The Life of Reason and the Life of Desire

In Plato's early dialogue the Gorgias, Socrates and his interlocutor Callicles debate what Socrates says is the most important question of all: how one should live. Socrates argues for the philosophic life, in which one's desires are ordered by reason; Callicles advocates the life of the forceful man of affairs, who as far as possible acts as he pleases both in public and private. Underlying their differences lies an implicit disagreement about the nature of the self. While both appear to believe that the human personality consists of two main aspects, reason and the desires, Socrates seems to identify himself with the former, whereas Callicles identifies himself with the latter. Thus for Socrates freedom and happiness depend on the desires' obedience to reason, while for Callicles freedom and happiness depend on reason's obedience to the desires. Callicles is adamant that it is his view of human nature that is correct: the philosopher is a pathetic creature who is entirely ignorant of human pleasures and desires and the characters of men. When Socrates asks whether Callicles agrees that those who need nothing are happy, Callicles scathingly replies that if that were true then stones and corpses would be happiest of all. Impasse appears to have been reached. Although Callicles later formally capitulates to Socrates, he also claims that he is only agreeing with him so that the discussion may be brought to a speedy conclusion.

MAN AND SUPERMAN

At first sight, it may seem rather odd to claim that Callicles is an example of thumoeidic tendencies gone astray; it may seem more plausible to view him as a forerunner, not of the thumos, but of the pleasure-seeking epithumētikon. After all, from 491e to 492c Plato puts into his mouth what appears to be one of the most forceful exhortations to hedonism ever made. The man who would live rightly, Callicles asserts,

One might imagine that a life devoted to such relentless sybaritic indulgence could hold little time for the thumoeidic pursuit of worldly success and honours. Yet at 484d Callicles makes it plain that a man should aspire to be a well-respected kalos k'agathos, and to this end should emulate men who possess wealth and reputation (486c–d) – a remark which is significant not only for the content of its ideal, but also because it shows that he is interested in ideals and role models in the first place. His chosen route, furthermore, is the energy-consuming one of politics: at 515a we are told that he has just embarked on a political career, and at 481d that he is in love with the Athenian dēmos.

SELF-PERPETUATING HEROES

In the Republic, Socrates is in no doubt that our non-rational elements can normally only be harnessed when early education is in the hands of Philosopher-Rulers. The trouble, of course, is that this education system must somehow already be in place for Philosopher-Rulers to be created. How is the ideally just state to get off the ground? The problem is exacerbated by the fact that, as we have seen, a role model culture such as Plato's Athens has an in-built tendency to reproduce itself – an innate conservatism that Plato highlights by stressing the thumos' desires for social esteem and success. Once the ideal state is up and running, and state-approved heroes well established, such conservative tendencies can be put to good use: properly purified literature and music, which promote the right ideals, must never be altered in any way (424b–c). In imperfect societies, on the other hand, the same tendencies will plainly work against Plato's blueprint.

The obstacles such innate conservatism raises are forcefully depicted in the Symposium. Before looking at them, however, we need first to consider the radical project for educating desire that the dialogue proposes, and the role in this erotic training of the conservatively-inclined thumos.

THE SYMPOSIUM: THUMOS AS INTERMEDIARY

The immediate task is clearly to establish that the thumos plays any role whatsoever in the Symposium: there is after all no explicit reference to it, or indeed to a divided psuchē of any kind.

The Republic and the Symposium are not, of course, Plato's last words on andreia. it reappears as an important theme in both the Politicus and the Laws. Yet the Republic is, I would maintain, his most sustained and consistent attempt to bring andreia and sōphrosunē together, chiefly by means of a careful education of thumos. And the Symposium is perhaps the most vivid demonstration of how difficult it is to effect such an education in practice.

Although the later dialogues fall outside the scope of this book, a very brief glance at the rich treatments of andreia in the Politicus and Laws will help to illustrate the radical nature of the Republic's project, and the importance of its theory of the tripartite psuchē. The Politicus, in particular, initially appears to adopt a position diametrically opposed to that (or those) of earlier dialogues on the question of the Unity of the Virtues. In 306a–b the Stranger tells Young Socrates that, in order to understand the statesman's art, it is necessary to explain what many will find a ‘difficult’ and ‘extraordinary’ doctrine, which asserts that the virtue of andreia and the virtue of sōphrosunē ‘are in a way in a condition of great hostility and strife in many things’. These two potentially hostile virtues are, in their turn, to be placed in two opposite classes (eidē) of qualities, and those who possess such qualities also naturally constitute two opposing groups (307c).

The analysis of the previous chapter suggested that myth in the middle dialogues expresses a synoptic view of reality. Myth extrapolates from the particulars of philosophical discussion and produces a narrative we might call ‘collective’ (or ‘recollective’). The philosopher's devotion to dialectic and to the examination of the grounds of his knowledge renders him capable of an intuitive leap to a vision of the soul separated from its body and related to the whole. The mythological vision is a self-qualifying image of the truth expressed in narrative. This intuitive understanding cannot stand by itself, however; it arose in the first place from dialectic and must return to dialectic to ground itself.

This final chapter on Plato will examine how the treatment of myth in the late dialogues takes this vision in a different direction. This is not to say that synoptic myths do not occur in the late period. The cosmologies of the Statesman and the Timaeus are universalising, albeit incomplete, accounts of the world from a transcendental perspective. Nevertheless, the relationship of these accounts to the context of the dialogue in which they are set differs from the middle period. Instead of being a philosophically intuitive leap, they are firmly integrated into a framework of analytic method and methodology. Thus the cosmology of the Timaeus is an exercise in structured scientific and philosophical inference, while the cosmology of the Statesman is intended to help clarify a potential error in the dialectic process.

Is myth a disease of language? If so, it is one for which language has a genetic weakness. Philosophical myth strives to be the inoculation against the disease, and, as is often the case, infects the patient with a weakened and preventative strain of the illness. By introducing a particular, engineered strain of myth into philosophical discourse, the authors whom I have been considering can both acknowledge and attempt to move beyond the inherent weakness of words. They can appropriate the productions of poetic predecessors and contemporaries and reissue them in their own image, while still guarding themselves against any charge that they repeat poetic mythological mistakes. Once recognised, the fallibility of language becomes a source of opportunity. Parmenides' goddess can, in the second part of his poem, boast of the deceitful ordering created by words, while still expecting her audience to be proof against it. Meanwhile, the errors of mortal thought are mercilessly exposed in the first part, but in such a way that we are forced to question whether the language of the poem can contain the conclusions expressed.

The sophists view myth as a form of literary and cultural convention. By manipulating this convention they can advertise their intellectual expertise and attract pupils. Since the content of their teaching is rhetorical, manipulation is not only a means but an end. Manoeuvring in and through language, they display its detachment from any universal or metaphysical truth.

Specifying the function of myth in early Greek philosophy is a perilous enterprise. What is myth? What is philosophy? How can we recognise philosophical myth? These categories are retrospective impositions on the competitive intellectual world of the sixth to fourth centuries bc. In order to define terms, we must realise that several interpretative problems overlap. First and most basic, there is a problem concerning what we mean and what the Greeks meant, when they used the word ‘myth’ (mythos). Second, there are problems concerning what conditions helped to bring about the rise of what we call philosophy, and the nature of the intellectual project involved. Third, we must investigate what moves are involved in the representation of the rise of philosophy, and how philosophy is related to the larger worlds of poetic discourse and mythology. This last set of questions is crucial because the formation of a specifically philosophical mythology is a result of the conceptual exclusion of poetic mythological discourse by early philosophers. This exclusion has influenced subsequent generations and has led to modern misconceptions of the relationship between philosophy and myth in ancient philosophical authors. Since early philosophers reject poetic claims to seriousness, we have often assumed that mythological elements within philosophy are ornamental bows in the direction of an obsolete thought world. We ignore the possibility that myth may serve a philosophical purpose.

The sophists, as we have seen, blur the boundaries between mythos and logos. They use the former to illustrate the latter, and pretend to distinguish the two only to obscure the distinction. Given Plato's hostility to the sophists, we might expect that he would differentiate rigidly between the two and that his myths would be susceptible to easy definition. This is not the case however. This chapter, the first of three devoted to Platonic myth, will demonstrate that Platonic myth is characterised by subjectivity. By this I mean that myth lies in the eyes of the beholder and that this is connected with our nature as humans. We all fall short of philosophical knowledge, and few have the intellectual means to be aware of the status of the arguments and declarations we make. Like the sophists, Plato is aware of human fallibility, but the conclusion he draws from this is radically different. Whereas the sophists reacted with relativism and the acceptance and manipulation of social and linguistic convention, Plato wants us to work through our weakness towards secure knowledge. His belief in the immortality of the soul means that we have many lifetimes in which to achieve this. Our understanding of the status of myth is tied to context, in the broadest sense. Personal knowledge and the ability to explain it, the range and type of interlocutors present at any given conversation, the incarnation of the soul – all affect the authority of any statement.

INTRODUCTION

In the previous chapter we saw how viewing the mythological tradition as a text allowed the sophists to create ironising mythological epideixeis. These epideixeis demonstrated the manipulation of linguistic and social convention through the creation and undermining of rhetorical and ethical paradigms. I suggested that mythological role-playing enabled the sophists to enter into a close relationship with these paradigms. Hippias can play Nestor, Antisthenes can impersonate both Ajax and Odysseus. Epideixeis that concentrate on paradigms for correct ethical behaviour assimilate themselves to, and manipulate, the traditional and societally non-threatening genre of ‘advice to young men’. There was, however, an omission: Protagoras' myth of the origins of civilisation as transmitted in Plato's Protagoras. Because of the complexity of the issues involved, the Protagoras has been reserved for separate treatment. Interpretative problems abound. Are we to believe that the speech Plato puts into Protagoras' mouth represents a Protagorean or a Platonic, myth? If Protagorean, how is it affected embedded in a Platonic context?

In the following pages I shall argue that the myth of the Protagoras is substantially Protagorean and accurately represents a sophistic use of myth with close ties to other sophistic epideictic practice. This demonstration will have two (unequal) parts, both indicative of the role of social and mythological convention. The first concerns the use of myth to disguise the unexamined nature of conventional belief in the prerequisites for a just society.

INTRODUCTION

The Presocratics fashioned themselves by challenging the authority through which the poets constructed their discourse. The generation of multiple poetic versions of myths according to no verifiable criterion was, for them, symptomatic of careless intellect. Poetic myths had enshrined unexamined cultural conventions and governed education. The Presocratics treated here responded by creating myths and mythological characters that were responsible to ‘scientific’ criteria of truth and falsity and reflected potential problems in the application of these criteria. Concerns with the status of myth and poetry were closely connected with questions about the nature and efficacy of language, and myth was used to encapsulate these questions. The language of myth, was not, then expunged from philosophical vocabulary, but its reference was changed. We might call this attitude to myth ‘transformative’. I shall call the approach of the sophists and their contemporaries towards myth ‘appropriative’, since the traditional stories retain their old forms and are manipulated rather than questioned. As we turn to the second half of the fifth century, we find that the same concerns inform intellectual speculation: the nature and power of language, and the status of the poets and their myths. The context of the speculation is different, however. Athens has become the intellectual centre ofthe Greek world. The rise of the Athenian empire and of developed democracy entailed greater opportunities for political and financial gain for citizens who aspired to positions of influence.

This chapter examines the myths of the soul in the Gorgias, Phaedo, Republic, and Phaedrus. The mythological material from the later dialogues, which focus more on methodological matters, will be treated in Chapter 8. This division reflects a shift of emphasis in the deployment of Platonic philosophical myth between the middle and late periods. The final word on the chronology of the Platonic dialogues has not been spoken, but, fortunately, absolute precision is unnecessary for the present task. It is sufficient that the myths of the soul form a recognisable grouping reflecting primarily ethical concerns. Middle period myths give a synoptic view of reality. They are connected with philosophical intuition and with the unmediated perception of reality that is the goal of the philosophical quest. They do not reveal reality, but act as a model for this ultimate experience. The relationship between logical/analytic discourse and mythical/intuitive discourse is complex. ‘Myth’ describes both an insight which serves as a starting point for dialectic and one which comes at the end of the process of analysis. It is the discourse out of which dialectic emerges and in which dialectic ends when the object of its analysis cannot (as yet) be verified. Thus it can be regarded as a symbolic short-cut for the analytic process, although it can replace it. Myth is the multivalent discourse against which philosophy revolts, the discourse which is a kind of philosophical shorthand, and the discourse which represents philosophy's culmination.

This is not a book about ‘mythical thinking’, although it is about both myth and thought. Treatments of mythical thinking try to specify some system of thought as ‘other’, as primitive, mystical, childish, or irrational. The difficulties of identifying and explaining purported different mentalities are by now well known, and the explanatory utility of such a procedure is limited. Nor do I wish to attempt a rehabilitation of ‘myth’ in the face of ‘philosophy’. It has been suggested, for instance, that myth is a ‘pre-philosophical “mirror” of existential thought’, a liberation from excessive abstraction and objectivism, a primal, original, and essential form of truth. The validity of these assertions I am unable to gauge, for the myth with which this book is concerned is post-philosophical. It is myth seen through a philosophical lens and incorporated into philosophical discourse. As a form of truth it is neither primal nor original. From the standpoint of the philosophers we shall meet in the following pages, non-philosophical myth is a story about truth that is often pernicious and misleading. The myth they incorporate serves their own ends. These ends are: the reformulation of people's ideas about literary and cultural authority, the problematisation of the different modes of linguistic representation, and the creation of a self-reffective philosophical sensibility.

The story of philosophy's relationship with and transformation of myth is the story of its relationship with convention, both literary and societal.

INTRODUCTION

In the previous chapter I examined issues that bear on the demarcation of a realm of myth. I outlined how usage of the word mythos, at first associated with authoritative speech, was transformed: gradually, it became connected with the traditional tales (myths) that were the vehicles of authoritative social conventions. The first philosophers attempted to appropriate this authority for their own intellectual project, whose product, they hoped, would displace traditional sources of wisdom. The textualisation of these sources in the wake of increasing literacy enabled philosophers to develop a methodological self-consciousness in the rejection of poetic multiplicity. They explored a new source for discursive authority, one which contrasted with Muse-based inspiration in its appeal to argument. An important aspect of textualising, demarcating, and excluding the poets was the concern that poetic predecessors had misused language. I suggested that this concern may have led to worries about the contingency of language. We may now proceed to a more detailed investigation of the nature of the gesture by which certain Presocratics reject the world of poetic mythologising. This chapter will focus on the challenge offered by Xenophanes, Herakleitos, Empedokles, and Parmenides to poetic thought and language, and, more briefly, on the response to this challenge. Parmenides' poem on Being will receive the lengthiest treatment, since it both critiques ordinary thought and language, and sets this critique in a framework. It is therefore well suited to dramatise the tensions and possibilities of mythology and philosophy.