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January 1985
Volume 13 Number 1
David Bolotin
Socrates'
Critique
of
Hedonism:
Reading
Speech in
of
the Philebus
of
15
Arlene W. Saxonhouse
The Net
Hephaestus:
Aristophanes'
Plato's Symposium
An Interpretation (Part
of
33
Mario
Lewis, Jr.
Plato's Euthyphro
I, Section
4, to end)
"Introduction"
67
Donald J. Maletz
An Introduction to Hegel's
to the
Philosophy
of Right
91
Joseph J. Carpino
On Laughter
Discussion
103
Angelo M. Codevilla
113
De Gaulle
on
as a
Political Thinker:
on
Morrisey's Reflections
to
De Gaulle
Will
Morrisey
Reply
Codevilla
Book Review
119 Nino Langiulli
Mirror of Nature
interpretation
Volume 13
JL
number 1
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Socrates'
Critique
of
of
Hedonism:
Reading
St. John's
the Philebus
David Bolotin
College, Santa Fe
Callicles'
argument, in the
of
Gorgias,
that it
is
right
by
nature
for the
stronger
to take advantage
the
weaker relies
largely on
his
claim that
life is to be cording to
capable of
Callicles,
instead
continually satisfying one's greatest possible desires. Ac nature herself proclaims the truth of his position. If most
what
people praise
they
justice,
opposites , this
inability
to sat
desires, and afraid of the power of those who isfy with Callicles, Socrates leads him to accept the following
their
sition: that men are
restatements of
with whatever
kind
of
enjoy
re
ment,
and
the good.
Socrates
marks
hedonism
with a
two-fold argument.
First, he
together,
not
as
in the
its opposite, the painful, are experienced together case of drinking, which is pleasant only while one
of
feels the
at
pain of
the good
and
its
oppo
site,
least
according to his
view
whom
they
Callicles'
hedonism is
a condition relies on
to be
inconsistent
with
happiness, is
from
Socrates'
evils.
hedonism
Callicles'
entirely free be
whom
men
to
whom
the good is
(as those to
beauty
as
is
present are
understands
by
good men
those
admit that
fools
and
cowards,
as well
or
the
wise
and
brave, enjoy
makes men
pleasure.
So if
pleasure were
the good,
that
whose
presence
or worthless men as
would also
be
good, at least
while
they
are
Though Callicles is
which suggests
not
that no
really convinced by the first half of this argument, pleasure is good, he is compelled by the second half to
admit
that only some pleasures, the worthy ones, are good, while others are bad.
argument
does
not refute
hedonism,
since
Callicles tums^out
not
to have
a whole-hearted
place.
As the discussion
with
Socrates
makes
clear, Callicles
has the
conviction
good
in itself,
quite apart
from its
Moreover,
cer
he had
disgust
at
Socrates for
accepts,
even
mentioning
to be
tain sexual
And
when
he
nonetheless
as a restatement of
his
pleasures are
good, he is admittedly
work on
trying
consis-
the Philebus.
Interpretation
rather
tent,
Accordingly,
had
always
gument
views.
is merely
bringing
to
light
of what
been
Callicles'
deeper
us wondering,
then,
whether
Socrates
hedonist. This
question
is obviously
an
since
Socrates
seems to
think that
most people
believe,
if they
won't often
say so, that the good is pleasure, and the greatest good (cf. Republic 505b5-6; Gorgias 492di-3; Philebus 66e2-3
be reasonable, for a man who seeks the best way of life, simply to disregard what he considers to be most people's opinion about it. Now this consideration offers the best perspective from which to approach Soc
would
67b3). It
hardly
rates'
or shameless enough
to
for the
hedonists in
having
said
Moreover, he differs from nearly all thought through the implications of his position. He is
praise of pleasure
even
by
usually
vice,
to be low or
disgusting. And
In
hedonsim
coexists
uneasily
with an attachment
to virtue, Philebus
other
of virtue and
or of good and
bad
men.
words, he is sophisticated
enough to
deny
sophisticated
refusal evils
that there is anything intrinsically good other than pleasure. This detachment from what men call virtue would also help explain his
to speak about
happiness,
It is
(contrast
I ido-7).
plausible that
he'd be
as
distrustful itself.
the promised
seems
reward
for
being
or
good as
he is
of goodness or virtue
Instead, he
to
believe that
with
we can
have
no greater good
painful
than the
sexual
pain,
satisfying
wants
wants
54e4-55au and
4733-09;
i2b7-9).
Philebus'
hedonism, then,
and
differ
so
from that
of
Callicles
so
by
its
uncommon
briety. And
Socrates'
arguments against
its disenchanted
adequate
to refute him.
Yet Socrates evidently believes that Philebus is vulnerable to a similar refuta tion, despite the fact that Philebus, unlike Callicles, never admits to the defeat of
his
unqualified
attributes to
and at
him
belief
they
alone,
are good or
(55b5-ci),
are.
and
they
are
better
men
they
In
other
words, despite
Philebus'
claim
that pleasure is
(the)
is
good to
practice
is,
of
or
of, the
of virtue.
means.
Now
Philebus,
course,
would never
have
what
he
is nothing more than pleasure, not that pleasure is nothing less than what men call virtue. But he may neverthe less have admitted to this latter view implicitly, at the very beginning of the dia logue. For there he agreed to the statement that pleasure is (the) good for all liv
means good
What he thinks he
ing
beings. Now to
speak of
something
as good
for
being
Socrates'
Critique of Hedonism:
Reading
or at
of the Philebus
3
that is
such
things,
least
sufficient to meet
a good were not
its
needs
(20CI4-6;
22b4).
need
for
gave us
in its
deficiency
than in
its strength, and we wouldn't call it good. Since Philebus besides pleasure, he must mean that pleasure alone is a
all
for
living
or
to
meet
the
needs of all
painfully diseased? To be sure, there might well be some pleasure, if only the pleasure of hope, that is available to everyone who seeks it, no matter what the
circumstances.
But
Philebus
claim
pleasures,
by
for
us?
By
far the
is that
interprets him to believe, that pleasure is the goal that everyone ought to pursue (6oa7~9; cf. Republic 519C2-4). He believes, in other words, that to seek plea
sure,
and not good
since
it is
presum
ably
for
being
to live as it ought to
live,
hopes
are
always
intertwined
that we regard as
all
duties,
would good
belief that
everyone ought
Philebus'
to pursue pleasure, in
circumstances,
account
for
claim that
for
everyone.
to pursue pleasure, he
have to
make
him,
namely that the more pleasure one is enjoying, the better or more virtuous one is. For to pursue what one ought to pursue is to be good. And the good man in the
sense will or
be the
he
ought
to,
either
the
most ear
even skill
in
Philebus
must either
allow,
failure
of the
best
man
depends,
more or
less,
on chance
the gods, or else think of the best man as the one who pursues pleasure the
Philebus'
most successfully.
belief in
most
"ought"
an
leads him to insist that the best be happiest in fact, that is, The only way, then, for
those who
which
men,
who as such
deserve the
happiness,
will
most successful
in their
pursuit of
pleasure;
and yet
he is too disenchanted to be
least consciously, in divine help for the him to avoid this dilemma would be not only to
lieve,
at
good.
succeed
in their dutiful
pursuit of pleasure
success, as
have seen,
is
guaranteed
to some extent
but
even to
men as
succeeding the most. Socrates seems to be right, in other words, in attributing to con him this bizarre notion of human goodness. The implications of
Philebus'
is (the)
good
for
all
living
beings
are
this extreme.
There
are other
signs,
apart
than
from the universality of his claim, that Philebus is he knows. For one thing, he tells Socrates that
of
he
will continue
pleasure,
no matter
what
could
have
no reasonable
grounds
what
will
be
unless
he knew the
Interpretation
he is
too sophisticated to
delude himself
will
on
hedonist
must
be based instead
In
other
words,
Philebus is unreservedly loyal to the cause of pleasure. Yet isn't unreserved loy alty, even to Pleasure, inconsistent with the doctrine that the good is merely plea
sure and that all pleasures are good?
Philebus'
stubborn
loyalty
to the
be
accounted
for,
at
least
the
not
fully, by
in
the
assumption
that
he
regards
hedonism
as
being
conducive
to
most pleasant
life. Indeed, he
never claims
that to be a hedonist is
more
pleasant
for instance, in
old age
hedonism itself
consistent
hedonist
at
Philebus'
could change?
failure,
then,
ment
or
his refusal, to
of
to the virtue
loyalty,
any change in his beliefs is a sign of an attach which deepens and is a part of his very attachment
views seems
to pleasure.
Philebus'
to go
be
hedonist
would allow
492di-3
with
cussion, at
Protagoras 35ic2-d7; Republic 538CI). In the course of this dis any rate, he suffers considerable pain for having been so outspoken in
of pleasure.
his advocacy
and powerful
near silence.
For
one
argument,
which
thing, Socrates attacks his doctrine with a long he is unable to answer and which he listens to in
What may be even more painful, he sees his own closest follower, turn against him and join eagerly in ridiculing both him and his be Protarchus, liefs (54d4-55c3; cf. 49dn-e5, 23a2-b4, and 46a5-bi). Indeed, the whole
Philebus'
circle
of
followers
if
we
can
trust
Protarchus'
claim
to
be their
spokesman
sure
join Socrates in severely rebuking those who praise the life of plea (i2b4-6; 15C4-9; 67b8-9). Now if Philebus had been less outspoken about
could
his beliefs, he
too
much
have
protected
contempt.
Or if that
was
to
foresee, it is
clear
that he could
least have
mitigated
the contempt
makes no
by
his
pretending to be
companions.
convinced
by
Socrates'
arguments.
But Philebus
compromise with
candor,
not even
for the
pleasure of
being
respectable
at all
candor
betrays
a concern with a
virtue,
and a willingness
beliefs,
In
that are
inconsistent
with
his
own
doctrine.
than he supposes, Philebus is
of
addition
to
being
his
his
piety, or
Socrates
calls
exaltation of
Pleasure
pleasure
as a goddess
his goddess, not so much in speaking about for this he does playfully but in his serious claim that
be
about
is completely good (27e7-28b2). For this claim, which he imagines to human pleasures, is more deeply, in fact, about the divine. What Phil
ebus says
is that
both in
belief
number and
Philebus'
be completely good if it were not unlimited, in degree. Now this somewhat peculiar remark points to a
on
part that
pleasure-seeking
would
lead,
not
to complete fulfill-
Socrates'
Critique of Hedonism:
Reading
of the Philebus
boredom if there
intense
pleasure,
ness,
or a
while
different pleasure, to look forward to. But this two-fold unlimitedit may be a blessing of sorts for Philebus, is still not evidence that
good.
pleasure
is completely
To the contrary, it
good.
means
or
that we
can never
possibly
com
have
more,
in
other words
that attainable
pleasure
is
at
best
an
incomplete
He
must also
be
including
"pleasures"
those
imaginable,
an un
but
real
never enjoyed
by
anyone.
goddess,
a goddess
The Pleasure that is completely good is thus in whom Philebus does in fact believe.
Philebus'
whom
he
"knows"
unwitting belief that pleasure is virtue, and his belief in a goddess to be unreal, are clear enough evidence that his position is un
a
reasonable.
really
sober
hedonism
to
would
be
false. And
if it
were
being
believe
whole
heartedly
and
that
Philebus'
inconsistencies,
akin to surface
Philebus'
to enjoy
oneself
the
beliefs
him license to
pursue
them all.
perspective of
pleasure,
is to be
must therefore
feel
ashamed
versation with
loyalty being in
ists,
goddess for the suffering that he endures during this con Socrates. Not only does he put up with a painful discussion out of to his convictions, but these very convictions lead him to be ashamed of
before his
pain,
and so
his
pain must
be
compounded.
pain
And
feel
relief
from their
by
unlike
ment, and
solation.
resolving to be better in the future, Philebus cannot enjoy this con For in his case, to resolve to be better would mean to resolve io feel
by
better;
and
will
show, doesn't
work
very
well.
Phil
ebus1
state of
soul, then,
painful
during
(cf.
27c 1-2).
And the
explain
pain
other
complete
good, helps
his
attempt to escape
a
himself
by
ex
of as
perfect
good
even
though he
argument against
hedonsim, however, is
not
merely to
reveal
the in
consistencies
in
Philebus'
argues,
hedonsim,
To
show
whether
only good,
offered, a
mem
asks
follower Protarchus
he
choose, if it
were
life full
ory,
of
intelligence,
understanding,
and
life that
Interpretation
both
pleasure and
combined
sure
understanding,
and so
Socrates
concludes
that
plea
is
not
One
could
object,
however,
supposition
that a life
could
have the
be
without
intelligence
and
impossible, since the pleasures of the moment are much increased by intelligence, especially by the intelligence to anticipate future pleasure. Accordingly, a hedonist might come to admit that intelligence is also
good, but he
would see
pleasure.
as an
ingredient of,
not,
on
would
this
view, be the only good, it would still be the only that was good in itself (cf. Protagoras 35id7-e3).
Socrates'
case
for the
goodness of intelligence
is
strengthened
if
we consider
which
he
also mentions
in his discussion
with
Protarchus:
the good
might
by
thinking being, by
is
good
that is aware of a
need good
for for
what
(20d7-n). And
be sufficiently
we need.
being
in
possession of
the good
For in the
"good"
of true
opinion, if
not
knowledge We
the
would
slip away having for something else, and thus the so-called good would not have sufficiently met our needs. Even the most sober hedonist, for example, depends for his contentment upon the thought that pleasure is good. This thought is im
would appreciated as good. still
been
be
looking
portant
to
him,
not
to
be
because it increases his pleasures, but because it allows him And thus even if pleasure were otherwise the only ulti
of
mate
pleasure
itself.
the argument I
Still,
good,
have just
might
sketched
is
no more
formal
refutation of
hedonism. A hedonist
when
this conviction
reply that his conviction about pleasure being the is good, is good because it reduces the pain of empty
fears
and of
amount of
his
dashed hopes for something more; it thus increases if not the pleasure at least the predominance of pleasure over pain in his
argue, then, that understanding or true opinion is good only this predominance of pleasure. And most importantly,
life. He
could still
because it
contributes to
the above argument doesn't challenge, in any serious way, Philebus' conviction that the best way of life is to pursue pleasure, to pursue only pleasure, and to pur
sue pleasure
of
the
Philebus,
whose mind
many kinds of pleasure. He discusses this better way of life, not with is already made up and who for the most part refuses even
Socrates'
his follower, Protarchus. Indeed, only obvious in the dialogue is that he wins Protarchus over to this alternative doctrine victory about the best way of life. Socrates persuades Protarchus, in the first place, that a
Socrates'
Critique of Hedonism:
and
Reading
on
of the Philebus
wisdom,
rather
is the
by
elaborating
in this
mixed
only
certain
pleasures
those unmixed with pain and those that accompany health and vir
tue
admit
that intelligence
or wisdom
is
good
is better than pleasure, in the sense of being more nearly akin to what about this best life. What the dialogue seems to accomplish, then, is to
Philebus'
save
Protarchus from
hedonism
by
providing him
There is something unsettling, however, about this apparent conclusion to the dialogue. For although Socrates and Protarchus speak of the best life primarily as
a
that
life for human beings (62a2; cf. 62b3; b8; C3; 6334; 66e4~5), the mixed life they outline together is quite impossible, at least for us humans. Not only
adequate
knowledge
of
"justice
itself",
of all
and of all
beings, but it
also
includes knowledge
could
Socrates'
true that a
human
and not
being resolved, by
regarded
know
so much
this
difficulty
"truth"
is
as
last-minute
addition of
to be
true,"
be
can
can such a life, which is clearly seriously as something good or best for us? (see 23a6-bi; cf. Protagoras 358b6-ci)?
At the very
good,
beginning
of
the
(1 ib7-c2;
or
in
accordance with
only for those for whom it is possible And yet this important consideration of what is possible, a being's nature, is treated slightingly, if at all, in the
55a7).
is truly to share in it
good
course of the
It is
never even
suggested, for
exam
best life for human beings, or approximates this pattern (contrast Republic
for the best life, and that the truly the best possible life, is the one that most nearly
a pattern
472a8-473b3).
Now the
manifest
impossibility
lous
about about
of
its
conclusion
lends to the
whole
dialogue the
of
playful or ridicu
we must wonder
character of wishful
Socrates'
thinking. And
in the light
this
fact,
interlocutor, Protarchus. If he really believed what Socrates says the best human life, wouldn't he want to know how, and whether, it was
for him to lead that life himself (cf. Republic 450C6-9; 458ai-b8) ? And gives no indication that he cares about the question of possibility
42d9-n).
possible yet
Protarchus
(contrast
neglect
Why
else
it
means
for Protarchus to be
not of
this
key
question,
it surely is
means
that
Socrates'
over
to his
own
doctrine, is
it
appeared to or at
first.
con
Is it
possible
that Protarchus
with,
least
seriously
Socrates'
cerned with,
inquiry
about
it,
this seems
desire to
settle
this question,
should
pursue, that he
half-play fully
let Socrates
go
home
until
he has
(i9C4-20a5;
even at
8
sion,
Interpretation
which
abrupt and
to hear
are signs
that
Protarchus'
Early
in the dia
con
defending hedonism,
Protarchus tries to
pleasures can
be dissimilar
or opposed to one an
that this
opposed
bad,
that
is,
to the good ones. As a result of this attempt at concealment, Socrates has to chide
of
trying
dialogue,
his
after
Protarchus has
hedonism, he
on
remains
unwilling to
expose
own
beliefs to the
Socrates'
power of
argument.
Thus, Protarchus
ridiculously easy likes to say what others say, especially if they are reputed to be wise (28c6-29a2; 36e9-io; 4ia2-4; 43ai-6; 67b8-9). And if this proves impossible to do, he be
comes uncomfortable.
For example, he
of unchangeable
responds to
Socrates'
being by
one
to
instead the
art of
persuasion,
and that
want
to op
ar
pose either of
the two
men
(58ai-b3). On
of
to be
his own, namely that there are no false plea attention to his unusual eagerness in defense of
claim
what
to be argu
he really believes. Yet he unwittingly betrays, again and again, how little of himself he is actually giving to the discussion. He agrees, for example, that he must stand behind his claim that there is a cosmic intelligence, and face
ing
for
what
the risk of
being
refuted
by
when
Socrates,
and
instead
quite
of
attempting the
arguments
expected
refutation,
surprises us with
additional,
intellect, Protarchus shows no concern that the question has been sidestepped (28d5~3oe8). Or, to take another example, Protarchus agrees, late in the dialogue, to the suggestion that pleasure
support of a cosmic
dubious,
in
is
longing
although he repeatedly speaks of it elsewhere as a good be without ever necessarily to the best life remarking on the contradiction (cf. 54C9-55ai2). Despite intense desire to hear what Socrates has to
not a good at all
Protarchus'
life,
our suspicion
is
that
he holds the
question
itself is
at arm's
sistence upon a
cern
satisfactory
nearly
he
pretends
(uc9-di; i4b5-8;
Yet how is it best
possible
for Protarchus to
of
care so
little
life,
and
for knowledge
Socrates is
right
the good
of what
really good,
and not
merely
reputed to
be
good
as
he
can
(20d7-io;
cf. Repub-
Socrates'
Critique of Hedonism:
Reading
of the Philebus
lie
505d5-io).
of
and argued
persuasively, that
knowledge
knowledge
is (Republic
for this
504d2-505b3).
search
could perhaps
be
explained on the
that he secretly be
lieves he already possesses it. But this suggestion, though too simple, for apart from the question of why Protarchus
not
would conceal
lief,
the suggestion
fails to his
account
opin
assumption
that
Protarchus'
can't explain
strange combination of
and
with
to any particular notion of the good. Rather than simply claiming to know the good, Protarchus relies, I
believe,
on
the
following
unspoken convictions: no
first,
and almost
surely
about the
good;
and
awareness of
to
Protarchus'
openly
it, including
But the
of
truth of
most important reason is his fear of exposing his beliefs to Socratic cross-questioning (cf. 22e6-23a2). Being distrustful, claims to truth, he can hardly have a genuine confidence in the convictions.
But they
provide
him,
even
so,
with what
he
some
how
only superficially involved in the discussion with Protarchus, then, is adrift to some extent deliberately
and thus
he is
adrift regarding life's important questions, and he even prides himself on this fact. He is, more over, a hypocrite. Once one has seen through his facade of earnestness, it is hard
question
arises
in
the
Platonic dialogue
about the
doesn't succeed, despite appearances, in educating Protarchus, any more than earlier teachers had done. father Callias, by the way,
Protarchus'
Protarchus'
may
well
be the
same
Callias
whom
Socrates
speaks of elsewhere as
having
cf. expose
spent more
education of
his
sons
(i9b5;
Apology
of Socrates
2oa4-b9).
Protarchus'
true character,
show
which
the
inadequacy
Protarchus thinks he has successfully con of his posture toward life. And though
may be tempted to dismiss Protarchus out of hand, as not even serious criticism, Plato must have thought it of some importance to
grounds
deserving
show
the
for rejecting his attitude. For Protarchus might conceivably be correct in his suspicion that there is no true answer to the question of the good life; human life
could
be
a meaningless accident.
And if this is
even
so
Protarchus'
what's
wrong
with
attitude.
It
allows
him, among
other
avoid
the painful doubts that tend to plague those who take some
10
Interpretation
stand about the
definite
good,
as well as
the
heartaches
protects
At the
same
time, it
be the futile
34CI4-9).
attempt
good with
knowl
pain, in
(cf.
Since there
difficulties,
pursuit of
and
difficulties that
bring
all opinions
that are held about the good, and since even Socrates has often been
resourceless"
left "alone
tion to
and
in his
knowledge (i6b4-7),
the tempta
try
to evade the
question
is
not
know
Protarchus'
whether
attitude of
The
chus'
and it may become necessary to easy-going indifference is untenable. from which to see the inadequacy of Protar
surprising,
approach
most.
on which
he
prides
himself
To the
extent own
failure
by
his
he really cares about this virtue, he must be judged a standards. That this is so is not because he accepts the dia
the best human
logue's
he isn't
means
serious about
that
conclusion
primarily
self-knowledge as
he
sees
it,
not
to commit
himself,
such
fundamental
questions as
(i9bi-2oa5;
48c6-49a6).
In the dialogue's
and
rather
lengthy
not
analysis of
comedy,
Protarchus repeatedly agrees that folly, wise, is an evil, an evil that stems from
ridiculous, if
those many
dogmatic
But
what
best life
and the
own re
(48a8-50aio;
he doesn't
see
is that his
fusal to
not
differently,
claim
what
to possess the
virtue of moderation
that virtue
claim
is;
and yet at
virtue, is is to
to
know,
least in part,
chus evade posture
what
is truly
good.
No
more
human
the necessity of making some serious claim about the good. And his
is
success, to
for his failed attempt, which he regards as a his inner indifference to the questioning of the dialogue. himself
on
Protarchus,
is
an
who prides
his
insists that
folly
evil,
orients
his
otherwise aimless
life in terms
of a
foolish
self-delusion.
His way
self puts
of
living, then, is
unacceptable when
judged
by
a standard that
he him
forward.
however, even if it doesn't take for granted that moderation is does assume that it is decisively important to Protarchus. But what truly virtue, if Protarchus isn't serious even about this? What if he doesn't really care whether
a
This criticism,
own moderation
is
a coherent or
inconsistency in claiming that it is virtuous or good to make no serious claims about the good and if he were willing to speak his mind he might reply as follows: he surely doesn't know that his noncommittal attitude is good, and it
may
well not
matter
anyway
whether
it is
or not.
If this
Socrates'
Critique of Hedonism:
Reading
of the Philebus
11
were make
his reply, his indifference to the truth of his belief in moderation would its inconsistency irrelevant to him. Now we might be tempted all the more
and
to despise Protarchus for such shallowness. But if his underlying suspicion, that
nothing is truly good, were correct, how could anything indifference to moderation, and to the truth of his bad? Someone
might still object
"belief"
in it
that it is base of Protarchus to be so easy-going can be possibility that there is no good. But such called bad only if there is a good and bad. If there isn't, difference from others would mean merely that he's less troubled by painful thoughts. It is
about the awful
"baseness" Protarchus'
Protarchus'
aimless
life is
no worse, and
espe
of others.
There is
quite wants
ample
evidence,
however,
and
troubled
by
painful
thoughts,
that he is haunted
by
the difficulties he
to sweep
under
of
violence, when he
senses that
feeling
of
Socrates is teasing, and not taking him seriously, betray a painful contempt for himself and for his phoniness (I5d8-i6a6; I9b2-e5).
admitted reluctance to state an opinion of others share
Moreover, his
knows that half-buried
to hear
it,
suggests a conscious
dread
of
uncertainties
(compare 58a7-b3
with
59bio-ci;
1433-6;
largely
about
as a result of
Socrates thinks
substitute
what
is good, it
real
Thus, the dialogue is as frustrating and he is unable to let it end, even though Socrates had itch, scratching offered to resume it the next morning (50d6-ei; 67^0-13).
satisfaction.
of an
The
evidence so
far
might suggest
now and
then,
as everyone
merely that Protarchus is uncomfortable is. But in fact he is unusually depressed. His underly
ing
the
depression becomes
evident when
Socrates
asks
him
about
the pleasure
or
pain
involved in the is
following
the
from
hunger, thirst,
or
like; he
remembers
pleasant
his he
emptiness
not yet
stresses with an
being unusually firm response, oath by Zeus, is that there is then a double pain, from longing
in the
soul
.
filled.
bodily
emptiness and
from
Socrates has to
remind
him that
one can
also
hope for
or, better, that one can hope for it consciously in the memory of those pleasures that one hopes to enjoy What Protarchus imagines as his despair about the good makes him tend
replenishment
to be
acute
oblivious
to the
pleasures of
hope,
be especially
will
during
this conversation,
from
which
he only
pretends
to hope that he
learn (35e2-36c2;
The dialogue
depression,
and of
its
deepest source, in his wavering judgment about a hypothetical life without plea sure and without pain. Early in the dialogue, Protarchus says that a life con
taining
wisdom
and
of
both
pleasure and
pain,
12
Interpretation
be in
worth
would not
prefer
combined
intellect
so
with pleasure.
But later,
after pleasure
has been
the
falsity
many
pleasures
with
reasonable
to choose a life
has been exposed, he claims that it's pleasure and pain in preference to the
soon contradicts
highly
un
thoughtful
again and
life that
contains neither. as
himself
reaffirms,
if it
were an obvious
And it is
always
truth, that the best life combines thoughtful hard to know how much he means the things
he is led to denigrate the kind
without pleasure and
he
of
says
(cf.
also 4434-8). as
But the
life
we
know,
being
a
inferior to
life
pain,
betrays
a soul thst
is
oppressed
by suffering (2id9-2236;
5461-5531
1;
6od3-e7;
less unhappy youth, even if he weren't in earnest about the conversation, would have probably seen through the absurdly wishful think outline of the best human life (cf. also 62CI-4). ing in
cf. 3335-C4).
Indeed,
Socrates'
Something
thing
must
Protarchus'
spoils a
life
we
live,
and
this some
be
Though he does
life wholly free of evils. this dre3m consciously, and thus does not en
be
joy it, it
dream
as
colors all
his
experience nonetheless.
ground of
this
must
life
without evils
its
reward
In
other
more
than
he knows
also
about virtue or
snd therefore
in his own, is deeper than whst he imagines Now no one could hsve much confidence in such
goodness of not pesce of mind
his despair
3bout
the good.
belief,
3 serious
belief in the
not give
msking
It surely does
for
virtue
belief,
and
is
view of
life is
dissstisfsction for him. The dislogue shows, then, that Pro an unenviable one, both becsuse of its inconsistency snd
the criticism of Protsrchus thst the
becsuse
The
of
exposure snd
dislogue
sccomplishes
compel us and
intelligence,
is
the
like
directed chiefly to Protarchus, might not be seriously meant. And we are thus left wondering whether Socrates knows a better way of life than the unqualified pur
suit of pleasure.
Unfortunately, I
cannot even
try
here,
but I
consideration: this
is,
I believe, the
rejects unqualified
hedonism because he
perhaps surpris
by
which
he means,
ingly, nothing
pleasures that
as an evil
other than
false
ones
(4oe9-4ia6;
cf.
32b9-d6).
Socrates has chiefly in mind are the pleasures of false hope, such man's pleasant hopes for his most distant future. But since we tend to
the magnitude
of
exaggerate
must and
future
pleasures and
also, perhaps,
because
all
hope
as
if it
hence worthlessness,
even
already present, Socrates sees some falsity, in those pleasant hopes that turn out to have been
were
Socrates'
Critique of Hedonism:
Reading
of the Philebus
13
well-founded
(4ia7~42C4; compare 39C4-7 and 4oa9-c2 with 5ibiff.). Now Socrates isn't recommending, of course, the impossible and miserable task of trying to live a life without any hope (cf. 39e4-6 and Phaedo 9iai-b7). But
what
mand
simple
hedonists,
and
from
most
others, is his de
to which the
and
other
highest good, or that sufficient pleasure in his life could become truly good, must be free
that reason alone, of all mere
Socrates'
in
relation of
falsity,
in
dependent, for
If there is
there was
hopes,
so
or at
ones.
such a pleasure
and
experience
it is the
philosopher'
pleasure, for
long
he
remains capable of
enjoying it, in
thinking.
Thought
A Review
Presents
of
Culture
issue
and
Idea
Novel
a special
on the
(December
Contents: The
1984)
Making
of a
Storyteller
and
ANDREW GREELEY
Memory, Creation,
Writing
TONI MORRISON
CATHERINE SEARLE
Narrative Fiction:
Moby-Dick
Genre, Myth,
and
Sublimity in
of
D. H. Lawrence's Representation
Risen Sons:
Soul
BRUCE CLARKE
History, Consciousness,
of
and
JOHN F. DESMOND
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Taulkinham
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DIANA BENET WALTER KENDRICK
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the Art
by individual
copy-$5.00 each.
check payable
to THOUGHT to:
Journals Dept.
THOUGHT Fordham
The Net
of
Hephaestus:
Speech in Plato's Symposium
Aristophanes'
Arlene W. Saxonhouse
University
of Michigan
of
Socrates especially praises that the city be one, a unity he says to be the work (egyov) love (rfjg cpikiag) just as in the speeches about love (egcorixolg Xoyoig) we
know that Aristophanes
says how on account of their strong love (did. xo ocpodga lovers cpikelv) (igcbvtcov) are eager to grow together and become one instead of two. In such a case it is necessary that both or one be destroyed, but in a city it is neces sary that love (xf\v cpikiav) become watery on account of the community and one will
least
"mine"
of all
say
whether
it be
a son
for
father
or a
father for
a son.
(I262b9-I7)'
mistake, sccording to
tween
Aristotle, is
"Yes,
thst
he fails to distinguish be
Lovers
offered
are
lovers
and cities.
obvious.
it,"
two people
devoted to
each
we want
if
the net of He
encompasses
an eternity.
The city
else,
people and
lovers.2
its
down"
expanse must
the
intensity
of the passion
make
felt
or
appropriate someone
him
your
own, to
The city
as we
know it
evokes no such
intensity, no such specificity. We may feel fond of "the city"; we even become, as Pericles urges his Athenians to do, Ugaorai of the city in may our defense of it or pride in it, but we cannot visualize a unity with and appropri
ation of
ality is
relationship
the
city.
is the
same.
incompletion through
not
many
While
sexuality may
be
a part of
relationship
pre-Socratics
from
a concern with
the
relationship between the one and the many, the eternal and the changing. The the rela problem of politics (and the problem of lovers) is precisely the same
tion of the one and the many
how individual
units
(people, families,
villages,
The author gratefully acknowledges financial support for work on this paper from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the Uni versity
I
.
of Michigan. The terms egcog and cpiXia appear interchangeable here. According to Dover (1980; p. 50, 20) they are not distinct in the classical period. 2. Aristotle is not so concerned with the watering down of love as he is with the consequences
n.
of
that watering
down,
that
is, impiety.
16
states)
Interpretation
can
unified whole.
into
It
reveals
the funda
mental political
talking
about
ism,
monarchy,
Aristophanes'
suggests
why
we must engage
in that
for unity, while Aristotle's reserva Aristophanes seems to offer for his lovers
quest
Socrates for his city is unsatisfactory for both. The intensity of the desire for unity that both Aristophanes and Socrates appear to encourage is self-destructive
in its
ers. abstraction
from
bodily
limits
that which
defines
our separation
from
oth
net
the
when
body
that complete
unity without death is possible. But why does Plato give to both Socrates
describing
unity?
describing
eration
lovers the
same
drive,
is clearly correct to espy the differences between lovers and cities, for Plato the differences seem to be less significant than the similarity. Both reveal
the needfulness of the human species, the
sufficient.
inability
of
the individual to be
self-
One's
a
eros
is
an acknowledgment of
that
inadequacy;
in
at
the
same
time, it is
desire for
one's
true
form,
which
there is
no needfulness.
Thomas Hobbes,
tion of our true
an
early
spokesman
for the
modern
period,
rejected
the
no
form
or eldog.
There is
no summum
bonum,
no finis ultimus,
(he
tells us in
nor cities
Leviathan)
help
us
to
from the
drives
us
and
equate with
the
pain we
feel in
an unattainable
whole
perfection
an
individual like is
atoms
Moderns begin
individual for
ness,
with men
in
void,
impediments to
our
happy
enjoyment of
natural condition
us of the
modern period
one of a-sociability.
Aristotle
and
Plato's Socrates
and
Aristo
drive toward
union with an
nstural. and
Where Pla
disagree
would
is to be cast, not on the source of our The story of the net of Hephaestus is told in the
entertain
Odyssey by
docus to
Odysseus,
Ares
a guest
and
the secret
love
affair of
in the
this affair Hephaestus goes to his smithy and hammers out webs,
which not even one of
"thin like
spider
see,"
which
he hangs
"so
over
love.
They
are trapped
neither
limb
up,"
or get
unable
17
not the
goddesses,
come
un
controllably.
whether
All
laugh,
that
is,
except
Hermes
by
Apollo
as to
bed
by
he "caught tight in these strong fastenings would be willing to sleep in the side of Aphrodite the responds that he only wishes it could
golden,"
be he
with
"thrice the
number of endless
on"
fastenings
and goddesses
looking
limit
with
incompletion leads to
this
desire for
beautiful
as
Aphrodite is in body, if
the permanence
of
in
character.
would ensure
cessation of our
complete and
bound
with
beauty. We
it
or would we?
understands more
gods:
Zeus
and
the other
lying
thus even
for
little,/
much
though
they
for
are
will
have
then my fastenings
suages
them."
and
my
the
longing
completion which
passes with
haunts those
who are
momentarily: modern
the pleasure
Sexuality
our
ignored
by
on vividly but it is one sign of that characteristic human and its transi others, only partiality tory resolution is not a final answer. As the tragic playwrights of the ancient
liberal theorists
announces
incompletion,
dependence
we
find thst
whole,
own
in unity with beauty. The vision of a human telos carries tragic knowledge that it can never be achieved by mortals limited
aries of
it its
by
the bound
their bodies.
Sexuality
thereby
inadequacy
vividly
of a union
de
pendent on
bodies. It is
portrays us as
bodily
creatures and
Aristophanes has
and
made us
laugh
often.
He has
shown us
fantastical images
feats
on the
Along
with
these
fantastic images, he
shows us ourselves, as we
would not we
like to
see ourselves.
By focusing
he
on our
bodies he
revesls
how ugly
evokes our
laughter
bodily
gro
which
into
expressions of our
dependence
bodies, bent
and crooked
bodies, bodies in
need of
being
filled
in
need of
being
ing
to be
scratched or soothed.
one of
his
own comic
is
not
Aristophanes into
Aristophanes'
tragedy
speech
into the
work of an
The final
the
dialogue,
18
and
Interpretation
answered
comedy, is
in the
affirmative
by
the portrayal
within
the dialogue
of
poet on
beautiful
as
they
struggle against
the net of
necessity
piety
of
cannot conquer.
Aristophanes
under
literary
is
art
is
transformed into a tragedian who evokes fear and pity with his praise of
love; he
The
the de
ac
does this
not with
the
depiction
images
of what
ugly.
with absurd
which offend of
in their descriptions
indecorous
the
beauty
of our
Aristophanes:
he leaves him
and yet makes
the
beauty
winning
Agathon,
says that
his
speech a
tragic
chus, the
doctor,
the
technician, sweetly
reacts
or
to
Aristophanes'
he
Aristophanes has
spoken
cutely (r)decog,
19364).
The
unpoetic
doctor
fails to from
recognize
the
tragedy
can
Aristotle
incompletion
satisfied
by
our
death.
the dialogue to admit to his
Aristophanes
But his true
appears
briefly
the
beginning
as
of
he
phrases
he is to
was
speak after
it
(rvxdv)
from
some
fullness
of
(185C5-7). The
reflect on
hiccoughs
caused
many
a commentator
to
the
order of
merely note on one level that they are a sign of his body. Most of the others at Agathon's house are similarly bodies
topic
of a
bondage to
controlled
by
their
bondage
which
has
evening to
of
discourse
on the
true
lovers
speech;
they
turn to
bodily
satisfaction
have been
closed to them
by
bodies.
progression of
However,
and
the
hiccoughs
orderly
the speeches
and a
of xvxn.
Chance
appears to place
Eryximachus
Aristophanes in direct
pair
Their
speeches
become
politics
offering opposing humanity, reality in the world. Eryximachus talks about order, the xoouog (i87d5), the
the place of
and
zexvn and
beauty
harmony
And
yet
of that order.
Occasionally
doctor's craft, but order is for Eryximachus the natural the hiccoughs of Aristophanes had come by chance, dis
which
had been
agreed
to
in
an
orderly
vote of
19
need to
dinner
party.
The hiccoughs
and
be treated
mony, the
as
tickling
the
sneezing to
the
and a
which
the doctor
discourses
on
harmony
his
vision of a natural
harmony
benevolent
is the
us about
love
ourselves,
inadequacy
of medicine as practiced
by
doctors
about
of the
body,
tyranny
of nature.
human suffering (ndd-og). It is the comic poet who doctor (i89di; I9id2; I93d5) as Eryximachus could
love to be indeed
do.
Eryximachus,
as
inherently harmonious,
ignored
polit
irrelevant. Politics
of
as the resolution of
conflict,
by
nature.
Opposites
drawn
by
nature
into
life
harmonious
Aristophanes'
whole. not
il
lustrates
none of
body
is
harmonious
the nature
he describes demands
which arises
disharmony within our beginning of his speech Eryximachus suggests that he will complete the speech offered by Pausanias, whose own speech was not sufficiently completed (otx Ixavcbg cxnexEksoe, i85d7-i86ai). Eryximachus initially has a vision of the world in which comple
our selves which the
from
individual incompletion
cannot always
doctor
tion
is possible; it is necesssry
conclusion of
order
thst
(i86ai). At the
completion.
his
speech
The
is
placed
in
question
he has posited, the possible comprehension of the whole as he suggests now that Aristophanes fill in (dtvankngcooai)
out
what
(i88e3). Aristophanes
men
abhors a
eager
vacuum; any
to fill up the
emptiness offends.
comedies
(and women)
Eryximachus'
speech, he
impossi
reflec
bility
tions
of ever
assume.
achieving the
Aristophanes'
harmony
the
filling
in
Eryximachus'
which
destruction
of
crates'
harmony
eventually
arises
from
and
transcends the
bodily disharmony
begin to look
at
Aristophanes
describes.3
Let
us now
the
actual speech of
which of
Aristophanes
sets
power
love; he specifically does not talk of and earthly love as the two previous
had
given
love
speakers
to love a
moral
value,
seen
it
within
Aristophanes
3.
who
Throughout his
he had
sug-
Edelstein
(1945)
to
resurrect
Eryximachus before
generations of readers
have
doctor. The
argument
from the
perspective of
dramatic
role
is
persuasive
but it falls
in
exactly Eryximachus
says.
20
gested
Interpretation
the
problem of which we
cording to
pretend conflict
establishing a standard capable of objective verification might be able to measure what is good and bad. He does
ac
not
to discover one
here
either.
Rather, his
concern
in this
speech
is
with
the
between
men and
di
by describing
love
as most
friendly
to mankind,
tpikav-
was
story of Prometheus is told twice in Hesiod's poems; in both, Pro is to heighten the conflict between men and gods. As he helps men,
gods'
he does nothing to assuage the hostility towards them. Prometheus in his love for mankind had given them the fire he stole. He thereby gave them the
power
natural
forces
to become civilized rather than bestial creatures. Thus both Prometheus and
Aristophanes'
Eros
show their
philanthropy
mentions at
by helping men in opposition to the the beginning of his speech that love
have the sacrifices, the temples, the altars which men reserve for the He is replacing the Olympisn divinities with s truly philsnthropic force
towards the easing of
pain rather
which works
than
its
exacerbation.
The inver
sion
of
is
captured
by
we are
to
be
"initiated"
into
love's
power.4
The
phrase recalls
praise of
the mystery
religions.
an
Eryximachus in their
good
love in the
heavenly love,
the gods of
love.
They
the city
wards
for their
model of
forces
visions.
does is
a
not
justify
itself through
power,
a primal
force
which
does
not
depend
on
approval.
He intends to
about
educate
others,
make them
men are
the
power of
love. All
to learn that
prophet.5
cpikav&gcoTCog
and that
Aristophanes is his
power of
In
order
to
describe the
love
and explain
which are
the
mark of
his trade.
or could
Specifically
the human
being
as
he
once was
inings
nature.
of an
Aristophanes. Aristophanes
past was
offers us a
The
is
not static.
In the past, in
A,
there were
according to
Aristophanes'
mythology three
sexes
double
4.
5.
claim
Bury (1909;
that
p.
56) translates
pp.
Elcrrjyrjaaa&ai
on
(i89d3 )
as
"initiate
into."
144-45)
speech
is filled
(p.
Prometheus. However, I disagree profoundly with Rosen's for the Olympians and that his "philwith
"philotheism"
otheism
is the
same as
his
patriotism"
121).
21
the
hermaphrodite.6
female,
and
Now there
are
female. Who knows how many there will be in the future? This portrait of the changing human form raises important questions about
the
status of
of
is changing,
described
find
our standard of
by Aristophanes
the three sexes is
which once
7
by
simply a term of reproach now (i 8962-5). What once human form has been destroyed. Perhaps a new has
yet
form
of
human between
conflict
nature and
convention, cpvoig
vouog, cpvoig
permanent, the
standard
by
bad;
the
variable world of
vouoi, it offered
be true in Persia
and
in
Greece. With his myth, Aristophanes raises standard to be what once was by nature or
Is the
is
now
form
understood
by
today
look
mired
and
perfection of that
form Are
we
or can
we,
must we
elsewhere
ing
of perfection?
left
by
Aristophanes
in
a world of relativity?
It is
at this point
Aristophanes'
is,
contemporary human form is not the true form, not the real xekog according to Aristophanes, because it is a form characterized by a sense of loss, of pain, of
what
Aristophanes it
alerts us
chooses to call
what we
cause
to
love. Love is worthy of being honored be halves and shows us whst we csn really are beings
st a
strive to
be
and
wholes
instesd
of psrtisl
distance from
our
true selves.
Pausanias
to their
own prejudices.
with an appeal
out
Greece suggests,
is
not
easily identified within the city. Eryximachus an order that had been belied by love in order
loves
and
hiccoughs. Aristophanes turns away from these good and bad instead finds in love the drive to become sgsin whst we once were. The is
rejected snd sncient nature
becomes
again
the
standard. recover
forces
us to
seek, to
or
longing (noftog)
and
that
love is
comes
from the
pain
(jiaftog)
of our present
state,
it is
pain
(19135-6). 8
Why
egcog
then
for Aristophanes is
our ancient
form
our xekog?
It is
form
without
absence
(pain) because it is
p.
self-complete.
Its
spherical shape
indicates the
"double-male"
6. As Neumann (1966;
since
421)
the
original
beings
double,
Aristophanes'
7.
Cf.
Thesmophoriazusae for
Agathon
as such a shameful
androgyne.
references
Alcibiades'
speech.
22
of a
Interpretation
or an end.
beginning
It
requires
interdependence among the spherical for the sake of procreation. The absence
humsn. Their
strive, that
perfection mskes them
nothing bodies.
more to
be
complete.9
There is
other,
rather
no
They
do
even
divine
than
can
which
humans
is,
perfection.
The
cal
ancient spherical
beings,
our
ancestors,
are our
true
gods.
There is
no politi
life among these ancient beings. There are no families. Both lies (and lovers) indicate the absence of perfection. Both reveal
creatures who cannot survive or procreate on
cities and
fami fami
not
men as needful
lies feel.
arise
from
a sense of
do
The
the
gods.
In their
completion
fullness they no longer need the gods as the mortals of later time, those to whom Aristophanes spesks, shsll. Wholeness opens the door for impiety be
csuse
it
rsises
men sre
psrtisl,
piety Pride
and
inadequacy
not
and
dependence
a sense of
on others.
from the
pride
arrogance of
completion,
from
inadequacy
the
it is this
an attack on
gods.
have.
do
what
the gods
arrogance."
Aristophanes Ephialtes
two
and
compares
immortals to the
where we
actions of
Odyssey
they
tal gods on
Olympus,
they
would carry/
(xi. 312-14) [Lattimore trans.]. However, we csn many sorrows against not ignore a different story told about these two in the Iliad. There we learn of
them"
who
by
from
mortals:
"Ares had to
endure
it
when
were
and and
Otus/
sons of
Aloeus,
of
chained
lay
Ares, insatiable
fighting
have
been
by
is
painted
in this
The three
ten months that Ares remained chained is a period without conflict among
Cf. Nussbaum (1979;
p. 139 and p. 171, n. 13) for her discussion of and Aristotle's conceptions of divinity. relationship to Bury (1909; p. 58) translates ra (fgovijpiaxa ^icyaka (I90b6) as
Xenophanes'
their
10.
"high-minded"
or
"proud
looks."
1 1
We
cannot
question of
achieves prepares
him to
revolt against
the Olympian
Socratic piety the completion which Socrates gods. Consider how Socrates is called arrogant
Alcibiades'
(hubristic) in
and
this dialogue
(I75e2;
affections,
claims to
know (I77d6~7).
23
The
gods
mortals.
do
not
story
of
only give gifts to mortals; they are the cause of much hardship (as the Prometheus shows as well). Had the assault of Otus and Ephialtes been
successful,
they
would
have
Had the
assault of
the
high-minded
plished great
spherical
beings been successful, they too would have eternal happiness and the absence
accom of pain
The
met
spherical counsel
humans
of
Time A
on
in their
revolt.
The
gods
con
in
to
discourse
how to
here, in
human,
with political
institutions.
They
de
sacrifices.
The human
gods
defend themselves
Their
the divine
on others
politicized.
dependency
The
men,
they simply
could
have disregarded
men and
challenge put
before them is to
keep
men alive at
gods'
the
made
dilemma is
It
arrived at mskes
by
Zeus
who
in
most
human
humsns
wesker st
the ssme
s plsn which
numerous.13
is
a plan which
similar
forces
men
into families
into
political
life,
that
is,
makes
them
what
to the gods
shall call
ruling over them. The first step in this process leading to Time B is the famous splitting of the round human beings in humans
as partial and
all
make
incomplete is
now
as
he is.
They
can no
proud
thoughts since
the attention
focused
on what
they
from
one many and While they were spherical, these beings were associated with the heavenly bodies, the double men with the sun, the hermaphrodites with the moon, the dou
half. From unity they have become divided in multiplicity there is weakness.
ble
the earth.
They
were
origins.14
Upon
being
like
by
the fearful
Olympians they are transformed into lowly objects find on the dinner table of s poor pessant. They are
or
an
egg
art
split
by
hair,
they
are
and when
Apollo
applies
his
healing
move
they
bladder. As
a result of their
slicing,
they
one
from the
heavenly
a
realm
who refashions
these new human shapes and works much like a shoemaker with
last. He leaves
few
of the
"an
suffering,"
cient
as
Aristophanes
what we
not precise.
The
suffering is present,
We
feel
now and
12.
13.
of rebellion
Bury (1909;
59)
suggests
irony of Zeus
that the
the omniscient
over
the
business!"
14.
of
Neuman (1966;
these divinities
p.
422)
suggests
heavenly
proclivities we must
these spherical
beings, descendants
in
contrast
of
divinities
worshipped
by
non-Greeks.
However,
consider
to what
they become.
24
ancient
Interpretation
and now
lost
is
The heads
reminded
of
the split beings are turned around so that men are to be constantly the sight of these ugly wrinkles of what
gods
by
to
destroy
of
that human
perfection. of
The tale
the warring
speech niggardly Aristophanes urges us to be pious, but he himself is not pious. He mocks and be littles the gods at the same time that he invokes a piety based on fear. The hu
the
Throughout the
viewing their cut forms from terror and not from love
mans
phanes'
accept as
the rule of
Zeus, but
the
order
then comes
Eryximachus
pictures
his is
his
plan
brings
by destroying
an ancient unity.
his
own
function
as men
hanged in the
remind us of
simple na
city
square or
heads
on stakes at
the outskirts
of
They
human It
Our
on
divine
authority.
reminds us of our
as our present
inadequacy
the
former glory and high thoughts, as well dependence on others, humans as well as gods.
Eros is As
of rebellion against
often
tyranny of Zeus. Our honor for love is our only form tyranny of the gods left to us. happens, however, the tyrannical exercise of power misfires. The
Zeus
creates
suffering
which
in his
subjects
is too
great.
The
screws are
being
can
twisted too tightly. The people cannot respond to a tyrant so violent; all
acknowledge
they
is their
snd
Zeus'
pain.
fsil to
give
him his
desired honors
other
sscrifices;
they
half,
the wholeness
they
once
had. Instead
now
of
having
vants, as he had
initially
anticipated, Zeus
has
none.
Humans
own
busy
pursu
ing
ignore the
race
for food
The human
bodies'
demands
a Lcnxavr):
The xc'c&og
and jto#oc
had
controlled
had been
asexual.
The
longing
for unity
met
with
genital contact.
their
or one that
they hoped
might
be
all
their mate
need other
they
ignoring
for food, clothing and shelter. The pain of separation had overriden all pains. Procreation in Time B had been accomplished from the earth not
each
from
other, that
is,
not
sexually, but
there
by
autochthony.
We
was procreation
ings
are
described
as exyovov of
the
heavenly bodies,
is
made to
of
creatures.
The
absence of generation
is
an
indication
their
dis-
original perfection.
article on
Plato's Statesman
25
obvious absence of eros and sexual repro ruled
to that
dialogue the
duction in the
prived of
Cronos
the
universe.
any desire beyond itself necessarily leads to men of the golden age who apparently have neither philosophy nor the use of their sexual organs. As they spring up already perfect and then live their lives backwards, they lack on all lev
'potentiality.'
els
They
the
are
born
are"
what
they
(p.
199).
Benardete's
comments
are relevant
cerned with
of
for understanding
Aristophanes'
speech as well.
Benardete is
con
form,
spherical shape
Aristophanes'
original creatures
had
precluded eros.
Both
represent comple
being
currently is. In
such
circumstances,
procreation
is
not
unnecessary.15
Aristophanes'
ancient nature
after
they
are split
by
the gods.
However,
st
first,
re-assert
these
in Time B, when there is no sexuslity and only longing, leads to death. It is to the humans that Aristotle refers in his discussion of unity from diversity individuals for
that
whom
the
discovery
is
of such
importance
unity.
they destroy
a
their
diversity
in their
It
is
kills them; the unity which they only clothing despite their transforms them into beings who no longer show achieve, diversity, any potential. They are whatever they might be. At such a point they need no
not
lack
that
others;
they become
politicsl
In Aristotle's
model
they become
ei
The
is the
reslm
inhsbited
of potential
ity
in
that
our
is,
dependent
on others
by
Our
our
but
what we might
be. It incorporates
potentiality
it is just
our poten
tiality
that moves us into the world of politics. Again Benardete helps to explain:
are without
. .
having
natures]
become. It deals
mans
with
eros"
but statesmanship handles beings that (p. 201). When Zeus splits his hu
them into the world of
rather
po
litical
metic
interdependence,
the realm of
statesmanship
than arith
antiquity
than modernity.
created
Zeus
who
had
inadvertently
eros,
is
no
longer threatened
by rebellious
humans; in Time B he is threatened by their death. By giving them sexuality in what we shall call Time C he gives life back to them. Eros is thus transformed
from
a source of
death to
one of
by
15.
Diotima's
speech and
the
nature of reproduction
there.
26
Interpretation
$r\keij"
of srms around
a new
not
the
There is
of
now
copulation
Instead
striving to be
used
always, unity
can
be
achieved and
then relaxed.
The term
to express this
(191C6)
satisfied,
Aristophanes'
understood
that the
love-making
ceases at
Ares
and
Aphrodite
could not
the
moment
that
fullness is
achieved. gods
Thus
live,
can
can
and offer
them
sacrifices.
Eros
when
during
Time B turns
us
During Time
race
away from daily chores and thus kills us. Only Time C are we able to take care of ourselves.
no
philosophy, no
is
exclusively
by
the eros
for
one's ancient
ture. At Time C we are released from the unrelenting power of eros to build other
realms of satisfaction.
Satiety
allows us
Eros draws
potential
sexuality
and
the
for activity which enables us to survive de back to our original natures, but it is precisely for sexual satisfaction that prevents us from be
soothing
our pain as
coming
ment,
gods.
which
By
of
fulfill
by
us
disregard
our
telos,
the chains
reveals
to us. The
soothing
through sexuality
The
trayed
by
Aristophanes
as a trick of
the gods to
does
from the pity which Zeus felt for the human species. Zeus does not have pity in mind; he has self-interest. What Aristophanes offers is not a praise of eros such as Phaedrus had requested.
not come as
Aristophanes had
at
first
suggested
Instead he
uses
temples and
his story of love to damn the gods. His plea to honor love with sacrifices is part of his arrogant rebellion against the Olympians.
spends a as partial
Aristophanes
tence in Time
fair
portion of
.
his
speech
describing
was
beings If
our original
form
dite,
we
turn for
sexual satisfaction
is
child and
in
family. The
family becomes
Nevertheless,
the expression
of
the
search
for
one's original
a complex of when
individuals inter
Aristophanes him in Time C, he makes them adul terers. He ignores the family. Is this because eros is not part of the family once it has been created; that is, the family serves as a whole which brings men back to
acting to preserve their
self
mutual existence.
their original unity, but does not need eros to remain together.
serves
Custom
now pre
that unity and replaces eros as the means to meld two or more
into
one.
The
other unions
which come
from the
original
27
double
by
custom or preserved
by tra
on our
drive to
form.
men.
at greatest
length
about
the double
These
who receive
they
each
are
the
bravest,
the
most
(I92a2).
find satiety in
case
to natural offspring.
of politics and cerned with of
They
They
and
that
they
must
marry
become
community which produces children. The family unity draws men away from the polis, from the public life in which they might demonstrate their cour
age and their manliness.
and
the
Offspring
do
not
divert their
attention
from
born
great
deeds
thus
becoming
of males
alone go
xa
of our sexu
homosexuality
attracted
does
not make
lasting
case
demands
in the
on
would
be the
structure of
family. Men
and
not
love
marriage
childrearing"
(i92bi). In
to Aristotle's later
whom
formulations,
the
family
worthy
is
not
necessarily natural,
Aristophanes
considers
of praise.
Why
view of
the
procreation or
reproduction
the aim of
eros.
Genesis is
was no part of
led; if
birth, it
autochthony If
nature
female
Heterosexual
of our
genesis
a response
nation
to the gods,
contemporary
weakness.
is
what
existed
in Time
A,
be based
on nature.
The
males
stophanes'
riage
story are forced (c\vayxat,ovxai, I92b2) to marry by thus becomes sanctified by the gods as a means of keeping
powerful
.
custom.
men
from be
coming too
gods
The
family
prevents men
again, from
finding
from uniting and threatening the and arrogance in unity such as their
ancestors
had
experienced.
The city is based on the exclusion of the female. Procreation in the family is based on the union of opposites whereas the double males, who are political, de light in those
who are similar
and to
political realm
is the
arena of
where one
the same as
concept of
have
similar potential.
The Greek
ikev&egla is dependent
confines of
the
family
life among those who are similar. To live within the is to live among differences and therefore not to be free,
than nature.
Socrates'
but bound
by
custom rather
criticizes
city
as
he
argues against
too much
There
must
have
comprised
of
doctors
of
or
only
of carpenters.
the
Politics, Aristotle
must
emphasizes
from
28
all
Interpretation
able
be
to engage in reasoned
returns
to the
men.
There
cannot
be too
much
diversity
there be too
of eros and
much similarity.
The
city is
Aristophanes'
a midpoint.
nature appears
description
originally destructive of the city. But with the intro duction of sexuality the city can arise and become the arena for those who are similar in their masculinity, but not self-destructive in the monomaniacal search
original
for
union.
of
Time B but
not of
Time C.
his
speech
the
body
and
because he slyly moves from an exclusive its drives to the psyche. He no longer distinguishes be
The
tween the three original sexes. He talks about all and describes the chance meet
ing
ual.
of those
"made"
for
each other.
by
chance as we all go
running
elusive
individ
ing
in
The meeting is not predetermined and we may spend our whole lives search one vain. The naturally orderly universe which Eryximachus envisions
Aristophanes'
disturbed occasionally by the bad sort of love does not exist in model. For him, the world is as chaotic as the hiccoughs which interrupted the
order of
when one
does
finally
chance on
is wondrously struck by the olxeioxng (192CI), the sense that mate, the other is one's own, belongs to one. One is moved by the feeling that this is
one's someone who
unified so as sense.
person made
for me,
with whom
can
be
to end all pain, all the seemingly ceaseless searching, all the chaos I
not propose random promiscuous
Aristophanes does
to the
joinings
of
bodies
as
the
resolution
search
for the
other.
There is
one
body,
we
ourselves.16
This
may
chance on
has
ugliness, brown
not
or red
hair
the
discovery. We do
desire
union with
other
because he
or she
is beautiful
a certain own
kindred it is the
sense.
The
values of
Pausanias in his
Love is
not
to
justify
his
of
homosexual
longings
are avoided.
beauty
love
of ourselves.
It is based
not on
Aristophanes is thus
In his description
those
we of
neither orderly, nor necessarily directed towards the good. Apollo's surgery he has shown us how ugly are the bodies of desire covered with full of holes wrinkles, paunchy, of
quite unlike
the perfection
hardly the
image
of
beauty
itself. Yet
we overlook all
something kin
dred in
our mate.
At this
point the
bodies
round
bodies,
cut
16.
of this
focus
to
the significance of
speech.
29 has
no shape and
with
to that which
can
is incapable
of
being cut
or
sewn,
love those
control
Plato's in the
wrinkled, paunchy bodies because begins to abstract from the body. The pain
thus no longer satisfied
is
no
longer
sensed
body
and
by
physical, sex
ual
union.
Those is
made
for
each
other
desire to live
192C2-3).17
out their
lives together
(diaxekovvxeg
now
uex'
c\kkr\kcov not
did. fiiov
This
love, Aristophanes
tells us,
192C5).
simply sexual coupling (r) xcov ticpgodioicov ovvovoia Now that the soul has been introduced, sexuality which had freed men
is
no
longer
an
adequate release
from
pain.
With this
from the
body
Men
they desire:
are able
odd'
(192C2)
and
ov
bvvaxai
(i92di). We
to articulate
the
body
needs when we
but
couplings, be
they homosexual
heterosexual,
a
inadequate. The
human for
being
split as a
body,
now also
has
double
soul.
The
soul of one
longs
the
which
body
longer
the
pain of
It is does
at
this
image
Hephaestus'
of
net.
He
not
tell the
story
of
caught against
their will
by
gods'
tell of the
uproarious
Hermes'
shame or
he has Hephaestus
upon each other.
offer
his
net
He is to
to
appear
before them
with
the tools of
his trade
other,
Are
to
you eager
for this,
together
become
as much as possible
joined
with each
leave
day. If you
are eager
for this, I
long
as you
die,
there
(ovLicpvorjoai) so that being two you will live; as one you will live in common with one another and when again in Hades, having died, you will be one in common instead of two.
But think if
upon
you
long
and
if it is
sufficient
for
Hephaestus'
be
rejected
by
no one.
Hephaes
to
on
he
proposes
to
mortals
dence
on their as
make
light
of
depen
perma
once
been
be joined
Time B discovered, without death and the separation nently, bodies then implies. Hephaestus turns not to the body but to which death for their
the humans the soul
of
with
his
net as
he talks
about a
life together
of the
after
death
a continuation as
human
17.
identity
after
body
out
becomes irrelevant
diareXsa),
thus
Pausanias death
expresses
the
ignoring
the
issue
of
which
Aristophanes introduces
30
the
Interpretation
joining of the lovers ignores the limits which the bodies create. Aristotle was right. Unity of bodies alone is impossible alone without death, while unity of souls is possible only after death. By preserving the unity of body and soul, he
allows
which
even
the double
men
of
Aristophanes.
Whereas
of
in
Aristophanes'
bodies had
mingled under
relevant.
the control
love,
now
Unlike the
who
dead Achilles
would wish
Odysseus
speaks
in Book XI
of the
Odyssey,
by
He
phaestus'
net
achieved
do
not wish
life but
the
death. In death they have their bodies had denied them. Aris If love is
so
strong for another, if the two indeed become one and self-complete, life itself ceases to be important. Human life is characterized specifically by potential. The net of Hephaestus as Aristophanes presents it offers an escape from that potential
by destroying
value of
the meaning
on
of
mortality for
humans.18
on
the to
life,
the
acceptance of
the mortality
of one's
body
deal
with
is that
neither net of
the city
nor
death
matter.
The
comedies of
cannot
can only be offered to us in the speech or Aristophanes. Hephaestus does not stand before us; the souls of two
Hephaestus, though,
be bound together
life
by the
tools
of a smithy.
The
search
for
our ancient na
ture the
(okoi, I92ei)
must
be
carried on within
the reslm
of
of our
predictions
hold: the
complete
melding of those bodies would mesn desth. We knowledgment that the net even if available
our
the tragic ac
us overcome
could never
help
without
destroying
his
us.
a comic artist to a
tragedian.
ends
speech with
for
piety.
The
precisely because the net of Hephaestus is unavailable, because we cannot insure our own completion and immortality by making death irrele vant. Because of an earlier injustice (xr)v cxdixiav, 19332) we were dispersed
(dicoxio&nuev, I93a2) by the god. The term is the opposite of the famous ovvoixiouogby which Theseus, in Attic legend, brought together the villages of
Attica to found the city of Athens. Aristophanes anachronistically compares the first splitting of the human race to the dispersal of the Arcadians.
gods'
Spartans'
The Arcadians had been disloyal to the Spartans, as in effect had the ings been to the Olympian gods. The Lacedaemonians exercised
18.
spherical
be
and demon-
Rosen (1968;
advice of
attainment of one's
suggests that because man is inarticulate concerning what he desires, Hephaestus. This advice, however, is only bad if one values life above the eidog. Certainly, the life of Socrates suggests that such advice is not unambig p.
153)
uously
31
their power
by destroying the unity which the city of the Arcadians repre By dispersing them and destroying that unity, they obliterated any power
result of
that city might have had. Weakness came to the Arcadians as the
one another.
their
isolation from
The
punishment which
men paralleled
and
the purpose
can
the same
the
destruction
of unity. of
We
further
in the drive
city again the same drive, eros, that motivates men to seek their mates by nature. Not to live in the city is the consequence of a hostile power intent on preserving simi its own stature of dominance. The city in this analogy is the natural unit lar to our original nature. Not to be part of the city is to create pain and longing,
jiaftog
power
and
by
of
Time B
The
in
others
is divine.
Piety
able us
Aristophanes,
will en
to find
ans might
Piety is
form be
of political
we not
be pious, he
warns, "if we
split and
gods,"
orderly (xoouioi) towards the become like figures on a bas relief, a oxrjkn,
we such as
may
once again
the graves of the dead (19334-6). In other words, the next split may mean our
death
Limited
mit
the net of Hephaestus around us that death has meaning. the union of bodies rather than souls, we are forced to sub
by
to the
us
power of
the gods. If we had that wondrous net, the power of the gods
to
keep
from
be
no
threat. Without
it,
we are subjects of
must give
is
(rjyeucbv
xai oxgaxnyog,
I93b2).
our
leader
and gen
we acknowledge
the
power of
the gods, we admit the pain we feel as the result of our actions against
accept
them and
release
the
fact that is
while sexual
allowed us a certain
never will
from the
and
pain
in
finally
forced to We
the domination
the gods as
well as
human
weakness.
cannot
fly
to heaven on
dung
supremacy beetles
nor return
our poetry.
The tragic
limits. is
The task
cerned
of politics
with
Aristophanes'
one.
parable
yet as
con
only
the making
And
he
plays with
the
idea,
to
he
inadvertently
illuminates the
problem of politics.
What does it
our
mean
be
the
How is
this reflected
by
understanding unity
of
relationship between
the finis
provide
ultimus
body
and soul?
concept of
when
is
rejected?
Plato does
the
final
answers
for
these questions.
Such
he
gives to none of
ab-
his
characters
not even
to Socrates. But he
does
Aristophanes in his
32
Interpretation
buffoon-like fashion
us
surd and
to give us the
image
of
the
net of
Hephaestus
and
thus
force
to consider whether
or
it if offered,
whether
we should
desire
or
fear unity,
whether eros
drives
thus
death,
telos.
REFERENCES
Statesman,"
Benardete, Seth.
107:193-226.
1973.
"Eidos
and
Diaeresis in Plato's
Philologus,
Bury, R. G. 1909. The Symposium of Plato. Cambridge: Heffer. Dover, K. J. 1980. Greek Homosexuality. New York: Vintage Books, Random
House.
Edelstein, Ludwig.
1945.
"The Role
of
Eryximachus in Plato's
76:85-103.
Love,"
Symposium,"
of
American Journal of
1966.
"On the
Comedy
1979.
of
Plato's
Aristophanes,"
87:420-26.
Nussbaum, Martha.
Symposium,"
"The
Speech
of
Alcibiades:
Reading
of
Plato's
Philosophy
1968.
and
Literature,
3:131-72.
Rosen, Stanley.
University
Press.
An Interpretation
of
Plato's Euthyphro
Holy (6eio-9e9)
gods
Euthyphron
xoig
now offers
his
second
(to
unholy.
is
holy,
with
is
not
dear to them is
Socrates
very know
teach
be delighted
he
was
whether
looking for. However, Socrates goes on to say, he does not yet the answer is true. But surely, he continues, Euthyphron will
course,"
him why it is true. "Of first examine what the statement they
The
god-beloved god-hated
Socrates
suggests that
He then
advances
({rsocpikeg, qaf) thing and human being are holy, whereas (d-eouioeg, 7a8) thing and human being are unholy. Moreover,
these statements
as suitable
holy
and
the unholy are not the same but most opposite to each other.
Euthy
phron accepts
formulation
of
his
views.
accomplish
by
a
reformulating Euthyphron's definition? logical standpoint. The prophet confused is dear to the
gods
If
what
is holy,
what
is
not
dear to them
be unholy; it may merely be not holy. In its original ver Euthyphron's answer reflected his hostility to the many; for most men are sion, presumably not dear to the gods. Second, Socrates enlarges the scope of the in
need not
Nearly all religionists suppose that what is loved or hated by the gods must holy or unholy. Equally common is the assumption that holy actions cannot also be unholy. This view would be correct if things are holy or unholy because in one of two distinct they By examining that view, Soc rates will be able to test indirectly whether there is a paradigmatic of holi ness. Finally, by making explicit Euthyphron's belief that human beings as well
quiry.
be
"participate"
"forms."
"idea"
as actions or
another
facet
of
the
by
We have already seen that Euthyphron is a lover of justice; it should be clear now that he is also a lover of the gods. In general, men cannot help imitating
what
they ardently
admire.1
Euthyphron is
a case
in
point.
He
admires
the gods
and reli
too
much
Soaring
admiration,
zealous
devotion,
love.2
egcog
or passionate
"Egcog
is
born
is
imperfection, insufficiency, or neediness. Since it desire for something needed and lacking, it is essentially outward looking. It
of an awareness of one's
Plato, Republic
Plato, Phaedrus
377e-378b; 500c-d.
244b-e.
2.
34
Interpretation
attention of the self on produce
fixes the
self.
In
moments of peak
inten
sity, it may
those states
ecstatic.
When egcog is
puts
moved
by
a sense of
imperfection,
it is
also upward
things and
persons on pedestals;
holds"
he idealizes. It is in
a state of
prophet
"be
"Egcog frequently
baseness,
cide and
whose
plays
the
"lying
lending
parri
usurpation,
charms
find
perfection
exists,
too
can
it invent
perfect
which exist
imagination.
"Egcog is
god-forming
power.
The lover
seeks
identity
unless
in
union with
larly,
lover
great
the
mystic attempts
selfhood
in
But the
need not.
cannot
be
united with
he is loved in
when
If his
is
In
in fact he is
is unavoidable,
as
he
be,
let it further be
Still,
since
his
divine gift, he cannot legitimately take credit for it. Strictly speaking, it is not his at all. Euthyphron thus has no virtue of his own that could make him dear to the gods. Or would they love him for the knowledge they gave to him? We are reminded of Machiavelli's quip that Moses is to be esteemed for
wisdom
is
preceptor.3
The
equivocal status
is
rooted
in
the dubiousness of
rational self-esteem
in
a world ruled
by
gods. gods
Socrates
do.
will
(i5ai-2). If this
pride
pious
platitude were
reasonably take
Socrates
now undertakes
to break
down Euthyphron's
in the
remainder of the
dialogue, Socrates
in the
try
to make the
feel that he
section, he
cannot
justify
his
action
In the
holy,
the
and,
at the same
time,
suggests that
gods.
divine
support.
his lawsuit may be hateful to some of Euthyphron doubtful of his wisdom and
holy
as
He
disagree,
or
quarrel,
other
fight because
views of
justice
The Prince
ch.
6.
522c, 6o2d.
4.
Plato, Republic
35
the gods
love
what
they believe
moral and
hate
what
they believe im
others
moral, he
must admit
be hateful to
(7ei-8a6).
(4)
It thus
holy
and
unholy,
contrary to what Euthyphron said earlier. Therefore, even if his lawsuit is dear to Zeus, it may be hateful to Cronos, Uranos, and Hera deities who suffered at the hands of their offspring and possibly to other gods as well (8a7-d6). Before turning to Euthyphron's response,
rates'
step
of
Soc
Socrates
refrains
phron's position.
If
what
from pointing out a mischievous consequence of Euthy is hateful to the gods is unholy, and they feel enmity
gods
and
hatred for
each
themselves
are unholy.
2.
When Euthyphron
asks
disagree
causes
fight,
Socrates
explains
him
what
kind
of
disagreement
enmity
and anger.
He then
disagree
about the
number, size, or
and
weight of certain
objects,
they
angry
at each other.
they
could
easily
resolve their
dispute
by
means
counting, measuring,
or
weighing the
objects
in
question.
Socrates does
those skills, es
pecially counting, are the foundation of all artful procedure or rational knowhow.4 He implies that knowledge is the ground of genuine concord, whereas ig
norance
is
productive
of
contention
and
strife.
It
might
be
objected
that
enlightenment sometimes of
fosters enmity
objection one
by revealing previously hidden conflicts could argue that insofar as men seek truth,
asked.
identical.5
now returns
A disagreement
about mat
ters of
what
kind
causes
swer, Socrates
and good and
offers
no
noble and
ready an base
bad."
He
to
suggest
they disagree
concerning flicts
about
those
"values,"
whereas
in fact
most con
presuppose agreement as
The importance
of
getting rich is
principle on which
naivete
the bank
president and
mundane competition
In the
and
"unjust,"
but
not
before
"base,"
"good,"
"bad."
or
on
The
effect
is to
"morality,"
create a composite
while
the one
hand,
"immorality,"
and
on the
other,
and
giving due emphasis to the primacy of justice as an element of the former, of injustice as an ingredient of the latter. This mode of expression nicely
5.
Plato,
Republic
6. Xenophon, Memorabilia
36
reflects so
Interpretation
Euthyphron's he does
not moral consciousness.
Even
as
he
confuses
piety
with
jus
tice, Socrates
clearly distinguish
the
just from
either
the
noble or
the good.
other,"
the gods, too, disagree about moral matters, as suming they disagree at all. "For presumably they wouldn't quarrel with each he remarks, "unless they differed about those Euthyphron em
asks next whether
things."
phatically agrees, no doubt because he feels it would be unworthy of the gods to fight over anything less exalted than the principles of justice or morality. Now if the gods knew what justice is, they could not disagree about it, for
truth is
one. was
The
agreement of all
knowers, in
examples
virtue of the
identity
of
the things
known,
vine,
the point of
Socrates'
concerning the
that the
of
arts of
counting,
measuring,
and weighing.
Does Socrates
imply
Olympians, if truly di
any
action or
to the justice
human
being? We may
regard
man
that the
inability
to achieve mathematical
to the
just,
defining
limitation
of
certainty in merely hu be
intelligence.7
Knowledge, in
otherwise.8
which cannot
When
it
scientifically.
know why something must be so, we may be said to know From this it follows that only things which are invariable can be
objects of scientific
knowledge.
Following Socrates,
"ideas"
let
us call
the objects of ra
tional
inquiry
"ideas."
Now if the
gods,
they
preclude
dis
agreement of the
can
"ideas."
among the gods, who can be But if the gods make the
presumed perfect
"ideas,"
in their
apprehension nor
they
are
bound to disagree,
they find a nonarbitrary basis for resolving their differences. For with no in dependent or pre-existing standards to guide their making, the gods must act in ignorance. Each deity will define good and evil according to its likes and dis
likes, loves
hates. Because they create out of blind desire, the gods will clash; they will fight. The belief in warring gods thus presupposes the priority of the gods to the The questioning of that priority by the philosophers is the
and
"ideas."
deepest
3.
between poetry
next
and
philosophy.9
In
to
Socrates'
each god
loves
said
what
he
hates
what
he
considers
immoral. Earlier he
that Cronos unjustly devoured his sons (6ai). Did Cronos act from a sincere, if misguided, devotion to justice? So convinced is Euthyphron of his own right eousness, and so desirous is he of being loved by the gods, that he transforms them into lovers of
much
all
fight for
the
right.
4.
Socrates
proceeds to
Euthyphron
has
accepted.
If the
gods
love
and
hate
what
they believe
unjust, but some consider just what others consider unjust, then the same things
7.
of 546a i-d3.
8. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics H39bl7-24. 9. Plato, Republic 597b3-d5. This part of my interpretation borrows from ture on the Euthyphro by Leo Strauss.
an unpublished
lec
37
to Euthyphron's
complains
dear
and
hateful to the
gods.
Thus, according
definition,
the
same
things are
holy
his
Socrates therefore
not ask to
that Euthyphron
has
not answered
be told
what same
thing hap
god-
pens
to be both
as
holy
and unholy.
what
hated,
and
it
seems.
In fact, it
would not
is
sion, if Euthyphron's
suit were
Uranos,
pleasing to Hephaestus but hateful to Hera; agree about it, the same will hold for them. Socrates has
He has dear to
accomplished
if any
of
both
more and
less than
one might at
first
suppose.
is dear to the
gods
is holy. How
what
is
godmay be hateful to another, and hence that there is nothing beloved in itself. This means "the is a unity only in name, or that there are as many of holiness as there are gods who differ in their loves and hates.
"forms"
The
unholy "are not the lation to the same god. For that "by
holy
and the
same
but
opposite"
most
(7a8-9) only in
(6dio-i
i
re
not
which"
holy
things are
holy
) is
an
love,
which
is
always the
love
of a particular
deity,
whose
affections
of other
deities. An intelligible
In short, the
arche of
holy
things does
"idea"
not exist.
holiness is
fiction.
practical rather
The immediate
theoretical. If one
than
believes
Hera,
which
deity
should one
try
to
please?
Should
god or coalition of
gods,
or
the
most
just
god or
Uranos, Cronos,
Olympians
are ei
Zeus, Hera,
and
reminds us of
that the
the
poetic
realm of genesis.
New
gods
may
the
The
capriciousness
of
and win
posed
in every
attempt
to
sacrifice and
gods,
or
that the ancestral gods are the present gods. The tradi
about
tional mode of
agree as over
inquiring
divine things is
prophecy.
But if
prophets
dis
to
whether
injustice, how
should
the dispute
be
re
solved?10
Again,
oneself and
to pursue
wis
dom
as
best
one can.
do
not
disagree about, he
penalty.
assures
be hateful to any of the gods. One thing Socrates, is that someone who kills
expression
unjustly
10.
must
pay the
of
The Greek
for
penal
"pay
the
On the possibility
disagreement among
38
Interpretation
(didovai
dlxrjv) literally
means
"render
what
is
due"
or side
"give
justice.""
In
effect, Euthyphron
avenge
argues that
because it is just to
and
injustice; he
assumes that
his lawsuit is
indubitably
prove
unmistakably
just. Socrates
more
cause.
will now
try
situation
is
a good
deal his
know how to
the justice of
Earlier
we saw
among
men.
He
now contends
denies
injustice based
ever
should
be
punished.
on a confusion about
men
Socrates apparently suspects that this opinion too is human things, for he asks whether Euthyphron has
heard
kills unjustly
elsewhere:
or
does anything
else
unjustly
manner
should not
pay the
penalty.
Euthyphron
responds
that
they
never cease
disputing
"Since they
avoid
commit all
of unjust
deeds, they do
as
penalty."
and
say everything to
persons accused of
the
Euthyphron
themselves
answers
if he thought
by denying
men
be
punished.
In
has
never
heard
dispute the
imagine the
son
gods
disputing
legitimacy of punishing criminals that he cannot it. However, he has heard people say it is unholy for a
murder
to prosecute
(4ei). And do
not
in
effect
that
someone who
prophets of whom
kills unjustly must not pay the penalty? Like some other history or legend tell us Euthyphron views mankind as mired
,
in sin; he is
where and
a misanthrope
(cf.
3d7).
Ironically,
the sinfulness
preference
for
Socrates ings. He
Euthyphron
about the
behavior
of
wonders whether
they
nonetheless claim
they
ought not to
confessing it, pay the penalty. Euthyphron strongly denies that men do not say everything, since they
"quite"
do
not
dare
argue
that if
they really are guilty of wrongdoing, they must not pay they they have done nothing wrong. Euthyphron thinks
claim concludes
should and
that men do not dispute whether wrongdoing be punished, though they may dispute who the wrongdoer is, what he did, when. Again Euthyphron agrees. Three times Socrates has led him to affirm
all men acknowledge
that
the
fundamentals
of criminal
justice. He is attempting
that the many
fanatic
by disabusing
him
of the notion
justice.
the subject of gods. He wonders whether
Socrates
the facts on
what
returns to
they
too
dispute
For
quarrel about
is just
and
unjust,
no
as you
wrongdoing."
surely, he continues,
injustice
should not
human being, dares to say that he who does the penalty. Euthyphron thinks this is true, "at least in pay
one,
1 1
Plato, Gorgias
476a8-l0.
39 justification.
the
nal
He is
not
totally
convinced,
declares
by
his
actions
upon
himself. Euthyphron is
not
publicly and what they silently is dictated by inaudible inner voices). For his
contempt a man
would
think12
the
should a god
be
so constrained?
Glaucon thought
invisible
mans.13
impunity
among hu
stories which
Euthyphron
accepts as gospel
of who shall
to the problem
the guardians.
on
Elaborating
of crime and
questions
punishment, the
disputants,
is just
whether gods or
gods
have
disputes,"
which
determine
upon
or unjust.
Euthyphron concurs,
where
Socrates issues
an abrupt challenge.
He demands to know
what proof
Eu
thyphron
has that every god believes a man dies unjustly who, while serving as a field hand, becomes a murderer, is bound by the master of the person he killed, and then perishes from his bonds before the man who bound him could learn from the Interpreters is
right
what ought
to be
done;
and
murder.
"Come
Socrates
exhorts
him, "try
absolutely believe this action is right (dgftcdg, 9b2); quately, I shall never stop singing your praises for
wisdom."
Socrates has
challenged
Euthyphron to
prove that
his lawsuit is
"right,"
that
is,
right
in the circumstances,
makes
the
gods.
If
Euthyphron
the
attempt and
fails, Socrates
will
could
probably
convince
him
he has
the
of
no chance of
winning in
on
his lawsuit. If
sameness
prophet
succeeds,
and
the
other
hand, he
will
reason, human
right without
divine. He
of
thus have
is
the
help
divine
revelation.
Socrates
would never
stop praising
the proof
him for
wisdom.
Socrates'
Euthyphron declines to
quite go
accept
challenge.
He
could exhibit
clearly if he wanted to, he claims, but the Socrates replies, "you think I'm duller than the into just now. "I show them that [your father's deeds] are unjust will you judges, since obviously
whole
things."
hate
such perhaps
Euthyphron does
not
deny
that
he
consid
he holds this
Euthyphron
opinion
rates
has
suggested
concerning the
gods and
answer,
it
not
12.
13.
On this distinction,
cf.
Xenophon, Memorabilia
1.1.19.
Plato, Republic
36ob3~c2.
40
Interpretation
for the he
not prophet to stay out of court? And if he takes Socrates for a lose interest in the conversation and leave of his own accord? sight of
be
advisable
will
dullard,
Socrates he
never
loses
his dual
practical
intention.
indeed"
Euthyphron
says.
asserts
he
will persuade
the
Socrates
assures
him they
will
indeed"
well.
"But
speaking,"
he
to me and I
reckoned with
Even if he
could
be
the la
about
while
borer's death unjust, Socrates explains, he would not know anything more what is holy and unholy. The death might very well be god-hated; but a
ago
it
came
holy
to be
and
unholy
cannot
be defined
on
what
is
god-beloved as well.
gods'
Socrates
irrelevant
to the determination
next section.
is
holy
a view
he
will
Socrates'
"thought"
supposes that
any
right
unjust
be hateful to
always
He
would
be
holy
is
just,
(2)
of
what
justice is,
point.
and
and
have been
Thus
even
rendered questionable
by
the
argument
the
gods
and consider
not
have taught
Socrates anything further about the holy. Having failed to make Euthyphron recognize that he
cannot
of
his
lawsuit,
Socrates
resumes
his
grants
for the
believe it to be
love is holy, definition in
unjust.
He then
proposes an amended
definition: What
love
and oth
what some
hate is
The
neither or
both.
seems
new
to
imply that,
being equal,
able to
an action
strength
in
in
creases
in holiness
also
with
numbers, but
count,
mea
sure,
dispute in
order
to
.
make good
his
claim to
have
knowledge
is
holy
7b5-c8)?
Or
would
it be
sufficient
will of
Homer's Zeus
cord
once
declared that if
let down from Olympus, and pulled until their strength was spent, they could not drag him from the sky to the ground; yet he, whenever so minded,
could
Socrates
gested.
haul them up along with the earth and the asks if Euthyphron wants to define the The
prophet responds with a
sea.14
holy
in the
manner
just sug
bored
not?'
'Why
him the discussion has become purely tween his own well-being and clarity about the
14.
'academic'
subject
him.
41
When he nonchalantly grants that the amended definition is correct, Socrates gently calls him to account. Should they examine this definition also, to see
whether
it is
well-stated?
Or
should
they let it
both their
someone must
those
of
if
merely
another
says
it is? Or
must one
inquire into
what
the
speaker says?
"One
in
quire,"
thing
to disparage
can
proclaimed
him the
wisest of
all, Socrates
undertook
to refute the
god.15
We
the to
may therefore surmise that if the entire host of Olympus told him that gods love is holy, Socrates would put to them the same question he
ask
what all
proceeds
Euthyphron: Is the
holy
loved
by
it is holy,
or
is it
holy
be
cause
V. Is the
Holy Loved by
the
or
is it Holy because it is
holy
because the
gods
holy
things will
never
love it, their unanimity is no guarantee gods may hate tomorrow what
they love
what
from the
another.
one posed
is just in
In
For if the
may be
(nagddeiyLia, 6e5) by
stances; it is
ous man to
In fact it
for
a pi
and
pray
that
not set
him in
that
to
himself
of
holiness, If,
on
ous cere
an
life
will clash
At any rate, may there is always the possibility that the requirements of a pi with those "of consistency, of a consistent and thoroughly sin
conclude
if the
life."1
the other
of
immutable
"idea"
hand, something is holy because it holiness, it would still be holy though every
But if
"participates"
in
god
hated
it
indeed,
even
if
no gods exist.
by
practicing piety
one
does
not neces
what
the
of
gods command or
them at all? An un
"idea"
same,
price of appear
the
holy,
and
the
dispensability
15. I.
of the
to the
practice of
piety.2
One
might wish
for
Plato, Apology
2lbl0-c2.
and
History
(Chicago:
The
original context of
the quotation
is
an argument
University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 75The faith in ques defending "the thesis of
faith."
no reason
2. p. 160.
Sophocles'
Reading
of
Antigone: Part
I,"
Interpretation 4
(Spring
1975).
42
Interpretation
love
what
gods who
is
intrinsically just,
it is bestowed
noble,
upon.
or good
(cf. 7e6-7),
and whose
love
whatever
But if
such gods
be
pious,
being
holy. For in
to be
god-
beloved it
The
suffices to
be
just,
noble,
or good.
asked
more general
form
of
Euthyphron is
something is true simply because the gods think it is. What the gods cre knowledge in ate they presumably can destroy. Thus if they make the the strict sense is impossible, even as an unattainable goal of human aspiration;
whether
"ideas,"
for
there
can
be
no eternal
truths.
According
to
Leibniz,
love
of
wills
it debases
all
His glory; "for why praise Him for what He has done if He would be The belief may be irrefutable, equally praiseworthy in doing the however. Every attempt to disprove it must rely on principles of demonstration
God
and
contrary?"3
inapplicable to himself. In
as
Greek
con
text, this
city.4
problem
part of civic
the
is
no
not
impair Socrates's
case against
the
Euthyphron
namely,
cause
that
he does
Socrates'
not
understand
question,
whether
the
holy
is loved
by
holy,
or
is
holy
be
it is loved. To have
make sense of
his perplexity,
the approval
we must recall of
that he
hopes,
might
by prosecuting his
as well
or obeys
own
father,
to
win
he is
good
because he
his
parents
Socrates
he
will
try
highly abstract, needlessly complicated exercise in the Socrates commits, or leads Euthyphron to commit, a se
most remarkable
ries
being that because the holy and the plan diametrically opposed. in the remainder of this section is to make Euthyphron dizzy with self-doubt, too uncertain about the holy to defy his family in court, and too demor
of
nonsequiturs, the
they
must
be
Socrates'
alized
administering
will seek
this chasetisement,
Socrates
He
by
means of
the same
faulty arguments,
Euthyphron
starts
by
asking
whether
understands the
difference between
something carried and carrying, led and leading, seen and seeing. Euthyphron thinks he does, though in all probability, he does not. The difference is not one of
cause and
effect,
of agent and
thus appears
Nor is it one seeing is the cause of a thing's being patient, unless in seeing we act upon the thing The difference to be purely grammatical: in each case Socrates contrasts active and
unless
seen.5
seen.6
3. 4.
Discourse
An
266d).
on
Metaphysics
ch. a
1.
omnipotent creator as
theoretical possibility is
discussed
briefly
in Plato's Sophist
(265b-d,
5.
43
the same
verb.
far from
evident.
The first
pair of
The reasoning behind his choice of verbs is participles indicate a physical, the second a
at all.
moral, and the third a perceptual relation; but this subtlety is surely not intended
something loving. "How could there not however, one is both loving (cpikovv)
and
blinding
delusion born
another's
him, he imagines, is
self-induced.
whom no one acts.
not
only
divinity
is
He is the
unconscious cause of an
imaginary
effect,
a patient upon
Perhaps this is why Socrates now replaces the active parti with an inflected passive of the same verb, thereby masking Euthyphron's
assent
Socrates
obtains
to the
following
propositions.
Some
thing is
cause
(cpegouevov) because it is carried (cpegexai), led (dyouevov) be it is led (dyerai), seen (dgouevov) because it is seen (dgdxai). These
carried
but
are
has
an sctive sense.
If his
sim were
merely trivial. In each case the inflected to instruct Euthyphron, rather thsn to
carried
befuddle
someone carries
him, Socrates would hsve said outright: Something is it, led because someone leads it, seen because
C7).
because it
someone sees
Socrates
will
elaborates
on
accepted.
(Here
non
be
used
Socrates
seen
says
seen
Euthyphron
is it
one see
it];
on
the contrary, it is
because it is
seen
[because
one sees
it]
Nor because
one
one
becsuse it is
csrried
is it
csrried
[does
[because
one
carries
his meaning is not entirely clear. Before Euthyphron can reply, Socrates says he means the following: Not because something is becoming does it be come, rather, it is becoming because it becomes; nor because it is being affected
is it affected, rather, it is
curs,
not nonsense.
being
affected
because it is
affected.
Euthyphron
nonsense
con are
only
sound
and
like
but
by
contrasting
passive
active participles of
the
(ioa5-n); he
an active
then
sense
inflected
pas
having
(iobi-n);
both
and
he
concludes
yiyvouevov with
jxaoxov with
ylyvexai,
ndoxexai,
which are
in meaning (ioci-4).
"is"
7.
This
In Greek, the
differ in
(e.g.
<pepo>evdv
ion)
do
and the
inflected
passive of
the third
person singular
(e.g. qiEQerai)
are
phonetically distinct
and
However, they
need not
meaning.
44
Interpretation
asks next whether
Socrates fected
ing.8
the loved
says
thing is
either
becoming
mistaken
or
being
as
af
by
something.
"Of
course,"
Euthyphron. He is
if,
Socra
loveable things
He is also mistaken if divine love is essentially similar belief that something is holy because the gods love it implies that divine love affects its objects. Human love has no such power. The lover's passion affects
the
lover,
not
the
beloved; love
and
the
lover,
not
love
and the
beloved,
are re
lated it is
Socrates
a
for Euthyphron's
approval:
Not because
loved thing is it loved by those who love it, rather, it is a loved thing be cause it is loved. Euthyphron strongly assents, and goes on to affirm, in response to further questioning by Socrates, that the holy is loved by the gods because it is
holy, it is
seems to
not
holy because
gotten
it is loved. The
"understands"
prophet now
the ques
began,
is
and
Socrates It
have
the answer he
wanted.
But the
answer
a mere assertion.
is
not
From the
statements
Euthyphron
has
accepted so
far, only
this much
can
holy
is
thing is it loved by the gods, rather, it is a god-beloved thing be cause they love it. This trivial proposition is the only legitimate inference that can be drawn from long and tedious argument. By no means has he
god-beloved
Socrates'
proven that
divine love is
reasons
a response to
holiness
rather
for
the
Euthyphron's Socrates
for accepting this view, he is probably flattered help loving him because he is holy.
that since the
could
by
a
holy
is loved
by
the
gods
it is
loved
thing
then
and god-beloved.
"How
it
be?"
not
Socrates
holy
be different from
each other.
And he
they
have
agreed
upon, the
loved,
he
whereas
is loved because it is holy, it is not holy because it is the god-beloved thing is not loved because it is god-beloved,
holy
fully
At
Socrates'
understood
reasoning,
shown
however, he
would
dismiss it
as
irrele
vant.
most
Socrates has
that the
holy
and god-beloved
differ in defini
tion; they might nonetheless be numerically, and so for all practical purposes, the same. It may be the case, in other words, that all holy things and only holy things
are
god-beloved.9
Socrates
puts
Euthyphron through
one
last
exercise
holy
the same,
he
says.
loved
be-
9.
8. Plato, Republic 479a-48oa; Symposium 2ioa-2i ic; Phaedrus 247c-e. Of the commentators who recognize this point, only Geach considers it
argument, and he is far from
a serious objection
to
Socrates'
understanding
definition,
neither
these scholars
holy
are also
nal quest
for
wisdom
is
necessary
nor
about the problem of the right life. It does dear to the gods, then philosophy as the ratio possible. See P. T. Geach, "Plato's Euthyphro: An
forget
45
god-beloved
it is
holy,
be
be loved because it is
to iod8).
(con
trary
to ioe8). And
would
if the
holy
holy
because it is loved
(contrary
are
that
they
other."
This is
sequitur.10
in every way different from each If the gods love the holy because it is
holy (iod8), and if the holy and the god-beloved are not the same (ioe2-i ia3), then the holy must be god-beloved even if it is not the god-beloved. As Socrates goes on to say, the holy and the god-beloved differ in this: the one is loved be
cause
it is
of a sort
to
be loved,
is
of a sort
to be loved because
it is loved. The
given premises. of
conclusion that
they
are opposites
is
Yet
as a
theological proposition it
happens
be
true.
The task
finding
its
proper premises
reader.11
Orthodox piety
phron assumes
largely
consists
sacrificing to the gods. Since pray, they cannot be pious. Now Euthy
who
imitates them
In
other
or who
does
as
they
god-
do. If he is correct, the gods do not love gods is god-beloved but unholy. Or, if
piety.
one
usual sense
is unholy
or at
lazy
radical consequences of
his
an
inference
as well.
ion
thesis, that the holy is not dear to the gods, proves to be from Euthyphronean heterodoxy, but from common opin only "Divine is a meaningless phrase unless it refers to something
paradoxical not
love"
analogous to
our own.
human
love, for
we cannot
imagine
passions
If divine love is
similar
to human
love,
we
may
sssume
Analysis
ioa-l
Commentary,"
and
Monist
50
(July
1966), pp.
376-77; S. Marc
Cohen, "Euthyphro
Journal of the History of Philosophy 1 2 (1971), pp. 9-10; I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato's Doctrines, I: Plato on Man and Society (New York: Humanities Press, 1962), p. 210; Thomas D. Paxon, "Plato's Euthyphro 10a to Phronesis 17 (1972), p. 184; and Richard
lib,"
lb,"
Sharvey,
120.
10.
ment
"Euthyphro
gd
I lb:
Analysis
and
Definition in Plato
Others,"
and
Nous 6
(May
1972),
p.
Commentators
and
logically
compelling
argu
respond to exclusively on the logic of this section his non sequitur in one of three ways. Cohen and Rose say nothing about it. Anderson, Brown, and Paxson interpret it in light of the following sentence ("the two are not the same"). Allen, Geach, and
hence that it is
to concentrate
Hall
mistranslate
it
as
"the
opposite
is the
case."
Thus do these
commentators
ignore,
pp.
eviscerate,
or
ioa-llb,"
pp.
3; Lynn E.
on
the
Euthyphro.
Euthyphro,"
Phronesis
10
(1965),
149-50; Albert
Review of Metaphysics 22 (March 1969), pp Anderson, "Socratic Reasoning in the The Philosophical Quarterly 14 476-77; John H. Brown, "The Logic of the Euthyphro p. 183; R. E No. 54 (January 1964), p. 3, n. 5; Thomas D. Paxson, "Plato's Euthyphro ioato
ioa-nb," lib,"
and the Earlier Theory of Forms (New York: Humanities Press, 1970), p Allen, Plato's pp. 376-77; John C. Hall 42; P. T. Geach, "Plato's Euthyphro: An Analysis and The Philosophical Quarterly 18, No. 70 (January 1968), p. 3. "Plato: Euthyphro loai-l
Commentary,"
ibio,"
'Euthyphro'
1 1
on the
My
interpretation in the
next
much
to Leo
Strauss'
unpublished
lecture
Euthyphro.
46
Interpretation
love
more thsn
wise man
is
be dear to the
gods.12
Now it is
of
to be
fonder
those
him; he naturally
tends to be fonder
must always
"virtue"
be told
guiding themselves than of those who fact, he would not love someone whose chief
above all else a could not
is
obedience.
But orthodoxy is
follows
being
supremely wise,
obedience.
It
vanity led Euthyphron to affirm that the gods love the holy because it is holy. He confuses piety with justice, and it is not generally sup posed that something is just or unjust simply because it is loved or hated by the
gods.
More than
Common
unlike
opinion
recognizes,
although
rules of
justice,
of religious
for
Euthyphron tacitly believes that what makes anything holy and therefore dear to the gods is justice. Since he has failed to articulate this view, Socrates now
chides
an
him for
not
stating the
"accidental
property"
"essence"
of the
holy. He
mentioned
namely, the
"being"
fact that it is
I ibl).
loved
by
all
(6'v,
"So if
beginning
is the
holy is,
however it is
what
affected
for
the
we shall not
disagree
that
but tell
me zeal
ously
holy
unholy."
and
With these
words
Socrates
steers the
dis
cussion
problem
of
preparing
for the
explicit
treatment
that subject
following
the
"interlude,"
VI. Interlude
(nb6e4)
cannot express what
Euthyphron is baffled. He
since
every
statement
unwilling to logical
rigor.
they propose always moves around them somehow, where stay they put it. What perplexes him perhaps as much
The
mystic seeks a
the
he has just been subjected, is its seeming direct intuition of the highest things, a compre
upon nor completes a process of rea means
hensive insight (vovg) that neither depends soning (Adyoc)1. Euthyphron, whose name
"instant
mind,"
is
a
not used
to
thinking
cursive
things
through;
step.
yet
Socrates has
made
him follow
complains
long
at
and
tortuous
the dis
argument
step
by
The
motion of which
he
is,
bottom,
activity
of reason.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics H79a23-39; Hesiod, Works and Days 293-97. Unlike the philosopher, whose best insights presuppose a long and methodical training of the dianoetic faculty (Plato, Republic 510C-511C 52id ff.; Sophist 2l8dl-2l9a3). near the end of
12. 1.
Only
the
to
dialogue, after having examined through discourse a number of related Xoyoi, does Socrates his vovg (i4ds); and what he intuits is the nature of his conversational philosophy.
refer
47
to be a species of self-movement, as does life itself. In or der to distinguish truth from error, the mind must be free of external compulsion; it must be able to move itself along correct paths of inference. In classical meta
Reasoning appears
physics, the
soul.
common ground of
of
life
and of
thought as
forms
of self-movement of
is
The spontaneity
the growth
all seem
animals,
and
the
not
power of rational
discourse
ipvxr),
to
testify
to the existence of
and
something
matter,
this
"something"
losophers
called
"soul."2
Now in
order
for Euthyphron to be
his
in
sus
luding
to the
statues,
says:
which were so
lifelike they
moved of
Socrates
my
forefather3
"Your statements, Euthyphron, are like the Daedalus; and if I had been talking and had set them have laughed in
speeches
at me, saying that on account of my kin (ra v xoig koyoig egya, 11C3) run away But since the suppositions are yours, some
down,
ship
with
him, my
works
to stay where they are put. joke is needed; for they are not willing to to you Euthyphron's statements
yourself."
for you,
as
it
seems
lifeless
copies of
living
speech.
This
would
like moving statues if they be the case if they were not his
through
what
"work"
own
but that
of another.
And if
a god speaks
differ from
a statue
to the dummy.
In Euthyphron's opinion,
around and not
Socrates'
joke
was
quite apt:
ments], but
would
you.
/ am not the one who put staying in place I think you're the Daedalus, since as far as depends
still."
they
have
stood
more
Euthyphron in
effect accuses
Socrates
of
putting
words
in his mouth; he is
not
Socrates
who compared
He has
mouth.
put
in Euthyphron's
mouth the ac
that he has
put words
in his
One is
reminded of
the ventrilo
mind.
dummy
acts
who complained
that he
Socrates
in loco deorum.
that he may have become much cleverer in the art than for the Daedalus; Cunning Worker only made his own works move, whereas he, it seems, makes those of outsiders move as well. Socrates adds that the most ex
Socrates
conjectures
quisite
feature
of
his
art
is that he is fast
and
wise against
his
will.
"For I
have my
2.
speeches stand
be fixed
immovably
Cf. Plato, Laws 895b-c; Phaedrus 245c5~e8; Sophist 24934-7; Phaedo 105C7-CL4; Aristotle,
427al8-23.
On the Soul
3.
It
was
a
to have
customary in Athens for sons to inherit the trades of their fathers, and for each trade divine or semidivine patron. father, Sophroniscus, is thought to have been a
Socrates'
stonemason,
and
Daedalus
was
be
one reason
why Socrates
mind as well.
calls
Daedalus his
seems to
By
implicitly
claims
Alcibiades I 12 la).
48
Interpretation
and the wealth of
Daedalus
Tantalus to
boot."
What Socrates be
means
here
by
an
immovable
koyog
is
can neither
refuted nor
improved
upon
and
It is the
ward a
(egyov) of a completed inquiry. We cannot advance one step to final account, however, unless the matter of the inquiry is determinate or
other
fixed. In
wisdom presupposes an
immovable
object of
cognition as well as a
"forms"
mind.4
moving
will, our
gods can al
ter the
of things at as a
koyoi may
to
rather
runaway know the unmoving of man than know how to produce, after the fashion of Daedalus, a mobile image of man. Still less does he wish for the
"form"
us
statue to
its
nominal
owner.5
Tantalus,
mythical
which
in the
poverty
of
Euthy
The
Tantalus
was condemned
by
the gods to
for
betraying their secrets to men. He was made fruit hung just over his head.
"riches"
drink, his
vealing. what
moved out of
reach.6
Euthyphron's
mysteries
Tantalus
was punished
The
not
know
he believes he knows.
enough of
"But
me, I
this
[banter],"
says set
Socrates,
who
then
implies, again,
holy."
that to
Euthyphron
shall
needs a
Daedalus to
him in
motion:
"Since
be
zealous
for you,
so that you
Ex
horting
Euthyphron
not
to grow weary,
directly
to the underlying
problem of the
dialogue
and piety.
GODS, JUSTICE,
VII. Is
Socrates begins
the
holy
asks:
tably,
all the
answers
in the
affirmative.
Socrates then
holy just,
some of
it
something else? Euthyphron is unable to follow this line might have expected as much. Since he tacitly identifies the
of questioning.
We
holy
is
with
the
just, it
up
is
as though
he has been
not
just. Socrates
suggests
ought to
be
able
to follow or
keep
4. 5.
Plato, Sophist
294D-C.
yjd-e.
1 1. 583-93.
6. Homer,
Odyssey
49 him in
youth1
(enoa&ai,
in
wisdom.
I2a3), inasmuch
no
less than
He thereupon
concludes that
spoiled
by
or
his
to
wealth of wisdom.
And, alluding
he
urges
the prophet
"stretch"
himself, insisting
really
not
hard to fathom. In
der to
make
two examples
which
illustrate in
way the relation of a whole to a part. Euthyphron readily grasps that fear is in extent than reverence, just as number is more inclusive than odd or
contends
that, in
holy
is
rather a part of
agrees
holy
might
answer,
first
Socrates'
examine
exception
Zeus the
lover,2
these things,
points out
revile; for
also
is
reverence.
Socrates
without
feeling
reverence or shame
(aldcog,
I2b4).
People
disesse
other and
hsnd,
a
anyone who
is
having
fears
bad
reputation.
Thus the
poet
"Where
shame
is,
there also is
fear."
There
I.
The
target of
Socrates'
is
not
the
particular
verse, or its
au
thor, but the poetic tradition as such. This is indicated by two facts. First, Soc (Stasinus);3 rates does not mention the poet's name second, he plays on the root
of
the verb
Jioieiv.
poem."
opposite of
What
or means
is that Zeus is it
heavenly
asserts
father
and a god of
of
love.
Socrates
nature.
rejects
this
view, as
implicitly
the
insufficiency
the divine
He quietly accuses the poets (and the city fathers) of ascribing their own imperfection to the gods. It is because they lack immortality that men seek it
through the progeny of their minds and the children of their
loins.4
It is
question
gods should
feel the
as
to create or to pro
Indeed, if
the
beings,
in
a state of wantless
self-sufficiency. an
is
nothing.
Divine love is
If the
holy
is that
which
is god-beloved, the
(younger)
holy
at
"is
not."
I.
The
word
vecjregog
I2a4
recalls
the
word
vewregov
(newer thing)
in
Euthyphron's opening question, and thus indicates 2. The best authenticated manuscripts read
"worker"
a new
beginning
in the dialogue.
of
"lover"
Burnet's his
"doer"
or
(eg^avxa),
to
and
contends that
emenda
tion is
needed
intelligible. He fails to
between
of
Zeus
3. 4. 5.
as
lover
and
the
holy
as the god-beloved.
Apology
Socrates,
Press,
1924).
See Burnet's
209c-d.
cf.
Lysis
21531-03.
50
2.
Interpretation
Stasinus'
dictum,
accompanies
fear, is
not so mis
taken as
which
Socrates
pretends.
For it is
not
fear in
general
of
Zeus to
of a
Piety, Socrates intimates, is the reverence or shame The holy is an (na&og), not a being (cf. na8).
"affect"
shame as
fear
of a
bad
reputation.6
for
reputation
(do^a, I2ci)
"opinion."
also means
opined
man of
is
someone who
is
opined
to do what is
to
bad
reputa
tion partly
city's
basis
given.7
In
order
shameless
is
not
to say that
a philosopher
does
not
con
sequences of a
bad
reputation.
with
4.
By linking piety
pious man
at the social
Since the is
fears
bad
reputation with
the gods, he
will
utility be
of religion. reluctant
to
even when
his
reputation
among
men
conventional status of
holy
is inferable
"natural"
pneumonia
character of such evils as poverty and disease. The badness of is clearly much less a matter of opinion than the badness of ne sacred burial rite Yet it is man's fear of natural terrors, combined with ignorance of their causes, which disposes him to ascribe his good or ill of
invisible
superhuman
own
beings.8
poverty
and
disease
Socrates is
a part
presents
(uogiov, I2c6)
correct
fear, he says, as the odd is of number. Hence it is not number is, there also is the odd; but it is correct to say
is
number.
is,
there also
Euthyphron is
now able
to follow
argument,
and
he
affirms
says next
holy
is it is
a part
(uegog, I2d5)
be. Two
of jus
to
find
might
possibilities
examples.
First,
the
holy
a part of justice as
the odd is
its opposite; for the even is a coequal part of number, and is the of the odd. contrary Thus, if one part of justice is holy, the other part must be which means that not all unholy
the
holy
divides the
holy
seen
why this is
second revere
so.
Piety
difference between
part of
power might
loyalty
and
justice. The
fear. We
justice
as reverence
is
of
doing
so
possibility is that the holy is a those who we believe have the because of their goodness. Reverence
most
described
as
the kind of
fear
gods.
Is
pi-
Plato, Apology
2ibio-e3;
ch.
cf.
Meno
93bio-94a5.
1 1 end;
51
of
then,
kind
of justice
the
dialogue is chiefly
Socrates
asked
now
introduces
is even, he would have replied, "that which is not isosceles."9 but When Euthyphron indicates his approval of this an scalene, swer, Socrates advises him to explain in the same way what part of justice is holy. It is difficult to see how he can. Either and are names
what part of number
"scalene" "isosceles"
him
of
triangles,
it
or
they
by
other names.
Socrates'
If the
worse, as
phron
is that
which
is
not odd
but
even.
Euthy
piety as opposition to impiety or injustice (5d8-e5); he later defended his lawsuit on the grounds that it is just to punish injustice (8b7-9). Be defining the even in terms of its contrary, Socrates mimics
first
characterized
Euthy
phron's
failure to
at
By
not
he hint
the
Euthyphron's failure to
will
is, does
three sections of
dialogue, Socrates
He
investigate the
nature of
divinity
the basis of an ac
count of justice.
is impossible, and hence This is why he now says that if Euthyphron instructs him adequately, they can tell Meletus to stop doing injustice and bring no more in dictments for impiety. It is unjust to prosecute a man for a crime no one can
will prove that
injustice
to the gods
that
impiety
"is
not."
commit.
VIII.
Piety
as an
Injustice to the
might
gods
is
possible
only if
we
have
obligations to
them that we
shirk, only if men and gods are partners or shar common good. ers in a The city understands itself to be the lesser member of a human-divine partnership; citizens regard their duties to each other as deriving
and such obligations exist
from,
ular
and subordinate
to,
their
duties to the
gods.
Two kinds
of
justice in
partic
deserve to be
called
bonds
of community: political
the relations between ruler and ruled, and commercial the transactions
conclusion
of
which governs
regulates
in
which we might
or as parties
to an exchange
in
which
they
also participate.
Socrates tacitly
and
considers
I3ai-d4, the
out
second at
I3d5-i4ci,
the third at
impiety is
crime,
is
more
important,
on
the gods
have nothing to do
next
us, since
order
popular conception of
piety
as
justice to the
in Plato's Laws
The
correct
parts,"
equal
occurs
(895e).
52
Interpretation
will also
piety is an first part of art. He is led to make this bizarre assumption by his discovery, in the the dialogue, that we cannot rely upon vouog to determine what our pious duties
gods, Socrates
test an hypothesis
of
his own,
namely, that
are.
One
sacred
law may
command actions
that
another
forbids;
and
the recog
may hold say nothing conflicting views of how we should act. In order, then, for piety to be a cause of right action, it must itself provide the knowledge required to guide the pious
nized authorities on
divinity
to
man.
arts.1
independent,
more
practical
knowledge
are
the
Accordingly, Socrates
a
that
if piety is
a genuine
virtue, it must
also
To be
specific, it
must
be beneficial
prod
(I3b7-d6), have
uct
steps
definite
subject matter
(i3d9-i4aio), have
The
teachable
aim at a
determinate
and realize
its
product
in
justified in terms
of those principles
(I4d9-e5,
I5a7~8).2
Socrates
is indicated
of
"technical"
use of
language,
and
by
his introduction
words refer of
the words
ness) soul,
and
to a quality or disposition of
hence conceivably to
the
type
doiov (holy)
key
up
to now
or in conformity to not analogy between technical proficiency and a commonly accepted virtue. Among other things, his intention is to point up the absence of knowledge from the behavior and states of character generally recog
acts performed at
unusual
to
for Socrates to
nized as virtuous.
To
return to
now undertakes
part of care
he says, it is the
(ftegajxeia, nej)
the
The remaining
part of
justice, he
adds, has to
do
with
the care of human beings. Socrates replies that although these statements
appesr quite
he does
of gods with
not yet
smsll piece of
"care."
informstion; for
if the
care
He
wonders
is anything like the care we bestow on other things. He then observes, Euthyphron's approval, that not everyone knows how to care for horses
the
or
dogs, only
horseman
or
the
huntsman. Socrates
goes on
to suggest that
horsemanship
(Inmxrj) is the
(xvveg);
care of
and
and
he affirms, in his
reply, that
holiness
and pi
ety
are
the care
of gods.
Judging however, by
tween each of the aforementioned skills and the animal species care, holiness is nothing more than the care of
i
to its
of
holy
things. If there
is
"care
Essay,"
p. 321.
2.
led to
recognize
Socrates'
"technical
virtue,"
conception of
astute observations on
and
Middle Dialogues
(Oxford: Clarendon
Press,
1977),
pp.
71-7,
53
an art as unheard of
the
it
would
be the
work of
fteoxixyj,
in Greek
as
"godsmanship"
is in English.
every kind
with
benefit
are
recipient. and
He then suggests,
improved
and
herdsmanship,
pose of care oath.
by horsemanship, dogs by huntsmanship, cattle by everything else by its appropriate type of care. Or is the pur
with an
if holiness,
since
it is the
care of gods,
this,"
is
also a
benefit to the
he
contin
holy,
better?"
Euthyphron
swears
word
The Greek
marily
means
uses
in the
"care,"
sense of
pri
"service."
whether
piety
consists
in serving the
gods and
most
ical
treatment"
"therapy."
or, simply,
revealing translation of the term is "med All men are in need of therapy, if only be
soul.3
is perfectly wise. We may infer from this that if philosophy is the wisdom, it must also be the care of the Certainly the Platonic
and
Socrates
types of
exhibits an
ignorance,
Socrates'
uncanny grasp of the vsriety of souls, their characteristic the ways in which these can be mitigated or rendered less
of
harmful. higher
knowledge any
rj>vxt)
enables
him to
practice
justice
to
on
public man.
Through
conversation
he
gives
each
in
terlocutor
is
proper or
fitting
for him. justice is the therapy of human Euthyphron, how a skilled therapist goes
as unaware of
Socrates
not
only
us,
accepts
beings; he
about
shows work.
by his handling
of
his
Euthyphron,
course, is
his illness
as
he is
of
Socrates'
attempt
know that
the true
by
executing
Socrates, it
Athens
will
he is like the city, which does not kill the Athenian who best comprehends
that a simply rational solution to the
standards of political
quarrel
health.4
Socrates'
with
reveals
rule, is
humanly
unat
whose
by
nothing
of
the greater
difficulty
does
not
in
knowing
the health of the soul than that of the the doctor to persuade the sick to
can al
body,
the
medical art
in itself
enable
nonexperts that they obey his "orders"; nor is his expertise so evident to problem political The a him from distinguish ways may then be
quack.5
arise
no
human
ruler
is
as
manifestly
and
transcendently
normal adult
human
being is
to
his
dog
or
horse.6
3. 4.
Cf. Apology 29d8-e2, 3oa8-b2; Republic 5l8d-e, 527d-e, Cf. Plato, Gorgias 52 le.
586c
5.
P\alo, Gorgias
4646. 275c.
54
Interpretation
rates mentioned
of rule over of rule over
horsemanship
subjects.7 groups.8
and
willing large
He
mentioned
The demands
justice
point
to the transcendence of
shepherd.9
This means, in the willing obedience of mankind to a divine for the if men do justice to the gods traditional that them, however, by caring human herders and metaphor needs to be inverted: men are gods to the gods
politics
Socrates denies any intention of imputing to Euthyphron the opinion that piety benefits the gods and makes them better. Indeed, he says, it was precisely be cause he did not think Euthyphron believed such a thing that he raised the whole
"care."
question about
the meaning
of
Euthyphron
accepts this
explanation;
or
we
should not.
The
care of gods
is
absurd
im
to
prove a perfect
far from
of
perfect.
According
Euthyphron, they
disagree
rocity,
about
would
committing injustice,
and
just,
fe
it
be in
our
interest to
improvement in
them that
an animal
his
care?
Piety, it
would
seem, is the
counterpart
art of
taming
for
our
benefit. Its
modern
is the
conquest and
domestication
of nature
by
means of scientific
technology.
The beliefs if
crucial
difficulty
to
or
which
Socrates
alludes
is
not peculiar
to the religious
of
the Athenians
ceive of
we
God
beings,
that
is the belief in
this section.
divine
providence
Socrates
to refute in
In ior
order
Action,
unlike the
instinctive behav
of
herding
horses,
requires a pursues
end,
Unless the
seeks
actor
is
deceived, he
his
goal
has
not yet
been attained; he
Other things
than when
he fails to do
blessedly happy, as is com monly said, they cannot have unrealized ends; whatever the divine good is, their enjoyment of it must be perpetual and at each moment complete. The gods,
gods are perfect and
Now if the
act.10
Consequently, they would not benefit us. happy, and hence that
gods are not
they
can
be improved.
not a virtue
Obviously, piety is
if the
argues
implicitly
that
they
are
H78b7-24.
55
He intimates that if piety does move the gods to act, it is a vice. Each time some one acts, his condition changes. This is so even if we abstract from the alteration in
bodily
and mental
states that
invariably
accompanies
human
action."
The
very particularity
particular means one must
of action
involves the
application of
to particular ends
either not
initiating
any action,
have been
is
acting
gods'
condition
without
one of
blessedness
or
something else. If therefore the perfection, it follows that they cannot act
doing
changing for the worse. Thus to the extent that prayer and sacrifice in duce the gods to benefit us, piety is a kind of care that harms its recipients, and
may be defined as injustice to the gods. In order to maintain that the gods would be
neither
harmed
nor
improved
by
dissimilarity
But
between their
ways and
Specifically, it is necessary
undertaken
action affects
the
actor
or
is
for the
a new
difficulty
srises.
Not
cease to have any intelligible meaning when applied only does the word to gods, but so, presumably, does or any other word that names an attribute of human beings. Put somewhat differently, all divine "at
"thought,"
"life," "will,"
tributes"
"sction"
become
again
Once
logical
structure of or
human
action
is
a suitable
divinity,
ond
it is
not suitable.
If the first
alternative
the uselessness
If the
sec
is true,
that
we
have
"are,"
no right
much
even
they
either
to make any positive predication of the gods, not It would less that they demand to be injustice to the or there is no good is not gods, impiety
worshiped.12
for
believing it
to be so.
IX.
Piety
as an
continues
to
question
Euthyphron
about the
meaning
of
If ho
not
benefit
or
it be?
Euthy
in
phron responds
holiness is
of skilled service
to
gods
(vnngexixr)
xig
fteoig,
I3d7),
and
Euthyphron
concurs.
Socrates then
by doctors assist in producing a specific work, namely, services used by shipwrights or housebuilders aid in skilled the just as health, Socrates asks him what producing boats or houses. When Euthyphron agrees,
skilled services used
know,"
work
the
skilled service
to
gods
helps to
produce.
"It's
obvious
that
you
"anthropological"
II.
For
The
an
argument against
Plato,
Republic
12.
38od-38ld.
"negative"
classic statement of a
plexed 1.50-60.
56
Interpretation
you claim what
he continues, "since
beautifully."
most
thereupon exhorts
Euthyphron
responds.
Socrates
resplendent work
is
which
the
gods
produce
by
The
using
gods of
us
as
servants
vague:
make
many fine
remarks.
"technical"
flavor
the
Socrates'
definite
point of view on
subject.
He believes the
an
is justice, snd thst they sccomplish it by ruling us. Socrates plays on ambiguity in the word Imngexixr), which signifies both an art of serving and a
work
subordinate art.
one
Euthyphron has in
and
mind.
In his
opinion the
many
properly the
emphasizes
must render.
Socrates
slaves, piety is the homage they the latter meaning when he contrasts piety
gods'
housebuilding. Are
we
in
order to accomplish
justice,
(vixngexaig,
13d i)?
and csre aims st
Justice is
cipients
kind
of care
(I2e6),
benefit
of
its
re
(1304). A
prodigious number of
the
benefits
enjoy
sre provided
by
doctors,
brutish,
used,
shipwrights,
housebuilders,
and
the like.
Indeed,
without
the services of
these and
other craftsmen
human life
would almost
and short.
However, it is equally
practice of arts. so.
obvious
The
arts and
unavoidably
For there is
art
in the
good
Each
deals
good,
not the
human
as
such;
for
its
own product.
The
goodness of
health, for
example, is
not a
finding
of
the
medical
presupposition.
Partly for this reason, the doctor as doctor is not qualified to dictate how much health care should be provided, to whom, and with what portion of the commu
nity's resources.
Yet
neither can
laymen
make
this determination
utilized
with
like technical
ment of
accuracy.
In
order
by
someone
hierarchy
of
of
human ends,
and
who, in addition,
com
detailed knowledge
of
preme
director
the arts could only be a god. If the gods rule us, Socrates sug
gests,
they
would
do
so
by
ordering the
arts
in the
manner
best
suited
to promote
our well-being.
They
would
nates,
Precisely
if the
gods
is justice.
con a
But do the
gods rule?
Obviously, a divinely-managed economy is a pure imagination. Of greater significance is the fact that
the goods and services whose
di
he
secures
which
just distribution among his human subjects. Thus he would not partake of the benefits he confers. But if gods and men do not share in a common good, do
have
no need of
they
57 Either the be
gods are
up
a community. or
This
rulers,
they
work
for
benefit
Now
someone
who
works
slave.1
If the
gods establish
a
of
the kind
to their masters.
When Socrates
question.
asked
him to
identify
gods'
the
him down to
accomplish
many fine things. Socrates definite answer. He points out that generals
make
tries to pin
also
and
farmers
and
many fine results. Nonetheless, it would not be hard to state the sum substance (to xecpdkaiov, I4a2) of their respective works: generals produce
gods'
victory in war, farmers produce food from the earth. Euthyphron has to agree. business But when Socrates asks him to state the sum and substance of the
(Hgyaoia, i4aio), he
matters
again evades
precisely is very great, the prophet replies, and therefore he will simply (dnkcog, I4b2) say this: If someone knows how to do and say what is acceptable
(xexagiouiva, I4b2)
to the gods
by
holy,
and
this
preserves
both
private
praying and sacrificing, he does what is households and the common possessions of
opposite of what
is
acceptable answer
is impious,
not
and
destroys
everything.
Euthyphron's
is
only evasive, it is
respect
considers
which
for Socrates has been entirely replaced by contempt. many. For it is the piety of ordinary
in
he
a curi
Socrates'
attitude
be
to
return
to
orthodoxy.
"simple"
Socrates
responds
to the
prophet's could
explanation
by
Euthyphron
have
answered much
not zealous
he
was on
the
work,
without
you
sufficiently
about
This is
a re
It implies that
satisfactory
answer
is
the
is to be found in
the preceding
exchange. much
The
foresee,
less
provide
against, every
contingency that
sure that
him be
of victory.
Nor
can
farmer in
But
his
ruined
by
blight. Man
art
invents
them out of a
for his
his Yet he
own well-being.
undertakings
cannot secure
the
conditions on which
the
success of
depends; it
He there Their
cannot eliminate
outcome of
affairs.
cares
his
endeavors
fully
reconciled
fore
turns to gods
grant
him security
and success.
i.
344b4-8.
58
"work"
Interpretation
is the mastery of fortune. Piety is the time-honored desire to control the
uncontrollable.2
sion of man's
In
order
to do their the
work
must
be
sovereign over
processes of
ticipate nor
thing
of
chance.3
radically free beings, man can neither an confine what they do; he is their plaything and so, in effect, a play unless his religious His hope of salvation is unreasonable
world.
Yet if they
kind
When
of compulsion upon
the
gods.4
Piety
presupposes
that
too
weak
to control chance
but strong
enough
to
control
pray,
they unconsciously
to
be the lords
or employers of
the
gods.
Again, it
seems, it is the
X.
Piety
as an
After chiding Euthyphron for his unwillingness to teach, Socrates remarks that the lover must follow the beloved wherever he leads We may expect that he
.
is
no
about
to make himself
take
for
an answer.
Pursuing
wonders
implication
of
Euthyphron's last
statement
(cf.
I4b3~5), Socrates
if holiness is
a certain
Euthyphron
gifts
affirms that
in giving
When the
knowledge
sponse
missed
prophet assents of
to this also,
Socrates
concludes that
is
sarcastic:
gods"
(iodi). Euthyphron's
beautifully."
quite
But he has
Socrates'
most we can
know
about gods
is
how to
in
regard
to
them, piety is
your
philosophy.1
Socrates then
"I
am one who
wisdom, and I
mind
to
it,
so that
nothing
say
will
fall to the in
ground."
In this
re we
words
cpikog
succession.
section of
As
see, the
nature of
philosophy
of
appears more
plainly in this
the dia
whether
the
service
(vjtngeoia, I4d6) to the gods consists in asking them and giving to them. Eu thyphron answers in the affirmative. Socrates then suggests that the right
way
and
(dgftcds, Hd9)
need
of
asking the
gods
is to
ask
for things
we need
from them,
of
they
he
from
us.
"For it
wouldn't
be
way
(xexvtxdv, I4e3)
giving,"
Cf Xenophon Memorabilia
.
i i 6- 1 o
.
.
Cf. Plato, Laws 644d-e. 4. Cf. Plato, Republic 362c, 3640-3653; Nietzsche, The Gay Science 2.84. 1 Cf. section vi, n. I For a provocative if overzealous interpretation of Gershon W. Rabinowitz, "Platonic Piety: An Essay Toward the Solution of an
3.
.
Socrates'
meaning,
see
Enigma,"
Phronesis 3
(1958).
pp.
116-19.
An Interpretation of
explains, "to
opinion
Plato'
Euthyphro
59
need."
This is Euthyphron's something he doesn't too. Socrates thereupon concludes that holiness is a kind of bartering art
give someone
...
(ujiogixr)
other.
tic;
xexvx\, I4e6)
by
Euthyphron's
art
patience is
nearly
at an end.
He tells Socrates to
it
bar
tering
to be
if he likes.
protests
Socrates
true.
that he is
to
not pleased
by
the new
definition
unless
it happens
And he
seems
tain any
since we
benefit from
our gifts.
the gods ob
to everyone, he says,
have nothing good that does not come from them. But what benefit do they derive from the things we give to them? "Or have we so much the better of them in this bartering, that while we get all good things from them, they get scarcely believe his ears. He demands to know whether Soc rates really thinks the gods benefit from our gifts. This is not the first time he be came indignant at the suggestion that piety benefits the gods (cf. 13C6-10). Yet if
can
us?"
piety
satisfies
would
a need of the
gods,
as
for instance
a need
obeyed,
it
not
be
us then assume
nothing from us and therefore gain nothing from our devotions. If they nonethe less demand to be worshipped in return for the good fortune they bestow, they
act about as
sensibly
one might
say,
swindling the gods. To avoid this consequence, one must deny that gods and men are in any way linked by contractual obligations or commercial ties. Specifically, one must reject the notion of a convenant in which divine pro
is the
art of
tection
is the
promised reward
for
obedience on
lier
we saw
that gods
by political
subordination.
We
are
do
not
make
up
that piety
is
community and do not share in not justice to the gods, nor is impiety
came closest
a crime against
after
Socrates
to mentioning philosophy
right
way to
give or
to ask is to do
interpreting
the
that between a
people and
its
gods
as an eco
founded
on
human
self-interest and
divine
gullibility.
What
emerges more
foundly
utilitarian
clearly in bent of
this than
in any
other section of
Socrates'
his
proposal
be deemed
sacred
Socrates'
or useful
(cbcpekia, I3b8;
their
i4eio).
He
institutions
from the
standpoint of
capacity to
2.
when
he
claims
that Plato's
divine."
intention is to
show
that
"justice,
Plato's
3.
[traditional]
See his
"Piety
and
Justice,
Euthyphro"
Philosophy 43
(April 1968),
p.
109.
60
needs.4
Interpretation
However,
unlike
the
utilitarian
thinkers of
classic modernity,
Socrates
recognizes a
hierarchy
of needs which
is
determined
by
the
ing
without
the time, or of any man when threatened death. Man's highest need, according to Socrates, is to become a be This is of course a need we can never satisfy, and for the
needs.5
that
we cannot
apy only the gods enjoy completely and continuously that solely for its own sake and never as a means to another
Let
us pause
himself
and
his
sensible
become simply wise. The wisest man practices ther friends as much and as long as he can. For
good which
end. might
is desirable be.
for
good
is
contemplation
is
suggested
by
following
A
considera
tions. Our concept of perfection contains two elements that are not simply or
wholly
we
compatible.
First,
there
is the
soley
notion of self-sufficiency.
perfect
being,
on
tend to assume,
external
must exist
by
virtue of
its
own
nature,
depending
.
nothing
We tend
being
would
of
felicity. Now
happiness,
all
at
least in the
common
understanding, is
a state or condition
in
which
desires
are
harmoniously
all
satisfied.
in
felt need,
priva
tion,
self-sufficient
being
is
by
definition
exempt
from every
desire.
ceived
in terms
of the satisfaction
ing
cannot
(cf. Gorgias
492a).
However,
such as
upon a
(ftecogia) belong in
Since the
reserved
this category,
pleasures pleasures
of
learning,
such as
Philebus
seem to
5ib-52a).
have been
by
nature
for
the snimal
kingdom,
whose preservstion
depends
ss much upon
an
intelligent
being
It
cspscity for locomotion; snd since lesrning is pos whose knowledge is incomplete, it is reason
which a self-sufficient
being
could
be
ca
pable
was of course
Aristotle's
view
that
God,
even
happy, because He
contemplation
n78b33-36).
To
gods else
return
to the
he thinks the
benefit from
do
you
our gifts.
wonders what
think,"
and
honorable
said
gifts and
as
(xdgis,
isaio)."
What he actually
is that
one must
4. 5.
Cf. Plato, Lysis 2lod; Statesman 296e-297a. Cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.6. 10.
61
"gratifying"
I4b2) to them.
(xexagiouevov, However, worship is readily intelligible as an expression of grati Gratitude is what we owe to our benefactors, and the gods are thought to be
manner
in the
"acceptable"
or
the
greatest
benefactors.
Gratitude,
in
moreover, is intended to be
expect to receive
xexagiouevov
in
both
A benefactor does
value
ciaries
anything He
also
comparable
tude
is
acceptable
return.
he knows it is the best thing they can give him in him, finds it gratifying, as it assures him they are not unworthy of his
to
since
efforts.
According
to
Euthyphron,
point
honor, honorable
honor them
gifts,
and gratitude.
The
he
wants
that we
to the gods
-
by honoring
them,
and we
and gratitude or
or
good
for
So
deeply
principle, that he
sometimes attempts to
object.
from dote
an
inanimate
on a
fondly
A
He may kick the door on which he stubbed his toe, possession which has become a special source of enjoyment
pride.
of
moment's reflection
his
ill.6
gratitude or resentment
informs him, however, that the only proper object is a moral agent that deliberately intends his good
Most persons, at one time or another, come to believe they have much to be grateful for. And when this happens, it is usually with an awareness that their
or
greatest
blessings
cannot all
be
attributed
to a human
agency.
The belief in
gods
enables man
personifi
cation of
his
his fears.
By
subtly calling
countless
attention
to this
fact,
sume
Plato
concedes
that piety
would
is
nobler
far has
suggested.
It
be
a gross
injustice to
devout
persons
to as
act of
worship there
lies
an unconscious
desire to domes
ticate, enslave,
XI.
or swindle
the gods.
Ending
Euthyphron's
Socrates to
suggest
that the
holy
re
but
neither
beneficial
nor
holy
He
in this
way.
is the dearest thing of all. We might have expected never doubted that holiness is god-beloved (cf.
na4-b8);
or
besides, if the holy is gratifying to the gods, it must also be dear pleasing (cpikov, I5b2) to them. Socrates goes on to infer that Euthyphron
and
now wants
to define the
says.
holy
as that which
is dear to the
predictable.
gods.
"Most
certa
the prophet
Here
again
his
reaction
is
He
never understood
the
difference
holy
is
god-beloved and
defining
it
as the
god-
62
Interpretation
iodi2-i
beloved (cf.
"accident"
ia9), any
more
than
he
understood
the distinction
between
"essence"
and
(cf.
na6-9).
Twice in the
present exchange
Socrates
Accord
has
predetermined
in his
mouth.
ingly
he
to the
subject of can
Socrates
how Euthyphron
appear not
be
surprised, when
he
gives such an
to stand
fast but
walk about.
And how
can
Euthyphron
accuse
him
of
being
he is
himself
round
he has
made
the argument go
come
in
a circle.
place
Or does Euthyphron it
started
discussion has
back to the
and
from?
Surely
he
remembers
holy
not now
Or does he he is
remember?
Euthyphron
what
replies
not realize
asserting that
equivalent
to
defining
the
holy
as
the
god-beloved
course,"
says
prophet. a path
Socrates,
we
observe,
Euthyphron down
that ends in
outright
grasp
either
him
a choice of
they blundered earlier in agreeing that the holy and god-beloved are different, or, if they made no mistake then, they must be using the wrong hypoth
esis now.
"So it
seems,"
Euthyphron
says
with
inquiry hardly say anything better calculated to hasten the prophet's departure. Vowing that he will not be cowardly and give up the search before learning what the holy is, Socrates implores Euthyphron not to scorn him, and to make
all over again
every effort to tell the truth. "For you know [the any human being does, and like Proteus, you
tell."
truth],"
says
are not to
Socrates,
"if indeed
be
This
remark
ious to leave. It is
is undoubtedly supposed to make Euthyphron even more anx of interest to us for at least two other reasons. First, Socrates
suggests that one would
and
implies that true piety is humanly unknowable. For he have to be as wise as Proteus to know what the holy is,
ary Old Man
logue."
Proteus,
an men
the legend
of the
Sea,
was a god.
"aporetic dia
Piety
of
is
correct
behavior
with regard
divine,
but
lack
genuine
knowledge
intention
of
Second, Socrates
his
capture of
Homeric tale
of
to Plato's
as an author.
the
Odyssey Menelaos
until
Proteus.1
he
agreed
This
was no mean
feat,
as
form
at will.
In fact,
and
Menelaos
would
have failed
help
of a
goddess, Eidothea. He
his
companions
had been
marooned
by
isle
of
Pharos,
barren
later they
would
die
of starvation.
Menelaos
suspected that
1.
Homer, Odyssey
4.348-480.
63
how to
for their plight, but he knew neither which deity they had appease him. Proteus could easily answer these questions,
retain
but he
shunned
his
liberty
Zeus
in
When Menelaos
punished
captured
him,
revealed
that the
hero
being
and
the other
failing to render complete hecatombs to immortals, but that by offering the proper sacrifices he would
home. Euthyphron
eluding him. He himself to Menelaos. The comparison has a certain
as a
for
be
Socrates
characterizes
Proteus bent
on
thereby implicitly
plausibility.
compares
Like Menelaos he
would
on
the
of
losing
of
his life.
accusers
And
perhaps
be less
vulnerable
his
if he had been
crucial
more attentive to
points.
Menelaos
Socrates'
But the analogy breaks down at home safely; Socrates will be condemned to punishment will be inflicted by the city, not by the gods.
the
sailed stand at opposite poles of the moral universe.
and
Socrates
The
one
reflective
love
of wis
we
may be sure,
have
Troy if
Ho
suf
abducted
Xanthippe,
even
had
she
been the
comeliest of women.
of
ferings
the
heroes,
encourages a
way
of
body,
property, reputation,
family,
in
and city.
dom. For it
and change. world came
presents a world
Proteus'
which
becoming
mutability
reflects
criticizes so
into being; it typifies that quality of the Greek gods which Socrates Republic* Socrates must have been amused, there severely in the
with
fore,
the aid of
Eidothea,
whose name
Athens executed Socrates, but he triumphed in death. means "form Through Plato's poetry, he became the hero of the philosphic tradition. And that tradition, which Plato's poetry was so instrumental in founding, itself became a element of Western Civilization. Plato could not have secured Soc
founding
rates'
victory
things, the
tion
over
not
become
a poet of new
of
divine
"forms."
By
a strange coincidence, a
fitting
image
this transvalua
by
not
Homer himself. why Euthyphron must know the truth about know clearly what is holy and unholy, he would
of a mere of
Socrates
to
explain
have
undertaken, on
behalf
hireling,
for
murder.
the
gods would
2.
Compare Republic
once
prays 3loud
st
Platonic Socrates 33 ldo-7; also consider Phaedo 1 1 837-8. The Phaedrus 279D-C, in a private conversation. His prayer is for wisdom and
of
the
Plato, Republic
The meaning
of
4.
by
Edward Erler.
64
Interpretation
do it
correctly,"
and
he
would
have been
ashamed
be
fore human beings. It is evident, therefore, that he thinks he knows clearly is holy and what is not.
what
final
attempt to
frighten
and shame
Euthyphron into
might
abandon correct to
while
hinting
be
one's
speak and no
Socrates,"
longer
father (cf. 4an-b2, 9ai-9) Socrates urges the conceal what he considers the holy to be. "Some
Euthyphron then
alleges
prophet other
to
time,
is the be
on
reply.
he is in
hurry to go
somewhere
and must
his
way.
And
with
He
rebukes
that, he departs. Socrates pretends to be Euthyphron for casting him down from a
what
mighty
and
hope,
namely, that he
could
is
thereby
rid
himself
Meletus'
of
Euthyphron
pares
down"
allowing him to be killed. In keeping with this, he tacitly com himself to the field hand, whom Euthyphron's father supposedly "cast
of
(xaxafiakcbv,
guilty
of negligent
help
us
culminated
failure. Not
only do Socrates and Euthyphron fail to discover true piety, but each fails to benefit the other. Euthyphron does not save Socrates from the city, nor does Socrates
save
Socrates Socrates
continues
the prophet's
departure.
not
By
in
to
be
able
to hear
him; he is surely
listening.
wise
he had hoped to
no
show
made
him
longer
speaks
loosely
or makes
innovations in
a
regard
them,
that he
would
live the
rest of
his life in
better
way.
With
live
reminds us
closing allusion to the problem of how that, in the decisive respect, the dialogue has been en
shown that
Socrates'
tirely
successful.
vouog does
not
deserve the
virtue.
It
has therefore
established
the right life. And that question is the central and unifying theme of Socratic
philosophy.
CONCLUSION
It
was observed
we cannot
in the Euthyphro
seemed
Socrates'
prejudging
quarrel with
Athens,
and this
legitimacy of our study. We found it neces and to assume that we could sary to treat Athens as representative of "the understand what is important about Athenian without ever having practiced piety it. In so doing we covertly denied the chosenness of its any ancient people
city,"
claim
to possess
a sacred
appre-
65
that the good
from the
outside.
In short,
we assumed
is
not
identical
to
with
Having
whether
dialogue,
we must now
try
determine
be.
the
just
summarized
is
as serious as
it
initially
appeared to
Two
considerations suggest
that
it is
not.
First,
of
the phenomena
as a guide
from
which we
inferred the
fallibility
and
delusiveness
vouog
being
common.
and and
On the contrary, they are fundamental features of civil life, Athenian non-Athenian alike. It will be useful to recall the most important of these, the key points that were made in connection with them, (i) The belief that
is
a sacral union.
the
family
This belief,
which
is
intimately
supports other
connected with no
heritability
of
sin,
both Euthyphron's
lawsuit
and
his kinsmen's
opposition
although a son
is impious if he
prosecutes
able
to
pollution unless
things, it implies that his manslaying father, he may not be he prosecutes. (2) The belief that the
or sanctioned
elementary
account of of
by
the gods.
On
this
belief,
loyalty
impartial justice
the form of a
intrinsic to
political
life
as such
tends to as
sume
contradiction
between the
commandments of
divine law,
or
of a conflict
between justice
and piety.
authori
ties.
In
addition
ample, the
King
Archon
and
the
share of oracle
to speak
for the
reli
disputes concerning
duty
that cannot be
although our
resolved on
Second,
ging
of
initial
beg
Socrates'
the question,
grounds of proof
do
not presuppose
the truth
compels
of what
is to be
One
and
him to
deny by
that the
gods rule
us, are
by
us,
or make covenants
logically
from
premises
expressly
or
im
plicitly
accepted
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illuminated
by
thought, however, its intention is per the fact that it was published with two
with no comment on
separate
their rela
tionship
Right
implied form
of
by
look back to
and
of political
philosophy; it
calls
the
Science
second
the State
[Staatswissenschaft]
as well as
in
Philosophy of Right";
this page
of the
mention of
right,
the reference to a
"science"
but it does it
give us
"philosophy."1
Characteristically, Hegel
and the
calls atten
right"
"science
of
("philosophy
of right").
The task
sug-
This
the
article
is the first
of
two on Hegel's
Philosophy
Hegel
of Right (cited
as
PR). Both
are
devoted to
it
difficult
"Introduction"
to this
book, in
which
presents the
analysis of right
right which
flow from it, such as the state. In the present study, the theme is informs Hegel's work from the beginning and then the first three
mode of
"Introduction."
follows,
espe
'will'
of
the basis
of right.
The
second of
4-29
the
PR,
where
the
idea
of will
is
presented
in
a comprehensive manner.
All too
often neglected,
this section of the PR is in fact the basis for Hegel's the sources
give a
of
both
political
state
novel understanding of the meaning of right and itself. To the extent possible, I have attempted to strengths and weaknesses of
thought
argument as
it
unfolds,
clearer
if
we
learn to
spell
Hegel's
Note
1818-31, 4
tion
of
vols.
For the text of the Philosophy of Right (cited as PR), I have used K.-H. Ilting: G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen iiber Rechtsphilosophie, (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Fromann, 1973-74). The second volume is a critical edi
by
the text
of
the
Philosophy
of Right
published
in
1820.
into English, Hegel's Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967); however, in some cases I have altered Knox's version in order to achieve a more literal render ing, and the translation from Uting's volumes is my own in cases where Ilting supplies material by
Hegel that
1
.
by
Knox.
"Grundrisse"
"Grundlinien."
use
and
'elements'
I have translated
'elements'
both
as
Knox (p. v)
uses
is
plainly
difference
by
the mean
ing
of
Cf. PR 1, 66,
juris."
where
Hegel
civitatis,
i.e.,
philosophia
68
gested meant
Interpretation
by the titles, albeit enigmatically, is that of understanding by a new unity and why and how it is to be sought; and this
enter
be
is the
most
of the
of
book. In
the
we will attempt
examine some of
by following
by
full
elucidation of
that
hint in the
to the book.
Philosophy
of Right is that it is
possible to
right and of
the state.
The
beginning
concluding theses
of
unity
of reason and
about the
actuality
of
Hegel's
entire approach
is
at work even
in
Here Hegel
will,
the
groundwork
by
presenting
thesis about
freedom
and
which will
for
a new
understanding
it
in
dividual rights, morality, ethics, civil society, and the state. The premise for this account of the free will and its implications is a critique of the notion of natural
right.
Hegel
abandons
from
nature
in favor
of the principle
ingly, he
ward
also abandons
natural as a
the
view
that life
particularly from the free will; correspond in accordance with the right moves to
the
goal,
and
thus his
torical,
rather
inquiry concludes by viewing right as his Philosophy of Right ends with a sketch of "world
freedom,
a
history"
as a manifestation of rational
"second
which we are
which we con
Hegel, is
the
insight to
led
when we ex
difficulties
taking
them as an excuse
for giving
is
landmark
right ideas
ly
the
ing
at the
early foundation
of modern
liberal
democracy,
not to mention at
basis
of classical
thought,
are replaced
by
a philosophic
doctrine claiming to be
merely positive,
the
of
independent
non-
of nature or
naturalness,
or antiphilosophic science.
That transition is
an essential element of
greatest
of modern political
many
of
its
of
Hegel's titles
mentions
right"
and
thus builds
on a
long-established tradition stretching back to the beginnings of political phi losophy in classical thought. Yet it also draws attention to a distinction between
"natural
schaft"],
right"
["Naturrecht"]
a
and
state"
["Staatswissen-
distinction introduced especially in modern thought by those who would separate ethics from politics, what men ought to be and do from what they in fact are and do.2 As we look further into the Philosophy of Right, we find that
2.
See the
introductory
remarks
Hermann Glockner.
20 vols.
Hegel's
Hegel
"Introduction"
to the
"science"
Philosophy
of
Right
69
science"
claims to offer a
"philosophic
tive
science,"
knowledge,"
as
The
be
a new
one, based
on a critique of received
ideas
right; but it is
of ethics.
not an adoption of
state"
which rejects
knowledge
It is
kind
natural right
thought
for knowledge
right"
is right
of
or
just in itself
"state"
while also
proposing to elucidate concurrently the real world gel offers a "philosophic (we find once the
sophic
the
(PR iv,
75).
He
phrase
"natural
right or philo
right")
how the
to thought are
inextricably
bound
together.3
Hegel's thought concerning politics was, from the first, occupied with the idea of natural right, for he saw that the concern for natural right was the mode
by
cal
rational
understanding
of
law law
and poli
or
tics,
simple,
histori
examples."
right,
ceived,
as
what
pp. 2-4.
By
"science
state"
of
the
is
meant
the
"politics,"
of
the moving,
study of positive law (PR in, 75), and also, as Gans changing life of the state, as distinguished from the
the science of the state goes
study
of
back,
accord
ing
to
Gans,
to the
political
philosophy
it is
not of
found in antiquity, which rather treated these as parts of a whole, he argues. For Hegel's views on the division of modern culture into irreconcilable dichotomies,
Hegel's
3.
discussion
Phenomenology of Spirit
one of
Row,
1975),
pp. 19-21
Or
its
variants, such as
"die
philosophische
Rechts
wissens
"das
Recht,"
philosophische
also
PR 1.
239-240:
3 Remark (here is the phrase 'natural right or philosophic right'). See "The name natural right is merely traditional, not wholly correct; for by PR
'nature'
is
meant
1)
(the
actual meaning).
The
actual name:
'philosophic doctrine
of
[philosophische
Rechtslehre]."
Cf. the
suggestion of
in Epicurean
and
thought there
is
by
the "nature of
note 44.
right."
History
(Chicago:
1953),
p.
in,
would note
ment of
Judith Shklar,
agree:
"One
the
Philosophy
of Right
as a
de
fense
of
philosophy Raymond Plant's Hegel, American Political Science Review, vol. lxviii (December 1974), p. 1745. While the philosophic and the political in Hegel, by his own teaching, cannot be abstracted one from another, the clear priority and the leading theme of the PR is the renewal of political philosophy
and
of political
rather
state."
Review
the
4.
consequent study of the modern See G. W. F. Hegel, Uber die pp. 437~537-
state on
wissenschaftlichen
Behandlungsarten des
Naturrechts, in
Sdmtliche Werke, I,
phia:
position on natural
Published in English
see
as
University of Pennsylvania
Press. 1975);
zu
especially p. 55. For my understanding of Hegel's by Manfred Riedel: "Natur und Freiheit in He
2 vols.
Rcchtsphilosophie,"
gels
in Materialien
and
Hegels Rechtsphilosophie,
Naturrechts,"
(Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp,
1975),
11,
pp.
109-127;
"Hegels
Kritik des
Right."
pp. 42-79-
in Hegel's
Philosophy
of
Perspectives,
ed.
University Press,
1971),
pp.
136-150.
Cf.
also
Discovery
of
vol.
45,
no. 2
(April 1983),
163-166.
70
men
Interpretation
agree on
have happened to
of
derstanding
nature
right
was once
among themselves. The quest for a rational un inseparable from the quest to know what was by
right
and
But
Hegel
difficulty
in
In his
"Preface"
to the
linking Philosophy
right to
nature.
mod
independently
of
Hegel's in
fluence. He
argues
is publicly
recognized"
divergence from, in (PR n, 61). This tendency is that in regard to knowledge of "na
is to be
viewed as
it is
now
widely
it."
acknowledged must
that nature
"inherently
this actual
within
rational"
"knowledge"
so that
reason present nature
"investigate
and
grasp in
concepts
in
Knowledge
essence"
seeks the
"law
and
immanent
influenced
"ethical
springs
within
by
modern
science,
cannot
world,"
"state,"
the
is "not
allowed to
reason which
enjoy the good fortune which has achieved power and mastery itself and has its home (PR 11,
there"
be
an exemption of
(so
different, it
would
from
modernism
in
practical affairs us
that
encourages
antirational,
thought?
We find before
in the
dualism
of
lawful
nature and a
freedom
now
tends to be interpreted as
universal
by
intelligible
practical realm.
To reply to the dilemma, Hegel proposes to seek the intelligible core of the We must then understand why it is not possible to approach this
standpoint of natural
thought began to
be
portant one.
We
move nature
easily toward
right,
notions of natural
grasp
what
is
by
when we
find
rights, duties or relationships, or even with conflicting opinions con ing cerning what is right. Arising in the case where there is not simplicity but com
set of
plexity and conflict, the question of natural right seeks to reduce the multifarious demands of practical life to their essentials, supposing that the essential is what is natural; it seeks to ascertain which of many laws, rights and duties are fundamen
tal, natural as opposed to arbitrary and conventional (PR iv, 75-6; 1, What is conventional in origin seems lacking in final authority; it is the
the contradictions that provoke the questioning.
5.
239-40). source of
That
which we
have
freely
in-
and
University
Press.
1976),
3, 12-13; Charles
pp.
University-
Press,
1979),
Hegel's
vented,
or
"Introduction"
to the
under
Philosophy
of
Right
71
to
invented it
appears
appears
tions,
more
and
authoritative, less
answer
natural
right
or natural
subject, for
Hegel,
connected with
nature.
The
has
sought
both that
a
from
that which
is
right
simply,
definitive
to the ques
tion of what
posed
is
things.
constituted at
However, nature means now two quite different and op On the one hand, it is 'natural the way we find ourselves the beginning, the primary or original material of our existence be
right.
being,'
fore
alteration
we also
by any man-made processes or conventions. mean by the nature of a thing its essence or concept,
what
On the
what
other
hand,
from
it
means
it is
'naturally,'
for
he
gives the
is
right as
and of
precisely it
What is
man,
76).
right
by
to
original
man
in
is
in
The
with
character of
should
be
compared
to a
difficulty
connected
the
concept of
law. "There is
a world of
laws,
in
gen
natu
eral."
The laws
of nature
properly speaking
"absolute,"
are those
laws discoverable
"are what
by
ral science.
valid as since
These laws
are of
that
is, they
they
they
nature, we must
its laws
it is only
our notion of
them
be
false."
"The
and
all"
laws is
outside of
us;
knowing
does
knowledge
of them can
expand, that is
na
(PR m,
91-93).
Next to this
account of an
ture,
we put then
which alone
inten
of
(PR m, and another way The similarity is only preliminary. "We learn to know the laws [human laws] That is, the citizen and the jurist become acquainted with the just as they and to an extent at first accept them just as given. Yet eventu laws of the
92).
exist."
land,
laws,
or
the
question as
to us, make
it
laws
are
"not
absolu
they
but
rather
does
not mean
that
they
are
ultimately
relative
absolute"
as those of nature.
man"
We
observe
77)-
What
comes
from this
pos
choice, can
be
criticized or
evaluated, also
being."
freely
accepted;
95:
a given,
not
"natural
hat."
Cf. Kant, "die Natur, die die GesetzmiiGigkeit doch zu ihren Grundlage Hegel's Phdnomenologie des Geistes, ed. J. Kritik der reinen Vernunft a 216, B 263. But cf. also s Phenom A. V. Miller, Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Meiner, 1952), p. 186; English translation by
6. Cf. PR 111,
Hegel'
enology
University Press,
1977),
245.
72
Interpretation
when we
Further,
source of the
law,
and
know it
as
in
contrast
"inner
voice"
compels us either
to assent or to ob
itself"
case of the
laws
of right
[Rechtsgesetze]
it
should
In
knowing
is
it becomes impossible to
resist
the
is
as
that
it
makes
Even do
the powerful, we
a powerful ruler nore
cannot
so
in the
our
same
way in
to nature. For
may intimidate
actions, but he
cannot compel
the mind to
ig
for
the
question of
Thus,
remain always
in the background in
matters of
right; it is
the standard
what politics
necessity; it is that
against which
finds
When
we
become
attentive
into
ourselves.
thing is
each
is simply that a law is; in the laws of demands that it should conform
the rationale which led to the issue
criterion"
(PR in,
93).
Yet this
consequence
threatens to
destroy
of natural right
in the first place, namely the quest for what is necessary or essen is in a position to recognize the pluralism of laws and duties. To
is in
oneself
is to
move
the sphere of
area
to have their
play.
spirit of
is the
ground of
right,
could
find the
Yet
to answer this
by
the
considering
what
it is in
man's
"natural
being"
that
is essential,
upon which
absolutely necessary drives or impulses? Might there be some basis one could find in man's natural constitution an analogue to the ne One
would
cessity
of nature?
basis from
which
human
choices spring.
Such is the
'naturalistic'
form
of natural right
teaching,
being"
a view
begin
sires, inclinations
of
and passions
itself. This
(PR iv,
approach
begins
itself,
taken as a whole
"our
the "nature of
character of
More promising because it directs our attention to the specific the human, it is nevertheless not suitable unless it finds the specif
77). must abandon
ically
mal
human. To do so, it
argues as
ani
Hegel There
"is
a
drives, for
us,
follows concerning the natural human drives ["Triebe"]. example, for food and drink. To have such needs
within our
necessity
within
nature, is
itself."
One
might then
basis: that
everyone should
not
acknowledging satisfying these needs on a live (the self-preservation of all) might seem
the
essential
finally
needs of
the
Hegel's
physical
"Introduction"
to the
are not the
Philosophy
of
Right
73
life The
but
only needs, there are others which indeed be counted as belonging to spiritual
sociability.
belong
life"
to life
(PR iv,
77-78).
Society,
too
understood
relationship
and as civil so
in terms
of physical needs.
First,
animal
drives
are
limited to
account
for
like marriage,
and
the at
do
so would outrage
"our
feelings."
ethical
Further,
physical
ety
and state.
The
concept of
of physical needs
is too "indefinite,
ab
and
stract"
(PR iv,
as
78).
Hegel
family
civil
society
the givens
which are
which
stand against
and essential. as
the attempt
of naturalism
is
our
primary naturally given, simply irrevocable facts, givens, which it is now important to ex according to the terms
of a
only to the
physical as
which unfolded
necessity and have taken us beyond our original merely The concept of the natural as a precondition of human life in the
not rich enough
natural con
sense
of mere
life is
element of
right, as seen in so
cial relationships as
But the
strongest objection
freedom,"
Hegel
employs
here
informally
although
it
be
understood
us return
preserve oneself
for
survival.
'absolute'
is
the ca
pacity to
age or can
limit
for
self-preservation.
Limits
from
modest
forms
of self-limitation
in
life to
all
friend.7
The
for freedom
"contradic
which
responsible
for
tion"
in the
'nature'
of
man,
a contradiction
that is "not to be
found in that
the human
we
have
nature"
named
(PR iv,
79).
This
contradiction gives
world a
quite
different
ground than
"natural
being"
and
is that
which constitutes
the basis
serving
this
"
. .
as
both making the problems of right and the basis from which we respond to the problems
ultimately
renders
as problems.
It is
right"
so equivocal, since
unjust."8
is
not
free
and therefore
is
neither
just
nor
Nature is "not
7.
Cf. PR
324-28.
cf.
8. PR S 49 Remark; PR i, 158;
"exeundum
connections esse e statu
PR 1, 240,
where
Hobbes'
view with
that of
naturae."
11,
of
Hegel,
see
For
an attempt to sever
St. Martin's Press, 1980). Contrast Riedel, Studien zu Hegel's of Political Theory (New York: Rechtsphilosophie, pp. 66-67. Cf. also Patrick Riley. Will and Political Legitimacy (Cambridge:
tiers
ing
of
Alexander
pp.
Harvard
University Press,
1982),
pp. 180-182.
74
Interpretation
another,"
opposed
to
cf.
whereas
"freedom
polemi
appears at once as
(PR iv,
to
79; m, 95;
1, 231-234,
238-239).
In
and of
itself,
not sufficient
of right.
constitution.
being,
indeterminacy
source of
Is freedom merely a lacuna in natural that lowers us from the level of the lawful
and unhappiness?
ness of nature?
Is it the
human uncertainty
unlike
Is it that
which permits us
Could freedom be
therefore be re
treated as
garded
'in'
nature,
of
if somehow for
its lawfulness,
'back'
and
in terms
Hegel
its
potential
being
directed
to nature, to a
kind
of
harmony
But
as
clear, these
to
gropings
do
not
"freedom does
not want
be
valid
in
but "insists
on
be
ing
the higher
principle."
"The highest
unification with
nature, but
goal of
not as a conflation or
in the form
of nature
as
fact;
rather
the
are
the unification of
freedom
so conceived
freedom"
that
both
built upwards, both are transfigured The natural being of a man must be
to the
by
freedom toward
in
a manner con
impulse toward manifesting, bringing to realization, the freedom forming of man itself. Nature is then subordinated; freedom aims at "being itself by itself,
not
having
equal
form
to
form through something else, but freedom must be this, to make its (PR iv, 80). If freedom is eventually to arrive at a goal, that
itself"
goal must
be from
within
itself,
not
something
external.
of
inherent in the
original
question
of natural
Thinking
which
approached
in
a more adequate us
way,
one
recognizing that
being."
element
in
makeup
forces
move
right
harmony
by
unity which mankind should seek to imitate as best it can. Nature lies before the Hegelian concept of freedom like a passive field which is to be cultivated
the self-activating
dynamism
of
the
free
will.
Lacking
significant
internal
con
flicts,
which
nature
is
unconscious and
on
ahistorical,
while
freedom,
on the other
a
hand, is
constructing its own higher reality, of course included (and in which it silently
reality in
contributes
defining
limits
of
freedom's di
recting monarchism. Nature is law, whereas the spirit of man cannot be said to be law but is a positer of law, also the critic of law, also the quest for the highest law. Natural law is simply there. Law in the ethically relevant sense is inter with the psychology of the human spirit; it is taken to be the potential master of nature, as if it can take the natural up into itself without any distortion of its sovereign autonomy.
twined
nature,'
of
end product of
Hegel's
human
"Introduction"
to the
Philosophy
of
Right
but
75
the striving
social
development, is emphatically
from
a
not natural
a result of
which elevates us
tion which
of
is ultimately
'second
will
nature'
produced
by
for the
sake
itself. From examining our 'natural ["Naturzustand"] man in his naturalness, we learn to see that primitive, unculti vated, original which it is the function of rational freedom to overcome and
,
condition
transfigure. to the
Rational freedom
of
creates a
"second
nature"
( 4),
which
is
adequate
"concept"
man; rational
freedom is based
precisely in
human
of
"natural
man
being"
must sense of
be
overcome
order
to realize the
'nature'
in the
his
essence
76).'
These
reflections constitute
the basis
from
which
Hegel begins to
construct
the
foundations
of
of the Philosophy of Right. The task of the book is the positive one attempting to explore and form the concept of freedom and will in a new way. Hegel does not hesitate to remind the reader that our first impression about free
dom may be that it means license for arbitrariness or subjectivity in opinion and action (PR m, 94-95; n, 58, 66-67). It may seem to many that the modern state, precisely because moving toward emancipation from nature, is a state of freedom in the sense solely of liberation from what was viewed as the authority of natural law. The emphasis on freedom may thus seem to open as many new problems as
it
solves.
the
Further, recalling the argument of Hegel's kind of theorizing which rejects the discipline both
if Hegel's
own approach
"Preface,"
with
its
attack on
of
law
and
reason, we
might wonder
is
subject
is
not
finally
Philosophy
of Right is the
for
an order that
applies
order which
is
self-imposed
by
the gen
uinely free will on itself; it is in fact devoted to showing longs to freedom properly understood. It is the attempt to find
that such an
and
ordering be
or
specify this
gives the
Philosophy
of Right its
systematic goal.
Hegel
will
try
to show
and ulti which
for worldly realization in public life mately in "world history"; he seeks to find in freedom an end or goal inner freedom
reaches out
9.
is
For
lucid discussion
also
Taylor, Hegel
and
Modern
Society,
pp. 74-77.
Cf.
Hegel's
statement of
this view in PR
show clearly enough that the priority of freedom over argument by for the Hobbesian views but was based on the apparent discovery of a flaw in Rousseau. See Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality, Part I. Cf. the re mark of Strauss, Natural Right and History, pp. 270-272, that Rousseau's arguments are based on
Hobbes'
"necessary"
187 Remark. However, Taylor does not the natural drives was not merely a substitute
drawing
a
of
conclusion
from
Hobbes'
by Hobbes himself.
see
For
the priority
also
of
freedom),
Lewis White
Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Cf. also Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant and Goethe (New York: i960), pp. 179-180, Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 45ff. Cassirer's opinion is that in Rousseau's thought there is a tran view in which: "The self is not a datum of sense scending of the psychology based on sensations to a data. It is an original activity, and the only of sense mere product understood as the be never and can not its receptivity, is the evidence of such activity available to man. And this spontaneity of the self,
Beck, A Commentary
199-200.
Divine"
mark of the
(pp.
46-47)-
7.
76
deeper
Interpretation
and more powerful than the commitment to argued can
liberation in
and of
itself.
How this is
be
seen
if
we now
Philosophy
tion the
of of
'nature'
the
of Right. Here one can hope to gain an insight into Hegel's exposi (that is, the concept) of the will the doctrine developed in
"Introduction"
the
work
and
constituting the systematic foundation for the remainder into his grasp of the central practical problem facing that new
and
itself
as responsible
emanci
from tutelage to
we
nature.
"will,"
Before
hear
we
which will
is
( 4), in
the
Philosophy
the
of
Right, before
learn
the
is
or what
freedom is,
we encounter
fol
lowing thesis,
right
which
is
the
initial formal
object
proposition of
is,
of
the concept of
together
with
its
realization"
1).
three
which at
of right.
It is
re
of
the
realization with
co-equal status
(though
not
without
sequence)
of
the
be
real
ized
what
with
the concept itself. The philosophic science of right asks not just for
what
is
actualized or
realized;
which
and
just this
point
distin
guishes
it from
a nonphilosophic
science, in
the
cepts assumes a
a certain
Philosophy
how
of Right
aspires
to teach
'realism,'
least
by discovering
joined,
This
or
how the
gulf
right'
and
will
of
the
is
overcome.
be
in
the
'concept'
leads
is
ul
an exposition of
the
character
Philosophy, he
distinct
says, is
a critic of those
merely
clear and
and which
intelligible form
what
interpret
is because they
with
is. Philosophic
science cannot
an
be identified merely
a critic of
the
genera
tion of concepts,
shows
for it is, in
important sense,
'mere'
concepts,
or
it
abstract concept
has to be
considered as more of a
question
which
the
mind
itself.10 There are incomplete or one-sided concepts to entity in may at first be led. Indeed, these may even be essential in human
development, for
mind or spirit
discovery
of
to withdraw from
from'
every
5).
possible
content or situation
(be it the
natural world or
needs and at
desires), in
be
short,
find
hand (PR
must
But the in
them-
first,
the
negative
of
step, the
concept,
examined
light
Abstractions
by
pp.
10.
of conceptual
and
Modern Society,
29-37,
49-
Hegel's
selves are of
"Introduction"
to the
Philosophy
is
of
Right
77
defects. Hegel's
philosophic science
concerned to
develop a critique
the multiplicity of
theories, those theories which will inevitably emerge when attempts its first steps away from thoughtless acquiescence to
holds that the
essential goal of
is
given.
Now this
science
is to grasp the
core of what
is
in the play
contin
falsity, illusion
applied to
forth"
and so
Remark).
Further,
must
be
thought
itself,
as a cure
for the theoretical productivity that multiplies abstractions but has no cure for deciding among them. Yet Hegel would be misunderstood if interpreted to mean
that we are to measure thought
in
some
purely
external
way
against
the practical,
our
historical
For his
proposition
is
not
selves with
the concept and also with whatever has been realized. On the con
trary, the thesis is that we must know the concept and its realization. The concept of right is that which "has and, further, which "gives this actuality to Remark)." It is a concept which is practical, having the force of a ( i
actuality"
itself"
project,
ceivable
as
if the freedom
the issue
of right
is incon
experience.
which
thinking
mere
idealism,
is that
which
is
capable of
becoming
practical,
as
therefore
intelligible
has already shown itself as practical idea, that is both as having been thought and as
or right
and
is
having
been
realized.
realized
grasp themselves through thought tionality through thought alone and hence
and so
and give
not through
feeling,
conscience, the
heart,
alizes
which
realism
or this concern
for
what re
itself
to
history,
stages
understood as a process
in
in
in
which
the
through which
1
it
proceeds
"shapes"
having
mate
constitute
the various
of concept and
Remark) by
which
the ulti
actuality,
mind and
history, is
of
Philosophy
the
meant
by
'the
concept'
taught, he explains, it is
ephemeral
giving reality to itself. When it is demanded that a science be understood that what will be offered is not something but something that we already know in a way, but concerning which
systematic, orderly, coherent, 'scien
arrangement of what
is already in
our mind.
Not
having
that scientific
on
clar-
11.
of
Rousseau's treatment
'ideas,'
of
the
Discourse
An illuminating
Hegel'
account of
'concept'
pp. xix-xxi.
12.
Cf. PR
21
Remark,
Remark,
343.
78
Interpretation
ity means to know something defectively; the teacher must take what is known haphazardly and then show the wholeness of it, unify it into a coherent view. He must make the "closed circle of a visible. Everything depends on bring out of on the incoherence, ing unity "assembly and arrangement of the essential (PR n, 57). But factors in a content which has long been familiar and
science" accepted"
this is
of course a
two-edged
notion.
For it
offers on
the one
and
hand
an apparent
which
has
long
been familiar
accepte
and yet on
source and
content
is
not
deeply
what
be fundamen inhabit
tally
is
misunderstood.
Precisely
time
is
in the
world we
not as yet
known. Further,
a
we are now
in
knowledge. For in
against
of a
"shameful
decay"
rationalism, whose to
allow
rules
have been
cast
off, "as if
they
were mere
in
order
the
58).
heart,
the
imagination
pleased"
ing
the
The deceptive novelty but the "same old (PR 11, 59),
(PRn,
cabbage"
while what
"science"
which enables us
to
grasp
more or
less
accidental periphery.
Hegel
replies
to this situation
about
with
the following:
old as
its
public recognition
formulation in the
more
public
law, in
the morality of
What
require
since the
everyday life and in religion. thinking spirit is not content to possess in thought
as well
requires to
be
grasped
In
answer
to certain
modern
theories, Hegel
points to
tradition, to
has be
come after
publicly recognized, to history; it is a thesis sure to puzzle or offend. Yet perceiving the surface deference to the existing law, custom and belief, one must perceive the irony. The thinking spirit is in fact not cowed by tradition, the merely traditional
content"
possesses as such no
to possess
authority at all for it, because it is "not the truth in the form of tradition, that is, in this defective be
grasped
form. It just
in thought. It in
law, in everyday morality, in religion? It "publicly looks for that element in the traditional which can be appropriated in thought, be
what
is
recognized"
cause
it is
at some given
level
implicitly
rational and
proper
activity
of
thought, be
presented
here
by
Hegel is
one which
is
(and
be
such a part
is merely external,
remain
shaped at
by
the
arbitrary and transient causes. "Thinking does not given"; "on the contrary, thought which is free starts
upon claims to
out
know itself
as united
in its innermost
being
with
the
(PR II,
60).
Hegel
provides an
with
illustration. "The
unsophisticated
simple
line
of
adhering
Hegel s
then
"Introduction"
to the
upon this
Philosophy
Hegel's
of
Right
its
79
set position
building
he
conduct and
in
life"
(PR n, 60).
that
("Unsophisticated"
is, in
language,
is
'unbefangen,'
a word
elsewhere uses to
modify 'nature':
"polemical"
'Nature'
"unbefangen,"
posed
to something
else,"
not
the simple
by
unity between citizen and thought, in a movement which demands to know the basis
given content must
be
resisted.
Critical
and
thought
has been
and
accepted as
familiar
true; the
nal
in, form, with the end, then, of a reunification, fulness, between the aware citizen and the laws
appropriated
rational.
be
thus transmuted
into,
of
ratio
on a
higher level
thought
explicitly
The
ordinary
experience
is far from
sufficient
in itself
but it is
must
something to
which
thought
must return.
What is first in
given
be
subjected
quality
basis
of
world, a world of permeating tradition. That world contains is true but only when reinterpreted. We must learn to see its truth not in terms of what is first for common sense, nor in terms of what is simply given; the
is
a common sense
what
key
is
rather to
find that
element
which
in it
which
is the
expression
of
free
will
of
freedom
abstraction.
returns
be
a world of
world, to
for far
all of
thought and
as
finally
the
world
in
which
a stimulus
realized
inso
possible.13
attacks
vigorously those
of modern thought
modern
tendencies
repudiate, explicitly
practical world. critique of what
or
implicitly,
kind
harmony
the
A is
certain
tends to pursue an
unending
be effectively established, of every practi constitution. This liberation from the practical world
or could
freedom,
or an absolute
at all
insistence
on
community
ternative.14
times,
to be satisfied
by
any genuinely
realizable al
however, it
it
errs
makes
it
errs
in pursuing
the
world at
abstractions, and
in
failing
hand. It unnecessarily
radicalizes
13.
69-72. Cf. PR
14.
Cf. Hegel, Phdnomenologie des Geistes. pp. 28-31; Hegel's Phenomenology, 216. 146-147, 316-318. See also Knox's note 68 to Consider PR 11, 58-59. 63-68; Hegel treats this theme throughout the
"Preface"
31-33,
cf.
258
Remark,
pp.
on
the
work of von
Haller,
and
141
Remark. Cf.
also
80
Interpretation
first-hand
unreflective experience and
consciousness of
divorces the
from the
world of
thought, the
citizen
it fails to
trine
of
liberation that
can
find
no road
back to has
It threatens to
rekindle
the
state and
thought,
leading
to a repudiation
by
practical
the
notion
an essential role
to play
within
the
state, even
fact built
on principles
that have
from the
Yet the
suppression of
eluctable and
the basis of
ethical
state":
"those
who
here
find
satisfaction more
and volition
(and
of
everyone)
for
which reason
has become
he
sees
It is theoretical, insisting on the importance of each pursuing the truth it. But it is also disposed to yield to a critique of rationalism, on the discipline
a
of reason
is
of the
heart
or
intuition. It is in
"consciously"
way
not theoretical
practical
find
satisfaction
in the theoretical. The possibility that one might in the state ought not be erased by the emergence
complicated,
and
of critical
thought; it is
What is
made more
transformed into a
goal
to
be
sociability.
is
a restoration of
actuality received in the form of natural insight into the basis for this con
scious,
knowing
membership in the state. If this is now the practical question of formulation of it follows: the study of right has to do but
with
just
its
realization.
is,
with of
that realization
it
creates
for itself,
which
must
to
what
the freedom
of
does it lead? Or is
a practical result
quence of
the free mind? Hegel means that we must learn to see the
man and
the
relationship between
project
(ultimately
viduals and
societies)
collectively human and historical, transcending by which free thought emerged in rebellion
world
indi
against the
according to its
own criteria.
establishes the
necessarily
between is
at
the ra
vis
history. Perhaps
what
first
argument
is Hegel's
It tears itself
"theories"
generating dissent
and
Hegel's
"Introduction"
to the
Philosophy
of
Right
81
aimlessly and groundlessly. Hegel soberly defends the achieved world of politics and law against what he considers a revival of sophistry (PR n, 67). But Hegel's
proposition contains another
element,
as
he develops it.
Taking
this
linkage
of
thought to
history
is
with
losophy
tempt to
is its
own
time grasped in
state as
thought
grasp the
something
intrinsically
in
and of
history,
not
more radical
"idea"
rives
not so much
earth as
from
to
come
down to
or
from
a systematic
questioning
groundwork
of
every attempt,
philosophical
theological,
Hegel's opening
ourselves
rational must
lays the
We
is
realizable.
adopt
the limits
of
limits;
worldliness
learn worldliness,
and reformed
basis
of
having
to be a
an
instructed
it. The
aim
is to live
within
the
of
understood
mundane world
in
which
lowering
"the
and
spirit's
idea,"
heaven to
earthly here
tion of the
law,"
and
now, to a
common worldliness of
fact
plus an eleva
mundane
"rationality
of right
and
losing
its
"barbarity
and unrighteous
Philosophy
reveal which
philosophy is to
movement
concluding of Right ( 360; cf. PR 11, 73), is the claims and, ultimately, inhabit. Hegel's
"history"
This goal,
to be the
mutual permeation
by by
its
in the
process of
'idea,'
the
thought.
by
an endeavor of
freely
and
to act on
The linkage
history
proposed
first
glance appear
by
we might
think,
seeks no other
authority than
on
what can
be
by
thought alone.
with
In the
world of
historical practice,
the other
hand,
we must
deal
the limitations of a
specific
authority
its laws,
with
that which
is
not
the
apparent transience of
things commonly
the quest
called
'merely
Hegel has
argued
that we must
replace
for
in the
late the
old
apparent
issue
of the relation
autonomy between
of
both thought
and
politics and
philosophy,
the
remainder of
the
introductory
theses preceding
his
account of
We
read that
[Rechtswissenschaft] is
82
Interpretation
(PR
2).
phy"
It is
"part,"
but only
with a
a part.
the
limitation
shown
which
part suffers
from
not
Being only a part, it therefore has being the whole. Its partness is
a
free will,
and
hence
concern
right, a
concern
developing
from
more
primordial
factors but
right.15
eventuating in the possibility of an intellectual proposition about the That there is and must be a concept of right is not in itself a theme of Hegel's
philosophic science of and
right,
which
is
that concept
is
99-100).
Moreover,
Hegel
to
imply
both
as a problem and a
force only
of philoso
with
mains
dependent
on
this
prior
development; it is
tutelary discipline
is
not
phy,
not autonomous
It is, rather,
caught
is
not a matter of
dependency simply up in the cause of philosophy itself, and its eventual outcome indifference as far as the significance of philosophy is con
an external one.
of
cerned.
To
show
ginning
result,
point
why this is the case, let us consider more closely the matter ["Anfangspunkt"] for this science. That first emergence
the
be
of
the is
a
development
of
philosophy
simply.
It is then
consequence,
of
merely in an accidental way, but as a culmination; the emergence of a concept of right is the "result and the of what has preceded it, and it even constitutes a
truth"
"proof"
of
it (PR
2).
a
The
is
philosophy's own
'idea'
project
'mere'
for reaching
self-
becoming
and not
As
the
"result"
of philosophy,
the philosophic
belongs to the
project
by
for
discriminating
between
is true
and what
is false in
com
mon
reformulation
(PR iv,
100).
There is
end and which
the
circularity to this argument, as Hegel here indicates. The beginning are linked, for the only adequate beginning point is that
produce and
the end;
final
Thus, if
first
we
look
Philosophy
of
we see
an
initially
dogmatic
another
assertion
that thought
leads to its
own realization
which
is also, in
form,
the concluding ar
gument of the
book, namely
The
mind and
history
as the realization of
thought
341-360).
"closed
science
(PR
and
11,
47).
At the end,
but this is
beginning,
one can
it is only
after
having
view is given only within the philosophic science of right. But it is not an item of faith, philosophy proper it is a doctrine receiving adequate explanation and proof. PR I, 241; 11, 88, 112. See Hegel's Encyclopedia, 3rd edition (1830, 234-235, 440-444, 465-482, 483-552, for the placement of right into a of philosophy.
15.
This
for
within
"system"
Hegel's
end.16
"Introduction"
to the
Philosophy
book is
of
Right
83
this
The
driving the
thesis, in Hegel's account, which cannot conventional way followed by the common sciences; it is, rather, presented and then described in all of its manifestations, after which it has acquired determinate
and concrete
result.
character,
and
Hegel's
of
statement on the
relationship of philosophy to his philosophic science define that relationship, is given its particular urgency
with which
by
the
"sciences,"
his Remark to
is
concerned.
The
those modes of
is already revealing; he is independence from philosophy and a central can therefore go off in directions of standard, which, lacking unifying For this is the characteristic own based on unreconcilable premises. their diverse,
use of
the
"sciences"
plural
concerned with
knowledge
which
claim
sciences"
of
the
"formal,
on
nonphilosophic
"definitions,"
method of
(PR
Remark): it
the
science
builds
can then
is the validity of formally necessary chosen because it the initial definition? If it is arbitrarily chosen, or, more likely, implicitly accords with common notions, then the entire structure lacks justifica
a
primary be deduced in
from
which
elements of what
But
tion.
Hegel's
principal example
law."
science of pressing.
In this
problem of a proper
concern
On the
avoid
clarifying first actual laws are the cases where in those contradictory and principles, especially principle. On the other confused and cannot be brought together under a single
to elucidate what
compels
it to
hand, its
achieve
claim
rate aspects of
law into
coherence.
Yet
as a nonphilosophic science,
"etymology"
it
can
only
this
cases."
particular
by deriving By either
or
"by
abstracting from
definition
correspond
to what
of positive right
to the
The
procedure of
this
positive science
is
contrasted with
that of a philosophic
or the
"concept"
science,
which acknowledges
inner
the
mind moves
following
in its
common notions or
from this
which
haphazardly. It is
world
is
given
to
what
is
confused, contradictory
256,
on
and erroneous
in the
in
state,"
16.
where
the state
both
as the
result and
257, 279
Remark,
301
Remark,
302
Remark.
84
Interpretation
notions, and it claims the
right
mundane of
it is
an
activity
is
'in'
history
is
not
and which
in history, but
which
the product
what
immediately
Further,
the philo
'historical'
objection to
the nonphilo
According
to the principle
jected, it is
thority
stracts
apparent
by which the merely abstract was re by the criteria of thought must also be
history,
it
ab
namely to
history
It
from it
positive
law
immediately
thought
exists
to the conceptual ac
world and
tivity by
return to
which we
both
emancipate ourselves
with
then
under
experience. ences of
The definitions
are
first
principles offered
leading by the
rather
than
following
purely
positive sci
law
in
it
a sense
ahistorical, for
they
to the sources of
the
critical
thought
by
which we
have
not
only followed
the
positive
law but
also
rebelled against
and reformed
it.
cept
Thus, the philosophic science of right has as its basis (namely, of a "freedom which gives itself
basis
of
discovery
as
of the con
existence,"
Hegel
puts
it). On
the
its
meditation on
this inner
spring
of
both theoretical
and practical ac
tivity, it then
to this
i oo).
meaning.
notion
concept
"Right"
and,
word
in
our
experience
No merely
definitively
overcome this
is that
the
reformulation of
What is the relationship of this philosophic right to the state and its laws? He law follows from the principle of the concept shaping its own In the
sphere of
the laws
we can
of
laws is
manifest
to ca
the
arbitrary
and conventional.
Precisely
be
cause
the
rational core
is hidden for
by
problem at
hand is
two-fold: there is a
to come to terms
need
with
the
authoritatively the rational core of law, by teaching how to discriminate between the core and what is inessential. It should therefore not be surprising that Hegel's first thesis about law in the (PR Philosophy of Right is introduced as follows: "the right is positive
. .
law there is its source, which is the reasoning law will; properly speaking is right, or the free will, become positive. The law is a manifestation of the activity and development of the will; it is, in principle,
3).
of positive
At the basis
law. The
prob
arises
from the
problem of
penetrating
to the point
Hegel's
where
"Introduction"
to the
will
Philosophy
would
of
Right
85
that this
means a
this source
be
visible.
It
be false to
a view
suggest
mindless acceptance of
the
laws
of the
day. It is
which,
on
the contrary, is
an
implicit
criticism of
the
laws,
though not
of positive
law
as such.
It is
a criti
cism
not
because it becomes
evident
in Hegel's its
presentation
know
not
how,
on
its own, to
make
The laws
to
of the
day
do
legitimacy
by
appeal
authority.
From
law, there is no clarity about the ultimate meaning or source of law. Therefore, Hegel's remarks on law are occupied with a critique of the strictly legal mind. It is only the philosophic view which knows the authorita tive case to be made for positive law. Thus Hegel's treatment of positive law,
and of
the
science of positive
law
(literally
"right": "die
positive Rechtswissen-
schaft"),
is based entirely on asking a question about positive law from within the philosophic approach. From within it, we inquire what is to be found when the takes a look at the state as it philosophic approach, concerned with 'the
right,'
first
comes
to
light,
law
by
the
be
by
of
The first is
recog
nition of ular
the necessity of positive law itself (though not necessarily of any partic
or
law
institution
at
for
the
practical
world, in
laws, institutions,
Secondly,
the philosophic
approach
of positive
law is revealing, that it is the expres to give reality to its reflections on the
life.17
right, to
While in the
or
der der
law
comes
first, in
the or
be
seen as
the
product of
that
which precedes
it,
the
thinking activity
when we
of
the
will.
"is"
But
positive, and
is
thus
in
core of the
laws,
fit the
non-self-evident
the theme of
The laws
seem at
first
glance to
They
distinct
The
peoples.
They
arise
from
practical men
responding to
concrete situations.
right
inheres in them
principles can belong to particular cases (PR only in the way in which general that the right is positive and therefore is in some learn 3). While we must at first
way
at
hand in the
traditions and
laws
under which we
live,
a portion of the
law is chiefly
pretend
a response to
local
exigency.
We
must recognize
the borders
cannot,
of the
philosophic view.
It
can penetrate
to the
essence of
the
law; it
the
however,
to legislate nor
necessity
justify
particular. claim
It
grasps
to the ability
it
relatively
by
in the overall,
dominate.
'expressivism,'
17.
of
Hegel
and
Modern
Society,
ch. I.
86
Interpretation
observations are not
These
edge of
designed
knowl
expose a
"philosophy."
by being only one of the parts of from below by the necessary particulars of positive law, for the details of law and custom belong in a sphere that is the province of the more calculating methods of
a
in
sense,
"understanding"
the
rather
than
The
actual
categories:
(i)
the national
people,
including
develop
the inev
the
the
specific natural
(climatic,
particular
(2)
right,
laws,
will require
ap itself
the
reflection;
(3)
final decision,
that
is, have
the
last
word and
is the thoughtful
response
to the needs and circumstances which will constitute the specific situa
it knows that
in
situations
partaking
of specificity.
But it
cannot presume
to legislate
on each and
every matter. It will not issue a book of laws (perhaps alluding to Plato). Not exactly indifferent to the details of legislation, it rather regards them "liberally."19 To attempt to legislate would be to show a failure to recognize the limits
of philosophic
reflection,
failure to
recognize
be
mediated
in its
multi
the philosophy of
particular
right
for
laws
itive law
ophy.
legitimate
claim to a certain
of
apply to the ex the study of pos This study limited independence from philos
and rules that so
But the
positive
study
law may
go
far
as
to assert categorical
independence be that
philosophic contribution
which
to the understanding of is concretely enforced. Claiming total autonomy in this fashion, it may then participate in or reflect a tendency which Hegel seems to regard as ever more powerful in certain strands of modern thought, a tendency to hold that there
are
It may
fundamental facts
which
of
consciousness,
as
of
feeling, or, in
law
and
simply
must
be taken
arbitrary
premises of
society
and
and thought
for
which no critique on
view
leads to
law
asserting the
rele
inability
vant
18.
19. vide a
cf.
PR II,
see
"liberal,"
PR 11, 71,
of positive
"positives
[book
law],
"that
cannot pro
(PR
11, 94)-
Hegel's
"Introduction"
to the
civili
2
Philosophy
of
Right
87
dangerous) (PR
cause
n,
84;
the
laws
are not
and
(in the civil law, every definition is Remark). Definition is treacherous, it is asserted, be based on rational principle nor intelligibly ordered. The
periculosa"
telling example,
law
was not able
to provide a
definition
a
"man,"
of
for its
practices
(slavery, fam
idea
of
ily
and
property relations)
could not
with an
man and
more visible
only make the injustices Remark). Definition might thus be dangerous both theoretically
would
definition
and practically.
The
exist
science of positive
a critic
by becoming
law may then try to defend itself and the laws as they of rationalist criticism of the law. It recommend may
that
definition be
regarded as
impossible,
on
simply
but
Ultimately,
theory,
the
historical reality to
to
thought, the
restate the ural right not
the
fundamental thesis is
but
of that
kind
of
questioning for
matter
tradition stands:
enforced
to examine the
law,
we
desire to know
only
what
is justifiable. No
custom right
is accepted, it
cannot
be
argued
mind refuses
how widely a law or simply from that acceptance that it is to be contented merely with the given,
of
for law
what counts or
whether a
right.
Second,
to
ask about
deeper
way.
What exactly is that which is posited, posited law? The answer to this question, the thesis of
one:
by
some
free choice, in
positive
3, is only apparently
an
"The
right
timate origin
is positive"; further on, "the right must become of positive law as a whole is that free activity of thought
(the will), altering
our perceptions and
positive."
empty The ul
which
has
the
practical consequences
demands
of
particulars of a given situation by ordering and accordance with criteria that are justifiable to the mind. them in among choosing The polemically positive legal mind errs on the side of the facts, for it has no ten practical
both
of
law
and of criticism of
the law.
ent of
Thirdly, while no course of reflection can escape beginning from what is pres to hand, and therefore from the contingent and relative, the positive science
which
happens to is
prevail
in
a specific
time and
place
of
in that time
and place).
The
philosophic science
right, on the
what
relative
but
emancipates
itself
from it
and comes
back to it from
It
which
am subject
is really does
not
essential?)
in
dium
of
the
issues
of the
88
Interpretation
leave these
beginning points untouched. It takes the common notions which we directly from naive experience and poses its central question of them. It pursues its course by attempting to separate out from them what is essential and
imbibe
to
distinguish it
as such
from
what
is merely
relative.
Indeed, it is
the approach
mix
the
discovery
disorderly
ture of the
which
temporary
and
has merely "historical and that which is justifiable in and of it self; it is hardly anything other, initially, than the emergence of the possibility of this distinction. It therefore emancipates us from uncritical subjection to the
common notions and
is
not
in any
sense
dominated
their
assayer, though
not a critic of
the
proposition
that there
be
common no
tions,
what
positive
law,
It
established
institutions
on
and so
forth.
The
positive science of
law,
the
is
enforced.
cannot arrive at
hand, is bound to limit its thought to independent criteria for ordering what is en
other and accidental. and
merely transient
Therefore, it
accidental, as
pe
finally
presents
bound to
riod when
exactly those
positive science of
law
claims
philosophic or
theoretical questions,
it in
the
realm of
the impractical. But this then also defines the practical realm as one
reason
of
unaffected an
by
because
controlled
by
other
then
becomes
instrument This
purely
contingent response
to contingent and
fluctuating
circumstances.
with conservative of
intentions,
But the
to pre
cure
distinctions
philosophy.21
is
than the
shows
is bound totally to the circumstances; this would mean that when circumstances change, the validity of the law changes. Hegel chooses, not by accident, an ex
ample
having
to do with religion.
monasteries
by
emphasiz
ing
their usefulnes in
helping
serving and passing on learning in barbaric times. But this historical defense also implies that the justification for monasteries disappears when conditions change.
If the function
of
the monasteries
providing education is now accomplished by other means, then have outlived their usefulness and have no present justification.
law by rejecting the significance of rational thought is then to law to the purely disintegrating effect of historical change in all of its superficial variety. The paradoxical result of this supposedly conservative view
relativize the open
To
is then to undermine,
20.
not
institutions.
value"
PR ii, ioo-ioi;
nature."
tory
cal.
is therefore 3 Remark: that which has only "historical Hegel's historicism is one in which it is still possible to depreciate the
of
'merely'
21.
and
History,
and the
pp. 13-15, 314-317, 318-319. And Peter Hanns Reill, Rise of Historicism (Berkeley: University of California Press,
Hegel's
The law
one
"Introduction"
to the
Philosophy
it has
of
Right
89
philosophic approach
to law is one
which assigns
dependent
role.
In its
own sphere
a certain validity.
particular;
they
must par
was
reflect
imperatives
But the
ticular
law
exists within a
larger horizon. It is
by
an
intention. It
"legislation"
Montesquieu
who paved
genu
standpoint."
inely
"its
philosophical
determinations"
For Montesquieu
considered
and
particular
as parts of one
totality comprising
laws
the character of
The "true
meaning"
of the
people, as
ing
it
unity, its
own
stands and
their justification, is revealed in the light of that underly implicit unity (PR 3 Remark). The unity is the idea for which which is accessible only to those who bring the questions of the
well as
people.22
philosophic
to
un
derstand
that
by
has been
usage
altered as a
term,
so
it
now
is intellectualized
of
and refers
in Hegel's
to the concept of a
'history'
thing,
so
the meaning
is similarly
which
redefined.
time" erscheinende,"
that
"appears in
3 Remark;
plane we
and
entirely different
with
find the
philosophic
linked
the rational
thought's
self-
actualization.
Hegel
intransigently
"purely
schools
into the highest standard, as do the positive of jurisprudence. His opposition is not based, however, on
altogether.
historical"
historical
to
objections
the historical
Rather, it is
end, and
a prelude to an affirmative
posited
teaching
is its
about
history
history.
it is that is
which
in history,
what
source
and eventual
meaning
or
finally
seeks to
join philosophy
and
historical"
It is the
element of
the
"purely
which
is the
source of
difficulties for
Hegel. The Philosophy of Right offers a remarkable schooling in the method by which we learn to rise above the purely historical, in order to ascend to that his
tory
which
is
of philosophical
interest because
of
self-
realization.
structure of
This intellectualization
history
dissolves
and
reformulates
the
in a manner de ordinary experience, natural or primary experience, which ordinary through recognition of the force signed to rationalizing activity Hegel denies itself. Thus beyond point to unreflective experience is compelled
the autonomy
critique,
concerns of that experience which
has
not
been
subjected
to the rationalist
which
is totally
absorbed
in the
particularities of
himself
educating it but
with
subordinating it to
'idea-ological'
higher,
22.
more
politics, as
it
were.
Ct
also
see
"spirit"
pp. I42flf. s
Montesquieu'
Philoso
University
of
184. 194-195-
90
Interpretation
of
is
not
Hegelian
is
teaching
which criticizes
in
which
is
ahistorical
but in the
the
name of a
preface
to Hegel's doctrine of
zation of
the
free,
rational will.
He
argues
in the
remainder of
( 4-33) that the will unfolds toward the actualization of a state embodying the full demands of free men. But the unfolding of the will must proceed in and
through the concrete circumstances of the existing world:
it is
mediated
through
the confused,
governed
disorderly
procedures of
the world at
hand,
which are
taken up and
by
reason and
by
no means eliminated.
Despite Hegel's thesis concerning the inevitability of this actualization, he cannot avoid drawing attention to a distinction between the rational as embodied
or actualized and the rational
rational with would call
in its
purity.
Actualization
means a
coupling
of
the
that
which partakes of
the
particular and
the
transitory;
while
he
this
union
the
'idea,'
an
overcoming
tinged
of
is im
possible to
also
with
The
of
actualization of
its is
limitations
the
empirical
("auf
empirischen
Boden, im
Dasein") is
vollkommen"
[PR iv,
isting
with
that
which
illusion,
etc."
(PR
1
of
Remark),
the
realm of
life. If Hegel
elevation of
would argue
for the necessity of this linkage, and the consequent he cannot avoid noting that it remains less than
concerning the
unification seems to
a perfect
harmony. His
proposition
be in
many
ways
the core of the modern state's high claim: that the rational can govern
reason can merge
into history,
it
formerly two, thought and practice, spirit and world, heaven and But the imperfections encountered and even perhaps intensified by this
to be the source of the
modern state's self-doubt.
project seem
23.
3rd edition
of
(1830),
552
Remark,
where
he
contrasts
his
view on
Plato.
On Laughter
Joseph J. Carpino
do: their
nature permits
it
and
the ter
demand it.
up into the
air and catch
Throw
tice
after
baby
him
a couple of
will no
the
more, tune if
when you
first fright, peals of laughter, uncontrollable giggling and asking for he realizes that he's not going to fall. (Of course he will change his
even
we're
involved in
education
having fun.) The initial terror is instinctive, the primal fear of arbo animals, and the happy expectation is quickly learned, but the neural sur
the laughter is repeated each time
precariousness of unless the game goes on and
just
too
long
the
fundamental
.
his
position
is
reappropriated
by
and
he begins to
cry.
man.
Risibility,
meant awareness.
as
By
this
they
must
have
Thinking
We learn
the
all-at-once or stripe.
timeless apprehension
and we
time, in many cases, but never is it angels or of disembodied intellects of foresee. Pure intelli
so so
any
forget,
we are
we remember and we
do that and,
the tradition to
speak.
runs.
They
might even
or told, angels don't; they simply know learn, coming to know as they come to be,
But they
events.
are never
is
essential
to laughter.
"set"
To be
surprised requires a
which
is then
falsified
by
When the
is
breaks out,
and a
kind
joy
splashes are
through
the
organism.
(Sudden
attacks
surprises,
pleasant
the other
slow
hand,
the stuff
of which
heart
made!) A
but
surprise, a
"dawning
grin," awareness,"
if it's private,
can
bring
about a
"secret
same as
laughing, however
much
both may
require a
the contrary
notwithstanding.
Laughter
to be.
Tickling
is
friendly
happens is suddenly not as bad as we expected it poking, comedy is failed tragedy. Wisecracks and
even as expressions of respect. The ribbing are insults uttered with affection and halflisteners and even the object of the ribbing suddenly realize (what they expected all along; we do not kid a stranger) that the hurt did not happen, that an
is
released
insult, the intention to wound, is missing, and their ten in laughter, chuckles from the bystanders (ribbing is seldom done
from the ribbee,
and a straight
in private),
maintain
perhaps a smile
face
on the
ribber, to
the illusion.
awareness comes
Human
in pieces,
have to be fitted
well-known
onto
some
kind
of precedent expectation.
(The
Ahahl
92
Interpretation
effect a new
Erlebnis is in
nected
of a
framework suddenly permitting previously uncon whole, and although a tension is relieved it is not
of
the tension of
fear.)
This habit
anticipation, life
being
what
it is,
soon
be
comes a matter of
completely
unawares.
steeling ourselves for what is to come so that we are not taken But if it all turns out well, if the roof at last does not cave
in, then we are relieved and the nervous system relaxes; and if the relief is sud den, the relaxation is spasmodic. And those spasms may well constitute the ratio
nal
there
pleasure
uted
is nothing rational or even specifically human about them. If there be no in it for them, the congress of hippopotami, for example, must be attrib
of
duty
"structure"
human awareness,
and
fragility
as an
abiding
ately
the
struction must
are
both
essential to
means that
would
de
or seen as a possibility.
immedi
happens (when
absolute
baby
and when we
know it
cannot
happen. If the
im
possibility tragedy is foreseen, or when it has become a reality, laughter is and their impossible. Thus the veneration of professional comics for
the
"timing"
concern
for
precise
and
the unreality of
tragedy
must
both be
given and
hidden in the
they
come out of
graph"
the resolution
by
careless
it,
would
Comedy, it is
and
often
vision and a
deep
moral
concern,
if this is
so
it
explains what
is
also often
with.
Clowns
must also
"clown
around,"
ing
are a
and
home,
we
hear,
and
entertainers, they are paid to please merely because, people. The bitterness of comedians may have a deeper spring. If laughter entails seeing, suddenly, that things are not as bad as they had
and not
But it
fits,
with all
threatened to
awareness
be,
then the
than most of us
ability to make people laugh must have of how bad things might be and
the
require a
deeper
of our utter
help
vi
lessness,
sion and
our absolute
fragility, in
face
.
of that awfulness.
the
moral concern of
comedy
Humor
the
of
the moral as
mor
it does
is
between
what
dimension. The primary form of hu has happened (as bad) and what
way that the resulting
within
realization system.
tension"
might
even
worse!) in
such a of
permits a more or
spasmodic
"release
the nervous
So
much
what ought
But the really primal contrast and the ultimate tension is between to be. The really funny makes a moral point. When
we see
is
and
that
what people
have done is
not
On Laughter
acted
93
through
foolishly
or
a small
and
thus
have
not compromised
laugh, because
noth
is
still
intact.
to be
If "the
order"
moral
were
would
ingness,
about.
then we
have
contrast,
no
thing finally
to be in
relieved
Even the
to be
of
"physical"
pain,"
ought not
and
"we
humiliated,"
ought not
basic
as
they
are
among fears,
derivatives
The
most
nostrum. of
fearful thing, then, is a compromising of the moral order, to repeat a Certain kinds of behavior, most specifically wickedness, put the reality
question.
blandishments
before
us
suddenly
as not wicked
together.) But when the behavior but merely foolish, then we can is
not
laugh, because all is still as it should be. Pomposity, for example, apes arrogance,
pompousness
and arrogance
is
grounded
enough
in
a weakness
(stupidity, if nothing
jokes
and
else)
and
ently
not
strong
to be
wicked and
so we are
safe, and,
within
comedy,
can
when confronted
by
it. Of
course real
pomposity is
occasion
for pity,
as with all
the
lesser immoralities.
are theoretical positions which
There
such
theoretically deny
in laughter
as
relativisms
in
particular
if these
as
indignation
meaningless.
would make
impossible
they
viscera
do
not allow us
to take relativism
seriously.
We fear
possibilities and we
that extent
system.
Ultimately,
of
of
course,
we
such,
and some
the most
precariousness of our
hold
over chaos.
one-for-
fragility
is the
of univocal
understanding, the
between
put
sound and
meaning
on which
Laughter,
constitute the
to
it in
a word,
extra of
human reason,
it may
well
pleasure of a temporal
intelligence,
members of a
its
neural appropriation of
the sequence.
bly innate to intelligent animals, varying with their intelligence and perfectable through training. But music is never about anything, it does not compare or con
trast
possible states of
affairs;
for that,
reason
is required,
and
usually
words.
Music
can
be
sad or
gay
or even
funny
or wrong.
And very
lonely
properly be enjoyed alone, where laughing by oneself is a business indeed. Thus the social character of laughter which, though
94
not
Interpretation
essential to it, is in keeping with the social character of human existence in its derivation, up 'til now or at
absolutely
social
least
"natural"
the
condition.
The
negative counterpart to
laughter
pression of sorrow
special case. usual neural
suddenly realized. Like hysterical laughter at the dreadful, they are an inversion of the reaction and have a law of their own.) Sorrow also has a temporal
awareness
have to be tears, weeping, the ex (There can be joyful tears, but they are a
would
least for us, so far as this loss is concerned. Ordinary pain is present, now, and if its end can be foreseen it can be borne. Sorrow is another thing, and though the higher animals
dimension,
the
that things
will never
be better
at
can pine at
the
loss
of a
beloved
master
(or
even at
weeping is specifically wordless, when "words Animals don't burst into tears at a sudden
wrong,
and angels can't
fail"
awareness so
that things
have
gone
weep
at all.
They
may,
teeth"
in
kind
of anger and
with no
"angelological"
import; laugher and tears imply an anthropology. Laughter, however, is pleasant, and the dynamics of it befit the human condi tion. In addition to a body, to do the laughing, laughter requires intelligence (to
permutate
fragility
laugh.
to laugh about). But it also requires something else, which we shall call the "the
oretical
mode"; a consciousness
we mean
sunk
in
praxis cannot
By
can
intelligence
here the
be
logically
the
rearranged,
have
long
been
con
aware of scious
correlation
between intelligence
to
and a sense of
humor. No
of
human
being
is
so unintelligent as
be absolutely incapable
others and
laughter, joke,
al
but
some
"get the
point"
more
quickly than
sense of
terms of the
"information") necessary
are some
And there
be
totally lacking in
a sense of as
factors,
temperamental
impediments
it
were.
Related to
intelligence, laugh,
tion,
ever
However intelligent
willing to
thorough
fairly
puns
real chuckling over puns in Aristophanes immersion in ancient Greek. Comedy doesn't
in
space or
time, mainly because the things we fear are not all universal; and when and wordplays have to be laboriously worked out with the aid of a lexicon
surprise
there can be no
in the
nervous system.
The
mind concedes
the
joke, but
too much
Ignorance
of
laughter but
so
too can
it. Be it only
who
knowledge
of the punch
times stuffy polymathy or even a real omniscience, laughter is not possible for
out."
Perhaps
friendly
effort,
as with
we
before
On Laughter
go
95
"topper,"
into
our own
but
no real
laughs
know too
much.
no
Sometimes the things feared, the tragedy avoided in the comedy, are simply longer a matter of major concern. Consider the role, in Terence, of rediscov
of parents and of release
ery just
from slavery,
them.
at
the end;
or more
and anxieties of as
"situation up
comedies,"
which with
reality
are so
quickly
catches
"gnoseological"
into play
primitive, is
Slapstick,
"awareness
fall
or
perhaps
because
of
of our
fragility"
moment
its simplicity, manifests most clearly the in the dynamics of laughter. That we can
and
slapstick and
be knocked down, that we can be humiliated for all to see, even children. As we get
become
more are
destroyed, is
given
in
older
of circus clowns
and
less
funny
(the bones
distant, and as pratfalls become more dangerous getting brittle) we turn for our amusement to more
cerebral
essential perception is there, already, in slapstick. Contradictions in terms, paradoxes, and absurdities are nothing less than the monstrosities and horrors of thought, and the mind cannot confront them without
and
discomfort, frustration,
vive
in fact
kind
of panic. and
Sanity
cannot
for
long
sur
in
disorder,
homonyms hint
at a possible
failure
pends.
the
conjunction
But
when after
between meaning and sound on which our thinking de further inquiry, or under a more general classification, the
and
contradiction
not
is
seen
to be only contrast
falling
or
flat
on your
face!),
then the
mind
is
be
at rest.
Now if
is sudden,
sometimes
having
as
suddenly evaporates, the rational organism can relax possible, however wry and begrudging it may be.
Logic itself
of course
suddenly
laughter is
is
never
threatened,
and
in the
even
though
they
confront and re
mathematicians
may be (and
our own system
most of
they
talk about
fragility
which
but only of the finitude of our thought processes. In a symbol depends on univocity, where sound is only a place-holder for
can
meaning, there
be
kind
of checkmating,
few
real puns.
Hippasus
At the
der,
there is also
can
be laughter
wake, but
every
thing.
Fragility
is
a poised
a possibility, not an
event;
and when
the roof
96 has
Interpretation
caved
in,
when
happened,
we cannot
laugh
about
itself keeps
some possibilities
this,"
open,
and with
day
laugh
about
but for
now we can at
only
The
are
ways of
dence
for hope
little
cause
for
laughter Real
as
the box
is
being
lowered in the
indestructibility,
was right about
on the other
hand,
it
laughter. In this
regard
Epicurus
pleased
nature"
by
To
speak
cannot
die.
gods"
at our weaknesses
an anthropo
morphism,
fact),
in
forms
the
misfortunes of
"anguish"
the the
of characters
context
"theoretical."
is eminently
misfortunes of others
world.
is
so monstrous an
inhumanity
Of
to
mystery, in this
can
course
"awareness
fragility"
be
veiled.
Wine
will
do it
almost
every time, but wine can bring its cients.) And besides, the
solves
own
hilarity. (That
by
the an
"indestructibility"
dis
the
into its
head
brain like
mud
morning after clearly signify the lack of even Epicurean immortality. can be appropriated in such a way as to give the illusion Sometimes an
"idea"
transcendence; one can lose sight of one's own particularity in the vision of a cause and be so caught up in its seriousness as to forget, or more properly, to de
of
spise, one's own fragility. "We are as nothing in the light of the
Movement."
And nothings, of course, are indestructible. There is no laughter in crusades. The main practical impediment to laughter, however, is not seriousness but
praxis
itself,
of
the
doing
of
portance of what
function
mary
as
is going on (consider the ribaldries of medical students) but in the level of involvement of the nervous system. Laughter is the pri
theoria,
even
mode of
before grammar,
the
and
it
leisure
distance,
or
own contents.
humorlessness
rhetoric.
of politicians
can
rather,
the
careful
of
political
Politicians
make of
handle heck
and
are
when
they're
funny they
the speaker
his
proposals an object
sometimes work
itself
can make
laughter impossible.
not
that allows
for
around,"
no
"fooling
because
of the
in brain surgery (we hope!), but because the labor involved precludes any relaxation of the viscera (as in a laundry). Let's finish the job and then we'll laugh.
tration required, as
There is
one
case,
and
however, in
which
"awareness
fragility"
of our
is
quite
properly hidden
On Laughter
to the neurones.
where
97
oneself
As it is impossible to tickle
because
we
know exactly
finger is going to go so too is it impossible to tell oneself a joke. People laugh at their own jokes, and can even chuckle as they repeat them
the poking to themselves, but to
surprise oneself
by
laughter only in and in terms of the company of others. (It is also, by the way, impossible to be tickled by one's own children when they are small. How could
one
by such short and lovable, essentially helpless little But in the case of self-tickling, foreknowledge and a contextual here, creatures?) indestructibility go hand in hand to make surprise impossible. In this regard, our
be
afraid of pokings
inability
So
god.
"theoretical"
much
for the
practical
ob
jections to
laughter,
"anthropologies"
which, if ever the viscera were to take laughter humanly impossible. And there are "cos
by reduc
ing
all
laughter to
we
The way
("sudden"
have
far,
rational-theoretical means a
would
and
little time,
time
at
all,
and surprise
less traditionally (you should pardon the expression) understanding of human nature, with mind and body interwoven in experience precisely because neither is a mere function
seem,
on the
face
of
it,
to call
for
a more or
of
of a
"composite
and
nature"
to man
our own
was subject
to ques
even
in
to
thing in
enlightened circles.
But
anthropological
dualism doesn't
it may be for the understanding ("two is the number away, refractory of analysis, never of being"), it is the only anthropology that provides any lever age in explaining the phenomena of laughter.
go and as as
"Platonistic"
Of
course a
Cartesian
or
dualism is
no
help
at all.
mind
to
which a
body
has been
at
has
no more
cause
for laughter
tickling
wash.
Even if
"get"
Cartesian
still
consciousness could
he
understood
in
a nonmechanical
way it
might
would
a
be too
other
pun or even
its
it. And
while
it
it
would
be too
spent
in the
analysis
are no chuckles
in Descartes.
hand is
not without
humor,
although
here,
an
as we move
men Socrates, closely away from the not entered and its to be into, observed, tality for which conviviality is something participants graded, as it were, on their rationality. Not a bad exam, it must be for future rulers of imprisoned souls, but only bodiless men could adminis
person of
we approach more
Olympian
said,
ter it
Entitative
or must regard
dualisms, in
other
because they
the
body
as an appendage to
the soul, as
an
to be
98
Interpretation
first
available
or
in
science).
Monistic
to take the
body
more
seriously
count more
pleasures of risibility.
would
Pleasure
might
as we
say,
Intelligence is dis
neural,
tickling is
neural,
tickling
or
between intelligence
and ration
ality simply mistakes quantity for quality, since the human being's capacity to laugh at jokes is a function merely of the greater complexity of our neural appa ratus and not of any essential differentia. Or so the argument would run.
The trouble
is,
animals
don't laugh.
They
react to
tickling
of
and some of
the
complex"
"neurally
more
in
kind
no
horseplay
(not horses,
of course).
But there is
laughter,
no
giggling,
guffaws,
no characteristi
cally human release in a specific and otherwise useless sound. Materialism is burdened, in our time, with a concept which lute
minimum of
caused an abso
trouble for
Epicurus,
the notion of
versality of laughter in human beings, preceding even speech, is an index of the level at which it would have to have offered a competitive advantage; but there is
no
way in
which
over another.
hunt
and never a
fun to
At most, laughter
be
an
evolutionary
abilities, like
side-effect,
by-product, like
following
upon
development
other,
biologically
more useful
speech or rationality.
But setting aside evolutionary considerations, if thinking is to be viewed as only a kind of calculating, the activity of a specialized group of "command
atoms"
in their regulating
parts, then
most
of what we
perhaps,
so
conceivably be accounted for, even the far as pleasures are concerned, the enjoy
design. There
olfactory
pleasures and
tactile plea
sures.
Why
shouldn't
(intelligence)
can
design,
Thus
display
pleasures of
intelligence;
name
why
not
then a "rational
pleasure,"
reason
being, for
materialism, the
for "great
intelligence"?
But laughter In laughter the
could not goes
mind
beyond the
powers of a
rationality
reducible to calculation.
flips over, it
something
which
it is
do if it
("Epiphenomenon"
just
ness
and
a roundabout
way of saying "the same as"; it gives the appearance but it denominates no real difference.) This kind of language,
of other
"flipping,"
"tricking,"
like "theoretical
modality,"
is admittedly
quite
figurative,
per-
On Laughter
haps
are
99
even vague, but it is not for that, invalid. Laughter should not be there if we but animals, however intelligent, or if thought were merely neural activity. At the other extreme, among the classical anthropologies, Stoicism offers a philosophical understanding of human nature which is dualistic but not
unmiti-
gatedly
so.
body is taken seriously enough to require a certain theoretical the teeth, if nothing else. Here the union of body and soul is not a
The
systematic
isomorphy, but
("restored"
manifold
by
structure,
logos,
have
as
no place
to
be
and
which,
when
finally
able
released
from the
body
they
from
intelligibility
as such.
In
such an
anthropology the
body
is
essential
to
man, but
cusing"
"dispersion"
speak again
becomes
a matter
for laughter in
dren
such a
man, no
essentially of indifference There is no cause delight in the body, no sorrow even at death. Chil
there is for the Stoic himself a certain
stern satis
are allowed to
laugh,
and
faction in the
most
exercise of
his
will
pleasur
is here
are
clearly
a contradiction
and
laughter
the
pointless side-effects of
lack
of self-control.
and
The
universe
is
knows
no
remorse,
which is what, if anything, a proper Stoic does. in reason-ing objections to laughter inherent in the Thus in broad outline the basic extremes of philosophical understandings of human nature. Epicureanism
"theoretical"
permits
it but
cannot explain
it (how
"trick"
themselves?);
not permit
Stoicism Of
can explain
it (as
a weakness
it.
or no one would
for long,
Diogenes'
of
chicken, "Plato's
"anthropologically"
All that
possible
would
be
required
is
theory
a
for the
all
jokes have
entailed
"understanding"
of
but they all do presuppose the stepping back and overview is not a logical operation, it is not the work in the adversative. The is in Kant's sense. Rather, to stretch things just a bit, the
"but,"
"but"
"but"
Reason"
precisely the
primordial rational
function to
which
the "Ideas of
stand as
specifications.
The
"but"
is
sud
denly
breaks
not as out.
bad
as
it
promised
it up, laughter
thought and
reason.
Whatever understanding of human being explains that interplay of in time makes laughter possible and grounds its pleasure in the
body
Sane laughter is
rationality
of
another matter.
laughter, its
is,
would
have to be in function
of
100
Interpretation
nature.
For this
we must move
from anthropology to
Looked
sense of
at
humor in
no
If there is
the central organizing theme of laughter of a is hope, "danger's as Thucydides puts it. hope there can be no laughter. It's as simple as that. And the prob
comforter,"
"structurally,"
general
lem
now
status"
of
hope.
of
On the level
being,
course, hope
can
be blotted
out
by
"appearances"
about
happen to
people).
hope
And it may be the case that in a given course of events there is no or at least no rational hope. The limb is lost, the beloved is dead; there is
about
nothing to laugh
particular
in that
regard.
But these
are
individual circumstances,
being"
contexts,
for the
presence not
in
is
Hope is
effort at
its
roots.
Hope is
not
desire
at
or
projective
thinking"
is
kind
of
kind
of confidence that
things need not necessarily go completely wrong or, a little more positively though
no
we shall survive
somehow.
There is
no
laughter in
In addition, therefore, to
sume somehow upon our pect
fragility, laughter
indestructibility,
tragic.
of
survival,
sciousness
not
The
continued existence of
human
con
kind
of survival to
be
on."
others
to carry
And
as
close as this
it has
served as
hope for
men and na
In
our own
time, unfortunately,
question.
an awareness of
the Sec
Law
Pollyannaism, "survival
only a block to The
to make
absolute
"metaphysical"
species"
of
the
But in any case, for all its basis of belly laughs but
must
question at
sense?"
is
perhaps more
conveniently formulated in
Here
term.
Philosophers know
or
"specialty,"
if
we
may
put
was
it that way, is knowing that hopeful, but his particular he says, in tales
and tradi careful
survival)
grounded,
as
"worthy
hope
and not
in
what
he knew.
Philosophy
is very
and
its
classical extremes
pretty
well cover
the range of
possibilities.
example, with its affirmation of the objective reality of Reason intelin the universe, seems to offer a basis for a kind of hope, via the eternity of
Stoicism, for
On Laughter
101
ligibility, for a perdurance of the rationality of man. But there's nothing personal about it, no ground for any hope. The Logos is not any one of us, it
"subjective"
is
not even
itself
a someone.
Human
reason
has
kind
of
transcendance
over
time;
that
we can
be
sure.
its cycles, will never be annihilated of itself, But the human individual is never anything more than a
through all
of rationality.
fleeting
verse,
mortal
instantiation
than
Hope, for
such a
thing in
such a uni
can
be
no more
just
another case of
shortsightedness,
useful perhaps
for the
at all.
touch"
accomplishment of certain
And
laughter, in
is
such a
limited goals, but with no cosmic significance context, is essentially insane, ontologically "out of
with what
real.
Atomism,
brutal (as
might
be
from
sightless
gent animals
they
day
day
and even
laugh
at
times (al
though there's no
accounting for it), but in the end there is nothing. When Epi curus says, to allay our fears of death, that "whatever is without sentiency is he must be taken at his word and understood to mean that to be is nothing to
us,"
in function
of sensation.
This is the
solipsistic
all
Berkeleian
worm
sleeping in the
heart
For
its
"realism,"
vaunted
a consistent mate
"the
world"
projection,
a construct, of
in
dividual consciousness;
pose
die, "the
universe"
ceases to
be. To sup
anything else would entail an inference beyond the evidence of our senses (which are at once the ground and limit of all that we can know). In such a cos
mology there
can
be
no
hope
at
becomes,
at
best,
one of
the
"natural but
At
necessary"
not
by
reason at
its
pur
be
mean"
no
"salutory
all
provided for hope. (There can is any "ontological in these matters but only compromise, a watering down.) its momentary release, is essentially insane, an unhealthy
wine,"
status"
it
might aid
digestion
but
you can't
live
on
it.
Laughter is insane in
such a view
seen
from the
is necessarily tragic: nothing laughter itself the joke, a mad refusal to is of And the good can come of it. reality then face the horror of contingent rationality. And of course, if "it's all a
inside, is itself
absurd.
Mortal
self-consciousness
joke,"
nothing,"
an
idiot
signifying
is
after all an
uttered
by
a man
facing
Hell.
hand,"
"But
another are
on
the
other which
as
other
there is
possibility
is
wrong, so
far
as
"philosophical
cosm
concerned, but
total-picture-
which might
be
to us
wise, namely,
of
what could
In any case, it's all that's left be called the Biblical tradition. (what
philosopher would a
The cosmology
Scripture is
not philosophical
impossible,
resurrection),
and
102
Interpretation
"members,"
it's
not
Creator
"and"
creation,
can
cannot even
be
connected
by
a proper
status"
for hope.
The very
fact,
to
of
provides grounds
hope,
grounds pressed
reject
down
consciousness
it
out
spilling over, is itself enough for a of hand, regarding it as the very model of
and
logical anthropomorphism,
rejection, indeed
blatant
projection of overblown
a a
in
most
cases, is
disregard
forget, however much he tried. But quite apart from difficulty here, without even mentioning the total absence, in of Scripture, anything which could, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, be
that, there is
"comic
a
relief."
called
In
tradition"
seems
to
which must
be faced in
any
laughter
on
have said, is denied the gods of Epicurus by virtue of their im mortality, their essential indestructibility: they can have no experience of fragil ity. How much more must a Creator God, with all His Omniscience and Omnip
Laughter,
otence and a
just
smile,
much
less
of
be necessarily incapable even of laughter? And if the nature of the "first defines all
thing"
what
Measures
they
don't
make
them),
then
how
being"
could a
Who is constitutionally
incapable
laughter anything more than, at most, property of human beings on the way to God and never of the saved at rest "in the bosom of Abraham"? (A less appealing metaphor, by the way, for union with God, can scarcely be imagined.) And be sides, as a group, Old Testament prophets are among the least amusing the
of
being
in via,
world
has
ever seen
and
St. Paul is
no
barrel
of
laughs
either.
There is
problem
And yet, and yet, when all is said and done, it's not impossible. When once the lion has lain down with the lamb, and after all the tears were wiped away, why
may
we not
expect,
within
hope,
that when it
will
finally
sinks
in
happiness
bring forth,
in
all the
surety
after
of
a peal of
joy
and an ocean of
laughter that
Abra
For
Creator,
that same
as
unblinking God,
middle
name.*
of
ham,
and of
Isaac,
and of
His
*Or just
about!
and 21:3,6.
of c
Discussion
De Gaulle
On
as a
Political Thinker
on
Morrisey 's
Reflections
De Gaulle
Angelo M. Codevilla
Select Committee
on
Reflections
risey.
on
De Gaulle: Political
Founding
of
in Modernity.
By
Will Mor
America,
1983. 210
pp.)
Charles de Gaulle, arguably more than any other political leader in this cen tury, wrote in order to explain the basis of politics. Even before he became a
statesman, he
was a
serious,
such
He
never stopped
on
*
thinking
Gaulle
of
himself in
De
no
book
sought to understand
de Gaulle
as
himself.
The book is aptly titled because it consists of distinct reflections. If overarch ing connections between the reflections exist, the author has hidden them too
well.
Hence,
on
of what
de Gaulle teaches
mixes
and
about political
founding
in
modernity.
The
author so
thoroughly
his
own oth
insight
ers,
this
matter with
the insights of de
Gaulle, Machiavelli,
many
the reader
a puzzle and
Each
explaining
de Gaulle's
major
departure for
made
a substantive
discussion
of a
topic suggested
one and
by
to order
to separate elucidation of
from substantive,
an amorphous
autono
discussion
well.
first
of the
five
ably
But,
a
as
flow
of
quotes
from
variety
sources, followed
by
what appears
to be hermeneutics
for its
own sake.
general
In 1983 the Institut Charles de Gaulle de Gaulle (Paris, Editions Cujas), the
such as
published papers
Approches de la
a symposium
philosophie politique
du
pa
from
held in April
1980.
The
pers
of
bear titles
"The
notion of
the universe
in the thought
of
Charles de
Gaulle,"
"The
sources
Gaullist thought:
in the
nineteen-t
"The demo
Gaullism,"
authority,
cratic on a
dimension
of
"The Gaullist
conception of
the state's
closely.
etc.
The
essays are
high level
of abstraction.
They
do
not analyze
de Gaulle's texts
a wide
fundamental
views on politics.
that
104
Interpretation
also marred
The book is is
a
by
gratuitous, inconsequential
remarks:
Montesquieu
writer on
"much
greater
French
writer."
Stanley
de
Gaulle. "Enough. It is only an aside Quoting de Gaulle that political leader ship draws from the people what they have "of faith, and hope, and latent devo
tion,"
the
author
ing
habit
of
charity?"
or
particular point at
criteria,
tent
almost
any
place
or other.
Of course,
The
depending on
the
of something.
that,
having
so
located
point, he has
established
Moreover,
for example, the revolution in Russia in February, 19 17, was not the Soviet revolution. The editing leaves much to be desired, Nevertheless, be cause Morrisey is obviously perceptive, the book is worth reading.
tual errors
The first
part
is
on
La Discorde
chez
I'ennemi (1924),
of
a product of
Captain de
Gaulle's analysis,
while a prisoner of
of
war,
as
why
Germany
Morrisey's description
planation.
La Discorde
"a
leadership"
manual of
leadership
was not
lacking
on either side.
Quite the
Like every other astute observer of that carnage, de Gaulle was stunned how easily millions were led to make enormous sacrifices. The question that haunted de Gaulle was more concrete: Given such superb material and human re
contrary. at
sources, why did the German leaders lose? As the title suggests, the
solved
question re
itself into:
Why
so much
in
nutshell, is that in
to their jobs.
stuck
Germany neither the political nor the military authorities Any large enterprise depends for its success on a proper divi
refused and
sion of
sive regard
von
for his
own position as
Overman,
the
and
world with
meaning,
was widespread
in
Germany
the
legitimized
altar of success.
No principle, not even love of country, was more authorita selffulfillment. Morrisey agrees with de Gaulle that
of success a
does
succeed."
not
In the end,
as
both de Gaulle
Morrisey observe, society based on no principle but unbridled competitive striving not only risks failure, but is likely to disintegrate in the face of it.
Captain de Gaulle
that that is out
of makes no obvious political suggestions measured avoidance
here.
Morrisey
says
"a
said quite a
for overstepping one's But the lot. True, he had sounded the orthodox theme of
place."
repeated appeals
in the
realm of
fellow
prisoners of war
decrying
the
the waste
high policy, and his lectures to his of life on the battlefield, were obvi
was
ous, pointed
references to
grievously wrong
with
the
Discussion
conduct of
men and
105
between
what
leaders
asked of
be lacking. Though
In the
at
the bot
tom of
society
still gave
charge were
behaving
in
ways
destructive
of allegiance.
de Gaulle
searched
something that
high politics for the reasons why proportionality ceased to exist, at least in Germany. But in 1924 this brilliant young man was not yet ready to pass on his own beloved country the severe judgment he would later pass: for some rea
son, the
people
in
up to their task.
The
subject of
Sword,
a series of
.
lectures to
starts with
the Ecole Superieure de Guerre Major de Gaulle delivered in 1 927 the premise that political leaders in
as well
part general
It
and
by
are
in the
process of
because they somehow naturally plays in them. Morrisey is wrong to say that The Edge "contains not a 'philosophy of (Fortunately the terms are in tary
'philosophy'
renouncing their responsibilities. They do so in don't understand them, or at least the role that force
a mili
quota
life'."
tion marks.) In
cipal point
fact,
political
life. Its
prin
force
to
are
people no
to
others.
The
ob
jective
conditions of
success.
Indeed,
out
men
modernity do not make impossible political and military are more disposed than ever to accept discipline. Yet mere
is
no
longer
sufficient can
to
keep
men
together. De
Gaulle lays
embody
the
leaders
follow to
success.
They
must
objectives able
to
command a
following. But he
Intelligence
knowl hu
way The
cannot pierce
the
veil of
to live
cannot
presence or absence
is
unmistakable.
is Henri
Berg-
Morrisey 's
ited to
erence
treatment of
Bergson,
de Gaulle, is lim
an obscure comparison to
Heraclitus
for
offensive
the
philosopher whose
military books
operations.
always
But it is simply wrong to treat this way held the place of honor on de Gaulle's
Bergson had nothing to say about military operations. Rather, he taught that words can at best describe, but cannot define, living things: "before philoso
shelves.
live."
phizing, one
must
Perhaps the
most
interesting feature
drawn
of
any
organism
is
how it
manages
to
make
grew
older,
and
the
pri
to the
Indeed it
seemed
rope were
surviving.
losing
Hence
for
an
hanging
is
so
together and
of this
de Gaulle's
is
investigation
a people
to do
what
natural, that
is,
106
Interpretation
to live? But
Morrisey
misses
what
is surely the
distinguishing feature
of
de
Gaulle's
political
thought:
its
concentration on
the simple,
primordial problem of
keeping
the polity alive for action in history. The fourth part deals with France and Her Army. This is
account of
not a
book
of mili
possible
her life.
Nothing
reflects
could
history
of campaigns.
The army
time more
finally
because,
how
after
is worthwhile,
about surviving.
How
are
the
forces
and
To
whom
society is do
they
How book
answer?
By
judged? What
moves
it to fight?
adequate
is the
to the
circumstances of
was written as an
illustration
shows
is it. And
the
reader
the courageous
of
but
undisciplined
ar
Louvois
and
the
revolution
led
by
officers who
tence
regime, and of the young conscript troops of the knew that, for the first time in their lives, compe for personal success. Throughout, he touches the actual
sources of
human
How
Thucydides
"polity"
and
Montesquieu
finally
that
Aristotle
calls
or mixed regime
is,
in
which
democratic,
monarchic,
regimes
aristocratic,
in
a concordia
discors. Such
eventually unbalanced, corrupted, as surely as any pure democracy or oligarchy nonetheless sustain themselves longer and (Aristotle would add) serve humanitas better than
others.
Charles de Gaulle plainly thought that in the 1930s his country equipped to draw from itself an effort proportional to the Nazi menace. In the fifth part,
quest
was
not
Morrisey
and
for the
France,"
grandeur of
leadership"
military
continue
that,
while
fighting
with
the
war until
the enemy's
defeat."
But he is
de Gaulle
of
published prior
his
constant
France, which, he supposed, wanted to live, as opposed to France's estab lishment, which did not care whether it lived or not. Let us now look at some
length
at the
judgment
and at
of corruption
that de
Gaulle
pronounces on
France's
es
tablishment,
By
men
the
mid-
1930s
it
was clear
to de Gaulle that
Germany
was
in the hands
to
of
who, however
base,
wanted
victory
so much that
they
were able
see
Discussion
clearly how to
were
107
achieve
armed
forces
were
being
rebuilt
to
achieve as much as
technology
would allow.
However, France's
victory but
upon
armed
forces imper
being
shaped not
by
by bureaucratic
to
atives
irrelevant
to it.
himself
draw up
a plan
thrust
(published
as
Vers I'armee de
He
also
the plan to the country. He made numerous connections with politicians of the
Left
and
and
Right,
and saw of
his
plan
introduced
plan
as a
Army
the
Ministry
wrote
technology did
preparations.
General Weygand
said
new
technology
impor
already had it: "Nothing is to be done, all already Finally the Minister of War, General Morin, solemnly declared to Parliament that the government is responsible for war plans, and that it deemed this plan foolish. In tant, the
Army
exists."
order
to agree
with
against such
illustrious military
decision.
far
to
men, the Members of Parliament would have had to have enough intellectual
self-confidence
to look
at
and make
their own
That
the
would
have
of
required
trusting
men.
testimony
bemedaled
It
would also
have
kind
required
putting
aside
immediately
by
pressing
a
political
tasks to do hard
of people
work and
"nobodies"
against the
they regularly
They
renounced,
large
majority.
chief of
intellectual
honesty
called
office
for
long
he
the
conversation.
De Gaulle's ideas
on mechanized warfare
had
made
sense,
and
wanted
personally.
remilitarized
Rhineland,
a while,
After
listening
for in
Blum
said
lot
more
and planes
was aware of
and the
wrong kinds
countered
were mindless.
province of such
Blum
Ministry
of
Defense.
details? Just before the telephone rang again and took reminded him that the Government was responsible
of
defense. Regardless
how
much or
exper
tise that
Four
involve, the Government had to do its job. later, after the invasion of France was well
occurred which
under
way
and
the
newly-frocked
several
incidents
the political
days'
Paris, General Weygand, who had taken over as Military Commander in Chief, was desperately searching for expedients that might save the situation. De
drive
on
108
Interpretation
Gaulle told him that the remaining French tanks, planes, and a few infantry divi sions should be pulled out of the line and constituted into two makeshift strike forces for
a pincer attack on the expected
failed,
there should
be
mass movement of
Wey
mat
gand rejected
for that
incapable
he had
operated so
outside the
intellectual
proving
of routine was
honor,
and
freedom.
De Gaulle
commander agreed that
immediately
had
suggested
who
stopped
Weygand
should
keep a military for victory made no sense. Reynaud be replaced. But, three days before the Government
looking
burning
in the courtyards, Reynaud Weygand's friends. The
pressure of
had to leave Paris, even as documents were said he could not bear up under the political
French
elites'
attachment
political existence.
into
On the very day that the government left Paris, Weygand, uninvited, burst a meeting between Reynaud and de Gaulle, and demanded that the Govern De Gaulle
objected.
have anything to Weygand asked angrily. Significantly, the reply came from de Gaulle, the most junior man in the Government, rather than from the Premier: "The Government
ment seek an armistice.
"Do
propo
you
does
not make
suggestions, but
It
them."
will give
Of course
to give such
have
suffered a
military
Weygand,
de Gaulle
de Gaulle,
prevailed
because,
official position
in the Government, he
of
was a member of
was not.
in the
sense
they
of
reports
it had become. De Gaulle, like many others, that the Government had an air of unreality about it. Ministers and Mem
most
truly
revealed what
bers
Parliament
interest
groups sought
favors,
of
Yet
none of
jockeyed for position, journalists swarmed this could rescue the French people from its predic
people
because
above
none
it
was
part of
archy
all, the
senior officers of
any thought,
hope,
or
ing
measured
was pursuing its faith in victory, without hav to the Nazis. Most leaders felt
for
what was
could
they
change their
accusing their own ways? The Premier, Paul Reynaud, and the President, Albert Lebrun, could have put in command of the Armed Forces men who wanted to win, but to do so they would have had to override the.
opposition of
chiefs'
fully
many high
high
status than
they
the
war.
Rey
naud
high-ranking
quickly
surren-
Discussion
109
could continue
dered to the Germans in the hope that they before. The French
Parliament had
supplies.
overrun.
people were
thoroughly
confused and
downcast.
They
and their
given the
They
Government everything it had asked by way of military had been told their country was impregnable. Now it had been
who
Their leaders
explanation
had
made possible
the disaster
offered neither a
for
what was
any hope for the future. The that the French people had neglected their Armed
nor
had happened
Forces
have to
and
had
work
diligently
who
for their
discipline
course none of
and
hope
which
which articulate
polity
and make
it
van
ceased
for anything which might compel allegiance. On June 18, 1940, Charles de Gaulle was a junior Minister in a cabinet that had just resigned in favor of Petain. When he flew to London in Churchill's
ceased to stand
plane,
with 100,000
francs
be
one
of secret
funds
given
to him
by
Paul Reynaud, he
hoped
than
that
he
would
he,
to
to continue the
spoke on the
BBC,
same.
though he knew
a
he
was
committing
names than
flag
which
bigger
his
would rally.
Indeed de Gaulle
asked
immediately
the
contacted
them to
continue
fight,
In his
of
second speech
from London he
North Africa,
was
by
All
to no avail.
citing him in the same breath as the founders of the Empire. Nogues remained faithful to Petain, while the few governors
who
Catroux,
were so
were unable
bring
their
them.
de Gaulle himself be
alone,
and
able to so.
distraught to be
job that
others
had
shunned
did
not
de
governance of not
France,
was
there,
undone,
demanding
title or the
reputation.
He is the
one who
necessarily the one with the actually does the job of leading the
is
from London, from the very first, were variations country. Most of his abandoned France, left her at the on a single theme: France's government had her not just of freedom but, more important, of hope.
speeches
Nazis'
mercy,
depriving
But France
can
must not
good
hope
of victory.
do
victory.
Above
all
it
alive.
to
He, de Gaulle, is speaking for France because do so. He is speaking on behalf of honor, good
third speech, right after
is in
a position
France. His
Petain
signed
the
Armistice, is
perhaps the
110
most
Interpretation
will
somebod
s got to
say it
good
(emphasis mine),
Frenchmen."
shame,
said
what
in the hearts
of
France, he
are
".
knows, feels,
better
au
by
the Bordeaux
Government."
in the
world
forces
day
will arise
ideal,"
Meanwhile,
French soldiers,
which, togther
there must
wherever with
be, he
said
"an
"a
hope."
He then
promised
they
might
be,
that together
restore
they
would
build
the
army
liberty
to the
world
and
greatness
to the
Fatherland."
Again
and again
referred
to himself as someone
of
doing a job
which
has to be
done, doing it only because in fact he was doing it. worthy though The people in Vichy, they had titles, were not doing the job implied by those titles. On June 26, answering a nationwide speech by Petain, he said,
and that
he
was
"Some
A few This evening that voice will be had the duty of wielding France's sword have On October 25, 1940: "Free French let if fall, broken, I've picked up the He had men! For the moment France is us. The honor of France is in our
voice
has to
answer you.
since
those
who
hilt."
hands."
wanted to live, it would rally to those who represented immense turmoil, only those men count who know how to France's great think, to want, to act, according to the terrible rhythm of to see the whole world sink because chiefs anxious "[are] they them military no
events."
selves
have
"
sunk
(August
22).
De Gaulle knew
and argued
that,
by
agreeing
resigned
to subordinate itself to
Nazism,
and
a whole
its
right
to lead France. A
new one
men"
did
arise.
Colonels Larminat
and
Leclerc
over
the French
Congo, Cameroon,
A
not
Chad respectively
their authority.
on
revolution was
occurring throughout
metropolitan cast
He had
deprived the
elites of war
They had
to
reproach
de Gaulle because
Perhaps if he
illustrious French
personages
had
joined the
movement.
were
less rigid,
alliances could
be
made.
De Gaulle
freely
acknowledged
terized as extreme.
But, he
such
pointed out
as well as
to the
British Prime
Minister,
of
authority
as
he had
unwavering
promising any
France's interests,
people who
either
in favor
in favor
with
of
"get
along"
ting
bubble
or
with would
had
not
compromised
themselves
of who
Vichy, his
were
his friends
because
of the
favors he
own
could give.
what
represented, in his
person,
Rather, they followed him because he they wanted for their country. The moment
he
compromised
his
moral
was
propounding, he
would
authority or the integrity of the view of France that he be literally nothing. Indeed, de Gaulle was openly
Discussion
scornful of
-111
being unadorned
his French
and
by big
British
names.
Recalling
Revolution, he
Alas,
lose
reminded
audiences that
"France
with
its
wars with
General
Marshal de
had
proved
beyond
preferred to
their own
kind than to
ideas.
moral and
Why had
intellectual
How How
reasons.
of men with no
Above all, perhaps, the regime had fostered the prominence faith except in their wallets and no law except their own interests.
the problem
which
Nazi
Germany
side"
posed?
pect of
they lead a fight for liberty if they did not love it? What military leaders "whose sword does not burn at their
and other areas
could one ex
when
Paris,
Strasbourg,
gone at
are enslaved?
not place
Intellectually
astray because
see that
was
"they
did
hand,
victory."
the problem of
They
failed to
"directness is the
greatest
By his
own
standard,
de Gaulle
primer on
the basics
of political
life. In
August 1944, Dwight Eisenhower and Franklin Roosevelt, not to mention Pe tain, Weygand and Laval, learned firsthand what political founding in modernity
could mean when new regime was
Charles de Gaulle
baptized
walked
and a
literally
is
by
the
joyful tears
Frenchmen.
Yet
was so
and this
the first
de Gaulle founded
it,
while
Republic,
ul
timately
ings
him
aside.
More
significant
for
purposes, de
Gaulle's
writ
they
nearly so enlightening about the essential details of political life as about the fundamentals. The Memoir es d! espoir, which cover the period
1958 and
between
and the of
1969
and
deal
with
de Gaulle's stewardship is
an
of
French society
French
State,
works.
are not of
de Gaulle's
We
Why they
tual and
of
answers.
De Gaulle
the State. It
a
is
an
one, to
reduce
to
kind
of
worship
the State. He
literally
as a
subordinated
that one,
in terms
of
dealt
with
the Algerian
war
primarily
to
threat, to the
cohesion of the
State,
even though
doing
so
involved cutting
to giving
body
politic,
and accept
ing
defeat he had
vowed not
accept.
Hence also,
the label
inevitably, he
a
translated
his strong
process
commitment
in France into
laborious
liberalism."
be described
to
note
by
"interest-group
more
Morrisey
thinking
is
quite
correct
that nothing
is
foreign to de Gaulle's
the Fifth Republic
liberalism.""
than
"interest-group
Yet
observers of
112-
Interpretation
admit
that
(including de Gaulle and Malraux in Les Chenes qu'on abat) invariably its day-to-day business consists of nothing else. De Gaulle concentrates on founding rather than on maintaining regimes Morrisey
has
served political
in
our
times. But the truths and errors he writes on both subjects are all worth pon
dering. bright
theory
of
well
carefully, is worthy
Reflections
on
De Gaulle:
Reply
to
Codevilla
Will Morrisey
The initial
called
The
account of
de Gaulle's
are
founding
is
of various
writers a
too
of
thoroughly
from
own
variety
sources, fol
lowed
by
what appears
to be
sake."
juxtaposition,
not mix
The tenth chapter, for example, begins with a brief survey of five kinds of political foundings as described by several writers, most of them philosophers.
next section contains an account of one
The
kind
of
founding,
what
is
called
the
"ancient"
founding;
of and a
number of
Plutarch's insights.
States)
a
"late
modern"
final
founding (that of the founding (that of the Soviet Union). The fifth briefly summarizes de Gaulle's first attempt to
the previous chapter. Be
there should be no
"modern"
found
cause
regime,
an attempt
thoroughly discussed in
Founding
in
Modernity
(titled "Po
on
reader will
Memoires de guerre") and to the rest of the not find the "overarching connections between
"hidden"
"hide"
about those con explicitly stated. But there is nothing nections. Readers accustomed to studying writers who really do things will find Reflections on De Gaulle quite simple and direct.
There
marred
by
gratu
remarks,"
The
offend
ing
passage
may be found
chez
on page
3, in the third
paragraph of the
first chapter,
"La Discorde
.
I'ennemi (1924)":
causes
discretion
the young
French
officer
to
analyze
failures
of
ership; two
centuries
before,
a much greater
French
writer commented on
by
imagining
rate
Persian
society.
Fiction
gave
Montesquieu
flexibility,
than a
recent history, allows himself no more many parallels. De Gaulle, using history, few hints. Nonetheless, because he whets them on history, those hints have points
sharp
for
those who
pride
themselves on realism.
example.
not announced as
if it
were a
discov
The intent
and
should
be clear; the
while
author
introduces
a comparison
between de "two
soci on
Gaulle
Montesquieu
insisting
on a contrast.
If the
sentence read,
centuries
before, Montesquieu
reader could
commented on
France
by imagining
put of
Persian
the
author
intends to
a
de Gaulle's book
kind
belief well
prevented at
114-
Interpretation
the outset of
er's
any book. It is not gratuitous to do so. At the same time, the read attention is drawn to the Frenchness de Gaulle and Montesquieu share.
'Germany'
'France'
particularly
major
quential.
will
be
is therefore
highly
conse
the best
writer on
de
Gaulle."
The offending
writes
passage
on page 113,
in the
ninth
chapter, "Memoires de
guerre
(1954,
is
Stanley Hoffmann,
and
that 'ulti
guerre
mately, the
great political
leader is
educator,"
an
"
that Memoires
de
rulership.'
'essentially
It is
treatise
on
inconsequential to
refer
the
reader
to a good scholar
who writes on the subject at hand, and to say that he is the best scholar who writes on that subject. The paragraphs that follow contain a description and as sessment of
Hoffmann's interpretation
that the
reviewer
of
scholar"
"the best
writer on cannot
de
Malraux, for
as a
be described
de Gaulle
(3)
"'Enough. It is only
aside.'"
an
The
reviewer quotes
again,
out of
context
(1932)."
De Gaulle
refers
'in
passing'
telling
Nicho-
machides
leader
was unimportant
be in
cause a
dishonest
incapable
citizen would
be
no
different than
Three
a skillful and
conscientious
m.iv).
paragraphs
Reflections
on
devoted to the
consideration of
de Gaulle's
evi
dently
deliberate distortion
Xenophon's
an
story.
The
a
paragraph
following
those
paragraphs
begins,
"Enough. It is only
aside, if
one."
fascinating
line
of
This lets
re
nor
argument,
nor
the interpretation of
it,
seriously
regarded as gratuitous
inconsequential
by
a thoughtful reader.
(4) "Quoting de Gaulle that political leadership draws from the people what the author inserts in brackets, they have of 'faith, and hope, and latent Some reviewers have no sense of humor. De Gaulle did. 'What, no Moreover, a statesman's relationship to certain Christian virtues can be quite
devotion'
charity?'
"
consequential.
The third
chapters, sections,
"the annoying habit of dividing texts into to locate a particular point at the center of
that
other."
something
most
or
The
reviewer contends
"depending
on
the criteria, al
any
place
is the
"divide"
middle of
something"; to
a text this
of medieval
way in
an at
importance"
"smacks
num
One
should
note,
however,
parts that
the texts
into any
not establish.
The
or
central pas
determined, intentionally
not,
by
de
Discussion
-115
Gaulle. That "almost any place is the middle of is as true as it is triv ial because the reviewer overlooks the fact that de Gaulle himself determines the
something"
"things"
as
Writers before
books
with
To know that is
remind
writer.
to succumb to a mere
As for de Gaulle, I
much greater
should
the
reviewer
French
to
This does
de Gaulle is
On the degree
which
de Gaulle is artful,
notes with
the reader of
his books
wishes.
comparing
my
commentaries
if he
The
reviewer next
book, criticizing the interpreta Le Fil de I'epee, La France et son armee, I'ennemi, briefly, Memoires
the
d'
Memoires de
cism reflects
guerre
and, very
espoir.
In
each case
the criti
impatient,
superficial reading.
On La Discorde book
as
chez
I'ennemi,
reviewer questions
history (quoting much as a history as a manual of Quite so, was not lacking on either
side."
it in full) "a
of the war
[World War
I]
meant not so
leadership"
(p. 3). He
observes that
prudent
but moderate,
de Gaulle
clarifies
this,
and
his intention,
by
writing that
in its
modest
This study
will attain
its purpose, if it
contributes,
measure, to
bringing
our
ous models
military leaders of tomorrow, according to the examples of their victori in the recent war, to molding their esprit and their character after the rules
of classical order.
will
imbibe that
sense of
equilibrium, of what
and
is possible,
of measure
render
durable
fruitful
the
works of energy.
The
Nietzscheism
of
the Ger
Bergsonism
of
it
that
de Gaulle's
account of
leadership
clear
begins to
make
this
in the
concerning Montesquieu.
On Le Fil de I'epee,
contains a
the
reviewer claims
"philosophy"
military
requirements
and not a
is wrong to think that the book "In fact the book "philosophy of
that it
life." life"
is
about
the
for
life."
political
Obviously,
of
"philosophy,"
not
the
on
same as a philosophy, or a
"philosophy"
is
writ
does not preclude writing on the requirements for military de political life. Le Fil de I'epee is primarily a book on military leadership; Gaulle distinguishes military leadership from political rulership in the final chap
ing
ter. The
author of
implications
of
de Gaulle's
military
leadership
central concerns of
of
Bergson,
outside of paraphrases of
de Gaulle, is limited
116
to an
ence
Interpretation
to Heraclitus and to an identification
with
obscure comparison
the prefer
for
operations."
offensive
military
and
appendix con
sists of
cisms
approximately
criti
of
Bergson,
says
de Gaulle's Bergsonian
that
Bergson
trusts that no
one anything directly concerning military operations, one denies that Bergson's writings were in vogue among French
and
military
War."
leaders,
at
The
reviewer claims
because
of
this
alleged neglect of
Bergson, "Mor
political
risey
misses what
is surely the
in
history."
distinguishing
feature
of
de Gaulle's
thought:
its
for
concentration on action
keeping
ity
alive
In this, the
reviewer's
de Gaulle
most
reflects
viewer's version of
Bergson,
who
ture of
any
organism
is how it
manages to make a
living."
"primordial"
de Gaulle
with
concerns
only
with
the
problem of
but
surviving: grandeur.
If de Gaulle
concerned
himself mostly with the primordial, he would hardly deserve any thoroughgoing attention. De Gaulle insists that survival alone is not enough, even as he spurns
utopianism.
That
simultaneous
"leaders"
insistence
of
and
this century.
On La France
stract, scarcely
"reflection"
et son
is disappointed
by
the
"Morrisey's
"colorful"
ab
relevant almost
text.
But
reflected,
not so much
necessarily emphasizes the outlines of the phenomenon its colors; it abstracts from concrete particulars. As for the
passage quoted
relevance of these
reflections, the
by
the
reviewer refers
to both
for
survival
both
French
the interpretation of Me
de
guerre.
In the fifth
quest
part
Morrisey
while
says
that the War Memoirs "chronicle the Gaullist that France's defeat "corrupted the French military
for the
France,"
grandeur of
leadership"
and
war until
that,
fighting
But
the enemy's
defeat."
continue
the
The
"the
corruption of
France's
unable
leadership"
is "a
constant
theme"
de Gaulle's
pre-1940 writings.
He is
to provide
a single exam
shows, as Reflections
on
France's military leadership prior to 1940. He De Gaulle shows, that de Gaulle regarded the French
military "Great
leadership
as
during
the
and a too-passive strategy thereafter. De Gaulle implies that the French military leadership envy men of character and lack the ability to (as the reviewer describes Weygand) step "outside the intellectual framework in which
War"
Discussion
-111
[they] had
made
long."
operated so excellent
But de Gaulle
writes
an
second-in-command,
place
that political
Gaulle
shows
de
As for the
leadership, de Gaulle
in
much
They
on
Nazi
One may therefore say that de Gaulle hints at some corruption of on De Gaulle makes this clear, too.
To
my's
write
Laon]
defeat,
France's
defeat,"
is simply to
to
de Gaulle's
own
account:
I felt
myself
beginning infinitely
that,
much space until
borne up by a fury without limits. Ah! It's too stupid! The war is badly. It is therefore [!] necessary that it must go on. There is, for
world.
in the
If I live, I
shall
fight,
wherever
must, as
long
as
must,
the
enemy is defeated
1954,
p.
All
that I
have
managed
L'
to
do
43.)
To
remark this
is,
of
course, not to
imply,
as the reviewer
tions on
ever
De Gaulle
implies,
was
"in
question."
The book's
by
almost
with
commentator on
it is
the same
substantive or
literary
quality
the
rest of
de Gaulle's books.
Why
book.
[it
is]
not
is
an
important question,
about which we
This is
not surprising,
inasmuch
as
Morrisey
finds Memoires
d'
espoir equal
to
much else de Gaulle wrote, allowing for its incompleteness. The style "excites us less than that of Memoires de Morrisey writes, but he does not suppose
excitement a
necessary
effect of quality.
The
reviewer
d'
suggests
an explanation
of
Memoires
espoir.1
He
claims
that
it is "not
much
an exaggeration
to re
duce de Gaulle's
patriotism
of
worship
of
the State. He
literally
subordinated
every
political good
in terms
of
it.
1.
For
fuller discussion,
see
Gaulle,"
in Statesmanship: Essays in
Carolina Academic Press, 1981), Honor of Sir Winston S. Churchill, Harry V. Jaffa, ed. (Durham: book on de Gaulle, The Lim Codevilla's written was Codevilla pp. 2 1 3-233 At the time this reply to not appeared. had Charles de Gaulle, The Grandeur: its of Statesmanship of
.
118
Interpretation
reviewer overlooks or minimizes grandeur.
Even in his
that "All our
most
His
tory is the alternation between the immense sufferings of a dispersed people and the fecund grandeurs of a free nation grouped under the guidance of a strong
state."
The
state
is
not
the purpose
of
grandeur,
The
reviewer claims
mitment process
to giving
by
the means of
'interest group
nothing is
liberalism.'
is
more
"interest-group
Malraux in Les Chines
consisted of
Yet
observers of
)2
(including
de
Gaulle
and
qu'on abat
invariably
admit
that
its day-to
business
nothing
else.
Here the
much of
reviewer confuses
Gaulle's
complaints that
his time
'standard-of-living'
merely economic,
"participation"
issues
and
he
called
association of and
technology."
labor,
capital,
and
In economics,
interest-group
liberalism
"participation"
in that both involve profit-sharing and con involved in a given enterprise. Eco
"participation,"
the extent
contrary to the reviewer's claim, was not implemented to de Gaulle intended. De Gaulle proposed it as a way to overcome the
defects
a
of interest- group
of
executive authority.
economics and
rejected parlia
de Gaulle's
entirely
partial
he
The final
chapter almost
concerns
theme.
As
acknowledged
at
the
Socrates
sent
gets the
legal code to a country house bring from the city, a book reviewer can bear words describing new discoveries (if not revelations). Whatever disputes may arise, I can only be grate
Like
a messenger
removed
from God
to
hold far
ful to Angelo Codevilla for his closing benediction. One might wonder Gaulle would think of the characterization, "a bright man who wrote
what
de
caref
One
prefers
of
his
reflection
(what
Chateaubriand
the
intelligence
of greatness of soul).
2.
It is important to
observe
qu'on abat
panded,
forming
also
part of
La Corde
les
souris
(Paris:
Gallimard,
1976), the
his
'anti-memoir,'
important
new section on
de
Gaulle. See
ton, D.C.:
Malraux: Cultural
Founding
in Modernity,
Washing
University
America,
1984.
Book Review
Nino Langiulli
St. Francis College, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Philosophy
Press,
and
the Mirror
cloth,
of
Nature.
Rorty. (Princeton
University
When
you offer
him
your answer
in
such
terms, if you
at your
speak of
in
mirrors or
in sculpture, he
to
will
laugh
words,
as
He
will profess to
know nothing
what can
confine
his
question
be
gathered
from discourse.
Plato, Sophist,
when
240a
Every
realm of nature
is
marvellous: and as at
Heraclitus,
the to
came to visit him found him warming himself tated to go in, is reported to have bidden them
hesi in that
not
kitchen, divinities
were present
Aristotle, On
[quoted
by
I
The ophy
that
principal argument of
philos
as
be
either
diminished
or abandoned so
and a
genuine
Philosophy's,
not
fortiori
the philosopher's,
wedded
claim
be
the
cultural
overseer,
is
to two interrelated
"delusions"
(my
word,
and
notion of
justifications
or
principles.
The initial
notion of
is formulated in
a variant
in the
course of
knower
of essences.
The
is likewise alternately
the notion of
philosophy as essentially ries, it would seem, a step further, indeed toward the final step, the
"elimination"
concerned with
enterprise
tion."
known variously
as the
of metaphysics or
its "destruc
The
and
Wittgenstein
come
readily to
mind.
But
so
do those
the neo-scholastics
Gilson and among whom we might mention Cartesian and post-Cartesian accounts of the concept, the argument is consonant. The target of Professor Rorty's book, however, is not just a part of philosophy,
that
Maritain
is,
metaphysics,
but
whatever residue
120
Interpretation
understood as
self,
epistemology (or logic) which is the target, that is, philosophy it it has developed in the West, and as Rorty understands it. The argument resembles Michael Oakeshott's withering criticism in his essay
as of a rootless
theoretical
reason as
the
proper mode
to
un
resemblance even of
Rationalism."
This spring is a doctrine about human knowledge. That some such fountain lies heart of Rationalism will not surprise even those who only know its surface; the riority
of
at
the
supe
the unencumbered
intellect
lay
could reach
more,
and more
man and
ideology
over
the tradition
lay
in its
its
demonstrability. Nevertheless, it is not, properly speaking, a philosophical of knowledge, and it can be explained with agreeable informality (Rationalism theory in Politics, London, Methuen, 1981 reprint, p. 7).
and
philosophy
alone.
His
concern
is
with
the mis
theory
to politics and
with a corrupted
form
which
he
maintains
philosophy to be. Rorty, on the other hand, if I have understood him cor rectly, is more profoundly radical. His criticism is of theory itself and it extends
fact,
as
phi
losophy
thereby
he
itself. He
urges
reasoning
as a and
species of practical
reasoning (phronesis),
technology (techne),
the very
modern philosophers
criticizes
in
The book,
ness and
native.
however, is
of
acuity
Rather, it is
philosophia
daring
in the
liberation from
philosophy's
enchantments
and
est
Catonic
call
tion
delenda
so that what
the author,
borrowing
speaks of as
"the
mankind,
conversation of
free from
not
and, if possible,
controversial own
For
only to be read but to be reread, grappled with, not only is its main argument challenging and
subarguments are all worthy in their for the way they cling to the principal assent from the reader. All this is achieved
in
a profound
way
of
attention,
even of admiration
importuning
For, although the author candidly admits as part his training his use of the vocabulary of contemporary analytic philosophers, he draws inspiration for his arguments from a wide range of philosophical writ
of parochialism. of
hint
ers.
He
aims
his
criticisms, moreover, at an
equally
wide range of
writers,
meth
ods,
and
postures,
including
especially
from
which
he
stems.
Book Review
The
121
body
of
the book is divided into three parts which are entitled "Our
"Mirroring,"
Glassy
Essence,"
"Philosophy."
and
vention
of
the
"Persons Without
Minds,"
'Theory
of
Knowledge,'"
Psychology,"
Hermeneutics,"
the
"Privileged "Epistemology and Empirical "From Epistemol "Epistemology and Philosophy of and "Philosophy Without The introduction and are fairly accessible in style and content to the educated reader other chapters require familiarity and patience with intricate and
Language,"
Mirrors."
Representations,"
sometimes as of
prickly
philosophic argument.
There is
a minimum of
jargon
as well
of analytical philosophers.
The two
quotations
are taken
Bemerkungen
and are
priately If the
appropriately finishes.
would seem
towards whom it
once
is directed, in
view of
its logic
and
Husserl
described them, those who learn "to know the despair of one If Rorty's argument is misfortune to be in love with
said
who what
has the
I have have
philosophy.
it is
and
if it is sound,
been
averted
Actually
The
than with
philosophy.
much a matter of
it simply
the
and
interpretation
book is to
undermine
reader's confidence
in "the
mind"
as some
as some
"knowledge' "philosophical"
thing thing
have
to
a
"theory"
view,
and which
in
"foundations"
be
has
and
in
"philosophy"
as
it has been
conceived since
Kant (p.
7).
Nor is it
a matter of
should read
"since
Plato,"
interpretation to say that the last two words of the quotation since the object of Rorty's criticism is not just modern
entire tradition of
Western philosophy
after
the
Sophists,
not
as
an unambiguous statement
found
on page
157
makes clear.
He does
suggest,
however,
has
that the
history
of
philosophy
should not
be
studied.
archaeological
use, inasmuch as
it illustrates,
what
icist
philosophy itself.
cannot nature.
If the
help
con
Mirror of Nature is
political
in
If he like
seriously
what
throughout the
"copes"
book is talked
instrument
by
with
a conclusion recurs
like
insistent
refrain.
Take the
It is
following
passage as an example:
so much a part of
"thinking
truth that
to be impressed
with
acter of mathematical
it is hard to
shake off
the
grip
of
If, however
we think of
"rational
as a matter of
victory in
122
Interpretation known,
we shall
look toward
our
we
interlocutors
think
of our
rather
than
to
our
explanation of
the phenomenon. If
certainty
about
ments on such we
will
find it
from
which
to
explain
by
the
relation of reason
to triangularity.
Our certainty will be a matter of conversation between interaction with nonhuman reality (pp. 156-157).
with
political character of
the
we
book, in
have here
that to
the
subservience of
logic to
rhetoric
is transparent. What
is
an echo of the
political and
On
page 368 we
read,
with respect
and
Wittgenstein,
whom
that
at
They
hammer away
than
the
holistic
point
from
other
words rather
by
virtue of
their
representative
character,
and the
from the
them
rather
transparency
It
would seem
to the
real.
various sorts of
religion, not to
with
discourse,
human
voice
"coping"
ways of
in "the
mankind"
conversation of
"doorkeeper"
and
reality (p. 375). Philosophy is but one "symponot, as Oakeshott put it, the
siarch,"
"arbiter"
or
(p.
391 ).
systematic philosophy will be revi Or it may be that the image of the the way of the medieval image of the
"mainstream,"
and
by
some
Kant
offered
revolutionary is about to
genius.
go
If that happens,
even as
"justifications"
the
notion of
philosophy
providing
juris
about
or
culture, or as adjudicating
plines
quaestiones
the
proper
domains
disci
(p.
394).
Although
about
which
Rorty
does
not
develop
the point,
he does
hint
the intimate
connection
is
at once aristocratic
between philosophy and classical antique virtue, and republican. This connection must be, for Rorty,
the correlative
of of a
the
hierarchial
or
der in ontology
and
epistemology
which
is the butt
Rorty's
arguments
in the
middle chapters of
have to be insupportable
readers will
from ited
democratic-egalitarian-pragmatic
Some
someone so
deeply
own
impressed liberal
by
pragmatism,
Rorty is,
can give
commitment to
education
"useless"
kind
thing
sake which
and which
is unmistakably hierarchical and aristocratic in is in mortal danger. His exhortation, therefore, in the con book
must
cluding
sentence of the
be
regarded as
half-hearted.
Book Review
123
concern should upon a
The only point on which I would insist is that the philosopher's moral be with continuing the conversation of the West, rather than with
place 394)-
insisting
problems of modern
philosophy
within
Once
again
must repeat
losophy but
remains
to
philosophy itself. The philosopher might wonder, moreover, what be talked about if he is warned against insisting upon a place for the
at
will
tion of
11(A)
In
order to
better
book, it is
subargu-
necessary to
examine
its
varied sources of
inspiration
review will
and
the many
it. The
body
of
this
be devoted to
such an
"deconstruction"
as one current
fashion in
philosophical tech
has it.
In the introduction
pline as one which as soon as one with
reflects"
Rorty says that "philosophers usually think of their disci discusses perennial, eternal problems problems which arise (p. 3). He regards this to be an illusion which is intimate
namely,
two other
illusions,
(1)
"the
thing
or
called
"the
mind"
which and
is
nature"
sometimes regarded as
(2)
that knowledge is
the
representation"
"accuracy
of
(p.
13).
essence"
of
these illusions
"villains"
of the
book
in their for
"wise"
They
are the
a
Merlins (or
res
Ziegfields)
cogitans, a
such enchantments as
hypostasized
dualistic innerness
attempt
body,
the coronation of
science,"
epistemology, the
to
set
philosophy
could
on
"the
secure path of
and name
Rorty
hardly
mind
my calling in his
and
"the
on
the other
hand,
are
Dewey, Heidegger
All three, he
though
as
Wittgenstein in
their
philosophical careers.
inasmuch
they
even
of
philosophy
as the
search
for foundations
of mind
"therapeutic"
sev
century
conceptions
and
of
knowledge (p.
than
Their later
"edifying"
"constructive,"
which
Rorty
calls
rather
"systematic"
than
and not
is intended to be
philosophy itself
"common
that traditional
9).
in
all
philosophy's vision of
breaking
what
free from
history
is
delusion (p.
he takes to be Dewey's
conception of
124
Interpretation
"justification"
knowledge
wherein
is "a
and
social phenomenon
'reality'"
intead
of a transac
subject'
'knowing
conception of
(p. 9),
(b) by
tool"
what
he
of
regards
Wittgenstein's
language
wherein
it is "a
instead
"a
mir
ror"
as well as a prevention
for the temptation to look for "the necessary condi linguistic (p. 9), and (c) by what he un
representation"
of the
history
of or
philosophy
as the
Western thinking
by
"ocular
"mirror-imagery"
(p.
12).
Bolstered
by
their
inspiration, Rorty
siege of
cas-
tellum philosophicum, an
impressive feat
He
employs with
dex
not only the standard figures of Ancient, Medieval, phy but he moves with ease and authority among the
terity
and
Modern
of
philoso
ranks and
positivists,
pragmatists,
analysts,
phenomenologists,
existentialists
hermeneuticists,
as
treating
varied
with respect
in character as that of Carnap, Sartre, Quine, Gadamer, Sellars, Apel, Davidson, Husserl, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Derrida and Foucault. Some readers will
find the
ecumenical aspect of
his
effort an
interesting
feature
of
the book.
Ecumenism
a vehicle
for his
in the first
chapter
by
a challenge
to contemporary philosophy's
the challenge occurs is
The
manner
in
which
by
way
and
"reliving"
of a
or a so as to expose
of
history
man's
of phi
losophy
the "language
games"
level
or epoch
(p. 34)
"mind"
problem of
itself
"glassy
as
Shakespeare
puts
"invented."
were
Rorty
from
cal
reconstructs
the "language
from
each
level to
show
how they
all contribute
to the effort of
fabricating theoreti
fictions
misleading
expostulations
culture"
(p.
37).
He
he
says:
The
problem of consciousness centers around problem of reason centers around all our
the
brain,
The
the topics of
intelligence
attributions of
"higher
powers."
The
freedom
and of moral
responsibility (p.
35).
He
he talks
about
"mind
as the
universals"
Plato's contribution,
intellect,"
or
Aristotle's "separable
man"
intellect,"
grasp of Thomas
Aquinas'
"active
Descartes'
of
and
res cogitans
(pp. 38-45).
lems
46).
as
Rorty belonging to
regards
concepts
(or
models of
mind)
and
the prob
the
language
game of
to
The way in which the changes of concept and problems take place according Rorty is through revolutionary deconstruction. Yet it is also by virtue of this
that the fictional character of theoretical
method
philosophy is
uncovered.
The
Book Review
case of
125
Rorty
is
engaged
in the
same
kind
of effort
he
attributes to
on
hand
while
deconstructing
them
hand"
of
was
Rorty's
to be so.
Such
by
men of
Descartes's boldness
"Kuhnian"
of
imagination, is an occasion for gratitude rather than censure. No great philosopher has avoided it, and no intellectual revolution could succeed without it. In ter
minology
no revolution can succeed which employs a
none can succeed
vocabulary
commensurable with
by
employing
So bad
arguments
for brilliant
hunches
porates
necessarily precede the normalization of a new vocabulary which incor the hunch. Given that new vocabulary, better arguments become possible, al
must
be found question-begging
by
28,
p. 58).
know
what
to
make of some of
Rorty's
assertions.
For example, is it fictional or optional to say that "the problem of personhood is but a description of the human condition [such] that it is not a not a
matter
for
'solution'
philosophical
."?
(p.
37).
Is it just
a moment
in the
revo
lution to
(p. 152),
tion of
claim that or
"knowledge
of
[is]
a relation
between
prop
knowledge'
"An "account
behavior"
the nature of
or still
be,
at
most, a
descrip
as
human
(p. 182),
"the
application of such
honorifics
'objective'
'cognitive'
and
agreement
is
for,
or "ab Are they statements of among a distinction that he makes in the seventh chapter? Are they discourse neither, that is, belonging to no special period of history? He seems to state them
inquirers"
(p.
335)?
normal"
as
if they were merely and simply true. While the argument in the first chapter attempts to persuade mythological invention of the mind in philosophical literature,
employs a myth of
in
its
own.
It is
kind
of science-fiction
beings
who
lived
on a planet on
These beings
are much
biochemistry
were
the
first disciplines
Terran first
wherein
Their conversation,
feels,"
in
third
person
utterances about
about stimulated
C-fibers
and neurons.
In the
middle of
representatives
including
planet.
The
who were
126
Interpretation
were puzzled
Recalling
who
forgotten
school of philosophers
centering in Australia
New Zealand,
in the
previous
century has revolted against Cartesian du the planet Antipodea and the inhabitants
discussion
minutely
argued
the
literature
on
"the
mind"
problem of
by
the publication of
Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind (1949). The temptation to enter into that dis cussion is strong. For it is hard to resist asking such questions as those raised by Kenneth Gallagher in his paper "Rorty's Antipodeans: An Impossible Illustra
tion"
with regard
ence"
to what
and
Rorty
could mean
by
the Antipodeans
having
"sci
of
mean
neurology
as we
"science."
what we
Terrans
be
settled
by
what we mean
us
by
the
"science"
there
is nothing
else
for
to
mean
by
word
fibers instead
so?
thoughts
Gallagher, the Antipodeans are to speak of nerves or or feelings, must they not be understood by us as doing
as we
be acting
would, if we
were
reader will
of the
discussion
to
resist, if
realize
must
that
by
mine) discussion
an effort
is,
on
the
"careful"
and of the
"closely
argued"
(quotes
literature,
and on
the other,
mind"
out
the
deluding
(glassy
essence,
cf. p.
nature, etcetera)
invented in the
seventeenth
This invention
and p. 379).
of phi
losophy
turn."
into theory
contention
knowledge,
philosophy
Rorty
puts
epistemological
At the
same time
and science
of
begin divorce
and
proceedings.
It is
Rorty's
Descartes
against medieval
self-
scholasticism contained
led to the
reestablishment of
discipline"
'scholastic'
making Descartes's
man"
new
concept rather
into the
content
of a
"science
means
of
of
moral
philosophy
and
by
Kant's placing philosophy "on the secure path of a The "epistemological wed philosophy to
turn"
(p. 137).
"problems"
other
(quotes
mine)
which
became
or
paradigms
for
modern
of either of
Ancient
Medieval
the
world
philosophy.
of
philosophy but were uncharacteristic There was, for example, the "problem
world"
the external
"outer"
"problem"
how the
was
"inner"
mind comes
into
con
(p.
139).
There
Locke's
confusion of explanation
(pp. 1488".),
of
the his-
Book Review
127
as
tory
(p.
of modern
philosophy
the struggle
between Rationalism
turn"
and
Empiricism
148).
in attending to the "epistemological on Rorty's part is to illus trate how (a) philosophy became epistemology, that is, how philosophy became expressed at the time, (b) epistemology came to be thought of as the foundational
The
point science where
philosophy holds
court on
the other
"special"
of
knowl
with
the issue
of
representa
turn"
Here
again
Rorty
himself
understands
such assertions as
"Certainty
is
a matter of conversation
betweens
person
(p.
157);
or
"Rational
certainty"
is to be
thought of as
156).
"victory in
argument rather
known"
(p.
11(B)
Although
space
more
honor is
paid
to
Dewey, Heidegger,
and
Wittgenstein,
more
is devoted to Sellars, Quine, Davidson, Putnam, and Kuhn, who do the commando raids around philosophy's castle but are not in on the final assault be
cause of some reservation or other on their part and
because
phy in
general
subject"
to philosophy
mology.
Kantian philosophy,
rather
a variant marked
of representation as
linguistic
critique,"
language
rather
than "transcendental
knowledge"
or
.
disci
the "foundations
of
to the
construction of a
permanent,
neutral
thus
for
all of culture
(p. 8).
assault
is profoundly indebted to
chapter of
those commando
book"
He
calls
his fourth
his
chapter
the "central
the
(p.
10).
In it
he
acknowledges
reliance on
Wilfrid
Sellars'
"giveness"
attack on
the no
is
some
basic datum
directly
Sellars
the
aware
in
This fiction,
which
calls
"the
the
of
are
justified
by
(p.
us
or
by
social practice
"rather than
by
inner
representations
they
express
174)-
and
justice
"society lets
say"
do (p.
and
174).
It is
not
that
some transfixed
knowledge,
truth, goodness,
justice Quine
are the
foun
behaviorism,"
dations
says
of what
society
says or
does. "Epistemological
and
a posture, as well as
Rorty,
a
common
"species"
to
to
himself is
of the
endeavor.
As
such
it "is
not a matter of
128
Interpretation
polemic, but
a
antifoundationalist
prise"
distrust
(p.
181).
"Epistemological
or even
behaviorism,"
has nothing to do
with
Watson, Skinner,
is the
claim
Ryle,
will
that philosophy
have
(supple
mented
by biology, history,
not clear that
of what
etc.)
about
knowledge
and truth
(p.
176).
Although it is
of all
things,
Rorty agrees with Sellars that "science is the measure (p. 199), he is that it is; and of what is not that it is
not"
does
concur with
Sellars that
science
is
rational
not
put
^foundation,
but because it is
self-correcting
in jeopardy,
the
reader
At this
point
is
urged
He is
encouraged and
by Rorty
to
the
challenge
in
the
following
truth can
way.
In
Sellars'
Quine's
account of
epistemology
to say that knowledge
our own
day
is
not
"cut
off
from the
world,"
only be judged by the standards of the inquirers of to say that human knowledge is less noble or important, or more than we thought. It is merely to say that nothing counts as
and reference and our
justification
unless
by
to
what we
beliefs
languages
so as to
already accept, and that there is no way to find some test other than coherence
(p.
178).
The
argument continues
by
reminding the
reader
the Right
practice,"
leads,
all
by itself,
to relativism
is
an
booby-trap thinking in terms of reduc turned on or foundations. But the is for tions itself, relativism, says Rorty, trap either of the epistemological or moral kind, does not, as we might suspect,
other example of the of emerge
from disagreements
within a
or even
from
the
differing
and
viewpoints of our
masters, but from the fact that the philosophical its transcendental hands on the ordinary words and
"true,"
has
is, between
the eternal
and of
and construction
practice"
(the best
day)
"seem
relativ
(p.
374).
No
one need
be
reminded
that
were
We shall, in short, be
where
the Sophists
principle
to
bear
and
invented "philososphical
contribution
thinking"
(p.
Willard Quine's
empiricism
reduction of
immediate
sense
(2)
the separation
be
tween truths
and
in language
independently
of things
idea,"
truths
"'idea'
things),
and on the
Book Review
129
is
the expression of
'inner'
something
means"
which must
be dis
before
we can
(p. 193).
must
Quine, according
to
Rorty, has
demolitions that
He
be
citrantly, he is
Empiricism"
commits
him to (p.
along
view
with
Sellars, he inherited
wants
Carnap 'completely
of
through
described'
(p.
204).
He
of "truth-
functional"
discourse
the superiority
wish
Naturwissenschaften
wissenschaften.
is the "discipline
guards
against
'irresponsible
reificati
(p.
208).
Rorty
wonders about
Quine's
reservations.
Why
of
do
the
Naturwissenschaften limn reality while the Geisteswissenschaften merely it? What is it that sets them apart, given that we no longer think
any
sort of statement
having
but
of all state
adjust
ments as ment
working together for the good of the made famous by "Two Dogmas of
in that
process of
holistic
Empiricism?"
Why
both the
empirical
inquiry
be
be the
whole of culture
(including
the
Geistes
wissenschaften)
rather
than
just the
nor
(p.
201).
There
or
should
no
faltering
turning back
no
hankering
for the
old myths
the
old mythmakers.
Quine's
what
Carnap's
attempt
to
is
to
help
of
us realize
that there
is
no such
are
just
reactionary nostalgia,
Rorty
psychology or philosophy of language as "successor sub to epistemology (p. 11). With respect to the first attempt, the fifth chapter
empirical
of the
book
argues
relentlessly
and
persuasively that
empirical and
psychology
will
fare
no
better in
mology formulated
cal
formulating improperly
and
and unnaturally.
naturally
what episte
proposal
that empiri
which were
evidence
theory
and
is
sanguine
(p.
220).
He seems, in
223).
Rorty's opinion, to
effects of
"input"
want
to hold on to
empiricism sans
dogma (p.
The
Quine's
recalcitrance can
"information,"
be
seen
in his
"loose"
use of such
terms as
"evidence,"
"testimony,"
and
. .
in the input
nerve endings
of unprocessed
infor
the
and
"It
is simply the
stimulations of our
upon as
In
response
to
such
talk
Rorty
asks
input to the psychology discover that the ina, but rather halfway down the optic
is
(p.
245).
Rorty
Fodor
considers
in the fifth
defended
by Jerry
who argues
130
Interpretation
between
program states of computers and psychological states of states of computers and neurophysiological states of
between
'hardware'
bodies
'inner
interesting
of
knowledge
consists of an
representation'
the
world
(p.
220).
It is the
the
backsliding
of
this
proposal.
reflect,
however,
the more
primordial
illusion
other
the
notion of mirror
knowledge
as
"ac
representation"
curacy
(p.
11).
In
words, the
magic.
imagery
surround
ing
philosophy has
wrought
its
illusionary
to
When
cessor
Rorty
considers
the
attempt
subject"
make
of
arguments
result.
psychology but the hope of its propo The hope is that philosophy of language will knowledge (p.
11).
succeed where
representation"
"accuracy
Davidson
claims
of
This
stage of
the argu
ment, as found in
and
services of
Donald
the
are
Hilary
Putnam. Some
of
tunneling is
required on questions
of some
philosophers
language that
epistemological
finally being formulated correctly within a general theory of meaning and that they are doing properly what earlier philosophers had done clumsily and improp "Whigerly (p. 263). It is just such claims as these that invite Rorty to call them a term frequently used in the last third of the book.
gish"
This
talk about say that talk about something we don't recognize is we do recognize used to be gratified in something by simply assuming fashion that our misguided ancestors had been talking about whatever our
need to
"Whiggish" "really"
"really"
claimed that
they
were
talking
about
(pp.
efforts
are regarded
by Rorty
as
a continuation of
of meaning "third or of
Quine's
at
and questions of of
himself to the
dogma"
so-called
empiricism,
sensory content,
to
something to be organized
world
the
(p.
259).
Such
dualism, according
lated,
(p.
severs
the
and
301).
Rorty
denouncing
the
of a special
and
territory for a theory of meaning so that we traditional territory of the grammarian whose ways
to
explain
left
with
the
modest
describing
sentences
help
how
(p. 261).
English"
The
point of
problems
is
not
to enable philosophical
lay
out
perspicuously
the
relation
(the
sentences)
(the
tences) (p.
262).
Book Review
131
that Davidson's
"holistic"
Rorty believes
to
account of
meaning
preempts the
quixotic attempts of
look for
ostensive
definitions,
of
"objective"
to a single
"observation"
constructing language
theories of reference
common to all alternative
invariance."
theories,
For
and of
support relies
Rorty
clinging to what Paul Feyerabend calls "meaning on this issue of whether or not there are any permanent meanings, not only upon Feyerabend but also upon Thomas Kuhn's concept of
(pp. 270-275).
says
"normal
science"
If it is so, in especially
are used as
Rorty,
of
that as
a result of a
discovery
in
some
domain
of
in
meaning"
or
"shift in conceptual
and
scheme"
signifies a
of
"shift
beliefs"
central
(Aristotle's
Newton's discussions
"motion"
examples), then there is nothing for the philosopher to do (such as "analyze meanings") over and above what the historian does in showing the change in conceptual scheme, and it is for an intellectual of the why time to accept it (p. 272).
"rational"
Just
account of
discussions
of
losophers
after
Ryle,
so
containing the Antipodean myth is an imaginative "the mind-body on the part of analytical phi too Rorty's sixth chapter is a skillful replay of their dis
problem"
"meaning"
cussions of
after
Frege
and
Russell.
Hilary
Putnam's
of
role
in those
discussions
constitutes the
latest
stage
in the development
ence"
out of presented as
change"
of conceptual
indulging
soon
trying
to
make a case
reconstruction of
facts"
which are
philosophy by independent of
discourse. He
rally this
discovers, however,
discovery
dephilosophization.
there
Putnam's
cal
is
no
discipline do
the
transcendental
could not
about
the content we
to
represent. we need
employing which will make clear its tie to But if there is no such way, then we can fall in with
Davidson's
295)-
claim
that
to
drop
the scheme-content
distinction
altogether
(p.
It
also comes
tionships"
down to saying that "the attempt to get a set of nonintentional rela (relationships that are independent of discourse) is in vain because simply further
theory"
"those
relationships are
parts of the
of
(p.
298).
"realism"
The
well.
argument
which
Rorty
aims at
is
addressed
to skepticism as
For the
pseudoquestions as
of
things presuppose
independent
discourse
in
order
to
explain
(p.
309).
criticism of analytical
Rorty
tween
completes
his
"referring"
about"
and
"talking
on one
guages on
the
other.
132
We
Interpretation
Sherlock Holmes but is
about"
cannot refer to
we can
talk about
him,
and
giston.
sophical art.
"Talking "Talking
"reference"
notion;
fictions
is
useless
for
realist purposes
(p. 289;
cf. pp.
300-301, footnote
reader
34).
On the issue
one offered
of
translation, the
is faced
to the
"relativism"
"skepticism."
understanding
world
and
If
someone
believes that
words
linking
individual
to the
building
he
will
have "cut
up"
the world
differently
thus
given
different
meanings to the
will of
individual
be infected
words
in the be
"core"
of their
our
rest of
their language
"core"
thus
by
this
divergence from
no
giving
meaning to the
cate
English,
way for
us to communi
no common points of
reference, no possibility
of
What into
we
have here is
another.
a defense of the possibility of translation of one language The belief that translation is not possible depends upon the trapped points of reference
account of
lie
outside of
discourse
and
that these
are not
"holistic"
discourse,
suggests
Rorty,
traps.
H(C)
The last two
chapters
(VII
and
VIII)
of the
book
are to
be
construed as a
final
assault on philosophic of
imperalism. In them,
"normal"
Rorty
"revolutionary"
and
He
pro
poses that
philosophy
should abandon
its
"epistemological"
become
hermeneutics,
be filled
not as a
"successor
subject"
to epistemology, but as
an expression of
not
cultural space
left
by
the
demise
the
become
315).
one
in
which
and confrontation
is
no
is
understood
by Rorty
quest
as the
de
for
a common ground
for
a set of rules
there
is disagreement. This
It is
"epistemological"
for
rational
is
"commensurability,"
called
chapters.
which
appears
frequently
in
describes
one
facet
of philosophic
de
lusion (p.
316 passim).
Rorty
their successors
believe in commensurability in
everyone"
(p. 317).
dilettante,
the
poly-
pragmatic
Socratic
intermediary
between
discourses"
various
Book Review
such
133 "disagreements
are compromised or transcended
not mention
an
intermediary
the
in the
about
conversation."
course of
Rorty
"conversation"
does
anything,
however,
how the
about
how the
say"
if it is
if it is
so
lets
us
(or
assertability)
and
so that the
difference between
the views of Galileo and Bellarmine is that Galileo won the argument (p. 331).
The
everybody
ultimate
else
is
doing
(p.
who knows every He is the "Platonic philosopher-king who knows what whether they know it or not, because he knows about the
is the "cultural
overseer"
context"
317).
Although there
and
will
be
carp
at
differentiating
Socratic types
ception of
Platonic types in this way, the issue is a trans-scholarly one. Rorty's con the Platonic philosopher-king does not reach Karl Popper's level of
of
misunderstanding
"polypragmatic,"
peripheral criticism.
or
Frankly
just
plain
am more annoyed
"pragmatic,"
by
Rorty's
use of
the words
echoes of such
as words of praise.
"pragmatic"
I hear
those
sententious
journalists
was an
as an
honorific in
sentences as
"Mao
"Pragmatic"
has
"ideological"
"fanatic"
"principled,"
opposites
other
than
such
as
or
"restrained."
The
is
neither
illuminating
king
or
bridge-building)
and
about common
hardly
complain.
For
by
interest
training, they come to care about whether or not some com They also become aware that those who do not care about the but solely
about the preservation of
their private
rhetoric of care
for the
common ground.
Why
then Rorty's
Nor
matic
can
the
antagonism related
"polyprag
uni-
Socrates"
and
the "Platonic
between
Here
again
he borrows
a
some terms of
Oakeshott's. But
Rorty's
pax
hermeneutica
calls
for
denunciation
united
of universitas
mutual
in favor
of
societas.
He defines
universitas as
"a group
by
interests in
through
much
achiev
end"
ing
a common
"persons
than
whose paths
life have
less
fallen together,
common
by
civility
rather
by
a common
goal,
by
(p.
318).
Rorty
again
adapts
Oakeshott's
criticism of mis
for his
criticism of theoria
itself. One is
could
forced to it
ask why,
if hermeneutics is
routine conversation
(pp. 315-319),
things?
If
modern
epistemology
and
its
successors
ontology
the
Why
must
be
134
Interpretation
to,
and
antagonistic
therefore,
excluded
for
a common goal or a
from the possibility of the societas? Is common ground divorced from civility?
education unite
Does
not and
not
by
them? Does
"civility,"
it is in logos, already
arete1.
the
common goal
Yet Rorty's
its unifying discipline, philosophy, is Complementing his radicalized (not merely general
with a recycled version of
ized)
version of
Kuhn's distinction
"edifying"
the distinction be
tween
"systematic"
and
historicist
ence
character of
his
argument.
Kuhn's
"normal"
"revolutionary"
and
sci
becomes
"normal"
"abnormal"
and
discourse.
problems against the
"Normal"
science
is the
practice of
solving
background
of a con
the
it
take
for
problem to
be
"Revolutionary"
solved.
science
is the introduction
Normal
science
of a
"paradigm"
is
as
close as real
life
it is to be
rational.
Ev
erybody agrees on how to evaluate everything everybody else says. More generally, normal discourse is that which is conducted within an agreed-upon set of conventions
about what counts as a relevant what counts as
normal of
contribution,
what counts as
answering
question,
having
a good argument
for
it. Ab
discourse is
what
happens
when someone
who
is ignorant
This distinction,
upon
"knowledge"
we
learn,
is
what
arises out of
"rational,"
speakers,
upon
to
be
"true."
ideas
which no what
"studies"
anything from nonsense to new discipline can since there is no discipline which describe, existing is creative or unpredictable (p. 320). Abnormal discourse, more
produces
Abnormal discourse
over, is
studied
by
hermeneutics from
understand
discourse. in
Hermeneutics tries to
order
they
account"
that
nature,"
the "sciences of
nor
between
a
fact
value,
of
nor yet
but simply
difference
things are
familiarity. Epistemological
well understood and
"ground"
accounts
fairly
be
discovering
something new, it
transcend its
who
invent
and
then
insist
upon
who
the dogmas
of
the
fact-value distinctions,
the only authentic
currently
understood as
Book Review
135
as either unscientific or a surrogate
fully
regard
for
religious superstition.
The
mal
paradigm
however, for
wherein
the
distinction between
controversy.
Rorty doubts
that a "neu
tral observation
differing
ries
theories
is
either
helpful
or even possible
in
deciding
(p.
324).
He
to
recalls
Kuhn's
an
own
doubt
about the
phy
of science
formulate
and to
"algorithm"
for
such
or
possible, to Kuhn
which
Rorty, is
hindsight
on
"Whiggish"
formulates
a conception of
knowledge
the grounds
dispute"
"the vocabulary
or assumptions of
a scientific
(p.
324).
Accordingly
in the Enlightenment
depends
328).
on
Galileo
being
completely
right and
Rorty's argument,
"illogical"
however,
more
Bellarmine completely wrong (p. than suggests that Bellarmine was not
"scope"
"unscientific"
being
there exists
or
of
the Copernican
way
determining
what evidence
there could be
for
statements about
theology "such
(p.
329).
is
'scientific"
value and
structure of criterion of
Europe is
'unscientific'
an
Rorty's
point
is that the
being
scientific which
in the early
seventeenth century.
No
conceivable
epistemology, no
was
"discovered"
it before it
have study of the nature of human knowledge, could hammered out. The notion of what it was to be "scien
tific"
was
in the
process of
being
formed
Galileo,
"grid"
the
common ground of
the
irrelevance
.
"modern
developed
as a consequence of that
values"
just say that Galileo was creating the notion of "scientific that it was a splendid thing that he did so, and that the question in doing so is out of place (pp. 330-330tional"
victory as he
We
can
went
along,
was
of whether
he
"ra
point
is
correct.
Yet it is from
a spirit of agreement
out"
that I
ceptance of
"abnormal"
"hammering if it is and Galileo's theory possible, then it would seem that both discourse itself, as philosophy discourse have a common ground as Rorty would have it. If such of "conversation would have it, or the civilized men, victory is not the issue. common ground exists, then among
that
both the
and the ac
"normal"
The
seventh chapter of
the book
concludes with a
discussion
of two
kinds
of
"subjectivity"
confusion.
which exists
and
"objectivity"; the
second
as self-crea
notion of man
notion of man as
ingredient (p.
136
346).
Interpretation
confusions
These
are, according to
Rorty, bound up
with
the propaganda
fusions
and
and
Geisteswissenschaften. The way to see through the con the propaganda, he suggests, is to distinguish between epistemology
the
a contrast
between
discourse"
(p.
346).
be that epistemology
endeavor will
hermeneutics
will not
be in
com
petition
but
jective
elements of
human
be bridged. There
will
be
no need
to be
be
more
difficult to
It is
talk
whereas
other
things do not,
that hermeneutics
is
in the
case of
347).
The
nature-spirit
long
it,
as
did the
realism-idealism
duty They were dedicated to a notion of a notion bearing dualistic and romantic im spirit as transcendental constitutor plications, yet a notion not reducible either to Geisteswissenschaft (sociology of
controversies
guard
merely did
for
a notion of philoso
was conceived
in
epistemology.
knowledge)
nature-spirit
or naturwissenschaft
which
fed the
controversy is that
knowing
what
it
means
is just
the
fact that
the necessary
will
for the
production of a noise
used
rarely be paralleled by a material equivalence between a statement in the language for describing the microstructure and the statement expressed by the noise. This
is
not
cal
because anything is in principle unpredictable, much less because of an ontologi divide between nature and spirit, but simply because of the difference between a
suitable
language
355)-
for coping
for coping
with people
(p.
Correspondingly, hermeneutics is
"understanding"
not
"another way
knowing,"
of sciences.
in the
namely It is rather
another science
it
relinquishes
The last
Philosophy
Mirrors,"
and the
entitled
of
"Philosophy
between
the
Without
proposes
Utilizing
another of
distinctions,
that
"edifying"
and
philosophy,
Rorty
offers to philosophers
"discipline,"
accepting a scaled-down version of the equal members in the conversation of mankind or continuing as participating self-deceptively in their quest for common ground, essences or foundations, thereby facing irrelevance, exclusion from the conversation, and ultimately ex
alternatives of either
tinction.
The first
condition of surrender
is that the
old-time philosophers
lay
down
i.e.,
by Platonists, Kantians,
positivists,
Book Review
357).
can
137
Once this
set aside.
notion
is
set
be
Once
wherein
the
shift
in
perspective
suggested
by
Gadamer's hermeneutics
own
history
is
not
phers,
will understand
"merely
propaedeutic to
finding a new and more interesting way of expressing ourselves, and thus of cop (p. 359). Educationally speaking, rather than ing with the ically or technologically speaking, "the way things are said is more important than the possession of (p. 359). The project of finding new, better, more
world"
epistemolog-
truths"
(p. 360). But speaking is called the desire for edification and the desire for truth are not in conflict, according to that the quest for Rorty, unless one believes the "Platonic-Aristotelian
interesting,
more
fruitful
"edification"
ways of
view"
of
believing
(p.
just
the many
to
ways
in
which we might
be
edified
In
answer
Rorty,
Plato
and
Aristotle did
not view
the pursuit of wisdom merely as the pursuit of truth. The Phaedo and the Nico
machean
Ethics
truth
stand as evidence.
On the
other
hand,
the
pursuit of
in Heidegger's
response
out"
sense
a sense which
of
Rorty
If.
should
as
find
congen
ial is
no
is the human
to the
intelligibility
things.
Rorty
says, there
"breaking
in human
of
place
concerns.
discourse for men, truth then necessarily has a special It is not the private preserve of philosophers. By pro
more attention general.
to that
intimacy
which exists
between
and
truth in
truth could
to be
society
allows us to
say
or a
way to
How
can
quired
by
edification
occur, if
men cannot of
break out,
from dis
one
"ways"
only means convention with another? (p. 379). It is equally difficult to appreci besides the pursuit of truth could be edifying, when they are de
or
in
"new
and more
interesting
way[s]
of
or no reservations
about
Aristotle
when
as the creators of
the
real villain of
his book
the
intellectual
from
one standpoint
their
work could
be described
"escape
as the
reductio ad absurdum of
the intellectual.
Why
indeed
should one
Platonism"
from
(p. 378),
unless
it be false?
are,
Nevertheless,
systematic philosophers
for Rorty,
it
as the paradigm of
idea,
hu
In the
mainstream of
the Western
philosophical
tradition, this
this
para
knowing
produced
Successive
main
stream
have been
of
by
philosophers excited
by
new cognitive
feats
e.g.
the
rediscovery
of self-conscious
histo
366).
riography in the
century,
Darwinian biology,
mathematical
logic (p.
138
Interpretation
calls
Whereas he
edifying
philosophers
those
the notion that
man's essence
in their distrust
writers
of
is to be
knower
we
of essence
These
have kept
that,
even when
than
have justified true belief about everything we want to know, we may have no more conformity to the norms of the day. They have kept alive the historicist sense that
"superstition"
this century's
relativist sense that the
was the
last
century's triumph of
infinity
the
of vocabularies
in
which
the
world can
be described (p.
367).
Rorty
cautions
reader
normal
discourse
and
that
edifying philosophy is
"intrinsically"
a reaction
to the
"intrinsically"
insist
on
hermeneutics
where
epistemology
will
do
lack
of education
(P- 366).
systematic and
edifying
philosophers
is
not
the same as that which he makes between normal philosophers and revolutionary
ones.
are of two
kinds:
normal, professionalized philosophy can
with
those
found
be
a
practiced
who see
the
the old as
temporary inconvenience,
to
be blamed
on
and
be
overcome
by
the institutionalization
who
On the
other
hand,
ever
be institutionalized
dread the thought that their vocabulary should Great systematic philosophers, like great scientists, build
for
(p.
eternity.
Great edifying
philosophers
destroy
for the
369)-
Again
edifying
philosophers such as
question of about
language
the
question of
the
first;
Aristotle. These
the
reader
begins to
wonder whether
he has failed to
Yet he does
not
feel
Rorty
that ev
ery
are
philosopher
in every
others.
epoch asked
every
in
order
fundamental
only
one suggests
which
the
An
appeal
Rorty
says shows
otherwise, does
a
otherwise,
ography is done
we
are
by
Kantian,
Hegelian,
of
Thomist,
be the
To
or a pragmatist.
handling
nag future
and curiosity.
Plato
irrelevant
or obsolete
betrays
indifference toward
Book Review
what
139
questions are.
the
fundamental
Historical
awareness
ignores
at
its
own
risk
the
questions perdure
of
whatever
diversity
riety
of
with
diversity
the
the
illusions). It is philosophy
which asks
the
edifying
distinctions, (i)
and
what
finding
activity,
(2)
that
between
is
natural and
the
other.
From the
standpoint of
human
finding distinguishing
course
taking
is
artificial or conventional
from
is
a
natural
do
not re
and
Rorty
should
be
pleased to
hear,
bespeaks
us,
being. In
of discourse, that is within discourse, and that discourse have the Positivists to thank for teaching
regardless of
being
is
It is It
rather presupposed
by
both
It is the
concept
into
which
deconstructed. It is
to be the
is it
given.
out
foundation
dis
Rorty
rightly
destroys the
his
ern
attack on modern
philosophy
and
epistemology
(p.
389).
in
knowing
by
the
is
"right to
believe"
His
notion that
edifying dis
course
is
supposed
to be
abnormal so as
"to take
power of strangeness,
seems anomic of rooted
to aid us in
becoming
new
in the priority
The
references
of what
called
self."
in this context,
as creator
his
his
values
telling (pp.
between
375-37)-
Yet
is
most objectionable
in
distinctions between
discourse
and
at all to be said. philosophy is that it permits anything logic is subsumed under rhetoric or philosophy under poetry (p. 360). The care ful listener and reader will not know what to take seriously. Such an objection is
avoidable when
poetry, and
science
too, becomes
philosophical.
Ill
While
nial
arguments of
so
many
Philosophy
One
could
and
to me, the
main one
is
not.
The Mirror of Nature are conge agree that the notion of "the
mind"
140
Interpretation
on
from Descartes
is
mistaken.
The
linguistic turn
have been wrong turns. But then so too is the Rortyian turn. He seems to believe that the destruction of philosophy will strengthen the conversation of mankind. I
think not.
In fact there is
enough evidence
which
the Positivists
believed
would replace
versation.
philosophy are constructing a tower of Babel for the con the psycho-babblers, socio-babblers, Indeed the various babblers
are well on of
not
to
the apostles
of
feeling
or
those for
discourse, let
that
alone
the conversation
mankind, is
contemptible.
Rorty's
or
suggestion
philoso
phy be turned into cultural anthropology (p. 381) could have a happy ring to it in those circles. Then there
says are
those
who will
be
pleased
Rorty
and
abnormal
discourse
food
Only
elements
tyranny."
already exist to make, as Leo Strauss warned, "a universal There is, for example, the of a homogeneous
"ideal"
There
are
ideologies
with
the capacity to be
immediately popularized
and
ogy.
diffused. There is the possibility of an unlimited and uncontrolled technol The rulers of such a state would have to present themselves as philosopheras
kings who,
only the thoughts of the philosopher-kings. Philosophy fares only slightly better at the hands of those radical pragmatists (which Dewey, James, and Peirce were not) who in the name of utility, neces
such,
could permit
would banish it from those very domains, the universities, it already leads a precarious existence. It strikes me as overly sanguine on Rorty's part to say that the "useful done by philosophers will survive
kibitzing"
because,
the
need
for teachers
who
have
read
the great
dead
as
philosophers
is
quite enough to
in
be philosophy departments
long
(p.
393)-
Anyone
who
is
not
totally
oblivious to what
universi
twenty
years would
hardly
be
philosophy therein. In many of them it is clinging by its fingernails to hold a place in the curriculum, let alone retain its traditional position at the core of lib
eral studies.
As far
as
the danger
of
the scarcity of food is concerned, one must frankly ad human beings must struggle merely to stay alive, nei
other
ther
philosophy
nor
any
specifically human activity will germinate. But be brought about or hastened by the siren
liberal education,
by
on
hedonism
which mocks
excellence,
and
by
dotes
the "cash
value"
of things.
In this regard, I
am more
impressed
of
by
the
reflections
("The Principles
Leadership,"
Book Review
can
141
1981;
Educator, Winter
4/16/82) in
"Dignity
and
Honor in
Vietnam,"
nal,
on the question of
than those of
years
Rorty
on
Stockdale
resided
for
eight
camp, four
in solitary
"culture
(p. 319)
confinement.
Rorty's
preference
for
for the
notion of
as a conversation rather
presupposes
than
foundations"
be imitated
not
and virtues
to be
appreciated.
Phronesis
conjunctive,
disjunctive,
of
so that a choice
be
be
The life
is
possible
is
ground which
from
be
grows,"
end
for
it [ex
work."
cellence]
goes to
If
Rorty
is
worried about an
infelicitous
coincidence
tween philosophic arrogance and human arrogance, then the very Heidegger
whom
he
admires a
has
a reminder
Ernst
Cassirer in
Man is
1929
conversation at
never
infinite
and absolute
that-which-is
selbst], but he is infinite in the sense of the understanding of Being [des Seins]. This infinity of the ontological is by its very nature bound to ontic experience, so that one
must
opposite:
This
infinity
which
pre
for finitude.
Ontology
is
an
index
of
However
ponderous
Heidegger's
prose
may
be, his
point
is
clear.
Human beings
act of search
become
aware of
in the
ing
way
They may learn of finitude from They may also learn of it from the
but
by
however,
of as part of philosophy (a very old thought) and not the through Husserl). As far as poetry is concerned, Descartes (pace way the Oakeshott who has taught him so much, from if Rorty must be aware, only that while the voice of poetry in the conversation of mankind is not a version of practical or scientific
activity,
it
must
be
philosophical
(theoria). If,
then
as
Oakeshott
should not
conversabl
said, "the
quarrel
voice of
philosophy is unusually
to
Mankind,"
Rorty
with
voice, and to
reflect on
Voice
of
Poetry
in the Conversation is
as
Heidegger
said
to
Cassirer,
itself in
"with the
the highest in
man. this
finitude
must show
philosophy in a completely
moreover,
radical
from the study of the history of philosophy is not, as The lesson, of the different standpoints, but rather the unity relativism Rorty believes, the those standpoints. His comroot of philosophic activity in differentiating
and
142
Interpretation
Analytic philosophy should not be primarily with its attempt to be a for epistemology but rather with its being ashamed to be philosophy in of science and technology, and with its professionalization to the point This latter transformation he has He
should
the
court
of trivialization. plored
with
duly
noted and
correctly de
(pp.
391-392).
Phenomenology
not alone
its progeny has not avoided a similar descent into It may be that the Rortyian turn has a millenialist twist. He is
in his
preference
"scholasticism."
philosophers
for
wisdom
over
philosophy.
Kojeve
drew, however,
some
noteworthy inferences
In
of
point of
fact,
or
History
that
is,
the
definitive
annihilation
means quite sim Man properly speaking, or of the free and historical Individual sense of the term. Practically, this means the dis the cessation of Action in the full ply appearance of wars and
bloody
revolutions.
And
also
for
since
Man himself
no
longer
changes
change and of
the
(true)
himself. But
be
preserved
is no longer any reason to his understanding of the world indefinitely: art, love, play, etc.; in
to the
short
everything that
quoted
happy
Read
ing
of Hegel,
Cambridge,
Although
not
1980,
p. 27).
Rorty
has
not
not
lie in the
entrails of
his
project.
not
Heidegger
pre
to and for
be
with all
its
"poverty,"
its
scars and
Gelassenheit. Let philosophy be! Let it its welts. Its kitchen is warm enough for The
conversation
anyone and
for
interesting, it is
serious.
In
order
for the
conversation
to
con
must
be
or
become
philosphical.
Philosophy
is the
Forthcoming
Ronna Burger Peter
Articles
Socratic Eironeia
Rousseau's Management
of
Emberley Webking
the Passions
Adams'
Robert
Virtue
The
and
Defence of
Donald Maletz
Meaning
of
in Hegel's
Philosophy
Right
Vukan Kuic
Alain"
of
Yves Simon
"The Politics
translated
Alain"
of
by
John
Dunaway
Walter Nicgorski
Leo Strauss
and
Liberal Education
and
Maureen
and
ISSN 0020-9635