Published in Gregorianum, 76 (#2, 1995), 343-62.
James V. Schall, S. J.
Georgetown University
ON THE UNIQUENESS OF SOCRATES
Political Philosophy and the Rediscovery of the Human Body
To
conclude, then, our discussion of the Republic, we suggest that the consideration of the good city
is meant to reveal how political life would have to be transformed in order to
admit of philosophic rule and why it is unreasonable to expect, perhaps even to
desire, such a transformation.
--
Christopher Bruell, "Plato's Political Philosophy."1
The
sexual differentiation of the human body ... suggests that ... the human body
is not simply "one's own affair"; the body is a sign and at the same
time the instrument of a determinate and whole-seeking eros, rather than of a
limitless and merely self-indulgent appetite. Hence ... the assertion of a purely private prerogative in
sexual matters is indicative of the failure synoptically to grasp the connubial
significance of the sexual character of the human body. Though we do not yet know the precise
details of Socrates' reformed nomos
for sexual mating, we may expect that it will be intended to combat
self-centeredness by encouraging more attention to the connubial significance,
as distinguished from the physiological separateness, of the human body.
-- Darrell
Dobbs, "Choosing Justice:
Socrates' Model City and the Practice of Dialectic."2
I.
Near
the end of his speech in The Symposium, Alcibiades affirmed that "many are the marvels which I might
narrate in praise of Socrates; most of his ways might perhaps be paralleled in
another man but his absolute unlikeness to any human being that is or ever was
is perfectly astonishing" (221).
To describe the philosophic life simply as the imitation of Socrates is
both accurate and ironic. It is
accurate because the life of philosophy, the erotic seeking of the knowledge of
the whole, involves a lifetime of questioning, of personal sacrifice, of moral
and physical courage, of discovering what we can about each topic -- be it the soul, the city, or the
cosmos -- that is presented
to our curiosity and our wonder.
"Knowledge is presumably dependent on what is, to know of what is that it is and how it is?" Socrates asks Glaucon
in Book V of the Republic, as if
the answer were self-evident, which Glaucon agreed that it was (477).
And
yet Socrates does not like imitation, even imitation of himself. Imitation stands too far away from what
is. He worried about the poets and the musicians for this
reason, imitations of imitations.
The potential young philosophers in The Apology, moreover, the very ones Socrates is accused of
corrupting, do him a disservice, when, after enjoying in the streets his free
performance in questioning their fathers to see if they were wise, go home to
imitate him before these very fathers.
The fathers as the leading politicians became angry and plotted against
Socrates for corrupting their youth.
Socrates, to be sure, took no money for his philosophy. He never claimed to be a teacher. He was merely following his daemon,
wondering what the Oracle meant about his wisdom in comparison to others. If the youth were corrupt by imitating
him, it was their own fault. He
did not teach them.
If
Socrates was wise, it was only because he knew what he did not know, though his
gradual examinations of what others did not know did produce a genuine
knowledge to replace a real ignorance.
When he is imitated in a less than serious manner, even by people he
likes and spends time with, however, genuine philosophy is not being
served. The philosopher spends his
serious time discussing the serious things. And in The Laws,
we discover that God is the only really serious thing and that our own affairs,
politics and the like, by comparison, are not really serious. This view of the unseriousness of human
affairs was not meant to denigrate politics and human affairs, but to liberate
them so that they would be properly located in the order of things. They were not themselves the highest
things. Political philosophy was
designed primarily to explain how political things could be arranged so that
the philosopher would not be killed, would be able to devote himself to the
highest things.
The
irony in describing the philosophic life as the imitation of Socrates follows
from this less than sincere imitation of his methods by the potential young
philosophers, the direction of whose souls we by no means yet know, nor do
they. The dialogues of Plato are
continual examinations of differing souls and the ways of life they might
choose, of those few who choose the philosophic way, of those many who get lost
thinking that other ways are better.
The reading of Socrates that Plato gives us is a self-reflective
examination of the direction of our own souls. It leads to self-awareness and self-illumination; it leads
to the sometimes frightening prospect of knowing ourselves. The way of life of the philosopher did
cause some astonishment in Athens and not just to Alcibiades, the most volatile
and most dangerous of the potential philosophers whom Socrates encounters. Indeed, Socrates himself maintained
that he lived as long as he did in Athens, till he was seventy, because in a
democracy, where all opinions are by law equally inconclusive, it was difficult
for the many who held the power to tell the difference between the fool and the
wise man.
The
wise man, when he appeared in the democracy, was taken to be as outlandish as
the demented man. Normal folks
avoided them both except for their curiosity value. Besides, who is to tell the difference between the one and
the other, between the philosopher and the fool? Distinctions in democracies are all political, not
natural. We are not allowed to
acknowledge natural distinctions.
Since it requires a certain amount of virtue even to recognize virtue,
the philosopher will be largely invisible in most existing polities in which
the highest virtue is statistically rare.
The one who is most capable of recognizing the philosopher's worth is
paradoxically the one who sees him as the most dangerous threat to his own way
of life. No one praises Socrates
more perceptively than Alcibiades.
No one is more careful to refuse to listen to him. No one is, ultimately, more corrupt and
more dangerous. The drama of the
relation of Socrates and Alcibiades in The Symposium is the ultimate drama because it directly concerns
which way a talented and handsome potential philosopher will choose in his own
soul to live his life.
II.
Clearly
both Callicles in the Gorgias and
Alcibiades recognized in Socrates a danger to their own chosen paths in
life. When they were young, like
Glaucon and Adeimantus, they studied philosophy. But they did not want to hear justice praised for its own
sake. Distinctly unlike Plato's
two brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon in Book Two of The Republic, Callicles and Alcibiades did not want to understand
the force of the arguments against justice, since they lived according to these
arguments. Callicles and
Alcibiades suspected what effect philosophy would have on their souls. Thus they decide that philosophy is a
threat to what they want to do in life, how they want to live. Callicles
and Alcibiades, when challenged, refuse to listen to Socrates because they
cannot meet his arguments. But
they implicitly understand his arguments and where they lead. Their rejection of philosophy is not
unphilosophical in the sense of its being unknowing. They do not wish to change their lives, so there are things
they do not wish to know, at least in public. They are first committed to the demos in their loves. Their politics is preferred to
philosophy. Popularity is
preferred to truth. They do not
wish this love of the demos to be tested except by the demos. Their lives, and through them, their
polities become closed to philosophy, to the imitation of Socrates, the gadfly
who keeps his city alert so long as he is allowed to live in it.
In
a philosophical and moral sense, both Callicles and Alcibiades were more
dangerous to Socrates than the five hundred and one jurors and the
prosecutors -- Meletos, Lycon, and
Anytos -- at the actual trial that condemned him to death in a relatively close
vote. Socrates knew this more
subtle peril. Though he let
Socrates talk on, Callicles simply refused to converse with Socrates, a refusal
that sealed Socrates', the philosopher's death. But Callicles was content to kill Socrates if he had
to. That was the logic of his
position. That is what the power
of politics was about, in his view.
Except as a kind of nostalgic and dilettantish affair in college,
Callicles never gave philosophy a second thought. He held, without quite realizing the irony involved in his
view, that death would silence the philosopher, the very philosopher who said
that philosophy is a preparation for death. It is only because of Plato's remembrance of the philosopher
Socrates that we remember the politician Callicles. Death does not silence philosophy, especially the political
execution designed precisely to silence it. This is the paradox of politics when it is held to be the
supreme science.
Alcibiades
was more shrewd and more capable of seeing the danger latent in philosophical
discourse with Socrates than Callicles was. Callicles was content to let Socrates talk, knowing he had
power of life or death over him in case Socrates' talk caused civic disruption. Callicles supposed this was a great
power, something Socrates was not so sure of, as he did not know whether death
was an evil. Alcibiades, on the
other hand, was clearly attracted to philosophy even while choosing to reject
it. Consequently, in one last desperate attempt, Alcibiades both admitted the
charm of philosophy and simultaneously sought to corrupt Socrates, the
philosopher. Alcibiades wanted to
be sure that there would be no living example of virtue to stand against his
own sordid record of betrayal and self-indulgence. Had he succeeded, there could only be, for the philosophers,
the imitation of Alcibiades, not of Socrates, as a viable way of life. Politics would have been superior to
philosophy.
III.
Christopher
Bruell, in his essay on Plato's political philosophy, has suggested that the
purpose of this philosophy was not to be put into effect in some existing
constitutional order that could be described as perfect or ideal. We are not to seek to set up the best
regime as it is so elaborately described by Socrates. The very effort to do so is a misunderstanding of the intent
of Socrates. Aristotle, likewise,
did not want this Socratic best regime to exist in practice, as he relates in
the Second Book of The Politics. He also objected to Plato on the
grounds of the impracticality of some of Plato's proposals, notably, the
communality of wives, children, and property. Wives, children, and property, Aristotle thought, are all
better taken care of if they are held in private, if they belong to someone,
not to everyone. This objection
makes it look like Aristotle, at close range, thought that Socrates was serious
about this proposal, even though Socrates himself, in Book Five of The
Republic, recognized that it was a
most delicate subject and one that had to be broached with the greatest
caution. Aristotle never would
have said, however, that the purpose of Plato's political philosophy was itself
to warn us not to attempt this actual transformation from existing state to
perfect state. It was Aristotle
who warned us, not Plato, in this context. Aristotle objected because he did not think the plan
would work. He objected on
practical grounds, on the grounds of existing human nature, on the grounds of
its wretched tendencies.
But
if Plato did not intend that this extraordinary proposal about political
institutions was to be taken at face value, what good was it? It is a distinguished view, one that
Bruell clearly elaborates, that Book Five of The Republic, and indeed the whole of the Dialogue itself, is the
greatest anti-utopian document ever written. Few have ever understood it this way, no doubt. Needless to say, when this thesis first
appeared with Strauss it was a provocative novelty.3 It still retains some of its heady
paradox. If philosophers really
examined the logic of justice, the argument went, they would see the fact that
these extraordinary Socratic proposals about the communality of women,
children, and property would have to be accepted in order that the real roots
of disorder in the polis be ferreted out and corrected.
Considering
them "in speech", however, makes this logic of justice, and therefore
the limits of justice, clear. In
agreement with Aristotle, we see how contrary to actual human nature these
proposals are, the human nature that we all know familiarly in ourselves, in
all existing cities. We should
thus become immediately suspicious of any theories that claim to solve
mankind's problems by proposals for radical changes in existing
institutions -- most notably,
those of institutional rearrangements family, property, and government that
constantly reappear under various forms in modernity even until today. On this reading, The Republic prevents totalitarianism, not causes it as the
famous, or infamous, thesis of Karl Popper intimated. Knowing that social engineering was dangerous, what Socrates
intended, it is held, was that we positively reject the temptation to put these
proposals under any form into effect.
We could only do this rejecting of these proposals if we understood
their charm and the logic of the proposals themselves. The Straussian understanding of Book
Five retains its force because it understands how attractive the proposal to
reform human nature really is.
Unless we understand this charm, we will not understand how important it
is to reject its spell over us.
IV.
How
do we go about thinking of these questions? Though I maintain that reason and revelation are distinct
and both to be reckoned with, especially where they touch on the same subject
matter, I suggest that they do sometimes, as here, shed light on each other in
a way surprisingly pertinent to the abiding questions in political philosophy.4 Not unmindful of Strauss' careful
articulation of the first books of Genesis, I have argued elsewhere that Book Five of The Republic is illuminating when read in the context of the
scriptural account of Creation and The Fall.5 I do not mean, of course, that Plato
somehow read Genesis, nor that the
origin of Genesis was purely
philosophical. But there is a
fascinating correlation of teachings in the two accounts. I have no hesitation, in other words,
in finding Augustine one of the greatest readers of Plato. The City of God is more than Platonic, but it is Platonic, and it is
more than Platonic because it is Platonic..
The
Fall evidently took place in a situation in which there was perfect conformity
between man and nature. The best
regime, in other words, existed in the beginning, not at the end of time, a
sentiment we also find among the Roman philosophers. God was not accused of not having provided a sufficiency of
material goods. Rebellion was not
rooted in scarcity. This to us
unexpected situation indicated that revolt against God or against the order of
the world is not rooted primarily in some dire deprivation, clear injustice, or
sexual disorder. We might likewise
point out, in this context, that when Socrates does get around to discuss the
decline of regimes in Book Eight of The Republic, we are given no real reason why anyone in the best
regime might find anything to complain of. We are simply told that "all things change." The Genesis account merely adds to this Platonic principle the
one thing in creation that can change for no apparent reason, the human power
of choice itself.
We
likewise wonder what Adam and Even had to murmur about in these conditions of
abundance. In Eden, things go along,
as it were, swimmingly. Creation
as such, including the creation of man, is good. The Genesis
account seems rather to indicate that the ensuing disorder was rooted in the
human will, not in things. The
human will (the angelic will is in the same condition), as a constitutive part
of man, is itself good, is itself will, is what it is. It is free. Its presence in creation necessarily implied that something
could go wrong, because it also implied that something could go right. It implied that what is, existence, needed to be itself affirmed as good on
the part of the finite creature.
Creation at its highest reaches was, for this reason, a risk. Things did not necessarily go
right. Adam and Eve attest to this
variable condition from the beginning.
The risk, the possibility that things could go wrong, is itself a
good.
The
First Parents were commanded, in an amazingly insightful imagery, not to eat of
fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Evidently, the fruit of this particular tree, so to speak,
was not itself poisonous to them.
No one is tempted to eat rotten apples. The first pair were not being forbidden for their physical
health, as it were. The point was
not, analogously, that God said to Adam, "Oh, by the way, watch out for
the rattlesnakes." What this
prohibition in the light of the name of the Tree seems to mean is that man can
claim, over against God, to be himself the source of the distinction between
good and evil, a divine prerogative.
The Tempter told them in fact that they would be "like
gods". This information
seemed to be a real temptation, not just for Adam and Eve. In
classical philosophy, this distinction between good and evil is also recognized
to exist. The subject matter of
ethics, as Aristotle often remarked, is those things which deserve praise or
blame. The most basic human
distinction is that which entails good and evil human actions. And these actions reveal the soul that
puts them into reality. This
distinction between good and evil actions is discoverable by reason, but not
made by it. In revelation, the
distinction between good and evil is not made by the first pair. They learn of it after the manner of a
command, but a command that they still must choose to obey and understand. Adam and Eve display some of the
wilfulness of an Alcibiades, though it seems to take expulsion from the Garden
for them fully to understand what they had been forbidden to do. In this sense, it might be implied that
there can be genuine philosophy in obedience, that obedience and reason are not
simply contradictory. There is no
reason to suppose that either Adam or Eve was stupid. It is not the simple who are tempted to pride, to the claim
that what is good and what evil are the results of our own determining. There is reason to suppose that the
first pair, like Alcibiades, chose to close their ears lest they would have to
change their ways.
Moreover,
the consequences, not causes, of the Fall are described as related to external
disorders in work, in childbearing, and later writers added a disorder in rule;
that is, coercive government was not from the beginning. The body was not the cause of evil but
it was involved in its consequences.
Evil, in its intelligibility, was the result of precisely this claim of
autonomy, the claim to locate the distinction between good and evil in the
human soul, in its power to make and choose. It was located in the spiritual, not material, side of the
rational being. Subsequent
gnosticism has its roots in the denial of this location of evil in the will. If we take a look at these consequences of The Fall, it
seems evident that, in this system, no amount of rearranging property, family,
or polis will ever result in a perfect rule, in the best regime. Why? Because the roots of disorder are not exterior to man
himself. The being of the exterior
order is itself open to man's own actions that proceed from his reason and
will. Thus, in the best regime we
can expect to have disorder, and we can, in the worst regime, expect that real
good might (or might not) appear.
The reason for this possibility is that the human will remains external
to the regime's order and to its instruments of law and coercion as well as
external to the structure of family and property. Nazareth can happen even in the Roman Empire. Both human and divine will stand
outside the laws of social and natural science, without denying the reality of
secondary causes and an order of nature.
V.
A
second series of reflections is perhaps pertinent to coming to terms with Book
Five of The Republic. It can be suggested, without irony,
that even when Plato is wrong, which is rarer than we had first thought when we
began to study him, he is very close to being right. The famous proposal for communality of wives, children, and property
is one of these places where Plato has hit a mark so close to the truth and yet
one which, if taken literally, is so very dangerous, that we must continue to
marvel at him. Our age, indeed,
might well be called the age of taking Book Five of The Republic literally, wherein the proposed absolute equality of
men and women, with the eugenic engineering this proposal "in speech"
entails, is working its way out in practice by people who have not restrained
their enthusiasm for changing human nature by themselves. The separation of marriage and children
is in law and practice nearing completion. The position paper for the Cairo Population Conference took
precisely this position of talking about children and sex with no relation to
family. The only sexual activity
that interests the modern state, however, is that which results in
children. Children begotten can
efficiently be eliminated through abortion. When they succeed in being born, the conditions of their
lives fall under the surveillance of the state. The state becomes the prime substitute parent and more and
more the immediate parent though its control of subsidies, day-care centers,
control of education, particularly sex education, at all levels. The description of the lives of women,
children, and property in The Republic is in many ways what we have or are seeking to bring into being after
our own fashion. Sexual activity
that does not result in children, however, has no political, moral, or
biological purpose other than a kind of useless pleasure, something allowed or
provided in order to keep the populace quiet.
Often
the slightest adjustment of Plato's position, as I indicated, makes his point
luminous. The Church, for example,
has proposed that for a certain type of its internal "guardians",
three vows are to be provided --
poverty, chastity, and obedience.
If we compare these vows to Plato's proposals for the communality of
wives, children, and property, we will be struck that the same issue is
addressed in both proposals, namely, what is the condition of life of those who
devote themselves fully to the common good. By removing wives, children, and property as concerns of
these guardians, which are instruments of divine not human law, if the monks
might be called that, the very point that Plato was seeking to establish is met
in another way that does not entail the harsh consequences, if actually tried,
of Plato's proposals. On the other
hand, for those who do not follow this giving up of wives, children, and
property, the marital centrality of eros and the family, with its necessary
property, the Aristotelian solution, is restored as another proper way of
living for other sorts of guardians, indeed for all. Thus, Plato's finger is very close to the heart of any
matter.
Moreover,
if Bruell is right, Plato is not even wrong in the first place about his best
regime since his purpose was to warn us not to attempt establish it except in
speech. Modern times have suffered
under the scourge of philosopher-politicians seeking to remedy all evils by
rearranging property, family, or government, only to end up creating even more
awesome tyrannies. Plato has
described this tyrannical process and how it can come about through democracy
rather accurately. In Bruell's
view this understanding of the possibility of horrendous tyranny is precisely
what the reading of Plato teaches us to expect will come about. If we do not read Plato with care and
attention, then, we will miss this irony in his proposals and mistakenly
attempt what should be left only in speech.
Plato's
extreme proposals, thus, can be saved in one of three ways: 1) We can take the Straussian view that
the communality of wives, children, and property is not intended to be put into
effect as it is too contrary to human nature. 2) We can take the monastic view that, in agreement with
Plato, there is a conflict between some vocations and family life but that
there is a dignified and sacrificial way to achieve Plato's ends without his
means. Or 3) we examine the
chaotic results of modern times that have left eros without discipline or
morality and tried to deal only with the empirical and chaotic
consequences. The theoretic result
in all three instances is the same.
Plato realized that the conditions of begetting were central to
political philosophy.
VI.
If
we look at the condition of Plato's guardians, then, we will see that Plato is
especially concerned with their education, with what might corrupt them. We were first to look at where disorder
came into the polis. It did not
come through economics, or politics, but through the literary or poetic
education of the guardians, of those who were potential philosophers and
politicians. Thus, if we are to
find just where disorder comes into the polity we build in speech, it comes in
through the education of the guardians, especially through an examination of
Homer and his accounts of the gods and the heroes as the poetic and primary
source of the tales and models of how to live. As we look at the initial city that is constructed in
speech, we notice the principle of specialization. We see that we need ultimately specialists of the
whole. These are the philosophic
guardians.
Initially,
in Book Four, we are surprised to note that these guardians were given families
and houses. However, such was the
concern of Socrates, these houses were just the opposite of what we might
expect for political leaders. No
one in his right mind would want to live in them. Every city, Socrates knew, was divided by how it dealt with
wealth and honors. Greed and envy
were the two most common and most corrupting vices. The parsimonious conditions granted to the guardians were in
the name of the happiness of the whole, not the happiness of each individual
guardian. The guardians were
supposed to be those who identified their own personal happiness with the
happiness of the whole. This
sacrificial aspect of their vocation explained Socrates' reluctance to give
them the normal mansions and adulation that we have come to expect in ordinary
regimes. Socrates wanted to keep
his guardians safe from their own passions and temptations caused by wealth and
honors. At first he did this by
giving them Spartan living conditions and a modest, but very cautious, appreciation
of their own worth. They were to
know how easily human beings were corrupted. They were given examples to be followed in the revised poems
of virtue and honor both among gods and men..
This
proposal to establish the intellectual guardians in a Spartan existence, except
for a discussion of the decline of regimes, would seem to have ended The
Republic after Book Four. At that point, we have now found a
proper definition of justice, that is, each doing his proper task. We have located in the false tales of
the poets, especially Homer, wherein disorder comes into the city and into our
own souls. We have identified the
source of disorder in greed and envy.
We have disciplined the guardians externally and internally against
them. But at the beginning of Book
Five, Adeimantus and Polemarchus whisper something. Something still upsets them. Socrates wants to know what bothers them. They recall Socrates' earlier remark
that "friends have all things in common", a famous if enigmatic
phrase that makes us realize that we have not really had a proper discussion of
families, of wives and children and property.
It
is at this point that Socrates becomes cautious about further discussion of the
matter, so delicate it is. But
Polemarchus, Adeimantus, Glaucon, even Thrasymachus get into the discussion as
they realize they have not heard, as we said, the arrangements about "the
begetting of children ... and of the whole community of women and
children..." (449). "We
think it makes a big difference, or rather, the whole difference, in a regime's
being right or not right."
The peculiar structure of The Republic is designed to force attention to this volatile
topic. This topic is the one that
must be handled most cautiously.
Socrates' arrangements recall Aristophanes' The Parliament of Women. This is
the parody of Socrates' proposals.
So Socrates must be careful not to leave himself open to ridicule. But at the same time, he is serious
about the family arrangements. Why
is he so serious? Is it because of
something deeper than the question of begetting itself?
VII.
Socrates'
proposals, it is often said, simply eliminate normal eros from The Republic, at least in the city in speech for the
guardians. Eros is replaced with a
clear, even cold reason that cannot be corrupted even by eros. Eros appears to have an intrinsic
selfishness about it. This view
makes us wonder just what in eros is corrupting since we also know about The
Symposium.6 The question is, again, why is Socrates
so concerned with this elimination?
We need to recall that Socrates himself had a wife and three children. Except for her appearance in the Phaedo, Xanthippe, Socrates' wife, does not much appear in
the dialogues. We have no dialogue
called Xanthippe. Are we to assume that he never
discussed the highest things with Xanthippe? But, as I just mentioned, we do have The Symposium in which Socrates is taught the secrets of love by
Diotima, the lady from Mantinea, who is said to be "a woman wise in this
(love) and in many other kinds of knowledge" (201).. It is his conversation with Diotima
that adds begetting to the speeches on love that we had heard up until the time
of her appearance. Agathon had
praised beauty for its attractiveness, for its uncanny ability to call us out
of ourselves.
What
true lovers seek, however, is the possession of the good. They are not just seeking their other
halves as Aristophanes held in his speech. Love wants both union and otherness. Diotima says to Socrates that she
"will teach" him about love (206). "All men are bringing to the birth in their bodies and
in their souls," she explains to Socrates. The analogy of physical and spiritual begetting is central to
her discourse. Furthermore,
both forms of begetting constitute a continuum. Physical begetting itself is seeking something beyond
itself. Even what is begotten, the
child, points to the fact that eros is not for itself alone. Even when the lovers are most closed in
on themselves, they are pointing back to the world and to how the world came to
contain these relationships that pointed beyond themselves.
Thus,
Diotima explains to Socrates, that "there is a certain age at which human
nature is desirous of procreation
-- procreation which must be in beauty and not in deformity; and this
procreation is the union of man and woman, and is a divine thing; for
conception and generation are an immortal principle in the mortal
creature..." (206).
Eros that begets is itself a divine thing. We are startled to see that it is "an immortal
principle in the mortal creature". This teaching would mean that we are not dealing with
fleeting things. What seems most
fleeting, the pleasure itself, because of its presence "in the union of
man and woman", in the mortal creatures, is itself symbolic of
immortality. Begetting itself is a
sign of immortality even on its physical side.
Diotima
had already explained that "the happy are made happy by the acquisition of
good things. Nor is there any
reason to ask why man desires happiness" (205). Begetting in the body and begetting in the soul are aspects
of the same eros. Both seek
immortality. We do not need
to ask why we seek happiness in all of our actions, especially these that
relate to begetting. We do not
ourselves make the good things we receive that make us happy. Diotima tells Socrates that love is not
just love of the beautiful, which, to recall Agathon's view, has a kind of
sterility of it. Beauty must be seen
as good, as desirable, as something that moves. "To the mortal creature, generation is a sort of
eternity and immortality ... and ... if love is of the everlasting possession
of the good, all men will necessarily desire immortality together with the good. Wherefore love is of immortality"
(206-07). And this love is a
sacrificial love, as the case of Alcestis showed. She alone was willing to die for her husband. But Diotima explains that the cases of
begetting or of searching for the beautiful even in poems and laws and other
places are the "lesser mysteries of love, into which even you, Socrates,
may enter" (210). Diotima has
some doubt whether Socrates himself can attain the highest reaches of
love.
But
Diotima, as if at least to give Socrates a chance to know what she is talking
about, proceeds to explain the way to Socrates. This is the great ascent from a particular beautiful thing
to beauty itself.
The true order of going, or being
led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth
and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only,
and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair
forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair
notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows wet the
essence of beauty is (211).
Again we are not wrong to catch here similar words of
Augustine echoing in our hearts, of his last conversation with Monica before
she died in Ostia. Neither are we
wrong to see Plato's ascent grounded in an initial reality, in an initial
particular thing, in a concrete beautiful thing.
VIII.
Darrell
Dobbs, in his analysis, has understood that Socrates' proposals about the
communality of wives, children, and property in the city in speech refer to our
capacity to choose the best regime in our souls. The city in speech, in essence, is a kind of "therapy
for comprehending constitutional polity as a whole."7 Dobbs does not think that Socrates is
merely proposing a kind of metaphysical reality check by turning our attention
to what is. Metaphysics, Dobbs seems to imply, is
not enough. We also have to attend
to our ideals for these, perhaps even more than a failure to turn to reality
itself, can prevent us from really devoting our attention to what is. This is
what the reading of The Republic
requires us to do, to examine our souls at the most fundamental of levels. We are indeed to join Socrates "in
making a model city." However,
"Socrates' political proposals are not meant, then, as a blueprint
for public policy; nor is it their principal intention to critique or to parody
political idealism."8
This position thus rejects both the notion that Plato was trying to
establish an actual constitution and the Straussian view that it was intended
to ward off this utopian program.
What
then was Plato trying to suggest?
He was trying to counteract those desires and distractions that might
arise from the body taken as a purely private self-interested affair. The noble lie was a medicinal exercise
to help us see ourselves clearly, objectively. "Socratic communism addresses certain tendencies toward
self-indulgent individualism which are rooted in the separation of one's own
body. The inappropriateness of
private possessions of lands, houses, and money by civic guardians is indicated
first of all."9 It is
clear that this sort of prohibition does not apply to everyone in the polity we
build in speech, only to the guardians.
Hence we have the curiosity that while the farmers and craftsmen lead
normal family lives, the guardians, because they are so much more close to the
spirit and therefore more in danger of being more subtly corrupted, need to
have these things, as sources of potential temptation, removed from them. These criteria are, we might observe,
essentially the same reasons for monastic or clerical vows whose purpose is to
enable the monk not to be distracted from the one thing that is necessary and
important. The careful attention
to the least deviation from the good is something a Plato and a Benedict have
in common.
In
a remarkably subtle analysis, Dobbs notes what he calls Socrates assault on
"erotic idiosyncrasy."
This assault is described precisely as the rejection of that notion of
the body and pleasure that were seen in Callicles and Alcibiades, in the theory
of tyranny which Socrates had explained in The Republic. The
counter assault of Socrates, though this is veiled, is a theory of friendship -- "friends have all things in
common" (449). Friendship
properly looks to the good of the other, not the self, even though it involves
the self. Even though each
individual is complete and independent as a human being, still this very being
is, even on its physical side, not ordained primarily or only to itself. "The intelligibility of the human
body itself depends upon an appreciation of its connubial significance in
procreation." The body is not
just a machine or a bundle of responses.
The body "which bears unimpeachable evidence of the complimentarity
of male and female, is only mistakenly regarded as a private affair." 10
These
same issues have been argued in a similar and brilliant fashion by Denis de
Rougemont in his famous Love in the Western World.
Here too eros in isolation is seen as in a dangerous pole between a kind
of transcendent death wish and its proper resolution or its reality in
marriage.11 The response
to the dangers of eros is not the death wish of a Tristan and Iseult, a wish
parallel in its own order to the search for the perfect regime. "But the troth of marriage
is ... a pledge given for this
world," de Rougemont wrote.
Inspired by an unreason 'mystical'
(if you like) and, if not hostile, at least indifferent to happiness and the
vital instinct, fidelity in marriage requires a re-entry into the real world,
whereas courtesy meant only an escape from it. In marriage the loving husband or wife vows fidelity first
of all to the other at the same
time as to his or her true self.
And whereas Tristan showed himself constant to a steadfast refusal, in a
desire to exclude and deny creation in its diversity and to prevent the world
from encroaching upon spirit, the fidelity of the married couple is acceptance
of one's fellow-creature, a willingness to take the other as he or she is in
his or her intimate particularity.12
These remarks of de Rougemont react precisely to the
the logic that sees no form or nature in material things, including human
things. Presumably, this position
conceives eros to be something so pure and so exalted that it cannot exist in
and through the order of
being. Death was the
only alternative to the fear of mixing it up with normal things. This form of eros corresponds to the
purity demanded of the intellectual guardians in the Fifth Book of The
Republic.
In
Dobbs position, the objective of Socratic communism for the guardians is
"to counter this mistaken tendency" towards an eros that is
independent of a concrete object and "to illuminate the connubial (and thus
the civic and even cosmic) significance of the body."13 This is a position very similar to
ideas that John Paul II has been making for some time about the spousal
relation of Christ and the the Church, of cosmos to God, of marriage to eros.14 Leon Kass has also from another angle
sought to restore the thinking about the body and its functions to a more
natural and harmonious function.15 Socrates' perception of the unexpected dangers latent in
marriage and pleasure and therefore his proposals about the communality of
wives, children, and property as remedies are designed not to eliminate marriage
itself, but to isolate just what it is that can cause the deviation in the
souls of the guardians from the good.
Dobbs' statement of the issue is to the point:
Socrates' assault on this form of
(erotic) individualism thus aims to orient his interlocutors toward the
wholeness of the connubial partnership and any other partnerships, such as the
political community, to which the connubial partnership belongs. As long as the connubial significance
of the human body is neglected, the dialectical examination of questions such
as whether the just or the unjust are happier will only endanger the excellence
of the human soul.16
The later Christian response to Plato, namely, the
legitimacy both of guardians who do not have wives, children and property and a
guardian who does have a faithful and fruitful marriage, is itself an effort to
take into account both sides of Plato's concern about the sources of disorder
in the souls of those most ordered to the highest good, to family, polity, cosmos, and God. The asceticism of the sacrament and the vow were designed to
take account of precisely this "erotic ideosyncracy" without denying
the ever present possibility of sin or disorder precisely arising out of free
will, even in the various guardians.
The
point of Dobbs' analysis of Plato's city in speech is, as he said,
therapeutic. That is, he wishes to
foster the sort of general overall view of man and the cosmos needed "to
the deliberate and reasoned adoption of a polity in one's soul." Before we decide how we should live,
that is, the structure of our own soul "writ-small", we need to grasp
the true reaches of selfishness and to realize its consequences in our own
understanding of human life. Is
this city in speech in the manner presented here the best regime? Dobbs responds to this famous question
in this judicious manner, "If the function of the political community is
to assist persons in achieving virtue, then it seems that it could count as
such -- though it never did see
the light of day."17
Thought, or the city of speech, in other words, is itself a reality and
has its effect on the world through its illumination of our perceptions of
ourselves, of the city, of the cosmos.
Whether
this city actually exists then is irrelevant once its real purpose is seen. This purpose is to face that potential
disorder of every soul that comes both from a misunderstanding of the body and
of its relation to the city and the cosmos. What The Republic
teaches is the order of soul. It
does this through a philosophical exercise, a necessary exercise for all those
whose souls would be ordered, that is, through the reading of Plato himself, a
reading that can take place in any society that leaves men free enough to
encounter him. Whether Plato's
responses can be considered definitive can itself be wondered at. What is curious is that Plato, when
carefully read, does abidingly bring to mind responses to transcendent
questions that are found in revelation.
This odd coherence does not necessarily imply a revelation to Plato as
some philosophers have cautiously posited.18 But it does create a remarkable correspondence between two
spheres too absolutely separated in modern thought.
IX.
Modernity,
so to speak, has more and more argued that the disorder of soul is initially
and primarily to be met by a reorganization of property, family, and
polity. The soul itself is
incapable of being touched by philosophic forces. Man is said to be moved only by passion and impulse. Politics is only a balance of
forces. This modern view is to be
seen as diametrically contrary to the classic view that was primarily and first
interested in the reform of one's own soul. What this reform in the classics implied was that the
understanding of the soul in its deepest meaning first required attention to
those drives such as selfishness, pride, and the opposites of each of the
virtues, to whatever in short, that would introduce disorder into the soul of
the guardian and through this disordered soul into the family, the polity, and
the world.
The
therapy of Plato, in conclusion, is to enable us to examine our souls
vicariously, as it were, in examining steadfastly the arguments in the various
dialogues of Plato, particularly in The Republic. Plato's
proposals about the life of the philosopher, the life of the politician, and
family life were directed at real sources of order and disorder in the
guardians. Moreover, Plato,
through his attention to these sources, was himself ordained to the highest
things, to that seriousness that alone is related to God, as The Laws eventually make clear (803). The things that could prevent us from
these higher orientations arise in the soul as it is erotically drawn to
objects that can deflect us from the good, from the beautiful. The New Testament, as if to reinforce
this very point, admonishes us that the individual is not only not to perform
definite actions that are disordered but not even to desire them -- the point that St. Thomas made about
the limits of civil law and the scope of divine law (I-II, 91, 4).19
Political
philosophy rediscovers the body through a careful examination of that very
tract in classical political philosophy that seems, at first sight, most
alienated from the body. It is no
coincidence, therefore, that what appears in late modernity and post-modernity
is not a proper appreciation of the body but precisely a denial of its
intrinsic connubial orientation.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger perceptively arrived at a conclusion that is
beginning to be presented in political philosophy itself:
The new esteem for woman which was
the justified point of departure of modern movements ends then soon in contempt
for the body. Sexuality comes no
longer to be seen as an essential expression of human corporeality, but as
something external, secondary and ultimately meaningless. The body no longer reaches what is
essential to being human, but comes to be considered an instrument we employ.20
The body seen as a mere instrument means that man's
will is not itself ordained to the reality of the body and its particular
being. A kind of gnosticism takes
political form to treat the body as containing in itself no principles or
structures that need to be respected.
The value of these recent reflections on Plato is precisely that they allow us to repropose to ourselves in thought, in speech, the right order of human and civil things, a right order that begins by coming to terms with the extraordinary proposals of Socrates in the Fifth Book of The Republic. Socrates tells Glaucon there that "to speak knowing the truth, among prudent and dear men, about what is greatest and dear, is a thing that is safe and encouraging" (450). But if we are in doubt about where these things go, as Socrates cautiously admitted he was, the case is more perplexing. Socrates thought, however, that it was "a lesser fault to prove to be an unwilling murderer of someone than a deceiver about fine, good, and just things, in laws" (451). The uniqueness of Socrates, thus, remains, to use Alcibiades' word, "astonishing".
1Christopher Bruell, "Plato's
Political Philosophy," The Review of Politics, 56 (Spring, 1994), 276.
2Darrell Dobbs, "Choosing
Justice: Socrates' Model City and
the Practice of Dialectic," The American Political Science Review 88 (June, 1994), 274.
3Leo Strauss, "Plato", History
of Political Philosophy, Edited by
Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 33-89; "On Plato's
Republic," City and Man
(Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1964), pp. 50-137. See also
James V. Schall, "A Latitude for Statesmanship? Strauss on St. Thomas," Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish
Thinker, Edited by Kenneth L Deutsch
and Walter Nicgorski (Lanham, MD.:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), pp. 211-30; "Reason, Revelation,
and Politics: Catholic Reflexions
on Strauss," Gregorianum, 62
(1981), #2, 349-55; #3, 467-98.
4See James V. Schall, Reason,
Revelation, and the Foundations of Political Philosophy (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1987).
5James V. Schall, "The Christian
Guardians," The Politics of Heaven and Hell: Christian Themes from Classical, Medieval, and Modern
Political Philosophy (Lanham,
MD.: University Press of America,
1984), 67-82; "On the Neglect of Hell in Political Theory," ibid., pp. 83-106; "Regarding the Inattentiveness to
Hell in Political Philosophy," Divus Thomas, (Piacenza), (#3-4, 1989), 273-79.
6See Josef Pieper, Enthusiasm and the
Divine Madness: On the Platonic
Dialogue Phaedrus (New York: Harcourt, 1964).
11Denis de Rougemont, Love in the
Western World, Translated by Montgomery
Belgion (New York: Schocken Books,
1990). See also Josef Pieper, About
Love (Chicago: Franciscan Herald, 1974).
15Leon Kass, Toward a More Natural
Science: Biology and Human Affairs (New York:
The Free Press, 1985); The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature (New York:
The Free Press, 1994).
19It is worth noting that John Paul II in Crossing
the Threshold of Hope has referred to
the deaths of Christ and Socrates:
"Christ is not simply a wise man as was Socrates, whose free
acceptance of truth nevertheless has a certain similarity with the sacrifice of
the Cross" (New York: Knopf,
1994), p. 42. See my discussion on
the relation of the deaths of Christ and Socrates in The Politics of Heaven
and Hell, ibid., pp. 21-38.