Philosophy as a way of life

Otto Apelt48 has given a good description of the mechanism of Socratic irony: Spa/tung und Verdoppelung.49 Socrates splits himself into two, so that there are two Socrates: the Socrates who knows in advance how the discussion is going to end, and the Socrates who travels the entire dialectical path along with his interlocutor. Socrates' interlocutors do not know where he is leading them, and therein lies the irony. As he travels the path along with his interlocutors, Socrates constantly demands total agreement from them. He takes his partner's position as his starting point, and gradually makes him admit all the consequences of his position. This a priori agreement is founded on the rational demands of the Logos,50 or reasonable discourse. By constantly demanding assent, Socrates leads his interlocutor to recognize that his initial position was contradictory, and he thereby objectifies their common undertaking. As a rule, Socrates chooses an activity familiar to his interlocutor as the subject of discussion, and tries to define, together with him, the practical knowledge required to carry out this activity. For example, a general must know how to fight bravely, and a soothsayer must behave piously towards the go

.

foundat ion . Up unt il then, he had, to a certain extent, identified with the v11luc..'-NYNtcm which hnd dictated to him his way of thinking and speaking.

l lt·m�cfort h , tu� i11 op1m11cd to it.

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Figures

Thus, the interlocutor, too, is cut in two: there is the interlocutor as he was before his conversation with Socrates, and there is the interlocutor who, in the course of their constant mutual accord, has identified himself with Socrates, and who henceforth will never be the same again.

The absolutely essential point in this ironical method is the path which Socrates and his interlocutor travel together. Socrates pretends he wants to learn something from his interlocutor, and this constitutes his ironic selfdeprecation. In fact, however, even while Socrates appears ro identify himself with the interlocutor, and enter completely into his· discourse, in the last analysis it is the interlocutor who unconsciously enters into Socrates' discourse and identifies himself with him. Let us not forget: to identify oneself with Socrates is to identify oneself with aporia and doubt, for Socrates doesn't know anything; all he knows is that he knows nothing. Therefore, at the end of the discussion, the interlocutor has not learned anything; in fact, he no longer even knows anything. And yet, throughout the duration of the discussion, he has experienced what true activity of the mind is. Better yet, he has been Socrates himself. And Socrates is interrogation, questioning, and stepping back to take a look at oneself; in a word, he is consciousness.

Such is the profound meaning of Socratic maieutics. In a famous passage of the Theaetetus,51 Socrates tells how he practices the same trade as did his mother, who was a midwife, attending corporeal births. Socrates himself, he claims, is a midwife of the mind, and it is to the birth of minds that he attends. Socrates himself does not engender anything, since he knows nothing; he merely helps others to engender themselves. As Kierkegaard was well aware, Socratic maieutics stands the master-disciple relationship on its head:

to be a teacher does not mean simply to affirm that such a thing is so, or to deliver a lecture, & etc. No, to be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner, put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and in the way he understands it. 52

The disciple is the opportunity for the master to understand himself, as the master is the opportunity for the disciple to understand himself.

When he dies, the master has no claim on the disciple's soul, no more than the disciple has on that of the master . . . The best way to understand Socrates is precisely to understand that we do not owe him anything. That is what Socrates preferred, and it is good that he was able to prefer this. 53

Here we touch upon one of the possible rncnningN of Socratcfi' cnigmat k declaration: "I only know one t hing: th111 iM, 1h111 I llun'I know 11ny1 him(." 1•

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1 55

This statement could be interpreted as meaning that Socrates did not possess any transmissible knowledge, and was unable to cause ideas to pass from his mind into that of others. As Socrates is made to say in Plato's Symposium, "My dear Agathon . I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed

.

.

. . . from the vessel that was full to the one that was empty." 55

In Xenophon's Memoirs of Socrates, Hippias tells Socrates that, instead of always asking questions about justice, he would do better simply to say, once and for all, whar justice is. Socrates replies: "If I don't reveal my views on justice in words, I do so by my conduct." 56 To be sure, Socrates was a passionate lover of words and dialogue. With just as much passion, however, he sought to demonstrate to us the limits of language. What he wanted to show us is that we can never understand justice if we do not live it. Justice, like every authentic reality, is indefinable, and this is what Socrates sought to make his interlocutor understand, in order to urge him to "live" justice. The questioning of discourse leads to the questioning of the individual, who must decide whether or not he will resolve to live according to his conscience and to reason. In the words of one of Socrates' interlocutors: "Anyone who enters into conversation with Socrates is liable to be drawn into an argument, and whatever subject he may start, he will be continually carried round and round by him, until at last he finds that he has to give an account both of his present and past life." 57 The individual thus finds himself called into question in the most fundamental bases of his action, and he becomes aware of the living problem he himself represents for himself. All values are consequently turned upside down, as is the importance previously accorded them. As Socrates says in Plato's Apology:

I care nothing for what most people care about: money-making, administration of property, generalships, success in public debates, magistracies, coalitions, and political factions . I did not choose that

.

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path, but rather the one by which I could do the greatest good to each of you in particular: by trying to persuade each of you to concern himself less about what he has that about what he is, so that he may make himself as good and as reasonable as possible. 58

The Socratic enterprise is existential in that it appeals to the individual.

This is why Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, each in his own way, tried to repeat it .. In the following text by Nietzsche, where he describes the "Schopenhauerian man," isolated in the midst of his contemporaries, it is hard not to think of Socrates' constant appeal to "take care of yourself," 59 and his continual calling into question of the individual:

hiN fellow men , . 11trut about in a hundred masquerades, as youths, old

,

men, liu herN, cit iienN, 1nic11t11, oflki11IN, merchants, mindful solely of

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their comedy and not at all of themselves. To the question: "To what end do you live?" they would all quickly reply with pride: "To become a good citizen, or scholar, or statesmanl" 60

the objective of all human arrangements is through distracting one's thoughts to cease to be aware of life.61

Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.62

Already in Plato's Symposium, Alcibiades had said: "Socrates makes me admit to myself that, even though I myself am deficient in so many regards, I continue to take no care for myself, but occupy myself with the business of the Athenians." 113 This passage allows us to glimpse the political consequences of such a reversal of values and upending of the guiding norms of life.

Concern for one's individual destiny cannot help but lead to conflict with the state. 64 This is the deepest meaning of the trial and death of Socrates.

Socratic irony becomes especially dramatic when, thanks to the evidence of Plato's Apology of Socrates, we sec it being used at the expense of the philosopher's accusers, and, in a sense, bringing about his condemnation to death.M

Here we have an instance of the "seriousness of existence" of which Kierkegaard speaks."" For Kierkegaard, Socrates' merit was that he was an exis1i11g thinker, not a speculative philosopher who has forgotten what it means to exist. Kierkegaard's fundamental category of existence is the individual, or the unique, isolated in the solitude of his existential responsibility. For Kierkegaard, Socrates was its discoverer.1'7

Here we come upon one of the most profound reasons for Socratic irony: direct language is not adequate for communicating the experience of existing, the authentic consciousness of being, the seriousness of life as we live it, or the solitude of decision making. To speak is to be doubly condemned to banality. In the first place, there can be no direct communication of existential experience, and in this sense, every speech-act is "banal." Secondly, however, it is this same banality which, in the form of irony, can make indirect communication possible.611 In the words of Nietzsche: "I believe I sense that Socrates was profound; his irony was above all the necessity to pass himself off as superficial, in order to be able to associate with people at all." 69 For the existential thinker, banality and superficiality are a vital necessity. The existentialist must remain in contact with mankind, even if the latter is at a level of less-than-adequate consciousness. At the same time, however, we have here to do with a pedagogical artifice. The circuitous detours of irony, and the shock of aporit1, can cause the reader to attnin 10 the seriousness of existential consciousness, especially if, 1ts we sh11ll 11cc l111c1", 1·hc power of l•:ros is thrown in for icood measure.

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Socrates had no system to teach. Throughout, his philosophy was a spiritual exercise, an invitation to a new way of life, active reflection, and living consciousness.

Perhaps the Socratic formula: "I know that I know nothing" ought to be given a deeper meaning. We are thus brought back to our starting point: Socrates knows that he is not a sage.70 As an individual, his conscience was aroused and spurred on by this feeling of imperfection and incompleteness.

In this regard, Kierkegaard can help us to understand the significance of the figure of Socrates. Kierkegaard asserts that he knows only one thing: that he is not a Christian. He was intimately convinced of this fact, because to be a Christian is to have a genuine personal and existential relationship with Christ; it is to intcriorize Christ in a decision emanating from the depths of the self. Since such interiorization is so very difficult, it is virtually impossible for anyone truly to be a Christian. The only true Christian was Christ. At any rate, the least we can say is that the best Christian is he who is aware of not being a Christian, insofar as he recognizes that he is not a Christian.71

Like every existential consciousness, Kierkegaard's was divided. It existed only in its consciousness of not truly existing. Kierkegaardian consciousness is identical to Socratic consciousness:

0 Socrates, you had the accursed advantage of making it painfully obvious, by means of your ignorance, that others were even less wise than you. They didn't even know that they were ignorant. Your adventure was the same as mine. People become exasperated with me when they sec that I can show that others are even less Christian than I; I who respect Christianity so much that I see and admit that I am not a Christian!72

Socratic consciousness is also torn and divided: not by the figure of Christ, but by the transcendent norm of the figure of the sage.

justice, as we have seen, cannot be defined. It must be lived. All the human discourse in the world could never suffice to express the depth of one person's resolution to be just. All human decisions arc, howc�er, fragile and precarious.

When a person chooses to be just in the context of a particular act, he has the inkling of an existence which could be just in the full sense of the term. Such a fully just existence is that of the sage, who is not sop/10s, but philo-sophos: not a wise man, but one who desires wisdom, precisely because he lacks it. Paul Friedlander puts it well: "Socratic irony, at its center, expresses the tension between ignorance - that is, the impossibility ultimately to put into words

'what justice is' - and the direct experience of the unknown, the existence of the just man, whom justice raises to the level of the divine." 73

just llS K icrkc1c1111rd wns only Christian insofar as he was conscious of not being n ( :lui11tii111, Sm·1·111c11 wn11 n 1mgc only insofar as he was conscious of not

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being wise. An immense desire arises from such an awareness of privation, and this is why, for Western consciousness, Socrates the philosopher takes on the features of Eros, the eternal vagabond in search of true beauty.

2 Eros

It could be said that Socrates was the first individual in the history of Western thought. Werner Jaeger,. was right to point out that Plato and Xenophon, in their Socratic writings, strive to make the reader sense Socrates' originality and uniqueness as they sketch his literary portrait. This need of theirs was certainly the result of the extraordinary experience of having known an incomparable personality, and, as Kierkegaard pointed out, 75 it is the true explanation of the terms atopos, atopia, and atopotatos, which recur so often in the Platonic corpus76 to describe Socrates' character. In the Theaetetus, for instance, Socrates declares: "They say I am atopotatos, and all I create is aporia." 77 Etymologically, atopos means "out of place," hence strange, extravagant, absurd, unclassifiable, and disconcerting. In the Symposium, Alcibiades insists on this point in his speech in praise of Socrates. Normally, he says, there are classes of men, ideal types to which individuals correspond.

For example, there is the type of the "great general, noble and courageous,"

represented in Homeric antiquity by Achilles, and among contemporary figures by the Spartan leader Brasidas. Then there is the type of the "clever and eloquent statesman," represented in antiquity by Nestor the Greek and Antenor the Trojan, and by Pericles among contemporaries. Socrates, however, docs not fit into any category. He cannot be compared to any man, concludes Alcibiades; only to Sileni or satyrs.78

Socrates was indeed an individual: that individual so dear to Kierkegaard that he would have liked to have as an epitaph: "He was That Individual. " 79

And yet, although Socrates was unlike anyone else, we shall now see him take on the mythic characteristics of Eros;80 an Eros, that is, conceived as a projection of the figure of Socrates.

In Socrates, erotic irony is intimately connected to dialectical irony, and it leads to reversals of situation quite analogous to those caused by the latter.

Let us be quite clear: the love in question here is homosexual love, precisely because it is educative love. In the Greece of Socrates' day, masculine love was a vestige and remainder of archaic warrior edU<."lltion, in which the young nobleman was trained in the aristocratic virtues, within the framework of virile friendship, and under the direction of an older man . The master-disciple relationship was conceived during the period of the Sophists, on the model of this archaic relationship, and ii waN frequently spoken of in erotic terms. We must not, of course, for1tct tlw rolt• t'l11ycd hy rhetoric nnd lilcrnry fiction in thiK wny of' 11pcnkin1<."1

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1 59

Socrates' erotic irony consisted in pretending to be in love until, thanks to the reversal brought about by irony, the object of his amoreus attentions fell in love himself. Such is the story Alcibiades tells in his speech in praise of Socrates. Alcibiades, believing in the sincerity of the numerous declarations of love Socrates had made to him, invited Socrates home one night in order to seduce him. He slipped into bed with him, and wrapped his arms around nim. Much to Alcibiades' surprise, however, Socrates remained in complete control of himself, and did not let himself be seduced at all. "Since that time,''

declares Alcibiades,

I am the one who has been reduced to slavery, and I'm in the state of a man bitten by a viper.82

I've been bitten in the heart, or the mind, or whatever you like to call it, by Socrates' philosophy . . . the moment I hear him speak I am ·

smitten with a kind of sacred rage, worse than any Corybant, and my heart jumps into my mouth and the tears start into my eyes . . . I'm not the only one, either; there's Charmides, and Euthydemus, and ever so many more. He's made fools of them all, just as if he were the beloved, not the lover.83

It is hard to imagine a better commentary on this passage than the following one, by Kierkegaard:

one might possibly call him a seducer, for he deceived the youth and awakened longings which he never satisfied . . . He deceived them all in the same way as he deceived Alcibiades who . . . observes that instead of the lover, Socrates became the beloved . . . he attracted the youth to him, hut when they looked up to him, when they sought repose in him, when forgetting all else they sought a safe abode in his lov�, when they themselves ceased to exist and lived only in being loved by him - then he was gone, then the enchantment was over, then they felt the deep pangs of unrequited love, felt that they had been deceived and that it was not Socrates who loved them but they who loved Socrates.8•

Socrates' erotic irony consisted in pretending to be in love. In dialectic irony, Socrates pretended, as he asked his questions, that his real desire was that his interlocutor communicate to him his knowledge or wisdom. In fact, however, this game of questions and answers resulted in the interlocutor realizing that he was incapable of curing Socrates' ignorance, for he in fact had neither wisdom nor knowledge to give to Socrates. What the interlocutor renlly desired, 1 hen, wns to enrol in Socrates' school: the school of the conHcim111m·NN 111' 11111 -know inl(.

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In erotic irony, Socrates used amorous declarations to pretend that he wanted his ostensible lover to hand over to him not his knowledge, but his physical beauty. This situation is understandable: Socrates was not attractive, whereas the young man was. In this case, however, the beloved - or supposedly beloved - discovered through Socrates' attitude that he was incapable of satisfying Socrates' love, because there was no true beauty within him. Upon discovering his shortcomings, the beloved would then fall in love with Socrates. It was not beauty with which the beloved fell in love - Socrates did not have any - rather, he fell in love with the love which, according to Socrates' definition in the Symposium,85 is desire for the beauty which all of us lack. To be in love with Socrates, then, was to be in love with love.

This is precisely the meaning of the Symposium.86 The whole dialogue is constructed so as to make the reader guess the identity between the figures of Socrates and Eros. Plato depicts the guests taking turns, going from left to right, giving speeches in praise of Eros. In succession, we hear Phaedrus and Pausanias, then Eryximachus the doctor, Aristophanes the comic poet, and finally the tragic poet Ariston. When Socrates' turn comes, he does not give a straightforward speech in praise of love, for that would be contrary to his method. Instead, he reports the conversation he had once had with Diotima, a priestess from Mantinea, who told him the myth of the birth of Eros.

Theoretically, the dialogue would have ended here, were it not for Alcibiades'

sudden intrusion into the banquet room. Crowned with violets and ivy leaves and rather drunk, Alcibiades submits to the rules of the banquet, but instead of praising Eros, he gives a speech in praise of Socrates.

The identity between Socrates and Eros is underlined in several ways: not only does the speech in praise of Socrates take its place in the series of speeches already given in praise of Eros, but, in addition, there are many significant features in common between the portrait of Eros, as sketched by Diotima, and the portrait of Socrates given by Alcibiades.

On the day of Aphrodite's birth, recounts Diotima, the gods had a banquet.

Penia - that is, "Poverty" or "Privation" - came begging at the end of the meal. There she espied Poros - "Means," "Expedient," or "Wealth" - drunk on nectar and asleep in Zeus' garden. As a way out of her destitution, Penia decided to have a child by Poros, so she lay with him while he slept, and conceived Eros.

This account of the genealogy of Eros allows Diotima to give a description of him so subtle that it can be interpreted on a variety of levels. In the first place, following the exact words of the myth, we can recognize in Eros the features of both his mother and his father. From his father's side, he gets his clever, inventive mind (in Greek euporit1). From his mother, he inherits the condition of a poverty-stricken beggar: t1p11rit1. Behind this dest.Tiption, we can distinguish a quite pnrticulnr conccp1ion of love. Where111; 1he other guests had described Eros in an idt.'l1li:1.ctl wily, Sm·1·11tl'll l'l'l'ounlN hiN l'nnverHllt inn with

The Figure of Socrates

1 6 1

Diotima in order to introduce some realism into the vision of love. Contrary to what the other guests assume, says Socrates, it is not the case that love is beautiful. If it were, it would no longer be love, for Eros is essentially desire, and the only thing that can be desired is that which one does not have. Eros, then, cannot be beautiful: as the son of Penia, he lacks beauty, but as the son of Poros, he knows how to remedy his lack. Agathon has confused love with its object, the beloved.

For Socrates, love is a lover. It is therefore not, as most people think, a god, but only a daimon; a being intermediate between the human and the divine.

This is why there is something comic about Diotima's description of Eros.

In it, we can perceive the beggarly existence to which love can condemn us.

This is the familiar theme of "Militat omnis amans": 37 in which the lover stands guard on his beloved's doorstep, or spends the night sleeping on the ground. Eros is both beggar and soldier, but also inventor, sorcerer, magician, and clever talker, for love makes him ingenious. For him, life is an uninterrupted suite of discouragement and hope, need and satisfaction, which succeed one another in accordance with the successes and defeats of his love.

This is Eros in his monstrous aspect - good-for-nothing, shameless, obstinate, loud-mouthed and savage - whose misdeeds are depicted with such relish in Greek poetry, right down to the Byzantine period.88

And yet, with astonishing skill, Plato makes the features of Socrates "the philosopher" appear beneath the figure of Eros the hunter. Agathon may think Eros is delicate and lovely, but Diotima asserts he is, in reality, always poor, rough, dirty, and barefoot. In his speech in praise of Socrate.'>, Alcibiades likewise portrays Socrates as barefoot, covered only by a coarse coat which barely protects him from the winter cold.89 From the context of the dialogue, we learn that Socrates has, exceptionally, taken a bath before coming to the symposium.'111 The comic poets, too, had a good laugh at the expense of Socrates' bare feet and old cloak.91

The figure of Socrates as Eros the beggar was subsequently taken up by the Cynic philosophers, in particular Diogenes. Diogenes, who seems to have designated himself as a "furious Socrates," used to go wandering with only his cloak and knapsack, bereft of hearth and home:92 As Friedlander points out,93 barefooted Eros also calls to mind primitive man, as he is depicted by Plato in the Protagoras (32 l c5) and the Statesman (272a5).

We arc thus brought back to the figure of that purely natural being, Silenus, with his primitive strength, more primal than culture and civilization. The fact that this element enters into the complex portrait of Socrates/Eros is not a matter of indifference. Rather, it corresponds perfectly to the reversal of values brought about by Socratic L'Onsciousness. For the person concerned about his soul, what is essential is not 10 be found in appearance, dress, or comfort, but in freedom.

And yet, I >iolimn Hlrcs.o;es that Eros has inherited some features from his fnlhcr: "lw Kl'IN 1 1·111ll1 for noble 1muls, for he is bold, headstrong, and full of

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endurance. He's a dangerous hunter, always plotting some trick; he lusts after cleverness,"' is full of resources, and is always thinking up some scheme; he's a terrible sorcerer, magician, and sophist." 95 We could very well be listening to Strepsiades in Aristophanes' Clouds, describing what he wants to become after his Socratic education: "audacious, glib, daring and headstrong . . . never at a loss for words, a real fox." 96 In his speech praising Socrates, Alcibiades had called him an impudent Silenus,97 and Agathon had bestowed upon Socrates the epithet of hybristes.98 For Alcibiades, Socrates is a magician99 and a smooth talker, skilled in attracting pretty boys. 100

Eros' toughness appears once again in the portrait which Alcibiades sketches of Socrates on campaign with the army. He could, Alcibiades says, put up with cold, hunger, and fear, and hold his wine as easily as he endured long bouts of meditation. 161 During the retreat from Delion, Alcibiades tells us, Socrates walked as calmly as if he were in the streets of Athens, where Aristophanes describes him as "holding his head high . . . rolling his eyes, barefoot, looking solemn." 102 As we can see, this portrait of Socrates/Eros is not very flattering; we are clearly smack in the midst of Platonic - if not Socratic - irony. Nevertheless, this image is not without its profound psychological truth.

Eros, Diotima tells us, is a daimon: that is, a being intermediate between gods and men. Once more, we are forced to consider the problem of intermediary states, and we realize once more just how uncomfortable such a situation is. Eros the daimon, as Diotima describes him to us, is undefinable and unclassifiable: he too, like Socrates, is alopos. He is neither god nor man, fair nor ugly, wise nor foolish, good nor evil. 103 Yet he still embodies desire, for, like Socrates, he is aware that he is neither handsome nor wise. This is why he is a philo-sopher - a lover of wisdom. In other words, he desires to attain to the level of being of divine perfection. Thus, according to Diotima's description, Eros is the desire for his own perfection, which is to say, for his true self. He suffers from being deprived of the plenitude of being, and he strives to attain it. When other men fall in love with Socrates/Eros - that is, when they fall in love with love, such as Socrates reveals it to them - what they love in Socrates is his love for, and aspiration toward, beauty and the perfection of being. In Socrates, they find the path toward their own perfection.

Eros, like Socrates, is merely a call and a possibility; he is neither wisdom nor beauty itself. To be sure, if one opens up the little Sileni mentioned by Alcibiades, they turn out to be full of statues of gods. 104 The Sileni, however, are not themselves the statues. They only open up so that one can get at them.

The etymological meaning of Poros, Erm;' father, is "means of access" or

"way out." Socrat·es is only n SilenuK, opcninic up onto something beyond himsel f.

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The philosopher, too, is nothing other than this: a summons to existence.

As Socrates puts it ironically to the handsome Alcibiades: "If you love me, it must be because you have seen in me a beauty which bears no resemblance to your own physical beauty . . . But consider the matter more carefully, lest you make a mistake both about me and about me and about my real nothingness.,, 105 Here Socrates gives Alcibiades a warning. In loving Socrates, he is really only loving Eros: not Aphrodite's son, but the son of Poros and Penia. The cause of his love is that he senses that Socrates can open up to him a path toward an extraordinary beauty, transcending all earthly beauties.

Socrates• virtues - those statues of the gods hidden within the ironical Silenus

- which Alcibiades admires so much, 106 are only a reflection and a foretaste of that perfect wisdom which Socrates desires, and which Alcibiades desires through Socrates.

In Socratic Eros, we find the same basic structure as in Socratic irony: a divided consciousness, passionately aware that it is not what it ought to be. It is from this feeling of separation and lack that love is born.

One of Plato's greatest merits will always be that he was able, via the myth of Socrates/Eros, to introduce into the philosophical life the dimension of love - that is, of desire and the irrational. He accomplished this in several ways: in the first place, in the experience of dialogue itself, in which two interlocutors experience a passionate will to clarify a problem together. Qµite apart from the dialectical movement of the logos, the path traveled together by Socrates and his partner, and their common will to come to an agreement, arc already a kind of love. There is a great deal more philosophy in spiritual exercises like Socrates' dialogues than in the construction of a philosophical system. The task of dialogue consists essentially in pointing out the limits of language, and its inability to communicate moral and existential experience.

Yet the dialogue itself, qua event and spiritual activity, already constitutes a moral and existential experience, for Socratic philosophy is not the solitary elaboration of a system, but the awakening of consciousness, and accession to a level of being which can only be reached in a person-to-person relationship.

Just like ironical Socrates, Eros teaches nothing, for he is ignorant. He does not make people more wise; he makes them other. He, too, is maieutic: he helps souls to engender themselves.

It is touching to trace the influence of Socratic Eros throughout history. 107 In third-century Alexandria, for instance, the Christian writer Gregory Thaumaturgus praised his master Origen in the following terms:

And thus, like some spark lighting upon our inmost soul, love was kiml led and bu rNI into flame within us - a love at once for the Logos . . .

ond for 1hiN m1111, ilN friend 11nd advocate .

sometimes he would

.

.

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approach us in the genuine Socratic fashion, and trip us up by his argumentation whenever he saw us getting restive under him, like so many unbroken horses.108

As Bertram has shown in some splendid pages, 109 we encounter the tradition of Socratic Eros and the educative daimon in Nietzsche. According to Bertram, three sayings sum up perfectly this erotic dimension of pedagogy.

One is by Nietzsche himself: "The deepest insights spring from love alone." 1 10

Another is by Goethe: "We learn only from those we love." 1 1 1 Finally, there is Holderlin's dictum: "Mortal man gives his best when he loves." 112 These three maxims go to show that it is only through reciprocal love that we can accede to genuine consciousness.

Using Goethe's terminology, we could characterize this dimension of love, desire, and the irrational as the "demonic." Plato had encountered this dimension in the person of Socrates himself. As is well known, Socrates'

daimon was a kind of inspiration which sometimes . came over him in a completely irrational way, as a negative sign telling him not to do such and such a thing. It was, in a sense, his real "character," or true self. Moreover, this irrational element in Socratic consciousness is probably not without relation to Socratic irony. It is possible that Socrates' reason for asserting that he did not know anything was that, when it came time for action, he trusted in his own daimon, as he also trusted in the daimon of his interlocutors. In any case, as James Hillman pointed out in 1966, if Plato was able to bestow upon Socrates the figure of the great daimon Eros, it was probably because, in Socrates, he had encountered a demonic man.' 13

How can we describe this dimension of the demonic? No one could be a better guide for us in this matter than Goethe, who was fascinated and troubled by the mystery of the "demonic" all throughout his life. His first encounter with the demonic had probably been Socrates' daimon, as depicted in Hamann's Socratic Memorabilia. 1 14 Socrates fascinated Goethe to such an extent that we find the following extraordinary exclamation in his letter to Herder of 1772: "If only I could be Alcibiades for one day and one night, and then die!" 115 For Goethe, the demonic had all the ambiguous and ambivalent features of Socratic Eros. It is, as he writes in Book 20 of Poetry and Truth, 116

a force which is neither divine nor human, neither diabolical nor angelic, which simultaneously unites and separates all beings. Just as in the case of Eros in the Symposium, it can only be defined by simultaneous and contradictory negations. Yet it is a force which gives its holders an incredible power over beings and things. The demonic represents a kind of natural magic within the dimension of the irrational and inexplicable. This irrational element is the motor force indispensable for 1111 cre11tion; it is the blind, inexorable dynamic which we cannot cscllpl', but muNt r1Hhcr lc11rn how to u11e. In hi11 llm•111·11•, Goet hl' writc!i 1111 follm\'N 11ho11t t ill' "'""'"" of individunlN:

The Figure of Socrates

165

So must you be; you cannot escape yourself .

. . . no time nor power may destroy

Form marked with a seal, which develops as it lives.117

In Goethe, the creatures who most faithfully represent this demonic element take on the features of Eros in the Symposium. As Raabe has demonstrated, this is particularly true in the case of Mignon. 1 18 Mignon, like Eros, is indigent, but she aspires to purity and beauty. Although her clothing is poor and coarse, her musical gifts reveal her inner riches. Like Eros, she sleeps on the bare ground, or on Wilhelm Meister's doorstep. Finally, like Eros, she is the projection and incarnation of Wilhelm Meister's nostalgia for a higher form of life.

Another demonic figure in Goethe is Ottilia, heroine of the Elective Affinities.

She is depicted as a natural force, powerful, strange, and fascinating. Her profound relationship to Eros is more discreetly indicated than in the case of Mignon, but it is no less real. Mention should also be made of the hermaphroditic figure of Homunculus, whose relationship to Eros is emphasized so clearly in Act II of the Second Fausl .119

As an ambiguous, ambivalent, indecisive element, the demonic is neither good nor evil. Only mankind's moral decision can give it its definitive value.

And yet, this irrational, inexplicable element is inseparable from existence.

The encounter with the demonic, and the dangerous game with Eros, cannot be avoided.

3 Dionysos

We shall now return to Nietzsche's odd, amorous hatred for Socrates. To be sure, Bertram has already stated the essential on this point, 120 but perhaps Nietzsche's complex attitude can be better understood by considering some of the less frequently noticed elements which go to make up 'the Socrates of the Symposium.

Nietzsche was quite familiar with the strange seductive powers of Socrates, whom he termed "This mocking and enamored monster and pied piper of Athens, who made the most overweening youths tremble and sob." 121 Nietzsche tries to define the mechanism of this seduction: "I have made understandable how it was that Socrates could repel: it is therefore all the more necessary to explain his fascination." 122 Nietzsche then goes on to propose several explanations: Socrates flattered the Greeks' taste for combat with his dialectics; he was a great erotic; he understood his historical role of counteracting instinctive decadence by means of rationality. The truth is that none of these expl11nntion11 iN particularly fascinating. Nietzsche does, however, suggest 11 more 1m1fouml t•11 uNe: the 11eduction Socrates exercised on all posterity came

1 66

Figures

from his attitude in the face of death. More specifically, it came from the semi-voluntary nature of his death. As early as his first work, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche summed up the last pages of the Phaedo and the Symposium in a grandiose image:

that he was sentenced to death, not exile, Socrates himself seems to have brought about with perfect awareness and without any natural awe of death. He went to his death with the calm with which, according to Plato's description, he leaves the Symposium at dawn, the last of the revelers, to begin a new day, while on the benches and on the ground his drowsy table companions remain behind to dream of Socrates, the true Eroticist. The dying Socrates becomes the new ideal, never seen before, of noble Greek youths. m

Nietzsche sensed and foresaw, in the concluding scene of Plato's Symposium, a symbol of Socrates' death. Taken by itself, Plato's description of the scene was as simple as could be:

Only Agathon, Aristophanes and Socrates were still awake, and they were passing a huge bowl from left to right, and drinking from it.

Socrates was holding a discussion with them . . . he was gradually forcing them to admit that one and the same author ought to be able to compose both comic and tragic poetry . . . Aristophanes was the first to fall asleep, and then, when the sun had already risen, Agathon. Socrates

. . . then got up and left. He headed for the Lyceum, and, after splashing himself with water, he spent the rest of the day just like he would have any other. m

The ambiguous symbolism latent in this sober passage has not been lost on modern poets. C.F. Meyer, for instance, gave the following picture of the figure of the dying Socrates, in that dawn when only the philosopher is still awake:

While Socrates' friends drank with him

And their heads sank down on their pillows

A young man came in I remember it well

-

Along with two lithe flute-players.

We drained our cups to the dregs,

And our lips, tired from so much talk, fell silent A song hovered above the withered garlands , ,

.

Silence! The Nlccpy flutes of dcnth nre Nmmdinl(l11'

The Figure of Socrates

167

By contrast, what Holderlin saw in this episode was Socrates the lover of life: Yet each of us has his measure.

For hard to bear

Is misfortune, but harder still good fortune.

Yet one wise man was able

From noon to midnight, and on

Till morning lit up the sky

To keep wide awake at the banquet.126

Herein lies the enigma Socrates posed for Nietzsche. How could someone who loved life as much as Socrates loved it seem, by his will to die, to hate existence? For Nietzsche was quite familiar with the Socrates who loved life; indeed, he loved him:

If all goes well, the time will come when one will take up the Memorabiliam of Socrates rather than the Bible as a guide to morals and reason, and when Montaigne and Horace will be employed as forerunners and signposts to an understanding of Socrates, that simplest and most imperishable of intercessors. The pathways of the most various philosophical modes of life lead back to him . . . Socrates excels the founder of Christianity in possessing a joyful kind of seriousness and that wisdom full of roguishness that constitutes the finest state of the human soul.128

We can see Socrates' "wisdom full of roguishness" in Xenophon's depiction of Socrates dancing; 129 in the jesting, ironical Socrates of the Platonic dialogues; and in the figure of the life-loving philosopher in Holderlin's poem "Socrates and Alkibiades":

"Holy Socrates, why do you always

Pay court to this young man?

Do you know nothing greater?

Why do your eyes gaze lovingly· on him

As on a god?"

"He who has thought most deeply

Loves that which is the most alive.

He who has seen the world

Can understand lofty Youth.

And often, in the end,

The wise bow down before the fair."1.10

In N icl.1.Hchc'N CHHay Srh1Jpenl1auer cu Educator, the figure of Schopenhauer is mcriccd with l hiN fiicurc of Socrntcs-as-lovcr-of-lifc. In the following

168

Figures

extraordinary passage, Nietzsche has recourse to Holderlin's verses in order to describe the sage's gaiety:

Nothing better or happier can befall a man than to be in the proximity of one of those victorious ones, who, precisely because they have thought most deeply, must love what is most living and, as sages, incline in the end to the beautiful . . They are active and truly alive . . . which is why, in their

.

proximity, we feel human and natural for once, and feel like exclaiming with Goethe: "How glorious and precious is a living thing! how well adapted to the conditions it lives in, how true, how existent!" 131

In The Birth of Tragedy,132 Nietzsche thought he could foresee the coming of a musical Socrates. Socrates the musician, he thought, would answer the call which, in Socrates' dreams, had invited the philosopher to devote himself to music; he would thereby reconcile the ironic lucidity of rational consciousness with demonic enthusiasm. Such a figure, says Nietzsche in his unpublished writings, would be a true example of "tragic man." Nietzsche projected his own dream of a reconciliation between Apollo and Dionysos into this image of Socrates as musician.

In the dying Socrates, Nietzsche saw yet another reflection of his own drama. Socrates wa111ed to die - this is what was so shocking to Nietzsche -

and at the moment of his death his spoke these enigmatic words: "0 Crito, we owe a rooster to Asclepius." 133 It was as if he had been cured from some illness, and owed a debt to the god of healing.

This ridiculous and terrible "last word" means, for those who have ears:

"0 Crito, life is a disease." Is it possible that a man like him . . . should have been a pessimist? He had merely kept a cheerful mien while concealing all his life long his ultimate judgment, his inmost feeling.

Socrates, Socrates suffered life! And then he still revenged himself- with this veiled, gruesome, pious, and blasphemous saying . . . I wish he had remained taciturn also at the last moment of his life; in that case he might have belonged to a still higher order of spirits.134

As Bertram has shown so well, Nietzsche here gives us the clue to his own secret, intimate doubt, and to the drama of his entire existence. Nietzsche would have liked to be the bard of the joy of life and existence; yet, in the final analysis, wasn't he, too, afraid that life might be nothing but a disease? By letting what he thought of terrestrial existence be known, Socrates gave his secret away. Yet Nietzsche wanJed to belong to that "higher order of spirits": those, that is, who

<:an keep quiet about this terrifying secret. In Bertram's words: "Wm; his extreme, Dionysiac pac.·m to life, and to lite nlonc, only the kind of Nilcnn.·, bcncnth which n grl'llt educator for life did no1 believe in lilc?" I I\

The Figure of Socrates

1 69

In the Twilight of the Idols, we find one final reversal in Nietzsche's reinterpretation of Socrates' last words. Here, the sick�ess from which Socrates is to be cured is not life itself, but the kind of life Socrates led:

" 'Socrates is no physician,' he said softly to himself; 'here death alone is the physician. Socrates himself has merely been sick for a long time. ' " 136 On this interpretation, Socratic lucidity and Socratic morality correspond to a sickness gnawing away at life. Yet, here again, might not Socrates' illness be the same as that of Nietzsche himself? This myth-dissolving lucidity, this pitiless consciousness; are they not those of Nietzsche himself? Nietzsche's amorous hatred for Socrates was, in the last analysis, identical with the amorous hatred Nietzsche felt for himself. Perhaps the ambiguity of the figure of Socrates in Nietzsche was rooted in the ambiguity of the central figure of Nietzschean mythology: Dionysos, god of death and of life.

For reasons which, in the last analysis, remain rather mysterious for us, Plato in his Symposium surrounded Socrates with a whole cluster of Dionysiac symbols. 137 In fact, the entire dialogue could have been entitled The Judgment of Dionysos, since Agathon tells Socrates that, when it comes to finding out who is wiser, he or Socrates, they will leave the question up to Dionysos. In other words, whoever drinks the most will win this contest of sophia - wisdom and knowledge - placed as it is under the sign of the god of wine. m When Alcibiades later bursts into the banquet room, he is crowned with violets and ivy leaves, just like Dionysos.139 As soon as he comes in, Alcibiades places a crown of headbands around Socrates' head, as it was the custom to do for the victor in poetry contests. 140 We recall that Dionysos was the god both of tragedy and of comedy. In the course of his speech in praise of Socrates, Alcibiades composes what Socrates later terms "a drama of satyrs and Sileni,'' 141 since these are the beings to which he compares Socrates. Again, we recall that satyrs and Sileni formed the accompanying entourage of Dionysos, and that the centre of satyric drama was, originally, the passion of Dionysos. In the final scene of the Symposium, we find Socrates alone with the tragic poet Agathon and the comic poet Aristophanes, gradually convincing them that one and the same man should be able to be both a tragic and a comic poet. 142 Agathon, in his praise of Eros, ·had said that love was the greatest of poets. 143 Thus, Socrates, who excels in the field of Eros, also excels in that of Dionysos. After all, he has no rival when it comes to holding his wine,144 and if, as a result of the "Judgment of Dionysos," he wins the wisdom contest, it is because he is the only one still awake at the end of the banquet. 145 Can we discern yet another Dionysiac characteristic in his prolonged ecstasies and transports, which are mentioned twice in the dialogue?141, Thus, we find in Plato's Symposium what seems to be a conscious and dclihcrntc ensemble of nllusions to the Dionysiac nature of the figure of SocnllcN. Thi11 l'l1Nl'lllhk culminates in the final scene of the dialogue, in

170

Figures

which Socrates emerges victorious from the judgment of Dionysos, as the best drinker and the best poet.

We should not be surprised if, paradoxically, secretly, and perhaps unconsciously, the figure of Socrates comes, for Nietzsche, to coincide with the figure of Dionysos.

At the end of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche dedicates to Dionysos an extraordinary panegyric of the "genius of the heart," which he repeats, as evidence of his skill in psychological mastery, in the Ecce Homo,'41 although this time he makes a point of refusing to say whom he is addressing. In this hymn, it is as though we hear an echo of the Veni Sancte Spiritus,H8 that old medieval encomium of the Holy Ghost (of which Hamann149 considered Socrates' daimon to be a prefiguration): "Flecte quod est rigidum, fove quod est frigidum, rege quod est devium." 15° For Nietzsche, the genius of the heart has the same marvelously delicate power of softening, warming, and straightening. In his portrait of the spiritual guide with demonic powers, Nietzsche intended to describe the action of Socrates. But as Bertram has suggested,151

wasn't he also thinking - consciously or unconsciously - of Socrates?

We will conclude with Nietzsche's encomium, since it sums up admirably all the themes of our discussion:

The genius of the heart, as that great concealed one possesses it, the tempter god and born pied piper of consciences, whose voice knows how to descend into the netherworld of every soul; who docs not say a word or cast a glance in which there lies no secret goal of seduction . . . the genius of the heart who silences all that is loud and self-satisfied, teaching it to listen; who smooths rough souls and lets them taste a new desire - to lie still as a mirror, that the deep sky may mirror itself in them . . . the genius of the heart from whose touch everyone walks away richer, not having received grace and surprised, not as blessed and oppressed by alien goods, but richer in himself, newer to himself than before, broken open and sounded out by a thawing wind; more uncertain, perhaps; tenderer, more fragile, more broken, but full of hopes that as yet have no name.152

NOTES

Aristotle, Prolrepticus, frg. 5, p. 33 Ross. Cf. the German translation in I. Dilring Aristoleles. Darsie/lung und lt11erpre1a1io11en seines Denkens, Heidelberg 1966, p. 414

and n. 87 = frg. B 39 in Dilring's 1969 German translation of the Protepticus, p. 47.

2 On the problem of the historical Socrates, sec 1hc collection of articles in Andreas Patzer ed., Der histnrisd1r Sncilltes (= Wege der Forschung

,

5115),

Dnrmstadt 1 987 .

.1 On Kicrkcl(nml nnd S11��rn1c11, l'f . .J . l lln1111rl,1 ru ri 1 S. A'irri•rx1um/1 S11i·ratr.1

The Figure of Socrates

171

Auffassung, Neumilnster 1927; J . Wild, "Kierkegaard and classical philology,''

Philosophfral Revie'fl) 49 ( 1 940), pp. 536-7; J. Wahl, Etudes 3rd

edn, Paris 1967; E. Pivcevic, lronie als Daseinsform bei Soren Kierkegaard, Gtitersloh 1 960; T. Bohlin 1 94 1 .

4 On Nietzsche and Socrates, see E . Bertram, Nietzsche. Versuch einer Mythologie, Berlin 1 9 1 8, repr. Bonn, 8th edn, 1 965; H. Hasse, Das Problem des Sokrates bei F. Nietzsche, Leipzig 1918; K. Hildebrandt, Nietzsches Wettkampf mil Sokrates und Plato11, Dresden 1 922; E. Sandvoss, Sokrates und Nietzsche, Leiden 1 966; H.J.

Schmidt, Nietzsche and Sokrates, Meisenheim 1 969; Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche.

Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th edn, Princeton NJ 1974. On the vast phenomenon of Socrates' influence in the West, the reader will find a handy collection of texts in H. Spiegelbcrg, The Socratic Enigma, New York 1 964. For the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see B. Bohm, Sokrates im achtzehnten Jahrhundert Studien zum Werdegang des modernen Pe'rsonlichkeitsbe'fl)Usstseins, Leipzig 1929; H.-G. Seebeck, Das Sokratesbild vom 19. Jahrhundert, Gottingen 1947.

5 Plato, Symposium, 2 1 5b-c; Xenophon, Symposium, 4, 19; 5, 7; Aristophanes, Clouds, 362 (Socrates as cross-eyed). Cf. Plato, Phaedo, I I 7b.

6 Friedrich Niet1.sche, "Socrates and Tragedy,'' Posthumous Writings 1870-1873, Second lecture, in Friedrich Nietzsche, Samtliche Werke, eds G. Colli and M. Montinari, 1 5 vols, Berlin 1 980 (hereafter Colli/Montinari), vol. l, p. 545.

7 Friedrich Nietzsche, T'fl)ilight of the Idols. The Problem of Socrates, 3-4, vol. 6, pp. 68-9, Colli/Montinari = The Portable Nietzsche, trans., intro., preface and notes Walter Kaufmann (= Viking Portable Library 62), New York 1 954, repr.

1 968 (hereafter PN ), pp. 474-5.

8 Nietzsche, "Socrates and Tragedy,'' vol. 1 , p. 544, Colli/Montinari.

9 Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols. The Problem of Socrates, 3. On this anecdote, cf. Cicero, On Fate, 5, 10; Tusculan Disp11tations, 4, 37, 80; Alexander of Aphrodisias, On Fate, p. 1 7 1 , 1 1 Bruns. According to Zopyrus, Socrates was stupid and slow because he lacked a hollow space between his collar-bones. We can perhaps detect an echo of this notion in Carus' description of the "Boeotian type"; cf. C.G. Carus, Symbolik der mensch/ichen Gestalt, 1 858, repr. Hildesheim/Damstadt 1 962, p. 267.

IO See above.

1 1 In The Birth of Tragedy, 8, Nietzsche insists on the !llliance between wisdom and primitive instinct in the figure of the Sileni and Satyrs. Compare Jung's remarks on the alliance between wisdom and buffoonery in the nature of the elf (C.G.

Jung, Von den W11rzeln des Bewussttins, Zurich 1 954, p. 42). See also the following note.

12 S0ren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to SoCl"ates, CW

31, p. 1 0 = trans., intro., and notes Lee M. Capel, New York 1965 (hereafter Capel), p. 50.

13 Plato, Symposi11m, 2 1 5b.

14 Nic1z11chc, Twilight of the Idols. The Problem of Socrates, 4, vol. 6, p. 69

Colli/Muntirmi = PN, p. 475.

IS Pluto, .\'11111/111.11111111 2 l f1c.

172

Figures

1 6 Ibid, 22le.

1 7 Ibid, 2 1 6d.

1 8 K. Gaiser, Prolreptik und Paranese bei Platon. Untersuchungen zur Form des platonischen Dialogs, Stuttgart 1 959, pp. 26, 149ff, 197.

1 9 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 3, vol. 6, p. 320 Colli/Montinari = in Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J.

Hollingdale, New York 1 969 (hereafter Kaufmann and Hollingdale), p. 280.

20 P. Friedlander, Plato = An Introduction (= Bollingen Series 59. 1 ), trans.

H. Meyerhoff, vol. 1 , 2nd edn, Princeton NJ 1969, p. 1 26.

21 Cf. K. Gaiser, Platons ungeschriebene Lehre. Studien zur systematischen und geschichtlichen Begriindung der Wissenschafien in der platonischen Schute, Stuttgart 1 963, 2nd edn 1 968; H.-J. Kramer, Arete bei Platon und Aristoteles. Zum Wesen und zur Geschichte der platonischen Ontnlogie, Heidelberg 1 959; 2nd edn, Amsterdam 1 967. On the history and current state of the question, see J. Wippern, ed., Das Problem der ungeschriebenen Lehre Platons (= Wege der Forschung 1 86), Darmstadt 1 972; M.-0. Richard, L 'Enseignement oral de Platon, une nouvelle interpretation du platonisme, preface Pierre Hadot, Paris 1986.

22 J.G. Hamann, Sokratische Denkwurdigkeiten, with notes by F. Blanke, Giltershoh 1 959, p. 74. ["In an imitative way." - Trans.]

23 Cf. BOhm, Sokrates, cited above, n. 4.

24 J. Wahl, E.'tudes kierkegaardiennes, 3rd edn, Paris 1967, p. 282.

25 S0ren Kierkegaard, The Point of View for my Work as an Author, CW 33, II, 1 , A&5, p . 48 = trans., intro. and notes Walter Lowrie, New York 1 962, 1 st edn 1 939 (hereafter Lowrie), pp. 39-40.

26 S0ren Kierkegaard, Tagebilcher (Diaries), Dilsseldorf/Cologne 1 982, vol. 2, p. 84 l= 8, A 27 ( 1 847)].

27 S0ren Kierkegaard, The Instant, CW 34, p. 329.

28 Cf. S0ren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (CW 16, p. 240: "Socrates was very careful that there should be no direct relationship between the teacher and the student." On indirect communication, see Wahl, Eludes Kierkagaardiennes, pp. 28 1-8, 584 (on Nietzsche's theory of the mask).

29 Friedrich Nietzsche, Posthumous Fragments, June-July 1 885, 37 (7), vol. 1 1 , p. 580 Colli/Montinari = WP 980 (1 885), p. 5 1 2.

30 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good 'and Evil, §40, vol. 5, p. 58 Colli/Montinari =

trans. with commentary Walter Kaufmann, New York 1966 (hereafter Kaufmann), p. 5 1 .

3 1 Nietzsche, Posthumous Fragme11ts, April-June 1 885, 34 (66), vol. 1 1 , p . 440

Colli/Montinari.

32 Nietzsche, The Dawn, 4, §42 1 , vol. 3, p. 257 Colli/Montinari.

33 Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, §3, vol. 6, pp. 319-21 Colli/Montinari = pp. 280--2

Kaufmann and Hollingdale.

34 E. Bertram, Nietzsche. Versuch einer Mythologie, Berlin 1918, repr. Bonn, 8th edn 1965, p. 1 82. Bertram's entire chapter on Nietzsche and the Mask is essential reading.

35 Nietzsche, Postlmt11<111s Fragments, 6 (3), Summer 1 875, vol. !!, p. 97 Colli/Montinari .

36 Pinto, Repuli/ir, 337n; .\)1mp11si11111, 2 1 <1c 5; Ap11lr111.y, .1H11 I .

The Figure of Socrates

173

37 Aristotle, Nicot11achean Ethics, l 108a 22; l 1 27a 22.

38 Theophrastus, Characters, § 1 .

3 9 Cf. H . Lausberg, Handbuck der literarischen Rketorik, Munich 1 960, §§582; 902, with abundant references. One of the finest examples of the rhetorical use of irony is the praise of slavery in Montesquieu's L 'Esprit des Lois, 1 5, 5 .

40 Cicero, Lucullus, 1 5; Brutus, 292-300.

41 Plato, Symposium, 221e.

42 Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, §1 75, vol. 2, p. 627 Colli/Montinari = (Texts in German Philosophy), trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge 1 986 (hereafter Hollingdale), p. 352.

43 Epictetus, Manual, §46. Cf. F. Schweingruber, "Sokrates und Epiktet," Hermes 78 ( 1943), pp. 52-79.

44 Plato, Republic, 337a. Cf. Gorgias, 489e; Tkeaetetus, 1 50c.

45 Aristotle, On Sophistical Refutations, 1 83b8.

46 G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesunge11 iiber die Gesckickte tier Philosophie, vol. 2, p. 65 =

Hegel's Lectures 3 vols, London 1 892, rcpr. London 1 955 (hereafter Haldane), vol.

I , p. 203. The pages Hegel devoted to Socrates in this work are of great profundity, permeated as they are by the great problem of romantic irony.

47 Cf. P. Moraux, "La joute dialectique d'apres le huitieme livre des Topiques," in G.E.L. Owends, ed., Aristotle on Dialectic (= Proceedings of the Third Symposium Aristotelicum), Oxford 1968. On the philosophical significance of such dialectical jousts, cf. E. Weil, "La place de la logique dans la pensee aristotelicienne," Revue de la Metaphysique et de Morale 56 ( 1 95 1 ), pp. 283-3 1 5 .

48 0. Apelt, Platonische Aufiatze, Berlin 1 9 1 2, pp. 96-1 08. On Socratic irony, the reader may consult the important work of M. Landmann, Elenktik und Maieutuk, Bonn 1950, and the excellent article by Rene Schaerer, "Le mecanisme de l'ironie dans ses rapports avec la dialectique," Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale 49

( 1 94 1 ), pp. 1 8 1 ff. On irony in general, see Vladimir Jankelevitch, L 'lroni'e, Paris 1 964.

49 ["Splitting" and "doubling" - Trans.]

50 The logos common to Socrates and to his interlocutors is personified in Plato, Protagoras, 361 a.

5 1 Plato, Theaetetus, 149aff.

52 Kierkegaard, Point of View, §2, GW 33, II, 1 , A, p. 40 = pp. 29-30 Lowrie.

53 Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragt11ents, GW 10, pp. 58, 2 1 .

54 Plato, Apology, 2 1 d 5 .

55 Plato, Symposi11m, 1 75d.

56 Xenophon, Memorabilia, 4, 4, 1 0.

57 Plato, Lackes, 1 87e.

58 Plato, Apology, 36b.

59 Plato, Alcibiades, 1 20d4; Apology, 36c.

60 Nietzsche, Untit11e(y Meditations, 3, 4, vol. I , p. 374 Colli/Montinari. = trans. R.J.

Hollingdale, intro. J.P. Stern, Cambridge 1 983, repr. 1990 (hereafter Hollingdale and Stern), pp. I 5�5.

61 Ibid, p . •

l73 Colli/Montinari = p. 1 54 Hollingdale and Stem.

<12 I bill, 3, 5, p. 371J Colli/ Monrinari = p. 1 58 Hollingdalc and Stern.

1 74

Figures

63 Plato, Symposium, 2 1 6a.

64 Hegel insists strongly on this point; cf. History of Philosophy, 1 , 28, 36, = vol. 1 , p . 442 Haldane: "no people, and least o f all a free people like the Athenians, has by this freedom to recognize a tribunal of conscience."

65 Socrates' will to die posed a grave problem for Nietzsche; we shall return to this point later.

66 Kierkegaard, ConduJing Unscientific Postscript, pp. 82fT Lowrie.

67 Kierkegaard, Point of Vie111, Part II, ch. 2, B p. 61 Lowrie.

68 Cf. Wahl, Etudes Kierkegaardiennes, pp. 281 ff; and especially the author's remarks on the relationship between the divine incognito and the incognito of the writer, p. 285, n. I .

69 Nietsche, Posthumous Fragments, April-June 1 885, 3 4 ( 1 48), vol. 1 1 , p . 470

Colli/Montinari.

70 Cf. Plato, Apology, 23b: "The wisest [sophotatos] of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom [sophia] he is really worthless."

71 Cf. Wahl, Etudes ltierkegaardiennes, pp. 387, 409 n. I (on Kierkegaard's negative theology).

72 Sercn Kierkegaard, Der Augenbliek ( The Instant ), IO, GW 34, pp. 330-1 .

73 Friedlander, Plato, p. 1 53 .

74 Werner Jaeger, Paideia, vol. 2 , Berlin 1 954, p . 64 .

75 Kierkegaard, Point of Vie111, GW 3 3 , p. 64 = p. 61 Lowrie.

76 Plato, Symposium, 2 1 Sa; Phaedrus, 229-30; Alcibiades, 106a.

77 Plato, Theaetetus, 149a.

78 Plato, Symposium, 22 1c-d.

79 Kierkegaard, Point of Vie111, GW 33, p. 1 13 = p. 102 Lowrie.

80 On Socrates and Eros, see J. Hillman, "On psychological creativity," Eranos

Jahrbuch 35 ( 1 966), pp. 370-98. The author emphasizes the demonic aspect of Socratic Eros, and I believe our investigations are mutually complementary.

8 1 Cf. H.-1. Marrou, Histoirt de l'tducation dans l'Antiquite, 6th edn, Paris 197 1 , ch. 3: "De la pederastie comme education" ["On pederasty as education" -

Trans.].

82 Plato, Symposium, 2 1 7- 1 8.

83 Ibid, 2 1 8a, 21 5e, 222b.

84 Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, ch. 2, GW 3 1 , p. 1 94 = p. 2 1 3 Capel.

85 Plato, Symposium, 200-1 .

86 See, above all, Leon Robin, "Introduction," in Platon, Le Banquet (Bude), Paris 1 95 1 , pp. Cl-CIX; Robin, La theorie platot1iciennt tlt /'amour, Paris 1 933, p. 1 95; Friedlander, Plato, ch. 2: "Demon and Eros."

87 ["Every lover is a soldier." - Trans.]

88 On the genealogy of Eros, see M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, Les ruses de / 'intelligence. La mitis des Crees, Paris 1974, p. 140; A. Spies, Mi/ital omnis amans. Ein Beitrag zur Biltlerspraehe tier antiken Erotik, Tilbingen 1 930. On Eros as a good-for-nothing, see the Anthnlogia Palatina, Book 5, Epigrams 176-80.

89 Plato, Symposium, 203c-d, 220b. On Socrates and Eros, Rec JankC:IC:vitch,

/. '/r011it, pp. 1 22-5; T. Gould, l'/atonic l.nt•t, London 11Jti3, p. 57.

The Figure of Socrates

1 75

90 Plato, Symposium, 174a.

91 See the passages quoted by Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 2, 27-8 ..

92 On the life-style of Diogenes the Cynic, see Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 61 20

ff. The passage containing the definition of Diogenes as a "furious Socrates"

(6, 54) is poorly attested textually, but is nevertheless not lacking in psychological verisimilitude.

93 Friedlander, Plato, p. 368, n. 6.

94 The Greek words chosen by Plato are intentionally ambiguous: Eros lusts after phronesis, that is, wisdom; he is "resourceful" (porimos); and he "philosophizes"

(philosophon) all through his life.

95 Plato, Symposium, 203d.

96 Aristophanes, Clouds, 445ff.

97 Plato, Symposium, 22 le.

98 ["Insolent, outrageous" - Trans.] Ibid, 1 7Se.

99 Ibid, 21 5c; cf. Meno, 80a3; Charmides, 1 S5e; Phaedo, 77e.

100 Ibid, 2 1 8a-b.

101 Ibid, 220a-d.

102 Aristophanes, Clouds, 362-3. Cf. Plato, Symposium, 221 b.

103 Cf. Plato, Symposium, 203--4. On the philosophical significance of these simultaneous negations, cf. H.-J . Kramer, Platonismus u11d hellenistische Philosophie, Berlin/New York 197 1 , pp. 1 74--5, 229-30.

104 Plato, Symposium, 2 1 5b.

1 05 Ibid, 2 1 8e.

106 At Symposium, 2 1 7-2 1 , Alcibiades insists on Socrates' temperance and strength.

1 07 Cf. Soren Kierkegaard, Christliche Reden (Cliristian Speeches), 1848, GW 20, p. 260: "When, in the course of my readings, I ran across Socrates, my hean began to pound like that of the young men who held discus.11ions with him. The thought of Socrates inspired my entire youth, and filled my soul to overflowing."

See also Goethe's comment, below.

1 08 Gregory Thaumaturgus, Speech in Praise of Origen, 6, 83; 7, 97.

1 09 E. Bertram, Nietzsthe. Versuch einer Mythologie, Berlin 1 9 1 8, repr. Bonn, 8th edn, 1965, pp. 3 1 8ff. Friedlander, Plato, p. 50, also alludes to this section of Bertram's work.

1 10 Nietzsche, "Introduction to the Study of Classical Philology," in Niet:r.dies Werke, vol. 17: Philologita, Leipzig 1910, p. 333.

1 1 1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Conversations with Eikermatm, trans. John Oxenford, 2 vols, 1 850, May 12, 1825.

1 1 2 Friedrich Holderlin, The Death of Empedotles, First Version, Act 2, Scene 4.

1 13 Hillman, "Psychological creativity," p. 380.

1 14 Hamann, Sokratische Denkwurdigkeite11, pp. 1 49ff Hamann s Socratit Memorabilia, A Translation and Commentary, trans. James C. O'Flaherty, Baltimore 1967

(hereafter O'Flaherty), pp. 1 69ff.

1 1 5 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, letter to Herder, July 1 772: "War' ich einen Tag und cine Nacht Alzibiades und dann wollt'ich sterben."

1 1 6 Johann Wolfgang vcm Goethe, Poetry and Tr11th, Hamburger Ausgabe (hereafter HA), vol. IO, 11. 1 75.

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1 1 7 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Urworte, Orphisch. The Demon," HA, vol. 1 , p . 359, lines 5-8 : "So musst d u sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen . . ./und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstilckelt/Geprigte Form die lebena sich entwickelt."

1 18 On Mignon's aspirations, cf. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels, From the Gennan of Goethe, trans. Thomas Carlyle, 2

vols, 2nd edn, 1 839, vol. 2, p. 89:

Such let me seem, till such I be;

Take not my snow-white dress away! Soon from this dusk of earth I flee

Up to the glittering lands of day.

There first a little space I rest,

Then wake so glad, to scenes so kind

In earthly robes no longer drest,

This band, this girdle left behind.

And those calm shining sons of mom,

They ask not who is maid or boy;

No robes, no garments there are worn,

Our body pure from sin's alloy.

[So lasst mich scheinen, bis ich werde,

Zieht mir das weisse Kleid nicht ausl

Ich eile von der schoncn Erde

Hinab in jenes feste Haus.

Dort ruh' ich, cine kleine Stille,

Dann t>fTnet sich der frische Blick;

Ich lasse dann die reine Hillie,

Den Gurtel und den Kranz zuriick.

Und jene himmlische Gestalten

Sic fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib

Und keine Kleider, keinc Falten

Umgeben den verkliirten Leib.

Cf. M. Delcourt, "Ultrumquc-neutrum," in Melanges 11.-Ch. Puech, Paris 1 974, p. 1 22: "A stolen child, unhappy, dressed as a boy and hiding her sex, Mignon is depicted as a ZIPillerhafles Wesen ["hybrid being" - Trans.). Finally reconciled with herself, she plays the role of an angel in a children's celebration and sings a Lied in which she foretells her imminent death: /ch eile von der sd1onen Erde . . . "I am leaving the lovely earth in haste I for that solid home . . . and the heavenly Forms who live there I do not a.o;k if one is man or woman I and no clothing, no veils I surround one's transfigured body." On the figure of Mignon, cf. also W. Emrich, Die Symbolik von Faust fl, Frankfurt 1957, pp. 1 72, 459, with further bibliography.

1 19 On Ottilia and the Demonic, in relation to the concept of the U11ge/1e11res

! "monstrous" · Tnms. I, cf. Emrich, /Jit .\'.vmlm/llt, p. 2 1 7. On hern1111,hrodit iMm in general, !ICC ihid, pp. 1 7 1 (1.

The Figure of Socrates

177

1 20 Bertram, Nietzsche, ch. 20 {"Sokrates"). This is not the place to enter into a lengthy discussion of this point, but it seems to me that Bertram's position on the relationship between Nietzsche and Socrates has not be� surpassed by the more recent work on the subject.

1 2 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §340, vol. 3, p. 569 Colli/Montinari =

trans. Walter Kaufmann, New York 1974 {hereafter Kaufmann 1 974), p. 272.

1 22 Nietzsche, T'll1ilight of the Idols, The Problem of Socrates, §8, vol. 6, p. 7 1

Colli/Montinari = PN, p. 477.

1 23 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §13, vol. I, p. 91 Colli/Montinari = p. 89

Kaufmann.

1 24 Plato, Symposium, 223c.

1 25 C.F. Meyer, Das Ende des Festes, in Gedichte, vol. 4: Da mit Sokrates die Freunde tranken

Und die Haupter auf die Polster sanken

Kam cin Jungling, kann ich mich entsinnen,

Mit zwei schlanken Floterbliiserinnen.

Aus dem Kelchen schiltten wir die Neigcn,

Die gcsprichsmilden Lippen schweigcn,

Um d ie welken Kranze zieht ein Singcn . . .

Still! Des Todes Sclummerfloten klingen!

[Conrad Ferdinand Meyer { 1 825-98) was one of Switzerland's greatest poets and novelists. - Trans.]

1 26 Friedrich Holderlin, Der Rhein:

Nur hat ein jeder sein Mass.

Denn schwer ist zu tragcn /Das Unglilk, aber schwerer das Glilk Ein Weiser abcr vcrmocht es/Vom Mittag bis in die Mittemacht, Und bis dcr Morgen erglinzte,

Beim Gastmahl helle zu bleibcn.

=Friedrich Ho"/derli,,, Poems and Fragments, trans. M. Hamburger, London 1966, p. 421.

1 27 "The most attractive book i n Greek literature,'' said Nietzsche in his Posthumoul Fragments, July 1 879, 41 , 2, vol. 8, p. 584 Colli/Montinari.

1 28 Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human, A Book for Fru Spirits,

§86, vol. 2, pp. 59 1 -2 Colli/Montinari = p. 332 Hollingdale.

1 29 Xenophon, Symposium, 2, 1 6.

1 30

"Warum huldigest du, heiliger Sokrates,

Diesem Jilnglinge stets? kennest du Grassers nicht?

Warum sichet mit Liebe,

Wie auf Gotter, dein Aug' auf ihn?"

"Wer das Tiefste gcdacht, liebt das Lebendigste Hohc Jugend versteht, wcr in die Welt geblikt

Und c11 nc:igen die Weisen

01\ 11m l•:nde zu Schtlncm sich."

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1 3 1

wiihrend dem Menschen nichts Frohlicheres und Besseres zu Theil werden kann, als einem jener Siegreichen nahe zu sein, die, weil sie das Tiefite gedad1t, gerade das ltbendigstt lieben milssen und als Weise am Ende zum SchOnen neigen . . . Sie bewegen sich und leben wirklich . . . weshalb es uns in ihrer Nahe wirklich einmal menschlich und nati.irlich zu Muthe ist and wir wie Goethe ausrufen m0chten: "Was ist doch ein Lebendiges fur ein herrliches k0stliches Ding! wie abgemessen zu seinem Zustande, wie wahr, wie seiendl"

Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, 3, Schopenhauer as Educator, 2, vol. I, p. 349

Colli/Montinari = p. 1 36 Hollingdale and Stern. [The quotation is taken from Goethe's ltalienische Reise, October 9, 1 786. - Trans.].

1 32 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §14- 1 5, vol. 1, pp. 96; 102 Colli/Montinari =

pp. 93-8 Kaufmann. Socrates' dream, in which the gods order him to devote himself to music, is re'-'OUnted in Plato's Phaedo, 60-1 .

1 33 Plato, Phaedo, 1 1 8a.

1 34 Nieu.sche, The Gay Science, §340, vol. 3, pp. 569-70 Colli/Montinari = p. 272

Kaufmann 1 974.

1 35 Bertram, Nietzsche, p. 341 .

1 36 Nietzsche, TJPilight of the Idols. The Problem of Socrates, § 1 2, vol. 6, p. 73, Colli/Montinari = PN, p. 479.

1 37 Cf. Helen 1-1. Bacon, "Socrates Crowned,'' The Virginia Qparterly RevitJP 35

( 1 959), pp. 41 5-30.

1 38 Plato, Symposium, 1 7Se.

1 39 Ibid, 2 1 2e. Cf. Gould, Platonic Love, p. 40.

140 Ibid, 213e.

141 Ibid, 222d.

142 Ibid, 223d.

1 43 Ibid, 196e.

144 Ibid, 1 76c, 220a, 223d .

1 45 Ibid, 223d.

1 46 Ibid, 1 74d, 220c.

1 47 Nietzsche, Em Homo, §6, vol. 6, pp. 307-8 Colli/ Montinari = pp. 268-9

Kaufmann and Hollingdale.

·

1 48 ["Come, Holy Spirit." Otherwise known as the "Golden Sequence,"

this Whitsun sequence is now commonly '-'Onsidered the work of Stephen Langton (ca. 1 1 50- 1 228), Archbishop of Canterbury and opponent of King John.

- Trans.)

1 49 Hamann, Sokratische Denkwiirdigkeiten, pp. 1 49ff = pp. 141 ff O'Flaherty.

I SO ["Bend what is stubborn, warm what is cold, straighten what is crooked." -

Trans.]

1 5 1 Bertram, Nietzsche, pp. 345-6.

1 52 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §295, vol. S, p. 237 Colli/ Montinari =

pp. 2 1 8-1 9 Kaufmann .

6

Marcus Aurelius

1 The Meditations as a Spiritual Exercise

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius - a better translation of the Greek title would be Exhortalions lo Himself were first published in the West by

-

the Zurich humanist Andreas Gesner, in 1 558-9. Since their first appearance, the Meditations have continued to fascinate readers. Not all of these readers, however - and this includes many historians as well - have always understood what Marcus Aurelius intended to accomplish by writing this book. The seventeenth-century English editors and translators Meric Casaubon and Thomas Gataker still had an intimate sense for ancient realities, and were well aware of the nature of the work with which they were dealing. The Meditations, they realized, were a collection of hypomnemata (commentaria in Latin): notes written on a daily basis for the author's personal use.

Many authors allude to the existence of this literary genre in antiquity.

Since they were not intended for publication, however, such writings were destined to disappear. We owe the preservation of Marcus' Meditations to some happy set of circumstances, quite possibly to the piety of one of the members of the emperor's immediate entourage.

Most historians, however, have anachronistically projected the literary prejudices of their own epoch back upon the Meditations. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when systematic treatises were considered the perfect form of philosophical production, it was generally thought that the Meditations should be brought into relation with the composition of some such treatise. Scholars consequently imagined that the Meditations were the extracts or disjecta membra of such a hypothetical opus, or perhaps a series of notes written with a view to its publication.

In the nineteenth century, characterized as it was by romanticism, it was widely rccogni:r.ed that the Meditations were a collection of hypomnemata or per1mnul notc11. Frrquently, however, as in Renan's great study Marcm

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Aurelius or the End of the Ancient World, 1 it was maintained that Marcus had written "a personal diary of his inner states."

In the twentieth century, the age of psychology, psychoanalysis, and suspicion, the very fact of having written this personal diary has been interpreted as the symptom of a psychological malaise. It has become a clichC

to speak of the "pessimism" of Marcus Aurelius. E.R. Dodds,2 for example, insisted on the perpetual self-criticism which Marcus carried out upon himself, and related this tendency to a dream of Marcus', which is preserved for us by Dio Cassius.3 On the night of his adoption, says Dio, the emperor dreamed that his shoulders were made of ivory. According to Dodds,� this suggests that Marcus suffered from an acute identity crisis.

In a collaborative study, H. van Effentcrre and the psychosomatist R. Dailly undertook to diagnose the pathological aspects - both psychic and physiological - of what they termed "the case of Marcus Aurelius." ; Basing themselves on the testimony of Dio Cassius,6 they supposed that Marcus suffered from a gastric ulcer, and that the emperor's personality corresponded to the psychological correlates of this illness:

The ulcer-sufferer is someone closed in on himself, worried, and uneasy

. . . a kind of hypertrophy of the sel f renders him unable to see his fellow men . . . in the last analysis, it is himself that he is looking for in others

. . . He is conscientious to the point of punctiliousness, and is more interested in the technical perfection of administration than in human relationships, although the former should be only the sum total of the latter. If he is a thinking man, the ulcer-sufferer will be inclined to search for justifications, to fabricate superior personalities, and to adopt Stoic or Pharisaic attitudes.7

For these authors, Marcus' Meditalions arc a response to his need for

"self-persuasion" and "justification in his own eyes." H

The acme of this kind of interpretation is no doubt the article by Thomas W. Africa, entitled "The opium addiction of Marcus Aurelius." 9 Basing himself on passages in Galen and Dio Cassius, the author tries to detect a genuine addiction to opium on the part of Marcus Aurelius, and he believes he can discover its symptoms in the Meditations. In fact, however, the texts he cites do not constitute conclusive proof of Marcus' drug addiction. As for the texts from the Meditations themselves cited as symptoms of intoxication, Africa's interpretation of them is pure nonsense.

Dio Cassius does not mention opium at all; he only mentions that, during the Danubian campaign, Marcus did not eat at night, and during the day consumed only a bit of theriac to ease his chest and stomach. ID Galen docs indeed mention opium,1 1 but in such a way t hnt it is impossible to ded uce from his words a genuine addict ion to opium. I le merely 11nys thn t , during

Marcus Aurelius

1 8 1

the Danubian campaign, Marcus took a little bit of theriac every day - "in the quantity of an Egyptian bean" - for reasons of security. This was a frequent custom among Roman emperors, since theriac was considered an excellent antidote against poisons. Because theriac contained poppy-juice -

that is, opium - Marcus experienced chronic fatigue during the day when he took it. He therefore had the poppy-juice removed from the mixture, but then began to suffer from insomnia. He again returned to taking theriac with poppy-j uice, but this time the thcriac was aged and much less strong. After the death of Marcus' official doctor Demetrius, Galen himself was charged with the composition of the emperor's theriac, and Marcus was entirely satisfied with his services. Galen explained to him that his theriac was the best, precisely because it was composed according to traditional proportions.

Marcus' problems with fatigue and insomnia were, as we can sec, merely temporary. Marcus never sought out opium for its own sake, but for its medicinal effects, and thanks to Galen he seems to have found the proper balance in his dosage.

In the last note to his article, Africa himself admits that, even if one consumed as much thcriac as Marcus did, the quantity of opium it contained was, in all probability, insufficient to produce an opium addiction. But, he adds, we must suppose that the prescribed doses were not always respected, because we must find some way of explaining the strangeness of the emperor's Meditations and the bizarre nature of the visions he describes.

Here the weakness of Africa's reasoning leaps to the eyes. We are not at all certain, he argues, that Marcus Aurelius was an opium addict, but we have to presume that he was, since we have somehow to explain the strangeness of the Medittttions. This is a double sophism: first, even if Marcus' visions in the Meditations are bizarre, nothing obliges us to explain them by means of opium; after all, Dailly and van Effenterre were content to explain them by a gastric ulcer!

Africa thinks he can detect analogies between the Meditations and Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-eater. But is such a comparison really possible?

We shall let Africa speak for himself: 12

Marcus' vision of time as a raging river carrying all before it into the abyss of the future was no school doctrine of life viewed from the Porch but an attempt to express the extended perspectives of time and space which opium had opened up to him. Temporal and spatial dimensions were accelerated until Europe was but a speck and the present a point and men insects crawling on a clod. History was no longer a reference hut an actual pageant of the past and Marcus shared the exacerbated scns;UionN of his follow-addict, De Quincey: "The sense of space, and in the eml t ill' sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings,

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landscapes, etc., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled and was amplified to the extent of unutterable and self-repeating infinity. This disturbed me very much less than the vast expansion of time. Sometimes I seemed to have lived for seventy or a hundred years in one night; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a duration far beyond the limits of human experience." 13

The passages from Marcus Aurelius to which Africa refers are the following: Eternity is a kind of river of events, and a violent torrent; no sooner has each thing been seen, than it has been carried away; another is being carried along, and it too will be swept away. 14

Think often of the speed with which all that is and comes to be passes away and vanishes; for Being is like a river in perpetual flux, its activities are in constant transformation, and its causes in myriad varieties.

Scarcely anything is stable, even that which is close at hand. Dwell, too, on the infinite gulf of the past and the future, in which all things vanish away.15

Pace Mr Africa, this theme is abundantly attested in Stoicism. Talce, for example, the following passages from Seneca:

Place before your mind's eye the vast spread of time's abyss and embrace the universe; and then compare what we call human life with infinity . . . rn

Everything falls into the same abyss . . . time passes infinitely quickly . . .

Our existence is a point; nay, even less; but nature, by dividing this puny thing, has given it the appearance of a longer duration. 17

This image is a venerable one; we find it in the following fine verses of Leonidas of Tarentum: "0 man, infinite was the time before you came to the dawn, and infinite will be the time awaiting you in Hades. What portion of life remains for you, but that of a point, or if there is anything tinier than a point?" 18 To be sure, Marcus' river is none other than the Stoic river of being, which "flows without ceasing," 19 but in the last analysis, it is also the river of Heraclitus, who, Plato tells us, compared all beings to a river's flow.20

It is also, moreover, the river of the Platonists as mentioned by Plutarch: "All things simultaneously come to be and perish : actions, words, and feelings -

for Time like a river carries everything away." 21 The same river is mentioned by Ovid : "Time itself flows on in constant mot ion, just like a river . . . wave is pushed on by wavc." 21

Marcus Aurelius

1 83

When, in the passage quoted above, Seneca uses the expression propone -

"place before your mind's eye'', that is, "represent to yourself the abyss of time" - he makes it clear that he is talking about an exercise of the imagination which the S toic must practice. It is an instance of the same kind of exercise when, in his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius tries to embrace the dimensions of the universe in his imagination, and to look at things from on high, 2l in order to reduce them to their true value.

Think of the whole of being, in which you participate to only a tiny degree; think of the whole of eternity, of which a brief, tiny portion has been assigned to you; think about fate, of which you are such an insignificant part. 24

If you were to find yourself suddenly raised up into the air, and observed from on high the busy hodgepodge of human affairs, you would despise them, as you saw at the same time how vast is the domain of the beings inhabiting the air and the ether.25

You have the power to strip off many superfluous things that are obstacles to you, and that depend entirely upon your value-judgements; you will open up for yourself a vast space by embracing the whole universe in your thoughts, by considering unending eternity, and by reflecting on the rapid changes of each particular thing; think of how short is the span between birth and dissolution, and how vast the chasm of time before your birth, and how the span after your dissolution will likewise be infinite.26

The rational soul . . . travels through the whole universe and the void that surrounds it . . . it reaches out into the boundless extent of infinity, and it examines and contemplates the periodic rebirth of all things. 27

Asia and Europe arc little corners of the world; every sea is a droplet in the world; each present instant of time is a point in eternity; everything is puny, unstable, and vanishing.28

How puny a portion of infmite, gaping eternity has been assigned to each man; it vanishes with all speed into the Unending. How puny a portion of the substance of the All; how puny a portion of the soul of the All. Of the whole of the earth , how puny is the lump you are crawling on!29

The difference between these texts and the passage quoted above from De Qµincey lcnpN to t he eye. For the latter, the distortion of time and space is, n11 it wc1·c, impoNcd upon him from outside; the addict is the passive victim

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of his impressions. For Marcus, by contrast, the consideration of the infinity of time and space is an active process; this is made quite clear by his repeated admonitions to "represent to himself" and "think of" the totality of things.

We have to do here with a traditional spiritual exercise which utilizes the faculties of the imagination. De Quincey speaks of a distortion of the instant, which takes on monstrous proportions. Marcus, by contrast, speaks of an effort to imagine the infinite and the all, in order that all instants and places may be seen reduced to infinitesimal proportions. In Marcus' case, this voluntary exercise of the imagination presupposes a belief in the classical Stoic cosmological scheme: the universe is situated within an infinite void, and its duration is comprised within an infinite time, in which periodic rebirths of the cosmos are infinitely repeated. Marcus' exercise is intended to provide him with a vision of human affairs capable of replacing them within the perspective of universal nature.

Such a procedure is the very essence of philosophy. We find it repeated -

in identical form, beneath superficial differences of vocabulary - in all the philosophical schools of antiquity.30 Plato, for instance, defines the philosophical nature by its ability to contemplate the totality of time and being, and consequently to hold human affairs in contempt.31 We encounter this same theme32 among Platonists like Philo of Alexandria·13 and Maximus of Tyre;34

in Neopythagoreanism35 among the Stoics,36 and even among the Epicureans, as we have seen in the passage from Metrodorus quoted above. 37

In Cicero's Dream of Scipio, the grandson of Scipio Africanus contemplates the earth from on top of the Milky Way. The earth appears so small to him that the Roman empire seems imperceptible, the inhabited world resembles a tiny island in the midst of the ocean, and life itself seems less substantial than a point.38 This theme was kept alive throughout Western tradition. One thinks of Pascal's "two infinities": "Let the earth seem like a point . . . compared to the vast orbit described by this star . . .

" 39

Marcus Aurelius' notes to himself give us very little information about his personal experiences. To be sure, in some chapters of the Meditations we can discern some minimal autobiographical data, but these are few and far between (only 35-40 chapters, out of 473, contain such information). Often, these details consist in no more than a name, such as Pantheia, mistress of Lucius Verus, who sat next to her lover's tomb, or the mimes Philistion, Phoibos, and Origanion. Marcus tells us practically nothing about himself.

But what about those numerous statements by Marcus which seem steeped in pessimism? Don't they tell us anything about his psychological states? If one gathers them together, they certainly give the impression of a complete disdain for human affairs. We seem to find in them the expression of bitterness, disgust, and even "nausea" 40 in the face of hum an existence: "Just like your bath-water appears to you - oil, sweat, filth, dirty water, all kinds of loathsome stuff - such is ench port ion of life, 11nd every Nllh11t11ncc." 41 In

Marcus Aurelius

1 85

the first instance, this kind of contemptuous expression is reserved for the flesh and the body, which Marcus calls "mud," "dirt," and "impure blood." 42

Yet the same treannent is reserved for things mankind usually considers as important values:

These foods and dishes . . . are only dead fish, birds and pigs; this Falemian wine is a bit of grape-juice; this purple-edged toga is some sheep's hairs dipped in the blood of shellfish; as for sex, it is the rubbing together of pieces of gut, followed by the spasmodic secretion of a little bit of slime.43

Marcus takes a similarly illusion-free view of human activities: "Everything highly prized in life is empty, petty, and putrid; a pack of little dogs biting each other; little children who fight, then laugh, then burst out crying." 44 The war in which Marcus defended the borders of the empire was, for him, like a hunt for Sarmatian slaves, not unlike a spider's hunt for flies.45 Marcus cast a pitiless glance on the chaotic agitation of human marionettes: "Think about what they're like when they're eating, sleeping, copulating, defecating. Then think of what they're like when they're acting proud and important, when they get angry and upbraid their inferiors. " "" Human agitation is all the more ridiculous because it lasts only an instant, and ends up as very little indeed:

"Yesterday, a little bit of slime, tomorrow ashes or a mummy." 47

Two words suffice to sum up the human comedy: all is banal, and all is ephemeral. Banal, because nothing is new under the sun: Always bear in mind that everything is exactly the way it comes to pass right now; it has happened that way before, and it will happen that way again. Make them come alive before your mind's eye, these monotonous dramas and scenes, which you know through your own experience or through ancient history; picture the whole court of Hadrian, of Antoninus, of Philip, Alexander, and Croesus. All these spectacles were identical; the only thing that changed were the actors.48

Banality and boredom reach the point of being sickening: Just as you get sick of the games in the arena and such places, because they arc always the same, and their monotony makes the spectacle tedious, so feel the same way about life as a whole. From top to bottom, everything is the same, and comes from the same causes. How long will this go on?49

Not only arc hum1tn nffnirs tedious: they arc also transitory. Marcus tries to mnkc the hunutn 11wnrm11 of 11ast ages come alive in his imagination,111 picturing

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the days of Trajan or Vespasian, with their weddings, illnesses, wars, feasts, trading, agriculture, ambition, and intrigues. All these human masses have disappeared without a trace, observes Marcus, along with their activities.

Marcus also tries to imagine this incessant process of destruction at work upon those around him.51

Marcus has no patience for those who would try to console themselves for the brevity of existence by the hope that they will survive in the name they leave to posterity. "What's in a name?" he asks: "A mere noise, or a faint echo." 52 At best, this miserable, fleeting thing will be transmitted to a few generations, each of which will last as long as a lightning-flash in the infinity of time.53 We ought not to be fooled by such an illusion: "How many do not even know your name, and how many will very soon forget it." 54 "Soon you will have forgotten everything; soon, too, everything will have forgotten you." ss

Such an accumulation of pessimistic utterances is indeed impressive. We should be careful, however, of deducing from them over-hasty conclusions about Marcus' own psychology. It is too facile for us to imagine that, like many modem authors, ancient writers wrote in order directly to communicate information, or the emotions they happened to be feeling. We assume, for instance, that Marcus' Meditations were intended to transmit his everyday feelings to us; that Lucretius was himself an anxious person, and used his poem On the Nature of Things to try to combat his anxiousness; that Augustine was really confessing himself in his Confessions. In fact, however, it is not enough to consider the obvious, surface meaning of the phrases in an ancient text in order fully to understand it. Rather, we must try to understand why these phrases were written or spoken; we must discover their finality.

Generally speaking, we can say that Marcus' seemingly pessimistic declarations are not expressions of his disgust or disillusion at the spectacle of life; rather, they are a means he employs in order to change his way of evaluating the events and objects which go to make up human existence. He does this by defining these events and objects as they really are - "physically," one might say - separating them from the conventional representations people habitually form of them. Marcus' definitions of food, wine, purple togas, or sexual union arc intended to be "natural. " They are technical, almost medical definitions of objects which, when considered in a purely "human" way, provoke the most violent passions, and we are to use them to free ourselves from the fascination they exercise upon us. Such definitions do not express Marcus' impressions; on the contrary, they correspond to a point of view intended to be objective, and which is by no means Marcus' invention. Already in antiquity, for instance, Hippocrates and Democritus were said to have defined sexual union as "a little epilepsy."

When Marcus pitiles.11ly imagines the intimate life of the arrogant "eating, sleeping, copulating, defecating," he iH t rying lo ((ivc 11 p/011fral viNinn of

Marcus Aurelius

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human reality. We find a similar reflection in Epictetus, concerning people who are content just to discourse about philosophy: "I'd like to stand over one of these philosophers when he's having sex, so as to see how he sweats and strains, what kind of grunts and groans he utters; whether he can even remember his own name, much less the philosophical discourses he has heard, declaimed, or read!" 56 Marcus applies the same method to our idea of death:

"consider what it is to die; and that, if one looks at death in and of itself, dissolving the images associated with death by taking apart our common conception of it, he will not suspect it to be anything other than a product of Na tu re. " 57

As we have seen, Marcus' effort to confront existence in all its naked reality leads him to glimpse processes of decay and dissolution already at work in the people and things around him, or to make the court of Augustus come alive before his eyes for an instant, so as to realize that all these people, so alive in his imagination, are in fact long dead. Yet we have no more right to interpret this as obsession with death or morbid complacency than when, in the film Dead Poets ' Socie�y, Robin Williams makes his students study a picture of the school's old boys. Williams' character is trying to make his charges understand the meaning of carpe diem ("seize the day"), the irreplaceable value of each instant of life, and it is with this goal in mind that he emphasizes that all the faces in the class photograph, so young and alive, arc now long dead.

Moreover, when Marcus speaks of the monotony of human existence, it is not in order to express his own boredom, but in order to persuade himself that death will not deprive us of anything essential. In Lucretius, the same argument is used by nature herself, to console man for the misfortune of death: "There is no new invention I can think up to please you; everything is always the same . . . what lies in store for you is always the same even

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if you were never to die." 58

In the case of Marcus Aurelius, all these declarations are the conscious, voluntary application of a method which he formulates in the following terms: always make a definition or description of the object that occurs in your representation, so as to be able to see it as it is iri its essence, both as a whole and as divided into its constituent parts, and say to yourself its proper name and the names of those things out of which it is composed, and into which it will be dissolved.59

This method is quintessentially Stoic: it consists in refusing to add subjective value-judgments - such as "this object is unpleasant," "that one is good,"

"this one is bad," "that one is beautiful," "this is ugly" - to the "objective"

representation of things which do not depend on us, and therefore have no morn! v11luc.·. The StoicK' notorious phantasia kata/eptike which we have

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trn11Nl11tt•d 1111 1111hl,•t·1 ivc representation"

tokes place precisely when we

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