In Cohen’s deliberately exaggerated expression, God’s being becomes actual in and through His correlation with man. “God is conditioned by the correlation with man. And man is conditioned by the correlation with God.” God cannot be thought properly as being beyond His relation to man, and it is equally necessary to understand man, the creature constituted by reason or spirit, as essentially related to the unique God Who is spirit. Reason is the link between God and man. Reason is common to God and man. But it would contradict reason if man were only the passive partner in his correlation with God. Correlation means therefore also and especially that God and man are equally, if in different ways, active toward one another. (Leo Strauss, “Introduction to Hermann Cohen: Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism” 238)

It takes a lot of Scriptural twisting to identify rationality as the central link between God and man. A sharp distinction between reason and revelation is much more sound for the study of philosophy or Scripture. And yet Cohen uses this strange set of thoughts to get here:

Our fellowmen we do not know through experience pure and simple but only by virtue of the command that we love them. Only on the basis of this intrahuman correlation can the correlation of God and man become actual: in man’s behavior toward men, not in his behavior toward God, the distinction between good and evil arises. It is in the light of “the social love” of our fellowmen that we must understand the love that proceeds from God and the love that is directed toward him. (239)

It’s beautiful. We understand fully there is nothing particularly rational, erotic or even friendly about this. This is a moral vision and it seems to indicate that concerns about the beautiful are moral concerns. It places a higher love as prior to justice, knowledge and even divinely inspired order. One does not argue with such a vision. There is too much in its generality and universality at stake to lodge petty complaints. What one does is sketch the more complicated pictures elsewhere. We recognize fully the power of the declaration that started this reflection. Sight, memory and thought create another world from the emergence of reason from darkness. Cohen, in his original vision, may not be attuned to the whole as tragic (although, given Providence and the fate of peoples, he certainly is aware of tragedy).

References

Strauss, Leo. “Introduction to Hermann Cohen: Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, ed. Pangle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. 238-9.

Contrary to our first impression, conventionalism does not assert that the meaning of right or justice is altogether arbitrary or that there is no universal agreement of any kind in regard to right or justice (Strauss 108).

I understand where Strauss is ultimately going with this. However, those many times you encounter someone in a dialogue concerned with differences between law codes (cf. Minos, where the companion wonders about why people have different burial customs) or asserting the lawful is not exactly the just (cf. Memorabilia IV.5) do rely on something about conventionalism at least seeming arbitrary. Strauss continues:

On the contrary, conventionalism presupposes that all men understand by justice fundamentally the same thing: to be just means not to hurt others, or it means to help others or to be concerned with the common good.

And yet we can say that the ultimate expression of conventionalism is Thrasymachus’ position in the Republic: justice is the interest of the stronger. (I realize Strauss employs a vulgar vs. philosophic conventionalism distinction later. I am aiming to see more prior.) There certainly seems to be something arbitrary about that! Focus on “interest” and “stronger” helps bring forth the relevant considerations. “Justice” is whatever it takes for self-preservation or community (whether that community is united under a dictator or dictates itself is another question).

Conventionalism rejects natural right on these grounds: (1) justice stands in an inescapable tension with everyone’s natural desire, which is directed solely toward his own good; (2) as far as justice has a foundation in nature – as far as it is, generally speaking, advantageous to the individual – its demands are limited to the members of the city, i.e., of a conventional unit; what is called “natural right” consists of certain rough rules of social expediency which are valid only for the members of the particular group and which, in addition, lack universal validity even in intra-group relations; (3) what is universally meant by “right” or “justice” leaves wholly undetermined the precise meaning of “helping” or “hurting” or “the common good”; it is only through specification that these terms become truly meaningful, and every specification is conventional. The variety of notions of justice confirms rather than proves the conventional character of justice.

To go further: it is plain “conventionalism” in this stronger form, precisely because it is useful and accounts for enough of a variety of/within codes, completely blinds one to “natural right.” You’d have to be unjust in a certain way to see beyond “conventionalism.” You’d need to dissimulate, be a liar, the lie being that you were a true citizen. The want to be more just alone does not bring one to natural right, as we see from people who obsess over the most minute matters of legality and morality. One needs something to pause obedience and cause a “turn.”

How does Plato reduce “conventionalism” to “the good is the pleasant?” It seems the former is a serious theory about law and justice. Strauss talks about how the pre-Socratics, in bringing forth “nature,” make what is natural good and what is conventional false. The pre-Socratics are actually conventionalists. They just don’t confuse the common good with an individual’s good. For an individual’s good, you need to go to nature, and that causes the whole conventionalist thesis to unravel. It literally gets set aside in the face of what could be (and is, given that “science” emerges through the pre-Socratics) a more powerful understanding. This is in addition to any problems, of course, conventionalism may have with its own coherence.

I think one issue worth considering is conventionalism and the “common good.” Is the common good law? Justice? Not really. In our everyday political life, we can spot innumerable conflicts between the common good and law. I’d go so far as to identify a tension between both generally. If you want what is good for the community, it needs to be procured. That can happen through legal or illegal means, but at some point, it has to happen. The law points another direction entirely. For those of us reading Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, etc. full time, we need to take seriously that the philosopher’s considerations of the good and the just may diverge just as wildly as these phenomena do in everyday life.

References

Strauss, Leo. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1965. p. 108

My co-author Tim and I are grateful to be afforded the opportunity to present our views. Deciphering the Minos is not the most accessible of topics. Ours is not the most accessible of papers. We hope our content more than our style will merit recognition. As is clear below, it is a Platonic thought which implies that things most relevant to democratic society may never easily be seen by such society, if seen at all.

The Minos itself has a question and declaration which tempt us to think things more understandable than they are. Socrates begins the dialogue asking “What is law, for us?” “What is law?” seems a philosophical question of especial relevance. Those even mildly familiar with Socrates know his procedure was to ask what each of the beings were. “What is justice?” and “What is courage?” stand out as typical examples of his inquiry. “What is law?” is itself both an unusual and fundamental question. Xenophon puts it in the mouth of an Alcibiades speaking Socratically. Socrates himself, in Xenophon, never utters it directly. We note, regarding the matter at hand, Socrates has asked “What is law, for us?”

Still. Lots of people ask “What is law?” Sometimes they are 13 year old nihilists who figured out that getting grades while living in a caste system that would make Louis XIV’s France blush might not yield anything worthwhile. Sometimes they’re people seeking justice in a system in which they haven’t given up hope yet. Does “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” implicitly ask “what is law?” It certainly sets a standard to judge all law.

The power of “What is law?” as a question stems from philosophy, even if the question itself is not strictly speaking philosophical. All of us ask it in one way or another inasmuch we seek justice or attempt to clarify our views about justice. Even dogmatists ask it, getting wholly conventional answers that may be far from useless.

So the dialogue asserts its relevance on an everyday level in its opening words. The discussion is far from complete, but it has started. We scholars would leave “what is law” open to a variety of answers, but it has practical, immediate relevance to human beings. Perhaps that is why the philosopher himself declares an answer. Is law the “wishing to be the discovery of what is?”

The temptation is to think a formula can replace thoughtfulness. The formula here: if we expose the pretensions of something, we reveal what it is. Law is the wishing to be the discovery of what is. It’s settled: all law does ape, not merely knowledge, but even our approach to knowledge. It attempts to replace science and often does. Socrates’ interlocutor does not even understand what Socrates says. He immediately challenges the proposition as if what was said was that law is the discovery of what is. If law is merely the discovery of what is, shouldn’t all people have the same burial customs? Shouldn’t there be a commonality to our speculation? The interlocutor is clearly not a philosopher. He can’t even remember what was said correctly. Obviously law is an obscenely large claim, and philosophers declare that much true.

What is strange is that the non-philosophic interlocutor has hit on a set of concerns that are the same as those of us who heard Socrates correctly. Again, we’re wondering about the limits of law. Maybe we can dismiss the interlocutor based on what he wants. Tim and I have taken a lot of time to show he may need more respect for law and its source. But if we settle on that reasoning, then what is the difference between cynicism and philosophy? After all, the interlocutor is where we are. We’re just proclaiming ourselves more moral.

So why does Socrates declare law the “wishing to be the discovery of what is?” Isn’t philosophy the exact same thing? A brief recap of the dialogue is necessary at this point. (It is as if philosophy does not exist as a body of propositions or set of questions, but something actually lived.) The Minos opens with “What is law, for us?” It rapidly moves from whether law is like gold or stone, material objects, to the type of political opinion law is. That consideration brings forth law as the wishing to be the discovery of what is. So ends one third of the dialogue. The next third starts from the companion’s mistaken assumption of what Socrates said and his objection about burial customs. It ends with the companion willing to consider that there are kings who distribute a good, albeit unwritten, order for bodies and souls. It goes without saying we learn a lot about the companion’s character from the center of the dialogue. He is politically ambitious and does not really see the value of law, especially law coming from a democratic regime. Democrats, unlike all-knowing kings, change their minds. The last third is a look at such a king, the mythical Minos. The companion admits after this that he doesn’t know what is good for the soul. He has been moderated, to a degree. We’re left wondering why such an elaborate process was necessary.

Law as “wishing to be the discovery of what is” is the primary problem. It opens up the possibility that political problems are resolvable by knowledge or consistent will alone. But any given regime had better be able to deal with necessities and procure goods. That depends on being able to act and have success. Fortune is the key issue: no wonder Machiavelli might like it subservient for a perpetual republic. We might say, after all this, that law is merely a mode of governance. We would say this in the Wittgensteinian spirit of not saying more than we know. A careful read of the myth Socrates posits in the dialogue opens a criticism of that position. As I want to focus on the relevance and accessibility of our project, I will leave that aspect of the paper unsaid here. Our immediate concern: a democratic, changeable will can certainly make legitimate laws. But a democracy’s defense of itself can get horribly cynical. Maybe it is because no one knows what is good for the soul there is legitimacy in the will of many. It would take one who could elaborate such a position properly – literally, one with knowledge of ignorance – to defend the regime.

SUMMARY

Dionysus, god of wine, returns with an Asian following to the place of his conception: Thebes. His mother was one of Cadmus’ daughters (Cadmus being Thebes’ legendary founder). Asia now understands his creed and dances accordingly. Thebes still rejects him. Its current ruler, Pentheus, will attempt to imprison Dionysus’ followers, the Bacchae (the Chorus), and find himself tempted, humiliated, and torn limb-from-limb by the wiles of the god.

BELIEF & KNOWLEDGE

Zeus could not reveal himself truly to Dionysus’ mother, Semele, without destroying her. ‘To believe’ and ‘to know’ are very different things (following Benardete 136: “Belief and knowledge are of different orders”). Belief in a simple sense, the one used for puzzles in epistemology classes, may translate into knowledge. But does knowledge convert into belief? This is a political problem in some respect. Perhaps Pentheus’ exaggerated manliness is not just a response to wanton lust (221-223) or seductive womanliness (233-237). “Manliness” might be where belief meets knowledge, as noble citizens who defend the city are created. They think they know and thus effect reality. (This is just a starting point for thinking about Pentheus.)

Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, has some very interesting lines:

Even if this Dionysus is no god,
as you assert, persuade yourself that he is.
The fiction is a noble one, for Semele will seem
to be the mother of a god, and this confers
no small distinction on our family. (333-337)

Cadmus is all but admitting that his killing a dragon and sowing the teeth into the ground to create Theban men is the noble lie (see Oedipus at Colonus for more). No wonder he will change into a serpent himself and we are to take this seriously. (1131) He continues:

You saw
that dreadful death your cousin Actaeon died
when those man-eating hounds he had raised himself
savaged him and tore his body limb from limb
because he boasted that his prowess in the hunt surpassed
the skill of Artemis.

Do not let his fate be yours.
Here, let me wreathe your head with leaves of ivy.
Then come with us and glorify the god. (338-344)

Hubris is violation of the noble lie: exactly what this means is not clear yet. Cadmus wants to crown Pentheus, make him also a Bacchant. Drama as we know it arose from Dionysiac rites.

DIONYSUS AS POET

The transition from foundation to preservation may parallel that of myth to drama. What was once declared true of nature, in both cases, becomes a matter of conventionality. Perhaps one can avoid unnecessary complications and ban certain dramatists outright. Maybe a regime can do well with people like Aeschylus, Sophocles and Aristophanes, who seem to give the city no trouble worth speaking about.

Let us say Dionysus is bringing drama to Thebes:

…it is in a sense the same Dionysus who schemes to reveal himself to the Thebans and is the god of the Attic theater. The Bacchae is almost a tragedy about tragedy: it begins with the god’s explanation of his human disguise. Unless the god of the theater goes masked, he cannot reveal himself to be the god he is. (Benardete 136)

Benardete cites the “various formulations Dionysus gives of his purpose.” This is a number of things, not the least of which that Dionysus himself is confused about belief and knowledge (Benardete 136). One has to wonder about the poet being under his own spell: this has to be case for fiction to work, to have the internal consistency it needs. But this is just one indication that poor Pentheus is being completely set up, that Pentheus’ inflexibility is not the problem as much as Dionysus’ complete command of the situation. Benardete goes on to say:

The worship of Dionysus cannot consist with the recognition of Dionysus. The Chorus worship Dionysus according to convention (430-33, 712, 890-96); they hear but never see Dionysus (577, 590). Pentheus comes to obey Dionysus, but he then sees him him as a bull (920-22); he does not submit to him as Dionysus. (Benardete 136)

Pentheus wants to know before he believes (Benardete 138). That’s not how divinity works: if you know the god, either you or the god is destroyed. “The gods, however native, are forever strangers; they can cease to be strangers if they are willing to give up their being for their being believed (Benardete 137).” We have speculated that Pentheus’ manliness may be a form of contrivance: believe and you will produce a state of affairs you know to be true. Dionysus (especially as god/poet) is all contrivance. These two are at odds because neither knows what it means to know. What is believed is what is apparent:

[Dionysus to the Chorus]: He seemed to think that he [Pentheus] was chaining me but never once
so much as touched my hands. He fed on his desires.
Inside the stable he intended as my jail, instead of me,
he found a bull and tried to rope its knees and hooves.
He was panting desperately, biting his lips with his teeth,
his whole body drenched with sweat, while I sat nearby,
quietly watching. But at that moment Bacchus came,
shook the palace and touched his mother’s grave with tongues
of fire. Imagining the palace was in flames,
Pentheus went rushing here and there, shouting to his slaves
to bring him water. Every hand was put to work: in vain.
Then, afraid I might escape, he suddenly stopped short,
drew his sword and rushed to the palace. There, it seems,
Bromius [Dionysus] had made a shape, a phantom which resembled me,
within the court. Bursting in, Pentheus thrust and stabbed
at that thing of gleaming air as though he thought it me.
And then, once again, the god humiliated him.
He razed the palace to the ground where it lies, shattered
in utter ruin… (617-634)

“There are altogether four gods in this account” (Benardete 137). Dionysus is speaking; one rattled the palace; the maker of the apparition; the apparition/watcher. What is certain is that the palace was rattled and the nearby mother’s grave was set afire. The poet is the rest of the account and its accounting. It is necessary that the speaker Dionysus, to keep concealed from the Chorus, explain the god made an apparition of him (Benardete 137). We the audience know the god to be his image. The immediate audience, the Chorus, believes the image to be a product of the god.

Images alone do not lead to knowledge or conversion. Ultimately, Dionysus will convert Pentheus, at least for a moment. He will do it by exciting his curiosity about the Bacchae: don’t you want to see what they are like? Manliness depends on womanliness; Pentheus perhaps wants to imagine them being punished (Benardete 139). Most importantly, he wants to see for himself. Pentheus’ desire for nobility and over-eager justice tempts him. He reaches a base level. He parades through the streets in drag unashamed; he has seriously contemplated rape (961-962; 952-954). The god as poet is the real issue. It is true the Dionysian cult seems to tap into something primal. The Chorus talks about their activity as “the rite of Cybele the Mother:” this is the Earth Mother, Gaia (78). Are man and woman fundamental categories which dictate politics? That literally depends on a mythical conception of nature whose place in convention (i.e. drama) we are in the midst of investigating. Poor Pentheus, who has his head ripped off by his own mother, has two stories told about what happened. The Chorus (the Bacchae) celebrates his death, giving the impression that he found himself betrayed and saw Dionysus no god at all:

Uncontrollable, the unbeliever goes,
in spitting rage, rebellious and amok,
madly assaulting the mysteries of god,
profaning the rites of the mother of god.
Against the unassailable he runs, with rage
obsessed. Headlong he runs to death. (996-1001)

One could say this refers to Pentheus’ behavior well before he chose to see for himself. But the complete absence of anything like the Messenger’s account has me wondering (1113-1121). There, he asks his mother to recognize who he is. She cannot and kills him.

Drama’s power stems from being like the primal myth. This makes it dangerous in a way almost nothing else is. Dionysus planned to reveal himself in a way Zeus couldn’t. His revelation was dramatic: Thebes was a play. One can argue that Dionysus never really was there. Pentheus’ fascination with something that gripped his citizens led to his demise. The poet can disappear into the background of his creation. But what did he create? The end of the play:

[Chorus]: The gods have many shapes.
The gods bring many things
to their accomplishment.
And what was most expected
has not been accomplished.
But god has found his way
for what no man expected.
So ends the play.

THE CHORUS

The Chorus unabashedly reduces piety to populism. Whatever they think makes them feel good is godly. Emphasis on “they think;” this is not wanton indulgence of lust. That is what Pentheus thinks he is up against; we know the Bacchae are actually chaste (687-689). The Chorus thinks they have returned to the roots of religious inspiration, that they have found what is fundamentally natural and good. It is music to which they can dance. Their miracles are of being freed (shackles falling away) and finding water, wine, milk and honey everywhere. They nurse baby animals. They are Mother Earth. Their womanly strength tears apart herds and beats back armies.

How is this not gross impiety on the part of the Bacchae? They seem to be claiming to be the first god, the principle of change and transformation itself. One has to look at some of their more developed views to see this as a political statement. They are consistently exaggerating Pentheus’ wrongs. They see themselves as humble, longing only for the few good things man wants. They are dismissive of “wisdom” (387-401) and see simple conquest as most divine and honorable (875-881). They see Pentheus (the legitimate ruler) as power obsessed. At what point are the gods the city’s gods?

The same point at which the gods are the people’s gods. This is the true, primal eros with which conventions actually work. This primal eros is not actually eros: it depends on what is apparent to all. There’s no doubt the Bacchae are self-delusional and will tear apart their own children. Sophocles presented the law as doing that in Antigone. But one can go further back to the question of “What gods does a city worship?” Worship itself is going to create a drama whereby people find what they want in the action and the only agreed upon principles will be nonsense. Benardete notes that Pentheus joins the action late (Benardete 138). What if someone came into the Bacchae late and didn’t hear Dionysus’ initial speech, declaring his intent and establishing the main action of the play? The play would seem absolutely crazy to them. We, who have been initiated, see god made man. We are the Bacchae, just as we do not recognize the god in our midst.

Most troubling for us, as a contemporary audience: the ideas that comprise monotheism seem to be at stake. This is a universal worship that transcends the city and treats its own origin as alien to it. There are rituals which are not merely suggestive of communion, as Bacchus brings to the fore the notion of “one flesh.” This might be worth looking to in terms of illustrating the famous “Platonism for the masses” complaint. But, looking to a more immediate concern, the specific point of contention: do the Bacchae ever really listen? Do they hear anything they don’t want to hear? The only time Pentheus’ mother truly listens is when she looks away from the earth at the sky because of Cadmus. The city does not exist for no reason: it provides security and can provide justice to a degree. It provides a setting where speech can matter. The tragic poets, like Aeschylus and Sophocles, tried to explicate the divine origins of the city and condemn impiety. The trouble is the latter. People see the action on stage and roughly think they know what the story is already (an evangelical friend once talked to me about how difficult it was to get people at his church to understand the concept of the Trinity). They’re going to condemn impiety for nearly every other reason except the ones you, as poet, are developing. Poetry looks like it came from elsewhere, but its origin was coeval with the political order.

References

Benardete, Seth. “On Greek Tragedy.” The Argument of the Action. ed. Burger and Davis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 135-142

Euripides, “Bacchae.” The Complete Greek Tragedies: Euripides V, ed. Grene & Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.

1. Once upon a time there were dragons whose power may have stemmed from words. They established a rule of sorts over men. Then the goddess came along and gave man the Voice – the power to use those words. Man defeated the dragons, at least for a time.

If we say that primordial chaos is not “nothingness,” that it could be words floating around, then this tale is some kind of combination of Genesis 1 and the myth of Prometheus. Maybe man is the creature that in putting words together has articulate speech. If so, what are the limits of his power? Much of Skyrim is devoted to a literal dispute over who is a god and who isn’t.

2. Like all political philosophy, the divide between political things and cosmology is problematic to say the least. The political things point to ever higher orders: underneath all the dogma is genuine wonder about what man himself is, where he belongs. But that doesn’t mean there’s any logical link between political things and cosmology.

In Skyrim, there are at least two before your character who used the Voice very differently. One was Talos, who had the Voice, got an army with it, conquered everyone, “ascended into heaven” (see Livy’s account of Romulus’ “ascension” to see what my level 23 Imperial-leaning mage thinks of that story). Then there’s Jurgen Windcaller, who realized that the ability to kill people simply by speaking might be connected to something higher. The Greybeards – monks who offer you guidance no matter what your race, who don’t care whether you’re their religion or not – look to Windcaller for the realization that “the Voice should be used for the worship and glory of the gods, not for the glory of man.”

So let’s say Ulfric is the second coming of Talos, complete with plans for Nord supremacy. And let’s say my heavily biased account above is right and the racism of the Stormcloaks against the Dark Elves is just one aspect of abusing the Voice. Does that mean we’ve derived a morality, a way of acting toward one another, directly from an account of the origins of the world?

Not in the least. For all we know, Talos might be a god. We’ve actually opened up a huge can of worms about our own perceptions. Self-determination is not necessarily a liberal principle. It can entail intolerance and closed-mindedness; early on in the Politics, Aristotle makes some observations that seem to mark any given tribe as tending toward empire. Ulfric’s general, Stone-Fist, is very open about wanting to conquer the elves after throwing the Empire out of Skyrim.

Yet self-determination seems to be an indispensable condition for freedom. The freedom the Empire gives is closer to what we have nowadays as freedom and we find a million ways of complaining about: security and order are paramount. The law is not in our blood but allows a diversity to tolerate each other and form a cosmopolis.

3. And all of you are aware what is above is oversimplified. It’s easy to use Skyrim’s mythology to generate questions. For example: How do Daedra fit into this? They are worshiped, but don’t seem to establish rituals or conventions like the gods of the pantheon do. My provisional guess – I need to play a lot more Skyrim to figure this out – is that they are desire itself for the most part (yes, this includes Daedra who govern things like darkness or twilight). Take the example Daedric prince of hunting, Hircine. Hunting doesn’t quite involve the skill set pottery does. One can characterize it, especially given its signification in ancient cultures, as a display of mastery. One out-beasts the beasts, so to speak. Hircine is insane as a result: he can’t tell who to aid, hunter or hunted, except in terms of creating the greatest hunt possible. The extremes desires lead us to exist outside of us and create situations desire itself cannot work with. Hence, it is another Daedra who created a weapon that can banish his kin. Azura might be the desire of change for the better. That kind of desire rarely likes to hear it is wrong.

Right now there’s a charming book in my inventory called “The Importance of Where” which would more than suffice for a children’s book. “Where” is not simply location or a target: it is the matter of demonstration or proof. The Dark Elves and the Dwemer might be competing over the same story. The know-how of the Dwemer resulted in magnificent creations that outlasted the race. The Dark Elves are surviving through their know-how even as they could be thrown out of Skyrim. I haven’t come across any Dunmer ruins yet.

For there must be some nature, either one or multiple, out of which the other things come into being while that one is preserved. About the number and kind of such sources, however, they do not all say the same thing, but Thales, the founder of this sort of philosophy, says it is water (for which reason too he declared that the earth is on water), getting hold of this opinion perhaps from seeing that the nourishment of all things is fluid, and that heat itself comes about from it and lives by means of it (and that out of which things come into being is the source of them all). So he got hold of this opinion by this means, and because the seeds of all things have a fluid nature, while water is in turn the source of the nature of fluid things (~ Metaphysics 983b17 – 28).

There’s more here than “Thales said everything is water.” “Water” is like a principle that is a substance. It preserves (“nourishment of all things”), causes motion (“heat,” [is where] “things come into being”), and is a point of origin (“seeds… have a fluid nature”). Thales and “everything is water” is a way of examining how a cosmology is comprehensive. It has to account for how time “works:” how things change in it, how they are preserved in it, where they come from.

Aristotle continues:

There are some who think that very ancient thinkers, long before the present age, who gave the first accounts of the gods, had an opinion of this sort about nature. For they made Ocean and Tethys the parents of what comes into being, and made the oath of the gods be by water, called Styx by them; for what is oldest is most honored, and that by which one swears is the most honored thing. But whether this opinion about nature is something archaic and ancient might perhaps be unclear, but Thales at least is said to have spoken in this way about the first cause. (One would not consider Hippo worthy to place among these, on account of his cut-rate thinking.) (~ 983b28 – 984a5)

Did Thales actually do science (natural philosophy)? In the Politics, Thales is used as an example of a philosopher who isn’t a a philosopher. Asked what the worth of philosophy is, he used astronomical calculations to determine if there might be a good harvest and invested accordingly. That’s not even an attempt to find the truly good for himself, let alone the comprehensive good the Politics inquires about.

Here, Thales is saying something that seems secular in proclaiming “all is water.” It is a break, in a way, with the poets and the mythical tradition. Water is not necessarily “Ocean and Tethys.” Then again, Ocean and Tethys are water and tied very closely to the gods for a number of Greeks. The gods themselves are swearing on water. Perhaps “water” is an elaborate comment on how the gods (beings? originators of beings?) relate to chaos (water). But it is more likely the case that myth allowed for this sort of “scientific” supposition easily. The opinion that “everything is water” was in a way implicit in myth and the one who could articulate it first and sermonize about it would be honored greatly. “Hippo” is a comment on what happens when philosophers compete for honor. If you want the truth, you have to move away from honor and riches and to an account that actually explains something. “Everything is water” is near impossible to distinguish from “everything is chaos” in both a mythical and scientific setting.

References

Aristotle, Metaphysics. trans. Joe Sachs. Sante Fe: Green Lion Press, 2002

…modern science is mathematical. From Kant comes the oft-quoted but still little understood sentence, “However, I maintain that in any particular doctrine of nature only so much genuine science can be found as there is mathematics to be found in it” (Preface to Metaphysical Beginning Principles of Natural Science). (Heidegger 273)

One has to distinguish between “mathematics” and “mathematical:” “mathematics itself is only a particular formation of the mathematical” (273). The Greek ta mathemata, a plural noun, designates “what can be learned and thus, at the same time, what can be taught” (274). That learning and teaching are of a capacity to understand is of the utmost importance:

The mathemata are the things insofar as we take cognizance of them as what we already know them to be in advance, the body as the bodily, the plant-like of the plant, the animal-like of the animal, the thingness of the thing, and so on. This genuine learning is therefore an extremely peculiar taking, a taking where one who takes only takes what one basically already has…. If the student only takes over something that is offered he does not learn. He comes to learn only when he experiences what he takes as something he himself really already has (275).

Mathemata sound an awful lot like the Platonic forms: true learning is a reaching into the soul, a recollecting of what was forgotten when we came into this earthly life. Now do need to clarify, before I get more in-depth about other topics, how the mathemata actually relate to something we are familiar with:

Numbers are the most familiar form of the mathematical because, in our usual dealing with things, when we calculate or count, numbers are the closest to that which we recognize in things without deriving it from them. (277)

2. I’m not entirely clear on whether Heidegger is entirely approving of Platonic philosophy in the lecture as a whole:

Learning is a kind of grasping and appropriating. But not every taking is a learning. We can take a thing, for instance, a rock, take it with us and put it in a rock collection. We can do the same with plants. It says in our cookbooks that one “takes,” i.e. uses (275).

The issue is whether categorization through use of logos is the same thing as literally taking things in the world apart for one’s own possession and use. Isn’t rock collection to some degree the same as categorizing types of rocks? Don’t we need to collect rocks to compare? Perhaps Platonic conceptualization is not entirely innocent of violence of a sort. If dialectic does result in a drawing forth from the soul, we note that it does not treat Socratic interlocutors very kindly.

Still, Heidegger in this section (“The Mathematical, Mathesis“) comments favorably on Socrates and Plato. He articulates nothing less than the core of the philosophical project:

The most difficult learning is coming to know actually and to the very foundations what we already know. Such learning, with which we are here solely concerned, demands dwelling continually on what appears to be nearest to us, for instance, on the question of what a thing is. We steadfastly ask the same question – which in terms of utility is obviously useless – of what a thing is, what tools are, what man is, what a work of art is, what the state and the world are. (276)

I think if we choose to attack Heidegger for not saying that “What is justice?” is the critical question, we’re nit-picking. Inasmuch I know something about philosophy itself, I do think it is the critical question, and not just for generating political philosophy. “Appears to be nearest to us” as the site of dwelling is not a neutral statement. Take careful note of “appears.” I suggest the question of justice is right beneath the surface here.

Heidegger comments on the life of Socrates to illustrate the above passage about “the most difficult learning.” The passage has especial relevance for me as the source is Xenophon. The unnamed scholar/Sophist is Hippias, noted for his flashy appearance and bragging about the money he made (see Greater Hippias):

In ancient times there was a famous Greek scholar who traveled everywhere lecturing. Such people were called Sophists. This famous Sophist, returning to Athens once from a lecture tour in Asia Minor, met Socrates on the street. It was Socrates’ habit to hang around on the street and talk with people, for example, with a cobbler about what a shoe is. Socrates had no other topic than what the things are. “Are you still standing there,” condescendingly asked the much-traveled Sophist of Socrates, “and still saying the same thing about the same thing?” “Yes,” answered Socrates, “that I am. But you who are so extremely smart, you never say the same thing about the same thing.” (276)

I do say that Socrates possessed the beings based on this story and a few other passages in the Memorabilia. But we need not go that far to understand the importance of mathemata. It seems he has mathemata, and they are probably apprehended natures. The relation between “being” and “nature:” “With Aristotle, however, this “force,” dynamis, the capacity for its motion, lies in the nature of the body itself” (285). Nature seems to be being in time, at the least (in Introduction to Metaphysics: nature is the thing’s striving toward being).

Is Hippias wrong to change his opinion? Not at all. Only: he was changing his opinion for money and thus moving from place to place. (We learn later in the essay that “nature” includes place. Bodies move toward the places they belong – 285). The Socratic investigation: ask someone with a natural talent for doing or making something what he does or makes. The inquiry’s conclusion – the inquiry itself – only appears to be at hand.

3. “Mathematical” can be the things we are capable of learning in the more or less Socratic way. But it is also “the manner of learning and the process itself…. [the] fundamental presupposition of the knowledge of things” (278-9). With this stated, Heidegger introduces Plato:

…Plato put over the entrance to his Academy the words: Ageometretos medeis eisito! “Let no one who has not grasped the mathematical enter here!” These words do not mean that one must be educated in only one subject – “geometry” – but that one must grasp that the fundamental condition for the proper possibility of knowing is knowledge of the fundamental presuppositions of all knowledge and the positions we take based on such knowledge. A knowledge which does not build its foundation knowledgeably, and thereby notes its limits, is not knowledge but mere opinion. The mathematical, in the original sense of learning what one already knows, is the fundamental presupposition of “academic” work. (278)

Again, I think Heidegger is basically correct. I might be more explicit about a tension between self-knowledge and knowledge. The Platonic and Xenophontic dialogues definitely work with the theme that love of wisdom is hubris. It isn’t even clear to me that self-knowledge exists, and I know this question can be advanced through reading Plato.

Is a potential Heideggerian criticism of Plato hiding here? It may be the case that “mathematical” already has overtones of a narrower vision that characterizes modern scientists (if not modern science). If I blog more on this essay, it will be very clear that “nature” is central to Aristotlean physics and that “mathematics” in modern philosophic thought regarding science is used to displace nature.

References

Heidegger, Martin. “Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics” in Basic Writings, ed. Krell. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. 271-305.

1. Aristotle opens and immediately challenges us and our modern world:

Since we see that every city is some sort of partnership, and that every partnership is constituted for the sake of some good (for everyone does everything for the sake of what is held to be good), it is clear that all partnerships aim at some good, and that the partnership that is most authoritative of all and embraces all the others does so particularly, and aims at the most authoritative good of all. This is what is called the city or the political partnership.

It is impossible to not make too much of this. The city (polis) aims at the good; politics is about the good, not just security or property or freedom (contrast with Federalist 10). Moreover, our participation in political life “aims at the most authoritative good of all,” embracing all the other partnerships and the goods they involve. There cannot be church/state separation in a sense here; contrast with Machiavelli.

Independent of any particular practices Aristotle may want us to adopt, what is advanced in this paragraph is a basis for theoretical reflection. The very notion of political theory, despite political science departments with “theorists” and activists that spout what they think is political philosophy, remains alien to us unless our concept of the good can be brought forth. We need to know what we want and how we want it; we need to attempt organizing our needs and wants, our ends and the means we require. We need to be clear man is a social animal (note the repeated use of “partnership”). If we were focused on practicality, or even theoretical reflection of the highest order, it would be possible to deny man’s social nature.

Now the rest of Book 1 of the Politics explores the polis according to “nature.” Thus, Book 1 starts talking about slavery – are there people who ought to be ruled by nature? Are there those who must rule by nature? I find “what is held” (believed? In that case, conventional) and “authoritative” to be interesting words in the paragraph quoted. To what degree can the city not simply be natural?

2. Aristotle then begins to distinguish types of rule:

Those who suppose that the same person is expert in political [rule], kingly [rule], managing the household and being a master [of slaves] do not argue rightly. For they consider that each of these differs in the multitude or fewness [of those ruled] and not in kind – for example, [the ruler] of a few is a master, of more a household manager, and of still more an expert in political or kingly [rule] – the assumption being there is no difference between a large household and a small city; and as for the experts in political and kingly [rule], they consider an expert in kingly [rule] one who has charge himself, and in political [rule] one who, on the basis of the precepts of this sort of science, rules and is ruled in turn. But these things are not true.

Four types of rule have been posited: rule over slaves, household management, political, kingly. One wonders whether “rule over slaves” is merely a form of violence. Political rule is beautiful and ennobling, to say the least: it is where one “rules and is ruled in turn.” Citizenship as leadership: is that “not true?” True or not, it is something any serious republic must consider. We all know we need as much nobility as we can get.

Now Plato and Xenophon do ask at a surface level whether all rule is really just household management. Household management is procurement and distribution: it is roughly what we would call economics. War and peace, not to mention the law, can be thought an extension of such reasoning. All you’re doing at the level of the city is feeding more mouths, no? A true king uses his expertise to assign people with the correct natures to appropriate tasks?

I think Aristotle insists on a qualitative difference between types of rule in order to make clear there are larger issues at stake. Every regime is a comment on human nature. A proper theoretical accounting works with a diversity, not just “rulers” and “ruled.” Perhaps even the definitions of kingly and political rule are suspect because they underestimate what would comprise a political science.

3. Aristotle concludes this chapter with some remarks pertinent to the philosophic:

This will be clear to those investigating in accordance with our normal sort of inquiry. For just as it is necessary elsewhere to divide a compound into its uncompounded elements (for these are the smallest parts of the whole), so too by investigating what the city is composed of we shall gain a better view concerning these [kinds of rulers] as well, both as to how they differ from one another and as to whether there is some expertise characteristic of an art that can be acquired in connection with each of those mentioned.

What are the parts? What is the whole? What truly rules? If the city is composed of a diversity of human natures, the whole may not simply  be”humanity.” After all, the city says something about what man is when truly human. Given that it seems peculiarly human to reflect on nature, nature itself may be at stake. A ruler would be someone (or something) who at the least comprehends human nature. There is probably no such art, but the closest one can come is through wisdom. In our partiality we reflect the goodness of the whole.

Water is preeminent and gold, like a fire
Burning in the night, outshines
All possessions that magnify men’s souls.
But if, my soul, you yearn
To celebrate great games,
Look no further
For another star
Shining through the deserted ether
Brighter than the sun, or for a contest
Mightier than Olympia
Where the song
Has taken its coronal
Design of glory…

(Sojourns 15)

The excerpt is inescapably political. It was meant to celebrate Hiero of Syracuse’s victory in the Olympics. This same Hiero was a tyrant depicted by Xenophon as an immoderate buffoon; he is implicitly chastised in the Hiero for competing against those he ruled in races.

Heidegger must be aware of some of the political implications of the passage. We know Olympia (the Olympics) is itself the song of the poem from a prior thought of Heidegger’s:

…the games themselves and the proximity of the gods that is preserved in them – what would all these be without the song that praises, without the word which first, through the vibrating-articulated tone, reveals and veils that which has been here? (14-15)

The games are brought about by the song of “praise,” the end of the games. That song is the word, the poem. “Vibrating-articulated:” word is distinct even in the flux of becoming. “Reveals and veils:” the song of praise reveals, as it shows one as he is truly. But songs can also be nomoi, as Plato’s Laws continually joke. Nomoi are laws (Gk. nomos – convention). The word also means “melodies” when an emphasis is placed on the other syllable.

The Olympics are not only a pan-Greek institution. As they are a “song,” perhaps Pindar’s poem itself, they have a “coronal design of glory.” This is the design, that which we see as simply best, worthy of rule. This is the cosmos (Gk. kosmos – order, ornament; what is fitting). The song establishes Olympia as brightness. That brightness is the fire, the Promethean gift of techne (art/technology).

The “design,” I submit, is politics. Conventionality imposes order on the chaos and allows the arts to prosper. Now how aware is Heidegger of any of this? I suspect he knows Hiero to be a tyrant, but looks at that irony as alluding to Oedipus and the tragedy of politics itself. I do think, given the sharp comments against modernity’s technical orientation earlier in the book, that there is a religion-politics-nature mixture he sees as giving birth to the arts as opposed to any particular reward. By extension, modern democracy may be problematic, as it goes hand-in-hand with more exploitative processes.

Still, Heidegger does keep an explicit focus on the poetic (Gk. poesis – making). His prose following the Pindar quote:

The withered beauty of the festival in this place has concealed itself from us. It lingered, however, as an immediate present [Gegenwart] in the creations and the figures stored in the Museum of Olympia which was established with great knowledge and care. Before that, however, we rested for the noon in the high grass under aged trees near the Altis, as butterflies were playing over us making the stillness more intense – a dim sign of Pan’s hour. (16)

Techne and Dasein (“being the open”) allow the “creations and figures” of the past to become “an immediate present.” The natural stillness before this encounter was, as a matter of course, more intense. Nature is a striving for a thing to achieve its being. The distance of the outdoor beauty prefigured the inevitable con-frontation of past meeting present for the sake of a future understanding.

Note: I am not in the business of translating Pindar, who has a very wide vocabulary. I bring forth more typical Greek philosophical vocabulary to make metaphorical matters clearer.

References

Heidegger, Martin. Sojourns: The Journey to Greece. trans. Manoussakis. Albany: SUNY, 2005.

One could well imagine instances in which such sights would serve to confirm something thought; for example, that the sight of the pyramids might have served to confirm what Kant had thought about the estimation of magnitudes in judgments of the sublime. But in the case of Heidegger’s travel to Greece, even the sense of confirmation undergoes a certain deformation inasmuch as what would be confirmed is a thinking of withdrawal from the very presence that constitutes a confirmatory sight. One might, then, be inclined to suppose that there is lacking a proper name for that which, in this instance, would connect philosophy and travel.

- John Sallis, “A Philosophical Travelbook” in Heidegger’s “Sojourns,” vii-viii

I’m not entirely sure what Sallis means. If I tried to simplify Heidegger, I might say a futural orientation necessitates calling the past into the present. That could mean when we look at an antiquity, such as the Parthenon, we are participating in a “thinking of withdrawal.” Maybe we are trying to focus on the past exclusively and therefore cannot receive proper confirmation. It is not clear what the past as presence means outside of such an orientation.

When I first read this passage, I wondered if the problem was more intuitive. There have been many times I looked at a building or painting, knowing quite a lot about it, and I spent less time feeling in the “presence” of the object and more time trying to recall facts or figures. A similar experience might happen in museums when one is spending more time reading about something than just taking that something in. One needs to bring forth methods and reasons to apprehend the past, but in doing so one can miss the obvious.

Then again, the question of Greece is not only aesthetic (if my intuition is only an aesthetic problem). Heidegger wonders in “Sojourns” whether the visit is worth it at all, for the Greece he spent a lifetime studying hasn’t existed for years and in a sense never existed. Greece isn’t just about philosophy in the academy as we know it. It is about whether an alternative exists to our way of life that could make the future better. Heidegger talks about Ancient Greece as beyond our industrial, commercial, brutally technological ways. I don’t want to idealize anything, but to be able to see further – not merely correctly – is what the philosopher does.