own son, another that Oedipus would kill his f.uhc:r and many his mother, and the third said that the pn:scntt in Thebes oflaius's murdecer caused the plague. The Chorus want all three oracles to rum ourro be rrue, but thcyalsowant their own lot (moira) to be such that they do not break the sacted prohibitions against parricide and incest (861-71). Oedipus, on the othe.r hand, want• the oracle addressed co him.self to prove f.alse, so that human morality will be maintained; but the gods want the authority of all the oracles, i.e., their own authority, maintained even at the expense of human morality. Human morality, however, was not brough.r about by human nature: O lympus alone was irs f:uhcr. It is the nature of Oedipus, rhen, to break these laws, but he: does nor know that it is his nature. He believes it to be the work of Apollo (tJ19- JO, cf. 376n). Oedipus, who thinks himself the manifestation of the city. turns out to be the manifestat ion of human nature itsdf, and the fare of human nature by irsdfis to violate the divine laws of the city. Hubris is the natural in man, and man is naturally a tyrant (873). Hubris makes man rise to heights he cannot maintain and hence plunges him into sheer rom pulsion. "where he widds a useless foot" (873-79). The swollen foot that is Oedipus finally trips him up. £ven if Oedipus lacks any secret desires, he uill is n.ot fitt from all passions. His 0\~rriding passion is anget. He lim shows it when T~resias refuses ro speak. "You would enrage,• he tells him, "the nature of a stone, • so unmoved does he chink Tirc:sias (3)4- }6). MYou blame my cemper," Tin::sias replies, "bur do not see your own that dwells with you.· Tirc:sw's Drt;/ (temper, anget) is his indifference 10 the city, Oedipus's Drgi, which is all of Oedipus. is his concern for the city. •Who would nor become enraged on bearing such words as youn, • he answers Tirc:sias, "in which you dishonor the city?" Oedipus's anger is cntitdy ac the service of the
n
78
Cluptcr Five
city. Hi,s anger now expresses his private devotion <0 public justice. rhough the same anger on ce brought him to kill l.aius and his rerrnue (807) . Oedipus cannot srand opposit:ion. He m usr overcome everyrhiug rhar resistS him (cf. rp2- :z.3). He f.lils <0 see any difference between his indignarroo at an injury ro himselfand one ro rhe cicy (61.9, 642-43). His indignarion is a passion for homogeneity (cf. 408-9). Everything must be reduced ro the same level or eliminated uoril be alone as the city remains.'' The sacred in rhe peoon ofTiresias and the private in that of Creon must go (cf. 577-82). He is opposed tO the Chorus's wish rhar god never dissolve noble contention and rivalry in th,e ciry (879-81}. His belief that be is a unique one in the cicy is rooted in his total public-spiritedness, bur the passion he brings co that role also looks roward his crimes against the cjcy. Anger as the leveler of distinctions resembles rhc homogeneity of law- there can be no exceptions to Oedipus's decree, nor even himself (8r6-:z.o)-bur this exrreme reductionism in Oedipus's anger d uplicates another kind of homogeneity that comes from his crimes. "Now I am withouT god and the son of unholy [parents], bur l alas am of the same kind as those from whom I myself was born" (r36o-6r). Oedipus is of the same kind as those from whom he was born. He is equally husband and son of Jocasra, f.uher and brother of Antigone. and killer of L.aius who gave him life (457-6o, cf. 1402-7). By killing his f.uher and marrying his moTher, he has destroyed the triad of farber, mother, and son. He is nor a third one over and beyond his origins, bur be is ar one with them (cf. 425). In his being he is the reduction that he tries ro carry our with his anger. The law agalnsr incest that forbids homogeneity in the f.unily emerges in his violation ofir as the homogeneity of anger. Oedipus's anger is the surf.tce ex:ptC$SiOn of his incest. They share in common the exclusive care and defense of his own without concern for anything alien; and this exclusiveness is characteristic of rhe city that Oedipus has made his own. His public ange.r and his private incest therefore com.e together in the Thebans' belief in rhc:it autochrhooy. Attrocbthony would give rhe earth tO everyone as a common mother and hence make incesr i.nevirable; but it would also best justifY a city's exclusive possession of irs land and hence most inspire rhe cirneru ro defend it." The Chorus divine that Oedipus will share with Cithaeron a common fatherland-it wiU be his patriotisand that Cithaeron will prove ro be his nurse and mother as well (ro8692). Oedipus, however, turns out to be autochthonous in another no.nmetaphorica.l sense. "How, how could the fa.t her's furrows, alas, bear ro keep silence for so long?" (IUl-11}. H is father's furrows are Jocasta's loins and nor Theban rerriroty (cf. 1482- 85, 1497-99, 1502). What would have been rhe complete vindication of Oedipus as the city if the patroiai alokes had
Sophocles' Oedipus 1yrannus been the patroia gaia (earth, or land), sig)lifies inStead his greatest aime against the ciry. 17 Oedipus, rhen, in destroying the ground of rhe private, reve:W rhe ground of rhe public. ln his violation of rhe unwritten law, he is the rrurh of civil law. Bur Oedipus is also th.e nature of man as it appears in itself wirhout the restraint of di,-ine law. Thus the monstrousness of Oedipus consists in his being together rhe ultimately natural (the private) and rhe uki.marely lawful (rhe public) in man. Oedipus believes that jocaSta. ashamed of his base birth, does not want the herdsman ro be questioned; bur he insists on discovering his origins even if rhcy are small. "I count myself rhe son of beneficent chance," he says. "She is my natural morbe,r, and the months that are my congeners m2de me small and grear" (lo8o- 8J, cf. JQ90) . Oedipus is rhe son of chance and rhe sport of time. )OCISra had asked him, "Why should a human being be alTaid, for whom rhe ways of chance are sovereign, and there is dear foreknowing of nothing' lr is besr to live ar random· (9n79). lf chance controls Oedipus because he is irs offspring, he bas norhing to fear from any disdosures char rime might brin.g (12.13- 15, cf. 917). They would all be as indifferent to him as they are to chance. The lack of discrimination in chance, irs randomness, necessarily leads to rhe loss in Oedipus of any distinctions, and chat is his crime. Chance is the ground of his apparent unconditionaliry, for his crimes have uprooted his own origins and made him his own arcbl (origin, principle). He is completely free. The one condition attached to his freedom is his swollen feet, but rhcy are lircraUy Oedipus bimsdf. He Stands in rhe way of his own nuure (cf. 674-75). Oedipus says rh:u be met Laius at a rriple road, bur Jocasta calls rhc meeting of the ways from Daulia and Delphi a split road (733, 8oo- 8ot, cf. 1399). A rripli hodos (triple way) is the same as a schistl IJOdos (split way). Two is the same as three. If one is walking a road and comes ro a branching of it, rhere are only rwo ways that one can go, for rhe third way h21 already been traversed. If. however, one is not walking bur simply looking at a map of such a branching, rhere appears ro be. three ways to rake. Action sees two where comemplarion sees rhree. Oedipus places himself in the camp of tiN6ria. but it is a naive th~6ria. He thinks he h11S one more degree of freedom than he has. If his swollen .feet are the sign of chis double pct5peaive, his crimes, one might say. are its mtth. He has, in committing inceSt, made literal rhe metaphor of political theory. Even as dreaming and waking are for him one and rhe same (cf. 98083), so he is blind ro the difference berwecn theory and praaice. The distant and rhe near view are in biro merged: t~~piJanes (the invisible) is to pros posin (that which is at the feet). Oedipus wants to become invisible to mort:1ls before rb.e double guilt
79
8o
Ch•pw Five
of incest and pat.ricide overtakes him (8J0-3J). And be later effectS his invisibility by blinding bimsel£ for he lives so entirely in the realm of Jqxa (seeming, opinion, and reputarion)- the famous Oedipus is the knownothing Oedipus (7, 397)-!ha.r his inability to see is equivalent <0 his nor being seen (cf. 1171-74). "This day,~ Tiresias had told him, "sball bring you ro birrh and de.m oy you" (438). The day that brings Oedipus inro the light takes away his' light (cf. m, IJ75-76l- His blindness has made him who was comp.lerely transparent opaque. He is now skqumos (1316). In thus rurning away from !he sham clarity of Mxa inro himself (1JI7-t8, 1347-48), Oedipus restores rbe private thar be had desrroyed. He recovers his shame. "lf you oo longer feel ashamed before rhe generations of morrals," Creo.n rells him, "at leasr feel shame before th.e allnourishing light of the sun, to show unbidden such a rainr that not earth, not sa.cred rain, not light wiU welcome. Go into the house at once: it is holy only for those who arc kin tO see and bear kindred evils" (147.431).11 Nor jusr rbe ciry, but rbe world icself rums its back on Oedipus. He had forbidden any citizen from receiving or addressing the murderer of Laius, from sharing with him the praye.rs or sacrifices to the gods, and from granting him !he use of lus.rral warm (238-40); but now the crime of inceSt bas wi!hdrawn Oedipus from things that are b")"-ond the civil order. He must 1ttl1TD ro the private. And yet Oedipus does no r need the seclusion of a house in order ro retire from the world; the blinding of himself bas already done it for him. His one concern is for his banishment from the city, whose physical presence (astu), whose towe.rs, whose sacred srarues of the gods benolongerdares to look upon (1377-83) . The restoration of the private must be accompanied by the restoration of the public: that he had equally destroyed. He therefore is at the end what he was at the beginning, a superfluous third. As rhe report (pheme or phatiJ) of oracles has been confirmed in the light (phos) of troth (tSJ-sS. 1440); (the rwo words share linguisric.Uiy the same root [cf. 472-76]), IJ so the unseeable Oedipus is also the unspeakable Oedipus: "Ob, my abominable cloud of darkness hovering, unspeakable" V313-14). He is surround.,d by silence and darkness {IJJI'- 39). lf there bad been some way to stop his ears, be says, he would nor h2ve held back from closing off his body (x386-89). He would no longer hear, as he no longer sees. h.is crimes. He would deprive himself of sense, as be was once deprived of motion... He would cut off the knowing as he was cur off from the walking in his name. He ba.d abused Tiresias as blind in his ears, his mind, and his eyes (37l); but be himself now wants ro hear and see nothing: "For thought to dwell outside of evils is sweet" (1389-90). Oedipus forgers to put out his mind. He does not regard n()UJ as a
Sopbocles' Oedipw TyriVInus
third faculty distinct from hearing and sight. He is like Plato's Theaetcws, whose mathematical knowledge rests on his thinking, but who believes that knowledge is sensation. The Chorus call Oedipus equally wretched for his calamities as for his reflection (nous) on them (t347), and Oedipus himself. when he cannot see. rcBecrs on the wretched future of his daughters (1486-88). In spite of bi.s own praa.ice, be does not consider that thinking is irreducible to sense, just as he did not understand that his ability to solve the riddle of the Sphinx revealed more about man than did his answer. Man is the being that solves riddles. The difttrence between man as rwo-footed and man as thr~ or four-footed does not consist in his being literally a biped-the dipous in Oedipus's nameand only metaphorically three- and four-footed, but in his thinking. The homogeneity Oedipus discovered in his origins has made him blind to this heterogeneous dement. Oedipus discovered the speciousness of the triad in the riddle, but he then found that the heterogeneity of mother, Euher, and son concealed in his case a sameness. He distingui.med a difference in what the rid.dle had presented as a sameness, only to discover a sameness beneath an apparent difference. His thinking as differenri:ning found itself confronted with the undifferentiable. The single nighr in which his blindo.ess has cast him seems to be truer than th.e daylight of his und=ding (cf. 374-75). His anger in finally turning on himself condemns him to live me homogeneity of his crimes. The first indication mac Laius might be Oedipus's father occurs when Oedipus asks Jocasra wbar me narure (phusis) of bius was, and she says that he did not differ much from me shape (morphi) of Oedipus (74043). They look alike because Oedipus is the son of l.aius, but Oedipus, in killing hi.s father and martying his mother, points to a deeper sameness in generation itsdf. He is not different from bis origins. He i.s the same as mat from which he came. He is the son of chance. Not the ndtJs of man, which the Sphinx bad posed as a riddle, bur his gmesis i.s the riddle of man. An artificial riddle yields to a natural riddle, and Oedipus is thrice characteri2ed by his nature. He says himself mar T uesias's silence would anger me nature even of a stone (334-35), and me n2ture of stone i.s to be wimout sex and human shape;" while Creon says mat Oedipus's nature i.s his shumos (spirit, anger, heart), which makes itself almost too painful to be borne (674-75, cf. 914> 975); and )ocasra says that Oedipus's nature or shape W2S close to Laius's. Oedipus has a threefold nature: his potential shapelessness, his thumos, his generated shape. His thut>UJs is unbearable because it shows through his crimes mat his gene.rared shape only bides his potential shapelessness. Oedipus's crimes seem to have uncovered the undifferentiated beginnin.~ of man. They point ro his nonanthropomor-
8>
t>
Chaprer r1ve phic tiTchai. As violation of wvine law chey point tO me archai that Lie behind me anchropomorphic gods. If me Olympian gods gave men cheir own shape (cf. 1097- U09), rbe prohibitions against ina:st and pauicide would mean that man was nor to ~reb into rhe shapeless dements beyond these gods. If be did he would find Chaos with irs offspring Night and all things mixed together. He would find Ouranos as the son and husband of Eanb- the pri.m e example of inceSt in the Greek rbeogonyand Ouranos casr:rated by his own son. n Oedipus, then, who discovered what man is in his i!ido1, seems to have discovered in his hubris the nonhuman gmnil of man. The whole of earrh, sacred rain, and Light, of which Creon forbids Oedipus ro be a pan, must be informed by the sacred if ir is jusdy to exdude Oedipus (1424-18, ef. 238--40, 1378- 83). The sacred must bind together and keep apart the public (Light) and the private (earrh)." If the whole does not have this bond of Olympian sacredness, which guarantees the human in man, then Oedipus, whose rhumos points joindy to rbe homogeneity of law and rbe homogeneity of nature, is truly the inhuman paradigm of man. This is the question that the three panicles that most nearly make up me name of Oedipus, ou di pou ("Surdy nor>"), can be said to inrroducc-a question raised in uuer disbelief, bur somerimes answered affirmatively (ef. 1042, 147~).:.0 In Oedipus at Coibnus, we learn char Oedipus, toward rhe end of his life, came to the bronu-stepped threshold rooted in the earth (tS90-9I), where Hesiod says grow the roots, the beginnings, and me ends of the earth, sea, aod sky;15 and that just after his disappearance Theseus was seen reverencing together in a single speech Eanh and the Olympus of the gods (1653-fs}.
Nota An earlier venioo of chis chap«< appeartd in J. Cro[>.!ey. AncimlS anti MotimiJ, copyright@ 1964 by Basic Books, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Basic Books, a member of Perseus Books. L.L.C. 1. Xenopboo Mnnorabili4 -t..j-20-2}. 2. Perhaps, then, one should read o:t rsos. ml spht, pat~r, idlis (Do not overlook
Sophocles' O.Jipro Tynt/tiJUS is callc:d ana:< Oord) fourtten rimes, only "vier after 8p., and both times by servantS (1002, U7J).
Ariswtle Mttap/rysit"J IOI6bq-21; IOlJall-IJ; P/ryJit"J U00l75· Cf. Sophocles Antigont 172, H75-76. 6. &uiku.r (king) is used only "'ice in the play, once of laius and onao of ~ipus (>p, 202), but tvrannoJ, e
(1410, 1417, 1447). 8.
a. Herodotus 5·92b1; Xenophon Htllenira 3·3·3·
9· The 6r>t triad is in Oc:dipus's first spttcb, "The city is altogerher full of incense, patu$'S view of tbe uiple source of mllSic: enthusiasm. pleasure, and pain ( Quat11iont:r ron•i,iaks L 5 [62JC- D] ; cf. De rupmtirione 9 [1690] ; Dt virtu~ mDritG 6 [44sDJ: also Plaro
&public 573~-s). 10. Pl21o Cratylus 3990 - 6. n. Cf. Plaro Charmida 159b>- 5. n. Cf B. Knox, Oedipus ttl ThtiH> (N<w Haven: 1957), r8J-8+ IJ. The c.ribrach phon"' (murderer) occurs three times as mt 6m foor in the line (362, 703. 721) , rwice of Oc:dipus as me murderer of uuus, and rhe mird time in Jocasra's denial c:hat laius's son kiDc:d him; bur whac Jocasr• says sraru "a wandering of the soul and agicuion of the wits" in Oc:dipus (727). whicb is also the third and last time mar Oc:dipus refers to his soul (64, 94). And again poteron {whemer} C)(lCUU Wet times at the beginning of me Jine ( IU, 750. 96o)r:wice of laius and once of Polybus, Oedipus's supposed &tber. 14. 794--97· cf. Sss-59· 897--910, 964- 7215. Cf. Herodorus 5·9"· 16. a. Plato R
tOJ .I--2.
r8. Cf. Euripides Phomisstu 6;-66; frs.
m. 68;.
19. Anmlom Grata~. c:d. J. A. Cramer (Oxford: r839-41), V<>l. I, 428, 19-13. 2.0. Anl;r4~ which Ucer:ally means · joinrs." occurs three times, rwia of OtdJpus's pinnal ankles, and once of his eyes that he blindc:d with Jocasra's pin> (718, ~o;•. 1170).
n. Cf. Odpry •9.16;. u. Hesiod Thtogo")' 116--36, 176--81.
23. Cf. Sophocles Antigon< 1o66- 7J. 14. Sophoclo AnJigont 38o-8L 15. Theogony]26--28, 736- 41, 8u- r;.
a.
S,
Euripides' Hippoiytus
Euripides' underscmding and his ability ro represent his underscmding of the casual moods that suddenly o~n up into deeper problems. The nurse brings Phaedra out inro the open air; she complains of Phaedra's inconstancy-whatever is absent l'haedra believes more dear- and then in her temporary exasperation she dedllre$ that the whole of human life is painful and roil never stops. Whar.ever truth there might be in this view is immediately balanced by a more general cdlcaion of the Nurse: "But whatever is dearer than life darkntSS envelops in clouds: we are passionately and inationally in love with the here and now whatever it is that gleams on the earth; and thus through our ignotance of another life and the non-showing forrh of what is bdow the earth, we are vainly c:uried this way and that by stories." We cannot help being attached and attracted ro this life. she says; but the meaning of this amaction and this life, precisely beea~ of irs brilliance and our own infamatiou, is entirely unknown to us; and as a co~ qucnce we anend to stories, which, though they speak of what is not evidem, have the advantage of offering a meaning ro human life. We are torn between the brilli:tnce of the unmeaning and the darkness of the meanin.gful. The Nurse believes that Phaedra is srarving herself to death in order to discover the uldmate meaning of life; against rhis she can only urge Phaedra ro be noble and bear wbat is a necessity for morrals; but when Phaedra speaks, and her longing turns out to be simply crazyshe wanrs ro be an Amazon. and rhus (we add) a worthy companion of Hippolyrus-th.e Nurse realizes that Phaedra's problem is of a different 0 N E CAN N 0 T P II. AI S E T 0 0
a..
HIGHLY
Euripides' !Ttpf>d/ynu
orclc,-. Phaedn's contemplation of suicide has nodling to do wirh ultimate things; the advice of the wise-nothing roo muc:h-suffia:s for both the Nu~ and Phacdra.. Phaedra can ~ handled within the borizon of the proverbial; she docs not requi« that the Nurst go beyond ber compereno:. Perbap5 Euripides is tdling us rhrougb rhe Nurse that this play docs not rouch on the more Strious things. The Hipp4/ytuS falls into rwo equal parts, the first pan female, the second male: Hippolytus, with !tis virginal soul, overlaps both pans. The link ~tween the rwo pam is the seoond srnsimon, almost lirerally in rhe center, in which the Chorus express the wish to become birds; for as birds they could Oy ~nd rhe Adriatic, where the sisters of Phaerhon were rumed int.o black poplars and now weep rears of amber in pity for him. The link ~twttn the two pam is the Chorus's wish ro fed no pity. Why is such a wish the proper center of the play? Aphrodite says that she is a goddess of overwhdming power among monm and gods; she docs not regard ha-self as rhe cauK of sexual desire among the other animals. She presents her power as coordinate with knowledge of her na.me: she scerns ro limit bend( to the Mediterranc:an, for only those who dwell between the Blade St.~ and the Atlantic experience her graciousnCS'I or her enmity. Hippolytus, "''C' know, is punished; but whom of her votaries does she favor? Is it Phaedn? It is Aphrodire who tdls us rhar Phaedn will die with glory; ir is her excwc for killing her; and Phaedrn does share with Aphrodite a no-holds-barred pursuit of honor n.nd glory. Hippolyrus, according ro Aphrodite, says rhar she is the worst and Anemis rhe greatest of the gods. Elsewhere in Euripides, Eros and Dionysus are said ro ~ rhe greatest of the gods for mrn; but the only gods who are called greatest without qualification are Eanh and On this ground alor1e, Aphrodite would seem ro have a case against Hippolyrus; bur there is more: Hippolytus refuses ro get f>Uirritd.. This Aphrodite is nor rhe goddess of love or of sexual license. She iJ rhe goddess of lawful wedlock; and Hippolyrus's denial of Aphrodite expoStS him tO rh~ just punishment of the law that enjoins marriage on t"W:ty ciriz.cn. The neo:ssary arrribute of a lawful Aphrodite is punishment; there is no conllicr here in the penonificuion of love as a nonloving goddC$$. The exrcm to which Aphrodite works within the law is shown by the following: Phaedta fell in love with Hippolyrus at Athens; bur in order that her love grow into someth ing dcotlly, it was necessary rbar Theseus volunco.rily impose upon himself a year's exile in Trottn for his justified killing of the Pallantidae. Theseus's scrupulous regard for the law, beyond the minimum requirements, is due to Aphrodite, just as rhc neceuiry for Theseus ro be
uus.
Ss
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C baprer Six
away three days from T roun in ordec to consult an oracle on some minor business must equally be due to her. Aphrodite uses only the most lawful of means to destroy Hippolyrus. Bur does not rbis Aphrodite also inspire Phaedra with an adulterous and quasi-incestuous love? She does; bur Phaedra canoor fall, for she loves rhe chaste Hippo.lytus. Hippolyms guarantees that Phaedra's love is nor a crime punishable under law. The unseduceable Hippolyrus works in perfect harmony with Aphrodite in upholding rhe law. Before Hippolyms rudely dism.iss<:s his old servant, who has urged him ro comply with the honors due Aphrodite, he tells his servanrs to prepare his dinner, "for a full table after me chase is delightful"; and once he has "sated himself with food~ (bonu korestb~it), he will go to exetcise his horses. The phrase boras ltomrbro is shocking, for one expecrs rhar sexual abstinence on principle follow upon abstinence in gener-al. For Hip· polyrus !his is nor the case; if it wete. one could at once understand why there are explicit refetences to a statue of Aph.rodire but none ro a statue of Artemis. Hippolyms hears only the human voice of Artemis; he never sees her face. Asceticism would then go band in hand with the incorporeality of the gods; bur sin.c e Hippolyrus is nor ascetic, there must be anorher reason for the absence of Artemis's srarue. The Hippolyws was produced in 428 s.c., long before one had a nude Aphrodite; and one wonders how one could rdl the difference betw.en an idealized Aphrodite and an idealized Artemis without their respective arrribures. Not despite ir bur because Hippolyrus nevet sees Artemis, does be call her the mosr beauri.ful of virgins and the most beautiful of Olympian gods. The phrase bor~U korestb~is is shocking for a. second reason; it is so crude: the verb "to ear" (etthio) occurs only in Euripides' Cydop3. What then dOC$ this departure from tragic decorum mean! Tb.e pamclos begins in a high-fiown way: "There is a rock that drips, they say, the water of Ocean, and it sends our &om irs sheer face a running srream in which pitchers are steeped." Bur rhe Chorus are only describing the place where Trozen does its laundry. If the Chorus can turn the e.veryday imo a mythical event, could oot Hippolyrus have done the sune with his dinner, especially since the Chorus are even able to poeticize Phaedra's starving he..elf: "she keeps her holy body away &om Demeter's grain"? One can eat alone bur one cannor love alone; and though love lends irsdf to poetry-the deeds of golden Aphrodite- eating as opposed to drinking can neither inspir< nor be glorified. The N wse later insisrs on calling a spade a spade and thereby misunderstands Phaedra's love; Hippolyrus says bortn komtbei1
Euripides' Hippo/J""
because nothing else can be said. The lone Hippolytus has n.o sba~ in either rhe Gl'ael:$ or !he Muses. His conversations wilh Artemis must have been about the hazards of the chase and bow much g;ame he had killed. The Nurse pries out Phaedra's S«rer in the fol.lowing way: "Know this: lf you die, you bcuay your children; they will not inherit their parernal esute. I swear the rrurh of this by the lady borscwonwt Amu.on, who bo~ a master ro your child=. a baswd wbo chinks lcgirinntdy, you know him, Hippolyrus. • The Nurse. then misiotcrprers Pbaedra's cry of dcsp;Ur; bur she u~ an argument that on !he face of it is absurd. Why should che iUcgitimate Hippolytus be favored OV<:r Pbaedra's legirinnte childrm? Her dcarh cannot be the cause; rather, Theseus must already have decided ro malcr Hippolytu.s his heir. and only if Phacdra nays alive could he possibly be dissuaded. Here we have a Theseus wbo exiles himself for ~ sake of rirual puriry, who consulrs 211 oracle for noching serious, and yet who docs not scruple to ignore legirinncy. If Aphrodite is the goddCS~ of lawful wedlock. one wonders whether Theseus and nor Hippolytus is the real vicrim of her wrath, and Hippolyrus, like Pbacdra, no more than a means ro bring abour his father's suffering. lr is the possibility ofTheseus's adulcery rhar the Chorus offer as the central reason for Pbaedra's silent suffering; he had. afrcr all, already committed adulrery wilh Ariadne, Dionysus's wife and Phaedra's sister. ln rhe prologue Aphrodite 5ays, " I shall make rhc maner known ro Theseus." Her words are true only if che ap~rance of Artemis, who acrually informs Theseus, is part of Aphrodite's plan. The Chorus, at any rate, herald !he appcaconce of Artemis with a hymn to Aphrodite, and the l:m words of the play arc The.<cus's: "How much, Cyprian, shall I ri!Inernber the evils you have caused. • Aph rodite's vengeance can only be satisfied by the demuccion of the bastatd Hippolyrus and the grief of the adulterous Theseus; bur mar does nor mean th:u Theseus's punishment, in being rhe main thrust of Aphrodite's plan, is also the theme of the play: Hippolytu.s still remains ~protagonist despite his insignificance for the play's moral. Theme and moral are not the Ame. When Pbaedra has managed co h;ave the NurK bring out Hippolytu.s's ll21lle-Pbaedra huself utters it juu ar ~ moment that six ooascs ro love Hippolytus-chc Nurse becomeo frantic. She wants co die ac ontt; sht ann<>< stand being alive. The Chorus go even further; cbcy want co die even before they conccivcd a thought like Pbaedra's. Everyone assumes at once !hat Phacdra's course~ the righr one; suicide is~ only way OUL
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No one rries ro bdp Pbao:lrn: rbat time wiU cure ber, that H ippolyrus is unattainable, that H.ippolytus is not char attractive anyway, and all rbe orber pieces of provmial advice thar might conceivably console Phaedra are missing. The thought of adulre
me
=·
Euripidts' Hipp6/yNIS
and there is the sban1e of action (this keeps he.r &om adultery). The second shame u good, bur the first entails an ignominious death, for Ph.aedra cannot die gloriously unless she reveals the reason for her death, and she cannot reve:al the reason without shaming he.r death. Suicide will res10re her repuration only after she bas lost it. Phaedra Starved herself for three days in order to solve tb.is problem. She is now weak enough to appear ro have succumbed to tbe Nurse's entreaties; and bei.n g under the compulsion to comply with the ucredness of supplication she can piously speak what cannot be decently said. Piety permits wh.ar shame forbids: rhe Chorus, we recall. presented her starving herself as a religious f..sting. And yet why does Phaedra choose suicide in the first place? There are rwo good reasons for this. Ph.aedra does nor think she can get away with commirring adulrery-to do ir withour speaking of it-~d yet not to do it without speaking of it is intolerable, for it would then be unknown; she does nor believe that the gods would know of her restraint. Neither men nor gods praise one for not committing adultety. Women are bared as such, even before they commit any crime; they are thought 1.0 be criminal in intent; so Ph.aedra cannot keep her reputation intaCt by being chaste, for wome.n are suspected even if they are chaste. Since a woman is never praised for having the vinue she is supposed to have, a woman has to commit suicide in order to be praised. The second reason is this. Phaedra presenrs her decision to die as the last of three stages. First she upt silent about it; next she planned to bear her folly by sophrrmrin; and last, she resolved to die when she found she could not prevail against Aphrod;re. Ph.aedra rec.ognitts love as AphroWte only when she 6nds it roo strong for her: the resolution ro die emerges wirh the recognition of AphtoWte: rhe moralistic and the demonic are in perfect agreement. Bur we are puzzled by the first two stage5' surely Phaedra should have cried s6phromni first, and then, when she could not prevail, decided to keep silent? The acrual sequence shows that we do .n ot know what Phaedra understands by sophrontin. AphroWte, however, has already rold us: Phaedra in Athens dedicated a temple to Aphrod;re. Her anonymous gift was her way of appeasing the goddess, as if Aphrodite were like any other god, for example, Artemis, who the Chorus had supposed now punishes Phaedra for her failure ro sacrific.e to her. Sophrosuni for Phaedra is nothing but rirual.iscic piety, and the shame th:tt kepi her silent had long before yielded to the silenr speaking of piety: she must have tht:n prayed tO Aphrodite. It is, however, tbis aa of piery that at once guarantees Phaedra's future gloty and furure shame: men will later
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speak of the temple as founded for Hippolyrus. Aphrodite's honor demands that men know who dedicated a temple to her and for what reason. At rhe moment, Phaedra believes that Aphrodite has &iled h.er; sh.e has nor cured her and what is worse has nor made known all adulteress<'&. Phaedra is powerJess to punish them and unable to join them. And yet only if it is inevitable that they gtt punished is it inevitable that she punish herself. "Tune." she says, "reveals the bad. just like a mirror set before a young girl; among rhem might I not be seen ." Tune is like a mirror be· cause it reveals decay: Phaedra cannot die at a more appropriate rime; ro be okl and in love is ridiculous. So rime, which supposedly reveals tbe bad, in &cr reveals rhe ugly. Love bas made Phaedra aware of her mortality, and this is the only sure punishment for adulteresses. A first reading of the Nurse's speech suggests that sh< urges Phaedra to accept (p~ impottible) Hippolyrus as her lover because love is as universal as it is irresistible. All living bein&$ from 6.sh ro gods are under Aphrodite's spell. Bur a second reading shows that rhis is an impossible interpretation. First, the Nurse says, "You love? What's astonishing about that? You do so with manymorrals. • Sh.e is nor thinkingofHippoiyrus in saying "many" rather than "a1J•; and second, she menrions no rerrcsrrial being except man. One must begi.n again. The N u.rse says that the wrath of th<' goddess has struck Phaedra. She thus connect& Pbaedrn's initial silence. which applied ro love rhe remedy appropriate for a 6t of anger, with Phaedta's later realimtion that Aphrodite was rhe cause. Love chen be· comes a punishment: Wh2T then is the crime? The crime, l should suggest, is the castration of Ouranos by Kronos, from whose genitals when they fell into the sea Apb.rodire w:as born. The castration of Ouranos emailed the dethronement of the cosmic gods and the worship of the Olympians. Aphrodite th~L< punishes gods and men on behalf of her father. This is not the Apb.rodite of the prologue who pr<sented hmelf as the upholder of the Olympian law; and yet Aphrodire never tells us he.r genealogyin this she d.iffers from Artemis. The only epithet she receives in the pl2y is pontia (of or belonging tO the sea)-and the Nurse understands Phaedra's submission ro love as an obedience ro law. Th.e Strongest evidena: that love is a punishment is robe found in Phaed.ra's experience, for she sulfers from unrequited love. It is within the conrext of unrequited love rhat the Nurse distinguishes betW«n those who submit to their punishment and those who resist ic; rhe gods are wise because they submit ro ir- th.ey rape those mortals whom rhey are driven to love. No love, rhe Nurse implies. survives union. In o.rder tO have avoided her &te. Phaedra ought
l!uripidrs' fflppo/yhu to have been born eirner on diffe,rem conditions or wirh dilfereot, i.e., pre·Oiympi211, gods who arc nor subjeer ro rhe law; bur as it is she eaonot possibly free herrelf from love. The wisdom of mon:als, rnercfore, consisu in hiding me ugliness of chis punishment: husbands pretend not to SI!C: the adultery of their wives, and F.uhers help their sons get away with committing adultery, for their transgression is only apparent; it is in faa a painful obedience ro me law. Phaedra, however, cannot do what me gods do: they not only submit, they practice adultery in the open. Since the equivalent to human suicide would be divine shame, the. equivalent ro divine shamelessness is human shame: human shame is likened to not finishing perfectly accurately what cannot be seen. The recognit.i on of human defectiveness- chis is rhe subjective &ide of love as pu.n ishmenris like a carpe.nrer's carelessness; it is something casual, not worth eliminating since it can be neutralized. The remedy for one's own shame is mutual love.. Since love is a punishment. rbe N urse proposes rhat Phaedra punish H,ippolytus; her own casual love is cured by deliberately punishing H ippolyrus with love, for love would make Hippolyrus see his own defectiveness. This is the one o.dvan!llgc Lovers go.in from rbeir obedience ro the law. The Nurse, how~er. d~ not herself entirely believe her own atgument. If Phaed!ll's life were nor in danger, she later S:I)'S, she would never have suggested this cure for the sake of her sexual pleasure. The Nurse cried ro make sexual pleasure amactive to Pbaedra by presenting it as a punishment. Her authority for doin.g so was nor just the experience of unrequited love but her rc:ading in tbe ancient poetS, from whose silence about it she deduced that the gods are without shame. and conrem to submit to rneir punishment. Tbe Nurse bas not listened ro folktales but srudi.e d the writings of poets. They are autboritarive not only because th.ey •re old but because they write: they are old and civilized poeu. Phaed!ll learns from the Nurse. Nor only does she punish Hippolytus bur sbe writes. The folktale of stepmornes and stepson is thereby transformed into a plot that can only happen in a literate society. And Theseus in fact will lllter unwittingly denounce the disproportion between rhc progress in the artS and the decline in morality, of which Phaedra's letter-writing is a pe.rfect example. The Chorus react ro me ambiguous proposal of me Nu<SC with a hymn to Eros. ln form, the hymn is traditional but in content it is nor, a sign of which is this: Eros in the 6rst srropbic pair is four times put where irs shon epsilon occupies a plaa normally reserved for a long sylla-
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ble. .From the second strophic pm, we learn that Aphrodite delights in human sacrifice: she is not an Olympian god. The Chorus, therefore, pro~ an innova.tion: we are mistaken to worshi_ p Aphrodite in the way that Phaed.r:a had, by founding a temple and treating bet as if she were the sort to bt: so appeased. Rather, Eros, whom the Chorus on their own authority make the son of Zeus, should bt: worshipp<:d; perhaps he will bt: appeased by animal sa.crifi=. Eros is the tyrant of men, and it is vain to sacrifice ro the other gods if we do not sacrifice co b.im as wdl. Eros can bt: civilized, Aphrodite cannot. The Chorus accept the Nurse's view that Aphrodite is pre-Olympian, and then in the guise of rbe rraditional enlarge the rradirional pantheon. If madness is controlled by Dionysus, and the thunderbolt by Zeus, why should not Aphrodite bt: conuoUahle through this new Olympia.n god? The cult-god Eros is the last sr:age of civili7..ation. The Chorus's new poetry improves on the old poetry. The Chorus's solution, however, is no more a.d.equare than that of the Nurse, who pretends that she can magically control Aphrodite. Even bt:fore they b.ear Hippolyrus's denunciation of all wo men, the Chorus are on Phaedrn.'s side: they do oor now regard their own knowledge of Phaedra's secu.t as a disclosure of her secret. The Chorus will later swear to keep silent; and their o:uh is so sacred that it never occurs co them to bteak it. Hippolyrus does not break h.is oath either, but he considers breaking it; and he is only checked by the consider:arion th:u be would need wirnesseB; be would need the Chorus. H.ippolyrus does not ask them-he has no knowledge of their oath- bt:cause he bt:Jieves they will lie. Hippolyrus's low opinion of women joins with tb~ piety of the Cborw in destroying him. However non-manly HippolyttJS m:ay appeat, b~ is a man; he OIJl never be as wtincrlvely piow as women. All the men in the second half of the play are doubters: Hippolyrus's secrvanr, who reports the miraculous destruction of Hippolyrw, which Theseus properly mkcs to be confirmation of Hjppolytus's guilt, dn.w no such lesson &om it. And Theseus himself ea.rlier, when Hippolytus begs him to consulr oracles before he condemns him-Theseus after all had just returned from consulting an oracle-dismiS8CS rhe proposal with exactly the same words with which H.ippolyrus had dismissed Apb.rodire: poll' ego cbairei11 ILgo. "Good riddance!" Anem.is praises Hippolyrus for keeping his oath; but that th.e Chorus keep th.eia is so much ro bt: expected as to warrant no praise. The Chorus had sworn-without being asked toby Anemis; and if Anemis wete not in secret agreement with Aphrodite, the Chorus would surely olfer a perfect r:arget for be.r wrath.· She reserves her gre2resr wrath for Theseus, who did not bdieve that the evidence of
ruu
Euripides'
Hipp•lytus
his eyes needed to be confirmed by divi.ne means. Perhaps, however, the most subtle means Euripides employs to distinguish be~een male and female is this: the Chorus in the third Stasimon use the masculine singular participle to speak of themselves when they express doubts about divine providence. That Hippnlyrus denounces women should not be taken for granted. We think of misogynists as men who have been crossed in love; Hippolyws has had no experience of women, and yet his barred of them ectends to virgin daughters, who are under the protection of his own tutelary goddess Artemis. In order ro understand his speech, one must. refteer on the frequency of th.e imperfect chrm in unreal conditions in this play (more than in any other play), and the sixfold occurrence of eithe in wishes, four of which are in Hippolyrus's mouth. Hippolyrus's speech is in two parrs, of 23 lines each- In the first pan he tells Zeus how, if he wished to have a race of mortals, he could have arranged it without the help of womea Men would deposit in Zeus's temples a sum of property proportionate to their several class assessments, and men would thus l.ive free without women. Some of the consequences of Hippnlyrus's proposal are these: children would be a kind of private property; there would be no ciry, since there would be nothing achanged among famil.ies acept goods; no child would be illegitimate; everyone would be as chaste as Hippolyrus, and he would no longer worship Artem.is; and 6naUy, in contrast to the spurious coinage of women, there would only be genuine money. Hippolyrus does not ask why Zeus did not make women better; if there are women, the violation of the law by them is inevitable. Hippnlyrus, moreover, judges nature in l.ight of the law rather than law in light of nature. His scheme depends on keeping the law of private property: the abolition of nature is better than any cancellation of the law. So imporram is the legitimacy of private property ro Hippolyrus rhar he cites the fact that fathe.rs give away their daughters in marriage as a proof of the innate 'vickedness of women, for he thereby foo:gers rhat the prohibition against incest rather than paternal hatred dictates exogamy. His srandard for the law is money, the most conventional manifestation of law, and not the deepest roots of laws, nothing in any case that could be called natural law. Hippnlyrus's reformist zeal cannot StOp here, for he cannot bur sense that if women are as bad as he says they are, Zeus could have meant them only as a punishment for men-th.e Hesiodic account-and that in his avoidance of marriage he is evading divine punishment. His sense of rhis makes him wish to have a Stupid wife if marry he must, and
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Chapter Six then that wives should have voiceless beasts for servanrs in order to limit their wickedness. Although marriage is bad, adultery is worse; and as a defender of the law Hippolytus does nor view natUre as an obstacle. HippolytuS's reverence for the law, one might say, does not even yidd to the impossible, bur rather w his reverence for rhe divine law-his oa
Euripides' Hippo!Jtw
rest of his vircues and which, he claims, makes him incompetent to speak before che unwise. Hippolyrus correctly recognizes that he is ~m~oiiSos. without any of the ways to charm a crowd or pe~uade a father. [Inat he is unlovable Phaedra's love for him proves, fo.r iris che work ofAphrodite.) His charmless wisdom has nothing ro do with siiphrosuni, under which he includes his piety, his justice. and his chastity. 'lnere is nothing sensible about his moderation or moderate about his wisdom. He knows nothing of prudence. He there/Ore defends himself against a charge of which he is nor accused. Since he believes chat all women are bad, he does not believe that rape is possible, and since Theseus never in h.is presence cells him whar Phaedra wrote, Hippolyrus argues the case of why he would never have seduced her. Against the charge of rape, Hippolyrus's defense could have been i:rrefurable: no rapist lets his victim live if be believes be can be identified, to say noching of the palace servants who should have heard her cries. Hippolyrus's rational defense, however, does conrain one pojm chat, had Theseus been listening, would have by irself convinced him of his son's innocence. "Was Phaedra's body," he asks, "more beautiful than any ocher woman's?" Hippolyrus thus supposes that to fall short of perfect chastity is to engage in libertinism. He knows nothing of the fiueful individuality of love, which makes the beloved so inexplicable a ch.oice ro everyone, including the lover. Hippo.lyrus can speak of Aphrodite bm never of Eros: the one time be uses the rognate verb, be calls fo.r his sword; amphiromou ltmchm eramai. In Hippolyrus, then, there is a s~r.~nge coincidence of lack of eros with lack of prudence. His unloveliness works against his sobriety. lr is only for a momenr that Hjppolyrus knows himsdf. Ir is when Theseus scorns his wisb char the house ir:self bear wimess for him. "Alas," he says, "Would that I could weep for che evils we suffer." Hippolyrus recognizes char cheu i.s no one oo pity him, for only anorhe:r Hippolytus couid. and there cannot be another, for he does nor want a friendanother J:.-bw his very self. He is entirely alone; he conversed with Arremis; burArccmis is not another Hippolytus-sbe is female and the goddess of childbi:rrh. Hippolytus saw his umqueness but he was not able to accept it; h~ looked around for a god who was like him, someone he could claim he imirared; but he does nor imitate Artemis-he is naturally chaste-and he cannot worship Arccmis, for be does not need her. It is for this reason that he cao so readily propose to l..eus a siruation that would dispense with Artemis. Hippolytus does nor nffi! anyooe. He is not a human type in any sense; be is not devoted roan idea! against which
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Cbapter Six he measures himself and of which he £-.lis shore; rather, he is perhaps the only individual, litern!ly understood. thar any poet has ever presented. We therefore cannot eimer fear for him or pity him. Hippolyrus does nor practice ar being chaste; he does not come close ro innocence, beset on all sides by remptatioo.s that he mnsr strive ro avoid. He is by narure perfea innocence. He certainly does not belong ro a sea like me Orphics for whom asceticism is the means for salvation. He is nor a monk. Hippolyrus's rnisrake, however, is his piety. Ir leads him to sec Arremis agajnsr Aphrodite, who are in rule not enemies ar all: me virgin, devoted first ro Artemis, pr-•ys after her mauiage co Aphrodite. When we 6rst bear Hippolytus, we chink rbac Euri.pides means us to understand me conrrast between Aphrodite and Artemis as mat between a religion in which the gods ceU men what ro do and a religion in which men do what the gods do. Bu~ Hippolytus's way is not me way of imirarion. An old servant of his asks him whemer he knows the law esrabLU;bed among m en ro bare me proud and unfriendly; Hippolyru.• agrees rhar he should abide by such a law and convention. The servanr rhen asks whether he expects the same ro hold among the gods. · yes," says Hippolyrus, "provided we mortals use the Laws of rbe gods." The servant meant to draw a parallel between the way men want ro be greeted by one anomer and me way me gods wane ro be greeted by meo; but Hippolyrus under· srands him diffeteml}" human conventions of politeness have their source in the conventions of che gods; we adopt the laws char dicrare the behavior of the god•. Irnirarion for Hippolyrus is obedience. It is, accordingly. nor completely true char Hippolyrus is encirely without love; bur what he loves is as alien as he himself is. Alter wishing that he could pity himself, and Theseus having accused him of self-worship rather than justice coward his parents, Hippolyrus bum.s out: "Oh miserable mother! Oh bicrer birth: may no friend of mine be a basrard." Legitimacy, he believes, is the indis· pc:nsable basis for love. So Hippolyrus is in love; h~ is in Wilt! with thtlaw. Wb.e n Theseus l:are.r praises his nobiliry (calling him gm1!1lioi}, he reUs him ro pray to have his legitimate children (gnaioi) like h.imself. This love ofHippolyrus cannot be required, for he is outside the law both by birth and by narure, and therefore in his uniqueness he longs for the. universality of the law. His barred of women is thus oor a direcr function of his chasrity but his way of being useful tO the law from which he is forever occluded. Euripides won first prize with the Hippolytus; but if wbar we are saying is rrue, char we do not and cannot pity Hippolyrus, ir would seem that
Euripides' Hippo/Jfus such a triumph is h:mlly plausible. But the lase part of the. play presents Hippolyrus in a different light. It is the joint effort of Artemis :Uld the Chorus. On Hippolytus's depanure, me Chorus express their doubts about divine provideoce; but since Hippolyt.us direcrly owes rus exile tO their silence, me stasimon seems to be the rankest hypocrisy. Bur it is here mar rhe Chorus most show their piety: first, they did not expect the oath they had sworn to lead to trouble, and then they expected that Theseus would believe Hippolytus's most solemn oath; and when he did not, they thought a miracle would resolve rhe crisis. Their present inability to see :lilY pattern in hum:Ul affiUrs arises from their perplexity as to how the gods can allow oalhs to be sworn, for oalhs presuppose a certain consrancy in human life. In the antisttophe !hey solve this problem: they wiU no longer try to underst:Uld rhe gods' ways; they will pray for rheir fonune to be unchanging but th.ey will no longer act as if they expected it r.o be; instead, wirb.in limits, they will adapt themselves to chance. This means in context a song in praise of Hippolyrus, as if they we.re his partisans; bur look how ill it suits Hippolyrus. They praise him for his be.i ng moutikoJ; they address the Graces as if they were me narural champions of Hippolyrus-the Graces who, according to Hesiod, pour fonh love from their eyes; and what is most absurd, they say that the girls of Trozen wiU no longer be able to run afrer Hippolyrus, the most eligible bachelor in town.
This is nor the Hippolytus we know; !his is the Hippolytw of Artemis's cult, in which virgins before !heir marriage cue their hair and sing a dirge for him. The Chorus on their own begin the rehabilitation of Hippolyrus and his transformation into someone piriable. Only by reinterpreting Hippolytus so rhar he becomes a representative of a certain stage in lire can they pity rum. The unique Hippolytus becomes the representative of the common and thus becomes part of me law. He who manifests the essence of love's illusion, that whom we. love is an irreplaceably unique individual, becomes completed by and absorbed imo the law, but only afrer his death. The Chorus mourn Hippolytus while he is absent; wh~n he rerurns half-dead th~re can be no kommo1, and Hippolytw must pity himself. H~ is not very good at ir. The pitiable Hippolytus cannor help holding forth in a comic vein. He calls himsdf ton kakodairtUJt~A klli katllrlOOn; kakodaimiin, which is not the opposite of n«iilimiin, bur rather an expression of vul~ comempt, occurs nowhere else in tragedy, neve~ in the historians, once in the orators, and lhrice in Plaro, bur ir is very common in comedy. Hippolytus cannot pity himself without despising
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Ch2prer Six
himself. His saying ltak()(./afmiin is like his saying boras R()resthesis at the beginning of the play. He is beneath our concern. And yet Hippolyms finally does elicit our compassion; his last words are <0 Theseus: he asks him to cover hi.~ face. Only when Hippolyrus is a corpse does he need anyone.
...~
.....
""~
S
q¥'~
N
On Greek Tragedy
I tragedy and come.dy alone seem to make a narural pair. They are natural in char they designate somerhing not merely in leners bur in life, and rhey are a pair in rhar, raken togemer, they seem ro comprehend che. whole of life, not just some aspect of it. We recognize as much whe.n we speak of "the tragedy and comedy of life, • which is a phrase as old as Plato. 1 Ar the same time, tragedy seems ro raise a claim chat by irself ir is the truth of life. Aristophanic come.dy, at any rare, is parasitic on tragedy, and Plato suggested chat the artful tragic poet is a comic poet as well, bur not the ocher way round.t Yet tragedy's claint to be rhe trurh of human life d
99
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Chapra &Yen
ics absoluteness is usually suppressed, and rh.is is done so systemaricaJly that so1ne effort is required to .notice wh11t has been suppressed. Although the srories of tragedy, like irs language, are taken from heroic epic, the word hn-o in the Homeric sense does not occur in the extant plays. The legends of tragedy are nor legendary; irs representation of the pasc is shadowless. Monarclllcal mle had long ceased in Athens (the word king survived as the name for a magisnate who no longer ruled the cicy), yer tragedy bas nothing but kings and queens for irs protagonists; tbe people are hardly more conspicuous in uagedy than they are in Homer.J Its women move as freely in the open as do irs men; and there is hardly a line in Aeschylus or Sophocles ro re.m iod the audience that their own women are confined suicdy to the home. Again, whatever irs origin might be, tragedy as we know it is Athenian; but the stuff of tragedy is not. Thebes looms larger than Athens; when Aristophanes bas Aeschylus boast that his Sn~tn Agllimt Thebes once filled tbe audience with martial spirit, he is sharply reminded rhar the Theba.ns are his beneficiaries.• Tbe greatest single event in Athenian history, in which the Athenians would legitimately take pride and to which we ourrelves can hardly be inclifferentrbe defeat of rbe Persians at Salamis is shown to rbem as a Persian cara.srre>phe, and in order to make it all the more unre.lieved, Aeschylus has the Chorus prerend that Dari.us never mounted an expedition aga.inu Gm:ce and Marathon did not take place. On the other hand, Sophocles must have seemed as enigmatic as the Sphinx when he aruibured to Oedipus's grave an eternal power to defend Athens from attack, for the audience would have been hard put ro remember any such occasion. Were they ro believe that at some future time Sophocles would be vindicared! lf, finaUy, the role of the Areopagus were a political >ssue at the time of the Ortttdit (458 II.C.), what political lesson could Aeschylus have conveyed in revealing that its first uial ended in a hung jury and that Athena spoke for the acquittal of someone who pleaded guilty to the charge of matricide? The placelessness and timelessness of Greek rragedy remind one of Plato's Rtpublic. in which Socrates presents the best city in speech. There, nor only does rhe ever-present urgency of the problem of justice occasion the best cicy in speech, iu utopian nature is readily granted to be a consequence of irs beaury. The beau!)' of Grttk tragedy, however, is a ni.g htmare, in which the terrible is not absuaaed from bur distilled. Greek rragedy is, as ir were, the offscouring of Socrates' city. The criminalicy against which rhe city has devised its strongest prohibitions is the setting for uagedy's celebration of its proagoniscs. Tragedy prosecutes as ir praises. It crosses the beautiful of epideicric oratoty with rbe justice of
On Grec.k Tragedy forensic oratory, but it whoUy fails to join them with the good of delibetation.1 Tragedy simply suspends the political good. even while ia horizon is the ciry's. Aeschylus's Oytemestra could have swung the Cho.rus of elders to her side had she but seen fit to link Agamemnon's injustice in his killing of their daughter with the general injustice of the Argive suffering at Troy, for which rhe Chorus are convinced Agamemnon deserves punishment. But she refuses ro condemn the war, despite the f..ct tha.t her enticrment of Agamemnon tO walk on rich embroideries can only be desi.gned to provoke the people's resentment at his impious and barbaric squandering of the royal wealth. Clytemestra muffs her chance to found a regime that wou.ld combine authority with consent. The killing ofAgamemnon exbausa bet hs68- 76); it serves Aegistbus but neither herself nor tbe people she has ruled for ten years. She lets Cassandra divert the Chorus from the political issue of the war ro the inherited fate of the Arreidae, even though this enrails that lphigeneia's sacrifice, about which Cassandra knoW$ nothing. be forgotten and Clytemcsrra herself appear to be a common adulteress.' Cassandra's diversion of the Agam~m11on's initial !heme seems to be typical of tragedy. The plague that alfeas all of Thebes is due, we are told, to the murder of ia former king; but Oedipus becomes so enthralled, as are we, by tbe riddle of his origins that he never learns from the sole eycwimess of Laius's death whether in faa he is guilty of regicide. The city would have been satisfied if Oedipus's discovery had been so limited but, as matters rum out, it has only his inference to rely on, and even at the end we do nor kn.ow wherher his exile is still needed as a civic purification. We reali-u here, as elsewhere. tha.t we have become estranged from the ciry's primary concerns, and that what bas estranged us is rbe sacred. The sacred loses its political place in tragedy. "First and Fifth," Aristode says, is rbe care of rbe divine; 1 it is fifth for the city and firsr for tragedy. Prior ro its admission into rbe city, rhe city attenuates rbe sacred. ln the Anrigon~, where there is a conflict berween divine and human laws, Tiresias reaffirms rbe sacredness of burial wirbout vindicating Antigone {1016-12, 1070-71). He inrerprets the divine law as applicable ro eaeh and every corpse; he d~s not limit !he obligation to the liunily, ignoring rbe faa thar Antigone wou.ld not have done what she did if Polyneices bad nor been her brother. The 6m stasimon of rbe play allows for civiliry to be part of the uncanniness of man; but to be devoted to rbe sacred strikes the Chorus, when they first catch sighr of Antigone, as a demonic monstrousness, and, after they have beard her defend rbe sacred, rbey detect in her her father's bestial savagery {]76, 471-71); she is, of course,
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Chapter Sc:vcn
rhe daughrer of Oedipus. Arisrode distinguishes between moral and heroic virtue, and rheir respective opposites, vice and be~cialiry. 1 Tragedy looks away from moral virrue- the pairs of vicious extremes are rhe subject of comedy-and toward heroic virtue, which, wirhour the mean of moral virtue, ceases w be the opposir.c of bestiality. Antigone herself speaks of her criminal piery; she says she stops ar norhing in the performance of holy rhings (74). Anrigoneshatters the sin.gle limit which the first srasimon ascribes to man (death), and sbe shattea it by becoming at one with the sa~. The sacred shines chrough Antigone nor despite the fact that she is rhe offspring of an incestuous union bur because. ofir. Out of rhe Eunily chat violates the family comes the defende.r of rhe family's inviolability. Antigone means "anrigeneration." At rhc beginning of his History, Herodorus identifies human happiness with political freedom and gfl'amns (q.J-4). He goes on oo indicate char justice is incompatible with such happiness (1.6.2, J:4.4), and be rhen illustrates their incomp:uibiliry with the srory of Croesus. After having made Lydia ioro an imperial power, Croesus invired the Athenian Solon to inspect his ueasury and then asked him whom of those he had seen did he judge ro be the happiest. Solon's answer was T ellus th.e Athenian: Athens was well-off, his sons were beautiful and good> they had made him a grandfather, he himself was well-off by Athenian standards, and his end was mOSt brilliant, for in an engagement wirh Arncns's neighbors be roured. the enemy and died moSt beautifuUy, in return for which rhc Athenians buried him ar public expense at rhe spot where he fell and honored him greatly. in chis judgment the private goods depend on the public good and arc fully in harmony with ir: rhe sacred is absent- Croesus, however, is not saris6ed and asks Solon whom of those he had seen he would put in second place. Solon does nor answer this question, for he now does nor speak as an eyewirocss but repom a srory, one in which rhe beautiful and the political good are absent. The srory concerns Cleobis and Biron, rwo Argive brothers whose livelihood was adequate and whose bodily strength was sucb rhat rhey had both won contests. Ir is nor s;Ud that Argos, where they lived, was well-off, nor that they were be-.turiful. On a day sacred oo Hera, their morher-she must have been a priestesshad to be conveyed ro the .sanctuaJ:)', bur since the oxen could nor be found and rime was running our, Oeobis and Biron yoked themselves to the carr aod dragged it fony..fivc srades. "Observed by rhe festival garnering." Solon rdares, "the best end of life befell them, and the god showed in their case that it is better for a human being w be dead than ro live." These verbs of seeing and showing are deceptive. for jtm as the scory is
On Grcdc T rage:ly
only hearsay, the cause of what follows is speech and whac follows is itself ambiguous. The Argive men blessed rhe strength of the Argive youths, the Argive women blessed their mother for having such sons, and she, overjoyed by their deed and irs acclaim, stood before the srame of Hera and prayed to the goddess to gram her sons whatever is ~t for a human being to obroin. The brothers lay down io the temple and never got up again, and rhe Argives, on rhe grounds that they had proved to be best, made Stlltues of them and dedicated them at Ddphi (1.31). Solon reUs these rwo stories as if rbe moral common to them bothno one is to be judged happy before be is dead-'Could conceal their dilferences. These differences constitute rbe double &arne of Greek trag· edy: rbe political in irs ionocent autonomy and tbe sacred in irs subver:sion of that ionocence. The last words of Aeschylus's Sn~e• against Thtbts, which are rbe last words of rbe trilogy (the 6rsr rwo plays are lost), give perfect expression co rbis doubleness but do not resolve ir. The Chorus of maidens divides between rbose who side wirb Antigone in her resolution to bury Polyneices and those who side with rbe city th2t prohibits it. The 6rst group says: "Let rbe city injure or not rhe mourners of Polyneices; we shall go and joiJl in his buri
toJ
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Ch3pter Seven
immune ro tragedy. ItS element$ were at hand bur not the recogllicion of them. That the same men are nor always prosperous was all be learned from Solon (uo7 .1). Croesus's immunity to the tragic is all the more surprising because he had a parr in a romplete tragedy. Adrasrus, the son of the Phrygian king. accidentally killed his own brother. Banished, he came to Croesus ro ask for puri£icacion according to law (Lydian law, Herodotus says, is in rnis respect dose co Greek law); and once purified, he lived at Croesus's expense. The inescapable, however, whieb was latent in his own name (Adrastus means just char), overtakes him in the guise of Croesus's son Acys, whose name signifies "Doom.• A wild boar was devastating the fidds of the Mysians; they ceques'ted Croesus ro sa~d them his son along with hunters and hounds. Croesus granted the rest bur denied them his son, for a dream had warned him char an iron spear would kill Arys. As a consequence of char dream, Acys's marriage had been hastened, all iron we<tpons in the. palace had been transferred ro the women's quarters, and be himself was fomidden to join in any military expedition. Informed of rhe dream, Arys argued char a boar's rusks were not of iron and rbar his enforced detention shamed him in the eyes of his bride and fdlow citizens. Croesus then relented. but he insisted that Adrasrus accompany his son to gu
On Greek Tmgedy
Creon's anempt to fasreo guilt upon him, yet when Theseus returns his
•os
1o6
Ch•prer S.:,eo
rus shouted aloud, called bim by name, and srruck himself on his head. Called upon to explain his acrions, me king said, "Son of Cyrus, the evils that llle my own wc.rc gJeatCr than lamcnrarion, but the sorrows of a friend deserved my tears: he has fallen from gteat happiness ro beggary on the threshold of old age."" If silence is the p.rop<:t form of private grief. tragedy is nor only paradoxical because it imitates aerion in speech bur-and parcicularly-·because it gives voice to silence. Aeschylus mana.ged ar least twice ro keep his protagonists silent fur an entire play within a rrilogy.'l The logos of silence is the rb.erorical equivalent in tragedy to its thematic transgression of the law. Their tqui"alence can be shown by means of a passage in Plaro's Phikbus. Socrates cites seven occasions when the soul experiences by itself a mixture of pleasure and .pain. They are anger, fear. longing, thrimn, love, envy, and jealousy (47"1-2). 'f'hrirws is plainly our of place, for wherea5 the orh.ers are all unmediared passions of the soul, liJI'itzf)J is the expression of a passion. It is nor grief at the death of someone-that is pmthos-bur a song sung at a funeral. A thrinos is no less conventional than is the occasion of irs utterance, but as rhe phrase "to be in mourning" suggests, the conventional face of grief is itk<eparable from what.ever is in fact experienced. The rragic poet can neither srrip grief of its conventions wirhour having it fall ~ilent altogether nor leave it to irs conventions without failing ro articulate it. Grief, howevez, not only baffic:s the poet, ir attr~cu him, and in just the way· Socrates indicates: the pleasure that accompanies irs expression betrays the pain of the otiginal grief. The rhrinos induces in us an innocent guiltiness that deepens the experience &om which it rdieves us. POd1)' thus assumes the task of purification which the law itself can neither do nor acknowledge rhe need to do. Poerry, according ro Arisrode, has a double base in our namre.'' We learn by imitating orhm and rake pleasure in images as images. We impersonate and keep our dismnce, are both acroxs and speeearors. Our sociality is a function of our emulation, and our delight in images of our curiosity. The imirarive arts rhus brin.g together without truly uniting them man's oatural desire to know and his nature as a polirical animaL That from which the mor.iliry of the city makes him ave.rt his eyes is brought befure his eyes in an image. The image transgresses the m.o ral and yet picdSeS. Aristode's two examples an: paintin.gs of loathsonle animals and corpses; they correspond respectively to comedy and tragedy, of which in turn there is the dung beede of Aristophanes' Pt11Ct and Sophocles' Antigone, who in scorning her sister's offer to die with her says, "My soul bas long been dead" (559-60). How the image rucceeds in preserving the law while
On Gred< T
cancelling it is not easy ro say. Aristode suggesrs that this is d ue to the illusory eqWltion it effects berween the artfulness of the image and the purposiveness of the imaged. Tbe image is the image of a natural tdcology. 17 Antigone, accordingly, would be the trwf, the artful perfection, of the corpse. The guard who brings Antigone before Cteon. who has forbidden burial to her brother, likens her ro a bird rhat on seeing her bed bereft of irs nestlings bursrs out with a piercing cry of lamentation (4:1.3-27). Polyne.ices' corpse stripped of irs rirual d USt affects Antigone in the way in which the loss of her brood affects rbe morh.c r bird. As Sophocles develops this 6gure. the corpse is Antigone's nest. rhe dust her young. Tbc corpse now srands tenantless; it was occupied when Antigone clothed it in dust. The corpse is lifeless, now that ir no longer houses the dust. The life of the corpse is the dust, and the dust is Antigone's. It was her life rhar the guards brushed off Polyneices. She alone was nor affected by the stench of his rotting corpse.'• The beautiful image of tbe ugly is but one aspect of m .gic poetry; the other is rhe beautiful image of the beauriful. or the praise of the noble. Tragic pocrry reserves its praise for those whose nobiliry appears tO be wirhour calculation. The self-evident impossibiliry of joining rhe good with the noble- the prudence of lsmene or Chrysothemis with the nobiliry ofAntigone or Electra-seems to be the unexamined premise of tragedy. Perhaps, however, rragedy only srarrs from that premise in order to question it without incurtin.g rhe suspicion thar irs quesrionin.g is due to rancor. Goethe's criticism of Antigone's last defense, in which she narrows rhe grounds of her action, suggests as much." AriStotle, in any case, seems ro intply that though rragedy is the proper form for those poets whose natures are noble, the manner of thc.ir praise does not issue in admiration but in pity and fear. Piry and fear are the truth of praise. When Caesar entered Rome, his sole opponent was Quinrus Mecellus, who barred his access ro the public treasury. Merellus srood his ground, even when Caesar rl=atened ro kiJI him on the spor; but be yielded when Caesar added, "Young man, ir was harder for me to say it rhan to dn ir. • Bacon characrerizes rhis as "a speech compounded of rhe grearest terror and greatest dcmcncy rhat could proceed our of rhe mouth of man. • lO Our experience of rragedy is not unlike that compound. The fear of Merdlus is in a sense the piry of Caesar. Piry is for those who do not de.serve their suffering, whose sul&.ring is sensed ro be in excess of whar they did and who they are. Piry thus assumes a moral universe-Ought and Is are in agreemem-in which an exception has occurred. The exception, moreover, is experienced not as
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Cluprer Sev' Tragedy unfolds die significance of Athena seizing Achilles by the hair when he draws his sword ro kill Agam.c mnon;:w it does nor concern itself with Odysseus, who, trapped in the cave of rbe Cyclops. draws his sword bur checks himsel£. 2) We may recall the nur.;ery rhyme, "Hush-a-bye, baby." Irs recitation is meant to a.c company an imitative pe.rformance of irself. The baby is firn rocked as if he were in a cctdle on the top of a swaying rree; he is rhen dropped at rhe ve.r y moment at which the song presents hypothetically the brealcing of rbe tree's branches; but since the baby's fall is then checked, rbe song's hypothesis is at the last minute denied ro be possible. The nurse who induces the terror relieves rbe terror. T he terror is induced presumably out of a sense of rbe baby's unfocused anxiety rbar can only be soothed if it is first tnnslated into a terror whose source is made known. 26 The enchantment of tngedy works something like rbat. It gives a
On Greek T .-.g«
u These re.marks on the general conditions for Greek tragedy are very far
from comprehending its variety, lee alone the particular ways in which a tragedy arrives at the revdarion of the tragic. The individual tragedy shapes the universally tragic. If the Antigone represents a confli.ct between state and individual, it first represents the conllict between a city's decree and a divine law; and ir further represents the city's decree as an arbitrary decision of irs ruler and the divine law in a specilic inrerpreution of ir; and finally the ruler is Creon, who proves co have modeled his understanding of the ciry on the family, and the defender of the divine law is Antigone, who is in love with death. Thus the closer one looks at the action and actors of a tragedy, the less manifest the r.ragic as such becomes. We are forced therefou ro look at anything within a tragedy that sounds like the universally tragic in light of the action that has prompted its utterance. Our oearest ex:unple is th.e Cho.rus's saying, in Oedipus at Co/onus, "Not to be born surpasses every accounL" Their interpretation of Oedipus's experience is nor neurral to his experience; it has been refracted through their own experience, which images but does not duplicate exactly his experience. Oedipus, after all, has stated at the beginning of this play thar his sufferings, along with time and the noble, have. caught him co be content (7-8) . His conrenrmem seems co be: an acceptance of l:tis experience: he would not now ch.oose .not to have been bont. Perhaps, then, the Chorus need time before they can echo Oedipus's contentment, and if they are deficient in nobility, they may never be able co bring therrudves to affirm iL The Oedipus of Otdipus Tyrannw is a riddle ro h imself. the Oedipus of Oedipus at Colonll! is a riddle to everyone dse. The first scene of the play con rains so many mysteries that almost in desperation one concludes
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Chapter Seven
that Oedipus bas become his own oracle. Oedipus's 6rst words are a question: "Daughter of a blind old mao. Antigone, ro what region bave we oome, or the city of what menr' Does Antigone not know rhat her liuber is old and blind (cf. 21- 22)? Is there a signpost that Anrigone bas just read> Could they have come ro a region that is not a city of men. or to a city that is nnr a region? Oedipus does not wait for an answer bur asks another question: • Trs." he begins. lt might mean "Who?" or "What region?" or "What city?" kWho/Whar," he asks, "will wdcome the wanderer Oedipus today with meager gifts-he asks for little, receives still less, and this suffices me?" Does Oedipus always identify himself by name wben he begs? Does rbe "Who" have to be human, and the "meager gifts" food and lodging (cf. 104)? And of whom does be ask r.his question? Antigone cannot know any more than be does. Does he abrupdy rurn ro talk to himself? Why does he ask for more than he finds sufficient? Is the still proud Oedipus crying out the role of humility? The "we" of bis first question has become "Oedipus" at me beginning of !tis second question and "me" at tne end. When he wrns back oo !tis daughter. he deepens !tis mysteriousness. "If, daughter, you see any sear, either at profane places or at the groves of the gods, sec and esrabli
On G...,k T rag
The riddles of rhe opening clu.uer around the knowled.ge of place, and rhe knowledge of place is embedded in Oedipus's own name"Know-where." Can Oedipus bimsdf have been rhe place he wa.s looking for (cf. 1510-23)? We learn ar rhe end of this play rbar the place of his disappearance is not ro be known to anyone, for though Theseus pres1!l1lably knows-how, if he cove,red his eyes at the last minute and Oedipus disappeared without a tra.ce?- and transmitted his knowledge to his successor, Athens is now, in the time of the audience for whom the play was writren, a democracy and no longer can have a cusrodian of this secrer. "Know-where" has become "Nowhere" (cf. 1649). The riddles conrinue. The narive of Colon us forbids Oedipus ro ask any more questions before he leaves the place where he is, "for you oceupy a place not sancrioned for crespass." Is there a connecrion berween outof-placeness and questioning? Oedipus complies by asking rwo questions: "What is rhe place? To whom of the gods is it held ro belong?" lb.e stranger then ignores his own prohibition and answers both questions: • A place untouchable and uninhabited. The goddesses in whom terror dwells occupy it, daughters of Earrh and Darkness.· Antigone was mistaken; rhe place is not inhabired. Could thue be rwo places? Oedipus rhen asks what the awesome (um111m) name of the goddes= is; plainly, he is eliciting the name he wants to hear-.5<-mnai-the distinctive epithet of rhe Furies at Athens and rheir name in the oracle he bas (89); but, he is told, "The people (kos) here would call them the aU-seeing Eumenides; elsewhere, different names are beautiful." Oedipus musr ha\•e come ro rbe wrong place; bur Oedipus decides otherwise' "Wdl, may rhey graciously (hiko) welcome the supplianr, since I would no longer depart from this place." Oedipus is going to sray regardless of wb.ether the Furies are gracious or not, fOr whereas the name Eumenides points directly to the word nmrmtiJ (kindly disposed), Oedipus choo= to substitute an equivalent word of the same metrical shape that puns on "people" (cf. 486). Does Oedipus need the graciousness of the people more than the kindness of the gods? It is striking, in any case, that Thes<:us does not need to coo•-ult an oracle ro confirm Oedipus's interpretation; indeed, neither Theseus nor anyone at Colonus is ever rold the oracle. Oedipus's ddiance now shakes the native's coo:lidence; be decides nor to expel Oedipus "apart from the city." What city? It cannot be Athens, for the inhabitants of Colonus have roral conrrol over this place (78). Is Colonus then a city roo? If it is, then the situation into which Oedipus has srumbltd must occur shortly after Theseus had consolidated all of Attica under rhe sovereignty of Athens, when rhe country rowns were srripped of their political independence bur their sacred places were left inracr.l1 Oedipus, however,
IU
1.1.1
Chapter Seo.'CO has now violated the sacred, and since we never lea.rn whether lsmene managed to perform the elaborate rites of purification before Creon seized her, Oedipus might remain polluted to me end: durin.g me interval in which Ismene would be performing me. ceremony, the Chorus learn of Oedipus's crimes (;to- 48). We arc made to wonder, in any event, whether Theseus needs rbe vio.lar:ion of m.e ucred, for if, on rbe one hand, rbe place of Oedipus's disappearance .is not to be approached (17 60- 63), and, on me omer, mar pla.ce is not to be known, rransgression is inevitable. Oedipus, "pure b)• law: brings to Athens the permanence of guilt. We are nor yet done with Oedipus the riddle. After me native of Colonus bas allowed him to stay where he is, Oedipus aslu him, "What is me place in which we have rome?" (s2). Had n.oc Oedipus already asked this question (38)? Is this yer another place? The native, in any case, does nor ~pear himself: "The whole place is sacred. Awesome Poseidon occupies it. The litan god, the fire-bringer Prometheus, dweUs in ir; and me place you rread upon is called me bronze-footed threshold of this land, the bulwark of Athens. The neighboring fields claim me horseman Colonus as mcir founder, and all in common have his name." "This land • does not refer ro Colonus; it is nor even clea.r whether it includes Colon us. The roor of Amens is not in Athens; the root of Athens, it turns out, is in Hades (1590-91). Colonus is many together bound in name to, and apan in being &om, Athens: the native distinguishes between what me place is caUed and irs srmousia. "It is this sort of place, stranger, nor honored in speeches bur more in a being together (sunousiP.)." Oedipus, in staying in this place and refusing to go to Athens, grants Athens "the greatest gift of his 1unousia" (647). Oedipus seems to be needed in order co weaken the apartness of Colonus wimour fuUy assimilating Colonus to Athens. He says he is sacred (287). The togetherness and apartness of Colonus are expressed in the first srasimon in which Oedipus, on the authority ofTheseus, is finally welcomed by the Chorus. The first strophic pair is devoted ro Col.oous, me ~cond ro Athens. Their connection is ooly made ar the beginning. "You have come, stranger, ro me best dwelling on earth of this land of good ho=. gleaming-whire Colonus" (c£ 694, 700). The difference between "earth" and "mis land" recalls Socrarcs' noble lie: the warriors of his best ciry are ro believe that the earth is rheir mother, and they must, "as about rheir mother and nurse, deliberate about the land in which they are and defend it if anyone artaclu ir, and on behalf of me rest of their fell.ow cir:izeos think of mem as bromers and eanhbom. •a The earth is u~tally their mother, me land is as if iris meir roomer. The land is an image of the earth. Yet the image prevails
On Gttdc. Tragedy over me imaged as soon as it is a question of war. Oedipus had come as weU in order ro be an eternal defense against the atnck of strangers. The Stran.ger
n3
""
Chapcer Seven We are now in a position to answer our origiw..J quesciorl. Why do the Chorus assert rhat not to be born is best just afret Theseus has proved by deed chat Oedipus is henceforth secu.re? The Choru.~ do oor leave ic at what is truly be.1:; there is a scc:ond-best: •Aod, once one has come to ligbr, ro go there quicldy from whete one bas come is by far rhe second best, since as soon as youth has passed, youth that brings airy thougbclessness, what labor wanders far outside? What roil is tlOt there within?" The Chorus find youth rolcrahle because of youth's ignorance; they identify knowledge with evil: "murder, civil factions, strife, bardes, and jealous resentmenL" Knowledge brings with it the city; it is what Oedipus brough< them when he rook away their innocence. "Not to be born surpasses every account (logos/' because oonbeing is withouc logos; and logos, they have learned from Oedipus, g~ with being. The su·...nger brings lbgos.l' The being-together (tunousia) of themselves with Colon us is no longer possible without logos. In the first srasimon, their praise of Athens, unlike thar of Colonus, calls attention to their own speaking and their knowledge of the difieceoce between heamy and autopsy. Their prajse of At.hens i.ncludes her am.
Ill The Chorus's praise of Athens points back co the anomalous place of Prometheus the fire god in the sacred serring ofColonus (54-56). Colon us is not quire as ardess and prepolirical as is suggested by the unhewn and natural rock upon which Oedipus first sin {.t9, 192). How the arrs affect the human condition is rhe theme of Aeschylus's Promtth~ Bound, in which we find Prometheus chained to a rock by Zeus a~ a punishmem for his service ro men. The gift of artS is but one of Prometheus's three crimes; the other rwo are his rescue of men from rhei.r annihilation and his cure of their despair. The relation char obtains among IUs d1ree crimes is nor at once dear, even though Prometheus puts them together in his talk wim the Chorus (218-~8). We are. given to undersnmd that as soon as Zeus usurped his father's throne he distributed among the gods who had sided with biro various offices and honors, but he assigned no special role ro men and planned to destroy them entirely before he produced a new race. Prometheus does nor explain what lay behind the plan of Zeus, but on the basis of what Prometheus himself tells us about man's prePromethean misery, Zeus's plan does not seem to be altogether unreasonable. Prometheus's pity should not dissuade us from looking at ourselves
On Grode T rag«fy pirilessly. To be pitiless is to be, according to the Chorus, "iron-hearted" (~). and iron is a Promethean gilt. The Chorus, at any rate. do not praise Promethew for his rescue of men; they do, however, praise him for his second c.rime. PROMETliWS. [
sropped morrnis from seeing d<:uh as their lot in from of
them. CHOllUS. What remedy did you find for !his di.seasc? P~tO><ETH£US. I serded blind hope in rhem. Cuoaus. You gifted momls with a grcru bendiaction. PaOMI!TH£US. Besides this, I gav.: them fire. CHORUS. And now roomls who live for a day h.-~ ll.ame-f.ced fire? PRO.MIITHEU&. Yes, and from ir they will learn many ans. Mo"als once saw d~th as their lot in from of them; rhcy could nor have simply foreseen the day of their death (as it is usually uanslared), for then Prometheus would not have been compelled to give them blind hopes; he would have only bad ro rake rbis f.tculty av.oay. Prometheus made dearh invisible (Hades). The pre-Promethean siruation of men was the constant awareness of death, and as this made any activiry based on fut.ure expectations impossible, which is rhe presumption of any productive ""· Prometheus had to remove men's oppressive sense of rhcir own mortality before rhc am could become useful. Mortals are ephc:mer.tl (qJhimeroi), according ro rhe Chorus; they Live in rhe Light of day in which thC)' once saw themselves as only mortal. Bur Prometheus's gift of fire, coupled with blind hopes, means th.e replacement of this natural light by artificial light, whose purpose is precisely ro conceal the original horiton within which men Live. Th~ price paid for the arts is blindness. The Chorus believe that co see death before one's eyes is a disease, and rhar Pcome.theus benefited men in scuing blind hopes in chem. On the ocher han.d, the Chorus ask in wonder whether men have fire. bur they seem nor co regard ir as a great benefit ro them; only lo, for whom rhe arrs arc of no use, will address Prometheus as though she thoughc ir is (6u- r3). The Chorus are immortal, and it would not be strange if thC)' thoughr fire was primarily a benefit ro chc gods. Without fire, men could not have sacrificed ro O lympian gods; if they sacrificed at all. rhey could have only poured libarions and ofFered lim fruirs. And if one thinks of the technical expression "fireless sacrifices," which are sacrifices ro the Fates and Furies, it is fining that a pre-Promethean man, haunred by his own momlity, should appeal to the only gods who as !ar as men knew controlled his life and death. In any case, such fireless sacri-
us
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Chapter Seven
fices would necessarily assign a higher if nor exclwive posicion ro rhe chrhonic gods: even rhe immortal gods would have made men rhink of dearh. No wonder, rhen~ rh;tr Zeus when he assumed power had no regard for rhose who could neirher please nor displease him. Prometheus's rhrec: crimes chmge radically not only rhe condition of men but also rhe relation of men to rhe gods. Promerheus's reflection on this latter chmgc is embodied in his description of the ans; but before we turn to rhat, we must consider how Promerheus viewed his effect on simply humm life. The order in which he has pusented rhe arts is not ar first clear (450-503), for the facr that number, rhough the "chief of comrivances, • is third in his lisr shows that ir is not a self-evident posicion. Men ori.ginally lived in the datk; their caves were sunless and rhey did nor know how ro make houses whose. windows faced rhe sun. Their emergence from caves into rhe sun naturally leads Prometheus to describe rhe art of distinguishing the seasons. The night sky gave rhem clear sig.ns for discrimination, bur since the risings and the settings of the stars are somerimes still "hard to discern," Promerheus gave them numbers, which are rhe only sure way of markin.g the seasons; and as numbering is useless unless one remembers accura.rely, it is joined with the. invention of letters. Thus rhe first four artS form a whole: (1) openness (houses); (2) rhe seeing of rhe sky in its diJfecenccs {astronomy); (3) rhe pr
On Greek Tragedy
che only art mentioned th:u essentially neech fire (apan from certain kinds of divination), and char "the signs that arise in fire" could equally well desaibe the way in which one judges in smdting che state of a molten batch, metals are ch.e fitting climax to che Promechean artS of prophecy. The last four artS, however, are much harder to see in their inner unity than che first four. Tamin.g of animals might have led Prometheus ro reSect on mastery in general, and from the mastery of che sea he might have got to che mastery of disease, and that in rurn may have led him to che mastery of chance through divination. The discovery of metals, chen, would be related to che previous three ans somewhat as ho~building was related to asrronomy, numbers, and letters. As homebuilding meant the coming nut into che open of men which entailed in turn che artS of discrimin11tion and accuracy, so metallurgy, as the art of bringing out imo the open thin~ chat are not naturally out in the open, would email the chree preceding artS chat make use of hidden characteristics of the S<:a. che earth (herbs), and fire (sacrifices). Promecheus first described men as clear-sighted in che face of deach, and his own activity as one of blinding; but in the account of the artS be presents men 2S originally blind and che artS 2S means ro bring chem nut inco ch.e light. The contradiction is traceable to Prom.etheus's failure to state whar he believes to be the naru~ of mao. Men were previously nipwi, he says, and he made chem sensible and in control of cheir ans. [f we take nipioi literally, Prnmecheus claims rha.t men were originally unspeaking; but bein~ wichout speech and sense CUI hardly be considered me.n at all, and Promecheus S2)'$ that he showed chem how co write and not how co speak. lf, ho~r, nipioi means only "foolish, • as ir usually does, chen his cwm to have given men rhose arrs they are capabl.e of finding Olll for rhe.mselves see.ms unfounded. The art of asrronomy is alrogecher different from che gift of fire. Men might never be so favored as co find our how tO make a fire (cf. 367-69), but as long as they can see and reason chey CUI discover che order in che movement of rhe stars. And again, if men can speak and chus make distinctions, chey can counr, and no Promecheus would be necessary to insrrucr chem. Whar che silence of Prometheus abour rhe. narute of man implies is revealed in a rematk that at fi.rst loo.ks like a merely grammatical curiosity. Among the ways of divination is ornichoscopy: "l discriminared for chem accurately che flights of crooked-taloned birds, whichever are on che right by nature an.d chose on che left" (488-90). The lasr phrase is consrrueted in such a way char "by narure" cannot be taken ro refet to che birds on che left. "On che righr" means by extension propitious, but "on the left"
117
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Ch2j>t
lirerally means "of good name," wd only becau.<e one recognizes it as a euphemiSll) for "unpropitious" does ir mean • on the lefr." The words for "left" and "right" are themselves signs that have ro be interprer.ed. The right is rigbr by nature, bur the left is only sinister by name; bur since they are correlative rerms, righr and left as propitious and unpropitious have suppressed rhe distinction between nature and convention. That distinction is not operative for men, for it has been replaced by arr; consequendy, the distinction between speech and language C3JJnor be drawn. Prometheus does nor distinguish between the natural numbers wd the conventional sign oflecrers. The fourth arr (lecrers) and rhe eighth (divination) equally show that Prometheus, in bringing men into the light, has nor revealed all the distinctions ro be found in the light, and that the ambiguous statuS of speech and reason in his account is founded on the blindness he first gave co men- lr is impossible to reconcile his giving men blind hopes as well as the arr of divination unless their bdief rhat rhey accur.uely know this an is in &cr the basis of their blind hopes. Men first Lived in chaos and were like the shapes of dreams (448-so), bur Prometheus showed them how rn tell which dreams were f.ued ro tum out true. Men do nor altogether awaken under Prometheus's guidance bur sriU live in a twilight. They now believe they an rell apart "realiry" from "dream," bur "realiry" is only the reality of dreams. "I opened the eyes of mortals,· Prome.theus says, bur only so that they could see rbe signs concealed in fire and nor rhe light of the sun. For Prometheus makes no distinction between the "hard ro discern" risings and settings of rhe stars and the "hard ro discern" cries of birds (458, 486). Bur men as surely lack the complete arc of dlvinarion as Prometheus possesses it. The arcs that illuminate the human world are embedded in an all-encompassing darkness. The lise of the arcs begins with man's emergence into the open and ends with the bringing r.o light of merals. Within this framework of light, the central art is something of an anomaly. The verbs Prometheus uses ro describe his w.l)'S of giving each art are rhose of showing, distinguishing, and discovering (altogether thirteen times); but in the case of taming, rhe verbs are surprisingly direct: "1 yoked~ and "lied" (462, 465). Taming is apparenrly not an an that can he caught in speech; Prometheus has tO show it in deed. And what holds for the tamer holds for the tamed: ir musr learn by suffering- Prometheus rhus alludes as fastidiously as he can ro rhe need for force and compulsion in rarning, for even in his medicine there are only "geode remedies" (482). The taming of Prometheus himsdf, which is consrandy described in rerms of subduing a horse, is suBicienr proof that persuasion does nor suffice. Prometheus, who pities even rhe
On Gre
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Chapter Seven
form of Prometheus's assertion makes it applicable to Zeus as well: • His an roo (these chains) is weaker than necessity." The Chorus phrase their question personally; they do not ask. •What then is omter of (sn:onger than) necessitT-" They $ense at once that art no more than necessity is a purdy absuaet noun. The Pates and Furies w: n<~~ity; and since Zeus is weaker than they, the conclusion seems plain: not Prometheus bur Zeus essentially is art. The ordering of human life through the am parallels the ordering of the world that Promcrbeus accomplished on Zeus's accession ro the throne. The empire of Zeus would al~ luve been surrounded by darkness. Indeed, this empire, in which each god bas a specific rask, is prese.nred i.o the fust sa:ne, where :U:us is shown tO comrol borh the arr of meraJworlcing (Hepha.estus) and the art of taming (Force and Violence). But Zeus, who has assigned a share to every god, rums out ro luve only a share on his own. There is something for which he has no art. The three Fares and their occcurive arm.. the Furies, have no parr in the am of Zeus. Zeus's defea consists i.n his ignorance of generation. He does not know rbat if he marries Thetis she will have a son who will overthrow him. Zeus, then, lacks the an of the Fates or generation. Their art is weaving. Of rhe three human needs- food, clothing. shelter-Prometheus mentions am that satisfy the lim and third but nor the art of weaving. As the only female an docs not appeat among the arts of mortals, so it is nor counted in the rcchnocra.cy of Zeus. When Zeus did learn Promethe.us's secret, he generated Athena nonsocually, the goddess of weaving. The pe.rfect product of art, who solves the problem of generation among the gods, solves it also for men: by vinue of her being motherless, she later tips the scales in favor of Orestes ....
IV The tragic poets are masters of presenting deadly moughts in the garb of innocence. Their words float long before they sink and terrify. They seem to have learned how to do this from Homer. When Hector returns ro Troy and goes to upbraid Paris at home, Hden says to him: "Come, enter, brother-in-law, and sit upon this scat, since especially the roil of war bas occupied your heart on account of myself a birch and the original offense of Paris, upon whom Zeus did place an evil litre, in order rhar hereafter we may be the subject of song for men who will be. "33 Homer lers Helen divine that the Trojan war, which had its ground in the Aclueans' vindica-
On Grttk T rog
m
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Choprer Se\'eo
w save Thebes.)S It would sc:cm, then, that Creon bas already shown mar he rules in accordance with his own laws: be has given up his son for me sake of bis fatherland. Yer he has dceided nor ro glorify Megareus's dearh bur has strangely ebosco Etencles' as the highest form of patriotism. His faU would surely gain in poignancy if me loss of Ills elder son underby Ills hatred of Polyneices and Antigone. Croon, howe,,er, never refers ro Megareus, and be gives no indi.cation that he h11s ever experienced suffering. If me death ofMegareru meant nothing ro him, me death ofHaemon and Eurydice will not either; and what looks like the fitting purlishmenr for his crimes will altogether miss in mark. Perhaps the moSt beautiful of all choral odes is the P'Modos of the AgammmotJ. Twdvc ~ elders begin by singing of rhe eKped.ition againSt Tto)' and their own
At the same time, then, that we learn of the Chorus's complicity, we learn chat they put no trust in anything bur what they can see with their own eyes. Tbey are acurely sensitive in regard ro morality and extremdy skeptical in regard tO evidence. They doubt everything they bear but do not see." They do not believe Clytemcsrra when she reports the fall of Troy; they find the perfectly plain visions of Cassandra very bard to follow;
On G...,k T ragt.dy
and they decide not to bdp Agamemnon, when they hear his cries, because at least half the Chorus are nor certain what they mean (!)46-71). Their skeprici$1D, however, is ar odds with their morality, for hardly aoyrhin.g they see confom:u self-evidendy with their morality. T heir morality needs to be grounded in knowledge of cause, bur all they know of Zeus is his name; he is only a likeness (cf. r6o-6s, 1486). Their silence, then, about wbar caused Agamemnon to sacrifice lphigeneia embodies their probity and d iruess. This does nor mean, however, that the Chorus cannot see bow decesrable Aegisthus is, and they are prepared to fight him (1651); but Oyremescra, despite Cassandra's best dfort to blacken her, baflles them to the end <•s6o- 6r) . The disparity between the Chorus's morality and dteir reliance on tye$ight alone S«ms co be resolved, if nor for them rhen for us, in the Ch«phoroi, where Orestes sees before his eyes the Furies, and guilt thus become$ visible. Irs visi.biEty, however, seems co entail a dintinucion of its power; it is no longer an experience of the soul chat the law cannot reach."' The Furies terrify Orestes, bur rbey do not succeed in bringing about his remorse.. Oresres never regrets what he did. Guilt made visible separates the fear of furure punishmem from rhe impossible wish to undo one's crime. The Furies' manifestation is thus indispensable for Athena's establishment of right in the form of law. The Furies become Kindly Ones in becoming pute insrrum.e ms of punishment. Law derers through irs sancrions; it is indifferent to r.be curative power of remorse. Law has ooming co do with the rragjc. It cannot care less whemer or nor Clyremcstra has bad dreams. The Chorus of the C!Jo~phoroi arc rhe first ro anticipare rhe condusion of rhe Omttia. Sem by Clyremcsrra ro appease wirh libations chose below rhe earth, they are afraid that they will be appeased and that she will not h2ve to pay for her crinte (21- 83). Guilt cannot redeem; it is the luxury of the successful c.rintinal (cf. 841- •13). Orestes roo is disturbed lest Clyrcmesua has managed ro appease his father, for he, Electra, and me Chorus have conjured Agamemnon tO come into cbe light and join with chem against his enemies (459-60), bur Agamemnon has failed ro appear. Accordingly, Orestes, oven after he has resolved ro :ret (sl4), hesitates. He has to know what prompted Clyremesrra ro send libations; that they are, as he says, ~less than her fault" (519), does not enrail that rbeydid nor suffice to rurn aside Agamemnon's wrarh and baffie his epiphany (cf. 461). The dream Clnoor mean what the dream-interpreters, who engaged themsdves to speak • from god" <39 -42), made it our to mean. And when we hear rhe dream , we are puzzle.d as ro how it could have admitted of any other interpretation than Orestes' (527-SO). Oyremestra
UJ
<>4
Chllpter Seven dreamed that she gave birth to a snake and when she offered it suck it bir her on the breast and drew blood. Who else could the snake be than Orestes? The sole wrinkle in Orestes' suaighrforward interpretation is one line. which is ordinarily taken tO say-it assumes an unexampled hyperbaron-that she anchored the snake like (di!ten} a child in swaddling clothes bur could possibly mean that in the swaddling clothes of a child she anchored just punishment (diften). Tbe child, then would nor be Oresr:es but Ipbigeneia, and the lncerpr:erers would have told Clyremesua that rhe sacri6ce of lphigeneia does nor now sancr.i on her f.tther's murde.r. lr is, in any case, remarkable that Oytemesrra, when she defends he.rself before Oresres, does not mention lpbigeneia (cf. 242). Orestes bas no qualms about having killed Acgisthus; he believes he had the law behind him (989-90), bur he does not believe that Apollo's oracle is as compelling as the law; his reasons for obeying the oracle arc nor unmixed (298-305). The Athenian jury too did not 6nd Apollo's case altogether convincing. This is rruly astonishing. There srood before them the ugliest and the mosr be.lutiful gods, and they could nor make their verdict unanimous. The. an:raction men have to the ugliness of punish· ment has neve.r been more vividly conveyed." Athena arranged for a contest in which it was shown thn the Olympian gods coul.d never wholly gain tbe wo!$bip of men. In petSuading tbc Fu.ries ro become pan of tbe new political order of Athens, Athena placed within that order a reminder rhar men do not have the capacity to recognize fully the justice ofZeus.42 Athena's wisdom thus partly consists in the admission that mortals cannot know her wisdom as wisdom. This admission lies behind her pe.rsuasion of the Furies. The Olympian gods will nor punish Athens for irs f.tilure to reverence them with all irs heart, with all irs might, wirh all its soul. She asks the Furies to make the. same concession (795-96). The visible gods of tbe city relax their grip on the soul, for the human undecidability of Orestes' case signifies the inevitability of human error-the acquittal of the unjust and the eondemnar.ion of the just- for which there is to be no punishment. The city that subsequently condemned Socrates postponed his eJ<ecucion until the sacred ship SaiAminia eould return from Delos. Ir puri6ed itself ho;riJJy hmeka, which literally means "for the sake of the holy" bur came to mean "fo.r form's sake:. • By the same token, o nce the gods have sanctioned public error within tbe city, the city can obviously kill its foreign enemies withour any qualms. The Trojan War can now take place. All that the city perhaps still needs is the supplement of tragedy. The Choq>horoi is divided into rwo unequal parts, a high and a Low.
On GK<:k T ragtdy The high pan goes up through the lim smsimon (652), the low coomins rhe killing of Aegisthus and Clytemesrra. The first part looks ar matricide in th.e dement of divine command and moral duty, the second part presents matricide as ir is. Orures nrais his friend Pybdes to remind him of Apollo's oracle (9oo-904). The disjunction between the two pam cannor be missed if one keeps together the last words of the first staSimon"deep-counseling Fury" -with Orestes' first words in the execution of his plan- "Boy! Boy!~(653). The Chorus say that d.e.ep-counseling Fury is introducing Orestes into the palace. but Orestes has to shout and knock like any figure on the comic $rage in order ro be admirted." NOt even Euripides, as far as we know, ever went this far in violating tragic decorum. T ragic decorum simply does nor suit the brutal business of a mother's murder. the urine and feces of the i.n fam Orestes are more consomlDt with it (749-6o). So a.re slaves. The Nu~ who speaks about the mindless beast that Orestes was i.s bur one of th= such who between them make possible Orestes' actions. The Chorus of slave women persuade the Nurse, in as miraculous a way as Athena does the Furies, to suppress parr of Clytemesrra's order in repeating it to Aegisthus; and me cries of the slave who discovers Aq;isthus's corpse get Clyremesrra ro come out of the women's quarters unarmed and unescorted (877-84). The house of Atreus is &eed by slaves. Orestes did not anticipate any of the difficulties they manage ro overcome; indeed, the very phrase, "where is the stranger from?·" which he had imagined would die in Aegisthus's throat before he could utter ir, is spoken by the slave doorkeeper (575, 657). Orestes, moreover, did not even expect ro be welcomed, "since the house i.s inspired by evi.ls" {s70), lee alone be wdrorned by his mother. ln the entire reheaiSil of his contingency plans. he never mentioned Clyremesrra. "Mother" never crosses l:tis lips until he says, "Pylades, what shall I do? Shall [ sh.rink fcom killing my mother?"(899). Perhaps, however, what most distinguishes the second from the first parr of the play is the absence of Electra. She does not .speak after Orestes asks the Chorus abou~ the dream; she has no parr in rhe murder (554). Orestes spares Electra against her will :tnd the expectation of the Chorus (473, 481-81; cf. 179). The incoherence of his plan seems ro be a way of freeing he.r from even the charge of conspiracy." OresteS fnces the Furies alone because he has arranged ro face his mother alone. If. however, be bad strictly complied with the orade, he would never have faced his rnoth.e r at all; be would have killed her as he had Aegisrh.w (and as Oyrernesr:ra bad killed Agamemnon), without ever revealing why she was ro be killed and who he was (cf. 555-59, 831-31). Orestes, how·ever, cannot bring himself
ns
u6
Ch•pter S.,,·eo
man
to act as if he is dte pure executor of rhe law, any more he c-.m let Eleccr.t participate in the killing. lhar Apollo defends him anyway, despite his disobedience, is a tign perhaps of rhe violem gr2ce of the Olympian gods.
v Sophocles' OuJjpw 1jrannus seems ro be the most sysrematically ambiguous of all Greek ttagedies. lc adn:Uts of two entirely different imerprerarions, neither of which seems ro be a deeper version of the other. The 6rsr interpretation rakes irs bearings from Oedipus, clle second from rhe plot. For rhe 6rst the plor is nodting bur an instrument of disclosure; and whatever dilliculties there arc in it do nor deuacr from r.he showing of Oedipus. The second interpretttion refuses to ignore the knors that compliC3te rhe plot unnecessarily. We begin ro wonder whether Sophoclea.n irony rruly consiStS in our knowledge aod Oedipus's ignorance, or rather in our own ignorance of which we never become aware. Each interpretation has ro be worked our separar.ely from dte other before they can be joined together. ro illuminare what is darker. than either Oedipus or rhe plor- the gods. Any inrezpretation of Oedipus has ro lace this riddl<: What is the necessary connection between Oedipus's solution 10 the riddle of the Sphinx and Oedipus's rwo crimes? This riddle, tO which Oedipus g;.ve the answer "man," wa~ Wbar walks on four legs in the morning, two ar midday, and on three ar evening? Is the amwer that Oedipus g;.ve the cognitive equivalent ro the actions of patticide and incest? That Oedipus is, as the Chorus say, the paradigm of mao-he shows char beneath all the show mao is nothing bur show (1186-96}-does nor seem ro require. that be know wbar walks on four feer in the morning. rwo feet in the afternoon, and three in the evening. The universality char Oedipus supposedly represents sirs awkwardly wirh his uniqueness; h~ never crawled on four feet or walked on cwo. A sign, however, of their coonecrion is his name. His name means either '' Swollen Foor • or "Know-Where. "") Inasmuch as it identifies him either as his body or his mind, it identifies rum as both: the CWO identifications might be me same. \Vhe.tl Oedipus explains his self-blinding. h.e adds chat had there been a way of dosing off his bearing, he would have done r.h ar roo. "For the mind ro dwell outside of evils is sweet" (1389-90). Oedipus assumes that b.is min.d would vanish with his seeing and hearing; indeed, he h2S already identified
On Grttk Trogtdy
Tircsias's blindness with his deafness and his mindlessn<SS (371). Oedipus, therefore, through his denial of any separation between body and rcind, can idemifY happiness with ignorance and knowledge wirh misery. His wish to be a Lucrexian •blind body" agrees nor only with Jocasra's assertion that to live at random is best bur with his own boast that he is th.e son of Ch2nce C977~79. 1080). To see through seeming-the riddle-is to discover that there is nothing bur seeming: rhe king is his F..ther, his wife, his mother. Oedipus saw through the riddle bux not through the form of the riddle, in which man's distinguishing feature was a corporeal one that changed in number but not in kind. Oedipus is first challenged to reflecr on the connecrion berween the Sphinx and the plague in the. first scene. A priest describes his pecitione.rs: "You see what ages we are who sir at your altars: some do nor yet have the srrength to fly far, others are priests heavy wirh age--l am of Zeusand others are a chosen band of still unmarried men" (IS-I9). Oedipus is here confronted with a divergent solution to the riddle, whereby aged priesrs replace the aged and bachelors replace man the biped. The sacred and the sexual, neither of which was in either the riddle or irs solution, are now in front of him. Not only, then, is the prohibition against incest encoded here in irs inconspicuousness and th.ereby imitated, but by contrast a link is hinred at berween the solution "man· and rhe asexual and the nonsacred. The link is made explicit in the first srasimon of the. Antigont, where the gods do nor pose any limit for man and man in his uncanniness is a neuter "this" (334). It would seem that Oedipus does not know what his solution means, which is rhat m3ll as he understands him is independent throughout his life; the. sacred involved in his beginning {incest-prohibition) and the sacred involved in his end (burial) do nor pertain ro man as m3ll. Oedipus, in 3l!Y case, does not now reflect on the absence of any wom~n before him, le.r alone the nature of rhe plague: "The cicy is wasting away in the eanh's seedpods of fruit, it is wasting away in th~ herds of cattle, 3lld the aborted birth of women (25-27, f7!.73)." That barrenness is the way in which the cicy is being punished for harboring a regicide does oor puule him. It is as if he had nevc.r heard of the old wives' rale that links incest aod degenerate oE&prin.g. As the soo of chance, coincidence is for him without significance. In his first speech be called all of those assembled before him, despire the disparicy in their ages, children (1, 6). Oroipus soon defines himself: "Children ro be pitied, you have approa.ched me desiring what is known and nor unknown tO me. I know well that all of you are ill, and rhough you are i.ll there is not one among
•~7
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Chapcer SC\'Cn
you who is as ill as I am, for your distre.u comes ro you alone. and by yourself, bur my soul groiDS together fo.r the ciry, for me, and for each one of you" (58-64). Oedipus rakes it for granted that he is unique; he is che only one who can bridge the gap between the city and the individual.: he inserts "me" between "the city" and "you" (singular). He. thereby implies that be is dilferem from both the extremes rhat he joins rogerher. He comprehends borb the public and the private, while remaining a separa.t e one. Asked by C.reon whether he is to report the oracle to Oedipus alone inside or to the asswJbly, he replies,"Announce it to all. I bear a grief for them more than for rny own soul" (93-94). The soul of Oedipus discounts the soul of Oedipus. He is rhe uniquely sel8ess self. He alone has nothing ro hide. The objectivity of his solution ro rhe riddle is of a piece with the disinterestedness with which he accepted the city's gift of the monarchy and che queen (383-84). His indignation ar Tiresias's silence is rhe result of Tiresias's refusal ro hdp the city-Tiresias never says "city," Oedipus speaks of it five times-and the old man's harpin.g on himself: Tiresias says "I" eight rimes co Oedipus's once (396). The sacred is indilfeftllt if noc hostile co the city. Tircsias pttceods char had he known why Oedipus summoned him he would not have come ()r6-r8). Oedipus, on the other hand, is devoted whuUy ro the city. His chance success of solving rhc riddle, · rire:sias tells him, destroyed him. "It's no concern of mine." Oedipus replies, "if I saved this city~ (44~). His open anger cesci6es ro the purity of his public-spiritedness; he does not stop to calc:ulare, as Creon does, how ro combine the profirable with the noble (595). There is for him only the ciry, since he is the city (625-30). Oedipus's tmnsparency extends even ro his language. He speaks all the time as if be knew &om the .srart what he set our ro discover. Creon says chat Laius was killed by hlghwaymen, Oedipus picks ir up with "highwayman" (122, 124). "Since 1 oow have, • h.e tells the Chorus, "rhe rule chat he had before, and have bis bed and wife, in whom we both did sow, common would be the of&pring of common children if his family had not been unfortunate; bur as it .is, chance swooped upon his head; but in exchange for rhis, just as if fur my owo farber, I shaD 6ghr on his behalf" (zss-65). Oedi.pus cannot speak metaphorically; everything he says is literally rruc. Such literalness would seem not only to do away with poetry but with dream.s. The Imaginary would be reality. That which Jocasra tells him has already happened ro many-in their dreanu they dept with their mother--has already happened ro him without dreaming (981-82). Oedipus has nothing private ro rum co, away from others. His
On Gred< T rogdy
destruction of the f.unily is therefore the indispensable means for grounding his own self-undemanding. Oedipus did unwittingly whar he would have had to do knowingly if he was going to be what he says he is. He finds, however, that he cannot will retroactively th.e condition rhar de6nes him. His self-blinding seems to be an attempt on his part to rescore the private condition he destroyed: Creon granted him his wish to be allowed to much his daughters (1466-77). "It is holy," Creon had told him, "only for those in the f.unily ro see and hear the evils of the family" (1430-31). Oedipus has become opaque (13~6). This interpretation of Oedipus's fare makes him out to be a root of rhe ciry that the city needs bur cannot afford to have represented. Thebes is autochthonous. Its present generation is the offipring of the dragon teeth that Cadmus once sowed (t). The Thebans as Thebans have only one moth.er; they are therefore fraternally bound with o ne another and isolated from everyone dse. Oedipus's son Eteocles, in Aeschylus's Sevm Against Thebes. appeals to the citizens ro defend their • dearest nurse, Mother Ea.rrh" (t6; cf. 421- 16, 476); he does nor ask them tO defend their "natural" parents. The fraternity of the Thebans, however, necessarily entails incest, for any weakening in the sense of mother weakens the justice of their claim to Theban territory. And yet m treat their claim literally is to aecepr Oedipu.s's criminality: "How in the world, how in the world, could your father's furrows have put up with you in silence for so long?" (wo-u). The Chorus's question admits of an answer if his f.uher' s furrows are not Jocasta, bur insofar as they are Jocasta, Oedipus has violated the indispensable condition for the existence of the ciry, the prohibition against endogamous marriages. That prohibition allows for the bonding of the city's f.unilies qUA families, bur nor for the bonding of the cimens qtta citizens, which can only be effected if the prohibition against incest that holds for each f.unily does nor hold for the ciry as a whole. Oedipus's identification of himself with the ciry cancels of necessity that prohibition, and that cancellation in turn makes Oedipus the one true citiun of Thebes. Oedipus is the ryrant (873- 82) whose illegitimacy legitimates the ciry. Oedipus's blindness seems to be set off against a neutral background ofTheban awareness. He alone does not know where he stands.; everyone else is in place. His way is solely a way of self-discovery, for no one else needs to be exposed. We are 6rst compelled to question this when Creon tells Oedipus that Laius was the former king: "I know by hearsay, for I have not yet seen him" (105) . We are so bemused by our being one up on Oedipus rhar we fail ro wci.gh carefully Creon's reply: "[The oracle]
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now plainly orders us ro punish by force nis murderers" (106-7). Oedipus is told for the 6rsr rime mar Laius was murdered; .. and if Creon is reporting accurately, the oracle uses rhe plural "murderers.• The plural is for the moment nor troublesome, but Oedipus's ignorance ofl..a.ius's murder is. Since only me sequenre--Laius's murder, Oedipus's arrival at Thebes-is neeessary ro me plot, nor me interval berween them, Oedipus could have taken me road tO 0auJ.ia after me ltiJJing ramer than have continued on his way ro Thebes. A lapse of a year or so would not have alrered anything essenrial, and it would nave made the Thebans' silence, ro say nothing ofJocasta's and Creon's, much more plausible.; as iris, the squeeze on rime brings in iu train a more serious awkwardness. Laius left Thebes in order to consult the oracle at Del.phi (us); he told no one of rhe purpose of his journey, but it is easy enough m suspect that be wamed tO nave it confirmed that he bad indeed thwarted me oracle. His action on the road strengthens this suspicio11, for, according to Oedipus, when Oedipus was passing by rhe can, after he had struck in anger me driver, Laius (if it was he) without provocar.i on aimed a blow at Oedipus's head. Laius, it seems, was raking no chances that this young man might be his son. However this may be. La.ius left Thebes prior ro the coming of me Sphinx, and Oedipus arrived at Thebes ju.st after me coming of the Spb.inx. Oedipus only now learns of rh.is sequence. C reon a~ that if highwaymen or a highwayman killed Laiu.s. the assassination must have been planned at Tbebes; no ooe would have dared such a crime unless he had been bribed (124-26). Laius's assassination must have bad a political purpose, and om)' Oedipus's timely solution of the riddle forestalled a coup d 'etat. Since Creon alone Stood to gain by Laius's dearh, and since Creon bad suggested rha.t the kin.g tell him io secrer of the oracle, Oedipus's accusario•1 against Creon is not a sign of his ungovernabl.e rernper bur a display of his shrewdness. Oedipus is righdy puzzled by th.e Thebans' failure to investigate Laius's murdc.r. Creon's excuse would o nly deepen his suspicions. "The complcx-,rioging Sphinx led us oo forego what was nor evidem and exam.ioe what was at our f<et" (tJO- JI). ln irself. the excuse is plausible; bur io the given rime-$p3n it almost suffices to convict Creon (cf. s66-67) . Wnhin days if nor hours of the posing of the riddle, the riddle was solved (736). The allusion io Creon's words ro Oedipus's condition has diStracted us; it would oor have distracted Oedipus, who would nor und=d why the Thebans had not put him ro this second <est. "Even if the master was nor divinely ordained," he tells rbe Chorus, "it was nor proper for you to let it go unpuri6ed" (255-56). That Oedipus
On G=k T<>ge
did not connca the killing of Laius with the availability of the Theban throne should not surprise us, given rhar he was ignorant of rhe former; but that rhe Thebans were never pU7.7Jed by dtc coincidence of his arrival with the report of Laius's death should surpri$e u•. [f Oedipus had r.o conclude either char the Thebaos were incapable of purring rwo and rwo rogether, or chat he musr have stumbled on a conspiracy, who buc a madman would not have chosen co err on the side of reason? Sophocles has combined an ironic linguistic surface that holds no ridtll.es for us with an ironic srrucnu:e of actions for which we have no guide. He has made us experience rhe collapse of the cohecc:ncc of seeming: the dreamworld is nor Oedipus's bur our own. We are curned into Thebans, for whom nothing has co make any sense. )ocasta must have long noted the close resemblance Oedipus bears ro Laius (743), but she casuaUy mentions it as if ir were of no significance. There is no necessity, afrer all , that resemblance entail consanguinity. The servant who escaped from Laius's retinue saw no reason why he should denounce Oedipus. He was so afraid apparently that his lie would be exposed-there was no band of highwaymen-char he preferred co let a regicide be king; indeed, since he muse have known that the baby he declined ro kill bad grown up to be a prince of the royal house of Corinth, it must be said that he preferred to allow Oedipus ro commit incest rather than ro be known as a liar. .A3 the sole survivor from Laius's retinue, he would have been no doubt reluctaor to cell the. truth, for the suspicjon would have been srrong that he had abetted a single assassin; but in the fuce of the :llrernarivean incestuous regicide on rhe throne at Thebes- his silence sec:ms inexcusable. He musr have convi.nced himsdf that the violation of the law, no matter how sacred the law is, does nor count as long as ir is nor publicly known. He asked leave. of Jocasra so thar he would nor have ro fu.ce Oedipus with his guilty knowledge (758-62); bur he believed, as dO<:S Oedipus, that even here the saying holds good, "Our of sight, out of mind." "It is best ro live at random, as much as one can. Don't fear marriage wirh your mother. Many mortals have already even in dreams slept with their mother. Bur co whomever these things are. as nothing. he bears his l.ife most easily" <.979-83). This principle. which Jcx:am. lays down, presumably only ro cajole Oedipus out of his terror of the oracle, simply formulates the universal practice among the Thebans. Since the events of the play seem ro refure the principle, Sophocles has check>ed us from 'vondering whether or not the Thebans have any evidence for rhcir adherence to Jt. Of the three ways of access ro the. rrurh, rwo are divine, one human.
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Chaprer Seven Apollo cannot be compelled, Oedipus says, to yield up any more than he has; Tiresias knows the truth but cannot or will nor offu any way of verifYing it; the servant who was an eyewimess lies. That "many" cannot be equal to "one" is Oedipus's ultimate refuge (843). As long as that inequality nolds, Oedipus is not guilty of regicide. J ='s con.fidence in irs truthfulness seems ro be grounded on nothing more than her equation of public knowledge with truth: "Know that this was expr=ly sa.id, and he cannot cast it out again: the city heard it, not I alone" (848-so). Oedipus's confidence, on the other hand, is grounded more firmly. His own account cannor possibly be squared with his guilt, for he stares rhar ac the crossroads he slew them all (813). No one escaped, for if one had escaped. the coincidence of the five in l..aius's retinue and rhe five in Oedipus's srory, with one fugitive from each group, could nor bur have convinced Oedipus that he had indeed slain I.aius. )ocasta. moreover, gives two versions of rhe crucial sequence. The .6rsr conforms with our belief: the city was informed oflaius's murder shordy before Oedipus was declared king (73638). Bur twenty lines later, Jocasra inverrs the sequence: "When [the servant] returned from there (i.e., rhe place where Laius was murdered) and saw that you had the rhrone and Laius was dead, he rook me by rhe hand and begged me ro send him to rhe fields and pastures of the Bocks" (758-~1). Oedipus. then, had already solved rhe riddle, won the throne, and married rhe queen before the city knew that Laius had been murdered. This sequence cerrainly saves the morality of the servant, who might well believe that no harm is done if both mother and son remain ignorant. Bur his moraUty is saved at a preposre.rous cost. Laius's murder would now have ro be proclaimed to everyone but Oedipus. And yet, is this more difficult co believe than the accepted version, rhar with nothing to hide, no one at Thebes ever hinted at l.a.ius's murder? We know rhar Jocasra did not we<~.r mourning at her wedding. Bur., the objection runs, this alte.rnare sequence means that in the course of a single day two re!lnues of live men each, each with one mule-can and one herald, passed the same spoc on the road to Delphi. Is this more difficulc to believe than the servant who Bed from the scene jusr happened ro be the servant co whom Lains had enuusred che baby Oedipus? And rhac the Corinthian messenger who came to report Polybus's deach just happened tO be the shepherd to whom l.a.ius's servant handed over the baby Oedipus? Once coincidences are accepted, one more or It$$ cannot maaer. It would nor have troubled either Jocasra or the city rhac with Laius srill alive she was committing bigamy. Jocasm cerra.inly feels no guilt that, if the orade deliv-
mar
On G.....,k T cagtdy ered to Laius were false, she and Laius were guilty of the gratuitous murder of theit son. Either Oedipus killed his father and married his mothe.r, or he married his mother but did nor kill his father. In the former case, the oracle is vindicated, in the latter ir is nor. In the former case, the gocl~ would seem ro be malevolent, ready to have a man violate their own sacred laws in order to prove that their oracles are true. Oedipus had assumed that rhe prophecy was conditional: if he went back ro Corinth, he would fulfill the oracle. And the gods surely cannot believe that the clarity of divine prohibition is less revealing of themselves rhan the obscurity of oracular pronouncements. Even if one grants that the more rhe law becomes "se.:; ond nature" the less irs author is recognized, d1ere still seems ro be no necessity char the revelation of the legislator be at rhe expense of the authority of the legislation. Oedipus, at any rate, does not need ro be punished in order to know that the prohibition against incest is sacred: "Never, never, 0 holy majesty of the gods, might I see rhar day, bur might I vanish before I see the taint of such a calamity upon me" (830-33; cf. 863-73). If, on the other hand, Oedipus did nor kill Laius, there would be no actual connection berween the oracle that limited rhe cause of the plague to Laius's murder and Oedipus's detc:crivc work. The gods would rhus have let Oedipus make that connc:cr.ion on his own. He alone would be responsible, through error, for discovering his crimes. It seems at first rhat Tiresias' s presence argues against this, but Tiresias, for all the effect be has, could just as well have remained silent about both Oedipus's patricide and incest. Neither Oedipus nor the Chorus ever mention char parr of the prophecy, Oedipus because he believes it agrees with the oracle he had alread)• construed, the Chorus because, being Thehans, they never notice anything. Tiresias, of course, could not have anticipated that he would be so ignored, bur Tiresias contradicts himself. He states on his entrance that had he known why he was summoned he would nor have come; and he states on his exit that he has said all that he had come co say (447). Tiresias apparendy provoked Oedipus so tba r he could pretend ro blurt our in an.ger what be had planned ro say all along. If so, his plan backfired; Jocasra and jocasra aloo.e made Oedipus afraid through ber wish to prove to him the unreliability of oracles. Oedipus himself, moreover, initiated his own fate by believing a drunkard rather than his putative parents. If Oedipus bad been a true Theban, he would have shrugged off the drunkard's remark; and if Corinth had been a Thebes, a rumor about
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Chapter Seven
his illegitimacy would never have spread (n?-86). The rhreat that me rumor posed to me Corinthian monarchy reinforced Oedipus's own unease. The gods, it seems, use simply human experiences as such in order to accomplish the.ir end. These experiences are enthusiastic: they have the gods within them and are wholly independent of the truth or falsity of oracles and divines. Admittedly, the sooty of Oedipus does nor seem ro deal with the human at all; rather, it seems to present man with an inhuman choice. Either everything happens by chance and norhing is imelligible, or nothing happens by chance and evetything is imelligible, bur wirh rhis proviso: the possibilicy of discovering the pattern is remote, for it t.o o depends on chance, and the pattern once discovered is sure to make life unlivable. There are either no gods or gods whose graciousness solely consiscs in guaranteeing that we smll nevec find out rbat they exist. To believe in chance is to be inspired b)' grace. We must wish for the Thcban condition. This wish, however, can not only ne\'er be granred us, for Oedipus has destroyed its possibility once and for all. bur the disencbanm1em of the Tbebans cannot be a matter of regret_ One wonders, then, whether Oedipus is alrogetber disenchanting: he does nor kill himself. The Chorus do not know why Oedipus chose a life of blindness rarher than death. Oedipus explains: "Had 1 gone to Hades, I do nor know with what eyes I would in Stting have beheld my father, nor in rum my miserable mother, to both of whom I have done things that deserve more than hanging (1371-74)." Oedipus's w1willed crimes uncover in him an autonomous element of shame. Shame is the human experience that reveals the gods. Oedipus now knows that Hades exists. Hades is the god of whom a man like Oedipus alone can never have any experience (cf. 97"1-· 987). It needs crimes as cerrible as his to infuse bwnan shame with divinicy. Oedipus can now enlighten the Thebans. The Chorus had rold us, though no one, nor even Tiresia< or the priest of Zeus had remarked oo it, thac the corpses of the plague's victims we,re being left Wlburied 180-89; cf. 2?-30). The Theban's disregard of rhis divine law is of a piece with the rest of rheir pracrice; the Chorus make it plain that only women- wives and aged mothers-bewailed the absence of due burial rices. Faced, then, with the Tbebans' invincible ignorance and unde6am impiery, the gods found that Oedipus was indi•l"'nsable: he charged Creon with the task of burying jocasta (1446-'{.8). That d1e divine law of burial is the underground theme of the Oedipus story is suggested both by his daughter's sacrificial defense of it and his own peculiar end. Oedi-
On Greek Tngedy pus, who believed he was his own origin, is the only man who ever buried himsel£C Oedipus's shame is that which distinguishes him from the virtuous man (tpitiltis). who Aristorle 5ays should not be the subject of tragedy." At the end of his analysis of the moral vinues (apart from justice and prudence), the last one of which is wirriness or "educated insolence,» Aristotle denies that shame belongs to the virtuous (tpieikis}, regardless of whether some things are truly shameful and others are. only thought to be shameful. The virtuous man will not do either because he ought not ro do cirher; and even if he does, he will nor have willed it, and shame can only be for what is wiUed." Oedipus's shame, on the other hand, is for what he neither willed nor can will; it can only be ascribed tO his imaginative experience of that which puts an inviolable limir to his secin.g. Hades the invisible recovers the nakedness of his parents. The prohibition against incest thus comes together with the command to bury the dead. They are unired in Hades, through Hades, and by Hades, for without Hades, parents cease ro be anything bur sexual beings and corpses cease ro be anything bur carrion. In guarding man against man's possible bestializ.ation (through incest and cannibalism), Hades sancti.fies the so-called humanity of man. This function of Hades is due almost entirely to the poets; it is their gift to the ciry and irs laws.'" Homer has Achilles say, after he bas seen a perfect likeness of rhe dead Parroclus, "So even in the house of Hades soul and image are, after all, something."Sl Hades is the locus of rhe reality of the image; it is the natuml home of the poet.
VI Of the four philosophers who have discussed tragedy, rwo are ancient, two modern. For Plato and Ari.stode, Otdipus Tyranmt! was the paradigmatic tragedy. for Hegel it was Antigont, and for Nim.scbe, Euripides' !Ja«hae. Plato a.nd Hegd agree at leasr in setting tragedy against the backgroUild of the city, for both detect in rhe sacred an unassimilable albeit indispensable element of tbe city, and Aristode roo, insofar as his morally virtuous man is to be proof against the tragic experience of Oedipus, can be grouped with them; but Nierzsche's account of tragedy does not seem to rake its bearings by tbe sacred city. His theme is rather the poet than the poem. Accordingly, the Bacrhat is his play, for it is in a sense the same Dion~us who schemes to reveal himself to the Thehans and is the god of the Attic theater. The 81U'chae is almost a tragedy about tragedy: it begins with the
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god's explanation of his human disguise. Unless me god of me thearer goes masked, he cannot reveal himself ro be rhe god he is. The paradox of a concealed god attempting ro become manifest shows up in the various formulations that Dionysus gives of his purpose. "1 have come,• he begins, "me son of Zeus, Dionysus, ro the land of the Thebans" (l-2); bur two lines later he says, "T mnsfonned from a god into a mortal shape I am here at me scream of Dirce and me water of Ismenus." He then tells us mat Thebes is the first Greek city he has come tO, after he had established his dances and rites throughout Asia Minor, "in order that I might he a god manifest to mortals" (11). Now, cimer rbe cult itself or me initiatory rites of t.he cult sufficed elsewhere co reveal Dionysus, whereas Thebes must learn nor only rhar it is uninitiated in his rites but that his defense of his roomer consiStS in his corning to light for mortals as a god she bore ro Zeus (39-42}. The Dionysian creed has a codicil at Thebes: Dionysus is a god born from a morral woman. Bur the action of me Bacchae is mar Pentbeus, the king of Thebes, is ar war wim Dionysus; he excludes him from his libations and prayers, "on accoum of which I shall point out ro him and all the Thebans that I am born a god" (47). Dionysus does not want any special worship at Thebes, but he cannot gajn acceptance mere unless he uears it as a special case. Once he has settled rhings at Thebes, he will move on, "showing myself," as he says; "bur if the city of Thebans in anger seeks with arms ro drive the bacchants from the mountains, I shall join forces with the maenads: it is for chis purpose I have altered into a mortal form and changed my shape into the narure of a man" (50-54). Pemheus's war against Dionysus, then. requires the disclosure of Dionysus; Penthcus's war againSt his cm2ed foJI.ower.s requires me concealment of Dionysus. Since. however, Dionysll.S's own actions abort me second possibility and yet do not strip him of his disguise, Pentheus seems to he punished for nor seeing through what was designed ro be opaque. Penrheus suffers for Dionysus's frusaa.tion of his own plan. The worship of Dionysus cannot consist with the recognition of Dionysus. The Chorus worship Dionysus according ro convention (430lJ, 712., 89o-96); they hear but never see Dionysus (577, 590). Penmeus comes ro obey Dionysus, bur he then. sees him as a bull (9~0-2.2); he does tlot submit ro him as Dionysus. Beliefand knowledge are of ditfe.r em orders; their inconvertibility is a lesson that Dionysus roo has ro learn. Although be sees the smoldering ruins near me palace, which bear wirness ro his mother's vain attempt ro sec 7..eus as he is in himself, he does nor realize their application to himself (6-9).» Tempted by Hera to confirm
On Greek T rogedy
by autopsy tha.r Zeus was truly he.r lover, and rhus r.o confine her sister's claim rhar she bad imputed Zc.us to her own disgrace, Semele pi'C'Ya.iled on Zeus ro show himself and was burned ro a crisp for her presumption. The gods, however native, arc foreve.r nrangeu; they can cease ro be strangers if they are willing to give up their being for their being believed. Dionysus testifies to the primacy of the Iauer in the course of his repon to the Chorus on bow he eluded Pentbeus: "Thinking be was binding me, [Pentbeus} could not touch me, but, fed on hopes, be found a bull in the stall, where be bad led me, and rried to shackle irs kn~ and hooves, breathing out his an.ger, dripping swear from his body, and biting his lips; and l sat by and quietly looked on. At r.har moment Dionysus came and rarrl.e d the pala~ and lit a fire ar the comb of his mother; and Pentheus when he saw it, thinking the palace was on fire, rushed about in disrraction, orde.ring his servants to bring wate.r, and every slave was engaged but all in vain; bur Pembew, dropping this cask, seized a sword and rushed into the palate-as if l had =aped-and rhen Dionysus, as it appears ro me, [speak only belief, made an apparition in the counyard; and Pemheus rushed ar rhar and stabbed the brilliant air, as though be were slaying me" (616-31). There are altogether four gods in this account: (1) the god who speaks, (2) the god who certainly rattled the palllce, (3) the god who apparently made (4) an apparition of (1). Pentheus confounded the fim with the founb Dionysus, but the lim is a disguise of the second; the founh too, then, in being no more an illusion than the first. must be indisringuisbabl.e from it. Did Pentheus go ali:er the real apparition of Dionysus, and is rhe Dionysus who now speaks irs illusory double (cf. 286-97)? Perhaps Dionysus himself cannot tell; his words, "as it appears to me, [ speak only belief," could express his own uncertainty as ro whether be really did make an image of an image; bur possibly the founb Dionysus, n.o less than the third, is only in speech: the lim Dionysus would have had to invent bim in any case if he were going tO remain incognito ro the Chorus. The puzzle Dionysus bas set for himself, rrying ro do what Zeus could not, comes our dearly in his 6rsr confrom:ation with Pentheus. Dionysus assertS that his own initiation occurred fuce-ro-&ce wirh Dionysus. Penthew asks what visible aspect the rites (or insrrumenrs) of initiation h2ve. Dionysus replies, "The uninitiated arc not tO know what cannot be said" (472). Pentheus then asks what benefit is conferred on those who sacrince. Dionysus replies, "It is nor allowed for you ro bear, bur it deserves ro be known" (474). Pcnthcus cannot know before he is initiated; he refuses to
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be iniciared before he knows. He mUSt have belief prior to knowledge; his conversion cannot be grounded on either present evidence or promised
good. The stubbornness of Pentheus is amazing. Nor ooe miracle opens his eyes. His seNant reports thar the bacchants bound in a public prison bad had their shacldes loosened of their own accord, • aod keys unlocked rbe door without mortal hand" (488). This first miracle Pentheus does not even commenr on; the second miracle--his bound prisoner escapespuzzles him enough to ask bow be did it. but not enough to wait for an answer (642-46). Th.e third miracle-the burning of his palace and the collapse of some of its beams-gets him to call his semmts, bur he himself soon loses any interest in it. The fourth miracle, again a report-that one bacchant when she struck a rock wirb th.e rbyrsus opened up a guslllng spring, another produced a fountain of wine, still others scratched the soil and got milk, and honey dripped from ivy-covered thyrsi-all dus provokes his servant tO say, " [f you been rbere, the god you now blame, you would have approached with prayers" (711-12); but Penrbeus does not even bother ro argue him out of his delusion. The fifth miracle hardly has a parallel in Greek liter.uure. "At rhe appointed rime rbe baccbanrs shook rbeir rbyDi for bacchic rites, invoking laccbus with collective voice rbe son of Zeus; and the whole mountain joined in baechk revelry and every beast, and nothing was not in motion" (713-z7). A mountain dances; Pentheus is unaffected. The sixrb miracle consisrs in rbe rout of his men, and rbe seventh in the utter destruction of a village (7'2.8- 64). These last two events only ~e to convince Pentheus that the women could nor resist heaV)Latmed rroops (78o-86); they do not convince nirn rbar a god is behind rbem. Euripides did nor assigo such stubbornness ro Penrheus merely to comment on mirades; he also wanted ro present rbrough Pentheus our own condition as audience. We are asked ro imagine Penrheus as a specta· ror who comes ro the thearer afi:er Tlu Bacchat bas begun; he has nor heard the prologue but must still try co figure our rbe plot without Dionysus's help. We are funber asked to imagine rbat Pentb.eus oomes without a program; indeed, he has never been to the theater before. The coJiapse of rbe palace is for him neith.er a mirade nor its image; it is crushed cardboard. A stagehand pulled some suin.gs. he does not know exactly how, bur if he wanted he could learn the trick roo. We, howeve~, without even thinking aboUT it, see triple: rhere is Dionysus, there is Dionysus di>-guised as a mao, rbere is a man playing rbe disguised Dionysus. The play does not work unless we believe in exactly this way, but we must
nad
On
G~ttk T ragcdy
be very hard put to persuade the naive Penrheus we have imagined that he must believe as we do. That is rhe difficulty Dionysus solves: he persuades the reluctant spectatOr Pentheus to become part of his drama. He getS him ro imitate a bacchant, and once caught up in hls role he is ripe for conversion. The conversion ofPentheus is the paradigm of the willing suspension of disbelie£ Dionysus deterli Pentheus from sending armed troops against the Theban women. It is not dear why be should prefer ro destroy Pentheus alone and unarmed; the effect is to diminish the miraculousness of Pentheus's destruction and m.erefore ro suggest eimer mat Pentheus armed is proof against conversion or thar Pentheus, unmoved by ostentatious miracles, must be convened in another way. Pentheus promises the srranger he wiU sacrifice aU rhe women, "as they deserve" (796); the stranger predicts a shame.ful rout; Penrheus gets exasperated and will not Listen any longer; the stranger proposes another way, whereby be wi.U bring ba.c k me women without arms; once more Pemheus scorns the stranger and calls for his arms. Penrheus's arms act as almost a magical charm against enebamment, and inasmuch as Pc:ntheus is presented as if he were the only active male citizc:n of Thebes-Cadmus and Tiresias sound like doddering drunkards-his armor can be said to stand in for the city. Tbe enchantment of the city is his sole protection against the enchantment of the srranger. Penthcus begins ro be disarmed when Dionysus asks whether he would nor want ro see rhe women sitting together in the mounroins (~u). Over and above the latent prurience of Peotheus, co which Dion)'lUS appeals, the pleasure Pentheus would obcain from the painful sight of drunk women is due ro hls quietly contemplating their future punishmenc. Dionysus objects that they will track hlm down if he goes in secret; Pentheus sees ar once mat secrecy belongs to me kind of rites mot the stranger is introducing and is nor consonant wim the openness of the politically noble; but he forgets that punishment, no matter how just, is nor necessarily noble. Dionysus appears to go along wirh Pentheus's revised plan, bur he orders hlm to dress up in women's domes. Pentheus is shocked. After having been reminded of the noble, he is urged to be shameless. Dionysus explains, "lest they kill you if you are seen there as a man." Peotheus accepts the explan ation; despite his armor, he is suddenly afraid of being killed.. Pc:ntheus panics. The cause of panic was the fourth of the seven attributes that Tiresias assigned to Dionysus: "He has a share as weU in Ares: terror 8usre.rs an army under arms and at irs scation before it touches a spear• (3o2-4).
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Panic is groundless fear. lt is itself the cause of the resulr chat it fears. It makes inevirable the possible and brin~ about rhe conviction of fare: The Bacchae is the only CXWlt play of Euripides in which the word "chance" does not OCGUr. Bur to say that Dionysus is the cause of causeless fear is ro say no more than rha~ the disguised Dionysus is the cause of Pentheus's panic. Pentheus panics through the stranger's recommendation ofexueme caution. Terror parnding as unmanly moderation is Dionysu<s specialty: the true mia.de of the bacchants is their cha.niry, sobriery, and decency (686-88, 940). Pentheus experiences his fear as reasonableness (b6); what stiU holds him hack is shame (828); even as he enters the palace, he stiU hesiutes ro follow Dionysus's counsel. Euripides has broughr Pentheus ro the poinr of conversion and stopped; even though Dionysus promises the Chorus that Pentheus wiU be punished, he still has ro invoke himself in order ro make Pentheus senseless, "for if he is of sound mind, he will never be willing to put on female dress" (851-52). Since the next scene shows Pentheus fuUy convened, Euripides seems ro have denied us the very momenx of co.nversion; Sl all we see and hear is the result: "Bring me through the middle of Thebes: I am rhe only man among them who dates this" (961-62) . Prior to his conve.rsion, Penrheus had ro ~ assured that Dionysus would lead him through Thebes unobserved (840-42); now ne boasrs thar ne has achieved the peak of manliness. Pc:mheus comes ro rerms with his panic by representing his adoption of female dress as courage. He is now roo manly ro need the trappings of manliness. To be unafraid of disga.cc: covers the formula for borh shamelessness and courage, but while the formula seems ro sponsor the defiance of convention, it conceals death under convention. Death is a kind of bashfulness that Pentheus has ourgrowo. He i$ now too noble ro prevail over women by force (953). This is now his sober inrerpreution of his former feat that they would kill hinJ. Euripides' showing of fear is the pendant to Sophocle.~· showing of shame; and just as shame is the passion with which Aristotle ends his account of rhe mo.ral vinues, so fear is rhe passion with which ne begins: the blush of shame and the paleness of fear comprellend the moral virtues. Collr.lge, howeve.r, unlike shame, is for Aristotle a virtue, bur it gives nim the most trouble. Collr.lge is the only vinue that he admits can also be spoken of in five spurious ways. 54 Political coua.ge, which shame partly constitutes, is the highest form of these phantoms. But what is true courage is left unexplained. Ic must be in the service of the noble, but whar the noble could be that on the fidd of battle transcends the sacred fatherland and yet is not an "ideal~ seems ro resist definition. Nor only does
On Greek Tragedy courage alone fail co bear the sign of virtue- ics ~.rformance muse be with pleasure (w7biS-16)-but courage is shadowed by Hades, !UldAristotle allows that Hades' cxisu:nce might affect the way in which human happiness is judged (UO<».IO-JO, uora:a-b9). Fear and shame, then, an: a kind of te$idue in virtue as virtue is ordinarily understood; d1ey are accordingly the tragic passions. Their raimnce ro c:nlighrc:omeot is a function of their inextricable involvement with Hades, and Ha.d.c:s is the soul of tragedy. Aga.thias in his Histories (2.3G-31) tells the following story. Seven Greek philosophers,
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back. The sacred did not fie readily into his opposition berween supersrition and enlightenment.
Nota Phikbus 50b3. 2. Spnposium 21JdJ-6. t.
J. Euripides cxpc:rimentcd in his la5t play, lphigmia at AuliJ, with having the
proragonist wholly invisibl<: the army with iu demagogic leadcs never appear.s, but nonetheless determines me action. The army is the locus of morality: they need tO punish Paris in ord.er tO deter omer wives from following the way of Helen <543- 57). 4· Frogs 1013-24·
Cf. Rrpublie 6o4c:t- d2. 6. Even more striking than dUs misrake of Clyremerua is her acceptance of the role in which Cassandea has imaginatively cast her (Agammmon 1497-1504). She needs the support of the divine in order co ground bcs serue. of right, even though me right supported by me d.ivin• \Thyesres' curse) does not ground her right (lphigeoeia's sacrifice). 7· Poliria rJ~8bo-n; cf. Nit»mllCblAll .&hia U45a1o-u. 8. NiumadJ.an Ethia D450JS-JJ. 9· Sophocles Oedipus Ill Cownus uy.>- J+ 10 . Cf. N•to Republiq78<7. 11. Cf. Sophocles O
On Greek Tragedy 16. PtNtia, cltap1er 4· 17.
On tht Partt ofAnimals, 644bu-64S•36.
18. 409-12; cf. Euripidet Suppli411ts 760- 68, 941- 47. 19. "There is a passage in Ansig<mc which I always look upon as a blemish,
and I would give a grcar deal for an apr philologisr to prove tha1 i1 is intupolartd or spurious. After the heroine has, in 1he cou"" of 1he piecr, shown 1hr noblr motivet for her aaion, and displayed 1he devated puri'Y of her soul, she at lasr, when she is ltd to death, brings forward a molive that is quire unworthy and almost bordca upon rhe comic." Goerhe rhco summarizes the passage. 905-n. "This is, at ltasl, rbe bare sense of the passage. which in my opinion, when placed in 1he mouth ofa huoine going 10 her death, disturbs the tragic tone, and appeaa 10 me 10 be ve'Y far-fetched- to savor too much of dialcaical calcullldon. • Omom4tions with Edurmann, 227 - 28 (London, 1901). 10. Of tht Atlmncnnmt ofuaming, 1.1 .28.
u. Sophodcs Octlipus 11t C•lonm 1224. u. Phuo Jon 535b1-c8; Aristotle Po/itirJ 1}4107. 1.}. Cf. Plato S.1"'fX1siUm !Jja- 6; Minos }18b5-CL 24. !Uad 1.188- u:>.
25. Odyssg 9-199-JOS-
26. C£ Pl..o lA"" 67>b:J-cs. 27 . Cf. Thucydidcs l.lj-16. 28. Rrpublit 4J4U-6. 19. The obscurity of the Greek seems justified only if Oedipus wants to pun on his own name: "out of the way foot"- a hodt>uf>Dd-sounds like Oitlipod4. JO. The usual tramlarion assumes an unexampled construction: "Do nor bebold me as lawless." Jl. Herodotus's second book is devoted to Egypr. Although it contains many stories, there art only thrce (thcy all involve Greeks) told in dialogic form. The firsr story conocrns Paris and Htlen-his violation of the sacred; the second conccms Amasis, a usu- •!· 173·>- 4- 181). Speech comes with rbe dtparrure &om law: 1be F.gypti•ns are txcessively pious, according 10 Huodows. and avoid che adoption of forcign cunoms (2.J7·'· 9-•) . 32. bmmidn 657-66, 736-38. H· Iliad 6.354- sS; cf. Odyss
Cf. Euripides Helm lS-4'· 31· Ewnmida 864-6!. 36. Agamem,on .~. cf. no6.
}4-
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n- Hesiod
WD'*t 11tt.6-"17. ~9- Cf. 475- 98. 988-93. 40. This elkct is adcnowkdged indir, the d.iffucnce betwcco "co.nsciencc" and "god' appears in rht following way: Menelaus is shocked to lind a filthy and unkempt Orestes after the murder of his mother. He asks him. "What illness is destroying you?" Orestes repli.es, "[melligence (or conscience), beeause I know the terrible deeds I have done." Menelaus is pecplaed, partly no doubt by the use of "intelligence' ro explicate illness. "\~at arc you saying? Clariry, you know, is wisdom, no< obscurity." Orestes replies, •pain is dreadful but all the same curable" <3.95- 99). The goddess Pain is both manag.,.blc and intdligible; "inreUigence' is neither. 41. Cf. Plato &publK ~.9<6-44003· 41· Euml!nidn 616-~r. 43· Cf. Aristophmes AchJUnk:rm 395, Ckuds II4l· 44· Orestes is collSiscenr on this point. Hi.s delay in revealing himself ro Elecua m..kes sense only if he never had any intenrioo ro rcvc:d himself His placing a lock of hair on his &thu's tomb almost betrayed blrn (he did nor suspect that Clyremcsrra and Al:gi:sthus had forbidden anyone to pay his due respecu to the corpse (cf. 4~9-50); but .l!lectra conch!ded (fonuoarely for Oresres) that the lock meant that Orestes would nor or could nor rerum (cf. r67, 179-84); but the twO sets of footprintS that she then noticed forced her ro realize that Orcsres musr have come himsdf aod not just sen< a messenger. This forced Orestes m show himself, heus, the inreq>rerer of the gods. derero:ed savage men by ruror from slaughter and loathsome food (i.e., caMihalism); be is said oo account of this to soothe tigers and 6trce ~ons" {Art ofP~try 391-93). Horace
On Grode Tragedy
points to the complete coincidence in the bighm poeuy between the wdUl {"deterred by tmor") ""d the pl
Iliad 13.103-4. S"l· F.uripid~' Akntu presents a not dissimilar lesson for Apollo. He gave his son Asclcpius the power of rcsurr=ion; Zeus kllled him; Apollo in an&« killed the Cydopcs. mpunishment for which he had tO SCJVC Admcrus as • ""'"· Apollo tcw.lrdcd the friendly rrcaoncnr he recei''Cd at rhe hands of Admctus by getting the Fares to postpone his dc:ub if he could 6nd somcon< willing to die in his place. His &ther aod mother rtfuse the privilcg<', his wife Alcestis a=p!S. Apollo did nor understand why Zeus bad disappro~ of his gifr of immomlity; con..qutndy, he tritd to get around what he rook to~ Zeus's j< men want (and Dion)'$us promises) and thc median contentment that is granted to th<m. We learn afrcr Penthcus'• death that Cadmus's one regrtt at the outcome is that Penthcus will no longer address him affcctionatdy as he asks, "Who wrongs you, old man? Who dishonoa you? Who disturbs and troubles your heartl Speak, so tha< I tn:lY punish, F..bcr,
54· Nico~n Ethia ro6ars- •7 ·
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E
Physics and Tragedy: On Plato's Cratylus
,4 6
c R A. T Y L us s E I! M s
caricature of a Platonic dialogue. It gives us Socrates as seen in the distorting mirror of an alien inspiracion. Ir begins as a fiu-ce and ends as a tr.agedy: Socrates finally invokes the "idea~" like so many dei rx mar.hina in order to be saved from the perplexities of tbe Heraditean B.ux. The suddenness of their invocation merely underlines tbe difficulty we experience throughout tbe dialogue of gauging irs oone correctly. The dialogue =ms to shift constantly berween the playful and the serious; and though such a mixture no doubt charaCterizes every Platonic dialogue, tbe unitS with which it deals, names, are so small that ir seems ro be composed of nothing bur a jumble of minute res:serae, some of which are in themselves as brilliant as any argument in Plato, while mosr are as desperately forced as the patter of a srandup romic. The CriU)lUJ has rbe look of a PLnonic dictionary. lc throws light on every other dialogue and leaVt's itSelf in the dark. Socrates' question ro Polus, All the beautiful rhinfl$-colors, for example, and 6gures, sounds, and pursuits-are you looking ar nothing on each occasion that you call (kal~is) them beautiful (lta/4)!' (G11rgitu 474d3-sl. gets deepened if one recalls Socrates' etymology here of kaum (416b6-
To B .E a
On Pbro's Cntrylw In order ro see what is going o n in the etymological section, it is necessaty to start ott the beginning-Hermogenes' invitation ro Socrates ro interpret the 001cular and ironical Cmylus. Cratylus's irony consistS in his saying that though Cratylus is his name, and Socr.u:es is Socrates', Hermogenes is not Hermogenes' name, not even if all human beings call him that. Socrares at once explains the joke ro Hermogenes; but it tal-es him moSt of the dialogue ro figure our Ctatylus the oracle. "Cratylus asserrs," Hermngenes tells Socrates, "that there is a natural rigbmcss of name /Or each of the beings, and a name is nor whatever some have set down together to call (something), uttering a part of their own lan.guage, but there is naturally a certain rightness of names lOr both Greeks and barbarians, the same for all." Socrates sers our to interpret this assertion without consulting Cratylus; once the oracle bas spoken, no more hdp can be expected from it. Ifone takes Crary! us's joke as the guide to his general Statement, "eacb of the beings" would mean eacb individual, and the sratemem would imply that th.e only correct name for each and every being is a proper name, and nothing is by nature. a member of any class. The connecrion between the denial of the existence of o11rural classes and the thesis of Heracliteao flux is obvious; it underlies the argument that Socrares develops in the first half of the Thtarmus. Whatever the merirs are of the Her11clirean thesis, Cratylus's joke does poim to a feature of proper names. Proper names are that part of eacb language which are mosr liable to survive intaawhen. uttered in anyotber language. Tacitus does not become Silent in English, nor Cicero Chickpea. The proper names of men are not in need of translation. Their iovaria.ncc across aU languages, despite th~ mispronunciation they might undergo in an alien rongue, seems to give them a natural m tus, nor because au account can be rc:nde.red of them but because each man presenrs himself through h,is name as something that resisrs universalization. Our names seem tO be a sign of our refusal ro be explained and explained away. Proper names ate the most opaque part of any language, for not only are they left unu:tn•lated from one language ro another, bur even within their own language they are wirbour meaning, regardless of how plain their meaning is. Only if A Comfort writes a book ~nr.itled TIJ~ Joy of Sec does meaning show through. lr is therefore possible for a languag~ ro have an entirely opaque vocabulary, in which each word would be a forei.go word witb no known or imagined conneaion with any orher word: Socrates suggests that "fire," "warer," "dog," and "evil" are barbarian words imported into Greek (409<:10-41036, 416at-7, 421C12-d6). Sin.ce
"17
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Chapter Eigbr it seems, however, most improbable that there W2S, is, or will be any such lan.guage, the question arises whether there is a natural way in which all languages extend their vocabularies &om a number of original roots. Hermogenes, for example, employs rhe word mmbakin, which literally means "ro rhrow togerher," for "to interpret" (38435). (The. ex.tension is exactly parallel to • conjecture.") The example suggestS a ge.neralization: for human be.ings the corporeal is primary and the noncorporeal derivative. All languages, one Qlight gu~, arc in principle anti-Platonic; but because rhe literal core of noncorporeal meanings rends ro fade over rime. aU languages are more or less at any given time Platonic, for the independence of the noncorporeal is racidy assumed. It rhus seems to be impossible either ro separate entirely or ro collapse encirely corporeal roots and their noncorporeal extensions. Puns might be one way a language has of acknowledging this twofold impossibility. A university boo.ksrore once put the marbemat· ics textbook /Ungr and ltkals in its marriage section. These rwo possible ways of imerprering Cratylus the oracle-the invariance of proper names and the uniformity all languages exhibit in extending their primary vocabularies- can be supplemented by a third. It is perhaps the one that would first come ro mind if one heard ir said that there W2S a natural rightness of names. A nameless Greek poet wrore the line, "I am a countryman and call a spade a spade." To call a spade a spade is literally a tautology an.d figuratively the sign of either boorishness or frankness. It implies that "spade" is the right word for things whose name is "spade." The saying enjoins us not to disguise low things with highfalutin names. A set of opinions is not to be called "a philosophy." Insofar as the saying favors simplicity, it seems to condemn Socrates for saying "the things within his cloak" an.d to pr.aise the man who asked the old Sophocles whether he could still have intercourse with a woman. 1 The saying implia that either nothing is by nature shameful or the narurally shameful is not what mOSt men hold to be shameful. In either case the saying is an attack on the retic:ences of law and convention; but ir thereby assumes that a language is not so tied up with law and convention as to lack the words to call a spade a spade.1 The narnegiver is apparendy closer ro nature than the law-giver. If. however, language neither is nor can be entirely free of the law, the right name for everything could never be expressed. Only the unpronounceable ideallwguage would be by nature. We have begun with these three wa~ of interpreting Cratylus's hypothesis in order to make it somewhat plausible that Socrates is willing to consider the dispute between Cratylus and Hermoge.nes at all and not just declare Hecrnogcnes in the right. While the Cratylus argues for a
On Plaro's Cratyfus
natural correctness of names. its argument is composed of names correct only by convention. for otherwiS<: we would necc:ssarily misread both medium and message. Socrates, however, seems co know at once that if the argumen.t runs counter to Hermogenes' stated position, Hermogenes will nor be altogether displ.eased. Hermogenes has long been obsessed with the possibility of the natural correctness of names (427d3-7), for he takes everything seriously and never sees the joke in anything. Hermogen.es wants the world as he knows it co be full of meaning. He would like co believe that the world is providentially a Plaronic dialogue in which there is no other cause than "logographic necessity." That "Polemarchus" means "Warlord" and Polemarchus is not polemarch in Athens are signi6.cant for the Rtpublic (cf. 332eJ-s); but Hermogenes is not content with such fictions. He wants being always to follow in truth on meaning, and nothing to be by chance. The action of the Cratylus consists in Socrates' attempts to persuade Hermogenes that the world is not a book, and co accept a less than perfect coincidence between meaning and being. Hermogenes finds it particularly distressing that Cratyius should make an exception in his case and deny char Hermogenes is his name. Socrates' interprecuion of Cracylus's joke is twofold. At first he suggests that since Hermogenes desires money (chrimatll) but always fails in its acquisition, "Born of Hermes" is not a suitable name. Hermogenes makes no comment on this suggestion; but larer, when Socrates proposes that Hermes means "Provider of Speech," Hermogenes exclaims, " By ilus! That l am nor Hermogenes is, I think, a good saying of Cracylus after all; I am not ar any rate well-provided with speech" (4o8b6-7). Hermogenes has not INed up to his name; if hi.s parems gave him his name as a form of prayer, it has gone unanswered (cf. 397h1-6). If it had been answered, Hermogenes would have been both wealrhy and eloquent; he would have been a rhe.rorician or a sophis·t and 8eeced his brother Callias of the inherirance he did not control U9tbu-C4). "Money ralks" is lirerally the truth ofHermogenes' name. Socrates condenses this logorof"Hermes• into rhe single word agorartilroi (40831), for the agora is indifferently the place for public speaking and the place for buying and selling. Money is alcogether by convenrion, as rhe name nomisma (currency) indicates; and the service it performs is nor unlike names: both make ir possible to avoid handling things directly. Money is ro barrer as names are co things; and just as money allows for perfect exchange independenr of immediate needs, so names allow for perfect exchange independent of present perceptions. The freedom &om immediacy char money gives allows for usury: and the coining of noncorporeal meanings our of corporeal rootS likewise
149
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Chapter f.ighr becomes possible by names. Con.cepcs seem ro be the unearned inreresr on names. There are no doubt several othe.r resemblances be.rweeo money and names; rbe devaluation of money and the debasemenr of langua~ are perhaps the most obvious, bur they are chieBy linked through the notions of exchange and communication. The money-hungry and tonguetied Hermogenc:s rhus inco.rporares rhe problem of communication, borh human and divine. It was very lueky of Socrates tO have found bim. Hermo~nes' way of exemplifying the conventional thesis-"We change the names of our domestic slav<>"-indicares thar he is thinking of law from the legislaro.r 's viewpoint {c£ 385d9). The sl3\•e cannot complain that his master addresses bim incorrectly, for all the other masters would ruro a deaf ear to his appeal. The masters agree among themselves that each of them has the right m name whatever is his own. Socrates' initial questioning is meanr ro rest Hermogenes' understanding of "one's own." He does this by ttmsbting the apparently neutl".ti word chrimata of Proragoras's saying- ~Man is the measure of all things (chr•mnriin)into irs presumed Attic equivalenr, pragmata (386aa). The rranslacion suppresses the monerary meaning of chrimata and presenrs rhings as things done rather rhan as things needful. Pragmata are the beings with which we deal and are of interest and concern ro us; they are nor tbe beings as they are in themselves (cf. 386e7- 8). For pragmara, a reasonable sense can be made our for rbe natutal correaness of names. lf, for example, the u.n it of th.e family in a tribe or city is " nuclear" -farber, mother, children-every name of a rela.t ion beyond this group is likely co be rransparenr, i.e., a compound name whose meaning can be read off nom irs dements (e.g., father-in-law); but if, on the othe.r hand, the family were ro e:x.reod, say, ro rhe cousins on the mother's side (Larin sobri.nus), rhe names of all relations within that range are likely tO be opaque, i.e., nonderivable lexical items., An opaque name for a relation of no importance would probably be a survival. Nnutal correcrn.ess of names in rhis sense would merely be the linguistic equivalent ro Monresquieu's spirit of the laws; ir would not en rail that the ratio between lin.g uistic opaciry and rransparency was fixed, but only rhat pragmata. however they are understood, diaare the names of pragmata. The nameless is the insigni.6cant. Once Socrates gets Hermogenes to accept a certain srabiliry in pragnulla, for otherwise Hettnogenes could nor hold on oo his experience that there are very many, very wicked human beings, Socrates asks after aaions or doings (praxeis). "If, for example, • he asks Hermogenes, "we were oo tty tO cut any of the beings, must we cur each (thing) in whatever way we wanr and with whar~er we wanr, or if we wanr oo cur each according
On Plaro's Cratylus
to the narure of cutting and being cut and with that which is by nature (fit to do so), shal.l we cut and will it be to our advantage, and shall we do this correctly, but if contrary co n
151
•s•
Chapter Eight Socrates' line of :ugument leads ro a paradox. lf names are instruments, they can be used beautifully by the expe.rt teacher; and either che rest of w have usurped chem for our own usc illegitimately, or all of us are equally expert. The knowledge of how ro use names seems ro be like che knowledge we are supposed to have of che law; we ourselves know its major provisions bur consult lawyers for rhe interpretation of doubtful cases. Two noncxperrs in conversing with one another are bound ro err. Hermogenes speaks of the "bronze-worker" {chalkew) as the maker of an iron drill U38d3, 389<=7); bur Socrates understands him perfecdy. Gredc, ir seems, belongs to che bronze ~ bur irs names were e:xrended to keep up wich innovations. Like our obedience ro the law, the intelligibility of names depends on their srabillry; but imperfea discrimination is its inevitable accompaniment. Names come down to us; insofar as they preserve the past, chey are more like customs and riruals chat arc sri II practiced but whose meaning has been fo:rgonen chan like written laws whose purpose can be questioned. The power of law seems to be a function of our unawareness: the prohibjtion against incest is almOSt as opaque as a proper name. Socrates can bri.ng law and name together because Hermogenes is unable to say who makes the names that che expert rea.cher uses. Law is the substirure for Hennogenes' lack of ltJgoJ; it hands over ro him the answer he could not supply by himsel£ [f he bad followed the argument, ne would have ha.d ro make up a name for che maker of names and thw shorrcircuired the argument. Socrates' own answer-"namemaker" {wur ~>urwurg<Jt}--is merely Socrates' question all ove.r again in the transparent disguise of a compound name. Since Hermogenes does not understand the import of Socrates' analysis, that names ,yeaJ most by what they do nor name of the pragmAta, he is not c:onrent with il; he wants Socrates ro demonstrate the natural righmm of names. Socrates' demonstration consisrs of seven different lines of inquiry: 1) the language of gods and men; 2) the language of men and women; 3) the names in a mythical genealogy; 4) the names of narural beings; s) the names of Gnek sods; 6) rhe names of c:dcstial things; 7) rhe names of mo.ral and intdlccrual virtues and vices. For our purposes., the fust, second, fifth, and seventh of these are the most important. Homer is rh~ authority for the first rwo, Euthyphro, a contemporary mystic, fo.r most of the other live, with the Heraditan thesis supplying the formula for the last three bur especially che seventh. The imeresr that each etymology has is inversely pro,portional to the use rhar Socrates makes of the Heradir.ean formula. Sysremaducion nukes the answer known even before the question is posed. The most enigmatic of theses proves co be
On Plato's
Cra~ybu
without surprises. The Cratylw rhus illustrates the erro.r of what Socrates called in th.e Phikbw making the many too qui.ckly into one (r~Se4-t7a5). It is this error that ro.n neas the apparently disparate themes of law and tragedy with Her:~direanism. All bur one of the divine names that Homer mentions are tramparenr; all their human equivalents are opaque. Xanthos (Tawny) is the gods' name for the river men call Scamander; chalku (brazen) is for the bird men cal.led kumindis: Planktai means "Wanderers," Briareos "Brawny.~ and what for men is a hill call.ed Barieia, is for the gods the tomb of Myrine; and rhe word for tomb (sima) literally means "sign." Socrates refers to three of these names and quotes rwo. The first is from the twenti· eth book of the 1/Uul. The passage in which it occurs describes the oppos· ing lineups of Greek and T rojan gods: "A great, deep-swirling river (srood) against Hepbaesrus; the gods call him Xanthos, men Scamander." The gods know that the river is a fellow god, and as much the son of Zeus as Hephaestus is. "Xanthos" seems ro be their nicknarne for him. If be is a god, it is a rorrcct name, just as Hephaestus is a correct name on the same condition. "Fire bums and "Hephaesrus bums" do nor say the same un.lcss "Hephaesrus" names no more than "fire," and "Hephaesrus prevails over Xanrhos" is equivalent to "Fire is more powerful than water." That which we might call, then, the simple poetry of the gods' naming might nor be poetry at all. Either the north wind pushed Oreithyia off some rocks, or Boreas raped her (Phaalrw 129b4-
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Astyaoax {llitUi 6.4(>1-J), Socrates geu Hermogenes to agree thar if the Trojans called him Astya.ruu< the women must have called him Scamaodrius. Socrates implies that either Hea.or was ex~ceprionaUy uxorious or women would adopt Heccor's private name for Ills son. The private i.~ opaque, rhe public transp:uent ("Lord of the City"). The son gers rhe tide rhar the lather, as long as Priam is alive, cannot have, and rbat, after the fall of Troy, Gm be at best only a reminder of past glory (Iliad u.477SI4]. Socrates guesses that Hector's name too is Greek, given ro him by Homer himself, and signi6es just about the same as"Astyanax. • "Hecror'' is shorthand for "Asryanax"; bur even on the most generous interpretation "Hector" covers no more than ana (lord); it does nor say what Hector rules, possesses, and has. The forced equation of"Hec:tor" and "Astyanax" sink• borb of them into the class of royal names and denies any difference benveen father and son. Socrarcs' preference for transparent names is his way of denying "individualiry," of which the specious opaciry of proper names is a sign. To recover the meaning of a proper name is not, as ir might seem, to enhance the importance of the bearer, but jusr the opposire, ro demote him. He is nothing more than an example of a common rype. Socrates, then, associates the masculine through the political and the transparent with the generic (cf. 392<;6-8), and the feminine through the private and the opaque with the individual (cf. 4toa;). In the genealogies that follow, Socrates is silent about the mothers. If a member of a kind breeds true, irs offspring is to be called by the name of the kind. This ruleSttms to condemn the usage of"buman being" (tmtlmpO!) in Greek. which in the singular, and particularly in the vocative, carries wirh it the notion of conrempr. The shift from a sexual to a generic designation of human excellen.ce is perhaps the most obvious indication of the philosop!Uc turn. Socrates' use of the oath "By Hera, " which belongs to Athenian women, poinrs in rhe same direction. Plato speaks of "divine human bein.gs" (l..awr 951b5, Minos 3t8e9); "divine man" (aner} is common from Homer on. 'In compensation for rbe self. denigration as a kind, men give themselves proper names; but these proper names, in thdr meaning, are still class-names-royal, martial, medical. or whatever-to which one is enrided only if one's nature is in accord with it. Nature alone Legitimates the patronymic. Among men, bowe
On Pla10's Cmf.Jius
em diffeLences of proper names and their equivalent generic meaning, on me one hand, and the apparem diffeLences in color and smell of drugs and meir equivalent power, on me other. Syllabic diJfer:eoces among names are insignificant as long as the names signify the same. Socrates conwsrs the four vowels in Greek which do not need names in order tO be spoken (E. Y, 0. 0 ) with the name bita for which the addition of e.m, rau, and alpha does not interfeLe wim the declaration of"B"; indeed, mey are me "noise" which alone makes its declaration possible. The soundless "B" is the tidos of "B": BA, BE. Bl, BO, BU are, as written, some of rhe dimensional patterns which show up in infinite vari1nions in our speaking the names "bat,• "bet. • "bit." "boot. • and "butt. • Whatever application t.his might have tO a Platonic physics (B's resemblance to a "quark• is probably deceptive), Socrates argues char men are taken in by the evident difference between, say, "King" and "Roy" and rhus fail ro discern the samen<SS of their power or meaning. Individual human beings are mostly made up of meaningless noise mrough which there shine for the expert knower of kinds me silenr consonants that are alone significant. Men believe in their own individual mysteriousness because they mistake opacity for profundity; they do nor know chat "peiSonaliry" is a disguise, however indispensable ic might be for the manifestation of a kind. If body is at the root of individuality, me multiplicity of meanings char Soc.rares finds in its name would both rellect mat faa and poinr to che illusion to which ic gives rise. "Body" is as equivocal as body is divisible. One possible root of "body" has a double meaning: sima signifies either "comb" or "sign. • So the body is either the tomb of soul or that by means of which soul signifies whatever it signifies. If body is the inscrumenr of signi6cance, or meaning. it cannor be a perfea instrument unless it is itself without significance. A tombstone marks the place where a body has been buried; it poinrs to che pl2ce where it is itself placed as if something else were then: in place. But Homer says rh2r men call a hill Buieia which d1e gods call the tomb of Murine. Men forgot char rhe hill was a sign and gave ir a name of its own. A plaa--name is a sig11. that does not poinr elsewhere; likewise, che name of body, now rhat it is distinct from sign, points simply to body. Since "body" is now neutral, it admits multiple meanings; bur as long as "body" was rima, ooe could nor nome ir wrrhour poiming beyond it, and hence body, srricdy speaking. was cheo nameless. Tbe modern name of body supplies the ground for me ancient meanings of "body"; the opaque makes its own transparency possible. Bur ifche opaque modern name bas irs source in a former name of body which was meaningful, then a meaning, which is yet co be grounded, is the
•Sl
•s6
Chapter Eiglu ultimate ground for dte present meaninglm ruune. Socr.rres' etymology of "body" recogni= that body is both itSelf and not i<SCII; as itself iT is what one can point at and name "body"; but as the universal instrument of meaning. it is never itself, always of anomer, and itS name is "sign." It seems as if rhe gods' name "tomb of Murine" and rhe human name Baricia were bodt rorrecc. Wirh the alternative root of "body,• Socrares appeals explicicly ro image for the first cime. "Body" is an Orphic name; the soul is kept safe {!Oroai) in the body (r6TnJZ) muil it has paid the penalty for irs crimes in full, for the body ls an "image of prison. • Hermogenes was nor being severe enough when he said that there were very many, very wicked human beings; everyone alive is unjust and undergoing punishmeot. Even though there could not be a more terrifying reading of bum2n life, rhe OrphiC$ chnse nor to co.ovey it$ terror in their name for body. The name of body is nor "prison" but "salvation"; itS o:une is dterapeutic rather than punitive. The name itself saves men from the ttuth; they now utter a sound that, while it preserves without the distortion of a single lener its root, conceals the docuine dtat expbins the root. "Body" is a euphe.mism. Irs account precedes immediately Socrates' interpretation of the names of Greek gods. Their manifest beauty and hidd.en ren:ibleness seem to be th.e framework within which each of the gods will be understood. Socrates' inrerpretaci.on culminates in Pan, the emblem of rhe tragic life. The most beautiful way of examining the names of rhe gods is, according ro SocrateS, to sCltt with a confession of ignorance.: "We know nothing abouT gods, either about themselves or in their ruunes, whare.ver they call rhemselves. • Socrates ronfirms this with an oath; it is his first. He calls upon Zeus to beat wimess to his ignorance about Zeus. "By Zeus" is, we say, just an expression; it does not mean anyrhing (cf. 410a5, 411b3). "By Zeus" is ustmlly no more co be interprer
On Plato's Cratylus
not my mind," it still is a way of conveying the degn:e of one's sincerit)' and concern. One's listeners are to believe not that Zeus but rhat one's very life and soul are bearing wimess. Religion has become rhetoric. The beautiful has overlaid the terrible. A second way of nominal correcmess is the way of the law. It commands us tO address the gods in om prayers with a saving clause-"wboever they are and with whareve.r name they are pleased ro be called, this we roo call them. • The law does nor doubt that the gods are and care, but it admits our inability to name them correctly. Zeus may nor be "Zeus." The gods are one group of speakers whose names are not authoritative for other groups; they are like slaves whose names we change ar will. The gods are always one's own gods. Socrates begim accor:ding to the law with Hestia, the goddess of hearrh and home. He begins with that god to whom one first sacrifices. What ones does is the. guide to what one bdieves. "Hestia" is "the bein.g {ousia)of all pragm41A," for the essence of what one does and is concerned with is one's own. Ousia originally meant "property," especially wealth, even though erymologically it means "being. • [n keeping with the localized sense of Hestia, Socrates appeals ro a dialectal form of "being" (mia) in order to establish the etymology. The meaning of Hestia appears in presenr-day Attic only in the third person singular of the verb "be" (mi). One's own is in Athens no longer the essence of things bur only that which panalres of tbe essence of things. One's own bas become alien in Auic. Anic is an enlightened language; the primary bas drifted out of the language wirbour ceasing ro be primary in fact. Ics neutrality is an illusion. Hesria is the only god in the Phaedrw myth who always stays at home and never behold5 the "hyperuranian" ideas (2.47at-1.). Socrates here, however, deliberately ignores the obvious connection between the verb "stand" (hi.stimi) and Hesria; he suggescs inStead that another dialectal form of "being" (otia) is from the vern "push" (othdi}, and irs speakers were Heraclireans, who believed thar rhe beings move and nothing abides, and oria is their cause and principle. The roor of "Hestia" is "being"; but "being" seems to admit of rwo irreconcilable interpretations. Since, however, being as one's own necessarily allows for irs meaning ro vary from place to place, the Hetaclirean interpretation is the truth of being as one's own, for it alone comprebend5 the. changeableness of one's own. Hestia as mover is the universal principle of the local- Accordingly, Tfmaeus can call the "wandering cause" place (ciJOra); indeed, "place" an.d the verb "move" {chorto) look like cognates (cf 402a8). The law says, Begin with Hestia; it says, lkgin with one's own. This law is both a partie-
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Chapter Eight ulai law and the characreriscic of all law in gcoc:ral. For those who obey this law, there is nothing but aU tbar the laws have laid down as one's own; but those who rdl~r on rh.is law recognize in irs injunaion a scaremenr abour law irsel£ Whether the Heraditeans, however, in grasping the na.rure of law have also grnsped the n•rure of nature, or somehow being still remains rheir being, and "one's own" still dings ro it, proves to be the chief issue of the Cratyius. lr is with "Poseidon" that Soczares first resorts to the beautiful ro illuminate the apporent opacity of names. In this dialogue, the beauciful is another name for the ttogic. The name-giver named the sea in terms of irs effect on himself-it was a bond ro his feet (pasj dmnos); but for the sake of beauty and decency (euprej>lia) perhaps he inserred an epsilon (Poseidun). As soon as rhe narure of somerhing is interprered from the perspective of one's experience of its narure. the beautiful is introduced. Socrates ar onee proposes rwo orher erymo.l ogies, one of which would make rhe sigma spurious, the other pi and ddra, while both would accept the epsilon as genuine. If the lim etymology is sound. beaury would lure one into attributing knowledge to the sea: "Poseidon" looks Jjke "kn.owing so many (definite) things." Knowledge seems robe rbe acciderual byproduct of beautification: a more concise formula for sraring the b.isrorical rdation between Greek poetry and philosopb.y could no r be made. One cannot help noticing. moreover, rhat a combination of Soc:rntes' first two etymologies turns Poseitkn into an anag13m of OUJipou.s, or "Know-foot." The paradigm of man is a god spelled inside out. The tragic 6gure par exeellence arises from the u nion of a primary and a secondary meaning; bur thar which binds the fee£ of Oedipus and puts him inro a stare of perplexity or aporia is not the sea but himself. An alien element frustrated the oame-giver of Poseidon; the riddle of Oedipus frustrateS Oedipus. Socrates seems ro b.int thar once the knowledge of things is equated with the experience of thin.gs, tragic self-knowledge will be irs inevitable fuJ6Ument, Oedipu.• is the truth of the beings as pragmata. "Pluto" is the first rranspoic:nt name of a god which Socrates considm; it is one of two names of the god. Its transparency is due to the fear that me orhc:r name, equally rransp:uenr, induces in the many. Tbe many give Had.es a name. mar refers ro this world- "Wealth (pioUlru) is sent up our of rbe e:mh from below"- for they mistake tou/Qu t()ll th~ou tis dumzmtos, which can be t.ranslared as either "the meaning of Hades" or "the power of Hades" (403b3). The power of Hades consists in the meaning of Hades. "Hades," the many believe, mems "invisible" (aides). and invislbiliry connotes for them two things: Hades is our eternal abode wb.en
On Placo's Cmtybu
we ue dead, and the soul stripped of the body goes away ro Hades. Hades is both a place and a god. As a place, Hades is where we go as ourselves; as a god (tktintm), Hades is he to whom soul alone goes off. Not ro be here is as terrifying as to be without body. Our anachmem to our place in this world and our own bodies is so ruong that not even Hades, who seems preferable to annihilation, can console; what truly consoles is wealth. Wcalrh gives meaning to death; one's substance (t>UJia) is thereby preserved. What comfo" Herrnogenes, the impoverished heir of great wealth, would draw from this is hard to say; perhaps he would rake it as another sign that he is not rhe offspring of Hermes the psychopomp. "Pluto" is not sufficient ro remove the. fear of death from born losers like Hermogenes; and so Socrates goes on to make Hades truly enchanting in his eyes. He begins by asking Hermogenes whether desire is a suonger bond than necessity to keep any animal anywhere. Hermogenes replies that desire far surpasses necessity. Since necessity cannot, strictly speaking. be weaker than anything, either • necessity" muSt be one of those ounes that have lost their original force, or HeLmogenes believes rhar all necessity is pseudo-necessity (cf 410d7-9}. Perhaps such a belief would be the indispensable condition for the meaning of "necessity'" 10 weaken. To hold such a belief, in any case, is ro be enchanted, for ench:mrment is grounded in rhe denial of necessity. The spokesmen for the deni:U of necessity au the sophiSts, whose beautiful speeches aruoit no obstacle ro the fu.Uillment of desire; bur since beautiful speeches ue stiU jUSt speeches unless necessity is in truth nonexistent, only the. disappearance of the body guarantees that necessity would not prove to be refractory to speeches however beautiful. Hades is rhus the perfect sophist; and Socrates enchantS Hermogenes with the prospect that he will in death surpass his brother in wealth (Pluto sends up just a fraction of his riches), and without spending a cent be insuucred by the arch-sophisr Hades. Hermogeoes' rwo incapacities will be cured together. Hermogenes will finally prove ro be "Hermogeoes." So the absence of necessity turns our ro be the condition for the coincidence of being and meaning. Bur since body is that by means of which soul signifies, and Hades cannot bind if the body's desires still hold, the enchantment of Hades is nothing but sophistry. There. can be no significance without body; bur if there is necessity, being and meaning cannor coincide. Of the fourteen gods whom Socnres now disc.usses, and wbo F.UI inro six groups, Hermogenes asks about nine of them, and Soc.rates interpolates six names: Athena, like Hades, has two naiDes. Four ofHermogenes' gods
119
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Chapter Eight
wd all but one of Socr.ues' are fenule. Socrates follows Hermogene$' order with two exceptions: he insectS Persephone between Hera wd Apollo, and rhe Muses, Leto, and Artemis between Apollo and Dionysus. These insertions postpone the cxplmarion of Athena, Hephaestus, and Are$ and m:ake Hermogene5 suspect that Socrates has forgotten the gods of his own city; the female, we recall. represented the privare, the opaque, and the individual. These insertions also m:ake Hermogenes forget his own list fi)[ a moment and ask instead about Dionysus md Aphrodite. • Aphro
me
me
On Plato's Crary/us
kin (lliklphos) to logos; and the formula, "Everything (pan) is logos," is the claim of the sophists. Sophistry and tragedy, it seems, are cwins, for the equivalence of "Pan is logos" and "Everything is logos" implies that the individual loses nothing of himself in attaining signiJica.nce. Now this implica.tion, which is the essence of tragedy, was shown to obtain per impossibk only in the realm of the arch-sophist Hades. "It surpasses every /ogqs," the Chorus of Oedipus as Co/onus sing. "nor ro be born." Hermogenes asks about the beautiful names that pecrtain to virtue; we do not know whether he suspects that the virtues are nothing bur fine names. According ro Socrates, "the beautiful things" (ra kala) were originally "the so-called things" (ta kawumma}, and "name" was "a being of which there i.s searching"; so Hermogenes' phrase, • beautiful names," signifies "so-called questions of being." The key ro the meaning of this oxymoron is now supplied by Socrates in the single most imporram Statement of the Craty!tiS. It is both a summary and a prospecrus. "By the dog! I believe my divination was not a bad one, which J just now understand, that the men of long. long ago, just like many of the wise nowadays, suffered verti.go from their constant whirling in their search to find our in what way the beings (ta onra) are, and so it looked ro them as if the things (ta pragntata} were revolving and moving totally. So they charged (aitiontai) not their own inner experience (pathos) as the cause (aition) of their opinion, but the things themselves (aula ta pragmata) were by nature in this state, and none of them abided or was stable, but everything always flowed, moved, and was full of every kind of motion and generation." The ancients mistook the state of perplexiry for the state of knowledge. Although they identified the dizziness of questioning with the dizziness of things, they did not know that that was what they were doing. They did nor conclude that being was enigmatic because they found it so, but rather that rheir search had finally put them i.n couch with the beings, and the beings without mediation disclosed what rhey were. They must, then, have reflected on their own inner experience and yet lost sight of its significance. It must have seemed to th.em impo!ISible for their own soul to be a cause: the dispassionateness of their searching was proof against the soul's self-infection. Even these assumptions, however, do not by themselves explain their mistake. Socrates implies that the corporeal cbarn.cter of the language for noncorporcal things was due to a theory that there was only body; so what now looks like rhe extension of names for the sake of economy was originally a doctrine of the identity of inner experience with corporeal motion. In the beginning there were no metaphor$, and tO be in a whirl was literally true. So the union of corporealism with
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Cl'"l"er Eight the probity of disinterest issued, by way of perplexity, inr.o rhe thesis that to know W 'd S to be disoriented. Nor to be at home was to be in coma.c t with the beings. Hestia was not their model but Persephone, the wife of Hades, whose name, like the name of wisdom, means "to be in touch with motion." Sioce ro be in touch with motion, however, is ro be in motion, and hence to know the bei.o g is ro be or act the being, what d1ey finally knew was their own. So Hesria, the goddess to whom one first sacrifices according ro the law, was their model after all. The premise of the law was rhus their own misunderstood assumption, for it is not understanding bur belief that foUows on. behaving. One of the words for cmeaning" in Greek is boulms, or "wiU." The imagined omniporeoce of the wiU can rake rwo forms, triumphant defi· ance. or acquiescence. Tragedy seems ro adopt the first, Heracliteanism the second. The first senses its owns deceptiveness, the second is selfdeceived, for it believes that it is !erring the beings speak for themselves while in fact ir is misreading the condition of irs consciousness. Wisdom is selfless knowledge of the self-absorbed self, or mysticism. The only difference such a wisdom can allow are diffi:rences of degree. "The good" (r'agarhon), therefore, is the admirable part of speed (rou thoou to agasron), and "rhe just" (to dikttion), insofar as it is that which goes through every· rhing (diaion), must be both the subtlest, in order that nothing can keep it out, and the swiftest, in order rhat it can use everything dse as if thi.< quamicy were sranding srlll. T he just c.ontrols all becoming instrumen· mlly; as the sohtlest of instrumentS, it makes rhe mosr refined discriminations, and as the swiftest it ~ommunicates wirh everything. Now Socrares bad begun rhe discus1ioo of names with Hermogenes by arguing that a name was an instructional and discriminatocy instrument. The just, then, is the name of names or the ,;diJt of name: "jusr» and "jusdy" are used br Socrates throughout ro signify nominal correctoess. Since. however, names are the work of rhe legislating naroe-gjver, the jusr is the lawful itself, and all names are more or .less crude approximations of the lawful; even to dikaio11 is not exa~ for rhe kappa has been added for euphony. The homogeneity of the beings, which was rbe original iosighr of the name-giver, rhus finds irs complete expression in the law, which admits oo exception ro its rules. The law's uniformity, however, is grounded in the individual will misunderstood as self-denial. The tom! self-denial of the will is acquiescence io the ftow of things; but if this mystical union is proclaimed as law, wisdom becomes indistinguishable from obedience. Obedience ro rhe law is the opaque rranslation of rhe ttao.sparem original that stated wisdom to c.onsist in the imirarion of things. Eurbyphro's role
On Plam's Cratylur
in Socmres' inspiration is now dear. Euthyphro did not scruple to prosecute h.is Euher for murder on rhe grounds that he was merely doing what Zeus had done to his farber. To do what rhe gods do is the pious, just as to be indifferent to individuals is rho legal version of Heraditeanism. They are united in Euthyphro. For Hcraditeanism injustia and cowardice are indistinguishable, and the riddles of cmgedy nothing but the willful beautifications of vice. The thirteen names from "courage" to "virtue" form a group (4.1~d7-415d); "art" and "device" are intruSive element& in this group. "An" is particularly recalcitrant to iorerpret:uion; so much so that Hermogenes protestS and says rhat Socr:ues is really reaching. Socrates' defense is that those who "want ro tragediu" names have confused them as they were 6m laid down, and for the sake of euphony, to which end time has no less conrribured, they have brought it about that "not a single human being can unde.rsrand (svn~inai) what a name wanrs to be. • The tragedians, he implies, have had rheir greatest impact on rhe names that perrain to mind. Socrates' eXJample of a tragediud name is "Spb.inx," in which the original form "pb.ix" is now concealed completely. Its tra.gic alteration has made an originally opaque name transparent. "Sphinx" means "Binder."' Now since to be bound is, literally, to be incapable of movement, and 6guracivdy, r.o be in a perplexity (aporia}, Oedipus's condition should epiromiu injustice and cowardice (or vice in general), for injustice is an impediment (nnpodisma) ro rhe transit (to diaion) of the jusr, cowardice is a suong bond on the soul's motion, and evil is whacever is before rhe feer (mtpodon) and sands in the way. Tragedy, howeve.r, seems to deny Oedipus's viciousness while accepting the injustice: of his acts, for at neither the beginning nor the end does it recognize rhe i.o.compa.tibility of Oedipus rhe bound with Oedipus rhe knower. Unwittingly, rragedy puts together in Oedipus complete vir· tue and complete vice:. Oedipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx; be figured out rhat man was rhc being which. wem on four feet in rhe morning, two feet in rhe afternoon, and rhree in the evening. Oedipus is a panial Heraclirean. He discovered man in his rnorion, bur failed ro carry that discovery through and realize rhar his motio n was rhe ""'Y of wisdom itself, for the three ways of locomotion characterized for bim only mao in time. There are gods. The knowledge of man 's mortality is the knowledge of universal motion made tragic. Furthermore, if to be in motion is tO come into conracr with the principle of aU things, and hence to be at one with one's own origins, the incest of Oedipus is not a crime but knowledge: the aorist infinitive of the verb "undersand" (mnffluti), whkh
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Cnapre. Eight Socrates has already interpreted as "go with" (mnienai), is the same as the infinitive of the verb "be wich," sexually or ocherwise. Cognation and cognition are the same. Tragedy ref"um ro face up to the identity of Oedipus's crime wich Oedipus's undemanding. At the very moment when Oedipus's self-knowledge should have liberated him, tragedy bound him again: his sclf-punishmenL made him incapable of moving on his own. The perplexity in which Oedipus was then caught, of suffering for what he had not willed, could only be resolved by the immonal gods. The gn
On Plato's Cmty/111 life-denying homogeneicy of the law. This coincidence is the excessive. punishment the gods infuct on the protagonisrs of tragedy. Socrates makes the connection between tragedy and punishment in the course of completing his systematic ecyroologizing. Thirty-four IJames fall into six groups: L Profit and Loss; II. PltaSure and Pain; ill. Desire; IV. Belief and Will; V. The Necessary and the Voluntary; VI. Name, Truth. and !king. There :ue no surprise etymologies among them, unless the implicit identification of pleasure, the good, and knowledge can be so counred, since hedonism seems to be a self-conrradicrocy basis for any legislation. Socrates implies, perhaps. not only that there is an dement subversive o f the law in. any language, but that the picture of a paradise or a golden age, which ofren accompanies the .quation of the good with the ancc:srral, is essentially hedonistic. The law recognizes irs own pain· fulness and promises, on the basis of an original freedom, an ultimate rd=~ The rragic form, then, of modern names would express the harshness of modern legislation. The moral is now the binding (tc d~on); originally, it was that which passes through (diicn); and "day" in irs most ancienr form meant "that which men desire afrer darkness,• but now that it has been made tragic it seems ro mean "that which makes things ram~" Tameness and obligation are comemporary. People must now submit to what they once desired: society is due to constraint. There are at least rwo indications of the extent to which harshness now dominates political life. Despite the app:uenr corporeality of the ori.ginal names, their etymologies :ue with one exception always in terms of the soul's experiences: body is mentioned only in rdation to one of rhe names for pain (419c, 3). It is as if the mode.rns rook literally the images of the ancients. Th.e second indication seems to confum this. Socrates claims that the original form of zimiiidn (ruinous) was dimiO
Now 1. ChanniikJ I5Sd3: /Vpub/ic J,l9CI-1..
See Cicero's letter tO L. P=us on obS<:Cne language (AJ familiarts 9.11); and cf. Moimonides Guilk ofzbt Ptrpkxtd (n. Pind [Chicogo. •963j): "I can also give cbe rta10n wby this our languag< is eallcd the holy language. It should not be thought that this, on our part, is an empty •ppellation or a mistako; in filer it is indicative of true reality. For in this holy ian~ no word at all bas been laid down in ord.er ro designate either th.e male or the female org:m of copulation, nor are there word.! designating this act iuelf that brin&S gencmrion, the sperm, 1.
•6)
166
Cbap<er Eight me urine, or me excremenu. No word at all designating, a.ccording tO irs 6rst meaning, any of these things has been laid down in me Hebrew language, mey bein.g signified by terms used in a figwative sense and by allusions. !r was imended therehy 10 indicate rhat no tenns designadng rhem oughr ro be coined. For rhese are rhings about which one ought to be silenc; however, when nee=ity impels mentioning rhem, a deo.•icc should be found tO do it by means of expressions deriving from orher words, just as the most diligent endeavor should be made ro he hidden when necessity impels doing rhese things. 3· Lucan's persistence throughout his .&Uum civik ro call Coesar tbe rD«T (f.uher· in-law) of Pompey is attributable not just to the resemblance betw<en the suife within a fumily and civil war bm ro the nonuanspareney of"""' withio latin, so that che rransgressiveness of the S3aed aan be seen. Socn·, moreover, reRects a cltange in the &.mily suucture: ll>CTW, morher-io- lnw, was originally the more important member of the &.mily intO whieh the bride entered: v. Ernout· Meiller, Dictiorurir•
On Plaro's Symposium
closely tO the life and rimes of Socrates, and some are set at a paniculat rime of day. The Phardo and Symposium satisfy both crite¥ia; they are also non-Socrarically reporr.,d dialogues, and both conrain Socrares' own account of his early thought. The Pbattlo tells of the lasr hours of Socrates, from the early morning to the seuing of the sun, when Socrates reme.mbe.rs at the last moment that he owes a cock to Asclepius; the SymptJSium rells of an evening party that end.,d when the cock began to crow, and Soc.rates left the poets Agathon and Aristophanes asleep and went about his usual business. The Phtudo and Symposium between them ocrupy a full day. In prison Socrates iden.rifies philosophy with the practice of dying and being dead; at Agathon's house he identifies philosophy with eros. If each definition is as partial as their temporal serring, the whole of philosophy is somehow comprehend.,d by these rwo dialogues. As the practice of dying and being dead is the pracrice of separating body and soul and in its dialogic counter· part the exercise of separating an argument from iu conditions, so eros should be the practice of putting body and soul together :U\d irs dial.ogic couorerpart, tbe practice of unifying argumem and conditions. Ultimately, of course, the disjunCtive and conjunctive modes of interpretation should yield to an understanding of the double practice of (nmkriJiJ and di4ltrisu)-of coUection and division-whose single name. i.s dialectic; but it would be well to start, in the case of the Symposium, with the peculiar difficulties we face if we accept the invirarion ro pur iu six or seven praises of eros back inro a unified whole. S 0 M B PLAT 0 N I C 0 I A L 0 C U ES ARB 8 0 UN' D
L6;
168
Chaprer Nine To puc the Sympo1i11111 r.ogetb.e r is nor easy; it is nor a normal dialogue bur consists for the moSt pan of a set of six spc:cches on Eros, each one of which seem.< as if it co.u ld be spoken at aoy time and any place, since rhey severally expre<S what the speakm understand of Eros, or more Cl<· acdy how they experience eros. They are almost all speeches of lovers who are rdlccring on their own experience; they are not speeches addrC<Sed to a beloved, designed t.O have the beloved undergo through speech the experience the lovers themselves did n.o t have through speech. The dialogue devoted ro erode speech of that kind is rhe Phaedrw, where the issue of persuasion naturally opens up into irs relation with reason and dialectic; but in the Symposium, we have speaker afi:er speaker declare his experience of eros in such a way as to defy th.e possibility of unifying that manifold and thus ro deny to philosophy any way to tum experience into argurnenL Socrates is left the task to preserve the truth of the experiences of the previous spe:Jkers and ro refine their inrerpre.m tion of their own experience, without anyone except. Agathon being brought to see his error. Agarhon's error initiates Socrates' speech because, Socrates confesses, it was his own youthful error before Diotima set him st.raighL That the refurarion of everyone else OCCUI'$ without anyone being shown his error reveals the power of Eros to convince each lover tbar his interpretation of his experience is necess2rily the crurh of his experience. How we come to read the Symposium is as peculiar as is ics nondialogic form. Apollodorus, who will be found crying unconcrollably throughout the Ph11edo, is irs narrator. He had given a recital of the Sympo#um, though perlr•ps less full, two days before; and he is all roo eager ro go through it once. more for a group of businessmen, for whom he has rhe utmoSt comempt; but rhis contempt is miti.gared somewhar by hiJ own selfcontempt, for he knows he is despicable along with everyone else, and o nly Socrates is exempt &om reproach. The Symposium is for Apollodorus a kind of mantra, which confirms at each recital his own worthlessness. He follows Socrate$ around Like a puppydog and can easily be distracted into a denunciation of everyone. The time of his larest recital is, I believe, a few years afi:er the end of the Pdoponnesian War and thus a few years before Socrates' death_ He is tht f.watk. His devotion to Socrates has soured him on everything else; suicide is rhe only way out for him once Socrates dies and he can no longer lash himself imo a fren%)' of selfabnegation by comparing his own nothingness with Socrates who alone is a somebody. Apollodorus seems to be the third of slavish followers of Socrares; the second was AriJcodemu.s, a shoeless atheist from whom Apollodorus beard the stoey of Agathon's party; and the first was Akibi-
On Plaro's Symp<>sium
ades, whose speech at the md of the SymptJSium reveals his own dependence on Socrates and how, he hdieves, he broke the spell. The repon, then, we ga of the Sympo1ium con=ns the qtWi-rdigious atmosphere Socrates creared around himself from the rime he first met Alcibiades to the day of his death, when his disciples demand that he enchant them with reason. This culr of personality raises rhe question of what conditions would have to be met in order to transform it into a true culr with its own god. The Sympt1Jium's answer seems ro be if and only if Eros were a god and Socrares his first worshiper. Through Diotima Socrates sets our to prove that Eros is not a god and no religion can fOrm around him. Socrates thus answers Phaedrus's original question, which prompred this famous nighr ofspeeches, why no poer ever praised Eros. Eros is not a god. Socrates is nor his propher, and Plato not the poet for whom Phaedrus is wamng. Agathon threw a parry the day after he won his 6rsr victory in the tragic contest. The year was 4 16 B.C., during which, in Thucydides' Hi.Jtory there is the only dialogue of a political kind, in which the Athenian ambassadors at Mdos frankly declare rhe divine ground fOr imperialism. It is one year before the Sicilian expedition, on which occasion, Thucydides tells us, eros swooped down upon all the Athenians; and before the Beet depaned Herroae rbroughour Athens were defaced, which so terri6ed rhe Arhenians, as if the defacen1.ent were a signal for a tyrannical conspiracy, thar they disregarded all legal safeguards and execured numerous Athenians on ntmor, an.d summoned Alcibiades back from Sicily to face the charge of chi.e f instigator of the mutilation as well as of profaning the Eleusinian mysteries ar the same rime. This sugge;tive juxraposition of eros and ryranny,laced by superstition and religious longing, puts a political casr on the SympoJium. It is as if Plaro intended us ro read the Symporium in light of Thucydides and take Socrates' radical aa:oum of eros as having irs distoned and fragmenrary echo in Athenian imperialistic designs. The Rtpublic in a way confirms this, for there Socrates assens the tyrant is Eros incamare and the offspring of radical democracy. It is in any case in this heavily charged atmosphere, in which Alcibiades is at the peak of his influence, and who carried Eros wirh • thunderbolt as emblem on his shield, that Plato has Socrates vindicate eros fOr philosoplly and draw ir back from its imminent misinrerpreration and misuse. Socrates sets out LO purify eros from the dross of the political and theol.ogical in which ir is necessarily found in its narural, unre8ective stare. Although the political·theological dimension of the Symponum lim becomes explici.t with Arisrophanes, it is 6rst hinred at by Phaedrus. What
169
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Cbapter Nine
putties Phaedrus the m.o st about Eros is sdf-sacri:ficc. The lover gives up his own life for the sake of another, even though the other might be totally worthless. Alcestis is his chief example of this spirit, Orpheus his cbief counter-example. Phaedrus inreqm:rs the backward glance of Orpheus, when he is leading Eurydice our of Hades, as a sign of the pods selfregard: he refuses ro give up everything for nothing. Alcestis, on the other hand, radicalizes his suggestion for an army of lovers and beloveds. who out of mutual shame would imitate natural ''irtne. Shame before rh.e noble or beautiful, which in .itself is superiOI to the gtounds of patriotism, vanishes in Alcestis's case. Alc:esri.• thetefore needs the gods if she is to get anything out of her sacrifice; but if there are no gods co support the lover, the beloved alone geu the good. Love, therefore, must be a god if it is powe.rful enough to overcome self-interest. The beloved, one might say, in becoming a god for the moment in the eyes of the lover, garh.ers all rhe good into himself and lives at the expense of the )o,•er. Phaed.rus, then, sees that the Olympian gods, who compensate the lover, cannot be combined with the real thrust of Eros, whicb serves the good of the beloved. The problem of the relation ~en the beautiful and the good, or between rhe lover's sacri6.ce and the beloved's advanrage, is first set our by Phaedrus. The problem is solved by Socrates in reversing Pb.aedrus. In his solution, the lover gees the good and the beloved keeps the beautiful. Now that the beautiful has come tO light in our discussion, it ought ro be remarked on how indifferent all the speakers are prior ro Socrdres ro the initiating experience of eros: the sight of the beautiful in the beloved. Eros primari]y means fo.r them ~being with" and nor ' looking at." Accordingly, rbe speakers are inclined to assimilate love to friendship and to disregard the equal need for conreroplative disrance in eros. The c.ogni· rive elernem in eros is at a discount. A wiUfulness therefore pervades their several ac:counrs in their attempt tO srarnp eros with a single trait and consequendy in their refusal to acknowl.edge that the conjunc:rive impulse in eros is no stronger than rhe disjunctive, and eros ceases to be itSelf if either is given up, and nothing can resolve the tension berween them . The praise of Eros, as the speakers undersrand it, involves the praise of satishction. Eros is not for them, as [c is for Socrates, ao in-berween, but a fi,lfillment. The beloved there.fure tends to be id.emi6ed with eros, for in nor starting at the bcginnio.g of eros-the sight of t.he bdovM-they overlook the possibiliry that the beloved roo is but a pointer to something beyond. The presence of the beautiful in the beloved does not enrail tb.at the lover's good. is present there as wdl. They pin their hopes on the beloved, bur the beloved is as d.isplaced as eros is b.omeless.
Oo Plaro'• S1mposium
The n= two speakers after Pha.edrus, Pausanias and Eryximachus, arc a pair. Nor only do they both subscribe to the view that Eros is double, bur th.ey both atttntpt to adjust the higher ro rhe lower Eros, or they attempt to conceal sexual pleasure u.oder the veneer of the beautiful. They also compltntent one another. For Pausanias the veneer is at different parts of his spe«h. Grublic: but Pau.sanias, because he wishes there to be no tension between philoso-phy and the ciry, must allow philosophy ro be only a plausible cover for seduction. There is robe no penalry if he does not live up to his promises. l'ausan.ias, one might say, is how Socrates appears to Athenian fathers. Pausanias offen the same patter, and the law is incapable of distinguishing between the. genuine and the spurious versions of Socrates. Eryximachus presents the same proble.m of discrimination within philosophy itself. ln extending eros inro a natural principle, Eryximacbus granrs that rhe cosmic order, over which uran.ian eros presid~. operates in a regular manner that precludes the good of man. Men can only gain their good, which is pleasure, at the apense of that order; and the greatest art is thesefore need('(\ ro go against nature without proceeding roo far and suffering sdf-desrruction. Eryximachus proposes, then, a set of theo.rerical sciences rhat would guide our cxploirarion of narure and rell us how much we could gee away wirh. in our tinkering. Precisely because pleasure is rhe sole human good, rhere is norhing in the discovery and concentplation of rhe cosmic order that answers to anything in rhe human souL F.ryximachus represenrs a version of the Timnew as much as Pausanias represents a version of the R~ublic. They both poim ro Socrates. The no:t ru·o speakers, Aristophanes and Agarhon, also form a pair, nor only because they are tragic and comic represenrarives of Eros, but also because they tOO splir apart somerhing in Socrates that Socrares man·
'7'
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Chap<er N"mc
ages ro keep together. The two foci of the Symposium are Phaedrus and Socmes. Phaedrns's challenge tO Pausanias and Eryximachus is ro find some good for the lover withonL the help of the gods. Pausan.ias's answer is law and Eryximachus's is an. Ag;nhon. who is Pausamas's long-standing beloved, celebrates the unity of the beautiful and good in Eros, and Aristophanes, whose place Eryximachus rook. denies that the present order, without which Eros cannot he, allows any room for adjusnnenr w human needs. Man was once in harmony with the cosmic order; bur now it is an impossible ideal, for any rerum to it, if1'" impossible it occurred, would demand the rota! elimination of man as man. Agathon and Arisrophanes deepen between them the speeches respectively of Pausanias and Eryrimachus. They thus become the way into their own overcoming by Socrates. Before we turn to Arisrophanes' speech, we should consider rhe occasion that brings abouc the. order of th.e Symposium rbar groups rhe comic and tragic poets together with Socrates. A bad case of the hiccups on Ariswphanes' part forces Eryximachus ro speak before the comic poet and allows him to complement Pausanias, who also maintained that Eros was double. A disorder for which Bryximachus prescribes several remedies rearranges the ordet of the speakers. It is a funny noise whose cure consistS in the funny noises of g.tt:gling and sneezing. Arisrophanes finds it funny that funny noises heal funny disorders; bur Eryximachus does nor find it funny; we cenainly must find it srrange at least that bodily disorders establish the harmonious suucrure of the speeches of the Symposium. Had the hiccup nor occucred, Ery.rirnach us would have spoken over Arisrophanes' speech to Pausanias's, and Arisrophanes' proposal for a new religion would have been an awkward inse.rtion between Pansanias and Eryximachus. It seems, however, thar the juxtaposition of Pausanias and Arisrophanes would have made a new connection: thar rhe solution Pausanias sought in the law was found by Arisrophmes in the nature of the city itsd£ Eryximachus, on rhe other hand, makes use of the disturbance in the order in the same way as his account proposes a disordering of the cosmic order for the sake of human pleasure; but he cannot account for the coincidence of disorder and the good of reason. Arisrophanes, however, in denying the doubleness of Eros, accountS for why both Pausanlas and Eryximachus required Eros ro be double even though they had no explanation for iL Aristophanes heals their double Eros and makes it one who.l e at the same time that he supplies the ground for their belief. Aristophanes, in unifying Eros, accounts for the diremprion in the cosmic and the human order. This direm.p tion is incurable by either art or law. ln comple.ring both Pausanias's and Eryximachus's speeches, be announces an Eros
On Plaro's Symporirmr
without hope. The human as such is essentially incomplttce and disordered. Socrau:s agrees that it is incomplere, bur he assem rlw: in its incompleteness ir is in order and good. Aristophanes, one might say. startS from rwo common exp.ressions we employ-"They were made for each other" and "[ don't sec wh:u she or he SttS in him o.r her. • The mysterious farefulness of love experientially has irs source in the radical rearrangement man underwent in altering from a being of cosmic origins ro a being who must submit ro the Olympian gods. This alteration is presented emirdy in rerms of rhe body. but it gains irs significance only if it is rransl:ued into the soul. Human beings were originally spherical, with two heads that faced in opposite directions. four leg.$, four arms, and two sers of genitals. They took afrer the sun if they were aU male, afrer the earth if they were all female, and aft:er the moon if they were male and female. What they all had in common were proud thoughts. As a punishment for their attempt ro scale heaven, they were split in two by Zeus and their heads were turn.ed around to 12ce the cur in order that they might he humbled; Apol.lo a.t the same rime straightened our the hemispheres in order to make them look like the Olympian gods. Man owes his shape to the Olympian gods, bur his soul belongs to an older order. Th= slices of men immediately sought out their counrerpans and clung ro each orbe~ unto death. Zeus a.ccordingly had to rum their genitals forward so that in the sexual embrace they might satisfy their longing to he wholes and at rhe same rime perpernate the race. Man is an experiment of the gods. He has been so rwisred about and rearranged that nothing can heal him. There lives on in rh.e soul a longin.g for something that never can he figured out, let alone achieved. Aristophroes expresses this by distinguishing between being a whole and being one. Hephaesrus, who occupies rhe role of the physician in Eryximachus's spec:cb, olfm to mdt rwo lovers together, but he does not offer to untwist them ro.d put them back the way they were. Indeed, the unity H.,pbaestus ho.lds out would obtain only i.n Hades wh.,re only ghost:S and shadows are and there is no embra.ce. Aristophwes sees the essence of eros nor in sexual pleasure but in the embrace. The embrace is a vain reaching out for one's other half, which is not the other that is ever embraced. Our wish, he implies, in facing one another is to recaprure our original natures in which we were back to back, wbc:n there was no possibility for one spherical whole to come dose ro, let alone embrace, another. Recognition is for the sake of communion without cognition. Eros is an unintended result of the double mh:.ping the: Olympian gods performed on us, first by way of punishment and
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Chapter Nine
then by way of survival so that we could continue ro serve rhem. There is now a generic adequation of partial selves, wnen male comes togerher with male, female with female, or male with female, bur there is no possibility of discovering the other half of our individuality. That is forever lost, either at the time of the original punisnment or diluted rh.rough sexual generation over the cour.se of time. Since rite division in the sdf is presented corporeally, ir is nor possible to translate it entirely imo psychic terms; bur Aristopnancs seems to assign the soul two layers, an original pride and a subsequent sname, that cannot bur remind us of the biblical Fall. Pride made man scale neaven, shame made lllm realize his defectiveness. Eros, then, is an ever-ro-be..IDwarred longing for a second tty 011 heaven. We turo to each other in lieu of our rebellion again.sr the gods. For the best of us, the all-male descendants of rhe sun, grati:6carion of our pride is found in politic:al life. The city replaces the wnole. and irs rulers retain vestiges of ntan's former ambition. Within the constraint of the laws of rhe city smolders a de:6ance. of the gods that is too weak ro succeed. Pe.rhaps the most serious defecr in Arisrophanes' account is his lililure ro propose an intermediary between the individual and the genus ro which the individual belongs. Everyone seeks his other half, bur he is condemned never ro find ir; for even if one posits a split soul, which never alrers in the course of generations, there is nothing unique about the fracture line in ir dun would match up wim only one other soul wirh irs corresponding edge. Aristophanes seems ro imply, merefore, rhat this feeling that our there somewhere there is our soul-mare is an illusion. Aristophancs, then, would have rold a srory rhar accounts for rhis feeling and showed ir up as an illusion. &cause th.en: is no cognitive dement in eros for Arisrophanes, be canJlOt offer a typology of souls, which would stand in berween sexual difference and individuality. Since the ultimate goal is dissoluri.o n of our frngmeorary selves, mere is no speaking ro one another in Aristophanes. The complete silence which his perfect beings would have to maintain toward themselves is foreshadowed by his own hiccup that kept bien from speaking in the firsr place. When he later wishes ro criticize someming in Socrates' speech, he is again forced ro keep silenr. I.n the biblical account, man and woman acpcrience shame after they car of the T rce of Knowledge because rhey realize that ncirher is in the image of God, who is neither male n.o r female; in AriSiophanes' account, man's shame before his defectiveness is a reminder that he is subject to gods inro whose likeness he has been remade. OU[ of rhis shame, or at least simultaneously with ir, at~ ews, a desire to bypass rhe gods of the
On Plato's Sy1ff!H»i-
law and recover the strength of one's original nature. That nature essentially consistS in proud thoughts. Eros blindly serves our claim to he somebody, and the sole purpose of that claim is to be powerful enough ro he without consuaints. The satisfaction of eros is on the way to the will for power, of which theie is still a mutilated venion in the devotion of pure males to political life. The city on earrh is a poor substitute for our original assault on heaven. That assault signified the right to he oneself, to he one's own man; but as long as there are gods, the city, and the law, man must put up with love of his own, which is always an ubitrary construction on man's deepest longing. If we ask what basis there is for man's will to he himself, the answer seems to require another Aristophanic story, how man's great thoughts owed their origin ro his sense that he was superior ro the Olympian gods who somehow or other managed ro gain control of the cosmic elements and along with them first subjugared and then punished m:m. There was once a harmony between man and the cosmos, but the dissolution of that order left man so permanently damaged that even what he thinks would cure him could not reswre him. This allows us ro formulate the deepest difficulty in Aristophanes' account. It is not that tbe complete freedom of man would he worse than h.is present cond.ition, but that the stria individuality that he detects to be the secret spring of eros is nor of the same order as man's cosmic origin. Because eros i.1 for Aristophanes not original with mao it is divorced from man's ratiooaliry. Eros therefon: can aspire to a wholeness that lacks i.nceUigibiliry. To he and tO he known are radically separate. When Arisrophanes uses the phrase katJJ noun, which literally would mean "according to reason ," he intends it to mean "as one likes it." The liceralism of Arisrophanes, from which his comic inventiveness stems, deserts him at this crucial point. The joke is finally on him. Insofar as Ari.ltopbanes tells a funny story with a tragic message. there would seem ro be no plae<: for Agathon, since, though one could say he gives the silliest speech. it i.1 not to he undersrood in either comic: or tragic terms. That Aristophanes' speech suggesrs both comedy ond tragedy throws some light on Socrates' argument at the end. to wh.ich both Agathoo and Arisrophanes put up some resistane<:, that the artful tragic: poet is a comic poet as well. Who rever Socrates may mean-it is striking that neither Arisrodemus nor Apollodorus has any interest in asking Socrates for a summuy of the ugument (neither. it seems, believes that rhar discussion is part of rhe Symposium or its rheme) -Aristophanes' speech is apparently not to he taken as an example of such a synthesis. or Aga.thon's
r;s
'76
Cb:tprer Nine
speech would be unn=ry. Agathon's speech is the only conspicuously well oroered speech in the SymjJDnum. It is not only perfectly arranged, bur it also states what it intends to do in a clear manner. ln this preface Agathon for the firs.t time distinguishes between the god Eros and the effectS of which he is the cause. If anything makes Agarhon a representative of tragedy ir is the focusing on the bein.g of a god. The being of rhe god is in his beauty, the causality of rhe god is in his virtue or goodness. The beautiful and tbe good are thus for th.e first rime sepamted. The separation between tbe fourfold character of the beautiful and the fOurfold character of the good which Agathon aruibutes to Eros-on the one band, youthfulness, softness, liquid form, and beautiful color, on the other, justice, moderation, courage, and wisdont-amounrs to a diJ.'tinction between the beloved and the lover. The beauty of Eros is manifesr in the beloved, the goodness of Eros is conferred on the lover. This twofold immanence ofEros is so complete tbat the god disappears into his human counterpara. Eros, which begins as subject, ends up as a predicare. Eros is simply r.he verb, "co love. • Agathon, in being the firsr to celebrate the god, is also the lim to eliminate the god. Agathon's speech wrns complerdy on ve.rbal equivocatio!ls. Eros, he says, i.s the most recent (n~omtoS, and always resides in the young (neoi). What is young in human time reflects what is youngest in cosmological time. Agathon inli:rs an identity berween two orders of time through their identity in language. He uses the homogeneity of language in order ro garber unlike things toger.her. His poetic art operates &om the beginning in order to bring about the phenomena he claims to interpret. Eros is fully manifest only in poetl}'; lr cannot be fully experienced except in and through poetty, so that rather than poetry and eros being Linked phenomena, Eros becomes the invention of poetty. 1r is wholly non-natural The issue of poetty becomes explicit in his account of Eros's second trait. Homer is needed. he says, ro show tbe softness, tenderness, and mildness of Eros. Without a poet of the caliber of Homer, what is manifest is nor manifest. Agathon needs Homer so that he can modd Eros on what Homer said of Ate. Through the render feet of Are, Eros obtains feet, roo, and thereby a body. No figuration of Eros is possible unless a poet shows the way; bur the poet Agathon is not poet enough to work our a human shape for Eros. The form of Eros is so much dependent on its function that Eros ends up completely amorphous, or, if you will, polymorphous. Eros assumes the shape of that in which he resides: on the one hand, the body of the beloved, and th.e soul of the lover, on the other. Eros, .he $2ys, dwdls among B.owers; .his beautiful complexion can be de-
On Pbro's Sym,.sium
duccd from this. Eros is an allegorical 6gure; he always points elsewhere and never tO himself. Eros is a trope, or, more exactly, he is the essence of all tropes. He is poetry. The ioner nerve of Agatbon's speech emerges at two poinu, fust when he assigns to Eros the wisdom of production. Eros is the eausc of the coming into being of new beings, both sexually and poetically. Here once again Agathon exploits rhe language, so that the maki.n.g of children and the making of poems F.t!J under the same eause. Without realizing it perhaps, Agathon implies that just as a child is not a rational production of his parents, the poet too does not know what the truth is in his poems. What is unknown to Agathon in what be says gives Socrates the opportu· nity ro tie Agathon's speech tO his own. Agathon concludes his speech with an extraordinaty display of Gorgianic jingl.es, at the end of which he says, "Eros is the best and most beautiful guide whom every man must follow in hymning him beautifully, partaking in the song that Eros si.ngs in enchanting the thought of all gods and men." Eros's song of enchantment is a song that celebrates as it causes the overcoming of necessity. The essence of necessity is in the diffe.rence berween the lover and the beloved. The identity of the lover and the beloved, or cbe disappearance of the alien as such, which was the impossible dream of Aristophanes' speech, occurs through and in song. It is the song of Eros that survives the fusion of the Aristopbanic whole. Socrates begins by attacking all the previous speakeu. He does not accuse them of ignorance of th.e truth about Eros, but rather that they know the truth and consequently could not 6nd anything in Eros to praise. The truth about Eros is terrifying, and only by decking Eros out with spurious beauties and exceUencies was praise possible. They were all tragic speeches, Socrates implies, and whistlings in the dark. Socrates himself knows how to praise; one rakes the beautiful parts of the truth and arranges them becomingly. Socrares announces that he is goin.g to suppress the ugly dements in Eros; we can say thar thar ugliness is what all the previous speakers saw and tried ro cover up. It is not cl~ar what happens to the wholr truth about Eros if Socrares is prepared ro present only the beautiful truth; but we can make the suggestion that even in the beautiful truth Socrates manages to inserr the whole truth, or that the beauty of Eros comprehends its ugliness. Socrates in fact identi6es eros with a certain kind of neediness. He is going to praise the defecrivr. He is going to render the good of the lover beautiful. He is going to praise himself, the ugliesr man in Athens. In rhe argument witb Agathoo, Socrates 6rsr establishes char Eros is
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Cbapter Nine essentially relational. It is always in a relation; ir does nor enter into a relation. This relation is of a fully determined mucture. It is nor per· sonal- "I love you" is nor its chief charaaeristic, nor does its object represent a completion of itsd£ Ariscopbanic self-love is nor of irs essence. Socrates uses Agathon's Eros as a god to assign it a scrucrure that is independenr of whate.vet human being ir vanishes into, and therefore ope,rarive in itself regardless of how anyone believes he experiences it. Eros is fully ar work with irs own deep suucrure apart &om whatever superficial syntax anyone of us attributes to it in our uuerances. Eros as a god is the common acknowledgment that Eros has this suucrure. Eros, then, is determined to be relational prior ro any detettnination of what it is in relation ro and how it is in that relation. Eros, moreover, once ir is settled that it is eros or love of somethin.g, retains that • of" even after the nominal predicate is translated into a verb. It is supposed to follow &om the f.tcr that Eros is eros of something that Eros desires something, even though it does not follow from sight being of color that sight sees color unless one adds, "whenever it does see"; bur it is precisely that condition which Socrates omirs in the case of Eros. Eros is always desiring something regardless of whatever its human subject thinks or believes. A peculiarity of Socrates' argument ought to be stressed. His argu· ment is couched in terms of a hypothetical atgument with a hypothetical inrerlocutor. It is through the skillful questioning of Socrares, wbo forces the interlocutor to bring out inro the open what he means, that the conclusion Socrares draws follows. Desire is subject to a dialogic examination so that there is no possibility of self-ignorance. In this brief bypotbe.tical dialogue, Socrates indicues a possible connection between eros and phj. losophy and suggests bow the speeches we have already heard would have disintegrated had Socrates been able to take their speakers through a version of this dialectic exercise. Socrates brinS$ Agathon to the conclusion that Eros cannor be either beautiful or good; but he does not take him to the next step, rbar Eros cannor be a god. That next step belonS$ ro a report of Soctates' instrucrion in erotic thinS$ by Diorima. This inst.ruction constimtc:s the last of three stages in Socrates' philosophic education. The 6m. stage Socrates gives in th.e Pha~do. Tbeze be reUs his disciples about his conversion from thinking of cause in an Ionian manner ro his discovecy of th.c ideas and his turn to speeches; the second phase is in the fusr half of the ParmmitkJ, where Parmeoides proves the impossibility of his ideas. According to Parmen· ides. rhe mosr telling objection ro thent is that even if they exist they cannot be known by us, for there must be a complete separ..rion between
On Plato'• SymfH>1U.m
divine and human knowledge. Ir seems ro be Diorima, wirh her notion of the in-berween or rhe demonic, who offered Socrates a way out of the impasse Parmenides left him in. Diorima's solution is nor easy ro follow, oor only because Socrares compresses what must have been a series of lessons into one but because in the course of these lessons she wavers berween the beautiful and the good as rhe primary object of eros. The clearest way to srructure Diotima' s speech is to divide it between rhe first part, which concerns Eros as an in-berween or da.imonitm, and me second, which concerns rhe human experience of eros. This division turns our ro be equivalent, on rhe one hand, to a splir berween the good and me beautiful, and, on the oilier, ro a splir between philosophy and pederasty. The division of Diotima's speech inro twO also proves to be a division between the rrum abour Eros and the rrum about me false beliefs abour Eros mar all the previous speakers had. Before we turn to Diotima's complex argument, we should rouch on Diotima herself. Soaates presents her as a witch with powers mat extended Fu beyond erotic knowledge. Socrates mentions one disrurbing thing abour her: she somehow foresaw the coming of the phtgue ro Athens and postponed ir for ren years. Rather man the plague exhausting itself in an uncrowded city, Diotima's action served to mulriply irs virulence when all the country people had been jammed imo Athens ar the surt of me Peloponnesian War in 432 B.C. If Diotima bad not interfered and everydling else had remained the same, Athens would have almost completely recovered &om the pbgue by the srart of me war, and irs outcome would &.irly ccnainly have been an Athenian vic~ory. Socrates reporrs this in the. year before the Sicilian expedition and Athens's greatest defeat. Thar the rrum about Eros should be connected, however remotely, with these terrible evenrs seems suange, especially since an Athenian vicrory in rhe war would in all probability have saved Alcibiades &om exile and Socrates from dcarh. The postponement of the plague recalls th.e posrponemenr of rhe report of Agathon's patty. Could both be connected alike with the &.re of Athens? Apollodorus's posrponemenr of IUs report would make sense if there were a delay in rhe confum.arion of something Soc:rares accomplished, which can only now be Jtt'Ogni«d. lf there is anything ro this suggestion, it should have to do with Alcibiades, whose political actions turn our to have a Socratic elemem recogniublc only in reno-
speer. After assigning Eros to the in-berween, Diorima tells the scory of his birth, which is meant ro show wbar rrairs he gor from his &.mer Resource and his mother Poverry. What firsr srarrles us in the story is thar Eros
17'J
tSo
Clupcer N"me has nothing essentially ro do with Aphrodite; he is conceived on her birthday but otherwise they have nothjng in common, o:xcept insofar as Aphrodite in being a goddess is beautiful and Eros an:ends her as he does anything else that is beautiful At rhe party Resource gor drunk on nectar and lay down ro sleep ir off; bur Poverty, who was nor invited, bung around the doors like a beggar and plotted like a wef to conceive a child from Resource because of her own =ourcelessness. Poverry is both resourceful and resourceless; she already contains within he.rself everything Eros is supposed to inherit from his father. Eros, then, is poverry, fur poverty is split between need and neediness, or self-aware desire. The srory is a srory-a muthos and not a logos-because it splits a single entiry with an internal srrucrute into rwo separate entities rbar then have tO be recombined ro recover the original. And I would suggest that what characterizes Platonic myths in general is precisely this: a principle is sundered in such a way that a two emerges from a one before ir is reabsorbed imo something that looks but no longer is one. The procedure, then, for interpreting a Platonic myth would be ro reinsert into its negative or dark side a negative venion of the positive. If Poverty is negatively resourceless or aporos, posit.ively she is aporia or perplcxiry. However this may be, the genealogy of Eros bas the advantage of allowing Diotima ro spell out all the arrribuces of Eros as Poverry. On rbe basis of the presumed idemiry of the beautiful and the good. Socrates had g<men Agathon tO agree that eros is not the good; bur among the traits Eros has from his mother in her impoverishment are several that are good withouY being attractive. He is tough, shoeless, and homeless. Socrares shares in the first two char3c<er· istics; but the third-his bomdessncss-is the most signiliauu. If home· lessness is as double as poveny, the lack of a home does not necessarily entail, as Aristopbanes believed, that man once had a home &om which he was expelled and for which he is forever seeking. Rather, Diotirna implies, Eros is complerely at home in his bomelesmess. He is ever at home wirb neediness. He is indifferent to comfort. Eros, then, never mistakes the local for the universal. Love of country is not part of his makeup. Arismphanes is again mistake." ' the ciry is not his second-best home. A$ Diotirna presents it, Eros on hjs mother's side is a being and has a personaliry, bur on his farber's side be seems ro be co.lorless and equivalent to what the verbs, nouns, and adjectives that desctibe ~ suggest sophist, enchamc.r, magician, hunter, ere. Such a distinction reminds us of Socrates, whose irony would seem tO d issolve his uniqueness and leave nothing but rhe philosopher as such. Diotirna implies that Eros is in faa the phjlosopber, for the only thing he desires is wisdom {phrtmisis}, and
On Plato's Symp
the only thing be does throughout his life. is philosophize. We can rhen say that Socrates offers through Diotima a self-portrait, which Alcibiades recognizes but misunderswtds and gives a completely fillse account of. Alcibiades is impressed by the features in Socrates of Eros's mother Poverty, but Socrates the philosopher is all-beautiful to him. AlcibWics cannot but acknowledge the ugliness of Socrates, but he believes it can be stripped away entirely and a god within be exposed. Alcibiades delivers a speech that underlines th.e imporwtce of the in-between, of resisting the tern pta· tion to separate and combine mythically or n.ondialectically. Like Eros, Socrates is nor a solution wrapped in an enigma. The enigmaric wr.~pping is the solution. Immediately after Diorima establishes the in-betweenness of philosophy-that the midpoint between ignorance and wisdom is not halfignorance and half-wisdom but the knowledge of igno.r ance-she turns ro the issue of the beautiful and the good in relation ro eros. She begins with the dictionary definition of eros- eros is of the beautifUl things; but when Socrates cannot answer her question-What does one desire to get in desiring the beauriful?- she switches to the goods, and then Socrates has no trouble in saying that the desire for the good is for one's own happiness. He further admits that everyone wanrs to be happy; bur he is stumped by the question, lf aU human beings are lovers of the good, why do we not call everyone a lover? The rest of Diotima's account is designed to answer this question. What is left obscure is the relation berween Eros as philosopher and happiness or the good. Initially, the identification of the beautifUl and the good in Socrates' argument with Agathon denied happiness to Eros; but now that they are no longer the same, it would be possible for Eros still ro be not beautiful and yet good. but only if philosophy makes for happiness, or, more precisely, only if knowledge of ignorance is the cause of good. It looks as if this is an issue Diotima left Socrates to decide for himself. Diotima, as I have said, has to explain how the universal desire for the good, which is eros, has been universally limited to a certain kind of eros, which involves rhe beautiful ln ber account the transition is made through a slide from eros always being of the good for oneself to eros being of the good for oneself always. The shift from the eterniry that belongs to eros to the eternity that one desires for oneself grounds the distinction berween the good and the beautiful. The beautiful is the reification of desire, not as the beloved but as the production in the beautiful of one's own. Through such a formula Diotima comprehc:nds and cotrecrs Aristophanes, who had sttn that eros was of one's own bu.t not that it
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was productive or generative and dfeaive as such in the beautiful. Selfperperuacion thus becomes the chuacteristic of eros, first tluough children and ultimare.ly through glol)'. Diotima, then, reimerprers Arisrophanes in two ways. The desire for oneself, which Arisrophanes had seen was in> possible, is in fact an illusion, for it always requires a dilution of rhe self in another. This oth.e r representS che beautiful, in which rhe eternity of the beautiful and the eternity of the self are mutually annihilated in the birth of an illusory self. On the lowes.t level, this is the morral offipring; o n the next level ir is the speech of the lover in which is embodied a version of himself and the beloved. On the highest level, this speech is freed from the individual beloved and is generated in rbe beauty of the moral; it produces in the 6rst place the b.e.rocs of poetry and in the last place the appuendy eternal glory of the poet. The poet's fame is the closest to the imrnorral that the individual can come. 1t rhus turns our co be no accident that Diorima compared the res
Oo Pl•to' s SJmposium
nancy of noble youths; bur it rurns out mat wh•t these noble youths are pregnant with are the conceptions of the poets. These conceptions include not only the political virtues but most importantly the Olympian gods. who, Diorima implies, following Herodorw, are the highest offspring of Homer and Hesiod. They arc rhe beings that rhe noble young absorb and rheo anempr to reproduce in rhe. beloved through speeches. They are the phaorom images of the eternal that always appears in me mode of production. The daimonion Eros, on the other hand, is, like Socrates himself, completely Sterile. In me final section, Diotima rehearses rhe previous section in a pederastic mode. It is addressed as an exhortation to Soc.rares. Because it is pederastic., eros is no longer productive but visionary. It is not therefore an account of rhe poet as sdf-pcrperuator in the elemeor of the moral, but an appeal ro rhe young Socrates ro give up me pettiness of individuality, which holds no less for me ordinary lover than for me poet who conceals it, and ro asceod ro the beautiful in itself. Diotima exploits the beautiful in itself against the. particular beautiful for the sake of-and this is as uuly astonishing as iris bold-eliminating eros entirely. In rhe ascent oferos, as soon as the lover passes beyond human beings and contemplates the beauty in laws and practices, be ceases to be a lover and becomes solely a spectator. Diotima goes the poet-invenoor-lcgislaror one berrer. She anemprs ro wean Socrates away from pederasty by sening before him a unitary beauty rhar the poets never even dreamed of; or rather, it is rhc uniraty beauty that Agathon's praise of Eros pointed ro and could not reach, so infected was be by the anthropomorphism of Homer. Diorima surpasses Agatbon's Eros by having rhc beautiful and the good collapse and failing to preserve the diffe.rence between seeing and being with, so thar the beautiful gives birth to true viuue. The individual returnS in the form of a nonpoetic deathlessness. Diorima firsr explicates Arisrophanes and then explodes Agathon. The key word in her contest with th.c poets is "imagination." The ulrimare beaul)•, she reUs Socrates, will not be imagined (phantasthiretai} to be corporeal bur wiU be imagined to be always alone by itself, and everything else to be a parricipanr in it. Since she fails ro account for the manner of participation, she admits by her previous argumeor rhar rhis ultimate vision is righr opinion and not knowledge. Diotirna has managed, then, to give her own version of rhe double Socrates, the embodiment of Eros the philosopher and Socrates rhe moralist. It only remains ro be seen what Alcibiades makes of ir. Alcibiades says tbar Socrates does nor allow any god or man ro be praised when he is present. Alcibiades' speech is in fact the fir:!t Greek
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speech we have which praises in prose a living human being. The pos.~ibil ity of there being such praise seems to depend on the denial mat Eros is a god. Whether or nor Alcibi2des is aware mar rhis is so, and that according co Diorima there cannot be anything that can properly be called religious experience, would be irrelevant, if we can accept for writing the principle post IJOC ergo pmpur hoc. Something Socratic would be at work in Alcibiades despite the &er th:u Alcibiadcs speaks of his experience of Socrates as a form of religious oonversion and comparable to old songs that reveal those who are in need of gods. Alcibiades' speech is an extrava· gant praise of Socrates' moderation; it makes chastity. rcmpcrancc, and endurance central to Socrates and denies him wisdom. Alcibiades never takes back, at any rate, his crowning of Agathon for being the wisest and mosr beautiful. Ar the beginning of the Sympofitnn, Agathon had proposed a conresr between Socrates' wisdom and his own tragic wisdom with Dionysus as the judge; ar the end, Alcibiades, crowned with violer.s and ivy, and looking vecy much like a drunk Dionysus supported by his acolytes, gave the prize ro Agathon. SocrateS receives as recompense a drunken praise of his sobriety. This sobriety of Socrntes, which Alcibiades idenriJies with his insolcuce, is said ro be th.c inner truth of Socrates. Socrates' dcdaration in the Pbadrus that the highest form of eros is moderariou should nor be confused with Akibiades' caricature, for Alcibiades docs nor connect his undersmnding of Socrates' mod.erarion with philosophy. Alcibiades asserts that everything he says is true bur at the same time he admirs that his speech wiJI nor be coherent. The separntion be effeas between truth and coherence is of the same order as his failure to connect the ourer Satyr mask of Socrates with the beautiful image of a god within. Alcibiades docs indeed find something in Socrates, but ir is nor what be believes it is. In most of his spcecb, Alcibiadcs speaks of Socrates in rbe rhird person, but in one section he addresses him directly. That section is about Socrates' speeches, whose power does not depend on Socrates being the speaker of them, but regardless of bow poo.r their delivecy is they a.ffecr Alcibiades in tbe same way. We know already mar Apollodorus's reaction also did not depend on a dWogic encounter with Socrates. In the case, then, of Apollodorus and Alabiades, the nondialogic cbaracrer of the Symposit/111 suiu them. They both revel in self-abasemeot whenever they hear th.e Call in Socrates' words. For Apollodorus, the Call is for philosophy; for Alcibiades, me Call is moral. Socrates for him is fundamemally a preacher, whose exhortations ro repcnt:an.ce cannot but give Alcibiadcs pleasure as he wallows in self-contempt. Bur for all his power, which docs
On Plato's Symposium
not require his presence, Socrates is still nothing but a Sunday preacher. All that Alcibiades retains is the hum of a bad conscience. He does nor change his ways. What baffies him about Socrates is the universality of his message and the extraordinary uniqueness. He therefou denigrntes th.e common things Socrates always talks about-shoemakers and bbcksmiths-i.n f..vor of golden words about morality. In other words, Alcibiades discards philosophy along with the Arisrophanic absurdity of Socrates' outer shell and keeps the beautiful god of Agathon. It is this god of moralism which be links up with Socrates the individual through his experience of the u.nseduceabilicy of Socrates. Socrates merges into his speeches through th.e insolent treatment of Alcibiades' beauty; and Alcibiades concludes &om Socrates' resistance to his charms that Socrates is the real thing, a most moral moralist. On the other band, Alcibiades senses that Socrates is playing the coy lover, and that his self-control is a device to rurn the tables on him and convert him into a lover; but what be is wholly unaware of is that, as a lover, he ha.< reprojeaed onto Socrates the beloved the image of himself. Alcibiades feU in love with and, as the guests beli.cve, is still in love with , an image of Socrates that rdlecrs himself. This is the mechanism, according to Socrates in the Pha~dnu, by means of which the lover doubles himself in the beloved, so that in complete self-ignorance the beloved loves himself. This is the final twist on Aristophanes' myth. It seems, of course, quite fantastic that Alcibiades' image should be of moderation and that Socrates should have implanted in him something that bears so little relation co the Alcibiades we believe we know, especially on the eve of the Sicilian expedition. which, with its f..nrastic hopes, was the very antithesis of sobriety and moderation. But Alcibiades, as we learn from Thucydides, after be had gone into exile and escaped certain death, and had helped the Spartans both strategically and diplomatically, returned to Athens as its sol.e salvation, which consisted in winning Athens over to a course of moderation.lr is Plato's conceit tharrhis acr of moderation 'vas due to Alcibiades' failure ro undemand Socrates, and thus the enactment in himself of his false image. It is through this long-delayed effecr that Socrates came that close to saving Athens. Now thar Alcibiades is dead-be died in 404 B.c.-rhe crnzy Apollodorus can tdl the true story. Alcibiades will never know.
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Proragoras's Myth and Logos
IN G EN B RA L, A S P llA K ll R S H 0 U L 0
Ji6
N0 T
promise more than
he can deliver, nor should be prcs<:nt conclusions as me sening for his argument; bur in this case, where a parr of a Platonic dialogue is to be exarn.ined, ir is necessaJY to say somerhing about the way in which Socrates has reported his discussion with Proragoras. Socrates' narration gives a mythical setting oo a oonmythical event. Protagoras is another Orpheus who by his voice alone arranges his followers into a disciplined choru:~; me house of Callias. whose butl.er is a very Cerberus. is itself Hades where Socrates as Odysseus sees Hippias as Heracles and Prodicus as Tantalus. Proragoras. then, who chooses ro tdl6Jsr a myth and then a logos, though he could have told a logos from the beginning. is set inside a myth from which we are to cxtlllet a logos. The difference between Socrates md Protagoras involves from the first the difference between me Socratic claim th.a t the logos can nt:\'e.r be rold ap;an from rhe myr.h. and the Promgoreao claim that it can. For Socrates, the presentation of philosophia is always muthologia. Socraccs' myth bas as ics l.ogos th.e proof that Proragoras is mistaken about the possibilicy of an immediate access ro the logos, and hence Proragoras's myth must remain a myth and never emerge as a logos. Proragoras's myth stands in for a logos mar would embrace man in a complece cosmology. That virruc is teachable would be a scricr deduction from me nature of all things. The incoherence. of Protagoms' s myth and logos is a direct outcome of Proragoras's implicit claim. The Prot4goras as a whole is Socr:ues' attempt to get at the essential incoherencies in Promgor:u's myth and logos and account for them. T he l'rot11g4ras shows
Pco12goras's Myth and Logos
dtat sophistry represems in a ghostly way rhe ciry ro rhe ciry in irs essenrial incoherence. Sophistry encapsulates what it claims to have understood and mascc:red. Socrates gers Protagoras to agree rhar he teaches good counsel {
back. Now man is an intrusion into the perfecdy balanced eco-system of Epimerheus. The intrusiveness of man is due tO his lack of instincts, a lack
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to be made up for by art and bw. More parcicula.rly, man's intrusiveness is due ro his lack of cohesiveness as a genus: it is striking that women are not mentioo.e d in rhe myrb. Protagoras implies that had Epiroerheus been wise, man would have been a beast without either reason or political Jjfe. RationWry is a compensatOl)' mechanism for man's failure tO have rhe right makeup from the srart. (One may note that if Proragoras's story is slighdy altered, and we say th3t man was a latecomer in a system in which all niches were already occupied, then a theory of evolution can readily be sketched in.) Since there was nor enough time for a redistribution of powers to be carried out before. the appointed bout came when all animals had to come into tbe Jjgbr, Proragoras makes Prom.etheus's aaion rhe model of good counsel. Good counsel is needed when the pressure of eventS precludes perfea solutions. Man became rational because reason was not in control from the scan. Sinc:e man was going to come into rhe light as completely helpless, had not Prometheus intervened, and since ir seems that Epimetheus must have given the shapes as well as rhe powers to the other animals, man was in his original State nothing but life irsdf or rhe morral ittdf. Man is the mortal being in himself; his rationaliry and sociality are adventitious accretions on rbat essence. In order to compensate fo.r Epjme.rheus's failure ro leave some combination of powers for man, Promerb.eus bad to violate rbe original diruibution between mortal and divine and steal from one to make up for a defect in the other. The consequence of this violation was that Prometheus ruined Epimerheus's sys.tern as well. Prometheus made each and every man perfectly and c:ompletely artful and as a consequence self-sufliciem and isolated from other men. There were houses but no families, there was language bur no neighbors, there was re.ligion but no cities. The srran.geness of this s)jps into the absurd when Proragoras asserts that men had co found cities in order 10 pr.ot
Pro12g0ras's Myth and Logos
is present in me ProtagorllJ with the exception of Aristophanes, and Aristophanes' speech gives an acooum of man's shape along with his relation to political life and eros, but Arisrophanes is completely silent abour art and mind. The Platonic undemanding of man is the proper mean between the Arisrophanic and Proragorean accounts. How such a mean is to be understood is hinted at by Socrates prior to bis meedng with Proragoras: the laugh and the blush, he suggeSts, were the rrue contribution of Zeus to man's makeup. But ba.ck to our srory. We must, however, make sriU another detour. It is clear that Proragoras is reworking older stories; the possibility of his coming forward publicly as a sophist depends in part on bis ability to be a critic of poetry; in particular, his list of Promethean art.! bears comparison to two other lists, the first in Aeschylus's Prom~t!Mus BowuJ, the second in Sophocles' Antigoru: Promtthl!141 Bowul 1. housing '1. astronomy l· number 4· letters j. CU1ltng
6. ships 7· medicine 8. divination 9· metallurgy
Antigont
ships farming hunting lllDling
speech thought civility housing medicine
Pwtagnras gods alt.trs starucs
speech housing
dr= shoes bedding f..rmiog
[In the first lisr, the second, third, eighth, and ninth items are in opposition to the drift of the second list; the third and seventh items in the second list are in opposition to Proragoras, and tbe first three items of Proragoras's list are opposed to the drift of the second Jist, and its six.t h, seventh, and eighth items arc opposed to th.e first list.] Several things jump to the eye. Prorago.ras's distinction between the Promethean and Jovian phases implies bis awareness of the EUlurc on the part of Aeschylus's Prom.ethe.us to understand rule and political life, while failing himself to notice the problem that taming raises; and in the case of th.e Antigon~. that he noticed, on the one hand, the difference between the secoo.d antistrophe about divin.e law and the rest of the staSimon, and, on the other, the anomaly of autllnomoi orgai or civility in a list of man's uncanniness, which implied that civility was possible without gods, and so Proragoras r<"Versed it a.n d first gave man gods without civility and then civility in a second distribution. As prominent as gods and things of the
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Cbaprer Ten gods are on Prorngoras's list, so are clothing and other kmds of bod.ily protection. (He must have norioed the absence of weaving in rhc Pro· tntthn.s Bound list.} "Gods and clothing" look as if they are the Pro· merhean version of the Jovian distribution of justice and shame. We are therefore forced ro wonder why clothing is divorced from shame. Proragoras does nor allow man ro be armed against beasrs individu· ally, and he does not allow the first city of Promethean man to be armed against one anothe.r. Protagoras, then, has given a peculiar version of Soc· rates' true city of the R~ub/ic in which rhe coUe.crive life of artful man involves religion but no ruk Protagoras, however, has not made mao when isolated a jack of all trades and when social a specialist; rather, he has scarred from ornnico.mperenr individuals in isolation who on coming together become specialists without, however, working justly mgether. Plato, we may say, lets Proragoras o~rve the defecrs in Socr:ates" true ciry and try ro solve them in a way that does nor involve any iorervention on the pan of the intedocumrs: Proragoras appeals over the heads of those he is addressing to the character of Athenian democracy as a corrective ro the radical isola.t ion of Promethean man. This appeal allows for rhe inrroduccion of sociality bur stiU without a ruling element. Whereas in the Rtpublic G laucon's objection ro the true city ultimarely allows for the rule of the philosopher-king, Pror:agoras's adjustment of his stoty ro fit Athenian democraey does nor allow for the rule of the sophists. lo light of the later argument, in which Socrates asks Pror:agoras how the 6ve virrues are related to one another, Promgoras should not have said that each was a part of the face but rather that moderation and justice corre· spond to the F..ce as a wnole and thus represent their indispensability as habirs for the possibility of rbe rul.e of wisdom or good counsel. Proragoras says that completely self-sufficient men first came together to prorecr themselves against beasts; bur they dispersed when they proved to be unjust co one another. He seems ro imply rhat man's injusrice co man did greater narm or was experienced as greater harm than whatever beam iu8icred on them; bur be has raken away the possibility of any ecooomic basis for their injustice by making each man self-suflicient. Man, then, is by art radieaUy separate and by nature radically uojusr. Mao, then, cannot be mortal life; he must be essentially willful over against others. Protagoras seems ro be in oecd of something like to thumoeides in order to ground man's injustice. Protagoras has cerrainly seen that artful man is wholly unerocic and asocial; the specialization of arrs forces men to be rogerner but it does not make them live together; but Proragoras is alrogerher silent about the domineering nature of man over man; for
Proragoras's Myth :wd Logos had he admit1:ed it. he would have had ro acknowledge its social. charaaer and therefore the impossibility of there ever being pre-Promethean man. A sigo of the difficulry is this: Proragoras spew metaphorically of the war beasts waged against men, bur though he grants that polemiki is part of poliriki, he never speaks of wan between cities. Promerh
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Zeus is needed in order ro sanction the ero:urion of criminals. This is nor something that Promethean man could. figure ouc for himself: he could not figure out, on the basis of rhe difference bet\veen an and nonan, mar criminals are not the ignorant. Protagoras implies, therefore, that the politi.cal an is teachabl.e but is not an. This massive contradiction exp.l2ins why the structure of the Protagortts is so complex.: if the political an is virtue and is teaeh2ble, every argument that Socrates mounts that purports ro prove chat virtue is knowledge should meer with Protagoras's immediate acceprance; but Protagoras balks at accepting every one of Socrates' arguments, which are all designed ro u1iue Socrates and con· Jirm Protagoras's claim. To understand why Proragoras does nor let his own claim be vindicated by Socrates is at the bean of the mystery of the
Protagortts. Socrates had said chat the Athenians do not believe that everyone has political vinue; to prove, to the comrary, that everyone partakes of justice and the rest of political virtue, Protagoras offers the following. Ifsomeone says he is a skilled flute pbyer and is not, everyone laughs or gers angry, and his relatives try to put sense into him as if he were crazy; bur if someone whom everyone knows is unjust denounces himself in front of the many, everyone says this is madness and nor mode.ration; and everyone ought 10 say he is just regaid.less, and everyone who does not pretend co it is crazy. This proof .is not easy to undeman.d: bow does it prove that everyone really believes that men paruke of justice and moderarion and nor that everyone must pretend to partake? Protagoras seems to be saying that the distincti.on between moderation in technical knowledge and moderation in morality shows that moderation is nor just habit bur rational and evidence of the presence of good counsel in all men. More cauriously, one can say, everyone knows that one must rell lies, and rhe cicy of Promethean mao is the city of truth-rel.ling. or, in Socrates' language, the true city, and that justice is not possible without falsehood. The city, then, does not rest on a myth, as Socrates wou.ld have it, but on rhe universal knowledge of the use of myths. The.re are two requirements of political life, jusrice and sanity (knowing when 10 lie and when not). Zeus arranges for justice by allowing men to ex~tc the justice-incompetent; the human equivalent for moderation i.s ro agree that the truthful unjust man is craz)'. The crazy, however, cannot be justly killed; the ciry kills on.ly the sane; they kill those who lay claim to justice; they kill those whom Zeus forbade them ro kill, for rhc savage are chose outside rhe city who do nor know enough about justice to lie about it. Protagoras, then, can get everyone sensible and moderate but not simulraneously just; and in the argument
Protagoras's Myth and Logos with Socrates Iacer he creates a diversion before he would have been forced to identify justice and moderation and reaffirm the unity of virtue. If, moreover, one puts together Protagoras's argumenr about me universal distribution of moderation wim real justice, one gets Socrates' counterexample before Cephalus, from which it would follow of necessity mar nor everyone has good counsel, for otherwise one would nor need to lie because no one would be crazy. Protagoras's evidence for me reachability of virrue is punishment. No one unless he is like a beast punishes irrationally. Proragoras assumes rhar this image qtJa image is always an effective deterrent; otherwise, he would have to admit that .i t would be possible to pun.ish bestially and irrationally, and so it would be possible 10 institute a city of quasi-beasts. As Proragoras develops his argument, ir turns our rha.t the city can punish rationally if ir punishes on each occasion for th.e sake of 1hose who wimess d1e punishment and who are thus deterred from injustice. So regardless of whether the city punishes rarionally or not, it punishes rationally if the desired dfea is achieved. Proragoras confuses rationality wim the reaching of a lesson. He rakes the literal meaning of nouthereb-10 pur mind into someone-as the true meaning of ~knocking sense into someone" by bearing him up. Punishmem is rational because what one says one is doing is what one is doing. It is me collective jusrice of the. city rhar marches the individual's sensible refusal ro admit tbar he is unjust. The esse.nce of irrarional punishment or vengeance is ro tty ro undo the done. No man in th.e city is unaware of the irreversibiliry of action, and in this sense everyone in rhe Jovian ciry is rational. Promethean rnan, then, was apparendy unaware of rbe noncanceUability of time. The arts because they are synthe~ic do not contain this knowledge. Promethean man did not know mar he would die, or he believed in resurrec.cion. So Zeus brought man through Hermes the psychopomp the knowl.edge thar death is final. Man m.e o became sober. The Jovian law of eucution ~ vealed the minimum condition for sobriety. "IGU rbe unjusr!" meant "Know that you are mortal. • Now i1 is remarkable that in Aeschylus's account, pre-Promethean man did have knowledge of his own death while Prometheus removed it and put in blind hopes instead. Proragoras has apparendy taken this to mean that the universal opi.nion that man is mortal is a posr-Prome1hean gift of Zeus. (In any case, one should consider in ligh1 of this, Pindar's Olympian II, where the overrh.row of Kronos by Zeus is taken to entail the cancellation of time through the invention of the soul. The Zeus of Piodar acknowledges man's irrational resentment against time and tries ro moiJify us with the hope of an afterlife.) lf, then,
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Cb•prer Teo
Prora.goras is connecting the awareness of time wirh Zeus, the unimelli.gible sequence of Promethean man's ans would re.Becr his unawlll'eness of nme. The parade of irrationality in the guise of rarionaliry in Prora.goras's myth emerges in rwo ways. He says the Athenians punish chose rhey beJjeve are unjusr; they rhus violate Zeus's commandment to punish the jllsrice-incornpetent, for that oommandment depends on knowledge and not opinion. Prora.go.w willlarer say rhat rhe mosr unjust wirhi.n the ciry i.s just if compared ro the savages oursidc the ciry. He thereby implies that none of these can be punished in conformity with Zeus's commandment. Prora.gow's silence, moreover, about war once the Promethean city dissolves is explicable if one draws the consequence of his argument: rhe enemy are killed because they ace in.capable of partaking in jusrice. Thus the war against beasrs in th.e Promethean ciry becomes realized i.t1 rbe Jovian city because the enemies are beasts. The. bescializarion of man belongs together with the civi.liu.tion of man, and ir is nor rrue thar the savages do not partake of Justice. Prora.goras bas oo eire a comedy in order ro show whom he means by savages. Savages are an invention of the poets designed ro conceal the savagery of the. ciry. So much for Proragoras's myth; when he comes ro answer Socrates' question, why the good do nor reach their own sons ro be good, Prora.goras calls it a logos. This d.isrinction should reflect rhe difference berween the minimal justice and moden.cion all citizens must have and the good counsel reserved for rhe good. Ir should reflecr the difference berween the justice and shame Zeus disrribmed and the good counsel Zeus himself had in so disrributing them. So the myth and rhe logos sections ought to correspond oo a distinction berween morality and prudence and fit more or less with the movement of the &public. lt is nor ar once obvious that this is the case' if Prora.goms had wanted to do so, he could have dropped all mention of piety in the logos--section- Piery, however, belonged to Promerhean man and was separ:ne from justice and sban1e.. lr could not be dropped without dropping every con.necrion berween art and morality and thus admitting that the political an cannot be caught. "Belief in gods" ar the beginning imp]jes that in rime it can become knowledge. Perhaps the mosr remarlcWle feature of Proragoras' s logos is the resemblance of irs srages to those of the Rtpublit 2-3 together wirh an exrraordinn.ty emphasis o.n beating. Prota.goras's education is both musieal and unmusical; it is as if be maintained the identity of the philosopher and the d og, with which Socrates srarrs our as a serviceable image, and preserved it throughout, whereas Socrates gradual!)' moves from the pte-
Pro01goras's Myth ond Logos
senrarion of education as the music-..J education of the rhumoeideric ro i!S truth as the education of the erotic. Such a movcmem does nor take place in Protagora.\s a.ccount. This Orpheus is the enehanring preaeher of punishment and reven.ge. Protagoras divides education into two srages, private and political Private education is itself divided imo a prdirerare and a literate mge. The family has irs biggest role at the first mge, when rhe noble, the jusc, and the holy are taught. Protagoras. however, is silent about the good; indeed, he never spc;Ua of the. good as a piece of instruction by anyone, even though he claimed rhat good counsel or advice about the good was his own art and the city's knowledge. A sign of this is the ellipsis of the apodosis at 315d5, where he does oor say what the consequence is if one obeys or is persuaded by one's earliest reachers. Proragoras is much more explicit about the consequence of disobedience: the child is bent and twisted like a piece of wood un6l he is srr-.Ughtened out by threatS and bearings. If, however, the boy is so straightened our, how come be does not keep hi.s acquired shape? How come at rhe end the city has to straighten nim out again after he bas finished his private education? In the second stage., the central lesson comes from good poets in whose poems there arc models of emulation. Protagoras soys not a word about the gods. What Proragoras presentS so casually, the praise of good men, is the hard...:arned result of nine books of the RLpublic, where in the tenth book the possibility of such encomia is granted alongside the hymns to the gods. In the third stage, which belongs co good lyric poers, Procagoras moves, just as Socraces does in Book 3 of the &public, from spccch ro rhychm and harmony. Sue perhaps what is more astonishin.g, the training in courage is emirely given over to gymn:u-rics; but this reassignment, which portrays courage as entirely corporeal, is the culmination of the movement in the separation of courage and moderation in Socrates' account so thac they finally emerge as problenutic objects of inquiry. Protagoras does all this with the left hand. It looks. then, ac this point thac justice and piety are learned in nursery school, moderation and courage in grammar and high school, and Pr~ ragoras of course is the graduate dean. Bur where is the college of wisdom? The answer is. rhe laws of the city. The city compels the young co learn the laws and live in conformity wirh them so that they rnay not act at random. As f.u as the city goes, all rhat expensive education is a waste, for whacever che young have been taught and however they have been whipped into shape are wholly inadequate for instilling obedience ro rh.e law. \Vhat has happened? The laws of the city are the legislation of the
191
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Cluptor Teo
ancient good legislaroo. The good legislacors are nor the good poers, for if they were, Protago.ras could not have said that the former poers coo· cealed their sophist.ry under ~he guise of poerry; but it is now revealed that the secret sopbisrs who were poers are openly used for education in private. Protagoras rhus admits thar education in poeuy is in fundamenral viol:uion of the city and irs laws. He admirs in &bon with Socrates that anciem poeuy cannot be the proper education if the srandard is vi.nue as the city undenrands virrue. Pro~ras admi.rs, then, rhat poetry does not teach political vi.nue and that poUrical vinue is nothing bur the result of terror and pain. Insofar as the city reaches anything, it reachc:.• one not to get c:tught. That Pro~ras knows or at least comes ro know rhar rbis is the consequence of his a:rgumem comes out larer when, in abandoning rhe main argument that vinue is a whole of pans, Protagoras criricius Simonides for having a contradiction in a shon lyric poem. Pro~ras calls such criticism a large part of education. He thus implies thar educa· cion in poetry is not political virtue and is incompatible with it. In criticiz. ing Simonides, be sides with all men who believe that to keep virtue in one's possession is the hardest of all things, whereas the poers are at one in saying thar once it has been acquired it is easy ro retain. The poets say virrue suirs man, Pro~ras says iris croublesome. Pro~ras, in attacking poetty, in the name of univeJ:Sal opinion, urges the city to abandon music education and rely entirely on punishment and threars. Proragoras the rationalist urges the brutalization of III2Jl. Larer in the dialogue there is a discussion of rhe word Minos, which literally means "rerrifying" and comes ro mean "skilled and dever." It is the word used at the beginning of the. 6rst stasimon of the AntigontnoA.I..a 'ta 8e1 va KOU8€v &v9proJtou 8u VO'tepov ~tE.I..n: the uncanniness of man turns out to be behind Pro~ras's myth. Pro~ras claims that the teachability of virtue is the same as the hidden unity in the double meaning of lkinos: To teach is to terrify. Now such a forced mating of Beating with the Muses amounts to the theme of the Gargim, where Socra· res explores the possibility of a punitive rhetoric. The Protagorm and the Gorgias are a paired set of dialogues that mke the R~public apan. The Gorgias examines the soul-muaure of the &public apart from the city, and the Proragorm examines the ciry-srrucrure of the Republic apart from the soul. The rwo dialogues thus ful611 Socrates' daim that the relation between rhetoric and sophiscry is analogous to rbar berween the an of justice and tbe art of legislation, which he sketches at the beginning of rhe Gargim. There he asserts that as cosmetics is ro cookery so sophiStry is ro rhetoric, and as gymnastics is to medicine so legislation is to justice.
Proagor:u's Myth and Logos
Sophistry and rheroric are the phantom images of two genuine am. They are phantoms because they pass off the irrational as rational, Gol:gias in starting from the so-called Socratic th.,is tha.t virtue is knowledge, and Protago.ras from the rationaliry of punishment. The movement of the N.'O dialogues is rhus rcvened. In the Corgias, Socrares passes from the epistemic-h.igh of the Gorgias section, through the rationality ofjust punishment, to an attack on pleasure, whereas in the ProtagorQJ. Protagoras begins with the rationality of punishment, and Socrates separates them through his Spartan myth, where Spartan courage is the mask of wisdom, only to end up with a pseudo-science of pleasure. Socratic politics in its truth is as alien from hanhness as it is from hedonism, but this does not preclude it from playing at botb as genuine displays of iu own good counse~ rather, it is all but compdled toward these.
197
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E N
On Plato's Lysis [Prof....,, James Gordley] had osserttd rhar within limits a word c.m be app~ed to different pan.irulaJ:s, but srlU have an invariable meaning. Thus, one can make a "friend" of a muluplicity of human beingsthough not of a kangaroo. Professor Daube replied, "Perhaps in sraid Berkeley, a sincere and lasting friendship with a lcangaroo is beyond the pale, but in San I'r:w.cisco, where I l;ve, it is rogarded as enrlrely normal ... 1
present himself :tc his sleaziesr. He reports how he undertook to pimp for rhe silly H ippothales and succeeded first in smashing the false pride of Lysis and dten in breaking down rhe disrinaion between love and friendship, so rhat Lysis could nor bur accepr Hippothales into the same association he shared with Menexenos. The puzzle, Who ls a friend? served as a cover for the display of Socrates' erotic redmique. That he did it for free seems to make it all the more reprehensible, since he did nor have the excu.~e of his own advantage for disillwioning Lysis about his family and advancing Hippothales' inreresrs. [f we disregard the frame and consider the argumentS about rbe friend in themselves, we imita're Socrates, who argues for the neutrality of body, soul, and other chings, if each is taken by itself, as if there ever were a living body rhar was neirher sick nor healtl:ty. The rheorerical arrirude thar Socro:res ocempli6cs. in urgi.n.g the perspective of neutral being, is as false to the nature of things as is the detachment of the perplexicies of friendship from a serring that determined from the srarr the rrium phanr assimilacio.n of philnn ro mm This harsh indicrmeru of SocmR$ iJ ddivered by Socrares himself. He makes himself look bad without offering any defense. His accoum, which confirms the worst nightmares of Athenian F.uhers, supplies his auditors with Jar more info.rmarion abour whar reaUy happened than anyone within the dialogue. could know. The,re is, in rhe lirsr place. rhe difference between the circle ofyoung men, whom Socrares meets ouuide .Mikkos's palaestra, and the boys within, who do nor know the purpose of IN T II E £ YSJ S PLATO HAS $0 C R AT B S
•98
On Placo's Lpis
Socrates' questioning, The boys are naive theoreticians of friendship, the young men have already lost theit innocence. Among the boys, moreover, Lysis sh~ with the young men an argument that Menexenos does nor know; Lysis shares with Socrares a conversation that the young men aff not privy tO; and we share with SocrateS his inr.erpretation of events no one knew at the time. We know in patticular of a mistake Socrates almost made. Even if, however, we are more privileged than anyone. else, we still have not been fully taken into Socrates' confidence. We are not his most intimate friends before whom Socrates lets down his hair and from whom he holds nothing back. Socrar.es' shamdessness, in allowing us, on the basis of evidence he himself supplied, ro look at him in the worst possible light, cannot be construed as candor. Socrates has left things out. He does not expl2in, in general, why be re.tells the story, and, in parricular, why he decided to hdp Hippothales our and nor continue on his way to the Lyceum. Although he is not unamacted by Hippothales' invit:ttion to join him and enter the palaestra, he still resists before he finds out whether there. is anything in it for him. In the interval between SocrateS' question- "On what condition shall I enter?" -and the arrangement that guaranteed the ensnarement of Lysis, Socrates heard something that made up his mind to enter. We are left ro punle our for ourselves what finally induced Socrates to show oR' his skills and blacken his name. The complete crust we associate with friendship, Socrates assi.g ns to knowledge. It is through wisdom, Socrates tells Lysis, that Lysis could be universally loved and at the same time g;Un the freedom ro do as he liked. Jusr as whoever is rrusred to be an expert cook can add ro the soup all the salt he wants, and whoever is trusted ro be an expert physician can pour ashes inro the eyes of the son of the Persian king. so Socrates, who proves ro Hippothales his own competence in erotic things, can ddude any forlorn lover, who puts nimsc.lf entirely in his hands, and carry our any whi.msical enterprise he hru in mind. On this occasion Socrates' whim is to declare his lack of friends and baffiernenr before the question, "Who is a friend?" Within the claim robe wise in erotic things, Socrates discusses his own ignorance. While he prerends to know in an instant who is lover and who beloved, he pretends nor ro know who is the &iend. [fwe assume that the lover wants to become. a friend, or, ar least as Hippothalc:s puts it, wants to become &iendly (prosphilis) to rhe beloved, Socrates' knowledge scops at inequalities, but if and when an equality is realiud, his ignorance begins. Socrares knows everything there is to kn.o w about the imbalance and instability of relations, bur when it comes to harmony and what the proverb koina ta phi/1;n means, Socrares is ar a loss. Philosophy,
199
l.OO
Ch•p<« Eleven Socrates seems ro !,., $aying. is whar he knows, bur wisdom, in which me knower and the known would !,., as one, dudes him, nor only in the sense char he docs nor have ir b11t also by way of Meno's paradox char he would nor know what ir was even if he did have it. If this is the drift of Socrares' arg11ment, chen the grafting of Hipporhales onto rhe friendship of Lysis and Menc:xenos was nor designed ro promote the lover bur to demore the friend and introduce l.o nging and desire intO what the lover believes he wanes and rhe friend believes he has achieved. Such a conclusion, however, is not alrogttber satisfacrory. In the dialogue, philosophy bdoov. as irs name indicates, to what Socrates docs not know; it is not assigned to the outer frame, in which me issue is eros and Socru.es' knowl. The =ting of the dialogue thus seems ro pur imo question rhe relation between SoctateS' erorics and Socrates as philosopher, which in orhec dialogues, where they are treated as rhe same, cannot even !,., raised as a problem. If the question ~ to !,., put linguistically, one would ask whether it was just an accident chat phib>Iophia had nor ~ designated erolDsophia (wisdom of love), and if Socrates had been in charge from the lint:, whether philosophy would have been srarnped with his own nnderstartding of ir. If Socr.nes is nece$$a(ily a secondary development within philosophy, Is the emergence of eros as philosophy likewise secondary~ Pannenides' own chariot is urged on by thwnos, bur when Pacmenides is a Plaronic character he speaks at least metaphorically of ero1. t Ir might !,., thought, alternatively, that Soccares is perfectly satis· 6ed with "philosophy," and nothing is at stake in the apparenr difference IJ<,rween phikin and mm. The peculiar structure of rhe Lyris, in which everything turns on keq1ing friendship and love distinct, argues against Socrares' acquiescence In "philosophy." If; however, eros does hear on philosophy, we 5eem to !,., invited by the L71is to infer that as Socrates' knowledge is ro Socrares' ignor:ance as eros is ro philia. so the breakin.g of the barrier IJ<,rween rhe ourer and the inner frame, which is symbolically repre-senred by the occasion of the Hetmaia that allows young men and boys to mingle, would involve the erne.rgence of philosophy as Socrates' knowledge of ignorance. Socrates would rhus be recountin.g in the Lysis how he came ro understand the relarion between the rwo primary cnnsriruenLS of his malreup, the gifr from god to rttognize lover and beloved and his constanr search from childhood for friends. Socr.ue' has already worked up the 6rst intO :mart and the s«nnd into a conundrum. The conundr11m Is m11t he mwc in some sense know whar a frie.n d is bur does nor know how co gn about 6nding one, and me arc is thac he knows whar something is mar no one else who ever ocperienced it knows. There is. on the one
On Placo's Lpu
hand, the opaciry of an experience, and, on the other, the obscurity of a way. Socrares figured our what it means for the ideal ro be experienced as the real, bur he still does nor know wherher his own posrulared goal is real. He is possibly under a ddusion himself while he has seen through the illusions of everyone dse. If the LysiJ represents Socrates' relation w philosophy, the.n it should indicate how Socrates combined his erotic science with his eroric disposition toward the acquisition of friends. If we rake Socrates ar his word, his desire ro h2ve friends is no more explicable for rhan another's love of horses or quail.s.) There is no "theory" ro explain his rasre, any more chan a prefere.nce for redheads has a deq~ significance. Socrates rhe pederast goes ro rhe heart of rhings, Socrates the phiktairot is just rhe way he is. It is ncither good nor bad, neithe.r grand nor base. Socrates seems to be rhe paradigm of neutral being. on which his account of friendship turns. Socrates' individuality, which resists logos and metaphysics, seems ro be equally true of friends. Lovers talk about rheir love. and that is wh2t makes them philosophicnUy inreresting"rruly" and "always" :ue never far from their lips; but friends do nor talk abou.r their friendship, and that is what makes rhem devoid of inreresr. The lover Hippothales cannot shut up about Lysis, the friends Lysis and Mencxenos have never discussed in all rheir quarrels what rhe proverl> lroina til phi/on means. Eriit is experienced as a god. Philia or Phi/om is a fiction of poets. Oiorima has ro demyrh.ologize trot agains.r experience and make its verl>al cognate cenual, bur no one is needed to do rhc same for "Friend." Gods show up as strangers and nor friends. Jusr as there is nothing theologically at srake in the friend, so there is a range in philm that resists an exact determinacion. Whoever or wharever one is attached to in wharevcr degree or manner is philot. If Helen is rhe ulrimarely desirable, for whom nor even Trojan elder$ are distressed ro fighr, Briseis is nor, even though Achilles uses her as an excuse to quarrel wirh Agamemnon. Briscis is but part of Achilles' measly reward for merit, oligon u phi/on te, of which "a small thing but my own" is not an entirely incorrect o:anslarion.4 Everything un:farhorna.ble about friendship shows up in rhe rdarion berwcen Hipporhales and Ktesippos. Granted that Kresippos .is particularly insol.e nt and sbarp, 1 it is surprising how scornful and mocking he can be of Hippothales and still remain his friend. If he were not a good friend and very understanding, he would nor have pm up with the drunk and sober Hipporhalcs singing and reciting day and night hls composiriom in praise of Lysis. Even if he exaggerates and Hippothales does nor harp on Lysis as much as he claims, or his poems are not as bad as he
101
w•
Cbaprer &-w
says rhey are. Hippotbalo, if he bad to put up wi.t:h rhis kin.d of abuse, would have brol«:o wilh him loo.g ago were not mere something be valued in his friendship with Krcsippos., unl~ of course we are to suppose chat he rolerares rhis side of Kresippos only 10 gain access ro Lysis through his cousin Menexenos (~o6d3); bur if this were rhe case, Kresippos is surely dever enough ro have figured it out and broken with him for that reason alone. T here is, men, already in me outer frame enough matter for reflection oo rbe friend, and it would have been unnecessary to confront a milder version of t:he same rensions in Lysis and Menexenos. Lysis has already derecced in Menexenos the etistical training of Kresippos and feels himself ro be enough at a disadvantage to wanr Socnues ro knock rhe sruffing our of him and mala: b.iro feel the lash of denigration as much as had just experienced it from Socrates. Socrares, however, =ms not be imeresred in rhese aspaxs of friendship. He records them bur d.oes nor rrear rhem. He seems ro be afier rhe alphabet, or berrer perhaps rhe syntax, of friendship rbat can alford co assign things of this order to rhe unlimited of individual experience. Whereas we mighr be indined ro suppose thllr rbllr was all there was ro friendship. Socrares, by lllllking philosophy cen· rral 10 his understanding of it:. thinks ~ discerns a mucrure in it rhat can be fOrmulated precisely and dispense with all the wriety of irs expression. This strucr.u re, nowever, for all iu comprehensiveness does have a core of individualicy. It is Socnres rhe philosopher who srands at the cenrer of "the friend." T he Hccmaia Wll5 a fesrival that allov.red some Joos.,ning of rbe rules chat governed palamras but no~ as much, if we can rrusr Aeschines, as Socrates represencs ln rhe Lysis. The neanisltoi could mingle wirh rhe paides, and the slaves could ger drunk on rne job. bur Socrates should still have not accepted Hippothales' inviwion.6 We musr suppose either chat the regulations were not at all rimes srricdy mainmined or t:hat Socr-•res deliberately Hours them and courts trouble for himself and Mikkos. To discuss friendship is to challenge the authorities. ln deed, Socrares bas nor ler rhe corrupting ralk about S
ne
Oo Plaro's &J!is rage, imposes certain consrminrs as well. The occasion sq>ararcs Lysis from Menexenos for a crucial moment, as Menexenos goes off ro auend to some. sacrifices, and SOCfllres manages ro complete in me interval the mas· rer argument for rhe subsequem discussion: Socrates returns ro it at rhe end. The subsequent discussion, in wh.ich Menexenos is the main interlocutor, is unde.r a rime consuaint. It can last no longer than rbe rime available before Lysis has to go home (2.11b5); and again Socrates manages ro come in under rhe wire, bur perhaps only because the slave paidag6goi delayed as long as they dared to gather up rheir charges. The situation recalls the Rtpublic, where Cephalus's withdrawal to auend the sacrifices allows Socrares ro dismiss any obligation of ours ro me gods as pan of justice. Cephalus's wirhdmwal also weakens rhc obligation Polernarchus mighr otherwi~ have felt ro defend his f.uher's position. In the Lysis Socrates exploitS Lysis's isolation from his friend to destroy any confidence Lysis migb.r have had in rhe uncond.irioned love of his mothes and fiuher. The f.unily, as the primary experience of philia and one's own, goes by the board under tbe auspices of Hermes. T he sacred works i.o harmony witb Socrates to overthrow tbe sa.crcd. The slaves return as daimoner at tbe end roo late tO repair rhe damage. Socrares' argumenr wirh Hippomalcs, which convinces him of his expertise and encourages him co enlist Socrares in m:tking Lysis more amenable, bear:s directly on the fir:s·t argwnenr wirh Lysis. Socrares convinces Lysis rhat knowledge alone makes for right; so that ev<:n his own is not his own unless he can show he knows how to use ir, and once he has tbar knowledge his own is no more his own tban his neighbor's is his own since knowledge knows no boundaries berwcen "mine" and "mine. • ln ligb.t of chis argument, Hippothales' celebration of Lysis's family is doubly absurd. In supposin.g char what belonged oo members of lysis's family belongs to Lysis- ir is all in the family- H.ippomales becrayed his belief mat if Lysis became his all the glory of Lysis's family would descend on him as well. juSt as the beautiful blond on rhe arm of her escort is presum.e d co shed hes beauty on him (even if it is only a proof of his power), so Hippothalts, in crowing before he won, was laying claim to goods rhar, Socrates proves, not even Lysis has. Hippoth11les cannor have a share in whar is not Lysis's to offer. Hippotnales had pur Lysis our of reach and made ~ absurd by writin.g a poem in which he declared rhar h<: was in love witb a descendant of Zeus. lndeed, had be put together the vicrories of Lysis's farber and grandfather wim me origin of me family in me offspring of Zeus and the daughter of rhe founder of me deme Ailone, and men coupl.d mcm with the entertainment rhis
103
>04
Chaptc. Eleven
offipring gave w Her.ades on. the basis of their kinship, Hippotbales would have written an old-fashioned Pindaric epinikion. We can easily reconmucr on a Pindaric model the general plan of such a poem. lc would have begun with the parallel between Hippothales winning Lysis and his family wirming chariot aces. There would chen have been an account of the relation between the universal and the local, between Zeus and the daughter of the hero-founder of an Attic derne, and how this relation led to the bestowal of a heredinuy priesthood of the He.raclidae on the family ofLysis.1 Hippothales' love-poem and vicrory ode in one would also put side by side a scory of love and a story of friendship (unismos}. A mytbic:al connectio.n would have been made between em and philia. The Pindaric Hippotbales would be saying that the heroic contains within itself both tb.e beau!)' of eros and the sacred bond of friendship, and the Iauer is an offspring of the forrne.r. One's own is erot.ically divine in origin, bur genealogic:ally ir is preserved through the sacred. All this would then be renewed in the mutual love of Lysis and Hippothales, of which the poem icself would be the n.ew offspring. Socrates dismantles this entice f.Ucy tale. Ir may do as poetry, bur it does not answer H:ippothales' n.eeds. Ktesippos saw char Hippotbales had lost sight of Lysis in writin.g up family history and myth. Despire the anemion he must have given to Lysis, Hippotbales could nor come up with anything that was both properly Lysis's and lovable. Lysis's beauty, which made him known to Socrates, was in the form of t!idos (204es) it manifesred the class-and everything else Hippothales collected had nothing peculiar (idion) to Lysis in iL Ir is, I chink, chis remark of Kresippos that setdes the issue for Socrates whether he is ro inrerrupr his journey or not. The idum, which is good and does not become u.niversal once there is knowledge, determines Socrates' inquiry inro the friend. In raking away from Lysis any ground for hi$ pride, Socrates offers simultaneously the exhilaration of omnicompetence or wisdom char would give back w Lysis even more chan was taken away. But what happens co Soctares, who knows cha.r wisdom is impossible? How can he keep anyrhin.g his own in light of his ign.orance1 Socrates can knock Lysis down while he sets him up, but is not Socrates already down and our for the coum? The picture he paints for Lysis-the freedom co do whatever he likes while usurping through. his wisdom what is really his-cannot even be a dream for Socrates. \Vithin the domain of his erotic science, Socrates can of course become everyone's friend and do with them what be likes, bur rhis partial scien.c e is as nothing 10 what Socrates does nor know; and
On PLuo'• /..pis
besides, even within the erotic domain, Socrates does not have an)'thing that is his own, for by his knowledge his own returns to him as a universaL It is precisely because the wise Lysis would have nothing of his own that Socrates has to offer him the freedom of whimsi.cality. The i.n dilkrenee of vdleity survives rota! wisdom, and nothing else. It is the counterparr ro Socrates' peaonal rasre for friends in light of his erotic wisdom. Lysis's peculiar good, which Hippothales failed to spot, is discovered by Socrates. An outburst of Lysis against his express promise not to be more than a listener elicits Socrates' pleasure at his phiwsophia (213d7). Philosophy seems to be that which can be one's own despite one's ignorance. A blush immediately followed lysis's outburst. He realized that he had erred and against his will confessed it. This involuntaty expression of shame, which publicly displays something one wishes to keep private, is at the opening of the Lyris. Hippothales first blushes when Socrates sees through his carefully neutral and philosophic answer to Socrates' question, ~Who is the beauty?~ "One of us thinks one is, another another. • By his wording, Hippothales wanted to forestall Socrates' question, but instead he left an opening. He wanted Socrates to enter without declaring his interest. His wording expresses the same indifference as Socrates does when he puts his love of friends on a par "ith any other acquisitive preference (104b3, md7-8). Hippothales blushes a second time and even more after Socrates tells him about his peculiar gift. Socrates' gift seems to be nothing more than the capacity to understand the blush. That the blush occurs exclusively in Socratically narrated dialogues-1Uld nowhere more frequently is there the verb for it (n-urhrian) than in the Lyrir'-.suggesr:s that it is of some importance for philosophy and Socrates' need to retain his own withom knowledge. The Lysis also contains the only occasion when Socrates admits he almosr made a mistake. After he. ha.s nU!Diliated Lysis, he was about to point out triumphantly to Hippothales that rhis is how one goes about cutting a beloved down to size, but h<: checks himself at the lasr moment wnen he notices th<: anguish in Hippothales' face and remembers that he had not wanted to make his presence known co Lysis (~IOCS-7)- Socra.res' pride almost got the better of him and ruined Hippothales' prospectS while trumpeting his own skilL Had Socrates bluned out what he had intended to sa:y, he would apparently have blushed a second later when he realiud that he bad betrayed his role and thereby aborted any further diseUS$ion of the friend. Socrates' account of his almosr-errot and quick recovery cannot but remind us of his sudden inflammation on catching sight of what was within Charmidcs' cloak and his regaining self-concrol with some effon.9 Both episodes
•os
1o6
Ch:oprer Eleven
seem ro point ro the issue of sdf-knov.~edge and irs impossibiliry: When Cbarmides hlwhes alter Socrates urges bim tO look wi rbin and report what he perceives his moderat.ion to be, be dO<S nor say that it is shame (t~q-d6).
The erotic diagnostics of Socrates seems to be as trivial and useless as Socrates says be is in all other respects b04b8-cr). lr is trivial because ir consists of an easy inference from a blush, and ir is useless because norhing can be done with such an inference. It is as certain as it is vain. If, of course, it were the same as th.e detection of philosophic natures, as iodlsp<:n.sable for itS detection as Ills ejaculation, and Lysis's blush then the display of a defect, which through irs ve.ry display reveals the defect ro oneself, would have some weight for Socnue$' understanding of the connecrion berwem his weD-known interest in beautiful boys and philosophy proper. 10 This possible connection mala:s Socrates' examination of the friend all the more puzzling. A huge range of the blush belongs ro fflis: the blush seems to have no place in friendship. Hippotbalcs pestered Krtsippos and othcJS shamelessly about Lysis; but as soon as be mer someone ourside the ci.rde. of his intimates, he blushed. Kresippos does not have as nice. a ~ of the d.ilference between the private and rbe publ.ic as Hippotbales does; or e.lse be believes thar Socrates is to be i.ncluded among Hippothales' friends, though even so he thinks he has ro justify the treachery by saying that Socrates would have learned of Lysis soon enough. On the basis, then, of the opening scene, we can say that Socrares is looking tOr someone ro whom he can 53)' anything and everything. and before whom he will nor h•vc to blush: the auditor of the Channitks might be thought ro fit the bill !t would rhus seem rhar Sacrares' search for a &iend is a search for the unblushing philosopl><:r, the philosopher without shame, th" philosopher who has overcome ltis radical defeccivene$5 or is not aware of it:. In either case, for S01.'1'llteS ro gain rbe &iend would be to give up eros. Socr>cres criticizes Hipporhales' approach ro Lysis by way of rwo images. He is as poor a bunter as he is a poet (1o6a6-b8). Huorer and poet immediately reeall the &phist, in which the Srrange.r, after an claborare series of divisions, bas to abw.don the sophist as hunter and reclassify him instead with the poet. But in the .Lysis, Soc:w:es gives no hint thar the two models may be incompatible, though it is not easy even here ro harmoniu them with the lover. The task of the poet is ro enchant and nor bcstiafu.e. and the task of the hunter is ro nor scare off' h.is quarry. Since Hippothales' mistake was to use his poetry ro puff Lysis up, and in this sense enchant him, Socrares must mean by encbanrmeor iu very opposite:
w=
On Pbro's Lysis
rite humiliation of Lysis involves his disenchantment. He must lose confidence in everything he believed he could count on; but at rhe same time, he must not be frightened off. He must be disenchantm widtout fallin.g into despair. Socrates admitS in th.e TIJeartnw dtat he himself was not always successful in checking the savagery of those he had relieved of their f.tlse opinions (1SJC4-7); but in Lysis's case, he does manage ro bring about both disillusionment and hope. He enla.rges rhe horizon of Lysis's ambition. so that even tO rule the enri~ world is not precluded, while he de-srroys the foundation of aU security in his home and family. The disenchantment of Lysis goes along with his enchantment. To sacrifice the local, the neighborhood, and the private-everything. in short, summed up in rite word oik
>CY?
1o8
Chaprer
FJ~·en
his own things (kai !Jauton kai ta !Jautou) on rhe very day he believes Lysis is wiser rhan himself (2.09C4-6). Lysis's father will rhen love Lysis completely, bur he will be just rhe opposite of anorher self of Lysis. If we rhen suppose rhar rhis self-alienation is as impossible as ir is repulsive, and we pur ignorance ar rhe core of rhc: self, we srill do nor make: ir any easier ro understand what another ignorant self would mean. We would nor care ro say, I believe, rhar friendship was a foli~ tkux. Before Menexenos left, Socrates was going ro ask rhe rwo friends who is wiser and who more just; bur rhe argument with Lysis alone makes wisdom rhe enemy of justice, for rhe friends Lysis would acquire from his knowledge would all be ar rhe mercy of his will. If friendship were designed ro be rhe bond between wisdom and justice, ir would have: ro be, as in rhe Rt>public, entirely mythical. 11 This purely hypothetical conAicr between justice and wisdom rakes a more serious turn when rhe argument Socrates mounted against Lysis's freedom and happiness is reapplied ro Socrates. Lysis's mother and father prevent him-for his own goodfrom doing whatever he likes wirh what is his; and were he allowed ro compere in a chariot race wirh his father's horses or bear his father's muleream, Lysis would be in some danger; bur when ir comes ro his mother's wool-working tools. which he could handle wirhour risk, Lysis admits wirh a laugh rhar his mother would not jusr prevent him bur, "I would be beaten should I rouch rhem." According ro Socrates, rhe principle involved is, "Do nor tamper with things you don't know." Socrates, then, deserves a bearing every rime he srarrs an inquiry, for if he can nor come ro an understanding he leaves everything he touches in shambles. The philosopher who lurks behind rhe argument wirh Lysis has virtually nothing he can call his own and seems, in his practice, ro be exercising rhe freedom ro do whatever he likes rhar, according ro Socrates, would be rightly granted him if he were believed ro know whar he was doing. The childish view of happiness-the license ro do whate\'er one likesthat Socrates promises Lysis he can realize once he becomes wise has already been gained by Socrates, and he does nor know anything. Ir is no wonder, rhen, rhar rhe philosopher lives only in a democracy. 1 ~ That Lysis's heroic ancestry included a grandfather whose name was "Democrat" is a nice touch. The question "Who is rhe friend?" was already ar issue in Socrates' first questioning of Lysis and Menexenos, for there seemed robe in principle nothing rhar could nor have iniriared a dispute between them and ulrimarely sown rhe seed of their en miry: bur rhe interruption of rhis line of questioning, after rhey had allowed rhar rhe question which of rhem
a
Copynght
ro
On Plato's Lysis
109
was richer could never be debated-the concession had been easy since they have no money of their own-seemed to force the issue underground, once Socrates began to represent Lysis to himself as an unhappy slave. The starting point of the interrupted conversation was the dual substantive philo (207c8), "a couple of friends:" bur the starting point of the argument with Lysis by himself is the verb phikin: "Surely, Lysis, your liuher and your mother love you verr much (2o7d5-6)?" The reciprocity of the substantive is lost in the verb; the verb goes only one way, regardless of whether it is active or passive. Socrates later raises this difficulty with Menexenos; bur at the moment one should notice how impossible it would be to say that Lysis's mother and f.uher are his friends." One can say that Lysis is dear (philos) to them, and they to him, bur not even this mutual love would turn them into friends. Ho "asus and "an have their counterpart in ho philos and phikin, and it would seem that Socrates undertakes in the Lysis to do for friendship what Diotima did for love-to shift to the verb and treat the substantive as derivative. Such a shift not only ceases to make philosoph(in, where there can be no question of reciprocity, as marginal as it otherwise would be, bur it also makes the promotion of the good an essential pan of loving. Lrsis's parents want him to be happy. and despite or rather because of this they check him at every turn. It is difficult to imagine, on the other hand, that Lysis's wish for Socrates to chastise Menexenos has anything to do, in his own mind, with Menexenos's good. What underlies Socrates' shift from substantive to verb is the following consideration. The expression "We're friends" conceals in its grammar the speaker. Lysis's and Menexenos's response to Socrates' question "You're a couple of friends, aren't you?" is panu g( (207c9). This narrative representation, coupled as it is with the dual (phatin (The pair affirmed it), covers over the fact that panu g( was spoken twice, once by Lysis and once by Menexenos. Although Socrates' report, "Then they both laughed" (~(/asatin oun ampho)-Socrates had asked whether they would also dispure who was better-looking-is narratively true. it is not true to the liters at ground level. The substantive "friends" adopts a theoretical perspective to the phenomena as experienced; as experienced, the friend is necessarily either the subject or the object of the verb (cf. 212a2-3). That Lysis's lather and mother love him-particularly since Socrates keeps the verb in the singular (phi/(i) despite the plural subject-and are not his friends, docs nor necessarily mean that the friend is a ghost of narration, bur it is noteworthy how Socrates sends off Lysis and Menexenos at the end. The brsranders, he tells them, will say as they depart that W( (himds)
Ll.
I
d'
llO
Chap[et EJa·en
believe we are friends of one anomer." h is through a reporr of a belief mat t:hey are friends. It would seem to follow from Socrates' argument with Lysis, ill which me blind trllSt of anomer's love is a guaranteed consequence of one's own wisdom, rhat mat is not the kind of friend Socrates has been looking fur, or else, in knowing that wisdom is not available co him at kast, the quest for such a friend is nothing but the qnest for wisdom. If. however, rhc l:u:re.r possibility were rhe case, philosophy would nor be for the sake of wisdom but for the sake of univeaallove, which would be, in rurn, nothing but universal tyranny. The. criminal prospects Socrates dangled before. Lysis c-.une about rbrongh a radical split between rbe selflessness of an and the selfishness of rbe artisan. Socrates had Hippochales eating out of his hand, but there was nothing in ir fur him if he did not find his reward in Hipporhales' gratitude, wbid1 Hippothales himself migbr of cou.rse m.istake for love. "' If, on the orber hand, th.e good friend Socrates is looking fur ;_,of a different order, it is nor easy ro so.y who be could be. Lysis's action , however, rbat intervenes becween the end of the fi.rsr a.rgumenr and the beginning of Socrates' account of his own makeup, suggests rhar the friend is co be. understood over against the enemy. 1r is always "us against them. " Lysis is impelled to draw Socrates inro a conspiracy directed against Menexenos. )usr as Hipporhales had engaged Socrares co humiliare Lysis, so Lysis engages Socrates ro punish Menexenos; and we cerrainl)' have to reckon wirh the possibility, at least for a moment, that we a.re meant ro imerpre.r t:he discussion of rbe friend as the chastiseme.nt of Menexenos, and what Hippothales takes to be cit<: breaking down of Lysis's resislllllce is taken by Lysis as tea.chiog Menexenos a lesson. Lysis's desire for Socrates to punish Menexenos is ar Jirsr all rbe more asronishi.ng because when Socr.ue$ refuses to repeat rhe argument to Menexenos and urges Lysis to do so on his own, Lysis seems not to realize rhat rbe argument in his own mourb would no longer humiliate Menexenos but serve to exhila£llte them borb-"Togethec we'U rule the world!b; bur perhaps Lysis d.oes realize this and therefore ~uires another kind of putdown for Menexenos. Lysis's consp.imcy, however, does nor Cl
Socrates understands a 6:iend as a kind of possession (kri ma ti). If rbe argument wirb Lysis is not m bold, he wams somerhing that is his own despite his ignorance. Since, moreover, he undersrauds what he is
On J>luo's Lysis •n on rhe modd ofphilippot and pl!ilortux, he is a philophilot, or, as he phrases ir in ordet, perhaps, to lessen the paradox, a phiktaiTOJ (me8) ;11 but in the ordinary understanding of a friend, Lysis has Menexenos as his friend, he does not have someone who is .nothing bur a friend. A horse or quail exists in irsd.f, and chen one acquires ir; but Socrates wants co acquire what is before his acquisition of it a friend. The friend, rhe.n, must be from rhe scm his own; bur if he does not have it, it musr be alienated from him, and wbar he wants is for his own ro be restored co him. Socrates says be bas lived in thu radical form of sdf-11lienarioo since childhood. lr is as if he IY.Id directed early on the argument with Lysis against himself and discovaed what was his own was not his own. The primary furm of this experience i.l ro doubt the legitimacy of one's birth; we may call it the T demaehean expe.rience in honor of the one who lim exprmed it in Greek liretacure. 16 According co Socrates himself, the young experience philosophy just as if rhcy realized they were adopred: they no longer consider as uuc anyrhing the law tells them. 17 Socrates, then, would have just delivered rhis shock-treatment ro Lysis; and in order to set him on rhe. righr course represents himself as permanently in rhis condition. Wbar is rhis condition? If we replace Socrates' phiktairOJ with pbiibphilos and rhereby make the second element as verbal as the first. Socrates' pbilein is of a pbikin. Since ir is bard to imagine what that second phikin could be except philosophy, Socrates would be a love.r of philosophy from ehildhood. lo order for this ro make. sense, it would have co be rbe case rhac philosophy was elusive, and not eve.ry time Socrates engaged in a philosophic i.lsue w:u Socrates engaged in philosophy. Socrattf would necessarily be aware of what constituted philosophy, but philosophy would not automatically be before him once he started asking about what he did nor know. A physicist is doing physics while he is looking for the answer co some problem: bur the philosopher does not have available ro him a way of goin.g about philosophy. He falls into philosophy.'* What rbe Stranger shows in rhe Sophi1rand Srarmnan is rhat philosophy comes with the breakdown of one's way and rhe subsequent awareness of the necessiry of irs breaking down, but rhar one cannot anticipate rhe breakdown and srarr with the correction of error built in (c:£ LysiJ :t13e2-3) . Socrares' own name for this is a second sailing. Thar Socrates has philosophy in mind as his dusive friend is not obvious; bur in surveying the arguments one cannot help noticing that Socrates leaves behind the poets and those who talked and wrote about natu.re and the whole as soon as he scans over again wirh rhc unprcct:denccd notion of the neither I nor. The plan of the eight ~>tgun>cnrs about rhe friend is as follows:
1.n
Ct..pcer Eleven 1.
Argument witb Lysis:
the destruction of the oikt>s and the oilttion ofL}-.is (2.07ds-11od8).
z. Argwnenr wirh Menexenos: ho phibJs '"" phiwu (wd6- 113ds). J. Argument with L~il: 4- Argument with Mc:nexenos: 5· Argumenr with Menexenos: 6. Argument with Menexon05: 7. Argument with Mtntx<"008: 8. Argument with Mencxenm:
"'homoion (~.tjd6--:ub>) .
The last four arguments nun back on the first four, and at least on paper a restoration of the oiwon is anempred wirb.out any recourse. to the wisdom Lysis had been assured would bring him back home. It would seem to follow from Socra.rel 6rsr argument with Menexenos th:u there are three kinds of "friends, • and nothing can bring them under a unitary idea. There are lovers, who imagine, correctly or not, that their love is not rerumed or even thar they are loathed (Hipporhales is one); there are others, like Socrates, who do nor even expect that their affection il to be retumoi; and 6naUy there is Lysil, whose loathing of his parents after their exposure by Socrates does not affect the intense love they have for him. The cenrr:al difficulty mighr be rhoughr oo consist io Socrares' failure to distinguish, on rhe one hand, momentary feelings of hatred from permanent stares of enmity, and, on the other. apparent from true friends. In saying that some lovers suspect their love is not returned, Socrates poims to rhe imaginary charaaer of the transitivity of ~riis. The lover believes that the beloved is automatically established throu.gh his loving; but as Socrates hinted to H.ippothales, since the lover is in love no less than he loves someone (2o4b6-8), the stative form of the verb makes it unclear whethe.r anything happens outside the sphere of the lover. Lovers rend ro make the same mistake as Polus does, who believes that, if one punishes, another is punished; but the will to get du-ough tO the other il no guarantee that ir is dfecrive. Socrates therefore expresses doubt whetb.er he has undcntood cor.recdy his erotic. disposition as a form of phikm He had interpreted kho.rse-lover" nor as an mn-geia, in which the fondness for horses is complete in itSelf, but as involving an aaion that aimed at a certain result, the acquisition of horses; but it now appears that phikin resultS in phikin. If one takes a later example of Socrares, rhe philogumflllSiiJ (2:ud]), whatever the exe.rcise-lover acquires as a consequence of his mining might be a byproduct and not of much imporrance ro him. The dance-lover loves ro dance. In dancing he 6nds that which
On Plato's Lysis enhances his own being. The X of the X-lover is that in which the lover is realized. Accordingly, the child who when beaten hates his mother is still the apple of her eye, since it is in him that she is fulfilled. In light of this, the philosopher would be like the wine-lover who has no head for it, 19 and the practice in which he finds his end is that in which he stumbles badlr and is always falling over his own feet. But still he dances. In order to reinforce the view that reciprocity is not essential for the friend, Socrates quotes two lines of Solon, which, if Socrates' argument did not deny it, we would understand as saying that he is happy who has dear (or his own)-phi/oi-children, single-hoofed horses, hunting dogs, and a guest-friend from elsewhere; but we are required instead to read philoi as a predicate and take happiness to consist not in possessions but in friendships. In Socrates' reading, Solon begins with the home and ends with the stranger. He encompasses the range Socrates had offered to Lysis once he acquired wisdom. The most striking item is the xmos a/lodapos, the stranger from elsewhere, for not only does it recall the xmismos Hippothales celebrated between Heracles and Lysis's ancestor, but it brings into the field of the friend the non friend or stranger, whomever one does not know and is not acquainted with. Through some kind of bond, however, the stranger has been pulled into our orbit and yet remains in his own. He is at a distance but close. This alien intimacy seems no! 10 be unconnected with philosophy, which cannot be understood as either friend or enemy. Now of the three kinds of examples Socrates gives, lovers, philosophers, and parents, the simplest to understand would be the last. One loves what one makcs. 20 If one then considers the lover in this light, especially with Hippothales in mind, whose poetry, Socrates has shown, is a celebration of himself (c£ ZI.p.I), the philosopher seems in danger of mistaking making for doing and rhe extension of himself in the beings for rhe disclosure of the beings in themselves. Even if the philosopher acknowledges rhe nonreciprocity of his love, must he still not assume that rhe beings are user-friendly and not hostile to their being known? The expression xmos allodapos cannot but remind us of rhe gods, who according to one of Penelope's suitots take on this disguise as they wander among men to survey their insolence or obedience to the lawY The suitor implies that the gods never become our acquaintances (gnorimoi) and are in a state of permanent estrangement from us. If we let the gods stand for the highest beings, are they, as Parmenides argued with young Socrates, cur off from us complerely,!.' and, insofar as they arc related, is it our justice rather than our knowledge that is at stake? Socrates had certainly argued with Lysis for knowledge rather than justice.
213
11~
Cbaprer EJ.,.,
The accempr co interpret "friend" in terms of irself fails. "Friend: one can say, bas been shown not to be an irreducible category. Friends, then, are nor wnar fr-iends sometimes believe they are, loved for thern.sdves alone. '1\'hen Socrates resumes this discussion, in argumem 7, he gees as dose as he can ro the friend in himself, bur with a difference: the enemy is now pan of rhe inner suucture of the friend (219b2-~). The enemy was an oursider in argument 1 and threatened co prove the impossiblethat there could be an enemy to the friend or a friend to the enemy; bur, in the Soeratic argumentS, causal accountS are pur together with the formal accoum of the firsr argument wi.t h Menexenos. This difference can be generaliud co mark the difference between the first four and the last four argumentS. The first four are categorial arguments, the last four are dynamical. Despite the &a that Socraces raised the quesrion in cerms of becoming-How does another become che friend of another (1c1a5-6)? -there is no discussion of becoming prior ro the introduction of the neicher/ nor. Only then does rime become a f.tcror to be caken inro account. In both argumentS 3 and 4. a cosmological theory is introduced inro what up to now bad seemed to be a suicdy human phenomenon; bur it would pe.rbaps be more accurate co say rhat nothing in rbe account of che frie.nd, under che principle of either "They were made for each ocher" or "Opposites attract" srands in tbe way of che friend losing his human face and falling under a comprehensive account of nature. As long as nothing peculiar marks off the friend from a general theory of "magnetism· -chere is desire but no soul (1.15e4)-rbe friend ceases to be of any interest in irsdf unless one can claim for it that it offers an exceptionally easy way into the ge.neral theory and merely exempli6es wbar can be observed throughout narure. The ontological counterpart to the. epistemoLogical ryranny that Socrates offered Lysis would be rhe denial of d.isri.nct natures co thin.gs. Such a denial would entlil, in Socr•tes' description of his predecessors, che collapse of the phrase ptri phUJ
On Pl:uo's Ly1u
Although both speak of the like, the poet has "the god himself" bring the like to the like, and the physicist! speak of the n.cessity char like be a friend ro like. ln both cases, the twO alikes are not from rhe sran together. There is some obstacle dur stands in the way of the ideal oondition of the pbysicisr be.ing realized, and for the poet no human entezptise would ever overcome rhe apparent disparity between Odysseus, the mas~.r now disguised as a Str.mger, and Eurnaeus. the former prince now a swineherd. On the surface, Socr.ues wrenches the line from the Odys
z•s
116
Chapret Elcvr.o
is needed within the like in o.rdu for patient and agent to operate, and some kind of lack is needed within the good in order for its presence 10 be felt and its absence to be missed. There must be a shading of rhe selfconsistent so char it can be affected, and rhece must be a shading of the self-sufficient so that it can be effective, and th= two defcaive modes must be together in the friend as the effectively needy. However suggesti~ this mar be of Socrates' capaciry to bring about aporia, there still seems to be no way to determine how mueh off from the good and the like the friend must be if the only restriction is that one muse a'•oid the toral instabilicy and incompetence of the bad. Whatever ratios prove to be appropriate must, as the physicists say, be fed in by hand, and the problem of the friend not admit of any but ad hoc solutions. We k:ne-.v from the srort that the circumsrandal was of overwhelming importance when it came to the friend. The sequence of resulrs up to now is this: In Socrares' firSt argument with Lysis, the wise who wanes friends can make anyooe be wanes a friend but canoot be a friend himself; in Socrates' first argumem with Menexenos, the befriended could be. a friend and yet be an enemy, and Likewise the one befriending could eherish an enemy. In Socrates' second argument with Lysis, where the like and the good come in, there is, qua Like, no possibilicy of rbe befriended, and, qtu< good, no possibilicy of befriending. Now Socrates, to aehieve this last result, bad ro force the meaning of"Like" and not accept the proverbial sense of Melanthius's utterance: "Birds of a feather . . ." He now does so in citing Hesiod. The poet shows the way to the literaL Socrates again. however, r.ev= rhe plain meaning of Hesiod. Hesiod is speaking of a. mistake he made in rbe T!Jt.Og01~Y. where Eris was only the cause of evil; bur here in the Works and Days, he begins with an admission that Eris is two, and the sra.re of war Socrates' source asserted to hold for those of the same kind is to be traced 10 the T!Nogo"fs Eris. Hesiod, then, was right tbe 6m time. Competition and war are inseparable. Indeed, according ro Hesiod, Ftiendlinm (Philbtit} is the sisrer of Eris. 0 lfHesi.od's second thoughts areseparared from the grandiose theory ro which Socrues attaches them, then the like of Socrates' own account, whieh was so much all of a piece as 10 be indfcctive, is now different enough ro resume its power in tbe rivalcy of friends. Differentials of this kind were alceady at work in the friendship of Lysis and Menexenos. What makes this solution inadequate is the third pair of rivals Hcsiod cites: beggar against beggar. The first two pairs ace artisans, potter and singer, and they can srand for tbe like as tbe good; bur the lack the ~ar represents had to belong ro rhe good, insof.tr as it was not the same as the Like,
On Pl:1.ro's Lyris
i !
r
•
r
if the good were going to be loving. Thus Hesiod's lines merely pose in themselves the difficulty Socrates had already worked out by himself on the basis of his eccentric interpretation of the like. A fully arrful neediness once more emerges as the general formula for rhe friend; and once more ir seems that Eros as rhe offspring of Poverty and Resource is Socrates' own mythological solution w it. The eloquence of rhe spokesman whom Socrates heard (he reminds one of Eryximachus) for a quasi-Heraclitean, quasi-Empedoclean theory seems to have carried him away into nonsense. There are at least two pairs in his lisr of contraries-bitter/sweet and sharp/blunr-rhar evidently do not fir. 211 The blunt may well need sharpening, but rhe sharp gees blunted against its will. If, however, we take our bearings by these pairst the rheory would not be about contraries in rhemselves but abour rhe actual determination of one member in each apparent pair of contraries by rhe ocher. The sharp is the less blunt, rhe sweet the; less bitter. Healrh, chen, would be a lesser degree of sickness, and friendship a slackening of hostility. Differences in magnitude would be experienced as differences in kind. Knowledge roo would be ignorance, bur nor as much. Consequently, the objection rhe professional comradicrors make, and which Menexenos believes is decisive, that friendship would have to be friends wirh enmiry, would nor hold, since rhe language of things is more absolure than rhe narure of things. Hesiod's error, then, would not have been just in differentiating Eris herself the second time around, but in having firsr made Eris and Philores sisrers, rhough in facr Philores is bur rhe spurious offspring of Eris; she is only experienced as distinct. It would flow seem dtar the shadiflg of rhe good, which Socrates' prior account needed, was misconceived. A shading of the bad is what is wanted. Such a demand could not be met as long as the bad and rhe unjust were idenrified. Accordingly, rhe issue of justice vanishes from the dialogue once Socrares curs himself loose from his predecessors and is on his own. What might be thoughr to rake its place and had been absent so far is the beauriful. Socrares, at any rate, had nor said a word abour jrs monstrousness if rhe ugly were a friend of the beautiful. He must have been thinking of himself all along. If we now survey the arguments about the like· and rhe contrary, we have, on the one hand, rhe homoion split between a· union and division of homoia. and, on the ocher, rhe enantion splic. becween a union and divi· sion of enantia. Such a double split recalls the mucture of the diacriticalsyncridcal way that the Stranger practices and discusses in the Sophist and Statesman. In the Sophist, the cutting apart of same frorn same is paired wirh rhe separation of good from bad, and in the Stattsman the putting
2.17
uS
Chapcer Eleveo
together of same and same is paired wim the relucmnr purting togerhe,r of good and bad. One would perhaps just leave it at this remarkable res<:m· blance becween me ways in which m.e friend shows up and the ways of dialectic, wete. it nor rhat Socrare$, when he ~ries to break out of their present impasse, notices rhar, as an o.ld proverb has it, "The beautiful is a friend" has been confirmed nor through any new insighr inro rhe friend in itself bur through me slipperiness wirh which rhe friend has duded them in the argument (t.16C4-d1). What me friend is comes to lighr rhrough a reflection on how it failed ro com.e to ligh<- Someb.ow the way of me argument about the friend has become associated with the friend. In a way typical of Socrates' second sailing, the speeches about a being take over from the being itself; and again, nor unrypicaUy, !his rerouting involves an image. When Menexenos asks Socrates what he means by his proposal about rhe neither/ nor, Socrates says, "WeU, by Zeus, I do not know, but real.ly and truly I myself am dizzy by the perplexity of rhe argument, and it' s probable, in conformity with the ancient saying. that me beautiful is philiJn. It bean a lila:n~. at any rate, ro some.rhing sofr, smooth, and sleek; and accordingly perhaps. because ir is of this kind, it easily gives us the slip and slides away." Socrates experience$ a d.isorienta· cion and ascribes it to the friend. The beauty of the friend shows up in irs making irsdfknown through irs litem! elusiveness. Socrates rhus admits that the friend is noc a possible possession: he could not reU Diorima what he would get were he. to get rhe beautiful.,. The friend remains atr.ractive and our of reach. If, then, we were to follow Socrates and appty the ways in which the friend came to liglu ro the friend irself, the friend would be whatever there is in which the fourfold way of dialectic is to be found. The friend would be me beauty of being insofar as it w:u ready for philosophy. Socrares recovers his footing by accepting that rhere must be a difference between the active and the passive of phikin. The previous acgu· ments have convinced him rhat it is hopeless to find the friend in mirror· structures. Perhaps he recalls the lire.tal meaning of mantion as "in f•ce of,• for whereas o ne's own mirror image would not reverse lefr and right, "anorhe.r I" would. In any case, for the new de6nitioo, the friend is dearly the subject, and it is the friend of the beautiful and good. It is the friend of whatever benefits :u it makes irself known (cf. 2I73J). Socrates' divination, char the neither good nor bad-simplified throughout as the neithcr/ nor- is the friend of the good, rurn.s our robe a r.ductio. A can· vasing of all other possibilities shows that ir alone is lefr, but there is neithrr any human meaniQg nor causal account yet artached ro it. It 6rst
On Plato's Lysis
falls our of the (qgos and does not emerge as the result of a division among the things that are. It seems co en rail rwo radical disjuncrioru. one between neutral beings and the good, the other berween neutral beings and whatever is becoming either good or bad. Socrates even speaks at one point of the ncither/nors as being such auta k111:b' bauta (220C4-5). One might infer that this is a consequence of Socrates Hooding the friend with the argumenr about the friend. so that what =ms to be a recovery of his balance is merely h.is accommodation to the dictates of the wgos. Socrates himself suggests that the neither/nor, and everything that followed from it, was nonsense and put together like a long poem without any point (121<4-6). The neither/ nor is a slippery class, and Socrates treats it in an odd way. He does not allow the body as being neither/ nor to be the friend of health on the grounds that in itself it follows some natural way toward healrh and puts up a natural resistance ro disease, bur he separates what it is in itself from what it is on account of the presence of evil, as if the sick wbr> is a friend to the doeror is not the same as the body rh1u is neither/ nor. Socrates' procedure allows him to have a subject of the verb pbikin that is not rhe same as what causes it to love the doctor. All love is conscious and rational. It does not acknowledge any way to health except through knowledge: the first argumenr with lysis is srill having its effect. As Socrates phrases it, the neither/nor would slide over imo the bad and cease co love the good at the moment rhe docror would declare mar the case is hopeless; otherwise, the body would be bad only a moment before death and not a minute sooner. One would complieate thin&" further were one ro assign desire exclusively to the soul and rake into consideration the will to live, for when the soul gives up on a cure, are we then ro say that the body is badl Socf"dtes, moreover, by inserting th.e medical art as the friend, makes the neither/ nor depend on the possibility of a cure. Philosophy, then, which Socrares is abour to mention as an illusrration of the neither/ nor, would have to be considered bad unless the wise were in principle available. The utter hopelessness of the philosophic srate may not leave the philosopher helpi<SS. ln order to darify the neither/nor, Socrate.• introduces a rli1tinction between rwo kinds of presence, in appearance aod in reality, which does nor appuendy make it aoy easier to understand the diffe.rence, if there is one, benveen those who do and those who do not befriend the doccor. If Socrates means char the body is fundamentally sound and sulfers &om some surface lesions, then the body is not neither/ nor but both good and bad, and it is "both/ and" in the serue that either the bad is separable
"9
uo
Chapter Elcvco
from the good (one can dtaw ir off or cur it our), or rhere is a blending of rhe rwo which defears the best efforts of the docror ro disentangle them. Soc~res speaks of the progressive spread of the bad and nor of a possibly stable bur nor necessarily static mixture of the rwo. Socrates' own ex:unple is bard ro apply. He distinguishes between a white-lead coating on top of Menexcnos's blond hair and the white that old~ will bri.ng. No one, however, would s:ay of a house painted white that ir was apparently white, any more than that Socrates' ignorance was an artificial dye smeared over perfect wisdom, however much it might appear that he was purring us on and really knew all the answers. I r would be rrucr to say that Lysis's confession of ignorance -.s a temporary coloring of a pcrfccdy healthy pride, and the older Socrates getS the greater his ignorance grows: his prescnr self-deprecation is a sign of what the future holds in Store.-"' [f. then, the elCample of hair-dye is to fit the foolish and ignorant, rhey are nor those who are all of a piece, but those whose appearance is the conrrary of what is already fully prescnL They are the Mxoiopboi, who have succeeded in changing colons and looking like gods. Perhaps, however, rbe sophisrs neve.r lose the suspicion that they do nor know what they say they know, and for all the show ignorance ultimately peeps through." Apart from the gencrlll difficulties rhe notion of a neutral soul poses, Socrates' own desire for friends is bard to formulate in terms of apparent and real presence. Socrares is friendless, but he does not s:ay he has enemies. whose presence would cause the desire for friends. He could of course be anticipating the future, particularly if the dramatic dare of rhe Lysis is after the Clouds, and the potential for rrouble is already in Srrepsiades' wish oo draw up an illdicuncnr.11 However that may be, me presence of the absence of friends seems not to fir very well rhe model of whitelead, unl., the point of th.e model lies nor so much in the mere presence of white.-lcad as in the self-evldenY &ct of irs presence- no one would mistake it for anything else than for what it is----and accordingly what is decisive is Socrarrs' aWIU"Ciless of the absence of friends, jusr as in the case of philosophy it is the knomcdge of ignorance rhar, in corresponding to rhe presence of evil, makes for desite. Tlte presence of evil, rhen, that cancels the desire must be irs nonmanifestation as evil, either in not showing itself at all or in declaring it:sclf tn be the opposite. If, however, philosophy as knowledge of ignurance is never fully present as i[SC:If to the philosopher, only the sympmms of ignorance could be present and manifest. Thc:st symptoms seem to be the equivalent of the blush. They are equally involuntary and at the start pcthap~ only manifest 10 another. The friend would rhus be indispensable for the philosopher. He would eir.hcr have
On Pluo's Lysis
to notice we ower's blush or induce it. This friend must be of a peculiar kind. Hippothales never blushed in the presence of Kresippos alone. Ln speaking of Menex.enos's hair, Socrates C'.uefully distinguishes berween "whiteness" and "white. • "Whiteness" is used only of the unreal presence of white, and "white" only of the white old age imparts. So we have a simple linguistic differentiation. If we can speak "Platonically~ of the presence of something, ir is an appearance; if we cannot, ir is real. This seems neat but nor helpful. Utter shamelessness, after all, does nor have to show up in a constant flush.ll In the case of the unwise, Socrates assigns the same agtwia to philosophers and fools alike bur calls only the latter agnihnonts. To be agnomon is eiwer to be ignorant and wiwout judgmem or to be cruel and unforgiving. Ignorance, then, would be a wholly negative stare when it expresses itself in the desire to punish another. Lysis's first reaction to his own proven senselessness was to lash our at Menexenos. Lysis's recovery roward the neither/nor was signified by a blush. Lysis's blush was an uowilled si.g n of error. Socrates then tOld us of his delight in Lysis's phiwsophia. If pbiwsqphia follows the rule Socrates set up for "whireness" and "whire," Socrates detected in Lysis the sign of a good bur not the good itself. The language of Platonism, one might say, is the language of modesty. In refusing to rake rhe appearance of Wings for the ttuth of things, it is always returning US tO the appearance of things. Seen in this ligh.c, the neither I nor would not be, as it first appeared, an arbittary absttaction from the things that are, bur, quire the conrrary, the expression of the way these things. "Good" and "bad," on we other hand, would hardly ever be stticrly applicable. The example of white-lead hinted rhat even "healthy" has to be pur against the scale of orne.
The neirherfnor has irs payoff in the philosopher. At first flush, wis means the pnilosopher has neither rhe good of wisdom nor rhe bad of ignorance. The bad of i.g no=ce, however, is a peculiar ignorance; it is ro believe one knows what one does not know. The philosopher, then, has one kind of bad and lacks another kind of bad. His bold, moreover, on what he lacks is tenuous: "be .still believes be does nor know whar he does not know." He does not srricdy have the good of the bad, namely, knowledge of ignorance; but his belief gives him the appearance ar best of knowledge of ignorance. and at worst of ignorance of ignorance, and in this sense he is a oeiwerf nor; bur he must also realize that it is bad to be a neither( nor; otherwise, be would not desire ro know. But what he desires to know cannot be wisdom, if he knows that is impossible, but knowledge of ignorance. He wants to know what it is he believes he does
"'
122
Chaptet Eleven
nor know; he does not want tO be in rhe exhausred srare Socrates left Theaetetus, who had oo answers left to the question what is knowledge hue was sciU unaware of what the problem of knowledge is." The good of the philosopher is poised vecy precariously between a bad that cannot be diminared and a bad that possibly can be ameliorated. Socrates tells us how he etperieneed this srate after Lysis and Menexenos supported complcrely the condusion that the neither/ nor is friend of the good on account of the presence of bad. "I mf$"lf," be says, "was very pleased too in barely (agapitos) holding on, like a hunter, ro what I was hunting (11&4-5)." AgapitoJ is the adverbial form of the verb agapan. which Socrates has used throughout as the equivalent of phikht; and were it not for the con ten, rhe adverb could have irs usual meaning. "gladly" or "contentedly. • Perhaps. however, as Socrates' joy attestS, "barely" and "gladly" are indistinguishable. Before Socrares can explain to Mencxenos why he suspects they have gained phantOm wealth, he has to complete the definition of the friend through the addition of final cause ro the efficient cause he has so far been content with. Hm&a (for the sake of) is put ar the front of the definition and din (on account of) ar the end: "For the sake of the ftiend the friend is ftiend of the friend on account of the enemy (219b2 -3)." Socrates has managed to rc:ven to a form chat does not use a.ny other termS than those he introduced in his first round with Mencxenos; but the uniformiry of the language conceals differences. The friend who is friend of the friend is a neither/nor; and neither the objecr, whose ftiend the ne.irher I nor is, nor the friend, for th.e sake of which the subject is a friend, is a neither/ nor; both rather are good, one as the means, the other as the end. SocrateS, then, for the sake of his undemanding, is a friend of philosophy on account of his ignorance. If, however, rhis plugs the proper values into the general fomtula, then it would seem that "neither/ nor• could in some sense hold throughout, since the means, the end, and the efficient cause are all ve.rsions of the neither/ nor. As philosophy represents the complereoess of this defective mode, so Socrates' own future understanding would be superior only to his prior scare of putative ignorance (cf. u8ez). Even if the means is not philosophy but a friend of philosophy, whether it be Lysis, Menocenos, or Ktesippos, the neither/ nor would sriU prevail throughout the formula. Granted, this is a special case, and it is remarkable that philosophy disappears as an issue once "for the sake of which" is introduced. Its disappearance, however, might be deceptive.. The drinking of hemlock proves to be the key example. Socrates wants to distinguish between phantom images of the friend
On Plaro's Lysis
and whatever is really and rruly the friend; and he forces Menexenos to concede the disriocrioo on the grounds that the never-ending series "for the sake of the friend" would wear them our unless there were a first friend. He wins chis concession, however, by doubtful means. Health is the only friend Socrates designates; rhe second friend for the sake of which health is a friend is left blank, and so is the third. Socrates warns Protarchus that it is a contemporary mistake to go so quickly from the one to the many without counting the kinds in berwcen.31 Suppose we follow Glaucon and say the second good is sight and the third thinking." lr is nor immediately obvious that these three goods arrange themselves hierarchically, or if they do whether Menexenos knows the conditions attached to ea.ch. Socrates would have been more sensible had he taken the friends of the "thar for the sake of which" -clause for the srrucrured constellation of goods, all of which we may cherish withom having any precise understanding of how rhey are related to one another. Socrates himself cites an example that ruins his case. He assures Menexeoos that though we say we make much of gold and silver, gold and silver really are for rhe sake of whatever we hold in the highest esteem (11oar-6), as if we did not know of misers and self-made millionaires whose horizon does nor extend any further than the preservation or accumulation of their wealth. It is clear in any case that none of the goods in a cons-rellation of goods is a phantom image of another, or if any of them are, Menexenos knows which they are. By failing to fill in the blanks, Socrares can glide into an example whose jerry-built structure is altogether different from that which would obrain for the permanent set of goods. We must remember that the sick was a friend of medicine for the sake of health; bur in the ease before us, in which a f.tdter believes that wine is an antidote to the hemlock his son has drunk and accordingly cherishes the wine and the cup, rhe physician has nor been consulted or if consulted not believed, and we are confronted with a crisis where the father will find his son dead in minutes. Socrates 6nally gives an example where one has ceased ro be a friend of the doctor either rationally at the moment one drinks rhe hemlock or shordy afterward; bur the father is out of his mind with fear and latches onto a nosr:rum he cherishes only because he cherishes his son. The dearness of the son irradiates with dearness the specious means of his survival, and once he was lost, the wine and the cup would soon sink back into indifference. Now prior to the crisis, th.e son like all of us was a neither/ nor; and if his fi
UJ
ll4
Chapter Eleven
or rhe scalpel the doctor was going to use. The father, then, wanted his son to be good; that is, he wanted him to have all the goods that constitute the constellation of goods that make up happiness for him. In the crisis, however, any consideration of this kind disappears; and unless his son drank the poison by accident, it would have vanished at the moment rhe Athenian court condemned him to death on some criminal charge. The son, then, gets to be the real friend, insofar as he is either neutral or bad, only through rhe crisis. It is the imminent risk the son is incurring that alters the father's evaluation and puts him at the top of the scale. It might be of course that the father has only one son, and his anxiety about his son's sun·ival runs in tandem with an anxiety about his own; but even if this were not the case, the father's grasping at straws cannot be separated from what the occasion induced in the son. Had Lysis threatened suicide, his mother would surely have allowed him to tamper with her things. Once we see that the friend exists within two different horizons, one in which he is patient of good and bad, in conformity wirh some structure of goods, and the other in which the friend in itself is ranked temporarily at the top of cherished things without any assumption that it is good, it is possible to understand why Socrates formulates the true and real friend in terms of an opinion that cannot be translated into knowledge. Whereas ir is pc:rfc:ctly possible: rhar all the: goods in rhe first structure of the friend are understood and supplied by arts, there is nothing in rhe father's making much of the son (pai pollou poi~isthai) to which any epistemic equivalent corresponds. Socrates had convinced Lysis earlier char it was his knowledge that made him dear to his parents. Lysis was good at certain things because he knew them; he was not in these respects a neither/nor. For the father now, however, there is no connection whatsoever between rhe reality and truth of the first friend and the father's knowledge. Indeed, as Socrates phrases it, the father makes much of the son "for the sake of holding the son of the highest importance" (pm pantos /J(g~isrhai). Antigone, in risking her life for her brother, risked everything for the sake of burying her brother; she acted, according to Socrates, for the sake of making the most of her brother, for without her action her brother would be nothing. The father, then, shows and sets out ro show the importance he attaches to the son; had he befriended the doctor wirh a secret antidote, he would not have proved anything. What, chen, of Socrates? We know the formula for him within the horizon of goods; but, when he is in prison, and proposes treating the hemlock as if it were wine, and claims to know char death is good for him, the: formula would have to be revised to read: ~For the sake of philoso-
Copyt"9htod material
On Plow's lysis
phy, Socrates was the friend of hemlock on account of the enmity of the Athenians." If, however, rhe hou hmt!ta clause must be altered to conform with the fathe.r's "for the sake of," it would read. "For the sake of showing the high imponana: he attached to philosophy, Socrates ere. • lt is only in the crisis brought on by his trial and condemnation that the purpose clause shifts away from his own advantage, and the immediate frio:nd ceases ro be philosophy or the philosophical young. Socrates, however, does nor distinguish the two cases, one of which concerns the continued existence of philosophy and the other his own good; but it was Socrates himself who had put philosophy at continuous risk by his reinterpretation of it. This reinterpretation by way of political philosophy necessarily affected the way in which every so-called philosophical question was raised. These questions could no longer be put by themselves; they had to be encountered rhrough and in light of the urgency that gave rise co them. The perspective of the urgent, however, is norhing else than the perspective of crisis, however diso:ngaged from a particular crisis others may be. Cephalus laughs off the issue of jusrice and leaves. It would therefore foUow that only for Socrates do the rwo horizons rend to faU tO(;<'ther, and Socrates is always on trial and malcing a defe.nse of philosophy while he minds his own business (cf. 222e2). 37 Ifwe set aside the possible coincidence in Socrates' case of the neithe.r/ nor which can become either good or bad and the neithc.r /nor whose existence is on the line, it is possible to offer a solution to Socrates' apparently inadvertent confusion of htn~lta and din at the point where he fhould have maintained the difference most carefully. The real friend, he says, if evil should dep:l.rt and no longer affect the neither/nors, would obviously have a nature contrary co the so-called friends, for, while they arc for the sake of the friend, it comes to light as for the sake of the enemy (22oez-4). "For the sake of the enemy" should obviously be "on account of the enemy"; but perhaps Socrates means what he says. The enemy for whose s:~ke the true friend exists can only be the true friend itself. In the case before us, the paradigmatic srrucrute of the good, which the lather hoped would apply to his son, faUs away and is replaced by the circumsrantial struCture of the friend. which, while it is becoming more precious by the second, rC$iSts any predication of the good. It is this resiSClU1ce tha.r makes the tru.e friend the enemy. It is against the nature of a neither/ nor to jump its class and be treated as if to be not-good were robe good. If ex.istence itself were a good and nonexistence a bad, Socrates' class of neithcr/nors, which he now calls the betweens (no6), would already be good and would never become bad as long as they were. If, on the ocher
:ttl
u6
Ch.aprer E.l<:'fen hand, ir were nor exinence as such rhat was good bur rhe exisrence of one's own, then Socrates' lim :ugumenr with Lysis goes ioro elfecr' rhe son ceased ro be rhe father's own once his recoll!$e ro false belief revealed that he did not know how ro use him. lf this argument is sound, one has to mess rhar rhe "for the sake of the enemy" -clause can apply only to the circumsmnri11l and nor oo the paradigm11ric srrucrure; and, indeed, Socrates separates once again the discussion about the real friend from the discussion about the good. ln appealing back ro "char friend in which all the rest ended," Socrares gives up rbe good thllt had no place in the former discussion either (:~.20<18-esl. The rhought-experimeot Socrates proposes has its ultimate purpose in rhc isolati.o n of desire from need; bur its proximate aim is to determine whether the neither/nor loves th.e gQOd on account. of rhe bad. Socrates does nor ser up the experiment with all possible precision. lf the bad were ro van.i£h, the neither/oorshould become the nor-good; but Socrates does nor alter the class of rhe neither/nors. We remain what "-e were. It rhus seems thar the bad does nor perish bur simpl)' no longer affects us nor does us any harm; and in his first formulation, Socrares goes no further than this (z.: wcr-7). We would, then, still have evils bur rher would be as if they did nor exist. We would not rreat them as evils. Socrates said be did not know whether death was an evil; and insofar as he idenrified it with philosophizing h~ .seemed to be saying it was good. So death was either a good or a neither/nor even when no thought-experiment had banished the bad. lf, moreover, the philosopheiS are neither/ nors, the doxosophoi would still be ignorant of their ignorance and pretenders to knowl.ed.g e regardless of whether ignorance had ceased co be an evil or nor, for even now they do not know char ignorance is an evil.)I! If the city itself is the sophist of sophists, as both Socrates and the Srrang~r agree,» then rhe ciry would not be unjust to Socrates, for though ir would retain irs ignorance, the trial of Socrates would be an occasion of mockery and laughter."' The more serious question is whether knowledge of ignorance would be possible under rhese conditions. The Elearic Srranger, who did not just i.magine the absence of evils but daborared a world complete with the reversal of time (Mencxenos would be born with white hair and die a blond), in wb.ich there were no evils, professed not to know whether Socr.ues was then possible.~ 1 What seems ro setde the issue is this consideration: Socrates' proposal amounts ro rrearing ourselves indifferendy. We would be like Sticks and stones, which are just whar they are. The theoretical attitude, which we bad thought ar lirsr characterized the oeit:hcr/ nor, is really i.n effect when everything i.s nor-good. for the neither/ nor was
On Plato' s Lysis
for the philosopher good and bad and could nor possibl)' remain good if it ceased to be bad.. )u.st as those ignorant of cheir ignof".mce would not be unjust, so those who knew or believed they were igl)orant would not be benefited by a knowledge, let alone a belief, about something rhat w.as not bad. It is not surprising, then, that Theod.orus, the theoretician par excellence, dreams of the end of the e.vils and has to be rold by Socrates that it is impossible.~ lf we revert ro Socrates' distinction between artificial and narural haircolor, or whor we rhoughr were the same, the blush and rhe unflushed complexion, if the blush sri!J occurred, what would it signiJY? It could not be the acknowledgment to oneselfor an ocher of a defecr. Surely Socrates would be able to know that Hippothales was in love and in love with someone; but would he rhen be useless in poiming out rhe misrake Hippomales had made in wooing Lysis? Hipporhales would presumably notregard. as an evil his failure to catch Lysis; and for aJJ we know, it might be good were he not to succeed; but Hippothales would in any case nor ask Socrates for help. Socrates' erotic science, then, would never be called on, though his diagnostic ability would be as unerring as ever. The Elearic Stranger's myrb anticipated this result. As long as rhe god has not withdrawn from his providential care, there is oo n-os. Wha.t is still left open perhaps is whether Socrates' desire for friends would. survive. What Socrates has been driving at does nor become dear until he makes a surprising move. He blocks off any answer to the quc:stion whether there will be unharmful hunger and thirst wh.en there are no evi!s-"Tbe question, What will be ot won't be? is absurd: Who knows?" - and comes back to what we do know, that all of these desires can be harmful, helpful, or neither, and then uses rbe survival of neirher/ nor desires in rhe absence of evils to show that desire is the cause of friendship. Now the emergence of desire as tbe cause simply rephrases Socrates' original formulation of the neither/ nor. Not only did he identil}> the neither/nor wirh the friend (119a6-bJ), but that friend had been the subject of phi~m. Soc.rares' to tpithumoun is merely che merging of noun and verb into the participle. To ~ith11111oun, however, has undergone a change. As a neither/ nor, it desired rhe good; now it desires the oeither/ nor that is truly neutral. It desires what is missing, but what is missing is the not-good; it is simply one's own (oiltmm). Socrates has taken a long way around ro confront Aristophanes, who had in chc Sympoiimn told a srory about how we were once whole and, o n account of our assault on heaven, had been cut in two and rearranged so that we would be ashamed of Out defectiveness and in sexual satisfaction perpe.ruate the race and find
» 7
:u8
Chapter Elrven
some recompense for the inecovembility of our original selves. Aristophanes, however, had arguro for uar as the desire and pursuit of the whole under the eondition of evil: our partial selves were due ro divine punishmcm. Socrates g~rs rid of the evil and keeps the desire. He questions wnether there is any neccss:uy connea.ion between the two, sine.~: Arisrophaoes did not equate the original whole with. good. If b.e b.ad, then the evil would causally be related tO the good, and me problem Socrates' account faced would rerum. As iris, me very longing to go back to one's own might be thought to depend on the coosrrainrs the present order bas imposed. Socrates himself b.ad offered a parody of Arisrophanes in bi.s rrearmem of Lysis. By raking away hls own, b.e had cut him down to size, and he blew him up again by o.ffcring its rerum through wisdom, which would finally give him the freedom ro do whatever he liked. He could once again have proud thoughrs. Socrares' version had the disadvantage that "his own," which ~is got in rerurn, was no longer restricted to whar had been his own; Aristophanes' 'oersion has the disadvantage rhar rhe return is equally im.possible and what one gets instead is anything one likes, and the proud thoughts one bas are <m~fined ro one's own ciry.'J The issue between rhem duu rums on the surus of philosophy as anorher kind of ncirher/ nor, for without mind the good of good and bad vanishes. If the AriStophanic oi/ujqn were what belonged tO us in accordance wirb mind, it would be the cosmos of intelligible beings; and Arisropbanes' denial that our own can be rescored to us would, under th.is translation. be equivalent to a declaration of the permanent fragmentation of the beings as they are for us. This &:.groenmtlon would make the beings appear to be nor parts of a whole. They would be beings alone by themselves (au/"4 Jrmh' bauM)aJtd detached from each other and the good. Such was indeed Socrares' description of our.sdves and our parrs, but suikin.gly none of them was rreared as a parr. and accordingly there was no whole of which they were the. puu. We could weU apply, then, to rhese beings the expression "phantom images" (tidiila), which Socrates bad used for those things over which the real friend c:asrs irs own cb.arncter. These pb.antom images would be, like the wine and the cup, the presumed means for getting the philosop.h er back ro me real. He would have to prize them highly and rake th.e m seriously in light of an ignorance as profound as th.e Etrher's as to whether or not they are &red or nor ro se....-e the rrue and the real; but they do serve his own good in the eonsrant life of thinking. His own thoughts, which are as private as his body but more liable ro alienation, whenever he or another comes to know, are these so-called friends. They are literally (rhimali) In speech. Through the oilr~ion, then,
On Plato's L)~is
there is a way back to the cosmological speculation that Socrates had abandoned when he had turned ro the human dimension of the friend; bur we must remember that with this turn ro the neither/nor philosophy became central. Socrates allows the issue of the oiktion as what is missing (tndtts) ro be glimpsed only for a moment; it is quickly replaced by the oiktion as whatever is Mon one's own wavelength" (kata, 222a2-3). This necessary condition for the possibiliry that what is lacking fir that which desires it, obviously does nor suffice ro characterize a missing pan. If and only if there were no whole of pans bur ro tpirhumoun were homogeneous throughout would the necessary and the sufficient collapse into one. Socrates rhus anticipates his own argument that establishes firsr the identity of the oiktion with the homoion and then irs equal uselessness. The one possibility he docs nor examine, that the good is oiktion ro the neither/ nor, could be thought perhaps as either equivalent to the first Socratic thesis, that the neither/ nor is the friend of the good, or roo paradoxical, if the good were found to be at home with what is neither good nor bad. Yet Socrates might still have intended ro make up for this omission in questioning the older boys (223a1-2), had nor tipsy and solecistic slaves forced Lysis and Mcnexcnos to go home with their brothers. They were afrer all in the right (223a5).
No us 1. M. E. Smith, Essays 011 Lmu rmd Rtligion. Tlu Btrktlty 1111d Oxford Symposia i11 ho11our of David Daubt (Berkeley, 1993), xi.
2. Pamtmidts 137014· 3·
Cf. Odyssry 14.224-28.
4· Iliad 1.167.
5- Elttll)'dtmtiS 273a7-b1. 6. Aeschines Comra Timarrlmm 10. 7· ]. K. Davies, Arhmia11 Propmitd FamiliN 6oo-300 s.c. (Oxford 1971), 359-
6!. 8. Ritl(lltS134b4. Channidts 158q, Emhydtm111273d6, 297a8, Protagoras 31222, Rtpublic 35ods, Lpis 204b5, q, 4· d8, 213d3. 9· Channidts 155d3-4.
to. Channidts 153d2-5, Lysis 204e5-6. 11. R~ublic 412d2-8.
129
1¥'
Ch~p<er
I!Jeven
n.. lkJ>Ublic s6tc6-dr.
the: rphodra a< 107d6 with that at Ul.ll4. 14. Cf. Xenophon Oaonomiew 20.29. '5· Aristotle Ni(()madJ,an Ethietll59J.H uses philophilos in me context of an aer, ro partake 13. Cf.
in che injustice, of me regime. 26. Odyssry '9·4o6-9. 2 7. Th
28. Cf. Symposium r86d6-<J. 29. Symposium 204d8-ll.3o. Cf. Sophist ••6b3- 6.
l' · Sophilt 268;u- 4. 31. Clouds •481- 82. JJ. Tacitus Agricola 45-234- Tlleacurus llOCJ.
Phikbus 16<4- <7•5· 36. Rtpublic 3570. 35·
37· The lace Leo Strauss once sugges!M mat the meaning of the ride Apolog ofSomttn W2S that aD rhe dialogues had che same purpose:. 38. Symposium 104'04-7· J9· R.J>Ublic 4922.1-u; Sm~~twum 303b8-cs. 40. Euthyphro = -7· 4f. StllUsman 172b8-4 41. Tlmutctus 176•3- 8. 43· Sympositm~ 1922.6- 7, I9JCS- d1.
On Interpreting Plato's Charmides
T B£
c H A R M T DEs 1 s A a o u T 10phroruni, "moderation and self-
knowledge"; bur pan of Socrates' original quesrion in the dialogue is about the srate of philosophy in Athens; and sin~ self-knowledge is presumably the marie of Socrates' philosophizing, the Charmider is about Socr:nd own undermndin.g of his kind of philosophizing; it is the self-knowing philosopher Socrates confronting his own teaching about self-knowledge. The Charmitkr, therefore, is a Socraticall)• namued dialogue (one of four), for narration of dialogue is the moSt obvious way to represent reB.exivi cy. The auditor of Socrates' narration is anonymous, bur unlike rhe other is addressed by Socrates (three times): in orrhree narrated dialogues, der for reB.exiviry not oo be losr on the narrative l.e vd , ir is necessary that ir too be given a perspc:ctive. Tbar perspective consiStS of twO things: (1) ignoranct of (and therefore iodiffeten~ oo) political maners-the auditor has nor neard about the barrie ofPotidaea, rhe scan ofme Peloponncsian War; so the auditor must be a foreigner; and (1) a cenain priggishness in sexual matters; so Socrates addresses him rwice in a row wnen he speaks of the erection he suffered wnen he saw the things within Charmides' cloak. A man, then, who does nor know his way ro rhe marketplace and is embarrassed by sex ca.n only be a Theodorus. In me Platonic corpus, T heodorus is me representative of pre-Socratic sc:knce. (Perhaps scien~ is necessarily always pre-Socratic. ) Socrates, rhen, presents his own reB.ection on himself before someone who is as oblivious of the political as he is reluctant to face eros: Socrates' account of self-knowledge is somehow
ne
,.,
lJl
Chaprer Twelve
rhe link between Socrates :15 the discovereL of political philosophy and Socrates' ~r6tiki t«<mi. The dialogue is in three pam. The first is mosrly narrative. Socrates' arrival, hi~ greeting by Chae:rephon, SocraTes' question, the arrival of Charmides, and Socrates' question about him; the second is the exar:Wnation of Charm ides; the lhird of Critias. Not only is the sening poliricalPocidaea-bur ir contains the democrat Chaerepbon and rhe furure tyrants Critias and Cbannides. Chaetephon is said by Socrates to be manikos and me bloodthirsty Cririas is hardly modemte. The setting is of political extremes, bur they ace in rhe future; in the present ir is the extreme reaction of everyone-including Socr-.ttes- ro Charmides: the cransgressive cbar-.tcrer of eros-Charr:Wdes alfccts even little boys- foreshadows political extremism. And yet the argument of the Channidn never touches upon moderation in the Aristotelian sense (and of the &pub/it" coolfood, drink, and sex. This ordinary kind of s6phrosuni is present only on the narrative level, and in a way behind the back of Socrates himself, insofar as the fares of Chaerephol\. Charmides, and Cririas Lie in rhe future. This displacement seems ro be th.e condition for the radical proposal of Cricias--s6piJTosuni is the science of science- and the no less radicd! critique by Socrates of Chum ides' sens.ible definitions-quiemess, shame, and minding one's own business. The frame embodies Socr.ates' self-knowledge; but within the frame a diStinction must be drawn between the examination of Charmides and Critias. Socraces suggesu ro Cbarmides that th.e definition he proposes for sophrosunl comes from an exrunination of himself (i.e., he suggeStS thar Charmides by self-knowledge discover that wphrotuni is selfknowledge), but when Charmides gives up, and Critias takes over, the linkageof the question ofwhat s6phronmiiswith rheone who is being questioned seems ro be abandoned, since Critias com.es forward ro defend a position regardless of whether or noT that position expresses his own state; and yet it is only when introspection is nor an ingredient in the discU$Sion that s6p!JToSUizl is defined as sdf-kuowlctlge. Argument and action cannot be together, but only if they are rogerber can there be philosophy. Socrates begins by sayin.g that he bas been away frorn Athens for some time; and this interval is long enough tO have ttansforrned Charmides from a boy tO a youth, and for Charmides to remember char Critias once associated with Socrates. Socrates' questions furthermore-who aro the new beauties and wise, and what is the state of philosophy in Athensimply that sufficient time h:IS passed ro make a difference. On the other hand, ancient campaigns usually last bur a se:ISOn; so it is hard to be~eve
Interpreting Plato's Channidn
that Socrates was away for more than a year or two. Socrates, then. has exaggerated the length of his absence. He has done so perhaps in order to represent a situation comparable to what the Eleatic Stranger describes in the Stausman: if a statesman had to go abroad for a length of time and left written laws, what would he do if he returned sooner than expected and found changed conditions? Would he abide by his own laws? Socrates, then. represents himself as returning to Athens after sufficient time has passed for his way of philosophizing to have been passed on to Charmidcs by Critias, the direct disciple of Socrates. The: question of sophrosun~ is a question about the transmissibility of philosophy as self• knowledge. It is tackled first through the question of its presence or absence in Charmidcs, and then in the case of Critias, the manner in which he has understood and therefore can transmit the Socratic teaching. Socrates' self-knowledge comes to light across the examination of Socratic selfknowledge as it comes to light in others. Charmidcs and Critias arc found wanting, and despite both being poets neither is capable of transmitting philosophy. Socrates will have to wait for Plato, a member of the same family who has not yet been born. That sophrosun~ as moderation has been taken up to the narrative level is first indicated at 153d1., when Socrates sums up the talk they had about Potidaea by saying. "When we had had enough of this sort of thing ... " The imminent life and dc:ath struggle of Athens, the deaths and woundings of their friends and acquaintances, all this they turn away from as if we could limit our concc:rn as we restrict our diet. Moderation, then, shows itself as indifference to simply human conccrns; 1 and Socrates takes over by asking about "the things here." Since this expression is not on the dialogic level, we cannot gauge the degree to which Socrates' actual question contrasted, with the arrogance of the ivory tower, their concern with Athens and their friends with his concern: Socrates had the nerve to identify Athenian affairs with the state of philosophy. Indeed, we do not know whether "philosophy" occurred on the dialogic level at all, or whether the issue of philosophy was Socrates' interpretation to the auditor of what he asked his acquaintances, whether among them there had proved to be young men outstanding in wisdom, beauty, or both. Socrates' threefold question at any rate gets only a partial answer, for Critias restricts himself to the question of the beauties; and when Socrates gets hold of the discussion again, the issue has become Charmidcs' nature with respect to his soul, and that in turn becomes the question of his sophrosuni. That sophrosuni might be the equivalent of philosophy. and that a good nature with rcspcct to soul might in turn be the equivalent of sophrosuni
1H
>}'!
Chapter Twdve
is one thing, but thar philosophy could be the equivalent of a good narure with respect co soul is quire anoth.ec, especially since Socrates comes forward with th.e claim that be has ar b.i.s command beauriful sp«ches that induce sopbrosrm£. Could beautiful speeches replace, in th.e case of soul, nature? Such a possibiliry seems CU1t2J1loum co the claim that Socrates' n-otikl tt<'hni wholly bmlks down the diStinction be£\veen arc and narure. One sees ar any rate that philosophy is cransmissible if and only if such a breakdown is possible. If courage means minimally "not easily frightened," and sophrosrml minimally ' nor easily ccmp!M; then perfecc: sop!Jrosrme might be unseduceabiliry, and Socr.ues remarks that if Cbarm.ides has in addition to beaUt)' of rorm goodness of soul he is unbeatable; bur at tbc eod ne COO· cedes that be will not oppose Charmides if Charm ides is prepased to use force. Cbarmides, then, is nor unbeatable; atld Soctares finds once more rhat ne can resisc. Socrates' resiscmce means that ne cannot be taken over, and Charmides' deficiency, chat he is nor his own man; be is rhe creature of Critias, like an acror, says Socrates, who has muffed his lines. Philosophy. then, is transmissible only if th.e receiver is wholly resistant to a rake· over. Socrates the philosopher is oo tb.e lookout for someone w-ho JlY,uches him in auronomy. Narural goodness of soul consists in a resisClOce to enchantmenr that has not been bought at rhc price of the experience of disenchanrmcnt. Ir is nor at once dear that Charmides is defective. Far from there being a new crop of beauties in Athens, as Socrates' question had implied, there is only one. Charmides has auracred everyone; no one, with the exception ar fitsr of Socrares who applies b.i.s mind to everyone else, can look on anyone else. but Charmldes. Eve.ryone is either his lo''Cf or loves him; this distinction refers tO their public acknowledgment of rhe.ir love or their experience of it. To be the object of univwal desire is ro overwhelm the differences asnon.g men; Charmides cancels natural rypes. Chaerephon expresses this by distinguishing between Charm.ide~· appearing n~prosopos and his seeming aprosopos should be srrip. so to euw pnnltaws is he. Ch.armides' own individuality would disappear with the uncovering of his tidos. The eidos in itself, it seems, does nor allow for the co-presence of the f.tce-Socrates bad already indicated this in saying tha£ everyone gazed on him as if he were an agalma (i.e. , wi£hour Jife)and so rhe Jovability of Charmides as Charm ides would vanish with the full display of his form. The occlusion of the beings is for the recognition of rbe beings indispensable. Socrates diverts them from Charmides' form by asking about his souL Charmides' beauty with respecr ro eidos is as
lnrerpn:
Charmides' possibly good narure with respecr to souL Cririas says that Charmides is beautiful and good in this respect roo; and Socrates proposes ro nrip "dtis very rhing of his" and look ar it before the tid4s. Socrates implies thar Cririas was praising Charmides' soul with its outer covering, bur that he wants to see the soul naked. The soul, then, seems to have a face-like pan and an tid4s-like part. The soul has its own individuality, and this does nor in.terest Socrares; he wanes co se<: wberher the soul of Charrnides exhibits soul with natural goodness and nothing else. Socrates will idenrify such a sr•ue of soul as the health of soul, or sophrosuni. If s6phrosuni were the beauty of soul, the parallel between Charmides' naked body and naked soul would be exacr; but we know that this skewed relation is deliberate, for sophrosuni is never called a vinue in rhc Charmidn, and "virrue" indeed is only mentioned once, as one of the oursmnding rrairs on the father's side of his family. Two suggestions can already be made. The first is char sophrosune as self-knowledge cannot mean knowledge of rhc self, as a unique bundle of particular features, bur it must refer to a class-knowledge. Selfknowledge as class-kn.owledge seems ro be hinted ar already in Socr.m:s' claim to bis audiror thar when ir comes to the beauties he is oredmiis white on white: alrnosr rhe entire class of rbe young appear beautiful to him. Socrates cannor be a lover of Charmides because he is for him norhing bur a representative of a rype. Cbarmides is already, without srripping, f.tcdess 10 him. But Socrares says auchniis: he is wirhour knowledge pre· cisdy beause he cannor tell rhe beautiful from the not. Self-knowledge as class-knowledge is nor knowledge at all , for if Socrate& is white on white, his be~ef char the young are beautiful is nothing bur his belief char he is beautiful, and ne is the ugliesr man in Arhens. Pernaps rne second suggesrion mighr help here: if Charmides had srripped, he would have exposed bis sexual parts: the things wirbin his cloak, as Socrares delicately says, his aid4ia as Greek says. Does tbe soul wbe.n Likewise stripped reveal i.ts aidqia too? Wharever that mighr mean, ir indicates a possibly necessary connecc.i on becween sophrosuni and aidOs. and this highlights the importance of Charm ides' idc.nri6carion of the two in his second definicion. In any case, rhese two suggestions yield one quesrion: can self-knowledge as class-knowledge be rescued from itS own illusiveness th.rough the notion of rhc shame of soul? The meeting bef\\'CCD Cbarmides and Socrares is arranged through Cririas, who sets our ro put Socrates in a f.tlse position and keep himself in charge. Cririas's ploy, however, ro have Socrares pretend robe a docror, is justi.fied oo rhc grounds char Socrates' proposal co scrip Charmides re-
IJ!
>J6
C~ter
Twelve
quires rhat Charmides not be ashamed of exposing himself ro a manger, and the easiest way to auange tbax, Critias believes, is oo make the relation a professional one between doaor and patient: Doetor Socrates has automatic access ro the secreo; of Cbarmides.2 Knowledge makes shame vanish. It is the psychic equival.e nt to the public display of nakedness that. established by custom, distinguishes Greeks from barbarians. Cririas tells Socrates that Charmides bas been waking up each morning wirb a headache. "The headache is." ro quote a medical manual for the family, "without a doubt the most common symptom of man: almOst any disorder can initiate an mack." The headache is a universal sign, manifest in a part, that some pan or other is nor in il'S proper condition. Cbannides' headache is no more than suggestive of the doctrine Socrates ascribes to Tbracian doaors, that the good condition of the pan depends on the good condition of the whole, for the headache is a general sign, it i& nor a sign of the general The experie.nce of disorder in a part that by itself points directly to the plausibiliry of a disorder in the whole as being causally related to it. i& left to Socrates. When Charmides bas come over and sat down, his ditea glance at Socrates forces him ro look away and down; Socrates tberwpon sees ta mtos and has an erection, which be describes to the auditor in suitably veiled language. It is not Cbarmides' headache but Socrates' own experien.ce, ro which no one present is privy, that iniriates the elaborate tale of Thracian medicine with its incanrarions and drugs. We have then a sptit between the basis of the dialogue and the basis of the narrative. Cbarmides' experience of immoderation is the occasion for the form in which rbe question of soplmmml arises; but it i& Socrates' immoderation that expe.rienrially grounds the Thracian teaching. What is theory for Charmides is faa for Socrates. The examination of Cbarmides' siiphrostml serves Socrates' self-knowledge. The auditor learns that Socrarcs at this moment was no longer in himself (m munaou}, be learns this when Socrates is fully in control: as narrator he can say and nor say what he wanrs about himself and everyone else. Self-control i.n the su:ict sense sett)lS ro be possible only if there is complete control of everyone dse. N:marion is the retrospective equivalent of what in the present would be universal ryranny. Socrates had returned ro his customary haunts with all rbe confidence that the routine brings; his being white on white bad assured him that be would not be forced to depart from his ways by anyone. Socrares could always adapt to any circumstance and play the role it called for. Cbarmides was no challenge. Nothing could surprise Socrat.cs. He is incapable of wonde.r. He cannot philo.wpbize, for philnsophy ceases to he itself if it becomes routine. It
lnterprerhlg Plato's Channitks is not possible to think philosophically if what one thinks is a tradition, in which thought has become belief. Thus the issue of the transmissibility of philosophy is the same as the issue of Socrates' self-knowledge. To be oucside oneself is the necessary condicion for philosophy, and to be outside oneself is to be wholly lacking in moderation and self-knowledge. Socrates says that the approach of Charmides caused much laughter. Everyone, in trying to make room for him next to himself, pushed his neighbor, and rhey succeeded in knocking one man at one end sideways, and anorher at the ocher end was forced to stand up. The expression Socrates uses, epoiise gelota polun. makes it unclear whether anyone actually laughed when they were pushing in earnest (spoudii); and it is perfectly possible that the laughter belongs to the narrative level: the auditor should find it funny. The funny indeed is the only way in which philosophy can be transmitted intact, for only it by nature contains within itself the necessary distance between surface and insight. What then was funny about the siruation Socrates describes? Since everyone had heard what the arrangement was, rhat SOcrates was to converse with Charmides, arid that accordingly the only proper place for him was between Critias and Sacrares, ir is hard m see why room was not made for him at once. Only if everyone was no less excited than Socrates and hence embarrassed to stand up does their pushing make sense. The auditor is thus forced to experience in the form of laughter the intrusion of the unexpected that Socrates himself underwent. The wholly particular character of eros is transmitted in the universal form of the laughable. Techni and aporia, "art" and ..perplexiry," cease m be opposed to one another. Socrates informs Charmides that the drug for the head. is. of no use without a prior incantation. Charmides says, "Then I shall copy it from you." The incantation is a universal formula that allows for the name of the patient to be inserted in the appropriate slots. The incantation is in the. form of any successful transmission: Charmides can recite it where and when he wants to without the presence of Socrates or any Other witness. The stripping of his soul is either unnecessary or it can be done by himself in private without shame. Socrates' question seems to grant Charm ides' assumption: "If you persuade or even if you do not?" There is nothing intrinsically impossible in transcribing the incantation, regardless of whether Socrates himself has written it down or not: Socrates could be forced to hand it over. 1t turns out, however, that the incantation is not necessary; the drug by itself could cure Charmides' headache, but the Thracian doctor strictly enjoined Socrates not to give the drug without first applying the incanrarion. Wirhout sOphrosuniit is of no use for Char-
237
138
Chap<er Twd..:
m.ides co b<: without a hea.dache. Charmides cannot b<:come healthy in his body until he is sound as a whole. The particular good muse wait on the common good; and if che common good is the beautiful condition of the whole, Charm ides will have to wait forever if, as Socrates demands, rhe beautiful condition of the whole cannot b<: induced b<:fore one knows in what such a condition consists. SQphrosuni cannot be handed on unless one knows what sophrosuni is, and yet it might b<: p.resenc without one's k:nowi.ng what it is. Soplmmmi does not email self-knowledge. The risk for rbe Tbtacian doctor was for Socrates to give the drug without the incantation. persuaded by either wealth, nobility, or b<:aucy; bur the risk for Socra.res himself was Cbarmides' dispensing with Socrates as the sole enchanter. Socrates implies char nor even the health of the whole is any good unless one knows what it is. Wbacever else siiphroumi is, ic cannot include either knowledge of itself or knowledge of its own goodness, for otherwise SocrateS could have sung tb.e ineanratioo over Charmides and then rested whether Charmides knew what it was and what good it was. This leads co a further difficulcy. Did Socrates learn the incantation without b<:ing siiphr6n himself? If he did, ir is possible for the incantation co b<: passed along without any effect: enchantment can be had without the recipient being enchanted. Philosophy can survive a nonpbilosophic transmission. If, on the other hand, Socrates did have sopbromne induced, it was not enough by itself co inure him against all blandishments, for otherwise be would not have had co swear to the Tluacian to abide by the sequence of lim the incantation and then the dmg. The oath Socrates swore seems tO b<: as good as s6phrosunl. It suffices co guarantee that h~ will n.o r b<: seduced. The oath is a formula in terms of which one binds oneself ro stick to certain conditions regarclless of circumStances. Th~ lack of conndence oneself or another bas in one's resistance is made up by an a_ppeal to a god or gods who will make sure that. however sorely rempced, one will nor give in. Surely an oath is a kind of b<:autiful speech-one inventS a perfect version of oneself which one is ashamed and afraid co b<:ttay-but ir is nor the sore of heauciful speech char Socrates learned at Poridaea from Tbracians who are said co make themselves immortal Since Ch.armides never does gee the incantation, one is inclined co ask whecber the b<:autiful speeches chat induce siiphromni are not in fact cbe ser of arguments of the dialogue. Is this possible? Can speeches about J6pbrosu11ias tO what it is induce by themselves tophrotulli!Can sophrom11i be cbe same as perplexity? Philosophy then would b<: misological skepticism and as dogmatic as any reaching, for just because Charmides and
lnrerpreciog Pluo's Channidn
Cririas can.n ot g~t out of the difficulties mey land in means as linle as if Socrares found them no less insuperable. Philosophy cannot despair. If, moreover, rbe quesrion of siphrosunl were sopiJroSIInl. rbere would be no something abour which one asked questions, and a self-reflerive ques'
1}9
140
Chapter Twelve nothing but no one believes him. His sophroruni is labeled irony. Now Charmides offers a venion of rhis argument bur nor before he blushes, wh.ieh made him, Socrates says, "appear still more beautiful, for bashfulness (to aischyntilon) suits his ~ge." Charmides' blush is rbe cownerparr co Socrates' own experience, fur it roo is an unwilled sign of some dis turbance. Ic enhances, however, rhe beaury of Charmides' face and indicates by itself rhe presence of wphrostmi in some seose but not of genuine wphronmi. lr is oor clear whether blushing is capable of being presenr cogecher wich genuine riiphrosunl, but if it is not, we would know already chat Channides docs nor have genuine soplmmmi. and be would. precisely because he has a version of it, be incapable of knowing that he lacks the genuine article. If blushing disappears wirh rime, without anything but the weight of unreflective experiences checking its possibility, then sophrosunican never become fully rati.o nal in tbe way in which Cririas will claim. Something char we on our own can neither induce nor suppress is che ground for self-knowledgeCharmides' blush preced.es bis answer; but is his answer che interpretacion of his blush? Does his blush say, "If[ deny I am sop!Jron, it is mange ro say something of tbe sore against oneself a.n d I shall show up Cririas as false and many otb.= in whose eyes 1 seem sophron, as he says; and if in turn f asscrr ir and praise myself. ir will perhaps appear annoying. So I do nor know what I am co reply ro you." Charm.ides' speech is concerned witb tbe shamelessness of either answer; bur che blush is nor shameless; it is a sign of Cbarrnides' ~imulraneous pleasure in being praised for mode.rarion, and his anxiety that such pleasure betrays a lack of moderation. lr cherthy signifies rhar he has nor yet differentiated between the pleasure in mode~tion and tbe pleasure of immoderation. His blush in itself shows tbar he docs nor know himself. Its true interpretation is nor in Charmides' direct speech but in the reponed speech, "He said it was nor easy at rhe moment either <0 agree or deny whar was asked. • Since Socrare.~ has pur this speech into his narrative flame, we cannot tell whecher we can reconstruct from ir Charmides' original spe«h or Socrates has given his own interpretation of tbe now-unrecoverable speech of Cbarmides. ln either case rhe direct speech we ace given, though it purporrs ro explain Charmides' dilemma, does not fully account for the srare he is in. Socrates proposes to get our of Charmides' difficulty by examining with hint wltethe.r he has wphrosuni or nor. "Clearly,· he says, " if sophrosuni is present ro you, you can opine something abour it, for it is surely a necessity tbar if it is in you that it supply some awareness (aisthem), from whicb you would have some opinion about ir as ro what sophrosrmi
lnrcrprcring Plato's Cbannitks
is and what sort it is." Socrates is referring to Charmides' blush, rhe heat of which should make Charmides aware of its cause and identifY sophrosunt with shame. Charm ides does make it his second answer but not his first. His first, quietness (htsuchious), does not require either that he have it or chat it supply him with a perception of it; his definition is merely, as Socrates says, something that people say. In order to distinguish between a transmitted opinion about sophrosum and its actual presence, Socrates had interposed the notion of aisthtsis. An aisthtsis of sophrosunt must be of sophrosunt; something of sophrosunt must show up in the perception of it and yet not be sophrosunt-sophrosum must be a kind or class of which one senses some individual, like the face of Charmides and unlike his form. If sophrosunt is present, it must appear in a passion or an action. If it is not in Charmides' blush, it seems as if it must be in his hesitation and unwillingness to answer the question, whose generalization Charmides sums up as quietness and Socrates interprets as slowness. Socrates' "slowness" is closer to Charmides' experience than Charmides' expression of his experience, which he has adapted to fit a common opinion. Charm ides' slowness, though it occurs on the occasion of the question of sophrosunt, does not necessarily have anything to do with sophrosunt. Charmides' error is based on the reasonable inference from what Socrates has said, that sophrosunt must show up in everything one does, and hence his present slowness must testifY to its presence or not. The manifestation of the scare of the whole is an adverbial qualification of the working of a part. Socrates shows by implication char no adverb chat is restrictive enough to constitute an explanation of what a beautiful order is can cover the range of all our actions of body and soul. Charm ides can hardly be blamed for not knowing of the indeterminate dyad of the beautiful which the Elearic Stranger presents as a solution to Socrates' question. It is precisely the generality of the condition that is the ground for any virtue, so that siiphrosuni cannot be a virtue among virtues, char baffies Charm ides and Critias and precludes the Stranger's solution. Socrates hints at the Stranger's solution when he urges Charmides to apply his mind more, look at himself, realize what sort of person siiphrosuni by its presence makes him and by being of what sort itself it would make him of that sort. "Figure out all this," he says, "and then say well and bravely what it appears to you." Charmides then paused, took a look at himself in a manly or brave way, and said sophromn(was shame. Socrates rhus makes Charmides disassociate the manner needed to discover and express sophrosuni &om what he discovers sophrosunt to be. He therefore cannot be noticing the state
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he is in while he is examining what s.cate the presence of 10pbronmi would put him in. He lacks self-knowledge, but he knows enough to refrain from saying that cowage is moderation. Sqphroruni must necessarily be elusive if che inrensicy and effOrt needed ro lay ir bare cannor consist with the delicacy and gentleness chat make che. man of modemdon impmu.cbabk Charmides imimccs in this respect the pre-Socratic philosopher, whose blind devotion ro che uuth makes him blind to himsdf. It wa.~ Soc.r:ues, who in turning away from looking at Charmides, applied his mind to che spectators. Soaares began to question Cbumides' first definicion of sophrofwli as "quietness~ by having him agree that sophrosuni is beauriJul-it can never fail to be beautiful, it cannot aires in light of ciocumsrances. The moderate life, Socrates concluded, is not the quiet life. Tbese is ooching beautiful about being deliberate. Lighrnmg judgment is usually suspect, nor because it would nor be as good or better than its opposite. but because it is usuaUy rhe case that what we have to decide upon is recalcitrant to speed. Socrates' argument is not based on any rdlecdon abom our nature, the power of our passions, or che fragmemary character of our knowledge. Charmides fails to define Jophrotuni because Socrates abstmcrs from human narure and the nature of our circumstances: sophrosuni would nor be good if we were not whar w<: are. I r therefore can be beautiful and deserving of praise only if it is not like Charm.ides' blusb, which enhances him only in U.g hr of a limitation of hit narure. lr is a question of time. Socrares began to question Charmides' second definition by having him agee~ that sophrosuni is good: mpbronml is good if and only if it is the cause of good. Socrar.cs' argument has a gap in it: he never gees Charmides to a~ee that if something is bad it can neves cause good. This gap links rhe beautiful and the good: to say that tqphrosunl is beautiful is ro asserr that bad carutot produce good. Socrates thus makes use of dtc connecrlon between shame and innocence in order to ger Charmides ro conclude that shame is nor sjjphrosuni. Charmides would have had to have been no longer innocent (i.e. , incapable of blushing), in ordes to maintain rhar the oongoodoess of shame does not prevent it from being productive of good. Charmides' own scare, wb.ich is an acknowledged defectiveness, forces h im to assume that defectiveness cannot make for good, even though in his case ir makes for good and made him more beautiful. Just as Socrates' refumrion of Charmides' "slowness" is itself refiued by Socrares' slow refumcion of it, so Socrates' refutation of shame as tophrosunl is re.futed by Charmides' acceptance of the authority of Homer who denies tbe goodness of respeCt. Socrates gees Charmides to oppose
Interpreting Ploto's Clnmnidn
authority in general on the aurhoriry of an authority. That authority is Homer:; bur Socrates can only make Homer an authority by ascribing to him a line that Tclemachus in &ct speaks. Socrates is nor 02ctly lyin.g. Even ifTdemachus spoke ir, it is not untrue ro say rhat Homer said it. just as every word in the Charmid~.s is said by Socnues. If Socrates had asked Charmides wherhe.r he thought T clemachus spoke beautifully when he unered this line, Charmides would have been asked ro give up his own opinion for chat of another young mao. So Charmides is shamed inro denying that rophroJuni is shame. Once more he is shown ro lack selfknowledge. The first consequence of rhis denial is to pur forward a definition he once heard from someone. He does nor daim as his own view that minding one's business is moderation. He no longer is minding his own business, which was co look at himself and report on his own scare. He defers to Homer and ceases ro defer to Socrates. Socrates is outraged. Charmides, he suspecrs, has heard the definition from Cririas or someone else who is wise. Cririas of course had heard it from Socrates and passed it off as his own. Charmides inadverrendy asks Socrates co 02mine his own definition. Can Socrates bring himself tO look at his own as if it were not his own? Charmides sees no difficulty. "What diffe.rence does it make, Socrares, from whom I heard it?" It is nor the speaker bur the speech chat counrs. There are now no authorities for Cbarn1ides. Socrates has done his work well, so well in fact that be is rold r:o forger himself while seeking self-knowledge. Charmides' principle, however, though it certainly puu Socrates in a quandary, is of no use ro Charmides, for as soon as Socrares shows him how enigmatic the definicion is, Charmides frankly confesses his ignorance and adds, "Bur perhaps nothing prevems even irs speaker from nor knowing whar he had in mind." Charmides has no srake in dte definition; he rhus gives the srrongesr argument for trust in authority, for no one wiU have ao incentive to face up ro the =igmaric unless he can believe rhat it is worth rhe effort to unravel it. Deference to authority is indispensable for the possibility of interpretation. Hermeneutical topllTOSuni consistS in questioning the wisdom of the authority ro which one defers. One transgresses on rhe basis of obedience, and one can only be forced ro rrarugress if rhe wise aut.horiry looks crazy. Hermeneutical wphrosuni means ro look hard ar another's; bur it is also rophrotuni ro defend one's own. One has ro surrender oneself ro anorher while fighting every inch of rhe way. Sopbromni is the orderly an.d quiet harmony of doing one's thing and deferring ro another. Charmides' failure to harmonize them expels him from dte discussion.
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Chaprcr T~lve A character in a Plaronic dialogue says there is no need for Platonic dialogues. He immediately refutes himself by abandoning the search for the meaning of something precisdy because he knows who said it and wanrs ro put him down. He discountS the possibiliry that me saying is enigmatic. Socrates' claim. however, !hat it is enigmatic, that a distinction has 00 be made between me verbal Utterance and the speaker'S intent, is only possible because Soaates does not lay claim to nis own de6nirion. It ceases to be enigmatic and becomes merely obscure as soon as it becomes Socrates' own. The enigmatic only makes sense as a form for the rransrnission of philosopny: it keeps out the legion of Cnarmideses and Criciases, me former because !hey cannot rake it seriously and the latter because they cannot defend what they cl:lim as their own. The Platonic dialogue, then, is rhe perfecr vehicle for the tunsmission of p!UJosophy. It conrairu its own defense, and when it is not funny it is enigmatic. Ta haut11u prmtin, if uanslated as "ro lcnow one's place, • connecrs nor only Cricias's definition of sophrosuni as "self-knowledge" with his defense of ta hautou pramin, but it also link.s up with Charmides' second definicion. Shame, one miglu say, is the consequence of one's not being fully certain as co what one's place is and therefore confining oneself more than the true extent of one's place allows. Socrates' puzzle about ir arises from the faa that the knowledge of knowing one's place is a knowledge of wn2c class one belongs to and not a knowledge of how co do or make at all. Socrates interprets the formula as wnolly empry of content in irself with each of irs pans, pr11min and ta h11utou, as a rubric for any action and any objo:t of that action respectively. He thus points to the difference berween the parts and the formula as a syllabic whole. As a syllabic whole or idiom, it appeau not to allow for substitutions. The difference, chen, berween its literal and idiomaci.c meanings is the basis for the parallelism and lack of parallelism between the structure of the ciry and rhe srrucrure of rhe soul in the &public. The shoemaker by art makes shoes; he does not by art mind his own business, though in making shoes by an he is minding !Us own business. Minding one's own business does not belong to the level of action and dialogue but ro that of narration: "I was minding my own business when .. ."The rask of the philosopner, the.n, is co mind his own business by an; this is self-knowledge. Ordinarily. nowever, ra haut11u pranein is determined negatively. Tnere is always another over against which one's own is defined. Por man. ir is beast and god; for the ciry, other dries; for rhe citizens, other citizens (not being nosy); for the artisan, orher arrs ("stick to your last"); for me, you. As a principle, it requires a prior determinacion of what pair is involved. It is a principle
lmerprcring Plata's C/Jilrmida
and not a way of finding out what is one's own, ln some cases the derermination is not given but has to be discovered- a prio.r meddlin.g is necess:uy if the principle is ro be employable; in othc.r cases. the determination is given but it can be imagined to be canceled- Aristophanic comedy exemplifies this. Through the nonderermination of things, a moral prin.ciple becomes equivalent ro philosophy as the determination of the nature of things. The nondetennin.ation of man establishes the need co decennine the nature of at least three things. Philosophy therefore is always placeless, and the philosopher always a Stranger. Socrates' erection was succeeded by Chaunides' blush; Charmides' blush in rurn is succeeded by Critias's visible "agony." Critias has been "running" Charmides and letting him be his mouthpiece; his anger when Charmides borches his poem shows that he lacks the sophrosuniof writing, which requires that one let go once one has published. Indifference to one's own playrhing is the acknowledgment of the difference between words and their meaning. Mind as such can never be passed on; the possibility of misundc.rstanding belongs of necessity to transmission. Critias, however, steps in because he wants no one ro think l:tim a fool, and that is cleady impossible unless one is either a god or a tyrant. Cririas's anger, wl:tich recalls the occasion on which Tl:trasymachus got angry, forces him to tdl Charmides in effect, "Mind your own business-You lack sophrosuni." This is tl:te counrerpan to Cl:tarmides' mockery of Cricias, which without Charmides being aware of it implies that Critias did not know what l:te was talking about when he praised him for his sophrosuni. Charmides shows his moderation by his indifference to what is not his own; Ccitias shows his moderation by caring for his own. Charmides' indifference led to his denying even the authority of his cousin and guardian Critias; Cririas's concern wiU lead him to speak without clarity our of sham.e of revealing h.is ignorance. Cririas's shame, however, is superior to Charmides' indifference. Socrates abandons Charmides as soon as he does nor care; he forces the discussion forward when C ritias refuses to admit that he does not know. AU of the foUowing arguments wiYh Critias are fueled by grammar. Syntactical ambiguities and errors are either exploired or ignored. The reflexivity of rhougbr, it seems, does not show up clearly in speech. Critias begins by distinguishing between pratttin and poitin, nor in the Aristotelian way of acrion and producrion, but by claiming for praruin the noble and beneficial pan of poitin. This division wirhin making is not balanced by a comparable division \virhin ta hautou; there. is nor the class of one's own of which a parr consists of noble and good things; rather, one's owo
~S
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Chapter Twelve
things arc only the good things. Sophrosun~. then, is w do the good things; but m do is itself m do the good things. Critias thus counters Socrates' argument that had split the idiom into its elements by unifying the syllabic whole of the formula to the point that it has nothing but redundant parts. Sophrosun~ is now entirely self-enclosed and immune to analysis. One's own, then, ceases not only to be in opposition to anyone else (justice toward others becomes total selfishness), but it ceases as well to allow any access to itself. Self-knowledge is neither possible nor necessary for sophrosun~. Socrates concludes this argument as follows: "Sometimes, then, the doctor though he acted beneficially or harmfully does not know himself how he acted/fared" (ou gignoskd hrauton hos ~raxm). Socrates introduces casually the theme of the rest of the dialogue by making use of the so-called binary construction: the reflexive hrauton as the direct object of the verb gignoskri is also in sense the subject of ~praxm. The self of self-knowledge is a virtual object of knowledge. The Delphic inscription "'Know thyself" (gnothi sauton) is not in intention a command; it is a concealed assertion: "You are not a god." Critias moves to sophrosun~ as science of science by denying that "Know thyself" assigns the addressee m the class of humans in opposition to the class of gods. just as he had turned the formula of justice, "Mind one's own business," m the formula for imperialism by denying any implicit opposition between one's own and another's. If. however, we combine the original meaning of "Know thyself"-"You are not a god" -with Critias's insistence on the formula's self-containment, we get the philosophical command, "Know what a god is." To examine the speech means to examine the speaker, for the speaker is the being m be known. The Charmid~s has consistently directed us to this way of interpretation. Hermeneutical sophrosuni thus consists in putting the meaning of an uuerence back into the surface sentence. On this reading the Sphinx asks, "What is man?" and Socrates' proof of the immortality of the soul in the Phardo runs, "'Soul will never accept the separation of body and soul." Critias, in shifting from ta hautou praudn to gig11osluin h~auton, makes a break between action and knowledge that lets siiphrosuni slip through his argument. He asserts that one could never be sophron and not know it. He thereby denies that Charmidcs is sophron; but does he imply that he is? He surely thinks of himself as being moderate in not insisting that he was right about ta hautou pratt~in; and he implicitly urges Socrates m concede that he (Critias) might be right; but if his new definition is right, and he claims to conform with it, he already has confirmed Socrates' later point that if one has self-knowledge one does not know anything. even about sophrosun~. since Critias now grants that ta bmttou
-· -:· li~od material
lnterpredog Plato's Charmidn
prtrttrin might be siiphrosuni. lf that were true, rhere would be rwo equivalent definitions parading as different, while tbe man who holds borb is siiphron wirhour knowing rhat be is. Critias, moreover, says rhar he would not be ashamed to say rh2r he misspoke. Sqphrosuni means nor co have fiUse pride; bur Cririas rhus admits that he does nor know wb~ttrhe mistake was in rhe previous argument any more than he knows thta there has been a mistake. Crirns i.s ce.rrainly now deferring ro Socr.ues' authority, ro rhe exrenr rhar Socrates has uncovered Cririas' s true belief abour so;hro· nmi which Cririas did not know he had. So regardless of wbar might bold :
Ccirias's interpretacion of "Know thyself" is nor easy co make out, for he seems borb to agree wirh Charmides rhar the speech and nor rhe speaker is to be taken inco accoum, and ro disagree wirh Cbarmides, since he speaks of the intention of rhe dedicator; but he also speaks as if rhe god roo is the speaker of rhe leners, and in turn as if rhe leners themselves are speaking. Cririas, in any case, admits rhu there is an enigma here. "Know thyself" looks like a piece of advice; before him ir was never understood as the preferred alternative to rhe greeting cbllirt (Rejoice). The god is nor saying to his worshipers as rhey emer rhe re.mple, "[am addttssing you in a way different from the way you greer one another because I am a god," but he is saying that his way is rhe righr way for men to greer one another. Men are now ro say what a god says, but to say it as they now say cbairt. One man is to greet another wirh g11othi sauton, and rhe other is to ceply, kai su gt (You roo). G..norbi sauton is not a piece of advice, for d1ere is perfect equality between addressor and addressee.. The imperative form is, on rhe one hand, 10 be doubled-the god says, "Say, 'know thyself,'" -and, on the other hand, it is not a command ar all but the expression of a wish, "I hope you know younelf" It is purely formal and does not require one to do anything more thm echo it when one hear~ ir. It is just a polite version of "Mind your own business." Crixias has ro formafue rhe Delphic inscription in order to guarantee rhar one cannot be ignorant of one's own doing and still be moderare. The shadowsentence that accompanie$ gnorhi mtcton and makes it an example of an ellipsed binary construction (hiis oul d rheos) does not associate being with doing. It therefore has ro be cur away from rhe audible sentence. The god who said it is none other than rhe man who wrote. it down. Critias dernes that midm agan is rhe equivalent ofgnothi sauJon. Mod-
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Chapter TwcJ,.., aarion has nothing ro do with siiphronmi. Critias bas so radicalized snphroruni mat it no longer can cover itS ordinary meanio.g. I r is as if Socrates' identification of just.ice as an art in Rtpublk I were never modifie.d in the course of the discussion and justice as will never taken into account. The dialogic level of the Cbannidn is Critias's, who as Socrates' disciple has pushed his reache.r's doctrine ro the point that the inner core of things has become the whole of things. Ta hautou of ta prldtrin lends an element of unclarity and indistinctness to minding one's own business, for ir allows for ao indeterminate expansion and contraction of one's own things, while irs complete contraction i.n knowing oncsdf seems to make for the greatest darity. The rdlexive pronoun points to self-identity. Cririas will not allow for rophrosuni to have a structure like justice, with both a comprehensive and precise sense, whose duality can be kept together only in thought. Cricias had right from the start iden.tified soul and mind and implied that the beautiful speeches ofThracian medicine would make Charmides better in thought. Health of soul, then, is knowledge and rh.e knowledge of health of soul the knowledge of knowledge, both comprehensive as me science of science and precisely as the science of itself. "Know thyself" originally meant "Know wh:u you are•; in Ccitias's version it means "Be knowledge-" Critias ends up with the pure mind of Arisrode, which has nothing ro rhink bur itself; and just as the world falls a'vay from Aristo<elian mind, dte self ofQliithi f4uto11 vanishes intO me selfof tpufimi h~4UtiJ. Tb.e emergence of science as i:ts own object happens in the seemingly moSt casual way. Socrates replaces the verb for knowledge by acquaintance (gignoskdn) with the noun for scienri6.c knowledge (tpirtim<). The noun, of course, can no longer take a rdlcxive personal pronoun , though Cricias at 6rsr lecs ir; bur the science would srriccly have ro be of rbe ego or, if the rdlexive &o.m the verh.al phrase i.s to be preserved, ir would have co be of itself. What asroni.shes us in the grammatical legerdemain is rhar Socrates proposes it on his own; but it ceases to astonish when we nohrosuni is unique because it is of itsdf and aU the other sciences. Cririas, rbeo, first denies
lmuprering Plaro's ChannUks
Socrates for failing m disc~rn clilrumces in similar thin~. If Crit:Us knew what he: was doing, b~ would be proposing that division in the Sophut in which the Eleatic Stranger puts mgether and separates his own diacritical way and me ca!hartic.s of Socrares. Critiu would then be saying that siiphrosuni is th~ science that distinguishes berween produc.t-scie.nces and measure-sciences, good-relared and non-good-related sciences, how they are rda.ted tO themselves and one another. Cririu, however, does not know what he is saying; h~ consis.teotly fails tO conn~ct the argument with what either be or Socrates says, even though by his own definition, it would seem that sophrosuni should equip one to follow one's following of an argument. Despite Critias's control of the argument up to Ibis point, Critiu wimout provocation rums on Socrates: "You are f.u from being unaware {k/irlmuzi) of this, but u a matter of fact I believe you are doing what you jun denied you do: you are uying to re.fure 1m, wi!h the dismissal of what th~ speech is about.• Socrates does not deny me charge bur ramer links the refurarion of Cririas wim me examination of me argument: "Think of what you are doing if you believe mat if it is gramed that I am refuting you I am refuting for me sake of anything else rhan for me sake of which I would examine myself as to what I say, in fear that without bei.ng aware of ir (lathein) I believe I know something and do not know it!" All Socratic examination of others is self-examination, and self-<xaminarion is examination of whar he says. Self-knowledge is once again binary. To test Critiu is to test a piece of Socratic opinion mat is parading as knowledge. Cririas is the unawareness (lathein) of Socrates. Sophrosuni is me sciencx of truth (a-lirh~iA}; but it cannot be such a science unless mere is unawareness or latency (lonthtmein) in truro and it is me alphaprivatizing of nor-noticing. for me latent in itself resists its own negation. Knowing and belief are in memselves distinct; !hey can overlap and seem th<: sam<: only in me would-be knower. Sophrosuni, men , is of necessity a continual praxis and cannot but disappear and contradict itself should it ever come to believe- it would never know-that it has reached its gO
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Ch•pter Twelve mf oitk11 tidnuu hoti oulr oiden- "the knowing of what one knows and does not know that one does not know." The phrase to ... tidtlldi looks complete, and the supplement hoti ouit oidm see.ms oo srand outside ic and unde.rcoc the distinction between what one knows and what one does nor; i.e., the knowledge that one does not know is a consequence of what one knows and does not know. The binary cooscruccion is thus exploited in order ro reveal dtat Knowing What and Knowing That are united in knowledge of igJtomnce, and whac are apace in the. firsc element of the conscruction are cogetbc.r in the second. The knowledge of indirect question (I know what) and the knowledge of indirect srarement (I know rhat) coin.cide only if what one knows is a question. The form of soul as selfmoving motion has the C:OgJtitive nrucrure of questions. This is sophrosu11L. Socrates offers Critias a list of cogl'irive and appetitive facolties of soul and asks in various ways, "Have you noticed ... ?" Tbis faculty of noticing is not on Soaat~' list. for ir .notices not only all orhes facolties as well as itself. but it also does not have any range to which it is rescricred; we can all it rhe surveying or enumerating faculry. There is nothing infal· lible about. rhis facolcy. Desire (tpdhumia), Wanting (bouilsiJ), and Love (tros} are in Soc:racc:s' preseow:ion laically distiucL; the firSt has pleasure, the second the good, the third the beautiful for irs prope.r object. The denial of reflexiviry to chem is thus resrricced oo these objecrs. lr is therefore possible for eros to be a good and a kind of pleasure and thus to be itself the object of wanting and desire respectively; and if eros is in rrurh a desire for the good and a wanting it co be one's own, th.e n eros could be of irself across Socrates' mistaken division. Elasticity of refe.cence would be the minimal condition for reftexiviry. This elasticity would be satisfied for anything imperfect that has the cap3ciry to be irsdf. Anything, in short, that can be a class-member without being identical wit.h the virtue of rhe class to which ic belong:scan be said to have such a reflexive capaciry. Knowledge of knowledge therefore is possible only if such knowledge can belong to rhe class of knowledge without being rhe virtue of the class. Knowledge must nor be disqualified as knowledge if it curns out to be nonknowledge too, any more than self-knowledge requires that he who knows that he is a man be the perfection of man. Csi tills is roo ex2eti ng to be m.oderate. 1n his eoumetation of facolries, Socrarc:s, ic seems, misplaces doxa (opinion); ic follows fear and should follow perception. Socrates, more4 over, fnils ro say whar doxa is of, bur simply asks, [Ha"-e you obsenoed] a doXll that was do>aJ of doxai aud of itself, but whar all orhe.c opinions opine about opines norhing?n C~irias answers, oud.ami;s. It is stricdy an
lmcrprcting Plato's Channidts
251
answer to "Have you noticed?" and not directly about opinion of opinions and of itself, for if it were, he would be mistaken, since oudamosis certainly an expression of an opinion about opinion, and it is false; indeed, it could not possibly not be false. Critias in fact has knowledge that there is opinion about opinion; he therefore has a false opinion about his false opinion. Critias's mistake is necessary for him; otherwise, one could have a true opinion about knowledge of knowledge and be sopbron without being sophroll in Critias's sense of knowing that one was sophron. If Critias, moreover, now has a true or false opinion about knowledge of knowledge, he certainly has an opinion about it: and yet he docs not notice that knowledge of knowledge must be of itself, and if Critias cannot prove that it is possible, he was asking Socrates to agree to something he himself does not know. Socrates distinguishes bc:twec:n the manifest impossibility that relative measures could be self-reflexive and the intense distrust that nonmea· surdike things could ever have such a power. He seems to imply that it could be: seulc:d if all nonmc:asurdikc: things could be shown to he in fact measurelike: but c:ven this proof. that their diflerence was only apparent, would fail to solve the problem, since once this science in charge of this proof were in place, it would have to examine itself and find accordingly that it was baffled as to which class it should assign itself. A complete Pythagorean ism seems impossible, and a science of science necessarily incomplete. Only a nonsciencc of nonscience is possible. Socrates' perplexity at this point is the manifestation of irs existence. "Whc:n Critias heard me and saw that I was perplexed, I thought that he: too, just as those who sec yawning people facing them, experience along with them this same thing, was compelled by my being perplexed to be caught by perplexity." That Critias's next speech is obscure wimout being enigmatic shows that he is merely imitating Socrates' perplexity. Critias docs sec Socrates per· plexcd. but he docs not sec that this is knowledge of ignorance and Socrates has refined himself. His failure: to see that the disproof of Socrates' argument supervenes on Socrates' argument is due in part to his truly acring in accordance with his original assertion-no siiphrosunf without self-knowledge-for he can only see through Socrates' argument if he gives up his thesis. which requires the thematizability of knowledge of knowledge. His thesis stands in the way of his seeing and thus refutes itself, since he cannot know himself either, inasmuch as he does not recog· nizc what he should according to his thesis. His shame dominated his pseudo-sopbrosrmi and therefore confirmed Socrates' pseudo-proof that it is not good: but this pride-this reluctance to call it quits-is the basis
Cop~
J maW.::
>f1
Chaprer T
wd••
for the logps coot.inuing. lt is Cririas's holding onto something not good which is llis own and wllich enables llim ro go on. Cririas' s impure care for llis thesis is good. Tt is no wonder, then, mac Socrates can now only divine that ~pbronmi is good; when he was spealcing wim Charmides, be was certain that it was good and thuefon: nor shame. Cricias'$ stubbornness lers Socrates formulate me difference berween knowing that and knowing wh:n. Without any knowledge of whatever an art or science deals wirb, knowledge of knowledge is n:duced LO knowing mar hen: is knowledge and here nor. This is nor altogether trivial, since it implies mar one can know .something without knowing that one knows it. Critias's restriction, however, of knowledge of knowledge ro the am and sciences makes it trivial, for me man with medical knowledge invariably says, "[ am a doctor." Latent. knowledge, which Cririas needs, seems mon: ro characterize Thtaeterus, who on Socrates' telling him the cause of his bewilderment says, "I do nor know." Theaeretus thus declares that he knows knowledge is knowledge of cause. Nonsynematic knowledge. then, could be the proper field of rhe exercise of sopbronmi, but Critias cannot by definition avail himselfof this. Knowledge of knowledge is a diacritical powe.r designed ro separ:w: things known &om thinS$ unknown; but Critias has to deny that it i~ anything more than the recogni· cion of that separation and not the sepatating itself, for the latrer implios that the known and the unknown were initially confused and lmowledge of knowledge. would have to know and not know the beings. Socrates illumates what he means by saying that political science is of the just. Political science knows tbe just and unjust. The dry is the locus of tbe sec of all possible opinions about justice. Political science, then, is the science of the just and of opinions of the just; bur opinions of the just are rhe sarne as varieties of pseudo-political science. Political science is of the images of political scicn.ce. It is of itself across nonpolitical science; and if the locus of nonpolitical science is the dey, it is itself the locus of justice. The knowledge of justice is of irs cognitive and ooncognitive character; in ics cognitive character it is philosophy, and in ics noncogn.icive character it is tbe cicy. Political science is of soul and dry, of itself and nor itself. Once the question of knowledge of knowledge is broached, it might surprise that the Tlxaeut~iJ question is nor raised, Wb.ar is knowledge? Suppose Cricias had said thar ~pbroJuni is me name for the answer tO that question, and just as there .impurity was ineradicable through our knowing while not knowing, so here rbe answer would be. impure through our not knowing while knowing. At the end of the Tbtaermu. Theaetetus
lnterpming Pbro'• Charmilks
knows thai be does not know wbat knowledge is; he knows his nonknowlcdgc of knowledge; and Socrates says that he is in the position he claims to be possible for Cricias's knowledge of knowledge if it is limited to knowing thar. Since Socrates' maieucic science, with which he never r.m ed Theaetetus's mathematical competence, brought Theaetetus to this knowledge, Cririas seems to be given the opponunity to identify it with a partial science of science. Socrates, howevet, does nor allow Cririas to examine Socratic knowledge because Critias shows that he does not have the knowledg<: to examine Socrates. Critias lacks rh<: maieutic science; but if the holder of the maieutic science generates nothing. can the rnaieuric science examine itself? Can "nothing" be examined? The issue of nonbeing in the Sophist follows directly from this puzzle. If Critias is the 14tmin of Soerares, he cannot be his own 14t!Min; Socrates would have ro be his Luhein, and his self-knowledge be across Socrates' ignorance. Cririas bad in faa tried ro arrange for this, for be assigned to Socrates the role of the sham-docror and rhus believed be had automatic knowledge of Socrates' nonknowledge; bur Socrates eluded him by presenting a docrrine that, in arguing for the partiality of the an of medicine as the Greeks undeJ'$tand it, ddied Critias ro prove rbat Socrates' knowledge was spurious. Socrates indeed lets Cririas draw that conclusion, for be g<:ts biro ro agr:ee that each science minds its own business. Cririas's science of science is sophriin because it acknowledges the siiphrosuni of each science. The pretender with his sham-knowledge always shows up in his violation of the boundary conditioos of each science. Socrates i$ the transgressor who has Critias accept the inviolability of class-&srinctions. Having reduced !Ophrorrmi to a knowing thar, Socrates outlines rh~ good they expected would have accrued ro them had siiphromni been also a knowing what. His oudine consistS of the true city of the R~public, in which everyone is in his proper pla.ce and thar place is determined soldy by knowledge. Everyone leads an error-frtt life. Sophrotunl, however, because ir governs everything. does nor have ro be youa in order for you to r<:ap exactly the same beoe6rs as you would should you possess lt yourself. If you do only wbat you know, and someone else decides what of yours you should hand over ro others who know, you will lead a lik in conformity with siiphrosuni without being yourself guided by it. Even if yon know oorbing and band yourself over entirely ro others in the rnictesr obedience, you wt>uld be in the same condition as anyone who was individually as well-organized. An error-free life is a life in which inside and onrside causation are indistinguishable. So if Cbarmides were as beautiful on the inside as on rbe outside, he would be faceless and have oo inside.
~!)
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Chapter Tweh·c
Hiding. then, seems to be comparibl.e only wirh error, the range of 'vbich extends &om Channida' blush to Socmtes latkiJL Soul cannot be. beautifuL In the Phnedrw it is a monner .in love with the beautifuL That sophronmi might be knowledge of what one knows and whar one does not know is a concession against roe logos !hat did nor allow siiphronml co be that if it ~rc siiphrosuni in C..ritias's sense; but nothing smnds in the way of there being such a knowledg~: as long as it is not sophromni. It is a parr of political science. Socr.n:es thus proves cluu even with this political science we would nor be happy. It is nor roe true and healthy city but the f.tlse and unhealthy city that is good. Socmres thus looks at sqphr1mml's usurpation of political scieoce and discovers cb.ac in its pretension it is oot good. The conc:ession& made against the logos are in fact nothing bur rhe sham disguises of sophrosuni. Sophrosuni as the sci.ence of science is rophisr.o:y, rhe indispensable shadow of philosophy. Socrares 6m ga\'C a contrahcrual argument for the goodness of Cririas's science of science in che full sense; he then asks whether science of science has nor a more limited scope, r.o make one's own learning easier and the examination of omen more beautiful; and though we are expecting an eX'IUllinarion of this possibilil)', Socrates insread goes back m the c.ootmfaetual and proceeds to prove roar the seemingly impossible is not good. This proof di~ with the need to wait for some great man, as Socrates puts ir, m determine whether any of the beings has irs own power rdative co irsdf. The philosopher is without hope. The structure of the argument suggests that the more modesr funccion of ropbrorunl was precisely to discover that the scicntilic life was not good. Sopbromnl makes learning easier because, on the one hand, it purs up resinance co the drift of an argument on the grounds that something is roo good to be impossible; and because, on the other, it resisrs the attraction of the impossible good. Socmres thus ruggesrs th:u one of the highest rhemes of philosophy would be tO consider wherhc.r anyrhing impossible is good or whether every good i.s in principle realizable. lf the first is true, philosophy ends in despair; if the second, that the. good is the cause of the being of rhe beings would be more than a divinatioJL The strange consequence that. now appears before Socrares, if ro live scienrificilly is oor to live happily. consiSI's in thjs, Thcir supposition had been that an error-flU" life was good. This was an error. They would nor have made this error if they had had the enor-free science of siipbrotunl. They would have known at once that it was nor good. Why. rben, was the error better rhan the truth? Why was Cricias's failure to admit his perplexil)' better than C-harmides' confession of ignorance? His failure
LDI<rpreting Plato's Chlumitlt:J allowed Socrates to formulate rhe difference between knowing what and knowing chat. This difference in rurn leads Socrates oo suppose that someone has knowledge of all that has been, all that is, and all that will be. This comprehensive divinaoory knowledge is a knowing that. Aeschylus's Prometheus knows that if he disobeys Zeus he will be punished; but his poet rev" canno< be properly formulated unless i< is erroneously fOrmulated.. This constitutes rhe philosopb.ical equivalem of tragic wisdom and its name, too. is sOphrosuni. Soera1es justilies his examination of his scrange vision by $3yiDg. "It is necessary tO look at what appears before one and not dismiss it idly, ifat least one cares for onesclf even a little." No one else cares for another's dream. The dream alone escapes concrol because it escapes the inrerest of whoever rules with the political science of science. Socmes opposes what is his own, reg;.rdless of irs
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Cluprer T wd.;e
unless mere is knowledge rh2t mere is good. There is no unexamined good and merefore no happiness wimout knowledge of happiness. Perhaps, then, it is in this way mat me good as me cause of me know-ability of the beings can be undemood ro fall rogerher with the good as the cause of me being of the beings. ln any case, me disjoining and conjoining bond in the compound name phi.losophia, between me knowledge of the beings that is wisdom and the desire to have that knowledge as one's own good, is suphrosuni. Cririas wonders why me science of sci.ence could not rule me science of good while still bang benefited by rhe science of good. The science of science cannot be subordinate ro any science. It corals bu.r does not complete. In order for ir ro complete the sciences, the science of science would have to rcaniculare the sciences in a way different from the self-conception of each science. It would have to look ar the sciences in light of a whole unknown to any ocher science and hence transgress the self-imposed boundaries of each science. Ccitia.• is not criminal enough to undertake mis enterprise; his scU,nce of science requires that ~tything be in place prior to his rule, fur otherwise the sci.ence of science would have tO know something besides rule. Rule, however, also mrns out ro be superfluous. Cricias's interpretation of Socrates' reaching amouors to the replacement of th.e good with the beautiful as the highest principle. The facel.ess ridbs of Charmides symbolized that princip.lt:; and the reaching of the Thracian doctor was Socrares' proleptic inreq>.ret:ation of ir. C ricias accordingly could not figure out whether that teaching was genuine or not, for Thracian medicine offered perfect order unaccompanied by any unde.rsranding of what perfect order is. That undemanding is in the beautiful speech of Socrates, the Charmider hself. It is his alone and cannot be copied by the likes of Charmides and Cdrias. Socrates comes back to Amens and rakes back his own.
t.
Cf.
1.
Cf. Herodotus 3-t)).I.
lfitu{ U-462-69.
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Plato's Lachi!S: A Q uestion of Definition
between Socntes IUld dte inglorious sons of Thuqdides and Aristides, on rhe one hand. and, on rhe ocher, rhe now-famous gene111.ls laches and Nicias. They meet somerimc after 424 B.C., me hattie of Odium, and before 418 B.C., dte hattie of Manrincia, where Laches lost his life (Thucydides 5-74-3). The meeting cann.o t he said to have been a complete success. No definicion of courage is arrived ar, and Soc111.res' proposal, that they all go back to school, was not, it seems, fOllowed up. Tb.e last words of dte dialogue are Socrates' -tAn theM theui-and dtey show him to he cautious even about romorrow in Arhens. This caution could not have been very different from th:u which he displayed at the battle of Delium itself, which impressed both Alcibiades and Laches (Symposium 22<>e7-22tCl). According ro Thucydides, dte left wing of dte Bocolians was defeated b)' rhe Athenians, bur the Athenians, on seeing two cavalry detachmentS that Pagondas bad sent ro rheir rear, panicked and ran in rhe belief rhat anomer army was about to attack them (4-96.s). If we imagine rhar Soaares was stationed on rhe initially vicrorious right wing-Laches' praise of him would not he as suitable if he were in retreat from the n:ur-rhen Socrues' precaution, his being more tmpl!rOn than Laches, would have consisted in his not taking anything except for what it is, wirh no false imaginings allowed, which would' have earlier prevented him from killing his feUow Athenians when the enemy line bene inro a circle and some of the Arhenians lost rheir heads and failed to recognize the.ir own (4.96.3). Socrates' caution seems to be a species of prudence, and hardly a matter of courage as either
T H .E LACHES R E C 0 R 0 S THE ME£ TIN G
>S7
•sB
Chapccr "fhin..,o
Laches or Nicias chink of it. His prudence seems ro be halfway belWeen che fully epistemic chanaec Nicias impresses on courage and the natural force Lacltes believes che lion, leopard, and wild boar share with brave men .' The essence of bravery is to be found in a beast, and a female one ac rhac. for it is impossible to tell apart che predicate adjective in Socrates' remark co Nicias, oude tin Krommuiinian Inn• pistnuis su gt andrrian gtgonenai (r96e1-2), from che substantive andrria in which one would say that Socrates and L1ches share (l93e:J). The bestiality of Laches' cour.tge is ar the opposite pole from Nicias's divinizacion of courage. so rhac. as Laches believes, only a god could possess it (196a6}.2 Socrates' middling position, which covers both his actions on the barcldidd and in a friendly conv= cion, certainly seems oo be of a human son; bur it willS this posicion at a price: che human (ttJ anthropritm) takes over from the manly {ro andreion), and Socrates becomes a whole by letting slip our of sight rhe half he really is. This internal opposition between the human and che manly is noted by Nicias: "That's good, Laches, . • . and it will no longer make any difference to you, it seems, if you along with me know nothing of chose things whose c:xaa knowledge (tpisumi) ic is licri.ng for a man who bclie.ves he is something ro have. Now you in fila seem co me co be doing a rruly human (anrhriipritm) thin( (20034-t>J); bw for Nicias che human aJl. coo-human is despicable, common though ic is, or, bet~er perhaps, because it is so common. and chis is what Laches is doing, seeing Nicias's discomfiru.rc as a vind.icarion ofhis own, while what he should be doing is looking to himself, since h.e believes he is a real man and a somebody.) It might be rboughr strange chat Nicias of all people should appeal co Laches' manhood, since he could nor have fmgorcen Oeon's jeer in the Pylos campaign, that che situation could have been resolved "provided the gener..Js were real men (andresr (Thucyclides 4·27.3). To be a man, rben, carries with it so immediate a recognition that Laches, wheo he is forced ro admit that choughrful dating is less manly chan choughdess, f..IIs back on his intuition, which, he acknowledges, he cannot express, but it still remains undamaged by Socrares' argnment: "I am really distressed if I am not able to say ju.
l'laro's Lizthn
If we discount th~ sons of Lysimachus and Mcksias, who speak one lin~ in unison (tSta)), tm dial~ consim of two nobodies and twO somebod~ with Socrates belonging oo nothu or both groups. For N'ocias and laches. Socntcs is dearly a somebody. but for Lysimachus and Mdrsias Socnrcs is not much, sincr it did not occur to tkm to invite him to tlK hoplitNhow of Srcsilaos, though Lysimachus knows of him through his fathtt Sophtoniscus. but be lost couch with him since Socntn was a boy, or so Nicias infcn (187d6-"4l. Soa-~tes, in any case, whatever his smnding iJ in the eyes of Nicias and Laches, did not bavc rhe public position that oould have excited Lysiroachus's interest. Lysimachus and Melesiu are concero.e d with their own 11u:lc of exploirs with which to rq:ale their sons, and in some sense they want ro learn the formula for political success; but this concern, though it seems to ~ rh~ spring of their joint action in inviting Laches and Nici:u, is overbid with a more meritorious impulse, to make sur~ their own sons who are som~h= ~rwew IS and 10 might ~ the best possible (179
1S9
>6o
Cruaprcr Thirteen mode as the only auly Hellenic one, and clearly despises the esteem in wh.ich Athens holds tragedy {J.8:Wl-b6, 188d2-8). Al the same rime, however, Laches cltarly does not reg:ud himself a.s devoted to war ro the same extent he bclit=s rh.e Spaams are, and Nicias deh.berarely gets his goat by citing the phil4polotW$l.amachus as no less wise than be {197C5- 7).8 Whar best shows off perhaps his Artie strain is his camch.rcsis of mou.siltos and doristi (t88d}, 6). Mou.sikos does not mean for l.ach<S "skilled in music, • which ir Still does for Soccues when he says In rhe &public that Glaucon, Adimanrus, and be wiD not be nwu.siltoi before rhey are thoroughly acquainted with the species of moderation and courage in themselves and their images (4mb9-e8}; but Laches' mou.siltos has mken on a novel sense rhat, while drained of tahni, does not preserve any connection with the performance of music either, even though Laches has to borrow the musical rerm doristi, but again it u unrelated ro any scale. In spite, however, of these noncognidve extensions of mbusiltos and h1Zt7110nia, Laches is saying that the real man (Ms al£thiis IVIir on, r88e8) is not as reticent as a Spartan but has speeches ro march his deeds. He may be claiming, it is true, a love of speeebes only to accommodate Socrares, from whom be seems to expect an eloquence that he can then borrow as his own and thus live up to the rc:ally (tiii ortti) harmonized man he has posrulared; bur Laches' admiration for Soc.rares soves him from being entirdy Socrates' timocraric rnon, who is more willful and slightly less musical than Glaucoo (&public 54lle4-549a1).' There is more ro Laches than he eon ttpress; but there is also more in what he says than we find in his words on courage. His vi~ of courage is much narrower than what he indicates he believes constitutes a real man. Although it would seem that a phrase like "a man auly a mao" should be no differen~ from the narure of manliness, Laches never connectS the virtue on~ with what he takes to be the anir mou.siltos. That Laches senses a connection is shown particularly in his confrontation with Nicias, where he plainly appeals to himself and othe.rs as proof positive that Nicias could not be mon: mismken.. Perb2ps what stands in the way of Laches' thematizing the connection is his agn:cmeot with Socrotes that andr~ia is a pan of vinue, whereos he surely d~ nor suppose a rrue man is defective in any way. Laches, then, fails ro grasp courage because he feels compelled ro resrricr it to a part while what he meems is a man who is a whole and all of a piece. IfNicias srumbles because he oxpands a parr inro a whole, Laches mUses the mark the other way around: he has a whole in mind that courage as a pan cannot m.eosure up ro. The loose language of contempt- like Oeon's "If th.e generals were men" - which
Plato'• 1.-uha
Laches fully exp~ and somewhat understands, re$ists guiding or even bcing raken inro account once Socrates .-aUes the formal question, What is courage? Not only the language but th.e opinions generally held have drifted away from the reality of what it means ro be a man. The shift· from substantive anir to possessive adjective andnio<, and the se.cond shift to a resubstanti?.ed andnia have left behind the being that Laches still divines is the real issue. Laches, in short, does say whar he thinks, but be does nor know it. It is easy enough to connect Lysimacbus' question, How can his sons become as good as possible? with Socrates' question, What i.1 courage? if one recalls the original meaning of agathoJ as "brave.•>• The connection cannot have been entirely lost on Lysimachus either if he believes that Nicias's and Laches' assessmem of hoplite-instruction provides a tesr of their advice about the more general question he poses. The Megillus of the Laws would perhaps have joined the two questions at once wirh some citations from T ysraeus that proved their essential equivalence. Laches roo must have retained something of the original meaning of agathos if he separates, as he does, wisdom so entirely from virrue, even though he does not dispa~ wisdom and believes rhe wise man roo can be in a Doric harmony (r88q). To be a man, then. has also moved beyond its ori.ginal sense and raken in more than andreia ean. Andrroz seems to be sruek between a concrete and global past, when ir charaaerized aU that a man could be, a Socratic present, in which its scope has been restricted. and rhe future where irs very existence is precarious ifit is nothing bur a human excelle.nce in which anyone can share regardless of whether one has a natural basis for it or nor. Nicias, one can say, represents a flawed version of that furure, and the question would be whether it has ro be llawed if nature is so ruthlessly banished." In order ro get a handle on what Laches wa.nrs ro have Socrates advo· care, it is necessary to go back to his advice about hopllre-insuucrion. ln the cou"" of arguing against the worth or even th.e existwce of such ao art, Laches tells an anecdote about Stesilaos, in which his no~·el weapon of spear plus pruning hook got him into trouble. The anecdote ill itself shows rhat Sresilaos's invenrion was not well thought ouc; it proves neither thar Sresilaos was a cowardly man nor char his training gave him a false sense of confidence; indeed, Stesilaos did not lose his head when hls spear· pruning-book got stuck in rhe rigging of a fre.ighrer, and he held on as long as be could. What Lacb.es cites as the most telling objection to SttSilaos is that his behavior provoked laughter fusr among the sailor:s on board the freighter, and then among his fellow marines. That rhe show he put on ,
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262
Cb.aprer nmre
Plato's Ltubn
abou< any enmity on their part, even though one can imagine that Lysimachus's and Mdesias's sons were nor slow ro spread the word among their contemporaries about the surprising defeat Nicias and Laches experienced at the hands of Socrares. Just ~>¢fore his trial, Socrntes singles our for mention Lysinuchus's son Arisrides as one of those who left him too soon, Wore his midwifery could have its fuU effect, and thus abo ned everything Socrates had previously assisted to see the light ar his lying-in (Thtat~tu.s 1SOCI-JS131.) ; and in the Tbtagts. Socrates cells how Aristidcs realized that Thucydides, Mdesias's son, was preening himself as being a somebody and forgetting that ~>¢fore he coosoned with Socrates he was no better chan a slave (13oa8-b8). Socrates, chen , has some disappointments in score for him, bur at the moment he is riding high and could easily be imagined to be. suutting in his usual way in his total defeat of know-nothing politicians. There is something delicious in Plato's conjuring up Socrates' imagin1UJ triumph. but also something absurd in taking th.is kind of reven.ge on AriStophanes. It is possible. ho~er. that a moment or cwo later, after the gathering broke up, Laches and Nicias came co their senses and reali~ed who was responsible for showing them up and purring them down, atld the Lncbn. far from recording a conrra&crual Socratic victory, documents the origins of the enmiry Socrates incurred among the politicians of Athens. Socrates is very anful in the way he d.ivens the i.nterlocurors away from an inlmediarely practical question- should the sons of Lysimachus and Melesias b¢ instructed in hoplite-6gbting-to his own kind of question, What is courage? whose only pra.crical consequence is bis own impractical suggestion chat the old men, the generals, and he go back to school and disregard the ridicule they will probably incm. His suggestion gains support only from Lysimacbus, who cannot lose any more fitce chan he already has, and ndther Laches nor Nicias-rhough the former would b¢ willing to entruSt his sons to Socrates if they were of age, and the latter is all for Socrates taking charge of his son-has any inrerest in consulting Socrates further on his own behalf. Nicias promises to go back r.o Damon and others to correct his partially flawed definition of courage, and Laches is not prepated ro fulfill his ambition ro crack down counge, once he is secure in the knowledge that Nicia• knows as little as he. The impracdcaliry toward which Socrates slants the discussion docs not hold thJoughout. No one can read Socrates' remark to Nicias, which Laches alone is made to confirm, chat Nicias and Laches as generals can b¢ar wimess that generalship best rakes care of the things within irs domain, and the art of divination muse sesve the art of the general, just as the law also ordains, without
263
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Cbaprer ThiJrecn
feeling rhat Socrat~ is w:u-ning Nicias, ten years bd'ore the fact., rhat he is destined to yidd fatally ro soothsayen (Ibucydides 7·50-4).13 Not only is the Lachet a monument to the cloudless days of Socrates but also to the terrible disasters rhat await Adtens through rhe incompetence and timidity of Nicias. The l"..at:hn, then, reprtsentS an occasion on which the philosopher might have bad an effect on the politics and life of his own city. Although this practical effecr lies outside the dialogue, it must color our reading of it. Sueb a perspective raises rwo questions: Was it just an accidenr that Nicias was incapable of heeding Socrates' advice, or does N icias represent or point ro something in the ciry that philosophy cannot budge? The second quest.i on is rhis: Does Plato's reconstruction of the premises for the SicililUl disaster contribute something of an entirely dif· ferent kind &om what we find In Thucydides? Is not Nici.u done to a turn by the historian widtou~ any help from philosophy, and does be not give us material as rich for rdlcction as any that Plato made up? lf, for a moment, one has to conceive of a typical sequence in Thucydides, one could say that it consisrs of a s~ or speeches that propose some course of action, foUowed by a deed or deeds that show the conse· quenccs of the advice taken or not taken. Every speech, no matter how focused on a single action, rends to be couched in universal terms: Oeon and Diodorus have to give a wide-mnging account of Arhen.ian democracy from which it is supposed tn follow that the Myrilenean decree is oo be put into effect or rescinded. The Jim parr of the Lachet somewhat resembles this Thucydidean practice. Nicias and Laches each give a speech, with one recommending and th~ other urging the rejection of hoplite· insuucrion. Both present their uguments in universal terms and thus con· rain in embryo the issue abour the narure of courage, to whieb Socrates then rurn.s rhe discussion. lnd~. the r=rnblan.ce ofNicias's and Laches' speeches to a Tbucydidean debate is strengthened through the inrervention of Mdesias, who suggesa that that advice should prevail with whieb Socrares castS his vote, and thus rums Lysimachus and himself into an assembly of two, who go wirh the majority of the dhnigoroi. In blocking this way our, Socrates ar.ranges for his deed, in whieb he rakes on !..aches and Nicias and pins them both in record time. This divergence to a higher level of universality than any in Tbucydides, sc:ems ro be the Platonic response to Thucydides: only with the Socraric turn can the truth of the particular emerge. There is, however, ar least one occasion in Tbucydides when th.e universal is wholly in the particular, and that is the curious discwsion between the Boeotians IIJld the Athenians that immediately follows the barue of Deliurn. A smaD force of Athenians is sci!J holed up
Pbto's Luha
in tbe cemple of ApoJio at Odium, and when an Athenian hernld comes to ask permission co pick up the dead from that batde, the Boeotians tO grant it on the grounds that the Athenians had violated the customs of the Greeks, which prohibit the use of temples and sacred p.recinccs for ordinary purposes (4.97-99). The Ath.enians i.n reply give two answers: One involves anothe.r Greek law thar hands over to the conqueror the absolute use of whatever land he controls no matte.< bow smaU. The Athenians' second answer turns on the issue of compulsion, and whatever guilt they have incurred through misapplication of sacral waters is invol· unrary, and rhe gods are the paradigm of forgiveness in the face of necessity. Here is a case where the actions of the cwo antagonis-ts draw their supporr from the highesr of grounds, the law and the gods. 1~ The sacred is that issue in which universal and panicula.r are always bound together, for a ritual practice (ntJmiuin) always ca.rries wich it a belief (rwmizein ei1111i), however buried ic rnighc be in the derails of the practice icself. I should suggest, then, that the odd angle ac which the sacred incrudes into Thucydidean deeds is the poinc of concact with the Socratic investigation of the lAchn. ]usc as Laches detects in Nicias's asserrion that courage is wisdom the implicic claim chat its knowe.r is a god, so Socrates concludes that Nicias's coucage as knowledge contains both justice and holiness and is the provider of all goods (199d7-er). 11 ln orde.r co see how the gods and courage are connected, it is merely necemry co recall Ajax. His rema.rk in the IliAd-"Even a fool would know that father Zeus helps the Trojans: cbe dares of aU bit their rargecs, whoever burls them, whether bad or good; Zeus makes them all go straight" (f7.619-3.1)-is the starting point of Sophocles' Aja."·'' whe.re Ajax's claim to be the best afte.r Achilles conceals the boasc co be Achilles' superior, since Achilles needed the gods and he does not: · Even a nobody would acquir~ superiority with the bdp of tb.~ gods; but I, even aparr from them, am conlident to win this glory" (767-69). ~Nobodies" (outi· tia1Wi} are anthropoi, and they need gods; tmdres do not.17 To be an tmir is co be stricdy self-reliant; it is ro be as sure of onesdf as of one's ability to tell friend from foe and human from beast. 11 When, i.n Sophocles' dranu, Athena interferes and prevencs Ajax from seeing thin&' as they a.re-Odysseus admits char no one was pronoustt:TOs than Ajax (n9)-Ajax resolves ro kill himself. Athena, he implies, cannot ger between himself and him.~dJ so as fo.r him to fail co know ac lease who he himself is, although eve.rything around him might be unreal Ajax. however, changes his mind; although he lirsr incended co commit suicide on cop of the catdc he had conurcd and slaughtered in his cent, be bas co go outside
muse
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Chapter l ' blrreen
carry ouc his resolve. The change of scene poinrs to Ajax's refusal to see his dead body as carrion; he wanes it to be a ntkros, rhe man-specific form of a dead animal" To be a corpse, however, means to accept the intrusion of the sacred into the makeup of being a man. Ajax needs Hades (cf 865). If we apply, then, this tragedy ro the Laches. we can say that Laches is Ajax before the f.ill. who, given the choice, goes with the beam in his defiance of Nicias, and Nicias represenrs rhe. coral disappearance of the manly in light of the gods. One of the actions of Nicias that Thucydides records was his willingness tO give up a trophy to signify his victory on the 6dd of battle for the sake of burying rwo missing dead, even though Athenian law allowed for burial in honor of the unrecovered dead (4-44-36; cf. :t.J4.J; Plutarch Nicias 6[5:1.7 b]). To be one's own man (hea.utOu einai) and to keep one's cool (mrpl.rron dnai} have both an unreflective natural s.ide and a reflective element that knows what it means ro look to oneself. To look ro himself is precisely what Nicias assem Laches refuses to do (20ob1). Laches is all reaction. He is ben when he argues against Nicias and worst when he is on his own. In his firSt anempt at a definition, Laches goes no further than rhe word amuntstbai to characterize the brave man; ir is Socrates who has to inrroduce rhe word mach~thai (I90CS, t9ta:z.,a.6;cf. b6). If one were ro puc Laches' view in rerms that never come up in the dialogue, Laches underStands courage as primarily rhe willin.gness to lx: killed, but not with irs necessary counterpart, the willingness tO kill. Not only does he fail to see at 6rSt that there can be s=diness in ll.ight-despite his admiration for Socrates in retreat-as wdl as in maintaining one's post, bur he holds our againsT pursuit as pan an.d pared of bravery. 20 When the dialogue rakes a sudden turn-Socrates proposes that Laches' second definition, persistence, has a dialogic tquivalent in their keeping up their search for courage--Laches immedi:udy rranslares it inro the nearest thing to standing still: "I, for my pan, Socrates, am ready to be not rbe 6rst to nand away (proaphuwthai)" (194a6). Laches' .fuilure to comprehend Socrates' behavior at the battle of Delium inro his definition of courage seems to belong to a more general failure on his part to link manliness wirh bravery. Laches' praise of Socrates is worth looking at not ooly for irs inuinsic inreresr bur for what he omits in his definicion. The language of his praise is supplied by Lysimacbus, who exclaims aher bearing Nicias's and Laches' recommendation ofSacrares, and his son's and Mdesias's confirmation rbat the Socrates r:hey are al"·•ys calking about is indeed the son of his old friend, - fhar's good, Socrates. chat you hold upright (orthliis) your father" (t8raJ-4l· Orthotm tO
l1 lato's Lachn
is an odd word for Lysimachus to use so metaphorically-"to exalt" covers it only if one thinks of its original sense-but Laches' play on it astonishes: ~I observed you holding upright not only your liuher but your fatherland; for in the retreat from Delium he was withdrawing along with me. and I tell you that were all the rest willing to be like him, the city would now be upright and would not then have fallen in the fall it did" (181a7-b4). ~Fatherland" and ~the citl are missing from Laches' definition: the: enemy can be: equally brave. It is one thing. moreover. to extend ~father" into ~fatherland." but it is quite another to keep orthoun in presumably Lysimachus's sense and then revert to its original sense in resorting to its literal contrary, "to tall" and ~fall." This is in the style of ancient poetry, to stretch a word and compress it at the same time, so that it is impossible to give: up the: literal while one: is still being forced to gi-..·e it up in order to accommodate its extension. It is perhaps not surprising that this should occur in a dialogue in which andr~ia cannot and must be kept together with anrr. That the: puns should be Laches' suggests that his incapacity to say what he thinks has something to do with the: resistance poetry puts up to translation, and that in courage there lurk images that cannot be brought into the light of day. If polis reduces parris into a nonimagistic form.~ 1 what happens to Socrates' father in that reduction? And if that is all that parris really means, why does the city then suffer a fall and contrafactually be upright? Creon rings changes on ortboun and ortbos when he first reports his decree to the Chorus: the gods righted the affairs of the city, Oedipus once kept the city upright, and we make our friends on condition of the city's sailing right side up (Sophocles Antigon~ 162, 167, 190), but it would be: hard to find anything comparable in the: orators.ZZ Socrates exalts his fatherland as a fact, and his city is upright as a hypothesis. Ortboun belongs to the language of praise, ortbos belongs to the language of fact. Laches seems to show himself as mousikos in a rather ingenious way: there is harmony between the: exaltation Socrates bestows on his fatherland as a matter of its praise and the success the city would have c:xpc:ric:ncc:d had everyone: bc:c:n willing to be like Socrates. Before he gets to say whom he admires, Laches comes forward as a composer of something in the Doric mode. Socrates is made all of a piece by Laches fitting parris to polis and speech (ortboun) to deed (ortlu-ptoma). Laches forces the matchup through the: imaginary; he is incapable of showing the matchup in the real. Socrates is a puzzle to Laches; to Nicias he is an open book. In the first part of the dialogue, Nicias knows from experience that Socrates is the expert adviser (I8oc8-d3); in the second part he explains Socrates to
~7
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Ch~ptcr
Thinccn
Lysimachus and claims that he knew from the start how Socrates would turn the conversation into a personal rendering of accounts (!87d6-1:4). In the language of the Gorgias, Nicias joyfully submits to corrective punishment at the hands of Socrates and thereby proves that to anticipate with pleasure the reform of one's errors makes it certain that one will only sink more deeply into self-ignorance and folly. Nicias has two elements of the genuine Socratic teaching: to be good is to know oneself and to be good is to be wise, and yet he gets them all wrong. He recalls the Critias of the Charmidts, who took Socrates' ta hautou prami11 and pushed it to the incoherent extreme of knowledge of knowledge. That both dialogues end up with the admission that neither moderation for Critias nor courage for Nicias can be the knowledge of good and evil, and that this is the highest knowledge, should make one wonder why Socrates gets encapsulated in so empty a formula once his teaching spreads among politicians or potential politicians. Plato is trying his hand at the sociology of knowledge when he ruminates on Socrates and his effect on politicians in Athens.l.l The difference between Socrates the true politician and all his phantoms is not just a theoretical difference, in which Plato sets Socrates as a foil over against an imaginary character like Callicles, but he also involves him with men who have been affected by him in one way or anmher. Nicias is in a sense the most curious; if we follow the manuscripts, he claims to be on the level of speech as close to Socrates as if he were family. In his trying to be Periclean and steering a middle course, Nicias should be expected to be least prone to the extremism philosophy necessarily breeds in the young (cf. &public537d7-5393.4; Phikbus 15<4-r6a3). Nicias is perfectly satisfied with himself. It did not occur to him to suggest that Socrates would be a better consultant than himself when it came tO the matter at hand; he seconds Laches' recommendation, but he is not at all surprised, as Laches was, that Lysimachus and Melesias did not approach Socrates first. And yet Nicias docs seem to be given to extremes: his understanding of both hoplite-fighting and courage ha\'e all the earmarks of the abstract reasoning practical men presumably most despise. Is it possible that this extremism only seems to be the same kind as philosophic reasoning but in fact has a far different source?:~ Such a possibility would go some way in explaining, in general, why political philosophy is so large a part of Socratic philosophy, and, in particular, why Socrates incorporates Laches into himself when he takes on Nicias (194b8-c1; 196c5-7). Laches does not have the wit to refute Nicias on his own; all he can do is splutter and fall silent, but there still is something in him that though silent Socra-
Copyright~
Pl•ro's f.AcheJ
res thinks deserves ro ~ allied with himself ~nst Nicias. We know at any rate that Socrates did not ask Nicias ro join with him while he talked with Lach.cs. Nicias makes seven points in his recommendation of hoplitiki (I8td8!8uh). He ~ns and ends with the body. The body in irs inner strength and the body in iu outward display of form, which can induce terror in t.he enemy. cndose, as it were, the conrribucions of the an to the soul.>:! It seems as if Nicias has d""ised a program for the complete man, of which the first step would be the art of the hop lite an.d the last rtrllligUz (r82cr). It is not surpris.iug, then, that courage should also rurn out co be cquival.e nt co the whole of virtue if ""en at the starr, in the discussion of a test case, Nicias thinks big. What is most curious, how.,..er, in Nicias's speech is his separation between the benefit he promises from hoplitikt on the occasion of a breakup in the battle-line and the greater confidence and courage that, he says, come with such knowledge. Nicias knows that whoever knows it "would suffer nothing at the hands of one, and perhaps not even by several" (r82ba-3); but this science, he says, "would nor by a little make every man in war both more confident and more manly than himself (auton hautou} (!8zcs-7).u The artful hoplitc has greater co.nfidcncc and courage. but Nicias kn.ows that he is almost immune in cerrain circumstances. Nicias does not have the nelVe co say that hoplitiki gives one the knowledge he has. The confidence one has in one's own survi,.a[ is of a different order from the knowledge Nicias has of one's survival. For a hoplitc to say co hillUdf, "Should 1 ha:ve chis scientific knowledge I would suffer nothing ar th.e hands of anyone, • would pass for boasting and not knowledge (cf. 184cr-.~). Nicias's knowledge would be in general of those things thar make for confidence in another, one of which is hoplitiki; bur his knowledge is nor yer the same as chat wh.ich gives him confidence. Nicias is stiU looking at courage from a distance. His perspective recalls the very first words of the dialogue: "Have you seen the man fighting in armor?" (r78a1). There is nor a hint in Lysi~ru~chus's words thar this is not for real, and they have not taken up an obscJVa.tion post of some skirmish (cf. Rtpublic 467c1-e8}; indeed, we never do find our whether Sresilaos had a partner, or he was fighting no one even in play. That anyone could have drawn any conclusions from a mock exhibition of fighting, where nothing is at stake and there is no element of chance, is past ~lief; but Nicias, without any appeal ro his own aperiencr, draws an c.ntire set of conclusions as if theater were real life. Tbe.re seems ro be a deep connecrion ~rween Lache$' mention of rragedy as thar which i.s mosr highly esteemed in Athens and Nicias' s rheory of hopliriki. Nicias
>69
270
Chaprer Thirreen is involved in a play of which he is at first the spectator and finally the protagonist. Nicias and Laches seem at first to be totally unlike. Nicias is specularive, Laches is factual when it comes roan assessment of Sresilaos's kind of instruction. Laches looks to the man, Nicias to the ways in which a whole cluster of sciences would arrange the events of one's life. This difference about IJoplztik~ is then expanded and developed into the deeper issue of courage. The natural beast-man of Laches is opposed to the knowledge ofNicias, which knows the good and evil of every past, present, and future: event. Laches tries to get Nicias to say that Nicias himself is the courageous man in his sense (195e3-4); bur Nicias will nor be drawn and persists in developing an argument that is wholly divorced from any known carrier of the knowledge. If we label Laches' undemanding of courage ucharacrern and Nicias's uplor,n we have the two elements that make up any tragedy. Pulled a pan, as they are in rhe dialogue, plot overwhelms character. Nicias devises a plot of inescapable necessity, in which everything unfolds in the future in accord with a causal nexus rhar stretches far back into rhe past and fiu forward into the future. This plot is wholly indifferent to character and, curiously enough. it sweeps Nicias up into irs net and displays him ro us ren years before the denouement as already fared to act out his historical future. Plato, in other words, by inserting the LadJtS into rime, allows us to watch the beginning of the catastrophe we read in Thucydides. We become spectators of a man fighting in armor, who ties himself up in such a way that the solution is the outcome we already know. Nicias, Thucydides says, least deserved the degree of misfortune he mer with (7.86.5); bur Plato has Nicias himself draw up the rhc:ory that predetermines that end. Nicias lives a peculiarly Athenian tragedy. As Socrates leads Nicias to explicate his understanding of courage, a certain brutality comes to light in Nicias and Laches that could pass for either the: ruthlessness of reason or the indifference indispensable to rhe general who must send men to their deaths. It is again the split between plot and character, so that one should nor rake the agreement between Nicias and Laches on this point as necessarily having the same source and admitting of the same rationale. In answer to Laches' objection that neither rhe doctor nor the farmer is courageous because he has knowledge of the terrible and encouraging things, Nicias gets him to admit that just as it is nor better (am~inon) for all to live so it is preferable (kr~itton) for many to be dead (195d1-3). That Laches docs nor think at once of the general as rhe one who has this knowledge shows that he does nor rake the estimation of battle-losses ro be a judgment on the worth of rhose
J mao··
Pl•ro's Uuha who are going ro be killed. Whar, howeve,r, about Nicios~ Of whom is he rhinking when he denies that the soothsayer knows whether or nor ir is berrer ro suffer death, defear, disease, or loss of money? Laches dismisses the possibility thar Nicios could mean a god-immonals have nothing ro fear-and assails Nicias for his insincere elusiveness. He grantS that if they were on trial, Nicias's ractics would be in order (19634-b]); bur he docs nor see rhu Nicias's model is rhe judge, who passes sentence in lighr of the good and evil the accused should undergo. Nicias's judge, howeve.r, must be divine, and his knowledge be a theodicy in accordance with which everything rurns our in conformity wirh right. lJ That Nicias himself believes thar he is in possession of such a releolog· ical horoscope eme~ from his actions in Sicily. Just prior ro the moon's eclipse, and su~uenr ro a disasrrous nighr barrie, Demosthenes recomme.nds withdrawal; bur Nicias refuses, and rhe first reason he gives is thar on their rerum rhey will face a hostile court and be condemned by the very sol.diers who are now complaining so vociferously about the dread· fulness of their presenr circumsrances, and thu he ar least prefen ro be killed by the enemy-he does nor speak of death on the bardefiddrather rha.n ro perish unjusdy on so base a charge ar rhe hands of the Athenians (7.48·3-4). The eclipse of the moon gives Nicias the chance to bring about a coincidence between his judgment thar his army would be berrer off dead in Sicily than unjust and alive in Ath.e.ns and the interval needed ro insure that result. Nicias saves rhe Athenians from rhernselves without lifting a finger: he merely follows divine guidance. The salvation he grants them agrees ro the lerrer wirh the theory Plaro assigns him. To condemn so many men for the sake of holding them back &om o.n error thei.r nature would otherwise make them commit. surely requires nerves of steel. This is a grace under pressure Hemingway never dreamed of. Nicias's knowledge of the terrible is terrible. !! [fa theodicy stands in the background of Nicias's undet$tanding of courage, what srands in the foreground? The knowledge of Ill deiM itai ta mi is usually formulated in a speech that is desi.gned to give others con6.dence in the policy one proposes. Demosthenes, for example, ar Pyios makes such a speech (4.10), jusr as Phonnion docs before the second naval batde of the \Yar (2.89); bur it seems strange to identifY the confideoc:e Demosthenes or Phormion mighr have had in his own speech with knowledge. If, however, one's proposal were &amed in terms of grearer and lesser risks, then J.."ttowledg<: is courag<: if one always were to choose the lesser risks and ro run away &om the grearer dangers. l n the Pbardo Socra· res says that rhis is his understanding of vulgar courage (68d9-10), and
17 1
•
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Chapter Thineen
Nicias seems tO exemplify it perfectly. He preferred peace to war, Thucydides says, ~use be thought be would lx less likely then to lose his reputation or mar the string of his continuous successes (p6.t). l.o terms of the LAch,, then, Nicias stands for always running away and Laches fo.r always sraying,29 and whereas always to run away can look like knowledge, always tO stay has an absoluteness in it that can never pass for knowledge. Laches wants courage to mean "to srand one's ground no matter what," either lxhaviorally as m taxri mmein or psychically as ka~ria; but when· ever Nic.ias would stay pur, even if hew= in line with Laches, be would be running away from sornerblng else. The vividness of Nicias's imagination, by painting in darker hues whatever he wants to avoid, replaces iL Nicias objectifies his fears and hopes and knowledge and passes then calculates their value on the scale of good and evil. He does not h11.ve to fight against his Jl1li.ns and pleasures, as Socrates had suggested b9rd6-7), for they are his version ofself-knowledge. The ultimate objectification of fears an.d hopes would of course lx the gods. The gods, in their assignment of good and evil, which is rheod.icy, are at one with Nic.ias's knowledge of ta deina te ltai ra thiJTTala, which are rooted un· knowin.gly in the passions of the soul. The argument with Nicias revolves aro.ind the good and bad, the argument with Laches involves the beautiful and ugly, or the laughterproof and the ridiculous. The ludo1 kagarho1 is split !xtween them. The good is always calculated in rerms of the bouom line, the lxauriful is something in itself. Although Socra.tes argues that thoughdess daring is ba.rmful and shameful, Laches is srumped ~use he asserted courage was one of rhe most lxautifulthings and not that irwas one of the lxst (192e7l· That persistence can be good is due ro its alliance with thoughtfUlness, but thoughtfulness does nor narumlly inhere in it; and once thoughtfulness is subtracted daring ceases robe grand. [f one srarrs with L.acbes' experience of Socrates, his withdrawal is prudent; but if one goes back a moment, his withdrawal is due to his having advanced into Boeotia as parr of Demosthenes' daring plan to disrracr the enemy with a two-pronged attack at rwo poinrs so &r apart from one another that no coordinated counteroffensive could 1x mounted (Tbucydides 4-89). Socrates was a ci.pber in a gcandiose scheme that bea.ts all the earmarks of thoughtful daring withour the drawbacks of unlovdy calculation. Socrates, however, did not originate the "beauty-part" but merely went along with it; on his own he executed the good parr that rerumed Laches and himself to safety. It seems that only a mixture of an advance with too many imponderables to calculate and a retreat that minimizes risk could reunite Laches
oor
Plato's Lacha and Nicias. Socrates offers Laches such a mixture, and though Laches accepts it in principle he neither carries it out in practice nor reflects on the possibility of its satisfYing the beautiful and the good at once. Socrates' offer comes about in the following way: He suggests that they adopt in deed their own speech (193e4), Karruia is to be the mono of their search for courage, "in order that andr~ia herself may not laugh us to scorn, because we are seeking her not manfully (andreios), if after all persistence herself is anduia" (194a2-5). Socrates implies that the argument he just used against the identification of courage and persistence might not be sound. They overlooked themselves in their pursuit of courage (cf. Charmidn 16od8-e2): they themselves exhibit Laches' definition, they are being thoughtful, and they do not know. To search for courage is already an act of persistence; it cannot be done at all if there is no persistence. Socrates has thus inserted Laches' definition of courage into a verb; and this verb contains within it thoughtfulness, for one is not moving aimlessly when one is searching. Socrates then picks up Laches' language about the flight (di~phugm) of courage and his failure to seize it (su/J.ab~in) in order to give to their search a character that is both epistemic and empirical: "The good hunter must run in pursuit and not let up" (194bs-6; cf. Sophist 235b-c6). The hunter's persistence is there from the stan and at one with his an. The hunter pursues either elusive or hostile beings, and possibly both. Courage is the being that now eludes them; the hostility is not in it but in their passions against which one must fight if courage is not to disappear. Laches admits that phi/onikia has gripped him (194a8); but it turns out to be easily satisfied by his discovery that his fellow hunter is as ignorant as he. His phi/onikia turns out to be hatred of Nicias. At the end of the dialogue, Socrates suggests that they all go to school if they can find a teacher; he suggests that they join in search of a teacher. This suggestion amounts to a denial that the first pan of the dialogue, which has as its question, Who is good at giving advice?, has a satisfactory answer. There is no possibility of expert advice, except in the form of disregarding any advice that does not advise extreme caution (185a9; cf. 188b1, 198e3). What is left, then, is the second pan, cautious and daring at once: the asking of the question, What is? This question is Socrates' action, which results from the failure of "Thucydidean" advice. Socrates' action, however, is nothing but speeches (cf. Apology ofSomttn }8a1-5). It is always on the way to being a "Thucydidean" action. To be always on the way is to be out hunting the beings. 30 One of the beings to be hunted is man, the most elusive and hostile of the beings. To be a man is to be something in asking what that something is. It is to be tkinos.
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Cbaprcr Thincen
Nom Cicero spliu versions of Nicias and Laches- maioris omnbzo ert cot1sili pro~ uidnt nt 'luid tak aceidat(as wbac Trtbonius suffertd,l, animi non minoris forrit
Tbe diflicutty of reco.nciling them is beautifully expressed by Socr.Hes' juxlllpositioo of a ptO\'e!b- ouk 4n p4S11 hus gnoi.o-that suppons Niciass position and a mych-hi KrommJliJ71Ut hus-tha:t supports Lache$' (l96d4-e1). 1..
3· For the equivalence of these cwo apressions, compare Ariscophanes Equir.s 177-79· 4· Cf. bow similarly &11hypbro speaks of his undcrSillnding of rhe boly and rhe unholy (Eutbphro nb6). 5· 1. 87.4 (Arhenians); 5-7~.:1 (battle ofMantinci•); 6.69.1 (Syracus:ms); 6.71..1 (Hermocrares; cf. 6.Jl.4 Htnnocrarcs :ag;tin). In the fun=l speech, Pericles opposes Athcnion riNnhumilt and tropoi antbtim to Sp:utao ponnn mtleti mtiiZ 110m6n (2.39·4).
6. Cf. ) . de Romilly, •Rtfiexioru sur le. courage chez Tbucydide et Plaron..• R.,_ des Etudes Gm:'fues 93 (•98o):J09· 7· Thucydides' remark that hoplires in formation alwoys veer on their exposed side away from tht. enemy's left suggests that there is an element of self-deception in l.ach<>' confinin.g courage to hoplites, for Thucydides 3Siigns fear as the c:ouse of this maneuver and does not ol1ow of my =•ptions (5.71.!). 8. If eirber lkrgk's or Kock's c:orttaions are right, Ariscopbanes pur l.oches and lamachus together in the AgriaJ/ne (to6), ro be dared around 42+9· There is an excellent presentation of laches in Th. de L.agunu's "The Prob-
lem of rbe Lachtt, • Mind 43 (19J4):170-8o. bur Nicias is mishandled. 10. Ereodes praises Amphiarous as a "moderate, jWt, good (agatiJOS), pious moo" (1\. Th. 610) , whese it i.us clear that 4gat!MJ means "brave" :>sit is significant
for the LtUlJes rhar prioc ro philosophy "pious" is the alternative ro "wise." u. There is a curious parallelism between rhe gender of hus as a marrer of language and a matter of fact and rbe gradual etiolation of anir in andrtia, so r.bar in both cases the stria rcfe.rence is rbe.re for rhe 12k:iug even though rhe language :>s spoken resistS such an appeal. The mascufu•e as a grammaric:U care· gory shows up in Soaartt' interpretation of Nicias: ktU moi tk>k
Pbto's LAdm
27S
familiariry as he: did othc:rs. This challc:nge was accc:ptc:d, and the: pc:rformancc: tric:d. Mr. Morris slapped Washington familiarly on the shoulder, and said, 'How are you, this morning. gener.tl?' Washington made no reply, but turned his eyes upon Mr. Morris with a glance: that fairly withered him. He afterwards acknowledged that nothing could induce him to attempt the same thing again." 13. In Montaigne's Es14u, the c:leventh chapter of Book I, Drs prognosticatiom, begins with a discussion of ancient divination and ends with Socrates' daimonion; and the twehh chaptc:r. Dr !JJ comranu. summarizes at the beginning Socr.ttes' refutation of Laches' first definition of courage. This sc:quence cc:rtainly suggc:sts a careful reading of the Lachrs on Montaigne's part, as well as a general reHection on its rc:lation to Socrates' daimonion. 14. lmmediatdy after this dispute, Thucydides tells how the Boeotians invented a novel w.~y to burn the Athenians' wall at Odium (.poo.2-4). \Var makes even the Boeotians, of all people:, technically ingenious, while the Athenians innovate on the: higher level of divine law. 15. Cf. Nicias's rc:mark: lraitoi mrn rs throw nomima drdiiitanai, pol/a dr rs anrhropous dikaia kAi :anrpiphrhona (fhucydides 7-77-2). 16. For a fi.tllc:r discussion of what follows, sc:c M. Davis, Ancirnt Trag~dyand rlu Origin of Modrm Scirncr (Carbondale:, IL, 1988), 14-33; an c:arlic:r vc:rsion is in j. Peter Euben, Gmk Tra_f,rdy and Political Thro~ (Berkeley. 1986), 142-61. 17. Cf 1 Epiulc: to the: Corinthians 1.28. 18. Caesar, immediately after saying hie sttbiram commutationnn fimunar vidnr licuit (Brllum Civik. P7-1), says hie cognosci licuit, quantum run hominibw prarsidii in animi firmitudinr (28.4), and recounts the fate of two of his ships. Both anchored over against Lissus, which was held by Pompey's forces; one ship was fillc:d with raw recruits and in trusting to an oath that if they surrenderc:d they would be unharmed were at once cut down. contra rrligionrm iurisiurandi: but the ship of veterans, though they received the same offer under oath. held out-nrqur o: protina virtutr rrmittrndum aliguid putavrnmt. Although Gesar at the beginning offers to swear an oath (1.9.6), he never docs; all oaths are sworn by Pompey and his lieutenants (1.76.2-5; 1.18.5; 3-10.9. 13.3-4; 87.5-6, 102.2). Considc:r 3.87.7: once the Pompdan forces had sworn, iam :animo victoriam prarcipirbanr. Pompey is C.acsar's Nicias. 19. Cf. Gorgias s24c1-3. The: c.uachrc.o;is of nt'lrros at Ajax 309 ili rc:mark.ablc. 20. Unlike Megillus (laW1 638a1-2). 21. That poliJ and parris arc: not the: same:, Thucydidc:s shows by having f>ericlc:s not spc:ak of the: fathc:rland until he: rums away from the: praise: of Athens to the praise of the dead (2.4:..3). and Plato by having Socrates not speak of the f.uherland before: he discusses the tyrant (Rrpublic ~7sds. 7). 21. When Demosthenes 19.248-so uses similar language, he is alluding to Creon's spc:ech.
Cop<.
,
ma~ri:JI
1
6
Chapter Thineen 23. For a sketch of this area of inquiry, sc:e P. Vidai-Naquet, LA Drmocr.zric grrcqur 1•ur •ti'ailkurs (Paris, 1990), chapter 4• ULa Societe platonicienne dc:s dialogues," 95-119.
24·
cr.
H. G. lngenkamp, WLaches, Nikias und platonische Lehre,"
Rh~in
isha Musrum 110 (1967)::z47· 2). Nicias alone mentions the body (181e4). Nicias's point about terror through show recalls his suggestion of what the Athenians should do with their armada in Sicilian waters (Th. 6.47: cf. 11.4). 26. Obsc:rve how this idiomatic expression confirms Laches' view that a coward, should he believe he had hoplirikr rpisumr. would in becoming rasher (rhrasuuros) apose him for what he was (184b4-6). 27. The best evidence for this is Nicias's remark to his troops (Thucydides 7·77·4). This theodicy is to be compared with what the Mc:lians maintain and the Athenian ambassadors urge them to abandon (S.I04-s). 28. Socrates prepares us for this pun by speaking to Laches first of all of those who pros lupaJ andrtioi risin I! phobous and then of those who pros 'f'ithumias r hMonas ikinoi rruuhathai (191d6-et); cf. 192C3-S· 29. Cf. S. Umphrey aPiato's La.cha on Courage." Apriron 10, no. 2 (1976): 1930. For this notion, see Phatdo 66a3; Sophist 221d13; Stataman2Bsd9-10; Eu-
thytkmuJ 290c1-4.
F 0
U
E
E
N
On Plato's Phaedo
cuss F o u a T H 1 N c s in Plato's Phardo.' First, the intention of me dialogue as a whole; second, the plan or suucrure o f the Phaedo; third, some arguments of me Phaedo: and fourth, me reason for the structure of me dialogue. Of Plato's narrated dialogues, three are not narrated by Socrates. The three Platonic dialogues rhat are narrated by someone om.e r than Soerates-Pbaedo, Symposium, and Parmenid.t.-all i.nclude an account of me early thought of Socrates. Their chronological order puts me Phudo first, where Socrates himself gives an autobiography of his early minlcing; followed by the Pamzenid.er. and, last, by the Symposium. Of these three accounts, only me Phaulo contains a pieture of me wholly pre-Socratic Socrates, and rha.t account, consequendy, i.s me only one mar i.s nondialogic in form. Now me question that confronts us in me Phudo is that Socrates, in this autobiographical part, talks about his second sailing, or hi.s recourse to speeches. The context of me Pbaedo is rhe last day of Socrates' life, and the issue is rhe immortality of me soul. There would therefore seem to be a connection, not immediately obvious, becween IIUUl's mortality and Socrates' recourse to speeches. (Would it be roo facile to say rha.t underneath these rwo themes- man's mortality an.d Soerates' recourse to speeches-there lurks Ari.srode's definition of rnan as logi!ton uon1) In order to bring OUt the problem in terms of me way me issue is presented, one immediately wrns ro the parallel in me Platonic corpus, namely the Symposium. The Phaedo begins in me morning-early in the morning-
1
w 1s H
To o 1 s
•n
178
Chap1er
Fourt~n
and ends with the setting of the sun, when Socrates drinks the poison and dies. The Symposium begins in the evening and ends when Socrates leaves the dinnc:r party after he has drunk everyone under the table and can still go about his business. So the Pbatdo and Symposium together clearly represent the philosophical life accomplished in one whole day, which in turn suggests that the connection between them is presented as a total opposition. On the one hand, in the Symposium philosophy is described as a kind of eros. In the Phatdo philosophy is described as a kind of dying and being dead. What links them is clearly that the experience of eros is the way in which we experience our own mortality. while we do not have any experience of death though we undergo it. Consequendy, one should not take for granted what the connection is-what the parallelism between these two dialogues means. If eros is primarily understood as love of the: beautiful, the parallel for the Pbatdo should be an analysis of the fear of death. But there is not really an account of fear. but rather of death. In order to show that eros in its inner core is philosophy, it was nc:cessary for Socrates to show that the ordinary understanding of eros was somehow the general setting in which that core was revealed. Death does not seem to fit this criterion, of an inner core that we can identify with philosophy and an outer shell that everybody experiences. So Socrates' task in the Pbatdo seems on the surface both more paradoxical and more difficult to carry out. Death seems to exemplifY an instance that does not compel Socrates to have a second sailing and have recourse to speeches. Everybody can immediatc:ly recognize: in the: Phatdo a perfect fit between the circumstances in which the discussion takes place and the discussion itsc:lf. Not only is this our own impression, but it is also asserted by Socrates in the dialogue: wNo one: will say that I am talking about an irrelevant issue on this day." The interlocutors also perceive a connection between the: circumstances and the: discussion. Though the Phatdo presents itself as a dialogue in which it seems to be impossible to separate the argument-if there is an argument that runs through it-from the situation in which that argument is presented, as interpreters of the dialogue:, we wish to make: such a separation in order to sec how the argument would stand up if the situation in which it occurred were removed. This interpretive procedure of our own turns out to be identical with Socrates' own procedure in the dialogue where he attempts to interpret the circumstances that will lead to the: separation between the: circumstances of his death and the argument itself. That happens in all dialogues more or less, but most strictly in the: Phatdo. So, in following Socrates, we arc in fact
J ma• ··
On Plato's PlxuM pursuing our own interpret.ive enterprise. He calls this interpretive enterprise the practice of dying and being dead-the separation of the argument from the situation. I shall cry ro show how he wen~ about it and to what c:x.tent he succeeded. The dialogue begins with Phaedo, the narrator, bcing asked a question by a man named Echecrares, as follows. In the Greek. the first word is auto!. ln the sentence it means, "Were you present younelf. Phaedo, on the day in which Socrates died and drank the poison?" That word suggests that the Ph~do, insofar as it is an accoum of the soul, must be about the relation betwttn the self-undersrood as the union of body and souland body and soul. At the end of the dialogue we are lett, through Socrates' conrrivance, with his friends compelled to watch him tum inoo a corpse. Though it begins with Phaedo being asked to report. on the basis of his own presence, about the separation berwecn the body and the soul, it ends with Socrates being present tO us in the dialogue only as a corpse. This movement, from the self of Pbaedo tO the corpse of Socrates, is reminiscent of the begin.ning of the Iliad, where Homer tells us that the wrath of Achilles sent the souls of many heroes into Hades and lett them-autom-as prey to dogs and food for birds. So in Plato, • maos"the co-presence of body and soul- is understood as the corpse in Homer. That is an indication of the way in which rhe dialogue is going tO proceed. Now the opening parr of the PhtUt/4 consisrs of four main sections, which are then repeared in each of three more pans, each consisting of four sections. So there are sixreen sections altogether, in each parr a group of four. Here is the suucrure of the Phaet/4: Purification of Atberu- no killing: Separation 2. Ph•«
Pan I
1.
Part II
1.
Philosophy as the practice of dying and being dead 2.. Proof of necessary «quena: of opposirc:s gene=«! ow of one. another J· Doctrine of recollection as proof 4·
Part II!
Aesopim ghosc S
Simmlas's objcc.tion ~. Cebcs objection l · Socrates !lllks to Pbatdo about me charaCTer of logos 4· Refurarion of Simmias
1.
179
U!o
Cluptor Fourreen
Part IV
t. S
Cebet
>. Rd'umcion of Cebet J. Myth 4· Socrates' dearh
Jacob Klein has observed that the comea of the Phaedo is mythical because, when Phaedo has tO explain to Echecrares rhe reason for 1he delay in Socrates' execut ion-between me rime he was condemn.ed and the rime he drank the poison-he has to 1ell the story of how Theseus saved fourteen Athenian youths from the Minotaur, which was the yearly contribution tha.t Minos, the Icing of Crete, required from Athens. And in Phaedo's description of those who were pr=nt on this last day, he mentions fourteen names. At the end of the dialogue, Socrates is referred to as loolcing like a bull- loolcing somewhat like a Minoraur. A wholly mythical structure is imposed upon Socrates; it is not something he devises. It is rhe labyrinth our of which be will have to lead his fourteen companions and save them from the fear of death. Now rhe consequence of this story about Theseus is that every year the Arhenians send a ship ro Delos, during which rime the law prohibits public executions. Ac· cording to Phaedo, this constitutes a purification of the city. So the occa· sion of the PhMdo, which is now corning to an end, is that the city, Athens, has suspended its righr to execute criminals it has lawfully con· demned tO death. And this is said to be a purification. During this rime, then, Athens has given up its own identity, therefore allowing for the possibility that the city itself is based upon an unrighteous foundation. The purification rums our to have led Socrates to revise his interpretation o( his recurring dream about what be should do. The dream kepr on telling him tbar he W2S to practice music, and he had inrerprered chis tO signify the practice of philosophy. Because the city has suspended its own nature, Socrates bas wondered whethe.r he, roo, is guilty of misunderstanding the dream. He has turned to his own form of purification in writing poetry. The purification of Athens and the purification of Socrates ue the mpics of rhe fir:st and last sections of the opening part of the Phaedo. When Socrates is engaged in his own activity, namdy philo· sopby, the city is engaged in irs own activity. And these two activities are in direct conJlia with one another. When the city, on the other hand, suspends irs own activity, Socrates suspends his also. So the normal under· standing of the rdation between Athens, in doing what it does, and Socra· res, in doing what be does, is a situation of rwo intersecting activities leading ro his coodemnati.on. When however, the city suspends itself and Socrates suspends himself, they meet in the realm of poetry and myth:
On Plaro's Phut/4
uch doing lb
ATHENS
Each abandoning their own thing
0 S
poetry ----'---t--1 .:....___
0
____,
A
myth
Phaedo then tells Echecraces about his unusual o:puience on this last day of Socrates' life. He says that it was an unf:uniliat mixtUie of the pl.easUie of philosophy with a pain due to his realization that this was Socrates' last day. In his presentation of this mixture, Phaedo reveals his own bdief in the pUiity of philosophical activity, insofar as pleasure is concerned, and also in rbe purity of rbe pain he would feel if he had been present at the death of anybody else but Socrates. He presents his own experience in this form: "1 did not have pity, which I would ordinarily have had when a friend of mine was going to die, because I thought that Socrates was going to go off and be happy." In other words, Phaedo is put in the very remarkable position of resenting the fact that Socrates is getting whar he deserves. But apart from Pbaedo's possible misunderstanding of his own experience, more remarkably, Phaedo becomes conscious, for the fim time, of a possible relation between the argument and th.e settin.g. So what we as reade.rs know about every Platonic dialoguethat an adjustment is taking place between the circumstantial and the argument-Phaedo now experiences without necessarily understanding that his o:pcriencc of the circumstances might be determined by his undersranding of the argument. Phaedo feels a mixture of pleasure and pain, which comes from two totally opposite sources, he believes, that admit of no connection with one another.' Immediately alter, Phaedo' s focus shifts to Socrates, who bas just been released &om the shackles in which he was held and is rubbing his leg. I quote the passage in which Socrates proposes-although no one who listens to him understands what he is proposing- the topic of the Plhudo. The interlocutors take a long time to catch up, and I am not sure they entirely understand what he has done: that Socrates is proposing for discussion an account of his own experience. Socrates bends his leg and begins to rub it with his hand, and as be is rubbing it be says this:
281
2.81
Chapter Fourtt:en "'How strange, gentlemen, seems to be that which human hcings call pleasant. And how wonderfully is it naturally related to that which is thought to be its opposite, the painful. for though the two arc unwilling to be present simuJraneously to a man, still, if one pursues one of them and takes hold of it, one ·is just about compelled always to take hold of the other, just as if they were two that were bound together from one head. And it seems to me," he said, "if Aesop had understood this he would have composed a myth that the god, wishing to reconcile them that were at war with one another, since he wa.o;; not able to do so, joined their heads into the same. And because of this, to whomever one of them is present there later follows also the other." (6obJ-C5)
Socrates gives a twofold account of his own experience: the first account in terms of nature, the second in terms of a god's attempted production, which fails. The thing one immediatdy notices is that the first, nonmythical account refers to what people call pleasant and what is thought to be its opposite. In the mythical Aesopian account, on the other hand, the union of pleasure and pain is a matter of their succeeding one another, with no revision in the understanding of what pleasure and pain might be after one has removed the fact that they are what people say is pleasant and what people call pain. The first account, which is based merely on an analysis of the experience, emphasizes that this is a human opinion and totally sidesteps t~e issue of cause. Only the mythical account introduces cause. Now in Socrates' autobiography, he explains how and why he had to turn from a pre-Socratic account, understanding things in terms of cause, to his second sailing. This difference is already present in the two accounts Socrates gives of his own experience of pleasure and pain. These two accounts exemplify two ways in which one is to understand "two," and the difference between thetn determines the entire structure and intention of the dialogue. I call the two represented by the nonmythical account-where pleasure and pain are bound together in a single head-a disjunctive two) and that represented by the myth-where pleasure is presented as one head and pain as ano£her, which then must be bound together-a conjunctive two. Conjunctive two
Disjunctive two
On Pbro's PhaNIJ
The Phaedo's concern is with unraveling or explicating the logos (the disjunctive rwo) as opposed ro the myth (the conjunctive rwo). In the Pbaedo this aa.ivity is called mytho/Qgtin. or "rational enchantment." What that mt'allS is thar iY is not possible to scan with the disjunctive rwo. It is nec~ry ro scan on the m).m.ic:al level with the conjunctive rwo. The sr.m cture of the PhaedrJ consists in moving the main interlocutors-Simmias and Ccbes-from u.ndersranding things pre-Socrarically, in terms of the c:onju.nctive two, ro a Socratic understanding in terms of the disjunctive rwo. That one has tO begin incorrectly is a sign of the Platonic principle that the way is always the obscade. Now this pattern of the beginning of the dialogue is then reproduced three times. I shall 6rst sketch in how th:u goes and then =mine cenain pans of it in derail. ln the 6tst section of parr U of the dialogue, the definition of philosophy is given as the prac~ice of dying and being dead. That issue comes up because Simmias and Cebes want to know why Soc-rates is committing suicide. They rake it for granted that he is. and Socrates does not at any point deny this. It becomes more co.mplicared later, but initially he accepts that. The second section is a proof char there is a necessary sequence of opposites that are gene.rared out of another. There follows a section that Cebes introduces by being reminded abour the socalled recollection theory that he has often beard from Socrates, which, presumably, ends with a proof that the soul does not die. The fourth section of pan II is what I call the Aesopian ghost story told by Socrates, occasioned after the third section. where Socrates gets Cebes and Simmias to admit rhat rhey are afr.Ud of death. Although they did not initially objea to arguments 2 and ), they now want to be enchanted: a lime. child rhat is within rhem wanrs ro be soothed. So Socrates obliges with a ghost srory. The consequence, however, works to awaken rhe. reasoning ofCehes and Simmias. The enchantment of the fear of dear.h leads ro disenchanrmc:nt with that enchantment. lr marks the beginning of the second half of the dialogue, parts W and IV, which are concemed with Socrates' second sailing. Tb.e 6rst section of parr ill begins with Simmias's objection to Socrates' account. The second begins with Cebes' objection. The third comes about in the following way: it turns our that the enchantment of th.e fourth seetioo of pan ll, fullov.-ed by the apparent refutation of what Socrates had said in its secood and third sections, leads the entire audience of young men ro be extremely perturbed that they were raken in by this specious trearmc:m of Socrat<:$. Ln order to rally them. Socrates calks to the narrator, Phaedo, about the character of logos. He points our that thcir pain at hearing a refutation of Socrates convinces them of rhe truth
li}
184
O.ap«r Foune
Oo Plato's Ph.uda order for ir to be undemood-soul as the source of life. and soul as rhe source of knowledge or awareness. ln the first part of the dialogue, whar incites Simmias, and particularly Cebes, ro rebellion is that Socrates gives an argument for his prudence that leads to the conclusioo that only be, Socrates, dies, and no one else. Man's mortality is a pseudo-universal; it applies only to Socrates. The evidence in the dialogue for this is Criro's question, "How shall we bury you?" and Socrates' answer. In the second half of the dialogue, Cebes is made ro undergo the opposite movement, in which he comes ro see that the common characteristic of soul-namely thar it is the cause of life ro body-is what makes every soul like every oth.e r soul. And 110 soul is more soul than any other. The relation be.rween the cognitive characrer of soul and rhe life character of soul introduces a structure inro soul which is parallel ro rhe account rhar Diorima gives ro Socrates in the Symposium about rhe double aspect of eros, namely, as it is ordinarily understood in terms of generation, and as philosophy. What again urutes the Symposium and the Phnedo is tbis: neither eros nor death can be undersrood physiologically. It migh r surprise us that when Socrates first asks whether death is something, he does nor. add, "Or is ir nothing?" Nor only would rhe answer, "Death is nothing." seem to imply irs i.nsign.ificance, bur on the basis of the sentence's plausible translation inro "Death is nor," ir would enrail a conclusion that could nor possibly be our first answer. Death rhus partakes of all the difficulties of nonbeing itSelf, which makes it rhe appropriate problematic link between the soul and the beings. SocraiC:S fim speaks of the beings as dearhless; and Cebes first identifies Socrates' argument with the thesis that rhe soul is dearhless. Ic is rhe "ideas,• whose exisrence is never proved but accepted, that are rhe obstacle to proving that the soul is immortal. Nowhere in the di2logue does Socrates say that the body dies. His own definition of death is silent on the identity of that which undergoes the dying, as well as indifFerent ro the fate of rhe soul and rhe body in death. He says, "[Do we believe death is] anything other than the release of the soul from the body? And this is to be in the stare of death, the body ro have become (g~rmmlliJ alone by irsdf and apan (choris) once ir is released from the soul, and the soul to be (tina•) alone by itself and apart (chiirn) once it is reJ~ased from thr body?" (64cs--8). Thr apparently redundant choriJ points ro the need for a double bonding of body with soul and soul with body if there is ro be life. It points to the possibility that life is only thought to be the opposite of death, bur in truth it is always rogether with dying, and the soul is that which makes us mortaL
18s
286
Chapter Founcen Socrates' final argumem, in any case, which is designed ro show rhar the soul is deathless, pro~ to mean something other than what "deathless" is thought ro mean, for the soul :as the transmitter of life to body is held to be that which does not admit death. Thus rhe soul does nor ad.rnir th.e double separation of soul and body. (Socrates reinterpretS "deathless" is such a way as ro bring it into line with the Eleatic Stranger's understanding of nonbeing.) The soul proves to be a part of a disjunctive two, while it was presented at first as capable of the aparrness of the conjunctive two.t inasmuch as Socrates' definition of death is nonphysiological, the significance of Socrates' account of the gene.rarion from opposites is likely to share this feature. So if the cognitive equivaleor of life, or the reunion of body and soul, is perception, and dm of death is rhe inrellection of separated beings, then the cognitive meaning of dying is sepa.r ating, and of reliving is combining; bur separating and combining are together in dialectics no less than in life, for the argument for cyclical generation implies that there cannot be a separation of body and soul unless their union also exists. The defect in Socrates' argument for suth a cyclehe fails ro keep to his own example in which there cannot be a "be· fore" unless rhere is already an "after" (i.e., he speaks coojunctivel)• rnthe.r than disjuocrively)- ceases ro COllllt dialectically where the necessary copresence of opposites is independent of space and rime. The second sailing Latent in Socrates' argument of section 11.:~., so that its difficulties as physiology are canceled as dialectics, is even more vividly suggested in his Aesopian story (II.4). There, in arguing that one becomes what one practices, and the likenesses of one's practices are whoUy confirmed in reincarnation. Socrates shifts from rh.e la.nguagc of place ro the language of kind (Su- b). Kind is the dianoctic equivalent of place. So all Socrar.es' talk of his death as a "goin.g" would have to be translated into irs "eidetic" truth. What would emerge after such a rranslation occupies the second half of the PhMdtJ. Socrates' autobiography shows tbar even as a pre-Socratic be was primarily interested in mao- in the rdation betwt\t\o man as thinking being and man as living bein.g. When be has ser our his original questionsthey turn our to be four-he mentions four things he thought be knew prior to nu:ning toward philosophy. These four things, when confronted with his pre-Socratic quesri.o ns, generate another set of four questions thar make everything he thought he knew totally wlinrdligible. This set of four questions turns our to be the problem of the number two. What Socrates sees causes his recourse ro speeches, his second sailing: rbar any
On Plato's Plmdli
accounr of coming inro being or of going our of bein.g must necessarily be translatable inro some kind of numerical account. 1berefore, all questions of becoming can be reinterpreted as questions about addition. Now any causal accounr whatsoever must necessarily admit this: opposite causes cannot have the same effect. What SocrateS realiz.es is that a naive understanding of the operations of numbers-of counting-leads to a contradiction because opposite processes do have the same effect. How is it, Socrates asks, that one gets rwo from rwo ones? The naive presentation of thar is to say a "one" bas come near to another "one" so that the joining rogether makes them two. Bur if that is the case, Socrates goes on, how come when one separates somed1ing, whieb is the opposite of joining together, one also gets two? We now have the following schema: Bringing near leads 10 IWO: definilioo ol lile
Separalioo leads lo one (Implicit)
Separating leads to two: de~'nltion of dealh
Bringing near leads lo one (explici1)
We have: "Bringing near leads to two." "Separating leads to two." But it is even worse. If bringi.ng near leads to two, then itS opposite m.usr lead to one. So "separating lea.ds tO one." Bur if separating leads to rwo, then "bringing near lea.ds ro one." We have a fourfold sebema of the problem as Socrates unde.rsrnods it. It is clear from what we have said so f.u that Socrates' definition of death has been of this kind, and the definition of life would be its contrary. lmmediatdy after he says he does not uode.rsrand this at all, he goes on ro describe having heard somebody reading from a book of An=goras about how mind is thar which accounts for everything. Without hearing any more, Socrares begins to think ro himself what exa.crly that would mean. He concludes that what Ana.xagoras ought ro say in his book is rhat any account of cause would h11Ve ro be an accounr of the good, because mind as cause can only be distinguished as a cause in terms of its being a nuional good. He is surprised, howcvc.r, ro discover rhar Anaxagoras docs nor undernand cause-using mind as a cause- in terms of the good bur only in terms of the making of something inro a p~tt~rn or a plan, and this plan itself cannot be understood as being good. Socrates then says that his inability to lind anybody dsc, and his own inability to bring about whut he thought the Anaxagorean project would consist inthat is, a complete releological cosmology-forces him to move to speeches. Now the immediate question is, Why does Socrates' account of his despair go from rhe problem about number to a problem about mind
zl17
188
Chapta f-ourreeo
ro a problem about good ro a problem abour speeches? The. answer is char rhe problem about rhe relation berween meclwtical caUS:ttion and teleological causation is not the only one. There is a problem concerning an opposition wirhin mind irself. the problem of numbers that Socrat.es raised could only be undemood in terms of mind-·o f Anaxagorean mind- but mathematics cannot be understood in terms of the good. Two things emerge from this: one sees thar these problems about what it means to make twO-in terms of either separating or dividin.g are all based on the undemanding of space. If there is an apple on me moon and an apple on earrh, no one is going to say, "Thar's a couple of apples." Presumably rhey have tO be rogerher. Bur once one unde.rsrands numbers in terms of rheir being rogerher, rhis Socratic problem develops. fr follows rhat Anaxagoras's e.rror, in asserting that before rhe operacion of mind all things were together, and after the operation of mind rhjngs were divided. was in nor sceiqg- and rhis .is absolutely crucial for underStanding rhe PhauirJ--rhat things c= o.oly be together if they are underStood as being so chrough an operAtion of mind. The failure of rhe first half of rhe dialogue resula from the way space and rime are undersrood as me subsrrucrure underlying all processes: all rhe argumena in rhe 6rsr half are based on false images, re.liectiog our ordinary undemanding of how rwo comes co be. Once one sees that "apart" and "together~ ca.n be undersrood only in re.r ms of the operation of logos irself, one sees also char Socrates' de6nirion of death does not encompass physiological death bur rarher defines philosophy as a process of separation. The spuriousneM of me argumentS i.n the Phaedo consisrs in his interlocutors' unawareness chat Socrates is forcing them con.standy ro jump ro logos away from factfrom what he calls pragm.ara, "the rhjngs," for the things themselves do nor lend themselves ro the kind of direct analysis rhar rhese people have in faa underraken. Socrares alerts them ro rhis. Th.e extraordinary con~uence of the analysis of me Phaedo is that any understanding of body is necessarily myrhjcal. That is a great shock because one would think it should be the opposite: any understanding of soul should be mythical. The definition of dearh in terms of separation was under:stood by Socrates' interlocutors ro he a characterization of body and soul as rwo separate subStances; when Socrates returns to it, he shows that whar is called death is in facr philosophy. So it turns out rhat the ordinary understanding of death has as its rrue meaning the practice of dying and being dead as philosophizing, not the other way around. Now this raises more than one puzzle. But parr of rhe movement of the dialogue consists in this: Socrates argues for dying and being dead as the aim of philosophy and of me philosopher on rhe grounds that the. philosopher
On Plato's Pba~do
2.89
wants lo be removed from his body in order lhal lhe pure soul by ilself mighl be in contacl wilh lhe pure beings. And he shows lhal lhis is based on a misunderslanding of lhe characler of knowledge because il does no[ preserve lhe necessary two ness of lhe relation belween mind and ils objecl, bul leads loa union, which makes knowledge, in facl, impossible. 5 Now, aher Socrales has laid lhis down, Cebes is reminded of lhe recolleclion lheory in which he remembers Socrales' assertion lhal everylime we learn, we are really remembering whal we once knew before we were born. Whal Cebes sees, and whal Simmias is made lo see once lhis lheory is accepled, is lhal if lhe recolleclion lheory is lrue, lhen lhe grounds for saying thal philosophy is lhe practice of dying and being dead-one has [O die in order [O come in contacl wilh lhe beings-are Wlally deslroyed. Because apparently now, lhrough lhe recollection lheory, one is able m have knowledge in lhis life, whereas lhe whole undemanding of dealh implied lhal one can onlr have knowledge when lhe soul is separaled from body. So lhe recolleclion lheory brings in a new assertion lhal one cannol have lhinking unkss one has perceiving, i.e., lhey belong logelher: lhe disjunelive lwo as opposed [O lhe original conjunctive [wo.• Simmias and Cebes come up wilh lwo different kinds of objeclions m whal Socrales has been saying. Simmias's objeclion occurs in lwo pans. He argues, fim, lhal everylhing Socrales says could also be said of lhe harmony produced by a lyre when il is in lune, and no one would conclude lhal lhe harmony survives lhe lyre. The second part of Simmias's lhesis is lhal lhe soul is in facl a harmony. Cebes comes up wilh anolher objection: granted lhal lhe soul exisls prior lo ils laking on lhe body, whal guarantee is lhere lhal il does nol wear oul a number of bodies and lhen finally die? Now lhe fantaslic lhing lhal happens is lhis. Simmias has reduced soul lo body. Soul no longer exisls excepl as a superfluous lerm; il lurns oul lO mean nolhing bul harmonized body-hence one can dispense wilh il. Cebes' objeclion lurns ou[ m mean, As long as lhe soul is nm incorporaled, il never dies. He gels rid of body. So Cebes' queslion is, Why is lhere becoming ralher lhan being? Belween lhem, Simmias and Cebes have accomplished jusl whal Socrales wanted: lhey have made a separalion of body and soul. One has found body, lhe mher soul. Unbeknownsl lo lhemselves, lhey have followed Socrales' definilion of dealh, nm as lhey lhoughl il was m be underslood, bul according lo lheir own logos. Socrales lhen lries m show in lhe second half of lhe dialogue lhal lhis is a false underslanding of lhe relation of body and soul, in lerms of lhe conjunctive lwo, and lhal one has m undetSland lhem ralher as a disjunctive lwo. He proceeds lo lackle lhis as follows. Lel me go back [O Socrales'
copynghtoo matenat
290
Ch•prer Fourteen
autobiography. Afrer having mentioned the problem of cause in the question of how rwo comes ro be, and the problem of cause in Anaxagorns's &ilure to carry out the project of mind. Socrates gives the foUowing illus· uarion of wh:u a teleological acoounr requires.: it would be ju.st :as if one said that nothing that I [Socmres] do is done without mind, and then, while claiming ro explain why I am sirting he.re in this prison, ralked about nothing but my bones and sinews. Such an acc:oum would neglect rhe true causes. • Now I have to read you the passage because it is an oxtraordinary tbin.g Socrates goes on to say about these rrue causes. Since the Athenians "thought that it was better to condemn me to deathbecause of thar- 1 in tum th.o ught that it was bener ro sit here and rhar it was more ju.st in remaining to undergo whatever punishment rbey command, since, by the dog, as I believe, these bones and sinews would long ago be around Mcgara or among the Boeorians, carried away by the opin· ion of that which is best, unless I thougbr that ir was more just and more noble to undergo the punishment, whatever the ciry enjoins, prior to fteeing and running away.• Now the first thing one notices is that opposite causes have the same effect. The ciry tbink.s thar Socrates is unjust. Socra· res rhink.s that what he is doing is just. Buc they bor.h have the effect of making him smy in prison. It would seem, then, that any teleological account, sraning with human experience, leads to the same paradox with regard to the principal question of physics. Nor only that, bur it is rather odd that whereas it can plausibly be said that what Socrates does is by mind, one cannot possibly say that what the Athenians do is by mind, in the sense of an understanding of the uue good. So ir is rather straoge rbar where he gives a rdeological example, rhe example is put not in terms of knowledge, but simply in terms ofopinion, i.e. , this is nor the ope.rarion of mind bur the operation of apparendy irrational principles, at least on one &ide or the orher. Nor only that, but one sees that a rdeological ac· count of man, which Soaates at this point abandons, would require an account of rhe relation between mechanical causation and teleological causation, that is, an account of the relation between body and soul being added tog~ther and making one. This is one of the four arithmetic operations Socrates aniculared. Bur it is unintelligible preci.sely because the same operation leads to exacdy the opposite result. The marriages of these rwo causes is the same as thei.r divorce. So it turns out that the problem of arithmetic is in f.tcr embedded in the problem of tdeological causatioo. When Socrates ralk.s about the good as a cause afrer this passage, he ralk.s about rhe good as the bintkr. In terms of rbe specific content of the PhaedtJ. the reason why aoy
On Pbto"s Phatdo
kind of teleological causation has to be abandoned is that the premise of the dialogue as a whole has been that it is better to be dead, i.e., for there to be a separation between body and soul. But if that is the case, no teleology-which would have to be concerned with the union or mechanical and teleological causation in a living being, that is, a being with a body-could possibly provide the account. But there is a deeper difficulty with regard to the problem of number that also causes Socrates to abandon teleology. He is forced to resort to speeches. What doe~ this recourse to speeches consist in? Socrates emphasizes that in order to account for why he is sitting in prison it is no longer possible to operate with a unitary concept of the just; rather, the just has to be split open and articulated in relation to the good and the noble. This is the dialectical examination of the ideas, i.e., it has exactly the same structure as what Socrates had proposed at the beginning with regard to the question of what is said to be pleasant and what is thought to be its opposite. As long as one think.~ of them as being totally divorced. one can make no progress. It is only when one sees their overlapping structure that one can move. And this is primarily what is happening in the Pbat'do. When body and soul are together, soul is concerned with the preservation of life in the body (913.1-8). So there is a perfect union between the operation of body and soul. One is combining conditions for the operation of a higher end, and that is making a two into a one. But one immediately thinks of it in terms of space: "Here we have the end, here we have the sinews. And we have to make an adjustment between the two by bringing them together." Socrates shows in this particular case that in order to account for why he is sitting in prison one has to explain why the Athenians have the opinions they do and why lu~ has his opinion. To go on to what the relation is between those causes, that is, the articulation of the relation of these three things-the noble, the good, and the justwith reference to how they operate on the living being, would require an account of the physiology of persuasion. We are no longer on the level of the combination of mechanical and teleological causation. Not in the Pbat'do, but in the PIJat'dnts, Socrates calls attention to this problem of causality-that people arc moved by speeches to act in a certain way. The explanation of how that happens, which is very mysterious, is, I think, the account Socrates gives in the Phat'drus; but to what extent it can be understood from physics is another question. That effort has to be abandoned once one sees what the real problem is. Death, however, looks like a matter of fact, to which Socrates' turn to speeches would seem not to apply.
191
~9•
Chapcer Fourte
On Pl:no's
Pha~do
What is the relationship of soul to body? Socrates' refutation of Cebes. What is the relationship of body to soul? The myth. And what is the relationship. finally, of body to body? Socrates becomes a corpse. It would take: a further analysis, which I will not do at the moment, to show how parts I and Ill fit in. But primarily one sees that when Socrates at the end of his autobiography proposes a hypothetical procedure of his own, it is in fact what he accomplished in the: Phaedo itself. At the end of his life, Socrates fulfills the promise: Parmenidc:s divined in him whc:n he was very roung.
No us This ch:~pter is a re'l'isc:d transcript of a lecture: given at Catholic Uni\'c:rsity, D.C., on }O January 1981. Answers from the question period are addc:d as notes. 1.
W:~Shington,
1. While: X:~nthippc: has at hc:r dispoS3l habitual ways of handling dc:ath, nothing of the kind is available to the mc:n. And the conventional practice which she indulges in exactly illustrates the: nc:cc:ss:otl")' rdation bc:twc:c:n pleasure: and pain. But the men who remain alter she leaves do not understand that precisdy because she is a woman. They fed superior to her, so they cannot understand thc:ir experience: of the: same thing. One of the: remarkable: features of the dialogue: is Phac:do's presentation of everything in terms of either habit or non-habit. Socrates looked like a bull; that is how he: habitually looked. He did this as he habitually did. We: philosophized as we: habitually did. On the: mhc:r hand, thc:rc: is that which is completely non-habit-
:1.93
194
Ch~pr~r Fourr~m
3. The: refutation ofCc:bc:s-namc:ly, ~ction !V.2-in bet accomplishes the: analysis of the charact~r of soul totally in terms of th~ so-all~d ideas. And rh~ myth is a pres~ntation of soul as body. In other words, total separation of body and soul. It is another way of doing what Socrates said death consists in. So the myth is in one: sense: mc:rdy a blown up version of the: internal structure: of the human body presented as the: structure of rhc: C:.Jrth. It is all body, nothing bur body. (One sees that very clearly if one: looks at Timac:us' account of the internal physiology of the: human body.) As a consequence:, when Socrates comes in rhis myth to the: abode of the philosophers-or th~ life: of the: philosophers-he says, "Well, somewhere dse. I cannot tell you about that now." In other words, the: original rea.mn for what he is doing and what he has done is totally abandoned. But the myth is more interesting. It consists in two parts. The: first occurs entirely in indirect statement; it is all infinitives and accusatives. Somewhere in rhe middle:, at exactly the point where: Socrates introduces nature, it turns into direct discourse. And there he talks about cause. The kind of cause that he: is talking about docs not seem to be comprehensible, either mechanically or rclc:ologically. This very peculiar account of cause corresponds ro nothing except perhaps the principle of sufficient reason. Why does the earth oscillate in this way? The answer: Well, it cannot do anything dsc:. Presumably this is something like: an application of rhe theory of logos to the question of cause. Let me put it this way. The whole dialogue begins with an account of the: ship that Theseus went on to Crete, and then rhe ship that the Athenians send to Delos every year. Phac:do implies that both ships referred to arc: one and the same, a sameness rhat resembles the self of Phaedo and what the dialogue really should deal with. But what does it mc:a.n to combine body and soul into a self? At no point in rhe dialogue is that question raised directly, although in fact it lies behind Simmias's and Cebes' questions, but they are not able to formulate it properly. When Socrates talks about his reason for turning to poetry, he makes rhe following remarkable statement: "Often the same dream came to me in my past life. at one: time appearing in one: kind of dream. at another time appearing in another, but saying the same things." The sameness of the dream is idenrili~d with the sp~ech that th~ dream makes in its various forms. So Socrates implies that the self is a dream, whose logos is rhe same:. Now ir rurns out rhat what Socrates makes his interlocutors finallr fear is, not death, bur st/fcomradkrion. Ceb~s laughs when he is told that he will be afr.1id that his speech will contradict his own speech. That is the PINUdo. So the movement of rhe dialogue is to show rhar rhe f:Jise understanding of the union of body and soul has ro be replaced by an account in terms of logos and self-contradiction. 4· Socrates shows that in some sense rhe philosopher practices J~arh. Bur his inrc:rlocutors ar~ puzzled. ft seems to lead ro th~ conclusion that you become: what you practice:. The consequence: is that only the: philosopher's soul becomes deathless. In other words, deathlessness is not an attribute of the soul itself, but something you work at. This puzzles rhc:m. So the other view comes in, that no soul is more soul than any other soul, and as a consequence, soul can be under-
I mar.
On Pbto' s P~dD stood only as the givet of life. But wba< happens to mind? It somehow vanishes. The t.ronci~ation betwcc:n what I call the jusr an.d rh~ prudenti:al, or betw= the class and the dass goal. is necessarily dialcc:tic:al. lt must be understood in terms of the disjunaive two or il will lead ro a paradox one can never solve. I would suggest rhat every time a myth appcau in Plaro, one of the terms in the account is supcr8uou.<, based on • filic scpange itself. which
>9)
296
Chapter Fourteen nec
6. In Mttaphpia A, AristOtle's account of the narure of mind has norhing to do with mind as cause. So the being of mind and tho causal character of mind are cotalJy sepanble. Tbar is equivalent tO an extruDe vernon of the Strucrure of the Pluuda. What mind wants-what soul wants-is to know the beings. But what soul is, is thor whieb gives life to body: coruoequtndy, suicide. Soul wants, for the sake of iu own being, to give up what it is as cause. So the problem is to try to show that soul is the beneficiary of itself wflen it operarc:s as cause, and that these rwo characters of soul belong together out of necessiry. And thar is what Socrates tries to do in the Pluuda. He tries r.o show, o.o t how they ur< internaiJy rd~.ccd co on.e another, bur that. in anempting co sep-.uare them.. one is not going co get what one thinb. When he says that the good is the binding at rhe end of bis aecount of teleology, whar I think he ;. pointing ro is this: a true understanding of the good would be in retms of parts and wholes. This is connected with the d.Wity of Eros in the Symposiwn- the longing ro be wim plus the longing to contemplate. What Oioetl nothing but his own body in an • ideal• form.
"''0
F I
'\ .
Fl~ E N
Plato's Theaetetus: On the Way of the Logos
o P £ N I N c o F T H E Th~atttfltS is curious. The report we have of another opening of nearly the same length indicates that it was always a curiosity.• If both openings are Plato's, and the rest of the dialogue they preface were not different, then Plato changed his mind about how to start off the trilogy to which the Thtattttus belongs; if the second version is spurious, someone thought he could surpass Plato and make a more sensible introduction; but if ours is spurious, then we cannot hope to interpret it. If we assume its genuineness and that it represents Plato's only or final recension-the other one is said to be spurious and rather frigid-then the Th~a~«tus opens with our listening in on a recital of the conversation Socrates had with Theaetetus and Theodorus shortly before his death: we are supposedly hearing it in Megara many years after the conversation occurred. The temporal and spatial layers are these: I) the original conversation; 2) Socrates' report of it to Eudides, in which every speech, explicitly or not, had a parenthetical "I said" or "He said"; 3) Eudides' notes on Socrates' report which Eudides corrected after his frequent returns to Athens; 4) Eudides' retranslation of Socrates' report into non-narrated dialogue; s) Plato's eavesdropping on Eudides and Terpsion in Megara, and his subsequent transcription of the slaveboy's reading of the dialogue after their return to Eudides' house; 6) our reading or hearing the dialogue at another time and another place. It is possible to ticket each of these layers, but it seems impossible to do anything with our careful discrimination of them. We are left with a logos whose indexes of space and time alter while it itself presumably remains the same. It
T HE
197
>98
Chapcer r ahccn
carries a reminder of the irrecoverable particularity· of the original setting no less than of its subsequent t.ranspositions, but the logos sta11ds clear of what occasioned it and remains co be viewed without distortion under scrara of illusory transparency. The publication of the logos is due to Plato; Euclides was content to render an illusion of the original conversation, in conformity with Socra· res' recommendation in the Pluudrw, as his own private reminder, though one mighr suppose rhar he would nor have gone co so much rrouhle had he nor intended to publish ic ac some time or ocher. Had nor Plato intervened, and Eudides got around to bringing it inco che light, we might have had a non-Platonic Socratic dialogue, which would have had a purely accidental link wirh Plato's Sophist and Statemutn. They could still be raking up where the Theaaetus left off, but the difference in authorship would have hindered us from reading the Theutttus in light of Plato's cwins. The TbtAett= would not be nanding at the head of the seven dialogues thar now con.stirure a single logos abour the trial and death of Socrares. It seems, then, that Plato has imagined what the cransmission of Socrates' reaching would have been like had his illness at the time of Socrates' death been fatal (Phudo 59b10), and Socrates had had ro rely on Euclides for gercing our his message. The extreme skepticism of the Megarian school, with its reliance on nothing but logos, would have received its imprimatur in Euclides' Theutttus. The solution to such a radical skepticism that we now find in the Sopbitt and the Sratesma11 would have been roi'OSing. The Theoetetus of course would nor have been enrirdy free of the circumsranti.:aL Soa:atcs implies in his first speech ro Theodorw that he is tied down to the local more than Theodorus is, and he does nor fuil to bring the dialogue down to earth by mentioning ac the e.nd that he musr go ro the noa of the King Archon co face the indictment Meletus ha< d.rawn up against him. Socrates the gossip. who knows all about Tbeaerews's father, cannot possibly be the philosopher whom Socrates describes to Theodorw, whose body al.ooe remains in the city bur whose thought B..ies above and below the earth. Theodorus would call such a theoretical man a philosopher bur nor apparendy Socrates (175e12). This higb·Bying ph.ilosopher, however, who docs nor know whether his neighbor is a beast or nor, devotes himself co Socratic questions: What is man? \Vhar is human happiness and misery? Whar is kingship? (175C28). The perspective of this Socratic pre-Socratic seems robe che perspective in light of which we. are being made ro read the ThetUtetu;. We are forced co abandon Theodorus's image of Socrates as another Anraeus, who weakens if he is raised above the earth bur grows nronger whenever he renews
Plaro's Th<.zuttuJ
conrac.r with it (169b1-4) and adopt a perspective. against the Socratic unde.rs~anding of things, which Plato lt'produco:d in the suuaure of the T~JzetetuJ icsdf, of the univemlity of logos. The Theamrus spells our defiantly the paradox of the Phatd1'UJ. Its logos invites us, despite its builtin warning llgllinst our doing what we cannot help ourselves from doing, to read SocrateS our of the dialogue and replace him with Theodorus's understanding of the philosopher, for whom the Eleatic Stranger an.d not Soc:r.ues is divine (Sophur 216b8-a). This end run around Soaares has the con~que.nce that we are 1.:<1 10 discount Socrates' maieuric knowledge, which resists the notion of the universality of science and elevates a private «cmtricity into a principle. If we resist th.e temptation Plato ~~ in our way and tty 10 insert Socrates' knowlo:dge into me issue of knowledge, we ate &co:d with the paradox that Socrates seems to prove conclusively that it is as impossible ro know what one does not know as eimer not to know what one knows or to mistake whar one knows for whar one does not know. Theaetetus, howeve.r, seems to be rhe evidence to the contrary of the lam:r impossibility 3lld Socrates himself of the former. The dialogue thus seems to be a knockdown proof that Socrates cannot have the knowlo:d.g e he says he has and Theaetetus cannot have made the mistakes he acknowledges he has made. The logos of Tllt!ltttttuS SWttps the board of every answer it exam· io.es and then cancels itself and denies that what Tbeaetetus experiences could ever occur. Such a conclusion must have prompted Theaeterus, Theodorus, and young Socrates to ask the Elearic Stranger about Soc:r.tres: What could possibly explain me sophistry of Socrates that parades as phil.osophy? According to Socrates, such an apparition is a necessary consequence of me position from which the philosopher is viewo:d, but, a.ccording ro the Stranger, Socrates rhe sophist can be a.ccounto:d for without grounding him in d•e reality of the philosoplter (Sophur 3). Socrates belongs to a dis'tinct species that can be comprehend.:<~ by itself. Th.is Parmcnide:~n daim mUSt have been a consolation to TheaetctuS and Theodorus. Speeches srrippo:d of everything are going ro be sltown for what they are. If that was what they expecto:d, the company was bound tO be disappointed by the Stranger's own logos. Rather than adopting the experiential mod.e of Socrates, wlto bad liken.o:d perplexity to the labor pains ofwomen, he will assure Theae.tetus th11r he can be brougltt closer to the bein.gs without ever experiencing rite disenchammem of innocent youth (Sophist 234e3-6; cf. Theaaetus 207e"J-<;) and urge him to assume, since Thea«ctus has never seen a sophist, tltat rite. sophist he is addressing is blind
199
JOO
Chapter Fift«n
(Sophist2}9eJ-l40:12). The Tlmumw and rhe Sophist rhus seem oo nand together and deny us any easy way to restore ro the TIJ~a~tetus a re\•indicarion of Socrates' insisrence rhar the arguments of Theaererus cannot be separated &om rh.e mode in which he delivered them from him. Since Theaetetus seems to say on his own no more rhan "Knowledge is perception." "Knowledge is uue opinion," and "Knowledge is rrue opinion with logos," while rhe dabo.ration of each of these propositions belongs exclusively co Socrates' doing, Socrates seems to refute himself. There is no science of midwifery. Ir is jUSt a way of encouraging Theaeterus after the failure of his fint answer, but there really is nothing co it, and Socrates' claim co be barren in point of wisd.o m srands refuted by the variety of his wise inventions that he falsely attributes to Theaererus' s conceptions. The refuratioo that Socrates anticipates the Eleatic Suanger as a refutarive god will infuct upon him for his poomc:ss io speeches has already been inflicred by himself. Socrates is willing. it seems, co endure a seeond bearing (169b6-8). The problem Theaererus is called upon to solve has been stated emblematically even prior to Socrates' formal questioning of Theaetetus about knowledge. He puts the embl.emaric question on the basis ofTbeodorus's praise of TbeaetetuS's narure. Theodorus's praise has nothing to do with Theaetetus's particular aptitude for matheroa.rics, abour which Socrates eould never have cast doubt, an.d which Theaeterus later displays on his own when he shows how be dassibed i.rrational square coots. Socrates, by speaking of a geometry and rhe rest of philosophy," had allowed Theodorus to srick co his special knowledge in his praise of Tbeaeterus (LodJ); bur Theodo.rus, rather than menrioning Tbeaeterus's ingenious procedure., chooses to srray inro Socrates' field of expertise and give an account ofTh~tetus's soul-he never mentions rhe word- that, if rrue, would pm at the beginning of the uilogy rhe union of moderation and courage which the Elea.t ic Stranger discusses at rhe end with young Socrates. The phrase "geometry and the rest of philosophy" seerns to imply thar either philosophy is a sci.e nce or philosophy and science are all of a piece (cf. l72Cj), and Theodorus's praise of Theaeterus is a praise of his philosophic nature, which is the indispensable basis for his purely rnathemarical skills. Theodorus, one might say, comes forward as one of the guardians of Ka.llipolis and declares Theaecerus to be lit for the higher training in dialectic. He =rns, ar any .rare, to be challenging Socrates. Socrates, to be sure, does not le.r on thar Theodorus has poached on his knowledge; instead, be geu Theaeterus's assent co the view rbat whoever is praised should be as eager co display his excellence as the listener of the praise should be eager co test its uuch.
Plato's
Th~a~t~M
Socrates' question about knowledge naturally follows from rhe appar~ em impossibility of pu[(ing together Socrates' knowledge with Theodor~ us's, even though Theodorus's general remarks about t~e disparate natures of rhe bold and rhe temperate seem within the competence of any experi~
I.
enced reacher, and his praise of Theaererus as an exception to the rule also seems ro be well within what Theodorus could have picked up in· a
long career. Theodorus rhus has scientific knowledge about a number of subjects and ordinary human understanding of his students; bur Socrates cannot compere with him scienrifically, and he is simply absurd ro come forward with rhe claim rhar he has replaced Theodorus' s experience with
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a science that in his own case did not need any experience to precede his acquisition of it. What seems to have rankled Socrates was Theodorus's preliminary remark that Theaeterus was almost as ugly as Socrates, and therefore his praise of him could not possibly be construed as due to any desire for Theaetetus on his part. In his conversation with Theaeterus, Socrates began by casting doubt on Theodorus's credentials: he could not say that Theaetetus was ugly unless he were a skilled paimer (144e814534). Socrates left it open at that point whether he was so competent; but when Theaetems finally comes_arouild to assigning to "soul by itself" cer£ain functions, Socrates triumphantly declares that Theaetetus is beaur tiful, "for he who speaks beautifully is beautiful and good." Socrates' knowledge discounts the senses, and just as Theodorus had to disclaim any erotic attachment to Theaetetus, so Socrates has to claim to be barren in order that his attachment to his own might not interfere with his delivr ery ofTheaeterus. Socrates is on a par with Artemis, and unlike her human surrogates, he never had to have put the age of childbearing behind him in order to· turn to the delivery and examination of another's offspring. The implausibility of Socrates' pretensions seems to make the ernr blematic confrontation between Theaetetus's knowledge and Socrates' a nonstarter. Theaetetus certainly does not see that if two such radically different types of science are involved, the possibility of a comprehensive characterization of science seems precluded. Once, however, Theaetetus supplies a series of mathematical sciences, along with their productive counterparts, as his first answer, and Socrates later givc:s an accoum of maieutics, we cannQ[ help but believe that Socrates has asked Theaetetus to put together the apparently irrational science of soul, of which he is the sole master, with the rational sciences of number and measure. Theaetetus first offers Socrates an indeterminate number of sciences as science; but once Socrates shows him that he did not answer the question properly, Theaetetus abandons everything he knows and declare his inca· pacity to say whac science is. Just as Meno's first answer to Socrates' ques~
JO<
j
Chap«r Fifrecn
cion, Whar is virtue? allows for a simple answer that would comprehend all the examples Meno gave-virtue consists in doing one's own job well- so The<J.ererus's lisr is jusr as easy to stamp wirh a single sign: science is the knowledge of how ro count and measure. After Tbeaeterus bas told Socrares how he understands the quesrion-ir is comparable ro th.c quescion he and young Socrates raised.. how ro characre~ize irrational squa.re roors posicivdy- he does nor even ay to do the same for knowledge. Had Theaeretus given rhe answer we expect, he would have shown his daring in extending what he knows inro all char he does not know and claiming thereby that whatever is nor countable or measu.rable is nor knowledge. Theodorus's knowl~ ofTheaetetus would have been demoted and pur in a field thar resists any scientific account, though for all praccical purposes it may be good enough; indeed, Socrates could even say he was superior ro Theodorus in this regard withour ever advancing rhe claim thar he was just as much an expert in souls as Theodorus was in numbers and measure. Theaeterus's innate modescy, ir seems, checked him from extending the domain of mathematics. He is more moderate than Theodorus, who, according ro Socrates, naturally pulled i.nro the 6eld of relacive measures what WliS nor susceptible to geometrical proporcions (SraJtsman zs7a6-b7) . Socrates does assign moderation to Tbeaececus, but only at the end of the dialogue when he is completely empty (:uoq); but if he had indeed been moderate, he would have rdUsed tO give any answer ar all once he was persuaded ro give up mathematical knowledge. Socrates persuaded him that he could not mention any art or science unless he knew whar science was; an.d since he had jusr listtd rbe arcs and sciences, he was convinced he could nor give any answer in light of wbar be knew. Socrares emptied Tbeaeterus of evecyrbing Theodorus bad raughr him. His fusr essay as midwife was ro cast our &om Tbeaeterus whatever he had thought was a science. He cauTerized Theaererus'5 womb and then encouraged him ro give birch. So whereas marbemacics looks ro be a rival ro maieurics, and indeed is if one steps back &om the Tbtatt
Plato's
Th~aaaus
is challenged to account for Socrates' speciality. something he does not know, and which, like: his characterization of irrational square roots, has to rely on an image to make: it plain. Thc:ac:tc:tus's second answer, perception. is the: answer of one: who has just bc:c:n born (186bn-cz). h puts Socrates' an in its place:. Midwifery is nothing but a knack, slowly acquired through the course of a long life; it is no more: than that which lay behind Thc:odorus's praise: ofThc:ac:tc:tus. Thc:ac:tc:rus himself may not have intended his answer to be: so interpreted. He: might have thought that if c:veryrhing Thc:odorus taught him could not be: the: characteristic of science:, Socrates must have: wanted a prescic:n· tific answer, that without which we: would not know anyrhing. h is not until latc:r in the dialogue that Socrates rc:vc:als to him the: nc:cc:ssiry of conversing impurely, and that means, in the: context, m speak about knowing and not knowing while trying to answer the: question, What is knowledge:? The: impurity of conversation is nowhere: more clearly hinted at than in Theac:tetus's response to Socrates' assc:nion that the: dizziness he has feh is not due: to his emptiness but to his pregnancy: "I do not know, Socrates, but I say what I have: experienced." Thc:ac:tc:tus distin· guishc:s perception from knowledge: and implies that knowledge: is always knowledge: of cause:. Socrates indc:c:d goc:s on to confirm this whc:n he reporrs that people say of him that he is most mange: and makes them perplexed. He: then asks whc:thc:r he: should tell Thc:actc:tus the: cause:, which is that thc:y do not know that he: has the: same: an as his mother, but he does nor maintain that they arc: mistaken in amibuting m him the power to perplex them. Socrates not only forestalls Thc:aetetus's answer, but he: hints at an understanding of knowledge that doc:s not come: up again in the: Thrarmus. If, however, we rurn m the: Sophist and Stawman, and look to the highest scic:ncc:s of each, the Sophist's answer sc:c:ms to be the divine knowledge of making. and the: Staumran's answer, insofar as the: ruler is the knower of the order of ends. seems to be knowledge of the good. The: union of thc:sc: two knowledgc:s would be a teleological physics, or precisely that science Socrates once figured out should have: bc:c:n contained in Anaxagoras's book if he: maintained correctly that mind was the: highest cause: (Phardo 97b8-ds). There is embedded, then, at the stan of the: Thrarirtus the: problem that prompted Socrates from the stan. Perhaps it would have: been too much to expect Socrates' look-alike to renew the issue:, even though the: shadow of the: problem came out of himself and did not require any teasing on Socrates' pan. His first answer had already suggested that wisdom would consist in a science that would combine the mathe-
303
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Chapter Fifreen matical .scien= with me CHJS21 knowledge implicit in shoemaking and the like. That Theaecetus was on the edge of renewing Socrates' earliest speculation shows that the barrenness of Socrates, upon which his daim to disinterested authority restS, cannot be genuine. Even if we do not count the "ideas" :IS his second birth and identify them instead with a comprehensive st.ru.cture of questions, Socrates' own autobiography con· uadicu the premise of his maieuria. Socrates decided to rdease through Euclides a veuion of hi:msdf that discounts his own ecperience. Socrates relies on nothing but logos. He was alwa)'S young and beautiful. lf, moreover, Tbeaeret:us had simply listened to Socrates' description of his own art, he could easily have put the problem of knowledge in terms of what he knew and what Socrates knows. Socrates' knowledge seems ro amount ro self~knowledge. He knows through his an that knowledge of soul is not wisdom, and no other an knows through itSCI£ that it is necessarily limited in its possible range. Thea.etetus could then have asked whether it was possible tO put scientific knowledge and selfknowledge together into a single science, for scienti6c knowledge, once it h:u compreh.ended evetything, can.n ot comprehend .scientific knowledge itself, and wharever knowledge does comprehend scientific knowledge cannot be scientific. Socrates' knowledge also seems to differ from any other known science in one important respect; unlike every other science it cannot as self-knowledge be wrinen down. It cannot be caught. It thus seems nor ro be knowledge at all bur ar best a kind of virrue. What holds for Socrates also holds for those be delivers. Their wisdom must be tiMir wisdom; it too cannot be found in a book. bur it must have their individual signatures upon it; otherwise, ic would become Soc:rates' own wisdom as soon as he brouglu it into th.e light. The identification, then, of wisdom and knowledge, with which Socrates begins his question (4sdtz-e7), cannor be right. The offspring he deliveu muSt necessarily be so many inseances of pseudo-wisdom or sophistry. ~rever knowledge his pregnant chJUgCS have must produce by i=lfa completion of itself mat is necessarily a phantom image of wi.sdom. Sophistry is the inevirable consequence of the contact of soul with science. There 'vere, chen, several ways in which Theaererus could have got hold of the question Socrates puc to him, but he rakes none of them. He gives an answer tbar confirms his b2fllement once Socrates has blocked the only way open tO him to approach me probkm. Socrates finds it rel:uivdy easy tO refute the answer once he bas gotten rid of his spontaneous variations on a theme suppLied by TheaetetuS, just as he later finds it no less easy ro refute Theaetetus's seeond answer, true opinion , once
Pbto's Th
he returnS from his unsolved puW.e about false opinion. The TheluretJIS, then, bas a remarkably symmetric structure: the first pan is dominated by Socrates' H.c:raclirean-Proragorcan thesis, which he simply foists on .Theaetetus, and the second part is do.m inat.e d by the intrusion ofSocnues' own perplexity about false opinion. The theme of the lint part is that there is neither true nor false opinion but there is wisdom of a ce.rtain kind: the theme of the second part is that false opinion is impossible. These twO the~CS amount to a concealed assauh on Socrates' midwifecy-he has no wisdom on his own and he can tdl infallibly true from false opinion. The Theuutus, then, has a single theme, Socrates' maieutics and why it cannot be a science. Insofar as one believes that the attack Socrates mounts against his own knowledge is successful, one has to conclude that the Th-tus restores ro TheaeretUS all the knowledges he was persuaded to set aside at the beginning of the dialogue, and that accordingly mathematics does not have to share its claim ro knowledge with anything else: Socrates' problem is not a problem. Socrates' suicidal mission also gives Theaeretus a modd of wh:u philosophical courage is. It is nor a modd he bas the guts to follow. He does, ho\\~cr, praaice a phantom image of Socrates' daring: for a rime be gives up what he knows. It would be easy enough to assimilate Socrates' midwifery to what he claims dsewbere to be his sol.e knowledge. competence in erorie thinss; but it would requite the sacrifice of wha.t is centtal to erotics-rbe generation of beautiful speeches on the beautiful (Symptnium 208c5-1.09C7), for Theaererus is not beautiful. Since, morMver, maieurics demands that Socrates share with his m.o ther the an of the go-between, which cannot publicly be distinguished from the an of the pimp, it might seem that nuieutics becomes fully artful at the expense of the spontaneity of eros; but one could suppose that Socrates' erotic art is just another name for this origi.nal sorting of natures, and Socrates' misrake is tO jump over this initial srag~ with Theaeretus-he had seen him before bur had not been attraaed to him-and try ro exercise his an on a oarure that did not 6t his own. Soc.rates docs indeed speak of beautiful of&pring as the possible outcome of his technique (15od]), but since he sa~ they are nor his, are we allowed to suppose thar Theaeretus inspired in him a phantOm image ofTheaeretuS that he generously imputed ro Th.eaeretUS himself? It certainly looks as if the account ofTheaeterus's definition is Socrates' alone, and Theaeretus falls for an alien falsification that firs himsel£ What is fatal, however, to such an association of erotics and maieutics, is that TheaetetUS's four offSpring an: not viable, and once they are broughr inro the light they cannot survive Socrates' examination. Ramer than offering Thea.eretus
)OS
3o6
Cb•pcu Fifteen something he can live with or live by, Socrates does his best to make Tbeaererus as perplexed as bimsd£ The Elearic Stranger, on che other hand, does hold out to Theaeterus somet.hing beautiful: he gi\·es him a proleptic vision of his own future self in which his nature. will finally 6t his own opinion that a god made everything (Sophist 265d5-e.2). This completion ofTheaerews's nature stands at the opposite pole from Socra· tes' suggestion that be (Soc~:ates) no less than the Stranger is a god. Socrates' science knows how t.o induce labor pains and soothe them. These labor pains are perplexities. "Pror:agoras" will later argue that it is impossible ro live in the element of perplexity: everyone is forced co come up with a solution, which is neither uue nor false but snong or weak. Even apan· from this "Niett.sebean" criticism of Socrates, Socrares' presenracion of his arc, however, is deeply flawed. He admits that his delivery of conceptions can he fully understood in l.ighr of his mother's art , bur he grants that her an has nothing that corresponds to his inhllible resting of truth and falseh.ood. [£, then, rhe testing of the offspring does not match anything in female ma.ieutics, Socrates cannot appeal to it in order to make good his daim that his ccirical knowledge is part of midwifery. Soc· rates may well have such an an, but unless he can show that it coheres with the art of delive.r y as much as the an of the go-herween must helong no less to his mother than to himself, he comes forward with two arts, che unity of which is far more puu:ling chan the uoiry of Theaecetus' s list of am and sciences. The rwoness of Socrates' singular art is mapped onro and enlarged in the rwo partS of the Tlu!anetus; and this largescale display of Socraces' maientics drives home the poim that each pan can he created separately and does not necessarily belong to the other. The rwo offspring of Theaetetus's soul that control seve.rally the two pans of the dialogue-petceprion and true opinion- refute t.b e uni ty of Socrates' art. Each part of the Tlmutetus has a controlling principle. For the lim part it is that nothing is one by itsd.f. but every apparent one is a rwo (151.d.l-3; lS)e4~s); for the second parr rhe principle is that there are noth· ing but ones, whether they he the ones of pure arithmetic, elements, or individuals like Socrates, Tbeaererus, or Theodorus. The lim principle is the Heraclitean ground for the Proragorean principle that man is the measure of all things. It supplies the physics for relativism. Socrates builds up the Protagotean-Heraclircan theory &om 151e4 to 160<:4. This interval corresponds tO the gestation and labor pains of pregnancy, afrer which Theaerecus's offspring is finally brought fonh. The initial offspring is, as it were, a disembodied logos; it gers a life only through the ministrations
Pl1lto's Th
of Socrat~ who h1lS had to cajole Theaetetus to allow it to he shaped and not dtop stillborn ax every possible objection. Thea.cterus's definicion, which appeared 1lS one, now comes to Lighr as having concealed a twoProrngoras and Heraclitus-who have come together to produce Theaererus's definition. It now contains a causal accounr; but insow as it is a causal accounr, it con:cradicts the definirion of knowledge. The causal accounr, eben, must he spurious; it cannot possibly be true but only a prod· uct of anod1er two that o.re thought to be separable and each to he a one apart. This illwory two is Soctates and Thea.etetUS, who in contact with one another play the role of agent and patient, respectively, and have engendered mgemer Theaeterus's thesis. The Proragorean-Heraclitean theory, as Socrates formulaces it, requires a version of Socrates' ID2ieutics, in which Socrates is no longe.r the neutral helper and irupector but a coproducer of what Theaeretus is mid is his alone. Socrates, d>en, works out a way in which his maieutics could he undersmod as fully in conformity with Protagoras's understanding of wisdom. The Procagorean rbesis has two anchors. The 6rst is relacively uivial. The bitterness or sweetness of wine depends on the condition of the drinker. At the other end is the plausible thc:sis that cities ate likewise either hcalrby ot sick, but the set of aurboritacive opinions of each ciry, which o.re called laws, dete.rmine what is beautiful and just or what is ugly and unjust. We can call the beautiful and just together mornliry. Mornliry is the way in which the ciry expresses as a symptom irs condition. It is rbe equivalent of a plant's percepcions-its turning to the light, for example, or its sending our roots in search of moisture-that reveals to the farmer its unde.rlying state, which the plant knows no more about chan the ciry knows about itsdf. Each ciry holds its morality to be true, but morality is nor uue or fals<: bur a way of life grounded in conditions or srates thar are neither uue nor fals<: but good or bad. A ciry is in a good condition if it can either resist being absorbed by anorher ciry or absorb another ciry. Health is the power to expand or defend, sickness is irs contrary. Between rhe individual's bodily state and the ciry's condicion, Socrates comes forward with a theory abour rhe soul, which, insofar as .ir speaks of pregnancy and barrenness. supplies an account comparable to ralk of health and sickness. Socrates cannot bur admit that if wisdom must he one's own wisdom, everyone says what he is, and the individual's logos is but a sympmm of his underlyin.g condition. It is therefore absurd for him ro claim that he can speak of true or false symptoms, any more chan he can determine whether Theaeterus's assertions are uue or false. He has been the agenr and Theactetus the patient. As pacient, Tbeaeterus believes
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3o8
Chapter Fificcn he has produced something verifiable; but that belief is merely a sign of his patiency. The wise public speaker docs not try to enlighten the city and replace morality with health; instead. he presents to the city a version of its morality that fits what is to its good. Socrates is urged to follow the same procedure: he is to show his wisdom by reproducing on the level of symptoms his own health, so that nothing remains in Theaeterus of his former perplexities but he copies the agency of Socrates in a passive reflection (r67e3-r68a7). This is a very powerful condemnation of Socrates: the city will ultimately prove to be healthier than he could e\·er b~ by killing him. If we follow Protagoras, we can say that every city established through what it holds to be the highest beings-the gods-the symptomatic network of its condition, and it is forced to live within the horizon of putative truth while it undergoes whatever the real power relations among cities determine. On Protagoras's interpretation, Athens takes out on Socrates its defeat by Sparta: it naturally believes that its weakness is Socrates' falseness. Theaetetus's second irrational answer-knowledge is perceptionseems to represent the soul's answer, once: its scientific superstructure: has been dismantled. The soul, however, cannot possibly see that its answer contradicts itsc:lf in its very formulation, for it must be blind to the nonperceptibility of such an equation. Socrates' elaboration of Thc:ac:tc:tus's answer auempts to derive it from the union of two theories, Protagoras's "Man the measure" and Heraclitean motion. Heraclitean motion is given a mathematical structure, and Protagoras's measure poses a counterclaim to Socrates' knowledge. Together they produce a total wisdom that claims to solve the problem that Socrates had put first to Theactctus in casting doubt on Theodorus's competence and that he had then lc:t us formulate for oursc:lves in setting up the contrast between mathematics and maieutics. Socrates' version of wisdom is designed to show Theaetetus what it would mean to have a grasp of science prior to the understanding of any particular science. It offers, for example, an understanding of power (dunamis) that lends itself very naturally to its mathematical sense. Power as agency and patiency easily fits the multiplication of numbers and magnitudes, where the equivalence of 4 X 3 and 3 X 4 points simultaneously to the nonfixability of agent and patient and the need to fix temporarily one number or the other as the patient of the other's agency. The more special use of dunamis as root is connected with Thcactctus's imagistic translation of all numbers into magnitudes, so that as magnitudes they can represent motions of any size. Protagoras's sentence docs not lend itsc:lf to an interpretation that
Copyrighted
Pl.uo's Theaaaus readily 6rs Tbeaetetus's definicion. In irself it seems to be a clever way of saying what pan of the Chorus in Aeschylus's SnMn say: "Even th.e city praises the just thiJ\1}1 differencly ar different rimes" (I070-7J). Their say· ing could be further genea.l.iud: "Oilfe.r ent tribes believe in different gods"; and in this form it S«ms to bear a not roo distant relation ro the implication of Socrates' maieutics. The gods arc those beings that complere the individual's particular knowledge, and such completions arc of necessity oomcienri.6.c, however indispensable they are for understanding the way in which the individual understands his own knowledge. In the spin that Socrates puts upon it, Prorago.ras is made ro bestow divinity on Tbeaeterus himself, bur if one replaces this identification with a somewhat -aker version, rhar what Theaeterus gene.rates our of himself is an ideal of r.oral wisdom, which Socrates implies is always an idol of total wisdom. then the political or conventional interprcrarion of Proragoras and its radically subjective interpretation, with which Socrates StartS, acquire a middle position that is hard to distinguish from Socrates' own. Theaeretus had originally said, ouk allo ti min ~istlml i aistlmi.J {15te2- 3). Socrates had rephrased it without "is": ai.Jthiri.J, phliJ, epiltimi? (151e6). Phiis, "you say," the bond between "knowledge" and "perception"; bur phlis is Theaeterus: he purs rhe twO together. He is the "man" of Proragoras' s general formula. Theaererus is the pia~ where knowledge and perception meet. Such a meeting involves the replacement of both with ta phainqmma; bur ta phairwmma scem.s 10 be paired with ta onta. In order, then, for til phainomma and til ontil co be in rum fused together, til onta must be replaced with til gignomma, and then again with ta lufti.. nbnma. The rhing~ in motion are rhen to he dimibuted between ra poiounta and til pascbonta, agent and patient motions. Socrates, however, does not go as quicldy as this to his suggested mathematical physics. He 6m appeals ro Homer as the propounder of rhe view that Ocean stands for motion and then rhar rbe sun in irs revolution stands for motion. In the second inrerprcrarion, motion is rhe cause of good and rest, of decay and nonbeing. Ifone cancels rhe difference between water and fire, Socra· res seems robe appcalin.g to an anri-enrropic principle, 10 which we can assign, following rbe Pha~do and Phaetirus, the name "soul." There lurks under the Heracliteanism Socrates uncovers the indispensable ground be h.irnsdf needs ifsoul is to be something nonderivacive. Heraditean motion and Proragorean relativism thus tum our ro be a not bad copy of Socrates' teaching in the Phaedrus, where soul as self-motion has irs counterpart here no less than do the Olympian gods. What seems to be missing, the byperu.ran.ian beings. has been supplied by numbers, which, though offi-
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Chap[er Fifteen
cially eliminated through Socrates' refutation ofThcaercrus's first answer, recur in the disguised form of fast and slow motions. The principle of Socrates' interpretation of Theaererus is nor that nothing is one, bur nothing is one by itself. Every apparent 1 is a 2, and this apparent r is such through the imaginative connector soul, bur there is nothing there. The soul is that which puts the line between numerator and denominator and interprets the ratio as greater or less than some constant, bur this constant is an illusion, for to say rhar Theaercrus is greater than he was a year ago identifies rhc Thcaetetus of a year ago as the real Thcaercrus, for if one says that Thcaererus and the measured Theaererus arc the same, it is impossible to say that Thcaercrus becomes railer than himself, for "himself" is nor apan from whatever size he is. We want to believe that Theacrcrus rhc measure is nor the same as Theacrerus the measured. We do nor want to trust our mathematics. This conAicr between mathematics and the hallucinations of becoming is nothing other than the apparent conAicr between Thcaererus's first and second answers, but his second answer turns out to be fully in accord with his first, provided one replaces becoming with motion. All three phasmata of becoming share at their base an assumption about counting: the first stares that nothing becomes greater or less as long as it is equal to itself, the second that what is not added to or subtracted from is always equal, and the third that whatever it was nor before bur is later cannot occur without becoming. Nothing. then, alters in rime unless there is the equivalent of an arithmetical operation; but 1 ::!:: 1h is only r1h or 1h, it is nor r1h and 1 or 1 and 1h; bur unless it is both at once, 1 has not become r1h or 1h. Every magnitude is just what it is, for there is no real becoming in number. Number therefore allows us to handle change while denying change.2 Thcaererus had felt dizzy because his experience was nor in accord with his mathematics, bur Socrates has shown him how they could be reconciled without giving up either what he felt or what he knc:w. The rational and the irrational arc in perfect harmony. and Theacrerus is all of a piece. It is a consequence of this that when Theaererus says "I don't know" a second time, he means that he does nor know his own experience, for Socrates has not ycr molded him completely to his taste (157'4). At the very moment Socrates has completed delivery ofTheaercrus's offspring, he seems to admit that he has delivered his own as well: "Well, this, it seems, whatever it is exactly. we at last generated (~grnnhamrn) with difficulty" (l6ocs; cf. rsoc8). Socrates then goes on to speak of the offspring as to f)gnommon, and they must consider whether it deserves to be brought up or is a wind-egg and false (I6oe8-9). The offspring is
C:
J ma•··
Plaro's T/Kurnus to be considered simultaneously under rwo dii:Terent aspeas: Is it viable? and, Is it true? lfthe issue is viabiliry, Socrares' maieutics is cxacdy parallel to his mother's, who would likewise have examined the oi:Tspring for signs of life. But if the issue is truth, the equivalent for Phaenarere would be whether it was suppositiow. and again for Socra.res wheth.e r Theaetems had genuindy given birth or it was all due to Socrates' spoonfctding. Socrates, however, not only denied from the swt t:hat his m could be interpreted in this way, but he reassens it now when Theodorus ttpresses astonishment that t:he oi:Tspring could possibly be false (t6Ibr-)): "You don't ger (mnot:is) what's happening (to gignommon}, t:hat none of rhe speeches comes from me but always from my interlocutor (para tou tmJJi prosdiakgometUJU)." Socrates inrplicitly distinguishes bmveen to gignomnwn1, whi.c h adusivdy is the thought of Theaeterus, and to gig.,ommof"t, which is the course of the conversation he and Theaetotus are havin.g. Now Socrates has just developed a teaching that denies that these rwo gignomma can be separared, for one is due to him and the other to Theaererus, but the one due to him is the combined result of himself and Theaerews and cannot accotdingly be tOld apan from to gignommon,, as Socrates' own ~ennisamen had already indicar.ed. This argument is not directly refuted by Socrates. Instead, he allows it tO remain while he dismandes its components into throe separate argumc:nts that came together in iL Theodorus confronts the Ptotagorean and HCI'llditean arguments, :md Theaereros con&onts his own thesis apan from that double support. Each collapses quite easily. Their rdu.ration therefore shows the power of the combination in which Socrates' own science is a.t scake. It shows that, contrary to what Theaetews comes tO bdieve, a whole i.s not a sum. "Proragoras's" radical criticism of Socrates' knowledge allows one to formulate more precisdy what must be involved in Socrates' practice of delivery and verification. If his double praaicc involves a distina.ion between soul and mind (now) or t:hought (dianoilz), and if that disrincrion entails in rurn a difference berwecn the excellence of soul and mind. or a difference between virtue and wisdom (145bt- 2, 176<:4-s). t:hen the denial of rhe possibiliry of complete knowledge or wisdom entails the corresponding elevation of t:hc moral vinues of moderarion and courage into nonscientific or philosophic equivalents, one of which goes by the name of sdf-knowl.cdge, while t:he other is more dusive, since the daringness of thought or deinoti1 is commonly pejorative and to be devalued as mere cleve.rness. Socrates implies, howevei, that t:here is a rrue and not seeming d8motis (176q- 6). Socrates' insinence, through his reliance on the model of midwifery, on private experience and private wisdom, underlines the
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Chapter Fiftten resemblance berween Socrates' "Proragoras" and himself and rhe need ro separate the Protagorean thesis thar soul is ro the speech of soul a.1 coodi· tion is to symptom from the Socratic thesis, that soul, without philosophy, necessarily compleres what ir knows with a phantom image of what it knows. Soundness of soul or srrengrh of soul has to be separated from "Proragoras's" undemanding of health or sickness in terms of the power ro affi:a or be affected. Thcodorus had originally posed rhe problem by his praise of TheaeretuS's vinue, which he had associated with his knowledge in a oor altogether clear manner. He had implied that Theaererus's virtues were indispensable for his learning whatever Theodorus could reach him, but once he gained this knowledge his virtues could fall away. He certainly did not imply that his knowledge would override his virtues and produce ghosts of wisdom. lo order to slip out from under his own cricique, Socrates appeals ro Theodorus. He thus reproduces himself again in a second pbanrom. By dragging Theodo.rus into the argument, he gets ltim to concede ro Proragor:as rhe relativism of praxis and assign to philosophers like himself an immunity from the Heraditeanism of rhe warerdock. The good of life and death belongs to rhe city, the beau~ifnl and the just are divorced from it and relegated tO a higher region. Thcodorus is led to believe thae chis relegation also applies to Socrates, bur it does not, either in general or on this occasion, when Socrates does not have the leisure both Theaetetus and Theodorus believe he has (J:72U, i87dro- u). The innocence ofTheodorus makes him as unaware of che threat Socrares now faces as of rbe applicability of the revised Proragorean ar:gumen.r ro Socrares. Even were he made co see irs applicability, it would oor disturb him; ic would only go to show the absu.rdiry of Socrates' claim co an art thae simulraneously depeods on his knowing the way tO the marketplace and on his derachmene from the Cl ty.
Theodorus does noe nocice, and be would nor chink it matters if he did, rbat Socrates' Battering portrait·ofhim does noe involve any mencion of the soul. He has dimwia (173e,3); the pettifoggers have a paltry soul and are engaged in a battle for their life or soul (172C7, 175d1; cf. 173a3, 6, 17Sb4). Theodorus, however, ror all of che purity of his accitude, is not unamacted by Protagoras; be is infuriated by the slippery arnwers of the Heradireans, bur he is ve.ry rducmnr ro cririciu Proragor:as. There is something that attaches Theodorus ro Proeagoras that goes beyond friendship. Afre.r all, Protagoras is already dead. The fim him of chae attraction shows up in Theodorus's understanding of speeches as his slaves, over which he has compl.ete power (tnb8-os); but irs hidden ground emerges
Plato's Theartttus
once Socr.u.s has finishtd with his account of the Theodol'llll philosopher and his opposite. The Theodoran philosopher bas nothing but an atti.rude ro sustain him. His remoteness from ordinary life is nor grounded in anything bur a highminded snobbery: he looks down on everyone else, bur he has made no rdleaion on his own aerie. He therefore is tempttd ro near evils as only a matter of opinion and indintd accordingly to hope that with a change of opinion more in conformity with bis own opinion evils would cease. Socrates separates himself from Theodorus on p.recisdy this point. "If you should persuade all," Theodorus rdls Socrates, "of what you are saying, just as you persuaded me, peace would be more cnensive and evils less among men (ry6a3-4)." Socrates 6rst separat(S Theodorus's senrenee into two propositions. He treats the question of evil apart from the issue of persuasion. He implies that evils are not exclusively a question of what convicrions men have or might have. Evi.ls will persist regardless of wbe.rher Socrates succeeds in persuading everyone or not. Theodorus has accepted, then, the Proragnrean understanding of power: Socrates could in principle dfect a universal chan.ge in public opinion. Socrates denies not only that evils can perish but assertS that "god" (9£6c;) is most jlut. God's justice consists in his knowledge that evils can.n ot perish, He therefore is not tempttd to eliminate them: what seems to be god's injustice, in not exercising his power co do away with evils entirely, is in fact his wisdom. Human wisdom consists in a comparable aw:ueoess of the necessity for this limitation on divine power: "The understanding of th.is is wisdom and true virtue, and ignorance [of it] folly and manifest vice (t76C4-s)."lt consisrs in an awareness of the reJtSons for abstaining from political life. Theodorus, however, does nor know this. He believes that it is possible ro combine the theoretical sciences wirh Proragorean power. Such a combination would be nothing bur a version of what we call technology, whose very name beuays the union of science with the productive arrs. Theactetus had already suggcsrtd such a union in his very 6rsr answer, where he had added ro what he bad learned from Tbeodorus the Socratic example of shoemaking. ~Shoemaking" srood for all the productive am, and in itself could be understood, in accordance with Socr:tres' suggesrion in the PbiltbUJ (ssds-S73S). as implying no more man tbar irs strlcdy scienti6c part consists in its dependence on an applied mathematics, and the remainder is to be dismissed as the Bair of aperience. If, however, rhe theoretical sciences can be fused wim the productive arrs, chen the increase in power such a fusion would engender seems to ofFer th.e prospect
l''
)14
Chapcer Fifreen of chc c.otal relief of man's estate. Socrates seems to imply thac Theodorus could never have dreamed of chis prospeet had not he come along and first rditshioned Proragoms into a more fonnidable opponent than he accually was and then shown Theodorus ro nimself, who does nor know that be does nor know what ne does nor know (173e1, cf. 17~3). Such a refashioning was made nccc:ssary once Socrates' maieutics was subject to examination in light ofTheodorus and Theaeterus's knowledge; and such a snowing of Theodorus to hi.msc:lf fr.,.,.{ him from his uoublesorne relations wim omec men and suggested his rriwnphant rerurn co political life wim almost infinite power. Socrates, wim an uncharac.teri•"tic dogmatism . simply stated me vanity ofTheodorus's nope; but we may see in the mym of rhe Staumuzn the reasoning behind Socrates' sratemem: the world rhat me derniucgic god rules is not only ugly but lacks the good of philosophy. The only consolation Socrates offers Theodorus is a punishment of the unjust mat consistS in their ignornnce of meir own misery. lf one of mem is to become aware, he must be ntanly and not run away from his confutation: Callicles is to be left off the hook. This roo is parr of god's justice. Any dissatis&ction we may feel with the first parr of the TbtaeUtuS is nothing compared to our unease a&er we fi.oi.sh reading the second part. Socrates gets Theaetcrus to acknowledge the need fOr a single form (mia ris idea) or soul to coordinate the manifold of perceptions; but he dcxs not get him to see that that which the soul by itself deals with, which ranges from the being of number to the being of good (r86C3), encapsu· lates the very problem Socrates had posod at the beginning. Once Theaete. rus has admitted tha.t there is knowledge only in reSection on aesthetic experience, he should have said that knowledge consistS in a compreltensive tulil>gi.tmoJ about all aesthetic experiences as well as about the categories rhe soul by itself uses and discovers in irs survey of them. Theaeretus -L" , __ «• • " bo h " 0 ..l. • 0 one• and • two,• adm•us -L tuat h, e u•mM 1s, t ., same" and " O\ue:r, when he thinks a.b out sound and color, and be grants that ir might be possible ro go on to exrunine the likeness and unlikeness of them (J8sb46). He thus admits chat the aesrhecic and rhe dianoetic might be co m para· blc, as Soccues' use of "rouch" for " understand" suggests (186<4; cf. r86a4, r87b1), and the.refore knowledge would consist in an account that separated and combmed me aesmetic and the noetic bein~. Such an answer would have been the equivalent of Aristotle's "The soul is somehow all things." Would, then, anything be missing? Socrates already implied that what would be missing would be the Parmeni.dean whole that cannot be understood as the equivalent of soul: the one that Parmenides is, is not the one of his reaching (l8Jes). The Parmenidean one eludes the soul
Plato's Th
regardless of how exten$ive the soul's range is presumed to be. We can say if we wish that the unCX2Jllinc:d Pannenidean one is doing double duty in the Theamtus: it stands for the unknown unity of knowledge of number and knowledge of good, and for the unknown unity of the cause of being and bein.g known, neither of which is ro be found in the unity of soul by itsd£ Theaererus's answer-knowledge is true opinion-mU$t be seen :u a disappointment in light of aU that TheaeretU$ himsdf has admitted. Ir is also disappointing in a more limited sense inasmuch as Theaetei!US refused ro assign ro soul any instrument compan.ble ro the sense-organs. Whereas the answer "the soul through speeches" seems to be srron.gly hinted at by Socrates' way of phrasing the question, TheaereCU$'5 "soul by itself" cannot handle errors of thought, since ir is too inflc:xibl.e within itself to make mistakes. TheaereM's third answer is as self-opaque as his second. It is the answer of one who has nor yer losr his innocence and still has con6dence in the good and the beauriful of opinion (2ooes-6; cf. Sophist l.J4d2-eJ). True opinion cannot con6nn irs own rruth and experientially does nor have a differenr fed from &lse opinion. Experientially, then, a false opinion is no less an opin.ion than a rru.e opinion (cf. r87d3). Opinion (dt»ca) is a.ccor
Jl!
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Ch•p<er Fifreen swer- knowledge is percepr.i on-he had begun by saying, "lr's my opinion" (lSiei) . Accordingly, Socrates' digression on false opinion is nor a digression ar all, but rather an accouru of what is involved in the soul's pronouncement on in own phantom im11ge, "True." It seems, however, that when the issue of the speech, which either silently or nor accompanies any offipring of the soul, is treated by irself, the speech is always true: it is impossible that Theaererus could ever have made a mistake in thought. Whereas in the 6rsr part of the dialogue there could be no uuth, for everyone says what they are--whether rhey be the "sucamers (hoi rheontn) or • me stoppers of the whole• (hoi tou ho/4u nasiotai)--in rhe second part everyone says what is. If Socrares' maieutics is to be saved, it is necessary that the two pactS of the T!Jeuutw be pur together over against their manifest separation. lr is not easy to say how this cao be done. Socmres first offezs thr« possible ways in which fulse opirtioo could be possible: r) the mistaking of what one knows or docs not know for what one knows or does nor know; ~) the mistaking of wb:u is not for what is or what is for what is n.o t; 3) t.b e mistaking of the other for tbe same or tbe same fo.r the other. Socrares does not coosider the possibility rhar mistaking occurs when all three propositions are combined: Tbc one who has a false opinion believes that those things which are oor are not tbose things which he knows arc not but some other thi.ngs which he knows are, or "Zeus is not Osiris bur heaven," • Eros is nor Aphrodite but love," "Homer's Hades is nor Milton's Beelzebub but dearh." Since it is possible for someone to maintain any or all rbree of th= proposirioos and be mistaken, why does Socrates liUI to examine the combination of hi5 rhree kinds of mi$talcing and rhus reproduce here a paralle.l to the oombinarion of Pror:agoras. Heraclitus, and Theaecerus that proved ro be so F..ral ro his maieudcs in the 6tst parr? ln the 6rn p=, the principle of pariency and agency was that nothing is rogether what it is aparr; in the second part the principl.e is tbat everything is jusr what it is and nothing dsc. This principle requires the idenrit\cation of pare with dement and whole. wirh sum. Such an idenri6car.ion, however, bas tbe consequence rhar Theaerews mnsr deny that the soul is some single form ( mia tis ide4,· 103C5-0, t4), in which the. manifold of perceptions come together. Theactctus is made to give up that which made him beautiful in order that he can rccove.r his mathematics. The atomicity of things, which runs rhrough tbe =ond part of tbe Tbeaoaw, seems ro be more in accordance with what Theaerews knows than rhe doubleness of rhings, which Theaererus was induced to accept from Socrates' delivery of his phanrom
Phuo's Tht4etaw
image. Thcaetetus, however, does not see that he must sacrifice the principle of arithmetic in order to keep his arithmetic. He sacrili= the principle when he admits that the soul in thinking converses with itself-a one is therefore a two-and again when Socrates askod about seven itself and 6ve itself (r96n; cf. Philebus 56d9-C3)-indistinguishable ones are many. The sacrifice of the principle thus reproduces within Theaererus's own expertise Socrates' problem, for however the one that is two of soul is to be understood. it is of a different order &om the manifold of ones with which arithmetic deals. Socrates bas pulled off within the restriaion of a lillse principle a kind of miracle: a genuine image of his own question about the unity of his knowledge and Tbeaetetus's. What makes this image so miraculous is that it occurs despite Thcaetems's sacrifice, for Theaetetus does not know that he made the sacrifice when he could not hold onto the notion of a whole. ln the course of the analysis ofTheaererus's third de6nition of knowledge, Socrates offers two images of the soul, wax and birds. Neithet solves the problem of false opinioo.. Theaeretus does not see, however, that these rwo images are images of a science of soul; they are nor the science of soul. They are images of the science Theaerecus docs nor know and Socrates claims for himself. Of the two images, one is more materialistic than the other, and together they point to the difference berween aesthetic soul and dianoetic soul, which Socrates hinted at wlten he moved so abruptly from rite single form of soul, which musr be rltere if the senses are not to be lodged in us as if they were soldiers in the wooden horse, to the variety of functions soul undertakes when it reSects on irs aesthetic experiences (184dJ- 6). One image firs us from the momem we are born (r86bna ), the other corresponds tO our learning the sciences (197e1-3). When Socrates gives the arithmetical art back ro Theaeretus, he characteri2.es it as a hunting for the koowledges (epi.!timai) of every odd and even nu.mber (t98a7 -8). "Hunting" (thira) implies that arithmetic as a science is nor a complete science; it is our in the wild and demands the virtues of patience and daring if the hunter is ro snare his prey. If, moreovt:r, the number-hunrer lilils to catch anything. he does not cease ro be a numberhunter. He is not a complete or perfecr arithmetician who has domesticated all that he knows, bur be is stiU an arithmetician (cf. 198b9). There is no reason to suppose that this model cannot be extended to the scientist in general: he is the hunrer for the knowledges of the beings (cf. Euthytfe. mus :1.90b1-c6). Socrares implies that the dialectical art, too, can be called a hunting. The dialectical art is the hunting of the various buntings of the arts and sciences. It is the hunting of perplexity itself.
J'7
)J8
Chapter Fiheen When Socrates bad admitted be was going to be shameless in defining epiJtasthai before defining epiJtOnZ. Theaetetus did nor know what he. was talking about (196d6). "We have long been infected with conversing impurely,~ Socrate$ reUs him, ~we have said rhousan~ of rimes 'We know' (gigniilnlromm), 'we don't know,' and 'we have scientific knowledge' (episwnerha), and ' we don' t have scieruilic knowledge,' as if we were understanding (stmimtt1) one another while we still are ignorant (agnoou.men) of science (tpistimin) (196et-s)." As a mauer of fa.ct, not one of thest: verbs has occurred at all in their conversation; and Socrates implies as much when he now calls attention to bis use of su.nienai and agnatin (196es-7V Whar Socrates Is rekuing ro, though Theaeterus does not understand, is their conversation. Every time Theaeretus or Socrates has asked a question, he has said, "I do not know this or thai in your speech"; and every time either has asked a. question, he has also implied, "( know this or that in your sp«eb." Tbe same goes for every answer they have given. As long as the continuity of question and answer is not broken, there has been a m.ixrure of knowledge and i.goorance. Socrates' second image tries ro formalize rhe impurity in dialectical knowledge; but it fa.ils ro do so because tbe double srare of knowing the image posrulacesberween use and possession-is nor me same as rhe impurity of simultaneously knowing and not kJ1owing rhat belongs in the image to "art" and nor "science." "Air" denotes the 6dd of some expertise, "science" denotes each and every thing know within that 6.eld.4 Ir is not surprising, then, that once a number is capwred no false opinion proves to be possible, bur wbi.le a number is being hunted it is. Socrates does not discuss the arirhmerician as bunter bur the arithme6cian as knower. Socrates thus allows for a kind of partial knowing while forbidding it ro Theaererus. How is this possible? Socrates bad called one logos the logos of rhe soul's conversation with itself or the soul's asking and answering questions; and he had called anome.r logos opinion when any answer h:~.d separated itself from question and answer. Theaeterus caUed any true answer, apart from question and answer, sci.ence. Socrates implies rha1 anytime any art or science ceases ro be a bunting and becomes complere it becomes a false opinion. Ir becomes a pan rhat parades as a whole. 1r is phanrom wisdom. When Thea.eterus recalls thar be heard someone say rhar knowledge was rrue opininn with logos, it .is almost as if Th.e.ae.rerus were recalling Socrares' own identification of opinion with .logos. By the end of rhe. 6rst argument about this definition, Socrates has shown not only that rhe elementS musr be as knowable as the compoun~. 1 but rhat there cannot be a whole char is different from the sum of the parrs; but since he has
PlatO's ThtAnehiJ
not shown that th~ pans of a wbol~ arc the same as the eleme.nrs in a 6~ it is not as one a parr of whole (i.e., though one is an element 6ve), he has allowed the soul to be a whole of pans in a sense tha.t dudes Theaetetus. Accordingly, the first account of logos is equivalent to the problem posed by Socrates' own m:tieutics, that it must handle the soul as a who!~ if irs matter is not to be reduced to speeches in themselves. Socrues then says ther~ ar~ three other possible meanings tha.t logos could have in Thcaererus's ddinition. The second possible meaning is tlutr logos is that which makes clear one's thought through sound with words and phrases (2.06dl-1); but though Socrates scenu to prove tha.t everyone who has an opinion makes ir plain, whether he does it slowly or quickly, be does nor argue that everyone can do this with his thought (dianl)ia), fur thought was silent dia~estbai, and dia~enbai is subject to an art and involves the knowledge of soul, speech, and being! So fat from trivial is this capacity to express one's thought that whoeve.r spoke the opinion Theaererus heard did not make his thought dear (l06e6), ro say nothing of Socrues' failure to understand what Parmenides said, let alone what he thought (t8-tal-J; cf. Sophist24Ja6-b7). lndeed, when Socrates turns to the third possible meaning of "logos," he implies it is in a conversation, since to go through the elements is to answer a question th«t someone then, we insert this correction into the else has put (2o6e6-.207al). second possible meaning of"logos," "logos" now means either "knowledge of soul" or "knowledge ofconversa.tion,• wd the 6rst two senses of"logos" then sum up the first part of Socrates' maieutics.' Tb~ third possible meanio.g of "logos" is the knowledge of how to put together all the dementS of something. We may call this, foUowing the Elearic Stranger, tunltritiki. lr consists in the knowledg~ of how to put togethe.r like with like and worse with better. The fourth possible meaning of "logos" is the knowledge of how to give the one differe.nrial by mews of which one thing is told aparr &om everything dse. We may call this, again fuUowing the Eleatic Stranger, diakririki. lt consistS in the knowledge of how to divide like from like and better from worse. Socrates' cathurics of soul is meant to exemplify a form of this diacritical task; but in fact the fourfold fOrm of the diacritical-synccitical art is nothing but Socrates' presumed knowledge of how to teU true speech &om f'alst, speech. The four meanings of "logos" thus comprehend the range of Socrates' maieutics. What is the difficulty, th.e n, thar Soerar.:s saw which prevented him from claiming to have total wisdom? The difficulty was that within diacritics and syocritics there is the arr of arithmetic, and arithmetic and everything that goes along with atithmecic do nor 6r Socrates' knowledge.
m
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320
Chapter Fifteen
The Tbeaetetus thus ends with a double conclusion. On rhe one hand, there is lurking within Theaetetus's understanding of arithmetic a double dilution of his own principle, and, on rhe other, there is lurking· within Socrates' maieutics a science rh~t does nor need his science even though irs way is pardy his own way of division and collection. Theaeretus himself had starred on chis way when he collected numbers into OYo separate· kinds and pur a disrinctive mark on each; bur he could not put a mark on his knowledge and Socrates', any more than Socrates could combine their knowledges even though he could collect and divide them. Theaererus had given the following· case as an example of false opinion (191bj-6): "Some
Plato's Theaetetus
without disillusioning him. Socrates' maieutic art seems designed to induce in Theaete[IIS moderation; the Eleatic Stranger's image of hunting is designed to induce in Theaete[IIS courage. The Theaaaus ends with the restoration of Theaetetus's mathematical knowledge to himself without his knowing what he does not know; the Sophist ends with the problem of sophistry solved through the Stranger's bestowal onto Theaetetus of his furure self or that which will fulfill his nature. The Theaaetus is concerned with the discovery ofwhat knowledge or wisdom is; the Sophist has as its premise that wisdom for man is impossible (Sophist 2.JU62Ha7). The problem Socrates puts to Thcaeterus in the Theaetetus is assumed to be insoluble in the Sophist. The effect of the Theaetttm has been to convince Thcactetus that any solution to the problem of knowledge is pseudo-wisdom, but he has been convinced without ever gaining anything but a phantom image of the rrue problem an.d by taking Socrates for the sophist. Tbe Theaetaussecms ro suggest that Tbcactcrus's ignorance of the true problem and his mistaking Socrates for a sophist are one and the same.
NottS Anonymer Kommmtar z;u Plarons Th
3· In the very 6cst argument with Tbeaeretus, sunimai occun four times (14737, b1. 4o 7): they bad started off convccsing impurely; cf. 1o8t8. Before Socrates m
311
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Chaprer Fifrceo
us ar whar distance we ace ro sClJld &om Euclida' writing; wirhour such knowledge ir becom.es a blur of sigllS that make oo sense; bur at the "right" distance it gives us the illusion ofindiriduality; iris in faa an atomic species oflogograpbic oecessuy.
6. Although Socrares begins by sp
5
E N
I
O n Plato's Sophist
at the beginning of the &phist and agrees to discuss the sophist. the Stlltesman, and the philosopher, ir is hard to remember that Socrates had arranged to meet with Theodorus, Theaeterus, and young Socrares once more, even after he had left Theaetetus completely barren, at least temporarily, and had encouorered resistance &om Theodorus to his funher participation in any argument that the inte.rval of a single day could not, ir seems, have overcome ( Theiletetus r69c6-7, rl!Jq-ds). The Suanger's inuusion rhus makes us fail ro notice dur Socrates' only possible intel"e$t in the same group would have been in young Socrates, about whom he knows only that he developed with Theaeretus a way of classifying two kinds of number, those with integral square or cube roots and those without. lfSocrates bad engaged young Socrates in a discussion, and informed Eudides about it in the same way as be bad reponed his discussion with Theodorus and Thcaeterus, we know that Euclides could not have uamposed Socrates' report into direa discourse and omitted Socrates' ·r said" and " He said." A uaosposition of the kind Euclides practiced in the TheMtnus would have led to the indiscemability of the rwo Socrareses., since each would have addressed the other as Socrates, and there is no reason t.o believe that the wiser answers would have consistently belonged ro only one of them. The dialogue between the two Socrateses, which does not occur at dawn on the day after Socrates' appearance before the king-archon. would nor perhaps be of any interest if it did. not call attention to the chara.cteriza-
0 NC E T H E S T RANG E R TA
I( B S
0 V E R the discussion
l1J
314
Chaprer Sixreen
cion of thinking. on which Socrates and the Stranger both agree: Thinking is the silem conversation of the soul with itself ( Theaetetus 189e4-19oa7; Sophist263e3-264"3). A double negation is assigned to thinking; thinking depends in its presemation Oil: the denial of lWO things that are indispens~ able for conversation: it must be before another, and it must be spoken. To strip speaking, on the one hand, of its vocalic character is co assign it consonants by themselves and thus to deny it the possibility of any combination of elemems, even though the combination of consonants with vowels is that which alone makes it possible to overcome the problem of nonbeing and falsehood (253:1.4-6), and to strip speaking, on the other, of a second participant in the conversation, is co transform the single speaker imo a double thinker, who retains in his doubleness the singular idemiry of the speaker, and who in going by the same name cannot control the split he needs in himself so chat whatever thought one self gives birth to the other self can test "objectively" and not succumb, as farhers do, to favoring his own thoughts because they are his own. The Stranger's intrusion thus looks like a godsend for both Socrates and Plato. h is a godsend for Plato, since a philosopher of rhe same caliber as Socrates can cominue rhe discussion in a form char Plaw has no trouble transcribing, and it is a godsend for Socrates, since he is not forced to face the true difficulty his own revision of Protagoras had raised, How is thinking possible if the thinker in becoming a double agent becomes thereby a double patient, and whatever he thinks experiences a multiplica~ rive effect that is in no time completely our of his control? Socrates proposes at the beginning of the Statesman to examine young Socrates as a means coward his own self-knowledge (257J1-158a6). Whether or not he could have succeeded in such a task, we know that Plato could not have shown him in either his success or failure if he had continued to preserve the non-narrated form of the Sophist and the Statesman. The missing dialogue Philosopher, which would have been the truth of which the Sophist and Statesman are two phantom images, can never have been written without Plato's reversion to Socrates' or Theodorus's narration of it. If it is hard to conceive ofTheodorus as narrator, we an: back with a Socratically narrated dialogue, in which the represemadon of young Socrates through and by Socrates would have effeccivdy concealed the true difficulty. This difficulty has two aspects: the impossibility on the part of Plato of presenting nonimagistically the reality of the philosopher, and the paradox for Socrates that his own thinking necessarily takes an imagistic form as soon as he begins to chink about it. Socrates can think in a genuine way as long as he does not think about thinking. Socrates, then, cannot have self-
On Plato's Sophist
knowledge. Socrates therefore cannot be a philosopher, and the missing
Philosopher represents nO£ an irnpossibilicy for Plato the poet bur an impossibility simply. The death of Socrates thus looks like the suicide of philosophy itself. Plato has so arranged his story that through two divergent paths it ends in silence. One path of silence is that not taken-the conversation between Socrates and young Socrates immediately after Theodorus's re~ turn with the two mathematicians. The other path of silence is taken but only partway. The Stranger proposes three discourses, but he delivers only two of them. The third would have been ei
325
J>6
Choprcr Sixt<eo
Stranger as another while the Stranger is in faet nothing but his future sdf, 1bcaererus reproduces in rime the problem of thinking. As rhe Suanger preseors it, the problem is patticularly acute, since it is immediately after he opposes irra.tional nature ro rational creation that the Suanger asseru that Theactecus's nature will on its own accept the creativity of mind. This irration:d path to reason seems to be the climax of the unreasonable procedure of the Stranger, who is going w lead Theaererus without experience to a rational account of nonbeing {z.J4e5-6). Theaererus is supposed to come ro an undersranding of the sophist withour ever having seen a sophisr (2-39C1). The sophisr is going to be deduced by reason. The sophist, we can only guess, is going to be deduced out of reason, and the no.nbei.ng be representS is ro be reason's own. [n the lim half of the Sophisr, the Stranger presents himself as a bunter of the hunter sophist; and if the Suanger has an an of b.unting, it roo must belong to the class of acquisitive arrs. Once, however, the sophisr is reassigned to the an of making, which rhe Stranger ha.d originaUy opposed to that of acquisition, it would seem that the Srranger is the original of which the sophist is the copy (:t65a..J- IO). The sophisr duplicares in the mode of no.nbeing the real acquisitor, the Stranger. Far from being a copycat of the acquisitive ways of the sophisr, the Suanger is himself the modd for the sophist. This rurnaround, however, is not exact. The Stran.ger's way seems w diverge from the sophisr's ar the. division between the hunting oflifeles.• things and thehunt.ing of animals (219"4- 7). Hunting in itself is the hidden hunting for the hidden or elusive beings and applies across the board ro what the philosopher as ontologist does; bur the hunting by the sophisr of rich young me.n has nothing to do with what the Srrangc:r does but evc:rythjng to do with what Socrares does. The divergence between the Stranger and the sophist at this point conceals the divergence between the Stran.ger and Socrates: Socrates is the h idden quarry of the Stranger's pursuit. If, however, SocrarC$ is a philosopher, rhe Stranger is in pursui~ of one of his own kind. who not only does not imitate the Stranger's way bur pr:acrices the Stronger's hunting of the beings in the hunting of men. Socrares seems to have a double name for this twofold pursuit. The first he calls dialectic, the second erotic. Socrates often leads us ro believe that th.ey are mysteriously the same; but if rbey are rhe same for Socrates, they are not rhe same for the Stranger. Socrates flits from genus to genus in the four ot five varieties of acquisition, but rhe Stranger does not accompany him. H.e is not seeking himself in his double search for Socrates and the sophist. There would thlL• be a split in philosophy irse.l f that is represenred by the Srranger and Socrates. The
On Plato's Sophiu
Parmcnidean Stranger c~uchc!; Socrates and ~ets him before the royal speech (235bro-cz). Socrcitcs is to be disposed of by a more comprehensive and less idiosyncratic art. The way of the Stranger seems to lead to two conclusions. On the one hand, It is not so certain a way as not to mistake the apparitional manifold of the sophist's art for'the sophist's art and to get the sophist's art right only on the second try and even then at the high price of bewilderment before the problem of nonbeing, which the Stranger had not recognized when he noticed the resemblance of the sophist to the angler; and, on the other hand, the Stranger'!; way leaves Socrates behind in fragments, since if he cannot be unified through the notion of production, the philowpher shows up in a genuine manifold within the art of acquisition. This unsatisfactory conclusion would seem to require a critique of the Stranger's way which the Stranger cannot give. His initial success at catching Socrates is worse rhan his initial failure to catch the sophist. The nonbeing that lurked In his failure coincides with the being that showed up in his success. The Stranger is not prepared for either. The fifch or sixth division that sits uneasily berween his original insight into the sophist as acquisitor and his second view of the sophist as maker has no standing in his almost (schedon) perfect division of the arts in rwo (219:18). In the sixth division he finds in the last cut Socrates, but he puts himself in the 6rst cut. The sixth division thus has at the top the Stranger as the separator kat' exochin and at the bottom Socrates as the purifier. The divider of the beings discovers at the end the cleanser of souls. A diacritical ontology subsumes under itself a psychology. This distinction cannot but remind us of the Sophist and Statesman respectively: the Stranger is the philosopher and Socrates the statesman. There is, then, no need for the third dialogue, since as the Stranger remarks to Theaeterus they have already fallen into philosophy in the course of their examination of the sophist (253a6-9). Such an interpretation would entail the demotion of Socrates and the elevation of the Stranger: the Stranger adopts Aristotle's view of Socrates before the fact (Metaphysics 987b1-4). The Stranger's subordination of Socrates to himself along with the implicit claim that his. diacritical ontology is the unity of acquisition and production makes one wonder whether the alternative does not lie in the thwarted conversation between Socrates and young Socrates, in which Socrates could have found his true successor in his namesake, who despite his reality would have eluded any reptesentation. The triumph of the Stranger would not be a true triumph, but only the triumph that is compatible with writing and institutions. Socrates would live over against the
Jll
·::1
•• ••••
·~
JlB
Chapter Sixteen Academy. This possibility suggests that me Stranger has nor gor Socrates dead to righrs, but mat Socrates slipped away from the final aap. The Srranger admiu ro Theaeretus that insofar as Theaetetus cannot tell Socr:tres apan from a sophist me SrJ"llllger's sixm division vindicates me view of Socrates (z,3J34-b2), that the sophist is a phantom image of me rrue philosopher, and Theaerews's mistm is n~ty. Indeed, if at any point me Srranger can isolate the sophist from the philosopher for the nonphilosopher Theaetews, then and only then is Socrares refured. It looks, men, as if the confinement of the sophist to the mode of production must give way to me establishment of the being of nonbeing, that is, to me necessity of the inremvining of being with nonbeing. Since Theaeretus has never seen a sophist and nevertheless believes that rhe description ofsoul-cath:utics resembles the sopb.inic an, Theaete· tus must have taken Socrates for a sophist, for not only does Socrares' maieutics correspond. fa.i.d.y closely to soul-cath-artics, but Theaetetus's own experience of his ignorance thJough Socrates agrees with me Srrang· er's account, parriculady since Theaeterus's aruiburion of the highest state of moderation to one so purified echoes Socrates' claim about Theaeterus's moderate condition at the end of the Theumw (Sophist23od5; Theaeretus 2IOCJ). The Theutttus, then, pamllels to some extent the Sophist, and if the philosopher would have been di.sct~SC<ed by Socrates and young SO<:rates, then me Stranger's third discourse in its absence is the same as Socrares' second. conversarion in its absence. The situation, then, is this:
S~:~~ r •t•• )'O-U ft;IIJ
a.nd Socr•lu
,.
•• ••
Phlfo•opll•r
'
lf this scheme is right, the Srnnger must have split thJough b.is d.iacrit· ical onrology the unity of Socmric dialectic (maieutic-erotic) of rhe Theutetlu. The Sophist and StatnmJln are rhe two pb:mhllmtaa of the Theaetctlu. Whar, then, is the Theat:retus? Why is it not the missing Pbilt>J· opher all by itseill If it is not the Philt>Jopbtr, but as much an image of ir as Theaeretus is of Socrates, how does it differ as an image. from its twofold image, me SophiJr md Statm>utn1 If Socrares is sitting for bis ponrair in rhe Sophisr and Smtnnum, whar is missing &om the portrait
On Plam'• Sophist
in the Tlmwetus? If Eudides had preserved Socrates original narrative, the Thtamtus would have been something like a sdf-port.rait. Do the Sophisrand Starmnan make up for Eudides' decision ro get rid of Socrates' perspective? If they do, why do "I said" and "He said" undergo the transformation into different dialogues with two different inrerlocurors? If the Sophist is to the Staraman as rationalism is to empiricism, in the sense that the sophist is to ~ deduced in the former without the intervention of experiences, particularly of sight, and the statesman is to ~ induced in the latter in young Socrates' endurance of political practice, there is obviously a way in which Theaetetus' s experience of false birtbs in the context of the discovery of logos as that which sets apart knowledge from true opinion reproduces the dualiry of the Stausman and the Sophisr. If the philosopher cannor thernatize himself but must be thematized by another, the Srranger seems initially to disagree with Socrates as to how this can ~done. Socrates sa)'$ that his own rhernatizatioo must show up in rwo separated apparitions; the Stranger sa)'$ that the school of Parmenides holds that a separate account of the philosopher is possible. The evidence Plato left w reUs w that the Suanger is mistaken. [f he realized his mistake, he mwt have done so during the discwsioo of either the sophist or the Statesman; but on the basis of his admission that he is about to co.m mit philosophical patricide (2.41d3- 8), he realiro his misrake at the poim where Theaetetus cannot reU Socrates apart from the sophist, and therefore non~ing must be ifTheaeterus' error is to~ grounded in something more than an accidental inadvertence. It is hard to believe, however, that the Srranger had not foreseen this crisis from the start, since he: declares rhar he had long broken with the Patmenidean doctrine of his youth (139b1- 3, 241a7-8). The Stranger, then, is deliberately set on a path of illwion; he knew that his diaimis would not give a logos of the sophisL The Stranger proceeds ddi~tdy into error. He makes error an indispensable part of the way of truth. This way of truth consists in the apparent borrowing of the thematized term "hunting, • so that it necessarily appears as parasitic while it is in facr the original hoSL A!; apparendy parasitic it cannot, as apparendy nonparasitic ir CUl, be thema.rized. Is this, however, a special case of th.e inversion of prioriry, or do sucb ioversi.o ns hold everywhere? If they do, then the Suanger's scbematism-simple paradigm and complex copy- must ~ the paradigm for any philosophical procedure: rhe paradigm mwt break down, and only after it has broken down does "rrue" philosophy begin. "True" mwt be bracketed ~usc if such a procedure is necessary, the "false" paradigmatic beginning is part of philosophy. The Sophisr. then, if it approaches as closely
Jl9
330
Chapter Sixteen
as possible to the thematimcion of philosophy, musr do so very la te in its examination. The true beginning ofphilosophy is precisdy at rhat point where rhe Stranger ends his discussi.o n of pre-Socratic philosophers and begins again wirh the problem of logos (251e7). It is at that poinr where rhe Srrange.r and Socrates merge and proceed from rhenc:e forward in step until dte end of rhe Smraman. The actual conditions for rhe conversation between rhe rwo Socrateses precludes irs be.ing written up; bm rhe alternative, rhat Theodorus did not bring rhe Stranger with him, seems to allow for a Socrarically narrated dialogue in which philosophy would he the subject. lf we should then ask what occasion would have led ro such a wpic, it would seem at lirsr as if we. cannor dicrare wharever Plato would have found most appropriate; but on reflection the germ from wh.ich Socrates could mosr plainly stan would have been a discussion ofTheaere.rus's errors in rhe Tlmut
On Plato's SophiJt
point: the Stranges gives an account of me painret's an, by means of which all thin&'! are imirared and in being exhibited to the. foolish young at a distance deceive them into the belief mar the paintings ue me beings and the painter compertnt to nuke the beings themselves. The Stranger then ge[$ Theaeterus to agree that the.re could be a puallel ur in speech, so char rhe sophist, in showing spoken phantoms (eidola kgomt~uz} to the young, who ue Still at a distance from the rruth of things (ta pragmata), would be believed to be speaking the rruth and be the wisest in everything (134e2-e4). Even apart from the puzzle of the inversion in the parallel, whereby the dimUlce of rhe young from the paintings becomes the dis· ranee of the young from the rruth of things, and Theaererus has to agree that he is the believer in the phantom speeches of the sophist before becoming disillusioned by direct conracr with the beings, the Srmngec gees Theaererus to agree on a possible art of imitation through speeches with· out ever exemplifying what a spoken phantom is. When, moreover, the Srmnger proceeds to divide the art of image-making into eikastics and phanrascics, he does so again on the basis of painting and does not Stop, before he plunges into the problem of being and nonbeing, to iUnsuate the difference between an eikastic and phamasric speech. We seem to be left on our own ro devise a sense for ei®la kgomtiUl that would ground rhe Stranger's argument. Our rask is in a sense made easy by the existence of the Sophist. That is obviously a case of phantom speech, but we have no way of knowing whether it was produced by eikastics or pbanrasri.cs unless we can determine what we mean by calling it an imjrarion. If, however, Pbto emerges as the master sophist, how is nor the whole argu· ment of the Srmnger undermined, if rhe philosopher Plato shows up appa· riciooally as the non philosopher and the philosopher Stranger as his finest product? In l.o oking outSide the dialogue, we detect the phanrmtiRot Plato; in looking into rhe dialogue, we liod the philosopher pure and simple. Once, however, we iocorporace the perspective we gained from the ourside into the inside, the Stranger is a phantom philosopher or sophist, who catches the pseudo-sophist, that is, the sophist who is not an apparition of the philosopher. Theaeretus at any rare declares the sophi5t to be the impersonator of the wise (:z.68b10), and whoever the wise is, whether god the maker or the wise simply. be is not the philosopher. The diffic.ult posirioo into wh.ic.h Plato put the Stranger seems ro prove that philosophy cannot be themariud without undergoing a rrans· formation i.nro an apparition of itself. Plaro the.re.by vindicates Socrates' view of the rdarion between the philosopher and the sophiSt and denies any validity to the Parmenidean view the Stranger was asked ro expound.
Jlt
w.
Cb>p<er Sixcem Before, however, we claim co 6n.d the rrurh about the sophist solely in the form of the Sophist, Plato has nor left rhe Srranger without his own way of exemplifying the problem of spoken phanroms, even ifTheaererus is put in the funny position of foUowing an argumem he cannot follow except in the image of spoken phantoms-images in deed. Up ro the point where the Srranger rurns ro the analysis of image-making. hunting and pursuit dominate his language and align what he is doing with what the sophist does. Of words with -thlr- in the Srlj>hist, forty-seven occur before leJSaii and two afterward, first when the Stranger recalls his remark that the sophist was hard to carch (dusthlri!Uton}, and then when be summarizes the kinds of acquisitive artS they had firsr assi.gned ro the sophisr (:z.6ras. 265a7). What happens rhen in the course of the Sophiit is a reflection on irs sraning point in the doubling of rhe image of hunting in the actio.n of the sophist and the Stranger. H is controlling paradigm is rhus subject to a double critique: whar grounds his discovery of the kinship between angler and sophist, and what grounds his understanding of what he is doing in the same terms? T heaeretus is at fusr rductant to admit that there is a hunting of men (:z.ub6), but he does nor notice that while the sophist bunts men, he and the Stranger hunt che beast sophist. The image of hunting is more literal on the levd of the Srrdnger' s method than on the sophist's. The Stranger thus denies what Theacrerus had accepted- men are tame and thete is a hunting of them-by making the sophist a wild animal that they are to turn over ro the royal speech. If, then, a spoken phantom is cxempli6ed by the sophist and the Stranger as hunters, the Scrange.r is asking, in generalit.ing the issue of his own language, whether images in speech necessarily involve deception, or the noobeing of spoln:.n images entails falsehood, and whethe,r ir is not possible co proceed in one's understanding withour any recourse to images. When the Stranger beg;ln by saying that the sophist was not the easiest to grasp (JUllabrin), that he believed the genus of the sophisc was ha.rd tO hunt down (dusthlrntt11n), and that he knew of no easier way (hodin) than to practice the sophist's pursuit (7mrhotl4•) on an easier subject (:z.r8c6, d3, 6-7), there was no reason for Theaeterus to galvani:z.e his language back into life and anticipate the Stranger's exploitation of expressions that he could have as easily let fade away in the course of the discussion. Phantom images in speech rhus seem to be a difficulry of rhe Stranger's own creation, so thar whereas he has to face the problem of image-making in speech. the sophist does not, since the sophisr aft.e r all does uor have to accept the Stranger's picrure of himsel£ The sophist can go about his business without ever entangling himself in an image. He
On Plato's Sophist
would rhus argue that his own spuriousness arises from the invention of the Suanger, and the Stranger has to account for himself without a shred of evidence that the sophist ever resoru to images in speech. How easy it would have been to dispense with the Stranger's language can be seen if one rdleas on the mucrure of his first ocampl.e, the an of an.gling. The division falls into three sections, with three items in each. The first section establishes the manner of the an- it is a kind of hunting; the second establishes the object of the art-fish; and the third establishes the means employed to catch the fish-book and line. The Stta.nger' s example, then, could have been generalized at once, and the sophist's art determined by its .manner, object, an.d means, an.d there would have been no need ro bring hunring to bear on either the sophist's or the Stranger's acriviry. The paradigm of rhe angler allowed for the scaffo.ldiog on which the Srranger's image-making to be dismanded without any loss ro the inquiry or any distraCtion from it. If, then, the sophist had been confronted straight-on with this three· fold question-how, what, and by what means-be could have been said m lure young men by mearu of speeches. To be sure, be could not have been distinguished thereby from Socrates, but that, according to Socrates, is as it should be. Why, then, does the Stranger gee himself involved in a series of definitions that, he claims, cannot be unified except through rhe notion of phantom speeches? A possible explanation can be found in the observation rhar Theaererus bas never seen a sophist and has no experi· ence of the disillusionment that comes from experience after living in the world of phantom speeches. Through the Stranger's literalization of language, he represents to TbeaetelUs a world of phantom speeches, which Tbeaeterus recognizes as such when be realizes the impossibility of discovering the sophist's uniry in the manifold of his different arrs. Wi.t hin the dialogue and through experience in speech alone, the Stranger gives Theaeterus an image in speeeb of what is entailed in the experience of things. The disillusionment of realiry is presemed in an image. The Stranger thus implies rhat the fundarnenral experience of the beings which most men undergo after their initial distance from them is the discovery of this principle: .Everything is just what it is and nothing dse. This principle is ~osbrined in the formula, a being is thar which does nor stand in need of another. Tb~ ones of phantom sp«eb are shown ro be phanroms as soon as they submit ro analysis. This atomism, wh~tl:ter mar~rial or ideal, bas as irs corollary rhat to be is ro be countable. It rhus links up with the implicit definition of knowledge, at least in parr, which Tbeaeterus first offered Socrates.
m
ll4
Cbaprer Sixtcxn The starring point of the Suanger thus reaches back to the beginning of the Th~Mtetw and goes forward ro his examination of the philosophers who count the beings. The problem of nonbeing, which comes ro ijgbt through a manifold that can be shown ro be one only if nonbeing is, leads ro the problem of being. in which it turns out that there can be no stable counting of the beings, regardless of whether there. is ro be only one or more than one. Initially, every manifold that was designated by a single name betrayed the presence of appearance and the failure to get at what something is; bur rh.e impossibility of keeping to tbe original count in the case of the beings entailed that it was not appearance that multiplied unity but being itself was infected with. the same m ultiplicarive virus. The Stranger's solution ro this Otltological crisis is to incorporate nonbeing into being as the other. The other is designed to cure three things simultaneously. Beio.g is no longer countable, or nothing is just what ir is and nothing else; appearances are a reflection of nonunitary being; and false spe«h still consists in saying what is nor, even though it is always speaking of that which is. Whether in fact the other does solve all three problems, ir puts the Stranger's artificial phantom image in speech of the sophist in a new light. The discovery of the manifold beneath rhe illusory one of the sophistic art, where each an is just what it is, is the inverse of the rrurh. The sophist., in his being always the other, is the mark of what is. The Stranger bad prepared us for this inversion by speaking of rhe truth of things (ta pragmata), and not the truth of the beings (ta onta). as that from which the young stand far removed (234<=4). To grasp the beings in all their vividness through experiences is nor necessarily ro grasp the truth of the beings. If rhe sophist is the sign of being as the other, and therefore it is not inappropriate for the Stranger to be the philosopher in being his hunter, be sti11 is not th.e only other in the Sophist. The threefold question Socrates raises happens ro coincide not only with three discourses the Stranger can recite off the top of his head but the question Theodorus, Theaererus, and young Socrates asked the Stranger sometime between the end of the Theaetaus and their meeting with Socrares (217b4-8). Whatever we may chink of this coincidence-Theodorus's distress at the going-over he received from Socrates ( Theaetdus 169a6-c6), reinforced as it was by Theaeterus's futile answers, might well have prompted him to question an authority about Socrates-we know that neither the Srranger nor Theodorus came ro the question in the same way as Socrates did. Socrates' way imo rhe question began with his tweaking Theodorus for h.is possible failure to .recogni2e th.e Stranger as a god in disguise. ln reply Theodorus
On Plato's Sophis<
distinguished ~>¢tween "godlike" (thtios) and "god," or between philosopher and god {ll6b9-ct). Philosopher and god are n.o t two of a kind. Socrates replied that the philosopher roo has his apparitions, or that "philosopherlikc" applies no less to sophiSt than to sratcsman. Sin~, however, Socra.tcs continued ro employ his Homeric citations even after Theodorus's denial, he implied rhac "philosopher" and "god" are the same, or, to follow Socrates more exactly, rhe philosopher belongs ro rhe genus ro which god belongs. 1 Socrates was led ro this possibility by Theodorus's inrroducrion of a philosopher as a nameless srranger. He turned a typical piece of indiffuen~ ro the buman-all-too-h.uman on Theodorus's part inro a general question- Who could possibly 1>¢ of necessity forever namdcss and a stranger?-and gave the answer, •A god. • Gods can never become our a.cquaio.rances (gntirimoi); they must always remain outside whatever group, large or small, we belong ro. "God," then , is rhe othe.r as such. As the other, he is nor merdy something .else (alw ti), bur ne is attached to thar of whicn ne is the orher because ne is the other. As the other, god is nor subject ro a wholly negative theology; man too is me other, for he is the other of rnat other. The indeterminate pair tnar god and man constitute makes one wonder whether the Sophisrand the Statnman ore not the same pair in irs apparitional form. The Statuman cannot determine the politician without separating him from god the ruler and from man the political animal; and the Sophist puts the sopnist in his place only through the notion of god the r:uional maker. Mind as dlicienr cause thus emeq;es as the apparition of god as the other. God sers the sttucrure of makin.g bur is divorced from the. structure. of acquisition, ar rhe nead of which would be the knowing ignoran~ of the philosopher. God, rhen, is as apparitional as the sophist, and he is other than the philosopher when he appears as maker. Socrates had opposed the Suanger as a punishing god to himself. The Stranger asserts in the myth of the Suumnan that there cannot be a punishing god; indeed, he denies that Zeus is a name for god, sin~ the age of Zeus stands for the time when rhe god has ler go of the universe and it is on ics own. Zeus is a con~ed negation; it means "nor-god~ or "withour god." God with a name designates "nor-god. • He is the other of the other. The Stranger and the sophist compere for the ride of the oth.e r, one as god, one as beast. Both are outside the circle and yer they are tlOt apart from man. Indeed, if man as such is nor a third between beast and god, then the Stranger and the sophis~ cover all thar man is. Man, rhen, would emerge as the orher km' exochm: he is the primary piece of evidence for
:m
.»6
Chapter Sixtccn the denial rhar there is anything which is just what it is. Man becomes exemplary of being once the highest being is a defective being, and. as the Stran.ger later says, there is no pan of nonbeing that is any less than any being (158a7-b3). That man is an issue, and perhaps even the issue, behind Socrates' question is already foreshadowed in the Thueutu.s. Socraces the,re tried to get ar the question of philosophy through the queSfion, What is knowledge? The n~.iry for ph.ilosophy emerges if it can be shown that knowledge o.r wisdom is impossible ( Tbu&tu.s 145e5); and it can be shown to be impossible if there is an obstacle to wisdom for man as man. This obstacle must take the following form: knowledge consists of two or more kinds that cannot be understood as an apparitional manifold. Each is just whar ir is ev~ though each is knowledge. Protagoras's "Man the measure" is not an answer to the question of knowledge but its enigmatic representation. Socrates with his knowledge and Theaeretus with his are togeth.e r the same eni.gma; bur they cannor be together because there is no "vocalic» bond between them. When Socrates fim formulares a venion of the Proragorean thesis, be asks two questions about iu meaning-"Docs it state that what son each =al thing appea.rs to me such are they for me, and what son to you, such in turn for you, and you and I [ate] man?"-Theaeretus answers the. first question and does not notice the second (1Jza6-!)). In particular Theaeterus does not notice that i.n Socrates' second question a plural subject has a singular predicare, and there is oo copula. Socrates and Theaeterus are severally man. but they are not anything together. The determination of man as the vocalic bond between beast and god can be said to be the theme of the SophiJt and the Starmnan. ln the course of his settit~g out his model for de.finitiou, rhe Stranger consistendy presenf& the undivided class as suffixed with -ikon bur never with -iki, with which t«hni is either expressed or implied. The -ikl suffix occurs only afrer a class bas been divided. The Stranger's language rhus duplicates the historical development of the suffix from being an ethnic to a skill, which we know occurred very rapidly roward th.e end of the fifth century.' The Suangc:r in.dicar:es thereby that there is no art for the undivided species but only for the atomic class. There is no art of hooking (asgltistreurilton), but only of its two species, triiJdontia and aspaliroliki. Arr implies specialization, and until one gets to the smallest division of labor there is an dement of inexpertness that lurks in any general action. The Stranger's starting-point, •an." i.s misleading, for i.f one looks to rhe man who could possib.ly do all the thing1 the. manifold of arts do, one would n.o r find the artisan but the jack-of-all-trades. "Sophist" or • Mr.
On Plato' • S4phist
Know-it-all" nte~ly looks spurious once th~ am have devdopcd in the way that Socraro. assumes in the &pub/it:, where the original housebuilder soon gives way ro the lumberman, th.e carpenrer, the bl:tck5rn.ith, etc. The Stranger, in implying. for example, that there is an an of nriking (pliluilri), from which rhe am of spearing and angling split off, is going against the truth of the am and laying himself open to the charge of making phanroms of the real. Long before, then, the Stranger sers the sophist in the class of imagemaking. be has been employing the art of image-making in order ro establish the kinsb.ip among the various am ro which we give the same labd, sophistic. The way of discovery is productive in the class of acquisition; and the Stranger in being the hunter of the bunte.r-sophist uses as his nets those made up by the poetic art. Th.e Stranger, then, praCtices versions of the sophist's two ways, bur in neither version does he duplicate exaaly the sophist. For rhe Stranger, bunting is a way of understanding; it assumes that rhe beings are not our in the open, and the way to bring them our is to illuminate rhem in a series of images. The Stranger's art of the image seems to be eikastics, for he is not setting things out to show them as beautiful; lico-hunting, he says, serves as wdJ as generalship for hunting (Z2739-b6). But the SlT20ger's art of hunting does seem to be due ro phanrasr.ics, for it seems to be adjusted to Theaererus, who is to pass for manly and brave in following the track of the sophist. Eikastics, then, is ro pbanrastics as ontology is to psychology. lf philosophy in genen.l takes afu:r the Stranger's double way, philosophy in iu ontological aspeet is not guided by anything. Its images are of its own devising and nor grounded in the narure of things. In its psychology, however, there is rhe narure of Theacretus, which in irs moderation calls on its own for irs proper correcti"e, just as young Socrates' boldn.ess demands domestication through the womanly an of weaving. Between his catching Socrates and the sophist rogerher wd his isolating rhe sophist in the class of making, the Stranger inserrs a classifiauion of arrs that purs him and Socrates together and e>ccludes the sophisL He begins this classification with a set of verbs that belong ro the actions of several arrs (226b5- cy). ln labeling their common action "dividing." he shows us whar he himself has b«.n doing all along, collecting and dividing; bur it is typical of th~ Sopbut tbar the diacritical function is stressed. and ir is nor until th~ StaUtman that irs syncrirical counre.r part is mentioned (282b7). However that may be, the Stranger applies the single name of the diacritical art to whar is done in sifting Sour or carding wool No specialist art, however, praCtices diacritics in itself. only the Stranger does
J37
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Chapter Sixreen
so whenever he proceeds to cu~ any class in cwo. The Stranger comes partly into the light in these first cwo steps. Sunkrinein and diakrinein are the first verbs that in being comprehensive refer at the same time to particular actions. The undivided species is no longer an image of the artS in its subsets bur an an in iu own ri.ght. The collapse of the ethnic suffix -ikon into the an-suffix -ilti is comparable, and perhaps ulrimarely idemical, with Socrates' persistence in refusing to separate dial~mhai fron1 dialektiki. lt is therefore surprising that the.Stranger can discover a version of Socratic dialectics in a genealogical descent from diakridki with which it does not link up in any obvious way. lf we srart at the conclusion of his dividings, the Stranger there opposes soul-cathanics to me art of ad monition chat fathers practice on their sons. Since, however, those who discovered soul-cathartics scarred from a premise that the admonitOry arc rejected- every kind offolly was involunrary- and the admonitory art had long been in place before the discovery of soul-cathartics, education (paideia) cannot be split between an an· less and an artful form. If, however, soul-cathartics moves up a level and becomes identical with education, Tbeaererus must be mistaken in labeling a Socratic insight an Athenian practice (u9cb.). Theaeretus calls education that an which gets rid of the belief on the pan of one who does nor know that he knows; but that doxoJophia is the peculiar obstacle to leaming belongs ro soul-c:uharti.cs and has nothing but language in common with a lather's rebuke to his son, "You think you're so smarr." lf now, however, Socrates' way takes over as rbe crue form of education, it is nor obvious that rhe art ofinsrrucrion (didasklllikl) treats rwo different kinds of ignorance (agnoia), since the premise of the psychic counterpart tO gymnastics is char evecy soul is involuntarily ignorant of everything (:u.Sq -9). Th.ea.erecus's distinction between education and derniurgic insrrucrion cannot be maintained if rbe basis of rhe latter is mathematics, for it seems to be equally at home with educati.o n in either the ordinary or Socratic sense. If. then, soul-cachatrics now rrears the. ugliness of soul per se, it cannor be kept one of rbe treatment of the illness of soul, since the Stranger ascribes ro rhe conllicr of opinions in the soul a source of irs illness and assigns to soul-atbartics the ra~k of bringing to light rhe conllicr of opinions in the soul {u8br- 4, 130bs-8). Soul-cathartics, then , rakes over as the entire treatment of soul, for the Su-anger's divisions have been in accordance with opinion and therefore incoherent. Soul-carharrics, however, cannot be pegged at this point eirbe.r, for in order to get ro rbe soul the Scranger had to separate the soul frorn the body, regarrllcss of whether the body was ensoul~ or not; but such a separation of rhe soul
Oo Plato's S,phist from the body is nothing other than the pracr:iee of dying md being dead, which is another name for philosophy. Even if we grant the Srranger's cut between soulmd body as nothing more thao a "throrer:ical" division, he cannot go on to split d1e vices of soul on the basil of a split in the vices of body wirhour granting the body, in ia apanness from soul, a th.rorerical determinacion of this srrucrure of souL The SU3Jlger, moreover, identifies the soul in irs separation from body as thoughr (dianoia, 227C4); and rhoughr cannot be subjecr to a distinction between moral and intellectual viiTUe, upon which the Stranger's counterparts ro medicine and gymnastics depend! There il the further difficulty that rhough the soul is supposed to have an impulse. roward truth, there is no argument that the soul has either a narural strength ro arrai.n truth or the capacity to accept the Steroids of art. Indeed, soulcathartics is described whoUy in term.s of medici.ne and not as capable of instilling beauty and strength of soul. Theaeterus indeed said that it produced the most moderate of stares, bur according to Theaererus moderation should be the contrary of intemperance (alto/asia) and therefore snbjecc to the punishing art of Diki (u.Ser-:U!)a]). If, then, the Sm.nger's separation of soul and body cannot stand as be phrased it, soul-ca.rharcics is now threatening the division in the ans of purification, fo.r soulcathartics musr now have a diacritical function if ir is ro understand soul by itself before treating it. The Stranger's first division in the tliacritical art had bew between an unnamed art of separarin.g like from like and the purificatory art of separari.n g better from worse (u6dt-5). This unnamed an is nothing but the Stranger's own procedure and identical with what soul-cathartics must also practice.. lr thus turns out that Socrates, rather than being a subo.rtlinare of the Stranger, usurps the Stranger's role and correccs the Stranger's divilions in light of own rcsolurion of the conm.dictory opinions at the heart of rhe Sm.nger's diactitical oruology. lr now rums out rhar the example of spoken phantoms is that division of the Stranger's where he and Socrates both are. Irs p.lansibilicy ro Theaetecus is a sign of irs phantom character. It is Thea.eterus, aher all, who insistS that the Stranger's fear of confusin.g rhe sophisr and the philosopher be ser aside and Socrates be condemned for sophisrry through a semblance (2}tar-s). Perhaps the moSt curious cons
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Chapter Sixteen
exemplifies phan14stiki. Previously we had thought that the Scranger's way was eikasric, since the classes ne had found were the produces of his own image-making; bur now, in involving himself in his own classification of an art-dialuitiki-b.e adopts simultaneously the perspective ofTheaererus and becrays Socrates. The Scrange.r's phanwtiki corresponds rather =ctly to the one he ascribes to painting, for in that case the painter makes the image ugly in o:rdcr for it tO appear beautiful, and here Socrates appears as completdy successful, with everyone angry only at themselves and tame roward everyone dsc (2.3ob8-9). The Stranger's beautification of Socrates seems to be sdf-defeating; it does nor keep Socrares from being identified as a sopnist bur rather convinces Tbeaeretus that he is a sophist. Theaeterus cannot tell apart the elusive sophist from the beauriful Socrates. The eibstics of the Stranger's 6.m d ivisions are in agreement with the phancastics of his last: the Socrates who lurks in the rejected species of acquisition-he showed up finally as the money-losing chanerbox (usd7-tO)-comes into tne light of opinion as the same as his own apparition. As lon.g as Socrates is hidden in the rejected species of the Stranger's way, he is safe from being misidentified; bur as soon as the Scranger sets out ro stalk him alone-Socrates is like the retailer who stays at home and sdls what he himself contrives (a14c4-e<~)-he cannot show him as he really is. It is through a set of un-Socraric distinctions that Socrates becomes as pretty as a picture.
n At the very m.o ment that the Stranger will abandon the image of hunting-he has just established the sophist as imitator-he becomes particularly exuberant in the exploitation of the image of hunting: "lr is our job &om this poinc forward no longer ro let up on the beast (thira), for we have preny nearly encompassed (ptritilzphamm) him in a certain kind of net (amphiblatriltoi tim) that is instrumental in speeches for dungs of rh.is kind (235a10-b2)." It seems, then, that we are being given a spoken pbanrom just before the Strangci confrontS the problem of image; bur it cannot be oversrressed thar we are given it and not Theae.retus: Theaererus plunges into a discussion of eiJ/qfa kgomma without having any clue as ro what they are. They are there in the Stranger's language, no less than they are in Theaetetus's, but they are never brought up ro the level of the argument. The one c:xceprion to this blanket concealmenr proves that it is nor an c:xccption. The Stranger remarks that the sophisr is really (on/61)
On Pl:uo's Sophist
amazing and very difficult w ~caught sight of. and Thcaeterus replies, "It seems" (toiltm, 236<4). The Srranger pounces on chis ettiltm without ever saying char mat is what makes him suspect that Theaererus is just going along with him wd does not really recognize me probl.em. Th.e Srran.ger is saying that unless words are taken literally their use berrays a &ilure to understand. Al:e we men tO unde<Stand the Srranget' s • encompassed" (perieiliphamm) literally? If w~e do, the Stranger agrees with rh.e body-people wb.o deny that anything is which rhey cannot ger both their bands on (uru lthmin attltlmoJ ptrrm ltai drus perilambanttnteJ, 246a8; cf. 265210). And when me Stranger remarks that ir was truly said that me sophist-beau was complex and nor, as the saying goes, to be S~
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Chapter ·siXteen
The reductionist program that this reading of the Sophist suggests cannot, I think, stand up to scrutiny; bur it does reinforce the peculiarity of the dialogue, where the Stranger's failure to explicate the difference between eika&tic and phantastic speech entices us to a reading of everything he says in light of the body. The body is the background against which we understand what he is saying. It is therefore of the highest importance that the Stranger at the end confines the sophist to being an impersonator in his body of what he seems to know. The sophist is the sophist precisely because the noncorporeal is made corporeal and passed off as noncorporeal. The sophist embodies what in its truth cannot be embodiccl. He is merely a higher version of vulgar or political virtue, which mistakes images of the body for traits of the soul (c£ &public 518d9-e2). The Stranger, then, must ultimately give an argument for turning language upside~down; so that the nonliteral language of soul can stand independently of its literal meaning. The argument must ground the phantastics of speech in something other than the being of body. If the argument can do so, we can then say that the Stranger fails to exemplify his meaning not because it is plain in everything he says but because it is truly hidden in everything he says. The Sophist is a vindication of this remark in the Statesman: "The bodiless things, being most beautiful and greatest, are shown plainly only in speeches and in nothing else (286a5-7)." In order to solve the specific problem-the distinction between eikastic and phantastic speech-the Stranger has recourse to well-known philosophic issues: appearance, false opinion, and nonbeing (:t36ei-:2.37a1). The specific problem· seems to get lost in the Stranger's review of various answers to the philosophic issues. His experience of the perplexity of being and nonbeing takes over from Theaetetus's innocence, and from his unawareness that it was his failure to detect the difference between Socrates and the sophist that confirmed the existence of phantastiki in speech and supplied the evidence of its power. A series of divisions in speech was made by way of images that led to the impossibility of telling apart beast from nonbeast (nonbeast covers both god and human); but their indiscernability is nothing but an exemplification of the sophist's an of phantastike. The Stranger claims he knows that the being his argument detected was the philosopher, hut he cannot convince Theaetetus that he is any different from the previous series of atomic species. The very parallel between painting in deed and painting in speech seems to imply that experience, which diminishes the -distance the young stand from the beings, cannot be duplicated in speech. If speech could in fact overcome the distance of innocence, one could speak of speeches in deed: "the hard facts
On Plato's Sophist of life" would have their equiV2lem in speech. We know that tcagedy docs have chis effocr with r.gard to the passions; bur we do not know whether me.re is a rational counrerpan. lf the Platonic dialogues were such a counterpart, it would be necessary that through their speeches one would experience a turnaround of cheir several arguments. The Plaronic dialogues would be governed by a pllantastilti by mearu of which we would get neatet to the beings without evet abandoning the level of speech. For the Stranger, the Parmenidean speech, and ultimately all rhe speeches of philosophers up ro now, are p!Jantasmata in speech ar a distance from the beings in speech. He proposes ro narrow the distance Theaererus sran.ds &om the beings by leading him &om on high ro where he. is, bw all within the element of speoch. This movement is the Stranger's version of Socrates' seron.d sailing. which consists in rhe realization that the beings are plainer ro U$ in speeches than in deeds. The aurobiography of the Stranger records for bei11g wh:o.r Socrates' does for bocoming or call$2liry; bur despite this difference they are the same experiencially. ln order to gee. at the problem of nonbeing. rhe Srranger establishes the arithmetical character of being and any speech about be.ing. The characteristic prefix of his argument is pros, "in addition." Being is countable, nonbeing is not. lr rurns our, however, tbar the arithmetical structure of logos forbids the use of logos co show the nonserue of nonbeing, since logos cannot treat nonbeing if ir does not give nonbeing an arithm.etical struc· rure that it then shows it cannot have. The sophist, then, if he is who he is chrough nonbeing, is always immune from attack. Why, however, must the sophist be assumed co have rta>urse co nonbeing? The sophist's claim is that he has a sin.gl.e science of everything. TheaetetU$ believes that the issue is the sophist's claim to know everything (zna3-4); his denial of that claim is not backed up by any argument, but if there we.re an argumem, it would have ro take the form of a proof that the parts of kn.owledge of which we are aware are rwo or more with twO or more essentially different sets of principles, and that the sophist is involved in nonbeing and imagemaking by his assimilation of every other part of knowledge ro one part wirh irs unique set of principl.. or the comprehension of all rhe pans of knowledge to some unknown knowledge wirh an unknown sec of principles. The ways of assimilation and comprehension born involve imagemaking. Thea.etetll$ is asked what an image is; he. speaks of images in mirrors, paintings, and narues. The Stranger asks him ro imagine that the sophist is blind and thar he wants a characteristic of image rhat does not appeal to sight. Theaeretus has no trouble in satisfying the blind sophist: whatever is another such (h~r"rm roib11ton) likened ro the rrue is an
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Chapter Sixteen image (1.40a7-8). Thcaeterus makes up a spoken phantom. His criterion for an image in sight is an image in speed!. HlffmJn roiouton eorails as he 5a)'$ a weaving together of being and nonbeing (1.40C1). Through this "weaving together" (!101fplolrl) he antic;ipates the rest of the Sophist and the finale of the Statesman. Nor only does nnnpMti itself crop up in the Stran.g er's rwo eharacteriz:ouions of logos, but the pre6x run is destined ro take over from the Stranger's pro1. S1m is nnt subject co an aridun.etical account." If hetmm toioutiJn is the cba.racterisric of any eikastic speech, and Theaererus has no trouble in supplying it, it might seem odd thac the Str:mger does nor follow it up with a comparable demand for the characreristic of a phamasric sp«eh. ln5tead, be turns co false opinion, whose characteristic, Theaeretus agtttS, invo.lves the impossible conjunction of being and nonbeing (141"3-b3). This replacement, howe.ver, of pbancascic speech by false spc=h .and opinion does not occur; rather, false opinion is notbin.g but pbanrasric ~. for false opinion is an experience of the soul that is due co an cikasric speech.! There are not rwo kinds of speech. but there is only one spc=h and how rbar one speech appears, or the nperience of falsity, that seems ro make for rwo speeches. The experience of falsity is rhus to be explained by rhe being of nonbeing in the image. False opinion eonsists in the belief that the images ofbeings are the beings, and-this is something new-the beings are the images of nonbeiogs. Nonbeings are, however, im~ges of beings. False opinion holds chat rhe images of the images of th.e beings are the beings; but phanrastilrl was precisely that art that produced images of images of the beings so adjusted to rhe perspective of the obsen•er thar he would take them for the beings. Accordingly, the Stranger has merely enlarged the problem wirb which he srarted and not alte.r ed lt. The Stranger's final division, in which he caught Socrates, was in itself an eikasric speech; it became a pbancascic speech ar the very moment Tbeaererus believed it described rhe sophist. lr \\'as geared for that mistake as well as for irs own dismantling, which we did by tracing back the descent of Socrates to his origin in the Stranger. His projection of bimsdf in another (Socrates) appeared ro Theaetetus as another such of the sophist; but Socraces was rh.e same as the Su·mger and not b.is image. The impasse that nonbeing makes for anyone who attempts ro deny that ir is suggesrs to the Stranger that the fault lies with an undemanding of being, shared by all the philosophers. which has generated a contrary to being our of a fundamental lack of clarity about itself. The Stranger gives an arithmetical cbaraeter ro this misunderstanding, whereby be
On Plato's Sophist
•··
i [:
I! i'
~-
shows chat chose who say being is any number, rwo or more, are forced to reduce their manifold ro one, and Parmenides' one in turn cannot be meaningful unless there are at least rwo. The precise people are opposed to the comprehensives (245e6-24(\a2), who do not count the beings but characterize being: bur the Stranger shows that they must compromise their principles in order to find room for their own understanding, and once [hey do compromise, either in the direction of nonbody or in the direction of soul, they must declare that being is rwo and fall into the trap he had already sprung for the precise people. This argumem hears direcdy on the sophistic claim in the following way. h supplies the proof rhar chere is not a single science of everything, for if they were, there would have co be a coherem set of principles char would determine the number of beings. If their number jumps about berween one and rwo, there is something in being char is recalcitrant to rhe unity of the science of being. The simplest example, perhaps, of the impossibility to keep the count of the beings down to the number one starts with· is to be found in atomism. Ics principle is, To be is to be body. Body, however, does nor allow for motion unless there is space. Space, in turn, is absolute nonbeing if the atomists hold to their principle. They therefore have to weaken their principle if they are co obcain any kind of suucrure. This difficulty is nor confined to acomism. h shows up no less in rhe Republic. where the principle one man/one art cannot establish the class-suuccUre of the city, than in Newtonian mechanics, where th.e first law of motion assumes inertial frames-there are bodies that are noc subject to acceleration-which the principle of gravity denies.6 If this is rhe general strategy of rhe Strang~r-co srrengrhen rhe case of the sophist by ruining the case of the philosophers-it still does not tie in directly with the doubler eikasric-phanrastic speech, for rhe explication of which rhe discussion of being is presumably an indispensable digression. The Stranger says that the philosophers tell stories (242c8243b1). A typical story combines a counr of rhe beings wiih an image of becoming, in which rhe philosopher who tells the srory is not part of rhe story. The Stranger does nor criricize rhis type of philosopher for either talking in images or leaving himself our; bur in rhe case of the c~mprehen sives he tells the story rhar puts them inro one srory and makes ~eir being the issue. It thus looks as if the precise ontologists are to the COfllprehensives as countable being is ro episremology or psychology, for. th~ forn:tula "to be is ro be body" really means "to be is to be rouchable," .and "to. be is to be an idea" teally means "to be is to be intelligible." The philosophers, then, are presented in such a way rhar eika'itic speech is opposed to phan-
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Chapter Sixteen
ta.nic speech, and the Stranger's presentation of phantasric speech is itself cikastic. We can then say that the diacritical ontology of the Stranger which discovered Socratic psychology reappears in the opposition between number and soul. This opposition is at first resolved through the Stranger's proposal that rest and motion both are; but he immediately concludes that this pair must and cannot be one. The Stranger ends up by counting the beings; bur his counting does not take into account what he is counting. It assumes that the two are not parts. for if they were parrs of one whole, they are not necessarily together what they are apart. The bodypeople are body-people by theJttSelves; when the Stranger puts them into a story, they be<:.ome giants, ;ust as the friends of the ideas cease to be nameless once they roo are part~ of the same story: they become gods. We therefore do not know what happens to motion and rest when they are together; but we do know that the being of the non being of motion must have a cause that is not the being of rest. The absence of any causality in the Stranger's juxtaposition of rest and motion tells us that the Stranger, if he is to go on, must find a way around causality. A recourse to speeches turns out to be the Socratic way out for the Stranger. The Stranger groups all of philosophical thought under myth, either by accusing the precise people of storytelling or by telling a story himself about gods and giants. He leaves tnyth behind when he turns to logos, which is to be discussed in light of its apparently contradictory way of postulating a one as subject which the manifold of its predicates denies (151a5-6). It is not immediately obvious that the Stranger's exampleman and his predicates-is significant; but we cannot but wonder whether there is not a connection between the recourse to speeches and the citation of man, especially since they appear together after his own giganromachy. Man had first shown up in the separation the friends of the ideas had made between body as that by means of which we partake in becoming through perception, and soul as that by means of which we are in some partnership with being through calculation (z48aiO-IJ). Man had then :shown up as a possible rival to god, when the Stranger elicited Theaecetus's assent to the proposition that the being which perfectly and completely is must have mind and life in soul (248e6-249br); but he had not gone on to ask whether soul entailed body. Man, then, is at least in the background of the discussion of logos. The logos is man's Wgos. His speech is prior to the letters that make up his speech. Its consonants are not in his speech what they are in the alphabet: "body" is the consonant of the alphabet, "ensouled body" is the consonant prior to the alphabet of the friends of the ideas. The Stranger's own alphabet accordingly is very mis-
On J>lam's Sophhl
leading if it is not accompanied by a procedure that informs us how to trarulate itS letters into sounds- irs apbiina inro rumphona. The. key ro this procedure is provided by the observation that only one of the letters of his alphabet is o:plained. !king, motion, l'
uua
347
Chapter Sixteen glide already auached. The true philosopher is rhe only being who emers speech as just what he is. He therefore cannot bur nor appear as he is, for he cannot avoid being taken to be like every orher being, a being in irself The philosopher rhus bears an uncanny resemblance to the lover, who despite;: his being equally defective comes to light as perfe~t and complere.11 h is not surprising, therefore, rhar Theaererus ends up by saying that rhe sophisr impersonates rhe wise (268cr}. lr is now possible ro link rhe orher wirh rwo prior srages of rhe argumenr. One is due ro Theaererus, the ocher to the Stranger. The image as heuron toiouton, or, as Theaetetus said, the weaving together of being and nonbeing, is no longer a marginal class among rhe things that are; rather, the image is char class of rhings acknowledged by tveryone-rhe ease with which Theaetetus discovered the proper formula testifies to it-as not being just what it is. They are rhe counterparts outside of speech of what ''philosopher" is within speech. Within speech, the image is necessarily double-"Thar's so-and-so" and "Thar's nor so·anJ-so." The image creates noncontradicrory doubletalk. It is rhus the way into the other itself. The second step on rhat way is the Stranger's contribution; it comes from his auempt, easier in speech than in deed, to tame the gianrs. "To be is to be an agent or a patient power" was not acc~prable ro the friends of rhe ideas, who rried ro restrict it ro becoming; bur rhe paradox rhar knowing could nor be either an agenr or padenr power was nor resolved and seemed to leave the friends of the ideas wi thour ideas, or as least wirhour ideas rhar can be known (248d4-e5).Ir is true that the definition of being as power, once ir is split between agency and patiency, suffers from rhe same defect as any counting of the beings; bur the definition does stare char being is relational, since a power can nor be an agem unless something else is a patienr. The definition thus sets rhe stage for the final emergence of the other. The other is the logical equivalent of the dynamical pair of being. It roo makes every being relarional insofar as it is in speech; bur ir overcomes the difficulty of power by getting rid of rhe comrary and including within itself a cwo. The not big, is the equal and the small, the not beautiful the ugly and the just, the not Greek barbarian and barbaric. In the lase case, the other, in curcing barbarian away from barbaric) brings "Greek" over to "nor Greek" and does nor exempt it from savagery. The designation "stranger" likewise bears on this designation, not only because rhe Spartans call barbarians strangers (Herodotus 9.11.2), but because "not stranger" includes the acquaintance and the savage. The Stranger says at any 'rate rhat not to comply with the: company's request appears ro him axenon (217e6}. The Stranger is not going to be a stranger while remaining
On Plato's Sophist
rhe Srranger. The Scranger's double sra£Us prepares the way for what even shocks young Socrates. "To be lawless (anomos}" is to bt: outside the law and above the law. It is to be eirher tyrant or philosopher (Statesman 301b10-C4).
The Srranger distinguishes berween rwo kinds of weaving roger her. One is rhe weaving rogerher of species, rhe other of nouns and verbs (259e5-6, 262q-7). It is on account of the fim kind of weaving that we have logos; bur it is rhe second kind char constitutes the srrucrure of logos. The firsr esrablishes rhe possibility of logos; it allows for rhings co enter logos; bur the second distinguishes between the agent and the acrion of a logos. This disrincrion makes us realize chat the Stranger's own divisions were primarily sets of discriminarions among verbs of aaion, and the agenr, wherher angler, Socrates, or sophisr, was defined by a predicate or predicates ro which he could be arrached. The verbs were so dererminarive of the agt:nts that whoever could be plausibly said ro do some action was ipso facto that agem. Accordingly, Socrares rook on the guise of the sophist, for there was nothing in the verb rhat could declare whether the agent was spurious or nor. Indeed, from this perspective, the Srranger's initial assertion chat he and Theaetetus had only a name in common meanr that they shared an agent-noun thar had to be hooked up co an action (218c15). The deed (ngon) he there spoke of was of an action (praxis). To move from word ro deed was simply ro discover the verb. In dissolving the subject inm the verb, the verb was put in rhe rhird person, in whose form a he or she that suired anyone who performed the action was concealed. Whatever this action was, knowledge had nothing to do wirh irs character. Although the split between an arrless and anful form of contradiCtion: was strictly impossible (22;bn.-c9), there was nothing in "to haggle"-that de· nied ir was nor fully informed by art, any more chan there was in irs counterpart any rrace of knowledge except the label. The emergenCe of the agent is something we are nor prepared for, since if truth or falsity is now to be found in the compound of agent and action, rhe Stranger is ad mitring rhat Socrates and rhe sophist do nor do different things, ·and no division by itself can mark off their difference·. Socrates might be as much a maker as the sophist. After his characterization of logos and illustration of a false speech, the Stranger quickly dispa
H9
w> Cbnpter Si:«een denial of a !bought. The Stranger bad indeed amicipared this revision, for he had interpolated in his example of a false speech a dialogic remark, "Theaetetus, • with whom I am now conversing, "flies. • What he had called speech involved tWO agents, the first and second persons of dialogue; bur if Thea.etetus is being addtC$Sed by me Stranger, !he logos is nor "Theaw:rus flies" but "You fly," which in Greek has the agent built inro rhe verb, puesai, or if conuaaed, pttii. Once speech becomes dialngue. the minimal speech is the verb with itS proper endin.g. If, however, the Smmger is addressing Theaetet\1$, be is asking a question and expects that Theaeretus will answer it. Theaeterus Is called upon ro de.cide about his own srate; whether he is right or not depends on whether the Stranger speaks an image or nor, for if it is an image, it is according ro Socrates, an image of chose whom Theodorus calls philosophers; and we would not expect that if Theatetus were one of !hem his answer to the question would be true ( Thttuu:ms rne5, 175e2}. However this may be, speech as dialogue alters the issue of predication. "I" and "You" seem to be resistant co their elimjnation through verbal action, for at first glance there seems to be no verb to specify wbllt we do in the way that "hunts" or "sifts" does, let alone an arc or science that rationalizes the llUman; hue on relleecion me verb !hat is predicated of man as such is diakgesrhai and its scientific form diakktiki.' The Stranger's characterization of logos, then, pointS to a structure of logos in which the explicir agenr-his two examples arc "man" and "Theaeterus"-conrains another, "You" if "[" or "I" if "You. " These agentS are present in any dialogue regarclless of whether they are parr of any logos. They are ch.e object of Soaares' soul-catha.rrics in the double form of self-knowledge. The Srranger concludes his account wirh phanwia. It is a mixture of opinion and perception. PhiVItasia, however, if ir is to stay wirhin the dialogic structure of speech and thought, has ro be understOOd as the formular.ion of an opinion in answer ro a question in light of the interlocu· tor's perception of the questioner. Sucb an answer is soon co be given by Th.eaetetus. The Stranger will ask him whether everything is the handicraft of a god or of thoughdess nature, and Theaccecus will say: "1, perhaps on account of rny age, often have opinions on both sides; now, however, in looking at you and supposing you believe. things are made in conformity wirh a god. I too hold in chis way (26sdr-4)." The mosr revealing !bing in Theaererus's remark is rhe absence of che word phainetai, for its absence is what makes his remark the example of a phanrasma. BeJore our eyes Theaccetus banishes doubt an.d replaces it wirh a conviction that he builds ouc of a reading of the Stranger's face. This reading is a spoken pbancom.
On Plato's Sophist
Regardless of whether thi5 is a correct reading of the Stranger's face, Theaetetus is now somerhing else than a verbal action. His conclusion has no weight unless Socratic cathartics is possible and can test whether this time Theaetetus is not pregnant with a wind-egg. The soul after all is something. We do not know whether we are to ascribe Theaetetus's apparition of divine making to the exercise by the Stranger of phantastiki; but we do know that Theaetetus's apparition precedes the Stranger's reattachment of eikastics and phantastics to image-making. As the Stranger sets up the distinction between divine and human making, there is no artful kind of divine image-making, for though he alludes w dreams, hiS" examples of the god's phantasmata are either shadows or mirror-images (266b9-C4). There is no suggestion that they are anything but automatic consequences of the bodies the god makes directly. Indeed, the bodies the Stranger allows to be the god's work are all on or in the earth (265C1-5); there is neither heaven nor stars, let alone an ordered cosmos (cf. 2.3Je5-2J{a4). There are animals and soulless things, but there is no mention of soul; neither psuchi nor empsuchon reappear$ once the Stranger returns to poietike (psuche last at 264a9). We are left in the dark, then, whether the god practices phantastics either in deed or in speech, and if Socrates were right, that the Stranger is a god, whether Theaetetus's phantasma was due to the Stranger's art. If, as it seems to be, it was Theaetetus's own offspring, there would be no divine phantastics in deed; but if it was after all a product of the Stranger's skill as of a god, there would still be no divine phantastics in speech. The Stranger's impersonation of a divine craftsman would not require more than a question to come across as an answer; it would not entail an elaborate account of divine revelation, either in the form of laws or of Socrates' daimonion. The function of divine making, then, is to put the stress on the body. That the body is paramount is shown by the double use of mimetike, first as the comprehensive art of eidola, and then as the art of using one's own body or voice to represent someone else's (265ruo, 267a7). At this point the Stranger's divisions break down, for he separates impersonators into knowers and nonknowers, even though we were dealing with kinds of productive an (267b7-8). Though nothing is said explicitly to this effect, it does seem that knowledgeable impersonators are those who imitate those they know (Theaetetus, for example), and ignorant impersonators those who imitate justice and the rest of virtue. The impersonators of virtue uy to make appear in themselves the opinion they and almost everyone else have about it. They embody virtue. This kind of embodiment
Ht
}Sl
Chapter Sixreen
occurred long before men became aware of the difference between opinion and knowledge {167<4-8). What the Suanger now calls doxomimitikl is known r.o irs since.e practitioners as anti. It is based on the belief that vinue can appear. Tneartetus represented that belief when he read the Stranger's F..ce as betraying his conviction about divine production. Did the Saanger rhc:n look up? It seems at first as if rhe Stranger's analysis of /qgos into agent and aetion was designed solely for finding trurh or falsity in the correct or incorrect anachment of an action ro a known agenr; but by his resuietion of imirarion ro impersonation the agent becomes significant in himself and independent of what he does. 10 The sophist embodies vinue as it is undersrood in opinion, despite his suspicion that he does not know what his 1chim11 declares he knows- Gorgias exemplifies this perfectly; bur what he does is ro contradict and refute rhe opinions about vinue rhe inre.rlocutor himself maintains and believes be sees represented in rhe sophist. Tbe sophist impersonares the opinions he refures. What, rhen, of Socrates? He is not an impersonaror. Theodorus at any rare found him poker-F..ced and could not figure our what Socrates believed fiOm his rorally convincing presentation of a Proragotcan posicion ( TJmuwus 161a6). Socrates, however, is ironical. Does his claim ro ignorance come across as knowledge in light of his capaciry ro show up the ignor.lllce of others? More patticulasly, does the incoherence in opinion about a virtue, once Socrates has exposed it, induce the impression that Socrates b.imself has it? Jr would seem impossible that Socrates could display popular virtue wirhouc ics inconsistencies while showing up irs inconsittencies; bur Socrates rhe logic-chopping moralist seems co be exactly that. Logos as dialogue rhus comes ro light as the problem of Socrates rhe agem in his action. We can say char rhe Sophia ends ac rhar poim where rhe problem has been uncovered, and the Sttttnman is designed co treat Socratic agency. Socraces the agem, however, cannot snow up in himself; in.stead, he shows up in rhe patient, young Socrates.
Not41 1.
ro tou theou (~•6c:4-s) is an
odd expression unless SocrateS impli.- that
bein&' other than god bdong tO the same genus; Cobets COrtectiOD ron tJmin is cerrainly what one would ha'"' expecred. ~-
a. Pierre Chanmine, La F<1rmdtUm da noms en gr« •n•-im (Paris, <9JJ),
JBS-93 ·
On Plato's Sttpbm ) . N.B.Iisthlmaha (u.81>.4) is used of dtc s~·· and Theaetetus's ~knowl cc~g.:· of the conllias in moral via and ismm (uSq) of dteit lcnowl
+ Protrirhntai is at •;Sa and 1}91>9; srnuirhmhtti at 1!1-bl, ). >6un. 168dJ; -mnt;rUtJthtU comes in at •slh6 and occua four more times (cf. >64h1). S· 'The Stranger's phnsing of the problem of F..be opinion poinu co this: ho~>tn pn-i ttJ phiUII4mfll aut#n 11f'lllltn phomm tin psudlln hbnln phb
6.
....
UJtl
potmJn Jlnl4l thxavin
a . De~'<'k J. !Uine and Michad HeU
t98t), 16: "The force-free motions, the exiS!eoce of which is wcrted by the Law of ln
7· It is suilcing that the absena: of a referent for fttis makes dte oeighbors speak at one< of Zeus. wbos.e .Jiiietions it is impossible to avoid (9-1()9). 8. 1"bis is the giu of the argument between Agathon and Socran'$ in tbe SymJOJH.m. 9· P
m
5
E
V
E E N
T he Plan of Plato's Statesman
As Y To fOllow the argument of the Statesman. Its dif6. culty seems ro be due to the odd lengths of its sections, which are either too short or roo long for the matter discussed. The Stranger spends two pages on a theme co which Socrates devotes two books of the &publie, even though it is admitted that almost everyt:hing aU of us do is for the sake of what is a digression in the Statesma11 (Jozb8-9). Weaving rakes so long to recount that the Stranger feels compelled to discuss at length the issue of length, bur he never gees around ro justifying the lengthiness of the section on weaving. Young Socrates is rebuffed when he wishes to learn how one can tell part and kind apart; but his mi
lH
1s N o T E
Tb< Plan of Plllto's Srtttaman
be set aside for the next rwo discussions. Theodorus's first mistake is due, accordin.g to Socrates, tO an at<:nsion of his matbemaricll knowlodge beyond irs compa:encc; and this hubris, which Socrates says is an unavoidable concomitant of any panial knowledge (Apology of Somrru 12C9-e5), seems to infect the sranio.g point of the divisions of sr-.u.esmanshi.p. Arithmetic exemplifies gniistiki because it is srripped of actions; and then the Srranges tries to force politiki into the same class, as if be Wlll1ted ro vindicate Theodorus over against Socrates and show that the statesman ar least is really on the same level as the mathematician. What mighr seem to be the pushiness of politics, as ifir wanted to give irself the airs of a theoreciclli science, is really the Strange.r 's indulgence ofTheodorus' s desire t'D punish Socrates for purring him down, and which it is easy <:nough to imagine young SocrateS as a budding mathematician shares. The Saan.ger himself, bowev<:r, cannot be unaware that the forcing is coming from the side of mathematics, for if poliriki were of the same theorericlli order as mathomarics, be could nor have proposed the cask he and young Socrates are undertaking to be the isolation of politics and the unification of :UI other sci.e na:s ioro one oth.es class (258C4- 8}. Youo.g Socrates' refusal to join him in chis discnvery forces the Stranger to win young Socrates over by lening abstraction play the role of theory. A mathematician is lured into politilr.i through a semblance of mathematical reasoning. Tbe Stranger's way of dividing epistimi into g>liittiki and prrzlttiki offers another possible division of each. He assigns to gniHtik.i rwo cbaracceristics; it is srripped of actions and supplies only knowledge (gno11Jli}. and be says of pralr.tilti that its knowledge inheres in irs actions and brings into being previously nonexisting bodies. There could, then, be • knowledge that was noe stripped of actions and yet supplied only knowledge. as well as a knowledge that was engaged in actions and yet did not handle the coming into being of bodies. A rheoretiotl practice on souls is not an entirely inaccurate label for either Socraces' own 11111icutiU or the Stranger's version of it, the cathartics of soul (Soplntt2)035-C4}. lndeed. it seems prerry well ro 6c politilti once the Stranger lers it drift our of gniirtilti and become a praxis (284c2). If mathematics irsdf, moreoves, is involved in a kind of practice, coo, whenever it sets for itself a construction (/?4public 5:1.7a6- b1), gnostiki could prove to be a class to whicb no known human science belongs. Four different arguments establish that politilti belongs to gniistilte. They are neither consistent with each other nor ad
JSS
H6
Cbapcer Scvenceen
the gnosrics that politics has now usurped for itself. No soone.r does the Sr:ranger ask wherber smU:S.man, king, master, and household manager are aU one than be makes a detour into another issue, whether anyone competenr ro advise a public physician must be addressed with the same name as the one b.e advise;, but the Smu:q;er does not explain what connectS the detour with the original question. The public physician does nor differ &om eirhe.r one in private pr.terice or on.e. who h2S retired from pmc~ice and serves as a consulrant in difficult cases. The political is edged our of consideration through rhe label "pu:blic," which no more affi:as rhe physician's knowledge chan the first element in dimiourgos signifies anything bur rhe $0cial funaion of the cr:rftsman. Carpenny does not become rheorerical if ir is exercised in an advisol}' eapacil)'. ln reducing the public ro the privat.e, the Stranger can sum:pciriously appeal to the face that evel}' adulr is an oiltonomos while he argues rhat knowledge is the sole ride to rule. His detour thus pulls tWO ways at once. The Stranger strips politilti of practice and rhereby makes it theo.rerical; and he puts it within the grasp of almost everyone through the indispensable practice of"economy.• The Stranger leaves it at the equival.ence of the schima of a large household and the onkos of a snull city, bur nothing he says cheeks rhe reduction of the kingdom co the size of an individual's domain even if he rules only over himself. If, however, political knowledge includes self-rule, it cannot be unexercised; and if it does not, no proof is offered char the land {ch6ra) a king rules is the same :as a pol# or an oiltos. The structural implic.arions in the words polis and oikos are not evident in the featureless ehora, which in this respect looks much more like the ~If of the individual. Once one realizes tbar the unemployed king could be the wise man in charge of himself, it ls possible to reinretpret the Stranger's fourth piece of evidence that politics is a gnostic science. He says that the Icing's hands and body conrribute litde ro the maintenance of his rule in compuison with his srrengrh of soul and intelligence. On the surface. rhe Stranger is simply contradicting himself, for the knowledgeable king, who can bur does nor have to advise the acrual king, bas no rule co maintain. The inclusion of self-rule, bowevet, within the dimensions of rule is bought at a price, for neithe.r suengrh of soul nor intelligence. for all their noncorporeal character, is th.e $ante as an arc or science; and if a psyclllc srren.grh is need.ed in the science of self-rule, there must be someming in such a science that bas a power to corrupt whoever wields it. T he potitiltos ean be trivially theoretical if "theoretical:" o.nly means thar he ean wait in the win.gs without losing his knowledge; bur if his knowledge cxrc:nds ro bim~lf, he can no longer be cheoreclcal without ceasin.g ro have sdf-
The Plan of Plato's Statmnan
knowledge. The scacus of self-knowledge imelf is lurking in the Stranger's depoliticization of politiki. The Stranger does not wane politiki co straddle two kinds of knowledge, so that there is "political theory," on the one hand, which speaks of various social structures, house, city, and kingdom, without ever claim~ ing chat they are ruled by the same art (let alone that they differ only in size). and, on the other, there is political flair, which shows itself in the parcicular judgments a sensible ruler makes in the face of unprecedented circumstances. He does not want gnostic polirkal science to be contami~ nated with a kind of practical knowledge; and he tries to conceal the contamination his own account has introduced by claiming to split gn.Os~ tikeinco kritikiand-epitaktiki. No argument, however, is given rhat epitdk~ tiki is a part of gnostiki and not of praktiki, for if epitaktiki is modeled on the job of the architelttOn. it has nothing to do whh either kri#ki or gniistike.' The master builder does not stick around after the building goes up to contemplate it, and he certainly does nor rule workmen when he is out of work. Even the one trait he might share with the king-he too does not maintain his rule by brute force-separates the king from gnOstike and reassigns him more plausibly to praktiki. The Stranger pre!Cnds, however, that the master builder, in supplying knowledge (parechomenos gnosin), is doing what the mathematical sciences do, for they too supply knowledge {to gniinai pamchonto}; but whereas the arithmetician has the knowledge arithmetic supplies him in just the way any arr is instructive, the masterbuilder can keep his knowledge to himself and still give instructions to his crew without explaining anything to them. Gnostiki now seems to designate any art in which one does nor work with one's hands. It has ceased to be positively determined and become merely what praktike is nor. What praktiki itself is, or more precisely how far it extends and intrudes into gniistiki becomes problematic at this point. Young Socrates agrees with the Stranger's division of grrOstiki into kritiki and epitak#ki with these words: kata ge tin ~min doxan (a8ob6); and the Stranger, before he recommends the dismissal of the opinions of all others as long as they are partners (koinOnOmen), remarks: alla min tois ge koinei ti prattousin ·agapiton homono~in. Young Socrates and the Stranger are engaged in a common action. This action has as its aim the supplying of knowledge; and since ir proceeds by way of"sbared opinion, to the exclusion of Other competing opinions, it cannot be said to be a knowledge~informed action. In ics hit~and-miss way of proceeding. with aJJ irs false sra.rts and stops, their action lies outside scient~fic praktiki, while they themselves seem to
"·
357
)S8
Ch>ptu Sew:oteel) be as exclusivdy concc,rned with knowled.ge as my number-meorecician. The Sttt.tmnan seems to be haunted by the ghost of itS own argument. These ghosts ue pe.rhaps inevitable by-p.roduas of any argumem: in the Sopbistme Stranger drew on the image of the hunter-sophist to character· ize checarchingofthesophist (u)ey,u6a6-8, 235b8-c6}.ln me Srausman, however, chis doubling of the atgumcnt in the action of me dialogue seems to be pervasi~ and all the more important to understand. since when it has now emerged statesmansb.ip is being assi.gned to one set of divisions and the Stranger and young Socrates find memsdves imitating all chat Sta.resmansb.ip is not. They are tO observe (tbeamm) me possible split in ~ittt.luiki since the statesman does not bdong in kritiki as if he were some orhe.r obsetver (theata. :t6oc:t, 6}. The next distinction rhe Srr.anger makes within rpitaktiki is not well grounded. It curs epittt.krikiin itself, but not insofur as epitaktiki is a part of gnihtiki, for not only do the herald and cox use meir bodies, but if they are to be understOod as exercising gnostilti, gnosriki must once more alter irs meaning and be equivalent to the knowledge of how tO transmit knowledge; and if they are to be understood as exer<:ising tpittt.ktiki, ~itJik tiki must mean the art of t:mnsmitcing orders and noc, as we were led to believe, the knowledge of what ordm are to be given. The Srranger's divisions can be saved if the herald's an is the comprehensive characteristic of ~ittt.ktiki and aur~itahiki is irs precise sense. The apparent cut of a single class intO two is in l2a me articulation of a subset wirhin tl larger class. This roo is a diairesis. Autepimlttikl and rpittt.ktiki are not rdated li ke m.is•plr•lcli U
bur like m.is-
~ •pl raktlltl •
kl rt~Trlki
The Stranger is peeling away outer coverings of me pim politiki; he is not, as he keeps on insisting he is, mettJtomei.' The soothsayer, moreover, whom the Stranger assigns to kirukiki and hence denies is a possible rival co the statesman. turns out to be hisrorically
Tht Plao of Pl•tO's
StatamJUJ
the lirsr claimant along with rhe priesr ro kingship afier the god has aban· doned the world (29oc3~8). In order ro ser aside soothsayers and prie.srs, the Stranger rakrs ;dvanrage of the vestigial traces of the priest-king in Athens and elsewhere, but he does nor justify his dismissal of them before the bar of reason. A theoretical diairttis resrs on the mysterious withdrawal over time of rhe sacred from pol.itical life. The withdrawal. however, is not complete. Socrates just met yesterday with the basilms lll"
lf9
)6o
Clupter Sevenreen nor the Statesman gives o.rden for the generation of cnsouled beings. Even if the s=man arranges fo.r rhe proper marriages between IUldnioi and siiphrone families (}tOC5-JII32.), his arroogemeru cannot mat.ch the supervision a master builder ct<ercises in the uoction of a house or temple. The king hllS a knowledge assigned him tlr.u possesses iu power m roit r.Oiois ltai prti auta tauta (a6rd!}; but this vague phrasing does not fit what presumably esablished h2lf of the class of autepimlttilti in the first place. Indeed, the tais at a61c1 (ttJ d' t!pi tais Mn nnpJJitahiltl.' He thus calls artenrion to the ordering involved in the giving of ordea. Epitalttilti is as much the science of ordering as it is rhe science of ordaining. Autepitalttikicould rhen be an essential pan of gnii.rri.k<--me disuibucion, on one's own, of mings into their proper class. The Stnnger, nne might beljeve, is not very good at such ordering; but there is order and order, and we might not yet be in a posicion ro judge which is which. The double sense of epirattein. which embraces both ptJlitiki and the Srrangc.r's discovery of p111itiki, seems at any rare to be conoea:ed with me issue of the apparent defectiveness in the proportions of rhe Stittemi4TI and to hint at rhelie in whose perspeaive ics proportions might turn our right. If in jUSt the way in which epiraktilti has a double sense, everything the Statesman knows and practices is the same and not rhe same as everything rhe Stronger knows and practices in determining what the statesman knows and praaices, the Stamman, it seems, must be out of joint, and the ugly the necessary byproduct of rhe superimposition of order on order.
The Plan of Plaro's S14ttsm.m
The Stranger's way of splitting the animal pan of epicactics is inadequate. He opposes the grooming of individuals ro the feeding of herds; but such an opposition lers slip our of sigbr the science of mating. though his own scheme requires him to make ir cemral (v. 26IdJ). This is the beginning of the errors the Stran~r acknowledges and goes to such lengths to corrttr; whether he succeeds or the proj= was Sawed from the stan cannot yet be known; but it is remarkable that at the point a.t which the royal an is assigned to the collective c:xdusivdy, the Srra.nger lea young Socrates make a division on his own only to have to exercise something like the an of statesmanship in humbling young Socrates and humiliaring man in order ro restore his authority over the divisions. The Sttanger S«ms to unleash young Socrates for the sake of reining him in all the tighter. Behind the cut berwecn herd and individual was the assumption that all herds were tame and domesticated (1.64<1•-3); and the Strao~r arranges for Soc·rates to see it by the confinement of humans and pig in the same class and by knocking the manly pride ouY of young Socrares. The actual tempering of young Socrates is imaged in the argument's discovery that man i.n th.e herd is either a two-footed pig or a plucked chicken. The barnyard section of the Stamman is a parody of the kind of mythology the Stranger says the statesman needs to suppon his rule (3o4ao-d2). Irs pseudo-rationality, which makes it hover between the strict distinction between parr and kind and the opi.nions the many would need tO be persuaded of, illustrates bow irrdNant the supposed disrinctive.ness of human reason is to the question of rule_ 4 Young Socrates' error does not consist in promoting mao aY the expense of the other animals but in bdieving that a division among the kinds of herd animals was the next step. The Stranger's introduction of tmpmeha misled young Socrates. This implied. be thought, that pnlitilti itsdf had already been fully determin.ed, and that all tbar remained was to designate man as the animal it rules. Young Socrates believed that there was nothing special about the science involved in epitalttilti. His f.lilure to see any need to account for the manner of political reason led him to pick our reason (phronbis) as the characteristic of the Icing's subjeers. Tbey arc as rational as be and this distinguishes the.m from all other animals. There rums our to be something to his rash association of the ruled with the ruler (cf. 174ct-4); but thete is a disproportion between the manner in which he arrives at man and the trait be ascribes tacitly to men. The manliness (andrtU.) of young Socrates is hardly the same as prudence; so that which makes him anticipate the goal of their inquiry, and which etymologically belongs to only half the human race, d.oes not show up in
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his selection of human bcinj9. His Datur~ a.• a maD (a,ir) srands aparr from che nature of man {amhropos). lf ne nad anended ro his own nature in his answer, he would have said andres (ef. Chamudes t6od8- es). Andm would nave been a not-unim:eresting an~r. for it would have corresponded to ch.e common notion chat che city is of men, and women and children belong to a subpolitical lc:vel of che city. Young Socrates could hardly know that che Stranger is going ro propose che interwea,·ing of manly wirh moderare narures. Such an interweaving seems to go some way coward settling che issue of parr and kind. lr suggests chat male and female, which the Stranger will say would be a more "eidetic" division :unong animals (262e5), have their exccllen.c e in mzdreia and sophrosu11i respectively, and that at least polirically th= vitrues are the hignest the political herd can go in approaching dte reason of che politikos. If we a.t tend to the Stranger's implicit criricism of young Socrares, which entails che rule that no diaemiJ is robe made char does nor fully incorporate in ch.e tiiaeresis thar which initiated and Jed co rhe diatmiJ, rhen rhe argumenr of che StatestnfJ11 can be stated as follows: The difference between whar rhe Srranger does and whar rhe Statesman can do defines entirely che an of staresmanship (cf. 3ucs). It would nea:ssarily follow from this ru1e that that difference can only be disdosed by a constant attempt on the Stranger's pan co eliminate rhe difference. Failure and error belong of necessity ro rhe way of the discovery of polihkt if failure and error are not co be the statesman's lot. The flrsr sign of ch.e difference is the Stranger's admission char meros in irs nonidenricy with titiqs characterizes cvety known political communiry, and a c:iry of men, with no exdusive designa.rion for themselves. so that no one is a stranger to them, is impossible (262e6-263a1). However tJXmos rhe Stranger may be, he is Still a stranger in Athens (Sophi.sr 1.17e6-7). The Stranger's objea.ion co the sepa.r ation of men from beasts, as if this could nor be done by rhem in speech before politikt bad done it in deed, seems ro have less ro do wirh rhe definicion of politiki than with the rwo lessons he c:m delive.r ro young Socrates. One lesson is a sobering (sophronismos) of young Socrates roward his own pretensions in particular and those of men in general; the other lesson is an incomplete instruction in rhe necessiry for a kind of sobriecy in diakcrics. For the second rime we are faced with a pun that repeats on a deeper level the double sense of
The Plan of Plato's Stattsman
be the necessary condition for philosOphy; but such a connection hardly warrants the collapse they have undergone in this passage, especially since the Stranger's cuts through the middle get to man in an arbitrary manner. He himself admits that whether they take the longer or shorter route is a matter of indifference (1.65a1-6). If, however, we consider that the Stranger is not objecting to young Socrates' isolation of man but to the concealed negation in theria, which means no more than "not men," then the Stranger is demanding a unification of all nonhuman animals in posi~ tive terms. His own determination of man, once there is a shorcer or longer way, is almost entirely negative: man on the longer way is akerOs (kolobos), amiges, and finally alogos, since he is the square of the irrational root of two, and on the shorter way he is psilos. The domestication of man is achieved by turning the rabies on young Socrates' negative determination of beasts. Man is "not beast." He is the other. The incorporation of thateron into the very constitution of man sobers man and makes him recognize the other as the other of the other (Sophist 255d6-7). Man thus becomes civilized and transcends the enmity of"us" against ''them," which for the Athenians and others takes the form of"Greeks" and "barbarians." The evenhandedness of thateron, we now see, was also absent in the Stranger's very first diaeresis. Arithmitikiwas psili tOn praxe6n (158d5); it was feeding off the very praktiki the Stranger was desperately trying to keep politikl away from. The Stranger himself had srarted out on the wrong foot. Young Socrates' error was a consequence of following his lead. The Stranger failed to get their soul to understand all the sciences as being of rwo eidi (258q). The Stranger began the barnyard section with a reminder of the proverbial warning-the faster the slower (speudi bradeOs)-which young Socrates had just failed to heed. A theoretical procedure is put in real time and measured against the shorter time ir would have taken had young Socrates given the right answer. It is not dear what the right answer should have been; it is not dear whether there was a right answer, or at least an answer that would have appreciably shortened the time. Young Socrates seems to be grateful for the delay (kai kalos ge, ii xene, pepoilke, 164b5); and he later asks for both the longer and shorter ways of division despite the time that they add (265a7-8). We are no doubt being prepared for the discussion of the measure of the mean; bur in the present context the issue of length assumes a more concrete sense. & soon ·as land animals are separated off from birds and fishes. the Stranger says he notices two roads stretched out toward the goal their logos has set out for (hiirmeken); and he says it is possible to travel (poreuthenai) on either one they wish
363
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Chaprer Scvemern (265ru-6). Young Socrates' choice of both ways will cause them no trouble, the Stranger says, for they are neither at rhe beginning nor at the middle of their journey (kat' archas kai mesousin {himin} tis poreias), where it would have been difficult tP comply with his request. The Stranger rhen proposes that they go (iOmen) on the longer road first, since "we shall travel more easily on ir while we are fresher (265b5-6)." Suddenly, the fork in the road is real, and they are obliged, once they are in real tlme, ro calculate their strength in corporea\ terms. The Stranger is intent on galvanizing back into life the original meaning of methodos, partly no doubt ro blur the difference between the long time it took ro domesticate humans and his own deliberate slowing down of young Socrates' pace; bur it is also due in parr to the need to arrange for his pun, as if the slowness of rhe pig explained why rhe pig (hus) came lasr (/Jtistata) in the divisions (266c8). The Stranger, moreover, in mapping his methodos onto the peza he is classifying, is able to enlist young Socrates and appeal to his geometrical knowledge for the last cut (266a6-b9). Once they have isolated the hornless and nonmixing herd-animal class and set aside dogs as nor worth counting, the Stranger proposes ro cur the class by rhe diameter and the diameter of the diameter. ''The nature (phusis)," he says, ''which the race of us human beings possesses, is naturally geared ro walking (poreia) in no other way than as the diameter two foot in power is (hi diametros hi dunamei diports)." We are to imagine, it seems, our two legs as rhe sides of an equilateral right triangle-
,Q ............
····'
and the square on the hypotenuse makes us rvvo feet in power. The action involved in the mathematicians' squaring (tetragOnizein) has restored rhe original meanings to their other borrowings (drmamis and dipous), so that man now moves on two feet because mathematics has recovered human rationality in a construction. 5 Metaphorical extensions of language are reliteralized in order to put man in his place and civilize him in a wholly rational manner. Man is humiliated and rationalized simultaneously. The shadowing of politiki in the Stranger's way of discovering politiki has led
The Plan of Plato's Statm&111
ro a coincidence between them that could only be justified if there wue literally a reversal of rime, and mpow and dunami.t had at the start aclusivdy mathematical meanings and their apparently original meanings wue a derivative phenoro.enon. Indeed, the Stranger's first set of divisions is corrected through a myth whose most original feature is the peri.o dic reversal of rime. Tbe myth the Stranger cells supportS in retroSpect what he has just done. The universe, he will say, goes on the smallest foot (27oa8). This foot is the imaginary axis around which the universe revolves. If th.e figurative could be reute.rali2ed, then, rhe Stranger implies, roatheroarical physics would be possible. His own contribution to that end is now before us. Whether we laugh or nor depends on whethe.r we look to its misuse of reason or irs rational bearing of man. The Stranger's dishonoring of man through the indifference of his way to questions of honor bas disparaged the kin.g as well, who finds h imself running alongside his herd and keeping pace with the swineherd, "the best exercised in lead ing the easy life" (266d1-2). We seem to be asked tO put together two passages in the Odyssty, one in which Circe transforms half of Odysseus's men into swine, "bw their mind was intact as before" (10.240};6 and the other in which Eu11l2eus the swinchc:cd forms an alliance with Odysseus againSt the suitors and receives in recompense his &eedom, a wife, a house next ro Odysseus's: be will be the comrade and brother of Telernachus (2t.21J-t6). The ra.d.ical democrariration of h haca, Eumaeus's new staiUS intplies, has irs dark side: Eumaeus chops up his enemy, the goatherd Melantheus, and feeds him ro the household d~ (22,474- 477). Man suipped of his pride rakes a terrible vengeance. Dogs, which in the Rqmblic were the models for the guardians-they were co be educated to conuol their canine savagery-have been canceled in the Stranger's divisions as nor to be count~d among herd animals. The elimination of any intermediate ci3Sli between the ruler and the ruled seems co force tbe ruler ro become one with the ruled. Differences have succumbed to tbe indifference of the Suanger's method. Irs rurhlessness has made roan ~itber roo easygoing or too ruthless. Hw. the Greek word for "pig," designates indiffe~end)• rhe shaggy wild boar and the smoothskinned rame. The shorter altern:uive to man as a rwofooted pig seems to anticipate the myth, wh.i.ch says tba.t in
J6s
)66
Chap<er Sevenreen
anticipation, however, explains neither why rhe Stranger complies with young Socrates' request for both ways nor why the shorter way contributes co our understanding. The class of terremial herd animals is co be distinguished betw«:n bipeds and quadrupeds; bipeds are to be cut by the differentiae of feathered and featherless; and then, the Stranger says, one must brin.g the politikos and basilikos as if he were a charioteer and set him in the art of hwnan herding (anrhr6po1Wmiki}, an.d hand the reins of the city over to him as if they were his own (oikaa) and this science were his (266e4-u).7 We are askd to picture the statesman as the guide of rhe fallen soul, which, according to Socrates' myth in the Phaedru.s, loses its wings and assumes a body after it has seen the hyperuranian beings. Political man, rhe Stranger implies, is unerotic man, for eros is the only human experience that mimics the •=nr of soul. Whereas man cannot regret his nor being as "rarion.:t.l" as rhe fourfooted pig. he is filled with longing for the wings of his congeners. The Srrangcr bad allowed th.e rc co be a double differentia of the hornless herd, either of which would distinguish man, schisto" or amign (amnlrron), "with split foot" or "iocapable of mating with another kind" (26sd9-ey) .The horse and the ass were thus separated from man. Man's exclusiveness was origin:t.lly not sexual; iT referred to the Greek mistake of lumping together immiscible (am~tikra) uibes under th.e rubric " barbarian" {262.<4). 8 One wonders whether there is a connection between the. oarur:t.l inability of man ro mix wim another kind and rhe political impossibility that meros and eidoscould ever coincide. Whatever is man's own by nature is never man's own by law. The politically relevant "one's own" always srands between them. Socrates had beautifully expressed this first of political facts by denying in a myth thar the goddess of the heanb H estia bad ever seen the hyperu.raoian beings (PhMdru.s 2.4731-2). For the Stranger, however, Hesria is the only god. His myth deni~:& that Zeus and the Olympian gods are anything more than oam~ for the absence of the gods. "Zeus" is a concealed negative; it means ~not god." H eroes are not allowed in the Stranger's classification, for there is no eros (Cratylus 398c6--e3; cf. Apology ofSiXTa/<1 17<4-eJ). To the course of the Stranger's discussion, two considerations become more and more prominent: the king as shepherd (poimm) and his rule as a form of graring (nemnn). In the case of nm~nn, another deep puo is involved, for rhe rejection in the fmr part of the dialogue of the sb.e phetd as a paradigm for the statesman is matched io the Sttond part by the rejection of law (nomo$}. The link between herding and law is made at 295e6 {hoposai (ag~lai) !tara polin m heltasrais nom~onllli !tata tou.s ton
The Pbn of Pbto's SwtmMn
grqpsonroun nq1111Jus)}, but there is throughout the dialogue a hidden tefleaion on the historical changes in political life that could possibly lie behind the common root of"law" and "herding" and the almost complete dissolution of tb.eir connection in contemporary linguistic experieoce. This hinorical dimension io the St~ttemutn argument is alU> present in th.e discussion of the king as shepherd. Although "Rock" (pqimrli} occurs before the myth (z68bs), "shepherd" (pqimin) is only after it (175a:J. bs). when the Stranger criticizes himself on iiS basis for speaking of the shepherd of the human herd ar the rime of the contrary revolution though he had been asked for the king and statesman of the present revolution and gmais. The notion of the king as shepherd of his people {pqimmt1 /Mn) is almost confined to the Homeric epics; indeed, in the Odymy, it is applied to the last representlltives of the former generation (Agamemnon, Menelaus, Nestor, and even Aegisthus}; Menror, when he is Athena in disguise, gets the epithet (2.4-456); likewise Odysseus and Laenes when Athena has enhanced them (18.70, 24-368); and Homer speaks thus of Odysseus aft-er uus has just thundered in response to his prayers and a loyal servant echoes his wish (20.106). The shepherd-king is not common in tragedy (v. Euripides Supplicn 191); while in Plato, Socrares likens the guanfuns to shepherds and the auxilia.ries to d.ogs (&pub& 44ods-6), and in the Minas he again links law and shepherd and cites the Homeric phrase poimnuz /Mn (3ua; cf. Aristotle Nicqmackan Ethics u6Iaro-rs). Everyone is more or less aware, then, of the antiquiry of the notion a.n d the archaic or even primitive condition it represents. lts slow emergence from behind the apparently neutral designation of man as a he.r d animal concealed for a while that at least from the rime of the introduction of th.e herd the paradigm of the shepherd was silently determining the under· standing of statesmanship. The Stranger's myth is primarily designed 10 expose the realiry presupposed in his theo.rerical enterprise. The elimination of the difference between household and ciry, which looked like a case of scientific abstraction in order to be as general. as possible. proves to have held in fact wben there was rule without either family or regime (27Je8-27z.ar). ln a rime anteda.t ing the so-called age of uus, a god was a shepherd of men, and his rule was indistinguishable from the divine pasturing of other kinds of Bocks. The Homeric metaphor poimma laon was once lire.raUy true (c£ &publi< )82CJo-dJ). Then man was only a herd animal, and rhe absence of sexual generation did not allow mating by rwos ro be an awkwardness for the Stranger's divisions. Thar schistan was an alternative ro 11miges in cutting the hornless class is no longer without meaning: amiges holds now
s
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Chapter Seventeen
and schiston held then under the sway of divine providence. All animals were then tame) and the Stranger had made no mistake in assuming that they were (263e6-264>3· 2?lel). The myth vindicates young Socrates as well. for though it seems that .fhirion was then inapplicable to any animal, still, if his real mistake was rO disregard the manner of rule,.it now turns
our that once the rulers are gods nothing more really does need to be said. Given the self.evident superiority of the gods, perfect order follows at once without their giving any orders (c[ 30Id8-e4). The Stranger's myth accomplishes several things at once. Prospectively, it follows up his negative determinacion of man in the diaeresis with a negative determination of the politikos himself: the god who exemplifies the ruler as shepherd is e'Verything the statesman is not. Retrospectively. the myth describes the conditions that must obtain if the Stranger is to justify the divisions he has already made: the soochsayers and the priests, whom the diaeresis of epitaktike "rationally" disposed of, reaUy cease to be troublesome through the myth's dc::claration chat they arealways impostors. Even the distinction between gnOstike and praktiki, which seemed as if it could not be maintained for either mathematics or the Stranger's own theoretical praxis, is grounded in the cwo phases of divine activicy. God either contemplates or rules; he never mixes those two activi~ ties, for when he lets go of the world, he retires to a lookout (ptriOpi}, and when he is in charge, he must have his hands constantly on the controls just as he did when he made the world in Lhe first place. It is, then, the strictness with which the myth keeps ro the drherl or character of rhe divisions chat distinguishes the myth from the dialogue it rectifies. Myth as myth does not•allow for the intrusion of dialogic action to contaminate the clarity of the argument of a dialogue. Myth transforms dialogue into treatise, for its narrative form lets it have only a single voice.9 This simplic~ iry of myth would help ro explain why the Stranger cannot figure out whether men of the golden age philosophized-whether, that is, in con~ versing wich themselves and other animals, they reflected on how their own doing was bound up with the gathering of imelligence from others. The form of che myth, then, endorses che split between gnOstike and prak~ tike that the god enacts. The unphilosophic god necessarily appears in a story in which philosophy cannot be detected. He presides over a world where eros, which in the ordinary sense has vanished, is not dearly present in its true sense. The Stranger extracts two lessons out of the myrh. They had aimed too high and too low. The statesman they were ati:er could neither emulate rhe god who truly is a shepherd nor compere with the various artisans
The Plan of Pbro's Sl4tmnlm
who severally supply by an all that once came spontaneously for men. The Strmger does not explain why the or~nization of the true city, as Socrates calls it (&public 372e6), could not be the unattainable ideal of the statesman. The true city had no ruler, but sttms obviously enough in neW of one, and the statesman should be perf= fOr the job. After all. th.e paradigm of weaving seems to be rhe tl':lru!ation inside the city of the shephe.r d who wanders ourside. By keeping ro the same animal presented under rwo different aspects, the Strange~ lw us see that the paradigmshift he is proposing reflects a historical shift from the apoliti.cal pastoral life to the ci.ty of specialization. The m)otb bad been given io order to show what would have ro bold in oroer fOr the metaphor of shepherd to be true; an.d the Srranger had shown that its truth is embodied in myth and cannot be a guide tO the age of Zeus. The Stranger has not explained in general why the poetry lingers after the reality is gone, and in particular why he has made you11g Socrates experience a hopeless nostalgia. The Stranger never repudiates fully the first set of divisions; he says that it served to separate the Statesman from his congeners, or more =cdy his fellow pasturcrs (sunnomoi) , before he was tO be separated from his coefficientS, the causes and co-causes of his rule (287b4~). Just as the weaver emerges from an elaborate dichotomy, so the Statesman needed the first argument and myth to stand clear of everyone else who is connected with knowledge and rule. But this will not do. The human shephe.rd fulfills a variety of tasks for his flock without any competition from rival claimantS precisely because he bas no specialized knowledge of midwifery. medicine, or music (268as-b6). The comprehc.nsive.ness of the shepherd's control stands over againSt the ever-diminishing range of each an as it becomes more refined, which needs accordingly to be set within the city in order for exchange to occur and its contribution be put together with those of othen. Despite, however, the inappropriateness of th.e shepherd {nomeus} as the para· digma.ric ruler, the Stranger suggestS tha.t he survives within the city in the fOrm of law (wmoJ}. Law is the trace of the unsci.entific and prepolitical past with which the city of ans can never dispense. Even the young Socrates, who as a mathematician believes that life without the artS is not wonh living (299C5-9), draws the line at ruling without laws (?.83e6-7). "Lawless" (~tnomtJt) does not look like "beast" aod "barbarian" with their concealed negatives, but it roo fails to distinguish between the arbitrariness of lawless rule and unlawful prudence. The city put$ together two immi.~ ble kinds in the label ··lawless. • It is as unavoidable for rhe city robe blind to that immiscibility as it is good for the city to be so. The failure of the
J69
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Chapter Seventeen
Stranger's lim p1mdigm ro rev~ the rrue srarrsman is the failure of che city to accept him.' 0 lf the Jim paradigm lingers on in rhe later argument, it is due ro the lesson it reaches about the diJierence between the Stranger's way and the way of the city. The need for an~ patadigm for rhe sraresman's art is r<:aliz.ed along with a general discussion of the narure of paradigms. As young Socrares is about ro enter the city of knowledges, he is made aware of how knowledge is acquired. The Stranger has him now revert to childhood, nor to recall the myths he was cold, but ro reftea on the leners he was raught (268e4- 6, 277e3). Young Socrates is to recapitulate in remembering his own past what happened in general when men abandoned the pastoral life for cities. This recapitulation lets us see that the Stranger's remark"Each of us probably, in knowing everything as in a dream, is once more ignoranr of everything as in reality" (:z.77d2--4) 11 -applies to rhe difierence betwttn their following unconsciously the paradigm of the shepherd and the Stranger's proposal tO articulate a paradigm Ji.t$t and then march it up with the art of StAtesmanship. They bad in fact jusc done rhe reverse. Politiki had been discovemi Jir:sr and then the mt'th had presenred the paradigm upon which .it had been based. This sequence forced the sratt:$· man to be exacr.ly the same as the divine shepherd if he were to be a ruler ac all. There were no functional analogies between shepherd and stacesman . "Shepherd," one could say, was a metaphor thar could nor be transformed into a simile. "Weavt!r" is a simile thac resists transformation into mecaphor. Weaver and sraresman link up rogerhei rhrough the intermediaries diakritikl and sunltrmlti, which cover both all of pralttiki and gtt~stiki without any confusion between them. "Shepherd,• on the other hand, overwhelms the statesman: and nothing of a higher generaliry rhan either, in joining them, keeps them apan. The most remarkable consequence of the paradigm-shift from the prepoliri~ shephero to the nrbani2ed weaver is that wool manufacture in general and weaving in particular illusrrare in che ways in which they handle thread and doth the very opaarions of dialectics irself. Philosophy in its peculiarly Socr:nic sense comes co light in che lengrhy analysis of weaving. Thar analysis is in three phases: L) the congeners o f weaving; ~) irs causes and co-causes; 3) the diacritieal and syncritical processes in woolworking. Although the third phase belon~ ro rhe second, no anempt is made to assign diakritilti and runkritilti to causality. Dialtritiki and srmkritilti show up i.n the actions of carder, spinner, and weaver, bur they are different &om the classifica.tion of coefficients inco causes and co-causes. The lengrhy accounr of weaving discloses ch.e tropos of weaving. and tropos becomes the common link betwttn weaving and ruling, on rhe one hand,
The Plan of Plato's Statemkln and ruling and philosophy, on the other, The firs< accoum of politiki lacked an account of its tropos, and it seemed that no division could possibly supply what was missing. Young Socrates' mistake of dividing rnen from beasts looked like a mis
J71
Chapter Seventeen through the rcdete.rminalion ofg.Wttiki and pruriki as the rwofold science of measure. Politilti, then, exhibits what can only be called the indere.rminate dyad of eidetic analysis." Ir assumed this structure through irs deidealization: only a god could be alte.rnaxely either nothing but fllOttikos or nothing but prahi.ltos. Man had to settle for a mixed praxis. This praxis was grounded in sunluiliki and dialuitiltt, which was in turn nothing but the dialogic acrion of epitattein thar diverged in the original divisions of gnostiki from the autepitaltJiki of the divine shepherd. Man is dunamei dipDU!: only potenriaUy tadonal. The Scr:mger brings rogether the use of dialtrisis and fllTikrisiJ with the discovery of the rwo sciences of measure in the following manner: His criticism of the Pythagoceans for their f.illure to make the proper divisions in mrtririki launch~ him lmo a general proposal of bow eidetic analysis is to be carried. out. "Whenever one first is aware of the community of the many, one should not stand back until one sees all the differences in it that are situated in kinds (ti&}: and. in rurn, in the p~nce of the omnifArious dissimi.lari:ties, whenever they are seen in multitudes, one must not be able. co be abashed (dus6poumenon) before them and stop until one confines all the kindred within a single similarity and comprehends it with the being of a certain genus" (z85a7-b6). Eidetic analysis bas co persist in dividing against the ap~ance of uniry and not be ashamed in the presence of a manifold of unlikenesses ro seek the unde.rlying unity. The first instance of a deceptive uniry is presented by the law, which necessarily must homo.g eniu: the manifold of differem human natu= and actions (294a1o-cy). To smash the law is ro uncove.r a sea of dissimilarities, which in rurn the dialecridan muse rry co unifY. Apparently, the uniry musr elude him; the best he can do is ro discove.r the twa kinds into which the manifold is divisible. These rwo kinds, which proverbially for us are rep~n:red by "He who hesirares is lose" and "Look before you leap," and in Greek are compressed into one-speudr bradeos--are rdlecred in the disjunction within another apparent uniry, virtue. Vinue divid~ into courage and moderation, which have their natural base in rhe opposition, within rhe arithmetic measure. of relative motion, time. and power; hut at the same time rhose virtues manifest rhe measure of the mean. The unity of moral virtue, which dissolves inro a pair of conrraries, r«ombin~ inro one as rhe phro11isis of the measure of the mean that fuUy acknowledges the infinire divmiry the law denies. Socrares had set the problem the Stranger was r.o solve.. His own suggestion was that the sophist and the searesman were each a phantasma of the true philosopher. The Sttanger Sttmed co disagree, ar least ar the start, with chis suggestion; in saying that the sophist and rbe statesman were
The Plan of Plato's St4tlsman
373
three, he implied that they were all equally real, could he understood apart from one another (cf. Sophist 25Jc6-9), and the philosopher was certainly not the reality of which the other rwo were the images. In che course of the Sophist, however, the Stranger was forced to face the problem of image, and he discovered he did not know ro which of the two arts that handled images sophistry belonged. He called one art eikastik<. the other phantastike. Eikastike was an an designed w give back i.n an image the same proportions as the original had, and phantastiki made an image in the propordons it would need if it were robe seen as beautiful from a cenain perspective. This distinction had to be applied to the Sophist and every ocher Platonic dialogue. Were they eikones or phantasmata? If they were phantasmata, what were their several eikones, and what proporrion did they have? According ro the Phaedrus, the ~ikon behind every dialogue was the black horse of Socrates, and the phantasma was the whire horse, of which Phaedrus was one. The white horse was the cruch of the Olympian gods. In the Statesman, whose action is identical with irs argument, there is no white h·orse. The Stranger discovers to his surprise char the greatest sophists of the sophists are the spurious rivals of the statesman (303b8-q). This discovery could not have been a surprise if the Sophist had already discovered this. Young Socrates' reply seems ro suggest rhat rhe Stranger's discovery requires a complete turnabout of rhe Sophist if the polidchns are really the sophists: kinduneuei touto eis tous politikous legomenous periestraphthai to rhima orthotata. If, rhen, rhe Statesman•. in defining the statesman, defines the sophist as well, the Sophist must be rhe phantasma of the eikOn the Statesman is. The disproportions of the Statesman are thus due to irs being the only Platonic dialogue in which we are led into rhe workshop where dialogues ace constructed. We see a dialogue put together withour seeing the dialogue after ir has been put in its proper place for viewing. What, then, js its proper place where the eikiin it is will become a phantasma? The Stranger solved the problem of the sophist by getting Theaetetus ro agree that rhe god made everything. The Stranger discovers the statesman once he leaves as a myth the demiurgic god and assumes there is no Zeus. In rhe political sense, the Statesman is the only atheistic dialogue. It is not beautiful.
-. Notes t.
Thac kririkl is the same as gnOstikl is shown by the Stranger's larer referring
w politikl as kritiki even though it should be that part of gnrJstiki politikl is not (292b9-w).
;7~
Chapter Se-•ent
J. The pun se<ms to explain why the Sttanger USC$ epitalttilti rather chan any d~rivarive from prosrartein. There are seventeen instanttS of ~pitnttein and cog· nares befor< the myth and only 6ve afterward; but there arc four instances of prosmt
hearsay and
S. l n the Th<MYtus, Theaererus rold Socrarc:s how he and young Socrates had d=i6ed the roots of numbc:ts (l47d3- t4Bb2). Their procedure involved the use of figures as images so chat the square roots of 4o 9, t6, etc. were represented as the sides of squares, and 2 , ;. ;, etc. were represented as rc:<.-cangles and their square rooa as the sides of squares whose areas were equal to those of the r90"9- •3; c£ Herodotus 1.1]2.. >~;), married a girl
The Pbn of Plato's St41mtr4n from Cyrtnt, with whom, however, he could nor h2vc inttrCOUlSC be!Or:e she hod prayed to Aphrodite (2.181.2- f ).
9- In the Criti4s. Criri.u breaks off his ruamri~ at the very moment he is going to quote Zeus. From this point of view, Critias conforms and Timaeus fails co confonn with Socr.ues' requirements for poetry in the &public. to. There are two curious allusions to the prew>t in the Stranger's revision of the final aooount. He speaks of those who are now statesmen (rqw n~.rhade "'"' polililtous, 275CJ -1), and of his comprehending by means of the santc differ· mti2e tm 4t&zioltoml~ tm te nun /tal tin tpi Krorrou basikian (176:1.6-7). W e cannot hdp buc think of Soc:n
o. Whereas hoion tmar can be paralleled in Plato (Sophist 16609, Pamrmitks t64d1, Symposium 17SCJ, Mtno Sscy), thtre is no othu =mple whete huj>IU is qualified with hosper or the like. If we ra.ke the qu:Uilicarion stticcly, ic is not the case thar we are ignoranr of everything hupar, only in a sense are .,.., so ignoranr: the Strange.r pe.rhaps refen 11..
10
the knowledge of ignorance.
A sign of this is the mysterious he*<Jusion at 1]6eo applied to politiU as
opposed to the tyrant. The tyrant rules over hoi bWoi as the statesman over hoi heltflUSioi, but the voluntaty natur< of his art cannot he in opposition tO cbc rduaanc:e of the tyrant. The distinction. ofcourse, between volunrary and forced is Iacer admiued to be inapplieahle 10 $cicnri6c rule (196<:a.-ds).
13. The Stranger begins with cbaraaerizing rwo diffuent measwes; after an aUusion to the digression on nonheing in the S
l7S
E I G
E E N
On the Timaeus
I submitted a pape~ to Leo Strauss on Timaeus's science fiction, he wrote back to say that Plato's TimaeuJ for him ba.d always been sealed with f seals, but he thought he saw rwo rhings clearly: Tirnaeus's account of the human soul is in agreemeot with Socrates' impreci~ and political understanding of rhe soul in the Rpublic, and Timaeus's denial of ms to the original coostirurion of man is a necessary consequence of rhar agreement. He might have: added as wdl that the abstraction from rbc body, which he discerned ro be rhe ne=ry trace of nonbeing in Socrates' anatomy of political idealism , has iu counrerpan in Timaeus's own piOcedure, whereby he begins, mistakenly as he says, with visible and rang.ble body, only ro end up. after he has pur soul 6csr, with the 6ve Platonic solids. which are n.eithc:r visible oor rang.blc:, in order ro account for the physics of change. ln what follows, I wish to look ar rbe connections between rhe Timturw and the &public insof.u as Strauss's interpretation of rhe RqJublic gives one a way, nor ro pry opc:n the Tinuuus, bur ro decipher some of irs seals and read them as questions. Srrauss observed tbat rhe link between rhe i mranJS and the &public seems ro involve the following proportion: As Socrares presems the besr ciry in speech, and Timaeus the best cosmos in speech, so Cririas has ro ser Socrares' ciry in motion, giving ira place and a rime, and Hermocratc:s was ro ser TLmaeus's cosmos in motion and thereby replace Timaeus's likdy story with rhe rrue cosmology. Thar Hermocrates has a rask assigned to him, bur no inkling is given of what ir is, suggests that Plato thought there rould nor be a complete rosmology, and unlike rhe missing PhilosoTH I R TV YEARS A GO, WHEN
J76
On the Ti11UWIS
phtr, which fails to complete the series
Thra~tauJ.
Sophist. Statemum, bur which one can still figure out from the proper union of the Sophist and the Statmnan, the Hermocratts cannot be imagined from the two and a half pieces Plato bas lefr us. A sign of cosmology's impossibility is th.is: although Plato bas hundreds of words with the suffix -iltos, which in the neuter plural can designate a fidd of inquiry and in the feminine singular an art or science, neither ta phusika nor phusilti appears in Plato. Arisrode is the first to coin these words, for be believes the principles of bodies in motion can be separated, at least in part, from the principles of intelligible beings. Plato's caution seems to be based on the punle mathematical physics bas at irs core. Aristode consisrendy does nor let mathematics have a sovereign place in his physics, and Timaeus expresses the punle in th.e phrase, "reason's persuasion of necessity." Th.is puzzle becomes most conspicuous in dementary thermodynamics, in which the noncausal account of mathematical statistics agrees pe&cdy with the causally bound motions of gas molecules. Plato's own way of expressing this is to have Socrates urge mathematical educa.tion as the unique way of ascent from the Cave, only to show that all of mathematics can be done comfortably in the Cave without even a glimpse of the sun, let alone of the idea of the good. The divided line is a spurious bridge between the image of the sun and the image of the Cave. The series Republic, Tima~. Critias seems ro be nor only incomplete bur spurious. Socrates narrates the Republic or Politria to some unknown auditors the day afrer it occurred; the Tinuuus happens one day afrer Socraces has feasted four men (Timaeus, Critias, Hermocrates, and an anonymous fourth) on an account of politria and irs best form. His summary seems to march Books 2-5 of the Republic, up to the point where Socrates inuoduced the philosopher-king; bur the time of the Tima~ is at the Panathenaia and that of the &public at the Bendideia, and these two ftstivals are eleven months apart. This temporal disparity appears to have a symbolic si.gnificance.' Whereas the revolutionary teaching of the Republic finds as irs proper occasion a novel celebrarion of a goddess who was the only foreign deity Athens cve.r accepted into itS sacred calendar, the city Socrates merely imagined rurns our to be, according to Critias, the city of Arhens long ago as Athena first founded ir. Socrates' city, whose pattern was laid up in heaven, was once reali2cd by a goddess whose chief chara.cterisrics were a love of war and a love of wisdom. She combines in herself what distinguishes Sparta from Ath.ens, and these two cities signifY in rum what Socrates' city in speech would have to unite. According to the principles of rationalization of myth that Critias lays down, Athena
l77
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Chapter Eighteen is nothing otber tbao Socrates' philosopher-kiog, and who in being female bur asexual comtS closen ro embodying cbe human being whom rbe gods according to Timaeus made first. Acbena's makeup, however, in agreein.g with the rhrust of Socrates' argument, reveals rbe spuriousness of Socrates' psychology, which requires char the guardians be as savage as dogs are to strangers and as philosophic as dogs are to friends. In solving, then, symholicaUy the relation between the divergent settings of the &f>Ublic and cb.e Tirmuus, we come across a deeper difficulty. What did Socrates intend by proposing a city in motion tbat by his own argumenr could nor possibly come to bel The complete exposure and utter explosion of polirical idealism, which scamps Strauss's inrerpre~tion of the &public with irs hallmvk. seems romake the cask of Socrates' hosts in the Timaeus futile if nor impossible. It is not rhar the impossible cannot be rhe premise of an action, as Strauss showed in his interpretation of Atisrophanes, btu that afrer the Republic cbe showing of irs impossibility in deed is superfluous. It thus seems that cbe temporal obsracle ro linking the &public and the Timaeus does have afrer all a symholic meaning. Ir tells us that they cannot be linked because the city in speech cannot be put in place and in time. For irs realization, tbat city requires not the cosmos we are acquainted with but a completely different o ne, in which Socrates couJd have educated the human beings Timaeus makes up and then passed them on to be.enrolled in Athens by Critias. The consisrency of the &public and the Tinuuus on this cenual point dispenses with the need for rhe Timtuus. Tbe barbarian country Socratts thought could have contained his ciry merely seems to be his hometown. It is really at home in an alien cosmos. Socrates' sumn1ary in the Timaew of the best ciry merely seems, once again, ro stop short of me philosopher-king. In concluding that marriages will be secretly ananged in order to couple the best men and women, he admiu that on occasion at leasr golden parentS will produce braun children, and iron parents a golden child at least as often. He thus admits that his city cannot maintain order and motion perfectly, and accordingly that the rulers must be able to discern natures across classlines and correct the faulrs in the sttucture for cbe sake of justice. These rulers must be the philosophers, who, as Strauss showed, were indispensable to rhe ciry even prior to the introduction of the principles of equaliry and communism. Socrates implies in any case that order and motion are potentially inconsistent, and if there is to be a cosmology, an argument has ro be given to show that either on a cosmic scale this difficulty does nor arise, or, jusr as in the. case of the city, order and motion must diverge. Timaeus begins as if h.e rhought that constant corrections of this divergence were unneces-
On chc Timams
,~~~
. '.t\'~
.a·4(..l8]
tjMJ 0
'
u to
379
sary-an implication thac lies just behind the myth of the Statesmanbut only because he began with body; as soon as he introduces soul, he grants a disorder in the cosmos that cannot be contained, as in Aristotle it is, within the sublunar sphere, but extends throughout the cosmos and spells of necessity the eventual disappearance of rhe cosmos. Timaeus separates his account of~ from his account o~ They differ from each othe:- as much as a"rrrtmetic differs from geometry, or the discrete from the continuous. Timaeus borrows this distinction in a Sense from Socrates' summary of the best city. Socrates' summary is in nine parts. The first four concern the division of natures, arts, and classes; the last four concern communism and generation. The central one describes the commtwized life of virtue the guardians lead. The word cypica! of the first part is "ro speak'' (legein}, that of the second part "to remember" (memnesthat). The second part deals with the transmission in time of the ordered structure of the city. We call for short the first parr of the summary an eidetic analysi.o;, rhe second a genetic analysis. Despite the need for Timaeus' s cosmology ro show the consistency of the eidetic analysis with the genetic, it does nor. His demiurge starts out as both maker and father, but Timaeus is forced ro admit their incohyence, which ultimately rests on his failure to solve the problem of time.~ dispute going back to antiquity, which ranged Aristotle and Plutarch over against most of the neo-Platonists, turned on whether Timaeus merely for the sake of instruction put the cosmos in time or intended for ir ro have both a beginning and, were it not for the demiurge, a narura1 end)His confession that he put body before soul, even though the demiurge did not, indicates that one cannot subtract time from his account. If the order of his presentation were not that of time, Timaeus could have argued that just as rhe parts of a machine can be made in any order prior to its assembly, so the parts of the cosmos have only an eidetic relation to one another, and rhe genetic does nor affect it. If we turn from Socrates' summary ro the Republic itself, we notice that the Republic too has an eidetic and genetic strain in it. Socrates proposes that they see the city coming into being and that they make the city in speech. The city they make is the best city in speech; the city they see becoming is the city to which they belong dialogically. I call it the dialogic city. The dialogic city is the only possible realization of the best city in speech. It is the city in which it is possible to ascend from the Cave, and thus realize $imuJtaneously the eidetic and genetic analyses: the speaking that belongs ro the eidetic and: the transmission that belongs to the genetic are nothing other than the duality of speech itself as discrimi-
\
380
Chapter fjghceen
nation and communication, or dialectics. Communism is mecdy the defective iosrirutionalizarion of dialectics. The. &public therefore has within itself the fulfillment of the project Socrates assigned ro his guesrs of rhe day before and his hosrs of roday. He has given them both a dry as lifeless as a painting and a city as alive as a city can be when a philosopher is in chaTgc and his fellow citizens are me combative Thrasymachus, the manly and erotic Glaucon, and the peaceable Adimanrus. Socrates and Thrasy· machus arc now friends. Prom this point of view, Socrates stops where he does in his summary because the rest is misunderstanding, and the mistake of Glaucon and Adimantus requires Socrates ro enchant them with the possibilicy of a knowledge as impossible as the best cicy irself, for they do not understand that If there is an education in philosophy beyond rh.e ir own education to philosophy, it consisr.s in the undemanding of their own education- No one can do that for them. It is not, then, the Athens of a remote past in whic:h the best cicy in speech is in motion, but the ciry within che city of contemporary Athens thar lasted for a day. The ephemeral of speech in action is the image of the erernal of thought. If the best cicy has already been cealized in motion, what exacdy does Socrates ocpcct of Timaeus and Critias? Critias, after all, does nor render what SocrateS said he himself was nor competent to do, the cicy at war, for be gives the conditioJU fot the coo:Bict between Athens and Adantis, bur rhe deeds and speeches of either city are missing. Socrates likens his own incompetence to that of poets, who are best at representing whatever their own upbringing was. Poets are rooted in the moralicy of their own time and place. Socrates implies that he wants prr impossibk a poet born and bred in the best city 10 be irs ce.lebrant. He wanes the Homer he censored in the second and third books of the &public ro sing once again of war, but he bas to be "reuoJired" into the mold of Socrates' imaginary ciry. Would th.is new Hamer be one of those who lived his life in rbe Cave, or would he have ascended and understOOd the lesson of the tenth book, that, as Strauss said, the poets whom Socrates critici%cs there are the poers he required for his own theology without justice and his own mythology without heroes? Socrates, then, seems ro put to his hoSIS a riddle: How are they or anyone else to supply this Homer? Critias's solution ;., ingenious: a descendant of old Adtens, who retained features of Athena's foundlin.gs, had some poetical ability, much political experience, and wandered as f.u as a sophist, 2 will come as close as possible to Socrates' req uesr. There ;., a sign that Critias intends to have Solon's story conform with Socrates' criteria for poetry in the !«public: Solon's account is solely in narrative, and at the very point 2.rus would have spoken direcdy, the
On th< Tim.uus
Critios stops. Nonimiruive poetry, howevc:r, cannot duplicate what Socrates did in the Rrpuh/U or Homer in me 1/iJJJi: to be all the voices and keep his own. Critias's solution, then, is a nolllitaner. He does not come to grips with Socrates' riddle. Socrates absmined from politics. He showed his justice: by minding his own bus.iness. His incompetence: therefore to describe his city at war is and is not paralld to the incompeten.ce be ascribes to the poets: they cannot slough off their breeding, he cannot give up philosophy. Political philosophy is not to be undemood as the same as the equal participation in politics and philosophy that Socrates ascribes to Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates. Political philosophy is the philosopher's ascent from, not his descent into, the Cave. The philosopher always looks back, he neve.r turns back. ro the Cave. Socrates contrasts the poets with the sophists. The poers sray pur, the sophisrs wander. The sophists are experienced in many beautiful speeches bur miss the mark when it com.es to the speeches and deeds of philosophers and politicians in wartime. The shape of Soo:ates' sentence makes it dear that speeches are not ro be assigned to philosophers and deeds to politicians.' Socrates asks whether rest and motion can be combined. He comes forward here as Plaro' s spokesman. The question he pose!$ is rhis. Thucydides managed ro narrate the speeches and deeds of the Peloponnesian War-the greatest motion-without once mentioning Socrates, and Plato managed to represent the speeches and deeds of Socmres-a Socrates always young and beautiful-without narrating the wanime sening of most of Socrares' philosophic life. Thucyrlides and Plato split between them a singl.e rime-frame, so that the reade.r of one could discern from a unique series of events whar holds forever as long as human narure remains the same, and the rea.de.r of the other could generaliu: about the necessary nature of philosophy from the most idiosyncratic of men, and rhey did so without either of them writing up the monster a political-philosophic history would be. Socrates asks, then, whether Plato was right ro give the true but secret history of Athem apart from its public history, and Thucydides in tum was right to ignore its private history, in which Socrates was hidden among the silem women of Athens. The rebarbariution of Greece: and the defeat of Athens were me conditions for the flight of Minerva's owl. If this is a necessity, what ;., its ground? Socrates' best city required, as St.rauss showed, that the needs of the soul be grafted perfectly onto the needs of the body, and Thueyrlides and Plato, in spliuing the.ir taSks, agreed that this condition cannot be met. Timaeus silently accepts their agreement. In purring rogethe.r body and soul in his cosmology, he comes up witb a cosmos in which he satisfies me conditions for Socrates'
381
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Ch•pcer Eighteen best city bur eliminates ar the wne rime the possibility of Socrates being in it. Timaeus, however, does not put body and soul together smoothly. The inconsistencies of his account, which go back to his failure to pur rime and space together cobu.endy, raise the qu esrion whether behind the so-called anthropic principle of contemporary cosmology there is the Socratic principle: what kind of cosmos must there be for Socrates to come ro be? Can a cosmology be d.evised in which Socrates is a possibility but nor a necessity? Socrates would be a necessi.ry if and only if his best city in speech were possible, bur iu impossibility seems ro entail that only the random of a certain kind could produce Socrates. Ir is a randomness that no one could either contrive or hope for. Ir is the random in the form of rhe teleology of evil. Socrates' best dry needed for irs realittrion rhe complete triumph of art: humans would have to be made from scrarch if the city were to saris~ irs eidetic strucrure.' The genetic would then go by the board. Socrates' digression into philosophy in Books 5-7 testifies to his doubt wherher man's elimination of man could ultimately be haired. The city of arrs necessarily ends up with an arcfully devised simulacrum of the human, while the sacred, which in his accouur only occurs in its noourilirarian form when the city bas completely d~enera.ted into ryraJUiy, sums uJrimarely too weak to put a check on the other root of the city. Nothing sraods in the way of Adanris, cem.inly nor Athens. If philosophy were in charge of the city, this nightmare would be avened; but if rbis cannot be, nothing but accidents could do the work of reason. Cririas's story makes out tbar nonperiodic cataclysms always come to the rescue of man. Timaeus's cosmos offers no such hope. lr offeu no such hope because Timaeus starts our with a split between being and the demiurge, or berween the beautiful and the good, that must, in denying oo the cosmos the necessary accident of SocrateS, rake away from it as well the cleansing effectS of natural disasters. It is roo well ordered to be good, for Timaeus professes nor to know that "be$t men ... for the most, become much more better for being a little bad." l Timaeus's overall scheme warrants this profession of ignorance, bllt there grows up within ir another argument that can be compared to the dialogic city in ia relation to th.e best city in speech. This alternate cosmos is f.u riche~ in sporrs than the. official one; it has many congeners and none of them exhausr all possibilities or pur man in the dilemma Timaeus's cosmos does. His cosmos is rragic for man. Ir can only be complete if man is unjust, and man is fared ro be unjust. Man cannot say yes ro Timaeus's cosmos but must wish that either it or he never come to be. Man begins ro degenerate and the cosmos to be com-
On the
r
IIIUlDll
plete when some of the original men prove to be cow.uds and unjwr. Confronted with this f:ne, we can surmise, men commit suicide and become women.
Timaeus begins with a prelude that contains within it all the perplexities that permeate his extended development of it. He begins with a question that he immediately answers. The question involves a division. It was already asked in amiquiry what it was that be divided. It rums out that be divided the soul that the demiurge. made first out of ingredients that were originally apart. Once these ingrediems were in soul, they became cognitive principles; and hence Timaeus' s answer ro his first question is in terms of knowledge, either whatever is comprehended by intellection with logos or whatever is opined by opinion with irrational perception. In his prelude, then, Timaeus does begin in a sense with soul; bur the consequence is that his original question, What is what is always? is not answered, for Timaeus never states what these eternal beings axe. Indeed, in posing rhe question, he purs it in a nominal sentence, viz., ti to on ui; or "what the being always?" which implies that before amwering rhe question what these eternal beings are, let alone how they are known, he would have to say whether they are at all. Timaeus makes no existential Statement before he asserts that the cosmos is visible and =gible, and this is his 6rst mistake. Timaeus is well aware of the difficulties he has caused himself. At the very start he declares that be must make a division according to his opinion. He admitS that he separates being from becoming by opinion and not by knowledge, for by h.is own division it would be impossible for mind to know of becoming. H e complicates his account further hy assigning to becoming the same eterniry as he does to being, but again he does nor ask whether what always becomes is. InStead, after answering his double-banded question epinemically, he assigns becoming and perishing to the realm of opinion. He thus implies that within eternal becoming there is coming to be and passing away. or that, as he later puts it, spa.c e i5 coeval with being and not the dfttt of any cause. He then asscrrs that whatever comes to be becomes by a cau:«:; but this can apply only to whatever perishes and not to whatever always becomes. He compounds our perplexiry by declaring that if any demiurgc looks at that which is always and reproduces ia structure aod power, the result is beautiful; bur if he looks away toward becoming, the result is not beautiful. It seems very arbitrary ro declaxe that a painting of a beautiful human being if beautifully done is not beautiful, and that if a craftSman keeps his eye on the eternal he cannot f.U1 to produce something beautiful. Is Socrates' picrure of dte soul in the
!83
JB4
Cbapcer Eigluecn
PhMdrus nor monstrous? After all, one of the horses of the winged chariot is as ugly as Socrares,. Bur we do nor have to go outside the Timaeus ro know that the demiurge did not always look ar being. He rumed away from rt and Looked to himself when he decided to give the cosmos mind and was forced to give it soul. The, demiurge may very well be eternal, but he cannot be what is comprehended solely by mind with logos, for the beinf!$ are not the causes of becoming wi,t hout him.6 When Timaeus gives up for a time the demiurge, he postpones any account of the causal icy of being. Now as soon as Timaeus asserts that whatever becomes must have a cause, it must be as intdligible as irs cause, and if the beiof!$ are its causes, it ceases to be determined so.ldy by whatever &us under irrational perception. Timaeus asks whether the cosmos or ouranm came to be or noc. He concludes that it came to be because it is perceptible; but the cosmos is not perceptible but the intelligible order of al.l becoming. and only if ltoimos. in being the same as ouranos, meant the visible sky, could Timaeus draw his conclusion. limaeus, however, cannot mean by ouranos "the, sky," for if he did the demiurge would once more have looked away from the beings in makin,g evecythiog that was nor sky. Cosmos is the togetherness of heaven and earth; it is nor the same as heaven and earth. Timaeus later concedes as much when he replaces his f.Use beginning with the true beginning and has the soul be the invisible envelope of the cosmos. Timaeus thus lays down three principles before he StartS off on the wrong fool: being and becoming are distinct; evel}-thiog thar becomes has a cause; and nothing becomes beautiful if the demiurge does nor look ro being. These three principles do nor suffice for C$tablishing the origin of the cosmos in time, bur the expression he uses fur the cosrnos-ro
On
the TimMUS
The sophist can display the same characteristics as the angler without bearing any resemblance to the hunter. That they share a manner of pro~ ceeding, tools for proceeding, and a subject they single out and make their exclusive concern does not establish a likeness between the hiddenness of the quarry of the angler and t:he secrecy of the sophis<, becween fishing pole and speeches, bait and talk of vinue, or between fish and rich young men. The sun is an image of the good for the sake of understanding, it is not the imagistic product of the good. If it were, Socrates would have supplied the cosmology tha< he confessed he could not before he embarked on his second sailing. The cosmos, then, could be a whole because there is a cosmos of the beings, and it could be good because the cosmos of the beings is a whole through the idea of
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l86
the ume extent as Jianoia, and consequently the cosmos a.o; image does 1
not coincide with the oosmos of mathematical oonstruction. The difficulty
~ I..,~• can be put as fOllows: The expresaion hoi .ikotn ~i has a double senae.
~~b -
By itself it would mean "plausible speeches." spe es arrived at by way of conjecture, but in the context it must also mean "imagistic speeches," or, as the Eleai:ic Stranger calls them, "spoken phantoms" (eidii/4 legomena).' Timaeus uses "likely speech" and "likely myth"indifferently and never lets on except once that he has introduced this ambiguity; but if one allows it, then an imagistic speech would be a speech that expressed the logos of that of which the image was an image. "This is a picture of our dog Buckwheat." "This is our dog Buckwheat." The first speech acknowledges that one is looking at an image, the second identifies that of which it is an image, and does not in itself deny that one is looking at an image. Both are true speeches; they are not plausible speeches. If, then, the likely speech of the cosmos took after either model, the likely stoty ofTimaeus would be true, and not, as he says, no less likely than any other. The likely speech would be about being and not about becoming. It would be likely because being and not becoming wa.< by conjecture. The likely stoty, however, would be a spoken phantom if the speeches one made about it were not of the beings that they resembled but of other beings that only seemed to be the same as the others. When the demiurge constructs the world-soul, he forces together the same and the other and mixes them with being and becoming. The nature of the soul itself entails that the other will be mistaken for the same and the same for the other. Of these two mistakes, the more fundamental is that the same is the other: the evening star and the morning star are two
before they are known to be one. The world-soul consists of two circles, each of which is exactly the same as the other. When the demiurge tilts one at an angle to the other, he calls it the circle of the other, and the other the circle of the same. Despite their merely nominal difference, the demiurge assigns one to intellection and the other to perception. We are destined to take, Timaeus implies, the world of sense for the world of mind and still believe they are not the same. We are destined to do what Glaucon did, when he first shaped the perfectly just man into an artifact whose shadow he cast on the wall of the Cave and then asked Socrates to prove that he was rruly happy. The first to introduce the word eidos into the Republic was Glauoon. $11..~ Bo~h Socrates and Timaeus are violators of their own teaching. Socrates pretends that the ascent &om. the Cave consistS in the recovery of the third dimension, but otherwise there is a one-to-one correspondence
On the Timaeus
becween the shadows on the wall of the Cave and the bodies of becoming, and the artifacts the puppeteers are carrying do not distort the beings in any way. Socrates pretends that law and convemion do not stand in the way of the discovery of namre, or that the Cave is not, as Strauss showed, the city. Timacus borrows this assumption for the first pan of his account.
II 1.~
The animals we see are exactly the animals that constitute the parts of noetic animal, and that the four elemems we see are one through transformatlon, while their noetic counterparts form a whoic without ever changing, does not affect the macchup between being and becoming. Timaeus, however, is even more radical than Socrates in going against his own principles. He declares that there is only one cosmos even though the notion of paradigm and image implies that images as such belong to a manifold, and the number of reproductions possible betrays their dependence on the one original. Timaeus indeed argues that noetically there can only be one being, and the demiurge made the cosmos one in order co represent symbolically the necessary oneness of its paradigm; but he soon dedares that the demiurge uses up all the corporeal elernencs for the making of a sin~e cosmos in order to ensure that no external forces could ever desuoy it.(Timaeus thus has the dcmiurge rid the cosmos of decay, despite the fact that becoming and corruption are an indissoluble pair within eternal becoming, and he wipes out any trace in the cosmos that it is an image) The meaning behind Timaeus's false start emerges clearly when he says he made a mistake in starting with the transformation of the four elements rather than with the making of soul. His mistake was due, he says, to the human participation in the random, but on the face of it his excuse is absurd, for he could have as easily corrected it before he erred as correct it afterward. Timaeus begins by asking his auditors to forgive him for any inconsistencies, but they should expect from him an account inferior to no one's. He admits that there are possibly other equally plausible accounts; indeed, he himself gives rwo. The account that starts with corporeal becoming is his plausible alternative to that which starts with the making of soul, 10 and the account that begins with space and not with paradigm and image by themselves is his alternative to his starting with the making of soul. The i';lconsistencies among the three accounts is his version within plausible speech of the manifold of images that belongs to the natute of patadigm and image that he seemed at first to deny. There is no reason to believe, then, that his third correction should be his last, and any plausible account not subject to i_nfinite revisions. Just as the making of soul does not correct entirely his starting with body, so the account of space does not correct entirely his second beginning. Two parts
387
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of rhe world-soul are the divisible same and the divisible other of body; but if soul is prior to body. and space prior to soul. the divisible sam« and othet must have been incorporated iruo soul &om spacr. Soul is onedlird space; it is one-third irrational. or, rather, since space is formless, it is some necessarily indeterminate wnstiruent of soul Timaeus, however, never makes this corc«rion in world-soul. The furthest he goes in the tim part is to imply that the circle of the other in its six divisions designates the arbitrary in~ide the .sttmingly rationat Six is a number that. as the physicists say, has been kd in by hand. In the second part. Timaeus grants that there may be more than one cosmos and conscquencly that all of them perish. Yet these dilutions of first principles never come to grips with the true problem: whether the disorderly is as much at a cliscount fur soul as it is for body. The making of wor1d -$0ul culminates in the establishment of time. Time is the way in which the cosmos becomes one and as close as possible tO the whole that is in; paradigm." The oneness time imparts is in the counting of time. The intervals of rime can always be brought together into one, whether it be the one of day and night, the days of one month, the months of one year, or the coincidence of aU the instrumuu:s of time in one great )'Car. u The one of time belongs. Timaew says, to the pans of time. They are at odds with the sptties of time, for there are only two species of time, past and funuc, and th.c present between is a f...lse insertion by men. for "is» in precise speech belongs to that which is always. The insurion of "is" between "was" and "will be" exemplifies pcrfeccly our necessary mistaking of the other for the same. Th.e one of time counts the past and the future. They count what is no longu and what is not yet. Time is the ultim•rc expression of the nonbei.n g of becoming. It is the truth of the myth that Kronos castrated Outanos. Becoming only is if one speaks impn~cisely. lkoom.ing only is if the in1ages of being can hold onro the being of space, md the being of space can be spoken of only imprecisely, by way of images, and can only be grasped by a burard kind of reasoning." All the becomings in space are bastards; rheir f..ther cannot recogniu them llS his. The demiurge as the maker of time sputs apart from the demi.u tge as the f..ther of becornin.g. for everything th•t becomes is at the expense of its rccognizabiUry. The difference between the rwo designations of the demiurge is the cosmological equivalent to Thrasym•chus's clistioetion between precise and imprecise speech, which Strauss showed tO be on.e of the fundamental keys for the understanding of the &pub/ie. Thrasymachw had wanted to maintain that a ruler who made a mjstake was strietly speaking no Longer
a ruler, any more than a doctor who erred was a doctor. Thrasymachus could not reconcile his ,,aunted politicaJ realism with this distinction; but Socrates was able to shC\w that justice necessarily consisted in the dyad of ( imprecise and precise sp':ech, or in the difference and sameness of justice as minding one's own bus; ness and minding one's own business well. They showed up together in 1he principle of the best city and its structure, for ..~its structure was a necessary dilution of its principle. Timac:us's cosmology~ 'd ~ " \.
. ....
is likewise concerned \\ith how cosmic principles and cosmic structures
do and not lit together. Their failure to lit perfectly together shows up
in the difference berween time and space. Timaeus's original distinction between being and becoming means { that becoming hides its causes. It is concealed because it is manifest. The disappearance of being is the condition for the appearance of becoming. The cosmos is first a sphere because the demiurge put the visible elemems into such a shape, then because the rotation of the ecliptic produces an
J
invisible sphere, and finally because the cosmos is in fact a dodecahedron
that in rotation appears spherical. As soon as Timaeus acknowledges the existence of perspective, eikastic speeches disappear as a possibilicy and in principle must be replaced throughout by the speeches of phantastiki." His discussion of time first indicates what would have to be done were such a replacement possible. After assening that no form of expression in which being and becoming are coupled-not even when that which is not is said to be what is not-is compatible with precise speech, he says that perhaps (tach' an) it would not be an appropriate time (kairos prepon) atthe present (m toi paronti) to speak precisely about them. To be present (pareinai) is to be (einai) here and now. The present of discourse is che nonmeasurable inrervaJ between the two species of time. The presem can be of any duration-this .evening, today, this week, this year, this .. ,. century, t~is era-b~t it cannot be collapsed into the nows. of time. The \~~., nows of time are pomts that can never be set down precisely, and the I 1JJ 4; swiftness of the soon (tacha) is always too late. All the imprecise expresJ sions of time cast doubt on the intelligibiliry of tode to pan, the existence of which Timaeus set out to explain. The application of mind to becoming puts time in place and banishes the timely." ~f1 Jr.l In the Sophi~t the Eleati~ S~ranger distinguishe~ bet';een. the .eikastic ... :,
l
and the phantasllc arts of palntong and sculpture. 1 he_e!lfaJt~ art reproduces the proportions and colors of the paradigm on any scale. It believes
it is nowhere or anywhere when it makes its copies. The phantastic art realizes that if one makes a figure of colossal size, though-tlieuppe;parts
could be in the image in a c:orrect proportion to [he lower, the upper
z,
1-' b~~
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Chapter Eighteen
body would appear, from our perspective on the ground, smaller than the lower. The phantastic art thus makes an image that is not an eikastic but a phantastic image of the original, so that the appearance of the phantastic would appear eikastically beautiful. Since the cosmos is of such an immense size, one would like to know whether the demiurge practiced eikas~ tics or phantasticsllf his art were eikastical, the cosmos would appear falsely beautiful, an~ one could infer, if it were ever discovered to be an eikastic image, that the demiurge looked to becoming and not being. If, on the other hand, his art were phantastic.al, the image that copied the paradigm was disproportionate, and it would require much ingenuity to figure out how to recover the originai)This difficulty is the background problem in_ Timaeus's discussion of space. It is not, however, the most important of the problems. As an application of a Zenonian paradox, the problem begins easily enough. If, Timaeus says, each of the four elements changes into the others through one, two, or three steps, what at any given time is the fire we see? It cannot be fire~ for in respect to its future it must already be on the way to another element, and in respect to its past it must have been partly what it noW appears to have ceased to be. At any moment in the cycle of transformations, each element comprises what it was and what it will be as well as what it appears to be but is not. Every element is a phantom image of itself. but it appears as what it is. What it is, is some regular solid, but at no time is it what it is. The elements are as apparitionally distinct as they are dianoetically, but they never are entirely either one. 16 Timaeus's first solution in light of the hypothesis of change is to say that to toiouton (is) each element, that which is like what it is {is) what it is like. Timaeus expresses this in a nominal sentence; in asserting an identity between likeness and being, we give up beingY We are then asked to withdraw the deictic- pronouns tode and touto from any of th~e toiauta and apply them to something else. That something else is chiira, or "space." Socrates was the first to use the word; he spoke of the need for offspring, who do not confurm to the higher class in which they are born, to change their place with those who are coming up from below (19a5). Chora can mean "country" as opposed to "town," or the "territory" of a tribe or city. It is primarily the local. Its denominative is chiirein, which can mean either "to leave a place and make room for something," or to contain and have room for something." Its adverbial congener is chOris, "separately" or "apart"; it is constantly used in Plato for dialectical discriminations. Timaeus's 6rst formulation of space implies that tode to pan or hode ho komws cannot be expressions of precise speech, for the cosmos is 11
1 On the TimMus
a collection of toiauta insofar as it is visible, and the cosmos, insofar as it is intelligible, does nor admit the deictic pronoun. Holle ho ltosmos and tork t<J pan look away from the beings and toward spcecl.." They are the emblematic expressions of Socrates' second sailing. which he likened to our looking at the eclipse of the sun's reflection in water. Timaeus's second formulation for the sake of greater clarity goes like this. "Were someone," he says, "to fashion all shapes out of gold without ever stopping in refashioning each into all, and were someone or other to point to one of them and ask what in the world it is (ti pot' ~sti), far the safest thing to say is, 'Gold,' but the triangles and all the other shapes that were coming to he in it, never to speak of these as being. inasmuch as they are altering while one is positing them, but if, after aU, the ques~ tioner is willing to accept securely to toiouton, 'the such,' one should be content" (50a5-h5). The original answer has been demoted to second place and the best answer"is gold, or, in the interpretation of the image, space. The example no longer depends on the truth of the hypothesized physics of change; indeed, Timaeus will deny that the four dements do change into one another, and in place of what he calls an incorrect phantom appearance, he will take earth out of the cycle and give a stability to things in the midst of change. Earth is the physicist's substitute for the truth of chOra. Timaeus's example transforms the original problem of eikastics into phantastics. Spa~ is now dialogic space. Tode and touto now · have their true significance; tork is everything in the sphere of the speaker, touto everything in the sphere of the one addressed. Tork and tout<J are expressions of 'T' and "You," respectively. "I" is not a pronoun but, as Emile Benveniste says,"/ can be defined only in terms of'elo~ution,' not in terms of objects, as is the case with a nominal sign. I signifies 'the person who enunciates the present instance of discourse containing /.' " 19 Timaeus uses "I" only once: "I the speaker" (ho Iegan ego, z9c8). The ' ' ': , expression occurs nowhere else in Plato. Chora, then, which "I" estab.!~ lishes, is the nonuniversalizable. Its mythical name is Hestia, the only god ., ""~ who has never seen the hyperuranian beings. It is the expression for the ap~!l~s_s~ ~a~~-in~-~a! as they are not parts of a whole. Chora is the part maker; it is that which breaks beings apart. It separates Greeks from barbarians and turns ne@;ation into constitution. There is no eidos or m.sasure of place; it is the exact.J!Illl.~Qf time. It expresses the local warp in ·space-time that vanishes at the moment 'T' falls silent. It corresponds to the manifold of local horizons withi~which men are; it is Timaeus's version ohhe Cave in which the prisoners talk to one another and ask what each of the shadows is. The question Timaeus has his questioner
J91
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i.
I
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Cbapcer E.lghceen put is ti pot' mi?"Once" {pot?, which is now wid:t "is," is the indeterminable interval of rime. lr was that which could not be one of d:te parts of cime and was squeeud our nom the species of time only oo reappear surreptitiously in d:te discourse on rhc timdy.'' 0 To be presenr (pardnai) is to put rogerher space and time in being insofar as being is apart (chiiris). It is a beauciful coincidence char d:te idiomatic translation of ri pot' tsti! is, "What in the world is it?" The truth about space was sra.r ed, according to Timaeus, whw be said that it was to be a receptacle, like a nU.!lie, of all becoming {49a5-6). The truth juxtaposes a metaphor with a simile. It juxtaposes a phanrasric with an eikastic phrase. A meraphor idenrilies two d:tings; it rakes the other for the same. A simile acknowledges a diikreoce in d:te sameness it has seen. The truth about the lib:ly story Timacus rdls is th:u as meraphor it is Likely (nkiis), and as simile it is a phantom image. In the liceral sense of metaphor, the images of be.i og were transferred ouro being and read off as if they were of that of which d:tey were not-the idealiry of the nominal sentence, m mioumn pur, represents this; but once in principle a simile is acknowledged ro be whar it is, one cannot teU how to subtract the difference the simile has from rhat to which it is like- If one could, there would be no need of similes." Contrary, then, to one's first impression, rhe phancascics of the second pan of the 1iJTUUUJ is eikascical, and d:te eikascics of the DJ:St part phanrascical.22 This rurnaround is, as Strauss illustrated. rhe essential trait of any Platonic argument_ If ir does not occur, we are still stuck in the Cave and have not yet begun to make an ascent."
Notts
For chc symbolic signi6canao of an impossible time-&amc, one mighc compare tltat of chc GorgiJzs, whose setring, from the death of Pericles to the ttial of the generals of Atginousoe, co~ umost the entire period of chc Pdoponnc:sian War: rhc:roricians arc inexperien<:td in the deeds they pr<$ume to control. The &r.t word of rhe GorgiJu is "war.• 1.
Herodocus L2J1.1. ). The plaa:menr of hama (19e5), so that it look$ as if it is in hypcrbaron, with chc implication that pbllosophcrs and statesmen are combined in the same persons, indicates chat the actions and speeches of each are also to be rakcn disttibutivdy. 2.
4- The lim and lasr word of making in the TimJUUS is paidopoiUz (r8c6, 9rc:z);
On
6. Attirus already asked whether the dcmiu.rge belonged to noetic animal or not. If be does, be is incomplete, since be is only a pan; if he does DOt,
7- This error has its countc:cpan in Timaeus~s acx:ount of m:u:hematical con· sttucrion. He 3$$Crts dtar there mun be a third dement if rwo other elernenu are to be brought together beautifully (}rb8-a), but the self-binding of w.up and woof in weaving shows that this does not bold in aU casts. A false reprc:senration of nu.mbers raised to the third power as equivalent 10 three dimensions follows on this error. 8. Timaeus can account for the difference between light and beat only by ascribing it to rwo different species of fire (58cj-d2); he therefore cannot accoum for our awareness of distane<; for sight occurs when the fit< within fuses with the fire outside into a single homogeneous body (450-d}). There is thus no "out-therenc:ss." nus mechanical explanation precedc:s the teleology of sight (47at- b2), and it could not have been reversed without an admission that the making of man is nor his generation. Timaeus is caught between asserting that any aa:ount of becoming is just play and for the sake of relaxation &om the serious business of undemanding being (59cs-d2), and conceding that there can be no undemanding of the divine if one does nor start from the neCCSSal)' (68er-
69as). 9· Nestor innoduces th.e same ambiguity when he hears T dernachus ( Ody~ J.L14-1j). Telcmacbus's speech is as sensible as his father's, bur it is still just a likeness. At R.public 414<8-ro there is rhe same juxtaposition of these two senses. 10. The account of corporeal becoming is a deduction &om noetic animal and involve$ geomeuic proportions o.nJy; the account of soul evolves into an aa:ount of the solar system rhar involves nongeomenic proponions as weU: there is a surd (kimma} in the secrioning of soul. Since Tirnaeus never gives any sUes, dimensional numbers, o r the constants of nature. must be inexpUcable and due ro chiir11.
a. The other two cosmic unities are. the unity of corporeal Structure under ttansfonnation (Timaeu.s later abandons this) and of animal under metempsychosis. EveJY animal can be labeled "human" and is accordingly a wioutan; ir is left obscure whether it can cquaUy be called "divine." Tbe beasts, in any case, arc us: the other is the same. On the eikastic level, a tecutteot "such" may be "dog, • on the phanrastic, "dog" is "human"; bur in our faihuc to acknowledge this, the human being is "a son of a bitch. • Accordingly, the asexual men who prove ro
be cowardly become women, i.e., the indignation at thcic cowardice rdabds them. To thumo
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Chapter Eighteen 12. Insofar as time makes for the unity of the cosmos, Timacus can speak of the time before there was time; there was then strictly relativistic time, when no interval measured for one series of events could be set in any ordered relation with any other series. This local character of time corresponds to the ineradicable localness of space and space-time.
13. Despite the number of images Timaeus applies tO space, he never likens it to a mirror, for it is the ground of all orientation and consequently stands in the way of any isomorphism between being and image: the image (eikOn), since that for which it has come into being docs not belong to itself, is a constantly moving phintom (phantasma) of some other (heteron ti) (52C2-J). We attach a condition to anything we believe to be~ to be something is to be something somewhere. This somewhere (pou) is our acknowledgment that every something depends on something other than itself in order to be. 14. Of the forty-four instances of the root phain-, phan-, there are only six before the demiurge stops making the cosmos; and of these six, rwo hdong to the prelude (28c2, 29b6), three are about the planets, and one about terrors and signs (4oc9). The last occurrence of this root is at 8oc8, shordy before Timaeus begins his account of disease and the. degeneration of the cosmos. 15. When Solon was in Egypt, he tried to set the oldest Greek stories inro· measurable time (22b2-3), but he found out that though they are of the past one cannot put them on a consistent time-line, This absence of a chronology makes the Greeks, according to the Egyptians, always children: their youthful souls hold on to the truth- of the never-quite-vanishing present. 16. Water is H 2 0, but we always see it in some state, and as a formula it is never any of irs states. In the case of smell, Timaeus does admit that we perceive nonregular solids (66di-4). We then come closest to perceiving the truth of all
change. 17. It is a nominal sentence because fire itself is a toiuuton, for the three elements are merely rearrangemenrs of the same triangles that constitute them; and the triangles themselves, in turn, are toio.utoi of triangle itself, for all of the corporeal triangles are imperfect (73b5-8), and triangle itselfJ even if it is not just hypothetical (480.-4), is not the same as the paradigmatic triangle selected for the construction of the elements. 18. The absence of the expressions touto tu }'an or houtos ho kosm01 in the Timaeus points to the difficulty that even if there are many kosmoiJ in accordance with the relation of paradigm and image, there is no access to them, and hence there is a fateful individuality to "this whole" that denies its intelligibilicy-. If there were intrusions into this cosmos of others in local pockets of space-time, as the image of the plokanon suggests that there are, then the essential heterogeneicy- of the cosmos would ground the necessity for Timaeus's story to be inconsistent. It would follow that turk tu pan is not and cannot be in the strict sense a kosmus. 19. Emile Benveniste, Problbnes tk /inguistique gttUrale (Paris 1966), 252.
On
me 1it111UUS m
zo. The zero of the now in the species of time Stems to haw: ia counterpart in rhe rapidiry with which the 6gures in rhe gold change; bu< TUll2eUS implies that chan!!" is nev~r innanraneous bur always takes rime, regardless of whethe.r one can keep up with it or not. 11. Timaew seems to imply dttr any mathematical modd of bodies in marion will introduce a si_milc or a set of similes that will not admit of correction, or, :u one now says, of renorm.alizarion. u. Timaeus shows how misleading rhe notion of pl•usible sp=bes is as soon as he gives an account of the compounds of the four dcmena: his account is now fully testable, and if "water" cannot be made inro gold, it is &be. Thr he denies rhar bis rheory of colors can be tested indi.cares his awareness of this (68bs8; d~-7). That "recipes" can duplicate nauue does nor enroil rhar one bas a true account; they could wdl be phanta.Stie and not eikasrie speeches. 23. Tinru:us goes ro grcar lengths p«ies of the present.
'.lmt
NIN~EEN
On Wisdom and Philosophy: The First Two Chapters of Aristotle's Metaphysics A
theoretical writings begins with a critique of his predecessor::.:; bur whereas the second books of his Physics and On SouL present his own definitions of. nature and soul respectively, the second book of the Metaphysics .seems ro be nothing but a series of questions. Nature and soul are there regardless of what anyone might say abour rhem (cf. Physics 193a3); but without perplexity there is nothing to metaphysics. Metaphysics seems to be the only science that in asking queS£ions discovers all of irs own field. and so, in completing philosophy, somehow returns philosophy to irs origin in wonder. Perhaps, then, being is not just in speech a question (ti esti); and that which was sought long ago, is sought now, and forever will be sought is precisely what being is.
E A C H 0 F A R I ST 0 T L E ' S T H R E E M 0 ST
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Aristotle begins not with the question of being but with its corrdative) the question of knowledge and wisdom. This question is the substitute for the lack of anything self-evidently prior to that which metaphysics itself establishes. The theme of the firsc chapter is delight and admiration-the delight we ourselves take in any effortless acquisition of knowl~ edge, and the admjration we gram to anyone who is manifestly superior to ourselves in knowledge. That which unites thar kind of delight with this kind of admiration is the absence in both of calculation. Without
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1 ~
On \Visdom and Philosophy
any regard to our own advan~e, we no less want by nature to know than we :uc willing to admire discovere.rs and inventors. Our ~dmir.uion for discoverers and inventors is the intersubjective analogue tO our own natuml curiosity. The sdflessness Aristotle detects in curiosity and admira· tion culminates in the &ediom that belongs preeminently to the: highest kind of wisdom. The &c:diom &om nc:di which is manifest even in the senses is the natural origin of the freeman's being his own cause. That curiosity and adrnimtion are rela.t ed through sd6essness and freedom should nor obscure the difference between the contemplative, which chancterizes the knowledge that reveals the natural desire to know, and the mriocinative, which characterizes rhe ans as so many knowledges of cause. To figure out an insight might well be the epiSlernic equivalent of th.e union of e~usality and bciogness (cf. PlatO &public 516b+-<3); but initially at least the reasoning of the artS dilfus in origin, charncru, and goal from the seeing we choose before almosr anything else. • All human beings desire by nature to know (tidnuzi)." Aristotle does not me:m that all of us desire ro Jearn. To love wisdom is not in the same sense natural, for the condition that excites it is never more than necessary; but to aim at being in a stare of knowing- fidnuzi is in the perfect tense-is always present and at wock. There is, moreover, not necessarily any diffi:.rence in kind between the knowledge we already have and the knowledge we want to possess. The promise of any difference wh:us~ver suffices to make us pay attention, whether it be to the clang of a fuc engine or the whispering of gossip. Thar it is distracting is a sign of the natural attractiveness of such knowldige. The desire ro be in rhe know is nor jusr due ro vanity. Knowledge: is simply the most self-satisfying 6Uer of our idle moments. "Man is by nature a political animal." The oammloess of human association seems to point as much away from the natural desire to know as the natural desire ro know points away &om art and cal.cularion as the: means by which men live. lndc:di, man the political animal and man the anful animal for the most parr coincide, for nor only does mao the speaking/reasoning (logikon) animal unite them, bur the division of labor wirhin the community of the: city is at one with the possibility of the dc:vdopmenr of the ans. Even if the naturalness of human association means that men re.n d ro come togc:lher without calculation, the community of speech does not of irself en rail the sharing of knowledge. ln facing each other, men would not necessarily be facing the rrurh: ir is of a Socnrie une~nniness whenever conve.rsion and conversation prove to be the same kind of turn (cf. Xenophon MmziJrabilia 4·5·u-6.t). As a kind (anthriipoJ), man is political; as an individual (panm anthriipoi), he dtSires
m
J98
Chapcer Ninereen know. lf, however, speech as tb.e species-bond for man is nor jlL
On Wasdom and Phi1050pby
"Philosophy.· at any rate, firs~ occurs here along with the denial that wisdom is a poetic art. "Now (mm oun) by nature animals come i.nto being with ~nsual awareness." Aristode shifts abruptly from the narure of man tO the nature of animals. The species in its highest aspiration precedes the genus in itS generation. What is given by nature is both complete and incomplete. Some animals can live solely by perception; others need memoty and instruction; but man ~ms to be more incomplete than any ocher animal, for even when he bas supplemented the given with experience., be perfecrs it with the arts, whose ostensible satisfaction of his needs conceals their significance as witnesses to his desire co know. Experience and art occur together in the expert; but Aristocle =ggerares their separability in order to bring out the luxury of the knowledge in the arts. Plato speaks of the beautiful as one of the consequences of technical specialization (&public 370<:3). Despite the &a that textbook knowledge wiU not usually suffice co cure Socrates, we still believe that such kn.owl.edge is higher than experience. lf we ate to believe the movies, the coUege-eduaued cop is as much envied as resented. The native speaker is not a linguist, and his ability goes unnoticed. The gardener with a green thumb is nor an agronomist, let alone a botanist; but the unteachability of his knowledge putS him behind the. others in our esteem. Our esteem for wisdom is nor srriccly in proportion to irs possible usefulness for us. We admire inventors more than rheir invenr.ions. We ate not necessarily graceful ro Prometbens. The drift of Arisrocle's atgument forces him to be silent here about that meaning of wisdom-prudence-which predominates in moSt modern languages; and even when Ariscocle does introduce it as the sixth characreristic of wisdom, irs difference &om the ochers stands out more plainly than irs ultimate uni6ability with rhem. Prudence, according to Aristotle, is not an att. For the most part, experience is as fat as a man can advance in knowledge by himself. Experience is deaf and dumb; it neither takes from nor shares with others. Although ocperience is not th.e same as irs origin in a manifold of memories- it is an insight (mnoima}- ir always remains attached to a particularity of that manifold; but an is indifferent to irs origin in a manifold of experiences. Art is impersonal. Irs universalization of ocperience through rhe discovc.ry of cause dcmores every experience, regatdless of whether ir confirms the att or is in faa the source of the att. In irs own eyes, att bas no "history." Art i.< nor just tb.e lut in th.e =ies of perception, imagination, memory, and experience; it is the form of the se.ries whose matter they become. Art reverses rhe rdation that
l99
experience sets up between "man" and "Socrates." For experience, "S~ra~ res" is accidentally a man; for an, "man" is accidemally Socrates. An re~ stores to the universals of speech their primacy. In the Republic, the para.doxical identification of justice with an art proves to be a better basis for Socrates' inquiry imO justice than his starting point in Cephalus's experi.ence, from whom he learns that "character" is decisive for happiness or misery. Because experience is nothing but a rule of rhumb, it dismisses exceptions: Cephalus does nor rake seriously Socrates' counter-example of the madman. Experience is the cognitivt counterpart to moral virtue; bu~ it is through art that Socrates brings Glaucon and Adimancus to phi~ losophy. The first chapter of Aristotle's Metaphysics consists of three arguments. The first argues that we naturally desire to know; the second that the degree to which rationality is present in an art marches the degree to which wisdom is credirtd to it; and the third that the m.on: an art was divorced from need the wiser irs practitioners were thought to be. The first and second of these arguments are linked together through the notion of nature; rhe second and third through the notion of development (from perception ro art in the first, from the arts of necessity to the arts of leisure in the third); and the first and third are no less closely linked through the notion of the useless {''theater" and "theorem" both come from a word for "sight"); but the second argument, for all that Aristotle discerns in the arts an element of uselessness, still stands on a difl:Crenr level from the others. Wisdom is commonly understood in rwo ways. It implies, on the one hand, a knowledge of cause, and, on the other, an impractical pursuit; and whether the latter is poetry or mathematics, neither is self~ evidendy a· knowledge of cause. Plato represents chis by having the mathe~ matician Theaeterus identify knowledge with perception right after he has failed to notice that his self-confessed ignorance of the cause of his perplex~ ity is the answer to his perplexity ( Theaetetus 148e&). Mathematics, it is true, is eminently reachable (irs students need no experience), and it shares this trait w\th the arts; but poetry is held to be unteachable and impossible without inspiration, and the kind of wisdom the poet does have seems to be prudence, and prudence is ;usr what Aristotle's argument has so far precluded. Poetry and mathematics, moreover, appear to be themselves so contrai}'" to one another as kinds of knowledge that their common impracticality, ~hich gets them both called wisdom, only goes to show {hat wisdom merely designates in their case the accident of their genesis. "Wisdom» now compris~s the arts, poetry, and mathematics only because the different times at whlch each arose concea\ed the cognitive emptiness
'j
vn W1soom ana l'rulosopny
of its successive extensions. Even if poetry were irrdevant for wisdom, a wisdom that just combined the theoretical character of mathematics with the knowledge of cause the arts contain seems to be something of an oxymoron. Aristotle himself, at any rate, denies the possibiliry of a mathematical physics. The arts and sciences that developed, once man had spare time, refined and articulated in a political setting men's natural curiosity. Just as man the theoretician is the perfection of man the spectator, so leisure is the polirical equivalent to the free play of the senses. The productive arts do not fit obviously into this schema, however indispensable they are for making leisure possible; and yet it is from then that what knowledge is came to be understood. The natUre of the knower and the nature of knowledge seem to be not quite aligned with one another. A sign of their misalignment is that Egyptian priests were, according to Aristotle, among the first mathematicians, but what they knew as priests would not pass for genuine knowledge. Mathematics is a liberal science, bur it is not liberating. If, moreover, the productive arts were to be considered knowledge only to the extent that they employ measure and number (cf. Plato PhilebuJ 55d5-56q), their subordination to mathematics would simultaneously deprive them of significance as representatives of causal knowledge. In Aristotle's insistence on this aspect of the arts, there seems to lurk the peculiarly modern view char we know only what we make. Aristotle therefore separates rhe insight, to which the arts give access, of what knowledge is from the way in which the arts apparently make over the natural to serve human needs. His distinction berween art and experience, with irs paradoxical suggestion that the productive arts are not primarily directed to production, is the lirst step in making this separation. It has to be completed with an argument that shows art to be not the conquest of nature bur either its imitation or completion (cf. Physics 199a15-17).
II The second chapter begins with a reperition of a difficulty in the first. Aristotle suggests that a rehearsal of our opinions about the wise man wiJI clarify the question of which causes and principles the science that is wisdom deals with. The way to rhe cha
401
401
Chapcer Nineteen
ence, or at best this lack of mutual implication among the characteristics, pr..erves the truth: no known science can satisfY all that opinion demands of wisdom. Aristotle, however. does make an advance on opinion; be replaces the comparatives in his account of our opinions with superlatives in the ~nferences he draws from them. Our opinions express our experiences; Aristotle is about to transform them into knowledge of knowledge. The wise man is thought (t) to know everything in its generality and (~) to have the capacity to know difficult things, or whatever is not easy for a human being to know. Furthermore, whoever has more precise knowledge (3), and whoever is more capable of teaching the cau<es (4) i< thought to be wiser. And just as the science which is for its own sake and for the sake of knowing is thought to be wisdom to a greater degree than any science sought for the sake of its consequences (5), so the more architectonic science is thought to be wisdom rather than any science that serves it (6). The first pair of these characteristics implies that wisdom cannot be any kind of perception; the second pair that experience cannot be wisdom; and the last that wisdom is not a productive art. Aristotle, however, has paired these characteristics not only because as pairs they determine wisdom negatively but because within each pair a tension obtains between its members. The generality of wisdom is at odds with its difficulty. for the more abstracted from experience a science ls the easier it seems to be to learn it. The precision of wisdom is at odds with its capacity to teach the causes of things, for mathematics exemplifies the former and seems to have no capacity for the latter. And a wisdom wholly sought for its own sake is at odds with an architectonic science of the good, for it seems that, on the one hand, whatever is sought for its own sake does not have to be good for anything, and, on the other, a good that is good for nothing is not good. If this threefold tension is to be resolved, a distinction has to be made between the universality of abstraction and the comprehensiveness of wisdom; mathematics has to be denied its exclusive claim to precision; and fi.na1ly what is the good for man must be shown to be compatible with good in itself. That metaphysics is the only nonabstract science, that knowledge of the soul admits of the greatest precision (cf. De anima 402a1-4), and that happiness is knowledge formulate Aristotle's own resolution of this threefold tension. Universality, difficulty, and precision seem to point to mathematics as wisdom; and, if one disregards causality, teachability and inner attractiveness do.so-no less. That the beautifUl, however, which mathematics discovers makes it the architectonic science would not follow without a proof that the beautiful is the good; and Aristotle's argument for their
Oo Wisdom and Philosophy
coincidence for inrdlecrion presupposes their divergence everywhere else (c£. 10] 2a26-7l · It seems, men, safes to put me founh and sixth of wisdom's characteristics under the rubric of knowledge of cause, and assign only the first mree and the fifth to mathematics. Aristode has so f.u put the greater emphasis on the 6fdt characteristic and been wholly silent about the mird, despite me fact mat together they are most plainly uue of mathematics. Mathematics has served as a sign of rhe naturalness of the desire for rhrorerical knowledge rather than as any indication of me content. of wisdom. lts development in Egypt, prior to philosophy, is irsdf sueh a si.gn. Mathematics was nor cultivated at 6rsr in light of arty general rdl..:rion on the nature of the whole. One can even surmise mar it began as a game: Palamedes was thought ro have discovered numbers as well as several games at Troy. This original playfulness of mathematics--and child prodigies show that thar is never lOst-heightens the tension be. rween rhe fifth and sixth characteristics of wisdom; bur ar the same time it recalls the Pl:uonic view that wisdom is the proper union of the playful and the serious; and that union is perhaps the same as maintaining the difference and the sameness of the beautiful and the good. On the basis of AristOde's arguments that ethics does not admit of precision- "moral certainty" is irs highest standard- wisdom is precise because (1) opinion has no part in it, and therefore it presentS no conflict within ir:self berween nature and conventiun, (2-) it is nor i.nrolved with the circumstanrial, where the good. for example, can prove to be harmful, (3) itS only use is for llUth ("for all practical purposes is abhorrenr to it), and (4) th.e difference between what somethin.g is and that ir is does nor pertain ro ir:s subject matter (cf. Nichomacbean Etbia I094h!4- t9, IQ98a1.6-b2, n0¥1-10). lt is, however, less dear, as Ariscode srates it, how wisdom is more like arithmetic than geometry, since the former is a more precise knowledge than rhe Iauer; but a non-Aristotelian example might explicate his meaning. Any desired digit in It's decimal expansion is knowable. but unless there i.s an actual infinite, irs entire expansion must dude us. Whatever th.e reason for this imprecision- the not wholly geometrical principles of geometry would seem ro be Arisrode' s explartation- wisdom cannot contain any potentially knowable elemenrs; all its kn.owledge must be present ro it as a whole. The completeness of wisdom entails irs rejection of every possible alternative; and this knowledge of rejected possibili(ies must conclude with a proof of their exhaustion. That AriStotle, however, mUst go through rhe views of his predecessors, in order to discover whether he has overlooked a fifth cause, is tantamount to an a.dmission that be cannot prove that there are only four cause$. Indeed,
40)
the problematic coherence of the four causes is rhe form in which Arisrorle later srares the problematic unity of knowledge (996ar8-1o). The stricteSt precision, moreover, is perhaps not only unattainable in itself; ic seems also to be incompadble with the first characteristic of wisdom, for it is only in a sense (piis) that comprehensive knowledge knows all its subordinates. A comprehensive definition of being cannoc apparently be com· bined with a precise account of the number and kinds of being. This difficulcy impinges in cum on another co which most of the perplexities of Book 1 are reducible: rhe principles of knowledge cannot but musr be rhe same as the principles of being. Aristotle's use of ousirl fOr both "beingness" and a being places this perplexity in being itself. Arisrode argues char the several perfections of the opined characteristics of wisdom converge on one and the same knowledge. If, for example, wisdom is chosen for its own sake, the ultimate choice must be of the eminently knowable, for mherwise there would be a further condition attached to the reason for the choice; and a wisdom, on the other hand, which knows the good sought in any action or knowledge, would necessarily know why wisdom for its own sake is the good simply, for otherwise that wisdom is for its own sake would still be nothing bur an opinion. Self-knowledge, then, completes wisdom. 1t gives the reason for the natural desire ro know and, in establishing the good to be a knowable cause, unites the contemplative and the ratiocinative. Their union, however, occurs even before it becomes the self-knowledge of wisdom; its prior occur~ renee is in wonder, "on account of which men both now and at first began to philosophize.» Wonder is a certain kind of conscious neediness (aporia}, it thus looks like the neediness that the productive arts satisfy; but unlike that neediness it is wholly selfless and rhus looks like the natural desire to know. The desire to know, however, is an indiscriminate greediness to transform the opaque into the plain (information); bur wonder is the recognition of the opaque in the plain. The wonderful is that which shows the hiddenness of the unhidden. It is every "that" which seems to be in itself a "why?'" when seeing is not believing, and the given is a question. The wonderful is a beautiful perplexity. If wonder is all by itself a sign that wisdom is a theoretical knowledge of causes, it seems strange that Aristotle introduces it only after he has indicated how the six characteristics of wisdom fir together in the same way. An account of what wisdom is thought to be seems to be more telling than an ac:counr of that condition without which it could never be sought. The admiration (thauma~tin) for wisdom precedes in speech and in deed the origin of philosophy in wonder (thaumazein), despite the fact rhar
On Wisdom and Philosophy
such admiration appears ro be nothing bur reflected wonde~-th~ =gnition that another bas seen and solved a pcrplc:xiry. One might argue that wonder as a cenain kind of ignorance should follow even the opinions about complete knowledge; bur Aristode, I think, wanted rather to separate the essentially true opinions about wisdom from a prevalent bur false one. He needs wonder now in order to confront philosophy with its chief competitor, poetry. The poets, who call themselves wise, make marvels, which are called myths. FM from such wisdom, then, purring an end co wonder, it issues in wonder. If "the lover of myth roo is in a sense a lover of wisdom," and hence "myth• stands in for "wisdom," myth must be the enigmatic solution to the enigmatic: the riddle of Oedipus is bound up with oracles. The double enigmas of poeuy are made by poerry; th.ey are nor found. Why men musr coil and die is a biblical question rhat arises from irs biblical answer. As a productive art, poetry is grounded in need; and the need is political (cf. t074b3-5). It thus comes about that poetry exhibits the freedom of wisdom-poets do nor roil-while ir serves the ciry as a community of the arts of necessity (cf. Plato Critias uoa3- e2). Poetry, therefore, is less revealing than the other arts of what knowledge is, even though it ostensibly poses more philosophic questions than they do. If Aristode was correct in denying production for use co the art of the productive arrs, poetry only seems ro be whar the other arts are nor while being in facr what the other arts only seem ro be. That poerry has usurped the name for all of making seems to be no accident (cf. Placo Sympolium 205b8-cy). Aristotle cites two pieces of evidence for rhe view that wisdom is for its own sake. The first is essential, the second "historical," or as he says, accidenral. Wonder is no less necessary now than it was at the beginning for the initiation of philosophy; bur it is an accident that philosophy began once the necessities oflife and the means for forgerung them (like poeuy) were satisfied. He thereby implies that wonder is neither painful nor pleasant. h neither compels nor entices. There is nothing in ir to be feued from which one runs away or which roots one ro the spot (like awe), nor does it have the natural attractiveness of seeing. Wonder makes for selfforgetfulness. The strangeness of the mange esuanges. A Greek word for the strange is the "placeless" (atopon}. Odysseus the wandering stranger is the wonderer. He once called himself No-one (outis) and punned on the homonymy of"wisdom" (mitis} and another form of "n.o one" (mitis). Philosophic wonder induces homelessness withou[ nosralgia (cf. Placo Symposium lOJdU). Perhaps therefore i[ is [00 self-forgetting. Aris[ocle, at any rate, no sooner concludes that wisdom alone is fttt [han he says,
40j
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Chaprer Nioctec.o
"So its acquisirion would justly be thought to be not human, for the nature of men is in many ways enslaved." He confirms this with a quotacion from a poec: "God alone would have this honor."Whereas both poet and philosopher agree on the unlikelihood of attaining wisdom, divine jealousy is the poets', natural enslavement is the philosopher's aplanarioo. for rhe poets, its appeUation "nor human" carries with it a prohibirion and implies the criminality of its attempted acquisirion; bur Aristotle regards ir merely as a correct designation of its acellence. The context in which Aristotle seemingly refmes the poets by a proverb, "Singers tdl many lies," suggests that the lie he has in mind is the poets' ide.nrification- in honor of themselves-of rhe highest cause with an efficient cause, so that to seck knowledge of it looks like prying imo a trade secret. The biblical story of man's fall, insofar as it points to the loss of sexual innocence, locateS idolatry at rhe beginning: men too can make beings. The impossibility of divine jealousy thus d.epends on whether the highest beings are only causes as final cause, and rheir causality is compatible with their bcin.g for rheir own sake. Ir is, in any case, the separation between the being of the highest beings and their being as cause that lets Aristotle affirm that the origin of philosophy is essentially wonder and accidemally at a certain stage of "history." The cause of philosophy is the effect of the good.
TW.¥ TY Strauss on Plato
WHAT PH. I L 0 S 0 PH Y IS SEEMS T 0 B E inseparable from the question of how to read Plato. Now almost no philosopher after Plato wrote at length about philosophy, and from antiquity at least there are few notices that inform us about the principles of Platonic writing. Three, however, stand out; the first two, in Plutarch and Cicero, respectively, point directly to the issue of esotericism; the third, in Aelian, to the very nature of philosophy. Plutarch implies that by the subordination of natural necessities to more divine principles Plato made philosophy safe for the city (Nicias 23.5); and in the Tusculan Disputations (5·4·!1), Cicero remarks that he followed the way of Socrates, as it was made known by Plato, in his own dialogues, in concealing his own opinions, relieving others of error, and seeking in every dispute what is most like to the truth. Aelian tells the story of the painter Pauson who was hired to paint a racehorse rolling in dust and instead painted it running, and when his patron objected Pauson told him to turn it upside down. and Aelian says that there was much talk to the effect that this resembled the speeches of Socrates (Varia Historia_ 14.15). It was the extraordinary merit of Leo Strauss to experience the. import of these three remarks (among others) and render them to the life in his own writings on Plato and elsewhere. This achievement amounts to, in my opinion, as great a recovery as that of al-Farabi, who rediscovered philosophy in the tenth century. The common thread in their recovery was no doubt;.their common understanding of re'lelation as the alternative to philosophy; but since after paganism the three revealed religions were already infected by philosophy to various
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Chapter T weruy
dq;rees, they had to recover revelation in its true form at the same rime as they recovered its opposite. For both purposes, Plato"s Ltwtwas the,ir guide. As a recovery, them migln seem of less significance than rhe original discovccy; but as both ai-Farabi and Strauss knew, the original discovery was irsdf nor at the beginning of philosophy. Philosophy had tO be rediscovered by Socrates long after there bad been philosophy. Plaro has Socrates call his rediscovery a second S311ing. The second sailing is philosophy, and iris never first. The false stan of philosophy can alone jumpsran philosophy. The caution and the daring that characterized all of Leo Strauss's works are conspicuous in his interpretations of Plato. One could say that for Strauss the caution came from his beloved Xeoophon and the daring from the divine Plato, bur it would be more precise to say char Strauss always refused to separate Xeoophon and Plato and in this showed especially his difference from the interpretation of Plato thar bad come to pln'2il sin.ce the rime of Schleiermacher. Strauss's caution appears moSt obviously in the e:meme reticence be maintained when it came ro rhe socalled Platonic Forms; but his dating is thereby all the more striking when one realizes rbat his thought was always fixed on th.e beings, whether god, man, or beasr, and the whole. Strauss was the master of the connection between the small and the large, or of the ways in which the one participates in and hence fitili to be idmtical with the other. Srrauss"s mastery was such that irs inbere.n t difficulty dO<S not strike home until one uies ir oneself and comes up with quite arbitrary links char do not in lacr encompass all of rhe particulars and hence fall short of the truly general. There was at !.east on.e contemporary of Smuss who had an equally uncanny eye for the unnoticed but significant derail- what he noticed was surprisingly different from whn Strauss did-but his ability co work up from ir to the bq;inning :llld down from the beginning to the derail was no match for Strauss's. Strauss came to almoSt everything experientially; he shunned •theories"; it was what he had found ouc fOr himself rhar he most relied on. His reading of Plato was not different from his own thinking, not in the sense that his opinions were Plato's or Plato's his, but in rhe dement of Platonic dialectic Strauss saw and practiced his own way. One bas ro tum to Xeoophon in order co understand th.e doubl.e sense comained within Platonic dialectic (Memorabili4 4.p2). Xenophon says chat ro converse (diakgnthai) meanr for Socrates the coming rogetber of men lOr rhe purpose of ddibetation by dividing (dUtleg~itl) the things (tl.l pragmatl.l} by kinds (gmi). The middle voice di4kgnthai contains within it the active, diakgdn. The communication among men involves the articulation of things. This Heraditean insight in co the double narure of logos
Sonuss on Plato was the basis for Strauss's reading of Plato. He put this doub.l~ natuce
into the title of one of his l.ast books, The Algummt and the Aaio11 of Plato's Laws. The "and" in the tide is misleading; it docs not mean that som~ sort of action is represented while the argument is being developed; it means that the action has an argument, and that that argument is the true argument of th.e Laws. That Strauss did not call his book, The Argument in the ActUJ11 • . • underlines rhe initial separateness of argument and action in a Plaronic dialogue and the latent community betw~n them.' Strauss was not the first to notice th~ dramatic sening of a Platonic dialogue; he was not even the 6rst to suggest that the drama altered the apparent meaning of the argument; but what is peculiarly his discovery was that once argument and action ar~ properly put together an entirdy new argument emerges that could never have been expected from the argument on the written page. Something happens in a PlatOnic dialogue that in its rc:volucionary unexpeaedness is the equivalent to the pmagOf.i. as Socrates calls it, of philosophy itself. This turnaround has a peculiar structure. It has to be experienced and can never be formulated in such a way as ro allow one anything more than ancicipation of an equivalent turnaround in another dialogue. There cannot be a method (methodos) of thought in the thoughtful going afte.r (metimai) of thought. The complete rationality of the ineffable seems ro be around the bend and open to the charge of mysticism and obscurantism; but Strauss saw that such a consequence of Platonic dialectic was nothing other than the sobriety of the highest kind of madness, which is philosophy, that Soc.rates celebrates in the Phaedrus. There are two kinds of esotericism, ancient and modern. Swift represented one by the ~. which out of the sweet produces the sw~r. and the othe.r by the spider, which out of the foulest things produces the most beauciful web. The first kind is metaphysical esotericism, the second political. The fim kind necessarily includes the second, the second necessarily denies the first . The first says that it is in the nature of things that things are hidden; the second says that it is in the nature of the city as now constituted that this is so. The second proposes enlightenment, th~ li.ghting up of things until nothing and no one are in the dark; th~ fim setS out to disclose things in th.eir hiddenness and show the reality of what appears. Strauss put this as follows: "The problem inh~renr in the surf.ace of things and only in the surf.ace of things is the heart of things." This sentence is merely a rendering of what ai-Farabi says is the way ro imerpret Plato. The first thing Strauss was always doing in his study of Plato was to
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Chapter Twenty be a beginner. He knew how to start again, not as if he were starting for the fint time, but really starting for the first time. It is what Strauss must have had in mind when he wrote to Gadamer that he could not recognize in Gadamer's "theory of hermeneutic experience,• which as such is a univeml theory, his own experience as an interpreter, which made him feel 11
the irretrievably 'occasional' character of every worthwhile interpreta~
tion. "2 This experience calls for a practice ofbeing without habits; Socrates . called it "the practice of dying and bein§ deaf and identified it with philosophy. This experience would be impossible were there not a hiddenness to things that metaphysical esorericism recognizes and reproduces through trapdoors in arguments. Socrates' account of the structure of the soul in the Republic is one such example. Only if one follows patiently Sociates' ai"@;timerit about desire can one see it turn upside down and discover that it is the presentation of desire by the thumoeidetic that has put on the mask of reason. It i.< then but a small step to apply this periagogii to the Thrasymachus of the first book and reali1.e that in the soul structure of Book 4 there culminates one parr of the Thrasymachean principle of the Repuhlic, and such a culmination prepares the way for its elimination and the emergence of philosophy. All of this was known to al-Farabi, who remarked that Plato combined the way of Socrates with the way of Thrasymachus; but it was Strauss who gave the full argument and indicated how one has to proceed beyond what al-Farabi had written. What is most remarkable in the history of philosophy is the simultaneous dominance and absence of Plato. It is as impossible to conceive of
Aristotle without Plato as to recall Plato while reading Aristotle. The Platonic Forms show up in the manifold of treatises Aristotle wrote, and
Plato disappears from the apparent separateness of those treatises, only co show up once more in the incoherence of the principles that do not allow Aristotle's treatises on the soul, on nature, and on being to be put together,
even though they severally demand to be put together. It is this kind of separation and combination that we are left to acomplish on our own when we come to Aristotle and that Plato's Socrates practices continu-
ously. Strauss realized that this is what it meant for Socrates to replace
efficient, material, and final causation with his hypothesis of uideas," which Aristotle pretends to be a fourth modality of causation that can readily be added to the other three rather than an abandonment of causality as it was known before Socrates. This second sailing of the ideas was inseparable from the promotion
by Socrates of the soul as a n.onderivative
principle. Ontology, epistemology, and psychology were thereby joined and hence transformed, and it was one of Strauss's most beautiful discov-
eries to put together logos, being, and soul.
ScraU$$ on Plato
up his imerpretations of Pbto' s Eurhyphro, Apoklgy of Socrates, Cnro, Euthydnnus, Republic, Statmrt4n, Mmo$, and Lmor. lr is n.ot unr~asonablc ro ask whether analyses so heavily weight~ in f.tvor of the political can do justice ro Pbro and do not diston Plato as much as the contemporary tilt in favor of dte Phaula, Thea~mw. Sophur, PormmiJo. and Timatw. lt rums out, however, that what seems to be tbe unavoidable bias of the professional put Strauss in a. unique position 10 return to Plaro in his entire range through political philosophy. The subride of Strauss's course on Plaro's political philosophy was "Its Metaphysical Foundations." In his time, political philosophy had deca~ so completely as ro cease robe a patt of philosophy. It had decayed so completely because philosophy itself had decay~ so completely. The connection betWeen political philosophy and ontology was not obvious, and rhe reason was the vanishing of the primary phenomena of dte Cave and their replacement by wbar Srrauss call~ "rhe Cave beneath the Cave. • Strauss bad ro reco"cr the Cave in all irs shadowiness before be could show the way our of the Cave. This enrail~ dte esablishmem of the fundamental character of rhe political in irs double aspect: the nature of political things and dte best fonn of the city. This double aspect can be said to show dte simultaneous empiricism and idealism of Pbro. Machiavelli understood the idealism by itself and accordingly fail~ t.o understand either irs political ground or its philosophic purpose. The srarting poim for Strauss was simply the rwo questions Glaucon po~ at the beginning of the second book of the Rept~blic; but this scarring point does not hold jus"t for political philosophy b11t for philosophy as such: tbe nature of the beings, on the on.e hand, and, on the other, dte nature of rhe good. Forms of dtese IWO questions inform all of Plato's writings, and all of human life. Of rhe rwo questions the good is always first for us. We are willy-nilly oriented by the good. Philosophy after Plaro had rend~ to forger this, pardy becallSC Plato had been so persuasive about the h11man good, and pattly because the separation of philosophical disciplines could nor keep the good as an essenrial pan of each of them. The dialectical success of Plato in th.e aniculation of dtings could not preserve the comprehensive reflection of Plato which alone had made his success possihle. The tradition of philosophy thus became unphilosophic., and philosophy could nor be restored unless one could go back to Plato, wnere rile part dtar is being and the whole that is dte good are constandy snown in dteir mutual interference. Sr.rauss dterefore was always turning away &om Plaro ro return to Plato and turning back to Plato after tbe obstacles to such a rerum had been faced. In dte history of scholarship, ir is not easy to find anyone with as wide a range an.d depdt of undemanding throughout dtar range as Strauss; and Sn:auss
WTOte
4D
such a successful union of disparate features speaks in a peculiar way for lhe soundness of his view that political philosophy is the eccentric core of philosophy. Strauss often spoke of his subjective certainty. What he meant was the experimencal nature of his ·~ay of interpretation. Once he could hypochesize about the drift of an entire dialogue or a sufficiemly complex argument, he would deduce from it rhe consequences that should hold in rhe text if the hypothesis were sound. The consequences cpuld range from a word £O an emire argument that should be present or absent from the dialogue. Strauss was thus able to deduce that "soul" does not appear in the Eurhyphro. What made this deducdon subjective was noc its willfulness bur that it could never carry the same convicdon co anyone else who had not proceeded in the same way as Strauss had done. Indeed, some of these deductions would appear in print as spurious, as if what Strauss had really done was merely to construct a hypothesis to 6t his observacion. This appearance of specio':'s serendipicy is a necessity. Once, when Strauss was discussing the Republic, he listed seven examples that Socrates had g~ven in the course of an argument, and remarked that from his experience he had learned that the center in an odd number of items turned out to be the most irrlportant, either in the immediate sequel or in the larger scheme of things. We were bemused and i~pressed when in this particular case the argument unfolded in rhe way Strauss had anticipated. A friend of mine, who was more skeptical than the rest of us, went home and took down from the shelf Montaigne's Essays, counted their number, and looked up the central one. It was entitled On Vain Subtleties. and its theme was rhe importance of being in the middle. {l Perhaps the principle Strauss invoked most consistently in his inter· - pretation of Plato was that of"abstraction." On the basis of his long expe~ tience with the dialogues, he thought that the key to each was something absent from the dialogue, which was necessary for understanding the issue at hand. This principle is the hermeneutic equivalent to the difference between a being as a part of the whole and a being apart from its being a part of the whole. Aristotle, for example, discusses being in the Metaphys~ jcs in such a way that it would make no difference whether there was only one being in the universe; but he pays heavily for this assumption, since he must end up with only one kind of being which strictly is and from which the universe necess~rily falls away. In Plato, however, the abstraction from something essential to the issue turns ou~ to be the revelation of the issue, and its apparent absence a sign of the failure on our part to effect the turnaround of the argument. The most obvious question to
StraU$$ oo l'lato
raise about Srrauss's principle is this: what is the principle that governs what Plato chooses to omit? After all, it would seem that any essential omission guanntees that nothing will lx: under$tood. There must lx:, then, reasonable grounds for the omission, and th.cse grounds must lie in the nature of rhe thing as it initially comes to lighL The abstraction m.ust lx: grounded in an abstraction by opinion, which has failed to rake some· thing decisive into account. Plato's procedure is based on the idealism of opinion, or the vulgar Platonism of opinion, which is cho::ked in rum by the Platonic dOCtrine of participation. It thus turns out that abstraction in Platonic dialogues brings together two principles: nothing can lx: understood if everything must lx: understood, and nothing can lx: properly understood if one docs nor rake one's lx:arings by the necessarily improper sraning point of understanding. Strauss's most smnling illustration of his principle is in his discussion of the Republic. What the &public abmaas from, he says, is the body, the most obvious sign of which is dtat the city, which is formed 10 supply bodily needs and does so perfea!y, has a class-structure based on the soul by itself, and this despite the fact that Socrates introduced the city as the analogue of the individual and nor his body or soul. The city, then, is the locus of idealism. It is shot through and ncccssarily shot through with self-mi-sunde.rsmnding. It is geared for the body and lays claim to the soul. In its usurpation, the city is =eotially rhe locus of alienation. It follows therefore that the city cannot make for happiness, and only if justice is radically reinterp.reted as philosophy is Thrasynuchus refuted on this LSSu.e.
This last allusion to justice as philosophy, which occurs quite late in the Rtpublic, calls attention to the most obvious character of Phuonic arguments. They keep on moving and changing in the course of a siugle dialogue, so that one can legitimately ask whether it is ever possible to single out anything as conclusive, or whether we must simply go with the Aow and not bother to pull together lx:ginning, middle, and end. Does a dial.ogue make a whole, or is it ra.rher an ever-moving series of insights and arguments that are not meant to come ro an end? Or what encdy is gained in undersWtding a Platonic dialogue if the temporal flux of argument is integrated into the paru of a single whole? What Strauss came to see was that only if one were able to link up the temporal order with the parr-whole order would the true argument ever emerge. The dissonance of pattern and sequence is of a diffe.renr order than their coincidence. lt was through the transformation that a temporal segment underwent when it lx:came part of rhe whole thar Plaro imitated the relation th2t always ob-
41J
414
Chapter_Twenty
tains between a part apart from the whole and a part as part of the whole. This imitation, which never ceases to amaze, made it possible for Plato to preserve the Socrates who in never writing represents the truth that philosophy alone has no tradition within the perpetuation of philosophy in its necessary decline. Strauss's deconstruction of philosophy is thus not Heidegger's, who hurried past Plato to Parmenides and Heraclitus, bypassing Socrates. '~) Strauss's second most important principle for the interpretation of Plato was the more obvious one. The dialogues were imitations because nothing in them was left to chance, but everything was in order even though the circumstances of reason' should not, it seems, partake of the same order as reason itself. The elevation of the circumstantial into the inevitable pointed in two ways: First, it reflected the fact that for us the starling point is always our interest; and this good, however conceived, is the engine of all serious discourse. What is true for life is as true for philosophy, which alone among the scientific disciplines has no principles from which to start except from life itself. To begin to philosophize, then, is to encounter a question that has been incorrectly formulated. The question reflects the true question, but it is not the true question. A Socratic discussion always moves toward a disclosure of the true qu~tion and its answer that determines at the same time the degree ofdisplacemem that was in the original question, and without which one could never have started. Plato's imitation of the relation between the beings and the good as it first comes to "light confronts us with certain difficulties: Once we have come to know the character of the perspectival, are we allowed to discard it and come face-to-face with the beings in themselves? Strauss's short answer is, Only if the soul can be discounted at the same time and shown to be a derivative phenomenon. Granted that the occasion Plato fixed upon does not and cannot stand in for all other possible occasions in which an issue arises comparable to the one he chose, it still must be the case that the occasion for all its apparent particularity is susceptible to thematization, i.e., to a structural extension that is as general as any argument. This is where an interpreter can most easily go astray and where Strauss was most surefooted. His reflection on the setting of the Laws, in which the Athenian Stranger is and is not Socrates, leads him to show the structural resemblance between wine-drinking and a discussion of winedrinking, on the one hand, and, on the other, the descent of the Stranger and the ascent of Megillus the Spartan and Clinias the Cretan. Such a reflection led him in turn to the Phaedrus, through which Strauss could understand why Cicero began his Laws with borrowings in equal measure from Plato's Phaedrus and Plato's Laws.
Stmuss on PlatO
Strauss's way of interpreting Plato, so that he became the model of all genuine philosophy, raises the question of poetry and its ancient quarrel with philosophy. Just as it is easy to recognize the difference between postPlatonic and prc-Pbronic philosophy, despite the poorness of our sources for both, so it is no less facile to distinguish between poetry and philosophy, as long as one does not look to Plaro and wonder whethct be is a hybrid who, in putting paid to the issue of poetry for all subsequent philosophy until Nietzsche and Heidegger, did 110t resolve the tension between the poet and the philosopher in himself. Strauss was alo.ne. I suspect. in showing the spuriousness of this apparently self-evident divide in Pbto. One way of stating the issue is to raise the question of uansluion, for if one renders Plato idiomatically, so that one conveys what one believes is the sense and nor the words, one bas already decided that the poet Plato, who is a legitimate subject of this kind of rendering. is irreconcilable with the philosopher, whose argumenu, everyone would agree. should be presented as exactly as possible. ln a rcttnt translation of the Sympotium, the cranslator puts into a heroic couplet cwo lines of epic v.,...., that Agathon made up in honor of Eros. Eros "brings,• Agathon says, "Sweet peace to men, and calm o'er all the deep. Rt:ot 10 me winds. to those who sorrow, sleep."
The translation seems flawless umil one notices that "rest" is not the same as koiti, which means either "sleep" or "bedtime. • "The sleep of the winds" poinrs directly tO Agathon's argumenr, th:n Eros is the god of poetic pro· duaion, by whose agency the metaphorical becomes lirctal. lr seems therefore alm.ost inevitable tha.r that uansla.ror introduces the couplet with the words "[Eros] brin.gs," and not with "[Eros] makes." Perhaps one could come 1.0 understand Agathon even through a nonlireral translation; bur Sttauss alone, as far as l know, did understand him because he followed the a.rgumeru down ro and &om the details. Perhaps the most punling as well as the most uno:pected aspect in Strauss's recovery of Pbro and philosophy concerns the srarus of me Grttk poets before Plato. Even if Plato does not open up the only way to them, it is certainly the most accessible. Without Plato, the tragedies of Sophocles, to say nothing of Aristophanes, are almost lost to us. Their understanding of me city, particularly of its subpolitical foundations. and of me law, particularly the sacred law, would remain in darkness were it not for the light Plato brings to them. The logos of Plaro unveils the mutbos of poetry for the logos that it is. Once, however, this is acknowledged, me Socratic revolution in philosophy seems robe coeval with Greek poetry, which had realized from me Start, with its principle of telling lies
415
41b
Lnapter l wenty like the truth, the relation of argument and action. Homer and Hesiod, then, would have to be recognized as alre :dy within the orbir of phi!oso~ phy. It is a rernarkabl<: fact, whose significance Strauss was the first or the last to see, that the only ment~on of "nature" in Homer has this meaning in PlatO but nor the philosophers who pr«.eded him. Strauss's recovery
of Plato opened up the possibility of gathering into the fold of philosophy more rhan philosophy had ever dreamed of I cannot end this discussion of Strauss on Plato without quocin·g Strauss's account of Plato's understanding of the philosopher, for it applies no less w Strauss in himself than w Strauss in his understanding of Plato: To articulate the problem of cosmology me"ans to answer the question of what philosophy is or what a philosopher is. ''iato refrained from entrusting rhe thematic discussion of rhis question ro Socrates. He entrusted it to a stranger from Elea. Bur even that stranger diJ nor discuss explicitly what a philosopher is. He discussed explicitly rwo kinds of men which are easily mistaken for t'ne phi\osopher, the sophist and t: ·e statesman: by understanding both sophistry (in its highest as weH as irs lowest meaning) and statesmanship, one will understand what philosophy is. Philosophy suives for knowledge of the whole. The whole is the totality of rhe pans. The whole eludes us bur we know parts: we possess parrial knowledge of parrs. The knowledge which we possess is characterized by a fundamental dualism which has never been overcome. At one pole we find knowledge of homogeneity: above all in arichmedc, but also in the orher brancnts of m;!.thematics, and derivatively in all productive arts or crafts. At the opposite pole we find knowledge of heterogeneity, and in particular of heterogeneous ends; rhe highest form of this kind of knowledge is the an of the statesman and of rhe educator. The Iauer kind of knowledge is sup<:rior ro the former for this reason. As knowledge of the ends of human life, it is knowledge of what makes human life complete or whole; it is therefore knowledge of u whole. Knowledge of the ends of man implies knowledge of the human soul; and the human soul is the only pan of the whole which is open to the whole and therefore more akin to the whole than anything· else is. But lhis knowledge-the political art in lhe highest sense-is not knowledge of the whole. It seems that knowledge of the whole would have to combine somehow political knowledge in the highest sense with knowledge of homogeneity. And this combination is not at our disposal. Men are lherefore constantly tempted to force the issue by imposing unity on the phenomena by absolurizing either knowledge of homogeneity or knowledge of ends. Men are constantly anracred and deluded by two opposite charms: rhe charm of competence which is engendered by marhemacioo:s and everything akin to mathematics, and che charm of humble awe, which is engendered by mediration on the human soul and its experiences. Philosophy is characterized by the gemle, if firm, tefusal to
Srrauss on Plato succumb to either charm. lt is the highest form of the mating of courage and moderation. In spire of irs highness or nobility, it. could appear as Sisy· phean or ugly, when one contrasts its a.chievemem wilh its goal. Yet it is necessarily accompanied, sustained and elevated by "os. It is graced by nature's grace. 3
Notes 1..
For the expression "'the deeds in the speeches." see Euthyphro nq.
"Correspondence Concerning Wahrheit und Meth()de," TJu lmkpmdent jo"rnal of Philosophy 2 (1978): s-6. J. What Is Politital Philosophy! (Glencoe, IL, 1959), 39-40. 2.
·P7
•
WORKS SETH
BY
BENARDETE
"The Oalmonion of Socntcs: A Study of Plato's '111algn." M.,tcr'• thesis. University of Chiop>, t9SI· •Achilles and H«tor. 1n. Homeric Hero. • Ph.D. dis.sc:mrlon. UniV9-)9. "Va. Cr. lilt: An U o t - Ariscopbanc:s MS." Htmwnl s...&s "' O.w.l ~ (194):): >41- ,.t. '"Acbilln. and die (/WI." H,._, 91, r>0. I b96J): t-<6. -n,. Ri&h<, lh< 'fN<, and the Bc:autiNL" G/M11141, DOL l - 1 (1<}6)): S4- 6>. • &'-1nd o;.,.ms in Pbro's Stms-•o.• ~ )(¥], DOL )-4 (196)): 19)- 126. -n>< Cri""' and Am of P~• ~ fiir /¥nlof.ri, ta], no. 1 h964l: ,.,_ -"· • "Sophocles' Ortlip111 TpAmu4." In .Anamn ttNi M.dnm. 1-tj. New Yorlc: lltiic llooko, 1964. R.eprin!," G/q,.., 4~, nos. J-4 (t96sl: lls--98. "Two P~ ln t...chylus' In r..-o paru: Witnn" Snulim NF 1 (1967): u)0. NP 1 (1968): S-17· "Hniod'o W.,/a ttNi lNp; A F111< R.cadinz." Ato" 1 (1<}67): t!o-74· •-n>< Arltril of Diomedcs and lh< Plot of the /lid' AfM 1 (1968): to- )1. H~ !..,Uri& The tbcu<: 1-bninus Nijbolf. 1969. N<W ecLuon with "s..-1
M......,,..
S
'fbott<u." Soudt 6md: Sc. ~·· Press. •999· "On Pbro's and TIIIIZUS' Sc:ima F"oaion. • !'"'?-""' 1o no. 1 (Summa 19]1): 11-6). R.eview of H. !.loyd-jones's tnruWioo of Aadoylus' Ortsril. A.ootntw.o P..-' of Phi· loJ.o 9l• no. 4 (1971): 6))-JS· "Ari>tlt: MA.oi-IILJ - s . " - t{M~a 21. no. 4 (June 1971): 6u-u. "A Rndins of Soplloclct' An. . .. In thne paru: lnfn1TtUI11#1f 4o no. l (Sprins t97sl: 148-196: S· no. • (Summer 1971): 1- Sf; s. no. • (Winter •ml: •41- 84- ~ prinred •• SMmf TnN,...,;•nr. A Rratling•fS.phodn' Antizon,. South B: S<. John's
r.-..,.
Coll
4<9
410
Sd<etecl Works "The Gn.mnur of Being. • i!n~ia.~olM~ JO, no. 3 (1.9nl: ..S6- 96. '"Oo Wisdom and Philosophy: 1lJe Yom Two Chaptm of Aristotle's M~a A. • Rn.iau .fM 101-43· Chicago: Encydopa«ii>. Bri· faotUca, Inc., t9S0. •"Plato' s P!Hutk' ManuscripL 1_9So. •"Pbysia sod Trog (1981): »7-4"· • "The Furies of AcscbyiU$. • Mmwcript. 1981. The Bnng -/the &tsoph] jounwl n (1986): 9- ;6. Sl"'J''Oi""'. Translation. lA Th< DUtlopn .fPLno, >jr-86. New York: B.nram 1.\oob,
•986. a..;.., of M. Gir>udcau. l.el ,.,mm, ~ n lflt:Wn tbee HmN/4t<. GtWIMI< j8, no. s (19S6}: s•6-47. "Oa:ro's lk kfiltus 1: Its Pbn sod ln~tion. • Amm-.fo"m.~l •IPhibJW:! roB, no. 1 (1987): >9S- J09·
•"Procq;oru' Myth and Logos.• Monwcript. 1988. S«nrtn ' S«onti S.ifin:: On PLno I ~bli<:. Chicago: Univcniry of Chicago Press, 1989. Paperback <991. TIN 1/heroric •IMoritlit] lind Plti/as,phJ: Plm# i "C.'f/6t • t
•-n,.
• ..._ •- • (1991): •s-47-
• "Plato's Luhn: A Question of DdWtlon. • Manuscript. 1992.. The 7'"n
m-4B-
7M &w aNI the Lpc A ~nit lkllll:mt 1/the ·~ • Lanham, MD: Rowrrun and Liulcndd, •997. • 'Piaro's 1 " - - On the w~y of the I.ogor." 1/nMw •fM'"'PhJsia 51• no. 1 (Scpctm·
ber 1997): •S- JJ· "l'laro. True and False.' 1M Nt"JJJ Crirmtm. Fcbnwy r998, 7<>-74· • "On the r,.,,_. Lcaurc at 1lJe Han.n1h Arcndt/Rdner SchUnn1nn Memorial Sym· po.sium in Politial Pba-pby: "The Philosophy of Loo Sm..,., • New School for Social ~ •999·
Sdcacd Works
"Meumorphooi> and Convcnion: Apuleios's Mrntmoryhosa." In Utnmy 1-fhuulon, Ancimt and MDdun: £mty. in Hont1T of Dalli.J Gror•, cd. Todd Brqfugle. lSS-76. Chiago: Univcmty of Chicago Pteos, 1999· "Socra
-tlJ
X
Aduan~
q>iohns o£. u; "knot o£. !li simile. o(, y; ond T rojw, ~ woll
of. i!biZ Achi!ks. !.1. 32. .1!i ond A1h< ar in Hip,.,..... !!. !1J.
atzumc"'·
2! Acgisthus. !!l Adian, on l'l.\10, 407 Ac:schlne~, u:srimony of. uu Aesop, l8l Agomc.mnon. J2i crime of, w.: cruelty of, !I!!; mimkc of. !!1.!!:.! Agfi.Pit41. double meaning of, Apd>ias, !£ Agathoo: and Atiswplunca. 121- 71, lb. ~ poruy in •pccch o( 176: apccch of. 12s- n; Suau.sa on. i!1i wisdon•
=
o£. ~ A&
bcinr;. }41: in cllinkinr;. 1\ju• .uicide of. 161-66 Alcestis. !12
)"!
~ ••1n.n
Alcibiadcs: lo¥U of Socr.ua, Iii!: mod. cmioo ol. ~ odf-<:onl
tS.,-llt; shidd o(, ~ f9C«b of. r&.,-lls Alimuion: and £roo. !ZZl of Socnrca. lU
Alpbabrr, ..,._..,.. and ..,...u in, ~book of. ~
Ani>': in Homer, ~ in
~
s....,_.., m
Alf~ ... JW
COOlcmpciblc and dr.inL-,
!Hi in Homer,
~ ~
as nobocfvs..
~ u.s..- ~
A.......... in Ar•-- 61 Anne, lllL nz; aocl c-. !!!!; aimj.. nalil}' of. ~ third d
Appearance. and raliry, 119-10 Apbrodite, 12. ~ 16
!.!
Apollo: on Athcna, liB; defense of Or... ta, ufu name ot ~ riddle ot 66 ApollodoNJ, c:har.>ct<:r of, t6ll Arrop
Arinopbanca: O.w/s of, Ulli comc:dy of, ~ ddinition of croo by, 1>.8; double trot in. !.Z!i on embr.aa, !ZE b_ iccups o£. 171: and mind, !!!i no< in 1'>."'f"= ~ and Socn1ca. ~ man t.cr.._.., !IE •!"""b of, m-n. yz; in tcxn.6 Ari
s,..,.n...
=
imimion. ~ M~o£. E oa mind as bcinJ and c:ou><, 196<1.6: p•u~ miocl ol. ~ on sciena mel an. Jlln..j; Oft Socnra, JlTo Oft , , _ . . !}!; theomical uorisa of, .196; on .UWO.U mao. !ll Ar<w, n6-tt'< and sp«UUizatioa. ~
4"1
Index Athena. 67; and Ala. m birth of, !11; on human ignora.ncx. §2i pcmuada Fu-ries-, !11; unites Sp=a and Athen.<, m=z8 Athens: de(.,-., of. !22; execution suspended io, 1Ba Atlas, in Hcsiod, !l Aukus. on demiurge. '9in.6 Aoomism.. incoruisceocy in., 34S Authority. otcd for, ~ Autoehthony, and ioa:n, zl
!Jnaha<,
116- 40
and man, tl& conceal~ nega:rion in, }6J ll
in mathematics. -40'2.--3'; name of. 146i in T'mrnnu, jlh: of mgedy. !.l!J and
'"" ugly. 1!:!& Becoming: u addition. >liz: hallucina· rions of. 310; and meaning. n:; problem of, 16o: reason lOr, 189 Bcing(s). ~ acstbet:ic: and nOttic, 31.4: arithmtric char..:ter of, Hl. }+!-~: io Ad&torle, 404; and beauty. ta ~118;
2.11d becoming i.o P~ 189, i_o Ti..uus, ~ as hody, W--9: and
cause. 'li deathless. >lis: ~ry of through sp«dtcs. ~ hid
for, tp: neutral, 2<9; of nonbeing. n8,: occlusion ot !:Yi not :u pans. u8i as power, H8: and time, 114: usc:r-frieodly, 113: weaving of with nonhBS: n.>me of. rss- <6: 111\d roul, }46; in Ti!lfMf4f. 381 Book. wodd nor a. ~
Boreas, !ll Brasidas~
ll Bruwiry, of Loeb"' and Niciu, •zo-71
Cadmw, in &ahu, !41"-S! Caesar, )uliuJ: &/him rivil< o(, l7fn.r8; C:Omp2SSiona.rc terror of, !QZ Cawndra. in Apnnn..n, u:u
Catacbt<$is, of -im. ~ Coralogue of Ship$, meaning of, JJ"-9 Cause, ~: and effect, ~ mechanical and tdc:ological, !22i as mythical. 181 Caution. of Socrares, !rl.:. 173 Cave~ Soaarn and Tim.aeus on~ 386- 87 Cebcs: and Slmmias, 181: oonccm fOr prudence, 181: objection of, Ul9 Ccplulus, in llqn.h/ic, !2l Cluercphon, cnzincss of. ill Chana:, lli 2.f. r!1: no< in iJR«har; Caes:u on. 17$D.I8:: i_n OuJipw TJT•nnw.. 22; in Platonic di21ogucs, 4J~
Chuaaer. and plot, 170 Charlo< ! Choice, in Otdipus 7)-rannus, ~ ChofUS: of AgRmnnnDn, nr u; of Anrig<mL, •2r: of &t:rlxu, 116: of H'rppolpus. ~ of O
edy. t44n .40: vCQion of laches and Nicias, l74n..t City (polis}: ond country (p.ztri$),
•zsn.n; di21ogic. 379, 18>: di>armed, !12; and household. u6; and justice, 1 !>: in O<Jipus TJ"'nnMS, :u; nruc· rurc of. Jh; rruc in Rrp.-bli<. 190, 112.
!69 Civility. r89; in Antitcnr. ~ and .sav~ 1)4 .
agc
'9'
Clm, mcmbetship ;,, and vinuc of, >lO Ckon, on Nicias, ~ a-Is, dare of, 16z.
Index Oyt<mcstG, 61. ~ and CawndG, 141n.6; d...,., of, 1.11 y ; and Furies. Z!1i mynetiowncss of, t~J; on Trojan War, 101 Collection (ttnth-itill). in llL S
s-
~ )OJ
Cosmos: of b
Coungc (aru/rriJV: linguistic hi.nory of, Uir; in ~ '171-Z1i and slpbro· nmi. '!H! 14C spuriow forms of, Ii O; .. thouglttful daring. 171-n. .jl6-J7l of young Socn.t
C rarylw, irony of, 147 Crlll]los, d!araetcr of. 146
Creon: in Antif""'· 111: lanSJUS< of, 167 , lztn.n; in
Desire, nz; and ncccssiry, !!!; and nttd scpant17-18; and CIOmmunhm, 180: and uo
Dilti, meaning of, 62. Dialogu< (~iJ, J49-JI; chuacr
SDpbist. m Divination, !!Z
Division (Jiakritill): and collection (nm. Jrriti~). Jl?-10. ill! JZ0-71; by ~ rion. 368: principle of. 361; JWO w.~ys of, :u! Su ,Js, CoDc:crion Dorian mode, 112-6o Double speak. £ of image. 348, }86 ~•mimitikl. ddinition of. m ~Diopiloi. &e Sopbisu Duak, in L:pis, 109 Dunmnir. as powu and meaning. 1!4-!! Educacion: of Rqub/ie, t9t9S; in vinue, 191-96
O.imonian. of Socn.tcs. 111 Olub<. 0 ., on friend, !2J! D
(uncanny).
~ 311; m:an~ 173
Dcliwn, :!ffi in Thucydidc:s, 164-61, :zsn.t4
Delphic orad<, in CJM,.,itks, 2.46- 48 Ottniurw:: as fathu and rnaltcr, J]ll; as rmk.er o( time and F.a~r of becom-
ing, J!! Ottnocrocy: in Athms, ~ and phiJoso. phy. lOS Dttnosthcn"" in Thucydidc:s, 171 - 71
Egypt. ... Eidroc analysis, and genuic, l79-8o Eidot: litcdeu, !:l:£ and mnot. 16~; in &pub/k.j86
EiWtilti: in SDphist. m ; and p/N11umi1i in TimaLW, 389-90· SS-•7• !:!2; spliu Socn.1cs, J~: w.~y of. H> -n
411
426
Index Elecm. in ChoI9. See also Homoi(m Epimetheus:, ec:u..~wn of, ~ EpiMktii:i: pun on, J74n.J; in Sra~m.tn, J60 Enm (to low:), u sarive, 112. Eris, geoca.logy of, U7 Eros: and Aphrodite, dao art of. ~ uz, !:Y; odthcr bcauriful nor good. •n11; cult of. 2!i as tl..im<mlon, !2!; as
diremption in cosmic Otd«, 171; dual· il)' of, 1'}6o.6; dinUnarion of. tlh; cxpe.ri.cncc of, ~ •z8; fatefulness of, !E and frlcnchhip, 170; ;CJ>ca.logy o( rSo; as god. 17~ 2.01; of the good, 181; in Hesiod. L 2; homdm, !Z!h 18o;
hymn tO. 91; illusion in.. 11 4i none in as• of Kronos. l66; dt< philosophu, dlo~ and poetry, r82; as produaive, !zz. punishment, fZt-7£ rtbcllious, ~ in &pr
.rlll•"'
=
37.9
Euboulia (good counseO. in Pt-otagoras, ~
Eurnenid... in Odipr11 at CAlonMS, w Eupbemisrn. 148. 17 1 l!uthyphro, zJ4n.4; mysticlim ot 162-61 Evtlr. disoppe:uan« of. u6. l!li prt$<11C<
or. =
E.volution.., in PmtagOra:s'.s myth, IRS Experience~ 161; charam:r ot '22:-400 Pacu_Jti~
i_o Channilks, 1.10 Fall, biblital account of, 174- 7!
Fame. desire fOr, i i ai-Fonbi, ttma.ia in Lyris. 2.01r Pa.oouhenaia in TrlmmU', m Porot. io l'roms) : as adjc:aivc, noun, ond \'erb, 1.09; conundrum of. 100. u8; de6nirioo of. U'li and en(ffly, UQ. 114~ fedin.p io.., !Q1.. 1n; differcnr from Eros, 1Sll; two horizons of, 2.2.(; as possession. u o- u ; Socrates' in
Cbarmitla. :w6: scrucrurc of,
102. 1U
Funoy, tbe, 237 Fu_ri_es, ~ J6o; i_o Ch«phoroi, tll: dream orin E-umenides. 6s; as new
gods. ~ in HesiocL 10: in Ornuia, lli Gen74n.JI Geocradon of opposita, 181: dialtaical vwion of_, :16. Goow:uy: a.nd philosophy. •oo; soud, rz§ Ghost story, !le.opian, 181. :tl!6 Gibbon, cites Jw,rhiu, w-e. Gbucoo" education of, 18o G-nomitl. in SrAmmall, ill Godd..,.., ~Wnes of. !.Go God(s), lli !2£ ab
-
4
wbok of parr.s, 1'}6n.6
lndc:x Gorgiu. t87; cnmplar of doubt aod pretense. 112: and Pnllagoru. !2Z; on pooisbmcor. >68 ~ ind:aerminarc cimc of, 192"-I; allude< tO Otiyuq, 210D-15 Grammar: an o~ urn.5; in Ch~
Co!fim,
14S Greeks, and barbariaos. ~ }'18. 163 Grief. formul.. of, l!, lli Guile in Ag~:~mt7Wion. ~ in Athens. w. Hade<, !],_ .u,
€:z! in Aforx. ~ aod
cnch2.none:nt, !f!i and Eros, !Zli
name of 158: in Promgrm•l, 1116 8z: in rragedr. •!i-ll Ham:d. in Hesiod, 2_ Health, Pro1:0g0ru'• oocioo of, ll1Z Hebe, in TIN!Jpny. 6
Heare, a; pun on,
~
H«.•or, ll, £; and Aiu. ~ and An· dtomacl>c. !!; name of, !.!! Hedonism, !l!z Hegel. G. W. P. on Ocdipuo, 71 Hden: and Briscis, a21.; in Euripide<,
6on.r6: i_n Homer, 4.L. ~ n P:=u: on poary. !l. Hcmlodr. in qsis, 111-·11 Hnulaz aod Ji... coofuoed in Lpis.
=
l"l.S-2.6
HcraditiiS. u! 117: on logos. ~ wd oarnes, 112-11: and Proagous. 3o8 Hcn:nos, mcaoing of, ~ Hero: in Homer, !li as dc:migod, 17; not
in tragedy,
UlQ
Hcrmogcnes. chuaacr of. !.!2_
Herodotus: on «mrihon.. 174n.S; on Croe-sus, ro1.; on logos, 1.11fL.li Hesiod: '"'" works o( ~ on l!ris, illi Hesr:i;a. J t7; and P~phon~ I'M : in PM~
'""· 166
H crcrogmciry, II; and homogeneity,
+•6-17 Hippo/ytus: am.WC. !!z. 2E nor ascetic. ~ churiry o( ~ ""'~"" of, 2l!; defencb himself, 9S: in lcm wirh rhc
Hipporhales: and Kttsippoo.
101- 1:
poem
of. 1<>1 Hom«, & ~ in Agathon's sp=b. rz6: u authociry, 141- 4 1: and gods, ~
and names.
1p.:
on Oceanus and
Tethys. ]!12; unanswe.rcd pr~ytr in, ~ rostoration o( 180: recia:ncx o( !!! Homogcndry, zl!
Homoion. i.n L]liJ.
117, 1.1.9.
£Nmti(m Hope. in Pr•nurhnls Hoplitcs, 17+"-7
Sec also
&rnul. ill
Horac:t-, on poetry and civilit:u:ion.., 144n.50
Hone, deotb of, 12 Human, and manly, ~
Hunrcr: Ele:uic Srrangcs u, 116, !f!1i of numbers, 117: and pocr. 1o6-7: Sacra· teS as. 17Jt in 5Dphis4 m Hyperbaroa: in 7ii1UU'US, 19••·1
•1dc:as. • as Soera:ric qucsdoru, ~ 1/i.u/: and Od]my !1, r9: plan of frorn Boob 4-457- 6 .117. ~ plot or. rz; proem of, 6tn.l.:l: sixth book of. o!l lmag<: definition of, H1i u hmron roioJt'""· .~<~8: of im:ogc. !!:!;_ rwo kinds of. l!l- P: and langu:ogc. 112: Stranger'• malting of, ill. Jmagjnation, !8:1 I mmottality, 42--50: of soul, 1}9 }J)anettion, 116--18
Inca<, 71, n9. •fl· ~ lndcrerminatt dyad. :!i in S,phil~ 141, ill lndividualil)'. 170, t8>-h: of name. !.!! Jpbigm.W •t Aolis, ~
lsmene, in Ckdipsu 111 Coltm111:,,
Jll.
jOOl..ua; a_od cha:nc::e, !1!!. confused rcpocr by, •·p : and Thebes, !i! Jury: in Arhcns, ~ in Eummirks, net:
knowlcdj;c of,
120
Just. cbc::: art of, ~ n;am(' for. r6'l;. prin· ciple of io R
law, ~ misogyny of. l!}, 1111 picry of, ~ prol« of, :2Zi sp«ch of. ~ uniqueness of, 9!: unlovable, 9S
iWI>s k•talhos, split between Laches and Nidas. 1.72
'117
4>8
l.ndcx
Lop: lS"nt and aetion in, 1!!' ari dunm·
/Gmtr/4 (peulstcnoe), '73
KiUi.ng: :wd dying in Hom«. 16-n; and being kill!91 and belief in &um.u. 116; as lcnowlcdg< of cause, JDJ; and communlq-, >oz; defined, 101; d.adrc lOr, :!ll; as disorico,ation. ~ and fi:eedom, !22i and good, 156: of igJ!Oranc.c. 18t; a.nd ju.ni~X. 10': and to know, !JS; of knowledge, ~ ~ maicu· 'ks 11od matbcrna_riq; u.ni·led u, .JOt. J' O; of nonbcing, J?iO.IJl pmial. 1lli and peruptlo4, and p
!!3"·"
of, z68; and trust. !]!2, Su llls4 Sdf-
kn.,.iodg<: Kronoo. in H<Siod. u. S.. lllS
:.sS- s<J.
:z.70; on boplite-insttuaion.. 16r; on
p:an and whole, 26o; pto!s<s Socr.ucs, 166-68; on tragedy, ~ lalu.. h; mwd
Languag-e: co.-pc>=li'C)' of. ~ ~ fiankness in. ~ Gtttk. 1110 and ·lnug<$. ~ i l l in OtdipJU T)"llniJW, ~ Larrncy (/,ubn,j, ill.! of lcnowlcdgc. •s~J 1nd muh, ~ S.. lllSnd J,.,rd, !6?-69: in Hc:tlocl, g; in Hip~/pMI. M. 91-!!iJ narurc, m; and song. r6~ as wisdom, !2l Lawless (aniJmos). double mewing of.
••l·
ru
349. Lasing; on Achacaru and T rojaN, ~ on $GC:pt«'
!!
L<wnann, M., on /wollJr, !§ Lifi:. mconlng of, !! Light: and beat, l9Jn.8; in Hesiocl, u Litcnln<SS, in j{jp~ly-. 86-81. Me.t:~phor
S« .W,
cal dw:aa..- of, 343; Herad.irw on, jQ§; Hcrodorw oo, Ji-tn.JJ; and nu.o, )46: mc::wing of. l!2l :wd myth, 18>.:
in OtJJp"' 111 CAI4nos, ll:f; Socrates' account of. 181: twO kind< of. ull Love: 1Dd &icndshlp, !!!2; and pottry, iB:J: as puni$hmen<, 2!!, See lllS
lu
L,..tmachus, and MHcsias, >!9 lysis: enchantment and disc.nchamme:nt of, wz: Jo,'llbility or. >Oil and Mencxmos, 1o8- 1o; philosophy of, !2i Lpis. eight argumcou of, i l l
Madnc:sJ, and injunicc. !!!: Makudcs, m; and crotlcs, !O!: and pn. p o, llii twO :uu jn, 1o6 M_aimonidc:s. on Hebrew, t6lity of, t88; bcstialiution o(, 194J as not bc:ast, )6); u bond, !E; earthly. lZl and god. 3461 humil· ioaOon o( 16:t: i_njuniee of, !2Q! inuu· •i-~css of, t8z- 88; as ~ving-tb.inking
being; as me O
ugo.as's myth, r8'8; in Tim40U, Su lllS
1&.1.
Ma47~ MC"p~CUSP
io ~,.. n.t- ·u .
Index Mega.ri•ns, slcepticism of, 128 M
dox of, lll2 Mcsscngcr, in Otdipw Tym~mu, !i! M¢~pbor. !ll, ~ Ht<:ab:tess of. Jl!;. rditmliz<.d, 36~ of sb, argumena in 6m chop<« of, ,.00-40'1
Mimeois; doubleness of, 35t: and narntion. z Mind: wonymity of. ~ as awe, :18z Mirodes, and Pen
2i
Moruliry, 161: of heroeo, ~ ignor.tna: of, !2.li in P,.,.,..thNJS &und. nz. 5«
""" O..th Muses, !: 1'1: for kings and singm. t three: so"&' of, 6-z Myrh: philosophea', 345: in Pbto, 180. 191: purpose of in S~.rttsm~~n. 367- 69: suucrurc of Socntcs', t9£l.J: ratability of, mn.n Name: bubui2n, !!Z; dri6s in meaning o(, ::t6li 2S ln.srrum~nt, !!!! male and female, !ffi and money, ~ of names, 16:1; private and publtc, !Hi
proper. ~ punitive and therapeutic, 111: sevm kinds of. IS>: muulation of. !E
aempl_ifia, UJ N«t:US, in Hcsiod, u Nestor. 15- 1.6, ~~~ ambiguity in spcc:ch of, mn. 9 Nc.wtoo: equation for forte. )'l.lo.z.; laws of motion of. J4l· ill!h!!
Nlcias: and corpses. ~ and philcmphy, 168; as prot.1g0nis1 and spem.tor, 169;-zo: praise of hopi.ite-innruction. 169-70; in Tbuqdides, >61-M· n!. •z6n.n. !1! !Z. Niemd>e, on tragedy, !ll Norni.I:W sentence. l2i: J94n.lz; idealicy of, 1h. ill Nonbeing: being of, !Hi and logos. :!iZi. in ~phis; i l l u the O
Oath,
!!z. 116: in Ca=r. n
rates. ~
OJ,ssry, Cira: and Eumaeus in, ifu, l1!!!,6 Od)'$$CU$, ~ ~ tOii and Achilles, ]!; ep~ thcu of, 'li; and Ewt12<11S, 115; and god$. 18n.1: kilb in anger, ~ name of, ~ 115, ~ as Outis. HZ! Soa:ateo as, 186; oo Sokos. U Oodipw. 104- 'io l07; :anger of, zz- z8; bdicf of, !lli birth of. ~ blindnm of, 1!<>=81: dilfcrcnc< in <wo p~, ~ funetion of in Odip"' 4t CD/cn14, UJ; guil< and innocence of, !!:L !1!;_ as Heraclirean, 16): ignoranc< of, nz: name of. Z:L !L !!L 126·i ~radigm of moo, rz. and Poseidon, rs8: public nun. Zl! pun by, m; riddle of n6; self-blinding of. 12!; sttll' of, Z!l nonsuicide of, !;!£ tragedy's undcfS(and· i-n.g of, r~: ryranr_, n9; u_ n_tqueneu of. !!!i unpoetic. zs
O.Jipus •·' CDk>nus, h. 100, ~ Chorus of, to8; 6rsr saslrnon o£ 111; riddles of. no- n; transgression m. !!.! o.Jipus T,nm•us: ambiguity of, u6; movomen< of. Z!i plot of, !lQ Oi~~PJ~ in Lysis, !!1 On
429
4 )0
Index Opinion (tibxa), >8>: Cddas's mlsundastandin.g of, >so; ddinidon o( U9; &IS<, 316, )W; in OalipllS Tpitl'lnUS. So; in Th: kincb of, 36o: and mocton, ~ in soul, 488; tcm· poral, ill Orestes, 6s- 6G. ~ £:!; ond J\cgisrhus, ~ ud
Elcetra,
LHJ!.44; 25
Lzw.
bringer, !!z; silence of, ill Other, and Some in r;,.,<JlS, tilt. See also Sophisr Oumnos: casuadon of. h. J&8: ln Hesiod, i Ovid, on Odysseus, !2 Pon: emblematic, 116: name of Ilia Pandarus, 1!!:::1! Ptpinian. on mora.liry, !.Q1 Par.a.digm; nal\lle of. 170=71: shift in. l.22i in J84d!J Paris, ~~ M Pannc-nidc.r. hypothes1:z.iog o·f, ;!92.; one of, \14 15: poem of, ~ P•rmnti.Jes, early rboughr of Socrates in,
run-.
121 P:a.n:icipttionf tbc other as pdndple- o{,
lil P4rhss P•usanias, and Eryxim>chus, !1! Pak.rasty. th~,; and philosophy, ~ Ptnrbeu.s: conve:r:sion of. ~ maollncss:
of. J£ PetjW)'. ~ in M
Pwuaslon. causa.licy of in PhtuJM. :191 Pb...!o, aperiencc: of. :z!l Phoing of, ~ Pb...!ra, on plosure, 88-89 Pb...!rus: in PharJJW, !ffi t68; in SJ"'J>O· sUtrn, t62-zo
Pho<Jina, 18s; and laws, 414; myth in, l 73t p:a.rndox of, '!22.i. aUlLSion in Sraus"''"' 366; Srrauss on, :122 P!Mntmio. de6nirion of, J49- !l Phommtilrl: as EWe opinion, ,Y,~; of Pl>ro, ii1i in S.phitt, m 110. )1); in Ti=nu. 39>- See also EiJ:asrihH; lm>g1' Phikbus. Jj"l. !!£! U}~ on matbMJafics, ill
Phi/Qphil<>s, in Arisrode, >30"-lS Philosopher: Socnres on, 111- 18: as Stral)ger. YI: EJc:ack Stranger as, J:q ; tbematitation o~ B2i Throdorus· undcar>nding of. 198 PhiloS4 Philosophy, U& ddi.nition of. r68, 1!>; experience of, = :a.nd good, »I: highest rhane of, >S4: bomde.ss. ~ hopeless, nor helpless, '-'9. >s4: in Lpis. 211- n ; withour method, 422.! and pcdera5ty, 17 9; and political philosophy, llt; and poetry, 4Q1! nonroutine ch:u-aacr of. ~J6; split in, p6; ""'"' of. uS; and ~Yt •:lso u::aditioa of: if!! ua.osmissioo ot 1?3· 118. ~ 198: and wiodom, Ul
Ph}'Siology, none of citber death or eros,
ili
Piety, ~ of Chorus in Hippolytw, !12; .ad philosophy, !i!; in ~ in~ •tainst Th~bt:J. 1740.10 ; of woroen, 9'1. Pindar: Ol]mpi4n U. 193: typical poem of, !2!:!1 Pityl and fear, IO? Place (Lh6rA): llL lni in atomism. }4}"; coeval with b91"··•· ltl: on Eros, 1; wd Eodides, 198; and Eleadc: Stranger, }1.4; Kinlism of. 41:1~ as
l'r•"'t'""'
image-malu~:r. ):)L; f...lults of, 4o8: on
lndea play. 401: and Thucydidcs, 164, 17 0; on u:agedy, 146. S« ow Socn.res Plato.Us:m. n•; of opinion, £E Plato ag:Un.sr, ill Plo:asute: and pain, 1B1, ~ S<Xual. 2!, !Z!
Plutucb: on Niciu, ~ on Plato, 407 Poetry, ~ in Laches' •pc..:h. 167: and philooophy, 40!': befim: Plato, 4JI 16 Pl)/jtifti: in CJ,omriJLs, !£, ?M; definition of, )71-71; as p>ndigm of science of !he OUter, !Zin~!: in Suusma•, }5S!l Polus, mistake of, Porphyry, on IW and Otlyssq. !1 Posridon. n-a.rnc of, ~ Po~<, in 7imuus, 191- 9·1. S« DW Time PrRgmar.a. 118: and oma, Hi! not ontA.
=
!lQ.
Prattein$ and poiein, :Y.S. Prefix: pros and nm, ~ 1nn.4 Presence (JN=14i4): in Lpis, 119; in 7int~teus.
l2!
Po:-Soc,..tic:s, !!:: Pride, ~ of Critiu, >SI: of man, !ll Priest-king. in /uhem, ll2. Principle, ,.cri6ce of, l!Z! }4! Pcomethcus, 122.! ans and crimes of, rl4!1i comp.let.. Zeus's project, ~ d"''"ir of, IJ9: good coomcl of, IBl!;, in HC$tod, l3i ignor.mcc o£, tt7, 1SS homtthtw &Mru/, :and Prougom. ~ Prophros, at O.,lphi, 6>-64 Protagoras: oounrua.rgumcnts of, r91; and democr:acy, 191; cvidtmiaJ suppon for, 107; logo5 o~ ~ on · man the mc;a..
•= ·." •so: myth md logos of.
~
and &pl
and disgr.ta:.. ro. n : divine, 16s: in Hippo/pus. ~ of l'cntheus, t06-'!$ ,..rionaJity of, 19}-94 Pun(•). 14n.1, ~ on 'f'ihu!Wr. 16o. 3740-l: of Socrares, 176n.l8 Pytbagoreanism_. 151. p1; Strauss on,
"'6
R:.cioe, PhMn. "+'"~ Reason: and the circumSWIWI, 17$; and conremplation. l2Z R.:coUection, 28!; and perception, 1B9 Rro>gnition, of enemies, u Religion, !1:!:, t84i ~d ap«iencc. 184; a.nd rhetoric, !1Zi in Symp9siu~Wo ~ twO kinds of, 2§. &public, 100, !22; at'gument of. ~9!-96; digr..,ion of Socn.teO in, ~ Glaueon'.s goods in. B3:;, 2.nd P:ausmfas's speech, !Z!,;, pbilosopher-.king ln. !QZi principia of, ~ rd•rioo to lkpublic, rz6 83: •P~' between Go1fUu and ho"'goras, 196 97; and Swmruzn, lffi S=uss on, 4U-1); ruuc:t:utt of soul and city in, ~ Rhapsodes, in Homer, !2 Rhetoric, 108; of mylhology, ~ Sacred, ~ ~ and !he po~tial, ~ in Tbucydides, 16s; violation of, !22 Sacri&ee, !!, us; in Haiod. !Ji hum•n. 2.!; in Lysis wd &pubGc, 10); in homaheur &und. !!2 Sc,ience. Sre Knowledge Second ,.iling. m. u8. 176, 4JD; Suanger' s ~t>ion of, ~ J9'· S« Diu> Soc>
. ,.
Seeming: in Oedipus TJ'"""'"· ~ in Sophist, ~
Self (•utos) , ~ de6ned in Pb.u~ •24•·J; illusory pcrpcwarion of, th Sdf-2."Nare.nm, yo-4-1 Sd.(..contl':ld.iaiun. in Phiutlo~ 2.94!!.1 Self-ronttol, ~ loo.s of in Socn.o:s, 1=16 Self-knowledge. m. !!!i and dialogue, 138: meaning of. 146: as pbilooophy, 1.11; not teadubl~, ~04: and wisdom~
404. See Dlso Knowledge Stven ag11ins~ Tbebts. 100, 12.9, ~74Jl.JO Sexual grnetation, and making. 1 Shame, 2.!, ~ 141- 4>; of Cbmnides, ~ of Cririas, 14S: and feu in Arisrode, ~ in Hippof]M, 88-89. 91; in O
411
-ll~
Index Sieiliao expedition, ~ Sighr. prinucy of. :12! Simi!<, lli 1!1. ~ of d.2o:h, lZi of Fwics, ~ in Hesiod, !]; of wcava. 12!!, SB. also Merophor Simmtas.. objecrion of, lSh 189; conarn for ju.stice, '!!:i Simon.ides, potm of. ~ SJaves, roJc of in CiJ«p}Nrt~i, !!i Soemes: abscnr &om Arhens. ~ u Antaeus, 198; as Ulduopic principle, 182; in Apo/4o 6J. !2i and Athens, 161-61; aurobiography ot :tlb.; made bcauriful, JfO; dcHvc,. pscwlc>wisdoms, !04. po; plays doaor. ~JS ~ doublcnm of, I1h: cro; love of philosophy, w. 1:11.; in L_.,U. 197-99; m.akcup of, 200; on mimesis, z; mother of~ 1!!! noble Ue o( m; os ~. ll2!i the pcdc..st. rcvc.rscs Pbacd..,., !2S os pimp, .198; of Pla
=
and young Soeratcs, EI Solon: in Criti•is Siory, 181; in f«ypt, l94ll:Lf; in H.c rodorut. IOl.{ lna:rpldarlon of, 1:13
Sophists (J.XY>SOphoi), !fi! uo; and dry. 187, :n 6j impcnonu: the wise, }48; as phant<>m U:noges of philosapbm. ~~. 11!; represent th< other, ~ .lingle knowlcdg< <>f everything by, HJ; 'lbcaerenu's mhundomandicng ot ul
s.,hlfl: wd s- ·· >I7-i8, !!!i. 198; breakdo.wo in. UL U9: di2Critic:::a in, :£!! a.s phantom spcccb. ll!l philosophy in, l:J:2i as pbonrom of an ~.
)?};
Socrate1 in, !22!, in Starnnum.
)59: theme of, JOJ
Sophocles. on Odysseus, !2 S6phnm01i (Modearion): as uniry of autonomy and def
m
Soul: aesthetic.: and dianoetic, Jr?; ami~ cnuopi"c pri_nciple.. 309; 3S body, 289; and d.2rh in Pll=J4. 1-16; death!..., ~ !ifll.:!i as disjunctive rwo. 1M; as dO\'ecoce and wu. :uz: in Hom«, y; n>rurol good> of, !Hi in P"--nu, 114: principle of life :and lcnowlcdg<. tS.S; &cdppiog of; '!3.1& suuc:rure of in R'P..b/it;, B, :tZ!; in Th<-. ~ rypcs of. !2! Soul-cathonk.s, "49· llli dcconsr:rucrinn
of:
1:l7-40~ :1S
tes,
l:lt 112
ma:l:lcine, 339; of Socra-
Space-: dialogic. 391- 91; not mirrorlike, l94Jl.11: oriemacion in, 3951\.13,; and rime in PbaLJ,, ~8. S« .Jso Pbu Spea:h: and oction, 180: and deed in
Tbueydjdcs. 164: OS dialogu<. }!O; diua ..d indir
OWoguc Sphiru. n6; bcanriful, >J8: name of. 163: riddle of. Zh ~ Suusman: argument of. )S<; ddincs $0phi.n. J7); dill'cccnr from SophiJt, ~ &lsc divisions in, lS9,- 6to mytb in, 12.6, !1L, 37 9; rerum of scau:sma.o in.. m; Socrates ill. J17; theme of. JOJ; ..glin.., of myth in, ~ Sresibos~
jn Uulm. 161- M Slr.luss, 'L.: caution and doting uf. 1o8: on C.v<, 386- 87: on
subjecti"" =·
lnda wmy, 4u: diffttenc:o: fn>m Godamcr, 410: on "idea• of the good. )Sr. on uws, 41-4: on pni4fiti ln Plato. 410: on Pla•-m on philosophy, 41<>-•To on polirial philosophy, .fll-n; on &pwlllic and n - . u6-n; on Thruymaduu. 188-8'!
Suffix:
·i*-~
:uS
iki, of Ariotode. l1Z! of me
Smmgor, u6 tz Suicide: in Hippol]oo. ~ ~ of philosophy, )>s: of Socrates, ~ ili Sun. in lkpublie and TimMtU, J8s s,ponum, ~ polidc:al-thcologic:al dirDMSion o(, ~ tim~ of. ~ 181; mgic spcrchcs in, !ZZi unity of, t6ll Symptoms: of conditions, U£ moality ... 1!!2.
r. iNtUh>o pr41Uim as an and principk. H+=W of Somtcs, Jzm.to Taming: in Pro-"-' Bftrul. uB Tcchnology, ill. ill Tdcmacbus: os hero, !2i shame of, w Tdcology: of C\il, :!-4!, ~ of Socrates, ~90::91
Thcaeterus, J>0->1: heaucy of, JO>: dassi· 6es roots, 11in. s~ combinc:s Heradirus and Prougoras, lQZi defines knowJ. edge, tU: capcdcncc of S=nga, JSt: four olfsprin& of, 12£ IW knowledge, JOt: made barren. :w.: narwe of. J•s'W in S.phisr. ~ 1o6: on soul, l!:li U&lincss of, .lQQ TINALtnru, !!!; argument of, !.fL logos of, 197: two principles of, 1o6: rda·
Theology. in Arisrocle and Plato, bi Theory. !Z!.. ~ and pd. j68; and sattsmansiUp, ill Tbusircs, !:2 Theseus, ~ in o.Jipou liS O.IDmu. m; scrupln of in Hippolyos. ~ Thinking: dc6nition of. J'-4• H9: lift of.
Tbrasymachus: angtt of,
!if;
Snauss on,
410
Thrin41. in Ph!Jdnu. !Oii Thucydida, !£ on courag<. and know!· edge. ~ and I.A.c/m, ~ 17Mn. !L ~ Mtftan dialogue. 169; and Plato, 181.; on w>ll of Adueans, 5!/-D.ll Tim:aoJS: on hunun body, Z..9:tn.Jt prelude of. l!!li c:hrcc principles of, ~ usc of divi
Titans. 1:2: and T1ranomachy. u Trad_ition, zJ6
T r.gcdy: in Athens, lli!; aud'ocn.ce of. !l!; character and plot in, 170: and com· cdy of life, 22; dcYico in. ~ func
101.
Thebes: blindness of, in Oa/ip111 Ty;m·
m
"""· 129. !.I£ and Oion)"USo Theoc:IK:y, of Nicias, zzr-z; TbcodorusJ l:27 i as auditor of ChArmiJn~ 111: errors of, !ltJ!; link with Pn>t1S0"'· illi parr of >Jt~Ument of TIN- 112: on Thact, 100: utopi· anism oC ill TIN~"!· plan of. s
Triple coad. in o.Jipou Tpnma, 19 Trojan!: c:lu.ncrrr of, !L ~ once silent., nn.6 Truc:h: and error. J!ii and ~e. ,.. n: of fabc mucturc, !!2, SN Jso Enos Two: conjWJ<:dvc and disjuocdvc., 28~ and oae in Platonic myth. ~ probltm of. Jl!6-8z Typhos (Typhon), u. !h !!9
433
4H
Index Tyram: in O.diput Tp•nnus. :n; Socn... on, Z:ti in Stautm4n. us·n.n.
Verbs. in middle ...-oic:c. l.B!!:;2 Vice. names for. IC)1 Vinue, pt.; berok, H! moral and imdleounl, m_: n_am.c:s for. till mmti_onecl one< in Chamtitks. >U: puts of. !2!!, 184: pleasure of. 141; and wisdom, l!.! Vowel~ atad consonanrs, l14i nama: of,
!.li
War, in .ProtagtJms, ~91-24. Wasbi.ngton. G., 2?..w.n. Wtaviog.. ~ ~9~n.z~ of A.Wna. no; di.a~ lccrks as, 37« and shame. ~ LWO kinds of, )4,9; of vinue, •~~> Whole. the: wd one, !Zli and port., !3§, ~ ~ 41:.; in 1'11<-. 116. See also £idM WiD (b.ulhis), 162; for poMr, !Z1 Wisdom: complerenm of. 401- 4; impossibility of. '!6; and jusrice. 108: as obedience., 160; 1ix opiojons about,
401- 4: prohibiri.on ag;.tinst. ~ Proragorcan. lQZ::§
Woman: in Hippolyrus, 91-94< in Hesiod, !li in Homer, r6; !lOt in Proagor.u's myth, tBa; in uagedy. 122 Wonder. and dcligbr. }96: .. sigo of wis-
dom. 404-S Wocd, all'~. !ib S.t .ts. Name
Writing,, of poets. 2!=::2:! Xanthippe, 29JD.l XmU. sacredness of, 41 Xmopboo, on double m
You.na Socrates, l!Z! humiliation of,
12! Zcno, puodox of, 190 Zeus~ L
!t JDn.7; art of,
U?; igoor.ilncc
of. no: justia of. ~ mme of. ~ as not god, fiL 166; plan of, 4 and time,
I!!
Zo:sin:tU.s. on Chri.scimity.
!Q1
