Nov
11
Just finished a Straussian ritual, Aristophanes’ “Clouds:” Preliminary Notes on the Limits of Comedy
Filed Under philosophy, plato, xenophon | Leave a Comment
1. Consideration of comedians: they use laughter to make everything ridiculous. The good things, while made ridiculous, still are essentially good and cannot be dismissed. They are necessary no matter how much we laugh. The bad things, made ridiculous, fall away quickly. All comedians - including those who believe all is spin, such as Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert - think they are defending the truest, perhaps the oldest goods in practicing their art well.
2. A more sophisticated consideration of comedy comes about in “The Birth of Tragedy” when Nietzsche associates Socrates with the comic. Strauss on Nietzsche’s “Socrates:”
“He [Socrates] is the prototype of the rationalist and therefore of the optimist, for optimism is not merely the belief that the world is the best possible world, but also the belief that the world can become the best of all imaginable worlds, or that the evils that belong to the best possible world can be rendered harmless by knowledge: thinking can not only fully understand being, but can even correct it….
Rationalism is optimism, since it is the belief that reason’s power is unlimited and essentially beneficent…. Rationalism is optimism, since the belief in causes depends on the belief in ends, or since rationalism presupposes the belief in the initial or final supremacy of the good. The full and ultimate consequences of the change effected or represented by Socrates appear only in the contemporary West: in the belief in universal enlightenment and therewith in the earthly happiness of all within a universal state, in utilitarianism, liberalism, democracy, pacifism and socialism.”
- Leo Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes, p. 7
We must keep in mind that Strauss is only sticking to Nietzsche’s surface here for a purpose. Strauss is putting us in the Aristophanean position of defending the ancestral and seeing Socrates from that viewpoint. Socrates is not Rousseau, and the latter half of the quote is pure Rousseau. Moreover, we have noted from Natural Right and History the truer teaching - reason cannot correct “being.” The whole of being is itself beyond being; reason’s ability to merely apprehend “what is” in all cases is dubious.
However, I bring up this more sophisticated view of the “comic” to make the point that comedy, in appealing to what is “common sense,” begins with the ancestral but is beholden to reason as progress without knowing it. “Common sense” can be concerned with immediate effectiveness, after all. This is an enormous problem because people who love wisdom or are very rational - people who can see 10 steps ahead of everyone else - are not necessarily embraced by the comic. The comic only embraces rationality as optimism: it confuses the two and misses that reasonable people can sometimes see problems the rest dismiss as paranoid ravings.
3. The plot of Aristophanes’ “Clouds” is simple enough: a father, Strepsiades, is of moderate means and is going broke. His son, Pheidippides, is using all the family money to become a superior horseman. These lavish tastes stem from the merger of old and new Athens - Strepsiades didn’t have much money but married rich, and his wife instilled lavish tastes in the son.
So what Strepsiades wants to do is get Pheidippides to go to Socrates and learn sophistry, i.e. the “unjust speech.” With that he can win any lawsuit against creditors and can go back to his son wasting tons of cash and himself, well, sitting around farting (I kid you not. Aristophanes uses this sort of joke every other line). He goes to Socrates’ thinkery himself and runs into new deities Socrates introduces - “the Clouds.” The “Clouds” promise Strepsiades quite a bit if he listens to Socrates, and even give Socrates a hint or two about how to deal with his new pupil. He almost becomes decent enough to defend himself, but doesn’t have the natural ability. Socrates expels him but the Clouds get him to enroll Pheidippides and Pheidippides learns the unjust speech. The father holds a feast for the son but they argue about the pious things; needless to say, son is a lot less pious having worked with Socrates, and beats his father up after the verbal exchange becomes heated. Father encounters the Clouds again and learns from the Clouds that his initial want of injustice brought this on. He turns to piety of a regular sort, and in this turning, decides to burn Socrates’ “thinkery.” This he does, and the god Hermes appears to drive him to expel Socrates and his disciples even from the theater.
4. The structure of the play is very complex - Aristophanes is featured himself as a character, the Clouds are selective in what they tell and don’t tell the audience and other actors. It is possible to get a reading of the play that is very sympathetic to Socrates.
5. I am not in the mood for such a reading. While eros unites all comically in the Symposium, where Aristophanes and Socrates seven years after this play was performed don’t seem to hate each other, the ending of this play is absolutely brutal. The god Hermes condones arson and encourages violence against Socrates and his followers, and Strepsiades, an unthinking brute who was more than willing to treat creditors like dirt when he thought his son could win any lawsuit, is given not a “last laugh” but a rather serious role in the polity. His piety is good enough to get Athens horsemen it will need for war, and makes him useful to the city’s higher purpose of throwing the distracting and unnecessary out.
Aristophanes comes before us as a character in the midst of the play to declare his wisdom; he too is a devotee of the Clouds, who can mimic everything. Only: Socrates believes the Clouds to be a stand-in for human reason - imitation is the province of the imagination and refers back to the uniquely human. Aristophanes sees the Clouds as genuinely divine and claims to be a disciple of Dionysus, the god of wine, himself.
It’s hard to see how Socrates isn’t correct in this debate: how on earth are the Clouds gods? Strauss notes that the Clouds want to be gods that don’t wander, but find a home. They want to reside in Athens. Socrates is their only devotee, but a flawed one. His willingness to consider them divine stems from a rejection of divinity in any traditional sense. What Socrates doesn’t see is that reason is a tool for divine, not just human, purposes. The Clouds may reduce to reason, but it isn’t human reason exclusively - the Clouds are everywhere, and are literally above man.
The Olympian Gods and the city that bears the name of the goddess of wisdom have a stake in the Clouds. Reason can never divorce entirely from “common sense” for Aristophanes. If you look unhealthy, you must be unhealthy - Socrates’ gauntness doesn’t reflect moderation as much as hubris: he thinks himself beyond the human.
But we’ve seen above that “common sense” can be fatally flawed: it doesn’t even realize its own grounding. And fathers, wanting the best for their sons, can end up throwing away years of tradition that might help the city as a whole. Strepsiades is an arsonist at the end of the drama; his pious revelation is just as destructive to the city as the sophist that Socrates is purported to be. Except that it wasn’t Socrates who came into the thinkery asking if he would teach injustice.
Point is, Aristophanes is between a rock and a hard place in defending his comic art. He wants to defend all the good things the city wants at once - wealth, martial virtue, reason/superior speech, piety. Guess what? No matter how much awareness your play may show as to the tensions between those things, even the exaggerated, poorly represented Socrates is in a better position to address the issue of the good. He’s at least honest about the things that aren’t compatible with each other.
So the question we’re left with is: Does human reason, which allows actual apprehension of the good, require a “beating up” of one’s own father? How radical is the questioning of “common sense?” The Platonic and Xenophontic Socrates, the one that would never teach an unjust speech or hold “clouds” to be responsible for all phenomena, keeps the critique very radical. That much Aristophanes got right; what he missed is why it is essential to not give up on lines of questioning. People are going to ask questions about authority no matter what, and it is when they don’t have any questions one has to wonder: either they’re frittering their money away on luxuries like horses, not caring for the debt. Or maybe they’re perpetually at war, with their neighbors and other cities. Finally, if they have no questions, maybe they’re in the most dangerous state of all, thinking they know everything when they can’t even articulate what they believe.
Sep
29
I finished a draft of another section of the dissertation last night. That section asserted that gratefulness needs to be expressed by one citizen to another, always, for ungratefulness makes benefactors feel like they’re lower than dirt. The teaching by Xenophon regarding citizenship stands in stark contrast to “enlightened self-interest,” where our greed produces the specialization and progress which makes us all comfortable in our own property. We don’t need to talk to each other on this latter theory.
The section I’m working on now grapples with fraternity: do we need to be friends? Of course we can’t be friends with all citizens, but the notion of friendship so prevalent among my generation - where “friend” is synonymous with “friend with benefits” and “drinking buddy” in many cases - is this notion acceptable? For Aristotle, the highest sort of friendship aimed at virtue: because we each want to be better, we work with each other and take each other seriously.
It looks like friendship may inform citizenship in a critical way: to know how to make and deal with friends is to know how to deal with people generally, including people who aren’t friends.
The two sections are not alien to one another. The thing I most regret is neglecting those who have done me so much good. What is darkest is my own memory with regards to my true benefactors, and it is darkest partly because saying “thank you” isn’t a virtue for us. More important to us is independence, and the security property affords.
A few who were very special to me only understood people as their own property - love was about possession simply. What is curious is how remembrance is a possession that isn’t a possession; a likeness “is” inasmuch it literally “is not.” To appreciate is an inward movement outward: the self-knowledge gained in taking something seriously leads back to the creator or giver of that something.
Sep
5
Creating Statesmen, Part 2: Democracy, Oligarchy and Xenophon’s Depiction of Charmides
Filed Under philosophy, politics, xenophon | 1 Comment
for David Sullivan and Joe Connole, with many thanks
Background: The Pelopennesian War, 431-404 BC, pit the Athenian democracy against the Spartan republic. Now Athens had not always been a democracy; once it was a kingship, and there were traces of noble lineage among the Athenians. One of the people of such descent was Plato (Wilson Carey McWilliams used to say Plato’s lineage was as if direct descendants of Hamilton and Jefferson had married). Athens at the time of the war also had a very active oligarchic class; richer citizens were responsible in large part for the excellent Athenian navy. These richer citizens, for quite obvious reasons, were not thrilled with the democracy’s bloodlust against Sparta. War was bad for business and they were forced to shoulder the burden of having to wage it to a greater degree than poorer members of the demes. Moreover, with ancestral ideas about what is noble floating around, children of the oligarchs wished to exercise power and rule themselves, paving the way for some who interacted with Socrates to take Socratic rhetoric, gain a following, and attempt to be tyrants. Those noble ideas, after all, didn’t have much to do with respecting the wishes of the demos.
A slightly more mature gentleman named Charmides was a friend of Socrates. After the war ended and Sparta won, Sparta installed some of the oligarchic faction as rulers, and Charmides was one of the rulers. These rulers came to be known as the “Thirty Tyrants” and were notorious for murdering anyone and everyone. Socrates’ main interlocutor in the Republic, Glaucon, died fighting this tyranny - Plato seems to credit Socrates directly with Glaucon moving from a love of tyranny to respecting democracy.
But I don’t use “friend” lightly, although Xenophon would move us to not even consider Charmides an associate of Socrates in the Memorabilia. Since the Memorabilia is about Socrates’ justice, this consideration is given by Xenophon for two reasons: first, it would make Socrates look pretty guilty of some crime against Athens if it were mentioned loudly. Second, and far more importantly, Charmides never really listened to Socrates, not in the least. He kept his distance in a critical respect, as we will see below. Read more
Apr
10
This is all over the place: it ties together, but doesn’t address exactly what’s wrong with how we’re talking about the issues - something about our talk feels alien. It will need to be expanded upon later, and made much more nuanced.
[Critobulus:] “But if one who is wicked is unable to acquire gentlemanly (noble and good) friends, then I have the following concern: whether one who has become a gentleman can readily become friends with gentlemen.”
[Socrates:] “What disturbs you, Critobulus, is that frequently you see men who perform noble actions and refrain from what is shameful, instead of being friends, engaged in factious strife against one another and dealing with one another more harshly than would human beings of no worth.”
“Yes,” said Critobulus, “and not only do private individuals do this but also the cities that are most attentive to the noble things and least admit the shameful are frequently in a state of hostility with one another.”
- Xenophon, Memorabilia II: 6, 16-18 trans. Amy L. Bonnette
So no one can be friends or allies with anyone, since a “noble” declaration would be a declaration of value and competing values, which all good people have, create a state of war. Not every saint agrees as to the nature of God; Dante points out St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis as having less than compatible visions of how God’s goodness is manifest. Only in heaven, under the pretext of there will be peace here no matter what is their “reconciliation” possible, it seems.
For the rest of us, a very large problem looms: it seems like the more we know, the more hostile we get towards each other over the things we hold dearest. A cynic could say the only thing holding those of us who care for higher things together is annoyance with and fear of those who don’t care to know at all. I prefer to believe that knowledge is a form of love, that appreciation of others is true knowledge, but any claim to wisdom means that I have to refrain from preaching that and commit instead to exploring it.
Politics can start well, though, from the factious state of affairs outlined in the quote. The “noble” can be an attempt to apprehend the beautiful for those who are higher in society, those who have founded and preserve society. And thus the “noble” isn’t just being a good politician: it means being courageous in battle, just towards the poor and the gods, moderate in one’s desires and even learning when one can. The “noble” goes pretty far in life, and what’s funny about it is that one’s attachment to it need not be rational or even erotic. All one needs to do to be noble is compete for what is beautiful, perhaps even ruthlessly shoving other competitors in one’s city aside to attain it.
If it seems unclear how such a conception of the noble creates civic peace, look at our Founders. Hamilton and Jefferson didn’t like each other at all. Look at British history, at Disraeli and Gladstone. Hear what Karl Rove says about most people he shakes hands with, hear what they have to say about him. The noble creates rules within which competition can take place relatively peacefully - no one wants to hurt another if one doesn’t have to; followers and converts are much preferable to enemies (Memorabilia I: 2, 10-11).
I haven’t been shy about talking about how this is always doomed to fall apart, though. A martial metaphor underlying the whole setup will mean that the second the setup can break down, it will. The question is what we should be looking for as a sign of the breaking.
Machiavelli held that up until Caesar, the Roman Senate took care of distribution of land/wealth issues well. They would delay instituting the reform the plebians wanted, but would eventually concede, passing something that had exactly what the plebs wanted but on their own terms, in a different statement than the plebians wanted. Dr. Parens’ lectures on Rousseau (I’m skipping his class as I write this) aren’t shy about citing property as what drives man away from some sort of natural nobility.
For us, then: Is all this talk about subprimes and trade agreements the sign that we are decadent? It’s like there’s no sense of value or tradition whatsoever in the way things are discussed. The candidates’ rhetoric about equality seems similarly empty: they’re tied to proposals that redistribute wealth and mention higher ends in passing, but don’t address what sort of citizens we would like to be ultimately. The proposals don’t offer a sense of “we, as Americans, are there for each other;” rather, it’s more there’s a “problem,” and there are “solutions,” just as a Sudoku puzzle has solutions.
We, of course, don’t want the government getting too nosy, prying into every area of our lives, and constantly calling us to civic duties that are extraordinary. Jury duty is annoying enough as is. But the distance we want the government to have we want on principle: since government is composed of each of us, we want each of us to be aware and respectful of our privacy. If we just say “I don’t care why government bother me, just that it doesn’t bother me,” then Saddam’s Iraq will do for us - its main concern was that it alone survived, and it literally didn’t care for its own people.
I’ve “answered” my own question in setting it up: economic issues matter. They matter immensely. But the principle that underlies them is what is crucial, because only the “noble” can allowed to be where competition happens politically. When people are using politics to compete for wealth only, then politics is nothing but class warfare with no sense of how society can preserve itself. It isn’t “having everything” that’s the definition of tyranny; what is tyranny is thinking that “having everything” and everyone else having nothing and basking in one’s splendor is a good thing. To remind us yet again: at a very base level, wealth isn’t beautiful, nor are the things it buys necessarily.
Mar
19
Are Philosophers Tactless? Regarding Antisthenes, from Xenophon’s Symposium
Filed Under philosophy, xenophon | 1 Comment
Preliminary to the dissertation, in the style the dissertation will most likely be completed. Making notes on the actual dissertation text as you read this. Please don’t worry about not knowing all the names, I will flesh out what is worth knowing, I won’t waste your time.
Socrates is a very noble guest in Xenophon’s Symposium. He attends Kallias’ banquet because he doesn’t want to hurt Kallias’ feelings (1: 7), and upon seeing Kallias enchanted with Autolycus (1: 10), promotes Kallias as much as possible. Kallias is complimented mightily on being a good host (2: 3), is defended in his claim he makes men more just through his money (4: 5), relied on for aid in dealing with Hermogenes’ taciturnity (6: 3), and finally told that his love for Autolycus is not only a good thing, but divinely inspired (8: 37). There are many other deeds of Socrates in the Symposium, but Strauss has suggested all the deeds are really one: he is exhorting Kallias to love the polis.
The above is only backdrop for our present concern, the character of Antisthenes. Antisthenes proclaims that he is madly in love with Socrates (8: 4), and Socrates jokingly replies that his love should be kept secret as it is only physical infatuation (8: 6). Strauss proclaims Antisthenes “unerotic,” though, and we have to wonder what is meant by that. I think those of us who consider ourselves philosophic in some small way, but nowhere near on the level of Socrates, would find ourselves sympathetic to Antisthenes.
1. Antisthenes as philosopher
Unlike Socrates, he has difficulty warming up to the dinner party. People playing the flute and dancing, lots of food and upper class snobs bragging about how they make people more just through money or know everything because they’ve memorized Homer via paid tutors - seriously, shouldn’t a philosopher - shouldn’t anybody - be offended by how grating it all is? There’s a war going on at the time of this party (421 BC is the date the Loeb editor gives), and the spirit of celebration can’t possibly be shared by all on command: witness Charmides’ barely concealed (and very justifiable) anger at the demos for his poverty in 4: 29-33.
So Antisthenes represents one who thinks he loves Socrates, but perhaps doesn’t truly. Yet his reaction to this party is more in line with what we would expect from a philosopher than Socrates’. Asked what the most valuable thing he knows is, Antisthenes claims that his pride resides in his wealth, although all know him to be poor. He holds true wealth to be held in people’s souls (4: 34-35), for what people are willing to do to each other if they are even remotely insecure about wealth shows many who seem to be wealthy to be poor (4: 35-37 - he cites the rich who take risks because of fear of competition, moves to those who squander inheritances, and finally talks about despotism as the enslavement of an entire city for the sake of a few bucks). For himself, though, he says he has too many possessions. He can eat so that he is satisfied; he doesn’t need too many extra garments or expensive shelters to resist the cold. He enjoys sleep and finds it difficult to get out of bed. Women aren’t a problem because he talks only to those who have no one else with whom to converse.
Antisthenes explains the “most worthy” possession of his wealth: If he were robbed, any occupation would provide for him adequately (4: 40). He can enjoy fancy foods and wines such as the ones at the party, but because he is “most contented” with what he has, he is “least likely to covet what belongs to others” (4: 42-43). He credits Socrates for this “wealth” of his, says that he is willing to share his spiritual wealth with all, and that his most “graceful” (the word has strong implications of immortality/divinity) possession is his “leisure” (4: 44), by which he can take in many things and hang out with Socrates.
Is Antisthenes not in Socrates’ league merely because he loves Socrates, and has resigned himself to be a follower? Or is there something else about a philosopher, a necessary nobility that Antisthenes does not quite have?
2. The trouble with Antisthenes
The trouble is inherent in the very listing of his “wealth.” The whole speech is too pointed, it would be considered a mocking of a less gracious host than Kallias. Poor Kallias is spending lots of money to feast this man. If wisdom is moderation, and part of moderation is knowing how to be a philosopher without rubbing it in every 5 seconds, then wisdom isn’t declaring oneself wise and moderate and better than everyone else all the time.
But there’s more than just the timing of the speech, or his refusal to make fun of himself (4: 62), or his nearly causing a fight with the Syracusean (a fight the Syracusean deserves, but still - 6: 8). The lack of grace is evident in his confusion about what is noble and what is graceful, and you can see that in his listing above. Usually we would say “leisure” is noble, and the ability to be continent - to provide for necessities by not having many in the first place - a particular grace. Instead, Antisthenes has reversed the order and placed continence under the “worthy,” and leisure under divinity. Now there’s nothing wrong with reversing this order, necessarily, except that continence is a means for the temperate as well as the intemperate. If one can control one’s appetites wholly, one has the potential to be the worst sort of tyrant over men - making them believe that one is a saint while one is really working to be stronger than everyone else so as to dominate. Continence can mark a greedy general as well as an ascetic, and not all ascetics, of course, are wise merely because they are ascetics. Sometimes they’re looking for influence in order to be remembered, and do not really care if they are wise or not.
What reveals Antisthenes as flawed is the one time he praises Kallias. While he eventually disputes that Kallias can make men more just through money, Antisthenes does like Kallias’ emphasis on justice. From Strauss’ Xenophon’s Socrates, pg. 149:
…in Antisthenes’ view justice is the least disputable kind of gentlemanship, for manliness and wisdom are thought to be sometimes harmful to both friends and the city (hence unjust) whereas justice is never in any respect associated with injustice; he implied that wisdom is at least thought to be compatible with injustice; he was silent on the harm that manliness and wisdom (and justice) can do to their possessor (Mem. IV 2.33), for the question concerned now the harm to others; he was silent on continence because it was thought to be compatible with greed (Mem. I 5.3)
It would seem to me that Socrates could agree that continence should be subordinate to leisure. But that is not specific enough - a despot is more than willing to be continent for the sake of leisure. A despot will happily use means that look just in order to advance injustice. Understanding what’s wrong above starts with “justice is never in any respect associated with injustice” - is it not the case we do harm to criminals, sometimes excessive harm accidentally? From the Republic, Book 1 - is it not just for someone who wishes to guard something well to be familiar with all the ways a thief can operate, perhaps be skilled at stealing himself? From Lesser Hippias - is it not the case that Odysseus teaches much about justice and wisdom and rule, all while being a liar?
3. So what do we conclude?
I think Antisthenes is a stand-in for those who wish to understand what Socrates truly stood for, and benefit others. It’s not that he isn’t philosophic - he is. He just has a lot to learn, and shouldn’t get carried away with how powerful the mind can be. Happiness for oneself is, in large part, a matter of perception. But true happiness for oneself and others involves subordinating oneself to what they want to achieve, and showing them what is best through subtle and caring means of persuasion. Socrates’ deeds in the Symposium are truly graceful because they are cornball for the most part: he compliments others frequently and avoids insulting anyone. Charmides and Antisthenes and Hermogenes all are in Socrates’ circle, and have legitimate complaints against being at the party. Antisthenes seems to me to be an incomplete philosopher, one who has a little bit of growing up to do. When he grows a bit more, he’ll realize just how much the philosopher is a guest, how much he would rather not be the center of attention (9: 4-6).