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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 June 2011
I'd like to trace here a great rhetorical-philosophical project which runs through the writings of Plato – his attempt to moralize norms of honor and glory, his attempt to harness the powerful feelings of shame and glory to the ineffectual norms of justice.
2 I am not saying, of course, that people always are or should be motivated mainly by desire to get these good feelings or avoid these bad ones. A story illustrates the moral inferiority of someone motivated just to avoid guilt-feelings: (Letter from anonymous taxpayer): ‘Dear Sir: I cheated on my taxes last year; now I can't sleep. Here's a cheque for half the amount I stole. If I still can't sleep, I'll send the rest.’ And in ‘Action, Excellence, Achievement’ (Inquiry 19 (1976), 279–297), I noted that an achievement-lover might shine in burning, not burn so he can shine. On the other hand, desiring glory doesn't undermine pursuit of achievement; nor should desiring moral credit undermine benevolence – an interesting puzzle – why the special Christian (and post-Christian) loathing for ‘desire for moral praise?’
3 In Lesser Hippias, Plato noted that one counts as a better dancer (or performer) if one's bad moves are voluntary – raising the puzzle of why we count one as a worse person if one's (morally) bad moves are voluntary (211b–c). Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Plato in this paper are based on The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including the Letters, ed. Hamilton, Edith and Cairns, Huntington (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1966)Google Scholar, sometimes abridged or otherwise altered.
4 In Republic II (365d), Adeimantos defends injustice: ‘Nay, `tis objected, it is not easy for a wrongdoer always to lie hid. Neither is any other big thing facile, we shall reply.’ The danger and difficulty of injustice can add to its glamour for adventurous young leaders.
5 Republic 551a.
6 Gorgias 483b.
7 [No reference was given in Lyons' typescript. This may refer to Iliad Book VII, 90. P.T.]
8 Laws IV 721b.
9 Letters: VII 351a.
10 Adkins, A.W.H., From the Many to the One: A Study of Personality and Views of Human Nature in the Context of Ancient Greek Society, Values, and Beliefs, (Cornell University Press, Ithaca New York, 1970), 28–32Google Scholar.
11 Remember the contempt with which Diomedes scorned Paris the archer when Paris shot an arrow into Diomedes’ foot. He says he's no more shamed by ‘being scored on’ in this way than if he had fallen under a mob of women. Here we have the bellow of rage of someone skilled in old-fashioned war, facing an ignoble practitioner of newer, more effective skills. (Fifteenth-century knights faced archers and infantry-guns!)
12 Analogously, early cowboy-myths in the U.S.A. have disastrous influence today when 250 million city-dwellers still see their car as their horse, and still insist on having guns.
13 In Cratylus, even Socrates sees ‘arete’ as coming from words for ‘ease of motion’ and ‘aiskron’ as from ‘impeded’ (415c–d). In such an activist culture, the goodness of quiet is likely to be underrated.
14 Republic II 360d; Gorgias 483c–d, 484a; also Laws X 890a.
15 Republic II 365d.
16 Republic I 354b.
17 Gorgias 482–486.
18 However, in Laws X, the Athenian also envisions indoctrinating the people to believe in a World-designing and good-sanctioning divinity.
19 Laws III 697.
20 Gorgias 527d.
21 In Phaedrus; Timaeus 70a; Republic; Laws, e.g. 631d 645, 647.
22 Plato never says explicitly (as far as I know) that a central function of the silver warrior-class is to control the bronze workers and traders. But I think this is obviously his idea: (a) Reading from Individual to City: just as the thymos part of the soul helps reason control desires (the white horse in Phaedrus helps charioteer control the black horse) – so the ‘thymos’ class would help the thinker-class control the ‘desiring’ bronze classes. (b) The bronzes must be controlled either by rational persuasion or by flattering rhetoric or by force. Socrates explicitly scorns the second strategy – and I submit Plato wouldn't put much faith in the first strategy … although in the ‘miser’ passage in Republic VIII, Socrates does contrast the brutal repression of the lower desires in the miser's soul with their persuasion and education in the truly temperate person. Plato says (a) that the desires are better off if reason rules and coordinates them, and (b) the highest life is the most pleasant. But did he hope that real workers/traders could see this? I suspect Plato thought many bronzes must be controlled by force-backing persuasion – so the ‘silver’ warrior-class are needed as enforcers.
The Church in the Dark Ages faced a bunch of savage thugs called ‘barons’, etc. The Church legitimized their murderous ways, calling them to kill only for God and ‘justice’. The myth of the ‘knight’ spread quickly over France (Duby, Georges, The Chivalrous Society, Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 1981Google Scholar). Whether this myth really much civilized the warriors' practice is more dubious.
Scholars, I understand, have puzzled over ‘Plato's’ Menexenus. Apparently there's some evidence he really wrote it – yet it is such egregious propaganda for Athenian imperialism that we shudder to think Plato wrote it.
But remember that shame depends on the agent's previous self-image. If Athens sees itself as a ruthlessly great empire (as in Pericles’ funeral speech in Thucydides), then Athens won't be ashamed to behave ruthlessly. But if Athens sees her empire as just, then Athens would be ashamed to fall short of her (partly mythical) classic age of justice.
Socrates might have gambled (as the Church did later) that hypocrisy is a lesser evil than shamelessness. We worship sincerity today; but I think this question is still open.
23 Republic IV 440.
24 Symposium 216.
25 Seventh Letter 345a.
26 Phaedo 68d, 82c.
27 In Gorgias, Socrates shows the hidden shame in many esteemed forms of triumph – e.g. hurting foes, helping friends, surviving in turbulent democracy, etc. (Socrates' eristic is more impressive than his constructive arguments.)
28 Laches 192d.
29 Adam Smith noted that in fact people value certain gadgets in themselves, though their meaning is instrumental. And he seems to approve. Analogously, why couldn't we admit that courage, temperance, cleverness are instrumental. Yet we might simply value them in themselves. So we might even value them when they are (mildly) harmful to us! (We certainly might value them when they harm only the Community, not their individual possessor.) Plato needs to face this possibility and argue against it more explicitly.
30 One might say Plato thinks wisdom is categorically good and beautiful. But the wisdom is so high as to be humanly incomprehensible.
31 Laches 192, 196.
32 Ibid. 191
33 Socrates' interlocutors would remember Hektor's fatal shame at refusing to lead a retreat before rampaging Achilles.
34 Charmides 160c.
35 Meno 73d.
36 Charmides 282b.
37 Laws 919d–e. See also Laws 689c–d.
38 Gorgias 513a.
39 Laws 638c.
40 The Athenian sees an interesting function for symposia – just as Spartans are put into fearful situations so they can be trained to control fear, so Athenians should be put into ‘shameless’ situations, like drinking-parties, so they can learn never to be shameless.
41 Laws 918e. However, Plato should note that some institutions (like trade) tend to tempt people so strongly to misuse them, that they are, in practice, as if bad-in-themselves. (The same might be said also of symposia – there might be good reasons why no one ever sees them run correctly.)
42 Euthydemus 281e; Philebus 32d; Meno 88d.
43 This point made also in ‘Action, Excellence, Achievement’, Inquiry 19 (1976), 290Google Scholar.
44 Euthydemus 288–290.
45 [No reference for this is given in Lyon's typescript. It likely refers to Moore, G.E., Principia Ethica, (Cambridge University Press, London, 1965)Google Scholar, see sections 103–106. Moore denies that virtue can be good in itself or have intrinsic value and says that it can only have ‘external rightness’ P.T. Thanks to John Tilley of Indiana University for finding these passages].
46 Meno 97.
47 Meno 99.
48 See note 29.
49 Gorgias 452e.
50 Gorgias 456d.
51 Euthydemus 280c.
52 Euthydemus 280e.
53 Euthydemus 281c
54 Ibid.
55 Phaedrus 250.
56 Laws 950b–c.
57 Analogously, people today might admire scientists even while they suspect that science is inevitably misused, so it is harmful. (See my ‘Are Luddites Confused?’ Inquiry 22 (1979), 381–403CrossRefGoogle Scholar.)
58 Critias 120–1.
59 Menexenus 244b.
60 Greater Hippias: The truly beautiful may not appear so… (294b); Contextual beauty (appropriate) (293); People don't agree on beauty (294d).
61 Yet Oedipus is presumably seen as tragic hero, still somehow splendid. He seems beautiful and foul at the same time, as if the spectator refrains from any judgment of ‘overall fair/ugly.’ So also the splendid villain might seem fair and foul at the same time … and perhaps more fair than foul!
62 Adkins, op. cit. pp. 145ff.
63 Temperance is not good by itself, Laws 710.
64 See Republic Book I.
65 [No reference was given in Lyons' typescript, and the editors have not been able to identify the text to which Lyons is referring here.]
66 The unjust man is inevitably a dishonorable man, Laws 662.
67 Laws 863.
68 Republic 442e.
69 Republic 553d.
70 Protagoras 356.
71 Philebus 41–2.
72 e.g. Protagoras 345e.
73 Laws 858c.
74 But perhaps Alcibiades was charmed by Socrates' cleverness in speech, more than by his saintliness.
75 Laws 860.
76 Laws 860b.
77 It's ugly and shaming that the criminal deserves punishment – but given his deserts, it's symmetrical that he get punished. (Analogously, it's ugly to dissipate so you need medical treatment – but it would be uglier to avoid it when needed.)
78 We feel pretty sure that strength that destroys its possessor is a weakness – (though: remember the glamour of Ajax) – the agonizing problem is evaluating the fairness of talents that don't hurt their possessor but do harm the community (no one would deny that injustice harms the City).
79 Greater Hippias 296–7.
80 Greater Hippias 295c.
81 The Loeb translation (Plato: with English Translation: Cratylus, Parmenides Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias, by H.N. Fowler, (Cambridge Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1963) has it differently: “…beautiful eyes, we say, are not such as seem to be so, which are unable to see…” This is even more controversial.
82 Greater Hippias 288d.
83 Republic 457b.
84 Laws 706c
85 Laws 922a.
86 Laws 797d.
87 Laws 720–857.
88 Laws 713b.
89 Laws 664.
90 Some say Plato is foolish to think you can control ‘shames’ so consciously. But deodorant ads in the U.S.A. have made youths so ashamed of their own smell that some beefy football players shower before practice!
91 Laws 833.
92 Laws 663d.
93 Laws 679c.
94 Laws 740d.
95 Laws 841b.
96 Laws 944–5.
97 Timaeus 91
98 Laws 873c.
99 Laws 696b, 697b, and 711c.
100 Laws 729.
101 Laws 796.
102 Laws 816.
103 Laws 721e.
104 Laws 921–2.
105 Laws 729c, and 762e.
106 Seventh Letter 351.
107 Catholicism is indeed the ‘poor man's Platonism’. Sancho Panza notes that the true fame-lover should want to be a saint, not a hero – Francis of Assisi has more world-fame than Achilles. The myth of the General Judgment, where all deeds are published under the true divine perspective of Truly Fair–Truly Foul, is a good example.
108 Laws 659–664.
109 Laws 780.
110 Laws 801b.
111 Laws 829c–d.
112 950b–c. Or perhaps Plato held that the average bad man can recognize who is just – but not that he can recognize this justice as naturally ‘finest and noblest’. (See Republic 364 a–b).
