Philosophy, - Interpretation

111 

Winter 1990-91 Volume 18 Number 2 

Chaninah Maschler Some Observations About Plato's Plaedo 

David Roochnik The Serious Play 

of Plato's Euthydemus 

Charles Salman The Wisdom of Plato's Aristophanes 

Roger M. Barrus David Hume's Theology 

Greg 

of Liberation 

Russell Jeffersonian Ethics in Foreign Affairs 

Daryl McGowan Tress Feminist Theory 

Discussion 

313 Christopher A. Colmo Reply 

Book Review 

to Lowenthal 

and Its Discontents 

317 Maureen Feder-Marcus Time, Freedom, and the Common Good: An 

Essay in Public Philosophy , by Charles 

Sherover

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Interpretation 

Winter 1990-91 A Volume 18 Number 2 

Chaninah Maschler Some Observations About Plato's Phaedo 177 

David Roochnik The Serious Play 

of Plato's Euthydemus 211 

Charles Salman The Wisdom of Plato's Aristophanes 233 

Roger M. Barrus David Hume's Theology of Liberation 251 

Greg 

Russell Jeffersonian Ethics in Foreign Affairs 273 

Daryl McGowan Tress Feminist Theory 

Discussion 

and Its Discontents 293 

Christopher A. Colmo Reply to Lowenthal 313 

Book Review 

Maureen Feder-Marcus Time, Freedom, and the Common Good: An 

Essay in Public Philosophy , by Charles 

Sherover 317 

Copyright 1991 interpretation 

ISSN 0020-9635

Some Observations About Plato's Phaedo 

Chaninah Maschler 

St. John's College 

The essay below falls into four unequal parts: 

1 . 

An 

introduction that places the Phaedo among the other dialogues con 

cerning the last days of Socrates, 

2. A section analyzing and appraising the first of the dialogue's four major 

arguments for the soul's not dying, 

3. A section in which the similes of the cloak and the lyre are studied in 

some detail, 

4. A concluding section about Platonic Forms. 

1. INTRODUCTION 

The Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, all three, purport to be "apologies," 

accused man's formal reply to a plaintiff's charge against him), albeit before 

different 

audiences.1 

In the dialogue that bears the name Apology, Socrates is in court. The for 

mal charge against him is impiety and corruption of the young. Roughly, this 

seems to mean that by questioning the authority 

(an 

of those who shape public 

opinion in Athens these were the poets, craftsmen, and politicians he un 

dermined civic solidarity to such a degree as to have harmed the body politic. 

The jurymen who hear and judge him represent the city of Athens entire. Here, 

in court, it is his life as a public personage that he is explaining and, in that 

sense, defending. He is also exhibiting it. 

In the Crito Socrates is in jail. The accusation, brought by 

the friend and 

agemate after whom the dialogue is named, is that Socrates, in accepting the 

Athenian jurymen's verdict and staying in jail to await execution, is acting 

irresponsibly toward his family and intimates. It is his death, or rather, his 

acceptance of death at the city's instance, that Socrates is explaining and justi 

fying 

to Crito. 

In the Phaedo we are made to overhear an 

Socrates conducted himself the day 

of that eyewitness. 

eyewitnes 

account of how 

he drank the hemlock. Phaedo is the name 

Phaedo reports that even on his last day, in the midst of friends who might 

be expected decently to still their own grief and to try 

interpretation, Winter 1990-1991. Vol. 18, No. 2 

to support Socrates'

178 Interpretation 

equanimity in the face of death, Socrates still is "defending 

against the "accusation" 

interest. Or at least, 

himself," 

this time 

that in choosing death he is acting against his own 

as Socrates' 

of sense ought to be troubled at dying (62,63), 

Cebes' 

young Theban friend Cebes puts it, that a man 

as Socrates appears not to be. 

remark, to be fair to the young man, actually takes the mild form of 

wondering how the various things said by Socrates hang 

stung by 

Socrates' 

together. He feels 

strange dictum that, while it would be wrong for a man to 

do violence to himself because he is not his own, but the god's property, nev 

ertheless, if he is a philosopher, he will die gladly. 

Socrates' 

saying 

would not be strange if it meant that philosophers do cheer 

fully and without groaning what we all must willy-nilly, or if it meant that, 

once a man sees clearly that death must soon come because he has made certain 

choices (98e), he becomes resigned to the outcome and, if he is the type of 

human being who derives pleasure from seeing why things are and must be as 

they are, he will not be bitter in his resignation. He may even, intermittently, 

experience a fierce joy at seeing the curve of his career with such utter clarity. 

But, as we all know, Socrates' 

He declares that " 

dying and being dead, nought 

What can he mean? 

words are much harsher and darker than this. 

those who pursue philosophy aright keep rehearsing 

else" 

(64a, epiteedeuousin). 

A first and moderately clear answer is.given at 64c-69e. In the eyes of those 

whose sense of life derives from such pleasures as eating, drinking, sex, fancy 

clothes, people who do not exert themselves to obtain such goods, 

who even 

despise their momentary selves (and others) for taking them seriously, look "as 

good as dead 

already." 

I am not at all sure that people who spend much time or money on fine food, 

or try the role of Don Juan, or devote their holiday time off to shopping sprees, 

experience the goods on which they gorge themselves as mere pleasures of the 

body, since even in the case of the pleasures of eating and drinking, and mani 

festly in the other cases, other people, their look of approval or envy, and thus 

their fellowship, are normally involved. Frequently some modicum of skill and 

connoisseurship enter as well. Still, it is probably fair to say that to a Spinoza 

or a Newton the majority of human beings look as though their lives were 

oriented toward finding opportunity for indulging their body. 

A second interpretation of the philosophic life's being a regimen of dying is 

given at 66d. Philosophers do not, according to Socrates, lack all acquisitive 

impulses. They 

want to "acquire" 

wisdom and knowledge. But they find, so he 

reports, that fellowship with their body and what their body gives them direct 

access to interferes with their obtaining what they are after. So, as much as 

possible, they dissociate themselves from its lusts and passions; they despise 

and sit in judgment on the deliveries of eyes and ears, allying themselves in 

stead to reasoning and calculating and all such powers of the soul as transcend 

the bodily.

Some Observations About Plato's Phaedo 179 

One may (and should) protest that philosopher-scientists are hardly the only 

ones who, when they find their concentration broken by a headache or hunger 

pangs or too great heat or cold, resent their embodied condition. The same 

holds for generals, poets, painters, businessmen. And isn't it absurd to reserve 

reasoning and calculating strictly for philosopher-scientists? Why is it the phi 

losopher more than other men that gets singled out as a despiser of the body? 

The question might not seem relevant to the purposes of the Phaedo, except 

that we do not as yet know exactly what the dialogue's objectives are. Now we, 

and the immediate, named audience for Phaedo's narrative, namely Echecrates 

and his fellow citizens from Phlius (cf. Diogenes Laertius viii. 46), 

are ex 

pressly told by Phaedo that philosophy is the dialogue's theme (59a). 

Philosophers, says Socrates, differ from other men in terms of what they 

desire and what they say they are lovers of (hou epithoumen te kai phamen 

erastai einai). They are not men who lack passion but men mastered by a 

different passion than are the majority. Now no matter how devoted to his 

enterprise a general, a poet, a businessman is, no matter how hard he drives 

himself, he cannot, in Socrates' 

terms, long for separation from the body, be 

cause the things that are real to him the troops, terrain, supplies, the risk of 

defeat, the hope for victory; the lyric, the ode, the play; the factory, the busi 

ness partnership, the money owed to him or by him though I believe not one 

of them is simply bodily (here I want to quarrel with what Socrates says at 

66d), do all involve things that can be touched, seen, heard. What is more, 

these enterprises, even if engaged in by people who believe in plain living and 

high thinking, call for some sort of love and respect for the bodily. 

At least according to the section of the Phaedo now under examination (66 

ff.), the philosopher, intent upon truth, has no such love and respect, whether 

for his own body, bodily desires, and sensory faculties, or for the bodily and 

perceptually accessible features of things other than himself, including his 

friends . 

"When, then, does the soul encounter truth? Because when it tries to consider 

anything with the body it is evidently deceived by it. In thought or reasoning, 

is becomes manifest to it. . But it 

then, if at all, something of what genuinely . 

thinks best when none of these [bodily] things troubles it, neither hearing nor sight, 

nor pain nor any pleasure, when the soul is, to the extent possible, alone by itself 

and takes leave of the body. 

" 

(65b) 

Since the opening thesis of the present section of the dialogue was that being 

dead can be defined as the state in which body and soul are severed from one 

another, each having reached a condition of being alone and by itself (auto kath 

hauto), we have, verbally, justified Socrates' 

philosopher "does what he 

dark saying that in dying the 

wishes," 

obtains a good long sought (67d, 68a). 

Fortunately, the dialogue arranges for Cebes to protest in our behalf. Being 

the well-bred youth he is, he doesn't put the question quite so rudely. Still, he


in effect asks what all along we have been muttering to ourselves: Doesn't 

Socrates' 

opening definition of death suppose the very thing that we least be 

lieve, namely, that when, as people say, the soul leaves a man's body, it con 

tinues to be something independent and coherent that has power and intel 

ligence (dunamis kai phronesis)! The form which Cebes' 

he reminds Socrates of a familiar "model" 

protest takes is that 

for the soul, namely, that it is what 

we, today, would call a gas, like air, which, when it is released from the bodily 

container that held it in, becomes an unidentifiable part of the atmosphere. The 

word Cebes uses to express this thought is the Greek stand-in for our Latinate 

word "spirit," 

viz. pneuma (70a). 

Here is how Socrates responds to what the dialogue describes as the com 

mon fear that no integral soul will be left over upon death, only 

an integral 

body, the corpse: 

According to many folk traditions, the souls of grandparents or great grand 

parents wait in Hades for rebirth in their descendants (Jews and ancient Greeks 

both often name their sons after deceased grandparents). Socrates is no funda 

mentalist about these old stories. Still, if it could be established that the living 

have nothing else to come from except what has died, then (says Socrates) the 

folk tradition might gain support and, in turn, give support to the philosopher's 

hope that death brings, not extinction, but consummation of his deepest de 

sire an interval at least of complete independence from the body. 

We have set the stage for the first argument for the soul's immortality, the 

argument "from 

opposites" 

(70c-72e). 

Opposites, or contrariety, have, of course, been with us from the beginning 

(58e, 60b). Notice also that we are told by Phaedo, our eyewitness, that he and 

his friends assembled in jail at daybreak and that Socrates died as the sun was 

going down (61e, 116b, e). 

2. ARGUMENTS 

Isn't it the case, says Socrates, that change and generation always proceed 

from opposite to opposite, the noble from the shameful, the just from the in- 

just, the greater from the smaller, the weaker from the stronger, the slower 

from the quicker, the worse from the better? If this holds true universally, then 

it holds also for life, at least, if to live (zcn) has an opposite, as being awake 

has the opposite being asleep. Manifestly 

there is an opposite to life (whether 

we consider the infinitive, the participle, or the adjective of the word root), the 

very thing we are all waiting for, death. 

Now in all the enumerated instances of paired opposites the extremes are 

linked by a genesis between them: Between the greater and the lesser thing 

(pragma) there is increase and diminution which, as they go on (there is a 

verbal substitution of infinitive for noun), amount to being-on-the-increase or

Some Observations About Plato's Phaedo -181 

being-on-the-decrease. That is to say, not only are there opposite poles, there 

are also opposite processes of moving between the poles, (cf. Aristotle's defini 

tion of motion as "the actuality of the potential qua potential.) The person now 

asleep wakes up and continues in a wakeful state; next falls asleep 

tinues in a sleeping state. And we have seen this cycle repeat itself. 

and con 

Admittedly, we have not actually observed returning to life as we have ob 

served dying. But don't considerations of symmetry make the inference that 

there is such a process of returning from Hades plausible? 

And if, just as the man awake comes from the man asleep, the man alive 

comes from the man dead, then we seem to have demonstrated what we wanted 

to establish, namely, that dead men's souls do not after separation from their 

bodies disintegrate but abide somewhere. 

try: 

Moreover, consider the consequences of denying 

the inference from symme 

"If generation did not proceed from opposite to opposite and back again, going 

round, as it were in a circle, but always went forward in a straight line, without 

turning back or curving, then, you know, in the end all things would have the same 

shape and be in the same condition and stop being 

generated. 

(72b) 

How good an argument is this? How seriously is it being offered? 

I find these questions much harder to answer than do some other readers of 

the dialogue whose comments 1 have heard or read. My 

kinds at least: 

1 . 

difficulties are of four 

Unless one settles precisely what conclusion is to be established by what 

premises and what degree and kind of cogency the author of the argument 

claims for it, how can one decide the goodness or badness of the argument? 

What I mean becomes evident if one considers that if one disregards the fabric 

of the given premises and conclusion, 

a Democritean materialist argument can 

be seen in or culled from the various things Socrates says, e.g. that round soul- 

atoms must abide to be available for reintegration with other atoms so as to 

constitute some new living being. 

being 

2. Mustn't one clear up the ambiguity of my phrase "how seriously is it 

Socrates' "offering" 

offered" 

by disentangling 

one go about doing this? 

from Plato's? How does 

3. Supposing that one has articulated what the argument is and what strength 

infer that 

it purports to have and one finds fault with it, can one now safely 

Socrates and/or Plato knew that the argument was weak? 

4. Again, supposing 

and/or Plato were knowingly offering 

that one has somehow satisfied oneself that Socrates 

poor arguments for the soul's immor 

tality, what do they stand to gain? What is the point? 

True enough, where I humorlessly insist on premises, conclusion, logical 

cogency, and all that sort of thing, the dialogue has Socrates talk gaily of being


far from impartial as to the outcome of arguments for the soul's immortality, 

thus not a kosher witness. And I would immediately join the reader who ac 

cuses me of obtuseness in not taking into account that Socrates' 

friends (both in 

the dialogue the ones with him in jail as well as the ones who assemble with 

Phaedo to call Socrates to mind after his death; and outside it ourselves, who 

are reading what Plato wrote) 

need consolation and might receive it even from 

poor arguments. Moreover, when Plato, later in the dialogue (85d), makes 

Cebes' 

friend Simmias speak of arguments (or speeches or accounts) of the soul 

and its fate as life rafts, we are told in so many words that anything like 

mathematical cogency is foresworn. Still, the fact remains that Socrates is por 

trayed as spending his last day amidst his friends laying out very elaborate 

arguments to prove that his soul will live on. To treat these as mere divertisse 

ment, 

them. 

cannot be right. Therefore I feel obliged to state what fault I find with 

My chief difficulty with the reasoning 

so far is this: As we learn from a later 

section of the dialogue (103), Socrates means to be speaking of opposite things 

(pragmata) rather than of opposite qualities (auto to enantion) 

when he refers 

to the poles between which the processes that carry from one extreme to the 

other stretch. We know that the waking Socrates, who, early in the dialogue 

(60e), told his friends of a recurring dream that commanded him to make mu 

sic, dreamt this dream while in a condition of sleeping. Our lives on earth are 

cycles the arcs of which are living wakefully and living 

sleepingly. Other peo 

ple who watch us and, more mysteriously, we ourselves, through memory, 

know that the same individual traverses these two arcs. The question under 

discussion, namely, whether the state of being 

dead will be a state of the soul's 

finally gaining the independence from the body and the purity 

cording 

to Socrates' 

for which, ac 

report, some human beings long, requires that we consider 

how much or how little an individual's life on earth, as consisting of these two 

arcs of sleeping and waking, is like another cycle, whose existence we are 

inquiring into. 

This other cycle would consist of the two arcs (a) life on earth, from being 

born, through acme (the stretch around the meridian), to death; (b) life under 

the earth, in Hades, the invisible realm. 

Now in addition to the difficulty that I have in fitting the two circles together 

(the waking-sleeping circle ought to be part of the being alive-being dead cir 

cle, but can it?), I find it hard to know who or what is the thing (pragma) that 

traverses now the life-on-earth arc, now the life-under-the-earth arc. 

If this thing is, for example, Socrates, who is a composite of soul and body, 

what reason is there to hope that in Hades the soul will be released from the 

task of ruling over and caring for its body, free at last to devote itself entirely to 

wisdom? 

Both the astral paradigm which, I am confident, inspired much of the argu 

ment now under examination, and the sleeping-waking paradigm seem to re-


quire that the thing over and under the earth be Socrates as ensouled body or 

embodied soul: Sleeping and waking as well as being now above, 

now below 

the horizon are attributes of animated bodies. Bear in mind that the stars are 

living beings for Plato, and Aristotle; for Ptolemy as well. 

If, on the other hand, throwing away the just-mentioned analogies, we try 

the hypothesis that the thing which traverses the life-on-earth arc is the embod 

ied soul of Socrates, whereas the thing 

sively Socrates' 

that traverses the Hades arc is exclu 

soul, his body having been left in the visible world as a corpse, 

then aren't we talking about two different things rather than about one thing 

with contrary attributes? 

Of course, the opening definition of death, according to which the process 

of dying is the process of loosening soul from body and the state of being dead 

is the state of each, soul and body, existing "itself by itself" 

(auto kath hauto), 

could be taken to amount to a denial of what was perhaps too confidently 

asserted in the last sentence: Mightn't being Socrates consist in being Socrates' 

soul, so that his present incarnated existence would be one among many adven 

tures of this same thing, the soul of Socrates? 

Many passages in the Phaedo (1 15d, 1 1 lc, 107c), and in other dialogues as 

well (Republic x. 608 ff. , Phaedrus 245, Meno 86, Symposium 212, Timaeus 

41, Laws x, xii), play 

migration to point a moral, the moral being 

with Pythagorean-Empedoclean-Indian ideas of trans 

our present life matters as though for all eternity. 

that how we conduct ourselves in 

According to these passages, the soul of Socrates continues as a soul with its 

individual past life at least in the sense that this soul's next life episode, 

whether incarnate or sans body, is chosen or bestowed because of the choices 

that were made in the course of the immediately preceding life. 

ing 

One is tempted to demythologize such talk about transmigration by combin 

it with the folk belief that our ancestors do not die but are reincarnated in 

ourselves, as we shall be in future generations. That would amount to urging 

something like what is said in the Old Testament, that the evil which we do 

lives beyond us till the third or fourth generation, in grandchildren and great 

grandchildren. 

Whether one ought to take Socrates' 

words in this rationalizing way is the 

thing I find hard to determine. On a rationalized reading, the story of the man 

in the myth of Er, who chooses a next life of evil because his previous life of 

virtue was based solely on habit unenlightened by reflection, would be taken to 

apply, say, to Polemarchus/Cephalus and their descendants. 

The reader may lack sympathy for my laboring over and belaboring 

of the 

question of what exactly Plato's Socrates and Plato intended. Why be so literal 

minded and humorless, precisely on this question of what Plato meant to be 

taken literally and what metaphorically, what was said seriously and what was 

said jokingly? 

So I had better confess that, whether reading or listening, I feel guilty when


I am caught, or catch myself, plugging in a sense that suits me, instead of 

straining for, guessing at, the other fellow's sense. It seems to me that, both in 

conversation and when we read, we are often much too quick to rule out mean 

ings which we believe to be obviously wrong or trivial. Sometimes we even 

puff ourselves up in pride that we sophisticates know how to read between the 

lines, know that this or that is said solely to pacify the vulgar, or again, that it 

is not to be taken straight but obliquely (ironically). We conceive of ourselves 

as humbly embracing 

the sane exegetic principle that wise men cannot err in 

obvious ways. But don't we sometimes make this exegetic principle axiomatic 

because our vanity is gratified that the wise author picked us to be his elect 

readers, we being 

the ones who have what it takes to determine in what tone of 

voice a wise author's falsehoods or fallacies were pronounced? 

It seems to me that the delicate business of hearing 

another person out is 

made impossible if we disallow that what he or she means is something we 

would not want to mean. To put it paradoxically, I believe it is a mark of 

disrespect to eliminate the possibility that an author's argument or imagery or 

theory may be wanting, in clarity or cogency or both. What I am attending to is 

the difference between "reverend interpretation" 

(as the scholastics called it) of 

a canonical legal or other community-building and community-sustaining text, 

such as the Bible or the myths used by the Greek tragedians, 

interpretation of the text left us by an individual designing author. 

and reverend 

As already said, I do find the argument from opposites wanting, yet wanting 

in an interesting way, since what the argument clearly leaves unclear is the 

identity 

of the "thing," 

Socrates. 

The two "middle" 

arguments . 

1 . The 

argument according to which the learning soul has a richer store of 

mental possessions to draw on than it could have accumulated over any one 

span of life from birth to death (73a-77c) and must, therefore, have pre 

existed; 

2. The argument according to which the mind has the attributes of its objects 

so that, if they are simple and thereby indissoluble, it must be (78b-84b) 

even though, as I believe, they too fail, do nevertheless address the question 

with which the first argument left us, namely, who or what Socrates is. They 

will be taken up in the context of Part 4 of this essay, where I try to examine 

what the Phaedo tells us about Platonic Forms. 

I repeat, it looks to me as though the dialogue sets its readers the task of 

judging whether Socrates has acquitted himself of the charge of acting contrary 

to his own good in leaving life, thus, by his own standards, irrationally. 

Whether this fact sits easily with us or not, the arguments for the soul's immor 

"defense," 

tality purport to be his 

so we are obliged to take them seriously. If 

nevertheless I turn for the present to another topic, in Part 3 of this essay, it is 

in order to prepare for taking the arguments seriously.

3. RECOLLECTION, CLOAKS, AND LYRES 

Some Observations About Plato' 

s Phaedo 185 

Toga and lyre, characteristic belongings of an Athenian youth, turn up early 

and late in our dialogue and in speeches by Socrates as well as in speeches by 

the two Theban friends Simmias and Cebes. To the two "models" 

for soul 

which we have so far encountered 

1 . That 

the soul is a sort of ether which is expelled from the body 

at death 

(77e) and which then either rises separately to a place above the atmosphere or 

immediately after leaving the body gets dispersed in the surrounding air 

(Cebes); 

2. That the soul is something like a star (rising above the horizon when the 

man or hero is born, culminating when he is fully mature and active, slipping 

below the horizon when he dies) (Socrates). (Cf. Ptolemy, Almagest 1.3, p. 7, 

Great Books of the Western World edition.) 

Simmias and Cebes add two other models that the soul is something like the 

harmony 

of a lyre (Simmias' 

weaver of togas (Cebes' 

contribution), and that the soul'is something like a 

contribution). 

My self-assigned task in the present section of this essay 

is to comment on 

some of the surprising uses to which the last two images are put by Plato. 

Socrates says: 

"When someone, upon seeing or hearing or in some other way perceiving 

something, not only recognizes/identifies/knows that thing, but becomes aware of 

(ennoesei) another, the knowledge of which is not the same (aute) but different 

(alle), do we not rightly say that he is being 

reminded of that of which he is made 

mindful (hou ten ennoian elahen)! For example, the knowledge of a man is 

different from the knowledge of a lyre. But you know very well that lovers, 

when they see a lyre or toga or something else that their darling uses habitually, 

tend to have the following experience (paschousi): They 

notice the lyre (egnosan te 

ten lyran) and also seize hold in their mind (en tei dianoiai) of the form (eidos) of 

the boy whose lyre it is which is a being 

Simmias is often reminded of Cebes. And there are lots of examples like these. . 

reminded. So too someone who sees 

Isn't this type of experience some variety of remembering, especially 

. . 

when it 

happens to someone in connection with things which were forgotten because for 

long he neither saw them nor meditated on them? 

Can a person who sees a drawn horse or a drawn lyre be reminded of a man, or 

when he sees a drawn Simmias, can he be reminded of Cebes? 

But it is also possible for someone to see a drawn Simmias and to be reminded 

of Simmias himself, isn't it? Now don't all these examples go to show that similars 

and dissimilars both can prompt remembrance? 

It became apparent that it is possible, when perceiving a thing visually or 

through hearing or apprehending it by 

of something else, 

some other sense, to become aware from it 

which had been forgotten but which consorted/was associated


with the other thing; and this may happen whether the two things are similar or 

dissimilar." 

(73c ff.) 

Allow me to present you with a slightly doctored extract from the notebook 

in which I recorded my first observations and reflections on the passage just 

translated: 

1. Socrates does not distinguish "being 

2. Only examples of the former, that is, "being 

3. The emphasis falls on pointing out that "unlikes" 

reminded" 

recall."2 

from "deliberate 

and 

"likes" 

are given. 

indifferently 

come in trains. But more, and more elaborate, examples of unlikes conjuring 

up an associated unlike are given, as though association by resemblance were 

held to be more plausible prima facie and the fact that unlikes too have this 

power of evoking each other needed special pleading. 

4. While it would be misleading to assimilate the pairing of Socrates' 

likes to mere Humean "association by 

are friends and the cloak and lyre belong to the beloved, so that a more intimate 

relation than "spatio-temporal 

contiguity" 

(since Simmias and Cebes 

propinquity" 

is supposed to tie the unlikes to 

each other), the contrast that would normally be made between "association by 

resemblance" 

and "association by 

nevertheless applies: Resem 

blance is an internal#contiguity an external relation. I call the relation between 

the toga and its owner "external" 

un 

contiguity" 

in that the beloved may give his toga to 

another without either the beloved dr the toga thereby undergoing alteration; 

hence their coupling for the mind may become undone. Contrarywise, the rela 

tion between a portrait of Socrates and Socrates, or a drawing 

horses, is "internal" 

of horses and 

in that, when one tries the thought experiment of removing 

the relation between the associated terms while keeping the terms the same, one 

fails: The look-alikes stay alikes for as long as each is itself. 

The example of the relation between Simmias and Cebes seems to me inter 

esting because it is not easy to decide whether it is strictly 

external: Is Simmias 

still himself, still the same, when (as seems conceivable) he is no longer Cebes' 

friend? 

To learn what to make of the features of Socrates' 

noted, we must place the passage in immediate and wider context. 

address to Simmias just 

We then notice that not Socrates but Cebes was the one who first brought up 

the theme of "recollection" 

(anamnesis, 126), in order to assist Socrates in his 

effort of proving the soul's immortality. Cebes, however, unlike Socrates, 

speaks of recollection pretty much as though he were quoting from the Meno: 

"Cebes, interrupting, said 'That also holds if it is true, as you, Socrates, are fond 

of saying, that our learning (mathesis) is nothing else than recollection (anamnesis). 

According to that argument we necessarily knew (perfect of manthanein) at some 

previous time the things that we now call to mind. But that would be impossible if 

our soul did not exist somewhere before it was born in this human form (eidos)."

When Cebes' 

learning is nothing 


friend Simmias begs for "proof" 

of the Socratic "thesis" 

that so it is), Cebes obliges. He says: 

that 

other than recollection (where Meno asked to be "taught" 

"Here is the best argument: When people are questioned, if someone puts the 

questions well, they say everything themselves (autoi), the way it is. And yet, if 

there weren't knowledge and right reason/correct speech (orthos logos) within them 

(autois), they would not be able to do 

this." 

Cebes seems to be talking about recollection as deliberate calling to mind, 

making an effort to answer a question, which in the circumstances supposed, of 

studying, e.g. mathematics, involves checking for truth and consistency and is 

not the sort of automatic triggering of the mind that Socrates seems to be talk 

ing 

about in the passage with which I began. 

Self-control (soophrosune) is one of Socrates's most striking characteristics 

(cf. 114e). 

Upon reading the Meno one is led to believe that this poise and sanity of 

Socrates is due to his unusually highly developed capacity to "recollect" 

"call to 

mind" 

(cf. Leibniz's New Essays bk ii, ch.21, 

or 

pp. 186ff.). But one is 

also led to believe that Socrates held that "natively" 

this ability belongs to all 

human beings; that making things, their antecedents and consequences and their 

mutual connections, 

clear and vivid to oneself is "natural" 

and that avoiding the strain, "not making the 

though strenuous, 

effort," 

is some sort of distortion 

of our nature. Given these facts, it seemed odd to me that in the Phaedo So 

crates should talk about recollection as though it were mere free associating. 

Moreover, a later portion of the Phaedo (97ff.) confirms that to be Socrates 

is to prize deliberateness: Socrates there explains to his friends how thrilled he 

was when, as a young man (presumably going through the same stage of life at 

which Simmias and Cebes are now) he heard that a certain philosopher by the 

name of Anaxagoras had written a book propounding the thesis that Intelligence 

or Mind is what arranged and caused each and all things. Socrates couldn't wait 

to read the book but found himself sorely disappointed. Anaxagoras did not 

come through on his promise. Whatever Anaxagoras might have meant in say 

ing that Mind is the world's Ruler, the detailed working out of his cosmogony 

showed that he did not mean that the way each and all things in heaven and on 

earth are is due to their being deliberately so arranged. So Socrates gave up on 

Anaxagoras. 

Not only Anaxagoras, but also Simmias and Cebes are found fault with by 

I mean their "models" 

for the rela 

Socrates (93ff.) 

because their "theories," 

tions of soul to body, being strictly biological, pay no attention to and perhaps 

don't even leave room for distinctively moral and intellectual agency (initiative, 

self-rule). 

So, I repeat, at second and third meditation on the piece of the dialogue with


which I began Part 3 of this essay, it struck me as curious that Plato should 

have given the "lines" 

about recollection as mere free association to Socrates 

and given Cebes the "lines" 

about recollection as deliberate calling to mind. 

Being mildly surprised by what looked to me like a sort of reversal of roles, I 

thought to myself that I should explain this 

anomaly.3 

Of course to experience 

the anomaly as an anomaly one would have to be pretty firmly settled in the 

conviction that the Platonic dialogues are artifacts made by the dramatist Plato, 

not stenographic records of overheard conversations. Well, then, this was the 

prior conviction in me. I was a "sophisticated" 

reader. 

Here are some of the questions I asked myself as I tried to account for what 

had struck me as a minor anomaly: 

1. Wasn't I going overboard with my fastidious sorting out of which speech 

or argument "befits" 

which dramatic personage? Aren't Platonic dialogues pri 

marily invitations to investigation, and doesn't that mean that the things that are 

being investigated and the arguments, analogies, and experiences brought in for 

life," 

this purpose are more important than whom they "belong to"? In "real I 

mean, the real life of the mind of human beings, each of us is full of questions 

to" 

and proposals that "belong our opponents in argument. Why shouldn't the 

dialogues mime this fact? 

2. Had I, perhaps, been careless of differences between the things later (85e 

ff.and 87b ff.) said by the two Theban friends about body 

and soul and their 

relation? Though the two men's theories that the soul is the body's harmony 

(Simmias' 

(Cebes' 

offering), and that it is the weaver and reweaver of bodily tissue 

contribution) are alike in that both are offered to argue against the 

soul's immortality, Cebes' 

Simmias' 

image does give some sort of agency to the soul. 

image, on the other hand, though capable of the most fascinating 

elaboration, is offered as though, when the ratios happen to fall out right, a 

mess of gut and harder stuff becomes a living (empsuchon) being. It then oc 

curred to me that Cebes should probably be understood as assigning a sort of 

Aristotelian artisan-role to the soul. The soul, like any craftsman working 

within a set craft-tradition, executes a "weaving 

contrive but inherited. Conceivably 

plan" 

that it did not itself 

this is also the spirit in which his quoted 

remarks about the person who is doing the recollecting having "knowledge 

within" 

that becomes "uttered" 

preted. 

under favorable circumstances should be inter 

3. As the example of the association couple Simmias-Cebes itself had shown 

me when I took stock of the fact that the way in which friends are connected is 

more intimate then the way in which a cloak and its owner are connected (see 

above), I had been simpleminded in considering only the "extremes" 

involuntarily 

prompting 

prompted to find some "out of 

oneself to gain access to some "in 

mind" 

thing "in 

of being 

mind" 

and of 

mind" 

thing. The "anomaly" 

that 

got me going was a kind of artifact of the microscope of my too-willful fixing 

on "extremes" 

when I looked again at Cebes' 

without intermediate cases. This self-correction was confirmed 

speech the fact that another person's questions


and diagrams figure in his explanation to Simmias of the notion that learning is 

recollection shows that there are gradations between automatic and deliberate 

recollection (Plato's thought, spelled out in Sophist 263d, that even solitary 

thinking is conversational has a bearing here). 

I exhibit this tiny slice of intellectual autobiography because it seems to me 

the quickest way of insinuating 

about recollection, taken together, might be "about" 

ing, i.e., the finding and making 

that what the speeches of Cebes and Socrates 

is thinking or investigat 

of connections and the subsequent critical 

examination of the strength and nature of these connections. 

There is simply no alternative to starting on any investigation one happens to 

undertake with the opinions one happens to have, for instance the opinion that 

Platonic dialogues are dramas, or the opinion that recollection means, in the 

Meno, deliberate calling to mind rather than free association, or the opinion 

that these two free association and self-critical recall of relevant instances 

are "opposites." 

When one brings these convictions, which are already "in" 

oneself, to bear on some present question, one tries to make them hang together 

with what is now being investigated and with each other. As one keeps going, 

one finds out that one must nuance, rearrange, or even drop 

convictions (cf. Phaedo 100). 

some of these 

So it doesn't matter if I was misguided when, initially, I felt that "free 

association" 

is not what we normally associate with Socrates (cf. the quotation 

from the Odyssey at 94d). What matters is that thinking can be self-corrective 

because there are constraints upon what conviction or observation or theory can 

be woven together or made to harmonize with what other conviction, observa 

tion, feeling, or theory. (Cf. 100 and 92c; cf. also how the weaving 

image is 

used in the Sophist and Statesman, the weaver's shuttle in the Cratylus.) The 

second thing that matters is that one can make a fresh start. 

Let's do that. Here is my new question about the same old thing, namely, 

the passage about recollection with which Part 3 of this essay began. Why 

important for the purposes that Plato had in writing the Phaedo that unlikes too 

may 

function as mutual reminders? 

I answer three ways 

1. In terms of writing's relation to speaking, 

2. In terms of body's relation to soul, 

3. In terms of speech's relation to Platonic forms. 

To state my hypothesis compactly, I believe that the Phaedo shows that 

Plato thinks (or wants us to think) (1) of writing as a sign of speaking, (2) of 

body as a sign of soul, and (3) of speaking as a sign of 

a. informed things, 

b. informed minds, 

c. forms themselves. 

I select for elaboration just the second of these suggestions, viz. that body is 

a sign of soul.4 

By examining in some detail how cloak and lyre illustrate the body-soul 

is it


relation we can, I think, explain why Socrates is made to dwell on the fact that 

things which are unlike each other nevertheless form "couples" 

and why he is 

portrayed as paying more attention than is usual with him to involuntary recol 

lection. 

Isn't it remarkable that Socrates illustrates recollection by the same things, 

toga and lyre (73), which the two young men from Thebes use as similes for 

the body (87b and 86a)? 

It looks to me as though Socrates was made to speak of how the mere toga 

has the power of reminding the lover of the absent beloved, the toga's user and 

owner (as does the mere lyre when the beloved has gone elsewhere) in order to 

both acknowledge and wean himself away from love of himself as an incarnate 

individual. Grieving is to be limited and desire reoriented. 

The most compendious description of the emotional effect intended by 

Plato's arranging for Socrates' 

examples of 

examples of the human body is, I think, this: 

Lovers' 

"reminders" 

to turn out to be also 

yearning to see the uncloaked form of their beloved is to be thought 

of as capable of becoming wholly transferred to the beloved's invisible self 

through the model of a "continued 

proportion" 

garment : bodily form (eidos) 

:: bodily eidos : self. And this "continued is conceived as continu 

ing until it reaches (haptetai, 65b) "beauty's self and beauty's 

Charmides 154c ff. , Symposium 211b). 

giver" 

(cf. 

When, on the other hand, Simmias is made to wonder whether the soul isn't 

as dependent on the body as is the harmonia of the lyre on the gut strung tautly 

on bent wood so as to make a musical instrument, this is, among other things, 

an insisting 

nent loss. 

In Socrates' 

on the right to grieve over the loss of Socrates as a real and perma 

speech to "convince" 

Simmias that "learning is nothing but 

recollection," 

toga and lyre are only loosely connected with what they "belong 

to"; that is, in retrospect we realize that Socrates is made to speak of body and 

soul as separable, much as Aristotle, in the third book of the De Anima (see 

also 403a 10, 404a 26, 405a 14, 408b 19f., 410b 15), deems the mortal indi 

vidual human being to be separable from immortal Mind. 

In the two Thebans' 

speeches, body and soul fit each other much more 

tightly: The toga that covers the old weaver is a product of his craft, 

lyre-specific harmonia (the word also means dovetailing) is "in" 

though not only in its build, since it is also "in" 

and the 

its build, 

its sounds (86c). Thus, as 

Socrates' 

Simmias and Cebes come to employ images, soul is "of" 

its body 

pretty much as in the De Anima Book II definition of the soul, where soul is 

"from" 

or "first 

actuality" "organized." 

of a body that is 

So it looks to me as though the dialogue presents us with 

"contrary" 

counts of the soul's nature and its relation to the body: According to the first, 

the soul is something that has or wears a body as the beloved wears or owns a 

cloak or a lyre. According to the second, the body is something 

owns a soul as a lyre has "harmony" 

when its 

ac 

that has or 

strings' 

tensions are just right.


The fact that Socrates and the two Thebans are portrayed as using "the same 

things" 

(toga and lyre) to speak so differently of the body-soul relation may be 

telling us about a perplexity 

solve. Needless to say, 

which Plato himself could articulate but not re 

neither can I. 

The fact that Plato makes the arguments "from 

forms" 

soul's kinship with the 

in the two different arguments "from 

look like "inner" 

recollec 

and "from the 

arguments by 

"wrapping" 

them 

opposites" 

confirms one's impression that 

toward" 

he "leans identifying self and soul with mind. (Cf. how, according to 

Hesiod, men deceived Zeus "wrapping" 

by 

their offerings of bare bones in 

luscious slices of fat!) Moreover, Plato arranges for all the interlocutors, even 

those who figure in the "frame" 

of Phaedo's report of what was said that last 

day in jail, e.g. Echecrates of Phlius, to band together in their adherence to the 

argument for the soul's pre-existing because of its capacity to recollect (87a, 

91ef.). 

4. EIDE 

Perhaps the quickest way of conveying where I want to go in the concluding 

section of this essay is to cite two poems, one by the German poet Hans Chris 

tian Morgenstern, the other, of which I select just a part, by the English poet 

Gerard Manley Hopkins. 

Once there was a picket fence 

with space between, to gaze from hence to thence 

An architect who saw this sight 

approached it suddenly one night 

removed the spaces from the fence 

and built of them a residence. 

The picket fence stood there dumbfounded 

with pickets wholly unsurrounded, 

a view so naked and obscene, 

the senate had to intervene. 

As for the architect, he flew 

to Afri- or Americoo. 

H. C. Morgenstern, Galgenlieder (bilingual edition by Max Knight. Berkeley: 

University of California Press, 1966). The translation has been slightly corrected.) 

How to keep is there any any, is there none such nowhere 

known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace latch or 

catch or key to keep 

Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, . 

away? 

from vanishing 

O is there no frowning of these wrinkles, ranked wrinkles deep, 

Down?


No there's none, there's none, O no there's none, 

Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair, 

Do what you may do, what, do what you may, 

And wisdom is early to despair: 

Be beginning; since, no, nothing 

To keep at bay 

Age and age's evils. 

Be beginning to despair, to despair, 

Despair, despair, despair, despair 

Spare! 

can be done 

There is one, yes I have one (Hush there!) 

Only not within seeing of the sun, 

Not within the singeing of the strong sun. . 

Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one, 

One. Yes, I can tell such a key, I do know such a place, 

Where 

. is 

whatever' 

s prized and passes of us 

kept 

Yonder What high as that! We follow, now we follow. 

Yonder. 

Yonder, yes yonder, yonder, 

From "The Leaden and the Golden Echo" 

To say it with absurd brevity: The Phaedo seems to me to be about how the 

world's beauty, in the form of "betweens" 

that are like the spaces between the 

pickets, abides "beyond the tall sun's tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of 

the earth's 

air" 

(Hopkins). 

Though the density of poetry 

gratifies the desire for compactness of state 

ment, I want to be intelligible as well as brief. So nothing but plodding exposi 

tory prose will come your way 

tell a story: 

for the rest of this essay. No. I do still have to 

A child asked why it must eat and was told "because there is a little stom 

ach-man inside you that gets hungry." 

So the child fell to, 

anxious to nurture 

the little person that lived in its stomach. But it did not take long before it 

occurred to the child to wonder why the little stomach man should get hungry. 

In preceding parts of this essay I wanted to minister to readers of the dia 

logue (including my former self) who feel as cheated by it as was the child by 

the grownup's answer. 

I tried to show, through a moderately detailed analysis of Socrates' 

argument for the soul's immortality and by sketching the counterarguments for 

the soul's mortality which his partners in conversation propose, that the reason 

ing which culminates in detaching or attaching 

first 

the predicate mortal from/to the 

subject soul (or self or he or Socrates) turns in every instance on claiming that 

the soul is like some other thing and that it must, therefore, like that other thing 

about which we suppose ourselves to know whether it is mortal or not, be


mortal or not. This meant, for instance, that Socrates argued against likening 

soul to air (which gets dispersed when it leaves its container) and for its being 

like a star, which temporarily disappears from sight, but will reappear after a 

sufficient interval. 

I was at pains to hold on both to the fact that everything said in the dialogue 

is in fulfillment of the "assignment" 

that Socrates prove that it is better for him 

to die than to live (cf. 95c) and to the fact that Socrates is made to interpret this 

"better" 

as though it were connected with death's not really being what to 

bereaved survivors it appears to be, annihilation of the one they love. So the 

dialogue looks, to quote a friend, like a "passionate, frighteningly relentless 

effort to hammer into the reader's mind a conviction of the soul's immortality" 

(cf. 107c). 

Yet since the means of establishing this conviction are, with but one excep 

tion, the examining of already available images or models for the soul, it seems 

to me an allowable refocusing of attention to contend that what the dialogue 

much of the time does is look at answers to the question who or what the soul, 

or the soul of Socrates, or Socrates himself, is. In saying this I am not trying to 

be coquettish or cute: Socrates consistently maintains in other dialogues (cf. 

Meno 71, 100) that to establish what predicate belongs to a subject one must 

first know precisely what the subject is. In the case at hand, this means that to 

establish whether soul is mortal or immortal one must know what it is. 

I call the models for the soul, or for its relation to the body, which are 

proposed in the Phaedo "already 

available" 

because the notions that it is a 

fallen star, that it is a weaver, that it is a special sort of pneuma (cf. Aristotle's 

sumphuton pneuma = quintessence = 

ether) resembling but not identical with 

fire have come my way in other books, some of them predating Plato or be 

longing to traditions distinct from the Hellenic. Many of these images seem to 

be folk beliefs. Whether they came to the folk through the poets or whether the 

poets simply preserved and elaborated on them we do not (and perhaps cannot) 

know. 

However, the Phaedo's two middle arguments for the soul's immortality 

recollection" 

the argument "from 

and the argument "from the soul's 

kinship 

to Platonic forms" 

If they involve "models," 

(73a-77c) 

(78b-84b) seem to be of a different sort. 

it is in some murkier way than so far encountered, 

others.5 

as is shown by the fact that one cannot draw them as one could draw the 

And if these middle arguments the argument from recollection and that 

from the simplicity and consequent indissolubility 

of the Forms owe a debt to 

poets, as seems to be suggested in the Meno (80b) through the reference to 

Pindar, the Platonic distance from that poetic source seems to be more impor 

tant than the possible fact that there is such a poetic fund from which Plato 

drew. 

Both of the middle arguments depend, for their meaning as well as their 

cogency, 

on the thesis that there is a "fine itself," 

a "large itself," 

a "healthy


itself," 

an "equal itself" 

apart from such things as a fine-looking baby, a large 

house, a healthy Pausanias, etc. (76e). Therefore, after outlining the two argu 

ments according to which the soul must pre-exist the partnership with its pres 

ent body and postexist this partnership, I shall dwell at some, though not suffi 

cient, length on what Socrates-Plato could conceivably have meant by these 

"themselves," 

the Platonic Forms. 

There will not, I fear, be a pleasing roundup of the dispersed pieces of the 

essay entire at the end. The best I can come up with is an appreciative critique 

of what I believe Plato sincerely meant. The heart of this critique is that, while 

there is every reason to be grateful to Plato for his discovering the realm of 

logic as the realm of rational necessity and for recognizing that it lies "beyond" 

sense and beyond passion, there is also reason to try the hypothesis that he may 

have misrepresented his own insight.6 

What I call the misrepresentation of his own insight is sometimes diagnosed 

as consisting in the mistaken notion that "pieces of language," 

to do their job of 

pointing beyond themselves, 

must one and all be names. I do not think that this 

is the happiest description, because (for one thing) it slights Plato's hard-won 

discovery (see Sophist) that true and false talk comes in sentences, at least 

when you consider how what is said is heard by the listener: The listener 

"takes" 

what he is "given" 

by the speaker as having subject-predicate format, 

that is, as both referring and describing. A more nearly just description is, to 

my mind, that in spite of what we hear Socrates say in the Phaedo (99d, e ff.) 

about doing his own investigating by way of speeches/arguments rather than by 

way of direct inspection of things, Plato seems to be unwilling to let knowing 

be anything else, ultimately, than a knowing of, acquaintance with, contact (cf. 

Meno 71b, Cratylus, Phaedrus, Symposium, Seventh Letter). 

And I take the outrageously risky step of wondering whether it was passion 

(cf. Hopkins' 

"keep / Back beauty") that made him downgrade skill (savoir 

faire), and knowledge of matters of fact (savoir) and led him to suppose that 

the true goal of inquiry is direct contact with divine forms (connaitre as when 

we know a person or a landscape) because it seems to me that the textual 

evidence for the dialogue's asceticism being sincere is simply too strong. One 

has to do violence to the text to overlook or discount it. 

By its being sincere I mean that the Phaedo seems to me to ask of us, as of 

Socrates' 

companions in jail, that we become resigned to his detachment not 

because we accept that Socrates is attached to the Athenian community, for 

whom he deems it better if the execution is carried out, nor because he antici 

pates an old age that might be full of indignity and pain and expects death by 

hemlock to be an easy death, but because there is something finer than any 

human thing contact with which waits for Socrates on the nether side of the 

horizon. 

The moral message of the Phaedo is, I believe, that we ought to cultivate 

the superhuman temperance of willingly giving Socrates up to a beloved we


deem worthier than ourselves, namely, the crystalline purities called Platonic 

Forms that supposedly draw him on. To them, not him, we ought ourselves to 

become attached (cf. 68a, b). 

It is probably fairly obvious that I believe this invitation to asceticism to be 

misguided. That is, insofar as the hypothesis that there are Forms "above" 

"apart from" 

longing for something 

and 

mortal things (including human speeches) is motivated by the 

to know and love that could substitute for mortal things 

and that an individual could become intimate with when he concentrates him 

self and is no longer bonded to his fellows, I believe it to be a mistake. Yet I 

have great sympathy for the feeling and thought that underlie it. 

Isn't Einstein speaking of such feelings and thoughts when he writes: 

one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is flight from 

everyday life with its painful harshness and wretched dreariness, and from the 

fetters of one's own shifting desires. A person with a finer sensibility is driven to 

escape from personal existence and to the world of objective observing (Schauen- 

theooreiri) and understanding. This motive can be compared with the longing that 

irresistably pulls the town-dweller away from his noisy, cramped quarters and 

toward the silent, high mountains, where the eye ranges freely through the still, 

pure air and traces the calm contours that seem made for eternity. With this 

negative motive there goes a positive one: Man seeks to form for himself ... 

a 

simplified and lucid image of the world (Bild der Welt), and so to overcome the 

world of experience by striving to replace it to some extent by 

this image." 

(Ideas 

and Opinions, [New York: Crown, 1954], pp. 224 f., my italics; cf. Phaedo 79d). 

Nor is it only giants of the intellect like Einstein or Plato who know such 

feelings. Picture the first-grade classroom where the teacher is checking the 

children's arithmetic exercises and she comes to Johnnie's desk and turns to 

him, ever so pleased, and says, "Very good, Johnnie." 

with great irritation and says, "What do you mean 'very 

And he looks at her 

good'perfect." 

? It's 

That child knows that some things are not matters of degree and not true or 

right because some human authority declares them to be so! 

So if Platonic asceticism is a "mistake," 

it is one of immense importance. 

This, indeed, is the prime reason for the writing out of this essay on the 

Phaedo. 

Well, then, back to the arguments for immortality, in particular, for the pre- 

existence of the learning soul. 

I understand Cebes' 

quotation from the Meno to be to this effect: 

1. If studying or learning with the help of a teacher is something 

that the 

student or learner himself does, not something that is done to him by his 

teacher, then studying or learning 

is in an important respect no different from 

recollection. Recollection is an active seeking for something that one believes 

oneself," 

the reason for one's self-confidence being, 

in the case of recollection taken literally, that one knows one previously knew 

one could lay hold of "by


the thing not now at hand and one has had experience of fishing for some 

submerged thing in the mind and actually catching one's fish. This first inter 

pretation of the famous metaphor of Socrates that learning is nothing but recol 

lection puts all the emphasis on the polarity active-passive. 

To appreciate that one ought to give a good deal of weight to this first 

interpretation of Socrates' 

to mind two things: 

metaphor for learning, it is probably helpful to call 

a.)that Platonic dialogues as well as Greek tragedy are continually ruminat 

ing about active-passive, doing and being done to. 

b.)that Platonic dialogues pay an inordinate amount of attention to matters of 

grammar, diction, and syntax, 

say "Ptolemy was teaching astronomy 

and that it so happens that in Greek you don't 

to Syrus," 

with the thing taught the di 

rect object and the person taught the indirect object. Rather, both the thing 

taught and the person who gets taught are direct objects. This mere accident, if 

you like, of the Greek language makes it important for someone like Plato (who 

is always scrutinizing how what people think and do is affected by what people 

say and vice versa) to pull resolutely the other way, to make a great fuss over 

the fact that in a learning situation the recipient is active, is not a mere piece of 

wax that gets imprinted by the teacher. 

When you put what was just said together with other passages in the dia 

logue (98d) you get the result that the teacher is "condition" 

only a not a 

"cause" 

of the student's learning; the "cause" 

of the student's learning is his 

love of the activity of investigation and/or of the things investigated (cf. Au 

gustine's On the Teacher). This first interpretation of Socrates' 

metaphor seems 

to have no bearing on the question whether the learning soul is mortal or im 

"natural" 

mortal. Rather, it bears on learning's being a 

motion, to use Aristotelian language. 

2.)A second interpretation, 

rather than a "violent" 

which one anticipates might become connected 

with the result wanted, namely the pre-existence of the learner's soul, is this: 

Any learning is based on prior knowing or prior believing, because to learn 

means to seek. And you cannot seek unless your search is oriented to some 

thing which to some extent you trust yourself to know already, sufficiently, at 

least, to recognize it as "it," 

the very thing you were and are looking for, when 

you come upon it.7 

Nor can you guess at a riddle unless you at least recognize 

it as a riddle. Moreover, there is no way of ruling against a step taken on the 

way 

to a wouldbe solution to a riddle or the wouldbe conclusion of a search 

unless, again, you trust that there are constraints whether "gentle forces that 

commonly 

prevail" 

prohibitions." 

or "imperative 

These too you must rely on as 

though you knew them. 

Now what shall we say about the very beginning of learning, guessing, 

investigating? And what shall we say about how we came to know these con 

straints upon interweavings of subjects and predicates, 

another? 

or of one sentence with


It seems as though there are just two alternatives: Either we must deny that 

everything that we know we came to know by learning it, or we must deny that 

there is an absolute beginning of learning /guessing. 

These two hypotheses are not the same. The first will be recognized as 

Leibniz's (New Essays bk i ch. 2, pp 52, 78f., 87). It amounts to the claim that 

even if it is nearly true that nothing is in the intellect that was not previously in 

the senses, still, the intellect itself is "in 

there," 

and its activity and structure 

are not the result of but the condition for sense experience's leading anywhere 

when we investigate. 

To someone who, like Socrates in the Phaedo, treats the pigeonholes "sen 

sory"- "nonsensory" 

as exclusive and exhaustive, and who, moreover, identifies 

these two with the pigeonholes "mortal"-"immortal," 

the thesis that some 

knowledge is not learned but innate, being constitutive of the intellect, amounts 

to the claim that the soul is immortal if by soul we mean the intellect. 

Let's look at the second hypothesis. According to it, every 

premise is itself a 

conclusion, that is, the outcome of some sort of guessing, reasoning, seeking, 

and there is no reasoning that doesn't have premises. I am using the word 

"reasoning" 

in such a way that deductive reasoning is only one variety of rea 

soning, so that "reasoning from 

called "models," 

rank as reasoning. 

Now most of us believe that Socrates' 

analogy," 

seeking and finding and using what I 

and any man's or woman's life "be 

gan" 

and, pace right-to-lifers, the going opinion in Athens seems to have been 

that a human life begins when the child exits from the womb. But if, because 

every premise is itself conclusion, there is no first in the series of learnings or 

guessings though one believes that there is a first in the series of drawing life's 

breath in the body, and if, further, learning can only be done by souls, doesn't 

that prove that the learning that looks like the first learning which a child does 

is not really first but relies upon a prior believing or knowing deposited in the 

child's soul from a prior phase of that soul's life? 

As was said in a previous portion of this essay, Platonic arguments for the 

pre- and postexistence of the individual soul often lend themselves to social 

interpretations. In Part 1 I tried to sketch how such a social interpretation of the 

notion of the soul's postexistence might be understood. I illustrated it by ap 

plying what is said in the Republic's myth of Er about the man whose decency 

is solely a matter of habit, unenlightened by reflection, to the grandchildren of 

Cephalus. At present I am talking about the portion of the Phaedo that goes 

into the soul's pre-existence. A social interpretation of this notion would, for 

instance, go like this: Any 

human being's investigating, studying, guessing 

relies on pre-existent knowledge and opinion in the community within which 

the person who is doing the investigating 

was raised and of which he is a 

member. But I hope you agree with me that it is really extremely puzzling how 

an individual, in particular a child, gains access to this communal fund. It 

seems to be in some ways quite strictly true that the child must itself actively


guess at the contents of the communal fund of knowledge (human beings learn 

to speak, but not by being taught); and it also seems likely 

that the child's 

guessing is genuine guessing, has intelligence in it, is not purely chance, there 

fore has something like premises and/or knows constraints. So although what I 

called the "social" 

interpretation of the argument from recollection is tempting, 

I do not believe it to be strictly true, either to the facts of human learning or to 

the dialogue. It is not faithful to the dialogue because, for one thing, it fails to 

pay attention to the prominence given to mathematical inquiry in the passages 

explaining Socrates' 

metaphor that learning is nothing but recollection. 

Way back I proposed that perhaps recollection is thinking and vice versa. 

This suggestion was based on analysis of the two rather different speeches 

about recollection given by Cebes and by Socrates and on the observation that 

what Socrates says about recollection brings to the foreground how very diverse 

the linkages between what is "present to the 

vicariously "made 

present" 

or "recalled" 

mind" 

and what is "absent" 

but 

are. And I remarked on how curious 

the mix of voluntary and involuntary, active and passive is if you take Socrates' 

and Cebes's two speeches together. 

Yet in urging this very broad interpretation of Socrates' 

metaphor that learn 

ing, studying, investigating is recollection, I slighted the fact that the favored 

examples of recollection given in the Phaedo and Meno are examples of mathe 

matical thinking. 

Any 

adequate account of the import of this fact would have to go into both 

the finding of demonstrations for mathematical truths and the demonstrating of 

mathematical truths. Nor would this be sufficient; one would also have to go 

into the finding of mathematical truths that might be understood to be explana 

tory of phenomena. I reserve an exploration of this topic for another occasion. 

In the context of the present essay I merely note that one effect of selecting 

mathematical thinking from the whole of thought is that the kind of thinking 

which characteristically encounters logical musts and cannots is, so to say, 

identified as nonmortal be 

shoved to the foreground. Thereby what is already 

cause it is nonsensory (viz. thinking) is moved still closer to the Divine by 

giving us experience of " 

inexorability (cf. Iliad and the will of Zeus was 

accomplished," Parmenides' 

poem On Truth, Fr. 8, 1. 32, Republic passages 

on noncontradiction at iv 436b-40 and x 602d ff., Sophist 230b). 

Just one more step is needed, which is taken in the argument for the soul's 

immortality that I dubbed "the argument from the soul's kinship 

with the 

Forms" 

(78d ff. [p. 273 Loeb]). This last step is that knowing is a becoming 

assimilated to becoming like that which is known. 

Were this assumption true, and were it shown that all scientific investiga 

tion, perhaps all investigation scientific or not, depends on the soul's knowing 

because foreknowing and recollecting Forms, and were it established that these 

Forms are immortal (because "simple" 

tality 

and thus indissoluble), then the immor 

of the soul insofar as this soul was, is, comes to be "in touch 

with" 

Forms


might be said to have been demonstrated. To the Forms we must, therefore, 

turn, or rather, to passages in the Phaedo, and a few other places, about Forms. 

These are: 65, 74-77, 78b-84, 92a-bff., 100 a f., 103e. 

The questions I shall pay a little attention to are: (a)Of what are there 

Forms? (b)What are Forms?(c)Why suppose that there are Forms? 

My answers, to state them baldly in a preliminary way, 

are these: (a)There 

are Forms (in the sense of eide chooristaf of qualities that are inherently rela 

tional. (b)The Forms are the relationships, I mean the somethings to which we 

in English tend to refer by what are called abstract nouns equality, justice, 

beauty, magnitude, health. (c)It is irresistibly plausible to suppose that there are 

Forms if one takes words to be names for their senses (logical depths) and 

up" 

"refer" 

holds that names, to do their job of "calling the named, must and 

indeed must refer to some one thing if the name is not to be ambiguous. And 

even if one has a more complicated theory of discourse than this, something 

like a theory of Forms would still be plausible. What is not plausible, to me at 

least, is the rank that is given to the Forms, by Plato, but not only by Plato. 

Let me now try 

What is it about 

to explain and furnish textual evidence for these answers. 

"just," "fine," "good," "large," "healthy," "strong" 

Socrates should single them out from among other qualities and claim that they 

must be "in and of themselves," 

beyond just men or cities, 

that 

apart from fine 

horses or young women, healthy men and children, strong carts and boxers? 

Since roughly the same set of examples occurs repeatedly, in the Phaedo 

(65d, e), in the Republic (479), in the Meno (72d), in the Parmenides (131a), 

we must ask why Socrates seems to believe that something is left out, over 

looked, were it said that the enumerated words or names (onomata) are mean 

ingful in that they name such beings (onto) as healthy Pausanias, strong Cal 

lias, and so on, or, if you like, the particular health, strength, beauty etc. that 

are in these men. 

In calling attention to the fact that certain adjectives (in neuter singular) 

recur whenever Socrates touches on the theme of eide choorista (Platonic, that 

is, independent, Forms), I am quarreling with one fairly standard answer to the 

question what such Forms are: If they were "universals," 

any and all 

as Aristo 

tle sometimes leads us to believe (see e.g. Metaphysics xiii 1078b33), nouns as 

well as adjectives should figure in the list. 

Aren't "man" 

and 

"animal" 

and "fire" 

and "snow" 

just as "predicable of 

many" 

as are "just" 

and "beautiful"? Why, then, are they not parade instances 

of independent Forms? 

The Parmenides puts the question whether for kind-words like 

"horse" 

and mass-words such as "gold" 

or "fire" 

or 

"wood" 

"man" 

or 

to be meaningful 

one must suppose that there is a prototypical "man himself," 

"fire itself," 

ter itself" 

"wa 

(Cf. Philebus 15b and Timaeus 49, 51b, 30). Most readers of the 

dialogue believe that the answer is in the affirmative. They base this conclusion 

largely on the fact that Socrates is in this dialogue portrayed ( 1 30c) as rejecting


such an expansion of the domain of Forms only because he is embarrassed at 

the thought that the same reasoning that generates a "water itself" 

generate a 

"hair," "mud," "dirt" 

per se. Parmenides diagnoses Socrates' 

would also 

intel 

lectual condition as one of youthful excessive respect for high-low distinctions. 

This seems to imply that the young Socrates' 

they 

are spoken of "mean and worthless things" 

that are, so to say, too base to be "called 

them," 

is mere prejudice. 

I am, however, struck by 

the fact that Socrates' 

exclamation As we see them, so 

like hair and mud, things 

after" 

any totemic ancestor "beyond 

exclamation is virtually a 

quotation of the famous passage about fingers in the Republic (523). According 

to these texts, men and fingers and sticks and stones directly "deserve" 

names. (See also Alcibiades I, st. 111c.) Their to ti en einai is "in" 

them. 

their 

The conclusion I draw from the facts just enumerated is that according to the 

words" 

do not call for Forms which exist apart 

majority of the dialogues, "thing 

from the things that illustrate them. (I leave unsettled whether they ought to be 

called "early" 

and "middle" 

aeus as "late.") 

If, however, 

over against the Parmenides and Philebus and Tim 

adjectival character alone sufficed for Socrates to believe that 

there must be a Form as a sort of "patron" 

after whom all the things bearing the 

adjective as a patronymic are called, there ought to be a Form "the hot itself" 

ancestral to all hot things. But "the hot itself" 

tions as an "eponym" 

employed) "shared 

out" 

(see Parmenides 131a, 

among participating hot things. 

nowhere to my knowledge func 

where that word and notion are 

Is it, then, because the enumerated adjectives name good things, 

objects of 

desire, that they are treated as somehow special? Perhaps, but whatever one 

makes of the telic or luring 

character of the qualities for which Socrates claims 

that there are separate Forms, one must tell a story that takes into account that 

equal is the Platonic Form most elaborately dealt with in the Phaedo9 

and that 

the idea of equality (and inequality) is at least as much "foundational" 

supposedly "value-neutral", desire-muting 

for the 

mathematical sciences as for poli 

tics: Euclid's Common Notions have just one theme equality 

traries, greater than, less than. 

and its con 

I could imagine that Gestalt psychologists and phenomenologists would pro 

pose that we think of Platonic Forms as the "limits" 

to some process of "ideal 

ization" 

(whether postulated or acknowledged) which realizes, recognizes, that 

the cognitive and moral and aesthetic demand (need, or even lust, that is, eros) 

is for perfection perfect justice, perfect health, perfect equality, perfect any 

of the things about which Socrates asks "What is it?" 

although, or rather, 

because what the world supplies never quite comes through by fully meeting 

the standards of the given desire (cf. Phaedo 74d, e). 

I would accept their proposal, though I would add the rider that the aspira 

tion toward perfection might be a demand for incomplexity that deserves tam 

ing: I've always liked Whitehead's reminder, "seek simplicity, and distrust it."

I would further add that the Gestalt 

circle itself" 


s Phaedo 201 

theorists' 

perfect geometric shapes ("the 

or "the square itself") do not figure in any of the Socratic lists of 

independent Forms that I have cited. 

So far my claim is that being a normative adjective/attribute (I mean, being 

an adjective the sense of which involves the thought that there are standards to 

live up to, as in the case of 

"healthy," "beautiful," "good." 

Cf. Euthyphro 5e, 

7; Phaedrus 263; Laches 192) may, on Platonic principles, be a necessary 

condition for implicit reference to a Platonic Form. It is not a sufficient condi 

tion. 

Just one way of making sense of the examples that Socrates gives and does 

not give occurs to me: There are Platonic Forms for those qualities that belong 

to things only insofar as they are ranged under a condition or in so far as they 

are vis-a-vis some correlative and/or in some context. What Plato discovered is, 

I believe, the reality of relations and their primacy in mathematics and politics. 

By "reality" 

I mean, not figments that depend on some individual's having 

originated them, as one might say Hamlet was originated by Shakespeare or a 

dream by its dreamer. By their primacy I mean that right reasoning and percep 

tion is due to recognizing this relational character and wrong reasoning and 

perception is chiefly due to failing to recognize it. 

But I mean more than this. Plato recognized something about relativity that 

bears on our entire emotional and intellectual nature. I call it our "gappiness" 

(Ungesdttigtkeit). Plato is ever talking about this: for instance, in Republic ii 

(369b), Socrates identifies the origin of cities as individual neediness and lack 

of self-sufficiency. In the Symposium (202b), the nondivinity of love is said to 

be entailed by the very meaning 

of the words to be divine is to be self- 

sufficient. But love's greed proves that it is not and has not what it longs for. 

This dependency of love on what it is of marks its nature through and through. 

Not only is love relative rather than absolute, it is multiply relative according to 

Diotima ou tou kalou ho eroos alia tes genneseoos kai tou tokou en tool 

kalooi (206e). Knowledge too is inherently relative, and in several respects, 

being of the known, of the one who knows, and of or among other knowledges. 

The Theaetetus makes quite a point of this relativity. 

Once the notion that Plato is interested in studying relativity and its kinds 

has entered on the scene, one no longer stumbles over previously weird pas 

sages, like the long stretch in Republic i where Socrates seems to be pestering 

Polemarchus with the question how to fill in the gaps in the formulas "justice is 

the craft of giving to 

" 

It would not be difficult to show how each and every Platonic dialogue is 

"of" 

about one or another kind of being relative: Speech is or "about" 

as well 

as "to" 

and 

"from." 

(cf. Sophist 244, 263c). So are knowledge, rule, part, 

whole, always of something else that is in the possessive or some other oblique 

case. 

The men who do the speaking, teaching, loving, ruling may think that they,


who are in the naming case, active rather than passive, giving 

ceiving, rather commanding than obeying, are 

rather than re 

"substantial" 

and "independent," 

whereas the crowd which they address, the pupils whom they teach, the slaves 

whom command are they insubstantial and dependent. Yet for the performance 

of any of these imposing roles they depend on what they deem beneath them. 

I believe that one of the reasons for Plato's never quite losing his charm is 

the depth he gave to this insight. 

Is there then no one and nothing absolute, self-determined, self-sufficient? 

Platonic Forms, like the divine Nous of Aristotle's Metaphysics book 

Lambda, are, I think, meant to be the absolutes to which mortal things are 

relative but which are not in turn relative to these mortal things. They are, to 

use T.S. Eliot's word, the "objective 

correlatives" 

for the human longing to 

stoop before what by its very indifference to adoration shows itself worthy of 

worship. 

To savor the strangeness of this thought that the longing for absolutes is, if I 

understand the project, to be satisfied by 

relationships themselves, not things 

that are related, I turn now to the topic of equality and try to show how "just," 

"healthy," 

"strong," "excellent." 

(I mean the qualities on what I called the 

recurrent list of Form-demanding names) might, from a certain point of view, 

be deemed to have a logical structure analogous to that of the seemingly un 

problematic because value-free qualities 

"large," "equal." 

Clearly, the quality of being equal belongs to a thing only 

insofar as it is 

relative to another, of which it is an equal. Observe, though this is not pointed 

out by the dialogue, that the other thing 

whose equal this stone is need not be a 

stone but may be a stick. Notice, too, that although Socrates here, and in many 

another dialogue, remarks on our getting into intellectual muddles because we 

speak (and perhaps even think and feel) inarticulately, fail to notice or to say 

that "this stone is both equal and 

unequal" 

relative to that stick on the one 

hand, this other stone on the other, we are, even after becoming explicit to this 

degree, still speaking elliptically. This stone can obviously be one and the same 

stick's equal and unequal its equal in length but its unequal in weight. 

The (in Greek) inherently oblique-case-needing 

stick-or-stone, 

character of being-an-equal- 

and the multiply-relative character of being-an-equal-stick-or- 

stone may not seem worth belaboring. But you will, I imagine, agree with me 

that these logical truths become more than a little interesting in moral or politi 

cal context. (Cf. Aristotle's treatment of claims to equality and inequality in the 

Politics, also 97c on "best for each and best for all"). 

But how do these observations concerning relativity bear on such qualities as 

health or strength (or justice, excellence, 

and beauty)? 

The Meno gives, or at least suggests, an answer. But, since it is an answer 

supplied by Meno, who has a bad reputation, many 

what he says. 

readers do not appreciate 

Wouldn't it, from a Greek physician's point of view, be true that the health


s Phaedo 203 

of an old man is different from that of a man at mid-career in that, say, the 

androgen level of the one is healthy for him but, should the other have the 

numerically 

same androgen level, some sort of imbalance or unhealthiness 

would exist in him? And do we really want to say that the same degree of 

muscular strength in a man and a woman is required for us to call either of 

them strong? Or that we expect a boy of six who is spoken of as tall to be the 

same height as a tall teenager? And are we entirely confident that Socrates 

would and should reject Meno's notion that a woman's way of being excellent 

is different from a man's? 

Meno is not simply wrong in speaking of excellence as relative to station in 

life, and the same holds, according to my argument, for the other qualities 

mentioned. Throughout, inexplicitness about the condition under which the 

quality that is spoken of belongs to what it qualifies tends to generate misap 

prehension and misreasoning. In this respect equal, healthy, tall, strong, splen 

did, just, and good are alike. For example, it seems abhorrent that for vultures 

to feed on the corpses of heroes is both right and wrong, 

until one makes 

explicit whether the corpses are Persian or Hellenic. Well and good. But So 

crates finds fault with Meno's answer. So far I have said nothing about why. 

Compare with Meno's litany about virtue (71e f.) this statement of my own 

invention about what being equal is: 

"There are many kinds of equality, as of weight, or of length, or of speed, 

or of volume. A balance will prove things equal weight. A stopwatch will help 

show their equal speed. Perfect coverage by each of each will show their equal 

length. Pouring the liquid that fills one container into another and finding that 

there is no overflow will establish that the two containers are of equal 

Would we not side with Socrates in feeling that although everything that was 

said is true and relevant and perhaps even indispensable, (cf. the indispensable 

and nevertheless "rejected" 

examples of knowhow and science at the opening 

of the Theaetetus), the tenor of our question is not being appreciated. We 

wanted to reach greater clarity about how all these different ways of being 

equal are ways of being equal. 

When Aristotle, in the Physics, defines motion as "the actuality of the po 

tential qua 

potential" whole," 

he is defining "motion as a because he is saying 

something about how the different species of motion (viz. in respect of place, 

in respect of size, in respect of quality) are akin. Thus he is giving the type of 

answer Socrates is ever seeking. He is defining the genus. 

In the Meno, Socrates himself illustrates in what spirit he would like Meno 

to consider excellence by answering 

the "what-is-it?" 

question about shape. 

Being a rectilinear and being a curvilinear figure are, for Socrates, in some 

manner 

"opposite." 

Nevertheless he comes up with an answer to the question 

how being circular and being triangular both are ways of being 

volum 

figures (cf. 

Aristotle, De Anima ii 414b-415a end; see also Charmides and Theaetetus). 

What motivates this Socratic hunt for the generic? How is it connected with


the postulating of Forms apart from the above the things "called 

after" 

the 

Forms? And what became of my claim that Forms are, or are primarily, patrons 

of relativity? 

The example from the Meno just given, 

which shows how the genus figure 

manages to hold the round's and the straight's conflicting ways of being figures 

together, 

gives us a clue: 

Intellectual ascent to the genus is frequently a way of rising above mutually 

antagonistic ways of being and seeing their togetherness, their forming a 

"community" 

a (koinonia) 

A homely way of illustrating 

whole, 

many of us about Nixon's "enemy list." 

under the generic totem. 

what I mean is to meditate on what troubled 

When we heard that this was the label 

used by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, many of us felt 

that Nixon and his camp had thereby become scoundrels (panourgoi), because 

they were denying that American political parties, even if they contend against 

each other, are parties of the American people, that there is a genus that holds 

together the different ways of being American citizens. As this example shows, 

reminding conflicting social or political parties that and how they 

"akin" 

are also 

or of one genus (sungenos) can be of great practical importance, that is, 

make a difference in deliberations steering toward action. 

For me the most vivid instance of what I am talking about is the speech 

whereby the brothers of Joseph, in the concluding chapter of the book of Gene 

sis (50:16-21), seek to move Joseph to mildness towards them. They say: 

"Your father said before his death, forgive the servants of the God of your 

father." 

It is the indirectness of that speech's rationale for reconciliation to 

which I am calling your attention. The indirectness betokens that only insofar 

as there is something that is regarded as to theion, divine, inasmuch as it is of a 

kind to rule and hold sway whereas the rival mortals all are to be ruled and to 

serve, can mortal rivalry 

be stilled (Phaedo 80a). 

But not every ascent to (recollecting of?) the genus that contains diverse and 

even rival species has such practical effects for the community. Sometimes all 

that is gained is peace of mind for an individual. Thus it appears to me that 

people who skip the earlier sections of the Phaedo because they don't like to be 

counted among the "vulgar" 

overlook the fact that the Phaedo acknowledges 

"animated" 

the different and apparently competing ways of being 

(empsuchon) 

by desire for goods that are of diverse species (cf. Aristotle, Nichomachaean 

Ethics i.6), yet of one genus in being good. 

To recognize that, as Pythagoras put it, life or at least human life is like a 

festival, where some go to sell, some to win honor by proving 

through their 

victory that they outrank their rivals, and some just to watch the game, the 

sellers, and the watchers, is to be on the way to becoming reconciled to the fact 

that each way of life claims that it is the true way, and in trying to win adher 

ents to itself will come into conflict with the others. My brief and perhaps 

slightly unusual way of expressing this recognition is to say 

cies of human life as species of one genus. 

one sees the spe


Sometimes, however, and here the so-to-say privileged status of the Form 

equality comes to the fore, ascent to the genus gives immense theoretical satis 

faction. 

Euclid's Elements postdate the Platonic dialogues, but 1 imagine that the 

idea of recognizing truths about equality-inequality as "common 

to" 

the sci 

ences arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, and whatever predecessor of 

Archimedes' 

science of weight probably existed was already on the scene 

when Plato wrote his dialogues. 

truth? 

To what are the Common Notions true? How do we come to know their 

The Socrates of the Phaedo answers: We learned them via mortal and per 

ceptible things that happened to be equal to one another in this or that respect. 

But the sign of our only being reminded of "the equal itself" 

instead of being 

things from which we learned 

directly informed by these things is that the very 

about being equal are (a)only approximately equal and (b)only 

equals as re 

garded in terms of one rather than another of their attributes, and (c)deserve the 

name only vis-a-vis a correlative. 

The truths that Euclid collects under the heading Common Notions outrank 

other truths in that they are Common to all the sciences, rendering arithmetic, 

plane and solid geometry, astronomy, the science of weights, music theory, as 

well as the subject matters of these several sciences, akin (sungenos). More 

over, the demonstrative power of these diverse species of science seems in 

large measure to hinge on the Common Notions. 

Now whereas when I tried to illustrate the idea of genus earlier through 

political and social examples, the diverse species that belonged to the genus 

were "contained in" 

their genus, it is my best guess that according to the Pha 

edo the genus of equal things to which Euclid's Common Notions are strictly 

applicable are not equal sticks or stones or equal heard musical intervals or 

equal observed angles made by heavenly bodies. Rather, these common notions 

hold strictly true of equals that are purely and perfectly and without qualifica 

tion what their name proclaims them as. 

And beyond them, higher yet than "the there is the source 

above" 

the 

of mutual equals mutuality. having This One is the Form "apart and 

things called after it, whence mutual equals have their mutuality, their broth- 

erliness. It outranks the terms related even when these terms are "perfect" 

the way that "mathematicals" 

To "the equal 

ultimately "look" 

itself" 

are. It is the relationship equality. 

in this sense of the word Socrates would say that we 

when we pronounce such truths as that equality is transitive 

and symmetrical. To this same Form the things here on earth (and even those 

over the earth that can be seen with the body's eyes) that are yoked together as 

each other's equals 

"look" 

when they 

"inferior" 

short" 

and remain (Phaedo 74d). 

aspire to be true to their name but "fall 

Let what's been said be my tentative answer to the three questions I prom 

ised to take up: 

in


1 . Of 

what are there forms? Of relational qualities such as figure in the 

mathematical sciences but also in politics and morals. 

2. What are the forms? They 

"fathers" 

are the or "patrons" 

of the innumer 

able couples, triples, quadruples, bonded to each other by the relation they bear 

toward each other. 

3. Why suppose that there are forms? Because the relation-words, 

which are 

the very words on which much of our reasoning turns, are meaningful, and 

their meaningfulness cannot be explained by treating them as the names of the 

things that are "towards" 

each other by virtue of their relation, not even if one 

takes these things in groups, small or large. The word, if name it is, is primar 

ily name of what it signifies, secondarily 

of what it denotes. 

Now this entire excursion into the region of the Platonic Forms was for the 

sake of meeting our obligation to appraise Socrates' 

self-defense before his 

friends. And that self-defense was given the form of attempts to demonstrate 

the soul's immortality. 

We must, therefore, return to the question whether, when toward the end of 

the dialogue his friends see Socrates' 

corpse stretched out and Crito has closed 

its mouth and eyes, these friends would rightly hope that Socrates now associ 

ates with beings better than themselves, namely, the Platonic Forms. 

My 

own belief is that the answer is "no." 

somewhat succeeded in conveying that if one says 

I hope, however, that I have 

"no," 

if one contends that 

Socrates has not established that it is better for him to die because at death his 

true self will become disencumbered of "accretions" 

and will gain full intimacy 

with associates long divined, one has to think rather carefully about everything 

over and under the sun. 

One of the things one learns from Platonic dialogues is that one should try to 

find out what follows from denying an assumption. 

arguments" 

If the "middle 

have not succeeded,10 

then I can see only three 

ways in which Socrates's drinking of the hemlock is "doing 

good for him. Two of these you will probably not like. 

1 . 

Socrates 

what he a 

is using the verdict of the Athenians as a permissible mode of 

suicide, anticipating a troubled old age (cf. Memorabilia IV. viii, Loeb ed. 

p.352). 

2. Socrates is "making a name for himself," 

shaping how future generations 

will remember him, by dying for Athens and philosophy. Despite the fact that 

Socrates is made to speak of other heroes in some such way as this in the 

Symposium, and in spite of the fact that the passion for fame plays so immense 

a role in human life, I have some difficulty ascribing this motive to Socrates 

because he is so profoundly aware of how the passion for fame makes one 

dependent on those who bestow fame. And I was under the impression that the 

Einstein passage, which towards the end speaks of substituting the intellectual 

for the lived world, shows that becoming independent of one's fellow human 

beings is one of the prime motives of the man whom Plato portrays in the guise


of Socrates (cf. Epistle ii 314c, legomena sookratous . 

gegotos). 

. kalou 

kai neou 

3. Socrates judges that the good of Athens is his good and regards the exe 

cution of a procedurally correct judicial verdict as a public good. 

If you opt for this last way, that seems to show that what a thing, or at least 

a human being, or at least certain human beings are is a matter of relations. It 

may, were there but argument enough and time, 

from facts of being related. 

NOTES 

show that relationships derive 

1. Apologeomai is the correlative of kateegoroo (Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon 

[Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968], p. 207). At Phaedo 63e the latter is the expression Socrates uses 

when, with a ("him,'' 

reminding contrast between the city's representative viz. the jailer) and his 

own little band of friends, he says, "Never mind about him. To you, who are now my judges, I 

want to explain (logon apodounai) why a man is of good courage when he is to die if he has 

spent his life genuinely in 

philosophy." 

The Meno's logon didonai is likewise a political expres 

sion logon didonai is what a magistrate does at the conclusion of his term of office. 

2. Aristotle, On Memory and Recollection, ch. 2, especially 453a7, where these are expressly 

distinguished, recollection being a kind of searching; cf. also Nichomachean Ethics 1 1 12b20. 

3. A reader to whom I showed a draft of this essay considered my use of the word "deliberate- 

ness" 

in connection with nous grossly misleading. The issue is too important for this essay (which 

is, after all, primarily intent on gaining some clarity about relations between thought and desire, not 

to repond to his query. But it is too large really to tackle. So I compromise with a note. 

Disregard for the moment passages in the Republic which contrast dianoia with noesis. Disre 

gard also what Aristotle says in Metaphysics Lambda. Nous is, after all, not an invention of 

philosophers. 

To judge by the entries from Herodotus, Homer, Xenophon, Platonic dialogues and Aristotelian 

writings more broadly that are recorded by Liddell-Scott, the range of meaning stretches over 

houtos ho noos tou rematos ("this is the sense of the word"), pros ton auton noun ("to the same 

effect"), en noun echein plus future infinitive ("to intend"), poiein ti epi noon tini ("to put into 

someone's mind to do"), agathooi nooi ("kindly"), ek pantos noou ("with all his soul/heart/mind"). 

A survey of these entries leads me to believe that neither the contrast between heart and head 

nor that between will and understanding is in or associated with the word nous. As far as I can see, 

the overall sense of the root is something like "paying 

yourself is attentive? Eye of the soul or of the body, head, 

attention,'' 

with the question "What part of 

or heart?" 

left unasked. The questions 

"Why are you paying attention? Do you mean to do something as a result of what you've noticed? 

Or do you mean to demonstrate something? Or are you just absorbed in what you are attending 

have not come on the scene. 

Consider now the passage in the Phaedo on which I drew when I characterized Socrates (97c 

ff. ), Socrates says that when he heard that it is nous which diakosmoon te kai pantoon aitios ("nous 

is what arranges and is responsible for all things"), this seemed somehow right to him. He imme 

diately adds: "If this is so, the mind in arranging things arranges everything (panta) and each thing 

In a sentence a little later, this emphasis on "best for each and 

(hekaston) in such a way as is best." 

best for 

Purely 

all" 

is reiterated. That is, Socrates never talks about a nonarranging nous! 

contemplative nous, as in Metaphysics Lambda, is never given entry. Rather, it looks as 

though the later passage, where Socrates speaks of what seemed best to the Athenians and what 

seemed best to him, is already being prepared for. Thus I take Socrates to be talking about reasons 

for action rather than causes of events and as maintaining that when someone does something, or 

does everything 

to?" 

nooi he does what he does out of/from a/because of a regard for what is the best of


each (including himself) and for all (including his family, and the city, and the little band repre 

sented by those with him in prison on his last day). 

I have a very hard time distinguishing "doing something deliberately" 

from doing it after and as 

a result of attending to the good of each and all. Doesn't deliberation (even about how the various 

pieces of a lock fit together) consist in trying to figure out what, under the given circumstances, is 

fit for each and for all? 

I certainly agree that people other than Socrates get distracted from the outcome of their deliber 

ations (what they "saw 

clearly" 

when they were so lucky as to reach clarity), don't keep their eye 

on the ball (viz. the good of each and all). So if I am to make sense of the fact that Socrates is not 

like other people, I shall have to listen to those who say, "Ah, but there is many a slip between the 

cup of seeing clearly and the lip of saw." 

doing in accord with what you I therefore appreciate what 

as mediating between "insight" 

and 

tempts people to postulate "will" 

my own tendency 

"action.' 

But I confess that 

is to work rather with the idea of concentration (see 83a and 80e-end on ath- 

roizesthai), substituting it for will, or identifying the two. Consequently 

I often wonder in the most 

literal-minded way about Meno's opening question, because it seems as though human excellence 

consists so largely in this ability to concentrate, which seems to be helped along by 

regimen and 

education, but nevertheless seems very much to be a matter of talent or grace. Examining Aristo 

tle's Nicomachean Ethics vii would greatly help to clarify the issue. 

4. Allow me to outline what I would want to say under headings (1) and (3). Audible speech 

reminds. How does it manage to do so? Many readers of Plato answer, by prompting the hearer to 

turn his or her mind to the eide "referred 

to" 

or "partaken 

of" 

by the individual words he hears 

spoken. On this interpretation of what speaking is and of what Plato's Socrates means by eide, 

"significance." 

there ought to be an eidos for every significant word, the eidos being this I hold that 

such a theory of language, one which refuses to make do with an account of words as substitutes 

for things and insists, instead, that words have logical depth as well as breadth, Sinn as well as 

Bedeutung, intension as well as extension, is more nearly like the truth than most of its rivals. I 

even believe that it was Plato to whom we, in some complicated way, owe it. But, as will be 

argued below, the evidence of the dialogues is against this general identification of eide with 

logical depths. For the expression "logical depth," 

see C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers, Vol.2, ch. 5. 

To fasten on writing and urge that reflection on its astounding powers is among the Phaedo's 

themes might seem merely modish. Yet consider, the Phaedo, more even than the rest of the 

dialogues, is a memorial to Socrates. Obviously the marks on wax or papyrus bear no resemblance 

to Socrates. They are letters not drawings. The only respects in which they seem to be like Socrates 

is that they are visible (have shape and perhaps color) and mean something (albeit only to those 

who have learned to read). So, except for being corporeal snub- 

they utterly fail to resemble the 

nosed man whom Phaedo and his companions deemed wisest, most just, and altogether best of the 

men in their acquaintance. Nevertheless, uncannily, they call Socrates to mind, who would other 

on." 

wise be forgotten, since "for long he has not been seen nor been meditated 

Now the entire corpus of Platonic dialogue is overrun with remarks about or references to 

written marks, grammata Hippias Major 285, Republic 11.368, Phaedrus 244, 274, Statesman 

277e, Theaetetus 202, Protagoras 312, 326, Cratylus 423-34, Philebus 17 ff. Sophist 253. True, 

letters and the learning or using of letters are frequently used as examples of something else, looked 

through rather than at. But it is hard to deny that Plato has mind." 

writing "on his 

Grammata are not mentioned or spoken of in the Phaedo. Diagrams, however, are. And in 

Socrates' 

speech to Simmias at 73c, the sentence about a drawn horse or lyre, in Greek gegram- 

menon, is bound to remind of a written horse or man. 

The word "diagram' 

is in the dialogue's text 

"When you lead people to diagrams or something of that sort it becomes particularly 

says Cebes in the speech to Simmias which intends to explain in what way learning or studying is 

recollection. 

The thing is not. There are no pictures or diagrams in the divided-line section of the Republic or the 

double-square section of the Meno either. Moreover, to judge by Sophist 240a, professors of math 

ematics like Apollonius may have left the supplying of illustrative diagrams to the reader himself.


Now one way of vividly experiencing the potency of writing is to stop and think about the fact 

that letters, merely conventional and otherwise arbitrary scratches, though they are not diagrams, 

yield diagrams, if the reader cooperates with the text by executing the required "setting 

dean ekthesis) of the author's enunciation. 

The Euclidean pattern of a reader's coming to assent to an author's "I 

drawing 

"cases" 

out" 

(Eucli 

say" 

declarations by 

which meet the author's general specifications, inspecting and experimenting on 

them, and finding that the particular cases which the reader was at liberty to conjure up bear out the 

author's claim is particularly clear and vivid. 

But mustn't we always do something like this when we read? Don't we otherwise merely mouth 

the words like an actor reading a script? (Cf. Aristotle Metaphvsics xiii 1087al7 and Nicomachean 

Ethics vii 1047a20 f.) 

You may well agree, yet wonder why I should do my ruminating about how one goes about 

realizing what is claimed by 

a sentence through meditation on written sentences. Isn't it just as true 

that to grasp the sense and test the truth of what someone says in a spoken sentence the person who 

listens must conjure up something to which to apply what is heard said, something which is not 

supplied in full by the speaker? I believe the answer is 

"yes." 

Remember, however, that what 

prompted me to think about the thinking that is stirred up when one is on the receiving end, 

interpreting someone else's words, was that I was trying to interpret what the Phaedo says about 

recollection, cloaks, and lyres. 

The scholarly justification for the hypothesis that one of the things that these passages in the 

dialogue are about is writing is the resemblance between Aristotle's On Interpretation 16a and 

Phaedo 73. But what is important about this hypothesis is the following: The passages in the 

Phaedo about recollection, cloaks, and lyres and the dialogue entire, are about thinking and for 

thinking, not only Socrates', Simmias', and Cebes', and ours, but also Plato's, the author's. What I 

mean in saying this is that we ought to try the notion that what the Sophist tells us about thought, 

viz., that it is the dialogue of the soul with itself, so that in thinking the one who does it is both 

speaker and hearer, I and You, applies to writing too: The author is both writer and reader. 

Clearly 

this is the experience which the likes of ourselves have when we compose a written 

piece. Why opt for radical discontinuity 

between Plato and us? 

If the supposition of continuity between what motivates major authors to write and what 

prompts ourselves to write sounds like hubris, think again about the slave in the Meno. Yes, it is in 

some measure more plausible to see continuity between Meno, the Thessalian nobleman, and his 

slave than between Plato and ourselves. Yet reconsider Isn't the long-run question of the dialogue 

about the excellence that consists in being oneself both Socrates and slave, teacher and learner, that 

is, self-ruled investigator? And in respect to certain kinds of investigation, in particular, the finding 

of the geometry that transforms Hesiodic stellar lore into mathematical astronomy, isn't there, on 

Plato's part, as much need for someone who played the role of teacher vis-a-vis him as there was a 

need for Socrates in the slave's case (cf. Epinomis 989e)'.' 

Now once one allows oneself the thought that Plato resorts to writing not only to teach but also 

to learn, the riddling character of the dialogues acquires a different ethos. They are no longer Zen 

master's koans. 

The things I said in connection with 

Cebes' 

and 

Socrates' 

rather different ways of speaking 

about recollection will now apply to the process of writing the dialogues as well as to the outcomes 

of that process. The author himself, looking back on what he has written, will have to study the 

questions which connections that were written down are strong and which are weak and why. And 

if he is anything like the Socrates whom he depicts, the author will trust that even erroneous 

answers to his questions have a rationale (as is certainly the case when the slave thinks that doub 

ling an area calls for doubling the sides which contain it). 

Therefore he will not throw mistakes away even when he has convinced himself that they are 

mistakes. He will, having had previous experiences of finding the true in the interstices of moti 

vated falsehood, 

look promising. 

Socrates' 

which was the slave's experience under tutelage, "save" 

mistakes that 

But as for which mistakes are promising, he will have to guess at that. Being a reader as well as


a writer of his own text, he too will in some measure have to guess at "what is 

which is, of 

course, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the subject at hand. (Is it at 

hand? ) 

5. Try picturing the weaver sitting at his loom and fabricating the life-cloth by passing horizon 

tal weft threads through the vertical warp threads, over and under, over and under, thus making a 

surface 

"emerge" 

just right so that the 

try picturing 

a man 

from 

"lines." 

Or again, picture the musician who gets the lyre 

strings' 

tension 

"potential" 

for noise becomes the "potential' 

for music. But isn't it hopeless to 

"reaching" 

within his mind or memory for an "absent" 

item? And, if anything, 

still more hopeless to try picturing anything which is utterly mono-eides, one-aspected, simple, and 

indissoluble? Say you mean to picture the color yellow, just yellow by itself. You will have to do it 

without also picturing surface and shape, but can you? 

6. I am claiming that in discovering the "noetic and distinguishing it from the visible 

cosmos, he discovered precisely that the "space of is different from that of 

that the semiotic is other than the causal "order." 

7. Cf. Felix Cohen, "What is a Question?" 

Cf. the writings of Wilfrid Sellars. 

"causes," 

in The Legal Conscience (Archon Books, 1970). 

Also notice how Euclidean proofs circle back on their opening enunciations at the end, in the q.e.d. 

or q.e.f. statement. 

8. The word eidos, as has frequently been pointed out, is not a Platonic coinage. It seems to be 

used, by authors other than Plato, roughly as in German the words Wesen and Gestalt are, e.g. in 

the sentences "Sie hat ein angenehmes Wesen." 

"Welch eine entzuckende Gestalt." 

What gets 

emphasized by these German words in the given sentences is the global, overall impression left by 

someone or something. Sometimes, indeed, Plato himself so uses the Greek word eidos, for in 

stance, at 79a f. , when he speaks of "duo eidee toon ontoon, to men horaton. to de aeides. "To 

this use eidos in the Timaeus roughly corresponds. As I understand the passage in the Meno (72) 

about "bee" 

in the Cratylus (389) about "shuttle," 

in the Republic (596) about "bed," 

or 

eide in these 

passages are not "separate" 

except for the contriving mind. The same holds for the eidos or Gestalt 

of the beloved whose toga or lyre reminds of the absent one whose property these are: these are 

eide, but not eide choorista, para tauta panta heteron ti. 

9. Cf. 

"similar," "multitude," "rest" 

"big," "heavy" 

and their "contraries" 

being 

fundamental to what will become our physics. 

and their opposites in the Parmenides, and "double," 

in the list at Republic v, 479, all the words in quotation marks 

10. I take for granted that the reader will agree that the final argument (102e ff.) leaves unde 

cided whether, when death comes, the soul 

"withdraws" 

exist." 

or has already "ceased to

The Serious Play 

David Roochnik 

Iowa State University 

of Plato's Euthydemus 

Plato's Euthydemus is a strange dialogue.' 

In it two old, but not very experi 

enced, sophists, the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, 

"eristic" 

show off their 

abilities. They bombard their audience with fallacy after fallacy, many 

of them quite absurd. (Example: that dog is a father; that dog is yours; there 

fore, that dog is your father (see 298e].) The dialogue is loaded with word 

play, and throughout Socrates is transparently ironic in his praise of his sophis 

tic competitors. When they finish their show, he says, "no one of those present 

could praise highly enough the argument and the two men, and they nearly died 

laughing and joy" 

clapping with (303b). 

As a result of its almost farcical quality, 

strained to begin their work on the Euthydemus by asking 

serious enough to merit analysis.2 

commentators often feel con 

whether it is even 

The task of the commentator is then to show 

that enough serious material can be extracted to justify the commentary. Typ 

ically the sophistical fallacies, which represent about half of the work, have 

been taken as the most significant portion of the dialogue. (Including the intro 

duction and conclusion the dialogue has seven parts, three of which are filled 

with the 

sophists' 

eristic). Even if they are occasionally absurd, it is obvious 

that arguments concerning the nature of learning (275d-77d) or the ambiguity 

of the verb "to be" 

(283b-e) or the issue of self-predication (300e-301c) 

should be seriously analyzed. Kuelen, for example, claims that there is an 

important relationship between the learning 

Meno; Peck argues similarly about the "to be" 

fallacies and the doctrines of the 

arguments and the Sophist; 

Sprague interprets a passage from the Euthydemus as an objection to the theory 

of Forms similar to one articulated in the Parmenides (see Keulen, Peck, 

Sprague [1967], 

and also Mohr). 

The fallacies have also been examined from a historical perspective. Since 

they are closely related to many 

phistical Refutation (SE) the following sorts of questions have been asked: 

of the examples Aristotle uses in his On So 

What is the relationship between Aristotle's treatment of the fallacies and 

Plato's? (Keulen asks this question, as does Praechter.) Was there an original 

source that supplied both the Euthydemus and the SE with its eristic arguments? 

Was there, for example, a historical figure named Euthydemus who actually 

compiled a handbook of fallacies (as is perhaps suggested at SE 177M2 and 

Rhetoric 1401a26)? (This is the main question in Praechter' 

s essay.) 

A similar historical question is this: What is the relationship between Plato's 

interpretation, Winter 1990-1991, Vol. 18, No. 2


dialogue and the "Dissoi Logoi" 

manual, possibly written at the end of the 

fifth century (see Sprague [1968], pp. 160-61)? Whatever the answer, it is 

clear that the Euthydemus provides valuable information about the state of 

Greek logic during this period, and it is likely that a great deal of serious work 

the sophistical arguments of the dia 

is both reflected in and was inspired by 

logue. The Kneales suggest an example: "It is probable then that the early 

Megarians took part in, and were stimulated to logical discovery by, such dis 

putes as we find satirized in Plato's Euthydemus" 

(p. 15). 

There is thus no doubt that the fallacies deserve attention from both histo 

rians of logic and philosophers concerned with Plato's development. In this 

essay, however, I propose a different approach to the serious side of the Euthy 

demus. Instead of focusing on its three eristic sections (275d-77d, 283b-88b, 

Socrates' "protreptic" 

293b-303b), I shall concentrate largely on speeches 

and Praech 

(278e-83a, 288d-93a). Commentators (e.g., Stewart, Friedlander, 

ter) frequently dismiss, simply paraphrase, 

or ignore these arguments. M. A. 

Stewart describes the argument as "an extravagant induction" 

and "equivocal." 

P. Friedlander says almost nothing about these arguments. Praechter describes 

the philosophical side of the dialogue as essentially negative and Socrates' 

guments as "unmittelbar ohne frucht" 

(p. 9). By contrast, I hope to show that if 

analyzed carefully, these speeches employ some of Plato's most crucial 

terms techne and arete are the prime examples and they raise philosophical 

questions of the highest order. 

The two protreptic speeches together form a continuous argument which is 

indeed quite serious. However, precisely because it is protreptic, the argument 

is also intrinsically problematic. Protreptic, as explained by Socrates, is a form 

of argument designed to persuade its audience that "one ought to philosophize 

and care about 

arete" 

(275a6. For a comparison see Isocrates To Nicocles 57. 1, 

Evagoras 11. 1 , Antitdosis 60.4, 84.2, and 86.2, 

ar 

and Aristotle's Rhetoric 1358b 

ff.) It invites its audience into the project of philosophy and promises, either 

implicitly or explicitly, that such a quest will be rewarding. But protreptic is 

next." 

incomplete: it only promises and does not itself deliver "what comes 

This phrase, "what comes 

next" 

(to meta touto) comes from Cleitophon 408d7, 

a dialogue devoted to the question of protreptic. I have commented on this 

work at length in "The Riddle of Plato's Cleitophon." 

It urges its audience to 

love wisdom but does not itself provide, or clearly articulate the nature of, that 

wisdom. As a result, protreptic forces the reader to consider some of the most 

pressing questions raised by the dialogues: Do "positive" 

they contain a teach 

ing? Can Socrates' 

promise of wisdom be fulfilled? Is there a theoretical doc 

trine, an episteme or techne, that actually does "come or is Socratic 

protreptic merely promissory? Does Socrates only refute and exhort his inter 

locutors, or does he actually teach them? 

Answering such questions would ultimately require a comprehensive inter 

pretation of the dialogues. This the essay to follow will hardly supply. Instead,

The Serious Play of Plato's Euthydemus -213 

I shall argue only for the following thesis: The protreptic arguments offered by 

Socrates fail to demonstrate conclusively that one ought to philosophize. If this 

is correct, does it follow that Socratic protreptic undermines itself? After all, if 

arguments purporting to show that one ought to philosophize are themselves 

riddled with problems, then why ought one to philosophize? 

While its conclusion is not universally or necessarily true, I shall argue that 

the protreptic does not undermine itself. As we shall see, Socrates' 

arguments 

are compelling only to those who are predisposed to agree with their conclu 

sion. Such a diagnosis sounds entirely damning; it is not, however. A thorough 

examination of the protreptic will disclose that these peculiar arguments are 

uniquely instructive. While they are not powerful enough to persuade every 

body to philosophize (i.e., to demonstrate that philosophy is an unconditional 

good), they can yet be effective in urging someone like Kleinias, the young 

man who (along with the reader) is the real target of Socrates' 

pursue philosophy. Furthermore, they 

can teach him how to do so. 

speeches, to 

In sum, then, the protreptic, like the Euthydemus itself, is a strange blend of 

seriousness and play. On the one hand, the protreptic arguments for the pursuit 

of philosophy fail to attain their stated purpose; "we were entirely 

says Socrates as he nears their conclusion (291b). Nevertheless, the protreptic 

succeeds in performing a most serious task: outlining the questions that must be 

pursued if Socrates' 

exhortation to philosophize is to be heeded. 

In the prologue the two sophists make a mighty boast for themselves: 

"Arete, Socrates, is what we think we can transmit more finely and quickly 

than anybody 

sponse is this: 

else" 

(273d8-9). The first question that Socrates poses in re 

Are you only able to make a man good who is already convinced that he should 

learn from you, 

or can you also teach that man who is not yet convinced either 

because he does not believe that in general arete is teachable or that you two are 

teachers of it? Come on, is it the work of the same techne to persuade such a man 

that arete is teachable and that you are the ones from whom someone could best 

leam, or is that the work of some other techne? (274d7-e5) 

Dionysodorus answers that it is the same techne that does these two jobs. 

Socrates then reformulates: "Therefore, Dionysodorus, of all men you most 

finely 

losophy 

'protrepticize,' 

encourage (or protrepsaite , 275al) others to pursue phi 

and to be concerned about 

arete?" 

(274a8-75a2). The sophist agrees. 

ridicu 

Examination of this passage raises general questions about the possibility of 

teaching arete which, I suggest, can best be illuminated by comparing the 

teaching of arete with other, more typical, subjects (or technai). The passage


implies that instruction in the latter requires at least four separate phases. (1) 

Before beginning a specific study 

a student must first be persuaded that the 

subject can be taught. In a typical subject like geometry this is easily done. A 

prospective student can simply observe that those who took Geometry 

101 in 

the fall, and knew nothing of the subject, can prove a host of theorems by the 

spring. (2) The student must be persuaded that the prospective teacher can 

to obtain. It can be 

actually teach the subject. Evidence of this is also easy 

determined that Dr. Jones received a degree in mathematics and taught the 

students who took Geometry 101 last year. (3) A third preparatory phase (one 

only suggested by the passage) is also required: The student must be persuaded 

that putting in the hours of study geometry demands is "worth it." 

As a result, 

the teacher must persuade the student that geometry is valuable. A good teacher 

of a typical subject thus requires two separate capacities: fluency in the actual 

material to be taught, and the ability 

to arouse the 

students' 

interest and 

commitment to the subject. It is obvious that the former need not imply the 

latter. (4) The final stage of instruction is communication of the actual course 

material. 

This schema seems applicable to any ordinary techne. Arete, however, is an 

extraordinary subject whose teaching will disrupt the schema for the following 

reasons. First, it can be quite difficult to persuade a student that arete is an 

actual subject. As Socrates often points out, there is no obvious version of 

Arete 101 and its teachers are not easily identified (see, e.g., Meno 89e ff. and 

Protogoras 319e ff.). How, then, does one persuade a student that arete can be 

taught? The student must be "protrepticized," 

exhorted to attempt an extraordi 

nary subject. For most people, instruction in arete is left to the basic customs or 

institutions of the community: imitation of the elders, obedience to civil law, 

and religious traditions are examples. To persuade someone to study arete as a 

distinct subject therefore requires calling into question the authority of such 

familiar activities and opinions. To be a candidate for such instruction, the 

student thus has to be willing, at the outset, to question the nature of arete. But 

this is equivalent to commencing the study of arete itself. In other words, the 

initial protreptic phase, (1) and (2) from above, collapses into phase (4), the 

actual study of the subject. 

A similar collapse occurs with phase (3). How does a teacher persuade a 

student that arete, assuming it can be taught, is worth studying? Only by argu 

ing that knowledge of arete is valuable. This would require employing and then 

explaining some standard by which to measure the value of this knowledge. 

But arete itself is precisely the standard that measures the value of activities. 

Therefore, it itself would need to be invoked to prove the value of knowledge 

of itself. In other words, should a teacher try to persuade a student that arete is 

worth studying, she would have to explain the value of the subject. But this 

explanation would be an actual lesson in arete. Again, there is no division 

between the protreptic preliminaries and the actual study itself.


The dilemma of commencing the study of arete thus echoes Meno's famous 

paradox. A student cannot learn arete unless he can be convinced that it is both 

teachable and worth studying. But only the student already convinced of both is 

open to the possibility of being 

so persuaded. Put into somewhat exaggerated 

terms, since being convinced that arete is teachable and worth studying 

a component of being good, only somebody already 

This issue, which admittedly is only suggested by the passage, 

is itself 

good can be made good. 

will become 

more explicit as the dialogue progresses. As we shall see in Sections III and V, 

it will prove to be critical for understanding the intrinsic limitations of Socratic 

protreptic. 

Dionysodorus states that it is one and the same techne that persuades a 

student that arete is teachable and that he and his brother can teach it (274e6). 

In a sense, this is the right answer: Because of the collapse of the various 

instructional phases just discussed, it has to be one and the same activity that 

both persuades the student to study and engages in the actual instruction. In 

another sense, however, it is clear that the sophist is unaware of a lurking 

problem. This concerns the very notion of a "techne," 

the word commonly used 

by Socrates to label ordinary forms of knowledge such as medicine, carpentry, 

geometry, etc. As has just been argued, the study of arete is extraordinary. The 

question should therefore be raised, Can there be a techne of arete? If so, who 

If not, does this imply there 

sophists.3 

possesses it? Certainly not the two old 

is no knowledge of arete at all, or can arete be comprehended by some form of 

"nontechnical" 

knowledge (see Woodruff)? As we shall see in Section IV be 

low, these are precisely the issues taken up in Socrates' 

speech. 

II 

second protreptic 

The fallacies of the first eristical scene commence when Euthydemus asks 

Kleinias, the highly promising youth who is the occasion for the entire dialogue 

(273a-c and 275a), "of the following two groups, who are the ones who learn, 

those who are wise (sophoi) 

When Kleinias answers "the 

swering 

"the ignorant," 

or those who are ignorant (amatheis)T (275d). 

wise" 

he is refuted. quickly He responds by an 

and is refuted once again. As Socrates later explains 

(277e-78a), the sophist here plays on the ambiguity of manthanein, which can 

mean either "to 

understand" 

(sunienai: 278a4) or "to learn new." 

something 

Manthanein can refer to expanding upon knowledge presently possessed (a stu 

dent who already knows his letters will understand a grammar lesson) 

acquiring 

or to 

new knowledge (a student who does not know his letters can learn 

them). As such, the question can receive two different, and seemingly exclu 

sive, answers. Given the first meaning of the verb, the answer is "the wise"; 

given the second, it is "the ignorant." 

Kleinias is befuddled.


This argument has occasioned much debate. It is not clear, for example, 

exactly where the force of the ambiguity falls. "Does the sophism depend upon 

an equivocation on manthanein . 

theis ('knowledgeable/ignorant' 

or on an equivocation on sophoi and ama- 

and 'clever/stupid')?" 

(Hawtrey, 

pp. 58 ff.). It 

is also possible that rather than equivocation the fallacy is better described as, 

"the one known traditionally as a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter. 

. . . This 

fallacy consists in taking absolutely what should be taken only acci 

dentally, e.g., to go from 'knowing 

(Sprague [1962], p. 6). 

one's letters' 

to simply 'knowing'" 

Since the focus of this essay is on Socrates', and not the sophists', argu 

ments, I shall simply assert that some form of equivocation is going on. What 

is clear is that, whatever the exact status of the argument, its consequences, if 

taken seriously, would call into question the very possibility of learning. If "the 

one who learns" 

cannot be identified, then the process of learning itself cannot 

be rationally explained, and it becomes legitimate to ask whether it is even 

possible. Clearly the sophistic arguments echo Meno's famous learning para 

dox. (Again, Keulen makes this a major issue.) 

After explaining that the fallacy rests on an equivocation, Socrates seems to 

dismiss the 

sophists' 

arguments as follows: 

These are student games (paidia) and thus I tell you that these fellows are playing 

(prospaizein) with you and I call this play (paidian) because even if someone 

should leam either many or all of such things as they teach, he would have no 

more knowledge of how things really are, but he would only be able to play with 

other men, tripping up and overturning them, by his use of the difference of 

names. They are like boys who take pleasure in pulling a chair away from people 

who are about to sit down and laugh when they see them sprawled upside down. 

You should think of what these fellows do as play (278bl-c2). 

Socrates proposes that instead of such play, the sophists should fulfil their 

promise to engage in the serious work (ta spoudaia: 278c3) 

of protreptic. A 

series of dichotomies thus suggests itself: Sophistry is the mere playing with 

words; it is concerned only with appearances and refutation, 

and not with in 

struction in how things really are; it is superficial, manipulative, and bad. By 

contrast, philosophy uses words to understand things; it is serious, protreptic 

(or "dialectical") 

("Dialectical" 

and good. is Sprague's word in Plato's Use of 

Fallacy, p. 3, and her interpretation is a good example of what I'm talking 

about. The relationship between dialectic and protreptic would constitute an 

issue in itself, and I shall not broach it here. See also Szlezak, p. 81.) 

While such comfortable dichotomies are attractive, I suggest that they are 

not as easily sustained as commentators wish to think. Despite their lack of 

perspicacity, the sophists have a position which is potentially quite serious. 

Whatever the exact status of the argument concerning learning, there is no 

doubt that overcoming Meno's paradox is not easy. Let us assume for a mo-


ment that the process of learning cannot in fact be rationally articulated and that 

its possibility should therefore be called into question. If that were the case, 

then the verbal combat of sophistry, the manipulation of words whose goal is 

only to achieve victory in any given contest of speeches, should be taken very 

seriously. Since the use of language could promise no higher goal, i.e., knowl 

edge, there would be no reason not to become a sophist. 

This position that I here propose attributing to the sophists is roughly equiv 

alent to that often ascribed to Gorgias. In his "On Nature" 

"Praise of Helen" 

and Section 1 1 of the 

he presents a form of scepticism. This in turn provides him 

with a warrant for his commitment to rhetoric, wherein truth is only an "adorn 

ment" 

(kosmos) of "logos." 

first word of the "Praise of Helen." 

The key 

It is extremely difficult to translate "kosmos," 

the 

See Diels, pp. 288 ff. , for the Greek text. 

point is this: The sophists who oppose Socrates are no doubt comic 

figures. This does not imply, however, that their position should be dismissed 

as a farcical "Gegenbild" 

(Szlezak's word, p. 81) to the serious work of Socra 

tic philosophy. It is possible to abstract the sophistic view from its playful 

context and the result is troubling, and perhaps formidable. 

The sense in which the sophistic view can seriously oppose Socrates' 

will be 

made clear as we examine the first protreptic argument. As we shall see, the 

conclusion Socrates purports to establish is, at the least, precarious. In other 

words, it will not be clear that good reasons are provided as to why Kleinias, 

the target of the protreptic, should accept the invitation to philosophize rather 

than join the sophistic camp. Indeed, we shall see in the following section that 

Socrates' 

argument requires prior agreement with, and does not itself certify, at 

least one of its premises; and it is precisely this premise that the sophistic 

scepticism concerning learning would call into question. 

Ill 

The following 

tions and Kleinias' 

tic: 

is an outline of the argument 1 extract from Socrates' 

ques 

answers, and which Socrates describes as genuine protrep 

1. All human beings wish to do well (eu prattein: 278e6), i.e., wish to be 

happy 

(eudaimonein: 280b6). 

2. In order to do well, the possession of good things is required (279a3 ff.). 

2A. A sample list of good things: wealth, health, physical beauty, good 

family, 

power and honor in one's community, temperance, justice, courage, 

wisdom (279a7-c3). 

2B. Good fortune (eutuchia: 279c7) is a subsequent addition to the list. 

However, because "wisdom is good 

fortune" 

(279d6) the same item is actu 

ally listed twice. 

3. To bring happiness, good things must benefit their possessor (280b7-8).

218- Interpretation 

4. To benefit, 

good things must be used (280c l-d7). 

5. To benefit, good things must be used correctly (280e3-4). 

6. Knowledge (episteme: 281b2) leads to correct use. 

7. All items on the sample list (2A) are actually neutral (281e3-4). Knowledge 

(or "good sense: [phronesis: 281b6[ 

or "wisdom" 

\sophia: 281b6] 

or "intel 

ligence" 

[nous: 281b7|) is the only intrinsic good and should be sought at any 

cost. (I omit that portion which argues that those with little sense should do less 

in order to err less [281b ff. ).) 

This is a classical protreptic argument, traces of which probably appear in 

Aristotle's Protrepticus (see During, p. 19). Its conclusion, "that it is necessary 

to love (philosophein: 282dl), if seriously accepted, would demand a 

total commitment on the part of anyone who agrees. Indeed, the conclusion is 

so serious and, with its use of the word "necessary" 

(anagkaion), so apparently 

unconditional in its admonition, that the premises deserve the closest scrutiny. 

Unfortunately, they are, as we shall see, quite vague. (This has led Stewart to 

describe this argument as an example of "Plato's sophistry.") A similar vague 

ness is found in the conclusion itself: Even if Kleinias were to agree that he 

ought to love wisdom, Socrates uses several words to describe the knowledge 

towards which the argument directs him. Two related questions, What exactly 

is this knowledge and How might Kleinias attain it? are thus left distressingly 

open. Finally, the principal examples used to illustrate knowledge or wisdom 

come from "the typical 

actually 

technai." 

It is not clear, however, 

whether these can 

provide an adequate theoretical model for the type of knowledge the 

argument encourages Kleinias to seek. 

The first premise contains a famous ambiguity in the phrase "eu 

Does it mean "to do 

well," 

in the sense of being virtuous, 

or "to in 

the sense of achieving one's goal, whatever that may be? Both Hawtrey and 

Gifford comment on the pointed ambiguity of "eu 

its usual acceptation it would rather mean "faring 

pratte 

prattein." 

The latter says, "In 

well" 

than "acting 

(p. 20). The reformulation the phrase receives, "eudaimonein," 

never quite adequately translated as "to be happy," 

only 

typically but 

recapitulates the prob 

lem. It does not seem to be the case that all people wish to be virtuous. We 

may all wish to succeed, that is, attain what we deem to be worth attaining. Eu 

prattein covers both situations. Its ambiguity, however, may not be entirely 

vicious; the first (as well as the second) premise expresses a basic, and typ 

ically Socratic, opinion about human behavior: All human beings desire what 

seems to them to be good. We make value judgments, pursue goals, 

well'" 

attempt to 

move from here to there with an eye towards attaining what we want and deem, 

even if inarticulately, to be good (see, e.g., Symposium 206a). The argument 

assumes, and does not prove, that human beings are free agents whose rational 

choice of what is good determines their action. It is vague and undefended, but 

not without some basis in ordinary observation. 

Premise (2) implies that human action is inspired by epithumia, the desire

for and consequent pursuit of objects. Again, 


although the premise is vague it 

reflects a broad and (to some) compelling perception of human behavior: Peo 

ple go after what they want, and what they want is what they think is good. 

I describe the list of good things Socrates proposes as "sample" 

because the 

specific items on it are not in themselves that important. The point is only that 

such a list can in principle be drawn. The items on this list (which have been 

accused of fluctuating 

"between the causes and the constituents of 

[Stewart, p. 23]) cover a very broad spectrum, ranging from bodily beauty to 

justice. Nevertheless, in keeping with the kind of analysis made so far, the list 

is plausible: it signifies again something basic about ordinary behavior. Each of 

us has a set of goals that energize our desires, a sample list of good things we 

think are worth pursuing. 

To summarize: The assumptions initiating Socrates' 

argument are vague and 

questionable. Nevertheless, they express a plausible conviction about human 

action, namely that it is caused by free and rational choices. More serious 

problems with the argument are yet to come. 

After placing wisdom on the list of sample goods, Socrates digresses. He 

states that he and Kleinias have left out "the greatest of the good things . 

good fortune (eutuchia: 279c7)." 

succe 

. . 

He cannot, however, add eutuchia to the list 

for it would repeat an item already there, namely sophia. By means of a series 

of examples, Socrates argues that good fortune and wisdom are really the same. 

In the matter of flute playing skilled flautists have the best fortune; in reading 

and writing letters, it is the writing masters; in warfare it is the wise generals; 

in times of sickness one would always prefer to try one's luck with the wise 

doctor. (About eutuchia Gifford says it means both "an accidental concurrence 

of favourable circumstances, and success resulting 

choice of 

from the agent's judicious 

means" 

[p. 22]. Note that at 279el the word used is eupragia. So 

crates generalizes: "Wisdom everywhere makes human beings have good for 

tune" 

[280a6]. This same point is made about eutuchia and techne in the Hip- 

pocratic writing, "Peri Technes," 

section IV.) 

Why does Socrates go off on this tangent, 

hia and sophia really as "disastrous" 

and is this identification of eutuc 

as Stewart thinks (p. 23)? The purpose of 

this digression, I suggest, is to focus attention on the character of techne. As 

has often been stated, techne is the mode of knowledge that best overcomes, 

and enables its possessor to control, tuche, luck (see, e.g., Nussbaum, 95- 

100). The pilot, for example, fares well when facing the contingencies of the 

sea. In this passage Socrates relies exclusively on techne for his model of wis 

dom, 

soon to be defined as that knowledge of the correct use of neutral items 

which brings its possessor happiness. But is wisdom best modeled by techne? 

In Section I we noted the features of arete that would distinguish its being 

taught from instruction in the ordinary technai. For Socrates arete is equivalent 

to sophia; therefore, 

this digression should be read with an eye towards the 

possibility of irony. In other words, despite its superficial identification of


sophia with techne, the real purpose of this passage may 

well be to call that 

identification into question. Is techne in fact the best model for sophia? If not, 

what is the nature of that sophia which knows how to use correctly the neutral 

items on the sample list and thus bring happiness to its possessor? These ques 

tions will be returned to shortly. 

Premise (3) states that the good things on the sample list must bring benefit 

to their possessor. This is true by definition and so adds little to the argument. 

Premise (4) does add something new: It states that benefit requires that the 

good things be used. I may possess an apple, but it brings no nutritional benefit 

unless I eat it. A woman may, for example, have a great deal of money, but 

she would neither be benefited nor made happy by it unless she used (spent) it 

(280d). "Use" 

becomes the crucial term because it refers to the process of 

bringing possessions into the human sphere, i.e., of applying them. 

Premise (5) elaborates the concept of use. Benefit requires, not only that 

good things be used, but that they be used 

"bad" 

item is used incorrectly the result is 

"correctly" 

(orthos: 280e3). If the 

(kakon: 280e6). This, I propose, is 

the pivotal premise of the argument. It assumes that the items of the sample list 

are in fact not good at all; they 

are neutral and can be used for good or ill. Most 

important, it assumes that the use of an item can be understood as correct or 

incorrect, good or bad. 

This assumption, I suggest, is problematic in a way that is both similar to 

and different from the problems surrounding the first four. None of the prem 

ises is self-evidently true; they are neither defended nor is their meaning en 

tirely clear. In order for the conclusion to be compelling, therefore, the target 

audience of the protreptic must already be predisposed to agree with them. 

Premises (1) and (2), for example, 

assume that human beings are free agents 

whose selection of what is good can determine their actions. This may not be 

true. Its truth, however, is not here the issue; the point is that in order for the 

audience to be protrepticized they must believe it is true. 

Premise (5) poses a similar, but more serious and complicated, dilemma. Is 

it in fact the case that, (1) things like wealth and health are not good but 

neutral; (2) their use can be rationally evaluated as correct and for the good, or 

incorrect and for the bad; (3) 

what the correct/good use is can be learned? It is 

possible to accept the earlier premises but still deny Premise (5). Indeed, this is 

precisely what sophists such as Dionysodorus and Euthydemus would do. They 

surely 

would maintain that human beings are free agents whose actions are 

determined by some conception of what is good, e.g., attaining political power 

in the Assembly. Without this assumption, their sophistry would become mean 

ingless: they would have no reason to seduce an audience. They would not, 

however, agree with Premise (5). Their scepticism as disclosed in the first 

eristic scene (275d ff.) prohibits them from doing so. As suggested in Section 

II above, the entire case for sophistry rests on the denial that objective knowl 

edge is possible. Premise (5) 

of Socrates' 

first protreptic argument assumes the

The Serious Play of Plato's Euthydemus 221 

opposite, namely objective knowledge of the correct or good use of an object is 

attainable. In other words, Socrates assumes that the "practical" 

question, How 

should we live our lives and apply or use our possessions? can be answered. 

From this assumption he concludes that such answers should be sought. 

To reformulate: If Socrates' 

premises are granted, then it follows that 

knowledge of how to use one's possessions would be the most desirable posses 

sion which is needed in order to be happy (which everybody 

wishes to be). 

Everyone, therefore, ought to seek knowledge of the correct use of neutral 

items. It is, in other words, "necessary to 

propose, is question-begging. 

philosop 

But Premise (5), I 

According to Socrates, an item like health is neither good nor bad, for it can 

be used well or badly. A strong body can beat up innocent weak bodies or build 

hospitals. Socrates assumes that one of these applications of the body 

is and 

can be known as correct. This assumption begs the crucial question. If correct 

use is a property belonging to neutral items, and if neutral items span the broad 

range that the sample list indicates, then knowledge of correct use would be 

required for happiness. The conclusion is thus built into the premise: If there is 

such a thing as correct use, then knowledge of it should be 

sought.4 

But on the 

basis of what should this assumption be granted? It is not self-evident: What if 

there is no such thing as correct use, if use is simply in the eyes of the be 

holder? What force would the protreptic argument then have? Can the living of 

a good life be directed by knowledge? Perhaps so. This, however, is precisely 

what the argument should show, 

and not assume. 

As if to signal distress, the conclusion is stated with a flurry 

of different 

terms: "episteme" 

(281b2). "phronesis" 

(281b6), "sophia" 

(281d6), and "nous" 

(281b7) are all used to label that which should be sought. This terminological 

flux helps to raise a decisive problem with the conclusion of Socrates' 

argu 

ment: Just what is this knowledge, assuming it exists, that Kleinias is being 

exhorted to seek? Throughout the discussion, most clearly in the eutuchia/ 

sophia digression (279c-80b), typical technai such as flute playing, reading 

and writing, piloting a ship, being a general, and medicine are cited as exam 

ples of knowledge. Furthermore, it is carpentry that provides the example of 

correct use in Premise (5) (281a). Is it a typical techne, then, one whose subject 

matter is the good use of neutral items, that Kleinias should seek? The mere 

"technical" 

presence of so examples would seem to suggest 

many 

that it is. 

Such a conclusion, however, is difficult to maintain. Exactly why can be made 

Socrates' 

clear by further examining use of the example of the carpenter. 

A typical techne has a determinate subject matter. The carpenter's subject is 

the production of furniture from wood (281a5). He knows, says Socrates, how 

to use tools and wood (280c8-9). Socrates makes an analogy between the car 

penter and his tools and a man with money. The carpenter uses his tools and 

wood knowledgeably (or "technically") and is therefore benefited by them. 

Correspondingly, the man with money should use his wealth knowledgeably in


order to be benefited and be made happy by it (280d). "In the working 

and use 

concerned with wood, is there anything other than the episteme of carpentry 

that effects the right 

use?" 

(281a2-4). The answer is no. Analogously, says 

Socrates, it is episteme that should direct the possessor of the items on the 

sample list, such as wealth, towards the correct and therefore beneficial use of 

his possessions; towards, in other words, happiness. 

There is a problem with this analogy which only becomes explicit in So 

crates' 

second protreptic speech. There are two senses of the word "use." 

First, 

the carpenter knows how to use his tools and wood. With them he knows how 

to build furniture. But he does not know how to use the furniture . The 

carpenter 

knows how to build a chair; but to what end will the chair be put? Will it be 

used to seat someone comfortably at a symposium, 

or will it be used as an 

instrument for torturing a political prisoner? It is this second sense of "use" 

would be required for "using" 

the neutral items on the sample list correctly and 

for the good. The first sense is technical and value neutral: the carpenter uses 

the tool correctly to produce the chair. The second sense is value laden: the 

chair is used correctly and for the good in order to achieve happiness. The 

carpenter, qua possessor of a techne, knows nothing of this. 

This problem discloses the difficulty of identifying what type of knowledge 

it is that the target audience of the protreptic is being urged to seek. It cannot 

be an ordinary techne. But technai have been the sole supplier of examples of 

knowledge. Then what is it? The second part of the protreptic explicitly takes 

up this issue. 

IV 

Socrates begins this section be restating the conclusion of the first part of the 

protreptic: Human beings should seek wisdom, i.e., philosophize (288d6-7). 

But what knowledge should we seek (see 289d9-10)? To elicit an answer, he 

suggests as possibilities the ability to discover gold (or alchemy), in other 

words the ability to produce wealth (288e6-89a5); medicine; the ability to pro 

duce immortality (289b 1). None of these epistemai, however, can really bring 

happiness, for they do not understand how to use their results. 

Plato's word at 288d8, d9, 289al, a4, bl and b4. "Techne" 

As is often the case, the two are synonymous.) An immortal life, 

("Episteme" 

that 

is 

returns at 289c4. 

even one 

supplied with indefinite wealth, can still be wretched. The type of knowledge 

that is needed is one in which the knowledge of how to produce is combined 

with knowledge of how to use what is produced (289b4-7), in which the mak 

ing is united with the using techne (289c2. See Republic 601c for more on the 

using techne.). Clearly, the sense of "use" 

here is not technical and value neu 

tral, but value laden. 

Ordinary technai, exemplified next by instrument making, fail this test. So-

The Serious Play of Plato' 

s Euthydemus 223 

crates then rather enthusiastically asks, "By the gods, 

what if we should learn 

the techne of making speeches (logopoiikeri)! Is this what is required to make 

us happy" 

(289c6-9)? Kleinias answers no, 

and he offers as evidence the fact 

that this techne can easily suffer the same split as any other: It is possible for 

speechmakers not to know how to use the speeches they make (289d). 

Socrates indicates some disappointment at the failure of the speechmaking 

techne. On the one hand, he is surely being ironic, for "speech 

making 

imme 

diately connotes the work of men like the very sophists with whom he is argu 

ing (see 304-6. I think, for example, of Lysias. See Phaedrus 257c. Also, the 

close of the Euthydemus , 304d-306b, returns to this issue.) On the other hand, 

his disappointment hints at something more positive: "Logos" 

is surely part of 

the right answer to the question, What knowledge should be sought? for what is 

required is a logos of how to use all objects of desire. What is required is 

sophia, understood not as an ordinary techne, but as a comprehensive account 

of what is good in the human sphere. (Szlezak believes that what is being 

referred to here is the scientific rhetoric of the Phaedrus [p. 86].) However, as 

we shall now see, identifying 

account is intrinsically problematic. 

Socrates offers the "general's 

the sort of knowledge that can provide such an 

techne" 

(290bl; mentioned earlier at 279e) as 

his next proposal. He does so apparently because the general, 

to command other human beings, knows how to organize, 

who knows how 

and in this sense 

use, the various technicians under his sway. Kleinias, however, immediately 

counters with an objection: The general's techne, he says, is a kind of hunting 

(290b5). Therefore, just as the hunter of game hands over his catch to a cook, 

so the general hunts and acquires cities and "then hands them over to the politi 

cal men, for [the generals] themselves do not know how to use that which they 

hunt" 

(290d2-3). In fact, Kleinias gives a quite detailed description of this type 

of knowledge: 

No part of hunting itself covers more than chasing and overcoming. And when the 

hunter overcomes what he is chasing he is not able to use it. Instead, hunters and 

fishermen hand over their catch to cooks. Analogously, geometers and astronomers 

and mathematicians for these also are hunters since none of them make their 

diagrams, they discover what is since they themselves do not know how to use 

these things, but only how to catch them, they hand them over to those men 

accomplished in dialectic so that they can use what these hunters have discov 

ered at least they can use however many of their discoveries that are not entirely 

senseless (290b7-c6). 

This is an impressive little speech, for it succinctly presents an entire con 

ception of techne. As if to signal its remarkable character, Plato places this 

speech in an extraordinary 

dramatic context: He has Krito interrupt the narra 

tion and ask whether young Kleinias was actually its author (290el). This is a 

good question: How did a mere boy learn about dialectic? Socrates responds by


Productive" 

Animals 

t 

Cooks 

TECHNE 

Living 

(Hunting) 

^Acquisitive^ 

Nonliving 

(Mathematics) 

Human Dia! ectic 

Political Men 

saying that he does not remember who the author was; perhaps it was the older 

Ktessipus. The situation is then made even more mysterious when he adds, 

"Good Krito, 

things" 

perhaps one of the higher beings was present and uttered these 

(291a3-4). Such mystery is, I believe, 

unparalled in the dialogues. 

What is the point of such dramatic tension? I suggest it is to highlight the 

fecundity of this succinct epistemological proposal, which the accompanying 

diagram schematizes. 

Although somewhat awkward, this diagram schematizes an important epis 

temological conception which finds parallels in several other dialogues. (For 

parallels, see Charmides 165c-166b, Gorgias 450b-d, Philebus 55d-58a, 

Sophist 281e-219d, Statesman 258b-260b. The diagram is awkward because 

some branches give genus and species and others do not.) First, it represents 

the fact that there are two basic forms of techne, the productive and the acquisi 

tive. The former are the most ordinary of all forms of knowledge, e.g., carpen 

try, pottery, medicine, etc.; the latter is itself divided into two parts, the second 

of which, I propose, is metaphorical; the acquisition of nonliving beings repre 

sents what Aristotle calls "theoretical knowledge." 

(That this is so is made clear 

in the Sophist, 291cl-7. See Rosen, pp. 91-92.) This type of knowledge does 

not produce its object, which it only studies and does not alter or bring into 

being. Aristotle's examples are mathematics, physics, and first philosophy; for 

Plato the single best example is mathematics (see Aristotle's Metaphysics 

1026a8-22). 

A mathematical techne, such as geometry, "hands 

over" "catch" 

its 

to the 

dialectician. Dialectic in this passage refers to some form of meta-mathematical

eflection, e.g., the study of "number itself." 

Plato' 

The Serious Play of s Euthydemus 225 

It is not possible, given the single 

mention of dialectic, to determine what Plato here had in mind. It can only be 

stated that the passage posits the existence of some theoretical discipline that is 

higher than ordinary mathematics. (Of course. Republic VII discusses dialectic 

in these terms and at length. For an interesting discussion of this issue see 

Klein, pp. 21-49.) 

Analogous to the handing over of theoretical entities to the dialectician is the 

hunter of men, i.e., the general, who hands over his acquisitions to the pos 

sessor of the political techne, who presumably knows how to use them. As 

such, the political techne seems to be "the one we were seeking and the cause 

of correct acting in the city. And just (atechnos) as Aeschylus says, it alone 

would sit at the helm of the city, steering everything and commanding every 

useful" 

(291cl0-d3). Atechnos again appears at 

thing and making everything 

n. 3. This knowledge, the putative goal towards which the pro 

29 1 d 1 . See 

treptic urges, is then named "the kingly (basilike) 

"kingly 

techne" 

(291d7). On the 

art" 

see Statesman 305c ff. and Xenophon's Memorabilia IV. 2. 2 ff.). 

The serious work of protreptic now seems over, for the knowledge that 

Socrates has been exhorting Kleinias to seek appears to have been identified. 

Unfortunately, this hopeful appearance is soon shattered. When he and his 

mysterious interlocutor reconsidered the basilike techne, Socrates tells Krito, 

"we were totally ridiculous, just like children running after birds" 

(29 1 b I 2). 

Why? Because the attempt to identify the structure and specific object of this 

type of knowledge leads to an aporia. 

First it is agreed that the basilike and the politike techne are the same and 

that to it "the general's techne and all the rest hand over their results of which 

they 

use them" 

are the producers for it to rule on the grounds that it alone knows how to 

(291c7-9). But a question then arises: What result (ergon) does the 

basilike techne itself produce (29 1 e I ) ? The assumption here is that it has a 

determinate and therefore identifiable result, i.e., that it is analogous to an 

ordinary 

techne. But the assumption is faulty. A spokesman for medicine 

(291e5) or farming (291e8), for example, can identify 

that which results from 

his knowledge (health or food from the earth). If the basilike techne is truly 

analogous, then its spokesman should be able to do the same. But this Krito at 

least cannot do (292a6). 

Because they agreed that the basilike techne is beneficial, Socrates next 

asks, "Isn't it necessary that it supply us with some 

first protreptic argument established that "nothing 

good?" 

(292al 1). Since the 

else is good except knowl 

edge" 

(292b 1-2), all the results that one would typically point to when consid 

ering the politike techne, such as wealth for the citizens, freedom, and the 

absence of factionalism, are "neither good nor 

bad." 

Only 

if it can make the 

citizens wise (or good or happy) can this techne be considered truly beneficial 

(292b4-cl). Once again, however, this description of the basilike techne fails 

to satisfy, for as Socrates next asks. In what specific sense will it make men


good? Will it make all men good in all things? Since knowledge is the sole 

good, 

will it provide all forms of knowledge, including shoemaking, carpentry, 

and the rest (292c6-9)? 

The basic point is this: No determinate and identifiable ergon can be spe 

cified for the basilike techne. (Orwin discusses this issue in the context of the 

Cleitophon in quite helpful terms, and Blits has an interesting treatment of 

similar questions.) As shown by the first protreptic argument, it cannot issue in 

an ordinary result; if it did, it would end up being classified as a neutral item. 

The only knowledge, therefore, that it can provide is "of itself (292d3-4). 

This obscure formulation is not explained further. I shall return to it shortly. 

A final effort at describing the basilike techne is made: It makes other men 

good (292d5-6). But, asks Socrates, those men who are made good will be 

good with respect to what? The answer: they will be good only in making other 

men good. Of course, this just postpones the answer, for the question Good 

with respect to what? would surface again. The basic problem here is the same 

as that described above, namely that of determining the object of this techne. 

time Socrates 

The search for such an object is "labyrinthine" 

(291b7); every 

thinks he has found a way out (it makes the citizens wise, it makes them good) 

he discovers that the demand for specification (wise in what?, good at what?) 

amazes him again. 

This extraordinary section closes with Socrates saying, "Corinthus, Son of 

Zeus, the situation is exactly (atechnos) as I was describing it: we were still as 

far, if not further, from knowing what that knowledge is which would make us 

happy" 

(292e3-5). 

This confession of a serious theoretical aporia (292e6) is couched in playful 

terms. "The Scholiast on the passage relates that when Corinth had sent ambas 

sadors to Megara to complain of their revolt, 

the mythical founder 'Corinthus son of Zeus' 

one argument advanced was that 

would be aggrieved if they failed 

to exact condign punishment. The proverb came to be used of boastful repeti 

tions of the same 

story." 

So says Gifford. Unfortunately, 

neither he nor Haw- 

trey takes notice of the use of atechnos at 292e3. The issue of techne is the key 

here; therefore, the pun seems unavoidable. Socrates professes to be drowning 

in the third wave of the argument (293a3) and he calls upon the two old so 

phists to save him. This is ludicrous, for of all men they surely can provide no 

relief. 

V 

Serious problems plague Socrates' 

protreptic. In his first argument, the 

premises are questionable. Even if they are granted, his conclusion, that it is 

necessary to philosophize in order to be happy, is jeopardized by its obscurity. 

Just what is the wisdom we are told to love? This obscurity is amplified by

Socrates' 

Plato' 

The Serious Play of s Euthydemus 227 

second speech: there are intrinsic difficulties in the very notion of a 

basilike techne. How, then, can a target audience which is being 

exhorted to 

pursue wisdom even begin its quest? Are we forced to conclude that the pro 

treptic undermines itself? If so. then the Euthydemus would have to be counted 

as truly bizarre: The Socratic protreptic would really be "apotreptic"; it would 

turn people away from the pursuit of wisdom. (I coin "apotreptic." 

See Aristo 

tle's Rhetoric 1358b for his use of apotrope.) On this reading, Socrates the 

serious protrepticizer who accuses the sophists of only playing with words, fails 

to give good reasons why we should pursue philosophy rather than sophistry. 

I shall conclude this paper by showing why 

mine itself. It is true that Socrates' 

the protreptic does not under 

arguments end in an aporia from which he 

needs rescue. This is not, however, equivalent to failure because the arguments 

provide direction in how to perform the rescue operation. Kleinias, 

importantly we readers, are being 

and more 

called upon to respond to the aporia that 

Socrates has created for us. We are being called upon to philosophize. 

The most serious question raised by Socrates in the Euthydemus is, Is there a 

techne of arete? This can be twice reformulated: First, can there be a "using 

techne," 

o.ie whose subject matter is the correct and beneficial application of 

neutral items in the human domain? The second refers back to the diagram in 

Section IV There the technai were divided into two kinds: the theoretical (ac 

quisitive) and the productive. The diagram, I propose, invites the question, Is 

there a third kind, namely 

the "practical," 

which is possessed by the "political 

men" 

to whom the hunters of human animals hand over their catch ?s 

Given the 

basic assumption operative throughout the dialogue, namely 

that techne is the 

model for knowledge, and the problems sketched in the previous section, the 

answer would seem to be no. 

The epistemological lesson that the Euthydemus teaches is this: Knowledge 

of arete cannot be completely analogous to an ordinary techne. This is because 

the latter has a determinate object or result (ergon). Medicine studies health, 

farming 

studies the production of crops. There is no analogous object of the 

putative basilike techne. Apparently this is because its subject matter, arete or 

the good use of neutral items, is indeterminate. Socrates presents no explicit 

argument here (292c-e) as to why this is the case. It can be inferred, however, 

that it is because the items on the sample list, namely the objects typically 

deemed good by human beings, are themselves indeterminate. It would follow, 

then, that the question of their correct use would not allow for a determinate 

answer and so would not constitute a stable epistemological entity. This is why 

Socrates and his mysterious interlocutor repeatedly fail to identify a specific 

object for the basilike techne.6 

If techne is the only form of knowledge, then 

there can be no knowledge of arete and Socratic protreptic cannot be distin 

guished from sophistry. 

There is, however, 

nontechnical mode of knowledge.7 

a thread to lead us out of this maze: a conception of a 

I suggest two approaches to articulating


what it is. First, let us return to the obscure formulation that describes the 

basilike techne. It has, says Socrates, itself as an object. Second, let us con 

sider somewhat further the very nature of protreptic. 

The salient feature of Socrates' 

its circularity: 

search for the object of the basilike techne is 

When we reached the basilike techne and were examining it, to see if this techne 

was the one that supplied and produced eudaimonia, it was just as if we had fallen 

into a labyrinth: when we thought we had reached the end, we twisted around again 

and appeared to be again at the very beginning of our search and just as much in 

need as we were when we began searching (291b4-c2). 

Why is this search circular? Given the premises of the argument, the basilike 

techne must supply something good. But what good is this? Given the results of 

the first protreptic argument, the answer must be knowledge. But knowledge of 

what? Of that which is good. But the good is knowledge: hence, the circularity. 

The basilike techne, which we now know is no ordinary techne at all, is then 

described as follows: 

It is necessary that it be a producer of no result, either good or bad; instead, it 

must transmit no knowledge other than that of itself (292dl-4). 

Possessors of typical technai study and then teach about (or produce) an 

object that is distinct from the technai themselves: The doctor teaches about the 

workings of the human body, the carpenter about the production of furniture 

from wood (see Charmides 165c: episteme [or technelis episteme tinos). Is 

there an analogous object of the basilike techne? One is tempted to answer, 

Yes, it is arete. But this is not quite right, for at least insofar as we pertain to 

the conclusion of Socrates' 

first protreptic, what this knowledge knows is only 

that knowledge of arete ought to be sought. When this knowledge that knowl 

edge of arete ought to be sought is transmitted to students, they are equipped 

only to exhort others to seek it. 

This is quite peculiar: Those who learn their Socratic lessons know nothing 

other than how to exhort others to love "wisdom." 

only 

Their wisdom is manifested 

in their knowledge that wisdom is lovable. Protreptic teaches the student 

only how to protrepticize; like the labryinthine aporia, it is circular. Or, in 

other words, it has no object distinct from itself. 

Socrates exhorts his listeners to pursue arete, that is, to philosophize. As 

suggested in Section I, however, such an exhortation appeals only to those 

already persuaded that the traditional purveyors of arete are insufficient and that 

knowledge is therefore worth seeking. In this sense, Socrates does not teach his 

audience anything new; his protreptic "goes 

only to those already "protrepticized." 

nowhere" 

for it is able to speak 

As explicated in Section III, the prem 

ises of his argument that human beings are free and rational agents and that

The Serious Play of Plato's Euthydemus 229 

the use of neutral items can be known as correct/good are undefended. Ac 

ceptance of the conclusion, that it is necessary to philosophize, therefore re 

quires that the audience be predisposed to accept the premises. In other words, 

the audience must already be predisposed to commence the search for objective 

knowledge, i.e., to philosophize. I propose that this is why the search for the 

determinate object of the basilike techne falters and why it is said to teach only 

itself. 

To reiterate the basic question, Does the circularity of the protreptic render it 

vacuous? No. Socrates does accomplish something significant: He reinforces 

and explicates a desire that is present in his audience. To clarify, imagine 

presenting 

Socrates' 

first protreptic argument. Its conclusion takes the form of 

an imperative (which I paraphrase): Turn away from your typical concerns, 

care about arete and love wisdom. The audience can respond in at least three 

ways. (1) They can reject such exhortation by dogmatically asserting that they 

are, for example, Christians and don't need help. (2) They can object to it and 

demand reasons why they should follow such advice. (3) They can heed the 

argument's imperative. 

Options (2) and (3) 

are similar: Those who ask for reasons are philosophiz 

ing. (This is reminiscent of the protreptical argument attributed to Aristotle: 

those who argue against philosophy are philosophizing. See the 'Testimonia" 

collected by During, p. 44.) Furthermore, both groups, those represented by (2) 

and (3), are similarly predisposed to philosophize. As discussed in Section III, 

the argument itself fails to provide satisfying reasons to philosophize. In other 

words, it cannot be said to produce (rationally) 

a new disposition to philoso 

phize in the target audience. In this sense protreptic is only effective with those 

who are already "protrepticized." 

What then does protreptic accomplish? It provides an occasion, as well as 

guidance in how, to philosophize. It addresses someone, like young Kleinias, 

who already is impelled to discover knowledge and encourages him to consum 

mate that desire. Furthermore, the argument teaches him how to do so. In 

particular, it points him in the direction of nontechnical knowledge. Techne is 

the pivot around which the protreptic revolves. Understood in a comprehensive 

sense, it provides a conceptual framework, such as that diagrammed in Section 

IV, within which ordinary knowledge can be classified. This framework allows 

someone like Kleinias to understand what is required to consummate his desire 

for knowledge of how to use neutral items correctly, i.e., for knowledge of 

arete. It shows him that the ordinary 

goal. What he really wants is a "higher" 

technai are insufficient to accomplish his 

form of knowledge, one that is non 

technical and somehow able to understand how to use the items on the sample 

list. Socrates does not identify this knowledge; as a result, and as Socrates 

himself admits, the Euthydemus is aporetic even maddening. 

The Socratic protreptic is not vacuous because in and of itself it represents a 

nontrivial form of knowledge. If its premises are granted, then it follows that


the typical things we normally desire (those on the sample list) 

are neutral and 

not good. It shows that if knowledge of the correct use of these neutral items is 

possible which it may not be then it is also desirable as the condition for 

happiness. It should be remembered, however, that the target audience of the 

protreptic already desires such knowledge. Therefore, at least implicitly, they 

assume it is possible. As a result, the protreptic directs the desires latent in the 

target audience; it urges them to turn away from more typical desires and pur 

sue wisdom. It shows how a most untraditional and therefore potentially alien 

ating desire, for wisdom, can be transformed into a coherent activity that can 

produce a happier life. 

To reformulate: Socrates fails to prove that philosophy is an unconditional 

good. The necessity found in the conclusion of the protreptic It is necessary 

to philosophize does not bind everybody. In particular, the injunction is not 

binding for those who would join Euthydemus and Dionysodorus in rejecting 

Premises (5) and (6) (that correct use is an objective property of neutral things 

and can be learned). Philosophy, then, is only conditionally good, and the 

necessity 

expressed in the protreptic conclusion is hypothetical, //one is predis 

posed to philosophize and to question the traditional purveyors of arete, then 

one must philosophize in order to be happy. This is a crucial lesson for some 

one like Kleinias. Unlike other associates of Socrates such as Charmides, 

Critias, and Alcibiades, whose criminal behavior discloses their willingness to 

call into question the traditional sense of arete, Kleinias should pursue philoso 

phy. He should seek the higher, the nontechnical form of knowledge, and he 

has been provided with a framework to begin doing so. 

In sum, the Socratic protreptic teaches a kind of self-knowledge, knowledge 

of the nature and consequences of those desires that belong to the student open 

to the protreptic. It invites the student into the project of philosophy, an activity 

to which he is already predisposed, and thereby teaches him how to attain 

eudaimonia. Protreptic itself thus manifests a kind of nontechnical knowledge: 

It does not have a determinate object other than itself. Its object is itself; that is, 

it is the study of the desire that wishes to know about arete. Other technai make 

discernible progress: one can move from ignorance of carpentry to skill by 

studying with a master. This is why the ordinary technai are easily recognized 

and usually admired. There is no analogous progress in the study of arete. Only 

one who already knows can be taught. But knows what? That knowledge of 

arete is desirable. 

NOTES 

1. My text is Burnet's Oxford edition. Translations are my own. Support from the State of 

Iowa, the Joyce Foundation, and the Northwest Area Foundation allowed me the time to work on 

this project. Professor David Sedley and an anonymous reader made many valuable comments on 

an earlier draft of this paper for which I am grateful.

The Serious Play of Plato' 

s Euthydemus 231 

2. An example comes from H. Keulen, who contrasts himself with Meridier, 

"L'Euthydeme est une comedie. avec son decor et ses 

who wrote: 

aceurs,' 

lautet einers der vielen Urteile, die 

den platonischen Euthydem als ein Ergenis spielerischer Laune Platons betrachtet sehen wollen. 

Dass der dialog jedoch sehr ernest zu nehmen ist, weiss man allerdings ebenso lange" 

(pp. 4-5). 

Or consider Leo Strauss, who describes the Euthydemus as "bantering, not to say frivolous and 

farcical" 

(p. 1) but then goes on to explain why he thinks the dialogue is extremely serious. In fact, 

because of the mention of Socrates' 

daimonion at 272e, Strauss says of the dialogue: "No other 

conversation presented by Plato has so high an 

origin" 

(p. 3). 

3. That the sophists do not possess such a techne is playfully indicated with the phrase Socrates 

uses to describe them: they are, he says, "passophoi 

where (1987, pp. 255-63), Plato consistently 

"without 

atechnos" 

(271c6). As I have argued else 

puns with atechnos; that is, he uses it to mean 

techne." 

R.S.W. Hawtrey comments extensively on passophoi in this passage but neglects 

to mention the pun with atechnos. The same is true in E.H. Gifford's edition. 

4. This statement does not mention any of the problems normally associated with the naturalis 

tic fallacy. 

5. This discussion is informed by 

physics 1026a8-22. 

Aristotle's tripartite division of the epistemai. See Meta 

6. The key question this paper raises is, Is arete, is the human good, determinate? There is a 

little joke at Statesman 266b which indicates my own position: the nature of the human race is like 

the diagonal of the unit square, i.e., indeterminate. I would argue that this holds for arete but I 

understand that a lengthy discussion is required. 

7. There are at least two other threads to lead us out of the labyrinth. As numerous commenta 

tors have proposed, there might be a techne of arete, if this can be understood in a "second-order" 

sense. R. Sprague (1976) most clearly expresses this position. She argues that the basilike techne 

art" 

represents a "second-order which "directs" 

made" 

or "knows how to use the things by other 

"arts" 

(p. 55). On her reading, even though the Euthydemus ends in an aporia, later dialogues 

actually express this higher or second-order knowledge. 

I think Sprague's position is seriously flawed. Her solution sounds plausible, but it ignores what 

I suggest is the critical problem: In what sense can the "first-order" 

an object of a "second-order" 

(or ordinary) technai function as 

techne? What exact kind of object would it be and why wouldn't it 

simply recapitulate the same problems discussed here? Furthermore, if this is really the type of 

knowledge that Plato has in mind, then why did he only describe or allude to it in the early 

dialogues and never clearly explain or illustrate il in the later ones? Sprague is extremely vague 

about such questions. This is damaging for her argument because techne is precisely that mode of 

knowledge whose object is clear and determinate and should therefore be readily explained. As a 

result, her solution, while inviting, simply postulates a hope that the aporia can be resolved. 

I mention Sprague in particular here because of all the many commentators who hold a similar 

thesis, she is the most systematic and clear. There is a mountain of literature on this subject. For 

representative views, all of which are similar to Sprague's, see Kato (1988), Kube (1967), and 

Irwin (1977). 

Another thread leading out of the labyrinth here is that of K. Gaiser (1959). Simply put, his 

thesis is that the dialogues are exoteric exhortations towards wisdom, while the positive teaching 

was esoteric. 

REFERENCES 

Blits, Jan. "Socratic Teaching 

321-34. 

and Justice: Plato's Cleitophon." 

Interpretation 13(1985): 

Diels, Hermann. Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Berlin: Weidmannsche, 1959. 

During, Ingemar. Aristotle's Protrepticus. Goteborg, 1961. 

Friedlander, P. Plato. 3 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958-69.


Gaiser, K. Protreptik und Paranese bei Platon. Tubingen: Kohlhammer, 1959. 

Hawtrey, R.S.W. Commentary on Plato's Euthydemus. Philadelphia: American Philo 

sophical Society, 1981. 

Irwin, Terence. Plato' 

s Moral Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. 

Kato, Morimichi. Techne und Philosophie bei Platon. Frankfurt: Lang, 1988. 

Keulen, H. Untersuchungen zu Platons Euthydem. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1971. 

Klein, Jacob. Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra. Cambridge, MA: 

MIT Press, 1968. 

Kneale, W. and M. The Development of Logic. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. 

Kube, Jorge. Techne und Arete. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967. 

Mohr, R. "Forms in Plato's Euthydemus." 

Hermes 112(1984): 296-300. 

Nussbaum, Martha. The Fragility of Goodness. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press, 1986. 

Orwin, Clifford. "The Case Against Socrates: Plato's Cleitophon." 

Political Science 15(1982): 741-53. 

Peck, A. R. "Plato and the MEGISTA GENE of the Sophist." 

2(1952): 32-56. 

Canadian Journal of 

Classical Quarterly 

Plato, Euthydemus. In Platonis Opera, edited by 

University Press, 1900-1907. 

Works, edited by E.H. Gifford. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1905. 

Praechter, K. "Platon und Euthydemus." 

Roochnik, David. "Plato's Use of ATECHNOS." 

John Burnet. 5 vols. Oxford: Oxford 

Philologus 87(1932): 121-35. 

Phoenix 44(1987): 255-63. 

"The Riddle of Plato's Cleitophon." 

Ancient Philosophy 4(1984): 212-20. 

Rosen, Stanley. Plato's Sophist. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. 

Sprague, R.K. "Parmenides' 

Sail and 

Dionysodorus' Ox." 

"A Platonic Parallel in the Dissoi Logoi." 

6(1968): 160-61. 

1976. 

.. Plato's 

Phronesis 12(1967): 91-98. 

Journal of the History of Philosophy 

Plato's Philosopher-King. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 

Use of Fallacy. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1962. 

Stewart, M. A. "Plato's Sophistry." 

Strauss, Leo. "On the Euthydemus." 

Szlezak, T.A. "Sokrates' 

Spott uber Geheimhaltung." 

The Aristotelian Society, S.V. LI (1977). 

Interpretation 1(1970): 1-20. 

Antike und Abendland 26(1980). 

Knowledge." 

Woodruff, Paul. "Plato's Early Theory of In Greek Epistemology, edited 

by S. Lrverson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

The Wisdom of Plato's Aristophanes 

Charles Salman 

Trinity University 

Even if, like so much ancient biography, the story is not factually reliable, 

something truthful is nonetheless captured in the tale that Olympiodorus tells, 

that Aristophanes' 

comedies were found tucked away under the pillow of 

Plato's deathbed (2.66-72). To Nietzsche the ancients conveyed in this story 

something of Plato's secret nature (Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 28), although 

in the Symposium Plato's fondness for Aristophanes appears rather more 

openly, in the almost triumphant power that he grants to Aristophanes' 

speech. 

It is an age-old sentiment that "Aristophanes is second only to Socrates in 

his grasp of the mysteries of love" 

willingly saw his own erotic theory 

(Brentlinger, p. 12), 

prefigured in Aristophanes' 

and Freud himself 

mythical 

speech (esp. pp. 51-52; cf. below and Santas, pp. 155, 157, 160-62). Indeed 

one frequently 

finds Aristophanes' 

myth to be the best-remembered of all the 

speeches in the Symposium, and even those who see it transcended by 

tonic account often assign it a key 

propaedeutic place.1 

a Pla 

How are we to understand this Platonic admiration for Aristophanes? As a 

preparatory step 

we might point to the sense in which the poet and the philoso 

pher shared a picture of their world, a world evoked for us, at least in a synop 

tic way, as we recall the 

background of the Symposium. 

"political" 

concerns that Plato has written into the 

The significance for philosophy of the moment in time depicted by the dia 

two historical events. In 

logue could be said to be broadly circumscribed by 

deed in the dramatic imagery of the dialogue, the philosopher is surrounded by 

them: on the one side, the recent crowning of Agathon as poet laureate of the 

day and on the other, the imminent expedition to Sicily under Alcibiades, the 

turning 

point in Athens' 

precipitous fall in the Peloponnesian War. If the dia 

logue even intimates a kind of genetic connection between the two as if the 

advent of sophistry were the prelude to complete and utter ruin it would seem 

more systematically still to recreate the stages leading up to that final fall. As 

we move from the heroic life of the Phaedrean battlefield, to the more "com 

plex" 

(poikilos) legal codifications of Pausanias' 

cities, to Eryximachus' 

intro 

duction of all of the technai that proliferate within them and as we finally 

move on to the creative arts and the exquisite civilities of Agathonian poiesis 

we bear witness to a kind of symbolic structural analysis of the rise or 

"ascent" 

of Athenian culture. But Plato at the same time casts aspersions on the internal 

dynamic of this ascent: If only most explicitly by the character of this culture's 



reigning "wise 

man" 

and by the portentous acclaim (213a) for the archon of its 

disastrous end (Alcibiades), Plato evokes our recognition that this ascent has 

been ambiguous at best, that this increasing 

"sophistication" 

culture is at the same time a kind of degenerate "softening" 

on the part of 

en route to com 

plete decline. It is thus no accident that apalos and its cognates cross Agathon s 

lips some fourteen times in his speech. The victory of Agathon stands at that 

imaginary moment when Athens finally identifies wisdom with the offspring of 

Gorgias, or (taking our cue from the meaning of Agathon's name) openly cele 

brates a sophistical "good."2 

At least in certain of its broadest features, the cultural assessment in the 

background of the Symposium was shared by 

focusing 

the historical Aristophanes. The 

of our attention on the dimsightedness of the war we find above all in 

the Lysistrata. The dubious character of the new learning (and in particular of 

the new scientific technai and the crowning product of their ethos, sophistry) 

are the central concerns of the paradoxically Platonic though anti-Socratic 

Clouds. Eryximachus, of course, is one locus of this shared reflection in the 

Symposium, and 

Aristophanes' 

facetious derision of his reductive physicalism 

(on behalf of the old "gods") has been frequently pointed out. If the attack in 

the Clouds on Athenian legalism is to be located in the Symposium, we must 

surely think first of all of the discourse of Pausanias, the other symposiast, in 

addition to Eryximachus, to whom Aristophanes specifically addresses himself 

(189c). Even the symbolic centrality of Agathon in the Symposium has its ana 

logue in Aristophanes, in the comic motif of the "softness" 

the young tragedian 

represents in the Thesmophoriazusae (cf. esp. 140ff., 191-92, 200, 206, and 

n. 4 below). 

The basic kinship between the comic and the philosopher that is grounded in 

these shared concerns seems reflected in the role Plato gives to Aristophanes in 

the workings of the Symposium. From the ambiguous unfolding of Athenian 

culture subtextually chronicled in the 

man striving, Aristophanes' 

symposiasts' 

collective logos about hu 

speech is thus made to stand apart. On the most 

concrete level he stands apart in the way that the comedian stands apart from or 

outside of his culture, as one who reflects back and ridicules, rather than un 

consciously adopts, the prevailing conventions of the times. So it is that right 

away we perceive in Aristophanes something 

of the "wisened 

cynic," 

standing 

ironically aloof from the others while mocking, and in that sense critiquing 

them. As Aristophanes played the critic in historical Athens so Plato seems to 

grant him a similar honor here, allowing Aristophanes to claim for himself, in 

role.3 

the dialectic of the Symposium, something of a special 

But what more precisely is the nature of the special role to which Aris 

tophanes here lays claim? Curiously enough, we can bring it to light by attend 

ing to something he has in common with the other speakers, to the sense in 

which Aristophanes' 

encomium, like those of the others, is covertly a praise of 

the speaker himself. In a still intriguing paper on the Symposium, Helen Bacon 

identified this basic "principle" 

that governs the various speeches on eros:

The Wisdom of Plato' 

s Aristophanes 235 

There is, however, a kind of principle behind the manner of their praising, and that 

is that each man sees love in terms of his own profession. Phaedrus and Pausanias, 

the rhetorician and the sociologist, see Eros as a kind of supersophist, engaged in 

what the sophists considered one of their main occupations, the teaching of virtue. 

Characteristically, Phaedrus bases his speech on Homer and Hesiod and the tragic 

poets, Pausanias on the evidence of actual practice in religious cult and social 

institutions; to Eryximachus Eros is the universal doctor; to Aristophanes he pre 

sents himself as the explanation of man's comic predicament; to Agathon he is the 

greatest of poets. And all of them are happily unconscious of the fact that it is not 

love that they are praising but themselves (p. 429). 

From this point of view at least one major feature of the encomia is what we 

might call their self-referential and self-gratifying character, and one clue to 

their interpretation comes from attending to the lives of the individuals who are 

their veiled, though perhaps all the more immediate and determining, referents. 

To Professor Bacon's sketch we might thus briefly add the following particu 

lars: To young Phaedrus, the beloved of Eryximachus, Eros is a "great 

the source of virtue and "anything 

really 

great and 

god," 

noble," 

and its elevating power 

resides in the beloved youth or eromenos who inspires all manner of 

courageousness and valor in his lover. In battle even a "low 

moved by the power of love to be "like those who are best by 

great is the inspirational power of the beloved that lovers are "willing 

their 

beloveds." Phaedrus' 

man" 

can be 

nature," 

and so 

to die for 

narcissistic phantasy about the power of the beloved 

reaches a kind of peroration in his celebration of Achilles (with whom we can 

by now imagine that Phaedrus identifies himself), who young and beardless 

(180a) was "more glorious . . than all the heroes put together." 

As an older erastes Pausanias takes exception to this simplistic (cf. 180c4: 

haplos) 

compelling 

view. Though Eros is indeed what "urges us toward noble 

us to "show great concern for our 

action," 

virtue," 

it shows itself properly 

not in the "pandemic" 

young boy but in the noble pedagogy of the more intel 

ligent older lover. Indeed, simply left to its natural devices eros is an ambig 

uous and potentially errant phenomenon, and it is only turned to the good by 

virtue of sophisticated institutions and the "complex" 

Athenian elders. 

While preserving Pausanias' 

machus, the doctor, ascends to a rather more 

approach. Beginning "from the medical point of 

principle operating in all of nature, 

(poikilos) 

nomoi of the 

sense of the duplicity of eros (186a), Eryxi 

"universal" 

and indeed scientific 

view" 

(186b) he sees eros as a 

and so at work in the spheres of all the 

various arts and sciences: medicine, gymnastic, agriculture, music, physics, 

astronomy, and divination. In all these domains accomplishing good is a matter 

of reconciling or balancing opposites, of making "the most antagonistic ele 

ments . friendly and 

loving" 

(186d). The one who has knowledge (episteme) 

of these love forces is able to impose "harmony and 

order" 

upon a poly- 

morphously baneful physis (cf. 188a6 ff.), so that through the contrivances of


mortal techne the man of science becomes likened to a veritable cosmic "demi 

urge" 

(cf. 186d4, 187d4). 

This metaphysical conceit and autoeroticism reaches finally a sort of cul 

thousand" 

mination in the speech of Agathon, the beloved of "thirty 

(175e) at 

the festival of Dionysus and poet laureate of Athens. Thus not only is Eros the 

most "gifted of 

things come into being 

poets" 

(196e) and so the creator by virtue of which "all living 

and develop" 

(197a2-3), but his various other attributes 

are all conspicuously recognizable as those of Agathon himself: He is the "most 

beautiful" 

(195a6), the "youngest" 

(195bl), "soft" 

ple" 

(196a2: hugros).4 

(195dl: hapalos), and "sup 

Indeed the beautiful poiesis that issues from Eros has 

"brought forth all good things that exist for gods and 

engendering 

a time of "affection and 

men" 

(197b8) and in 

peace" 

(195c5) has put an end to the harsh 

rule of Necessity (195c, 197b). The self-referential principle that has been at 

work throughout thus becomes virtually explicit in Agathon's speech, and Plato 

seems to underscore the importance of this feature of the encomium by having 

Apollodorus break into the narrative at its end: "When Agathon had finished, 

Aristodemus said, the people who were present applauded the speech which 

was so becoming to the young man who had given it, as well as the 

(198a). 

But what are we to say here about self-praise in Aristophanes' 

god" 

mythical 

speech? Is there likewise a principle of self-reference at work in the comedian's 

account of eros? Professor Bacon surely captures something promising here in 

saying that Aristophanic eros serves as "the explanation of man's comic predic 

ament," 

since it explains why we are so hopelessly and obsessively preoccupied 

with joining 

and "melding" 

our bodies with that of another. So archaic and 

almighty is this erotic pathos (cf. 189d5) that all other aspects of life are finally 

subordinated to its end (191b), and indeed are possible only by virtue of its 

prior satisfaction, in periods of satiation and respite. As one only really appre 

ciates the "power" 

of eros when one sees this comical human situation, 

logos on eros makes a claim for the "power" 

the comical perspective.5 

In this sense Aristophanes' 

aim at a praise of "his own 

of the wisdom finally 

so this 

inherent in 

exposition doubtless does 

profession." 

But this is indeed only the surface of the speech's self-referential dimension. 

As we now reflect more closely on the particulars of Aristophanes' 

comical 

speech, we will begin to see just how much he would claim for himself in 

giving us this exposition and the internal specificity 

with which his praise of 

eros turns out to be implicitly self-referential. According to Aristophanes' 

ollective myth, the original circle-people mounted an assault against Olympus. 

In order to "stop their licentiousness" 

190c7: mekhanen) the plan of cutting them in two, 

rec- 

(190dl: akolasias). Zeus contrived (cf. 

sent in Apollo and "he told him to heal (190e4: iasthai) them 

sewed up their bodies, leaving 

smoothing out the wrinkles the way 

and after he split them he 

up." 

So Apollo 

the navel at the middle of the stomach and 

shoemakers do on lasts. The operation

would make them "more 



orderly" 

(190e4: kosmioteros). All the same, men 

began dying off in this condition (since each longed only to reunite with its 

other half), so Zeus himself performed a kind of second operation, "setting 

their genitals around in front of them" 

to prosthen) that they might propagate with one another. 

(191b5: metatithesin auton ta aidoia eis 

These events bear a striking similarity to the events of the Symposium itself. 

Like the very contrivance of Zeus himself, Aristophanes' 

progressing circle. This splitting, in effect, 

Eryximachus, technician and "demiurge" 

harmonization of physis indeed tries to "heal" 

intended to make men "more 

only 

hiccups halve the 

causes him to send in the doctor 

of the body, whose speech about the 

orderly" 

things up. That the surgery is 

underscores the reference to Eryx 

imachus whom Aristophanes has recently detected in his predilection for "the 

orderly" 

(cf. 189a: to kosmion) and the language of whose speech clearly 

makes him its particular partisan. Then comes the discourse of Aristophanes. 

On its deepest level it tries to recall the symposiasts to the "power" 

that is 

implicit in the yearning of their sexuality. Like Zeus in the myth Aristophanes 

himself now tries to "set their genitals around in front of 

discovery 

them." 

With the 

of this level of self-reference in his speech we begin to see the true 

grandeur of Aristophanes' 

praise of "his own 

self-image and indeed just how far-reaching 

is his 

profession" 

since with his comic exposition Aristophanes 

claims to be bringing to bear the Zeus.6 

very wisdom and justice of 

That Zeus should serve as symbol for the object of wisdom should greet us 

with no overwhelming surprise. At the beginning of his description of the ce 

lestial procession which leads to the "hyperouranian 

that "true being" 

region," 

the place where 

dwells in terms of which the realm of genesis is to be under 

stood, Socrates announces: "And behold, there in the heaven Zeus, mighty 

leader, drives his winged team, first of the host to proceed, ordering all things 

and caring therefore 

" 

(Phaedrus 246e: ho men de megas hegemon en 

ouranoi Zeus, elaynon ptenon harma, protos poreuetai, diakosmon panta kai 

epimeloumenos . 

. .). To 

Hackforth this passage is "noteworthy as being the 

earliest intimation of the central doctrine of Plato's theology . 

. 

" 

(p. 71). 

Whether the presence of Zeus in the Symposium leads us to see this central 

doctrine intimated still earlier or whether we follow those who would argue that 

the Phaedrus is earlier than the Symposium need not concern us here (see 

Moore). What we need is to understand something of the substance of that 

"central doctrine." 

Hackforth is surely right in connecting the present passage to Socrates' 

in the Philebus about the nous that is basileus hemin ouranou te kai ges (28c). 

This "intelligence" 

. . (aitia) that 

that is "king 

of heaven and 

talk 

earth," 

this "presiding cause 

orders and arranges (kosmousa te kai suntattousa) the years, the 

called sophia kai 

nous" 

(30c) Socrates 

seasons, and the months, and is justly 

clearly connects with the figure of Zeus at 30d. In making a fuller investigation 

of what 

"sort" 

this nous is, Socrates asks Protarchus:


"Are we to say, Protarchus, that the sum of things (sumpanta) or what we call the 

whole (holon) is governed by 

kai eikei dunamin), and so by mere chance (etukhen), or on the contrary to follow 

a power that is senseless and without purpose (alogou 

our predecessors in saying that it is steered through by intelligence and a wondrous 

wisdom (noun kai phronesin tina thaumasten suntattousan diakuber- 

governing 

nan)V (28d) 

As the "nous" 

which "orders all things and cares therefore" 

(diakosmon panta 

kai epimeloumenos) , Zeus is the personification of that law which governs over 

"heaven and the necessity which regulates the movements of "the 

years, the seasons and the 

months" 

or finally, the mindful "power" 

which 

arranges measures and order for life, growth, and healing (cf. Phil. 30a9-b8) 

in the cosmos. Zeus is thus the overseeing principle which animates the realm 

of genesis, or in language perhaps more appropriate to the mythical image, the 

Will behind all of physis. Aristophanes' 

claim to introducing 

the wisdom of 

Zeus is thus tantamount to the claim to seeing beyond opinion or the strictures 

of human nomos to the divine law or truth which resides in and animates nature 

itself.7 

How are we now to evaluate Aristophanes' 

implicit self-praise, his sublime 

claim, in the dramatic metaphor of the dialogue, to bringing to bear the wisdom 

of Zeus? The answer, I think, is not to be sought in a simple condemnation and 

dismissal. When we reflect on the critical role Plato has assigned Aristophanes 

in the context of the speeches of his fellow symposiasts, we are moved, rather, 

to adopt an attitude considerably more ambivalent, and to appreciate the sense 

in which Aristophanes' 

Olympian self-image does have a kind of legitimacy 

even if, in Plato's last analysis, Aristophanes fails to make good on his claim. 

What then is the substance of Aristophanes' 

comical critique? Aristophanes 

sees how Pausanias and Eryximachus, while appearing to praise Eros, really 

praise the controls that the human artifices of nomos and techne can have over 

it, and so honor not so much the divine power of Eros as the all-too-human 

powers of reason and logos. In this sense he recognizes precisely their claim to 

having 

transcended the power of physis: the self-praise of the symposiasts is 

thus mirrored in the self-praise of the culture of which they are the Platonic 

icons. Aristophanes "contrives," 

as it were, to "stop their licentiousness." 

his recollective tale of the power by with which eros moves us to "joining" 

"melding" 

with one another, he decisively recalls us to the "power" 

With 

and 

of sexual 

desire, and in this sense compels our recognition of that erotic Necessity which 

transcends mortal dominion. 

Indeed Aristophanes' 

attack. The 

hiccups had already anticipated the substance of his 

symposiasts' 

project begins with a proposal by Eryximachus, that 

rather than drinking the party be devoted to the giving of speeches about eros. 

Moving next that they dismiss the flute girl (who might ordinarily have been 

pressed into sexual service at the drunken conclusion of the party), he suggests

Plato' 

The Wisdom of s Aristophanes - 239 

that on this occasion they "consort with one another through 

speeche 

instead 

(cf. 176e7: dia logon allelois suneinai). In view of the circumspect sexual 

sense of sunousia the meaning of the scene is clear : In the project thus being 

symbolically inaugurated by the symposiasts, the sobriety of logos is to take the 

place of or supersede the errancy of eros. Just as the orderly procession of logoi 

at the party caricature the claims of culture to have imposed order on unruly 

nature, so Aristophanes' 

disruptive hiccups anticipate what he will attempt to 

show by his critique : that for all its apparent establishment of dominion, hu 

man 

"order" 

is still subordinate to a yet stronger "power," 

versive and intractable will of natural necessity. 

the potentially sub 

Both in ergoi and in logoi Aristophanes thus incarnates his satiric wisdom in 

the Symposium, opposing a kind of hybris on the part of culture with a recollec 

tion of the rule of Necessity. Recalling us to the "power" 

by 

which we are 

inextricably tethered to our mortal nature, he would reorient our thinking to 

ward a remembrance of "the 

gods" 

or the transcendence within physis. In thus 

recalling the rule of Necessity and undoing the injustice of the mortal rebellion 

against it, Aristophanes indeed acts to forestall an "assault against Olympus," 

and his comedy becomes likened to a contrivance for the preservation of the 

rule of Zeus. In this sense Aristophanes' 

on its Olympian claim. 

comical wisdom seems to make good 

But the drama of the Symposium alone is enough to cast doubt on the ulti 

mate legitimacy 

of Aristophanes' 

claim : Despite the pronounced antisophistry 

of the comic Aristophanes, the reigning poet is the Gorgian Agathon. With the 

ascension of Agathon comes the final phase of the assault by mortal hybris, and 

the rebellion against Necessity here becomes most explicit and complete : 

declares that the ancient reign of Ananke is over if 

Agathon finally openly 

indeed those earlier writers who once told of its dominion were even telling the 

truth (cf. 195c, 197b). Justice is now to be located in agreement among men 

since "what one person willingly agrees on with another is just and the saying 

'the nomoi are king of the 

of Gorgias' 

city'right." 

is (Agathon quotes Alcidamas, a rhetor 

school. Cf. Aristotle, Rhet. 1406a 17-23.) As such "agreement" 

can seemingly be secured through the persuasive techniques of mortal speech, 

the students of Gorgias thus lay claim to having discovered the hegemony of 

mortal will and to having supplanted the archaic rule of physis by the kingship 

of conventional consensus. The nomoi of Pausanias and the technai of Eryx 

imachus are in this sense wedded and raised to their highest potential. At the 

culmination of the speech the powers of the gods are subordinated to the cre 

ative power of this "young" 

new Eros, including, at the last, even 

"Zeus' 

ernance of gods and (197b3). The victory of Agathon's sophistical poi- 

esis thus points back to something lacking in the Aristophanic contrivance, to 

his ultimate failure to bring to bear the "will of 

in physis. 

Zeus" 

or the "power" 

gov 

inherent 

Does Plato perhaps even intimate dramatically something of the ground of


Aristophanes' 

failure ? Though Aristophanes contrives to gain a higher position 

in the order of speakers than Eryximachus (and in that sense appears at first to 

subordinate the technician), he is himself only able to speak by virtue of Eryx 

imachus' 

cure (cf. 185c, 189a). Does Plato here suggest that Aristophanes' 

logos is ultimately dependent on that of Eryximachus ? Does the wise Aris 

(18c2-3) logos on eros, perhaps 

"different" 

tophanes, in giving us his allegedly 

finally fail to transcend the sense of physis at work in the logos of Eryximachus 

(cf. Rosen, pp. 120, 133)? 

On Aristophanes' 

interpretation of eros, 

eros is our eternal search for our 

missing or "matching half (sumbolon), a search he thus characterizes as being 

whole" 

animated precisely by our "desire and pursuit of the (193al : tou holou 

oun tei epithumiai kai didxei). Since the reason (192e9 : aition) for this is that 

is was in our original nature to be whole, eros can finally 

another way, 

original 

be understood still 

as what would return us to or be "the restorer of our archaic or 

nature" 

(191dl : tes arkhaias phuseos sunago geus). As "everyone 

would openly acknowledge that this is the age old desire," 

the "joining and 

melding" 

(192e7 : sunelthon kai suntakeis) into a whole with one they love, we 

must acknowledge that a logos on eros is first of all a logos about sexuality. 

Aristophanes' 

sexual frankness is thus present from the beginning of his speech : 

The archaic state to which eros would have us return is presented in the image 

of the rolling and tumbling circle-men, 

of whom Aristophanes names Ephialtes 

and Otus as if a representative couple (190b). The meanings of their names 

make for a wry Platonic touch : Since ephialtes was "popularly connected with 

"Otus" 

ephallomai (LSJ), and since seems to derive from the verb othed, they 

represent the coupling of none other than "he who leaps 

pushes 

back." 

But Aristophanes resists being characterized as a crudely 

upon" 

and "he who 

reductive erotic 

theorist. If a logos on eros must first of all be a logos of sexual desire, it must 

at the same time be an interpretation of desire as a whole, an interpretation in 

which sexuality has, so to speak, its psychical analogue. Of this Aristophanes 

himself would seem to be well aware, since he claims his account of 

archaic goal pertains to more than just the body's desire : 

But no one would believe that purely sexual union (aphrodision sunousia) is what 

is wanted, as if for the sake of this alone they enjoy coming together with such 

great zeal. But clearly there is something else that the psyche of each desires, 

which it is unable to articulate, but it does divine what it wants and hints in 

disguises (alia manteuetai ho bouletai kai ainittetai). (192d2) 

The soul too thus shares in the longing to return to our archaic state and partici 

pates in the body's perpetual "desire and pursuit of the 

eros' 

whole." 

Indeed the 

participation of the soul is such that it even seems to underlie the body's desire, 

so that sexual union simpliciter cannot be understood as the archaic "whole-

The Wisdom of Plato's Aristophanes 241 

that eros pursues. Beyond the aphrodision sunousia itself there is "some 

thing 

it were, only 

else" 

that eros is after, an archaic wholeness of which sexual union is, as 

a token." 

But sexuality is indeed a bona fide token of the type 

perhaps the most proximal of the phenomena in which desire as such appears 

and so provides us a "hint" 

as to the broader sense of the "archaic 

that eros as as a whole pursues. Thus there is a sense in which Aristophanes 

can be said to have given an account of what it is that the psyche, too, desires : 

The blissful "merging and 

melding" 

of erotic union acheives a temporary re 

lease from sorrows, a forgetfulness of the strivings of mortal existence, and a 

kind of dissipation of ordinary consciousness. As one "loses oneself in the 

enravishment of eros the world seems to disappear, and one escapes for a while 

in ecstatic freedom from the careworn labors of the creatures of genesis. In the 

blissfulness and eudaimonia of this moment mortal nature is given to feel ful 

filled, and the vicissitudes of life give way to stillness, ease, and peace; for a 

time, the wheel of Ixion stands still. In this time of world-forgetful ness and 

strifeless existence the psyche indeed pursues a kind of- return to its archaic 

situation, to the original nature it had "prior," 

consciousness. The psyche too is thus marked by 

as it were, to the genesis of 

the "desire and 

wholeness, the blissful womb of unconsciousness, the "archaic 

which it came. That he so envisages 

fully reveals with his next words, where he finally 

wholeness that eros as such is after: 

pursuit 

of 

state" 

from 

eros' 

archaic goal Aristophanes now muse- 

does "divine" 

the nature of 

Now Suppose Hephaestus were to stand over them as they were lying together this 

way, having his tools ready, and he said : "What is it you want, you human 

beings, to get from one 

another?" 

And if in their perplexity he asked them again : 

"Is this what you desire, to come together as much as possible, and not have to 

leave one another, night and day? If this is what you desire, I am willing to melt 

you and weld you (suntexai kai sumphusesai) into one being. You would be as two 

become one, and you can live as one, with the two of you sharing a life in 

common. And when you die, there in Hades, too, instead of two there will be one, 

sharing death. But see if this is what you want and if you would be satisfied if this 

should happen." 

We know that not a single one of them, hearing this, would refuse 

such an offer. They would seem to desire nothing else. (192d2-e7) 

What does Hephaestus offer which would seem the very satisfaction of our 

longing 

and the attainment of 

eros' 

archaic goal? he proposes to make two into 

one, to create a state of wholeness or eternal union out of what had previously 

been held apart. Such wholeness or permanent union seems to be nothing less 

than a state of uninterupted fulfillment, 

a state where, as 

Aristophanes' 

image 

captures so unambiguously, there is no longer any separation between what 

desires and its object. Since it is just such a separation, as Socrates first of all 

shows (199c-201b), which is presupposed by the presence of eros, this state of 

erotic fulfillment would be a state characterized precisely by 

eros' 

absence.


Plato deftly 

Aristophanes' 

captures this character of 

divination. The presence of 

suggestion that we be "welded 

tophanic "wholeness" 

: 

together" 

Hephaestus' 

eros' 

archaic goal in the particulars of 

Hephaestus' 

(sumphusesai) 

tools (organa) and his 

evoke a sense of Aris- 

work appropriately transfigures us into 

something inanimate, like metal or stone, since his offer of wholeness is pre 

cisely to put an end to the yearning of eros. 

desire "nothing 

Aristophanes' 

claim that we would 

else" 

amounts to the suggestion that what eros desires is its own 

termination, an end to the striving of consciousness. This logos on eros thus 

properly 

has its mythical telos in "Hades." 

Freud has therefore divined some 

thing of the truth in seeking his own erotic theory prefigured in Aristophanes, 

as he too conceives the "ancient 

goal" state," 

to be "the inanimate and finally 

feels "compelled to say that 'the aim of all life is death' 

Aristophanes' 

comical logos on eros thus harbors a profoundly plaintive and 

somber pathos. At the bottom of the human situation lies a contradiction in 

heart of life itself. The creatures of physis are animated by an erotic Necessity 

which puts them fundamentally at odds with themselves, since they are com 

pelled to strive by what would find its fulfillment only in the release from 

striving. Since such release is only finally attainable by virtue of an end to 

erotic animation, there can be no genuine well-being or eudaimonia for animate 

creation. Life is animated by the ideal of death, the strivings of consciousness 

by the ideal of quiescence. Physis is fulfilled only by self-negation; in the 

meantime, the wheel of Ixion rolls on. The eros which moves mortal creation is 

the affect of a futile striving. 

The Aristophanic cosmos is in this sense fundamentally anous or "mind 

less", and the whole of nature governed by a "power senseless and without 

purpose" 

(alogou kai eikei dunamin) (cf. discussion on wisdom of Zeus above). 

The overseeing principle which animates genesis compels its creatures to strive 

"in 

vain" 

(eikei), thus condemning them to a life of perpetual frustration and 

suffering. In this way Aristophanes' 

hiccups themselves caricature his inter 

pretation of eros : a recurrent and intractable demand from which we could only 

wish respite and surcease. From this point of view one might represent the Will 

behind all of physis as uncaring for and even ill-disposed towards the aspira 

tions of its resident creatures aspirations which it itself nonetheless demands 

of and evokes in them. So Aristophanes pictures Zeus: Hostile to the strivings 

of the circle-men, Zeus refuses to wipe them out completely, being unwilling to 

lose their worship (190 cd); he decides instead to debilitate them. He thus 

creates a situation where men retain their "upward" 

of the means of fulfilling it. 

. . 

orientation but are deprived 

The pathos generated in the one who so perceives the "power" 

Necessity 

thus emerges in the "moral" 

behind erotic 

Aristophanes would have us draw from 

the wisdom of his exposition : This logos on eros shows that it behooves us to 

be obedient to the gods and "in the present 

circumstances" 

to do what "is best 

for now : that is to fall in with one of like mind to oneself (193c9 : touto

The Wisdom of Plato's Aristophanes 243 

d'esti paidikon tukhein kata noun autoi pephukoton). The cosmos that is anous 

and alogos is also by 

nature left for whatever good befalls to a fortuitous and 

promiscuous fate: tukhein (from tugkhano, "to fall in 

with" 

or "hit upon") thus 

pointedly carries the sense of "to meet chance." 

by Human existence is com 

pelled by an eros that allows it only surrogate and fugitive satisfaction and for 

this exiguous solace it is fundamentally abandoned to "chance" 

(cf. also 193b2, 

193cl, 193c4). 

ting 

"In the present 

circumstances," 

then, the best we can have comes from get 

together with one of "like mind to oneself (kata noun autoi pephukoton). 

In the mythical ideal this beloved is less precisely a 

"complement" 

(cf. Dover 

[1980], p. 113) than a reaffirmation of the self-same: These lovers, as Aris 

tophanes would have it, have "two faces, exactly 

opa . 

alike" 

(189e7-al: kai pros- 

homoia pante). In his beloved the Aristophanic lover thus pursues not 

what takes a different form from the lover himself, but rather only, as it were, a 

kind of permanent reconciliation with what he already is like. What is "best" 

thus the absence of striving that comes from being 

is 

with one of "like mind to 

oneself," 

who in reflecting the countenance of nothing beyond what one al 

ready is induces a kind of stillness and peace. In this sense in "sharing their 

lives in 

common" 

these two share a kind of mutual quiescence. Since the 

cosmos that is animated by eros is fundamentally alogos and contradictory, 

here again what is "best for is not to awaken or incite it, but rather to lull 

it into rest by 

whatever technique it can be quieted or "kept 

where Zeus warns : kai me thelosin hesukhian agein . . .). 

mous "conservatism" 

still." 

(cf. 190d5 

Aristophanes' 

is thus profound and pervasive : The wisdom at the telos 

of this logos on eros counsels a kind of retreat from the agitations and move 

ments of genesis. As the assuasive effects of the techne of comedy might now 

finally be held up to attest, the "best" 

we can have comes from the poiesis of 

what might allow us to release ourselves and take respite from life. 

Where are we here to locate Aristophanes' 

perspective is wanting in his perception of the "power" 

might root ourselves once again in the "principle" 

and bring to light one final self-referential feature of 

fa 

failure and see what from Plato's 

behind eros? Here we 

which guided us earlier on 

Aristophanes' 

speech. As 

Aristophanes tells the story, after their original nature had been severed men 

"yearned to be enmeshed 

together," 

off from "hunger and general inactivity" 

their genitals around in front of them, " 

and caring only for this they began to die 

(191b). For this reason Zeus moved 

. . and through this got them to 

propagate with one another, the male inside the female. This way, if a man 

happened to meet (191c5 : entukhoi) a woman, while they were embracing they 

would generate and the race would 

In Aristophanes' 

continue" 

(191c). 

story, the procreation that results from erotic union is thus 

incidental to its true motive, namely, the desire to return to the archaic state of 

logos proves im 

"enmeshed." 

Aristophanes' 

"melding" 

and being 

Here again 

plicitly self-referential precisely insofar as the generation of someoffspring 

is


incidental in Aristophanes' 

interpretation of the "power" 

behind eros and 

thing 

inessential to understanding the archaic goal that eros ultimately pursues. 

But what does it mean for procreation to be incidental to an interpretation of 

eros, or conversely, to understand eros in terms of an essential orientation to 

offspring? Only in this latter way, one might say here, do we truly recover 

eros' 

archaic goal, and so begin to see the nature of the eros' 

Necessity behind 

intractable "power." 

So Diotima warns Socrates : He must understand that all 

humans are fundamentally pregnant (206c 1) and that eros is for "giving birth 

and procreation in the beautiful" 

(206e). For as what is to be born lives on, 

beyond the reaches of what brings it into being, so eros, viewed from this 

perspective, begins to appear this way : as a longing of what is subject to the 

vicissitudes of genesis for what endures beyond these vicissitudes standing 

more strongly and with greater vitality within the stream of becoming and in 

that way better constituted for what befalls mortal nature though the intractable 

will of genesis. It is this mortal's perception of something "immortal" 

behind the "power" 

which is 

of sexuality and what is implicit in the adamantine will of 

erotic Necessity. In this sense eros is the affective presence of something tran 

scendent in the mortal breast : In erotic longing the child who would be born is 

already daimonically 

present.10 

From this point of view what is wanting in Aristophanes' 

interpretation of 

eros is precisely recollection of the transcendence within physis, and as this is 

what is "behind" 

the power of eros, we might say that this is what he fails to 

see : That what is erotic is unconsciously animated by a vision of the "immor 

tal" 

of what is divined to be in some way delivered from the infirmities of the 

mortal and so of what in its transcendence is immanent as what orients the 

process. In this way we can understand the meaning of Diotima's oracular 

reference back to Aristophanes : "Whereas a person might tell a story that those 

who seek after the other half of themselves are lovers, my 

account describes 

love as being neither of the half nor of the whole, unless it should happen, my 

friend, to be something 

good" 

(205de). On this view eros is archaically ori 

ented less by the other ("half) or even the sunousia of the two (the "whole") 

"power" 

than by a prior perception of the of what might be created by virtue of 

their union, a hidden promise within physis of what they thus "instinctively" 

divine as making good on their mortal lacking. 

This understanding of the power of eros, has, so to speak, its psychical 

analogue or provides a "hint" 

through which one might likewise understand the 

"desires and 

pursuits" 

of eros as whole. Here too the longing of eros would 

have its arche in a perception of something "immortal," 

and would be animated 

by a glimpse of the power of something it might produce, "something new, like 

itself (208b 12), but which it divines to be delivered from its own infirmities. 

The "mantic" 

character of the psyche is thus an elaboration of the general 

metaphor of mortal pregnancy : The longing of the soul is not the archaic affect 

of what would return to the stillness of the inanimate, but rather of what al-

Plato' 

The Wisdom of s Aristophanes 245 

ready nurtures within it a still greater vitality, speaking, like the prophetic 

"pregnancy" 

of the body, of a future animation. In the soul too eros would thus 

not find its fulfillment in release from mortal striving and the peaceful quies 

cence of "death," 

but rather in bearing what is better constituted for this mortal 

existence and in bringing something new to life. 

In this way the soul would share in being animated by 

what stands beyond 

the vicissitudes of genesis, having always already divined, as it were, what is 

stronger, and makes good on its lacking. In its transcendence this would always 

be immanent as what orients the soul in its desire, the arche of the 

"power" 

compels it to longing, and the source of erotic Necessity. In being animated by 

this the soul is indeed subject to the demands of a higher Will, since this is 

what, of Necessity, compels the mortal soul to its pathos, to the inspired awak 

ening 

of a resolute pursuit or the hypnogogic inveiglement of a plaintive and 

forgetful flight." 

that 

As the affective presence of what transcends the mortal soul, 

eros divines precisely that with respect to which this mortal's life now appears 

as lacking, and so is the revelation of what points up 

its infirmities and failings. 

The affect of Necessity thus undoes and debilitates the completeness and integ 

rity of a way of life, or in the more imposing language of the mythic metaphor, 

sunders the hybristic whole. In this way erotic Necessity brings with it suffer 

ings and sorrows and is the archaic affect of a hard and demanding Will, since 

it shows what must first be overcome and undergo genesis in order that its 

promise be delivered and fulfilled. Here erotic Necessity 

might evoke the pa 

thos of mortal flight, and generating, as it were, in mortal forgetfulness, give 

way 

to a timorous delusion. 

But just insofar as erotic necessity points up our mortal debility by first 

divining that in view of which this way of life now appears as lacking, it is 

itself the revelation of how one could yet stand more strongly, and dwell, one 

might here say, in a cosmos that is "beyond" 

this one and which transcends it. 

In revealing what thus stands "beyond the horizon" 

eros is, in the language of the Phaedrus, 

of the present 

"cosmos," 

an intimation of the "hyperouranian" 

place. Erotic necessity thus brings into view something captivating and beauti 

ful, since in pointing up our mortal lacking it divines the very way 

in which 

what is lacking could be made good. The hard Will of intractable necessity 

could here awaken 

mortals' 

resolute affection and be the inspiration of a cos- 

mogonic pursuit, the daimonic power by 

the way it could be "nourished and 

which an infirm mortal soul can see 

prosper" 

(cf. Phaedrus 247c ff. where by 

the vision of the hyperouranian place the soul is trephetai kai eupathei . 

The plaintive pathos of mortal flight is thus not itself demanded by this divine 

Will, since in the matter of the affect generated in the face of Necessity 

.). 

we are 

"chance." 

not fundamentally abandoned to In this way Plato's philosophical 

logos on eros harbors an encouraging and inspiring pathos, and an altogether 

more just and divine image of the nature of the will of Zeus, 

of all hidden within the "power" 

since it sees first 

of eros the promise of a better cosmos.


The cosmos in this way animated by 

and not governed over by a "power senseless and without 

tures of physis would not be compelled to strive "in 

eros would not be anous or "mindless," 

purpose 

The crea 

vain," 

since they are 

moved not by what finds its fulfillment only in the release of death, but by 

what would be fulfilled here, in the regeneration of life. In this sense the Will 

behind physis is not "ill-disposed" 

towards mortal nature, having animated it 

with an eros which at its arche holds the measures by which life is replenished 

and goes on. The "power" 

which animates genesis is thus not alogos, "sense 

less," 

or even wholly 

"inarticulate," 

but rather speaks daimonically of the very 

way in which a mortal's lacking could be nourished into strength, its affective 

presence harboring the hidden logos of a cosmos transfigured, its infirmities 

overcome. While mortal nature may thus be subject to genesis and being "sun 

dered" 

by what prevents it from remaining the same, it is animated by 

that can heal this by revealing how Necessity has arranged for a way 

change. In this sense the "power" 

an eros 

it can 

that rules over physis has filled its creatures 

with something divinely promising, and while its adamantine Necessity may be 

demanding and hard they are not deprived of the means of fulfilling 

it. The 

Will that governs the cosmos thus does not abandon mortal creation for its 

eudaimonia and whatever good befalls to the fortuitous workings of "chance," 

but rather arrange measures and order for life, growth and healing 

cosmos, 

realm of genesis. 

and in that sense "cares for" 

From this point of view, our "archaic 

in the 

the mortal creatures which dwell in the 

nature" 

would never be though' 

in 

terms of the inanimate substance of physis, since it is what in its transcendence 

animates this that is at the arche of our erotic coming-to-life. Here one might 

speak of a cosmic nous that steers through all that is inanimate, like Zeus in the 

myth, the "first to proceed, ordering all things and caring therefore 

drus 246e: . 

" 

(Phae 

. . protos poreuetai, diakosmon panto kai epimeloumenos . . .). 

Thus Plato's logos would not move in the imaginal direction of the mythologiz- 

ing 

of Hades but rather towards a recollection of the psyche's divine or "hyper 

ouranian" 

origins. In this sense Plato brings to bear a sense of physis different 

from that which Aristophanes and Eryximachus both share, the "archaic 

of a fundamentally 

"mindless" 

and desacralized cosmos. 

Since the cosmos that is animated by eros is at its arche divinely promising, 

the "best for 

now" 

could not possibly be to lull it into quietness or "keeping 

still," 

but rather to pursue the good that is promised mortal nature which honors 

the Will behind genesis. In this way the initiate Socrates proceeds in the coun 

sel of "Diotima." 

The wisdom at the telos of this logos on eros would thus not 

issue in the "conservative" 

and 

""soft" 

poeisis of what delivers us respite from 

life, but bids us suffer the sacred rites of genesis which promise its renewal 

and rejuvenation. Two lovers "sharing their lives" 

in this way would not share 

a mutual quiescence, since here again in their love what they share is some 

third thing, which makes good on and still transcends them (Phaedrus 250b, 

nature



252e). Thus in the end it would be better not to say that Aristophanes' 

consists in "making eros fundamentally 

tonic love it fundamentally is that. Aristophanes' 

failure 

sexual." 

Even for the initiate into Pla 

failure does not as much 

body" 

consist in his thinking that the "psyche is defined by and depends on the 

(Rosen, p. 140) as in his not seeing how both the body and the psyche are 

and depend 

"defined by 

on" 

their animation by something divine. 

Thus the wise Aristophanes could be said to have reminded us of the rule of 

a higher Necessity, recalling 

us to a "power" 

to which we are subject and 

which transcends mortal dominion. His comic recollection of intractable erotic 

compulsion in this way would mitigate mortal hybris, 

claim to being 

just as Aristophanes' 

and at first sight lays 

a poiesis that recalls us to wisdom about the power of Zeus. But 

hiccups are an anticipation in ergoi of the substance of his 

critique, so they are an ironic caricature of what is still wanting in his wisdom, 

of Aristophanes' 

failure to himself rightly perceive the "power" 

implicit in 

eros. Recalling erotic Necessity without the nous and cosmic divinity behind it, 

he might be likened to one who presents the will of Zeus as nothing more than 

a hiccup, making Aristophanes' 

of Aristophanes. 

NOTES 

1 . Thus in his inspiring 

object of erotic love is to oikeion kai 

paper "Platonic Love" 

hiccups themselves Plato's joke on the wisdom 

L.A. Kosman finds Plato's view that the "proper 

already 

"Central to Plato's vision as articulated comically in Aristophanes' 

endees" Aristophanes' 

present in 

speech : 

myth is that the self which I am 

about to become, my "ecstatic self, is ideally no mere projection of my fantasies or desires, but is 

my true nature from which I am only in some accidental sense, by a willful and jealous act of the 

gods, 

alienated" 

(pp. 60-61). 

2. Agathon's representative connection to sophistry is indicated by 

Socrates' 

opening words of 

response to his speech (198c : "The speech reminded me of Gorgias "). On the "abundant" 

presence of Gorgias' 

rhetorical "machinery" 

to 194e. 

in Agathon's speech cf. Bury, pp. xxxxv-vi and note 

That Phaedrus brings us back to the Homeric beginnings of this culture Plato indicates in a 

number of ways : not only is warfare the existential context for Phaedrus' 

conceptualization of 

virtue, and not only is Achilles finally named as the one who lives out his ethical ideal (179e ff.), 

but Phaedrus quite openly identifies virtue with the archaic Homeric menos (179b). 

For a somewhat fuller account of the subtextual 

"anthropogony" 

in the first five speeches of the 

Symposium, cf. the author's "Anthropogony and Theogony in Plato's Symposium''. 

The centrality of the Symposium of Plato's quarrel over the 

symbolically indicated already 

in the dialogues' 

"wisdom" 

of Agathon is of course 

prologue. Cf. esp. 174b-d and 175c-e. 

3. Thus Brentlinger aptly says of Aristophanes that "he dramatically fulfills a role in relation to 

the first three speeches which in other dialogues belongs peculiarly to the Socratic art of question 

and answer that of a wise critic. It is essential in understanding the Symposium to grasp this 

point, namely the similarity . 

between the comic poet and the dialectician. 

(p. 

12). Cf. also 

Friedlander: "It is apparent, to begin with the human or social content, that the four other speakers 

form two pairs of friends, Phaidros an Eryximachos, Pausanias and Agathon. Even as Aristophanes 

is alone among 

the guests in this human situation, so his speech is the furthest removed from the 

" 

speeches of the others. . Aristophanes is the sharpest critic . (p. 18).


In the Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche speaks of "the profound instinct of Aristophanes" 

ing "the signs of degenerate 

in recogniz 

culture" 

(cf. sections 13 and 17). To the extent that the drama of the 

Symposium lends a kind of approval to the Aristophanic "instinct," 

we are led to wonder about a 

principal and complex issue-about the extent to which Nietzsche's critique of what he deems 

"Socratic" 

culture is really Platonic in origin. 

4. Along with Phaedrus the youngest at the party, Agathon was renowned for his physical 

beauty, and Alcibiades only gives voice to the general sentiment beautiful" 

calling him "the most 

Phaedrus' 

(213c: toi kallisto) man at the banquet. (Cf. also remark at 194d and Socrates' 

at Pro 

tagoras 315d.) According to Aristophanes (Thesmophoriazusae 191-92), he kept his beard close 

shaven, presumably to heighten the appearance of early 

unconnected. On the basis of Aristophanes' 

'"softness" 

youth. His predilection for 

is not 

portrait in the Thesmophoriazusae , 

it appears that 

Agathon was widely known for his effeminacy and for his role as a passive homosexual (cf. 140 

ff., 191-92, 200, 206). If we are to believe in Aristophanes' 

can also understand the attribution of "suppleness" 

circumspect sexual sense, and the sexual accessibility 

: hugros 

merciless portrayal, at any rate, we 

("supple," "pliant," 

"easy") has a 

Aristophanes attributes to Agathon makes it 

an apt characterization (cf. e.g. Th. 35, 56 ff., 200). But we need not turn to Aristophanes for a 

hint of Agathon's promiscuity. Of all the lovers in the Symposium, it is Agathon who displays a 

propensity 

for "looseness" 

by 

his open flirtation (175d) with Socrates (this in spite of the presence 

of his lover Pausanias). Cf. also 222c ff. On Agathon's effeminacy cf. Dover (1978), pp. 139-44. 

Aristophanes' 

5. Cf. Nussbaum, p. 172 : "As we hear 

distant myth of this passionate groping 

and grasping, we are invited to think how odd, after all, it is that bodies should have these holes 

and projections in them, odd that the insertion of a projection into an opening should be thought, by 

concern." 

ambitious and intelligent beings, a matter of the deepest 

It is of course precisely the 

"power" 

of eros which Aristophanes claims his predecessors have 

failed to see : "It seems to me that men do not perceive the power (dunamin) of eros at all. . I 

will try to show you its power, and you, in turn, will be the teachers of 

others" 

(189cd). For an 

extremely interesting discussion of the centrality of the theme of comic and tragic wisdom, see 

Clay. 

6. On the circular arrangement of the couches at Agathon's symposium, see Dover, p. 11. 

Dover takes epi dexia at 177d3 to indicate that the speakers are moving in an '"anti-clockwise 

sequence." 

Cf. also Friedlander, vol. 1, p. 161. 

For Eryximachus cf. 187d5, 187d6, 188a3, 188c3 and Bury's note to 189a. Consider here also 

the scene at 223b : When the revelers finally take over the party and "the slightest semblance of 

order (kosmoi)" 

disappears, Plato has Eryximachus make his exit. 

For the claims of Aristophanic comedy to critical sophia, cf. the parabasis of the Clouds esp. 

518-48. In making the claim to wisdom implicit in giving a logos of Zeus, Aristophanes here 

seems to take what he deems his rightful place in the "contest over 

initiated at the dialogues' 

wisdom" 

that Agathon had 

outset (175e). We should note too how he was implicitly solicited or 

perhaps better, provoked by Socrates who characterized him as "devoting himself entirely to 

Dionysus and Aphrodite" 

(177e). 

7. Thus Aristophanes begins : dei de proton humas mathein ter anthropinen phusin kai ta 

pathemata autes (189d4-6). (On Aristophanes' 

conflation of "human 

"nature" nature" 

and gener 

ally cf. 191a5.) The connection between wisdom and the figure of Zeus should of course also recall 

to us the passage at Phaedrus 250b where the philosophers are said to be the ones who have 

followed in the train of Zeus. (Cf. also 252e.) Perhaps even more important in the present context 

though is a passage in the Critias where "Zeus, the god of 

which such things as mortal decline are seen (121b). 

gods" 

is the one who has the power by 

8. Thus we can already see how it cannot be wholly right to say : "By making Eros fundamen 

tally sexual, Aristophanes illustrates two inseparable principles of his teaching. Human striving, 

whether for truth or fame, is essentially physical : the psyche is defined by and depends on the 

body" 

Aristophanes' 

(Rosen, p. 140). Cf. however Rosen's fascinating reading of entire speech 

(pp. 120-58) with which what follows might be compared. 

9. Beyond the Pleasure Principle, pp. 51, 32. On p. 51 Freud says: "Apart from this, science 

has so little to tell us about the origin of sexuality that we can liken the problem to a darkness into

Plato' 

The Wisdom of s Aristophanes 

which not so much as a ray of a hypothesis has penetrated. In quite a different region, it is true, we 

do meet with such a hypothesis; but it is of so fantastic a kind a myth rather than a scientific 

explanation that I would not venture to produce it here, were it not that it fulfills precisely the one 

condition whose fulfillment we desire. For it traces the origin of an instinct to a need to restore an 

earlier state of 

- 

249 

things' 

In the context of a discussion of whether Freud conflated Aristophanes' 

speech with Plato's erotic theory Santas says that a major "novel element in Beyond the Pleasure 

Principle was Freud's notion that the instincts are essentially 'conservative': they 

restoring 

aim at 

affairs." 

an earlier state of Freud "surveys the findings of biology for positive evidence of 

a death instinct or for the instincts being 

tophanes' 

conservative," 

but finding none, he refers us to Aris 

myth which as Santas points out Freud had recited to his betrothed some forty years 

before (pp. 160-62). On p. 181 (n. II) Santas remarks that the "aims of Freud's Eros and Aris 

tophanes' 

eros would seem to coincide in general, in both aiming at an earlier state of but 

seems to wonder as to whether they would "coincide more 

of both Hephaestus' 

specifically." 

The symbolic significance 

smith art and his mention of Hades seem to make the coincidence deep- 

running indeed. Some version of the intuition that Aristophanic fulfillment culminates in death goes 

back at least as far as Aristotle (Politics II 4 1262b 9-17), as Friedlander (vol. 3, p. 20) points out. 

10. Here, strangely enough, we can seek help 

from the eccentric "Platonist" 

Schopenhauer. 

"immortal" 

who describes how only the presence of something can account for the overwhelming 

"power" 

of eros : " 

. this 

longing 

and this pain of love cannot draw their material from the needs 

of an ephemeral individual. On the contrary they are the sighs of the spirit of the species, which 

sees here, to be won or lost, an irreplaceable means to its ends, and therefore groans deeply. The 

species alone has infinite life, and is therefore capable of infinite desire, infinite satisfaction, and 

infinite sufferings. But these are here imprisoned in the narrow breast of a mortal; no wonder, 

therefore, when such a breast seems ready to burst 

" 

(vol. 2, p. 551). Behind sexual attraction 

Schopenhauer thus sees something like the unconscious "meditation of the genius of the species 

concerning 

the individual possible through these two 

already kindled in the meeting of their longing glances . 

affect in the breast of the mortal of what has a more "infinite life." 

" 

" 

(p. 549). "Its new life, indeed, is 

(p. 536)." 

Eros is thus the archaic 

But as we will suggest shortly 

below, what for Schopenhauer is the sexual substratum to which all love is to be privatively 

reduced, for Plato is the prototype of what holds analogically across the spectrum of erotic phenom 

ena. 

1 1 . On 

the centrality of the notions of affective presence and pathos to Plato's conception of 

the relation in which mortals stand to the "truth" 

REFERENCES 

Bacon, Helen. "Socrates Crowned." 

cf. the author's forthcoming 

"Platonic Rhetoric." 

The Virginia Quarterly Review 35( 1959):4 1530. 

Symposium." 

in the In The Symposium of Plato, 

Brentlinger, J. "The Cycle of Becoming 

translated by Suzy Q. Groden. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970. 

Bury, R. G. The Symposium of Plato. 2d ed. Cambridge, Eng.: W. Heffer and Sons, 

1932. 

Clay, Diskin. "The Tragic and Comic Poet of the Symposium." 

In Essays in Ancient 

Greek Philosophy, edited by J. P Anton and A. Preus. Albany: State University of 

New York Press, 1983. Vol. 2. pp. 186-202. 

Dover, K. J. Greek Homosexuality. New York: Vintage Books, 1978. 

Plato: Symposium. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. 

Edelstein, L. "The role of Eryximachus in Plato's Symposium." 

Association Transactions and Proceedings 76(1945): 85-103. 

Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Translated by 

York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1951. 

American Philological 

James Strachey. New


Friedlander, Paul. Plato. Translated by 

Hans Meyerhoff. Princeton: Princeton Univer 

sity Press, 1958-1969. 

Hackforth, R. Plato's Phaedrus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952. 

Kosman, L. A. "Platonic Love." 

Werkmeister. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976. 

In Facets of Plato's Philosophy, edited by 

Moore, J. D. "The Relation Between Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus." 

W. H. 

In Patterns in 

Plato's Thought, edited by J. M. E. Moravcsik. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing 

Co., 1973. Pp. 52-71. 

Nussbaum, Martha. The Fragility of Goodness. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press, 1986. 

Olympiodorus. Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato. Edited and translated by 

L. G. Westerink. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1956. 

Rosen, Stanley. Plato's Symposium. 2d ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. 

Salman, Charles. "Anthropogony and Theogony 

Journal. Forthcoming. 

"Platonic Rhetoric." 

New York: Edwin Mellen Press, forthcoming. 

in Plato's Symposium." 

The Classical 

In Rhetoric and Ethics: Historical and Theoretical Essavs. 

Santas, G. Plato and Freud. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988. 

Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation. Translated by 

Payne. New York: Dover Publications. 1969. 

E. F. J.

David Hume's Theology 

Roger M. Barrus 

Hampden-Sydney College 

of Liberation 

Liberal political philosophy attempts to reform government and society by 

separating religion from politics, accomplishing this by curbing the moral pre 

tensions of politics. Liberalism rejects the traditional conception of the purpose 

of government as the achievement of the complete good life. Instead, it limits 

government to the purpose of securing the rights of life, liberty, and property, 

the necessary but by no means sufficient conditions of the good life. Limiting 

government to securing the prerequisites of the good life means leaving its final 

attainment as a matter of individual effort. Included in what is left to each 

individual must be the very definition of what it means to be a good human 

being. The distinction between the conditions and the fullness of the complete 

good life more or less defines the distinction between the public and the pri 

vate. Religion, with its concern for ultimate purposes, falls within the sphere of 

private right, outside the sphere of public authority. It has for its object, as 

Hegel explains, "the highest, the absolute, that which is absolutely true or the 

truth itself." 

This is to be found in "the region in which all the riddles of the 

world, all contradictions of thought, are resolved, and all griefs are healed, the 

region of eternal truth and eternal peace, of absolute satisfaction, of truth it 

self.'" 

Religion belongs in the sphere of the private because it attempts to de 

fine the context within which the question of the nature of the complete good 

life can be resolved. 

The separation between religion and politics in liberal political philosophy 

involves, along with the innovations in politics, 

Implicit in liberalism is a hostility 

a transformation of religion. 

towards traditional religion. It rejects the 

traditionalist social and political order, in which religion is at the center of 

society, defining its purposes, giving it shape, and setting it in motion. The 

traditionalist social order is founded on the opinion that society is divinely 

ordained. This opinion, in turn, is based on the view, 

characteristic of tradi 

tionalist religious belief, that there is a divine superintendence of human af 

fairs. At the same time, there is implicit in liberalism a kind of religious teach 

ing of its own. If only indirectly, it affirms a conception of the complete good 

life, what it intends to achieve in political practice through the separation of 

religion and politics. This means that at least tacitly there is in liberalism a 

conception of the divine according to which the complete good life can be 

determined. The religious implications of liberalism's new political science are 



elaborated by the liberal philosophers in a number of works, now largely ig 

nored if not entirely forgotten, on the subject of 

religion.2 

These works are 

neglected because the issues with which they deal are no longer alive politi 

cally, a measure of the liberal 

philosophers' 

success in convincing the world 

that religion is an essentially private affair, having nothing to do with politics. 

Probably the most artistic, if not necessarily the most artful, treatment of 

religion in liberal political philosophy is David Hume's Dialogues Concerning 

Natural Religion.* 

For Hume, the Dialogues was an extremely important work. 

He labored on it off and on for over twenty years, from first draft in 1751 to 

final revision a short time before his death in 1776. He was occupied during the 

last weeks of his life in arranging for its publication. Hume apparently also 

considered the Dialogues to be an extremely dangerous work. Not only did he 

delay its publication until after his death, but he failed even to mention it in the 

short autobiographical sketch that he published just before he died. This is all 

the more interesting because he was willing to publish during 

his lifetime and 

in his own name works of religious scepticism including the Inquiry Concern 

ing Human Understanding, the Natural History of Religion, 

"Superstition and Enthusiasm," 

"The Immortality 

of the Soul." 

"The 

Further, many 

and his essays on 

Sceptic," "Miracles," "Suicide," 

and 

of the most provocative argu 

ments of the Dialogues are drawn from these other works. While Hume no 

where explicitly states his intention in writing the Dialogues, it is clearly in 

tended to be something more than a mere catalogue of his arguments on 

religion. The book has a unity and integrity of its own. It is this that accounts 

for the Dialogues' 

importance, and its danger, for Hume. The unity and integ 

rity of the Dialogues are to be found in its development of what might be called 

liberalism's theology of liberation. 

The separation of religion and politics is crucial to the success of the project 

of liberal political philosophy, the realization of what it conceives as man's 

natural freedom through the liberation of mankind from its traditional bond 

ages. Human beings from the beginning have sought to subjugate and dominate 

one another. This is a nasty consequence of their subjection to nature: the 

narrowness of their natural endowment compels them to make use of one an 

other to at least partially relieve themselves of the cruel necessities that press 

down on them. The enjoyment of human beings of their natural freedom, what 

liberalism articulates as their natural rights of life, liberty, and property, is 

threatened by the malevolence of man and the enmity of nature, the former 

represented by war, and especially civil war, the latter by famine, plague, 

pestilence, and the other cataclysms of nature. Liberalism attempts to solve 

both these problems, either directly or indirectly, through its invention of the 

political system of nonpartisan, representative government.

David Hume's Theology of Liberation 253 

The traditional understanding of man's thralldom to man and to nature is 

reflected in Aristotle's teaching in the Politics. Aristotle begins his teaching on 

politics with the claim that the ultimate moving force in human life is a longing 

for the good. "Everyone," 

he asserts, "does everything for the sake of what is 

held to be 

good." 

It is this desire for the good that leads human beings into 

association with one another. The most comprehensive form of association is 

the political community, which aims at the most comprehensive of goods, the 

complete good life. It contains within itself, and perfects, all other forms of 

association. These are subordinate to the political community because they 

have as their objects only the various partial goods that contribute to the 

achievement of the good life. There is an order to the elements that make up 

the political community. While perhaps all make contributions that are neces 

sary for the accomplishment of the common purpose, 

some make contributions 

that are more nearly sufficient for it. The latter have a claim to political prece 

dence over the former. The political community is, then, an hierarchically 

structured whole made up of heterogeneous parts, organized in the light of 

some conception of the complete good life.4 

Government, for Aristotle, is inherently partisan, the rule of some part of 

society over the whole, on behalf of some particular conception of the good 

life. For analytical purposes, Aristotle refers to the groups in society as the one, 

the few, and the many. Whichever group comes to predominate in a commu 

nity gives that community its tone, shape, or order, what Aristotle calls its 

regime. Regimes differ not only with respect to who rules in them, but also 

with respect to the purposes for which rule is exercised. Every group in society 

conceives of the common good in the light of its own specific interests. Again 

for analytical purposes, Aristotle distinguishes between regimes in which rule is 

for the good of both the rulers and the ruled, and regimes in which rule is for 

the good of only the rulers. The former are good regimes, the latter bad. There 

are, then, many different regime forms. Aristotle includes six in his theoretical 

taxonomy: monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, polity, and democracy. 

Even the good, however, exhibit something of the particular interest of the 

ruling part, just as even the bad exhibit something of the universal aspiration 

for the good life (see Bk. Ill, esp. 1278b6- 1281al 1). 

It is the partisanship of government that is, for Aristotle, the cause of the 

fundamental problem of politics. All the groups in society want to be treated 

justly, to have their special contributions recognized and their specific needs 

filled. While all agree that justice is giving equal things to equal people, they 

all disagree about the equalities and inequalities of people and things that must 

be taken into account in doing justice. Every part of society is led, then, to 

assert its own right to rule, 

on behalf of its own conception of the good life. 

Political practice is defined by the competition of the various parts of society 

for the right to rule over the whole. This competition, 

which Aristotle calls 

faction, can, if it gets out of hand, become extremely destructive. While Aris 

totle suggests a number of strategies to contain the problem of faction, he


understands that it can never be eliminated from politics. Faction is inherent in 

the very nature of political society (see Bk. V). 

Aristotle's teaching 

on politics leads to the conclusion that there is no re 

lease for mankind from the age-old bondages of man to man and man to nature. 

At least there is no hope for universal progress or a general improvement in the 

human condition. With its aim of actualizing the complete good life, politics is 

an expression of the yearning of human beings for the fullness, completion, or 

perfection of their existence. This yearning shows itself in politics, however, 

principally in the particular claims to rule that are raised by the various parts of 

society. The assertion of these claims to rule leads to the disruptiveness of 

factional struggle. In politics, efforts to make things better are inevitably ac 

companied by conflicts that might well make them worse. The political struggle 

leads to the replacement of the rule of one part of society with its own particu 

lar conception of the common good by 

similarly 

the rule of some other part with a 

partial view. At best the new government is a marginal improvement 

over the old. The domination of man by man, however, continues unchanged. 

Political practice moves, then, 

within more or less fixed limits. These limits 

represent the forces that, from above, hold human beings in subjection. They 

make manifest the domination of man by nature. Consideration of the problems 

of politics leads to the conclusion that what is most needful for human beings is 

an understanding of the limits that define their existence. This involves reflec 

tion on the nature of man, the place of man in the order of things, 

and the 

power or powers that give man his being. The highest expression of the longing 

for completion is, therefore, to be found in the activity of contemplation. There 

is in this activity a kind of transcendence of the limits that define the life of 

man. Only the relatively few individuals, however, who have the leisure, incli 

nation, and ability necessary for the contemplative life can obtain this freedom. 

Liberalism's project for the emancipation of mankind from its traditional 

bondages receives its most comprehensive exposition in Hobbes's Leviathan. 

The premise of Hobbes's teaching is his denial that human beings can be under 

stood as being moved by the longing for the good. This is the most important 

chapters.5 

point of the materialist psychology that he elaborates in his first 

Hobbes concludes from his psychology that "there is no such Finis itltimis. 

(utmost ayme,) nor Summum Bonum, (greatest Good,) 

Books of the old Morall Philosophers." 

as is spoken of in the 

In its place, he proposes as "a generall 

inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after 

power, that ceaseth only in Death." 

The cause of this ceaseless striving for 

power is that man "cannot assure the power and means to live well, 

which he 

hath present, without the acquisition of (Ch. 1, pp. 160-61). Politics 

does not, then, grow out of the longing for completion, fullness, or perfection. 

Rather it grows out of the competition for power understood as not so much the 

prerequisite as the substitute for the good. This is expressed in the doctrine of 

the state of nature. In the natural condition the competition tor power is unre-


strained. As a result, there is no security for men in the enjoyment of their 

natural rights to life and what conduces to life, liberty, and property. The life 

of man in the natural condition is "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and 

Human beings form political society, according to Hobbes, 

not to achieve the 

complete good life but only in order to escape the horrors of the state of nature 

(see Chs. 13-14). 

Government when properly organized-that is, in accordance with Hobbes's 

new science of politics-is nonpartisan. The exclusion from the public sphere of 

the question of the nature of the complete good life makes it impossible for any 

part of society to assert, on the basis of its special merits, a right to rule over 

the rest. Given that there is no publically accepted and enforced conception of 

the good, there is no foundation on which to rest such a claim to political 

power. More importantly, the depoliticization of the question of the nature of 

the good life has the effect of abolishing, at least for the purposes of politics 

and government, the qualitative distinctions among the different parts of soci 

ety. With no public definition of the good, there is nothing to make any indi 

vidual or group in any way special in the political order. This means that, at 

least from the point of view of politics and government, 

all human beings are 

equal. This in turn implies that, since there is no one who enjoys any 

short." 

natural or 

divine right to rule, all human beings are by nature free. The only legitimate 

basis for government authority is the consent of the governed. The governed 

presumably will give their consent to the formation of a government that will 

limit itself to the purpose of securing them against the dangers to life, liberty, 

and property of the state of nature. All legitimate government is, then, repre 

sentative in character, embodying 

both the consent and the interests of the 

whole of society. According to Hobbes, this is the case regardless of the 

form monarchic, aristocratic, 

Chs. 13, 17, and 19). 

or democratic in which it is organized (see 

Hobbes in his invention of nonpartisan government attempts what is, accord 

ing to the traditional understanding, the impossible: not merely to control but to 

solve the problem of factionalism. The cause of faction is the partisanship of 

government. The political system of representative government attacks fac 

tionalism at the level of its causes by replacing 

the partisan government of 

traditional society, in which a part rules over the whole in the name of some 

particular conception of the complete good life, with an essentially nonpartisan 

form of government, in which the whole rules over itself on behalf of goods 

that, while in themselves only partial, are universally 

desired. It is impossible, 

under representative government, for human beings to raise in public the ques 

tion of the nature of the good life. It is therefore impossible for them to come 

into conflict politically over the great issues that arise from this question, the 

issues of who should rule and for what purposes. From the point of view of 

representative government, 

they all imply something 

all opinions about the good life are false because 

of a natural or divine right to rule. It would be the


height of folly, then, to fight in politics over these opinions. Little is left to be 

struggled over in the public sphere, 

and what is left is not such as to engage 

men's most powerful passions. Politics is reduced to the struggle over who gets 

what of the essentially instrumental goods of society. It is almost, but not quite, 

subsumed by 

economics. In this situation human beings will retreat into their 

private affairs, which do engage their passions, 

and involve themselves in the 

public arena only when moved by threats to or opportunities for the advance 

ment of their special interests. There is little danger that this kind of politics 

will ever get out of hand and endanger the peace of society. This would be the 

last thing that its participants, animated primarily by essentially economic con 

cerns, would want to see happen. Prosperity accompanies peace. In Hobbes's 

new arrangement of political society, the stirring but frequently destructive 

clash of great parties is replaced by the unexciting but generally nondisruptive 

struggle of interest groups (see Chs. 21 and 24. On the topic of great and small 

parties, see Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 2, "Par 

ties in the United States.). 

The resolution of the problem of factionalism in Hobbes's new science of 

politics prepares the way for the general improvement of the human condition. 

The solution to the problem of faction involves a drastic narrowing of the pur 

poses of government, from the achievement of the complete good life to the 

security of the instrumental goods of life, liberty, and property. Ironically, this 

narrowing opens up 

hitherto unimagined possibilities for progress in society. 

Factionalism is an evil thing because it threatens the enjoyment by men of their 

natural rights, both directly, in the violent conflict that it only too frequently 

touches off, and indirectly, in the way that it interferes with the progress of 

modern natural science in its effort to conquer and master nature for the relief 

of man's estate. One aspect of the competition for political power among the 

various factions in society is a tension between the few wise, the philosophers 

or scientists, and the many unwise, the nonphilosophers or nonscientists. 

Through his system of nonpartisan government, 

which makes it impossible for 

either the few scientists or the many nonscientists to claim a right to rule over 

the other, Hobbes reconciles these two parts of society, guaranteeing to the few 

the freedom from interference by the many that they require for their investiga 

tions, while assuaging the fears that the many might harbor towards the few on 

account of the power that they have at their command. Peace is good not only 

as an end in itself but also as a necessary means for the achievement of a 

greater end, the emancipation of mankind from the bondage of natural necessity 

through the conquest of nature by modern science. On its deepest level, 

Hobbes's system of nonpartisan government is a means by which human beings 

can ally together to more effectually make war on nature. 

The conclusion of this alliance, according 

to liberal political philosophy, 

requires the separation of religion and politics. The establishment of the system 

of nonpartisan government requires the exclusion from the public sphere of the

essentially 


religious question of the nature of the complete good life. This ex 

clusion takes the institutional form, in Hobbes's thought, of secular absolutism. 

Its more successful institutional form, however, is Locke's system of religious 

toleration. Involved in the question of the nature of the complete good life are 

issues of cosmic dimensions: the organization of the universe, 

man's place in 

the order of creation, the power or powers weaving together the whole. Tradi 

tional society, 

which places the question of the nature of the good life at the 

center of its politics, is profoundly religious. This is expressed in its fatalism, 

its submission to the given. The religious character of traditional society is 

expressed even more forcefully 

in its adherence to the contemplative ideal. 

Liberalism, by removing the question of the nature of the good life from poli 

from its traditional fatalism while 

tics, secularizes society. It releases society 

its traditional admiration for the contemplative life with a taste for 

supplanting 

action. Liberalism not only unites but sets in motion traditional society. 

Through the separation of religion and politics liberalism intends to bring about 

a revolutionary change in the way men are governed, and out of that a radical 

transformation of the human condition. The political system of representative 

government abolishes the domination of man by man, and makes possible the 

abolition of the domination of man by nature. Liberalism is eminently sober in 

its politics; its sobriety, however, is in the service of a kind of madness, the 

scientific conquest of nature. There is something divine, at least Dionysian, in 

the liberal project. The works on religion of the liberal political philosophers, 

including Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, articulate this Di 

onysian dimension of liberalism. 

Hume's adoption of the dialogue form in his Dialogues Concerning Natural 

Religion is a rarity in modern philosophy. One of the characters in the work 

asserts that "though the ancient philosophers conveyed most of their instruction 

in the form of dialogue, this method of composition has been little practiced in 

later ages, and has seldom succeeded in the hands of those who have attempted 

it." 

Modern philosophy aims at the development of comprehensive systems, 

beginning with indubitable first principles and moving by 

unbroken chains of 

reasoning and evidence to arrive at sure final conclusions. It therefore tends to 

slip 

ophy 

into a "methodical and 

didactic" 

mode of exposition (p. 3). Modern philos 

is systematic because of its intention or purpose to master and conquer 

nature: it reforms nature in theory in preparation for its reconstruction in prac 

tice. Its principal instrument in this project is modern natural science. Hume 

does not, in his own name, 

explain his choice of the dialogue form for his 

treatment of natural religion. He indicates by his choice, however, that there is 

a limit to how far modern philosophy can be made systematic. Natural religion


is the set of beliefs about God that supposedly can be derived, without the aid 

of divine revelation, by reasoning on the observation or experience of the uni 

verse. It concerns, then, the cause or ground of all being. Choosing the dia 

logue form to present his teaching on natural religion, Hume implies that there 

is a problem in the metaphysical foundations of systematic modern philosophy. 

This, in turn, implies a problem for the conduct of the modern project of the 

scientific conquest of nature. Hume's purpose in the Dialogues is to define and, 

to the extent possible, to resolve this problem in the theory and practice of 

modernity. 

in his own 

Hume masks his intentions in the Dialogues by never speaking 

device of a narrator who 

voice. He accomplishes this by adopting the literary 

introduces the discussion, 

makes unobtrusive comments on the arguments and 

the actions of the interlocutors, and concludes by rendering judgment on the 

debate.6 

The narrator, the youth Pamphilus, 

records for his friend Hermippus a 

conversation that he recently overheard on the subject of religion among three 

older men, Cleanthes, Philo, and Demea. This conversation is of interest not 

only because of the topic with which it deals but also because of the extraordin 

ary differences in the characters of its participants. Pamphilus contrasts "the 

accurate philosophical turn of Cleanthes" 

Philo" 

and the "rigid inflexible orthodoxy of Demea" 

conversation, Pamphilus, "upon a serious review of the 

with the "careless scepticism of 

(p. 4). At the close of the 

whole," 

decides that 

"Philo's principles are more probable than Demea's, but that those of Cleanthes 

approach still nearer to the 

truth" 

(p. 95). This verdict seems curiously obtuse. 

Philo is the dominant, or at least the most vocal, participant in the conversa 

tion. Many of his arguments are left unanswered. He states the conclusions of 

the discussion. If Cleanthes really is the victor in the confrontation with Philo, 

he must win by stealth or even fraud rather than by force. It is possible, how 

ever, that Pamphilus is not a fit judge for the debate. He is young. He is likely 

to be partial towards Cleanthes, his friend and teacher (see pp. 4-5). Perhaps 

he underrates the arguments of Demea and Philo while overlooking problems 

with Cleanthes' 

markably 

arguments. At the same time, it is necessary to note the re 

Pamphilus' 

reserved character of judgment: Cleanthes' 

not simply true, but "nearer to the 

truth" 

than Philo's. 

principles are 

Pamphilus takes up in his introduction the question of the purpose of writing 

dialogues. He claims that the dialogue form is appropriate whenever the issue is 

not only "so obvious that it scarcely admits of 

that it cannot be too often inculcated," 

dispute," 

but also "so important 

the freshness of the presentation making 

up for the hackneyed character of the topic. The dialogue form is also appropri 

ate when the issue is "so obscure and uncertain that human reason can reach no 

fixed determination" 

without any decision" 

on it. In this case the play of "opposite sentiments, even 

offers "an agreeable 

amusement 

The reader enters into 

a kind of community of interest and sympathy with the interlocutors. In this 

way the dialogue "unites the two greatest and purest pleasures of 

life- 

human

study and 


society" 

(pp. 3-4). The subject of natural religion combines all these 

circumstances: there is no topic so obvious but important as the being of God, 

no topic so obscure and uncertain as the nature of God (p. 4). How the dialogue 

form might be utilized to "unite study and 

society" 

is indicated in a comment 

by Philo on Galileo's Dialogue of the Two Principal Systems of 

the World. In 

this book, Galileo has his characters discuss the common or received opinion 

that terrestrial and celestial substances are distinct in their nature and behavior. 

The dialogue form allows him to meet the "full force of 

his "arguments on every side in order to render them popular and 

prejudic 

by turning 

(p. 24). Galileo's intention in the Dialogue, of course, is to demolish the meta 

conv 

physical foundations of the Ptolemaic conception of the universe and to provide 

the metaphysical foundations for the new Copernican conception. Galileo's rev 

olution in astronomy contributed, however, to the demise of the traditional 

world and the creation of the modern world. Galileo uses the dialogue form, 

then, to "unite study and 

society" 

by refounding society 

truths that he has discovered through study. 

on the basis of the 

Hume reveals his intention in the Dialogues, to the extent that he does re 

veal it, in the dramatic structure of the work. This involves, in addition to the 

characters' 

arguments, their actions and designs. The arguments are so absorb 

ing that it is easy to overlook the other elements of the drama. The characters 

conceal, or at least do not loudly proclaim, their intentions. They 

in their actions, generally speaking showing themselves in nothing 

are subdued 

but facial 

expressions and tones of voice, commented on apparently in passing by Pam 

philus. This is altogether appropriate for the situation and the setting: a conver 

sation among a few old friends, 

on a topic of general rather than immediate 

practical interest, carried on in the genial surroundings of the library of one of 

the participants. The discussion among Cleanthes, Philo, 

and Demea on the 

subject of natural religion, however, is no idle chat but a rhetorical contest, a 

kind of war, with 

Pamphilus' 

soul as the prize for the victor. The older men 

debate the principles that ought to guide the young men's education. It begins 

as a dispute between traditionalist piety and modernist activism. It quickly be 

comes a dispute between two fundamentally different conceptions of modernist 

activism, however. Demea proposes to Cleanthes a plan, ultimately borrowed 

from the ancient moralist Plutarch, for educating Pamphilus. Apparently 

troubled by the way Cleanthes is handling 

him the "useful" 

he is 

the youth's education, imparting to 

elements of the arts and sciences. For Demea, the point of 

education is not action but contemplation. His plan culminates in the study of 

"the nature of the 

gods." 

Before the subject of theology is broached, however, 

the mind of the student must be well seasoned with piety. This is accomplished 

through a kind of sceptical attack on human reason, by continually pointing out 

during the study 

thought. 

of the other sciences the failures of man's natural powers of 

Philo, complimenting Demea on his plan of education, agrees that religious


faith must be based on scepticism about the capabilities of human reason. 

"Those who enter a little into study and inquiry," 

he claims, 

all too often come 

to believe that nothing is beyond the reason of man; then, "presumptuously 

breaking 

ple." 

through all fences," 

they 

"profane the inmost sanctuaries of the tem 

Human beings move beyond the reach of their intellectual abilities when 

they speculate on religious subjects, in particular the creation of the universe. 

The only defense against presumptuousness is to set before them the limits of 

human reason, including 

ples in all 

"the insuperable difficulties which attend first princi 

systems" 

and "the contradictions which adhere to the very ideas of 

matter, cause and effect, extension, space, time, 

are better off when they 

motion" 

(p. 6). Human beings 

confine their specualtions to thisworldly 

topics, in 

cluding trade and politics (p. 9). Cleanthes admits the use of a moderate scepti 

cism that considers "each particular evidence 

to the precise degree of evidence which 

natural, mathematical, moral, and political 

cal and 

apart," 

and proportions its "assent 

occurs." 

This is the basis for "all 

science." 

He insists that "theologi 

religious" 

science can and must be built up using this same kind of 

reasoning. He follows Locke in affirming that "faith [is] nothing but a species 

of 

reason," 

that "religion [is] only 

principles of theology" 

a branch of 

are established by 

those employed in "morals, politics, or 

philosoph 

and that "all the 

"a chain of 

arguments" 

similar to 

physics" 

(p. 11-13). Based on the 

observation of design in the universe, Cleanthes argues that the "Author of 

nature is somewhat similar to the mind of 

man" 

(p. 17). Demea is scandalized 

and Philo somewhat amused by the comparison between the divine and the 

human. All three of the participants in the conversation are, then, sceptics of 

one sort or another. They derive very different practical and theoretical conclu 

sions from their scepticisms, however. Demea is led to the piety and rationalist 

theorizing 

of traditionalist religiosity. Philo comes to a kind of moderate mod 

ern scientific empiricism. He distinguishes between heavenly and earthly mat 

ters and restricts the quest for scientific understanding to the latter, 

signing 

while con 

the former to perpetual doubt and uncertainty. Cleanthes is a 

thoroughgoing scientific empiricist, who applies the methods of modern science 

to the study of all beings, both on the earth and in the heavens (see p. 26). In 

spite of their differences, Demea and Philo are able to ally together to combat 

Cleanthes, with Philo bearing the heat of the battle, subjecting his arguments to 

a barrage of sceptical criticisms. 

Two separate conflicts then, shape the drama of Hume's Dialogues. The 

first, of course, is the confrontation between the traditional rationalist Demea 

and the modern empiricist Cleanthes. The second, and more interesting, is the 

confrontation between the two modern empiricists, Cleanthes and Philo. These 

separate conflicts are intermingled, however, as a result of the alliance con 

cluded between Philo and Demea against Cleanthes. The drama has as its cen 

tral motif, then, the rise and fall of the alliance between the modernist sceptic 

and the representative of traditionalist orthodoxy. Formed at the beginning of


Part I, it suffers stresses and strains throughout the dialogue, and finally disin 

tegrates at the end of Part XL It falls apart under the pressure of Philo's relent 

less sceptical questioning, particularly when he touches on the issue of evil in 

the world and what it might or might not imply for the benevolence of the 

Deity. The alliance's fate is the result of the fundamental differences between 

the two allies. These differences are clearly recognized by Cleanthes at the time 

of its formation. He smiles at what he perceives as satire when Philo proclaims 

his approval of Demea's approach to education (p. 7). Demea and Philo come 

together on the basis of what appears as their mutual scepticism about the reach 

of human reason. They differ profoundly, however, over the practical use to 

which the theoretical critique of human reason should be put. For Demea, the 

use of scepticism is to tame the mind to "a proper submission and self-diffi 

dence" 

(p. 5). It supports traditionalist piety, 

with its resignation to the given. 

For Philo, however, scepticism is useful as a discipline for the mind in its 

struggle to understand and ultimately to control the world. It leads the mind to 

be cautious in its reasonings, especially on the most abstruse topics, and to base 

all of its conclusions on the solid foundation of experience. It induces the mind 

to restrict its speculations to the sphere of common experience, leaving alone 

such transcentental questions as "the two eternities, before and after the present 

state of things," 

the "creation and formation of the 

universe, 

and the "powers 

and operations of one universal Spirit existing without beginning and end, om 

nipotent, omniscient, immutable, infinite, 

and incomprehensible" 

(pp. 9-10). 

Scepticism supports, then, the modern project of the scientific mastery and 

conquest of nature. 

The differences between Demea and Philo are summed up in the distinction 

introduced by Cleanthes, between vulgar and philosophic 

scepticism.7 

Vulgar 

sceptics "reject every principle which requires elaborate reasoning to prove and 

establish." 

This sustains "traditional 

superstition" 

while precluding the ad 

vancement of scientific knowledge. Vulgar sceptics "firmly believe in witches, 

though they will not believe nor attend to the most simple proposition of Eu 

clid." 

Philosophic sceptics push their speculations into recondite subjects but 

refrain from drawing any conclusions except from hard evidence. They 

are led 

by their theoretical scrupulousness, however, to assume that the highest ques 

tions, in particular theological questions, are beyond the reach of human rea 

son. For Cleanthes, men of philosophy or science should be willing when in 

vestigating matters of religion to make the same kind of empirically based 

judgments that they do with respect to matters of a more mundane character (p. 

11). Philo, in contrast, compares philosophers or scientists dealing with reli 

gious questions to "foreigners in a strange land to whom everything must seem 

suspicious, and who are in danger every moment of transgressing against the 

laws and customs of the people with whom they live and 

So far 

from common experience, all arguments look equally reasonable, 

equally 

unreasonable. "The 

conver 

or rather 

mind," 

Philo claims, "must remain in suspense


between 

(p. 10). 

them," 

and this "suspense or 

balance' 

Philo and Cleanthes are both partisans of modernity, 

is "the triumph of 

scientific conquest of nature. They agree on its superiority 

giosity and rationalist theorizing 

scept 

with its project for the 

to the pious reli 

of traditionalism. This area of agreement is 

obscured by the rhetorical concessions that Philo makes to Demea, required by 

the alliance between the two. Philo and Cleanthes disagree powerfully, how 

ever, in their understandings of the theoretical foundations of modern science. 

They differ over the question of whether modern science pertains to only 

"earthly" 

or to both "earthly" "heavenly" 

and 

matters that is, whether it pre 

supposes a specific theology or metaphysics. This theoretical disagreement has 

practical consequences for the conduct of the modern project. If modern sci 

ence has no theology or metaphysics of its own, then there is no necessary 

conflict between it and traditional belief, and reconciliation between modernity 

and traditionalism is at least possible. This is Philo's position. It is reflected in 

the alliance he forms with Demea in Part I. If, however, modern science has its 

own theology or metaphysics, then conflict between it and traditional belief is 

inevitable, and there is no possibility of a reconciliation between modernity and 

traditionalism. This is Cleanthes' 

position. It is reflected in the withering attack 

he makes on Demea's a priori argument on the nature of God in Part IX. 

Indicatively, Philo backs away from a frontal assault on Demea in Part IX. He 

criticizes Demea's a priori argument, but only on practical grounds. It is un 

likely, he claims, to convince anyone except "people of a metaphysical head 

who have accustomed themselves to abstract 

reasoning. 

Cleanthes is, then, 

more intransigent or radical in his modernism than Philo. It is Philo, not Cle 

anthes, who attempts to compromise with traditionalism. Cleanthes' 

radicalism 

can easily be overlooked, however, because of his own reserve and because of 

Philo's argumentative pyrotechnics (see p. 44). 

Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion presents dramatically the 

confrontation of two different practical approaches to the modern project of the 

scientific conquest of nature, based on two very different conceptions of the 

theoretical foundations of modern natural science. The crucial practical prob 

lem is the relationship between modernity and tradition: can the modern project 

be pursued within the intellectual, social, and political framework of tradi 

tionalism, or does it require the overthrow of traditionalism? The decisive theo 

retical issue is the place of theology or metaphysics in the structure of modern 

natural science: can modern natural science be constructed on the basis of thor 

oughgoing scepticism about the highest questions, 

or does it presuppose a cer 

tain theology or metaphysics? In the Dialogues, Hume indicates his answers to 

these questions in the movement of the drama. The alliance between the ""care 

less 

sceptic" 

Philo and the "rigidly 

orthodox" 

Demea breaks down, despite all 

of Philo's efforts to placate Demea (see, e.g., p. 19). Eventually Demea sees 

Philo as perhaps "a more dangerous enemy than Cleanthes himself," 

the result


into all the topics of the greatest libertines and infidels" 

(p. 80). 

of his "running 

He is so deeply offended that he leaves the conversation. Perhaps Philo care 

lessly allows himself to be lured or goaded on in his questioning by Cleanthes 

(see, e.g., pp. 44, 71). At any rate it turns out to be simply impossible for him 

to sustain his cooperative relationship with Demea. Science ultimately cannot 

recognize the distinction between "earth" 

and "heaven." 

In the end, Philo is left 

with Cleanthes, reconciled to him. And even though it is Philo who states the 

conclusions of the dialogue, thost'conclusions are essentially Cleanthes' 

Philo 

limns out a theology or metaphysics based on the understanding that "the cause 

or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human 

intelligence" 

Pamphilus in judging . 

(p. 94; compare p. 17). Hume would undoubtedly agree with his 

the outcome of the conversation He 

is as intransigent or 

radical in his modernism as his character Cleanthes. The fact that Hume writes 

the Dialogues along with so many other works on religion indicates that he 

agrees with the position espoused by Cleanthes. He conveys in the Dialogues a 

revolutionary teaching. It is disguised, however, by the reserve of his character 

Cleanthes and the apparent radicalism of his character Philo. Hume adopts the 

dialogue form in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in order to "unite 

study and 

foundations and practical consequences of the modern project of the scientific 

conquest of nature. 

Ill 

society" 

on the basis of his radical conception of the theoretical 

Hume in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion develops what has 

been called his theology of liberation out of the dialectal confrontation of De 

mea, Philo, and Cleanthes. No one of these characters simply speaks for 

Hume. All at least on occasion use distinctively Humean arguments (see e.g., 

pp. 20-21 [Philo]; 30-32 [Demea]; 58-59 [Cleanthes]). From Hume's point of 

view, however, they all err in important ways. Demea goes astray in his rejec 

tion of modern empirical science. Philo is wrong on the fundamental practical 

and theoretical issues pertaining to the modern project: modernity cannot come 

to terms with traditionalism because it presupposes its own profoundly anti- 

traditional theology or metaphysics. While Cleathes is right on the fundamental 

practical and theoretical issues, he appears to be overly optimistic about the 

prospects for the modern project. The conclusions Cleanthes seems to want to 

draw from the relationship between the human mind and the cause of order in 

the universe, for example concerning the benevolence towards man of the first 

cause, Philo shows by his questioning to be unwarranted (see, e.g., p. 55). If 

Hume has a spokesman, it is Pamphilus, who introduces the discussion, com 

ments on the characters and actions of the participants, and judges the outcome 

of the debate.1* 

Hume, however, does what he can to hide this by raising doubts


about Pamphilus' 

judgment, making him young and potentially 

biased. At the 

end of the discussion, Philo sums up what seem to be its conclusions. "The 

cause, or causes of order in the 

universe," 

he claims, "probably bear some 

remote analogy to human intelligence This proposition, however, does not 

allow for "extension, variation, 

or more particular 

explication." 

The analogy 

between the mind of man and the cause of order in the universe applies only to 

man's intelligence and cannot be transferred to "the other qualities of the 

mind," 

by which he means its moral attributes. Finally this proposition "affords 

no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or 

forbearance" 

(p. 94). This cold, even frigid, theology provides the foundation 

for the project in liberal political philosophy for the liberation of man from his 

traditional bondages to man and to nature. 

The pious traditionalist Demea plays a crucial, albeit ironic, role in the de 

velopment of the Dialogues' 

theology. He of course initiates the discussion of 

the subject of religion. This is only the beginning of his influence on the dis 

cussion portrayed in the dialogue, however. Demea time and time again 

changes the direction of the argument by raising 

objections to what he senses 

are its unorthodox implications. He cuts off the discussion at sensitive points. 

At the same time, and apparently without a clear understanding of what he is 

doing, he turns it in new and fruitful directions. This first occurs at the begin 

ning of Part II, when Demea rebukes Cleanthes for the tenor of his remarks on 

the empirical foundations of religion, taking him to imply that it is necessary to 

defend the thesis of the existence of God. Asserting that the existence of God is 

something that no man of common sense can doubt, he insists that the debate 

be about the nature rather than the being of God. This, he avers, is altogether 

incomprehensible to the finite human mind. Cleanthes responds with his design 

argument. The next time Demea gets stirred up is at the beginning of Part VI. 

Cleanthes' 

design argument leaves too much in doubt. It leads to a religion that 

is altogether useless for the purposes of life, positing a Deity who is no possible 

object of trust, worship, 

or obedience. Demea demands an account of the na 

ture of God that allows human beings to repose their confidence in Him. 

In Part IX Demea, having 

seen some of the problems with a posteriori argu 

ments concerning the nature of God, tries his hand at an a priori argument. To 

this Cleanthes delivers a devastating critique, demonstrating the impossibility 

of a priori proof of any matter of fact, including not just the nature but the very 

existence of God. Rebounding from this criticism, Demea at the beginning of 

Part X attempts his own a posteriori argument. He asserts that the truth of 

religion is established not by abstract reasoning but by the sentiments. Human 

beings are compelled by the fear of death, pain, and the rest of life's woes to 

seek protection from a Supreme Being. Offended by the inferences which Philo 

draws out of the reality of human misery, suffering, and sorrow, Demea with 

draws from the conversation at the end of Part XI. After Demea departs, Philo 

delivers his judgments on the questions of the existence and nature of God,

David Hume' 

s Theology of Liberation 265 

which are left by Cleanthes to stand as the conclusions of the whole discussion. 

Demea's eruptions, then, move the argument through its various themes, giving 

it a kind of hidden order or structure. They 

divide it into three major sections, 

each devoted to a single theme or topic. This perhaps accounts for the peculiar 

plural in the title of the Dialogues, which to all outward appearances portrays a 

single continuous conversation. Thanks to Demea, while the argument seems to 

wander more or less aimlessly, it actually examines the most important teach 

ings of traditional or orthodox theism, the omniscience, omnipotence, and be 

nevolence of God. It reformulates these teachings in the light of the empiricism 

of modern philosophy and science. Its reformulations of the traditional teach 

ings on the nature of God comprise a kind of theology of modernity. The 

absence of Demea when the conclusions of the argument are stated serves to 

underscore the profoundly unorthodox or antitraditional character of this new 

theology. 

The omniscience of God is the theme of the first section Part II through 

Part V of the Dialogues. God, for Demea, is the "supreme Mind," 

but due to 

the infirmities of human reason He is altogether incomprehensible to the mind 

of man (p. 15). Philo agrees that the only way for "reasonable to think 

about the Deity is to assume that He is unknowable. Since nothing 

can exist 

without a cause, there must be a cause of the universe; the universe's cause, 

"whatever it be," 

human beings call God. They piously 

impute to Him all 

perfection, including thought. Since what they conceive as perfection is relative 

to their own experience, however, what they say about the Divinity indicates 

nothing about His real nature. Infinitely above the limited understanding of 

human beings, the Supreme Being is "more the object of worship in the temple 

than of disputation in the 

what he calls Philo's 

"pious declamations," 

schools" 

(p. 16). Ignoring 

Cleanthes argues that the nature of the Deity 

deduced from the evidence of design, "the curious adapting of means to 

can be 

throughout the universe. The resemblance of design in God's world to design in 

man's works allows for the inference, "by all the rules of 

some similarity between the mind of man and the "Author of 

Demea objects to Cleanthes' 

ends," 

analogy, 

that there is 

nature" 

(p. 17). 

argument because, based on experience rather 

than abstract reasoning, it gives only a probable and not a necessary proof of 

the existence and nature of God. Philo objects not because the argument is 

based on experience, nor even because it makes use of analogy, but because the 

analogy 

it appeals to is weak. The differences between the universe and man's 

creations are too great for any legitimate comparisons to be made between their 

causes. Philo's concessions to Cleanthes outrage Demea, however, and in order 

to placate his ally he restates and strengthens his criticism. The crux of his 

argument is that since there are many "springs and principles of the 

it is impossible to trace the origin of the universe to any one of them. No 

conclusion about the cause of the whole can be derived from observation of the 

causes of change in any part. It is as unreasonable for human beings to make


their own thought the model for the organization of the universe as it would be 

for a peasant to make "his domestic economy the rule for the government of 

kingdoms" 

(p. 22). 

Cleanthes rejects Philo's dissociation of human and divine intelligence as 

fatal to the progress of science. He reminds Philo, who just before had been 

discussing Galileo's Dialogues, that "Copernicus and his first disciples," 

obvi 

ously referring to Galileo, were compelled to demonstrate "the similarity of the 

terrestrial and celestial matter, because several philosophers, blinded by old 

systems and supported by some sensible appearances, had denied this sim 

ilarity." 

Philo's argument is no better than the "abstruse 

who hold that the universe is unchanging, 

cavils" 

of the Eleatics, 

a whole without parts (p. 26). 

Philo's argument implies that the universe is nothing but change, parts without 

a whole. In neither case is speech or reason about the universe possible. Rea 

soning about the universe involves connecting 

to require, for Cleanthes, assuming 

parts with the whole. This seems 

some kind of intention or purpose as the 

first cause of the whole. It is necessary, in order to think about the behavior of 

the beings that make up the universe, to impute to them some kind of purpose. 

The purposiveness of the parts will then be reflected in the structure of the 

whole. From Cleanthes' 

point of view, human beings, to reason about the uni 

verse, have no choice but to make their "domestic 

economy 

the "rule for the 

government" 

of the whole. The analogy between the universe and the works of 

man is self-evident: they 

involve "the same 

matter" 

and "a like form." 

clinches his point with two illustrations, an intelligible voice from the clouds 

and a library of naturally propagating books. Both these circumstances would 

allow the inference of a superhuman reason or intelligence. There is more evi 

dence of design in the works of nature, however, than in any speech or any 

book. He demands, then, that Philo "assert either that a rational volume is no 

proof of a rational cause or admit of a similar 

ever cavils may be 

coherent, articulate speech, 

design and intention." 

He 

cause" 

to the universe. "What 

urged," 

Cleanthes affirms, "an orderly world, as well as a 

embarrassed and confounded (pp. 26-29). 

Philo apparently accepts Cleanthes' 

cussion after a long 

will still be received as an incontestable proof of 

This argument, according to Pamphilus, leaves Philo 

argument. When he returns to the dis 

period of silence perhaps the longest in the whole conver 

sation he shifts, decisively, the point of his attack. He does not return to his 

earlier position, that no conclusion regarding the cause of the universe can be 

derived from its visible order. He tacitly accedes to Cleanthes' 

essential point, 

concerning the theoretical Cleanthes' 

necessity of what calls his "hypothesis of 

universe" 

design in the (p. 41; see also pp. 66, 70, 82). Philo is rescued from 

his embarrassment by his ally Demea, who picks up the argument with Cle 

anthes. God is incomprehensible to man, according to Demea, because man is 

a compound being and God is One. The mind of man, according to Demea, is a 

"composition of various faculties, passions, sentiments, ideas." 

This is incom-

patible with the "perfect 

admits that a perfectly simple being 

of the Deity as perfectly 


simplicity" 

of the Deity (pp. 31-32). Cleanthes readily 

simple are "complete 

is incomprehensible. Those who conceive 

mystics" 

(p. 32). Mystics, of 

course, do not reason about the universe and its causes. Cleanthes' 

design argu 

ment implies that the first cause of all things is not simple but compounded. It 

is a whole with parts. The order of the beings in the universe is a reflection of 

the order of the elements in the first cause. To reason about the universe and its 

causes ultimately means to attempt to find an account of the hidden order of the 

causes that displays within itself the manifest order of the universe. When Philo 

returns to the discussion, he makes this the point of his criticism of Cleanthes' 

argument.9 

He restricts himself to pointing out the "inconveniences" 

calls 

Cleanthes' "anthropomorphism." 

of what he 

It leads to a multiplicity of possible 

causes. There are, in accordance with the "hypothesis of design in the uni 

verse," 

many Dieties, many possible orderings of the first cause (p. 41). Philo 

admits to Cleanthes that "a man who follows your hypothesis is able, perhaps, 

to assert or conjecture that the universe sometime arose from something like 

design"; beyond that, however, "he cannot ascertain one single circumstance, 

and is left afterwards to fix every point of his theology by the utmost license of 

fancy 

and hypothesis" 

"horror" 

but with "pleasure" 

(p. 40). Cleanthes views Philo's arguments not with 

(p. 41). There is, then, a rational design or order 

to the universe; it is up to human beings, however, as part of their effort to 

understand scientifically the universe, to say just what that rational design or 

order might be. 

This raises a question about the omnipotence of God. This is the theme of 

the second major section of the Dialogues, from Part VI through Part VIII. The 

relationship between the themes of the omniscience and the omnipotence of the 

Deity is indicated in the structure of the dialogue in two ways. Philo takes up 

the argument in the second section explicitly as an extension of one of his most 

important points in the first section, that Cleanthes' 

on the premise that "like effects arise from like 

design argument is based 

causes" 

(p. 42). More impor 

tantly, Demea's attempt in Part IX at an a priori argument on the nature of 

God, so out of place in the dialogue as a whole, effectively brackets together 

the first and second sections. Philo points out that, on Cleanthes' 

"like effects like 

premise of 

causes," 

it is possible to conceive of the universe as an 

animal, since it has many of the properties of animals, including the orderly 

connection of parts to the whole. This makes the Deity the soul of the universe, 

"actuating it, and actuated by it." 

Cleanthes demurs, but only slightly, to sug 

gest that the analogy is even stronger to plants. Both animals and plants have 

their own internal principles of order and change. Philo argues, then, that it is 

plausible to "ascribe an eternal inherent principle of order in the world, though 

attended with great and continual revolutions and 

is "a theory that we must sooner or later have recourse to, 

alteration 

This, he claims, 

whatever system we 

embrace." 

In the world of Philo's theory, there is no room for chance (pp. 42-


46). There are, however, many principles of motion in the universe, including 

reason, instinct, generation, and vegetation. It is possible, he asserts, for hu 

man beings to choose any one of these as the basis for a "system of cos 

mogony." 

Any account of the whole involves a choice about first principles or 

causes. He illustrates his point by referring 

(pp. 49-51). This argument conceals a fallacy, however, 

to Greek and Hindu cosmologies 

which Cleanthes at 

least dimly perceives (see p. 51). The fallacy is in Philo's claim that there is no 

room for chance in the universe. Chance exists, if nowhere else, in the choice 

of first principles by human beings. This is by no means an inconsequential 

matter, as is indicated by the examples of the Greek and Hindu cosmologies. 

Human beings create great civilizations through the cosmologies they pose for 

themselves. These civilizations, in turn, 

shape the ways of life of their peoples. 

This means that human beings in effect create themselves through their choices 

of first principles. The first cause of all things is, then, some kind of combina 

tion of necessity and chance. These two together are perhaps omnipotent. 

While they are immutable, however, they allow for the mutability 

of human 

history, its movement reflecting the combination of the fundamental principles 

of chance and necessity. The first cause is, then, essentially the transhistorical 

ground of history, expressing itself and its power particularly in the self-mak 

ing, historical activity of human beings. 

The question of the benevolence of the Deity is taken up in the last section 

of the Dialogues, in Parts X and XI. This issue arises out of a consideration of 

evil in the world. Nature, according to Demea, has kindled a ""perpetual 

among all living 

war" 

creatures. Human beings can protect themselves from at least 

some of nature's threats by uniting in society. Philo points out, however, that 

this only creates new evils for them. By coming together in society they are 

able to surmount all their "real 

enemies" 

and make themselves masters of "the 

whole animal creation"; at the same time, however, they 

"imaginary 

enemies," 

the "demons" 

of their imagination, 

"superstitious terrors and blast every enjoyment of life." 

raise for themselves 

who haunt them with 

Society 

also sets hu 

man beings against each other. Afflicting one another with "oppression, injus 

tice, contempt, contumely, violence, sedition, war, calumny, treachery, fraud," 

they would quickly dissolve society 

if it were not for the evils that would come 

with separating (p. 63). Philo challenges Cleanthes to maintain his "anthro 

pomorphism" 

in the face of the reality of evil in the world. It is impossible, he 

argues, to claim that the "moral attributes of the Deity," 

including 

His benevo 

lence, are "of the same nature with these virtues in human (p. 66). 

Cleanthes admits the importance of the issue. There would be no purpose in 

demonstrating 

be left "doubtful and 

ness of 

the "natural attributes of the Deity" 

if His moral attributes should 

uncertain." 

He therefore denies the "misery and wicked 

man." 

The good outweighs the bad in human life (pp. 67-68). 

Philo cautions Cleanthes that by taking his stand on this line he is "introduc-

ing 

David Hume's Theology of Liberation 

- 269 

a total scepticism into the most essential articles of natural and revealed 

theology." 

Even assuming the preponderance of good over evil, this is insuffi 

cient to prove the benevolence of the Deity. If He is infinitely powerful, there 

should be no evil whatsoever in the world (pp. 68-69). Cleanthes attempts to 

save the benevolence of the "Author of 

nature" 

by positing that He is finitely 

powerful. He is benevolent, but limited by necessity (p. 71). Philo shows, 

however, that while the thesis of the finitude of the Deity might save His 

benevolence as an hypothesis, it cannot establish it as a fact. No inference 

concerning 

the benevolence of the first cause of the universe can be drawn from 

the mixture of good and evil in the world. The presence of evil is the result of 

a number of circumstances in the organization of the universe that might or 

might not be necessary to it. These circumstances include the use of "pains, as 

well as to "excite all creatures to action"; the "conducting 

world by general laws"; the "frugality 

of the 

with which all powers and faculties are 

distributed to every particular being"; and the "inaccurate workmanship of all 

the springs and principles of the great machine of 

nature" 

(pp. 73-77). From 

his consideration of the causes of evil, Philo concludes that "the original Source 

of all things is entirely indifferent to all these principles, 

and has no more 

regard to good above ill than to heat above cold, or to drought above moisture, 

or to light above heavy" 

(p. 79). Recognizing the force of Philo's argument, 

Cleanthes comments to Demea that "it must be confessed that the injudicious 

reasoning of our vulgar theology 

(p. 80). 

cule" 

has given him but too just a handle of ridi 

The first cause of all things, whatever it might be deemed to be, has no 

particular concern for man. The Deity is a disinterested observer of the universe 

and the beings, including man, that compose it. This disinterestedness, how 

ever, can be interpreted as at least a kind of negative benevolence towards man. 

It is possible to argue, as Philo hints, that the causes of evil in the universe are 

"necessary and 

unavoidable," 

at least for the sake of man's development (see p. 

73). At one point in his argument, he claims that to "cure most of the ills of 

human life" 

it would be necessary to increase only one "power of faculty" 

man's soul, his "propensity to industry and 

labor" 

of 

or his "bent to business and 

application." 

For human beings to be induced to labor, they must feel both the 

lash of fear and the lure of hope: the fear of what they will suffer if they do not 

stir themselves to action; the hope that by their actions they will actually be 

able to improve their situation. The disinterestedness of the first cause provides 

the grounds for both hope and fear. It induces human beings to labor by not 

revealing 

whether it is benevolent or hostile towards them. It distributes to 

them both pleasures and pains (p. 73). Because the first cause is indifferent 

towards human beings, it does not interfere in the course of nature to care for 

their needs. It thus makes it possible for them to employ their powers of reason 

"in the conduct of life" 

(p. 74). More like a "rigid than an "indulgent


son and 

towards human beings, it bestows on them no advantages except "rea 

sagacity." 

It thus forces them to use their reason to gain everything 

they need or want (pp. 75-76). Finally, by allowing a certain "disorder or 

confusion" 

in the operations of nature, it leaves to man the opportunity, by the 

employment of his reason and the application of his industry, to manipulate the 

course of nature (p. 77). The disinterestedness of the first cause moves human 

beings to labor. They would have no reason to undertake the struggles to mas 

ter, create, cultivate, and build the arduous efforts by which civilization is 

constructed if it were either particularly careful or actively hostile to them. It 

forces them to act but leaves them free to determine for themselves how to act. 

Giving them nothing but their wits, the first cause of all things literally compels 

them to make something of themselves. 

The theology or metaphysics developed in Hume's Dialogues Concerning 

Natural Religion supports both elements of the liberal project, nonpartisan gov 

ernment and the scientific conquest of nature. What Cleanthes calls the "Author 

of 

nature" 

not only does not oppose the endeavor by 

human beings to master 

and control nature, it invites them and even compels them to undertake it. The 

first cause of all things constrains man to become his own first cause. God in 

effect demands of man that he make himself into a god. Human beings can 

make the most of themselves if they cooperate with the first cause and choose 

to organize themselves in society in such a way as to expose themselves to the 

lash of fear and the lure of hope. This occurs only under the liberal political 

system of nonpartisan government, in which no individual or group has a spe 

cial place in the order of society. Nonpartisan government, in turn, requires the 

separation of religion from politics. The secularization of politics is not just 

possible but absolutely necessary according to the theology elaborated by 

Cleanthes and Philo. The Deity 

revealed in the discussion does not-indeed 

cannot-rule directly over human beings. He gives no commandments to them. 

He has no will that must be enforced on them, either by Himself directly or by 

His earthly representatives. He cannot be used, then, by any 

one to claim a 

right to rule over the rest of society. The political implications of this theology 

are reflected in Cleanthes' 

comment that "the proper office of religion is to 

regulate the heart of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of toler 

ance, order, and 

obedience." 

When it "acts as a separate principle over 

however, "it has departed from its proper sphere and has become only a cover 

to faction and 

ambition" 

(p. 88). The theology of the Dialogues purges religion 

of its political pretensions. This contributes to the elimination of the evils of the 

rule of man over man adumbrated by Philo (see p. 63). As illustrated in Philo's 

rhetorical reconciliation of "the 

theist" 

and "the 

atheist," 

it makes possible the 

achievement of peace in society (see pp. 85-86). Hume's Dialogues Concern 

ing Natural Religion articulates the theological or metaphysical presuppositions 

of the Dionysian project for the scientific conquest of nature at the same time 

that it lays the political foundations necessary for the project's accomplishment.

CONCLUSION 


Liberal political philosophy, which seeks in practice to separate religion and 

politics, culminates in theory in a kind of religious teaching of its own. This 

religious teaching implies a more or less specific conception of the complete 

good life for man. It is, of course, possible to question how "complete" 

conception of the good life really is. Unfortunately, liberalism cannot give a 

good answer to this question. As is clear from Hume's elaboration of the theol 

ogy of liberalism in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, liberal politi 

cal philosophy abolishes all standards both natural and divine by which it might 

be answered. What this might lead to is reflected in Philo's last speech in the 

Dialogues: 

But believe me, Cleanthes, the most natural sentiment which a well-disposed mind 

will feel on this occasion is a longing 

this 

desire and expectation that Heaven would be 

pleased to dissipate, at least alleviate, this profound ignorance by affording some 

particular revelation to mankind, and making discoveries of the nature, attributes, 

and operations of the Divine object of our faith. A person, seasoned with a just 

sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the 

greatest avidity, while the haughty dogmatist, persuaded that he can erect a 

complete system of theology by the mere help of philosophy, disdains any further 

aid and rejects this adventitious instructor, (p. 94) 

Man might imitate the God of the Bible and organize the world by the word of 

his mouth; he cannot, however, like the Biblical God give the organized world 

meaning and value by simply calling 

it good. From Hume's other writings on 

religion, in particular the Natural History of Religion, it is clear that he would 

by 

no means welcome the flight to revealed religion. It is possible to under 

stand the development of political philosophy after liberalism, and with it the 

course of political development in the modern world, as the result of this yearn 

ing 

for a new revelation from the ground of all Being. 

NOTES 

1. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, edited with an introduction by 

of California Press, 1984), p. 83. 

Peter C. Hodgson (Berkeley: University 

2. See, inter alia, Hobbes, Leviathan Parts III and IV; Locke, First Treatise of Government and 

Reasonableness of Christianity; Spinoza, Theological and Political Treatise. 

3. David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, edited with an introduction by Henry 

D. Aiken (New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1966). 

4. See Aristotle, Politics, translated with an introduction by Carnes Lord (Chicago: University 

of Chicago Press, 1984), Bk. I, esp. 1252al-23. 

5. See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-Wealth 

Ecclesiastical! and Civill, edited with an introduction by 

Books, 1968), Chs. 1-8. 

C B. MacPherson (Baltimore: Pelican


6. The structure of the Dialogues perhaps indicates something about the dimensions of its 

subject matter, relating it to three of the greatest of Plato's dialogues, the Symposium, Theaetetus, 

and Parmenides. Appropriately, the Symposium is the only Platonic dialogue on a god, the god 

Eros. The Theaetetus and Parmenides deal with what are now called epistemology and ontology. 

Commentators tend to associate the Dialogues with Cicero's De Natura Deorum. The resemblance 

is not so strong, however, as to the Platonic dialogues. In De Natura Deorum, Cicero in his own 

name recounts a conversation that he heard. In the Symposium, Theaetetus, and Parmenides, like 

Hume's Dialogues, the conversation is recalled by one of the author's characters. There are a 

number of references to Plato in the Dialogues. There is also a clear reference to Parmenides. 

7. "Demea" 

means something like "common." 

There is a joke about a "Demea" 

in Plato's 

Gorgias. There is much that could be done with the names of the other characters in the Dialogues. 

The most interesting question about names in the Dialogues in why Hume gave his arch-sceptic the 

name of a Jewish Platonist. 

8. Pamphilus' 

judgment in the introduction on the characters of the interlocutors should be 

carefully noted. Most commentators take Philo as Hume's spokesman in the Dialogues; a very few 

take Cleanthes. 

9. See P. S. Wadia, "Philo Confounded," 

in McGill Hume Studies, edited by David Fate 

Norton, et al. (San Diego: Austin Hill Press, 1979), pp. 283-87, for a rather different interpreta 

tion of Philo's show of embarrassment. Wadia is one of the few commentators on the Dialogues 

who takes at all seriously the drama of the work.

Jeffersonian Ethics in Foreign Affairs: 

John Quincy 

Greg Russell 

Adams and the Moral Sentiments of a Realist 

Northeast Louisiana University 

Commemorating the Jeffersonian heritage in American diplomacy, one inex 

tricably tied to the lawful purposes of civil government, is certainly appropriate 

at a time when leading officials salute democratic revolutions throughout Eu 

rope, South Africa, and Latin America. Recent political and ideological up 

heavals throughout the Soviet empire and Eastern bloc nations challenge anew 

the national purpose as much as the national security of the United States. The 

need to redefine the national interest "beyond 

duty 

containme 

carries with it the 

to reconsider the historical basis of American moral and political leader 

ship in a troubled world. Since the earliest days of the republic, the struggle for 

human rights has inspired partisans to invoke the "verdict of history" 

and pro 

claim the "inextinguishable human 

spirit" 

as inseparable from the moral fiber of 

the American union. "From the time of the Declaration of our Independence," 

according to Henry Kissinger, "Americans have believed that this country has a 

moral significance for the 

conscious act by 

world" 

(p. 59). The United States was created in a 

a people dedicated to a set of political and ethical principles 

they held to be of universal meaning. 

A new generation of American statesmen, looking beyond Cold War rivalry, 

are called upon to affirm certain truths to be virtually self-evident: that the 

United States is a great power with a unique national identity; that what we do 

will affect not only our own survival but the fate of Western civilization as 

well; that men fighting for freedom are moved by great ideals; and that, for 

these reasons, it is urgent that we see ourselves and that others see us as acting 

in accord with ideals which are sharable and worthy of respect. Today, Jeffer 

son's common human faith in the rights of man will certainly find acceptance 

in a wider immediate circle than he ever dreamed of. 

Convinced that the republican is the only form of government which is not 

eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind, my prayers and efforts 

shall be cordially distributed to the support of that we have so happily established. 

It is an animating thought, that while we arc securing the rights of ourselves 

and our posterity, we are pointing out the way to struggling nations, who wish like 

us to emerge from their tyrannies also. Heaven help their struggles, and lead them, 

as it has done us, triumphantly through them. (Quoted in Koch, p. 151). 

interpretation. Winter 1990-1991. Vol. 18, No. 2


ing 

The two great religious-moral traditions that infused early American think 

New England Calvinism and Virginian Jeffersonianism arrive at similar 

conclusions about the meaning of American national character and destiny. In 

Wonder Working Providence of Zion' 

s Saviour (1650), Edward Johnson spoke 

of New England as the place "where the Lord would create a new heaven and a 

new earth, 

new churches and a new commonwealth 

altogeth 

A century later 

Ezra Stiles of Yale preached a sermon on "The United States elevated to glory 

and 

honor" 

in which he defined the nation as "God's American Israel." 

Jeffer 

son and John Adams called the amalgam "the dictates of reason and pure 

Americanism" 

(To Edward Rutledge, June 24, 1797, Jefferson [1903], IX, 

409. For "Americanism" 

in John Adams see his letter to Benjamin Rush, July 7, 

1805, in Schutz and Adair, p. 30.) The self-interpretive symbols of American 

nationhood look in two directions: "towards the truth of man's existence per 

sonally, socially, and historically, on the one hand; and toward the persuasive 

and evocative articulation of that truth in the foundation myth of the new com 

munity, on the other 

hand." 

The vision at the center of American politics, then, 

is structured by insights into human reality "taken to be universally valid for all 

mankind, even as they are adapted to the concrete conditions of time and place 

at the moment of the articulation of the new nation as an entity politically 

organized for action in history" 

(Sandoz, pp. 35, 35-36, 38, 83-84, 105, 1 14- 

15, and 123. For the theories of articulation and representation here, see 

Voegelin, Chs. 1-3.) 

Jefferson's conception of the innocence and virtue of the new nation was not 

informed by 

the Biblical symbolism of the New England tracts. His religious 

faith was a form of Christianity which had passed through the rationalism of the 

French Enlightenment. His moral transcendence was expressed in the belief of 

the power of "nature's God" 

over the vicissitudes of history. Jefferson was 

moved to acknowledge that nature's God had a very special purpose in found 

ing this new community. America had a political mission to fulfill, for itself 

and before the eyes of the world: to prove that reason, order, and law are the 

genuine fruits of an educated people governing themselves. 

the eyes of the virtuous all over the earth are turned with anxiety on us, as the 

only depositories of the sacred fire of liberty, and that our falling into anarchy 

would decide forever the destinies of mankind, and seal the political heresy that 

man is incapable of self-government. (To John Hollis, Esq., May 5, 1811, 

Jefferson 11903], XIII, 58) 

Every 

nation has its own form of spiritual pride. These examples of Ameri 

can self-appreciation could be matched by corresponding 

sentiments in other 

nations. To know that nations are subject to the moral law is one thing, while 

to pretend to know with certainty what is good and evil in the relations among 

nations is quite another (Morgenthau [1973], 

p. 11). "Power," 

John Adams

Jeffersonian Ethics in Foreign Affairs 275 

wrote, "always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehen 

sion of the weak: and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all His 

laws" 

(quoted in ibid., pp. 90-91). The tragic conception of politics and diplo 

macy, however, need not recommend cynicism or complacency with respect to 

fundamental moral choices. Indeed, it will make a difference whether the par 

ticular culture in which the policies of nations the actions of statesmen are 

formed is only as deep and as high as the nation's highest ideals, or whether 

there is a dimension in the culture from which the element of vanity in all 

human achievements is discerned. Jefferson's memorable assertion in his First 

Inaugural "we are all republicans, we are all federalists" 

was perhaps less 

important as a conciliatory overture than as a subtle intimation of the moral 

resources in American politics and statecraft. 

That the national unity of all Americans carried a distinctive message for 

between power and morals in 

mankind can be seen by noting the relationship 

Jefferson's philosophy. Of particular importance is how the natural and inalien 

able rights of man are derived from, or connected with, 

natural law. For exam 

ple, Jefferson affirmed the rights of man on a preponderantly moral basis of 

preference and appropriateness to human 

interpersonal context of other selves, may 

nature.1 

Self-realization, always in the 

be the natural moral goal. The impli 

cations of Jefferson's concept of rights for the conduct of men and nations were 

detailed by one historian in the following terms: 

Natural law is the system of governing norms, rules, and duties that bind 

man the correlative, in short, of the natural rights which he claims. Natural law 

in its widest legal sense (what Jefferson referred to as "the law of nature and 

nations") includes this meaning plus the usages and customs of nations dealing with 

other nations in the interest of peace and under the controlling ideal of more 

humane and civilized practice. (Koch, pp. 44-45) 

The enduring moral principles (e.g., the worth of every human being, equal 

ity of consideration to which all are entitled in society, justice, and fraternity) 

are in no way limited to a given time or society but invoke the vision of a 

brotherhood of man. The important point is that one hereby 

asserts a moral 

limit on power politics; one condemns force and violence as an extensive, 

wholesale instrument of national or international policy. Jefferson urged justice 

upon nations if they would have the firm friendship 

Britain, unable to win allies in the great battle with Napoleonic France, Jeffer 

of other countries. Of Great 

son wrote that she was a living example "that no nation however powerful, any 

more than any individual, 

can be unjust with impunity. Sooner or later public 

opinion, an instrument merely moral in the beginning, will find occasion physi 

cally 

to inflict its sentence upon the 

"useful to the weak as well as the 

Jefferson [1892-99], VIII, 300). 

unjust." 

The lesson, he believed, was 

strong" 

(To James Madison, April 23, 1804,


The law of nature and nations, then, becomes another illustration of Jeffer 

son's theory 

of natural rights. Each nation "forms a moral 

member of a nation is "personally 

responsible for his 

person" 

and each 

society." 

The continental 

tradition of raison d'etat, the historical debate about ethical "dualism" 

from 

Machiavelli to Bismarck, is hardly compatible with a theory of rights so ex 

state" 

pressed. Briefly summarized, the heritage of "reason of holds that the 

state is subject to no rule of conduct but the one which is dictated by its own 

self-interest. Salus publica suprema lex. When the statesman is confronted with 

a choice between two actions, the one ethical, the other not, of which the latter 

has a better chance of bringing about the desired result, he must choose the 

latter. When he acts in a private capacity, however, he, like any other private 

individual, must choose the former; "for, 

while political action is free from 

ethical limitations, private action is subject to them. The individual as such is 

moral by nature; political society is amoral, also by 

[1946], p. 176). 

nature" 

(Morgenthau 

Jefferson rejected any dual ethical standard and argued that the limits upon 

the moral conduct of the nation are the same as those upon relations between 

man and man. 

The moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a state of nature, 

them into a state of society, and the aggregate of the duties of all the 

accompany 

individuals composing the society constitutes the duties of that society towards any 

other; so that between society and society the same moral duties exist as did 

between individuals composing them, while in an unassociated state, and their 

maker not having released them from those duties on their forming 

themselves into 

a nation. ("Opinion on the Question Whether the United States Has a Right to 

Intervene to Renounce Their Treaties with 

France" 

[1903], III, 227) 

Jefferson's counsel merely points to the fact that it is always the individual who 

acts, either with reference to his ends alone or with reference to the ends of 

others. "I know but one code of morality for men, whether acting singly or 

collectively." 

If the morality of a solitary individual "produces a just line of 

conduct in him why should not the morality of 100 men produce a just line 

of conduct in them acting 

together?" 

(To James Madison, August 28, 1789 

[1903], VII, 448-49). The action of a society or nation has no empirical exis 

tence at all. What empirically exists are always the actions of individuals who 

perform identical or different actions with reference to a common end. 

The only exception to the laws of nature and nations is the transcendent right 

to resist self-destruction. As there are circumstances which sometimes excuse 

the nonperformance of contracts between man and man, so nations may annul 

their obligations "if performance becomes self-destructive to the 

"the law of self-preservation overrules the laws of obligations in 

("Opinion 

" 

party." 

Only 

[1903], III, 228). In addition, Jefferson was enough of a realist 

to see clearly that no nation can fully transcend its own interests. "All know the 

others


influence of interest on the mind of man, and how unconsciously his judgment 

is warped by 

influence" ("Autobiography," 

that [ 1903] , I, 120). In 1812, when 

Napoleon was at the pinnacle of his power, Jefferson was unprepared to con 

template moral principles apart from the political exigencies of American na 

tional security. His was the hope that "the powers of Europe may be so poised 

and counterpoised among themselves, that their own security may require the 

presence of all their forces at home, leaving the other quarters of the world in 

tranquility" 

undisturbed 

(quoted in Morgenthau [1951], pp. 20-21). 

This was also a realism that made room for political ideals and declarations 

of rights. The Thomas Jefferson who wrote in 1809 that "1 am persuaded no 

constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire and 

self-governm 

could also write in 1817 that America's role in the world was 

to "consecrate a sanctuary for those whom the misrule of Europe may compel 

to seek happiness in other 

but moral in nature: "This refuge once known," 

climes." 

America's influence was not to be military 

happiness even of those who remain there, by warning 

he declared, "will produce 

their taskmasters that 

another Canaan is open where there subjects will be received as brothers" 

(quoted in Bellah, p. 89. See also Germino.) The moves and countermoves in 

the struggle for political power must be intelligible as a dialectic movement 

toward the realization of justice. Consider in this connection Jefferson's admo 

nition that " 

. it 

is true, that nations are to be judges for themselves; since no 

nation has the right to sit in judgment over another, but the tribunal of our 

consciences remains, and that also of the opinion of the 

world" 

("Opinion 

[1903], III, 228). 

Modern perspectives of realism and idealism in American diplomacy often 

sharpen the power-morality dichotomy in such a fashion as to ignore the man 

ner in which a statesman's political responsibility is inseparable from his role as 

a moral witness to the actions of his nation. Implicit in the Jeffersonian world 

view is the prescription that America's dual importance, as a native achieve 

ment and worldwide example, must embody an element of restraint and pay 

proper respect to the varieties of possible political experience elsewhere. For 

the diplomatist, the Jeffersonian legacy is not a doctrine or mere ideological 

credo; rather, his contribution (although not alone here among the Founding 

Fathers) underscores the centrality of political ethics for relating the national 

interest to structures of community and justice beyond the parochial nation 

state. The issue is one that points to the need for a meeting ground upon which 

the philosopher and statesman can momentarily converge. 

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS AND AN ETHICS OF CIRCUMSPECTION 

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., refers to John Quincy Adams, and several of his 

contemporaries, as honest Jeffersonians (p. 313). Admittedly, the categoriza 

tion is arguable in light of several profound differences in political and philo- 

"


sophical orientation; however, Schlesinger's paradox is not entirely lost with 

reference to a common intellectual inclination on the part of both leaders to 

affirm, however precariously, the moral basis of American power and expan 

sion. Moreover, they arrived at this conclusion by divergent paths, even while 

disagreeing 

on the origins and merits of republican and democratic politics. 

"We are . as Mr. Jefferson forty years ago said, 

cans, but not all Democrats, 

all federalists all republi 

no more that we are all Aristocrats or Monar 

chists" 

(Adams [1842], p. 30). Yet Adams, the only federalist in the United 

States Senate to support Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana territory, ac 

knowledged in this transaction 

Fortune claims to herself the lion's share. To seize and to turn to profit the 

precise instant of the turning tide, is itself among the eminent properties of a 

Statesman, and if requiring less elevated virtue than the firmness and prudence that 

withstand adversity, or the moderation which adorns and dignifies prosperity, it is 

not less essential to the character of an accomplished ruler of men. (Adams [1850], 

pp. 83-84) 

Adams, with Jefferson, knew too well that "the selfish and the social passions 

are intermingled in the conduct of every man acting in a public 

(Memoirs, August 20, 1809, II, 13). Moreover, the good which an individual 

can do for his fellow citizens "is seldom proportioned to his dispositions and 

the inclination to do good itself, unless enlightened by a clear perception, 

guided by a discriminating judgment, and animated by 

capacity" 

active resolution, 

evaporates in the dreams of imagination (Memoirs, March 4, 1820, V, 

13). 

The intellectual universe of John Quincy Adams, 

a compound of Christian 

faith in the gospel of modern liberal reason, discloses the unique resources that 

would help mold the diplomatic achievements of America's greatest Secretary 

of State in the nineteenth century. What has been described as the Golden Age 

of American diplomacy, the 1814-1828 era, forms the backdrop for Adams's 

diplomacy during the Madison and Monroe administrations. During these 

years, the United States signed the treaty of peace ending the War of 1812, 

issued the Monroe Doctrine, 

and strengthened its maritime power through an 

agreement with Britain to clear the Great Lakes of warships and by obtaining 

rights to fish off the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland. Americans extended 

their continental reach through the annexation of Florida, by removing Russian 

influence from the southwestern coast of North America, through the establish 

ment of the American-Canadian boundary from the Great Lakes to the Rockies, 

and by staking their first claims to the Pacific coast (La Feber, p. 13). 

Adams was a central figure in all these transactions and, in each instance, 

saw a larger moral message for the exercise of power in defense of the national 

interest. Inasmuch as the voluminous record of Adams the diplomatist has been 

treated at length elsewhere (see Bemis, Graebner, and Lang and Russell), this


essay looks more towards Adams the ethicist and his unfailing regard for the 

morality of state behavior. His inability to countenance an "irremediable 

between the principles of ethics and diplomacy provides a useful point of de 

parture to rethink the moral prerogatives of the American statesman. Adams's 

quality as a human being has a direct and obvious relation to his political and 

social thinking. He viewed the moral and intellectual qualities of others from 

unassailable heights whereon he felt himself for the most part secure, despite 

occasional lapses of penetrating self-analysis. He was, however, 

moralist; he also felt the promptings of desire for success and place: 

I want the seals of power and place, 

The ensigns of command, 

Charged by 

To rule my native land. 

the people's unbought grace 

Nor crown, nor sceptre would I ask 

But from my country's will, 

By day, by night, to ply the task 

Her cup of bliss to fill. (Adams [1848], p. 22) 

no ascetic 

Adams first entered the political arena with the publication of his "Letters of 

Publicola," 

demolishing Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. These papers, which 

grew out of the controversy between Paine and Edmund Burke concerning the 

French Revolution, exemplify 

Adams's reliance on natural law to illumine the 

foundations of liberty and to defend minority rights in republican government. 

Like the writings of his father, his seek to oppose the extreme views of Paine 

and of the French Revolution and yet to retain faith in the American theory of 

natural rights. Adams many times expresses his allegiance to the principle of 

natural rights, including 

the "unalienable right of resistance to 

tyranny." 

not the basic premise of Paine's book to which he is opposed, but the conclu 

sions which Paine infers from them. This "commentary upon the rights of 

man," 

he says, draws "questionable deductions from unquestionable princi 

It is 

Paine, as the controversy develops, acknowledged "that which a whole 

nation chooses to do, it has a right to do." 

Adams responded with the belief 

that "it is of infinite consequence that the distinction between power and right 

should be fully acknowledged, 

principles of legislators." 

and should be admitted as one the fundamental 

This principle, that a whole nation has a right to do whatever it pleases, cannot in 

any sense be admitted as true. The eternal and immutable laws of justice and of 

morality are paramount to all human legislation. The violation of those laws is 

certainly within the power, but it is not among the rights of nations. The power of 

a nation is the collected power of all the individuals which compose it. If, 

therefore, a majority 

are bound by no law human or divine, and have no other 

mle but their sovereign will and pleasure to direct them, what possible security can


any 

citizen have for the protection of unalienable rights? The principles of 

liberty must still be the sport of arbitrary power, and the hideous form of despotism 

must lay aside the diadem and the scepter, only to assume the party-colored 

garments of democracy. (II "Publicola," 

also Wright, pp. 168-71.) 

11 June 1791, Writings, I, 69-71. See 

The half-century of public life as diplomatic emissary, Secretary of State, 

President, and Congressman led him to defend the rights of property and 

tradition while opposing slavery and the southern interest. Between the two 

commitments, Adams saw no essential contradiction. "The True Theory of 

Government," 

he wrote to George Bancroft in 1835, "is that which provides 

alike for the protection and security both of persons and 

property 

("Letters," 

pp. 246-47). He died painfully conscious of his failure to accomplish any of 

those high hopes for American national character upon which he had expended 

his life. Judging Adams' 

credentials as a conservative thinker, one author 

writes: "It is hard to reproach this inspiring man with the collapse of his 

ideals; but the fact remains that he expected more from men than any true 

conservative should expect, and he got from them less than many a leader 

immeasurably Adams' 

moral inferior can 

obtain" 

(Kirk, pp. 257-58). Adams 

was forever tormented by the thought of what he should have been, destroyed 

by a nation and a superintending Providence unable or unwilling 

vision of national grandeur. 

to heed his 

If my intellectual powers had been such as have been sometimes committed by the 

Creator of men to single individuals of the species, my diary would have been, 

next to the Holy Scriptures, the most . . valuable book ever written by human 

hands, and I should have been one of the greatest benefactors of my country and of 

mankind. I would, by Almighty 

the irresistible power of . . 

God, have banished 

war and slavery from the face of the earth forever. But the conceptive power of 

mind was not conferred upon me by my Maker, and I have not improved the 

scanty portion of His gifts as I might and ought to have done. (Quoted in H. 

Adams, pp. 34-35) 

He sensed that his duty was the conservation of America's moral worth; he 

knew his age for a time of transition; but how to contend with this grim sphinx, 

he never properly discovered. 

That Adams as thinker has been largely ignored by most standard works on 

America's intellectual traditions may be explained, to some degree, by the 

manner in which his world view cut across conventional theoretical guideposts. 

Henry Adams considered that his grandfather had been a political man, actu 

ated by ordinary feelings; whereas Brooks Adams judged him an "idealistic 

philosopher who sought with absolute disinterestedness to put the Union upon a 

plane of civilization which would have averted the recent War; who failed, 

as all men must fail who harbor such a purpose, 

and who . resigned himself

and his ambitions to fate" 

Jeffersonian Ethics in Foreign Affairs 28 1 

(quoted in H. Adams, p. vii. See also Nevins, p. 

ix.). Adams's social and political philosophy derived in great measure from his 

own reading and converse with eighteenth-century thinkers, in particular John 

Locke, but it constituted as well a special synthesis of old ideas. He was also 

obligated to the "long tradition of medieval political thought, back to St. 

Thomas, in which the reality of moral restraints on power, the responsibility of 

rulers to the communities which they ruled, and the subordination of govern 

ment to law were 

axiomatic." 

His combination of the Lockean position with an 

important emphasis upon the vigorous role to be played by 

government in a 

program of internal improvements; his combination of a strong nationalism 

based upon a sense of moral rectitude with an insistence upon self-restraint, 

equality, and a recognition of moral laws in the relations of nations; his combi 

nation of a religious faith in the natural-law concept with an empirical and 

skeptical view in the realm of science made Adams unique among public fig 

ures of his day in the United States (Lipsky, p. 328; Sabiiie, p. 523). 

Adams has been aptly described as "the classic example of the political 

moralist in thought and word, who cannot help being a political realist in ac 

tion." 

His international thought was anchored in the realist tradition of Wash 

ington and Hamilton; yet he did the better part of his work in statecraft in an 

atmosphere saturated with Jeffersonian principles. Between Adams's moral 

principles and his conception of the national interest of the United States there 

was hardly ever a conflict. The moral principles, as Hans J. Morgenthau sug 

gested, were nothing but political interests formulated in moral terms, and vice 

versa ([1951]), pp. 19, 22). Adams' 

seminal contributions to the American 

diplomatic tradition freedom of the seas, the Monroe Doctrine, and Manifest 

Destiny are evidence of this achievement. For example, the legal principle of 

freedom of the seas was a weapon through which an inferior naval power tried 

to safeguard its independence from Great Britain. Similarly, the Monroe Doc 

trine's moral postulates of nonintervention (and anti-imperialism) were negative 

conditions for the security and prestige of the United States. Their fulfillment 

insulated the United States from the power struggles in Europe and, through it, 

ensured the predominance of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. 

Manifest Destiny 

was the moral and ideological incentive for American conti 

nental expansion and subjugation of native inhabitants (ibid., pp. 22-23). 

Morgenthau's analysis, however, 

speaks more to effect and less to cause. 

The clear implication of his commentary is that realism and idealism need not 

always be treated as mutually exclusive categories or criteria from which to 

judge the words and deeds of the statesman. Equally 

important in this connec 

tion is whether moral desiderata above the nation state function only as an 

ideological apology for the powerful (the homage that vice pays to virtue) or as 

an exercise in costly self-deception for the weak. Is the statesman ill-advised to 

derive norms of national conduct from some other source than mundane politi 

cal reality? It must be noted that these questions are rarely, if at all, felt and


confronted by the statesman in a way that can be easily 

transformed into the 

systematic analysis of hypothetical possibilities. While Adams may have 

avoided systematic expression, he evolved a conception of life, God, and the 

universe into which his attitude on all the problems of his political time may be 

fitted. Even if Adams could not disengage himself entirely from the singular 

heat of political passions, his legacy substantiates the normative and philosoph 

ical core of all serious political thinking. Of no small significance here is how 

his reflection on man's nature and the moral tasks of governance relates to the 

duties of American national interest in world affairs. 

He found the world about him confined and controlled by a paramount law 

of nature, superior to the regulations of humans, a law which the logical mind 

could discern and apply to the political fortunes of nations. For example, he 

rejected the demand pressed on the Washington Administration that the United 

States support France against the combined powers of Europe in 1793. America 

was commanded by the "law of nature, which is paramount to all human legis 

lation, or compact, to remain at peace, and to content ourselves with wishing 

that laureled victory may sit upon the sword of justice, and that smooth success 

may 

August 24, 1793, Writings, I, 145-46). In this philosophical scheme the 

always be strewed before the feet of virtuous Freedom" 

(III "Marcellus," 

United States occupied a unique position, for it was the first nation in history to 

announce foundation principles embedded in the "law of 

nature" 

(see Adams, 

[1831]). The Declaration of Independence announced "the one People, assum 

ing their station among the Powers of the Earth, as a religious, civilized and 

Christian People acknowledging themselves bound by the obligations, and 

claiming the rights to which they were entitled by the Laws of Nature and 

Nature's God." 

The laws of nature, according to Adams, applied to the social 

intercourse between sovereign communities and found expression in the Euro 

pean law of nations. These laws are "all derived from three sources: the . 

dictates of justice; usages, sanctioned by custom; and treaties, or national cove 

nants." 

In addition, Adams acknowledged that the "Christian nations, between 

themselves, admit, with various latitudes of interpretation, and little consis 

tency of practice, the laws of humanity and mutual benevolence taught in the 

gospel of Christ" 

(II "Marcellus," 

. . 

Writings, I, 129). Americans "laid the foun 

dation of their government upon the eternal and unalterable principles of human 

rights." 

That government's essential purpose the very reason for which it is 

instituted is to secure the "natural rights of 

mankind" 

ensured that the struc 

tures of power would be "subordinate to the moral supremacy of the People" 

([1837], pp. 20-22). 

Nor is Adams's devotion to the precepts of natural law invalidated by point 

ing out that, on occasion, he could specifically sanction departure from princi 

ple, although the departure was explained in terms of moral and legal obliga 

tion. Concerning the acquisition of Louisiana, Adams believed that, although 

the consent of the inhabitants should have been gained, it would have been

Jeffersonian Ethics in Foreign Affairs - 283 

impracticable to try to obtain it prior to the treaty and that "theoretic principles 

of 

government" 

had to be modified to meet the "situations of human events and 

human 

concerns" 

("Notes on Speech on Motion," 

Writings, III, 28-29). The 

treaty-making power had been used constitutionally in acquiring the territory; a 

plebiscite might have denied the results of the treaty. Yet the United States 

could not be relieved of the obligation to procure the consent of the inhabitants 

after the treaty. 

And as nothing but necessity can justify even a momentary departure from those 

principles which we hold as the most sacred laws of nature and of nations, so 

nothing can justify extending the departure beyond the bounds of necessity. From 

the instant when that [necessity] ceases the principle returns in all its force, and 

every further violation of it is error and crime, (ibid.) 

The law of nature, then, determines the extent of deviation that necessity may 

occasion from its precepts. Adams once wrote in his Memoirs that principles 

should be adhered to strongly only to the degree of their importance and of the 

importance of results deriving from their application (December 22, 1833, IX, 

58). Neither intentions nor results are, by themselves, a moral guarantor of the 

national interest. Adams would not accept our dichotomy of realism and ideal 

ism; he would, as Nathan Tarcov explains, emphasize the complementary rela 

tion of principle and prudence. "Principles are not self-applying: They 

tell you what to do. They 

Prudence is not self-sufficient either; it requires principles for 

cov, 

p. 48). 

do not 

require prudence and judgment for their application. 

guidan 

(Tar 

The competing claims of power and principle to which Adams alluded were 

nowhere better exemplified than in his own defense of General Jackson's 1818 

invasion of Spanish territory in Florida and the storming of Pensacola. On the 

one hand, Adams stood alone in the Cabinet in holding that the action had been 

"defensive," 

neither an act of war nor in violation of the Constitution (Mem 

oirs, July 17, 1818, IV, 111), that the capture of Pensacola was in anticipation 

of a threat from the Spanish governor to drive Jackson out of the province that 

he had entered in pursuance of his orders. He cited chapter and verse from 

Martens on international law in support of his convictions. On the other hand, 

he wrote of the Administration's moral and political "dilemma" 

self unable to escape the judgment of power at hand. 

and was him 

The Administration were placed in a dilemma from which it is impossible for them 

to escape censure by some, and factious crimination by many. If avow they and 

approve Jackson's conduct, they incur the double responsibility of having 

commenced a war with Spain, and of warring in violation of the Constitution 

without the authority of Congress. If they disavow him, they 

must give offence to 

all his friends, encounter the shock of popularity, and have the appearance of 

truckling to Spain. But the mischief of this determination lies deeper: 1. It is


weakness, and confession of weakness. 2. The disclaimer of power in the 

Executive is of dangerous example and of evil consequences. 3. There is injustice 

to the officer in disavowing him when he is strictly justifiable. (Nevins, pp. 196 

200) 

Adams's position, elaborated further in a momentous state paper to the Ameri 

can Minister in Spain, won the enthusiastic endorsement of Jefferson. This was 

"among the ablest compositions [he had] ever seen, both as to logic and style 

and was a vivid illustration of the level of American statecraft (from 

Jefferson to President Monroe, January 18, 1819, in Adams, Writings, VI, 

502). Intervening circumstances, particularly slavery and the annexation of 

Texas (the "apoplexy of the Constitution"), led Adams some three decades later 

to reverse his position and disclaim the power of President Polk's "aggression" 

against Mexico in 1846. Adams viewed the war as an attempt by Polk to move 

beyond proper continental limits through the use of force and expansion of 

slavery. 

With respect to the first principles of philosophy and theology, as apart from 

science, Adams was less given to questioning the reasons for things than his 

father, with whom he discussed the issue. John Quincy Adams spoke of never 

having "much relish for the speculations of the first philosophy"; his mind was 

not one that took delight "in reasoning high upon 'Fix'd fate, free will, and 

foreknowledge 

absolute' " 

(To John Adams, October 29, 1816, Writings, VI, 

111-12). Disavowing the metaphysics of doctrinal schisms within his own 

faith, Adams declared that "the only importance of religion to my mind counts 

mankind" 

in its influence . . . upon the conduct of (VII, 90). Adams believed 

in "the genuine doctrines of Christianity 

happiness." 

in their application to the pursuit of 

In addition, he cited the "Socratic and Ciceronian moral philosophy 

as the most exalted system of human conduct ever presented to the 

(Memoirs, April 17, 1813, II, 462). This synthesis of classical and Christian 

dimensions is broadly compatible with the moral-legal precepts shaping the 

Founders' 

faith in a constitution grounded in principles of "higher law." 

Its tenets were beyond the ordinary level of human infirmity; and so are those of 

Christianity. It made the essence of virtue to consist in self-subjugation; and so 

does Christianity. It gave out a theory of perfection to the aim of man, and made 

the endeavor to attain it duty; so does Christianity. The perfect example . was 

not given, as by Christ; not even Socrates. Yet he, and Cicero . 

eminence of practical virtue. . (ibid.) 

did 

attain an 

It was among the obligations of statesman, Adams believed, to "aim in so far 

as their abilities extend towards the moral purification of their country from 

besetting 

sins." 

This would be accomplished, in the first instance, "by setting 

the example of private morality"; and, second, "by promoting the cause in 

every way that they can lawfully act on 

others" 

(To James Lloyd, October 1, 

world"


1822, Writings, VII, 312-13). For Adams, natural religion was not a product 

of a spontaneous understanding in the heart, but was a learned body of princi 

ples in the keeping of society and brought to each generation by 

civic education. 

the forces of 

In Adams's political theory, the Creator had made man a "social being," 

blended his happiness with that of his fellow man, and government was a nec 

essary instrumentality 

had 

for the effectuation of this liaison. Yet he differed from 

the general spirit of his day, which was manifested in either a conservative 

desire for a government only strong enough to keep the enemies of social order 

in harness, or a more radical and Jacksonian opposition to strong govern 

ment, except insofar as it must be used to keep the economic oligarchy from 

tyranny. Seeing in any 

political order the hopes and aspirations of human na 

ture, Adams looked upon reason as the foundation from which "we participate 

of the divine nature itself." 

In his inaugural lecture as Harvard Professor of 

Rhetoric in 1805, Adams observed: "It is by the gift of reason, that the human 

species enjoys the exclusive privilege of progressive improvement, and is 

able to avail itself to the advantages of individual discovery" 

([1962], pp. 13- 

14). Civil society merely reflected the prevailing concepts of character and 

virtue among its members. Government did represent "a restraint upon human 

action, and as such, a restraint upon 

Liberty." 

The constitutional framers were 

"aware that to induce the People to impose upon themselves such binding liga 

ments, motives were not less cogent than those from which the basis of human 

association were . . . 

necessary" 

([1850], pp. 34-35). A theory of rights, there 

fore, is inconceivable without a corresponding conception of obligations. A 

passage from Adams's first State of the Union address is worth quoting at 

length. 

The great object of the institution of civil government is the improvement of the 

condition of those who are parties to the social compact, and no government 

can accomplish the lawful ends of its institution but in proportion as it improves the 

condition of those over whom it is established. But moral, political, and 

intellectual improvement are duties assigned by the Author of Our Existence to 

social no less than individual man. For the fulfillment of these duties governments 

are invested with power, and for the attainment of the end . . the 

delegated power is a duty 

criminal and odious. ([1966], I, 243-44) 

exercise of 

as sacred . as the usurpation of powers not granted is 

By no means, however, was Adams's tribute a ceremony 

of national self- 

congratulation. He believed that the doctrine of internal improvement had more 

than an American application. He was, for example, filled with admiration for 

Peter the Great as the genius who had built St. Petersburg according to a mag 

nificent plan. Peter applied his energies through government, and the capital 

was suited to the leadership that was reorienting Russia in a new direction. As 

Secretary of State, Adams admonished the Columbians to think little of Colum-


bia as a center of empire but to give due regard to the bounties of nature. "God 

to thee has done his part do 

thine" 

(National Archives, IX, 297-98). No 

negative suspicion of government limited his conception of what men could 

accomplish through its agency. He enjoined men of all lands to apply their 

skills through government to the task of internal improvement. 

Like Jefferson, Adams was unwilling to admit of any dual morality in the 

uses of politics and diplomacy i.e., by setting the political sphere apart from 

the private one for purposes of ethical evaluation. In his Harvard commence 

ment address upon graduating in 1787, Adams took up the problem in a speech 

Community." 

on the "Importance of Public Faith to the Well-Being of a He 

was troubled by the suggestion "that nations are not subjected to those laws, 

which regulate the conduct of individuals; that national policy commands them 

to consult their interest, though at the expense of foreigners, 

or of individual 

citizens." 

Could there, he asked, be more than one kind of justice and equity? 

Could "honor and probity be qualities of such an accommodating nature that 

they 

will like the venal sycophant at court suit themselves to all times to the 

interests of the prevailing 

ings, I, 34-35). Adams thought of the nation as a "moral 

party?" 

(To Jeremy Belknap, August 6, 1787, Writ 

person" 

in the family 

of nations. This moral person, in view of the international law governing the 

subject, was possessed of external rights and obligations that remained un 

changed by any 

"internal revolution of government."2 

In this context, he de 

scribed as a new maxim in the law of nations the principle, especially devised 

by the victors to apply to Napoleon, that a sovereign by the breach of a treaty 

should forfeit "all legal right to 

existence."' 

Adams was, of course, exposed to the political temptation of acting on a 

felicitous coincidence between the best interests of the United States and eternal 

verity. 

Nothing do 

that we could . 

would remove this impression until the world shall 

be familiarized with the idea of considering our proper domain to be the continent 

of North America. From the time we became an independent people it was as much 

a law of nature this should become our pretension as that the Mississippi should 

flow to the sea. (Memoirs, IV, 437-39) 

Moreover, he conceived of the law of nature and nature's God as requiring the 

eventual achievement of most "liberal" 

principles of commercial relations and 

exchange, in particular resulting in the opening up of South American ports to 

the commerce of the world and in relaxing imperial commercial restrictions. He 

especially importuned the British to liberalize their system, and propounded a 

policy 

of mutual exclusions upon British commerce in order to force conces 

sions. He described the policy of the United States with regard to South Amer 

ica as based upon the two principles of "entire and unqualified 

recipro 

and 

permanent most-favored-nation treatment, which were necessary to the achieve-


ment of South American independence (National Archives, VIII, 241. See also 

Adams [1900], II, 288). In negotiating treaties of commerce, 

a nation should 

seek not only to satisfy its own interests but should also be willing "to concede 

liberally 

Message," 

Regarding 

to that which is adapted to the interest of the 

p. 380). 

other" 

("Third Annual 

British and Spanish possessions upon the northern and southern 

borders, Adams thought it "impossible that centuries should elapse without 

finding 

them annexed to the United States." 

Few of Adams's contemporaries 

would be so quick to stake out the moral high ground by vigorously protesting 

that this did not involve "any 

Any 

spirit of encroachment or ambition on our 

effort on the part of the United States "to reason the world out of a belief 

that we are ambitious will have no other effect than to convince them that we 

add to our ambition hypocrisy" 

(Memoirs, IV, 439). 

Adams recognized that the nature of international politics often entailed 

making a distinction between methods and purposes in diplomacy. The nation 

may be a moral person; however, self-preservation was also the first law of 

nature. Nations acknowledged no judge between them on earth. Their govern 

ments "from necessity, 

must in their intercourse with each other decide when 

the failure of one party to a contract to perform its obligations, absolves the 

other from the reciprocal fulfillment of its 

"committed many great 

ernment with those of external 

own" 

([1839], p. 68). America had 

errors" 

in "confounding the principles of internal gov 

relations." 

Adams never extended normative 

sanction to the presence of self-interest in political life. But there "must be 

force for the government of mankind, 

and whoever in this world does not 

choose to fight for his freedom, must turn Quaker or look out for a 

part." 

master" 

(To 

William Vans Murray, July 22, 1798, Writings, II, 344). Adams disclaimed 

"as unsound all patriotism incompatible with the principles of eternal justice." 

Fiat justitia, pareat coelum. Yet this line of reasoning was not precisely appli 

cable to the diplomatic craft, inasmuch as negotiation and political compromise 

were rooted in a prudent disposition to reconcile conflicting values in changing 

situations. 

Adams was acutely conscious of the significance and implication of diplo 

matic maneuver, 

and his first contacts with the British government provided 

him with early experience in the art. Sir Charles Bagot was the most successful 

British minister he had known. This fact impressed him because success was 

perhaps based on the minister's mediocre talents, and this possibility staggered 

Adams's "belief in the universality of the maxim that men of the greatest tal 

ents ought to be sought out for diplomatic 

Adams noted 

missions." 

In a revealing profile, 

The principal feature of his character is discretion, one of the most indispensable 

qualities of the good negotiator. His temper is serious, but cheerful. He has no 

depth of dissimulation, though enough to suppress his feelings when it is for his


interest to conceal them. To neutralize fretful passions and soothe prejudices, a 

man of good breeding, inoffensive manners, and courteous deportment is nearer to 

the tme diplomatic standard than one with the genius of Shakespeare, the learning 

or the wit of Swift. 

of Bentley, the philosophical penetration of Berkeley, 

(Memoirs, April 14, 1819, IV, 339) 

Adams understood the delicacy and danger in bestowing diplomatic confi 

dences; "but, crafty and fraudulent as the trade has the reputation of being, I 

. give it as the result of my experience that confidence . judiciously . bestowed 

negotiation" 

is one of the most powerful and efficacious instruments of 

(May 

28, 1819, p. 377). Adams also knew that improper methods, or morally ques 

tionable means, may exact a high price. What is here done with good intentions 

but unwisely and hence with disastrous results is morally defective; for it vio 

lates the ethics of responsibility to which action affecting others, and political 

action par excellence, is subject (Morgenthau [1946], 

p. 186). 

ADAMS AND THE AMERICAN MISSION: FINAL THOUGHTS 

Adams joined with Jefferson in affirming natural rights as the moral com 

pass of the union; he quoted Madison's "pride and boast of America, that the 

rights for which she contended, were the rights of human 

nature" 

([1850], p. 

22). His world view was one that could rarely decouple the expression of na 

tional interest from underlying values of national purpose. From the horizon of 

ethics, Adams was reluctant to condone any essential difference between public 

and private moral acts. Perhaps the most that can be said concerning the moral 

character of a private, as over against a political, 

action is that an individual 

acting in one capacity may be more or less moral than when acting in the other. 

Adams's political and diplomatic career was conspicuous by his belief in a 

vital connection between America's commitment to mankind and clear limits to 

the moral authority of the nation's power in world affairs. As a realist, he 

understood the restraints imposed by an anarchic world arena in which America 

would only be a minor (but not always unimportant) player in the European 

balance. As an idealist, he exhorted his countrymen to uphold the public virtues 

of republican rule as a model for other nations to emulate. In other words, 

America's success in the world for which a prudent and modestly conceived 

national interest was necessary was a function of the nation's own moral and 

spiritual stamina in its self-governance. America, Adams wrote in 1816, was 

"the strongest nation upon the globe for every purpose of justice." 

Yet he could 

not "ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a case where she would be 

in the 

of right, 

wrong." 

He hoped America might "be armed in thunder for the defense 

and self-shackled in eternal impotence for the support of 

John Adams, August 1, 1816, Writings, VI, 60-62). 

Adams would even more forcefully 

wrong" 

(To 

accentuate the importance of national 

self-restraint in his July 4, 1821, oration before the citizens of Washington. His

Jeffersonian Ethics in Foreign Affairs - 289 

address was in answer to the question, What has America done for the benefit 

of mankind? In the assembly of nations, the United States has "held forth to 

them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, 

of generous 

recipr 

Furthermore, for over a half-century, the nation "abstained from interference in 

the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she 

clings. . . 

Whenever the standard of freedom and independence has or shall be unfurled, there 

will her heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in 

search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and 

independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. (Quoted 

in LaFeber, pp. 42-46) 

Adams's remarks point to a concern for the consequences of intervention in 

wars "of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which 

assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom." 

dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the 

America's glory "is not 

mind." 

Adams's concept 

of international ethics illustrates how universal principles of right and obliga 

tion in foreign policy take a direct bearing from the moral and political order of 

civil society. 

NOTES 

1 . Jefferson's 

convictions were concisely stated in the following terms: 

We believed, with them, that man was a rational animal, endowed by nature with 

rights, and with an innate sense of justice; and that he could be restrained from wrong and 

protected in right, by moderate powers, confided to persons of his own choice, and held to 

their duties by dependence on his own will. 

To Judge William Johnson, June 12, 1823, Writings, (1903), XV, 441. 

2. National Archives, IX, 8. To Don Dionisio Vives, State Department, May 8, 1820, Writ 

ings, VII, 18: He asserted that Spain could not be relieved of an obligation to ratify a treaty that 

had been signed by a plenipotentiary, even though he had acted on unqualified instructions of a 

sovereign whose authority was subsequently limited by a legislative body asserting a new constitu 

tional power to pass on treaties. 

3. To Abigail Adams, April 22, 1815, Writings, V, 302. Adams, without ever explicitly deal 

ing with the point at length, distinguished between the sovereign "moral 

person," 

the nation, sus 

ceptible of no act incompatible with the necessities of the moral system of which it was a part, and 

the physical sovereign in a monarchy, who could be sovereign only in a fashion subordinate to the 

level of a nation. Annals of Congress, 9th Congress, 1st session, March 3, 1806, pp. 145-61. 

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Feminist Theory 

Daryl McGowan Tress 

Trinity College 

and Its Discontents 

In the wide-ranging work of his late career, Civilization and Its Discontents, 

Sigmund Freud speaks of the malaise bred in the individual and in culture by 

the denial and suppression of the forces of irrationality. These instincts, aggres 

sive and sexual, are experienced as dangerous and so are repressed. But, Freud 

insists, to repress these forces is not to eliminate them. What is denied and 

forgotten lurks beneath the surface of conscious and cultural life, constantly 

undermining and threatening to destroy the glorious constructions of self and 

civilization (see especially Chs. 6 and 7). 

I would like to borrow in a limited way from Freud's lesson in Civilization 

and Its Discontents and consider what it is that feminist theory has come to 

perceive as threatening to its enterprise, what it is that feminist theory believes 

it needs to defend itself against. From the contemporary feminist point of view, 

it is not the forces of irrationality that are threatening, but instead reason and 

rationality are viewed as masculine and as the foes against which women must 

defend themselves. Increasingly, feminist theory fixes its attention on passion 

and power, on the nonrational, at the expense of reason. The history of feminist 

thought, along with a major current in history of ideas generally over the last 

two hundred years, reveals a growing tendency to draw positive significance 

and value from the irrational while looking 

threatening 

aspects of "the 

to expose the full negative and 

rational." 

But, as I hope to show, the denial of 

reason can be no more successful than the denial of the irrational; it inevitably 

leads to contradictions and instability, especially 

identity 

as feminism requires for its 

what it condemns and denies as oppressive. The inconsistencies and the 

discomfort they generate are signs of a serious failure in feminist theory's intel 

lectual ancestry, and this is what I will trace. 

Feminism has made some very valuable strides for women. The organized 

efforts of women to win the vote, for example, 

variety 

and to put an end to a wide 

of forms of legal and economic discrimination against women are most 

worthy of respect. The exposure by feminists of more private but nonetheless 

pernicious forms of maintaining women's subordination has been beneficial, 

even if sometimes disruptive and painful. Lately, though, feminism has fallen 

on hard times. One sign of this, surely, is the reluctance of many women today 

This paper was originally 

Lecture at Trinity College. 

interpretation, Winter 1990-1991, Vol. 18, No. 2 

presented in April, 1989 as the Blanchard William Means Memorial


to identify 

themselves as "feminists," 

even while they do support the promotion 

of women's interests. (See Chadwick or Fleming for differing generational 

views of feminist ideals as presented in the general media.) For a movement 

that sees itself necessarily as a popular, broad-based political one, lack of popu 

lar appeal is a most serious problem. And while feminist theory has attracted a 

good deal of attention in academic and publishing circles, it is currently in 

internal disarray, experiencing disputes, for example, over liberal, integrating 

political strategies versus radical, revolutionary ones, and over efforts to reev 

aluate positively women's traditional activities while simultaneously calling for 

radical reformations of social life that gave those traditional activities meaning. 

In addition to these deep differences regarding aims, the latest work in feminist 

theory adopts the very skeptical stance characteristic of some contemporary 

European philosophical movements and launches an attack on "logocentrism," 

or, with its feminist twist, "phallogocentrism." 

These are the pejorative terms 

applied to the philosophical tradition which claims the superiority of reason. 

According to feminist theorists, phallogocentrism, representing the reign of the 

phallus, i.e. masculinity, is in its insistence on rationality repressive, dominat 

ing, and violent. Rationality 

is seen from this new feminist point of view as the 

source of many, if not all, of the different forms of oppression in the modern 

world (e.g. sexism, racism, and imperialism) 

threat to women's safety and happiness.' 

and so is viewed as a powerful 

As a philosopher I have been both troubled and puzzled by the hostility 

towards reason in recent feminist theorizing, and the increasing erosion of the 

place of reason in feminist work. If, in trying to understand this development, 

one examines the genesis and growth of feminist theory, one discovers that this 

is not a new trend but is really the inevitable culmination of a long process. 

Feminist theory's current troubling state springs inexorably 

atic origins. 

from its problem 

What I will try to show is that the development of feminist theory reflects 

the intellectual history of the past three centuries, i.e., feminist theory comes 

into being 

as a modernist movement and the course of its development mirrors 

the vicissitudes of the modern intellectual era. Especially evident in the history 

of feminist theory is the very unsteady state of reason and rationality in late 

modernity. (See the differing perspectives on this phenomenon of Strauss, Mac 

lntyre, Cascardi and Lang.) 

Two troubling general consequences of the elevation of passion and power 

and the reduction or elimination of reason can be noted at the start: the first is 

that appropriate aims for desire and political action cannot be determined and 

these areas of life become chaotic. A second difficulty is that the categories one 

looks to defend or revitalize begin to unravel, that is, they become internally 

inconsistent and their explanatory power is weakened (for example, the basic 

feminist concept of "gender" 

is currently coming undone. See "Editorial."). 

Modernism makes feminism both necessary and possible, that is, the modern 

intellectual era provokes it into being and provides it with a set of intellectual


and its Discontents 295 

tools to construct itself. But at the same time, feminist theory is also heiress to 

all debts and problems of the modern intellectual era, 

and these have come to 

manifest themselves in the current confusion which riddles feminist theory. 

Let me specify what I mean by "modernism" 

(and point out parenthetically 

what will soon become obvious: that I am working with very broad historical 

categories, and so I have simplified what are in fact very 

complex systems of 

ideas). I distinguish three major movements within it: early modernism, anti- 

modernism, and postmodernism. "Early 

modernism" 

here designates the world- 

views originating in the West in the seventeenth century and maturing 

in the 

Enlightenment era of the eighteenth century which expressly repudiated re 

liance on the earlier classical and medieval-theological traditions. These tradi 

tions had been based on a divinely ordered cosmos and an immaterial human 

essence or soul which had its own natural ends. Early modern thought placed 

confidence not in the authority of tradition but instead in the knowing subject 

and in the subject-as-knowable. The subject can know, grasp, and conquer 

nature, and can come, as well, to know himself or herself with certainty be 

cause the subject now is regarded as secular and as operating according to 

scientific rather than divine laws. "Antimodernism" 

designates modernism's 

turn against itself, its rebellion against the Enlightenment preoccupation with 

reason and scientific knowledge. The spirit of antimodernism is expressed in 

nineteenth century Romanticism's embrace of the imagination and in the revo 

lutionary political urging of praxis or activity 

as superior to theory. In the 

antimodern period, history and nature are regarded as surpassing rational, indi 

vidual efforts at control. Finally 

"postmodernism," 

the most recent intellectual 

current, is one that consciously defies definition; its spokespersons, Derrida, 

Lacan, Foucault, and Rorty, to name a few, set postmodernism in opposition to 

the values of both early modernism and antimodernism, in particular to the 

confidence the previous modernisms display in the solidity and self-sufficiency 

of the subject. For postmodernists, 

a fragmented subject moves in a de 

naturalized world where everything is a construction of language or an opera 

tion of power, and the denaturalization of which intellectuals and artists are 

obligated to express and promote in their work. (Jardine's study is partic 

ularly illuminating 

sources of "postmodern" 

on the "denaturalization" 

feminist theory.) 

of postmodernism and on the 

At these three modernist pressure points, certain features characteristic of 

the modern intellectual period can be detected: the rejection of tradition and the 

desire for "new" 

solutions, the overarching attitude of opposition and rebellion, 

the atmosphere of crisis, the priority given to analysis of power and its opera 

tions, the emphasis placed, on the one hand, on the defense of the autonomous 

subject independently willing and choosing his or her own ends, and on the 

other, a preoccupation with a political and/or sociological analysis of power 

groups and their dynamics, and finally, a disillusionment with and rejection of 

all these categories and the difficulties they represent. 

These features of the modernist program, all of which mark feminist theory,


can be contrasted with the premodern, 

classical philosophical outlook. The 

classical view holds to the notion of human essence which is timeless in its 

nature. Because some aspects of human nature are timelessly true, tradition and 

its thinking are valuable for us; the problems we confront now are not so terri- 

fyingly new, nor, perhaps, do they have the dramatic exigency that modernism 

insists upon. Classical philosophy focuses its concern on the human essence or 

psyche, and makes the object of its inquiry not discontent, power, needs, and 

preference but rather virtue, that is, what makes a person, or people, excellent, 

what is it that we do best to desire.' 

Since all human beings as human beings 

possess a similarly structured psyche, relationship and community 

are possible 

and desirable; we are neither atomistic individuals nor social constructions, 

according 

to this view. The classical outlook maintains that the ground of real 

ity is stable essence or form or substance, and hence is intelligible and access 

ible, to some extent at least, by means of open dialogue and patient, rational 

reflection. It places priority on these rather than on willing, acting, changing 

the world. 

Feminist theorists have been highly wary 

"Central to feminism," 

of essentialism from the start. 

Anne Donchin writes, "is the disavowal of the concep 

tion of the essential self (p. 92). The allegiance of feminist theorists, almost 

exclusively, has been and continues to be to a view of women as constructed by 

social and historical conditions. Alison Jaggar, a feminist philosopher, suc 

cinctly states the reason for this allegiance: "Invariably, anti-feminists have 

justified women's subordination in terms of perceived biological differences" 

(p.21). The idea of an invariant feminine or human nature or essence, then, is 

regarded as grounding the injustices of the status quo and perpetuating 

women's subordination. 

It is correct, of course, that essentialist models have been used against 

is founded 

women. But the alternative, modernist model which feminist theory 

upon is deeply problematic and will not yield a coherent theory of women. I 

believe that once the defects of modernism in all its versions are made plain, a 

reconstruction of feminist theory on a classical foundation can begin. 

Let us now examine at greater length each of the three modernist stages in 

the development of feminist theory and consider its implications. 

Mary Wollstonecraft, who lived her relatively short life at the end of the 

eighteenth century, generally is placed at the beginning of the lineage of mod 

ern feminism. Writing her bold Vindication of the Rights of 

Woman in 1792, 

she faced the challenge of opposing the popular Enlightenment-era view that 

men and women have fundamentally different natures a view developed, for 

example, by Rousseau in his best-seller, Emile and using Enlightenment prin 

ciples and values to undercut the Enlightenment notion of a basic and thorough 

going distinction between the sexes.

Feminist Theory and its Discontents 297 

Wollstonecraft saw Rousseau and others arguing on the basis of the apparent 

differences in male and female natures that different educational programs and 

different political entitlement were not only permissible but beneficial to every 

one involved. What seemed obvious to Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau 

and Edmund Burke and others was that women, while possessing 

some mea 

sure of intelligence and reason, are nevertheless more instinctual, emotional, 

and imaginative creatures than men are, and that women are constituted by 

nature for the domestic life of pleasing men and caring for children. What was 

decisive, of course, was women's deficiency with respect to reason, since enti 

tlement to human rights (such as autonomy, freedom of choice, privacy) de 

pended upon full possession of rationality. 

The notion of different male and female natures posited by 

Rousseau and 

others can be seen as an expansion upon and intensification of the mind-body 

distinction elaborated by some philosophers in the seventeenth century. The 

split within subjectivity that is basic to some early modern intellectual models 

is externalized and applied to the sexes: mind is more and more strongly associ 

ated with men and masculinity, while body is consistently taken as the primary 

determinant of women and femininity (see Riley, Ch. 2). As this polarization 

becomes more vivid, 

and the superior regard for mind and inferior regard for 

the body become more boldly prominent in the writings of the eighteenth cen 

tury, some intrepid women at least were bound to be provoked to response. The 

very easy, 

confident expression of women's subordination so popular at the 

time can be seen as the provocation which necessarily gave rise to the modern 

feminist response. 

Mary Wollstonecraft, agreeing with her fellow eighteenth-century thinkers 

that, generally, women appear to be deficient in reason, employed standard 

eighteenth-century 

arguments even Rousseauian arguments to explain that 

appearance, namely that women have been made unequal, have been denied 

expression of their rationality and consigned to the body by 

corrupt public 

institutions and by debased interpersonal relationships. Her reformist plan was 

to restore women to their full status as rational agents by means of a substantial 

education which would be equal to that provided for men. The aim was to 

permit women to become free, autonomous, assertive individuals, the equals of 

men. The contemporary feminist theorist Carol C. Gould echoes and expands 

Wollstonecraft and the spirit of the eighteenth century when she writes her 

recommendation for feminism today: 

I think the preeminent value that ought to underlie the feminist movement is 

freedom, that is, self-development. This arises through the exercise of agency, that 

is, through the exercise of the human capacity for free choice, in forms of activity 

undertaken to realize one's purposes and to satisfy one's needs. (P. 4) 

In this contemporary expansion of the early modernist defense of women, 

the emphasis on the self, on free choice, on action to fulfill one's own needs


and create one's own life are all in evidence. What the self should choose, what 

it should do, who it should be would not be specified as part of this paradigm; 

values are to be freely and subjectively chosen. One can, to quote Gould once 

again, "appropriate any 

on one's free 

one's choices. 

traits for one's own self-development, depending 

choice" 

(p. 15). There are, in other words, no natural limits to 

Wollstonecraft herself wrote courageously and eloquently to vindicate 

women and women's rights, and it is important to add, she herself was con 

cerned about equality of reason as a path to equality of virtue in men and 

women. Her use of an Enlightenment notion of human nature to establish 

women's integrity could not succeed, however. I want to suggest that Woll- 

stonecraft's failure to persuade stemmed in part from the fact that the split of 

subjectivity along sexual lines was already so deep by 

the close of the eigh 

teenth century that it was no longer possible, strategically, to challenge it from 

within. The Enlightenment model of human nature and its ideal of political 

equality required a community of individuals who could think and judge coolly 

without the obstruction of prejudice or passion. It served the model importantly 

to displace such human tendencies both in theory and in practice onto a 

separate group. So when Wollstonecraft made her seemingly innocuous pro 

posal, that women and men both possess minds so both require education, I 

believe she herself was aware, to some extent at least, of how implausible this 

would sound to her contemporaries. 

"Mind" 

had already become evidently 

masculine, in ways that the classical soul which it replaced had not been, and 

her proposal was bound to strike her audience as bizarre. A clue to Wollstone- 

craft's own awareness of the desperation of this situation was her own occa 

sional sliding away from her basic commitment to the fundamental equality of 

male and female mind to the appeal in the Vindication that men, after all, will 

be happier with educated wives than with the delicate, 

superficial creatures 

whom she saw as the degraded feminine product of Rousseau's unequal educa 

tional 

program.' 

Doubtful about its persuasive possibilities, in other words, she 

let her argument become a plea. 

Mary 

Wollstonecraft's Vindication did not turn the modernist tide. Instead, 

due to its own internal dynamics, modernism turned against itself in the nine 

teenth century, as it would again in the twentieth with the advent of postmod 

ernism. An intellectual shifting of gears took place in the nineteenth century 

which produced a wariness about Enlightenment ideals of human rationality 

and autonomy and a disillusionment with eighteenth-century political ideals of 

self-interested individualism. Some of the important values of the Enlighten 

ment were preserved, such as equality and progress, but the notion developed 

that radical means were required for their realization. Other Enlightenment 

values, however, were rejected, for example the supremacy and independence 

of scientific reason. Could there be a more striking and appropriate symbol in 

this context of the souring of eighteenth-century optimism about reason and the


dream of progress and human control of the natural world than this: the classic 

nineteenth-century tale of the soulless monster created by the mad, mega- 

lomaniacal scientist, the story of Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, the 

daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft'.' 

Two major trends of great consequence for feminism flourished in the nine 

teenth century: revolutionary politics, especially Marxism, and Romanticism. 

These movements display the extremes of world-views dependent, 

hand, on political power, 

on the one 

and on the other on emotional subjectivity. Both 

oppose the ideals of the eighteenth century and particularly the early modern 

ideal of reason on the grounds that a hidden, privileged process (i.e., power or 

"life"), inaccessible to Enlightenment reason alone, is the true ground of real 

ity. 

A radical departure made by 

stratum in human beings. Instead of having 

Karl Marx is his elimination of a natural sub 

a basic nature which has been 

obscured and spoiled by social conditions an eighteenth-century view 

Marx's proposal is that human beings are thoroughly determined, not by the 

tangle of their desires but by external social, political, and economic forces. 

The complete, thoroughgoing 

dependence of human beings on these forces 

means that their proper ordering is of the utmost urgency. Capitalism is the 

current exploitative arrangement that shapes modern life, according 

and Marxists; it is a system which requires a revolutionary overthrow. 

to Marx 

This political model recommends itself as pledged to equality among people 

and between the sexes; it regards apparent differences in mentality as the effect 

of differing 

material conditions. Since there is no human nature prior to social 

influences in its view, there is no natural base in which significant mental or 

rational differences between women and men could permanently inhere. With 

the aim in mind of establishing women's full humanity, this revolutionary polit 

ical model might seem promising, and a large number of contemporary femi 

nists, such as Nancy Hartsock, Juliet Mitchell, Evelyn Reed, and others, have 

followed the classic application of the Marxist approach to women's condition, 

namely, Frederick Engels' 

The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the 

State. In this work he tells the story of the beginnings of the exploitation and 

oppression of women as coinciding with the beginnings of capital and private 

property. 

The sources of all traits, according to this model, 

made visible. Thus "sex," 

male and female, is greatly minimized by way 

from 

"gender," 

are external and can be 

the apparently inescapable biological determinant of 

of this model and separated 

the social determination of masculine and feminine; "gender" 

becomes the concept basic to feminist discourse. And we can come not only to 

see the externally imposed sources of inequality but, more significantly, do 

something 

to change the situation of exploitation and subjugation. The principle


(answering perfectly to certain Enlightenment desires) is that what has been 

humanly produced can be humanly grasped, altered, overthrown. 

There are, however, a number of serious problems generated by the use of 

this political model for understanding women. The first is connected with the 

Marxist concept of 

"ideology" 

(see Mah). The divided self of the early modern 

period, in Marxism, is realigned and mind and body are assigned a new hier 

archy, namely, that mind and its output, theory, are effects of material causes. 

The material relations in the world, according to Marx, produce ideas. Ideas 

and theory are not, in this view, autonomous and dependable guides for arrang 

ing human worldly affairs, but instead are necessarily saturated with class inter 

est and self-interest, as well as a measure of fantasy and wishful thinking typ 

ically permitted by abstract thought which holds itself aloof from specific, 

material conditions. 

The concept of ideology thus articulated in Marxist work is a volatile one, 

however. It does allow feminists to claim that the reigning set of ideals of 

female inferiority are ideological, i.e., self-serving for the power elite and 

hence suspect, thereby challenging Enlightenment assumptions. But this "ideol 

therapy" 

kills the patient along with the disease. Ultimately, the implica 

ogy 

tion of the concept of ideology is that ideas and theory cannot be trustworthy; 

they are always contaminated by class interest, always pretending to be supe 

rior to the world when they are, after all, only 

expressions of prior economic 

and power relations. By borrowing this concept, then, feminist theory in effect 

abandons any expectation of firmly establishing its ideas regarding women's 

full humanity. No set of ideas, no theory is immune from the charge of ideol 

ogy. Ideas and philosophy are further disparaged in this model, since the aim, 

as stated in Marx's overquoted epitaph, is not to understand but to change the 

world. According to this view, one must be able, above all, to do and act; 

philosophy, which regards itself as nonpartisan inquiry, indulges in self-decep 

tion and lends itself as a tool of the oppressors. This sentiment is echoed by the 

contemporary feminist theorists such as Andrea Nye, who wonders resignedly 

whether feminist practice might have to be sufficient for feminism since theory 

has a sexist history which can never be eliminated, and Kathryn Pyne Ad- 

delson, who chastises feminists who have forgotten that feminist practice pro 

duces feminist theory, not the other way around, and that feminist practice has 

one goal: to change the material conditions of women. Given these principles, 

how an adequate theory could ever be available or what its real value would be 

if one could develop it is extremely hard to see. Indeed, in this world-view 

where power is reality and takes the form of conflicting interests, any disin 

terested inquiry such as philosophy is bound to appear useless at the very best, 

blindly and dangerously 

manipulative at worst. 

One other feature of the Marxist model deserves attention in relation to 

feminist theory. This is that Marx's is a social theory rather than a theory of 

individuality. It is one which tells the story of class conflict, the story that the 

basis of the "real 

world" 

is the group dynamics of money and power, and that


this is a dynamic of conflict and exploitation. Thus, this world-view is one of 

groups pitted against one another under capitalism; the attention to large social 

patterns of oppression calls for women to unite and rise up against a common 

oppressor. By shifting attention away 

from individual experience of subordina 

tion and unhappiness to the common features of oppression, the Marxist politi 

cal outlook allows women to unite against social injustice and or "feminism" 

a political force to be born. A problem with this political or sociological lens is 

that it filters out personal difference and the texture of individual lives, or 

perceives the personal and intimate according to the categories of economics 

and politics. So, for example, Nancy 

Reproduction of Mothering, talks of mothers "investing" 

187), and Paula Rothenberg 

between the sexes; by "political 

Chodorow in her widely-read work The 

speaks of the "political" 

as 

in their children, (p. 

nature of the relations 

relationship" 

Rothenberg means one which 

"involves a struggle for control between individuals of unequal power and sta 

tus, who confront each other with essentially opposed interests" 

(p. 205. The 

criticism of Chodorow is made by Elshtain, p. 292; see also Ch. 5 for a lengthy 

critique of radical, liberal, Marxist, and psychoanalytic feminisms.). 

Trouble also arises specifically within Marxism when trying to conceive of 

women as a "class," 

"Class" 

since women are members of every economic class. 

is basic identity in this model, 

and that it might be impossible to ade 

quately identify women within Marxism has been disconcerting 

nents. (Eventually, the notion of "the 

for its propo 

patriarchy" 

seemed to offer a sufficiently 

generalized antagonist for generating women's political solidarity across all 

classes.) 

This political outlook, in insisting that power is basic and that class conflict 

is everywhere, 

and fosters a "conflict 

certainly 

requires and deepens an adversarial and oppositional attitude 

consciousness" 

of the world in general. Questions can 

be raised about how comfortable most women are with a generalized 

adversarial sensibility and whether women believe themselves sufficiently de 

fined by the rhetoric oppression, 

which allows women the narrow options of 

being either victims, victim-resisters, or collaborators. Finally, 

we can notice 

here, as we did with the Marxist concept of ideology, the corrosive effect this 

political, adversarial attitude has an open, philosophical questioning. Feminism 

becomes a "cause" 

that demands loyalty and can be criticized only 

with the 

utmost delicacy. One aims here, above all, not to understand but to act, to right 

wrongs, to air grievances, to avenge, to punish, to defend the oppressed and to 

deprive the oppressors of power, to promote the revolution, to change the 

world. In the bargain for political effectiveness, the price paid is a diminished 

respect and capacity for rational thought which is reflective and reserved. 

The other major nineteenth-century intellectual trend of importance for femi 

nist theory is Romanticism. Romanticism's rebellion took this general form: 

discursive thought and scientific reason were rejected and replaced by emotion


and imagination. Romanticism turned its attention fully to the self, the subject 

in his or her personal experience. It valued achieving one's true home or iden 

tity, recovering 

as most genuine was "Life" 

oneself and the world at its most genuine. What was regarded 

or nature or passion in its wildness and sponta 

neity. The metaphor of the journey or passage inward took on special meaning 

for the Romantics, the arduous journey which can be undertaken only by the 

remarkable Romantic hero or heroine who is proud, smart, strong, defiant, 

and emotionally and imaginatively sensitive. The Romantic hero or heroine 

stands apart from and above others, but exactly as a result of his or her superior 

sensitivity is likely to be a social outcast, misunderstood and mistreated by the 

many out of their ignorance and envy. (We might note, parenthetically, in this 

other," 

outlook the longing to be "the the deep desire to be outside the dull 

routine of ordinary existence. Yack's book is of interest here.) The novels of 

the Bronte sisters offer examples of the Romantic heroine. We may appreciate 

the adroitness of the venerable heroines such as Jane Eyre, but we may also 

note, as others such as Virginia Woolf have, the resentment in these characters 

and the sense of grievance bred by their assurance of their own emotional and 

imaginative superiority, particularly when it is not validated by others or when 

they perceive that its full development is hindered by material conditions which 

do not match their natural entitlement (Thurman). 

The Romantic attitude was absorbed into feminism as an alternative way of 

answering the problems, persistent since the early modern period, regarding 

male-female difference and the inequality bred male- 

by the associations of 

mind, female-body. What I identify as the Romantic solution to the problem is 

the acceptance of these different associations, and the claim, unlike that of the 

Enlightenment and Marxist approaches, that the masculine-mind, feminine- 

body 

associations are indeed "natural." 

The Romantic feminist strategy is to 

reevaluate positively the body, and the domains of emotion and imagination, 

and to assert the superiority of these to abstract, calculating, scientific reason. 

Women, according to this narrative, are different, but better. 

Romanticism recommends itself in several ways: it endorses a distinctly 

feminine sensibility of intuition and sympathy, as the Enlightenment and Marx 

ist models did not and could not. It upholds the ideas of women's subjective 

experience, of women's privileged access to the natural, powerful wisdom of 

sexuality and childbirth, of separate domains in which feminine nature takes 

precedence. Furthermore, since women are so different from men, according to 

this model, women are in a privileged position to speak for and about women's 

experience. Romantic feminism also provides an explanation for the rarity in 

history of great public achievements by women, insisting that women's work 

has been thwarted and suppressed consistently by the jealous, coarse, and ag 

gressive nature of men. 

The Romantic view of women as superior, sensitive victims has strongly 

influenced contemporary feminism. The victimization model has become very


familiar in feminist writing over the past twenty years: Susan Brownmiller, for 

example, in her book Femininity, analyzes the feminine as a form of constric 

tion and suppression, and the feminist philosopher Sandra Lee Bartky writes: 

Feminist consciousness is consciousness of victimization [sicj. To apprehend 

oneself as victim is to be aware of an alien force which is responsible for the 

blatantly unjust treatment of women and to be aware, too, that this 

victimization, [is] in no way earned or deserved. . 

(P 

254) 

There is a branch of contemporary romantic feminist theorizing called "cul 

tural feminism'' 

which maintains that there is an essential woman. The nemesis 

of the essential woman, as Linda Alcoff writes, is "not merely a social system 

or economic institution or a set of backward beliefs but masculinity itself and in 

some cases male biology" 

(p. 408). Cultural feminists may be more or less 

adversarial in approach one might contrast, for example, the gentle goddess- 

worship proposals of Carol Christ with the harder-hitting and sometimes hateful 

positions of Mary Daly or Adrienne Rich who hold (or have held) that male 

nature is in itself deeply defective. Despite differences in tone, what these 

feminists have in common is a vision of the future world deeply transformed 

and made true somehow by the recovery and release of the power of the femi 

nine (Alcoff, p. 408). 

Romantic feminism has been criticized by representatives of the liberal-En 

lightenment, Marxist, and postmodernist views for positing 

a female essence 

and a static, immutable feminine difference. The trouble with the Romantic 

position as they see it is that it appears to undercut political drives for equality, 

particularly 

when experience shows that "different" 

so often means "inferior," 

or that it is intellectually naive. My own concern, however, is with the valori 

zation within Romantic feminism of the nonrational and the distrust this out 

look displays towards rationality. It is not uncommon for feminists today to 

address an audience which has come to share their assumption that rational 

thinking, including conceptual categorization, logic, 

and an ordered progres 

sion of ideas is, in its severity, its demand for precision and control, and its 

subordination of feeling and particularity, 

a masculine form of thought and is 

inherently domineering and destructive. Jessica Benjamin, for example, can 

write about "rational 

violence," 

which she and some other feminists believe has 

its roots in masculine gender formation of early childhood (p. 42. Also see 

Gilligan). The poet Adrienne Rich expresses the Romantic feminist denuncia 

tion of masculine forms of thought: 

"His mind is too simple, 1 cannot go on sharing his 

nightmares 

(p. 156). 

Carol Gilligan's interesting and influential work on women's voice in ethics, 

In a Different Voice, regards as sufficient, and it seems, as preferable, the 

immediate living and the simple telling or dramatizing of one's lived expe-


rience, rather than the more arduous and often less immediately satisfying tasks 

of analysis and explanation. 

The serious shortcoming of this position, however, is that it precludes judg 

ment and full assessment of oneself and one's situation. What is offered instead 

is an immersion in an aestheticized subjectivity, a supposedly feminine subjec 

tivity of experience which is sometimes strikingly 

sentimental or self-congrat 

ulatory in conception, and presents, in its extreme forms, the danger of solip- 

sistic self-absorption which feminists feared from technical, unfeeling reason. 

In this model where subjective experience is primary, the means to reflect upon 

and question the limitations of that experience are denied. Describing and de 

fending the validity of one's experience becomes a substitute for inquiry into 

the benefits and shortcomings of one's way of experiencing. The result is that 

responsibility 

cept. 

for one's views and actions becomes difficult to assign and ac 

Another and not unrelated liability 

of Romantic feminism is its encourage 

ment of a certain set of emotional and attitudinal responses as the correct femi 

nist ones. There is, for one thing, self-righteousness, as one sees oneself as the 

superior but deeply wronged and injured party. This attitude is not only fos 

tered among women but becomes the posture of feminism itself as women's 

voice. Anger and resentment breed in this atmosphere; the tone becomes impe 

rious and punishing. A smug "enemy-consciousness" 

is generated which filters 

into all aspects of life. The simplistic and reductive romantic categories 

"woman" 

stands for goodness and purity, "man" 

stands for the envious, brutal 

aggressor have the effect of precluding discussion or debate. A richer or more 

complex understanding of women and men than the one these simplistic catego 

ries allow becomes impossible. 

Finally, there are problems in achieving the stated aims of feminism, such as 

social transformation, within this paradigm. Because of the priority 

the personal and because of its distrust of generalization, 

it grants to 

which it associates 

with dominating reason, there is no evident way to move effectively from sub 

jective experience to the politically unified activism which feminism expects. 

The most recent modernist alternative, embraced by a number of contempor 

It is re 

ary feminist theorists, takes the broad label "postmodern feminism." 

garded by some feminists as a corrective which is nevertheless still faithful to 

feminism's ancestry, but other feminists see it as a deep threat to the move 

ment. Postmodernism, I will suggest, is just the latest, decayed form modernist 

principles and values have taken. As such, it does not offer a solution to the 

problems vexing feminism since its modernist beginnings, nor does it represent 

a new threat. Postmodernism, emerging fairly recently from some crosscurrents 

in European intellectual life, refuses a single definition, but what is notable is 

its denial that there is any essence, any persistent identity to be found beneath


appearances or even below layers of social oppression. The social construction 

of the self runs all the way down, according to this view, and any 

attempt to 

posit a true, stable identity or authentic subject only has the effect of solidifying 

the illusion of self and the subjugation that this illusion permits and perpetu 

ates. Not only are human subjects fully the byproduct of the forces of history 

and language, but reason too is seen as just one more constricting offshoot of 

social processes. Postmodern thinkers particularly call into serious question the 

conceptual structuring of rationality which depends, they claim, upon binary 

oppositions good and bad, self and other, reason and emotion, and so forth 

which always contain partially disguised value judgments and hierarchies of 

power (see Wilmore and Alcoff)- 

Male-female is, of course, one of the many items in the table of binary 

oppositions, and the postmodern style of thought is adopted by some feminist 

theorists primarily as a way of deconstructing the problems about male and 

female natures that propel modern feminist theory. Postmodernism is deeply 

anti-essentialist and skeptical, and so its approach differs fundamentally both 

from Enlightenment feminist theory, which preserves a notion of humanity of 

which women must be counted as full members, 

and from all varieties of Ro 

mantic feminism which universalize feminine traits. It also differs from nine 

teenth-century revolutionary politics in that it abandons expectations regarding 

the permanent liberation of an oppressed class. Postmodernism's insight of par 

ticular relevance to feminism is this: merely turning the conceptual tables by, 

for example, regarding feminine traits as superior rather than inferior or by 

wresting power away from men and giving it to women, is to agree to play by 

the same old binary rules. Postmodernism demands the highly radical move of 

dismantling entirely the categories of male, female, masculine, and feminine. 

Postmodernism sets itself against the oppositional strategies of the nine 

teenth century in an interesting manner. It looks as if the postmodern approach, 

in this way, might be interested in eliminating the rigidly opposed categories of 

oppressor and oppressed, insider and outsider, us and them. Such an aim has 

led feminists such as Jane Flax, Luce Irigaray, Jane Gallop, Denise Riley, and 

others to engage in a postmodernist analysis in their feminist work. But in 

reality, postmodernism is much more deeply 

any 

oppositional in its outlook than 

of the earlier schools of modernism. Since deconstruction involves a desta- 

bilization of all concepts and identities, no notions at all and no political or 

ethical category is permitted to stand. The postmodernist program is to expose 

the instability of any idea that is presented as natural, obvious, or authoritative. 

Feminist theory is now utterly cornered: it can neither affirm that women are 

something (since nothing is in any common, identifiable way), nor can it elimi 

nate the category of "women" 

(since, in that case, feminism would be meaning 

less). All that's left is raw opposition, 

the intellectual attitude evident in na 

scent form in early modernism's rejection of the classical tradition that has, in 

postmodernism, become an end in itself. Julia Kristeva, speaking 

position, puts the matter succinctly: 

from this


It follows that a feminist practice can only be negative [my emphasis |, at odds with 

what already exists so that we may say "that's not it" 

(P 137) 

and "that's still not 

This feminism that Kristeva offers subverts the self-assured positions taken 

by some earlier feminists, but does so only by developing one that is only and 

necessarily 

inisms came to rest somewhere in the vision of a realized communist state or 

negative and oppositional. But whereas the earlier oppositional fem 

a woman's counterculture, for example postmodernism proffers permanent 

instability without foundation of any kind. Postmodernism may appear to sup 

port the desire for a highly liberated, pluralistic feminism, one that is un 

bounded by the limits of earlier theory. But the desire for feminist theory to 

take such a formless form itself represents certain values and a certain concep 

tion of freedom which still fall within the compass of modernism. Unfortu 

nately, by this point in its modernist descent, feminist theory has no positive 

vision and no genuine understanding or affirmation of women to offer. 

Postmodernism not only fails to step beyond modernism as it sees itself 

doing, but is modernism in the extreme, the nadir of modernism. Postmodern- 

ism's fragmentation of the self is the culmination of the early modern fracturing 

of the self into mind and body. Postmodernism's destabilization of the world 

and knowledge of it is the outcome of the gradual modern erosion of substance 

and essence. Postmodern skepticism, which leaves one unable to sustain any 

level of trust in the world as one meets it, so that one must constantly create a 

new world, is the exaggerated fulfillment of the modern desire to have the past 

disappear. Postmodernism's appeal to the "play" 

it." 

of language and of power is 

an extreme and twisted appropriation of the emphasis placed on freedom by 

earlier modern thinkers. In all these respects, postmodernism seeks to make a 

virtue of the internal collapse of the modern outlook. But as yet one more 

version of modernism, postmodernism is in no position to help feminism out of 

its modernist difficulties. 

I hope to have shown the pervasiveness of a modernist sensibility of opposi 

tion, rebellion, crisis, and urgency, and a general distrust of reason in the 

ancestry of feminist theory, and to have indicated, albeit briefly, some of the 

shortcomings of this sensibility for developing a satisfactory theory regarding 

women. What would serve better than the modernist approach, in my view, is a 

commitment to intelligibility and stability 

such as is found in the classical 

philosophical approach. Basic to classical philosophy is an acknowledgment of 

the nature of things and in particular, human nature, its stable identity and 

ground of unification, along 

with an acceptance of the vulnerabilities of this 

nature. Only with this stability as a premise can there be a stability and truth to 

our speech, which in turn provides the basis for the meaningful discussion of


and its Discontents 307 

ethical and political goods. (This argument is developed by Rosen.) Classical 

philosophy lacks the exigent tone of modern intellectual work; its mode is one 

of patient reflection on and discussion of aims prior to action and change. 

Unlike modern philosophy, which makes human willing and choosing primary 

without being able to specify 

what it is best to will and choose and what the 

limits of human choice must be, classical philosophy recognizes human nature 

to have certain basic capacities such as reason with natural ends and excel 

lences, and that the achievement of these ends is either helped or hindered by 

political circumstances. The intent of classical philosophizing, as I see it, is to 

speak about what would be the harmony 

of freedom and natural limitation, 

emotion and intelligence, equality and necessary hierarchy, desire and restraint, 

practice and theory, the subject and that which grounds the subject, male and 

female, 

life.4 

as all of these manifest themselves in human A complete theory 

of human nature, expanded and fully inclusive of women, would ground the 

commonalities of men and women in such a way as to permit differences in 

masculine or feminine style or position to be acknowledged without the immi 

nent risk of devaluing or overvaluing one or the other, and thus dislodging one 

or the other from the realm of the fully 

human. A fuller account of male and 

female commonalities would also subdue the antagonism between the sexes, 

although, due to some ineliminable differences, there inevitably are elements of 

tension and mystery between women and men. 

Women cannot afford to accept the fashionable rejection of reason as simply 

masculine and oppressive. Just as Freud held that the denial of the irrational led 

to a generalized malaise, the attempt to suppress or eliminate reason is similarly 

"theory" 

a morbid endeavor. Any which moves in this direction undermines 

itself, and any theory which tells women that the nonrational is their special 

province or exclusive obligation denies women their status as full human be 

ings. A reconstruction of feminist theory, away from discontent, involves reha 

bilitating our understanding of reason and human nature. 

NOTES 

1. For example, Diana Meyers indicates the opposing feminist viewpoints regarding the status 

of "the traditional woman's 

life," 

as either an oppressive, coerced state or a freely chosen, desirable 

way of life. Andrea Nye (1986) points out "the self- 

incompatibility between materialism and 

assertion" 

in the feminist work of Simone deBeauvoir without, however, commenting on the in 

compatibility of these larger trends within feminist theory generally. 

The radical, thoroughgoing skepticism regarding reason is most evident in the "new French 

feminists" 

and those influenced by them. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron write, "Many 

women who refer to themselves as radical Marguerite Duras, Christiane Rochefort, Claudine 

Herrmann are convinced that the will to theory is the most pernicious of male 

activitie 

(p. xi). 

And, "Their own analyses [Cixous, Kristeva, Clement, Irigaray, and Herrmann] 'of the status of 

womanhood in Western Theoretical discourse' 

have led them to a variety of startling conclusions, 

among which the most frequently shared and propagated is that only one sex has been represented,


that the projection of male libidinal economy in all patriarchal systems language, capitalism, 

socialism, monotheism has been total; women have been 

absent" 

(p. xii). 

Other feminist objections to reason are based on psychoanalysis or politics, or both. 

The challenge to rationality based on psychoanalytical theory has been widely adopted by femi 

nist theorists. The feminist interpretation of it, briefly, is that rational thinking is the outcome and 

reflection of masculine gender development in early childhood, i.e., the process whereby the boy 

distinguishes himself as "boy" 

and separates from the mother who is perceived as sexually differ 

ent. The basic feminist statements of this view are Nancy Chodorow and Dorothy Dinnerstein. This 

approach is applied to ethics in Carol Gilligan's In A Different Voice Psychological Theory and 

Women's Development. It also has been applied to the history of philosophy, notably by Susan 

Bordo. Without dependence on the psychoanalytic model, Genevieve Lloyd argues that the ideal of 

reason has been a masculine one from the beginning of the history 

of philosophy. Lloyd's reliance 

on Francis Bacon, a father of the modern intellectual era, to bring the masculine nature of reason 

into focus is telling in the context of the argument developed in this paper, i.e., of feminist theory's 

own pervasive reliance on a modernist lens. 

A challenge to the notion of objectivity and scientific reason is mounted on political grounds by 

Sandra Harding's work in feminist philosophy of science. The political criticism of rationality looks 

at the differing interests that knowledge serves and differing class access to knowledge, asking 

"whose knowledge?" 

Also prominent in feminist philosophy of science, Evelyn Fox Keller leans 

more heavily on the psychoanalytic interpretation of gender development than on political argu 

ments for making her case. For a critique of the attempted feminist revision of science and epis 

temology see Alison Wylie and the less sympathetic, "Feminist Philosophy of Science: A Critical 

Look," 

Margaret Levin. 

by 

The feminist philosopher Iris Marion Young, invoking Theodor Adorno, offers a politically- 

inspired criticism of reason as unrelentingly reductive of difference, and as inherently controlling 

and dominating: see especially pp. 60-63. 

The American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy (March 1989) 

takes as its topic "gender and 

phy on the subject. 

rationality" 

and contains several short articles as well as a bibliogra 

2. The contrast between the classical focus on virtue and the modern focus on needs, desires, 

preferences, and ultimately, effectiveness is developed by Alasdair Maclntyre. See especially Ch. 

5, "Plato and Rational Inquiry." 

3. Her argument about equality of reason and virtue is made forcefully, but frequently in the 

text she asserts that her proposals will make for more stable marriages; see pp. 29 and 34-35 for 

examples. For further discussion of Wollstonecraft see Korsmeyer, Rogers (pp. 18 1-86), and Tong 

(pp. 13-17). 

4. Catherine H. Zuckert discusses the classical philosophical approach to problems of politics 

and power with special attention to the situation of modernity. Her discussion closes with a call to 

philosophical mediation between extremes (pp. 1-29). 

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Discussion 

Reply 

to Lowenthal 

Christopher A.Colomo 

Rosary College 

In his comment on my recent article in Interpretation, David Lowenthal 

argues that I contradict myself. The alleged contradiction is between my asser 

tion that God is the absolutely other and the biblical account, wherein God is 

the provider-judge, the God whose goodness men trust. I contradict myself, 

according to Lowenthal, because I try to combine the absolutely other and the 

provider-judge, the biblical God, in one account of God. 

I admit to being puzzled provider- 

by the assumption that I treat God as the 

judge (a phrase I never used). I would have thought that my remark about 

sinners in the hands of an angry God indicates only that imagination can ob 

scure one's reason [Interpretation 18 (1990): 149]. I believe I am perfectly 

imagination. If 

candid in confessing that I would not want to be misled by my 

my reference to an angry God is the only 

support for the claim that I treat God 

as the provider-judge, then I regret misleading my reader, but think myself 

absolved of the contradiction in question. 

Since the provider-judge cannot be simply hidden, perhaps Lowenthal char 

acterized God as the provider-judge in order to explain why I speak of God as 

revealed. In any case, if God is revealed, then He cannot be the absolutely 

other. What is absolutely other cannot be revealed, since in the instant that it is 

revealed it ceases to be simply or completely other. According to Lowenthal, I 

contradict myself by treating God as both revealed and absolutely 

readily 

other. I 

agree that an account of God that ascribed to Him both these charac 

teristics would in this respect be self-contradictory. But this is a contradiction I 

point out (ibid. p. 148 bottom), not one I fall into. 

Perhaps Lowenthal's main point is that the contradiction between provider- 

judge and absolutely other whether or not I see it as a contradiction is one 

of my own making. More specifically, he claims that this contradiction is not 

traceable to the Bible. He writes that I leave the biblical view of God "far 

behind" 

when I treat God as the absolutely other. He recognizes that by calling 

God the absolutely other, I refer to God's utter mysteriousness or unintel- 



ligibility. The claim that I leave the Bible "far behind" 

is based on the view that 

the biblical God is not mysterious and unintelligible. (So far as I can see, 

Lowenthal does not attempt to show that I am wrong about the Christian God, 

who is three in one, very God and very man.) 

Something is amiss here because in his review of Strauss's book, Lowenthal 

writes that the Bible extends God's mystery "'as far as 

possible. 

He recognizes 

that the biblical God of power and mystery is in tension with the God of love 

and justice (the provider-judge of his comment), since the moral concerns of 

the latter must be intelligible to man. Indeed, he calls this tension "a fundamen 

tal psychological difficulty 

within the Bible as a 

whole" 

[Interpretation, 13 

(1985): 317].The contradiction Lowenthal reads into my position is the contra 

diction that he himself sees in the Bible as a whole. 

Perhaps a "fundamental difficulty" 

is not a contradiction. In his comment. 

Lowenthal suggests that in the Bible "God's ways are indeed mysterious, but 

this does not mean He Himself is inherently and totally 

mysterio 

The prin 

ciple of contradiction is here brought into play in order to say that God is 

mysterious in one way but not in another. But is it persuasive to claim that 

God's ways, His actions in history, are mysterious and miraculous, but that He 

Himself is knowable (consider Exodus 33: 20 and Hebrews 11: 1)? Maimonides 

interprets the Bible in just the reverse sense, suggesting that God's ways can be 

known but not His essence (Guide I 54). The insistence that God's essence 

cannot be known seems to me necessary if God is to be perfect yet one and of 

infinite power. That these characteristics belong to God seems to me to be a 

reasonable interpretation of what the Bible says. On the assumption that God's 

essence is unknowable, Maimonides goes on to say that "One must likewise of 

necessity deny, with reference to Him, His being similar to thing" 

any existing 

(Guide I 55, Pines tr.). By implication God does not even exist in the same 

Lowenthal in his comment 

way that other existing things do (an equivocality 

appears to reject). This radical dissimilarity to any existing thing is what I tried 

other." 

to capture in the phrase "absolutely 

Lowenthal and I see the same contradiction between the claim to be re 

vealed, just, and loving and the claim to be hidden, unseen, or mysterious. We 

disagree in so far as he is certain that an argument is refuted if one finds a 

contradiction in it. I am not sure that this is the case with respect to a truly 

fundamental argument or position. When Socrates claims to know that he 

knows nothing, he contradicts himself to the extent that he must know what 

knowing 

is. But does this paradox refute him? 

A self-contradictory statement could be defended only if reality itself some 

how contained a contradiction. If "reality" 

is the world we see and touch, then 

Plato seems to have thought that reality to be so obviously self-contradictory as 

to justify him in positing another reality, the "ideas," 

which, we are told, are 

not self-contradictory (though to many readers they no doubt seem to be one of 

the most self-contradictory things in Plato). While Plato's surface teaching in

Reply 

to Lowenthal -315 

itself proves nothing, it does raise the question how we would prove that the 

reality of the every day world is not self-contradictory. Could we use the prin 

ciple of contradiction in our argument? Or would the use of this principle to 

prove that reality conforms to the principle be an instance of circular and, 

hence, invalid reasoning? (Nowhere does Lowenthal address the detailed argu 

ment I make about the contradictory nature of reality on pages 149-50 of my 

article.) 

From Maimonides and Aquinas to Kierkegaard and Bultmann, believers 

who are aware of philosophy have stressed the mysterious aspect of God in 

order to clearly differentiate between faith and philosophic knowledge. No 

doubt, in so doing, they expose just the kind of fundamental difficulty Low 

enthal discusses (e.g., S. Th. I, q.4, a.3, reply 4). In so far as they continue to 

believe, they 

whether the believing 

continue to live with or in contradiction. It is another question 

mind is the one that can best understand and accept this 

situation or whether the believer is not at bottom always seeking release into 

the clear either/or of Kierkegaard's choice. Lowenthal, at least, seems to think 

that it is the philosopher who must resolve contradiction; a man who would be 

rational "must go one way or the 

other." 

Perhaps so, yet I puzzle over the 

seemingly contrary view expressed by Leo Strauss in his reply 

Tyranny (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 210|. 

to Kojeve [On 

Philosophy as such is nothing but genuine awareness of the problems. It is 

impossible to think about these problems without becoming inclined toward a 

solution. Yet as long as there is no wisdom but only quest for wisdom, the 

evidence of all solutions is necessarily smaller than the evidence of the problems. 

Therefore the philosopher ceases to be a philosopher at the moment at which the 

"subjective 

certainty" 

of a solution becomes stronger than his awareness of the 

problematic character of that solution. At that moment the sectarian is born.

Book Review 

Public- 

Charles Sherover, Time, Freedom, and the Common Good: An Essay in 

Philosophy. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). xiii +314 

pp.; cloth $59.50, paper $19.50 

Maureen Feder-Marcus 

State University of New York 

Old Westbury 

Contemporary political life, marked by conflicting claims to entitlement, 

requires clear normative principles for evaluating these claims. Yet few con 

temporary 

philosophers outside the province of the Left have advanced a sys 

tematically worked out, comprehensive view of our social being rigorous 

enough to function as an ontological framework for making such evaluations. 

Professor Sherover goes far in accomplishing this. Time, Freedom, and the 

Common Good is a carefully conceived and tightly argued work and may well 

be foundational for current political debates. 

Drawing from the phenomenological and pragmatic traditions, Sherover pre 

sents an "authentic descriptive 

tered on what he calls the "three principles of 

understanding 

of our actual social being cen 

polity," 

i.e., the existential cate 

gories of our actual social life. This descriptive task comprises the first section 

of the book. The second part sets out some of the normative criteria which flow 

from these categories, and a last section, "The Discipline of Freedom," 

up specific issues in contemporary public policy, including 

takes 

an agenda to be 

discharged and an appropriate method to be used for evaluating social programs 

if we are genuinely to pursue a common good. 

Sherover puts forth three categories which he takes to be constitutive of our 

social being: membership, temporality, 

and freedom. These are derived in sev 

eral ways: as a thoughtful appropriation from our political heritage as grounded 

in the Greeks, through a phenomenological, i.e., rigorously descriptive, ap 

proach to ordinary experience, and dialectically as a transcendental analysis of 

those structures grounding the very possibility of social being itself. Thus the 

book founds the notion of membership, for example, on an Aristotelian concep 

tion of the polis and the primacy of the social, on the notion of individual 

identity as requiring linguistic community and social membership, and on a 

Roycean notion of self-consciousness as an emergent from the social whole. In 

each case, these multiple perspectives are mutually reinforcing and add up to a 

carefully 

elaborated notion of our social being. 

interpretation. Winter 1990-1991, Vol. 18, No. 2

318- Interpretation 

Assuming 

for the moment that these categories are both comprehensive and 

exhaustive, they provide the basis for inferring a clear set of normative guide 

lines for deciding questions of power, organization, and procedure in a free 

society. Sherover's reasoning moves here from the existential notion of mem 

bership to the political one of citizenship, from temporality 

to the power to 

control time, i.e., governance, and from freedom to the activities flowing from 

it, primary among these being 

livelihood. His discussion of the first of these 

political concepts, citizenship, is, in fact, very rich, entailing a whole series of 

substantive conclusions about equality and rights which can be used as a mea 

sure for weighing the legitimacy of various contemporary 

Sherover argues for a Burkean notion of "prescriptive 

Thomas Hill Green, reminding 

political claims. 

rights," 

as emended by 

the reader that there is a tradition of positive 

rights, i.e., those enabling protections which provide the means by 

society takes its members as citizens, 

which a 

within the conservative tradition which 

stands between the Lockean notion of abstract natural rights and the centraliza 

tion of power marking the paternalistic state. 

Given the second of his three principles of polity, Sherover is able to infer 

the legitimacy and necessity 

of republican government as it developed from 

Machiavelli and Montesquieu through The Federalist. Since time, conceived 

both ontically as a fact of experience and transcendental ly as the ground for the 

construction of all meaningful experience, is a constitutive element of our so 

cial being, the best government is one which allows the greatest openness toward 

the future and the greatest control of time to its citizens. Given a realistic 

conception of power, the pluralization of centers of power is the best way to 

secure and protect such openness and what Madison called the diverse "faculties 

of 

men." 

Indeed, our form of pluralism which checks even the possibility of 

legislative dominance through which a majority can move to complete power, 

becomes virtually a moral imperative for political life. 

Finally, the three principles of polity generate a defense of a commercial 

economy functioning by 

means of the free market but one in which government 

can interfere as the "guarantor of the general interest" 

along 

the lines conceived 

by Hamilton. The efficacy of the dispersion of property within the framework 

of capitalism provides the empirical verification for Sherover's conceptual 

view, reinforcing the notion of the primacy of pluralism already 

chapter on governance. 

made in the 

Given the assumption that the three principles of polity are sufficient for 

characterizing our social being, Sherover's arguments in the second section of 

his book are tight and well founded. It may be that these do not, by themselves, 

account for man's full socialness, however. If no other, the notion of social 

labor might have to be considered labor seen not simply as an area left over 

for individual pursuit once social life is constituted but labor as essentially 

constitutive of our social being itself. 

The fact that labor is conceptualized as a residual and individual activity

Book Review 3 1 9 

takes its toll on the book's overall argument. For in the course of his work, 

Sherover refers on a number of occasions to the fact that his analysis must 

"faithfully" 

speak to our actual social experience, including the actual kinds of 

personal lives that an organized society permits and encourages. I would have 

expected the book to undertake such a concrete analysis at some point, if in no 

other place, in the section on "Livelihood." 

not, I think, "faithfully" 

Unfortunately 

this chapter does 

speak to our actual experience. Rather it veers off in 

the direction of abstract exhortations to free enterprise. As a result, Sherover's 

argument remains most compelling when the threat to freedom is posited in its 

starkest terms, namely a planned society with a centralized monopoly of power 

and authority. Sherover's initial categories allow this discrimination very well. 

However, they may be inadequate for catching 

the more subtle but nonetheless 

serious deformations of freedom arising from, among other places, the free 

market itself. It would be essential then to offer or at least to refer to a physiog 

nomy of the contemporary soul, for the concrete historical instantiation of Sher 

over's categories is, itself, the measure of just how well we really are nourish 

ing 

the life of freedom and the notion of a common good. 

It is precisely because Sherover eschews the tradition of atomistic liberalism 

and takes the notion of the common good as central, that some more concrete 

analysis of the structures which form and support it is warranted. He seems to 

speak as if these structures are self-developing: "A free economic order has, 

indeed, increasingly provided the material basis for moral or virtuous behavior 

and for a social commitment to individual happiness consonant with responsible 

social life" 

(p. 220). And in a footnote in his chapter on livelihood, he as 

sumes, with Michael Novak, that we can take as a given a moral-cultural sys 

tem to restrain and check the economic system without noting how the market 

can erode the valuational systems counted on for its restraint. 

Even if we assume the more optomistic picture, a society of individuals with 

decent, even actively sympathetic impulses, we still must address the question 

of how these individual affects can be formed into a public will to discharge the 

political agenda Sherover sets out. Thus there seems to be an omission in his 

analysis, even if we assume that the structures of consciousness and our affec 

tive life are such that there is a substratum of feeling or virtue to be mobilized. 

Certainly 

the issue becomes even more problematic if we take to heart Allan 

Bloom's description of contemporary interiority, its insularity and trivialization 

of feelings and ideas, summed up in his telling phrase, "the dreariness of the 

family's spiritual 

landscape." 

contemporary 

A similar point is raised by James Miller. Commenting on Arendt's On 

Revolution, Miller notes: 

For might not contentment with civil liberties, which protect the private pursuit of 

happiness, slacken the thirst for public freedom? Might not the very perfection of 

the governmental mechanism breed apathy, and create the conditions for a retreat


into those insular concerns that have become the image of 

"happiness" 

in America? 

Have not the generous circumstances attending the American experiment actually 

helped generate a fatal vacillation between an active commitment to freedom and 

the passive enjoyment of prosperity? Has not America become the perfect 

model of a two-party plutocracy where (and directly quoting from Arendt) "public 

happiness and public freedom have become the privilege of the few"?1 

And from Arendt herself: 

It was precisely because of the enormous weight of the Constitution and of the 

experiences in founding a new body 

politic, that the failure to incorporate the 

townships and the town-hall meetings, the original springs of all political activity in 

the country, amounted to a death sentence for them. Paradoxical as it may sound, it 

was under the impact of the Revolution that the revolutionary spirit in this country 

began to wither away, and it was the Constitution itself, this greatest achievement 

of the American people, which eventually cheated them of their proudest 

possession.2 

Certainly 

an analogous point can be made about the common good. Political 

life, in its highest sense, requires acting within the human community, an act, 

as Arendt points out, of self-revelation requiring courage and faith. Yet even if 

we take a less heroic and more modest view of politics as the institutionaliza 

tion of procedures for persuasion and mutual accomodation, the structures of 

individual consciousness and social life must exist to make these possible as 

well. What institutions, organs, rituals, even public spaces are necessary for 

forming 

a public will dedicated to freedom and the common good? To assume 

that these structures exist and to lay out a political philosophy accordingly, may 

not be sufficient. Rather, the question may be how to theorize the proper or 

gans of will formation consonant with a free society. It is all the more timely 

for believers in individual freedom to do this, 

question from the Left has been so resoundingly defeated. 

since the attempt to answer this 

1. James Miller, "The Pathos of Novelty: Hannah Arendt's Image of Freedom in the Modem 

World," 

in Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of The Public World, ed. Melvyn Hill (New York: St. 

Martin's Press, 1979), p. 195. 

2. On Revolution (New York: The Viking Press, 1965), as quoted in Miller, p. 201.

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