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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781611860542 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Michigan State University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2012 |
| Series: | Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture |
| Edition description: | First edition |
| Pages: | 210 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
| Age Range: | 3 Months to 18 Years |
About the Author
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The Sacrifice of Socrates
Athens, Plato, GirardBy Wm. Blake Tyrrell
Michigan State University Press
Copyright © 2012 Wm. Blake TyrrellAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61186-054-2
Chapter One
Mimesis, Conflict, and Crisis
In the contest system, men's satisfaction with their own position decreases to the extent that others' positions are improved. The good things that happen to others are therefore hurtful to them. This is precisely the nature of envy, which is a feeling of dissatisfaction that arises from the success of others. —Alvin W. Gouldner, Enter Plato
In the Greek contest system, all men share, relative to their social position, the roles of subject and model, for all desire to possess all the goods of society for themselves, and anyone can be an object of envy. One aristocrat differs little from another, and they all desire the same things, the implements of honor and excellence. When one among them puts his personal worth together with an accomplishment, victory in the Olympic chariot races or prominent leadership in the assembly, for example, he stands as a model that attracts the envy of others. The others, subjects in Girard's terminology, desire what he has gained and react as if suffering a diminution of their personal esteem and success. "The bitter competitiveness of the contest system," Alvin W. Gouldner continues, "induces men to relish openly the defeat of their foes—thereby making subsequent reconciliation all but impossible." On the other hand, envy from the side of the victorious savors the satisfaction of having gained all in the contest at others' expense. The contest system, inspired by acquisitive desire, motivates victor to continue winning and motivates the defeated to humiliate and impoverish him and take what he has from him— both motives for violence. Agamemnon arouses envy for having destroyed Troy. Yet he is in mimetic rivalry with Priam. He wants what Priam as king and as subject would have in his lust for glory—the prerogative of striding upon clothes from the house, richly made and purchased for silver, and fit only for the foot of a god. Plato as an aristocrat could not have been unaware from his earliest youth of the conflictual aspects of imitative desire.
Plato became a philosopher while writing Sôkratikoi logoi, Socratic conversations or discussions, in competition with other followers and admirers of Socrates. Some Socratics showed their desire for the man by following him around the city. Some adopted his lifestyle. Aristophanes points out that the latter "were sick with Socrates," as if Socrates were a disease, or "desired to become Socrates." His word esôkratôn denotes both meanings. These Socratics actually copied him, wearing the same kind of clothes and mimicking his gait and manner of speech. Some like Apollodorus spent time with him daily, wanting "to know what he said or did" (Pl. Sym. 172c). Others less ostentatious wrote accounts of Socrates beginning around the time of his death. (Even before then, if Diogenes Laertius may be trusted, Simon the cobbler wrote down what he could remember of the conversations Socrates had in his shop with his customers.) Aristotle called their writings Sôkratikoi logoi and classified them as mimetic (Poet. 1447b11-3). Evidently, he held that they re-presented Socrates' words and deeds, although not necessarily for philosophical purposes. Xenophon's Socrates, less philosophical than Plato's, is a man of self-control and perhaps a more faithful copy of the original. Sôkratikoi logoi in the form of narratives or dialogues circulated privately among what was a highly competitive circle of devotees. Little is known, of course, about their activities, but the titles that remain suggest a keen rivalry over representing Socrates.
Aeschines, a constant companion of Socrates, won praise for his depiction of his idol with works entitled Callias, Axiochus, Aspasia, and Alcibiades. These are names found in the Platonic corpus. Aeschines also appears to have written about Socratic eros before Plato so that Plato could have had Aeschines before him in composing the Symposium. He undoubtedly knew the work and, while adopting the idea of a female expert, changed the actor for the role from the hetaera Aspasia to the priestess Diotima. Aspasia wrote the funeral oration in his Menexenos. Another prominent early Socratic was Antisthenes, an Athenian like Aeschines, who composed an Aspasia, Menexenos, and Alcibiades. Their writings exist in fragments. Plato and Xenophon were minor Socratics at this time. Indicative of their rivalry, however, is the absence of mention of Xenophon by Plato and Xenophon's sole reference to Plato as Glaucon's brother, as well as Xenophon's shared titles, Apology of Socrates and Symposium—titles, Diskin Clay observes, "clearly meaning to rival the homonymous dialogues of Plato." The silence is compelling, especially beside the willingness of both to name others of Socrates' companions and acquaintances.
Socrates was alive in 414 BCE when Aristophanes produced Birds, with its observation on men who wanted to become Socrates. They could have encountered their subject on the streets of Athens. Socratic writers wrote about Socrates from firsthand knowledge of the man but not with the intention of reproducing him faithfully. Rather, in concert with contemporary notions of biography, they could not have imagined the prospect of recording Socrates as an individual. Biography formalized uniqueness into typicality, a process that the comic poets had begun before his death.
Afterward, the rivalry of the Socratics took the form of what Girard calls "external mediation," in that Socrates was removed from them by his death. They could not enter into conflict with him, and so as model he could function positively for the individual. But external mediation easily slips, even in the case of a dead model, into "internal mediation." From imitating Socrates, which they definitely did, they could easily take that small step to the desire to imitate him more closely and in better fashion than the others and, finally, to acquire him in one's version for one's own. (This is, after all, what happened with the Platonic Socrates.)
In this way, the idea of Socrates mediates among Socratics internally— that is, within their circle—for it would be accessible to all, and all were disposed to acquire it exclusively of the others. Girard explains that the model in a situation of "internal mediation" is close at hand to the subject:
Due to the physical and psychological proximity of subject and model, the internal mediation tends to become more and more symmetrical: the subject will tend to imitate his model as much as his model imitates him. Eventually, the subject will become the model of his model, just as the imitator will become the imitator of his imitator.
In this case, the model is the written Socrates of the subjects. They imitate the Socrates of their desire, the one of their experience and imagination, in an effort to acquire him exclusively. By so doing, in time they defined an arena of topics within whose competition they were made alike. This accounts for the appearance of the same titles; each writer is trying to capture the definitive Socrates as his own.
* * *
Plato once wanted to be a poet whose tragedies would carry off the prize for entertaining and instructing Athenians in the values of the demos. Tragedy at Athens conformed to the same institutional model as its assemblies and courts and functioned no less as an instrument of democratic ideology. The young Plato evidently desired what poets enjoyed from time immemorial: authority as teacher and voice of wisdom. Then he encountered another voice, a voice capable of instructing the people in another way, and he went into another direction with his writing. But the desire to have what the poet has appears to have abided. He later engages himself in another mimetic rivalry, which he deemed an "ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry" (Rep. 607b). It is a "quarrel" that has left no trace in Greek literature and culture before Plato. It is most likely a Platonic invention, in Andrea Wilson Nightingale's words, a "part of a bold rhetorical strategy designed to define philosophy and invest it with a near-timeless status." Poets traditionally were educators of the people concerning gods and men. Through their songs, heard, memorized, and repeated from earliest youth, the Greek was acculturated as Greek, and Greeks were bound together in communities. Poets, foremost among them Homer, inculcated moral virtues and values, illustrated modes of behavior, and provided information of all sorts and kinds. They had no quarrel with philosophy, for philosophy in Plato's sense did not exist before Plato. It is, as Nightingale says, "Plato's private quarrel ... which is retrojected back onto the ancients in Republic 10 and thereby made to escape the contingency and specificity of Plato's own historical moment." In this process, Plato's philosophy is undoubtedly the newcomer. Poetry and rhetoric wielded power over audiences long before Plato had arrived to conceive of philosophy and continued to do so as long as Athenian culture remained essentially oral. The desire for that power had to have been shown to Plato by those other genres/media. That is, as newly arrived on the block, Plato could only have learned the desire from its established residents. Thus, Plato is the subject who feels the desire to imitate the models, the poets, in exerting authority over audiences as voice of wisdom. The story in Diogenes Laertius, although not likely historical, expresses this dynamic by having Plato desire first to be a poet and only then turn to philosophy and Socrates as the better way to attain that desire, for, as the story implies, the wisdom was better. Although he no longer wanted to be a tragic poet, he craved the poet's influence for his philosophy.
* * *
To the end of usurping the authority of the poets with that of his philosopher, Plato deconstructs the beliefs of the morality they popularize in their songs. One avenue of attack is the elenchus, the process of question, cross-examination, and refutation practiced by Socrates. The elenchus begins with a request for information—that is, knowledge. "Do we believe that there is any such thing as death?" (Phd. 64c). "When someone loves someone, which of the two is the friend, the one loving the beloved or the beloved of the lover, or does it make no difference?" (Ly. 212a). Socrates rarely asserts that he has any worthwhile knowledge and looks to others for instruction. "I do not say with knowledge what I say but I am searching in common with you" (Grg. 506a). "How could anyone answer who does not know and keeps saying that he does not know.... It is more reasonable for you to speak, for you say that you know and can tell us" (Rep. 337e). "We are all now equally in perplexity," he avers in forestalling the invitation to tell the nature of courage (La. 200e). His request comes in the form of a question that establishes Socrates in the role of the subject which, in turn, casts the answerer in the role of the model. Socrates looks to Euthyphro, for example, for knowledge of piety. "Tell me what you say the pious is and what the impious?" (Euthphr. 5d). By becoming the student of Euthyphro, expert on piety, he explains, he will know what he knows and so copy him in being an expert in piety. Thus Socrates could say to Meletus, "If you acknowledge that Euthyphro is wise in these matters and believes in them correctly, consider that I too do and do not prosecute me" (Euthphr. 5ab). There is, of course, nothing serious in this on Socrates' part. Yet, if Euthyphro were an expert, and Socrates were to acquire the object of his desire, the result would be that Socrates would be like Euthyphro. Similarly, Socrates looks upon Callicles as the model who holds the same opinions as he, for their agreement would yield likeness as well as "the truth itself" (Grg. 487a). In different ways, Socrates imitates his model to acquire knowledge.
The initial question provokes others whose answers are self-evident, so much so that to withhold assent would be perverse and provocative. Socrates insists that the answerer reply sincerely from his beliefs. "See to it, Crito, in agreeing with these matters, you do not agree against your opinion" (Cri. 49c). "This thing that you are thinking, since you know how to speak Greek, would you say what it appears to you to be ?" (Chrm. 159a).15 Socrates explains to Gorgias at length his idea of an elenchus:
I consider myselfamong those men who are glad to be refuted if I am saying something not true, and would gladly refute another if he says something not true and for whom it is not less pleasant to be refuted than to refute. Yet I consider the former the greater good in releasing oneself from a very great evil than to release another. (Grg. 458a)
Forthrightness in stating one's opinion is another aspect of the elenchus that Socrates lists for Callicles:
I think that the one who is going to examine correctly concerning the soul, whither it lives correctly or not, should have three qualities that you, Callicles, have, knowledge, good will, and forthrightness of speech. (Grg. 487a)
In this way alone, the elenchus remains legitimate search for truth rather than a game like that of a lawsuit with arguments and witnesses (Grg. 47ie-472b). That is, the elenchus is a contest with the person's beliefs and self-esteem as the stakes and, unless truthfully and openly conducted, will not reach to the quick of the responder.
However far removed subsequent questions seem to be from the starting query, they eventually land the answerer in a contradiction and the collapse of his first answer or definition. Commentators have remarked upon Socrates' skill in framing questions and have drawn conclusions about his knowledge, but this is to displace the author. Plato gets to play both sides of the chess board unrestrained by a time clock. The contest is renewed, often aided and always prompted by Socrates, with a new definition that ends in contradiction and failure. Socrates may declare his willingness to begin anew, but with aporia (perplexity) the elenchus ends with the answerer's abandonment of his position. Aporia, on the one hand, marks the answerer's total defeat in the zero-sum of the contest. Socrates emerges with all of the prize— namely, whatever, if anything, has been learned and the stakes, which are the answerer's profession of his ignorance and with it his sense of worth. On the other hand, aporia evinces the cessation of the answerer's role as model. He has been shown to lack the desired object, the knowledge of what piety is, for example. Socrates is willing to continue, but, as if the river between them has disappeared, their rivalry ends.
The shrewdness of Socrates' questions strikes his interlocutor that he knows both where the inquiry is going and what lies at its destination. Socrates always desires knowledge but also always denies that he has any of his own. "You behave towards me as if I admit to knowing these matters about which I ask you, and if I wanted to, I would agree with you. This is not the case, but I am seeking along with you what is set before us because I myself do not know" (Chrm. 165b). Socrates would shift the blame, for that is what it appears to be, for the refutation from himself to the argument. "I mainly examine the argument [logos]," Socrates tells Protagoras, adding, however, "it turns out perhaps that I the questioner and you the answerer are being examined" (Prt. 333c). But familiarity with his methods, among his friends, precludes such innocence. "You clearly have not encountered Socrates since he has grown older," Nicias warns Laches (187e). "The denial that he is conducting an elenchus," Richard Robinson states, "is insincere, and constitutes what is known as the Socratic slyness or irony." Robinson goes on to explain Socrates' purposefulness as hardly happenstance. The biographical approach looks for answers in Socrates as a person and dismisses the author who, in arranging the questions toward his objective, employs irony to palliate their purposefulness and to diffuse the hostility that a "fixed" contest would arouse. The elenchus is a contest in the form of a mimetic rivalry between Socrates the subject who desires the object and the answerer as model who has it. Their rivalry over the object potentially arouses anger between them. Plato tries to head off conflict by integrating Socrates as a fellow seeker but at an ironic distance. This is to say, irony positions Socrates outside the rivalry inspired by his question. The answerer becomes irritated by his failure to display his knowledge, but as long as the irony of Socrates' ignorance holds, remains unaware of the contest and unprovoked by his inability to display his prowess. Whether Socrates actually knows is not the issue. Should his victims think that he is pretending not to know, then violence breaks out. Whereas Euthyphro is left wondering why his words circumambulate (Euthphr. 11b), and Meno likens his state to numbness induced by the sting of an electric eel (Men. 80ab), Thrasymachus and Callicles penetrate Socrates' pretense of ignorance and strategy of asking questions and not off ering information. He lives in a child's world without villains (Grg. 521–522). He should come out and answer questions (Rep. 336bc). Th ese are victims who become, Robinson says, "angry with Socrates and ill-disposed towards him." Each believes that he knows the answer, asserts his claim to the object by fighting Socrates for it, and refuses to allow him the freedom from the fray (Rep. 337a). It is no accident that the elenchus falters with these answerers, who in seeing through Socrates' "accustomed irony" (Rep. 337a) become violent and lash out at him.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Sacrifice of Socrates by Wm. Blake Tyrrell Copyright © 2012 by Wm. Blake Tyrrell. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Preface ix
Introduction xi
Chapter 1 Mimesis, Conflict, and Crisis 1
Chapter 2 Plato's Victimary Culture 41
Chapter 3 Aristophanes' Ready Victim 73
Chapter 4 Foundation Murder 91
Notes 151
Bibliography 175
Index 185