Rethink.

With thanks to Jonathan Culp

At times, ancient texts outdo our self-help gurus. Aristotle’s Ethics: “Read this book, be happy!” Plato’s Republic: “Learn justice while building a powerful city!” Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus (Cyropaedia): “Become a great general and near invincible ruler. Get the education Cyrus had today!”

It is true Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus starts with a narrower, more theoretical claim. Xenophon professes interest in whether men can be ruled like herds. He heard there was one Cyrus who was able to do this, even though it seems to many who meditate on politics that men cannot be ruled like animals. There aren’t pages with bullet points and headers proclaiming “Top 10 Tips for Quick Cash.” Rather, an epic story is recounted with a view to decisive conversations and deeds. There’s a lot to think about; things have not been made easy for the consumer.

But still, let’s get real – Xenophon’s world and ours have a lot in common. There’s ambition aplenty nowadays, just as there was then. Rhapsodes and rhetoricians can find their niche on American Idol or Oprah. It does seem that in Xenophon’s world, one could go out into the middle of nowhere and build a city or found an empire. But that’s happening in other parts of the world, including parts of the world bombarded daily by U.S. drones. Nobility and the desire for political greatness never went away. What died was any serious recognition by the academy of these phenomena. That lack of serious recognition carried over into education generally. However, I would caution anyone who thinks they can see what exactly the consequences of this are, or immediately try to pinpoint where we fail to engage more or less noble desires. For some strange reason, that sort of “inquiry” typically brings forth a lot of unhinged ranting.

To get to the theoretical problem, we have to recognize what pulls or pushes us away from the text. That recognition prepares us to be sympathetic to whatever we find as we consider things carefully. What pulls us to the Education of Cyrus is Cyrus himself. We are presented with a historical figure who conquered many nations and founded a great empire. He was a liberator: his conquest of Babylon allowed the Jews to return to Israel. It is said Caesar took Xenophon’s account of Cyrus’ life to heart. Now how much history is actually involved in this account is another question. Xenophon shows us Cyrus dying peacefully. Herodotus has Cyrus being killed in battle and decapitated. Cyrus’ head was then shoved into a bucket of blood so he had his fill of gore.

All of this is to say that the self-help surface of the text matters immensely. Xenophon really wants us to consider Cyrus’ life as worth living, regardless of how preposterous much of it is. In 8.2.14-23, Cyrus has finished his conquests and is ruling peacefully. He has wealth and happiness and his people are ruled as herds are ruled, herds of sheep:

People quote a remark of his to the effect that the duties of a good shepherd and of a good king were very much alike; a good shepherd ought, while deriving benefit from his flocks, to make them happy (so far as sheep can be said to have happiness), and in the same way a king ought to make his people and his cities happy, if he would derive benefits from them. Seeing that he held this theory, it is not at all surprising that he was ambitious to surpass all other men in attention to his friends. (Cyropaedia 8.2.14)

Cyrus, wealthy, happy, in charge, gives leadership training seminars. A shepherd makes his flocks happy and gets goods for himself. That’s exactly how kingship works, right? A king makes his dominion happy in order to get goods from it. You can see something is a bit strange with this logic: don’t people make sacrifices to be involved in politics? Aren’t there some good rulers known for their piety? The end of a political life is not necessarily the happiness of those in charge.

Then again, who said we were talking about politics? People don’t attend leadership seminars because they want to be leaders. They want to get ahead in their lives or careers, they want to provide for themselves and their families. They pursue happiness through the acquisition of private property. “Leadership” helps them enlarge their domain. This is, to say the least, a more private version of an art we associate with public things. Try actually being a political leader in Cyrusland and see the fun. Still, Cyrus can’t help if his subjects think they can be him to a degree, perhaps learn from him. And, as noted before, Xenophon has a self-help surface of sorts.

The darker political implications remain. Cyrus lorded over others like they were in herds so he could obtain benefits for himself. Lest we be too cynical, a large degree of happiness and order can be presumed in his empire. Earlier in the book, Xenophon gave glimpses of the leaders Cyrus displaced. To call Cyrus a tyrant or despot does not appreciate how awful what he replaced was. Further, the whole idea that one is benefited by an order that keeps others in herds is linked to friendship, of all things: “Seeing that he held this theory, it is not at all surprising that he was ambitious to surpass all other men in attention to his friends.”

From 8.2.15-23, Xenophon tells a story featuring Cyrus and Croesus. Croesus famously thought he was the happiest of men, before being challenged by Solon and conquered by Cyrus. Croesus tells Cyrus that he should store more gold of his privately, quoting him an amount that he would save if he gave less. Cyrus sends out a messenger to all his friends asking them for money, money he tells Croesus he needs. The friends are to write down how much they can pledge, but those sealed pledges are to be delivered by a man Croesus trusts. Of course the pledges, when opened, are considerably larger than the amount Croesus said Cyrus could save.

The surface teaching is to invest in friends. Cyrus takes his surplus and uses it to buy no less than loyalty. But is that a real teaching for those of us in private life? Cyrus is a ruler, after all. He can have the loyal turn on the disloyal well before imprisonment or any harsher tactics. That he can command loyalty is a product of having control of the administration of justice and warfare as well as giving to others.

But Cyrus does come down to earth. He admits he has an insatiable desire for wealth that he cannot rid himself of. He is like everyone else in this regard (8.2.20). But others merely store their wealth, letting it decay, finding their joy in continually counting or seeing it. What he does differently is use his wealth for “security” and “good fame” (8.2.22). These things, which come about through the loyalty he procures, do not decay or do injury to him. Rather, “good fame”  makes him “lighter of heart;” its benefits seem to continually accrue. Taking Cyrus seriously, we see exactly why American Idol was the direct result of a Constitution that protects private property. Wealth alone is not happiness. It must obtain the things which make life easier and preserve us. Ultimately, those things have less to do with property or our own bodies, more to do with reputation and loyalty. Take it from me – it’s a lot easier to work with people who respect you than with people who hold back on giving any support just because.

What Cyrus has given is a vision of a fulfilling life: “one who can honestly acquire the most and use the most to noble ends, him I count most happy” (8.2.23). Give friends as much as you can, and you will do nobly as well as well for yourself. People will guard your wealth for you. This isn’t necessarily tyrannical, but the dark political implications have not been purged, as you have probably noticed. The deep problem is that “freedom” and “respect for others” are not treated terribly seriously. One has to account for everyone else around himself as “herds.”

We haven’t found tyranny: what we’ve found is that our private notion of happiness is noble in a strange way. Again, this is commendable to a degree. Students that bash Cyrus as some kind of bloodthirsty despot miss this question: What is the best politics can do? Still, what we’ve also found is that “good fame” can accompany some of the most shallow behavior, that nobility can be watered down in any day and age. To find other political goods and see further, one should seriously note the points of contrast with another figure Xenophon presents in detail, Socrates. Cyrus’ continence, which served him well in war, is not in the service of any kind of moderation. For Socrates, one could say wisdom is moderation. Cyrus’ happiness residing in “good fame” completely denies the infamy that can be earned by standing for the truth. To use public things to secure one’s private standing may make everyone happy, but perhaps to the detriment of “everyone.” The funny thing about thoughts well-thought is that they aren’t private. Ultimately, they’re a genuine contribution to humanity. To see the world as property, as private gain, is dehumanizing on a level I can’t quite address, though I live in the midst of it.

With thanks to Jonathan Culp

Xenophon, “On the Cavalry Commander”

On the surface, this is an exceedingly practical text. Xenophon tells us to make sure the horses in service don’t have bad legs, that the men can mount their horses, etc. There is a catch: in Memorabilia III.3, Socrates has an interlocutor who is an elected cavalry commander. Xenophon declares that he knows the presented conversation happened. This is not a claim he makes about many of his chapters. Socrates gives much of the exact same advice written in the first book of On the Cavalry Commander to the interlocutor, who comes off as extremely ignorant. As it stands, I’m developing an argument that Socrates’ practical advice in III.3 is actually about nobility and the soul. I suspect there is less truly about horses in both writings and a lot more about philosophy and human nature, some kind of direct hint about how Socrates educated Xenophon directly.

However, there is an enormous difference between Xenophon in On the Cavalry Commander and Socrates in Memorabilia III.3 that is revealed by the opening. Socrates never mentions gods or piety in giving the commander advice. He focuses on provision, training, motivation and obedience for horses and men alike. But Xenophon opens his treatise such:

The first duty is to sacrifice to the gods and pray them to grant you the thoughts, words and deeds likely to render your command most pleasing to the gods and to bring yourself, your friends and your city the fullest measure of affection and glory and advantage (Cavalry Commander 1.1).

Xenophon is not shy about repeatedly mentioning the service the commander owes to the gods. Is Xenophon more pious than Socrates? Hardly – the morality of this passage is extremely questionable. In return for giving the gods control over your thoughts, you get affection, glory and advantage. This is an attempt to bribe the gods. The “thoughts, words and deeds” that matter the most bring success, not justice or living within one’s means (contrast with: Mem. I.1.19). It is worth noting that Xenophon talks about the gods so much in his little treatise that he apologizes for it later (Cav. 9.8).

The full significance of piety in the treatise requires one to see competing claims about divinity. Xenophon is abundantly clear about the cavalry commander’s perspective. The other opinion comes about a roundabout way, as the figure of Socrates is hinted at. Xenophon’s practical advice is never just that. To take perhaps the most important example: it is sensible advice that one who wants a horse’s feet to be stronger will have it stand on large stones outside of the stable (they didn’t have horseshoes), making that horse as a matter of habit get used to the hardness (I.16). Xenophon gives a hint that this advice is central to the plan of his work, as he tells the reader that if he tries this, he will “believe in the rest of my rules.”

This passage reminds of Socrates’ hardened bare feet, one aspect of his disdain for wealth and his own continence (cf. Mem I.2.5). It only reminds, as we can only speculate. Much later in the treatise, Xenophon discusses how a thoroughly superior cavalry unit would come about, one that would make one’s opponents look like amateurs. The cavalry that will almost literally fly in difficult situations and over rough terrain – Xenophon says they will be like “birds to beasts,” the “sound from the lame” – that cavalry is trained and has hardened feet (Cav. 8.2-3). He goes further, saying that equestrian exercises are no work at all, for they are the activities where man comes closest to flight (8.6). If one is still not convinced of the value of cavalry, there is this: through war, states get happiness from the gods; no other competition among men is like it (8.7).

Our speculation is beginning to see the outline of a pattern. Men compete not just to be better than other men. They are trying to make claims over other men, trying to show that what other men could not do they can do. In other words: man is the species that is emphatically not content with being man. (One can argue that the text most Greeks know is Homer. A figure like Achilles cannot simply be ignored when reading Plato and Xenophon.) Xenophon is quietly pushing the idea that a superior warrior is near godlike while overtly pushing a more conventional piety. Not to make a bad pun, but to stay grounded, we have to try not to think about a lot of training making someone look like they can fly. We’re going to have to wonder why someone with rather tough soles would choose to stay in the city. The answer, I think, lies in an allusion near the end of the treatise. The gods, who know all things, give warnings through a variety of means; a commander must do his best to take them seriously (9.9). Socrates had the same warnings (Mem I.1.3). To a degree, to want the power of a god is to deny oneself direct access to divine knowledge. Why would someone truly godlike compete?

I | II | III | IV | V

Why is this text worth commenting on? The question at hand: Can philosophy defend freedom? So far, it doesn’t seem so. Our last few considerations of this issue found the philosopher promoting the useful above things essential to freedom and dignity. Now it may be the case that the philosopher merely wants what is useful to inform freedom. We still have to wonder how far that thought can go. Philosophic freedom is very distinct from political freedom. How Socrates lives is not an accident.

I want to talk a little bit about something we passed over that might have future relevance. Aristarchus first dismisses any appeal to utility by associating slavery with providing for one and many (II.7.3). Then he attacks having an art in favor of “being freely educated” (II.7.4) and finds any barbarian examples of using people well distasteful (II.7.6). The example of Nausicydes in II.7.6 makes one wonder if barbarian orderings are symbolic of political life generally. If that last part is the case, freedom as an end conflicts with politics itself, unless Aristarchus’ notion is so utterly useless. There’s certainly evidence for such uselessness. Indeed, we’ve already listed it.

(II.7.8) [Socrates:] “And did they learn what you say that they understand, on the assumption that these things are not useful for one’s life and that they would not be making any of them, or, on the opposite assumption, that they would be attentive to these things and derive benefit from them? For how is moderation fostered more in human beings: through their being idle or through their being attentive to the useful things? And how would they be more just: if they are at work, or if they idly deliberate about their provisions?”

Comment: The women in Aristarchus’ household do know how to make barley meal, loaves of bread, cloaks, tunics, mantles and vests (II.7.5). That they should employ this knowledge is only part of a larger argument Socrates is making. That argument started with II.7.7: freedom and happiness were connected with work of a sort. That work mentioned learning and remembering and branched from there. Acquisition was also mentioned, but property wasn’t stated as a goal, only “what is useful… for life.”

Here, there is still no private property: the emphasis is on production creating moderation and justice. Justice is very curious, as it stands opposed to “idle deliberation.” A lack of idleness seems to aid the intellect (II.7.7) and produce virtue (II.7.8). Of course, “benefit” is crucial to the enterprise.

(II.7.9) “But in fact as it is now, I think, you do not love these women, nor do they love you; for you believe that they are causing you a loss, and they see that you are annoyed on their account. From this situation, there is a risk of greater enmity coming into being and their former gratitude diminishing. But if you preside over them so that they are at work, you will love them when you see that they are beneficial to you, and they will cherish you when they perceive that you are delighted with them; and since it will be more pleasing to recall former good deed, you [pl.] will augment the gratitude stemming from them and as a result be more friendly and like a family to one another.”

Comment: Socrates is giving the advice that will translate into Aristarchus’ creating a sweatshop. It moved from some rough consideration of the intellect and virtue to love. Our big question: does this advice help heal the family? The political order? Civil strife, after all, helped cause this mess in the first place.

It isn’t clear there is a family or appropriate notion of gratitude at work when everything is so conventional. Creating one to be an aristocrat-oligarch is perhaps too great an affront against nature. Nature allows for love of benefactors, though, and even the pleasures had from earning rewards in a reduced system. Before, the “freely educated” had dignity. Now they may trade it for a pat on the back for small jobs well done.

That this isn’t really gratitude discussed should make us wonder about whether a family can be purely conventional. Something about the family must be natural. Were Aristarchus’ relatives really a “family” when eating so much as to destroy his household? Moreover, what of “beneficial?” A natural good is not so much recalling “former good deeds,” but attaining wisdom.

A rough, provisional conclusion: one may need conventionality for love. You need it to have gratitude and a sense of pleasure connected to dignity. Purely natural benefits may not further society’s growth. The natural may be a more appropriate concept for family, but thinking through that, we realize that bad conventions (creating an aristocrat-oligarch) might create bad familial relations.

I | II | III | IV

We assume Aristarchus some combination of an aristocrat and an oligarch. In the midst of war and civil strife, relatives who have come to live with him are using up his resources rapidly. He claims he has no solution to these difficulties. When we last left the text, Socrates was arguing for Aristarchus to take what is useful more seriously and not despair over the fact his relatives were “freely educated.”

(II.7.6) [Socrates:] “Next, don’t you know that from a single one of these things, from making barley meal, Nausicydes sustains not only himself and his household servants but in addition many pigs and cows, and he makes such a surplus that he often performs public services at his own expense for the city as well; by making loaves of bread Cyrebus continually sustains his whole household and lives lavishly; while Demeas of Collytus is continually sustained by the production of mantles, and Menon by the making of wool, and most of the Megarians by the manufacturing of vests?”

“By Zeus,” he [Aristarchus] said, “the human beings they have are barbarians whom they have bought so as to compel them to produce what is appropriate (kalos) for them to produce. The ones I have are free and my relatives.”

Comment: Aristarchus resisted any appeal to acting usefully earlier (II.7.3) by saying that those who put “many” to work sustain slaves while he sustains those free. Socrates has not told him to put his household to work. A bit later, he rejected the idea that the free should even be considered “artisans” (II.7.4). Now he dismisses those producing anything as “barbarians,” even if they produce what is appropriate. The word kalos, though, means “noble” or “beautiful.” Again, Socrates has not told him to make his household work any particular way yet.

Nausicydes’ barley meal production enables him to rule his household like Cyrus, ruling men as if they were herds. He gets to spend like the perfect gentleman of the Oeconomicus, too. Cyrebus’ bread gets both him and his household what is good. The production of clothes can sustain a nation. The useful is central to the political. What of freedom?

(II.7.7) “Then,” he [Socrates] said, “do you think that, because they are free and your relatives, they should do nothing other than eat and sleep? Among others who are free do you see those who live in this manner living better lives, and do you deem them happier than those who are attentive to whatever they understand that is useful for one’s life? Or do you perceive that idleness and inattentiveness are beneficial to human beings for learning what it is fitting to understand, for remembering what they learn, for being healthy and strong in their bodies, and for acquiring and preserving what is useful for their life, while being at work and being attentive are not useful for these?”

Comment: Now Socrates openly attacks “idleness and inattentiveness” as serious attributes of the free. This is the first of a chain of arguments that will convince Aristarchus to enslave his household.

Of importance is an implicit distinction between freedom and happiness. You can be free and lead a worse life, but happiness demands attention “to whatever they understand that is useful for one’s life.” Is happiness contingent on knowledge of the useful simply, or on thinking one knows what is useful?

A lack of work and focus destroys “learning what is fitting to understand.” Does the philosopher stick to one topic consistently? Does he work? What is “fitting to understand?” Memory and health are certainly worth work and focus, but the end of the list is about “acquiring and preserving what is useful.” The implicit question: what does it mean to be free? The philosopher’s leisure is critical. But the free can’t be stuck doing what is necessary all the time either.

I’m not saying that Socrates does not mean any of his critique, or that Aristarchus should use gaps in the argument to contradict Socrates. We know what will happen is that Aristarchus will be at leisure and happy while his female relatives do a lot of useful things for him. A notion of freedom that reconciles with happiness and extends to all is necessary. One wonders if politics means there must always be losers, always someone doing something slavish. In which case, only the philosopher is free.