LOGOS

Logos and Eros

 Books of Interest from St. Augustine's Press
Stanley Rosen, Plato s Symposium
Stanley Rosen, Plato s Sophist: The Drama of Original and Image
Stanley Rosen, Plato s Statesman: The Web of Politics
Stanley Rosen, The Ancients and the Moderns: Rethinki.ng Modernity
Stanley Rosen, G. W. F. Hegel: An Introduction to the Science of Wisdom
Stanley Rosen, The Question of Being: A Reversal of Heidegger
Stanley Rosen, Metaphysics in Ordinary Language
Stanley Rosen, Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay
Stanley Rosen, The Limits ofAnalysis
Leo Strauss, Xenophon s Socratic Discourse: An Interpretation of the
Oeconomicus
Leo Strauss, Xenophon s Socrates
Seth Benardete, Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero
Seth Benardete, Sacred Transgressions: A Reading ofSophocles 'Antigone
Seth Benardete, Herodotean Inquiries
Aristotle, Aristotle - On Poetics; translation by Seth Benardete and
Michael Davis
Aristotle, Physics, Or Natural Hearing; translation by Glen Coughlin
Plato, The Symposium of Plato: The Shelley Translation; translation by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
St. Augustine, On Order [De Ordine}
Averroes, Averroes' Middle Commentary on Aristotle s Poetics; translation
by Charles Butterworth
Averroes, Averroes ' Middle Commentaries on Aristotle s Categories and
De Interpretatione; translation by Charles Butterworth
Michael Davis: Wanderlust: Ruminations on Liberal Education
s
Michael Davis, The Poetry of Philosophy: On Aristotle Poetics.
Ronna Burger, The Phaedo: A Platonic Labyrinth
Joseph Cropsey, Polity and Economy: With Further Thoughts on the
Principles ofAdam Smith
Gerhart Niemeyer, Between Nothingness and Paradise
Josef Pieper, Enthusiasm and Divine Madness: On the Platonic Dialogue
Phaedrus
Mario Enrique Sacchi, The Apocalypse of Being: The Esoteric Gnosis of
Martin Heidegger
Henrik Syse, Natural Law, Religion, and Rights
Jacques Maritain, Natural Law: Reflections on Theory and Practice
Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being (in two volumes)
James V. Schall, S.J., The Sum Total of Human Happiness
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Future of Our Educational Institutions;
translation by Michael W. Grenke
Friedrich Nietzsche, Prefaces to Unwritten Works; translation by Michael
W. Grenke
 Logos and Eros
Essays Honoring Stanley Rosen

Edited by Na/in Ranasinghe

ST. AUGUSTINE'S PRESS

South Bend, Indiana
2006
 Copyright© 2006 by St. Augustine's Press

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
permission of St. Augustine's Press.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

I 2 3 4 5 6 12 11 I 0 09 08 07 06

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Logos and eros: essays honoring Stanley Rosen/
edited by Nalin Ranasinghe.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-58731-470-3 (hardcover: alk. paper)
1. Philosophy. 2. Plato. 3. Philosophy, Ancient. 4. Philosophy,
Modem. 5. Logos (Philosophy) 6. Rosen, Stanley, 1924 -
I. Rosen, Stanley, 1924 - II. Ranasinghe, Nalin, 1960-
BD41.L64 2006
190 - dc22 2006030089

oo The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements ofthe
American National Standard f or Information Sciences - Permanence of
Paper for Printed Materials, ANSI Z39.48-l984.

St. Augustine's Press

www.staugustine.net
Contents
Introduction: Stanley Rosen as an Educator l
Nalin Ranasinghe, Assumption College

Works for or about Stanley Rosen

Transformations of Enlightenment: Plato, Rosen, and the Postmodern 13

Alasdair Macintyre, University of Notre Dame
The "Ordinary Experience" of the Platonic Dialogues 27
Drew A. Hyland, Trinity College
From Hermeneutics to Common Sense: Stanley Rosen
on Precomprehension 36
Laurent Jaffro, Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne
Four Brief Essays for Stanley Rosen 50
Herbert Mason, Boston University
Discourse: For Stanley Rosen 55
Geoffrey Hill, Boston University

Works on Plato and Ancient Philosophy

The Grammar of the Soul: On Plato's Euthyphro 57

Michael Davis, Sarah Lawrence College
Platonic Liberalism: Self-Perfection as a Foundation
of Political Theory 72
Charles Griswold, Boston University
The Nonlover in Aristotle's Ethics 105
Ronna Burger, Tulane University
Democracy in Motion: Some Reflections
on Herodotean Politics 118
Clifford Orwin, University of Toronto
Aristotle's Commonsensical Cosmology 134
David Roochnik, Boston University
VI NALIN RANASINGHE, A SSUMPTION COLLEGE

The Politics of the Afterlife in Plato's Gorgias 147

Damjan de Krnjevic-Miskovic, Office of the President,
Republic of Serbia

Works on Modern Philosophy

Kant's Philosophical Use of Mathematics: Negative Magnitudes 160

Eva Brann, St. John's College, Annapolis
Origins of Enchantment: Conceptual Continuities in the
Ontology of Political Wholeness 176
Waller R. Newell, Carleton University
On Giving Oneself the Law 190
Robert Pippin, University of Chicago
Christianity Is Platonism for the "People": A Reinterpretation 211
Robert Rethy, Xavier University
Where My Spade Tums: On Philosophy, Nihilism,
and the Ordinary 229
Sharon Rider, Uppsala University
Freedom from the Good: Heidegger's Idealist
Grounding of Politics 246
Richard Velkley, The Catholic University of America
The True and the Bad Infinity 260
Donald Phillip Verene, Emory University
Stanley Rosen as an Educator
N alin Ranasinghe
Assumption College

I wished that I could find a true philosopher as my teacher, a man who could
raise me above the inadequacy of the age and teach me simplicity in thought
and life-to be unmodem in the deepest sense of the word.... Modem man
is so complex that he is forced to be dishonest whenever he speaks, opines
and wishes to act.

-Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations

I
The inherently difficult task of writing an introduction to a Festschrift celebrating
the career of one's beloved teacher is further complicated by the fact that- far from
being a valetudinarian- Stanley Rosen, despite having already been the author of
fifteen books and countless articles, perhaps is now in the most productive decade
of his life. Having already published two books, Metaphysics in Ordinary Langu.age
and The Illusiveness of the Ordinary, that are judged to rank among the best philo-
sophical works of the new century, this septuagenarian has just completed a
magisterial commentary on Plato's Republic. However, we are at a point in this
active teacher's career where it is possible to identify and celebrate the grand motifs
that he has consistently iterated over his fifty years as a doctor of philosophy.
Even though, as Drew Hyland points out in this volume, his writing style has
changed more than once, Rosen has always sought to defend the lifeline between
cosmos and logos; he has always insisted that the bond between philosophy and
ordinary language is sacred and indissoluble. From this vantage his amazing abil-
ity to yoke together and drive the unruly black horse of ordinary language and the
ideal steed of metaphysics seems godlike. Accordingly, bearing in mind his
teacher's famous assertion that the depth of things resides precisely in their
surfaces, it is appropriate that this introduction should begin by describing
Stanley Rosen in the place where his unsurpassed mastery of both philosophy and
ordinary language are most evident: the classroom.

II
I first took a class with Stanley Rosen almost twenty years ago, at Penn State, in
autumn 1985. What transpired in Rosen's seminar that afternoon was something
2 NALIN RANASINGHE

that I have never experienced, either before or since, with any other teacher. My
other instructors that semester were Joseph Kockelmans and the late David
Lachterman, professors of rare erudition perfectly capable of making difficult
texts clear and accessible. However, only Rosen could seamlessly integrate
philosophy into ordinary experience while enormously enriching his students'
awareness of both. He was an amazing combination of Platonist, stand-up
comedian, Dutch uncle and social commentator. Like Socrates, he could bring
philosophy down from the heavens and do the most difficult topics justice in the
language of the agora--or gridiron. His students saw that Rosen came before
them neither to praise ordinary language-at the expense of philosophy, nor to
bury it-in abstract jargon. Rosen made me aware of how flat and stale it was to
make a living by opposing philosophy to everyday life; Platonism, as he embod-
ied it, was distinguished by a robust sense of reality. A philosopher who cannot
use the direct evidence of the everyday exercise of reason to justify the good life
is worse than useless; he is dangerous.
This is why Rosen took it upon himself ceaselessly to warn against the nihilis-
tic foundations of what his teacher memorably called ''the joyless quest for joy." By
thoughtlessly denouncing the so-called elitist experience of excellence, our egalitar-
ian ethos is powerless to defend the very virtues that must sustain a democracy. For
one thing, any talk of high and low, noble and base, or good and evil is expressed
purely in terms of selfishness, sentimentality, or superstition. Alternately, and even
more dangerously, any 'value language' that cannot be quantified is deemed either
meaningless or, horror of horrors, judgmental. Consequently we find ourselves
'thrown' in a world in which ordinary speech is hopelessly incompatible with the
technical jargon and quantitative measurements that rule and constitute the increas-
ingly artificial and illusory everyday reality we dwell in. Yet Rosen does not
zestfully denounce modernity in the stern and pompous tones of Cato the Elder;
self-consciously anachronistic speech only serves to widen the gap between eternal
verities and present-day exigencies. He is of the view that human beings can only
maintain the essential connection between reason and the good by living the good
life in the present. Ancient self-knowledge and modern liberality cannot be under-
stood as virtues that mutually exclude each other.
Rosen's metaphysics of the ordinary becomes startling relevant when we real-
ize that the hundreds of billions spent annually on weapons that could blow our
planet up many times over are as inconceivable in terms of human experience as the
immeasurably tiny particles of matter and energy used by computer technology to
hold our world together. Reality today is such that even the President of the United
States cannot hope to master all the data at his disposal and gain an accurate world-
view without a large number of assistants and deputy assistants, all operating from
their own limited and limiting perspectives. Furthermore, by a perverse reversal of
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle at the macro level, it seems inevitable that the
very efforts made to measure and report this chaotic mass of raw matter itself
 Stanley Rosen as an Educator 3

result in distorted pictures of the whole that only further disorient the various
entities that constitute it. Consequently, power, no matter how arbitrary or vio-
lent, is affirmed for its own sake. Renouncing higher notions of justice and
personal integrity, both the technocratic West and the fundamentalist East
shamelessly kneel before the altar of necessity. Human society becomes generic
and machine-friendly, and the loudly proclaimed advances in human genetics
only promise to embody superficially what educational institutions have been
doing to the minds of impressionable students for many decades. Under these
conditions, when nobility and even uncorrupted speech seem to be all but
impossible, a man who can practice ordinary language to remind us of virtue
and excellence can only be compared to Teiresias in the underworld "alone
retaining his wits while the others flitted around like shadows." Yet such is the
dis-ease of this state that even many students fear those rare teachers who can
bring them out of Hades.
For fifty years, Stanley Rosen has unceremoniously dragged thousands of
students from the ghetto ofjargon and compelled them to speak and think in ordi-
nary language. This is why many righteously tolerant academics have been
appalled by his use of 'judgmental' language and unprofessional examples to gra-
tuitously indicate the nihilistic foundations of their schizophrenic existence. Now,
as then, many highly intelligent students of philosophy prove to be utterly incapable
of living their lives in accordance with the principles to which they pay lip service
in academese. Nihilism, an unbalanced disposition towards reality, which often
results from a death-obsessed 'care' or ego-maniacal authenticity, is preferred
over the 'logocentric' procedures of judgment and rank ordering that provide
meaning and virtue in a world conspicuously deficient in both qualities.
Unfortunately, the question of whether 'being judgmental' is worse than being a
hypocrite is one that few care to address in our simultaneously over-tolerant and
over-righteous times.
Many students (and professors) still view philosophy as a disease (or a way
of being articulately neurotic) at which they just happen to be good. Of course,
this sophisticated diaresis has no way of distinguishing between Wittgenstein and
Woody Allen-and perhaps it shouldn't. In other words, philosophy becomes just
a means of paying one's bills; the unquestioned end is normalcy-understood in
the most banal and mimetic terms. Any setback will cause philosophers of this
variety to not unhappily pursue some other, often more lucrative career path that
would better advance either 'family values' or Epicurean lifestyles. Furthermore,
following the example of Wittgenstein and the Logical Positivists it has become
acceptable, and indeed downright philanthropic, for philosophers to set about the
liquidation of philosophy itself- with a view to delivering normal people from its
annoying questions and perplexities. Unfortunately, this Socratic 'speed-bump' is
the last obstacle to the flattening out of everyday reality and its bifurcation into
the extremes of Last Men and Fundamentalists.
4 NAUN RANASINGHE

By inconsiderately philosophizing in everyday language Rosen makes it far

harder for his audience to maintain a 'double-truth' relationship between philos-
ophy and everyday life. He has never treated philosophy as a language game that
is played strictly within the pages of scholarly journals and becomes irrelevant or
dangerous the moment we re-enter the real world of Xanthippe and Crito. The
good must have precedence over being, even in our thoroughly historicized
surroundings. Indeed, one could argue that Rosen has always followed
Zarathustra's imperative to "be faithful to the earth" and never been seduced by
ontic or even ontological exigency. Whilst those least worthy of philosophy only
pursue it instrumentally, better but more timorous scholars have sought to make
the world safe for philosophy and only succeeded in debasing both philosophy
and the world. Vigorously eschewing both of these false oppositions, Rosen
believes that true philosophers can and must justify existence through their
"robust sense of reality." It follows that 'rank-ordering' is an essential aspect of
the distinctive manner in which a philosopher views the world and judges that it
is still possible to practice virtue. Even though seeing things as they are certainly
is not easy, and the task frequently seems to be as impossible as it was for
Socrates or Rousseau to penetrate the encrusted outer shell of Glaucus, Rosen
points us towards an abiding structure that, in his own words, "isn't the eternal
order but yet is the natural foundation for willing the eternal order to be." 1 It is
noteworthy that despite the cryptic language, this formulation is far more positive
than its equivalent in the writings of his teacher: eternally recurrent problems that
let philosophers stand beyond good and evil to rescue us from the chaotic mire of
historicism. By his emphasis on this structure that allows noble deeds and
thoughtful words to remain timelessly meaningful, Rosen defends the reality of
both ordinary language and human virtue.
Furthermore, despite his passionate interest in moral and political questions,
Rosen has consistently been critical of irrationalism and dogmatic skepticism;
both poses conveniently conclude that 'everything but judgmental language is
permitted' once we are either desperate or 'cool' enough to assume the absurdity
of existence or the final inaccessibility of ultimate reality. As a result, the world
is delivered up to extremists on both ends of the political spectrum. Contrariwise,
Rosen has demonstrated throughout his extraordinarily successful and productive
career that ordinary language is sufficient to guide human life when it is governed
by rational judgment- rather than mindless imitation. Conversely, ideas and facts
cannot be separated from each other without consequences even more dangerous
than those following the splitting of the atom. Neither does Rosen's model of
human existence place man somewhere between an illusory physical world and a
wholly transcendent heaven; he prefers to derive the ideas used to measure

Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987),

127.
 Stanley Rosen as an Educator 5

qualitative excellence from human cognitive activity itself.-thus deriving depth

from surface. In this important regard he once again separates himself from those
who pride themselves on their ability to create values ex-nihilo by imposing order
on the chaotic hyle of reality. Rosen's scathing criticisms of historicism and
pseudo-aristocratic nihilism are founded in his recognition that it is possible for
human beings to take their stand in the real world and resist both fundamentalism
and sophistry.
Stanley Rosen, a self-described New Deal Democrat, has remained constant
in his political views while instructing three generations of students.
Temperamentally unsuited to occupy the Vicarage of Bray, he has never failed to
warn against the worst tendencies of the ideology most in vogue among his
students-even at the risk of being (wrongly) associated with political views
toward which he is least sympathetic. His characteristic defense of prudence in
eloquent but seemingly immoderate language has very little resemblance to our
contemporary tendency to use insidious methods to promote extremism. Far from
being the kind of man who would prescribe Nazism to ward against the corrup-
tion of Weimar, his criticisms of nihilism and postmodemism have always been
undertaken in the name of moderate enlightenment. It is far nobler to be a
Platonist accused of sounding like a Nietzschean than to be a Nietzschean imper-
sonating a Platonist.
Rosen's well-known unwillingness to suffer fools gladly derives precisely
from his awareness that many fools are yet capable of excellence; he does not
allow a false sense of charity to alienate him (or them) from the experience of
quality in the world. His high expectations of others have always been accompa-
nied by genuine authenticity in personal relations with individuals. Having been
educated in the company of truly brilliant eccentrics at the University of Chicago
in its glory days, and being himself the possessor of an artistic temperament,
Rosen has always understood the thin line that separates genius from madness. He
has never mistaken an artful plodder with a high I.Q. for a genuine philosopher.
In a situation where students typically expect professors either to be their equal
or an unapproachable superior, Rosen has refused to play either role in order to
gain approval of crowds. Differently put, he has never been known to be afraid of
being himself or of speaking his mind. Consequent to this refusal to conform to
stereotype, humorless students (and colleagues) at both extremes have decided
that he is either unprofessional or an elitist. Their pathetic inability to appreciate
Rosen's unsurpassed sense of humor has always served as a kind of pons asino-
rum separating the children who approach him from the goats, sheep, camels and
lions making up the intellectual order of rank. By refusing to take himself too
seriously, and by never seeking to make disciples, Stanley Rosen always pointed
beyond himself. The exaggerations and self-caricatures that made members of the
aforementioned menagerie regard him as an egomaniac were in fact the produc-
tions of an artist always keenly aware of the enigmatic relationship between image
6 NALIN RANASINGHE

and original. It followed sadly but necessarily that those incapable of understanding
this basic Platonic distinction proved that they were unworthy of studying with
our greatest living Platonist. Some of the most egregious misinterpretations of
Plato have been committed by persons firmly convinced that a philosopher will
never write or speak humorously.

III
Of course, any talk concerning Stanley Rosen and the student-teacher relationship
is necessarily incomplete without a discussion of his attitude towards his own
teacher, Leo Strauss. Since much of Rosen's own work could be regarded as an
ongoing response to certain fundamental themes in Strauss 's work, and because
Rosen himself has had much to say about his former teacher, we could gain valu-
able insights into the thought of both thinkers by directly addressing this topic. Just
as Strauss's amazing success as a teacher is attested to by the large number of dis-
ciples garnered by this unprepossessing man, the strange fact that the charismatic
and ebullient Stanley Rosen has actively refused to make disciples points to a not
unimportant difference in the deepest philosophical beliefs of the these two giants.
Rosen first met Strauss in 1949 shortly after the latter had moved to the
University of Chicago, via the latter's stepson, who was an acquaintance of the
former. ("You're a poet? My father knows something about poetry. Why don't you
go see him.") Rosen at the time regarded himself as a poet. He was also busily
engaged in completing the requirements for a Bachelor's degree from Chicago in
one year- a feat that was also performed by his distinguished contemporary Seth
Benardete. Rosen's hilarious account of his first encounter with Strauss awaits
publication, but it suffices to state that on the occasion of their first meeting, after
having introduced himself as a poet, Rosen responded to Strauss 's inquiry
whether he, Rosen, knew what Plato said about poets by saying that he dido 't give
a damn- because as a poet he knew more about his art than Plato possibly could.
This was the unpromising beginning of a very long and animated conversation
that ended with an invitation to study with Strauss.
It is highly significant that Rosen was one of a very small number from the
Philosophy Department at Chicago to attend Strauss 's lectures; Richard Rorty was
another. Most of the participants were either from Strauss 's own department of
political science or the Committee on Social Thought. Among these were intellec-
tual luminaries such as Seth Benardete, Victor Gourevitch, Muhsin Mahdi, and
Allan Bloom. In addition, Rosen was the only one of Strauss's students to come to
him from poetry. This fact is of course not unrelated to Rosen's interest in language
and its often tenuous relationship to everyday reality. By his own account, he was
also initially virtually uninterested in politics,2 an attribute that, needless to say,
also separated him from the vast majority of those who attached themselves to
2 See Stanley Rosen, Preface to the Portuguese Translation of Nihilism, xxii.
 Stanley Rosen as an Educator 7

Strauss. Indeed, it has been noted on many occasions that Rosen's interests in
metaphysics and epistemology also make him almost unique among Strauss's
students. Because of his departmental affiliation, every official course offered by
Strauss had to do with political science; however there were several private
groups reading philosophical and theological works that he presided over as well.
By his own admission, Rosen attended virtually every meeting of Strauss 's
seminars over the five years he spent as a graduate student at the University of
Chicago. It was soon readily apparent to him that Strauss ''transcended the faculty
members of the philosophy department in virtually every significant way."
Accordingly, after taking his master's degree, Rosen transferred to the Committee
on Social Thought where he was able to write a dissertation on Spinoza under the
supervision of Leo Strauss. Shortly after completing his degree, marrying, and
spending a year in Greece, Rosen secured employment at the Pennsylvania State
University and left Chicago. This did not however end his association with
Strauss. They corresponded often by letter and in 1958 Strauss visited Rosen and
his wife at State College, Pennsylvania. Strauss, who had often defended Rosen
against criticisms concerning his student's colorful temperament by giving assur-
ances that he was "getting better", was very pleased at his student's success. He
is said to have boasted to colleagues in Chicago that Rosen had "made it" and was
now the proud owner of a house and automobile. Rosen continued to visit Strauss
on many occasions, the last such visit taking place shortly before the latter's death
in 1973. On that occasion, upon hearing that Rosen was preparing a book on
Hegel, the ailing teacher pointed him towards what turned out to be a vitally
important passage in understanding the full argument of the Greater Logic. This
incident confirmed Rosen's adamantly held conviction that Strauss 's true genius
was to be found neither in his pronouncements as a statesman or prophet, nor in
his metaphysical or poetic powers, but in his remarkable ability to read a text.
Rosen has stated elsewhere that Strauss rescued him as a teenager from a "tran-
scendentally grounded nihilism." While he came to share a number of his teacher's
central views and retained many of them throughout his life, Rosen says he was
never at any time a 'Straussian.' Strauss never required him to become one "as a
price for the extraordinary benefits he bestowed on his students."3 Despite fully
acknowledging how much he benefited from Strauss 's immense learning and
"sober madness", Rosen believed that there were certain important differences,
largely concerning the issue of esotericism, which caused him to separate himself
from the Straussian mainstream. As readers of his writings are well aware, Rosen is
in considerable sympathy with the courage and generosity animating the "modems"
in their revolution against tradition and nature. Yet Strauss, who according to Rosen
regarded courage as the lowest of virtues,4 was often critical of what he perceived
as Rosen's excessive boldness. It is worth repeating the expression 'epater le
3 ibid., xxiii.
4 ibid.
8 NALIN RANAS INGHE

bourgeois' (shocking the bourgeoisie) that summed up Strauss's disapproving opin-

ion of his student's more exoteric writing style.5 We cannot avoid the inference that
this criticism had more to do with style than substance.
Even though Rosen's celebrated book Nihilism was written to work out the
general features of Strauss 's analysis of the nihilistic roots of modem philoso-
phy, its "spiritual father", while commending the work highly, also commented
that he himself lacked the courage to write such a book. 6 This goes to the heart
of the fundamental difference between Strauss, a refugee from Nazi Germany,
and Rosen, a native of Cleveland, Ohio. Despite his frequent and stirring invo-
cations of thumos, Strauss, the man who rediscovered the long forgotten art of
esotericism by reading heretical political theologians, preferred not to express
his truest opinions freely on most matters of importance. Some argue that this
was due to his fear of corrupting his readers (epater le bourgeois). However
that may be, it seems not unrelated to their different views on whether it is
more desirable and or practical to gain fame or disciples. There are reasons for
and against the belief that Strauss, the prudent "ancient", obeyed the Greek
warning against seeking fame in one's own lifespan. It is likewise unclear
whether Rosen, the courageous and generous "modern", embraced
Machiavelli's advice to trust in his own arms-even ifthe goal was to holdfortuna
within them.
While Rosen has always defended the phenomenon of esoteric writing, it is
his contention that our plight today is such that 'shocking the bourgeoisie' is far
less dangerous than allowing them to persist in complacently nihilistic modes and
orders already producing a civilizational meltdown. Put bluntly, esoteric writing
is useless in a decadent time where success is measured by power rather than wis-
dom, and even the best students are barely literate, certainly not pious, and often
incapable of ever being more than merely good students. Importing esotericism
to America is ultimately almost as quixotic as transplanting democracy in Iraq; in
both cases one can best deflect the accusation of esoteric knavery by drawing
attention to exoteric folly.

IV
An emphasis on rigorous interpretive procedures aiming at the utmost clarity
possible, ultimately expressed in ordinary language, rather than reliance upon
oracular pronouncements and dogmatic assumptions concerning perfectly
constructed texts written by all-knowing Ancients, that could only be decoded by
infallible interpreters, starkly distinguishes Rosen's approach from results
common to Heideggereans and Straussians. Such procedures only separate

5 ibid.
6 ibid., xxii- xxiii.
 Stanley Rosen as an Educator 9

student from interpreter while promoting the latter to an intellectual pantheon that
confirms his qualitative kinship with the Ancients: "Where I go, you cannot
follow." This pious posture also deprives writers from past times of what they
would most desire in ours: intelligent readers capable of ascending from the
signifier and sign-painter to the signified. The idea that Shakespeare could only
have learned about the soul through reading Xenophon by candlelight denies the
possibility that an intelligent man may understand a great deal through observing
human affairs by daylight.
In other words, while it is quite obvious that many great writers write in such
a way that the deeper implications of their works would only be apparent to more
astute readers, the view that great works are flawless masterpieces of logographic
necessity takes away the only quality that makes interpersonal communication of
goodness truth and beauty between very different times and places possible:
shared erotic humanity. Consequently, we must deplore the effects of a certain
kind of historicism, based upon dark oracles concerning the withdrawal of being
or caves below caves, that necessitates revelatory exegesis when unnecessarily
befuddled students cry out "Only a god can enlighten us!"
By refusing to resort to obscurantism, and providing constant verbal and non-
verbal reminders of his robust humanity, Stanley Rosen has never 'hermenutered'
his students and left them incapable of reading for themselves. He recalls Strauss
smiling broadly and quoting Nietszche's assertion that the best thing a student can
do for his teacher is to kill him. Teacher-student relationships modeled after the
doctrine of original sin, which opens up an infinite moral and qualitative abyss
between creator and creation, are not appropriate in rational-as opposed to rev-
elatory-contexts. In other words, teachers who produce disciplined disciples
often cast a long shadow that makes emulation of the master's virtue by the dis-
ciples, or even recognition of it by later generations, all but impossible.
Shakespeare put it best in Julius Caesar: "The evil that men do lives after them;
the good is oft interred with their bones." Accordingly, Rosen's fidelity to Strauss
might very well be best assessed by somewhat more esoteric criteria than those
used to prove ideological discipleship.
Rosen has stated that Leo Strauss "regarded Heidegger as the enemy of the
heritage of Platonism in the late Modem world." Accordingly, he sought to "inoc-
ulate his students against Heidegger by training them in the Platonic tradition." 7
It was in the service of this cause that Rosen published two works that took direct
aim at Heidegger: Nihilism and A Question of Being. Yet Rosen's singular experi-
ence was that Strauss very rarely mentioned Heidegger by name, even in private
conversations and reading groups, and never referred to Heideggerean texts. 8 It
was only shortly after leaving Chicago that Rosen became aware of Strauss's

7 ibid., xxiv.
8 ibid.
10 NALIN RANASINGHE

lecture An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism- a revised version of

which was published in 1989. This document concludes with a description of
Heideggerean Being or Esse as a synthesis of the Platonic Ideas and the Biblical
God. Esse is said to be as impersonal as the former and as elusive as the latter.9 It
is curious that Strauss himself, in his famous 1953 lecture Progress or Return?
claimed that the secret of the vitality of the West depended on the continuance of
the unresolved conflict between Reason and Revelation, Jerusalem and Athens. 10
Bearing in mind Heidegger's famous pronouncement in his Introduction to
Metaphysics (also published in 1953) that the idea of a Christian Philosophy was
about as meaningful as a round square, 11 we must entertain seriously Rosen's
thought that, despite their respective foci on ontology and politics, the man his
teacher called "the only great thinker in our time", 12 exerted a great deal of influ-
ence on Leo Strauss. 13 Did Strauss himself have a non-corrupted take on either
the round or the square? His recently published early writings point to the heady
influence of Freud and Nietzsche; they certainly don't convince us that he was
immaculately conceived from the head of Zeus. Does Strauss subscribe to the
Nietzschean view that a culture is created ex nihilo out of the dialectical interac-
tion between two fictions? Or did he follow Heidegger's example and effectively
function as a prophetic interpreter?
Perhaps we could say that Strauss, who claimed to be only a scholar, 14
rejected the poisoned chalice of reason and preferred to find upright shelter in the
enduring stormy tension between the impersonal and the elusive. In less poetic
words, he preferred political philosophy to metaphysics. Viewed in this light, it is
likely that his setting up of the famous quarrel between the ancients and modems
was undertaken with the intention of reconfiguring the debris remaining from
Heidegger's destruktion of the Western tradition in a way that protected the West
from the nihilistic consequences of enlightenment. This solution amounted to
forcing both faith and reason to cooperatively assume defensive postures against
their common enemy, the juggernaut of technology, instead of exposing each
other's deficiencies. Unfortunately, the exigencies of the Cold War forced the

9 Leo Strauss, "An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism" in The Rebirth of

Classical Political Rationalism, ed. Thomas Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1989), 45.
10 Leo Strauss, "Progress or Return?" in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of
Modernity, ed. Kenneth Hart Green (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1997), 116.
11 Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1958), 7.
12 Strauss, "An Introduction to Heideggeran Existentialism," 29.
13 Stanley Rosen, Preface to Chinese translation of The Quarrel between Philosophy
and Politics, 1.
14 Strauss, "An Introduction to Heideggerean Existentialism," 29.
 Stanley Rosen as an Educator 11

West to embrace this very enemy in self-defense. Heidegger warned against this
danger, but of course his own doctrines had contributed greatly towards the
Western tradition's weakened condition. Rosen himself believes that Strauss was
"too pessimistic concerning human creativity, too enamored of nature and so too
forgetful of the fact that nature is both good and bad." 15 While we deplore the lib-
eral tendency to celebrate raw potentiality as actuality, this is no reason to
embrace the conservative fallacy of justifying, anointing and acclaiming what is
as what ought to be. This is but another form of historicist fatalism. While they
might flatter the rich and pander to the powerful, language games of this kind can
only breed hubris and stupidity in the real world.
Strauss's preoccupation with such theorists of strife as Thucydides, Hobbes,
Machiavelli, and Schmitt as well as his preference for those two noted anti-
Socratics Aristophanes and Nietzsche, justify the inference that he esteemed the
ancients for their noble pessimism than out of any belief in goodness, truth and
beauty. This view is also supported by the fact that his celebrated re-discovery of
Platonic political philosophy occurred through the esoteric, atheistic, and decid-
edly pessimistic medium of Islamic political thought. While Strauss 's call for the
revival of spiritedness was altogether justified in dark days of the Cold War,
Cassandra-like, he drowned out his own warnings that the less immediate but
gravest threats were posed by intellectual and religious decadence. In our present
hegemonic predicament, the swashbuckling hubris of an Alcibiades is more
attractive and consequently a greater danger than the over-prudent timidity of a
Nicias. At a time when our foes are unified by their hatred of us, the splendid
pseudo virtues of prodigality and optimism are no longer acceptable substitutes
for temperance and prudence.
Sadly, despite his prophetic recognition of a looming clash between the
Enlightenment and Fundamentalism, the vast majority of Leo Strauss's publica-
tions consist of cryptic interpretations of obscure writings; these works have little
to say to our unlettered, thoughtless and thoroughly exoteric times. His praise of
martial virtue seems redundant besides our sanguine bellicosity, and his guarded
revelations of well-concealed wickedness fail to shock our shameless and
insatiable appetites. Mindless imitation of imagined hierarchical relationships
between infinitely wise oracular teachers, spirited young aristocrats, and invin-
cibly ignorant hoi polloi does little good and generates a great deal of mischief in
our cynical, superstitious, and materialistic society. Today, the grand alliance pro-
moted by Strauss between Reason and Revelation yields a distressingly large
harvest of knowledgeable knaves, lustful libertarians and fanatical fools.
By contrast, subsequent to his bittersweet Socratic recognition that no human
being (not even Strauss!) was transcendently wise, Rosen's accounts of the essential
connection between reason and the Good provide a richly comprehensive erotic

15 Rosen, Preface to Chinese translation, 2.

12 NALIN RANASINGHE

Platonism that is agreeable to the generous heart and fevered temperament of

modernity. He believes that poetry can mediate successfully between sad reason
and crass politics 16 and he has shown that a new robust metaphysic can be derived
from the enduring phenomena of ordinary experience. While fully aware that
nihilism is a permanent human possibility, Rosen's speech and deeds are animated
by his confidence that humans are not inherently incapable of the self-knowledge
needed to educate their desires and lead a good life. In one of the most beautiful
passages of Nihilism, Rosen stirringly reminds us of the contagious example of a
virtuous human being:
The good man ... is not 'useful for .. .' in the same sense that tools, food,
acts even just and beautiful things exhibit utility ... there is a certain fulfill-
ment, completeness, or perfection which shines forth from such a man, and
which we too admire, even perhaps without envy or desire because of its
splendor. This is what we mean by 'genuine goodness' or 'purity of charac-
ter.' The shining of a good man's splendor may illuminate and help us to
complete our own lives, whether by virtue of its nobility, or because we are
able to see better what to do ourselves when that noble light permeates the
otherwise dark contours of our lives. 17

These winged words best express what Stanley Rosen has meant to many of
his students.

16 ibid.
17 Stanley Rosen, Nihilism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969; South Bend, Ind.:
St. Augustine's Press, 2000), 172- 173.
Transformations of Enlightenment
Plato, Rosen, and the Postmodern

Alasdair Macintyre
University ofNotre Dame

It is an undeniable truth that Stanley Rosen's philosophical work has not received the
attention that it deserves. But the reason why so admirable a set ofachievements have
not been paid their full due is a good deal more interesting than many such explana-
tions are. In philosophy we generally learn to find our way around by accepting from
our elders and teachers some standard account of what the major standpoints are, of
how the conversations between them have gone so far, and of what roles it is now
acceptable to play, if we are to be recognized as participants in those continuing
conversations. And most of us find our place in those conversations by assuming
some acceptable role. Not so Stanley Rosen. Rosen has recurrently been the inter-
rupter, the disrupter, the one who insistently points out the inconvenient fact or
the disturbing argument, attention to which would make it impossible to continue
the conversation along its familiar and established paths, attention to which might
even make us fall momentarily into that rare philosophical condition, silence.
Not that silence is characteristic of Rosen himself and happily so. For his
chosen part is to put the rest of us to the question, to distract, to disturb. And of
course the easiest way to avoid distraction and disturbance is: to ignore its source,
to pretend that Rosen is not there. Just this, I believe, is the major explanation for
the inadequate recognition of his striking achievements.
There is however another aspect of the resistance to acknowledging Rosen's
insights with which I have more sympathy. One of his methods is to take some
familiar subject-matter or some well-charted set of disagreements and then to
show us by a detailed exegesis of relevant texts conducted with insight and
imagination that things are a good deal more complex than we had taken them to
be. Yet, if we respond by amending our account to accommodate this complexity,
he then often points out some further complexity engendering feature of the argu-
ment that we seem to have overlooked, and proceeds in this way until we have just
too many issues on our hands all at once. And a refusal to accompany Rosen to
this point may arise at least in part from a sense that sometimes some fundamen-
tal issue may be in danger of being obscured.
What I am going to suggest is first of all that we are deeply in Rosen's debt
for having shown how much more difficult and complex the issues are that divide

13
14 ALASDAIR MACINTYRE

the defenders of Enlightened modernity from those of its radical critics whose
allegiance has been to some position drawn from ancient thought than has some-
times been supposed. Yet I shall also argue that, even when we have given their
due to those complexities, fundamental and divisive issues remain. Those issues
concern the sense in which and the ways in which nature provides a standard for
right action in social and political life.
My account will have five parts. The first will be concerned with the portrait
of the Enlightenment's legacy that emerges from Rosen's observations. The sec-
ond will be about the part that, on Rosen's view, the misunderstanding of Plato
has played in the history of Enlightenment and postEnlightenment thought. The
third concerns Rosen's own attitudes to the Enlightenment and identifies a cen-
tral problem for Rosen's position, the problem of how phronesis and law are
related. A fourth part addresses that problem. And the final part concerns Rosen's
remedy for the excesses of postmodernist thought, the virtue of moderation.

I
Postmodernism is often treated both by its protagonists and by its critics as
if it were, almost self-evidently, a revolt against the values of the eighteenth-
century Enlightenment. It is to Rosen that we owe the insight that in key part at
least postmodernist thought is a sequel to Enlightenment thought, generated
from within that thought by the strains and tensions internal to it. Those strains
and tensions result from the Enlightened attempt to combine and to implement
on the one hand ideals of reason and on the other ideals of freedom and
spontaneity.
The ideals of reason prescribe for us a mode of enquiry that enables us to
implement and in part to satisfy the human "desire to solve problems and to
achieve mastery" (Hermeneutics as Politics pp. 150-51). What is to be mastered
is nature. But, if human beings are to understand nature and so become masters
of nature, "one must reconstitute nature itself" (p. 150) "The nature to be
mastered"- and therefore to be reconstituted-"was no longer the Greek physis,
or the living and even reasonable center of order in man and the world, but a life-
less and so unreasonable extension in the void, moving in accordance with the
laws of mechanics but blind to the rational purpose of the human soul. Nature
in the sense of matter was thus sundered from soul or mind in God and man"
(The Ancients and the Moderns: Rethinking Modernity, p. 22). In consequence
nature could no longer provide a standard for reason or for virtue. So the prescrip-
tions of Enlightenment become very different from the prescriptions of the great
classical thinkers. Nature is now matter to be reconstructed, not a standard for
action (on how this contrast is to be interpreted, see Leo Strauss e.g. Natural Right
and History chapters 4 and 5). But the prescriptions of Enlightenment reason are
not restricted to the tasks of understanding and mastery.
 Transformations of Enlightenment 15

The Enlightenment valued both reason and freedom. And one aspect of the
"modern celebration of freedom" is that reason is taken to prescribe freedom, a
freedom that is the expression of a spontaneity which is, on the Enlightenment view,
as fundamental to human nature as reason is. But in fact it is possible to value rea-
son, as the Enlightenment understood it, and to value freedom, as the
Enlightenment understood it, only at the cost of generating tension and conflict.
And the history of distinctively postEnlightenment thought is the working out of the
tensions and conflicts thus generalized, the latest stage of which is postmodernism.
Postmodernism interprets metaphysical reasoning as at once a disguise worn
by freedom and an imposition upon, a limitation of freedom. And, since it takes
all reasoning to be interpretation, it takes metaphysical reasoning to involve
misinterpretation, a misconstrual of reason, a series of philosophical mistakes,
the exposure of which is one of the tasks of deconstruction. In so doing the pro-
tagonists of postmodernism often see themselves as opposed to the
Enlightenment. But, on Rosen's view as I have already indicated, once we have
understood the structure of the Enlightenment's thought, we are also able to
understand postmodernism as a continuation of that thought, even if, as Rosen
puts it, "Postmodernism is the Enlightenment gone mad" (The Ancients and the
Moderns, p. 20), mad because it presses immoderately towards one-sided
conclusions, in which some insights of the Enlightenment are developed in such
a way that the Enlightenment's allegiance to truth and reason is abandoned. How
then are we to understand the structure of Enlightened thought? Rosen in
answering this question has provided us with illuminating analyses of Descartes,
Kant, Fichte and Hegel, but it is on Kant that he focuses.
For Kant Ideas and Ideals are products of reason and as such they provide the
grounds for our theoretical, practical, and aesthetic judgments (The Ancients and
the Moderns, p. 48). So the exercise of our freedom is grounded on and con-
strained by the exercise of reason and understanding. And it may appear
therefore-as it does indeed appear to almost all Kantians and Kant scholars--
that, on Kant's view, reason has priority over freedom. But this, according to
Rosen, is a mistake. "The understanding is in essence the formulation of and
obedience to rules. Since there are no rules for the following of rules, or in other
words, since reason is the domain of freedom, the understanding must be a
'project' (my [that is, Rosen's] term) of reason. But what grounds or motivates
reason?" (Hermeneutics as Politics, p. 4). Rosen argues that "on the basis of
Kant's texts there is only one answer. Reason is itself constituted, or let us say
constitutes itself, in accordance with the will to freedom. The upshot is that
freedom both grounds and is grounded by reason" (p. 6). And Rosen goes on to
comment that, if "judged by the canons of traditional logic, which Kant accepts,
his argument is invalid".
On this conclusion it is worth making two comments. The first is that, if
Rosen's interpretation of Kant is correct, what he has shown is not that Kant's
16 ALASDAIR MAC INTYRE

argument is invalid, but that it is circular. But I take it that nothing in Rosen's
overall argument is affected by this revision. A second comment is that whether
Kant's argument is or is not circular does not depend on Kant's acceptance of the
canons of traditional or any other logic. And perhaps Rosen did not intend to
suggest that it does so depend, but only that Kant's understanding of logic should
have enabled him to identify the failure of his argumentative strategy.
Yet well-grounded accusations of circularity, even of vacuous circularity,
against Kant would still not be sufficient to make out Rosen's case against Kant.
For his claim is not merely that, on Kant's view, freedom both grounds and is
grounded on reason, but that in the Kantian scheme freedom is at least at some
points-contrary to Kant's own claims-given a priority over reason, that reason
has become only what freedom can make of it. And so unsurprisingly it is Fichte
who in his revision of Kant "represents the characteristic axiom of the modem
approach: freedom is higher than Being" (The Ancients and the Moderns, p. 69),
although it was Kant who had provided "the classical statement of the theoretical
defense of freedom" (p. 70).
So Rosen presents us with a coherent, albeit complex narrative of the devel-
opment of Enlightenment and postEnlightenment thought. First there is a set of
initial seventeenth-century formulations which both introduce a new conception
of nature and afford recognition to the desire for freedom with the result that
nature can no longer provide a standard for ethics and politics. A second stage is
represented by Kant and Fichte, a stage during which the new relationship
between reason, nature and freedom is worked out, although not entirely coher-
ently. And a good deal later comes the postmodernist stage in which the rejection
of the incoherent theorizing of the earlier stages disguises both for its adherents
and its critics the extent to which the original values of the Enlightenment are still
being affirmed, albeit without the sobriety of the earlier thinkers.

***
The story, as Rosen tells it in detail, is of course even more complex and
tortuous than I have suggested and to represent it fairly and fully much more
would have to be said, especially about Hegel. But enough has perhaps been said
to make it clear why, on Rosen's view, one recurrent attribute of Enlightenment
and postEnlightenment thought is a rejection of ontology, a rejection which is
understood as a rejection of Platonism. Yet this is an antiPlatonism that depends
in key part on misunderstandings of Plato. And, so Rosen argues, this relationship
to Plato throws important light on Enlightenment and postEnlightenment claims.
Consider from this point of view Kant's Plato, Rosen's Plato, and Derrida's Plato.
Rosen ('Antiplatonism', chapter 3 of The Ancients and the Moderns) quotes
Kant in the first critique (B596f.) as saying that "What is for us an Ideal, was for
Plato an Idea of the divine understanding, an individual object in God's pure
 Transformations of Enlightenment 17

intuition, the most complete of each type of possible being and the ultimate
ground of all images in appearance. Without our soaring so high, however, we
must admit that human reason contains not only Ideas, but also Ideals which
indeed do not like the Platonic have creative but rather practical force (as regula-
tive principles)." Kant thus presents us with an account of what divides him from
Plato, according to which, while he and Plato agree in according a certain kind of
primacy to Ideals and Ideas, Plato takes them to be actual and existent, while he,
Kant, restricts their status to that of merely regulative principles for both theory
and practice. And many readers have followed Kant in contrasting his thought
with Plato's in this way. But Rosen argues that matters are a good deal more com-
plex than Kant or his commentators have allowed. Kant is more ontologically
committed than he himself recognized, while Plato is less ontologically commit-
ted than either his critics or his defenders have perceived.
Kant, on Rosen's interpretation, leaves open the question as to whether those
"heuristic fictions" which are the Ideals are original or images. "If they are genuine
originals, then Kant has created the regulative concepts that supply unity and
direction to the world of experience ... If the heuristic fictions are not originals
in this sense, then they must be images of the nature of the noumenal world, or
more properly, of the teleological nature of the noumenal world as a creation of a
divine intelligence or as the Platonic order of eternity. In this case the originals
are absent" (Ancients and the Moderns, p. 56) and, because they are absent, they
are unknowable.
Kant thus, on Rosen's account, still leaves open the possibility that there are
indeed ultimate existents, even if we can only be aware of them indirectly through
the images that they generate. In so doing however he has moved towards agree-
ment with Plato. For Plato, on Rosen's account, holds that we are aware of the
Platonic Ideas, which are pure form, only through recollection and Rosen follows
Leibniz in holding that "a recollection of an Idea is already an image and not the
Idea itself" (p. 55). Yet of course Kant and Plato thus understood are still in dis-
agreement. For Plato it is crucial that the Ideas are actual and that actuality is
more fundamental than possibility, while for Kant possibility is primary, even if
it is what is necessarily possible that is fundamental. Rosen comments that, iron-
ically, the quarrel between Plato and Kant could only be resolved by recourse to
a quasiK.antian argument, one that showed that "the logical condition for the
possibility of the world is the primordial and unknowable structure of original and
image" (p. 50).
On Rosen's view no sound argument of this kind is however available and it
is not just that no sound argument has as yet been advanced. There is here an unre-
solvable impasse in wrestling with which philosophy has made and can make
no progress. And the quarrel between the two sides is not so much a quarrel
between Kant and Plato, let alone one between the modems and the ancients, as
it is a quarrel internal to Platonism. Plato, that is to say, was not the straightforward
18 ALASDAIR MAclNTYRE

expositor of a theory of forms, nor even someone who at one stage of his career
had held such a theory, but later criticized and abandoned it. On that interpreta-
tion of Plato the dialogue form would be no more than an expository device, one
that Plato could easily have dispensed with, whereas on Rosen's view-and on
this matter let me endorse Rosen's view-the dialogue form is indispensable, if
Plato is to communicate to us what he needs to communicate. What he needs to
communicate, according to Rosen, is not at all an ontology, not what postmod-
emists accusingly speak of as a metaphysics of presence. Why not?
The Plato of the dialogues is to be distinguished from an apologist for an
ontology of forms in at least three ways. First, such a defender would be
committed to showing that knowledge of forms can be achieved in a way that
frees those who achieve it from the limitations and especially the one-sidedness
of sense-perception. But the Platonic Socrates, while contrasting the knowledge
of forms with the opinions that derive from sense-perception, is unable to
characterize that knowledge and its objects without using the language of vision,
so that, as Rosen puts it ''the famous Socratic distinction between the intelligible
(to noeton) and the visible (to horaton) cannot be sustained. In the first place the
intelligible is itself visible to the mind's eye. This is of course a metaphor, but an
inescapable metaphor" (The Ancients and the Moderns, p. 59). And we may rein-
force Rosen's point by noticing that, when the Platonic Socrates contrasts
mathematical understanding with knowledge of the forms, one of his two reasons
for asserting that mathematical understanding is inferior is that it cannot dispense
with diagrams, yet he himself explains what knowledge of the forms is by appeal
to a diagram (Republic VI 509a- 51 le) and one that appears to be indispensable.
Secondly, our vision of the Ideas is neither some type of inferential
knowledge nor direct, unmediated vision. "It is rather a temporalized image" (The
Ancients and the Modems, p. 58). And our images are tied to our particular point
of view. "Seeing the Ideas is like stargazing, not astronomy" (Hermeneutics as
Politics, p. 76). So that the most that we can ever have is "a perspectival and tem-
porally conditioned vision of the eternal" and this "is not a sufficient basis for an
ontology" (The Ancients and the Modems, p. 76). "It is not that we do not have
glimpses of the eternal, but that the world of movement and change in which we
are situated, rules out the possibility of systematic speech about the structure of
being" (p. 182). We see with difficulty, although certainly "To see with difficulty
is not the same as not to see at all."
Thirdly what we have instead of systematic speech is either poetic and myth-
recounting discourse or silence, each of which has a necessary place, for "all
discursive analyses are grounded in silent vision" (Hermeneutics as Politics,
p. 76). And what we can express as the outcome of our discursive analysis must
take account of the fact that "there is a disjunction between vision and logos or
the discursive account of what we see" and that this "disjunction can only be
filled by myths" (The Ancients and the Moderns, p. 60). So philosophical enquiry
 Transformations of Enlightenment 19

can never free itself from myth, can never be a matter wholly of those concepts
that are at home in discursive analysis.
The Platonic dialogues then are "a web of speech ·and silence" and,
insofar as they are speech, they are playful speech, "artifactual phantasms of
the truth" (Hermeneutics as Politics, p. 77). No reader of both Rosen and Plato
could fail to remark on the distinction and the originality of Rosen's account. This
is not Terence Irwin's analytical Plato nor John Findlay's Neo-Platonic Plato nor
Jowett's Victorian Plato. So that we might easily be distracted into asking the not
unimportant question: Is Rosen's Plato Plato? Nonetheless I shall treat it as a
distraction. For Rosen's Plato provides him with a paradigm of philosophy
and, if that particular Plato had never in fact existed, Rosen would have had to
invent him.
Philosophy on this view has to steer a course between a dogmatism that
ignores the situatedness of all thought and a relativism that obscures the
inescapable reference to standards of truth that informs all discourse and every
enquiry. It can only steer this course successfully, if those engaged in philosophy
recognize the necessary incompleteness of and limit to the findings of discursive
analysis. And, if we do recognize this, we will understand that philosophy consists
in "the deepening of comprehensive problems that cannot be solved by technical
devices of any kind." It is just because there are no such solutions that the issue
that, on Rosen's account, divides Kant from Plato cannot be brought to any deci-
sive resolution. Yet that it cannot be brought to such a resolution is itself surely, if
Rosen's accounts of Plato and of philosophy are correct, a victory for Plato.
It is my reading of Rosen's reading of the history of philosophy that he takes it
to be a series of vindications of this Platonic standpoint in which successive explo-
rations succeed or fail insofar as they avoid or fail to avoid the one-sidedness of
both dogmatism and relativism. Yet, although these are very different types of
error, their protagonists tend to agree in misinterpreting Plato as an ontologist, the
dogmatic party claiming him as an ancestral and prototypical figure, their oppo-
nents accepting this characterization, so that they can attack whatever
contemporary view they happen to be opposing by attacking Plato. Hence
AntiPlatonism is not accidentally a recurrent feature of the history of philosophy,
one whose latest representative is Derrida.
Rosen's critique of Derrida's interpretation of Plato makes a number of
telling points: that Derrida's canons of interpretation are self-undermining; that
Derrida ascribes to Plato a condemnation of writing as such, while Plato in fact
only criticizes one kind of writing; and that Derrida fails to construe correctly the
relationship between analytic discourse and poetic myth, both in Plato and more
generally. This third criticism finds application in part because of a more general
failure by Derrida, a failure to recognize that "The perception of forms guides
every kind of discourse'', so that there is no escape from the kind of standard that
Derrida aspires to disown.
20 ALASDAIR MACINTYRE

Here I interpolate a comment on Derrida that confirms Rosen's diagnosis.

Derrida's practice on occasion subverts Derrida's theory. Two kinds of writing in
which he engages make this especially evident. First, there are the interviews that
he has given and the question and answer sessions in which he has engaged. In
these contexts what is revealing is Derrida's remarkable and praiseworthy attempt
to make sure that he has grasped the question as the questioner intended it, that
he is speaking to the questioner's concerns. In so doing he tacitly acknowledges
not only shared standards and a shared goal, but more specifically standards of
truth and truthfulness, standards that he finds inescapable in this kind of writing.
And this is even more evident in a very different kind of writing, that of his mem-
oirs of and elegies for the recently dead (collected in The Work of Mourning, ed.
P.-A. Brault and M. Naas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). Here it
is clear that Derrida is presupposing standards shared not only with the dead, but
with those other mourners whom he addresses, standards that once again make it
not just intelligible, but inescapable that he and they should grieve for the lost
goods of their relationship with those who have died. This is what Derrida him-
self speaks of as an "ethics beyond ethics" in his farewell to Levinas.
I do not myself think that Derrida is thereby committed to a strictly Platonic
account of the standards to which he is conforming. But Rosen is certainly right
that there is in Derrida's theoretical works a failure to acknowledge standards that
are nonetheless accorded recognition implicitly even in those works and more
openly in these other kinds of writing. And this recognition confirms Rosen's
view that the attempt to disown such standards is indeed an arbitrary act of will
disguised as a hermeneutic insight. Here the two strands in Rosen's thought that
I have traced so far come together. For Derrida is the paradigmatic case of the
postmodernist thinker whose view of reason disguises both from himself and also
from others the extent to which he is an heir of the Enlightenment. And Derrida's
AntiPlatonism is a symptom of this condition. But in thus unmasking Derrida
Rosen himself speaks both as a friend of Plato and as a friend, albeit a critical
friend of the Enlightenment.

II
How then does Rosen stand to the Enlightenment? He agrees with the thinkers of
the Enlightenment in their contention that those ancient conceptions of nature that
had made it possible to take nature as a standard to which appeal could be made
in our moral and political lives have been conclusively discredited by the philo-
sophical and scientific developments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
(The Ancients and the Moderns, p. 22). And attempts to revive that standard, and
with it the classical ideal of the polis, by contemporary conservatives would
involve absurd consequences: an intolerably strict regulation of public life, an
impossible imposition of their standards on the many by the few, indeed "the
 Transformations of Enlightenment 21

steady transformation of the city into an armed camp", and beyond that the
quelling of any effective type of disagreement. And so the attempt to implement
in the modem world what conservatives take to be the paradigm of civic virtue
would in fact subvert that paradigm and be self-defeating (The Ancients and the
Moderns, pp. 9-11).
Rosen thus takes it not only that in the quarrel of the ancients and the
modems we must stand with the modems, but also that we need to recognize that
that quarrel is itself something that takes place only in the modem world and only
among modems. So it is a quarrel in which one version of modernity confronts
another, and because Rosen rejects the modernity of conservatism and, like other
post Enlightenment thinkers takes it for granted that the ancient standard of
nature is no longer available to us, he finds himself committed to rethinking the
relationship between nature, freedom and reason in very much the way that Kant
did. Indeed, although he does not accept Kant's solutions, he takes Kant's problems
with the utmost seriousness. It would perhaps not be going too far to say that
Rosen has made Kant's problematic his own, even when he presents Kant too as
problematic (see especially 'Transcendental Ambiguity: The Rhetoric of the
Enlightenment' ch. 1 of Hermeneutics as Politics). Where he takes Kant, and
those who have developed certain aspects of Kant's thought one-sidedly, such as
Fichte, to be at serious fault is in not having recognized how much they need
to learn from Plato. So Rosen's central project is this: to bring Plato's thought
to bear on the distinctive issues of modernity, as defined by Kant.
Rosen believes that the successful carrying through of this project has
political as well as philosophical implications. For the politics that he fears is
not primarily, I think, the politics of conservatism. What then does he fear? Here
I need to mention two topics that I have been trying so far studiously to avoid:
Leo Strauss and God. Rosen's relationship to Strauss is complex and in much that
Rosen writes that relationship cannot be neglected, both on points of detail and
on the definition of large issues. Indeed any adequate treatment of Rosen's atti-
tude to the contrasts between ancient thought and Enlightened thought would
require an extended comparison with Strauss. But here I remark only that some
of Rosen's fears are distinctively Straussian fears, above all the fear of those who,
like Alexander Kojeve, identify themselves with God. This tendency towards the
madness of self-deification belongs to one particular strand of Enlightenment and
postEnlightenment thought, that which denies the need to respect limits and glo-
rifies the immoderate. Rosen rejects what he takes to be the irrationality of the
immoderate, whether in its conservative or in its postEnlightenment form. So it
became essential to Rosen's project to rethink the notions of sobriety and of mod-
eration, so that those virtues may become at home in the modem world, both in our
theory and in our practice. The account of the virtue of sophrosune provided by
the Platonic Socrates has to be the starting-point for this investigation, yet in the
end it presents us with difficulties. One source of these is the inadequacy of the
22 ALASDAIR MACINTYRE

Platonic account of self-knowledge. Another concerns the relationship of theory

to practice. And both these problems can only be resolved in the course of
acquiring an adequate understanding of practical intelligence, of prudence. For to
be moderate is to be prudent in one's practice. What then is it to be prudent?
Here we need to remind ourselves once again of Rosen's rejection of what
some followers of Strauss have understood as the ancient conception of nature,
which was valued by them for providing a standard by which actions could be
judged virtuous or vicious, a standard that is external to and independent of the
judgments of particular individuals. If therefore Rosen is to provide us-and him-
self-- with an account of reasonable moderation, then he needs to identify a
capacity for exercising a type of practical judgment that may be characterized as
reason-governed, yet that does not involve appeal to any such external standard.
Plato and Aristotle have a name for just such a capacity: it is ''phronesis". So the
question of what phronesis is and how it functions had to become an item on
Rosen's philosophical agenda.
Moreover the ancient conception of nature, on this understanding of it,
provided a standard by appeal to which laws could be evaluated. But, if there is
no such external standard for legislators, then the questions inescapably arise:
How are we to understand the legislator's activity? And what kind of authority
do laws possess? Here then was another item for Rosen's agenda. But at once it
is evident that the problem of the nature of phronesis and the problem of the
nature of the authority of law cannot be investigated in independence of each
other. What conclusions one reaches about the one puts constraints upon the
conclusions that one can reach about the other. So that the nature and relation-
ship of phronesis and law is a single, if highly complex problem. It is therefore
to Rosen's treatment of that problem in his commentary on Plato's Statesman
that I now turn. But I do so with an eye to yet another problem confronting
Rosen.
Rosen, as we have already seen, distinguishes himself from the postmodern
heirs of the Enlightenment not only by counterposing his Platonism to their
antiPlatonism, but also by his emphasis on the need in an Enlightened person for
the virtue of modest sobriety, so that such a one may then become the protagonist
of "a modest version of the Enlightenment" (The Ancients and the Moderns,
p. 21 ). "The adherence to Enlightenment", he wrote, "must be moderate in vari-
ous senses of the term, none of them incompatible with courage" and he added
"that temperance is the courage of modesty" (p. 20). Rosen therefore owes us a
more systematic account of the virtues then he has hitherto provided, an account
which will explain the relationship of temperateness, courage, prudence, and
respect for law, that is of phronesis and nomos. But an obstacle confronts him in
giving such an account.
Rosen, like the Eleatic Stranger in the Statesman, denies the possibility of
governing the life of a city by a standard derived from nature. Rosen, unlike the
 Tronsformations of Enlightenment

Eleatic Stranger, affirms the possibility of combining sophrosune and a"""ia in

a single character. The problem for Rosen is this. If we are to understand how this
latter is possible, ·we shall need an adequate conception of phronesis. or so I shall
argue. And any adequate conception of phronesis, so I shall argue further.
requires a rejection of the Eleatic Stranger·s account of the relationship ofphrone-
sis to law. But that rejection requires us also to reject the Eleatic Stranger's
assertion that, in Rosen's words, "the city is not in accord with nature .. . in the
same sense as it is for Aristotle" (Plato s Statesman: Tire Web of Politics New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, p. 5). The city, as understood by the Eleatic
Stranger, could not be in accord with nature, both because there are ..diverse
human natures" which are "the raw material out of which the city is constructed."
(p. 5), and because there is a "disjunction within nature that they themselves
[human beings] exemplify, but which for that reason they can never master"
(p. 7). If there are sufficient grounds for agreeing with Aristotle and therefore for
disagreeing with Eleatic stranger, as I shall suggest, then Rosen confronts a
dilemma. Either he must revise his view that the standard for the life of the city
cannot be derived from nature or else he will be unable to provide an adequate
account of the virtue of modest sobriety. He will have to abandon one part of his
position. What then are the arguments? They begin from the claim that no one can
have and exercise the virtues of sophrosune and andreia, unless they have a
further virtue, one that enables them to recognize in which situations sophrosune
is called for and in which andreia. That virtue is phronesis.
The Eleatic Stranger takes phronesis to be the virtue of those who have the
kind of understanding befitting a king (294a) and contrasts the exercise of
phronesis with the rule of law: "Law cannot prescribe with accuracy what is best
and just for each member of the community at any one time" (294 a-b), while the
phronetic human being knows what it is best and just to do here and now. Even
the best legislator, so the Eleatic Stranger asserts, has to enact unvarying rules
that are able to take account only of some salient features of the situations to
which they apply and therefore must fail to make provision for exceptional and
varying circumstances.
The relationship between phronesis and law, as understood by the Eleatic
Stranger, has three important characteristics. First, those who possess perfected
phronesis have themselves no need of the guidance provided by law. Secondly,
conformity to law does not require the exercise ofphronesis by those who so con-
form. Acting in accordance with law requires no more than knowledge of what
the laws are and motivation to obey them, motivation provided by the penalties
attached to disobedience. Thirdly, in a well-ordered city- unlike actual Greek
cities- it is recognized that there are two distinct classes of human individual,
the few fitted to rule who live by phronesis and the many from whose everyday
law-governed lives phronesis is absent. On all three counts I shall suggest that the
Eleatic Stranger is mistaken.
24 ALASDAIR MAclNTYRE

First, it is of crucial importance that phronesis can only be exercised

successfully in determinate social contexts. And, in order for the circumstances in
which it is exercised to be adequately determinate, individuals must stand in
norm-governed relationships to each other, each individual having relatively firm
expectations of others, expectations founded on their knowledge of those require-
ments that are generally acknowledged in that particular social context. Central to
those requirements are the requirements of whatever set of laws have been
enacted and continue to be recognized as authoritative. That is to say, it is only in
communities that are partially defined by laws that are authoritative for all the
citizens that phronesis can be successfully exercised. Phronesis and law are not
alternatives, but counterparts.
Secondly, the better the system of laws the more evident will be the need for
phronesis not only in acts of legislation and of administration and enforcement by
authorized officials, but also by plain persons, by the ordinary citizens. For laws,
unlike the commands of tyrannical authority, are upheld by widely shared agree-
ments to respect them, so that a range of civilized interactions and transactions
may continue to be possible. And phronesis is needed as a virtue of the everyday
life of the ruled just because in any working system of rules, including systems
of laws, based on such agreements, there have to be numerous exercises ofjudg-
ment by plain persons as to whether this or that action is to be accounted a
violation of this or that law, or as to how the law is to be interpreted in its appli-
cation to this or that set of circumstances, or as to the particularities of what is
required and what is permitted.
Let me make this point more generally. Philosophers writing about rules and
rule-following are sometimes misled by what Wittgenstein called an unbalanced
diet of examples. They attend to examples of arithmetical rule-following,
performing long division, say, or reciting the prime numbers or the expansion of
pi, without recognizing how different most rule-following in everyday practice
is. Numerous empirical studies have shown that in many different social contexts
there is first of all a gap between rules as explicitly formulated and rules as actu-
ally followed and secondly, and even more importantly, that rule-following in
complex cooperative activities has to be sustained by frequent acts of creative
improvisation. In all such contacts something very close to phronesis is indis-
pensable for rule-following, both an ability to understand what the rules
followed really are, since they may be in crucial respects not at all what people
say that they are, and an ability to improvise, sometimes in new and unexpected
ways. And among the sets of rules for following which these abilities and skills
are required are the rules of legal systems. (An example: what is the answer you
should give to a police officer in North Carolina, when he tells you that you have
been driving at more than ten miles per hour over the speed limit? Bad answers
are either "No, I was driving under the speed limit "or" Yes, I was driving eleven
 Transformations of Enlightenment 25

miles over the speed limit". One much better answer is: "I am certain that I was
driving eight or nine miles over the speed limit", and this whatever the speed
at which you were driving. Am I suggesting that it is right to lie? No, I am
suggesting that this kind of question and answer is part of an equivocating ritual
by means of which some drivers and some police officers sometimes exercise
something very like phronesis in order to negotiate the statute law of North
Carolina.)
What emerges from this is that the relationship of phronesis to rule-following
and to law-govemedness is quite other than the Eleatic Stranger suggests. For the
exercise of phronesis has to be an aspect of all agency in and through which
human goods are achieved and law-governed human community sustained. And
in addition the standard by which the laws of particular human societies are to be
judged is a standard provided by nature, although not in that sense which both
Rosen and the Eleatic Stranger give to 'nature' or to 'physis'.
To say that nature affords a standard for law or that a city is in accord with
nature is to speak of what human beings are by nature, that is, of what their
nature as rational animals is. And it is part of our specific nature as rational
animals, as both Aristotle and Aquinas tells us, to ask not only what our specific
good as human beings is and how it is good and just for us to act here and now
in this or that set of particular circumstances, but also what bearing the answer
to the former of these questions has on the answer to the latter. In so asking we
discover that, each of us needs resources provided by others, each of us needs
to deliberate and to enquire in company, so that phronesis may inform our
actions. But such communal deliberation and enquiry itself requires that certain
conditions be satisfied, that each participant in such deliberation and enquiry
is able generally to rely on the observance by other participants of certain
precepts. For we cannot deliberate together, we cannot learn from each other,
unless each of us knows that we all regard ourselves as bound to respect the
person and property of others, to speak truthfully, to honor our commitments,
to listen carefully and to acknowledge when we are in the wrong. The precepts
that thus bind us are the precepts of the natural law, those precepts without
which we cannot achieve the good which is ours by in virtue of our nature as
rational animals.
So the argument comes full circle. The exercise of phronesis requires a
recognition of a standard derived from nature and the exercise of the other virtues,
including the virtue of modest sobriety, requires the exercise of phronesis. It
follows that without a standard derived from nature we cannot exercise the virtue
of modest sobriety. And hence Rosen confronts a dilemma. But at least in the
form in which I have presented it, it will perhaps be less unwelcome than in some
other versions. For the appeal to nature as a standard in morals and politics, as I
have understood it, does not after all involve any concessions to the kind of
26 ALASDAIR MAclNTYRE

postStraussian conservatism that Rosen so rightly condemns. Nor indeed need

this appeal be thought of as taking the side of the ancients against the modems.
Rosen has given us excellent reasons for regarding Plato as a contemporary
philosopher. I have tried to suggest, although no more than suggest, that Aristotle
and Aquinas too are best regarded as contemporaries.
The "Ordinary Experience" of the Platonic
Dialogues
Drew A. Hyland
Trinity College

This collection honors "the work" of Stanley Rosen, and the clear assumption of
the title, by long tradition, is that the work we address in these essays will be
Rosen's written work. I want to begin, however, by acknowledging first another
dimension of Stanley Rosen's work too often passed over: his outstanding work
over the years as the teacher of so many of us. One might easily cite some of the
most striking features of Rosen's teaching: the brilliance of his presentations, his
hilarious asides, his sometimes biting irony. But through the brilliance of the
teaching, through the hilarity of the asides and the biting irony, Rosen, as some
of us like to say, has always been teaching us the simple but profound lesson of
how to read: how to read with the most careful attention to detail. how to read
with a critical imaginativeness, how to read philosophically. For that, so many of
us remain always profoundly grateful.
I might subtitle this paper, with no little irony, "Rosen's Development," or
even "From the Early to the Middle High Rosen," since I want to reflect on the
relation, on one issue at least, between Stanley Rosen's early work on Plato, espe-
cially the books on the Symposium, Sophist, and Statesman, and his later work,
with particular attention to his 2002 book, The Elusiveness of the Ordinary:
Studies in the Possibility ofPhilosophy. The irony, of course, derives from the fact
that Rosen's own attitude toward the well-known "developmental hypothesis" as an
interpretive principle of the Platonic dialogues has not always been, shall we say,
gentle. So perhaps a more prudent way to put the point I want to make is to say
that an inspection of the connection between the early Plato works and the later
work demonstrates that Rosen has learned from himself.
Rosen, as is well-known, was a student of Leo Strauss, although he has surely
been a student who has taken Zarathustra's advice near the end of Part I to heart:
"One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil." One
lesson Rosen did take from Strauss and preserved concerns the crucial importance
of the dialogue form itself to any interpretation of Plato's philosophy. More
particularly, Rosen emphasizes again and again in his Plato work the way in which
every dialogue, by the way that it locates every philosophic discussion in a specific
existential context, in a particular time, a particular place and situation, with

27
28 DREW A. HYLAND

interlocutors of varying character, abilities, and limitations, teaches this decisive

initial lesson, perhaps the most pervasive lesson in the dialogues, that what may
become the extraordinary speech of philosophy always arises, or perhaps always
should arise, out of the "ordinary" situations and predicaments of the everyday.
Socrates, in a discussion with two generals, leads the conversation into a discus-
sion of the nature of courage. Socrates, in jail and presented with the opportunity
to escape, engages his old non-philosophic friend, Crito, in a discussion about the
justice of such an escape that concludes that Socrates should stay and die.
Socrates, at a party where most of the participants are involved in various erotic
and antagonistic relationships, engages in a discussion of Eros. Philosophic speech
may, for a variety of reasons and in a variety of situations, become abstract, but the
lesson of the dialogues is that it never, never begins as abstract, or perhaps we
should again say, never, never should begin as abstract. To put the point another
way, philosophic speech, even what may become the most extraordinary philo-
sophic speech (that is, highly technical, complicated, jargon-filled, or abstract
speech) always arises out of and is generated by the predicaments of the everyday,
of the ordinary, of what comes to be called much later by various philosophers
"ordinary language," or "lived experience," or "average everydayness." A second
lesson of the dialogues may well be that the more abstract, and so the more distant
from ordinary speech, that philosophic speech becomes, the more problematic it
becomes as an account of the ordinary experience that was presumably its guiding
intention. One thinks here especially of dialogues such as the Parmenides, Sophist,
or the more abstruse sections of the Philebus. The Sophist is a particularly
poignant example of this problematic. Dramatically, the dialogue is set the day
after Socrates has answered the charges against him of impiety and corrupting the
youth, the day on which Socrates engages in two dialogues, the Theaetetus and
Euthyphro. As the Apology will soon demonstrate, Socrates understands these
charges to be based in part upon a confusion of his own philosophic activity with
that of sophistry. To say the least, he could use some help, concrete, ordinary language
help that he could use in his defense, in distinguishing his philosophic activity from
sophistry. Of what help will the highly technical intellectual gymnastics of the
various diareses of the sophist by the Eleatic Stranger be in his defense? Indeed,
given that one of the "definitions" of what is called the "noble" sophist comes per-
ilously close to Socrates own activity, one could say that the abstract procedure of
the Eleatic stranger, far from helping Socrates in his existential predicament, con-
fuses rather than clarifies his problem. The Eleatic Stranger, whatever light he may
shed on what much later generations will label problems of "predication" or "par-
ticipation" or "the logic of negative facts," offers Socrates no help whatsoever in the
defense of his life which he now must be preparing.
Rosen is always careful to place his interpretations of Platonic dialogues in
their proper existential context and to show how those contexts generate the
"philosophical" issues of the dialogue. Indeed, one could say that no one does
 The "Ordinary Experience" of the Platonic Dialogues 29

this better than he does. In his Symposium book, his opening discussion of the
complex prologue to the dialogue, a discussion that itself covers some thirty-eight
pages, thoroughly sets the groundwork for the interpretations of the speeches that
follow, interpretations which themselves constantly call attention to the connec-
tion between the theoretical positions that are developed and the existential or
personal situations of the speakers. In the Sophist book, his discussion of the
prologue to that dialogue includes a seminal section on the dramatic significance
of the dialogue form entitled "Dramatic Phenomenology," a term which Rosen
characterizes therein as follows: "Dramatic phenomenology is the artistic refor-
mulation of phenomenological descriptions of speeches and deeds within the
context of a unified statement about the good or philosophic life, and hence about
the noble as distinct from the base. Such a unified statement is an interpretation
of human life." (Plato s Sophist, 12- 13).
Such a characterization, while it pays due attention to the dramatic portrayal
of "human life," brings out implicitly a further complication to Plato's use of the
dialogue form of which Rosen is acutely aware. Although the dialogues clearly
portray everyday situations and the way in which philosophy might arise out of
those everyday situations, they do so in a way that is itself in no way "ordinary."
That is, the dialogues themselves are "extraordinary speech" from the beginning.
They are extraordinary, first, in the exquisite care with which they are obviously
constructed. One can express this provocatively by saying that the dialogues are
extraordinary precisely because they are art- a term that becomes provocative in
part because of the often apparently critical discussions of art that occur within
the pages of the dialogues. Ordinary experience is shot through with chance.
There is next to nothing left to chance in the Platonic dialogues, certainly includ-
ing the occasional artistic incursions of what is experienced by the persona within
the dialogue as "chance." (If I were a more obedient philosophic grandson of
Strauss, I would say "nothing" rather than "next to nothing" is left to chance). So
as Rosen often puts it, the dialogues, in the exquisite care with which they are
constructed and controlled by their author, are all "fictions," and so are already
extraordinary portrayals of ordinary experience. Nevertheless, again, one lesson
of these artificial constructions, these "dramatic phenomenologies," is to
exhibit the way in which philosophy originates in and arises out of the ordinary
experience of the everyday.
In his earlier works on Plato, as I have pointed out, Rosen always pays due
attention to these dramatic elements, grounding what follows in concrete experi-
ence. And yet, I now want to suggest that however detailed his discussion of this
background in ordinary experience is, however more detailed it is than almost any
of his predecessors, Rosen's discussions of that grounding in ordinary experience
remain propaedeutic rather than thematic. By this I mean that in these earlier
works Rosen seems comfortable, having pointed out the importance of the every-
day situation out of which the philosophic discussion arises, in making the
30 DREW A . HYLAND

transition to the extraordinary speech of philosophy, and remaining within that

realm of extraordinary speech for the balance of his reflection. This is what
I mean by saying tfhat the real theme of these books remains not the ordinary
experience that gives rise to philosophy but the extraordinary speech of philoso-
phy itself. Indeed, often his very way of leading us from the "ordinary"
experience of the dialogue to the extraordinary philosophic issues is itself extraor-
dinary. One need only consult as an example the remarkable "Prologue" to the
Sophist book, with its highly technical and logically sophisticated accounts of
the "predicationalist" reading of the dialogue, to see this. In these books, Rosen
teaches us perhaps better than anyone before that the dramatic portrayal of the
ordinary experience out of which philosophy arises is crucial to understanding
the philosophic teaching. Having taught us that lesson, he is content to spend the
balance of his books on the most sophisticated, and in that sense extraordinary,
analyses of the philosophic issues that do arise out of the everyday.
It is this that changes significantly, I now want to suggest, in Rosen's later
work, and quite focally in The Elusiveness of the Ordinary. This change occurs,
I think, in two fundamental ways. First, in the later book Rosen now stays with the
ordinary at much greater length, makes the issue of the ordinary as the source of
philosophy itself the guiding question. The transition from the portrayal of ordi-
nary situations to the extraordinary speech of philosophy that he made so easily
in the early work now becomes itself the philosophic problematic. And the nature
of that transition, Rosen shows at great length, is itself extraordinarily compli-
cated. On the one hand, the extraordinary speech of philosophy does originate in
ordinary experience and ordinary language, just as the Platonic dialogues had
shown. However, that ordinary situation already contains the seeds of the extra
ordinary speech that it generates, indeed demands it. As such, and contrary to the
hope of 20th century "ordinary language philosophers," the ordinary language
and ordinary experience which generates the extraordinary speech of philosophy
cannot itself be the source of the resolution of the problems generated by that
extraordinary speech. Rosen formulates this succinctly as follows:
"Very far from being entirely distinct, ordinary language is rather an antici-
pation of theoretical discourse . .. . For this reason, it is impossible to return to a
natural stratum of discursive experience that is theoretically neutral, in the sense
that by grasping it accurately, we are able to determine a unique and correct stan-
dard for subsequent interpretations of the significance and value of human
existence. Precisely if Socrates was right to refer to the human soul as philosoph-
ical by its very nature, ordinary or ostensibly pretheoretical speech contains
the seeds of philosophical disputation, not the uniformly valid resolution of that
dispute. Philosophy originates in, but does not take its final form as, ordinary
discourse." (The Elusiveness of the Ordinary, 232).
In the chapter from which the preceding quote is taken, entitled "What Do We
Talk About?" Rosen is concerned to emphasize the complexity of the situation
 The "Ordinary Experience" of the Platonic Dialogues 31

here, that while ordinary experience and discourse does generate the extraordinary
speech of philosophy, the two are neither entirely separate nor can ordinary
experience be used as the final arbiter of the extraordinary speech that it gener-
ates. "The fundamental premiss of this chapter is extremely simple: everyday
experience provides us with the only reliable basis from which to begin our
philosophical reflections. But it does so as the source of extraordinary or philo-
sophical speech, not as a distinct and paradigmatic use of language. Our talk
about the substances or things that occur within, or constitute, ordinary or every-
day experience is therefore philosophical from the outset. Philosophy is
accordingly the process of explaining how extraordinary modes of discourse are
demanded for an adequate understanding of the ordinary." (233).
I want to emphasize that this focus on the problematic of the relation of
ordinary to extraordinary or philosophical discourse is in no sense a "reversal" of
his early work-quite to the contrary-but precisely a "development." What had
in the early work been identified and acknowledged as an important issue now
becomes itself the philosophic problem. The dialogues, in exhibiting again and
again how philosophic issues and philosophic speech arise out of ordinary situa-
tions and language, do not just teach us an important lesson; they point to an
enormous philosophic problem.
Second, however, the grounding of the extraordinary speech of philosophy in
ordinary experience and language has implicitly profound implications for the
character of the extraordinary speech itself. As my earlier reference to the dramatic
problematic of the highly technical diareses of the "sophist" was meant to suggest,
the farther that extraordinary philosophical speech gets removed from the ordinary
speech that generated it, the more problematic it becomes as an adequate account
of that ordinary situation. This is a complicated issue, complicated first by the fact
that, as Rosen emphasizes, ordinary discourse demands the extraordinary for an
adequate account of itself. So philosophic speech can hardly be criticized per se
for being extraordinary (again a common mistake of later "ordinary language
philosophy"). Yet it remains true that the farther it get from ordinary discourse, the
more problematic it becomes as an account of the ordinary; in the extreme cases,
philosophic speech becomes almost totally detached from ordinary speech, or
"merely" abstract.
Rosen, I now want to suggest, seems to have taken this lesson to heart. His
early work, as I have already pointed out, moves rather quickly from the ordinary
situation and ordinary discourse that he acknowledges to the most extraordinary
discourse, extraordinary not least for its complexity and abstractness. This is evi-
dent enough in the Plato books, but is nowhere more visible than in his two early
but seminal articles on the Ideas, the articles entitled simply "Ideas" and "Wisdom:
The End of Philosophy." Those articles are important statements of Rosen's
interpretation of the Ideas, what they are about and what they are intended to
explain. But they are nothing if not difficult, complex, and extremely abstract.
32 DREW A. HYLAND

A few examples should suffice. I risk the injustice of citing these passages out of
context because I want to focus not on the position itself or the justification of the
position, but the character of the discourse, or the level of abstractness.
Both articles take their beginning from the conflict between what Rosen
takes to be a fundamentally Platonic and a fundamentally Hegelian understand-
ing of philosophy- an issue that can only, one might say, be encountered at a high
level of abstractness. In the 1962 "Wisdom" article, he opens, interestingly
enough, with a theme very similar to the one he addresses in the later Elusiveness
of the Ordinary book, the relation between everyday experience and philosophy.
But it is instructive to see how rapidly he moves to the more complex discourse
of philosophy: The article begins, "One of the peculiarities of philosophy is that
every attempt to isolate a particular philosophical question, a question about the
most familiar aspect of our daily experience, is transformed, the moment we
begin to reflect carefully about the meaning of that question, into the universal
problem of the nature of philosophy itself. The decision, for example, to concen-
trate our attention upon the analysis of the 'logic' of ordinary linguistic usage,
depends, if it is truly philosophical, upon prior decisions concerning the mean-
ings of 'logic' and 'ordinary,' upon a decision concerning a 'criterion of
significance' or the decision process itself: upon the 'meaning of meaning."'
("Wisdom: the End of Philosophy," [Review of Metaphysics, vol. xvi, no.2,
December, 1962; page 181 ]). What is striking about this introduction for our pur-
poses is that the transition from everyday experience to philosophical discourse is
literally "momentary." If we leap, again without reference to content or justifica-
tion, to the conclusion to the article, we see that the level of discursive
abstractness, its distance from ordinary discourse, is preserved: "In different
terms, philosophy is 'completed' by its own possibility, and this possibility
depends upon the actual intelligibility of the Whole. This Whole is in principle
the knowable, although we can never really wholly know it. If it were not in prin-
ciple the knowable, we could know nothing. Or again, whatever we know is made
knowable by the intelligibility of what it would be to be wise. The intelligibility
of wisdom, or intelligibility as such, is the peace upon which philosophical war
depends. And so, no speech is philosophical which denies intelligibility, or the
intelligibility of the Whole as the heterogeneously articulated structure in and
through which each part is intelligible." ("Wisdom," 211 ). I cite these passages
not in the least to suggest that they are not philosophically intelligible, on the
contrary. My point is to observe the very high level of abstractness both of the
subject matter and of the discourse itself.
The same is perhaps even more true of Rosen's important early statement of
a justification for the notion of Platonic Ideas, the article entitled "Ideas." Note
again the already abstract or extraordinary discourse in which the issue is
introduced at the beginning of the article: "Is there, or is there not, an eternal,
rational structure, order, or ground of the Whole, independent of that complex of
 The "Ordinary Experience" of the Platonic Dialogues 33

subjectivity and change which we may summarize under the name of history? Is
the form of Being identical with, or different from, the form of Time? Are there,
or are there not, Ideas in the Platonic sense of the term?" ("Ideas," [Review of
Metaphysics, vol. xvi, no.3, March, 1963;] 407-8). To accomplish his defense,
Rosen turns to the paradigm of mathematics, a move which virtually necessitates
a high level of abstractness, which I exemplify by one last citation, near where
Rosen introduces the mathematical language: "If to be is to be something, each
thing is both one and many. Being is somehow a relation of the one and the many,
and if we generalize these elements, we may say that the principles of Being are
the Monad and the Dyad. But Being (or any particular being), precisely because
it is an instance of the Monad and the Dyad, is not only neither the one nor the
other, but it is not just the two taken together. We are forced to say that, as the
exhibition of the Monad and the Dyad as simultaneously present, each being is
some third thing, which I shall call a Triad or Three." (Ideas, 410). Again, the
point of my citations is to emphasize that however intelligible and even convinc-
ing this argument may be to those of us trained in the technical language of
philosophy and mathematics, both the content and the language inhabit a
discourse very far from the ordinary.
This distance from the ordinary of Rosen's own extraordinary philosophic
speech moderates dramatically in The Elusiveness ofthe Ordinary. Fortunately, we
can compare it rather directly to the abstract discourse of the two early articles,
because in one of the most remarkable sections of the recent book, in a chapter
entitled "The Attributes of Ordinary Experience," Rosen develops over the course
of ten pages or so an extraordinary introduction to, or almost a transcendental
demonstration of, the necessity of something like Platonic "forms." This time,
however, it is extraordinary precisely in how closely it stays to ordinary language.
It will be impossible to summarize the entire presentation adequately in a short
paper, and in any case the journey must be taken it its entirety, but let me cite just
a few representative passages in order to make my point about the way in which
Rosen's own discourse, while certainly moving into the realm of the extraordinary,
nevertheless remains as close as possible to ordinary discourse.
He begins his account as follows: "Unity, regularity, and comprehensive-
ness are representative examples of the general attributes of ordinary
experience. It goes without saying that this road has been frequently traveled
before. Indeed, it is my claim that one cannot travel at all except along this very
road. The next step in my argument covers more controversial ground, but
I believe I can present my argument in relatively straightforward language. The
goal is to clarify the characteristics of the intelligibility of the elements of the
continuum of experience. As usual, I begin from the commonsense reasoning
of everyday life. I contend that this commonsense reasoning is the core of
the doctrine of intelligible form introduced by Plato and Aristotle." (The
Elusiveness of the Ordinary, 274).
34 DREW A. HYLAND

We see in this passage both the insistence that his argument will begin from
"commonsense reasoning," that its intent is to adequately account for that reasoning,
and that it can be stated in discourse that is at least close to the ordinary, or as Rosen
puts it, "relatively straightforward language."
He accomplishes this by holding closely to the etymological root of eidos as
"look," and by the stunningly everyday example of the "look" of a cow. "When
I ask you, 'What is that?' I am not asking you for the name of a look, because
'that' is not a look; it is a thing, say, a cow, with a look of a certain kind. I do not
ask, however, 'what is that look over there?' I ask rather for the name correspon-
ding to the kind of being of which the one to which I am pointing is an instance.
The 'look' comes into play only when I ask 'How did you identify that thing as a
cow?' How are you able to identify a cow as the kind of thing that we correctly
designate by that name? ... The simplest answer, which not only conforms with
but is certified by ordinary language, is ' Because it looks like a cow.' You say that
this looks like a cow, not because it is a look but because it has a look." (275).
Rosen adds a few sentence later, in a wonderful loyalty to ordinary discourse,
"We can of course say 'That cow is mooing too loudly' or 'I admire the complex-
ion of that cow' or even 'Hey, you, cow; get out of my way!' But all these
statements are intelligible in the last analysis.only because we know what it is to
be a cow." (275- 76).
When he turns next to what is often the extraordinarily complicated and tech-
nical problem of how a look (which he soon identifies as "eventually the eidos or
Platonic Idea" [279)) is both the same as but different from its instances, he does
so in a way that again reminds us of his intent to stay as close as possible to ordi-
nary experience: "I want now to show that it is impossible to identify anything as
anything unless the look is in one sense separate and in another sense not sepa-
rate from the instance bearing that look. My demonstration will be based on
features of experience that are accessible to every person of normal intelligence."
(276-77). His demonstration claims to show, a few pages later, that "So when we
say 'there are a multitude of instances of things of that sort,' what we mean to say
is that there is a multitude of the same sort of thing, i.e. the concept, or the look,
and so eventually the eidos or Platonic Idea. And this shows that the look, con-
cept, and so on, is not the same as the instance. In other words, nominalism is
unintelligible." (279).
I cite these examples not because I can claim to summarize Rosen's careful
argument here, but to bring out how, especially by contrast to the earlier work on
the Platonic Ideas, Rosen here stays as close as possible to the discourse of ordi-
nary experience out of which he insists that philosophic discourse arises and for
which it intends to account. That too is a lesson Rosen would seem to have
learned from the dialogues.
I close, then, with a question or two that, if I am right, is raised by this move-
ment of Rosen's focus, from what I will call his early "leaving behind" of the
 The "Ordinary Experience" of the Platonic Dialogues 35

ordinary experience and discourse out of which philosophy's often extraordinary

speech arises, to his later dwelling on and sustaining of the issue of the relation
of ordinary to extraordinary discourse itself. Does that shift of focus represent a
"development," in the sense either of a change or of something once left behind
and now taken up, or even of something once inadequately expressed now given
more adequate expression? Or, to cite another possibility, is it rather a certain
shift of rhetoric, an appeal to a different sort of reader, even as the different dia-
logues employ very different rhetorics and subject matters to appeal to different
readers? That is, have I in this paper cited an instance of "Rosen's development,"
or an instance of a different rhetoric, a different stroke for different folks? Or,
finally, to borrow from Heidegger's favorite metaphor for his own thought, are
these different "ways," different "Feldwege" (one thinks here especially of the
example of the "cow") on Rosen's philosophical journey?
From Hermeneutics to Common Sense
Stanley Rosen on Precomprehension

Laurent Jaffro
Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne

In his most "French" book, Stanley Rosen summed up the history of hermeneutics
in this depressing way: The initial object of hermeneutics used to be the word of
God. Modernity extended its realm to the word of man. We were then told that
God was dead. According to the latest news (in the seventies), man is dead as
well. The history of hermeneutics is the story of a double disappearance. Once
both objects have vanished, we are left with our own "garrulity". 1 This is why phi-
losophy has been transformed into a theory of textuality or, on the other side, an
analysis of language. One might be tempted to conclude that Rosen has nothing
more to say on hermeneutics. It is just one of the numerous faces of nihilism. The
only way to confront universal chatter is complete silence.
Somehow this was a provocation. Rosen's inquiry into the principles of
hermeneutics did not stop at this point. On the contrary, his further works have
taken account of the positive aspects of the hermeneutical transformation of phi-
losophy. The rejection of hermeneutics was not his last word; he has since
undertaken to examine in a dialectical way the possibility of a philosophical
hermeneutics that should escape the risks both of silence and chatter.
I begin with Rosen's main claim that hermeneutics is possible only insofar as
it presupposes a common sense or pretheoretical reason. Next I try to scrutinize
the nature of this presupposition and I give a glimpse of the difficulties of a philo-
sophical recourse to "common sense". I am aware that Rosen gives preference to
other expressions, such as "everyday life" or "ordinary experience". But I stick to
"common sense" in this paper because I think that it is an interesting fact that this
expression at once has an ancient philosophical pedigree and is commonly used
in ordinary language. This puts in a nutshell a central difficulty.
As I have just hinted, Rosen's views on the relation between philosophy
and ordinary experience have changed since Hermeneutics as Politics- not to
mention Nihilism ( 1969), in which he had wondered whether the philosophical
recourse to common sense as a criterion was a rejection of philosophy or a

"Theory and Interpretation," in Hermeneutics as Politics (HP), Oxford, Oxford UP,

1987, p. 161.

36
 From Hermeneutics to Common Sense 37

travesty of common sense. In his recent works, Rosen does not renounce the
claim that common sense cannot be used as a criterion, but he argues that this
point does not entail the refusal of any philosophical recourse to common sense.
On the contrary, provided that they do not use it as a criterion, philosophers are
correct when they recognize that they necessarily have recourse to common sense
as the medium through which they translate, read, and understand each other.
Thus in 1996 Rosen presents common sense, not as an accurate and infallible cri-
terion of truth, but as the "ambiguous matrix" of philosophical inquiry.2 Of
course the appeal to the ordinary is not ordinary; but this extraordinary appeal is
initiated within the ordinary. To put it another way, in his Nihilism Rosen had a
point when he noticed that philosophy itself was responsible for promoting the
prephilosophical as a standard; but this does not mean that the prephilosophical
is merely a reconstruction and that we should put a ban on any recourse to com-
mon sense. It is a truism that the prephilosophical, as such, is far from being
acquainted with philosophy; but there is no contradiction in its being animated by
that which, according to Aristotle, is the beginning of philosophy: wonder. This is
concisely formulated in The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry: "The prob-
lem of the relation between philosophy and everyday life is visible within
everyday life, even if philosophy's true nature is not" .3
The method of this philosophy that remains sensitive to the ambiguities of
everyday life and is able to discern the potentialities which are concealed in the
doxa, is called: dialectics. I propose to piece together the dialectical account of
hermeneutics, that is, the supreme dialectic which determines the true relations
between philosophy and ordinary life in order to assign dialectics to its proper
place and function.

From hermeneutics to common sense

In his "Interpretation and the Fusion of Horizons" (1997), Rosen takes the oppor-
tunity of a criticism of Gadamer's conception of interpretation to formulate the
connection between hermeneutics and common sense. He starts with the two clas-
sical conditions of the interpretation of a text. The first condition is that the
meaning and value of the text are susceptible of being determined. The second
condition is that its meaning and value are not directly accessible, but somehow
hidden and doubtful, to the extent that several interpretations are competing.
The first condition does not entail that a text should have one and only one
meaning. Of course this meaning can be ambiguous and complex. This simply

2 "Philosophy and Ordinary Experience" ( 1996), in Metaphysics in Ordinary

Language (MOL), New Haven, Yale UP, 1999, p. 230.
3 "Philosophy and Revolution," in The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry,
London, Routledge, 1988, p. 29.
38 LAURENT JAFFRO

amounts to say that we could not interpret a text if it was impossible to distinguish
a right interpretation from a wrong one. The second condition adds that this right
interpretation is not obvious, but must be aimed at among a range of several can-
didates. In short, the classical concept of interpretation supposes that we are able
to distinguish a right interpretation from an arbitrary one through the examination
of a plurality of probable interpretations.
The essential point is that stating these two conditions of interpretation
amounts to founding the possibility of hermeneutics on the ordinary capacities of
everyday life. Philosophical hermeneutics is rooted within common sense since
the paradigm of the interpretation of a text is our understanding of other people.
The two main characteristics of everyday understanding are the risk of misunder-
standing and the fact of ambiguity. The risk of misunderstanding corresponds to
the first condition; the fact of ambiguity to the second one.4
Postmodern hermeneutics considers that there is no risk of misunderstanding
because there is nothing to understand. The first condition does not make sense.
Nietzschean historicism or perspectivism replaces the ideal of right interpretation
with the fact of interpretative affirmation. To interpret is nothing but to create a
new meaning or to frame some evaluation. Hermeneutics boils down to "poetry,"
namely, to the fabrication of meanings of which the hermeneut is the true author.
The main effect of this rejection of the first condition is the transformation of
reading into writing or the fading of the distinction between reading and writing.5
Contemporary theories of literature follow Jacques Derrida when they claim that
the interpretation of a text consists in writing a new one. 6
Rosen maintains the conjunction of both conditions in order to preserve the
possibility of reading as distinct from writing. If reading merges with writing,
how can we say that the reader has to hear and understand anything? The task of
the reader, then, would not be to grasp, but to create the "meaning". To put it in
other words, the distinction between reading and writing belongs to that kind of
fundamental condition which is presupposed by everyday communication.
According to Rosen, what literary theorists call ''theory," to describe their own
hermeneutical activity, is not theoria but techne, since it does not consist of the con-
templation of transcendent significations, but amounts to the fabrication of new
textual objects. Nevertheless Rosen does not advocate here any return to Platonic
contemplation against postmodern techniques. He has accepted the importance of
hermeneutics and he is aware that we need it to the extent that interpretation cannot
be reduced to contemplation. This is why the alternative to postmodern

4 "Interpretation and the Fusion of Horizons," MOL, pp. 183- 84.

5 In Hermeneutics as Politics (HP, pp. 143-44) Rosen used to view hermeneutics as a
decadent discipline. He has reappropriated the term since then.
6 There is a similar line of argument in Antoine Compagnon 's criticism of formali st
approaches to literature, in Le demon de la theorie. Litterature et sens commun,
Paris, Seuil, 1998.
 From Hermeneutics to Common Sense 39

techne is not Platonic theoria but Aristotelian phronesis. The ambiguity of the
interpretandum must be confronted by the "pretheoretical talent of natural reason" 7 ,
that is, the practical judgment which is typical of common sense.
That which is at stake here is the determination of the true relation between
"interpretation" and "theory". This is a quite complicated issue since modernity
has replaced the ancient vision with a technical construction or creation. 8 The
Modems view theory as a technique or, to use one of Rosen's most favourite
expressions, as "poetry". In order to recover the possibility of a true reading, we
must renounce the pretension of ''theory" and come back to the roots of everyday
intercomprehension. We can get out of hermeneutic nihilism only through a
revived attention to the ordinary resources of life. The only way to overcome
nihilism is, so to speak, from below, that is, from the substructure of everyday
life-not from above or through an extra ''theory".
Now we can tackle Rosen's criticism of Gadamer, which consists in noticing
that he fails to escape hermeneutic nihilism.9 A central concept in Wahreit und
Methode, the notion of fusion of horizons (Horizontverschmelzung), has the merit
of giving a good account of living traditions: we read the past through the pres-
ent; we apprehend the meaning of an artwork through its successive receptions,
not from the original intention of its author. But what is defective in Gadamer's
account is the historicist ontology which is associated with his concept of fusion
of horizons. This leads him to neglect the reality of the artwork and to hold that
it has no value regardless of its interpretations. Gadamer does not pay enough
attention to the fact that we are able to compare and grade interpretations of the
same work. 10 He regards the various interpretations of an artwork as analogous to
the multiple performances of a piece of music; but he fails to account for the fact
that they are performances of the same composition and that, from this stand-
point, some of them may be considered arbitrary. 11 The recourse to the idea of
fusion of horizons substitutes the structure of temporality for the presence of the
work. 12 Of course the whole process of interpretation is always a succession of
receptions, but the question is: receptions of what?
The disagreement between Rosen and Gadamer is about the very nature of
interpretation. According to Rosen, it does not consist of the creation of a new
meaning (as hermeneutic nihilism would have it), nor in the transformation of
meaning, which amounts to the confusion of the objective interpretandum
with the concerns of the subjective interpretans (as it is the case in Gadamer).

7 This was the definition of phronesis in "Theory and Interpretation," HP, p. 174.
8 "A Central Ambiguity in Descartes," in The Ancients and the Moderns. Rethinking
Modernity, New Haven, Yale UP, 1989, p. 22.
9 "Theory and Interpretation," HP, pp. 164--65.
IO "Interpretation and the Fusion of Horizons," MOL, p. 187.
11 Ibid., p. 195.
12 Ibid., p. 193.
40 L AURENT JAFFRO

We should be aware that, far from being a creation or a transformation of

meaning, interpretation is the art of understanding (as when we meet someone
who speaks our language) or of translating (as when we meet some foreigner with
whom we manage to communicate).
Rosen and Gadamer agree on the fact that this hermeneutic ability cannot be
completely created by the act of interpretation, but is at least partly antecedent to
it. A "precomprehension" is supposed as a prerequisite. Gadamer is convinced
that in order to account for this precomprehension he can rely on Heidegger's
concept of the interpretative structure of the everyday existence of the Dasein. He
does not notice that the Heideggerian argument remains essentially historicist and
sticks to Nietzschean perspcctivism.
Against this view, Rosen puts stress on the observation that this precompre-
hension draws on the resources of that "intercomprehension" which allows us to
understand the works from remote epochs. 13 His main claim is that the everyday
resources of intercomprehension do not express merely the spirit of this particu-
lar age, but what human nature truly is. This is why he explicitly prefers Plato and
Aristotle to Gadamer and Heidegger. Let me specify that this preference is not
that of the Greeks versus the Modems. Dialectics is not a frame of mind peculiar
to the Athenians, but the philosophical way in which we can be sensitive to the
ambiguities of ordinary life, which is political as far as it is a common life.
I should add that when Rosen speaks of"Plato and Aristotle," this conjunction is
a way of hinting at the disagreement between Plato and Aristotle on the subject of
the confrontation of philosophical activity and everyday political life. As he puts
it somewhere else, "the entire complex puzzle of the relation between philosophy
and ordinary experience is contained within the disagreement between Plato and
Aristotle". 14
Here we have a glimpse of the nature of the presupposition that roots
hermeneutics in common sense:
I hold that we can understand artworks as well as texts of other kinds from
epochs other than our own and that we can submit them to new interpreta-
tions only because of this antecedent understanding. 15

The nature of the presupposition

Drawing mainly on "Interpretation and the Fusion of Horizons," I have shown how
a critical approach to the concept of hermeneutics sends us back to the question of
common sense. Now I examine the way in which hermeneutical philosophy
presupposes (or is anticipated by) common sense, focusing on a major essay,

13 Ibid. , p. 191.
14 " Philosophy and Ordinary Experience," MOL, p. 239.
15 "Interpretation and the Fusion of Horizons," MOL, p. 191 .
 From Hermeneutics to Common Sense 41

"Philosophy and Ordinary Experience". In this study, Rosen definitely rejects the
dilemma which had been formulated in Nihilism. Between the extremes of a
triumph of common sense over philosophy on the one hand and, on the other hand,
of a complete loss of common sense by philosophical madness, a moderate
recourse to the ordinary not only is possible, but is required.
A fundamental characteristic of common sense is, first, its heterogeneity. 16
Ordinary life is neither univocal nor homogeneous, but involves a multiplicity of
preconceptions on which a technical language can concentrate. Here we find an
implicit revival of the Stoic (and Socratic) theme of the confused or at least
imperfect anticipation, within ordinary language and everyday usages, of those
notions which only an accomplished philosophical education could apply cor-
rectly. "We speak ordinarily of the beautiful, the true, the good, the useful, and so
on, but also of our desires, hopes and fears, intentions, goals, and the like." 17 It
should be noted that Rosen is now more indulgent with moral prolepses (or pre-
conceptions) than he used to be in Hermeneutics as Politics. 18 Common sense is
heterogeneous insofar as it provides us a diversity of ends and values, without
structuring them according to a clear hierarchy, without making sure that they are
consistent, without attempting to justify them. This is why common sense appeals
to philosophy, but cannot serve as a criterion for it. "Ordinary experience is not a
first principle; it is just ourselves." 19 Thus the ordinary should not be identified
neither with the "state of nature" nor with the "golden age". As far as it is an
anticipation, it cannot exist unalloyed and pure. It is a continuous dimension of
our present life. Rosen calls it the "stream of life".20
Another characteristic of common sense is its flexibility. Rosen holds that the
historical transformations which human nature undergoes do not prove that
human nature does not exist, but that it is flexible. Even though the judgments of
common sense vary from time to time and from place to place, "what we mean
by common sense does not change". It would be against common sense to try to
define it with mathematical accuracy. 21

16 Here Rosen draws on Leo Strauss 's comments on Socratic dialectics.

17 "Philosophy and Ordinary Experience," MOL, p. 223 .
18 "Hermeneutics as Politics," HP, p. 129: "One could even grant to Strauss that all men
prefer virtue to vice, good to evil, justice to injustice, and the noble to the base. This
is not philosophically decisive (although it is interesting) until we decide what is vir-
tuous, good, just, and noble." See also p. 128: "The clear implication of this passage
is that the moral distinctions of everyday life are known to all prior to theoretical
reflection, which then raises severe questions with respect to these distinctions. But
if these objections are not resolved, then the very hypothesis of a pretheoretical
natural standard is not merely questioned but contradicted."
19 "Philosophy and Ordinary Experience," MOL, p. 224.
20 Ibid., p. 238.
21 Ibid., p. 224.
42 LAURENT JAFFRO

These features- heterogeneity and flexibility-signify that the sense of

questioning and wonder is interior to ordinary life. Here we meet what I have
called the anticipation of philosophy by common sense, which can be described
as a relation between life and books: "Life teaches us how to read, or in other
words how to decide which books are in accord with our understanding of how to
live."22 The separation between reading and writing entails that the capacities
which are required for reading are not identical with writing skills. Moreover, the
understanding of a book does not amount merely to the technical mastery of its con-
tent, but is necessarily anticipated at the level of everyday precomprehension. The
reader is interested in a book from the standpoint of his or her grasp oflife, of human
nature and of our "common world". Of course books can help us to understand life,
but they would be utterly unreadable if life did not involve in itself a precomprehen-
sion or anticipation of that which books claim to teach. Without this presupposition
of common sense, there can be no moderate and sound hermeneutics. Philosophy
cannot break with the common conditions of intercomprehension.23
Common sense is the medium through which translations from one idiolect
to another are possible. It allows us to compare books, for instance to concern
ourselves with the disagreement between philosophers. Without the language
of common sense, how could we translate the language of one book into the
language of another one?
It is important to note that a certain kind of criticism is associated with the
recourse to common sense. If the consequences of a philosophy completely con-
tradict the claims of common sense, we should revise our philosophical views.
This criticism is well instanced by Rosen's observation that a theory which would
denounce consciousness as a delusion could not be held without that kind of
inconsistency which some philosophers call a performative contradiction (this is
not Rosen's expression). To put it in a positive way, "the Cartesian appeal to the
cogito is thus not a metaphysical argument or first principle but the evocation of
ordinary experience."24 Hermeneutics as Politics made use of a similar dialectics
to suggest that the surface, unlike the depth, can never be deconstructed. 25
I think that this argument gives us an important clue to understand the true
nature of the "presupposition" or "anticipation" between philosophy and common
sense. We recognize here that kind of dialectical argument which Cha!m Perelman
used to call a "retorsion" and which is better known as the ad hominem argument.
This retaliation consists in pointing out an inconsistency between a rule (which the
interlocutor holds to be valid) and the circumstances of its utterance.26 Perelman

22 Ibid., p. 221.
23 Ibid., pp. 225-27.
24 Ibid., p. 225.
25 "Surfaces cannot be deconstructed, since wherever we begin, they are always present
as the beginning." "Hermeneutics as Politics," HP, p. 88.
26 L'Empire rhetorique, Paris, Vrin, 1977, pp. 72- 73.
 From Hermeneutics to Common Sense 43

insists on the comical effects of this dialectical argument. The retorsion is well
instanced by classical and modern usages: the way in which Aristotle disproves
sophistic arguments against the principle of non-contradiction; a well-known point
against neo-positivists, namely that, when they claim that every meaningful proposi-
tion must be either analytical or empirical, it is doubtful whether this particular
proposition is meaningful; the Stoic refutation of the Epicurean denial of natural
obligations.
The Stoic form of the argument is of great significance, because it makes
explicit that moral skepticism rests on the same kind of inconsistency than logical
sophistry. Perelman refers to Arrian's Discourses ofEpictetus, I, 23, 10. In this pas-
sage, Epictetus is ironical about the obvious contradiction between Epicurus's
advice to the wise-that they should not have children or, if they have children, that
they should abandon them-and the counterfactual consequences for Epicurus's
own existence if his parents had been Epicurean and followed their son's advice. 27
Perelman might as well have quoted II, 20, 6-11, in which it is observed that
Epicurus contradicts himself when he is worried about our being under the illusion
that love and care are real things in nature. Whether he likes it or not, Epicurus tes-
tifies to the existence of moral norms while he is contesting them.
This particular kind of retaliation is the rhetorical core of common sense.
According to Perelman, this argument is not logical, but rhetorical, since the sit-
uation to which it applies is not monological, but dialogical. Moreover, it does not
directly prove that such and such a principle is true; it just suggests that the inter-
locutor is wrong when he or she denies it. Irony shows us the way, but does not
provide any evidence. If we attach this kind of argument to the philosophical
recourse to common sense, then we must consider that common sense is not
merely a set of self-evident intuitions, but involves also implicit normative
usages. Common sense is demonstrated by what we do and especially by what we
do with words. 28
If we lay stress on the pragmatic- rather than intuitiv~imension of com-
mon sense, then it appears that this ordinary knowledge has little in common with
Platonic vision. Here dialectical irony leads to a reappraisal of opinion rather than
to the contemplation of Ideas. Rosen says that nihilism consists of the transfor-
mation of"theory" into "construction". But it remains that the way out of nihilism
is not a way back to theoria. If my interpretation is correct, we must admit that
the fierce criticism which Hermeneutics as Politics had addressed to the postmod-
ern destruction of the Platonic sense of "theory" does not lead to a revival of the
good old days.

27 Ibid., p. 74.
28 In The Ancients and the Moderns. Rethinking Modernity (op. cit., p. 142), it is signifi-
cant that Rosen "persists in using the term intuition" to refer to particular ordinary
capacities which he regards as practical dispositions.
44 LAURENT JAFFRO

Now we may have better grasp of Rosen's statement about the possibility of
hermeneutics, which I have already quoted:
I hold that we can understand artworks as well as texts of other kinds from
epochs other than our own and that we can submit them to new interpreta-
tions only because of this antecedent understanding.

The retorsion argument calls attention to this inescapable antecedence of

(pre)comprehension. The distinction between reading and writing is attested by
this kind of retaliation29: if I maintain that reading amounts to writing another
text, all I can expect from my readers is that they produce new texts; I would have
many disciples, but without being read. If the problem of hermeneutics is that of
the possibility of reading as "comprehension," distinct from "production," then
the way to the solution is shown by the dialectical argument.
In short, what they call the hermeneutical circle (in order to be able to under-
stand, we must be already engaged in a process of understanding) is not a curse,
but the ordinary experience of the "retorsion" of common sense. To illustrate this
point, Rosen remarks that, unless they contradict themselves, his readers cannot
deny the existence of a common, non-technical language, in which we have the
ordinary experience of intercomprehension. Other instances of this argument, or
at least of the same formal structure, can be found in The Elusiveness of the
Ordinary (2002):

Even the nihilist assumes that his or her judgment is rooted in a true percep-
tion of human existence. The doctrine would be worthless if it were based
upon erroneous reasoning. I do not see how the assertion could be proved, but
it is my view that even the philosophical nihilist takes pride in, that is to say,
esteems, the capacity to have arrived at the truth, however distressing, and so
is not misled by illusion, however gratifying. 30

We could not even imagine an alternative, or what Heidegger calls "a differ-
ent beginning," if there were not some common basis for comparing
traditions of for interpreting human existence. This is why it is possible for
philosophical hermeneuts to publish thick volumes in which they support
the priority of difference for the edification of larger audiences, each mem-
ber of which has common access to the perspectival nature of human
existence. 31

29 "Philosophy and Ordinary Experience," MOL , p. 232.

30 "The Attributes of Ordinary Experience," in The Elusiveness of the Ordinary (EO),
New Haven, Yale UP, 2002, pp. 262-63.
31 "Concluding Remarks," EO, p. 294.
 From Hermeneutics to Common Sense 45

We recognize here the formal features of the Stoic criticism of Epicureans and
Academics32, of which a modem equivalent is the refutation of Hobbesian "egoism"
by eighteenth-century British moralists. As the third Earl of Shaftesbury puts it
against the author of Leviathan:

Sir! The philosophy you have condescended to reveal to us is most extraordi-

nary. We are beholden to you for our instruction. But, pray, whence is this
zeal in our behalf? What are we to you? Are you our father?[ ... ] It is directly
against your interest to undeceive us and let us know that only private interest
governs you and that nothing nobler, or of a larger kind, should govern us
whom you converse with. 33

This old argument is employed by twentieth-century "discussion ethics" as

well. Jiirgen Habermas and Karl Otto Apel point out the performative contradic-
tion in which the skeptic or the "methodological solipsist" is caught when he
denies the validity of moral or cognitive norms, which are identical with the
norms of every communication. To determine to what extent this argument is
correct exceeds the limits of the present paper.
Common sense is not a logical condition of the practical, but rather a dialec-
tical condition of the logical. Here we must tum to The Ancients and the Moderns,
chapter 7, in which Rosen notices that in Aristotle the defence of the first princi-
ple of logic, non contradiction, is not logical but dialectical. Logic excludes formal
contradictions, whereas dialectics is a sensitivity to "existential contradictions".
These existential inconsistencies are ambiguities in every day life which cannot be
formalized. They require from us relevant and appropriate responses, in a word:
some finesse. 34
To this description of the relation between philosophy and common sense,
one might object that- like phenomenology-it has been scheduled, but never
really fulfilled. One might demand more than a methodology: an effective and
direct description of what common sense is.

32 Epictetus's retorsion to Epicurus: "Why do you write so many books, that no one of
us may be deceived about the gods and believe that they take care of men; or that no
one may suppose the nature of good to be other than pleasure?" Discourses of
Epictetus, II, 20, 9.
33 Shaftesbury, Sensus Communis, an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour. in
Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times ( 1711 ), ed. L. E. Klein,
Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1999, p. 43. See L. Jaffro, Ethique de la communication
et art d'ecrire. Shaftesbury et /es lumieres anglaises, Paris, Presses Universitaires
de France, 1998, pp. 102- 10.
34 "Logic and Dialectic," The Ancients and the Moderns. Rethinking Modernity, op. cit.,
pp. 118, 142, and especially p. 158: "Dialectics is not a procedure for eliminating
inconsistencies and contradictions but rather for making sense out of them."
46 LAURENT JAFFRO

We should respond, first, that the programmatic and methodological look of

this undertaking is the effect of the uneasy and shaky position in which philoso-
phy is with regard to common sense. Philosophy turns its back on common
sense, while simultaneously trying to look at it- which is the best way to get a
theoretical stiff neck. Indeed philosophy has a therapeutic dimension insofar as
it teaches how to endure pains of this sort. Second, this exploration of ordinary
experience is not, properly speaking, a description and does not merge into
phenomenology. The exact paradigm for this exploration is Socrates's practice of
dialectics.

The difficulties of a philosophical recourse to common sense

Stanley Rosen claims that moderate hermeneutics presupposes common sense.
I have tried to clarify the nature of this presupposition. The relation between
hermeneutics and common sense can be analysed as a "retorsion". The art of retor-
sion is called "dialectics". This dialectical approach to common sense is neither
descriptive nor theoretical, but dialogical and elenchtic. As such, it draws on the
capacity of "antecedent" understanding, which is present in opinion, to convert
opinion to philosophy.
Then we must face a first difficulty. Dialectics consists in practising retor-
sion, but not necessarily in knowing that to which the interlocutor is unwillingly
testifying. Dialectics points out that I cannot deny some common sense princi-
ples without succumbing to some performative contradiction, but does it give me
a positive knowledge of these alleged principles? We can employ the ad
hominem argument-which shows that the interlocutor presupposes what he or
she is denying- without having an adequate notion of that which is presupposed.
Here is a fine example in Perelman:

Just as the public, in a provincial theatre, was about to strike up the

Marseillaise, a policeman came on the stage to announce that anything which
was not on the playbill was forbidden. Someone in the audience interrupted
him: 'as for you, are you on the playbill?'35

In this example, can we say that the audience has an adequate notion of what
"to be on the playbill" means? I doubt it. They have a good notion of what "any-
thing" means insofar as they notice that it should include the policeman, and this
is enough for the ad hominem argument. But as far as the playbill is concerned,
they rely on the policeman's irresponsible declaration and they just return it to
him. My point is that philosophers cannot rely on the policeman. They must have
an adequate notion of the playbill. To put it in other words, a philosopher can use
the retorsion argument to show that skeptics, nihilists, postmodemists, and the

35 L'Empire rhetorique. op. cit., p. 73. My translation.

 From Hermeneutics to Common Sense 47

like, stick unconsciously to that which they are denying; but a philosopher, espe-
cially in the Socratic tradition, cannot be happy with this argument unless he or
she tries to know the reality, principle, norm, and the like, which they deny.
A second difficulty, to put it roughly: is common sense "natural" or is it rather
"historical"? Here Rosen discusses the similarities and oppositions between
Wittgenstein and Leo Strauss. The "public idiom" is an "historical creature".36
Wittgenstein opted for the historical and therefore conventional character of the
ordinary.37 As for Leo Strauss, in order to escape historicism, he thought it proper
to characterise common sense, not as ordinary language, but as natural precompre-
hension. Pretheoretical life is political and is nevertheless natural, because man is a
political animal by nature. But we may object to Strauss that the Greek age during
which human nature is unveiled, even though it is an exception in comparison with
other epochs of which the history is made up, remains historical.38 Nothing escapes
the dominion of historicity, but at the same time we can use the retorsion argument
against those who, under the pretext that nothing escapes historicity, claim that
everything is relative. Conversely, if we assert that reading presupposes human
nature and its natural capacity to understand, we must admit that any effective read-
ing has access to this nature. Then we should say, against Strauss, that the Athenian
access to this nature is not more authentic than our contemporary access as read-
ers39. It is clear that the retorsion argument is useful to draw the attention of the
historicist to his or her own contradiction and well suggests that we cannot get rid
of nature. Yet the "nature" which the retorsion argument puts forward against the
historicist consists of nothing but the practice of dialectics. According to Rosen,
there is an "intrinsic connection between ordinary experience and human nature". 40
This nature is not antecedent to the use of language, nor to political life. It is that
which is presupposed by every act of understanding, reading, talking. ''Nature" is
another name for "reason" in the cosmic, non scholastic sense. In this sense, Rosen
is not more an Ancient than a Modem.
Another difficulty concerns the relation between philosophy and rhetoric.
On the one hand, Rosen claims that the presupposition of common sense is typical
of philosophy and that this is one of the major features which differentiate

36 "Philosophy and Ordinary Experience," MOL, p. 218.

37 "Wittgenstein excludes the possibility of theorizing on questions of this sort. He
begins from the conventional or historical fact of the linguistic community whose
members speak in more or less the same way. It is as a member of this community
that the philosopher or speech-therapist has access to standard idioms and rules of
linguistic use by which to eliminate mistakes arising from misuse of those idioms
and rules." "Wittgenstein, Strauss, and the Possibility of Philosophy," EO, p. 141 .
38 "Philosophy and Ordinary Experience," MOL, pp. 220-22.
39 "Concluding Remarks," EO, p. 302: "What I mean by ordinary experience is as
accessible in late twentieth-century Paris as it was in classical Athens."
40 "Philosophy and Ordinary Experience," MOL, p. 231 .
48 LAURENT JAFFRO

philosophy from poetry and rhetoric. On the other hand, I have suggested that we
can draw on Perelman's so-called "new" rhetoric to present this presupposition as
a retorsion. We must then solve a question of terminology. Rosen constantly
underrates rhetoric and often connects it with ..poetry"-that is, in his idiolect,
technical construction-, while at the same time he relies on a sort of philosoph-
ical rhetoric which is essential to his argument. He wants to show that without the
presupposition of common sense interpretations are pure creations and, as such,
remain inaudible. In my opinion, this argument should not be considered as a
depreciation of rhetoric. On the contrary, if we put aside the old caricature of rhet-
oric as the art of verbal seduction, we should recognize here the deep connection
between philosophy and rhetoric: both involve the art of intercomprehension and
suppose the precomprehension of the audience. It seems that Rosen admits this
rhetorical dimension of philosophy, in a positive sense, when he passes this remark
about the risk, for postmodern artworks, of being completely hermetic:
These works of art are not intelligible, in the first instance not to any exter-
nal audience, but also not to their creators, since there is no standard by
which to distinguish between a true and a false interpretation of one's own
creation.41

Even though he prefers the idea of dialectics, Rosen searches for a "theoret-
ically correct rhetoric". 42
To my last point: is common sense a philosophical reconstruction? Twentieth-
century philosophies make use of various expressions to characterise it: ordinary
experience, ordinary language, everyday life, Lebenswelt, and so on. If we go back
to the Ancients and to early modem philosophy, we can put other items on the list:
Platonic doxa, Aristotelian endoxa and legomena, Stoic preconceptions, Cartesian
bon sens or lumiere naturelle, Scottish common sense, Kantian gemeine Verstand,
etc.43 As many expressions as philosophers. It would be against philosophical accu-
racy to consider that these expressions are synonymous. It is obvious that they are
far from being synonymous, particularly if we take into account the gap, to which
Rosen draws our attention, between transcendental reconstructions of prephilo-
sophical life and immanentist approaches to the ordinary.44 Nevertheless, it would

41 Ibid., p. 228.
42 Ibid., p. 233.
43 This list should be completed with William Hamilton's note on the history of common
sense. See The Works ofThomas Reid, ed. W. Hamilton, II, Note A, Edimbourg, 1863
(6e ed.), pp. 742-803.
44 This point was first tackled in "Hermeneutics as Politics," HP, p. 132: "Strauss
makes the reasonable claim that unless thinking is regulated by the everyday world
of common sense, it soon becomes indistinguishable from the imagination.[ ...] His
opponents make the equally reasonable reply that the everyday world of common
sense is already a product of theoretical constitution (Husserl) or imaginative
 From Hermeneutics to Common Sense 49

be against common sense to deny that these various expressions have something in
common. It might be the case that each philosophy has its own conception of com-
mon sense, but, beyond this paradox, it should be common to all philosophies to
presuppose such a prephilosophical level. Surely we must admit that every presup-
position of the ordinary is accompanied, to a certain extent, by a philosophical
reconstruction. But there is a risk here. If the reconstruction outweighs the pre-
supposition, common sense is lost.
In short, philosophy must engage in the hermeneutical turn, but interpreta-
tion rests neither on a technical skill nor on a theoretical vision. We must have
recourse to philosophy to clarify everyday life; yet philosophy cannot substitute
for everyday life, otherwise philosophy would lose the hermeneutical capacity
insofar as it is- this is Rosen's main claim- a prephilosophical talent. This point
has been concisely formulated in The Question of Being:
Philosophical doctrines are required in order to clarify the obscurities of ordi-
nary life. But no doctrine is worthy holding if it renders everyday life
unintelligible or claims that it is an illusion. At the same time, there is no
philosophical doctrine or definition of what constitutes everyday life. There
will always be disagreement about what needs to be explained and what does
not. This is why one must first be wise before one can be a philosopher.45

We might consider as well that, if we must begin with wisdom, philosophy is

far more difficult than we thought at first. For philosophy is an extraordinary
enthusiasm; as such it is not easily capable of this ordinary wisdom and is often
blind to it. The notions of what is difficult and of what is easy in philosophy do
not coincide with the difficult and the easy in ordinary life.

construction (Nietzsche). I would myself observe that common sense, on Strauss's

own premise that thought is (divinely) mad, is incompetent to adjudicate a truly
' fearless' (Strauss's term) philosophical thinking."
45 The Question of Being, New Haven, Yale UP, 1993, p. 122.
Four Brief Essays for Stanley Rosen
Herbert Mason
Boston University

Discourse
What is the condition of humanity that brings to surface repeatedly the argument
of Athens vs. Jerusalem? The Platonic God is not the God of al-Quds, an argu-
ment that was absorbed by Jewish, Christian, and Islamic philosophers, and is still
with us in the twenty-first century in various forms.
One aspect of the argument, as I understand it, resides in what one calls the
self and expresses its opposing sides with what each considers virtues. The argu-
ment isn't clear-cut, however, due to two factors, one of which is historical. Greek
became assimilated with Jewish thought by many ancient thinkers in centers of
learning in Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt, the process of which was continued
successively by Christian and Muslim thinkers. Secondly, philosophical: the
virtues overlapped and became, in effect, ratified in the neo-Platonist Christian
philosophies. It is an argument that becomes fashionable in symposia and semi-
nars of discourse periodically and ends in this familiar pattern of assimilation.
The differentiation can only be made between Plato's and Abraham's notion of
God, and between a neo-Hellenistic philosopher's devotion to self-examination
and a monotheistic believer's adherence to revelation; between reflection and par-
ticipation. The question of virtues can be differentiated ultimately only with
regard to the self and its full realization through expansion or diminishment.
In the mysticism that steers one through these human conditions there is the
reverse of expansion in the face of many temptations. Ultimately, there is a dis-
appearance of self in God's self. God's creativeness, suffering and compassion
make this thinkable as a path of life. What turns one from assuming it is unthink-
able is the mystery of conversion on which one builds one's life anew without the
obsessive qualifications of rational discourse. One doesn't become unreasonable
or driven by emotion. One's reason is redirected through recognition of the limits
of self, of self's complex tendencies to misunderstand those limits and of self's
frequent aversions to simple truth. Compassion to oneself is seeing and acting
against the dangerousness of forgotten limits and aversions.
The whole issue for the mystic becomes one's conception of the mastery of
self. It is possible as a religious person to examine one's reason critically, thor-
oughly, decisively, and to become convinced that one is guided in all things by

50
 Four Brief Essays for Stanley Rosen 51

rational self-examination, and yet to live according to an inflation of self in one's

daily life. Such is the subtlety of self-deception. Classical mystics, such as the
Muslim al-Hallaj and the Christian St. John of the Cross, speak of the emptying
of self and the experience of denudation to the point of having and knowing noth-
ing apart from God, yet whom one can't possess and can't know; God who is
neither only absent or only present.
The Christian Gospel speaks of the eye of the needle as a parable that mystics
might regard as instruction in approaching nothingness rather than merely
judging worldliness. The path in question doesn't mean the mystic assumes no
responsibility in worldly matters or for the existence of evil in the world, but that one
assiduously strives to remove one's attachment especially to the rewards of responsi-
bility as rapidly as one receives them. Spiritually, it is never possible to accept honors
for one's actions or thoughts unless one recognizes simply that they are appropriate,
not inflationary In terms of the existence of evil, the mystic suffers anguish yet at the
same time presumes no ultimate authority based on what he knows. On every level
of experience such a one self-abnegates repeatedly as an interior, hidden way of life.
One understands something, one doesn't make understanding a substitute for God.
Everything created is perishable. One experiences foretastes of what is
imperishable within creation through friendships and love with others one is not
entitled to possess. Such is also the teaching of the path of self-diminishment. It
is considered mystical only because one can't proceed along its way through
unconverted rationality.
Reason is no match for the thoroughly deluded self and becomes quite willing
to be a partner in deception, including religious deception based on self-inflation.
Yet with a denuded self as partner reason finds value and power in humility. This
partnership provides the strength needed for this path.

Argument
To reiterate: one knows of the dissemination of Greek learning (science, mathemat-
ics, medicine, the method of logical inquiry of Aristotle's Hermeneutica) in
Alexandria, Jw1di Shapur, Antioch, Baghdad, Cordoba, via Syriac, Arabic and Latin.
Neo-Hellenism provided a diffusion of religious consciousness through historical
criticism and philosophical reflection. It was, so to speak, the universalizing of
cultic experience, ancient and monotheistic, with some cults resisting its influence
and remaining cults, exclusivist, unanalytical, ahistorical; perhaps mystical and, to
themselves, faithful to their origins. The civilizing apparatus of neo-Hellenism
eluded them and they remained anomalies, quirks on the screen of anthropological
analysis. One thinks of the Yazidis of today in northern Iraq or of numerous African,
South American and other tribal religions still undocumented by the neo-Hellenistic
investigators. They remain very old in appearance and practice and marginalized as
witnesses of religious experience. Of course, neo-Hellenism on the other end of the
52 HERBERT MASON

spectrum has made the "universal" religions almost bland, non-experiential, theoret-
ical, academic, even post-philosophical, embarrassed by experience, abstracting of
God as Idea, hostile to mysticism, forgetful of origins.
What of the individual religious consciousness, of the personal search for
mystical union with God, whether within mainstream religious traditions or with-
out? Has the path, sui generis, also eluded neo-Hellenism's reach and cataloguing?
Does this ultra-individual, non-tribal scientia intuitiva find itself staring across the
computerized desert of World Religions at the so-called primitive fidelity, say, of
the Yazidi elders, to all appearances Abrahamic, and see itself mirrored, echoed
there, like two birds caught and caged far apart yet yearning together to be free? Is
salvation to be found in neo-Hellenistic aesthetic collection? Can personal experi-
ence any more than tribal ritual be encapsulated in abstract terms? It is a very old
question asked early in Alexandria, Jundi Shapur, the Bayt al-hikma of Baghdad,
and every department of religious studies in universities since.
Most would argue that such experience, especially mystical experience, must
be conceptualized in order, not to be lived by oneself, but to be understood by oth-
ers curious about religion and searching for Truth. The legend of the cave in Plato
moves us still on this issue, pricking our individual consciences. The legend of the
cave in the Koran urges us to sleep in God who will awaken us to question one
another in good time. Both call for the devoted and the examined life.
To establish a path for oneself one must look critically at one-self and one's
human conditions; and for this one must be in part a neo-Hellenist, even as one
inclines repeatedly toward mystical union with God. It isn't an either/or situation.
One is moving on one's path with a neo-Hellenistic brother at one's side, and
he on his path with a brother he considers, with a tinge of skepticism, yet with
affection, as a mystic.

Friendship
Friendship is many things and takes many forms, and is fundamentally
inscrutable. It is rarely described as a condition essential to one's health, yet it is
one of the profoundest antidotes to the sterility of solitude and the psychological
disorders that grow therefrom. Its very inscrutability and unpredictability protect
it and those who experience it from all forms of obsessive analytical intrusion.
First, friendship can't be prescribed or invented or forced into being. No one
knows how or why or when it is conceived, survives birth, grows, and attains
longevity. By contrast marriage seems comprehensible and even predictable and
arranged customarily as necessary for the continuance of civilization. It is
normally required as a means of procreation, nurturing and socializing of the
species. Friendship has no such necessary function and may even be considered
an impediment to self-advancement in certain hyper-competitive cultures.
In ancient civilizations, if our reading of oral epic literature is correct, friendship
 Four Brief Essays for Stanley Rosen 53

is a spontaneous and uncontrived reflection of human aspiration at its highest,

noblest level. Greek and Mesopotamian friendship was fundamental to moral and
spiritual development: to self-realization and the achievement of wisdom. In
Homeric and Gilgameshian worldviews it stood spiritually above marriage and
parenthood in the heroic struggle against injustice and the debilitating fatalism of
ubiquitous mortality. One was armed best by friendship, not by weapons alone.
Friendship vitalized one to accomplish heroic deeds beyond one's individual pow-
ers, and its loss, its invariably ironic and tragic loss, due to one 's failure to fully
grasp its necessity for survival, led to disaster. In both Mediterranean and
Mesopotamian literatures the opening of the heart by the loss of a friend to death
reveals the only conquest a human being can achieve over mortality: through the
sorrow that transforms tragedy into revelatory wisdom.
Is friendship an unforeseen gift, in religious terms a charism received from a
transcendent source? The question is important, because the source believed to
have produced revelation has also produced the condition of friendship and in the
instant of tragedy is blamed for its loss. One asks in quest of understanding has
there been a mysterious force guiding and bringing friends together only to sepa-
rate them? One's trust in human control oflife has been transformed, in any case,
by loss. Once a friend, one can no longer believe or act as if only enemies exist;
yet after loss, enemies abound again. Perhaps if there is a sequel to tragedy found
in wisdom, it is the hope that a single friendship can inoculate one against
destructive confrontations and fruitless suspicions that lead to spiritual ruin.

Ageing
This is a definite and, to many outsiders looking in with horror at it, a catastrophic
condition. There is no way back from it. It happens, unless one is afraid of it to
such a degree that one aborts oneself from its experience. Its personal signs are
many, both surface and internal, skin and organs, and its social signs are many,
both superficial and psychologically devastating. One can no longer do or be seen
by others as capable of doing what one used to do. One's being seems to be going
through an involuntary and undesired transformation. A force is at work that seems
to be coming neither from God nor from others, one that ambushes one wholly by
surprise from within. Call it grandly fate or banally time. It has been part of
humanity's experience always, and it reminds one of the bond one has across time
with ancient humankind, mediaeval humankind, and so forth. It is a unifying
revelation; this awesome ambush, that comes with a violence destroying vanities
and hopes for further undertakings and involvements, pleasures and diversions,
buildings and imaginings. It lays waste and leaves more devastation than the
greatest of hurricanes, floods, fires, and wars, and overlooks neither groups
nor individuals. Its storm's eye has amazing gifts for both generalization and
particularism. No one can escape its watchful focus and its humiliating exposure
54 H ERBERT MASON

of everything one presumed oneself to be. It separates one from everything one has
achieved, possessed, and extended through others. It has access to everything but
thought, and even that can become twisted out of shape through separation from
reality caused by age. One turns in age thus to the struggle not merely to preserve
thought but to seek its fruition on a further, yet to be experienced level: a level
barely imaginable, ironically, but for the gift of age. Yet to reach this level of
perception, contemplation and understanding one must transform one's focus of
thought to perceive more deeply and more clearly than previously experienced.
One must aim literally at the spirit of others and things and oneself, and one must
seek knowledge of the source of all, including, and especially, the source of spirit;
and one must be prepared, like the most ancient warriors of history and legend,
who fought the monsters of forest, sea and selves, to overcome time with the
spiritual weaponry of thought, which is, at last, all one really has.
Discourse: For Stanley Rosen
Geoffrey Hill

As to whether there persists-enlighten me-

a dialectic: labour into desire.
Forgive my small vocabulary that tries
and abides your patience. What a wonder's
man the philosopher set on his throne.
What a wonder he is, and how
abysmal. I would not have you say
I speak ungratefully; or that there's self
going spare in our unsparing tribute.
Arbeitsknecht by adoption, I never
slam down advice, even to shake the building.
Perhaps (but not likely) I may be still
a whizz at ordinary language and you
mishear things.

2
No, put this way: cancel, expunge, annul,
self-reference. Philosophy keeps up
embarrassment and expense. I'd quit us
of further scars had these now been incurred.
You 're magisterial in judgement's gorge
where the rocks are at all angles and the stream
buggers its way through:
let's flip with self-projection's paper boat.
Language not revealing to the elect
only; and wild descenders pierced by good.
So few of us absolved when what we write
sets us to rights on some scam-scale of justice.
You 're magisterial in your own conviction.
And a clown with it, and a judge of clowns.

55
56 GEOFFREY HILL

3
Susurrations of winter: voicing stems mistune
a glass harmonica at my good ear.
The alien's close to home, the changeling's not
too much a prodigy or wastrel; lovers
and children not inimical by rote.
Something here even so. Our well dug-in
language pitches us as it finds-
1 tell myself
don't wreck a good phrase simply to boost sense-
granted its dark places, the fabled burden;
its loops and extraordinary progressions,
its mere conundrums forms and rites of discourse;
its bleak littoral swept by bursts of sunlight;
its earthen genius auditing the spheres.

From The New Criterion Vol. 21, No. I 0, June 2003

©2003 The New Criterion I Back to the top I www.newcriterjon.com

The URL for this item is:

http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21 /jun03/hi11 .httn.
The Grammar of the Soul
On Plato's Euthyphro

Michael Davis
Sarah Lawrence College

[O)rder and stability in speech and deed depend on what Socrates calls the
Ideas. But speech and deed are not themselves Ideas; they are the functions
of the human psyche. The difference between the psyche and the Ideas ... is
sufficient evidence of [the) error in asserting that Plato replaces Being by the
eidetic "looks" of what is. This amounts to the assertion that Being in Plato
is, or is represented by (the Idea of), the good, in the sense of the goodness
or essence of the Ideas. But this is to identify the whole with the domain of
the Ideas, or to forget about the psyche (and the receptacle). The goodness of
the Ideas rather would seem to be but one manifestation of the good itself;
intelligibility does not account for life or intelligence. 1

I
The Euthyphro is the Platonic dialogue about the holy-our relation to the gods.
Its setting suggests a certain urgency, for Socrates is about to enter the court
where he will hear the charges for which he will later be tried, convicted, and
executed. This is the Socrates whom Plato immortalizes in his writings as the
paradigmatic philosopher. So, one might say that in the Euthyphro the best of men
holds a conversation about the highest beings. While this should suffice to
indicate the importance of the dialogue, I don't suppose it is perfectly obvious that
the way to approach this importance is a discussion of Greek grammar.
Nevertheless, this is where I will begin. Forgive me for the grammar lesson you
are about to receive.
The English verb has two voices-active and passive. Voice is perhaps the
most fundamental feature of the verb since variations in tense, mood, aspect,
person, and number must all occur in a voice-"he saw," "we were seen," "she
will be seeing," "they may be seen," "to see," " having been seen," etc.2 Now the

Rosen, Stanley, Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1969; South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine's Press, 2000), 162.
2 Voice, according to Emile Benveniste [Problems in General linguistics (Coral
Gables, Florida: 197 l ), 146], "denotes a certain attitude of the subject with relation

57
58 MICHAEL 0AVI$

Indo-European verbal system (we'll pay special attention to Plato's language,

Attic Greek, in a moment) has not only active and passive voices; it also has a
middle. Active and passive seem simple enough; the one involves actions done,
the other actions undergone--"I hit" on the one hand and "I am hit" on the other.
But the middle voice is harder; it seems at first to be a sort of fuzzy intermediate,
derivative from the other two, that according to one Greek grammar "usually
denotes that the subject acts on himselfor for himself."3 Now, you might be won-
dering how on earth it would possible for a subject to do anything other than act
on or for himself; if so, you understand why the boundaries of the middle voice
are notoriously difficult to make out.
It is almost irresistible to think of the middle as a hybrid, a mean between
active and passive produced by splitting the difference. This is especially true in
Greek where with a few exceptions middle and passive verb-forms are identical,
and one can only determine which is meant by the context. A middle, then, would
be an active verb in which I am something like the passive object of my own
action. In this it is like the reflexive verb in modem European languages which is
either translated as passive or as active and taking the reflexive pronoun as an
object. Sich interressieren means "to be interested" or "to interest oneself." Yet it
is of some interest that even here the priority of the passive to the middle is not
so clear; aqui se habla espafio/ is translated "Spanish is spoken here," but a more
literal rendering would be "Spanish speaks itself here.'"' In fact, there is every
indication that historically in Indo-European languages the original dualism was
not active/passive but active/middle. Emile Benveniste describes the dualism
this way.
In the active, the verbs denote a process that is accomplished outside the sub-
ject. In the middle ... the verb indicates a process centering in the subject,
the subject being inside the process .... Here the subject is the seat of the
process. . . ; the subject is the center as well as the agent of the process; he
achieves something which is being achieved in him.5

One can thus speculate that in Greek some verbs lack a middle-passive form
because the action they signal is too other-directed to support one, and some
(called deponent verbs) lack an active form because their action is so internalized
that it cannot even be contemplated apart from a transformation in the agent.
Aisthanesthai, "to perceive," is such a verb.

to the process-by which the process receives its fundamental determination." Much
of what follows simply summarizes Benveniste's elegant discussion of the middle
voice in lndo-European languages.
3 Smyth, Herbert Weir, Greek Grammar, 107.
4 I have borrowed this example from an internet posting by Carl W. Conrad,
"Observations on Ancient Greek Voice."
5 Problems in General linguistics, 148-49.
 The Grammar of the Soul 59

Keeping the middle voice in mind, let us tum to Plato's Euthyphro. By my

quick count, middle-passive verb forms occur 281 times in the 13 pages of the
dialogue. Of these, 78 have passive meanings and 203 have middle meanings.
This distribution, however, is a little deceiving since 52 of these passive mean-
ings occur in a single argument that extends over only a page and a half
( 1Oa- 11 b}-an argument that itself turns on the distinction between active and
passive verbs, and which would therefore be impossible to articulate without an
unusual incidence of passive forms. In the eight pages prior to this argument, of
the middle-passive forms, 14 are passive and 125 middle; in the four pages after,
of76 middle-passive forms, 12 are passive and 64 middle. Now, verbs are words
of action, and, according to Socrates in the Euthyphro, "if something comes to
be or is affected, not because it is something coming to be does it comes to be,
but because it comes to be, it is something coming to be" (lOcl-3). Someone is
loved (passive) because someone loves (active); accordingly being loved exists
because there is loving. Isn't it rather peculiar then, that in a dialogue where
Socrates makes such a strong claim about the dependence of passivity on activity
in everything that comes to be or is affected-a claim that presumably covers all
verbs-there should appear so many verbs that do not fit the paradigm, so that by
a proportion of seven to one, verbs with "passive" forms do not have passive
meanings? What does it mean that for the purpose of his argument, Socrates
ignores the whole range of "activity" described by the middle voice?
This is especially odd given his primary example. Of 52 passives in the
argument, 29 involve the verb "to love." The general problem might be stated
this way. For both Plato (Phaedrus 245c) and Aristotle (De Anima 111.9) soul is
self-moving. When we try to make this intelligible to ourselves, we f"md
ourselves dividing soul into a part that moves, and so is active, and a part that is
moved, and so is passive. This of course simply begins a regress, for now we find
ourselves asking how the part that moves the other part first moves itself. The
middle does not allow itself be deconstructed into active and passive elements.
In an attempt to avoid this regress, both Plato and Aristotle tum to love as a
way of explaining the self-motion of soul. We are drawn out of ourselves by
ourselves.

II
The Euthyphro begins with the words "What's new?" or, more literally "What's
newer?" Euthyphro is a young man with an eccentric understanding of the divine
things and an estimate of his own stature as a religious seer that is so overgener-
ous as to be comical (for example, he assures Socrates that nothing will come of
Meletus's charges against him). Euthyphro is surprised to find Socrates hanging
around the Porch of the King, the location for preliminary hearings in judicial
cases. He is certain that Socrates must be under indictment, for surely he would
60 MICHAEL DAVIS

not be indicting another. Euthyphro, on the other hand, is not only indicting
another; he is indicting his own father, and for murder at that (although the
circumstances are arguably unusually extenuating). The dialogue thus begins with
a contrast between Euthyphro the zealous agent and Socrates the perennial
patient. Indeed, Euthyphro is so paradigmatically the agent, that he makes Zeus's
binding of Kronos his model (Oedipus, by the way, also lurks in the wings). Like
Zeus (and indeed Kronos as well) Euthyphro assaults his own father. Now, the
binding of Kronos (whose name is a pun on chronos- time) marks the beginning
of the reign of the Olympian gods- gods whose names no longer double as
common nouns like Ouranos (heaven) and Gaia (earth). The Greek gods are
peculiar beings; they are at once principles of intelligibility (as Ares is the god of
war, his notorious affair with Aphrodite can be understood as an allegory for the
complicated relation between love and war- the theme of the Iliad), and they are
agents in their own right (Ares is a person capable of being attracted to and
sleeping with Aphrodite). As principles the gods point to an unchanging eternal
order of things. To understand the variety of and relations among them, then,
would mean to understand the world. Yet as persons, the gods are agents of the
new. While the names of the Olympians no longer point directly to cosmic
phenomena, it is probably no accident that the accusative of Zeus's name (Dia)
might be interpreted as "cause." If the binding of Kronos means the overthrow of
time, then Olympian rule stands for what it means to introduce into the world the
possibility of causes that are not simply rooted in the past out of which they
grow-causes that are not simply effects. These gods, and this is particularly
important for the Euthyphro, represent what it means that there are souls in the
world. Not accidentally, the word psuche soul, does not occur in the Euthyphro.
In a world without the agency of souls, everything would be rooted so firmly in
its past that there would be nothing unpredictable-nothing new- and so
Euthyphro 's opening question would make no sense. The problem hinted at by the
first words of the dialogue, then, is this: How could there be agency in a world so
fully intelligible that everything falls into place, has a place, is rooted, and so, in
which there is no real change? The gods, at once principles of intelligibility and
initiating agents, are the way we human beings formulate this problem to our-
selves. And by speaking of gods, without quite realizing it, we have raised for
ourselves the problem of soul. The gods are in a way mythic versions of the
middle voice of the verb in which the subject "inside the process" "achieves
something which is being achieved in him." As we have seen, although the mid-
dle is fundamental, it is deceptively easy to construe as deriving from the
combination of active and passive.
Euthyphro acts so as to transcend the fact of his having a past; his goal is a
sort of parricide, with all the attendant tragic implications. His first impulse is to
affirm the purity of his own agency.
 The Grammar of the Soul 61

It's laughable, Socrates, that you think it to make any difference whether the
one who died is stranger or kin, rather than to be necessary only to watch out
for this: whether the killer killed in justice or not. (4b7- 9)

And yet he goes on to say that he is charging his father with murder in order to
root out the pollution in his household. So Euthyphro attacks the idiosyncrasy of
the ancestral for the sake of purifying the ancestral. This seems to be the
fundamental character of the experience of the holy-it is an experience of being
unclean, of shame, of needing to cleanse oneself. But the principle according to
which this cleansing is undertaken is only a purer version of one's idiosyncratic
self. Put differently, Euthyphro senses that there is something wrong with an
unexamined loyalty to his own-to the particular-simply because it happens to
be his own. But his first reaction is to correct the situation on the basis of a piety
that consists in a deeper version of an unexamined loyalty to the particular and
idiosyncratic. In practice this takes the form of going to the city to adjudicate
the conflict. In taking his father to court Euthyphro acts out the actual historical
development from the gods of the hearth-ancestor worship-to the gods of the
city. When Socrates confronts him with the prospect of losing his case in the
city, Euthyphro restates the case in terms of justice- no longer mentioning
pollution. But then Socrates calls the gods of the city into question by showing
that they too contain within them the tension that is within Euthyphro-i.e. the
story of the binding of Kronos by Zeus is precisely a sort of cleansing of the
divine by an attack on the divine. Father Zeus replaces father Kronos.
Euthyphro's attempt to cast himself as a perfectly responsible agent is thus riven
by self-contradiction.
So much for Euthyphro 's case; Socrates describes his own case in the
following way.

For he [Meletus], as he says, knows what way the young are corrupted
[diaphtherontai-this is the first passive verb in the dialogue] and who are
those corrupting them. And he runs the risk of being someone wise, and,
gazing down at my ignorance, he comes before the city charging me, as
though before his mother, for corrupting those of his age. And he alone of
the political men appears to me to begin rightly; for it is right first to care
for the young, so that they will be the best possible, just as a good farmer is
likely first to care for the young plants, and after this also the rest. And so
perhaps Meletus is first thoroughly cleansing us who corrupt the buds of the
youth, as he says. Next, after this it is clear that having cared for the older
ones he will come to be the cause of the most and greatest goods for the city
as is likely to happen for one beginning [middle] from such a beginning.
(2c3- 3a5)
62 MICHAEL DAVIS

What is so startling about this account is Socrates' presentation of Meletus 's

understanding of the young in the city as plants to be nurtured or corrupted. 6 Or,
put somewhat differently, if the city is our mother, then aren't we perennial
children, never passing through adolescence and coming into our own? And if
those in the city are so infantilized as to be like plants, altogether affected by con-
ditions that either nurture or corrupt them, how can Socrates, who is after all one
of them, be a cause of their corruption or, for that matter, how can Meletus be a
cause of their salvation? The first middle-passive verb form with a passive mean-
ing in the dialogue is diaphtherontai- Meletus claims to know in what way the
young are corrupted. But is being corrupted ever simply passive? Shouldn't
diaphtherontai be a middle so that the young are in part at least responsible for
"corrupting themselves?" If we are to judge by Meletus, Socrates is a subject of
passionate discussion among young men he has never even met. Great teachers
are often like that. Not unlike Aristotle's unmoved mover, they move what is apart
from them by example, by way of attraction rather than compulsion, by what they
are, not what they do. Being final and not efficient causes they presuppose some
principle of motion in the things they move. When you find a movie moving you
are only metaphorically grabbed by it. Socrates, an object of intense admiration
in Athens, outdoes his ancestor Daedalus- he animates the statues of others.
By modeling himself on Zeus Euthyphro presents himself as pure agent; this
is what he thinks his piety consists in. Meletus, on the other hand, attacks Socrates
for widermining the passive acquiescence of young and old to the norms of civic
life. For Meletus, ·piety is pure passivity. Strangely, only criminals are agents.
Euthyphro is at odds with himself, for he is passive in his emulation of the action
of Zeus. Meletus is at odds with himself, for in coming to the rescue of the
passivity of civic virtue he is an agent; his piety turns criminal. This tension
between agency and passivity sets the stage for the series of arguments about the
holy that make up the bulk of the Euthyphro.
Socrates playfully sets forth a plan to become Euthyphro's student so that he
can arrange a sort of plea bargain. He'll give up Euthyphro to Meletus, the
rationale being that Euthyphro, as his teacher, must be understood to have cor-
rupted him. Turning Meletus view on himself, Socrates will take refuge in the
claim to be a plant. Of course, this begs the question of who corrupted Euthyphro,
but Euthyphro doesn't notice, for Socrates has turned his overconfidence against
itself. Euthyphro also doesn't notice how absurd the sequence of events in this
plea bargain is, for Socrates doesn't claim to have learned anything from
Euthyphro prior to being charged, and yet he plans to place the blame on
Euthyphro for his own corruption. There can therefore be no causal connection
whatsoever between what Socrates is supposed to have done and what Euthyphro

6 According to the Eleatic Stranger, in the age of Kronos human beings were like
plants; see Statesman 271a ff.
 The Grammar of the Soul 63

is about to say. What then is the meaning of Socrates' plan? And, since it is clearly
ironic and playful anyway, is there a serious meaning behind appealing to the
comical, overconfident Euthyphro for help?
Socrates must defend himself against the view of Meletus that time rules
everything in the sense that what comes before altogether determines what will
follow, the world of Kronos where everything is a plant, a world where the young
or new is necessarily simply an outgrowth of the old, and so where it is quite
impossible for anything to be new. The rule of time means the rule of necessity.
In his defense Socrates will appeal to the man who stands for the reversal of time.
Euthyphro/Zeus is a tool for attacking Meletus/Kronos. To the suggestion that he
take Socrates' place Euthyphro says
Yes, by Zeus [emphasis mine], Socrates, ifhe should try to indict me, I would,
as I suppose, discover where he is unsound, and our speech in the law court
would rather turn out to be about him than about me. (5b8-c3)

That Socrates, who just met Euthyphro, could not possibly have learned from him
the vices for which he has been indicted is a joke designed for make us see that
something like the suspension or reversal of time is necessary for corruption, for
something new, to occur. What Meletus has not considered is how his own ultra
orthodox view itself gives birth to an attack on itself. He has not understood how
what he charges Socrates with is possible, how it is possible for Euthyphro to turn
on his father in the name of the ancestral, how Zeus is possible. Or, more simply,
the tradition is much more complex than Meletus realizes.
Socrates' plan is either to learn from Euthyphro what he needs to defend him-
self or use Euthyphro as an excuse for his own guilt. He begins his course of study
with the crucial question.
Now then, before Zeus [this is the only time Socrates swears by Zeus in the
dialogue], tell me what you just now were so strongly claiming to know
clearly- what sort of thing you claim the pious to be and the impious, both
with respect to murder and with respect everything else? Or is not the holy
itself the same in every action, and the unholy in turn the opposite of all the
holy, itself like to itself and having some one idea in accordance with all
unholiness that is going to be unholy? (5c8-<i5)

What follows is generally taken to be the real substance of the dialogue. Socrates
elicits from Euthyphro a series of definitions of the holy. None is successful, but
at the very least the procedure of asking for the idea or eidos of something-
what it is "itself in itself"- is held to be one of the earliest examples of Plato's
legendary "theory of ideas" or "forms." Socrates' insistence on a definition of
the holy, as we will see, threatens to subordinate the gods who are active persons
to utterly unchanging and passive principles. But we are getting ahead of
ourselves.
64 MICHAEL DAVIS

Euthyphro responds to Socrates' request by saying that the holy is

just what I am doing now, to go after one doing injustice, whether concerning
murders or temple robberies, or to go after one erring with respect to any
other such thing, whether it happens to be father, mother, or whoever else,
and not to go after him is unholy. (5d8-e2)

Now, Socrates rejects this account on formal grounds, claiming that Euthyphro
has only given an example of the holy. Socrates asks for the "eidos by which all
holy things are holy" (6dl0-11), and then the "one idea" by which "the unholy
things are unholy and the holy things holy" (6dl l-el). This may not seem unfair,
but we need to notice that there is surely a definition implied by Euthyphro's
example-his extended comparison of his own action to that of Zeus. As Leo
Strauss has seen, the implicit definition with which Euthyphro begins is that the
holy is imitating the gods-doing what they do. 7 This, the most active of
Euthyphro's definitions, shows up only between the lines- indirectly. As it never
becomes explicit, it is never refuted. Nevertheless, it affects all subsequent
definitions.
When Socrates presses him for a definition in a more acceptable form,
Euthyphro replies that the holy is what is loved by the gods, the unholy what is
not loved (6el0-7al). First Socrates changes this to what is god- loved and god-
hated (the two formulations are interestingly different); then, he refutes it by
showing that by Euthyphro's own account since there are many gods and they are
frequently at odds with one another, the same things will be both god-loved and
god-hated, and so holy and unholy. 8 To solve the difficulty of diversity among the
gods with respect to what they love, Socrates helps Euthyphro reinterpret his first
explicit definition. The holy now becomes what all the gods love, and the unholy
what all the gods hate (9el - 3). Socrates refutation of this definition is the gram-
matical argument that we have been haltingly approaching for some time now.
Socrates asks whether the holy is loved by the gods because it is holy or holy
because it is loved by the gods. A lot is at stake. If it is loved because it is holy,
there is a reason for loving it- a reason which once known would presumably be
higher and more lovable than the gods themselves. Our piety might consist in
imitating the gods who love the holy, but in loving something higher than them-
selves they would have ceased to be the gods we hold high. If there are principles
of order higher than the gods as persons, the gods are not gods. If, on the other
hand, the holy is holy because the gods love it, then the "order" in the world is

7 Strauss, Leo, "On the Euthyphron," in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism
(Chicago and London: 1989), 197-98.
8 In the course of this refutation Socrates introduces a second implicit understanding
of the holy- what we dare not deny, in this case that the unjust should be punished
(8c-e). This is the first of the definitions that involves fear.
 The Grammar of the Soul 65

dependent upon their whim. We would have no recourse but to do what the gods
say since their power would exceed ours and their reasons for loving what they
love would be no more available to us than the new line of argument Socrates
announces at 9c-d was available to Euthyphro prior to his having announced it.
After all, until Socrates says "this came to mind at the same time you were speak-
ing" (9c 1- 2); Euthyphro must have thought Socrates was paying attention. It
seems that if the gods are altogether active, then we must be altogether passive.
And ifthe gods are passive, then we may be active.
The grammatical argument is rather complicated, but at the risk of oversim-
plifying this seems to be its gist. Wherever there is an action there is
corresponding being acted upon. Socrates gives a series of examples. That there is
something carrying is the cause of something's being carried. Leading is the cause
of being led. Seeing is the cause of being seen. Similarly loving would be the cause
of being loved. Accordingly the cause of something's being loved by the gods is
that they love it. But the holy is surely loved by the gods because it is holy and not
holy because it is loved. Being loved by the gods is passive in the sense that it does
not so much refer to the nature of the thing loved as to the gods' act of loving. By
itself it tells us nothing about the holy; accordingly it cannot be right to define the
holy as what is loved by the gods. As beautiful as Euthyphro's definition is in its
form, it isn't much good to us, for in not telling us why the gods love what they
love, it leaves us altogether in the dark about how we should behave.
Now the difficulty with this argument is that, while it makes sense grammat-
ically, finally it doesn't really make sense at all. Socrates' three examples are
rather peculiar. He first pairs two participles pheron (carrying) and pheromenon
(being carried). But in the middle pheromenon can mean "carrying off for one-
self," and pheron by itself can mean "fate." At the end of the argument Socrates
exhorts Euthyphro to find another definition saying they will not "differ" about
the fact that the holy is loved by the gods (11 b4). This "differ" is the verb dia-
pheresthai, compounded out of the middle-passive form of "to carry." But surely
"to differ" is as active as it is passive.
Socrates second example is no more appropriate. Agomenon, which here
must mean "being led," has meanings as various as "leading for oneself,"
..taking," and "marrying." And even were this not the case, surely if to be led
means to follow, then following is as much an action as leading. One need not be
altogether Hegelian to notice that sometimes being followed depends on those
who follow. Furthermore the first part of the Euthyphro itself provides a striking
example of just how active one can be in being led. While Socrates has been
following Euthyphro's lead, there is little doubt about who is in control here. And
the case is no better with the third example-seeing (horon) and being seen
(horomenon)-for horomenon can mean "to make an appearance,"-to make
oneself seen. Furthermore, when Socrates asks Euthyphro at l la3 "Do you see?"
he is asking him if he gets the point. The verb "to see" is active, but in describing
what we undergo isn't it in some way passive in its meaning?
66 MICHAEL DAVIS

The crucial verb, philein (to love), is every bit as problematic. Ordinarily in
Greek philein is non-sexual love; it is used initially of kin and later of friends. The
middle-passive participle, philoumenon, is nevertheless often used to designate
the beloved in a love relation. Is a beloved ever altogether passive; Socrates of all
people surely understands flirtation. And what about the active verb? When we
fall in love are we doing something or undergoing something, suffering some-
thing? Even if the verb means something like ''to be a friend of," can one be a
friend without at the same time having been befriended? Aristotle, at least, thinks
not. 9
As if the distinction between active and passive were not already sufficiently
confused, Socrates deepens the puzzle. Previously we had a "thing leading" and
its correlative "thing led"- the active and passive participles of the verb respec-
tively. Now Socrates asks whether something is a ''thing led" (passive participle)
because "it is led" (finite passive verb) or vice versa. In other words, now the par-
ticiple is being treated as passive, and the activity it is passively undergoing is
being treated as active. Put differently, the first stage of Socrates' argument is this:
I hit you, therefore you are hit. The second stage is this: You are hit, therefore you
are in a state of being hit. In the first stage "You are hit" is taken as passive, in
the second stage as active.
This proliferation and relativizing of active and passive modes is brought to
a head at I Oc in Socrates' general formulation of the point he has been making.
I wish [middle] to say this: that if something comes to be fgignetai] or suf-
fers (is affected) [pasche11, not because it is something coming to be does it
come to be, but it is something coming to be because it comes to be; nor does
it suffer because it is something suffering, but because it suffers, it is some-
thing suffering.

Once again Socrates makes the active passive distinction in terms of the
difference between the finite verb (e.g. "it suffers") and the participle
(e.g. "something suffering"). What is so curious about this summation is that in
order to express the meaning of the active in general Socrates uses a deponent
verb that has an active meaning but only a middle-passive form (gignesthai). And
in order to express the meaning of the passive in general, Socrates uses a verb
with passive meaning but an active form (paschein). We are thus led to draw the
general conclusion that depending on the situation virtually any verb can be
understood to carry active or passive meaning. It all depends the direction from
which you see the action. Since the dismantling ofEuthyphro's claim that the holy
is what is loved by the gods depends on the rigid distinction between active and
passive voices, Plato has gone out of his way to call Socrates' refutation into
question. Why?

9 See Nicomachean Ethics l l 55b-56a.

 The Grammar of the Soul 67

In its subtext Socrates' argument forces us to ask whether all human action
is not reaction, and so in some measure passive. This is a way of asking whether
all living beings are not necessarily reactive. One cannot kill the father because
to attempt to erase your past is to re-affirm its hold on you. There is no such thing,
then, as pure will in the world, and nothing is simply loved because someone loves
it. Action is always reaction to. This is the importance of the distinction Socrates
makes at l la7-9.
And you run the risk, Euthyphro, upon being asked whatever the holy is, not
to wish to clarify the being of it for me but to speak of a pathos/affect belong-
ing to it.

Socrates seems to say that to define something means not to describe what
happens to it but to say what it is in its being or essence-its ousia. Euthyphro
had tried to say that the holiness of something consisted in its happening to be
loved by the gods. Still, couldn't there be something the being or ousia of which
was to have a certain sort of pathos? Isn't this just what we mean by soul, which
cannot be anything apart from a power or ability to suffer, or undergo, certain
sorts of experiences? Soul is thus inseparable from its affects; its being is first to
be affected. If we were to understand gods to be perfect souls, they would have to
have the perfection of this suffering, undergoing, or being affected. Worshiping
them would then amount to worshiping pure receptivity-the fact that there is
such a thing in the world as "being affected."
Let's start over. All doing is ultimately something done by a soul, but there is
no soul without undergoing or suffering (the phi/on, the loving thing, is the soul,
but loving is something that happens to us). 10 All doing is thus first and foremost
something undergone, something done to one. Action is necessarily reaction, and
so there is nothing new-there are always fathers. Therefore, the question
"What's new?" amounts to asking for a doing that is not reactive-an uncaused
cause. "What's new?" means "Show me the perfect soul which only acts and does
not react." There seem to be three possible responses to this request: 1. There is
nothing new; we are only plants or billiard balls, moments in the march of time.
2. There is something new, a soul so active as to be altogether outside of the
ordinary temporal order. Or, 3. there is something in between (the first words of
the Euthyphro, after all, are not "What's new?" but literally "What's newer?"); we
undergo and react, but we react unpredictably. The first alternative describes a
world in which nothing changes and which would be totally intelligible save for
the fact that there is no being in it to whom anything could become intelligible. 11
The second alternative describes a world in which there are beings who affect the

l0 At 11b1 Socrates says to Euthyphro, "So if it pleases you [ i.e. if it is phi/on/dear to

you], don't hide it but once again from the beginning, tell me what is the holy"].
11 See footnote 1 above.
68 MICHAEL DAVIS

world, but in which, precisely because it possible for the radicaJly new to come to
be at any time, there can be no intelligibility. Finally, the third alternative
describes our world. We are generated out of a temporal sequence without being
swallowed up by that sequence. We are neither willful gods who annihilate time
nor plants. We are souls with the power to react. Perhaps one might call it a power
of refusal, a "little god" within us which does not so much teJI us what to do as
tell us what not to do.
Euthyphro is frustrated with this refutation, although not altogether sure what
exactly has happened to him. In response to Socrates' request that he try again, he
replies,
But, Socrates, I at least do not have a clue how I am to tell you what I have
in mind. For whatever we put forward [middle] moves around [middle] and
does not want to remain where we place [middle] it. (l lb6-8)

To this Socrates replies that what Euthyphro has said are like the statues of his
ancestor, Daedalus; so well wrought that they move of their own accord. 12 When
Euthyphro accuses him of being the Daedalus, Socrates expresses great surprise.
He would like nothing better, he says, than for the argument to stay put, if his
cleverness moves them, it is an involuntary wisdom. This interlude is instructive,
for it is disagreement about who is the cause of a movement-Socrates or
Euthyphro. Euthyphro begins by admitting that he cannot describe what is going
on around him- what he has just undergone. For that reason he attributes a will
of their own to "our" speeches. Socrates then disavows any responsibility for the
movement and claims Euthyphro is its cause. Euthyphro then responds by accus-
ing Socrates; it is as though he says "If you will not admit that they moved
themselves and insist on a cause, then you are the cause." Socrates does not deny
the charge, but says instead that if it is true he must be more uncanny than even
Daedalus since he makes the words of others move and he does so without even
knowing how he did it. So the alleged cause of the motion of the speeches shifts
from the speeches themselves, to Euthyphro, to Socrates, to a hidden part of
Socrates of which he himself is altogether unaware. The significance of this
movement becomes clear from the way Euthyphro jumps to the conclusion that
the speeches have a mind of their own. Animating the speeches is a way to escape
blame for the embarrassing situation he finds himself in. While Socrates refuses

12 That Daedalus is the mythic figure at the bottom of this interlude is clearly impor-
tant. He was a man who fashioned statues of human bodies that they moved
themselves. He gives human bodies souls. He is also the man who contrived a way
to escape Crete by fashioning wings from wax and feathers; his son Icarus attempted
to fly to heaven to be like the gods, and when the sun melted the wax in his wings,
he perished. His father, more moderate, took the middle course and made it safely to
the Peloponnese.
 The Grammar of the Soul 69

to let him flee in this way, it is still true that they did not want the speeches to fail,
or at least did not know that they wanted them to do so. This suggests that
underneath the appearance that these beings are separate from both Socrates and
Euthyphro and have a life of their own lurks a part of Socrates and Euthyphro that
gives the speeches life without knowing that it does so. It is not the speeches that
are uncanny, but the soul in its hidden depths. Euthyphro 's animation of the
speeches is simply a way of explaining himself to himself by projecting his own
hidden power, his soul, onto an external being. In animating their speeches,
Euthyphro has revealed how and why we make gods. And by this attempt to make
sense of things, he has rendered invisible what is truly at issue here, the soul.
Socrates' refusal to follow him in this theogony signals his understanding that the
only way to make the soul visible is to work backward from the reified beings to
which, out of perplexity about itself, it gives rise.

III
Socrates begins the second half of the dialogue by asking Euthyphro
whether all the holy is just, and then whether all the just is holy (l le4-12a2).
Euthyphro doesn't understand, and so, after expressing surprise because "indeed
younger [newer/neoteros] you are than I not less than to the degree you are
wiser" (124-25) (Socrates sounds a bit like Yoda here), Socrates introduces two
examples of what he means. Just as fear (deos) is a class of which awe (aidos) is
a subclass and number is a class of which odd is a subclass, so also justice is a
class of which the holy is a subclass. There is too much here to treat adequately;
it must suffice to say that just as imitation of god was the implicit definition that
fueled the first part of the dialogue, fear of god is the implicit definition that fuels
the second part. Euthyphro is then led to agree that the holy is that part of the just
that has to do with tending the gods (12e). This is refuted because it implies that
we make the gods better. In the definition that seeks to correct this one we are
demoted from shepherds of the gods to their thralls; piety becomes the art of slav-
ery to the gods (13d) This fails because it presupposes that the gods need us to
produce something for them. The next suggestion is that piety involves the knowl-
edge of prayer and sacrifice-notice that the one is passive and the other active
(14b). This however degenerates into a business relation between gods and men
in which, since they do not need anything, we must perforce cheat them. At the
end Euthyphro comes almost full circle and claims once again that the holy is
what is loved by the gods ( 15b).
Euthyphro began the dialogue in such a hyper-active self-intoxicated
imitation of Zeus that Socrates openly wondered that he was not afraid lest he be
doing something unholy (4e4-8). After the Daedalus interlude the dialogue shifts
in a decisive way. Socrates becomes openly active, and the underlying issue
becomes the connection between the holy and fear. The shift is not arbitrary.
70 MICHAEL DAVIS

While the argument of the first part of the dialogue is altogether aporetic, the
action of the dialogue consists in placing Euthypbro in a situation where in the
face of something he does not understand, his fear leads him to assume the exis-
tence of an animate being. He and Socrates together seek a fixed principle of the
holy. When they cannot find it, Euthyphro's confidence fades; to protect himself
be animates the logos. Plato has thereby allowed us to witness the creation of a
god-supposedly as an explanation but really out of fear. In the second part of the
dialogue we come to see the natural consequences of such animation. First gods
are generated as explanatory metaphors--say the cosmos being formed by the
coupling of Ouranos and Gaia-and are objects of wonder. We make them gods
and not simply principles because as uncaused causes of motion they, there is
only one thing comparable in our experience-soul. We thus animate them so that
our world will make sense-to gain control over it. But in so doing we must make
them far more powerful than the souls of which we have experience. However, in
order to be souls, they must share the fundamental feature of all soul-opacity.
They thus move from becoming objects of wonder to objects of fear. As Strauss
and others suggest, Socrates does indeed intend to move Euthyphro back toward
the orthodoxy which he too easily forsook. 13 He will chasten his arrogant soul by
making him god-fearing. By the end of the dialogue, Euthyphro, who was about
to enter the court to prosecute his father will "go away" (apienai-l5e) . However
this is not simply a moral lesson. The movement Euthyphro undergoes points to
what one might call a natural history of religion. To understand ourselves we gen-
erate gods for their explanatory power as models of perfect agency. But their very
perfection as agents threatens to undermine the intelligibility of our world and
make it inexplicable. Once this happens we must understand ourselves to be
under the control of the same very powerful agents we have generated as tools for
our self-understanding. There is no alternative but slavery. Euthypbro's initial
claim to be like Zeus leads willy nilly to his becoming a slave to Zeus, a plant. The
active voice generates the passive voice as its corollary; the two together obscure
the middle voice which is their common origin. Euthyphro is in a way an imma-
ture "young" Socrates who easily gives way to Meletus, a decayed "old" Socrates;
Euthyphro is Zeus, and Meletus is Kronos. Euthyphro is an active verb and
Meletus a passive. Socrates is in the middle voice-at once the only place to be
and a very unstable place to be.
Precisely because the Euthyphro is about the soul, it cannot mention the soul.
Instead, it presents us with the characteristic motion of soul. It discloses the
nature of our souls as simultaneously and necessarily both active and passive, or
rather as in the middle and tending to fall apart into active and passive. The
dialogue everywhere shows signs of this indeterminate dualism. Definitions,
explicit and implicit, of the holy move from imitation of the gods to slave-like

13 Strauss, "On the Euthyphron," 204.

-.
 The Grammar of the Soul 71

obedience, but neither extreme proves stable, for each regenerates its opposite out
of itself. The dialogue contains a similar, if less obvious dualism connected to phi-
losophy. On the one hand, this "early dialogue" seems to provide an immature
version of the "theory of ideas," according to which philosophy consists in seek-
ing the fixed principles that render the whole intelligible. Yet, the ideas are only
half the Platonic formula for philosophy; the other half is a powerful presentation
of the person of Socrates as a model for emulation. To be intelligible the whole
must contain intelligence; yet if it contains intelligence the whole must be incom-
pletely intelligible. The philosophic counterpart of the question "Why do men
worship gods?" is the question "Why do men need living models in order to
learn?" Socrates is on trial in Athens because he is followed by the young. Their
ardor may have something to do with the theory of ideas, but its more obvious
cause is the example Socrates provides of the living soul at work. The young look
to Socrates in order to understand themselves. It is the way of the soul to seek
itself in what is apart from itself. This is what leads it to resolve itself into active
and passive parts, neither of which can really exist by itself only to then attempt
to restore its original unity. 14 One might call this the grammar of the soul.

14 The Euthyphro therefore means to articulate how the core of Socratic philosophy, the
quest for self-knowledge, is at the heart of the human soul, but for that very reason
also at the heart of what gives rise to the trial and execution of Socrates. Socrates'
indictment by Athens was at the same time a self-indictment.
Platonic Liberalism
Self-Perfection as a Foundation of Political Theory*

Charles L. Griswold Jr
Boston University

But what is government itself but the greatest of all

reflections on human nature? If men were angels,
no government would be necessary. If angels were
to govern men, neither external nor internal controls
on government would be necessary.

James Madison 1

Introduction
Whitehead famously declared that ''the safest general characterization of the
European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to
Plato."2 This statement is true with respect to the history of political philosophy
only in the sense that Plato's political theory has continually functioned as a
provocation to which almost everyone has felt the need to respond. The footnotes
in the history of political philosophy have mostly been negative and critical. The
critique of Plato's political philosophy began almost immediately with Aristotle.
The third sentence of the Politics, in fact, contains an unmistakable, and negative,
reference to the equation suggested in Plato's Statesman (258e) of statescraft
with the art of ruling over slaves, and substantial consideration is given in the
Politics to attacking various proposals set forth in the Republic, Laws, and
Statesman. Luminaries of the liberal Enlightenment, such as Jefferson, Madison,
and Adams, were particularly sharp in their criticism of Plato. 3 The most famous

• Published in Plato and Platonism, ed. J. M. van Ophuijsen (Washington: Catholic

University of America Press, 1999), pp. 102-34, in slightly emended fonn. French
translation too currently in print (see the final footnote) .
Federalist no. 51 . In The Federalist Papers, with intro. by C. Rossiter (New York:
New American Library, 1961 ), p. 322. (Subsequent references advert to this edition.)
2 Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, corrected ed., ed. D.R.
Griffin and D. W. Sherburne (New York: Free Press, 1978), p. 39.
3 In his semi-retirement, Thomas Jefferson turned back to the classics, and after
rereading Plato's Rep. he wrote to John Adams that Plato is "one of the race of

72
 Platonic Liberalism 73

recent scholarly attack is undoubtedly that of Karl Popper, while I. F. Stone's

much discussed book presented the attack at a more popular level.4 For Popper,
Plato's views were "totalitarian" and prepared the way for Nazism and Stalinism
(certain Nazi theorists did in fact take themselves to be continuing the program
of Plato's Republic). 5 Even though Popper's interpretation of Plato has been sub-
jected to endless examination and refutation,6 it remains difficult to free oneself
from the long standing judgment that at least in his political philosophy, Plato's
views are deeply flawed.
The specific accusations against Plato's political philosophy are fourfold in
nature. First, Plato's schemes are accused of being unfair because not committed
to a notion of the moral equality of human beings. Plato's theories seem inegali-
tarian at their core, and the social and political schemes he sets out are
hierarchical. Correspondingly, we hear nothing about "natural rights" in Plato. 7
Second, these schemes seem illiberal to the extreme. Especially as presented in

genuine Sophists" whose reputation has survived only because it was incorporated
into equally doubtful doctrines of Christian theology. Jefferson adds "It is fortunate
for us that Platonic republicanism has not obtained the same favor as Platonic
Christianity; or we should now have been all living, men, women, and children, pell
mell together, like beasts of the field or forest." Jefferson to Adams, July 5, 1814; in
The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. L. J. Cappon (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1988), p. 433. On Madison, see below.
4 I refer to his The Trial of Socrates (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1988). For a cri-
tique of Stone's book, see my "Stoning Greek Philosophers: Platonic Political
Philosophy and The Trial of Socrates," Classical Bulletin 67. l (1991): 3-15.
5 See Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1962), vol. I, p. 87 et passim. On the appropriation of Plato by Nazi
theorists, see R. F. A. Hoemle's "Would Plato have Approved of the National-
Socialist State?" in Plato, Popper, and Politics, ed. R. Bambrough (New York:
Barnes and Noble, 1967), pp. 32- 35.
6 For a sample of the debate, see the essays collected in Plato, Popper, and Politics,
and those in Plato: Totalitarian or Democrat?, ed. T. L. Thorson (Englewood
Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963); R. Robinson, "Dr. Popper's Defence of
Democracy," in Essays in Greek Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969),
pp. 74-99. Further discussion may be found in R. B. Levinson's In Defense of Plato
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), and in G. Klosko's The Development
of Plato's Political Theory (New York: Methuen, Inc., 1986).
7 Averroes, an otherwise sympathetic reader of the Rep., indicated a related disagree-
ment with Plato. Averroes objects to the Rep. view that the Greeks are best suited by
nature to perfection. See Averroes on Plato's Republic, trans. R. Lerner (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1974), 27.1- 14, pp. 13- 14. Averroes implicitly indicates
that Islamic universalism is at odds with that sort of particularism (46.10-21, p. 46).
On the other hand, Averroes appears to accept Platonic communism, among other
aspects of the Rep. (57.23- 58.14, pp. 65-66).
 74 CHARLES L. GRISWOLD JR.

the Republic, they seem to leave very little room for political liberties. And this
too seems unjust. Third, they are accused of being tied to complex and doubtful
metaphysical and psychological doctrines, doctrines that just about nobody wants
to defend and which were immediately rejected, in whole or in part, by his best
student-Aristotle.
A fourth set of criticisms alleges that Plato's schemes in the Republic and
Laws are simply unworkable or fail to produce the results intended. Aristotle's
arguments to the effect that abolishing private property does not remove either
strife or the desire for accumulating property fall into this class. 8 In early moder-
nity, Madison takes it as a crucial axiom that "a nation of philosophers is as little
to be expected as the philosophical race of kings wished for by Plato."9 Locke's
pragmatic criticisms of a civic religion that is coercively implemented, 10
criticisms echoed over and over again in the liberal Enlightenment by thinkers
such as Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Voltaire, are implicitly directed against the
kind of scheme for a coercive civic religion set out in great detail in book X of
Plato's Laws.
To these points about the unworkability of Plato's scheme we may add the
objection, articulated by Rawls (among others), that since there exists no popular
consensus as to the truth of a single notion of the human good, such a scheme
would be politically irrelevant even if its truth could be established philosophi-
cally. Large modem commercial republics are characterized by wide, even
extreme, disagreement about the human good in the sense Plato's dialogues speak
of that good. 11 This characteristic of modem liberal societies is a cause of lament

8 Pol. Il.1262a37-1264b25. Aristotle also implies at Pol. Il.1265al0-18 that the

scheme of the Laws is fundamentally impossible. With respect to Phaleas' proposal
that the possessions of the citizens should be equal, Aristotle notes that "the nature
of desire is without limit, and it is with a view to satisfying this that the many live.
To rule such persons, then, [requires] not so much leveling property as providing that
those who are respectable by nature will be the sort who have no wish to aggrandize
themselves ..." (ll.1267b3-7). Here and below I cite from C. Lord's translation
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
9 Federalist no. 49, p. 315. For a similar point, see D. Hume's "Idea of a perfect
Commonwealth," in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, revised edition, ed.
E. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1987), p. 514.
10 I refer to the arguments in Locke's A Letter Concerning Toleration.
ll See A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 330-31;
"Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory," Journal of Philosophy 77 ( 1980),
pp. 518-19; and "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical," Philosophy and
Public Affairs 14 (1985), pp. 223, 245. In this and other articles, Rawls took him-
self to be working from not an a priori, permanently true set of political principles,
but from "intuitions" and "convictions" implicit in a constitutional democracy
("Justice as Fairness," p. 225). See also the Theory of Justice, pp. 243-44: "The
principles of justice define an appropriate path between dogmatism and intolerance
 Platonic Liberalism 75

for some (such as Macintyre) and of celebration for others. In either case, Rawls
takes it to be a basic fact that must orient any realizable theory of justice. As
Rawls put it, a theory of justice must be "political" and based on an overlapping
consensus rather than be "metaphysical." 12 Hence "Philosophy as the search for
truth about an independent metaphysical and moral order cannot, I believe,
provide a workable and shared basis for a political conception ofjustice in a dem-
ocratic society." 13
I think that we can put these various criticisms in focus by noting that they
(rightly) take Plato's political philosophy to be a version of what we may call, fol-
lowing Rawls, "perfectionism." Rawls characterizes perfectionism as a form of a
teleological theory, namely one in which the realization of human excellence is
taken as the good. Utilitarianism is another form of teleological theory, one in
which (to put it very roughly) the good is defined as the satisfaction of desires or
interests. 14 As Rawls points out, in the various teleological theories, justice-<>r
what Rawls calls "the right"-is taken as that which maximizes the good. Rawls,
of course, argued the converse (that the right precedes the good in political
theory). 15
In a preliminary way, let me parse a bit further the notion of "perfectionism."
In classical perfectionist theories, such as those of Plato and Aristotle, we are pre-
sented with arguments that run something as follows: as political philosophers we
are to orient ourselves by a notion of hwnan nature, and in particular by what it
would mean to exhibit some relevant aspect of human nature perfectly, or at least
as perfectly as is humanly possible. The best human life is exemplified by the per-
son having that trait in the requisite degree. As Aristotle states in the Politics:
"Concerning the best regime, one who is going to undertake the investigation

on the one side, and a reductionism which regards religion and morality as mere pre-
ferences on the other. And since the theory ofjustice relies upon weak and widely held
presumptions, it may win quite general acceptance." The centrality of disagreement to
political life is implicit in Madison's seminal discussion of faction in Federalist no. l 0.
12 Rawls notes in "Justice as Fairness" (p. 245) that "The absence of commitment to
these ideals [comprehensive moral ideals such as autonomy and individuality], and
indeed to any particular comprehensive ideal, is essential to liberalism as a political
doctrine." Should liberalism assume a set of ideals, it becomes "another sectarian
doctrine" (p. 246). And "In such a society [a democratic society] a teleological polit-
ical conception is out of the question: public agreement on the requisite conception
of the good cannot be obtained" (p. 249).
13 "Justice as Fairness," p. 230.
14 Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 24-25.
15 See for example his "The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good," Philosophy and
Public Allain 17 ( 1988): 251-76; and his "Justice as Fairness: Political not
Metaphysical." Since mine is an essay on Plato and not on Rawls, in citing Rawls
here have not taken into account any variations of his ideas offered in his most recent
work, Political Liberalism.
 76 CHARLES L. GRISWOLD JR.

appropriate to it must necessarily discuss first what the most choiceworthy way
of life is" (1323al3- 16). Further, the best political polity is that in which this best
life is attained as much as possible by all those who are capable of it. Aristotle
writes that "a polis is excellent, at any rate, by its citizens' -those sharing in the
regime-being excellent; and in our case all the citizens share in the regime"
(1332a32- 35; cf. Laws 707d). 16 Statecraft is the art of bringing about the best life
for as many as are capable of it. 17 For perfectionism, political theory is really an
extension of ethics. A theory is thus perfectionist in (a) orienting itself by an
account of human perfection, and (b) taking the task of statecraft to be that of
bringing about human perfection in the polis, either directly or indirectly. A direct
perfectionist scheme attempts to bring about excellence in human beings by per-
fecting human nature, by involving itself intimately in the improvement of the
citizenry. An indirect perfectionist scheme attempts to make perfection of human
beings possible by supplying the conditions under which individuals can improve
themselves.
As noted, perfectionism and utilitarianism share a common teleological
orientation, and revolve around what one might loosely sum up under the title of
"interests." Both versions of teleological theory insist that various goods are to be
judged relative to what they accomplish for human interests. 18 In this sense both
are what Joseph Raz calls "humanistic"; they explain and justify the goodness or
badness of things relative to their actual or possible contribution to human life
and its quality. 19 I interpret Plato's political philosophy as "humanistic" in this
broad sense. But perfectionists and utilitarians take "interests" in different ways.
First, perfectionist theory views human beings in terms of their potentialities
rather than in terms of their given interests, wants, or properties. Utilitarians tend
to take "interests" as givens rather than as potentialities (though to be sure Mill's
deliberations about this point complicate the distinction). Perfectionists orient

16 At Pol. Vl.1324a23 we read "Now that the best regime must necessarily be that
arrangement under which anyone might act in the best manner and live blessedly is
evident."
17 Towards the conclusion of the E. N. Aristotle tells us that to be a good man is to be
properly trained and educated, and that good laws are crucial to that process
(I 180a14 ff.). The science of legislation has a pedagogical intent and so is oriented
by a notion of human flourishing (cf. also E.N. I 103b3- 25). Cf. Euthyd. 292b4-cl:
statecraft is aimed to make the citizens happy; and Laws 683b.
18 As Mill says in On Liberty, "I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical
questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent
interests of man as a progressive being." In the C. V. Shields edition (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1976), p. 14. On p. 77 of the same text Mill rhetorically asks: "for
what more or better can be said of any condition of human affairs than that it brings
human beings themselves nearer to the best thing they can be?"
19 Raz, "Right-Based Moralities," in Theories of Rights, ed. J. Waldron (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 183 .
 Platonic Liberalism 77

themselves not by interests as agents understand them (not by "subjective prefer-

ences"), but by interests as agents would understand them had they full
self-knowledge.
Secondly, utilitarians and perfectionists are likely to disagree about the
nature of the human good. While utilitarians take happiness to be the human
good, and evaluate interests relative to that standard, perfectionists take the devel-
opment of "human nature" to be the good, and see happiness as a consequence of
realization of human nature. 20 The import of the perfectionists' commitment to
some form of naturalism is perhaps visible in terms of their description of happi-
ness in contrast to the description that utilitarians are likely to give. While the one
will talk about virtues understood as excellences of self, the other will talk about
pleasure, satisfaction, tranquility.
There exists wide latitude among perfectionists, of course, in the specifica-
tion of that which constitutes excellence, as well as in the degree of excellence
required for a certain level of moral approbation. At the one extreme, Nietzsche
posits so high a standard for excellence that only a few can reach it; he tells us
that all those who fail to reach it are, in effect, natural slaves.21 Towards the other
end of the spectrum, Aristotle thinks that a basic capacity for deliberative ration-
ality is (putting aside the thorny question of theoretical virtue) the standard for
moral excellence and is a capacity whose realization is available to most human
beings. Nonetheless, whether in their milder or harsher versions, perfectionist
theories tend to be non-egalitarian, for it is felt that human beings do not share
equally in the requisite aspect of human nature. That is, stated simply, political
liberty and equality seem incompatible with "absolute" standards of excellence.
This is a disturbing thought as pressing now as it ever was.
Given what I said earlier, it might seem that any attempt to defend Platonic
perfectionism against its critics is wasted time in that it entails a defense of an
illiberal, unfair, unworkable, and metaphysically cumbersome political theory.
But if the defense is that Plato's political philosophy does not entail these unde-
sirable features, the effort would seem more worthwhile. In the present essay I
shall take a few steps up that road, with the aim of showing that, at least accord-
ing to some dialogues, Plato's political philosophy, while perfectionist, is neither
simply illiberal nor inegalitarian. Hence the first part of the title of this paper. I
want to suggest that the "Socratic" virtues of toleration and open-minded inquiry
can be seen as founded on "Platonic" metaphysics. 22 Interpreters as diverse as

20 See H. Sidgwick 's The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed., rpt. (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Co., 1981), pp. 1-11 (and notes), 114-15.
21 Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, Third Essay ("Schopenhauer as Educator"),
section I, et passim. Nietzsche's comments in section 8 about Plato, philosophy, and
politics are also germane to my discussion here.
22 I note that by "Socrates" I shall mean, in this essay, the Socrates of the dialogues, not
the historical figure.
78 CHARLES L GRISWOLD JR.

Popper and Mill have agreed that these virtues are liberal ones, and have thus seen
Socrates as a champion of political liberty.23 Yet our portrait of Socrates comes in
good part from Plato, and in Plato's dialogues some of the objectionable proposi-
tions mentioned above are put in Socrates' mouth. It seems, furthermore, an
extraordinary provocation that the philosopher who wrote so movingly about
love, with such sensitivity about our imperfections, and with such praise of the
striving for the good, should have thought that a totalitarian, soul crushing
political regime did justice to the human condition. These tensions within Plato's
dialogues are worth resolving.
The general line of argument here offered is not without precedent.24 The
project of rehabilitating ancient perfectionism along the lines I have indicated has
its adherents, as the work of neo-Aristotelians such as Doug Den Uyl, Douglass
B. Rasmussen, Fred Miller, Stephen Salkever, Henry Veatch, Bernard Williams,
and Martha Nussbaum shows. Their approach comes to something like placing a
theory of rights within the frame of what is now called "virtue ethics." Nussbaum
has recently argued for what one might call Aristotelian liberalism, thus developing
a tradition that includes earlier neo-Aristotelians such as T. H. Green. 25 A return
to the ancient vocabulary of "virtue" might be motivated by the perception that

23 Mill, On Liberty, p. 30. Popper, The Open Society, vol., I, pp. 128-31 et passim.
24 I have in mind R. Kraut's work in particular. See his Socrates and the State
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), ch. 7. For discussion of Kraut's
"liberalized" Plato, see his exchange with C. Orwin in Platonic Writings, Platonic
Readings, ed. C. Griswold (New York: Routledge, Chapman, and Hall, 1988),
pp. 171-82. See also C. D. C. Reeve, Philosopher-Kings (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1988), ch. 4 (esp. pp. 213-34); D. Clay, "Reading the RepubUc," in
Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings, pp. 19-33. Other efforts along the same gen-
eral lines may be found in G. M. Mara's "Socrates and Liberal Toleration," PoUtical
Theory 16 (1988): 468-95; A. de Lattre, "La Liberte Socratique et le Dialogue
Platonicien," Kant Studien 61 ( 1970): 467- 95; L. G. Versenyi, "Plato and his Liberal
Opponents," Philosophy 46 (1971): 222-37; S. Salkever, "'Lopp'd and Bound': how
Liberal Theory Obscures the Goods of Liberal Practices," in Liberalism and the
Good, ed. R. B. Douglass, G. M. Mara, and H. S. Richardson (New York: Routledge,
Chapman, and Hall, 1990), pp. 167-202; and my "Po/itike Episteme in Plato's
Statesman," in Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy vol. III, ed. J. Anton and A.
Preus (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 141-67.
25 See Nussbaum 's "Nature, Function, and Capability: Aristotle on Political
Distribution," O:lford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, suppl. vol. (1988): 145-84.
See also her exchange with D. Charles in the same journal, pp. 185-214; and her
"Aristotelian Social Democracy," in Liberalism and the Good, pp. 203-52. Some
ofT. H. Green's reflections on the matter may be found in Lectures on the Principles
of Political Obligation (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895), pp. 47-48 et
passim (Green refers to Aristotle on p. 47). See also H. Veatch, Human Rights: Fact
or Fancy? (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985); B. Williams,
 Platonic Liberalism 79

terms such as "moral ought," "moral obligation," "end in itself," and so forth,
have lost (as E. Anscombe argued) 26 the original theological context that gave
them sense. The question Plato's Socrates insists on is not "what ought I to do?"
(this is Kant's question; CPR A805=B833) but "what sort of person should I be?"
(e.g., Rep. 443d-e). The return to classical virtue ethics also seems motivated by
the view that pre-Christian ethics offers valuable insights about the centrality of
dialogue, knowledge of ignorance, friendship, love, and the virtues, to our
thinking about politics and ethics.
The effort to argue for a liberalism on perfectionist principles has found its
supporters as well. That effort invariably begins with a critique of Rawls' view to
the effect that the right is "prior" to the good and that a theory of justice should
be "political" and not "metaphysical."27 Victor Haksar, for example, argues that
perfectionist theory is unavoidable if the liberal intuitions Rawls wants to appeal
to are to be defended. 28 Joseph Raz argues for a conception of rights that explic-
itly bases itself on a conception of human well being. Raz refers to this as the
"beneficiary view of rights,"29 and characterizes his theory as "perfectionist
moral pluralism."30

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985);
F. Miller, Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1995); S. Salkever's Finding the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian
Political Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); and D. Den Uyl
and D. Rasmussen's Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal
Order (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1991).
26 Anscombe, "Modern Moral Philosophy," Philosophy 33 (1958): 1-19. The
argument is elaborated in A. Maclntyre's writings, most recently Three Rival
Versions of Moral Enquiry (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,
1990), chs. 7-8.
27 The list of these critics is a long one. M. J. Sandel's Justice and the Limits of
Liberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982) is no doubt among the
most influential discusions. Rawls' claim that he is articulating widespread intuitions
of a democratic culture is questioned in W. Galston's "Pluralism and Social Unity,"
in Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1991 ), pp. 140-62 (especially p. 158).
28 Haksar, Equality, Liberty, and Perfectionism (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1979).
29 Raz, "Right-Based Moralities," p. 183. Raz there remarks that '"X has a right' means
that, other things being equal, an aspect of x's well-being {his interest) is a sufficient
reason for holding some other person(s) to be under a duty." This view "would fit
well with a 'view which regards the interests of people as the only ultimate value."
For fuller discussion, see Raz's The Morality of Freedom, III.7. W. A. Galston
argues along similar lines in Justice and the Human Good (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1980).
30 The Morality of Freedom, p. 133.
80 C HARLES L. GRISWOLD JR.

In section I of this paper I shall begin by developing further the definition of

perfectionism. I shall then tum briefly to the Republic, as that dialogue is clearly
problematic for the line of interpretation I am advancing. I shall say just enough
to show how I would disarm the objections the Republic seems to pose. I will
then offer, in part II, a more detailed consideration of the Statesman (supported
by references to the Laws ). I shall attempt to show that the Statesman not only
supports my comments about the Republic, but also points us in the direction of
a constitutional democracy as the best available politeia. In order to move the
argument closer to that destination I shall tum, in part III, to the Phaedrus (with
brief reference to the Symposium). Along the way, I shall discuss why, for Plato
(in contrast with Epicurus), the pursuit of perfection of self involves concern for
political association, and indeed political association of a certain general type.
The story line of the paper is that polities compatible with Platonic perfectionism
would be considerably more liberal than traditional readings of Plato suggest.
Political liberty and equality need not be at odds with with the assertion of the
highest standards of human excellence.
The paper is programmatic both in the intentional brevity of the comments
on the Republic and in leaving for another occasion discussion of connections
between Plato's political philosophy and the contemporary debate about liberal-
ism and perfectionism. My argument is compatible with the proposition that there
are tendencies in Plato's political philosophy contrary to those I have elicited, and
compatible with any of a number of hypotheses to explain any inconsistency of
this sort. This observation is especially important with respect to the Statesman
and the Laws; passages in the former about punishing all those who corrupt the
youth (299b-c), or in the latter about the Nocturnal Council (909a), will correctly
be cited as illiberal to the extreme. I do not overlook or deny the existence of these
passages. I am asserting that there are also other passages with contrary implica-
tions. To reconcile these various passages, comprehensive interpretations of the
dialogues in question would be required. I cannot supply these here, but merely
offer, as a sort of promissory note, my belief that these passages can be recon-
ciled, and in a way that is consistent with the thesis advanced in the present paper.

I
Let me begin by distinguishing between two species of perfectionism. I shall call
them "communitarian" and "individualist" perfectionism. I take Aristotle to
belong to the first species. As already noted, for Aristotle excellence in the city is
determined relative to excellence in the soul of the individual. The purpose of the
political association is not just to bring out excellence in a few lucky souls, but in
all the citizens. Hence the polis exists not for the sake of living, but for the sake
of living well, in accordance with excellence. Further, Aristotle argues that excel-
lence in the individual's soul cannot be brought out fully except through rightly
 Platonic Liberalism 81

structured civic association, and that participation in a rightly ordered polis is not
just a means to moral excellence but is partially constitutive of it.31
Correspondingly, there is room for the notion of the public good in Aristotle's
theory. 32 In committing himself to the views that the polis is natural (1253a25),
that humans are by nature political animals (1253a2-3), that the polis is a type of
association distinct from (among others) the household and family, and that the
polis provides a collective good, Aristotle falls into the camp of what I am calling
communitarian perfectionists.
I take it that a moral theory is individualistic if it assigns only instrumental
value to any collective or public good.33 Individualistic perfectionism will also
hold that the individual's chief ethical end is self-perfection. This is very differ-
ent from understanding individualism as that doctrine according to which
subjective preferences are good reasons for action. Epicurus may be taken as an
extreme example of what I am calling individualist perfectionism. Epicurus sees
the individual's autarkeia not just in self-origination but more importantly in the
correctness of beliefs about his or her own ends. For Epicurus, the summum
bonum is the agent's happiness, understood, roughly, as pleasurable tranquility of
mind (ataraxia), freedom from pain, and invulnerability to fortune. 34 The emphasis
on stability of happiness and imperviousness to luck makes it difficult for

31 The difference between a polis and other sorts of association is not just numerical but
qualitative; it has a form of unity particular to its nature and distinct purpose, and
Aristotle criticizes Plato at length for failing to appreciate that fact. For Aristotle,
Plato insists on the wrong kind of unity in the polis, and fails to see that the hierar-
chical relationship of master and slave is not of the essence of the polis. These
criticisms suggest that Plato does not see the polis as a precondition for the expres-
sion of moral excellence. By contrast, the polis is, for Aristotle, a "sort of multitude"
consisting of persons of different kind (126lal7- 24); and political rule properly
speaking is rule of those free by nature and equal, while household management is
monarchy (1255bl6-20).
32 The public good would be that good (a) which is made available by the polis, (b) the
distribution of the whole of which is not subject to the voluntary control of individ-
uals, and (c) which is constitutive of the individual's realization of his or her own
excellence and not merely instrumental towards that end. This definition of the pub-
lic good follows, in rough form, Raz, "Right-Based Moralities,'' p. 187.
33 In this definition of individualistic moralities I again follow Raz, "Right-Based
Moralities," p. 186.
34 See the Letter to Menoeceus 128- 29, 132-35, in Epicurus: the Extant Remains,
trans. and ed. C. Bailey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), pp. 87, 91- 93; Sententiae
Vaticanae LXXVII, p. 117; Kuriai Doxai n. XVI, p. 99; and Diogenes' Lives X.118,
in Bailey p. 165. (Page references to Epicurus' writings refer to the Bailey edition.)
This can be interpreted along perfectionist rather than utilitarian lines, for Epicurus
seems to see this summum bonum as a fulfillment of the way in which our material
natures are constituted; and he assigns no place to a principle of the equal value of
82 CHARLES L. GRJSWOLD JR .

Epicurus to explain consistently why even friendship could have an important

place in the life of the self-perfected individual.35 Further, Epicurus understands
self-perfection in such a way that all political involvements are judged solely for
their instrumental value. Correspondingly, prudence (phronesis) functions as the
chief virtue for Epicurus; its task is primarily to deliberate about the means best
suited to self-interest rightly understood. Justice, Epicurus says, is nothing but a
contract; the agent is obligated to be just only insofar as it is in his interest (rightly
understood) to be such.36 What substantive commitments a just contract makes
(putting aside the agent's commitment to his own perfection) will depend. For
example, an Epicurean might accept slavery as a just institution in some cases,
and in other cases not.37
In sum, Epicurus' teaching seems at its core apolitical; it leaves no room for
anything like the view that the polis is natural (in Aristotle's sense), that human
beings are political animals by nature, or that political association is intrinsic to
the realization of self.38
There is only partial overlap between Plato's and Epicurus' views. On the one
hand, the Phaedrus shows, as I shall argue, that part of the individual's self-per-
fection must include care not just for other individuals but for communities. Plato
has significantly different notions of "self" and "happiness" than does Epicurus.
On the other hand, nowhere is it argued in Plato that the polis is natural (in
Aristotle's sense), or that human beings are by nature political animals. Like
Epicurus, Plato takes self-perfection to be the overriding telos of the human
being. It seems that, for Plato, what is due to others is extrapolated from what we
owe ourselves once we have rightly understood ourselves (hence the subtitle of

individuals (hence he nowhere points to the happiness of the aggregate of individuals

as the summum bonum).
35 See Sent. Vat. XXIII, p. l 09; and for discussion, Mitsis' Epicurus' Ethical Theory,
ch. 3, especially pp. 117-28.
36 Kuriai Doxai n. XXXI, p. 103. See also P. Mitsis' Epicurus' Ethical Theory
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 80.
37 Diogenes Laertius notes that Epicurus owned slaves, and that he both treated them
well and manumitted several on his death (Diogenes interprets all this as indicative
of the kind of person an Epicurean would want to be). Lives X.10 (p. 147), X.21
(p. 155), X.118 (p. 165). In a manner reminiscent of Plato's Socrates, Epicurus does
maintain that the pursuit of self-perfection removes motivations at the root of actions
commonly labeled unjust. The Epicurean will care little about wealth or power, for
example, and so will take no steps to acquiring any.
38 Correspondingly, Epicurus was accused of shirking his civic duty. See Epictetus'
Discourses III.vii.19-23. On a purely prudential basis it would be possible to spell
out a politics most likely to be conducive to the Epicurean's pursuit of self-perfection.
For example, in light of Epicurus' emphasis on the role of scientific investigation in
clearing the mind of superstition, one would expect that a society that encouraged
such investigation would be useful.
 Platonic Liberalism 83

the present paper). Where does this way of looking at political theory lead
Plato?
Let us turn briefly to the Republic. In book II, Socrates is pushed to prove
that we are motivated to be just not because justice is instrumentally good, but
because it is an intrinsic good. In book N (433a-b, 443d-e) Plato has Socrates
offer what is surely a counter-intuitive definition of justice as the right ordering
of the individual's soul, such that the individual minds his own business ("ta
eautou prattein"; "doing one's own thing"). Justice is a quality of a perfected soul
in that each of its "parts"-the rational, the spirited, and the desiring-does its
proper job. The connection between justice as a virtue of self, and justice as con-
ventionally understood (in connection with equality, law, duties towards others,
etc.), is the subject of a now well established debate. 39 At least within the
Republic's "city in speech," however, the argument is that the structure of the
polis is isomorphic with that of the soul; justice in the polis is justice of the soul
writ large (435a-b; 368c-369a). The political and the psychological are to paral-
lel each other. This "holistic" model to the effect that a political arrangement is
good or virtuous insofar as it has the same structure of goodness or virtue that
belongs to the soul of an individual leads to illiberal and inegalitarian measures. 40
The idea is that meaningful choice of a way of life cannot be had without an
understanding of better and worse ways of life, an understanding reached through
philosophical reason. The higher parts of the soul or city should rule over the
lower; the lower parts lack the rationality requisite for meaningful self-rule and
should therefore be ruled by the higher. Just as knowledge rules in a healthy self,
so the philosophers, those persons knowledgeable about the Forms, rightly rule
the polis, for the polis' own good.
This scheme runs into difficulties quickly, as many readers have noticed. 41 It
leads to the paradoxical result that the majority of the citizens of the just polis are
not just. The largest class of citizens seems be that dominated by the "lower"
desires; but by definition those individuals are not just, because they lack proper

39 The discussion was inaugurated by David Sachs' "A Fallacy in Plato's Republic,"
rpt. in Plato II, ed. G. Vlastos (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,
1978), pp. 35- 51. The same volume contains responses by R. Demos.
40 I take the term "holistic" from Nussbaum, ''Nature, Function, and Capability,"
pp. 155- 56. As Nussbaum points out, other models also operate in Plato's text.
41 The paradoxes to which the holistic conception leads are examined in B. Williams'
"The Analogy of City and Soul in Plato's Republic," in Phronesis, suppl. vol. 1
(1973): 196-206. In short, Williams points out that the just city must be divided into
parts as the soul is, and so that the lowest (and largest) class of the just city is com-
posed of epithymetic people; but these are not just people because they are not ruled
by reason. Therefore the just city must have a majority of citizens who are not just.
This contradicts the principle (implied in 433-34) that the city is just if and only if
its citizens are just.
84 CHARLES L. GRISWOLD JR.

ordering of the parts of their soul. It is tempting to modify the thrust of the
city/soul analogy and say that only the philosopher-rulers in the just city are just.
But the just polis seems unjust in its treatment of them by forcing them to rule (a
similar problem arises with respect to the guardians, who are forced to do their
job whether or not they are happy doing it). In book VII of the Republic we are
told that, even in the ideal state, philosophers- here taken to be those ultimately
perfected human beings-must be "compelled" to rule, and will rule only
because it is a necessary thing not a good one (519c, e; 520e). Even in the ideal
state, there seems to be great difficulty in harmonizing self-perfection and care
by the self-perfected for the polis. Socrates is explicit that such harmony is not to
be hoped for in any non-ideal state.42
Even if these difficulties were solved, we might want to voice three objec-
tions against the Republic's scheme. First, Socrates assumes that every person's
nature is suited to a particular sort of job (370a, 395a-b). But this is nowhere
demonstrated, and much doubt is cast upon it in the Phaedrus. Second, he
assumes that the rulers of the city can, for a time at least, discern the natures and
so the appropriate occupations of individuals (4 l 5b). But this would require
omniscience on the part of the rulers. Third, it is assumed that philosopher kings
could exist. These individuals are not just philosophers in the sense of the term
used in the Phaedrus and Symposium (204a), i.e., of persons who, as lovers of
wisdom, are lacking the thing they love. The Republic's philosophers are wise;
they have gazed directly upon the Forms. Even if it is just to compel wise philoso-
phers to rule, and even if the just city need not be composed only of just persons,
the just city cannot be just unless wise philosophers rule it. But the Statesman
and Phaedrus will show us that there are no philosophers so understood, and this
has crucial political consequences.
Further, the preconditions for setting up the Republic's third city (which
Socrates refers to as"Kallipolis") virtually ensure that it will never come to pass,
as is indicated not just by the requirement that the rulers be perfectly wise, but
also by the proviso at the end of book VII to the effect that everyone over the age
of ten be expelled. At the start of book VIII we learn that this polis-in-speech
would not last long anyhow; Socrates throws out an elaborate mathematical joke
to "explain" how the polis' inevitable decay comes about (and given that the pas-
sage is a joke, the implication is that there is no formula for the right breeding
of the guardians and hence no way to sustain the regime past the first generation).

42 E.g., at Rep. 497b we hear that "not one city today is in a condition of worthy of the
philosophic nature." (Here and below I shall be citing from A. Bloom's translation
(New York: Basic Books, 1968). The reasons for which that is true very probably
would still hold, in Socrates' view. One reason is stated as a permanent truth: "it's
impossible that a multitude be philosophic" (494a; cf. Stsm. 292e). This generates
the alienation of philosopher from city graphically described at 496b-e. Still, there
may be degrees to which po/eis are unsuitable to the philosophers.
 Platonic Liberalism 85

As Diskin Clay has argued, the dialogue is structured in ways that indicate Plato's
intention that the closed regime of the middle books of the Republic be read as
open to question. As he and Charles Kahn have insisted, we ought not in any case
to read off Plato's intentions from the utterances of his dramatis personae with-
out further ado. The dialogue form entails a lack of transparency with respect to
authorial intention. Plato's can have his characters assert all sorts of things with-
out his wishing either to affirm those assertions or to persuade the reader to
accept them uncritically. 43 Indeed his use of the dialogue form positively warns
the reader against any such uncritical acceptance.
Let us distinguish between two questions. Granted that the Kallipolis is
inegalitarian and illiberal: did Plato (a) intend the Republic as a blueprint for
social action? and (b) does he intend the 'story' (Rep. 501e) he tells to be a
description of the perfectly just community or, as I will argue is true of the
Statesman (below), did he intend the reader to see that even a supposedly "ideal"
state of affairs suffers from grave defects? For my present purposes, it suffices to
focus on the first of these questions. Socrates explicitly gives us the answer at the
end of book IX of the Republic. He there concedes that the "city in speech" will
come to be only by divine chance and adds "but in heaven, perhaps, a paradeigma
is laid up for the man who wants to see and found a city within himself on the
basis of what he sees" (592b2- 3).44 The city/soul analogy, and the sense in which
the city is the soul writ large, must therefore be completely recast. The whole of
the Republic's effort to define justice seems of value, that is, because of the role
of this effort and of the definition in the individual's self-perfection. The empha-
sis at the end of the Republic is on the individual's choice of a way of life; this is
a major theme, in fact, of the myth with which the dialogue concludes.
Let me restate the thrust of the preceding paragraph. We learn at the end of
book VII (as we shall also learn in the Statesman and Laws), that the first best
regime is unavailable. We have in effect seen the need to reflect on what such a
polity would look like; we are provided with opportunities to reflect on how

43 I refer to Clay's "Reading the Republic." Kahn's point is worked out in a number of
places, beginning with "Did Plato Write Socratic Dialogues?," Classical Quarterly
31(1981): 305-20. For extended discussion of Kahn's interpretive assumptions, see
my "Unifying Plato: Charles Kahn on Platonic Prolepsis," Ancient Philosophy 10
(1990): 243-62. On the general question of the intentions of the Rep., see also D.
Hyland, "Plato's Three Waves and the Question of Utopia," Interpretation 18
(1990): 91-109. The reading of the Republic's Kallipolis as an (almost certainly)
unrealizable polis is argued by Clay, Hyland, and also Klosko (The Development of
Plato's Political Theory, p. 179 and context).
44 This passage echoes a much earlier description in book VI of the philosopher's pas-
sion for and absorption in "things that are set in a regular arrangement and are always
in the same condition-things that neither do injustice to one another nor suffer it at
one another's hands, but remain all in order according to reason-he imitates them
and, as much as possible, makes himself like them" (500c2- 5).
86 CHARLES L. GRISWOLD JR.

desirable such a regime would be for us; and thirdly we are led to reflect on the
consequences of the fact that we cannot plan on its coming into being. Theory and
practice cannot be straightforwardly reconciled, and the 'practical' question about
what follows is itself a matter for theoretical speculation. Thus this third reflec-
tion is crucial: it leaves us with several pressing questions, such as: what is the
second best regime? Or in different terms, what is that polity which best
"imitates" the ideal? What would it mean to "imitate" an unobtainable ideal? The
answer to these questions must take into account a whole range of factors,
including facts about human nature and its imperfections, views about how much
knowledge is accessible to humans and how we are to "recollect" more of the
truth; theories about the different types of regimes and their relationship (perhaps
genealogical relationship); arguments about how we might best "pattern" our
souls so as to perfect them in the midst of an irremediably imperfect world; and
of course, views about what regime here and now best serves the means for the
self-perfection Socrates praises at the end of book VII. The political need not and
cannot express our personal ideal; what then follows for the politics of self-
perfection? What polis does justice to us as erotic and therefore perpetually
incomplete beings? Book VIII takes up some of the just mentioned questions, and
similar discussions occur in the Statesman and Laws.
It is within the space of this question about "imitation," opened up by the
necessity for deciding what might be the second best, i.e., the best practicable
polity, that the case for a relatively "liberal" regime would be made. Plato follows
up the the remarkable passage at the end of book VII with a discussion of various
regimes, and the analysis of democracy is striking. Democracy is portrayed as
degenerate and yet, as Socrates remarks in a frequently ignored passage, it is also
a convenient place to look for a polity: "thanks to its license, it contains all
species of regimes, and it is probably necessary for the man who wishes to organ-
ize a city, as we were just doing, to go to a city under a democracy" (557d). In
other words, the sort of philosophical discussion that is the Republic can best be
undertaken in a democracy. This regime is "sweet" because it is many colored,
dispenses a certain equality (558c), and also provides significant political liberty,
thereby providing a context for a Socrates. In this polis one is not compelled to
rule (557e), and this is crucial; in the Apology Socrates tells us that he remained
alive by staying out of politics (31 d). A democracy is permissive enough to allow
him both to stay alive and philosophize, at least for a longer time than would other
regimes. A democracy allows one to live the life of the private man laudably
chosen by Odysseus (620c-d), and by Socrates. Paradoxically, a democracy is in
theory to be rejected by philosophy, while in practice it is hospitable even to
philosophy's rejection of it in theory. And we live, Socrates told us at the end of
books VII and IX, in the realm of practice, not of theory. How the philosopher
would rejoin the two is at the heart of the problem of "imitation" here, and I will
say more about it in parts II and III below.
 Platonic Liberalism 87

If the interpretation I am sketching is accurate, it may seem not merely that

the Republic is not a blueprint for political action, but that the activities of
actually founding a city, of taking part in politics, or of specifying what sort of
polity is best in practice, are matters whose value is purely instrumental. We seem
returned to book I of the Republic, where Socrates asserts that the philosopher
would want to hold office only in order to prevent being ruled by a worse person
(347c).45 Taken in isolation, such passages suggest little place in the well ordered
philosophical life for care for a polis. As in Epicurus, Platonic self-perfection
seems to offer us little more than prudence and self-interest rightly understood as
a basis for political theory. It seems that while the philosopher may not be
compelled to espouse an illiberal and inegalitarian polity such as that of the
Republic, he or she might do so for prudential reasons.
But that conclusion does not follow, as I shall now try to show with respect
to the Phaedrus. We shall see that Plato does provide us with an argument show-
ing that love of wisdom does include attachment to others in their collective
capacity. But first, let me show how at least parts of the Statesman cohere with
the interpretation of the Republic just sketched.

II
If the comments in the preceding section are well directed, then for Plato politi-
cal philosophy will orient itself by a distinction between ideal and non-ideal
regimes. The "second best" polis theme is explicit in the Statesman (below) and
Laws (712a ff. and context; 807b, 875a-d).46 It is also to be found in Aristotle's
political theory. Plutarch tells us that when Solon was asked if be had left the
Athenians the best laws that could be given, he replied "The best they could
receive"; and Hesiod's account of the successively degenerating "ages of man"
suggest, indirectly, a difference between first best and relatively best conditions.
The distinction between ideal and non-ideal regimes, and its political impor-
tance, is scarcely unique to Plato. The view that the best practicable form of
political association will be imperfect or, in a Platonic phrase, be second-
best, complicates in interesting ways Platonic perfectionism. It decisively
tempers perfectionist social engineering, and turns moderation into a central
political virtue.

45 Cf. also Rep. 496b-<i, where we are told that philosophers despise the business of the
city and look beyond it, and that they mind their own business.
46 The distinction between best and inferior regimes is also explicit in Aristotle. But
Aristotle does not draw out, in the ways that the Platonic dialogues do, the
paradeigmatic status of the "best" regime, the reasons for which that regime is
unavailable, and the ways in which the realization that the best is unattainable should
condition our reception of non-ideal regimes.
88 CHARLES L. GRISWOLD JR.

The Statesman is part of a trilogy. 47 It is immediately preceded by the

Sophist, and was to have been followed by the Philosopher. At the start of the
Sophist Socrates turns to the newly arrived Eleatic Stranger (ES) and asks him
the question which leads to, and provides the main topics for, the ensuing two
dialogues: do people from the ES' region divide the genera "sophist," "states-
man," and "philosopher" into three, just as the names indicate? The ES answers
affirmatively, and accepts both Socrates' invitation to define each of these types
and Socrates' selection of an interlocutor. Having thus given shape to the ensuing
conversations, Socrates sits back and listens. A similar scene occurs at the start of
the Statesman, where Socrates picks a new interlocutor for the ES, a young
mathematician named "Young Socrates" (YS).
The Statesman attempts to define the genus "statesman" by defining the
science he possesses.48 The ES' rationale is evidently the belief that possession of
political science is a sufficient condition for someone's being a statesman (259b).
The ES procedes by using the method of diairesis. The first definition of political
science is arrived at as a result of a long series of divisions that occupy the first
third of the dialogue. Each step of the division is woven together such that the
definition of political science is the sum of its genealogical parts. The ES begins
by dividing "episteme" (knowledge or science) into "praktike episteme" (as in the
art of carpentry) and "gnostike episteme" (as in arithmetic and kindred arts). The
ensuing series of divisions yield a startling definition: the statesman is he who
possesses the cognitive science of giving his own orders for the nurturing and
grazing of the two footed pedestrial hornless non-interbreeding herd of animals
(267b--c). In other words, political science is the art of ruling featherless bipeds.
This reductive definition omits what is essential about human beings-the soul,
the interiority of self, rationality. Young Socrates accepts this definition as satis-
factory without qualification. 49

47 For a much fuller discussion of the Statesman, see my "Politike Episteme in Plato's
Statesman," from which these remarks are drawn. A recent study of the Statesman,
one in substantial harmony with my own interpretation, is S. Rosen's Plato's
Statesman: The Web of Politics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995).
48 Since in the Stsm. the possessor of statecraft is referred to with masculine pronouns,
it seems pointless to do otherwise when commenting on that text.
49 Three brief comments about this initial definition. First, Young Socrates is a
mathematician; thus the opening definition of political science as a theoretical
branch of episteme expresses his own proclivities. Second, the final definition is also
Young Socrates'; not only did he assent to each step as well as the conclusion, but
the definition expresses his traditionalist notion that the ruler of a polis is a "shep-
herd of the people," to use Homer's characterization of Agamemnon. If the ruler is a
shepherd, we are sheep. Third, the definition is tidy in a way that a poliitically
inexperienced mathematician might be expected to appreciate: there is one ruler; the
ruled are treated as units to be manipulated as the ruler sees fit; they are inert, things
 Platonic Liberalism 89

Many commentators stop here, assuming that YS speaks for Plato. Popper
alludes to this opening section of the dialogue when accusing Plato of advocating
totalitarianism. so This definition is of a piece with the initial definition of the
political art (258e) according to which, as the ES says, the art of political rule and
the art of ruling over slaves are effectively the same. But in fact Plato has the
Eleatic Stranger proceed immediately to reject the definition. In a very Socratic
way, the ES has led Young Socrates down the garden path. Young Socrates is
thrown into a state of aporia. The ES' initial objection is that the definition does
not isolate the statesman's art, for "thousands" of other types of people will claim
to be "statesmen" in the sense specified so far (267e-268c). That is, the ES
focuses on a crucial aspect of political life; namely the existence of widespread
and deep disagreement about who should rule, and so about what just rule is. Title
to legitimate rule is in doubt, and a successful political arrangement must take
into account the liberty of thinking which the phenomenon of disagreement signals.
Each person thinks he or she ought to rule. Thus civil strife and dissolution
constantly threaten our lives (cf. 273d, 302a, 308a). The Laws puts this even more
strongly: every person is an enemy of every other person, and each person is also
his own enemy (626d; cf. 744d). The problem with the Statesman's opening def-
inition of political science, that is, is that it is strangely apolitical. It has little to
do with real world politics.
The ES develops his point in a surprising way. He proceeds to recount a long,
complicated, and quite bizarre cosmological myth. I think that this myth is the
pivot of the dialogue, that on which the competing definitions of statecraft turn.
We can read it as a sort of thought experiment whose central point is that the
initial definition of the Statesman assumes a state of things that does not exist in
the sort of world we presently occupy. Among other things, the myth attacks the
definition's assumption that an all-knowing shepherd-of-the-people presently
exists. We are given to infer that a person who thinks he possesses political
science in that sense, who sees himself as different in kind from the ruled, and
takes the ruled to be comparable to sheep, is nothing other than a tyrant. Let me
fill out this account with a very brief summary of the myth.
The ES says that current stories about a distant golden age are dim recollec-
tions of a truth. The cosmos turns in two cycles. The cycle contrary to that in
which we now live-let us call it the divine cycle-is governed by the god
Kronos. In the divine cycle the god guided and re-energized the cosmos, taking it

to be manipulated, having no potentiality or freedom; the ruler is the measure of the

whole.
50 Popper, The Open Society, vol. I, pp. 8fr87; I refer to section (A) on p. 86 in
particular (no doubt Popper there thinks of the Rep. too). I note that Aristotle's Pol.
discussion of Plato's political philosophy is carefully stated; Aristotle repeatedly
refers to "Socrates" rather than to "Plato" as the author of the various views he
rejects.
 90 CttARLES L. GRISWOLD JR.

and winding it up like a spindle hanging from a thread. Kronos regulated every·
thing along with helper gods, among whom care of the herds of living creatures
is divided. Just as now men graze the inferior species, so then the god graz.ed
humans (271 e5- 7). It was a beautiful era. Everything operated with extreme effi-
ciency and mathematical precision. In those days there was no disagreement or
competition among people. Indeed, humans and animals could converse with one
another and got along perfectly (272c). There was no private property, no family,
no work, no sexuality (people are generated out of the earth), and no war
(27le-272a). There was no reason to develop any of the arts, not even the arts of
agriculture or of clothes-making; people in those times went about naked and
found food without effort. They possessed no sense of shame. I think it safe to
infer that there existed no politics in the ordinary sense of the term, and this
because there existed no human beings. 51
This picture of things supplies the background for the Statesman's initial
definition of statecraft as the rule of the all knowing person over featherless
bipeds. The myth suggests that such a scheme would be appropriate to the golden
ages and so, first of all, that it is impossible in practice. The first definition holds
only for the cosmos' countercycle (274e- 275a). As the ES goes on to say, things
are radically different in our cycle of the cosmos. At a preordained time, god let
go of the tiller of the cosmos. There was a gigantic quake, and a near total destruc-
tion of all living things. God retired to his "observation tower'' (periope; 272e5;
a sort of 'ivory tower') along with his helper gods. The cosmos began to unwind,
and in the ensuing cycle~ur cycle, the human one-the cosmos and all things
in it are left to care for themselves. Disagreement, war, competition arise. So do
the arts, customs, communities, religion, philosophy, sexuality, and procreation;
all are forms of auto-therapy. We live in the best of times and the worst of times.
For a while things go well. But unfortunately the universe is ineluctably entropic.
It degenerates into chaos, and god once again grabs hold of the tiller and winds
up the universe.
The ES pauses to ask YS which cycle is happier. YS is unsure. ES prompts
him with this criterion: if the residents of the countercycle (that which Kronos
ruled) had philosophy, then they were happier. It seems clear, as I have said, that
in the golden age there was no philosophy. The model of statecraft appropriate to
the golden age is neither possible nor ultimately desirable, for utopia was not
unequivocally good. This is a point that, as I suggested earlier (part I), might be
read in the Republic as well. It follows that, among other things, our conception
of politics must be conditioned by a deep sense of our neediness and a recognition

51 Another strange aspect of life then is as follows: people were born full grown and
then became younger. It would thus seem that there was no learning in the counter-
cycle, only forgetting. As the ES says, no one possessed any memory of preceding
generations (27 le8-272a2); there thus existed no sense of history or continuity with
the past, no traditions.
 Platonic Liberalism 91

of our fallibility; of the inevitability of self-reliance thanks to god's absence (the

art of politics cannot claim divine guidance as the source of its knowledge); by a
deep sense of the constant pressure of decay and the tendency to entropy; of the
omnipresence of disagreement and of the ever-present danger of war; by the
development of technai that will save us from the destructive hand of nature; and
finally by- to use a Socratic phrase-knowledge of ignorance, by our recogni-
tion that no human can or ought to rule as god would. Indeed, the ES defines the
tyrant as someone who rules without established law in the belief that he pos-
sesses the true political episteme (300bl0--<:4). The tyrant exhibits ignorance of
ignorance in the highest degree. That crucial point is a strongly Socratic one. In
sum, the Statesman points us to a deeply fallibilistic teaching about the human
condition and world, and draws the appropriate political consequences.52
These consequences include a recognition of the importance of written law.
In a now famous discussion, the ES argues that while in a perfect world the ruler
could dispense with written law and instead legislate for each and every case, in
a world of imperfections and fallible knowledge, written law is best. Since a god
cannot rule, it is best for the laws- the result of trial and error, experience,
prudence-to rule (294a6-8). 53 The laws ought to rule as justly and impartially
as possible, but always with an awareness as to why they, and not a fallible person,
rule. With this in mind the ES sets out a hierarchy of imperfect polities relative to
the perfect one which they "imitate." The imitative polities may be governed
according to law or lawlessly (i.e., without laws, contrary to laws). The question
is this: given the cosmological conditions outlined, which polity is the "mean," the
timely or appropriate one, for the times?
After a discussion about measure and the rule of law, the ES sets out the types
of polities. He remarks that while a monarchy is best if it is governed by good
writings or laws, in a situation tending to lawlessness and intemperance democ-
racy is best, for while it is not capable of the greatest goods, neither is it capable
of the worst evils (303a- b). If we order the six regimes he names from best to

52 The ES has told a story that illustrates why the choice of theoretical knowledge as
the branch under which to seek political science was a mistake. It abstracted from
our fallibility, our limits, from the world's unwinding. Now we infer that statesman-
ship is a branch of practical science. The ES puts this metaphorically: political
science is like the art of weaving woolen cloaks, i.e., the art of uniting the citizens
through mores and laws protecting all from hostile nature.
53 As the ES says, "there is no king that comes to be in the cities, as we in point of fact
assert, who's of the sort that naturally arises in hives-one who's right from the start
exceptional in his body and his soul- they [the citizens] must, it seems, once they've
come together, write up writings while they run after the traces of the truest regime"
(301d8-e4). I quote here and below from the S. Bemardete translation in The Being
of the Beautiful: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophis4 and Statesman (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1984).

-
 92 CHARLES L. GRISWOLD JR.

worst, we get this sequence: monarchy, aristocracy, democracy according to law,

lawless democracy (mob rule), oligarchy, and tyranny. In the light of the cosmo-
logical myth, it seems clear that our times make democracy according to law
appropriate, for we surely live in a time tending to lawlessness and intemperance.
"Precision"- a favorite word in these passages of the Statesman-simply does
not characterize our lives as political beings or individuals, in sharp contrast to
the world governed by Kronos. Further, we are told that the people refer to any-
one claiming the title of monarch as "tyrant."54 Even well intentioned rulers are
corruptible by the usual temptations. Plato makes this point explicit in a remark-
able passage in the Laws, and with a familiar sounding formulation: absolute
power corrupts and is not to be entrusted to a mortal, corruptible being (Laws
713c, 714a, 69lc-d, 875a-d). The point is there made with reference to the same
Kronos myth that plays such a large role in the Statesman. And as in the
Statesman, the conclusion is that the laws must rule in such a way as to provide
constitutional restraints on absolute power lest the situation devolve into that
which plagued Persia (Laws 697d-698a). So monarchic rule is not desirable in a
non-ideal situation.
The same objection that the ES articulates against the claim by one person to
absolute rule would a fortiori hold against the claims of a few such persons. And
that leaves us with the third best alternative, namely a lawful or constitutional
democracy. As ruled by law and structured by institutions that prevent the
(corrupting) concentration of power in one or few hands, a polity of this sort
would differ fundamentally from the "democracy" criticized in book IX of the
Republic.
A constitutional democracy might satisfy the demand of each person to rule.
A polity of this sort might encourage development of the arts and sciences in that
each person is left at liberty to create under competitive conditions. If knowledge
is fallible, then the opportunity to improve it must be encouraged (at 299e the ES
notes that a system of laws excluding progress in the arts eventually destroys the
polis). Those arts and sciences are essential for self-preservation in an entropic
age. Since civil war is forbidden and all are equal before the rule of written law,
politics is to be carried on by persuasion rather than force. That and the diffusion
of power that a properly structured democracy ensures should check the lust for
power so evident in the political life of an unravelling world. Finally, I note that
at 276e the tyrannical art is characterized as "care of those who submit to force,"
while the political art is characterized as voluntary care of voluntarily participating

54 As the ES says, the people simply "don't trust that anyone would ever prove to be
worthy of a ruler of that {kingly} sort, so as to be willing and able as ruler with virtue
and science to distribute correctly the just and holy things to all." (30lc8-d2). In a
comprehensive interpretation of the Statesman, I would seek to show that the section
on law recapitulates the whole course if the dialogue, and is a highly dialectical
section.
 Platonic Liberalism 93

citizens. The distinction between political rule and rule over slaves, demanded by
Aristotle at the start of the Politics, is now granted. In sum, the Statesman points
us to constitutional democracy composed of free citizens as the "best" regime for
the current cycle of the cosmos.55 This might be interpreted broadly enough to
include elements of other polities, as in the Laws' mix of democratic, aristocratic,
and monarchic models (756e-757a et passim).56 And as the Athenian Stranger
stresses in the Laws, the lawgiver's aim must be to secure for the polis not just
internal harmony but freedom and wisdom (70ld). 57
The Statesman confirms, I am arguing, my reading of the Republic. Yet
both dialogues seem to leave us with the impression that the public realm is not a
context within which excellence is to be pursued by individuals. The value of the

55 We can connect the ES' account with Socrates' view of things. The ES tells us that it
is extremely difficult to separate the true statesman from the "sophists of sophists,"
the "greatest imitators and greatest enchanters" who falsely claim to be legitimate
rulers (29lc, 303c). The problem of images and originals is central to our under-
standing of political life. Now, this is a favorite Socratic theme. And Socrates
responds to the problem by cross-examining claimants to wisdom in order to see
which of them really possesses wisdom and which only seems to. In the Apol. , he
recounts that he concluded from his dialogues that no one is perfectly wise; the best
one can do is human wisdom or knowledge of ignorance. That sort of self-knowledge
entails recognition of one's limitations as human- a pervasive point in the Platonic
dialogues. The famous Socratic and Platonic emphasis on dialogue, that is, supports
the Stsm.'s fallibilistic critique of despotic rule.
56 But how exactly is this polity to be structured? Will it mix in, say, other forms of
po/eis- aristocratic and monarchic elements, as in the Laws (756e-757a et passim)?
At this point, I think Plato has no a priori answer. The answers will be, to borrow a
phrase from a founder of American liberalism, "inventions of prudence"
(J. Madison, Federalist no. 51, p. 322). It will depend on everything from the social
and political history of the people in question to the geography of the place. Trial and
error will be one of our teachers (300b). This is unsatisfying if one thinks of political
philosophy as capable of answering a priori detailed questions of constitutional
structure or social policy. But one could also argue that a strength of the approach is
precisely that it leaves a great deal of room for deliberations about empirical and
contingent affairs. The large role that Plato and Aristotle assign "phronesis" in polit-
ical theory is connected with their conviction that particularities must be given itheir
due in both ethics and political theory.
57 As the Laws indicates, Platonic perfectionism would grant significant space to
liberty of speech, liberty to trade, to travel, to gather with other citizens, to partici-
pate in politics, to the right to own private property. The glaring exception concerns
the public expression of atheism, public disagreement with the civic religion, or the
creation of private religions. All are strictly forbidden in book X of the Laws.
I would want to argue that with regard to freedom of religion, Plato either erred, or
thought the threat of civil war so great (Laws 744d) as to require him to put aside the
•tiberal' consequences of his own theories.
94 CHARLES L. GRISWOLD JR.

polis, once again, seems merely instrumental. To revert to the ES' question as to
where happiness is to be found: we seem led to answer that it is to be found in the
individual's private life. This is puzzling within the context of a perfectionist
theory, as the point seems now to be that there is little perfection to be gotten by
means of the state's direct intervention in the lives of individuals. It also seems
that individuals have little reason, other than an instrumental one, to care about a
polis. To see that this is not the end of the story, we need to turn to the Phaedrus.
If some connection between self-interest and the interest of others can be estab-
lished at the heart of the non-political, perfecting pursuit of self-knowledge, then
we may be able to see in a general way the connection between that pursuit and
politics.58

III
Close to the start of the Pbaedrus, Socrates declares that he cares only about self-
knowledge. 59 With this striking declaration Socrates presents us in the strongest
form with the assertion of the primacy of self-perfection; for that is the goal to
which self-knowledge is the means. This emphasis on self-knowledge and self-
perfection is, as we know, repeated many times in the Platonic dialogues.60 In the
Apology, for example, Socrates characterizes his life as a divinely provoked
pursuit of self-knowledge (21a ff.). Yet in the very same dialogue he describes his
purpose in a very different way when he portrays himself as dedicated to the

58 Sections of the following discussion of the Phr. are adapted, with many changes, from
parts {A} and {B} of my "The Politics of Self-knowledge: Liberal Variations on the
Phaedrus," in the Understanding the Phaedrus, ed. by L. Rossetti (Sankt Augustin:
Academia Verlag, 1992), pp. 173- 90. I am grateful to the press for permission to
adapt that article to my present purposes, for a fuller discussion of the Phr. and liber-
alism. The general strategy of turning to the 'discourses on love' for insight into the
foundations of Plato's political philosophy has not been followed through, so far as I
know, in the detail I have attempted. But moves in that direction are made R. Kraut in
"Egoism, Love, and Political Office in Plato," Philosophical Review 82 ( 1973):
330-44 (Kraut refers to the Symp.).
59 "I am not yet capable," he says, "in accordance with the Delphic inscription, of
'knowing myself'; it therefore seems absurd to me that while I am still ignorant of
this subject I should inquire into things which do not belong to me. So them saying
goodbye to these things {the question as to the truth of various myths}, and believing
what is commonly thought about them, I inquire-as I said just now- not into these
but into myself ..." (229e5- 230a3). Trans. by C. J. Rowe in Plato: Phaedrus, with
translation and commentary (Wanninster: Aris and Phillips, 1986). I shall use this
translation throughout.
60 E.g., Rep. 578c ("for, you know, the consideration is about the greatest thing, a good
life and a bad one"); Gorg. 487el l-488al: the key issue is what quality a person
should have and what his pursuits should be.
 Platonic Liberalism 95

moral improvement of his fellow citizens, thereby manifesting (so he claims)

great civic concern for Athens as well (29d-30b). How do these two sides of
Socrates' moral life cohere? If the philosopher cares only about knowing himself,
is there any room for his caring for others?61
I think we can make some progress here by recalling some of the metaphys-
ical propositions of Socrates' second speech-often referred to as the
'recantation' or 'palinode'-in the Phaedrus. In the palinode we learn that Forms
are not directly visible to embodied souls; that privilege is reserved to the gods
and the disembodied souls that accompany them. For us, Forms are visible only
through their images and so through sense perception; we know the Forms only
through recollection, through "memory" (mneme, 254b5). This theme ofrecollec-
tion (anamnesis), which is absent from the Republic, accents the partiality and
indirectness of our understanding of Forms. The Phaedrus insists much more
strongly than does the Republic that the philosopher cannot escape the cave
altogether. In the Phaedrus' universe there could be no "philosopher kings" since
there could be no "philosophers" in the requisite sense. 62
The palinode concentrates on Beauty, but also mentions Justice. If Socrates
had chosen Justice rather than Beauty as the Form with which to illustrate the
workings of eros, how would the account have proceeded? Where would the
images of justice present themselves? Presumably they would do so in the words
and deeds of other persons individually and collectively considered. Just as the
directedness of the soul towards the Forms, and the availability of Forms through
images in "this" world, ties the philosopher to a beloved in the case of Beauty,
so we can envision that a similar connection would hold in the case of Justice. A
philosophical attraction to that Form would tie the philosopher to persons in this
world; perfection of self would seem in this event to include attachment to others
in their collective capacity- to one or more communities, in effect. 63

61 I shall refer to the philosopher using the masculine pronoun because Plato does so in
the Phr., and to avoid cumbersome switching back and forth. I do not, however, believe
that Plato's story here about soul, perfection, and love has to be gender specific.
62 The cycle of departure from and return to the cave, narrated so briefly in the Rep.,
consumes much of the Phr. 's palinode. The palinode tells not only about a heavenly
scene above the earth, but about the fate of earthbound, fallen souls-a fate that
entails forgetfulness of what was seen above, and a struggle to remember. Down
here, our intelligence is bound to sense perception, and in different ways. Beauty is
the "clearest" of all the Forms, accessible as it is to the sense of sight; Wisdom
("phronesis"), by contrast, is invisible to sight, and very hard to recollect and to love
(250d3-el). The earthly likenesses of Justice and Sophrosyne also lack luster; they
are hard to see (250bl-3).
63 Since at 250b et passim Socrates indicates that our attraction to Justice is not as
passionate as that for Beauty (at least not initially?), I use the word "attraction" rather
than "passion" here. That is, the justice which the organization of the laws of a body

JIF
96 CHARLES L. GRISWOLD JR.

The pursuit of Justice cannot be a merely "other worldly" one, particularly if

another aspect of the story Socrates tells about lover and beloved holds by analogy
with respect to the philosopher and his or her beloved polis. An old debate
surrounds the issue of whether the lover cares for the beloved for the latter's own
sake, or merely as a means to his (the lover's) own perfection. This debate, ini-
tiated by an article by Vlastos, lies at the heart of the problem mentioned earlier
as to whether or not the polis is merely of instrumental value to the philosopher.64
I wish to propose that the dilemma is a false one. I shall suggest that the relation-
ship between philosopher and polis parallels that between lover and beloved, such
that the polis too may be of more than merely instrumental value. While the lover
cares about the beloved because he sees in the other an image of both his own per-
fection and of the Form, he does genuinely care for the beloved's welfare as
measured by the latter's potential for perfection (cf. Rep. 40 I d-402d, 51 Sb). The
lover does not better himself at the expense of the beloved, but in such a way as
to better the beloved as well. The lover does not throw the beloved away at the end
of it all; rather, if things go successfully, they become life long friends (256a-b).
The beloved's potential is not a mere means to the realization thereof, as though
once perfected he is a different self. That potential is itself treated, in the
Pbaedrus and Symposium, as a source of wonderment and respect. It is true that
a self is held to be worthy of love in virtue of the lovable qualities immanent in
it; but I take Plato's point to be that the "separable" nature of these qualities res-
cues value for soul rather than deprives it of value. 65 A universe in which a self
could not be seen as reflecting these eternally perfect and complete qualities
would, on this view, leave us with little motivation for valuing a soul deeply.66
Love and friendship, in turn, are indispensable components of the good life

politic and of the characters of its citizens may exhibit will lack the brilliance present
in a particular, potentially philosophical beloved.
64 I refer to G. Vlastos' "The Individual as Object of Love in Plato," reprinted in
Platonic Studies, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981 ), pp. 3- 34.
65 Cf. G. Vlastos' "The Theory of Social Justice in the Polis in Plato's Republic," in
Interpretations of Plato, ed. H. F. North (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977), p. 33. As Vlastos
rightly points out there, if Plato were to ask "what is excellence {of soul } for?" we
might answer "for humanity." But Plato would want to take the reverse tack, asking
"what is humanity for?" and answering with reference to excellence or perfection.
And this answer might seem to lead (and does lead in some Platonic dialogues) to a
view of justice that is compatible with substantive inequality. But the Phr., as I shall
suggest, at least points in another direction. For a very fine response to Vlastos on
this point, see A. Kosman's "Platonic Love," in Phronesis suppl. vol. II (1976), ed.
W. H. Werkmeister, pp. 53-69.
66 My purpose here is neither to defend the just stated point as an exegesis of the Phr.
nor as a philosophical position in its own right. The former task I undertook in Self-
knowledge In Plato's Phaedrus (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986),
pp. 124-33 (for the debate about the possible "egoism" of this portrayal of love, see
 Platonic Liberalism 97

precisely because, rather than in spite of, their being intrinsic to the philosophic
activity of anamnesis, to being the kind of self that is perfected.
A similar picture may hold with respect to justice. The philosopher will see
images of Justice in poleis, and therefore take an interest in these poleis in the
course of trying to understand what justice itself is. A polis that embodies or in
its institutions "images" Justice in a high degree would be particularly promising
in his eyes. Should he discern in a polis the reflection of the Form Justice, the
philosopher would want to bring out a polis' justice in something like the way that
the philosophical lover wants to bring out the best in his beloved.67 As an over-
flow of his own desire for self-perfection (for justice in his own soul, say), the
philosopher will want to perfect his polis. But just as the lover tries to select a
beloved whom he divines is of the same type, so the philosopher would grant his
attentions to a community in which he or she divined the potential for justice.68
As the choice of a correct beloved initiates the love affair, and ultimately the
friendship, that provides the lover with the context for self-perfection, so a

pp. 128-29). A difficult problem about the relationship between Beauty and Justice
lurks here. One might ask, for example, what makes Justice (or an instance thereof)
attractive to the philosopher, if not its Beauty, whose motivational property Socrates
makes so much of. Perhaps it is the rational order that mi!ght partly define what it is
to be just that attracts the philosophical soul, an order or symmetry that might qual-
ify as "beautiful." In this event, the correlate to justice in the city would be justice in
the soul, that of beauty in the city would be beauty in the soul. Perhaps justice could
be seen as exhibiting harmony and unity that are marks of beauty; and this would
account for the philosopher's attraction to justice in the city. Beauty would here func-
tion almost as the Good does in the Rep.
67 For a discussion of the Rep. that leads to similar conclusions (though from quite
different premises) see. J. Cooper, "The Psychology of Justice in Plato," American
Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977), p. 155: " . . . it does not follow that they
(philosophers] would always choose to live a contemplative's life .... a just person
is a devotee of the good, not his own good; and these are very different things.
Knowing the good, what he [the philosopher] wants is to advance the reign of
rational order in the world as a whole." A similar point is made with reference to the
Symp. by R. Demos in "A Fallacy in Plato's Republic?", in Plato II, p. 55: "To aim
at the good is also to aim at the production of good things; thus for an individual to
aim at justice means that he cares not only for justice in the abstract, but also that
justice should be embodied in human beings in general. ... The health of the soul
includes, above all, the fulfillment of its reason: and the concern of reason is that the
good soul be exemplified everywhere." See also M. Miller's "Platonic Provocations:
Reflections on the Soul and the Good in the Republic," in Platonic Investigations,
ed. 0. O'Meara (Washington: Catholic University of American Press, 1985):
163-93. Miller stresses the element of "generosity" on the philosopher's part that
results from his vision of the Good.
68 Recall that there are two kinds of ''recollection" in the palinode, and that they are
connected: e.g., (a) to recognize oneself as a follower of Zeus--i.e., as a
98 CHARLES L. GRISWOLD JR.

friendship with the right polis may provide the lover with the context for self-per-
fection as a just human being. 69 And as not just any beloved will help the lover
accomplish these ends, so not just any polis will help the philosopher accomplish
analogous ends. Perhaps there is a hierarchy of po/eis-the most potentially just
to the most tyrannical and unjust- as there are of soul types (248c2-e3). Indeed,
in book IX of the Republic Socrates matches up a hierarchy of polities with a
hierarchy of soul types. 70 No more than the beloved, then, is a polis a dispensable
feature of the philosophers' love ofForms.71 This I think is the thrust of Socrates'
comments about laws and customs in the Symposium's ascent passages. There

philosopher- is to see oneself as the type of soul passionate about (b) tracking down
or recollecting the Fonns present in their images. One cannot apprehend one's own
nature directly, without the mediation of the other who serves, in Socrates' word, as
a "mirror" (255d6). I am suggesting that, at least in the case of justice, the polis
serves as the philosopher's mirror. What dimension of the soul is mirrored and
brought to consciousness by the polis? Presumably, the aspect of soul that would be
engaged as dialectician and (in a suitably defined sense) pedagogue in the polis (that
engagement described in the Apol. as being both beneficial to Socrates and to the
citizens). Further: in the palinode's account, the beloved is portrayed as confused by
the lover, unclear as to what he (the beloved) is loving and as to what he sees
reflected in the lover (255d). If the present analogy holds, we would expect the polis
to undergo a similar experience when facing the philosopher. The relationship is
asymmetrical in each case. Finally: as Socrates shifts between the language of mak-
ing (252d7, e4) and of discovering (252e 1-4) in describing the lover's stance towards
the beloved, so too, perhaps, with respect to the philosopher's stance towards the
polis: the given polis, as potentially just, is both discovered to be an image of Justice
and made into a more perfect image thereof.
69 This is compatible with the Rep. 's view that ruling is drudgery (Rep. 540a- b); but
there are other fonns of political activity, such as that described by Socrates in the
Apol. as an alternative to direct participation in ruling. Aristotle points out that
(Plato's) Socrates "praises above all the city's being one, which is held to be, and
which he asserts to be, the work of affection," and goes on to allude to the Symp.
Aristotle rightly points out that the Rep. 's scheme dilutes the possibilities for affec-
tion by dissolving the family; the implication being that the Symp. is inconsistent
with the Rep. (Pol. II.1262b8 ff).
70 I note that at Phr. 246e6-247al we hear of a multitude of communities in heaven,
varying as soul types do.
71 The general point of the preceding paragraphs could be taken much further, of
course. For one could argue that (like other Fonns) Justice is not an entity that can
be defined in and of itself, that in isolation from contexts and examples in which it
is (even if imperfectly) instantiated, there is relatively little to say about it (except by
negation, as at Symp. 21 ld8-e4), however much it may be something one can "see"
(Symp. 211 e I et passim). In the Phr. Socrates in fact says nothing about the substan-
tial meaning of any Fonn, except that vision of it is deeply fulfilling etc. I note in
passing that not even the gods care solely about the Fonns: they are portrayed, rather,
 Platonic Liberalism 99

we are told that the ordering of cities and households with moderation and justice
is the most beautiful part of wisdom; a lover of beauty will want to give birth to
admirable regimes, and will admire them too as instances of beauty (209a, d,
2 lOc, 2 llc).
This way of looking at the relationship between self-perfection and commu-
nity entails giving up the holistic model of the city/soul analogy, according to
which a philosophical polis is one ruled by philosophers just as a philosophical
soul is one ruled by reason. In light of the Phaedrus and Symposium we might
rather say that while neither a city nor a soul is admirable if ruled by passion, a
city is admirable if it enables each of its members to pursue whatever excellence
their natures may hold.72
The first two speeches of the Pbaedrus, which portray the beloved as an
object to be manipulated, give us an idea as to how persons may be mistreated.
Particularly in Lysias' speech, th.e "other" is reified, reduced to a body, unsouled,
having value only in the sexual gratification it can yield. The burden of the palin-
ode, and so of the "ascent" from Lysias' speech, is to show why that conception
of the person is inadequate, why it is that someone possessing self-knowledge
would not be disposed to demean others in that way. Socrates introduces the
notion of"soul" to denote a core function without which we would not be human.
He implies that to treat persons as though this were not true of them would be to
act ignorantly.73
Socrates' palinode takes us some way towards a critique of the reification or
objectification of others so prominent in the first speech (that attributed to Lysias)
of the dialogue. That speech implies a denial that persons have intemality, that
they are "subjects of a life" in a way that things and other animals seem not to

as "caring" for the cosmos (246e5-6), contemplating the Forms only intermittently.
lmitatio dei thus involves more than contemplation.
72 A promising community need not, on this view, be seen as an individual--here the
disanalogy between Socrates' account of the love of beauty and my analogous
account of the love ofjustice is important. I note that individuals who are in love with
a particular city are not praised by Plato. For they seem to be according the wrong
kind of affection to the city, treating it as though it were an individual. Cf. Pericles'
funeral speech where we are urged to become the "lovers" of Athens, inspired by the
vision of her greatness. Thucydides 11.xliii.
73 For some discussion, see Self-knowledge, chs. 2- 3. In the Phr., souls have a fixed
upper limit, at least within cycles of embodiment; a Hera-like soul cannot in princi-
ple become a Zeus-like soul. But the lower limit is not fixed in the same way, and
souls can act in ways that are, as it were, beneath themselves. They can fail to reach
their full potential. They can also come to see, and attempt to realize, their full poten-
tial. As self-directing in that sense, persons possess an inner freedom that permits
them to become objects of praise and blame, to be held responsible for failing to live
up to themselves.
 100 CHARLES L. GRISWOLD JR.

be.74 By contrast, the whole description, in the palinode, of the experience of

falling in love portrays vividly the self as having "inner" experiences, an inward-
ness articulated here with remarkable subtlety and sensitivity. The "inner/outer"
self distinction keeps reappearing in the Phaedrus (245e4-6, 275a2-6,
279b9-c 1; cf. 235c4-d 1), pointing to the presence in each of us of interiority, one
might even say individuality or subjectivity, the possibility of a first-person per-
spective.75 Plato's version of Kant's imperative will be "hypothetical": treat others
with respect (aidos) for the selves they truly would be, if you would become a
happy, perfected self. This is part of the story as to how Plato will get from ''jus-
tice" conceived as an excellence of self (i.e., as "virtue") to ''justice" conceived of
in terms of what is due to others.76 Conversely, as Socrates says in the Republic
(443a) as well, the just person lacks the motivations that commonly lead to injus-
tice in the conventional sense--regardless of the presence or absence of
incentives conventionally understood. Socrates wants us to see that selfhood
should be understood not as "individuality" cut off from others, not as an entity
to which other persons are mere means, but as having a kind of being (ousia; Pihr.
245e3) whose good includes the good of others and, indirectly, of suitable
communities. A polity that founded itself on a misunderstanding about this nature
of the self will not qualify as just; and Socrates would, I think, hold that many
conventional regimes fail to pass muster on precisely this ground. 77

74 I take it to be part of Plato's purpose to show that the speech is internally inconsistent.
For the non-lover gives a speech precisely to persuade the beloved, i.e., he assumes
the beloved is capable of choice (23ld6-7; cf. 233a4-5). In Socrates' first speech we
are presented with a demand for definition of terms, a tactic designed in part to make
us see that how we value others makes assumptions about what kinds of beings they
are, assumptions that if thought through would require that we treat these beings dif-
ferently.
75 "Individuality" and "subjectivity" are obviously controverted notions, especially in
the context of Greek ethics; hence my tentative use of it. I would only note here that
they should not be confused with uniqueness.
76 Worked out in the way suggested in the present essay, this way of bridging the gap
between justice understood as a quality of self, and conventional justice, leads to
rejection of the "holistic" model of justice.
77 The view of soul as self-moved, of learning as recollection, and the critique of moti-
vation that assumes faulty notions of the human good (and so of what it means to be
human) at the very least exclude much conventional politics and poleis on the
grounds of injustice or some other vice. For example, any regime that claims wealth
as a title to rule can claim no legitimacy, and Socrates is very harsh on oligarchs and
their regime in the Rep. Vlll. Rule based on brute force is obviously illegitimate as
well, for Socrates; it amounts to tyranny in one form another. Any regime that claims
virtue is inherited is based for Socrates on a falsehood. And, more subtly, any regime
that fails to promote the development of moral excellence rightly understood will be,
in various degrees, less than perfect and so less than worthy of approbation. I would
 Platonic Liberalism IOI

Let me briefly indicate what sort of communities would pass muster. I note,
first, that knowledge and self-knowledge are both, for Socrates, types of remem-
bering. Whatever else this may mean, it strongly suggests that the requisite
knowledge is to be found "within" and that it has value as appropriated through
one's own dialectical or erotic labors. Socrates contrasts to this process knowl-
edge that is poured in from the "outside," as he thinks book-learning to be (275a).
The process of Socratic dialectic famously embodies the view that while souls
can be helped to learn, they cannot be taught philosophy directly. The application
of political compulsion would presumably transform anamnesis into rote memo-
rization, perhaps hypocritically performed. The type of perfectionism compatible
with Socratic dialectic and anamnesis would be indirect, and would recognize the
key role of the agent's effort and choice in self-perfection.
Second, recollection is to be undertaken dialectically, for Socrates, and this
requires suitable interlocutors. 78 Correspondingly, the question of the polity is not
a matter of indifference for the Phaedrus' philosopher. The liberties to discuss,
to question, to have students of one's choice, to wander outside the city's walls,
and to do so in the company of some politically doubtful souls, seem essential. 79

expect that in criticizing such regimes Socrates would follow his usual practice of
searching for internal contradictions, unsupported assertions, and false beliefs.
Ultimately he will argue that a person who advocates, say, a tyrannical regime,
manifests a tyrannical soul, one which is enslaved to its own fears and desires (Rep.
579H). This elenchus would narrow considerably the political options Socrates
would consider acceptable, and would point, as I have argued, to an important place
for political liberties. In the Pbr. 's account, the tyrant lies at the very bottom o.f the
hierarchy of soul types (248e3) because he is most ignorant of the Forms and is moti-
vated solely by the basest of desires, a motivation that stems from an impoverished
conception of his own "self" and, by extension, of what it means to be a "self." He
reifies others because he has reified himself. The tyrant is, as it were, Lysias' non-
lover armed with ambition and political power.
78 The philosopher must live within the walls of the city and-again, precisely in order
to pursue his own perfection- want to live among interlocutors of the requisite soul
types (say, types ranging from Phaedrus to Protagoras to Plato).
79 lt is significant that at the end of the Phr., a conversation that takes place in the coun-
tryside, Plato makes a point of Socrates' and Phaedrus' return to Athens. Plato has
them vote for that polis with their feet. Socrates and Phaedrus have wandered out of
the embracing walls of the city, but just for this day. At the end of the dialogue, they
return to Athens. As the gods return "home" (oikade; 247e4) after feasting on the
eternal verities, so when finished with their feast of speeches Socrates and Phaedrus
return to the home suitable for embodied souls-a polis, indeed a specific polis. That
polis is not just a faute de mieux, life outside the walls of which would be infinitely
preferable. Socrates leaves uncorrected Phaedrus' assertion that he (Socrates) never
leaves Athens "at all" (230d2), and provides an interesting explanation: "Forgive me,
my good man. You see, I'm a lover of learning, and the country places and the trees
 102 CHARLES L. GRISWOLD JR.

As we have already noted, Socrates points out in the Republic (557d) that anyone
wishing to set out a regime, as he and his companions have been doing in that
very dialogue, would prefer to do so in a democracy. so
Finally, while the Pbaedrus sets out a hierarchy of soul-types on the basis of
how much each soul "saw" of the Forms (248d-e), it does not follow that the dis-
tribution of liberties among the citizens should be very restricted, such that the
best practical polity must be substantively inegalitarian. 81 For accurate institution
of the various soul-types as social classes would depend on accurate discernment
of the soul-types. And the palinode leaves us-deliberately, in my view-utterly
unclear as to how a list of vocations, a list of character types), and various

won't teach me anything, as the people in the city will" (230d3-5). Of course,
Socrates has been outside the walls- and significantly, for my present purposes, in
order to fight on behalf of Athens. And when he and Phaedrus re-enter, they do so
armed with a lengthy discussion of rhetoric, a theme to which the polis is relevant.
80 The reason Socrates cites is that a democracy contains many different models of
polities. But it does so because, as Socrates says at 557b, it is a city full of freedom
and free speech. These goods would also be required to discuss pubJicly which of the
models is best.
81 Presumably those at the top have a better claim to know justice and to be just than those
lower down. After the seeker for wisdom and beauty Socrates ranks the law-abiding
king, and so on down the latter. This scheme seems to lead directly to a non-egalitar-
ian political polity, for one could argue that those persons who are by nature incapable
of recollecting much, and who "forget" even that of which they were capable, thanks
to their way of life (248e3-5, 250a3-4), occupy a lower moral rank than the philoso-
phers and ought to be treated accordingly. So the most "philosophical" polity, the one
most beautiful in a philosopher's eyes, would seem to be hopelessly far from anything
like a regime that recognized basic principles of fairness and equality.
82 At 253b Socrates says that each follower of a given god strives to make his beloved
resemble that god. Hera-types look for royal natures, and so forth. One might ask how
followers of Ares will "love" their polis, and what Forms (or what understanding of
Form(s)) they seek to have reflected in their own soul and their polis. Part of the
answer may lie at 252c, where we learn that followers of Ares are possessive to the
extreme; if they think their beloved is doing them some injury, they will shed their
own and their beloved's blood. Something like this may fit the description of
Alcibiades at Symp. 2 l 3d, and correspondingly the ways in which Alcibiades repaid
his "beloved" Athens for perceived injustice towards him (on Alcibiades as a lover of
the demos, see Symp. 2 l 6b). It remains unclear how that sort of account meshes with
the "degree of knowledge of the Forms" issue. Things become still murkier if there
exists a Form oflnjustice (as suggested at Rep. 476a), a possibility that risks seriously
disrupting the Phr. 's account of things. For then the tyrant would be not a person for-
getful of Forms who treats the polis as he would treat himself-e.g., as a thing to be
reified and manipulated-but a person who remembers a Form (e.g., Injustice) and
passionately seeks to have that Form realized. Presumably, that Form exists in the
antipode to the hyperuranian place, somewhere "under the earth" (256d6).
 Platonic Liberalism 103

quantities of knowledge-of-Forms, are to be coordinated. 82 Indeed, the palin.o de

may be taken to claim that the relative weighing of these factors cannot be ration-
ally understood. 83 Moreover, the palinode also teaches that such weighing is
nearly impossible. Given the inherent fallibility of that procedure, the ever present
possibility of error on the part of the dialectician, and the limited number of
persons one can examine, it seems to follow that any effort to institute an illiberal
hierarchy of social classes is deprived of rational justification from the outset.84
In sum, the Phaedrus suggests that the best practicable polity will be com-
mitted to institutions that encourage persuasion rather than coercion,
development of self rather than debasement thereof, philosophy and the love of
knowledge rather than tyranny and the love of power or wealth, the treatment of
others as potentially perfectible in some degree (a degree not inferrable from the
person's vocation or social status), and whatever liberties conduce to the above. It
will recognize its own limits; in particular, the fallibility of our knowledge, and
the necessity that true knowledge be appropriated by the individual. We would
thus expect the philosopher to admire a polis whose institutions are shaped by a
knowledge of ignorance parallel to his own. For all practical purposes, we may
infer, a polis would do better to proceed afong egalitarian lines in its organization
of political participation (this is of course compatible with a meritocracy in other
spheres of social life). The duty to respect liberties could well be expressed in
terms of rights (where a right to something is understood as the legitimate claim

83 For substantiation, see Self-knowledge pp. 102--03.

84 Whether this interpretation can be reconciled with the Rep. is a fascinating question
far too complex to broach here. If I am right, the Phr. suggests that we abandon the
Rep. view that the city is good if its parts are related in a way analogous to the way
in which the parts of a well-ordered soul are related. Nor, on the present account, does
the Phr. suggest that the good polis is that all of whose parts are actually (rather than
just potentially) good (those would be very few in number). The palinode's teaching
is much more fallibilistic than that of the Rep., as already indicated. The Rep.'s argu-
ment for an inegalitarian regime depends on the premise that moral experts to rule
over non-experts; but there are no moral experts in the requisite sense.
85 Even if this answer is accepted, though, it may seem that we have been furnished with
no principled way of defining the liberties, or if you like, the rights, of the citizens in
Plato's second best polis. Further, these liberties-whatever they may be, exactly-
seem placed on a highly insecure basis; and this has been a reason for rejecting
perfectionism as a political theory, as noted at the start of the paper. I take it that Plato
would want to reply to the second point that the basis is as philosophically firm as it
ever gets; no theory is so obviously sound that discussion about its merits ends among
philosophers. He might continue to say that political liberties would be as soundly
embedded institutionally in a scheme he would devise as in one we might devise. But
if one wants something still more specific, something comparable to the American
Bill of Rights, one will find Plato of limited help. I expect that he would see precise
enumeration of rights as a task for a legislator in a specific situation. I also expect that
104 CHARLES L. GRISWOLD JR.

to be protected in doing that thing). 85 In a Platonic context, talk about rights

would serve as a proxy for the sorts of moral reasons clustered around the notion
of self-perfection that I have discussed. When at the end of Republic IX Socrates
bids us to order our souls by contemplating the "paradigm" of the "city in
speech," I think he means us to adopt just this stance towards politics.

IV
Let me close. I distinguished earlier between individualist and communitarian per-
fectionism. I characterized Epicurus as an extreme representative of the former
camp, and Aristotle as a representative of the latter. In which camp is Plato to be
put with respect to his political philosophy as represented above? As in the case of
the characterization of the lover/beloved relationship, I want to claim that neither
alternative alone does justice to Plato's theory. In that friendship for individuals
and care for an appropriately defined poleis are intrinsic to a person's development
of self.-and I have argued that they are such, for Plato-then Plato is in the ''com-
munitarian" camp. But in that the qualities by virtue of which we admire persons
and polis's are separable-and the Forms are characterized as such in the Republic
and Phaedrus--and insofar as the Forms apprehensible in and of themselves-the
great prize Plato promises those who have perfected themselves-then the good is
realized in an activity of contemplation of which community is not constitutive. In
a perfect world, Platonic perfectionism would be individualist rather than commu-
nitarian. In this world, among us, it would be both.86

worries (as expressed in the Phr.) about the inherent weaknesses of written word
might make him reluctant to sanction in any real world situation an enwneration of
rights in a constitution. Of course, this is a worry expressed in the American tradition
itself. See Madison's conunents in the Federalist no. 84.
86 I thank Aryeh Kosman, Mitchell Miller, David Roochnik, Amelie Rorty, and David
Schmidtz for their very helpful comments on various drafts of this paper. I am also
grateful to the Earhart Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars
(Washington, D.C.) for the support of work leading to this paper. Drafts of this paper
were delivered at Scripps College (Claremont), Rutgers University, Loyola College
(Baltimore), George Mason University, the Graduate Center of the City University
of New York, Yale University, the Universite de Paris (XII), and the Catholic
University of America. I am indebted to audiences at all these institutions for useful
discussion and suggestions. Versions of this paper were published as "Le liberalisme
platonicien: de la perfection individuelle comme fondement d'une theorie politique,"
in Contre Platon: le Platonisme Renverse, vol. II, ed. M. Dixsaut (Paris: Vrin,
1995), pp. 155-95; and in "Platonic Liberalism: Self-Perfection as a Foundation of
Political Theory,'' in Plato and Platonism, ed. J. M. van Ophuijsen (Washington:
Catholic University of America Press, 1999), pp. 102-34. The themes addressed here
are perennials in the work of Stanley Rosen; may this serve as a contribution to the
on-going dialogue with my friend, colleague, and former teacher.
The Nonlover in Aristotle's Ethics
Ronna Burger
Tulane University

I. Madness, Sobriety, and the Possibility of Philosoph,y

The very possibility of philosophy stands or falls upon the possibility of a

philosophical madness that is more sober than sobriety. This is no doubt a
deeply problematical formulation. But it is not a puzzle. 1

Stanley Rosen's essay, "The Nonlover in Plato's Phaedrus," helped guide my

understanding of the Phaedrus, the subject of my first academic project, though
I did not understand sufficiently at the time the broad and deep implications of
his analysis. 2 The figure of the nonlover, Rosen leads us to see, is not simply
Plato's portrait of a seducer; he is the concrete exemplification of how hedonism,
utilitarianism, and "teclmicism" show up in the human soul and stand in the way
of philosophy. But the nonlover cannot simply be dismissed: he exhibits, not only
why philosophy is impossible without eros, but at the same time, why "the highest
erotic function is impossible without the discursive detachment of the nonlover."3
Rosen pursued his analysis of the nonlover with a sequel, "Socrates as
Concealed Lover," which appears along with the earlier essay in the collection,
The Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry. 4 Together they establish how "the
three speeches in the Phaedrus constitute an erotic ascent from the nonlover via
the concealed lover to the lover in the full or manic sense."5 The nonlover

Stanley Rosen, The Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry: Studies in Ancient
Thought,'' New York/London: Routledge, Inc., 1988, p. xiii.
2 "The Nonlover in Plato's Phaedrus," Man and World, Vol. 2, no. 3, 1969, pp. 423- 37.
In 1981, Rosen wrote a review of six related books on the Platonic dialogues, which
included my book, based on my dissertation, on the Phaedrus (Philosophy and
Rhetoric, Vol. 14, No. 2, Spring 1981, pp. 112-17). His praise and his criticism were
both important for me in my work after that starting point.
3 "Socrates as Concealed Lover," The Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry, p. 97.
4 The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry, pp. 78- 90 and 91-101. Further refer-
ences to these two essays indicate page numbers in this volume.
5 "Socrates as Concealed Lover,'' p. 91. The concealed lover contains elements of the
nonlover and the lover that allow him, Rosen demonstrates, to mediate between them
(p. 95).

105
106 RONNA BURGER

represented by the speechwriter Lysias, who is responsible for the initial condem-
nation of eros, is exposed, in Socrates' revised version of the speech, as a lover in
disguise, seeking to win for himself the favors of the beloved. Halfway through
his speech Socrates stops, uncovers his head, which he had covered in shame, and
prepares to leave, but is held back by his daimonion; afraid, as he claims, of being
punished by the god Eros, and ashamed at having presented such a vulgar view
of lover and beloved, Socrates sets out to purify himself by offering a "palinode,"
which will hold up the divine madness of eros as the source of our greatest bless-
ings.
Overshadowed by the grandeur of Socrates' "mythic hymn" in praise of eros,
the first two speeches are commonly neglected; Rosen's consideration of those
speeches provides a unique way into the most striking problem of the Phaedrus.
This dialogue, which more explicitly than any other holds up the standard for the
written work as a perfectly ordered whole, appears to violate that standard by its
own division into two halves: the series of speeches on eros in the first half, cul-
minating in Socrates' praise of divine madness, appears to be only accidentally
connected with the sober analysis of rhetoric and dialectics that occupies the sec-
ond half of the dialogue. The speeches of the nonlover and the concealed lover
provide a key to the unity of the dialogue, Rosen argues, precisely insofar as they
represent the element of sobriety that must somehow be put together with the
seemingly incompatible element of madness if philosophy is to be a real possibil-
l'ty. 6
Rosen concludes his prefatory remarks to The Quarrel between Philosophy
and Poetry with a reflection on those seemingly incompatible elements as
reflected in the difference between Platonic madness and Aristotelian sobriety.
Aristotle's political writings, he acknowledges, might "be commended for insu-
lating politics from philosophical madness," but they could "be criticized for
overestimating the power of sobriety and practical intelligence."7 There is, per-
haps, no more striking sign of the apparent split between Platonic madn·e ss and
Aristotelian sobriety than their treatment of love and friendship: Plato, one might
say, merits the title the philosopher of eros as much as Aristotle does the philoso-
pher of friendship. Not only is eros the central theme of two Platonic dialogues,
and present one way or another in almost all the others, but the discussion of
friendship in the one short dialogue devoted to that theme is framed and colored

6 "[T]he peak of the dialogue about speech is in fact silence. But the slopes of that
peak are discursive, and in two different senses. The way up is not the same as the
way down. The way up is the dialectical transformation of base or nonerotic desire
into noble or erotic desire, with the concomitant Aujhebung of the legitimate element
of the nonlover. The way down, after the recollection of the hyper-Uranian beings, is
the technical discussion of rhetoric and dialectic." ("Socrates as Concealed
Lover," p. 99).
7 The Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry, Preface, p. xii.
 s
The Non/over in Aristotle Ethics 107

by the issue of the lover's relation to his favorite. 8 Aristotle, as is well known,
devotes the longest segment of his inquiry into human happiness to the theme of
friendship, with eros mentioned only in scattered remarks, mostly derogatory.
One hears, in those remarks, the echo of the nonlover of the Phaedrus, above
all in the insistence the incompatibility of passionate love and friendship.
Aristotle, it is true, does not put those remarks into a speech delivered by a fic-
tional character; but he gives us reasons to question whether, or to what extent, he
is endorsing the nonlover's understanding of eros as he represents it. That under-
standing is not, in any case, not Aristotle's last word. There is, I want to propose,
a development in the sequence of seemingly casual remarks about eros,9 and the
pattern is furnished by the Phaedrus: the condemnation of eros in favor of the
sobriety of perfect friendship turns out to be only the first stage of the discussion;
a "palinode" that leads us to rethink the account of friendship brings in its wake
a transformation of eros, which leads finally to recognition of the erotic moment
that belongs essentially to philosophic friendship. Perhaps, this conclusion sug-
gests, Platonic madness and Aristotelian sobriety are not quite so starkly
contrasted as the surface of their works make it seem.

II. Eros and Philia in the Nicomachean Ethics

1. Perfect Friendship and the Disappointments of Eros
No one, Aristotle announces in opening the discussion of friendship, would choose
to have all the other good things in life but without friends (8 . 1 . 1156~). No
comparable claim is made about anything else in the Ethics. But the general
agreement about the desirability of friendship does not settle, or even address, the
disputed issue of what it is. At the core of the dispute is the question whether
friendship is primarily a relationship between likes or unlikes (1155a33- b2). The
attraction of likes or unlikes, while spoken of in the language of human experience,
lends itself readily by metaphor to serve as a cosmological principle. 10 Making a

8 The discussion about friendship that Socrates conducts with the two young friends,
Lysis and Menexenus, is preceded by his opening conversation with a young man in
love with Lysis, whom Socrates advises on how to speak to his favorite so as not to
approach him like a hunter who makes his quarry harder to catch (Lysis 203a- 206d).
The discussion of friendship ends with the proposal that "one's own" is alike the
object of eros, philia, and desire (22le).
9 References to eros or related terms appear in 8.1 (1155b3-4), 8.3 (l 156b2-3), 8.4
(1157a6-13), 8.6(1158al1- 12), 8.8 (1159b15- 17), 9.1(1164a3-8),9.5 (1167a4--6),
9.10(1171al1- 12), and 9.12 (ll 7lb29- 3 l), with a very different treatment up to 9.1
from that which appears in 9 .5 and later.
10 As Euripides no less than Heraclitus and Empedocles testify (1155b2-8). Cf. Lysis
214a-b and 2 l 5e, where the notion of philia as a relationship between likes or
opposites belongs to a cosmological account.
108 RONNA BURGER

Socratic tum, Aristotle dismisses such speculations about the whole of nature and
sets out to analyze friendship as a strictly human phenomenon: the inquiry is to
focus on the questions whether there is more than one form of friendship and
whether all people can be friends or only the good.
The two questions prove to be integrally connected: a division of kinds (eide}
allows friendship to be construed so broadly as to encompass relationships
between individuals who are not good, however paradigmatic friendship between
the good may be. The classification of friendship into kinds requires an articula-
tion of principles, which Aristotle finds in the motives of our attraction to others:
however messy a mixture all our actual relationships may be, the difference
ibetween liking someone because we find him good, or pleasant, or useful yields
a tripartite division of pure types of friendship (8.2. l 155bl 7- 20). This expansion
ofphilia is in part guided by ordinary language: we call people "friends" who like
each other for all these reasons (8.4. l l 57a26-30). But beyond ordinary language,
the analysis captures some kind of generosity of nature: we are allowed, or com-
pelled, by our political nature, even if we are not simply good, to participate,
however defectively, in this most necessary and desirable experience. 11
Distinguishing the motives of our attraction to others establishes a division
of kinds without yet determining what friendship as such is. Aristotle finds the
key to that question in the common opinion that an inanimate object cannot be a.
friend. We do not wish for such an object to be in good condition, unless it is with
our own interest in mind; but they say-Aristotle does not confirm the claim-
that one should wish the good of a friend for his own sake (8.2. l l 55b3 l- 32).
Good will, however, is not enough; it must be reciprocated if it is to count as
friendship, and even that is not sufficient, unless both. persons are aware of each
other's regard. Something inanimate cannot, of course, return our affection or
have any awareness of it to begin with. The philo-sophos, however drawn he is to
becoming wise, cannot be in the precise sense a friend of wisdom. Strictly speak-
ing, he is a "lover of wisdom," in whom sophia arouses eros, while remaining
indifferent to it. 12
Friendship, then, is a relationship of two individuals bound by a reciprocal,
mutually acknowledged affection and genuine goodwill for each other. This is a
comprehensive conception that is supposed to encompass three species: we can
wish the good for a friend, Aristotle tries to argue, "on account of" any one of the

11 The internal structure ascribed to friendship, which incorporates a set of eide that fall
short of the ''perfect" or "complete" form (te/eia philia), prepares for the treabnent of
happiness at the end of the Ethics, which includes a "secondary" form of eudaimonia
that falls short of the ..perfect" standard (teleia eudaimonia) (10.7.1177b23- 25,
I0.8.1178a9-IO).
12 In the Lysis, Socrates questions the necessity of reciprocity if it precludes the
possibility, not only of "friends of horses" (philippoi), or quails or dogs, but also
"friends of wine" or gymnastics or wisdom (philosophoi) (212d-e).
 The Non/over in Aristotle s Ethics 109

qualities-goodness, pleasantness, or usefulness-that has attracted us to him

(8.2.1156a4-5). In doing so, however, we are wishing the good for our friend
"with regard to" one of those qualities (8.3.l 156al0). But liking someone for the
utility or pleasure he supplies to us, and wishing him well with regard to that
pleasure or utility, is not really liking him and wishing him well for himself. A
friendship motivated by pleasure or utility seems incapable, in that case, of living
up to what friendship aims to be, as expressed in its supposedly comprehensive
definition. Such a relationship is bound to be precarious: an association motivated
by usefulness dissolves as soon as one party ceases to provide the benefit the
other seeks from him, while one motivated by pleasure is as unstable as the taste
that initiated it. This is especially clear, Aristotle suggests, in the volatile relation-
ships of the young, who look to friendship for pleasure. It is in this context that
the erotic relationship first appears: as an association guided by feeling and moti-
vated by pleasure, it is especially appropriate to the young, who end their
attachments as quickly and passionately as they fall into them, often changing in
the course of the day (8.3.l 156b2-4).
Friendship has the promise of enduring over time only when one feels affec-
tion for the person himself and wishes him well for his own sake. 13 This is the
core of philia as the comprehensive conception expresses it; but it looks as if it
could be fulfilled only by the highest kind-the friendship of the good, who are
alike in virtue (8.3.l 156b7-14). Who are "the good" and what is the virtue they
possess alike? The Ethics has rarely referred to "the good" simply, and they are
not identified now as the d.ecent or the serious, the prudent or the wise; the
virtue they have in common remains unnamed. The friendship of the good seems
to be an abstraction, which we fill in, for the most part, by recognizing, from the
more concrete account of the inferior forms of friendship, what it is not.
Especially problematic is the question of what need two individuals would have
for one another, each of whom is supposed to be good in himself and, in all essen-
tial respects, like the other. Whatever makes them want to be together as friends,
it is certainly not any awareness of defectiveness or longing: they are not driven
to try to complete themselves by union with each other, as if they were two halves
of one whole.
The affection such friends feel is based, presumably, on nothing but their
mutual recognition of the goodness in each other. Their relationship is distin-
guished from the inferior forms of phi/ia because their aim is not to get pleasure
or profit from each other; yet their association is in fact both beneficial and
pleasant, not just in their own eyes, as all friendships are, but simply so
(8.3.l 156b13- 18). The friendship of the good is a standard, therefore, not just as
the highest type, but as comprehensive: it is teleia philia (l 156b7- 8), and the

13 Of course, even character, Aristotle eventually admits, can change in ways that make
the preservation ofa friendship impossible (9.3.l 165bl4-35).
110 RONNA BURGER

ambiguity of this characterization-complete friendship or the most perfect friend-

ship-is essential to its status. 14 It is philia in the primary sense (8.4.l 157a3 l), not
just because it is best, but because it encompasses all the grounds for friendship.
And it is only to the extent that they resemble this primary form that relationships
aimed at pleasure or utility count as forms ofphilia at all.
While both inferior species can be identified as friendship by analogy to the
primary form, relationships motivated by pleasure, Aristotle stresses, bear a much
closer resemblance. This is evident from the typical relationships of youth in con-
trast with those of old age. Older people, who are likely to seek profit in
friendship, may genuinely wish each other well, but they don't necessarily take
pleasure in each other's company and therefore do not want to spend their time
together. Young people, on the contrary, being drawn to friendship by pleasure,
are eager to "live together" (suzen ); but it is living together that makes the jp<>ten-
tial of friendship an actuality. Pleasure, then, is the instrument through which
nature drives us toward the actualization of friendship (8.5.l 157a6-8, 16-18).
Friendships based on pleasure are closer to the primary form for another reason:
such relationships are more likely to obtain between individuals who are alike,
whereas relationships based on utility are almost by definition between unlike
individuals, insofar as each seeks in the other what he lacks and needs. With each
partner engaged in calculating the profit to be gained from their association, the
very claim to be friends seems to invite deception, or self-deception, about the
grounds for their association. Friendships based on utility, consequently, provide
the most fertile ground for complaints and recriminations. 1s
Aristotle calls upon eros as the paradigm of a relationship motivated by
unlike and potentially conflicting aims (8.4.1157a6-16). 16 The association of
lover and beloved thus stands in the sharpest contrast to the perfect friendship of
the good, with two like partners each directed toward the other in the sam,e way.
But even a friendship based on pleasure or utility could display some strength and
stability, Aristotle allows, as long as each partner received the same or similar
benefit from the other; at least this would be the case, he adds, when it is pleasure
from the same source that the two friends offer each other, as in a friendship
between two witty people. In an erotic relationship, by contrast, the lover's

14 This ambiguity first appeared in the characterization of happiness as "teleios"

(1.7.1097a28- bl), then as a characterization of the te/eia virtue in accordance with
which some activity of soul constitutes the human good (1098al6--18). Cf. the
ambiguity of te/eios in the "dictionary" of Metaphysics L1 ( 1021 b3 l- l 022a 1).
15 An examination of these complaints and recriminations is undertaken in chapter 13
of Book VIII (see especially l l 62b5~).
16 As an attraction of opposites, the erotic relationship presented here is the human
equivalent to the cosmological principle expressed in the verses Aristotle originally
cited from Euripides: "Earth longs for rain" when dried up, and "Awesome heaven
filled with rain longs to fall to earth" (8. l.l l 55b3-4).
 The Non/over in Aristotle s Ethics 111

pleasure comes from gazing at the beloved, but the beloved's from receiving the
attentions of the lover, and when the bloom fades, the former lover no longer
finds pleasure in the sight of the individual who was once his favorite, and he, as
a consequence, no longer receives the lover's attentions. 17 It is possible, Aristotle
grants, that in some cases the two remain friends, if they have come in the course
of time to appreciate each other's character; but friendship in that case is a
replacement for, and not an integral feature of the erotic relationship. Aristotle
speaks here in the language of Lysias' non-lover, who tries to seduce a beautiful
boy by persuading him of how much more advantageous and enduring a relation-
ship he offers, with each partner looking to his self-interest, than any association
with the lover, who is by his own admission out of control. 18 As the concealed
lover in Socrates' revision argues, the lover is not only harmful in every way to
his favorite, but also most unpleasant, and the only way he induces his favorite to
endure him is by the promise of future benefits; but he is bound to forget those
promises once his passion ceases, and mind and moderation take over from eros
and madness. 19
This depiction of the erotic relationship continues with its last appearance in
Book VIII (8.8.1159b 16-19). The essential nature of friendship, as proverbial wis-
dom has it, is "equality and similarity" (philotes is isotes and homiotes); but this
is most perfectly instantiated by those who are alike in virtue, whereas relation-
ships based on utility are likely to hold between opposites, since each turns to the
other seeking something he lacks. One might "drag" into this class, Aristotle
remarks, the relationship between lover and beloved, or between a beautiful and
an ugly person. Lovers, consequently, appear ridiculous when they demand to be
loved: if they were worthy of it, that would make sense, but what if there is
nothing lovable about them? If eros is subject to the requirement of justice, it
must be on the distributive principle, and the lover can only expect to be loved to
the degree of his worth. This is, once again, the argument of the nonlover, who
tries to dissuade the beloved from feeling obligated to requite the lover's feelings
just because the lover happens for the moment to have those feelings. If the
beloved were to look to his self-interest, he would realize that he should grant his

17 The relationship is even more unstable, Aristotle observes, when lover and beloved
exchange pleasure for gain; but such a relationship as later described (9. l. l l 64a3- l l)
looks indistinguishable from the exchange of pleasures just depicted.
18 See Phaedrus 231 a-b. According to the non lover, he can devote himself to the inter-
ests of the beloved in a way the lover never could, precisely because, as Rosen puts
it, he "acts from freedom rather than necessity, in a sober and businesslike manner,
which does not interfere with an efficient and technically accurate calculation of prof-
its and losses" (''The Nonlover in Plato's Phaedrus," p. 87).
19 See Phaedrus 240e-24 lb. Cf. Rosen's account of how "the concealed lover 'ration-
alizes' the prudential calculation of the nonlover by explicit emphasis upon the
subordination of desire to knowledge" ('"Socrates as Concealed Lover,'' p. 99).
112 RONNA B URGER

favors, not to those who beg for them, but to those who are able and willing to
repay him; and the non-lover, who has never neglected his own advantage and has
no regrets, should be in just such a position.2°
Eros seen through the eyes of the non lover makes one more appearance in the
Ethics, in the first chapter of Book IX (I 164a2-12). At this point-in the midst of
an extended examination of the complaints and conflicts that plague relationships
of diverse sorts- friendship as "equality and similarity" looks like a distant ideal;
the real question now is whether friendship can be achieved at all between
unequal partners. That seems to depend on the possibility of applying the principle
of distributive justice, in an assignment of rewards proportionate to deserts: for
such a friendship to be established and maintained, the inferior party must bestow
fondness relative to the worth of his superior. If affection could be measured and
controlled in this way, the association that results would be some kind of imitation
of the relationship between two individuals who are simply equals, which is sup-
posed to characterize friendship at its best. Aristotle calls upon the erotic
relationship, once again, to illustrate the problem. In economic associations,
money provides a common measure that makes exchange possible, but lover and
beloved have nothing analogous: each is trying to enter into an exchange that will
serve his individual interests without any common measure to render their offers
commensurate.21 The lover complains that his love is not requited-however
unlovable he may be-and the beloved that the lover fulfills none of his promises.
The one is seeking pleasure, the other utility, and neither loves the other person
in himself. The erotic relationship thus exhibits the defectiveness of the two
inferior forms of friendship together, and it looks, thus far, as if there is no higher
standard in the case of eros equivalent to the perfect friendship of the good. A
transformation in this Uflderstanding of eros, equivalent to Socrates' palinode,
proves to require, as its necessary condition, that philia too undergo a
reinterpretation.

20 See Phaedrus 233d-234a. The whole argument, Rosen proposes, is a legitimate

criticism of the general teaching of the Symposium, which identifies the erotic man
as the most needy: to gratify the most needy, the nonlover argues, is to gratify the
worst rather than the best. The nonlover's exoteric teaching- "one should gratify
those on whose pensions (ousia) one can rely"~ontains an esoteric teaching-"one
should gratify those who already possess the good or ousia in the ontological sense
(233e-234c ). In sum: the baseness of Lysias' speech contains a serious teaching, or
rather two serious teachings, in however ironical a form. As always in Plato, the low
prefigures the high ..." ("The Nonlover in Plato's Phaedrus ," p. 90).
21 "There is to be an exchange of goods," Rosen explains, "or a wholesale rather than
a retail business contract" ("The Nonlover in Plato's Phaedrus," p. 87). Intimacy
with the non-lover, Socrates warns at the end of his second speech, is mixed with
"mortal and thrifty economizing," which begets a lack of freedom in the soul
(Phaedrus 256e).
 The Non/over in Aristotle s Ethics 113

2. The Friend as an Other Self

Just when the discussion of friendship seems to be completed-having descended
from the perfect friendship of the good to an analysis of the various conflicts and
disappointments that come with our attachments to others- it starts all over again
in the fourth chapter of Book IX, with the idea of the friend as an "other self."
This new beginning marks a decisive moment, not just in the analysis of friend-
ship, but in the understanding of the human being that underlies the argument of
the Ethics as a whole. The aim at the outset of the inquiry was to discover
happiness or the good for a human being; but the human good was first identified,
"in outline," as an "activity of the soul in accordance with complete or perfect
virtue" ( l 098a 16-18), and human virtue, in turn, was declared to be that of the
soul, not of the human being as a whole. We do not realize how much has been
taken for granted until the designation of the friend as an other self in Book IX
leads, for the first time, beyond the abstraction of the soul to the notion of the
human being as a self. That it has taken so long to arrive at this subject comes as
a surprise. Even more surprising is the claim about how it is to be understood: the
self, we are now told, is, or is most of all, mind. 22 This might be appropriate for
the contemplative self that appears in the tenth book: it is far from obvious how
it fits the self that emerges in and through the relation to the friend.
The self comes to light through a reconsideration of the whole preceding
discussion of friendship: an the features thought to characterize the harmonious
relation between two friends are now found to belong, in their primary form, to
the inner state of the decent person (9 .4. l l 66a3- 29). Such an individual desires
the same things with his whole soul (l 166al3- 15);23 he wishes the good things
for himself, because he does so for the sake of the intellectual part (to dia-
noetikos), which seems to be just what each individual is; he wants his life to be
preserved, but most of all the life of the thinking part (to nooun), which is what
each individual is, or is most of all. Only such an individual, precisely because he
alone can be said to have, or to be, a self, can be related toward a friend as he is
toward himself, for the friend is an other self (allos autos, 9.4.l 166a3- 34).
Friendship with another is the extension of an inner harmony, which has been
traced in turn to the identification of self as mind, or mind most of all.
22 See especially 9.4.l 166al5-27; cf. 9.8.l 168b34-1169a4.
23 Now that its place has been taken over by mind, "psyche" appears only in this state-
ment about the decent person and once again to describe the base person whose soul
is in a state of faction ( l 166b20). "Psyche" will appear again in Book IX only in the
proverbial formula "one soul" (9.8. l l 68b7) and in the description of the blameworthy
lover of self who indulges the irrational part of his soul ( 1l 68b20). It occurred just
once in Book VIII, in an aside comparing the relation of master to slave with that of
body to soul (8.I l.l 161a35). "Psyche" has, in fact, more or less disappeared from
the Ethics after Book VI and it will be conspicuously absent from the description of
the contemplative life in Book X.
114 RONNA BURGER

The base person, in contrast, is one whose soul is filled with faction
(l 167b7-20): always desiring one thing and wanting another, he cannot share in
his own joys and pains. Such a person cannot be said to have, or to be, a self at
all. This characterization entails a radical alteration of the premise at work
throughout the whole preceding investigation. Until this point, the akratic person,
who knows the right end but lacks the self-restraint to carry it out, has been
distinguished from the base or vicious one. The base or vicious individual was
supposed to be someone whose recognition of the right end is so destroyed that
his bad desires are in harmony with wrong judgment; but such an individual is,
apparently, no longer a real possibility. Everyone, it is now presupposed, has some
inkling of the good; the base person is someone who fails to desire with his whole
soul the good he perceives, and the consequence is the internal dissension that
makes friendship with another difficult or impossible.
The self, in its relation to the friend as an other self, is invoked one last time,
as the discussion of fri.endship draws to a close with the question whether friends
are required for happiness. The issue seems to be settled almost immediately with
a simple observation: no one would choose to have all the other goods if he had
to enjoy them alone, since the human being is by nature political and meant to live
together with others ( l l 69b 17-22). Yet what our political nature means is perhaps
not so obvious, since Aristotle apparently finds it necessary to offer a series of
arguments to demonstrate why we need friends for happiness. In doing so, he
introduces a new understanding of eudaimonia, which requires, we discover at
this late point, a kind of self-consciousness about one's life that was never
acknowledged before.
There is, we are now told, a particular pleasure, essential for happiness, that
comes with our awareness of ourselves acting. The pleasure has, in fact, a double
source, in contemplating actions that are decent and also one's own; but since we
are more able to contemplate others than ourselves, the good person needs serious
friends, in whose actions he can somehow see his own (I 169b3 l-1170a4).
Aristotle offers what he calls a "more natural" variant on this argument
(1170al3-bl9): it addresses the question of the need for friends on the most
primary level, which concerns what it is to be alive. For all animals, being alive
is being aware; for non-human animals that means perceiving, for humans it
means perceiving and thinking. Perceiving or thinking brings with it an awareness
of doing so; that means we are aware of our own being, and that is pleasant. But
if the perception of ome's own being is desirable, and the friend is an other self
(heteros autos), the perception of his being is as desirable, or nearly so.24

24 What we might have expected from this argument is the conclusion that one needs
self-awareness for happiness but can only acquire it through the awareness of one's
friend. Instead, the argument seems to asswne a primary awareness of oneself that
can be extended to awareness of the friend. The perception of one's friend's life and
its goodness enriches what must already be perceived as a desirable life of one's own;
 The Non/over in Aristotle s Ethics 115

Therefore, the argument concludes, one should "perceive together"

(sunaisthanesthai) with one's friend one's own being and that of one's friend. But
this comes about, as one last remark clarifies, through living together; and while
living together for cattle would mean feeding together, for human beings it means
sharing speeches and thoughts.
The opening argument located a pleasure in our awareness of the decency of
our own actions, which is made more available through contemplation of the
actions of one's friend; this "more natural" argument indicates how the friend can
be, not just the object of my apprehension, but recognized as another subject,
undergoing the same experience of awareness I have of myself. In the contempla-
tion of action, the friend could be nothing more than a mirror for the self; only
in speaking together is it possible to discover the differences that individuate us. 25
Sharing speeches and thoughts is motivated by and in turn produces an awareness
of one's partial perspective or incompleteness: it introduces into friendship the
possibility of some kind of longing, which the friendship of the good seemed to
preclude. The emergence of the dialogic self, for this reason, provides the condi-
tion for the appearance of a new understanding of eros in relation to which the
Ethics' account of friendship will be completed.

3. Eros Thansformed
Eros, once it is no longer defined by contrast with the friendship of the good,
ceases to be construed as a relationship between unlike partners with conflicting
ends; in fact, the beloved as an active subject drops out and the only feature that
remains from the original portrait is the emphasis on vision. The context in which
this new understanding first appears is an analysis of goodwill (eunoia, 9.5).
Goodwill, though it is necessary for friendship, is not sufficient; we can feel
goodwill even toward a stranger. It seems to be the starting point, but only the
starting point, of friendship, in the same way, Aristotle proposes, as the pleasure
of sight is the arche of loving: no one loves without first being pleased by the
looks (idea), but one may enjoy the form (eidos) without necessarily loving. Only
when one longs for what is absent and desires its presence can one be said to love
(1167a5- 8). From its starting point in the lover's gazing at the beloved, eros
necessarily turns into longing; it is essentially an experience of distance, absence,
and incompleteness. Friendship, in contrast, as it develops out of good will intto
being together, is an experience of union, presence, and fulfillment.

and friendship is necessary to the extent that a life without that enriched perception
would be missing something desirable. As Aquinas puts it, the deficiency that
would result if the happy person did not have this awareness of a friend 's life is
contrary to the notion of happiness that calls for sufficiency (Commentary on the
Ethics 1912, translated by C.I. Litzinger, Dumb Ox Books, Notre Dame, Ind.,
1993, p. 578).
116 RONNA BURG ER

This contrast between eros and friendship appears one last time when the
"natural argument" for the necessity of friends is resumed and completed in the
final chapter of Book IX:
As seeing is most choiceworthy for lovers, and they choose this sense over the
rest, as that in accordance with which eros is and comes to be, isn't it thusly,
for friends, living together that is most choiceworthy? For friendship is
koinonia. And as one stands in relation to himself, thus he is toward his friend;
but just as the perception about himself, that he is, is choiceworthy, so it is in
regard to his friend; but the energeia of this comes to be in living together, so
this is reasonably what friends seek most of all. ( 1171 b29- 1I 72a l)

Seeing and "being together with" are two elements joined in the Platonic concep-
tion of eros, however paradoxically.26 Aristotle has split them, and assigned one
to eros, the other to philia: what sight is for lovers, living together (suzen) is for
friends. Sight, in fact, which was originally only the starting point of eros, now
seems to be its very being as well. The vision that is so desirable to lovers is not,
then, only an initial experience that arouses longing, but the very object of that
longing. It is not the contingent absence of a particular individual that evokes
such desire, nor his presence that would fulfill it: the beloved, on whom the lover
fixes his gaze, must point beyond himself to something else that is at a distance
and necessarily remains so. The lover takes pleasure, Aristotle observed, in the
sight of the looks and form of his beloved-the idea and the eidos (9.5.l 167a5-6):
eros, Aristotle suggests through his language, elevates the vision of the loved one
into the sought-for object of theoria. 27
The lover, who is defined by his longing for the vision of what is absent, can-
not be completed by union with the beloved; friends, on the other hand, are
defined by their living together in "communion" (koinonia). The discussion of
friendship concludes with a description of the forms that living together might
take: some friends drink together, some play dice together, others practice
gymnastics together and hunt together (sugkunegousin) or philosophize together
(sumphilosophousin) (9. l 2. l l 72a 1-6). Aristotle completes his account of

25 The friend was originally designated an al/os autos (9.4. I l 66a32), suggesting the
replication of myself in an other; as a partner in dialogue he becomes heteros autos,
forming a pair with me precisely because of the difference that makes him genuinely
other.
26 See, for example, Symposium 21 ld-e. Cf. Seth Benardete, "Socrates and Plato: The
Dialectics of Eros,'' Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung, 2000, p. 19.
27 It is the lover's sight of the godlike face of his beloved or "some idea of the body,''
according to Socrates' account, which inspires his recollection of beauty itself, as he
once glimpsed it on his flight to the "hyperuranian beings" (Phaedrus 251 a).
Aristotle speaks of the sight of the idea and eidos; what is strikingly absent is the
beautiful, as that which provokes erotic madness.
 The Non/over in Arfstotle s Ethics 117

friendship with an allusion to Socratic philosophy, whose definitive mark, one

might say, is the enigmatic connection between the hunting of the beings and the
hunting of beautiful youths. 28
Hunting begins with the recognition of what one lacks and the desire to attain
it, even while recognizing its propensity to escape from one's grasp. The longing
for what is absent was supposed to differentiate eros from philia; it seems to have
become in the end the basis for a certain kind of philia, between those who
"philosophize together." That friendship can only be understood in light of its
incorporation into itself of eros-not, apparently, the eros of each for the other,
as lover and beloved, but the eros they have in common that motivates their desire
to live together. This is, admittedly, not exactly a praise of the divine madness of
eros. But Aristotle's argument has traversed a great distance since the nonlover's
condemnation of eros. In every other form of friendship, the fulfillment of being
together stands at odds with the longing of eros; in the friendship of those who
philosophize together, philia and eros are conjoined, and necessarily S·O.
Philosophic friends live together by sharing speeches and thoughts, which seems
to be at once the realization of the political nature and the rational nature of the
human being. All other activities friends engage in, which only accidentally
require sharing speeches and thoughts, now look like various ways of aspiring to
the standard of sumphilosophein. 29 Through its incorporation of eros, the friend-
ship of those who philosophize together alone fulfills what phi/ia aims to be.

28 See, for example, lysis 206a and 2 l 8c, Laches l 94b, Protagoras 309a, Republic
432b, Symposium 203d- 204b, Sophist 222d-e.
29 Aristotle's apparently casual set of examples of how friends might spend their time
with each other included drinking together, playing dice together, and practicing
gymnastics together. All these activities seem to serve, at various moments in the
Platonic dialogues, as an image for philosophy (cf. for instance, the first two books
of Plato's Laws, Republic 487b, 503b-504a.).
Democracy in Motion
Some Reflections on Herodotean Politics

Clifford Orwin
University of Toronto

Reputations with posterity are notoriously difficult to foresee. Still, I feel

confident in predicting that Stanley Rosen's will not rest on his early essay on
Herodotus. He has simply written too much of value since, about too many other
great thinkers who, moreover, loom larger than Herodotus for people of today and
(ultimately) for Professor Rosen himself.
This being said, Professor Rosen resembles the elephant of the fable of the
blind men. Your experience of him depends on the side on which you approach him.
While I too have learned from his work on the likes of Plato, Montesquieu, Hegel,
Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, I don't regard myself as competent to
pronounce on it. I may be able to say something useful about Herodotus, however.
So I thought that I could make no more sensible contribution to honoring Professor
Rosen than by taking up that old but remarkably youthful essay of his. 1
Once having done so, however, I found myself in the grips of an optical
illusion. For my whole adult life I've looked up to Professor Rosen as older than
myself by an academic generation, an outstanding contemporary not of mine but
of my teachers. Yet in turning to his essay on Herodotus, I behold a Rosen nearly
a generation younger than I find myself now. The grizzled veteran eyes the brash
upstart. Warily, at first, but with increasing respect.
While Professor Rosen's essay on Herodotus expresses his understanding of
the work as a whole, he limits his systematic exposition to its first three books. In
what follows, I will build on his contribution as I pursue one of his leads into a
later book. Guided by Professor Rosen's reflections, we will review the celebrated
debate of the regimes (3.80-87). We will then turn to Book Five, territory untra-
versed by Professor Rosen, to compare the most famous analyses of democracy
uttered by Herodotus in his own name with those of his Persian debaters.

"Herodotus reconsidered," Giornale di Metafisica 18 ( 1963): 194-218. Reprinted

(minus most of its footnotes) in Herodotus, The Histories, Norton Critical Edition,
ed. Walter Blanco and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts (New York: W.W. Norton and
Company, 1992), 332- 56. As the first version is widely unobtainable, I will confine
my in-text references to the second.

118
 Democracy in Motion 119

I
Predictably, Rosen's claim in expounding Herodotus is that the latter was more
than just an historian; i.e., more than the "scientific" historians of ca. 1960 mis-
took him for being. Today the literature on Herodotus is strewn with the
preoccupations of postmodemism, but in 1963 a more positivistic view of history
still prevailed. That Rosen published his study in the Giomale di Metafisica itself
expressed the vast distance between his Herodotus and that of the latter's profes-
sional custodians, as did his decision to begin the study with a theoretical
discussion. Having raised with the assistaJ].ce ofThucy~id~s the question of how
"history ... differ[ed] from, and [was] related to, philosophy." (emphasis in the
original, 334), Rosen asserts that "this problem takes its decisive form in the work
of Herodotus." The extraordinarily rich paragraphs that follow, which compare
Herodotus with Thucydides and each of them with both Homer and Plato,
conclude with a magisterial pronouncement.
setdown
For Homer and Herodotus, there is somethi~~ in the nature of things which for-
bids the public transcendence of the ancestral. At this point the public and
private teaching correspond. . . . The absence, or allusive presence, of
philosophy on the surface of Herodotus' writings is thus a prelude to
Thucydides' silence about philosophy. The inquiries of Herodotus and
Thucydides are a preparation for modem "history" insofar as both men are
antagonists to philosophy in the Socratic sense. . . . Both are related to
Heracleitus, and consequently to each other, in the following way. Herodotus'
teaching is in essence the teaching of Homer, and Homer, as Socrates points
out, makes all things subservient to motion. One could not say the same about
Thucydides, but his main theme is also kinesis. . .. With the massive excep-
tion of Parmenides, the pre-Socratics . . . like the thinkers of modernity, are
obsessed with kinesis, and kinesis is the father of history. (337- 38)

End setdown..
..Kines is is the father of history." Herodotus has his own way of putting this.
setdown
I will go forward in my account, covering alike the small and great cities of
mankind. For of those that were great in earlier times most have now become
small, and those that were great in my time were small iri the time before.
Since, then, I know that man's good fortune never abides in the same place,
I will make mention of both alike. (1 .5)2

2 Except where otherwise noted, translations of Herodotus are those of David Grene
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
120 CLIFFORD ORWIN

End setdown
Thus much of cities; what, however, of regimes? In the very first pages of his
work, Herodotus speaks of human beings both Hellenic and barbarian (whose
great deeds he seeks to rescue from the abyss of becoming and therefore for-
getfulness) (I.I). The distinction among regimes is not as significant for his
work as that between Hellenes and barbarians. The very existence of non-
monarchic regimes is peculiar to the Hellenes. Among the Hellenes, however,
despite their common ways in most other respects, differences of regime are
crucial. ~o-operation of Athens and Sparta to preserve the freedom of
Hellas in · -· Persian threat presupposes their common Helle~srn.
Yet it also discloses strengths unique to t e regime of each city that comple-
ment those of the other. It is only from this interplay between their sameness
and their differences that the salvation of Hellas arises.

Sparta's mixed regime was of course peculiar to her. By contrast, several

cities known to Herodotus were democracies at least some point in their respec-
tive histories. Athens was unique among them, however, in realizing the potential
of democracy. While he cites her at 5. 78 as demonstrating the excellence of isago-
ria ("an equal say for all"), no other "isagoric" city appears to have equaled her
in the respect there indicated.
Be this as it may, both Sparta and Athens have known great changes not only
of magnitude but of regime, and Herodotus presents the former as having
depended on the latter. Sparta became solid and therefore powerful only through
the reforms of Lykourgos (l .65; cf. Thucydides 1.18); Athens dynamic and there-
fore powerful only through those of Solon and Kleisthenes (5.78). While
Herodotus may not go so far as to say with Aristotle that a city that changes its
regime becomes thereby in the crucial respect a different city (Politics 1276ab),
he does stress that the Sparta and Athens of "after" the transition to their current
regimes were unrecognizable as those of "before." Both, having been "small,"
have become "great" thanks to these regimes.

II
As it is primarily through war that cities wax and wane, so it is in war that the
effects of the different regimes are starkest. It is therefore on th~ir _suitability for
war that the cases for the different regimes must rest, if not wholly then least at
substantially. This already emerges from the "debate ·ofthe· regimes" at 3 .80-82.
This discussion among Persian grandees over which. regim~:~ best to
establish in Persia is the oldest such dispute in Hellenic and so in world litera-
ture. 3 It is also justly one of the most celebrated episodes in Herodotus.

3 I Samuel 8 doesn't qualify because no alternative to kingship is considered; but

consider Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 6.35-44 [and cf. 4.223-24), for a
 Democracy in Motion 121

When the confusion had settled, five days later, the conspirators against the
Magians held a debate about the entire condition of affairs. Here speeches
were made that some of the Hellenes refuse to credit, but the speeches were
made for all that.
Herodotus does not here elaborate this remark. As later emerges, however, if
Hellenes will find these speeches incredible it is because as Hellenes they ascribe
to barbarians an unquestioning acceptance of despotism (6.43).
In fact, however, as Rosen shows, and as others have since elaborated, the
debate is thoroughly embedded in its "Persian" narrative context. As the conspir-
ators against the Magi have consulted together at every earlier stage of their
endeavor, so would we expect them to do so now. There is rough parity among
them, the Persian nobility being one whose members are deemed equal ("peers,"
homoioi). There is presently no king to overawe them, nor can a new one emerge
except by their doing. For with the overthrow of the false Smerdis, Persia finds
itself not only without a king but even without a monarchic regime. While the
Hellenes of Herodotus' day might reasonably take Persian despotism for granted,
the supposed date of this debate is a century earlier. The Persian polity was still
quite young at that time (only fifty years from its origin), and had known only
three kings, of whom the second and third had been mad and a usurper, respec-
tively. Only the founder, the great Cyrus, had so acted as to enhance the prestige
of monarchy, and after just one generation of unworthy successors, his line was
now completely extinct.4 As for the plausibility of Persian grandees entertaining
such typically Hellenic notions as democracy and oligarchy, remember that of all
peoples the Persians are the most ready to adopt foreign practices ( 1.135).
Not only is it plausible that the Persians would conduct this debate under the
circumstances in which they do, but it's questionable whether any other people
would have done so. Certainly Herodotus' Hellenes evince no comparable open-
mindedness on the question of the best regime. In the debate, after all, both
democracy and oligarchy, regimes never practiced among the Persians, get their
day in court, and monarchy must vie with them on equal terms. Among the
Hellenes, by contrast, for whom oligarchy or democracy is the rule, the case for
monarchy is never heard.5 It is not to the Hellenes, then, that Herodotus' reader

reworking of the passage in Samuel that supplies this defect on the basis of the
intervening Hellenic discussions of which this in Herodotus was the first. (The
Antiquities dates from ca. 95 C.E.)
4 We hear at 3.88 of a daughter of Cyrus' murdered son the true Smerdis, but there is
evidently no royal succession through the female line.
5 The only systematic exploration of the theme of rule by one is the great speech of
Sokles the Corinthian (5 .90). As a discussion of the advisability of instituting a
monarchy, the conference of the Lakedaimonians and their allies at which Sokles
speaks parallels the debate of the grandees. The issue, however, is not whether any
122 CLIFFORD ORWIN

must look to find a reasoned debate in which democracy is called upon to vie on
even terms with its rivals. Hellenic hatred of despotism serves not to encourage
free debate but to suppress it. 6
So it is that only among these Persian grandees do we find the conditions
necessary for democracy to receive a fair hearing-no less and no more. Only
here, with all regime options fleetingly open, does each contender make itself
heard in the absence of an already established order which ipso facto would have
served to suppress debate.
The previous councils of the conspirators have disclosed striking differences
among them. That Otanes should now advocate democracy and Dareios monar-
chy or despotism seems fully in character for both. Otanes had been the first to
confirm beyond all doubt that the ruling Smerdis was an impostor, and had
accordingly been the one to initiate the conspiracy against him (3.68-70). At no
point, however, does he display the ambition to become the ruler himself. He is
indignant at the notion that he, a Persian noble, should be ruled by a Median
Magus, but he never evinces an inclination to take his place. The subject of his
speech, appropriately, is the evil of being ruled, and his suggestion, that one can
avoid being ruled by abolishing monarchy.
At the same time the onward rush of the events of the conspiracy has
disclosed Otanes as lacking in decisiveness (3.71- 78). Though Dareios was the
last of the seven grandees to enlist in the conspiracy, he was the only one after
Otanes himself to do so entirely at his own initiative. Dareios, moreover, enters
on this bold course without even the certainty that the ruler is a usurper that
Otanes had gone to such risk to achieve. In every crisis that has arisen thus far,
Dareios has succeeded in wresting the ascendancy from Otanes- a fact that
augurs poorly for the latter's prospects in the current debate.

of the cities present should acquiesce in monarchy in its own case, but whether they
should assist Sparta in reimposing tyranny on fledgling democratic Athens. There is
no disagreement among the speakers in this debate on the badness of tyranny for the
city subjected to it; it is precisely because tyranny will cripple Athens that the
Spartan king KJeomenes wishes to inflict it on her. Hippias, the once and (so he
hopes) future tyrant whom Kleomenes is bent on restoring, responds to Sokles'
fierce attack on tyranny by threatening the assembled cities with the specter of a
powerful Athens. He implicitly accepts Sokles' claim that tyranny sucks the life out
of a city. While (or because) tyranny knows no limits- Periandros went so far as to
violate the corpse of his wife and then, to appease her angry spirit, shamed all the
women of Corinth- the city subject to it is easily limited. The cities assembled at
Kleomenes' behest thus share a common interest in avoiding tyranny and in impos-
ing one on Athens. In the end, however, the enormity of the evil to be inflicted on
Athens deters them.
6 In fact Sokles' animus toward the rule of one drives him to abstract even from the
distinction between democracy and oligarchy, the better to unite the partisans of both
in unwavering hostility toward tyranny.
 Democracy in Motion 123

Otanes' brief against monarchy is powerful. He begins by appealing to his

fellow conspirators' experience of the hybris of both the madly murderous
Kambyses (3.16-38) and the usurping Smerdis (3.61- 79) His subsequent argu-
ment anticipates that for which we celebrate Lord Acton: he insists that absolute
power corrupts absolutely even the very best of men. In vain do you assert that as
the best man you are worthy of monarchy; even if your claim to be the best is
valid, your claim to rule is not, for the virtue on the basis of which you lodge it
will not survive your accession to the throne. Tacitus' famous epigram on the
Emperor Servius Galba ("Greater than a subject he seemed, while he remained a
subject, and all would have acclaimed him worthy of rule, had he never
ruled") 7-is true of every pretender to kingly virtue. There is therefore no plau-
sible argument for the rule of the one best.
The specific case against monarchy runs as follows. The advantages of the
king breed insolence or outrage (hybris). and envy is inbred in (or natural to,
emphyetai) all. So monarchy fosters the former without (as one might have
supposed) appeasing the latter. In elucidating the psychology of this, Otanes
openly calls the monarch a tyrant. Possessing all good things, he ought to be free
of envy (aphthonos). In fact, however, he begrudges the lives of the best or most
virtuous of his subjects but not those of the evildoers, and so himself is best
(aristos) at entertaining slanders. This is the distinctive "virtue" of a monarch:
that he is receptive to slander of the virtuous. Monarchy is the enemy of human
excellence: under it the best men fare the worst. (We might compare the jealousy
of the gods according to Solon or Amasis with the jealousy of the monarch
according to Otanes.) Is Otanes suggesting that precisely because the monarch is
the man who has everything in terms of material goods, he envies all the more
fiercely whatever of others he cannot possess, namely their virtues?
Besides which of all men the monarch is the most discordant, dissonant, or
out of tune (anarmostotaton; the term is a musical one). Does Otanes mean by
this self-contradictory? Measured praise is too little for the monarch; unstinting
praise, too much. He resents the former, suspects the latter, so it is impossible to
honor him without incurring his wrath. But the greatest (i.e., worst) things to be
said of him are that he overturns ancestral customs, raping women and executing
men without a trial. So monarchy, even where ostensibly guided by law (as it is
among the Persians) is inherently lawless. Just as the distinction between the best
man and others proves irrelevant to the case for monarchy, so does that between
kingship and tyranny, between legitimate rule and usurpation. All kings flout the
law; all are tyrants.
The worst evils arising under monarchy thus emerge as not incidental but
endemic to it. They proceed from the unworthiness of human nature as such to
bear monarchic power.

7 Histories, 1.49.
124 CLIFFORD ORWIN

The question is whether Otanes' praise of democracy is as conclusive as his

condemnation of monarchy. "But when the multitude rules it has first of all the
fairest name of all (or finest or noblest or most honorable: kalliston ), equality
before the law (isonomia) . ..." So the first argument in favor of the rule of
the multitude is from its name, and is therefore a merely nominal argument. While
the regime that Otanes praises sounds very much like demokratia, that isn't the
name under which he chooses to praise it. If isonomia is the finest name, then
demokratia must not be. But why not? Is it that while implies the rule of the
people, one distinct class in the city, over the other citizens (who thereby become
subjects rather than citizens), isonomia obscures this problem? The equality of
each before the laws implies that no citizen is subject to any other, all being
subject to the laws, and Otanes can think of nothing finer than the abolition of this
subjection.
Otanes' second reason in favor of isonomia is "that it does none of the things
the monarch does." The superiority of isonomia no longer figures as merer~ nom-
inal, but it does emerge as wholly negative: it is the best regime just insofar as
monarchy is the worst one. What distinguishes isonomia is the absence of the
concentration of power definitive of monarchy. Isonomia features election by lot,
rotation in office, the accountability of officeholders, and an assembly in which
all deliberate about what is common. 'T he officeholders do not rule, they merely
execute; only the community as a whole enjoys the final say about what concerns
it as a whole.
There is something somehow "modern" or "liberal" in the negativity of
Otanes' approach. Politics emerges from his speech as a matter not of aspiring to
the heights but of avoiding the depths. Monarchy is the worst alternative because
it inevitably fosters oppression; best will be the regime that reliably minimizes it.
That regime is isonomia, conceived as the regime that is not a regime, in which
all rule and therefore none do, because no one is ruled by anyone else. Now this
is precisely the goal of the modern political project at least until the Nietzschean
reaction against it: most visible, doubtless, in Marx, but fully present already in
Hobbes. 8 Perhaps the modern thinker whom Otanes most anticipates is
Montesquieu, who shares the negative political orientation of Hobbes but for
whom the summum ma/um from which to take our political bearing is not the state
of nature but despotism, that scourge of actual societies.
Democracy as Otanes has sketched it is not a regime in motion. He presents
it as stable internally, and as at rest externally. In both respects he presents his pre-
ferred regime as static rather than dynamic, and in both respects the subsequent
speakers will set out to refute him.

8 See Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr, "Hobbes and the science of indirect government,"
American Political Science Review ( 1970) and my "On the sovereign authorization
[in Hobbes];" Political Theory 3.1 (1975).
 Democracy in Motion 125

The problem that Otanes has set out to resolve is that of domestic oppression;
this explains why relations with other societies receive no mention in his speech.
Yet has he solved even this first problem? He sketches what we would call the
"rule of law;" it is before the law that aH are equal. But this abstracts from the
question of the origin of the law.9 Evidently Otanes would place this origin in to
pfethos, "the multitude, " which figures both at the beginning of his account of
isonomia and again near the end. "The ruling multitude, on the other hand, is
called by the fairest of names." "So let us put an end to monarchy and exalt the
multitude, for all things are in the majority."
Yet this last statement discloses the ambiguity of the term pfethos. By it
Otanes acknowledges that under isonomia the final authority in the city is to
pol/on, not the pfethos as such but only the greater part of it. The pfethos so
understood is merely the majority, which as such contains not all but only some
things, and quite possibly not the best ones.
As the rule of the minority by the majority, of one part of the city by another,
is not Otanes' isonomia as liable to abuse as any other kind of rule? And if so,
does not the question of the character of the ruling part necessarily take center
stage, for all of Otanes' efforts to avoid it? If it was on the character of the
monarch- which is to say ultimately on the highly fallible nature of human
beings as such-that the case against monarchy rested, must not the p/ethos be
made to answer for its own character? It is just this weakness on which the
following speaker, Megabyzos, will seize.
Megabyzos is the most obscure of the three speakers on this occasion. He
plays no other role in the work, either before or after, except as one of the seven
conspirators. We learn no more of him than that he was co-opted into the
conspiracy by Gobryas, who seems the noblest of the conspirators- I conclude
this on the basis alike of his speech at 3.73 and his action at 3.78-and that he him-
self fathered the noblest Persian of all, Zopyros (3 .150-60). On the basis of this
little that we do learn about him it ought not surprise us that he champions aris-
tocracy in this debate.
Megabyzos' rhetorical strategy is to endorse Otanes' sweeping condemnation
of monarchy while claiming that it applies a fortiori to the rule or power (kratos)
of the p/ethos. Nothing is less intelligent than the crowd (homilos) which just a
sentence later becomes the "unbridled plebs" (demos akolastos). The truth of the

9 While the universal kingship of nomos or convention (3.38) points to the primacy of
claims of knowledge of the divine (Rosen, 339-40), political nomoi among the
Hellenes were not generally held to be descended from the divine. (Here the laws of
Crete and Sparta were the notable exceptions.) Nor, evidently, among the Persians,
or else the current debate would not be possible for them. The authority of the
ancestral, which is that of the divine, has fallen into suspension: while Dareios will
appeal to it at the culmination of his defense of monarchy, still not it but the will of
the conspirators reigns authoritative for the decision at hand.
126 CLIFFORD ORWIN

rule of the whole is indeed the rule of a part. Megabyzos unmasks isonomy as a
euphemism for democracy.
While Megabyzos does offer an affirmative case for aristocracy, we will
follow Rosen in stressing the extent to which his speech conforms to the pattern
set by Otanes: the few best are qualified to rule for the inverse of the reason that
the unbridled plebs is not. At the core of Megabyzos' speech lies his concern with
mind (nous) (Rosen, 348-49).
Nothing is more witless or insolent than a useless throng; for men to flee the
insolence of the tyrant only to fall upon that of the unrestrained people is
nowise to be borne. When the tyrant acts, he does so knowingly, but the mob
acts in ignorance. For how could it understand when it was neither taught, nor
can it see for itself, the noble and fitting, but dashes upon the [public]
business like a torrential river. 10

The demos is motion, and therefore hybris incarnate; lacking as it does the
principle of mind, so it does all moderation. This fine paragraph of Megabyzos
evokes a matching one from Rosen.
The intensity ofMegabyzos' concern for intelligence is matched by the degree
of violent stupidity which he attributes to the mob. Here again we have the
repudiation of motion: the rabble is the political equivalent of the chaotic
beginnings, the flowing river of Homer, Hesiod, and Heracleitus. (349)
Democracy brings descent into chaos; reversion to what to a modem reader
will recall Hobbes's state of nature. Democracy can be said to triumph only in a
negative sense: as power unguided by intelligence, it is a formidable foe to itself
only. "Let those who mean evil (kakon ... nooei) to the Persians be subject to the
demos." Just as the English mean is cognate with mind, so Megabyzos employs
an idiom for intention that is cognate with nous. Let not the Persians but those
minded on evil toward them fall under the sway of the people and so into mind-
lessness. As a rushing torrent of popular passion, democracy does not sound
peace-loving, but a city subject to it would be hampered not helped in its capacity
to wage war. Megabyzos advances the argument bey'Ond where Otanes had left it
by introducing the issue of foreign policy. Democracy looks worst where the
stakes are highest, for there so too would be the penalties for mindlessness.
Megabyzos' aristocrats, conversely, would be as pre-eminent in mind as the
people is lacking in it; resplendent in domestic matters for their justice, they
would save the city in foreign ones through their superior prudence.
To Magabyzos' critique of democracy Dareios adds one of his own. If his
speech were to follow the pattern established by Otanes and refined by
Megabyzos, it would discredit oligarchy by tarring it with the same brush as

10 The final two sentences of this translation are Rosen's (348-49).

 Democracy in Motion 127

monarchy and democracy. It would go on to introduce a fourth and previously

unmentioned regime as preferable. Dareios does begin as expected by indicating
that he will quarrel with Megabyzos' account of oligarchy. (This he has already
begun to do simply by following Herodotus himself in characterizing Megabyzos
as a spokesman for oligarchy, thus implying that aristocracy served him a euphe-
mism for a reality much less prepossessing.) But Dareios cannot stick with the
pattern of Otanes' and Megabyzos' speeches, for he has no fourth regime up his
sleeve to promote. Rather he wishes to return to the regime that both of the
previous speakers had agreed in blackening. His challenge is to defend the only
regimes of which so far only ill has been spoken.
How is Dareios to respond to Otanes' powerful indictment of monarchy, in
which Megabyzos has fully ·concurred? His ingenious solution is to argue that if
we take each of the three regimes at its best, monarchy will prove to far outstrip
the others. He thus seems to defer to his colleagues' praise of their respective
choices; he need only show that monarchy at its best trumps both oligarchy and
democracy at theirs. So stated this strategy might remind us of Aristotle's account
in the Politics, according to which of the three "correct" regimes-i.e., of the rule
of one, few, and many at their finest- the rule of the one most virtuous, monarchy
in the true sense, comes to sight as the best of all. 11 Is this what Dareios means?
Not exactly.
Dareios begins with a brief but fervent praise of monarchy, on the premise
that the king is the best of men, combining wisdom with decisiveness. This is
indeed to take monarchy at its best, as Dareios implies no concession that things
might be otherwise with monarchy or that it might be prone to abuse or decline.
He effectively ignores Otanes' claim that the greater decisiveness and expedition
of the monarch compound the evils of monarchy.
What then of Dareios' claim to take not just monarchy but democracy and
oligarchy at their best? Here "taking each regime at its best" assumes quite a
different meaning. However promisingly each may begin, it contains within itself
the seeds of its ineluctable decline, a decline from which there is no escape except
by means of monarchy. Oligarchs, however "aristocratic;" i.e., however avid to
display their virtue on behalf of the common interest, will for this very reason fall
to quarreling. "Each wishing to be chief of all and for his judgment to prevail,"
bitter enmity will result. The desire of the oligarch to serve the public is insepa-
rable from his ambition to be first in serving the public; each ambitious oligarch
naturally tends toward monarchy. From this arises violent strife among them, and
the eventual emergence of one of them as monarch in fact. "And in this manner
monarchy is shown to be best," i.e., better than oligarchy, the instability of which
is such that its inevitable outcome is monarchy.

II Such at least is Aristotle's initial, schematic statement (Politics 1279ab). His

elaboration of it, which conswnes the rest of Book 3, is complex and highly
ambivalent.
128 CLIFFORD ORWIN

But what of democracy? As Rosen was the first to discern, Dareios expresses
a certain inclination in favor if not of democracy, then at least of the people as a
class in contradistinction to the intriguing few (cf. Machiavelli, Prince, · Chapter
Nine). He presents the people as sinned against, not sinning: the problem with
democracy is that designs contrary to the good of the people are always arising,
doubtless from those ambitious few who would form the regime were it an oli-
garchy and who therefore conspire on behalf of oligarchy. In response a champion
of the people arises, perhaps not the most sincere of ones. Having repulsed the
subversive designs of the "evil-minded," he goes on to subvert the regime himself,
in the direction not of oligarchy but of kingship. This account is well grounded in
the Hellenic experience of tyrants like Peisistratos who began as defenders of the
people against the old landed families. Dareios somehow casts himself in this role
of a king who will rule primarily at the expense of those who most vigorously
contend for rule, the few, while maintaining the support of the people (Rosen
349- 50).
Monarchy is best, then, in relation to both oligarchy and democracy, because
even at their best their defects are such as to plunge the city into strife from which
only monarchy can save it. "Aristocracy "is not Megabyzos' regime of mind
because aristocrats will never be of the same mind, or if they are, it will only be
in the sense that each will be of a mind to rule. Regimes of the few no less than
those of the many are given to random .and destructive motion.
But what clinches Dareios' case against both democracy and oligarchy is
his appeal to the example of Cyrus the Great, the great benefactor of the
Persians to whom they owe their freedom as a people. The cornerstone of
Dareios' position is a consideration absent from Otanes' speech and merely
implicit in that of Megabyzos when he wishes democracy on Persia's enemies. It is
the primacy of foreign policy over domestic and therefore of the demands of war
over those of peace. However alluring the notion of a city free of the exactions of
a ruler, the first concern of any people must be freedom from domination by other
peoples. Flux among factions at home will only subvert the Persians' ability to
maintain themselves in the flux that pervades the world outside.

III
What, however, is Herodotus' own view of these matters? In particular, what is
his verdict on democracy? Does he accept Otanes' case in its favor, or does he
incline toward the critiques of Megabyzos and Dareios? Or his is own position
somewhere in between, or even somewhere else entirely?
Neither the space remaining to me nor the state of my understanding will per-
mit me to address this question fully. I do propose to make a beginning, however,
and to do so in the most obvious way. We will examine the two most famous
remarks on the grandeur et misere of popular government that Herodotus offers
in his own name. As we might expect, these recall aspects of the earlier schematic
 Democracy in Motion 129

debate. They also advance the perspective on democracy as the politics of motion
ascribed to Megabyzos by Professor Rosen.
We will begin then with Book Five, Chapter 78, Herodotus' famous praise of
isagoria.
Now the Athenians increased [in power]. This makes it clear that not in one
respect only but in every way for all to have an equal say is a serious business,
seeing that while they were under tyrants the Athenians were no better in war than
any of their neighbors, yet once free of the tyrants they were first by a wide mar-
gin. This makes it clear that while they were held down they willing played the
coward, since they were working for a master, but once liberated each one strived
eagerly on his own behalf.
· This passage features yet another term for popular government, and the one
Herodotus takes up when he himself wishes to extol it. So again we will refrain
from calling the object of his praise democracy, because we must assume that this
distinction of terms is significant. Demokratia proclaims that the demos collec-
tively rules, that kratos or power rests with it (so Megabyzos at 3.81). lsagoria,
equality of speech, calls attention to a different feature of popular rule: that each
citizen enjoys an equal say in public matters. It captures the significance of the
transition to popular rule not from the perspective of the demos as a whole but
from that of each of the citizens.
Earlier we had occasion to comment on the "modernity" or "liberalism" of
Otanes' praise of democracy. By that we meant its negative orientation: Otanes
anticipates modernity by casting politics as a matter not of aspiring to a lofty
good but of avoiding a paramount evil. Herodotus' own presentation is different.
Rather than restate the case for popular rule offered by Otanes, he offers an
implicit retort to the critique of that case presented by Megabyzos. His brief for
the ascendancy of the people is not primarily a negative one. While Otanes
argues for democracy by stressing the evils of rule by one, Herodotus under-
lines the benefits of participation by all. Each, in working for the city, is
working for himself, not for any other; and each, in working for himself, is
working for the city.
From this it will appear that Herodotus' view of citizenship and of the clas-
sical city as its locus is far removed from those of Rousseau and his mentor
Montesquieu. His presentation foreshadows not the Rousseauian argument for
citizenship as the transformation of nature but the early liberal one in favor of the
emancipation of nature, which is to say of the individual. For Herodotus as for
Locke and Adam Smith, he will contribute most willingly to the common benefit
who least understands himself to be sacrificing for it. The common is most
common when experienced as most private, for then each devotes himself whole-
heartedly to an end which both is and is not identical with that of his comrades.
For this reason Herodotus understands the private as necessarily prior to the
emergence of the common in the political sense of that term. It is because the
130 CLIFFORD ORWIN

Hellenes, unlike certain of the more primitive peoples in the work, display a
highly developed sense of the private, that the Athenians, underachievers under
the tyrants, become such whirlwinds when granted isagoria. As isagoria emerges
only by contrast with tyranny, so the common itself emerges only by contrast with
the private. But in both cases the contrast is an imperfect one, for the common is
at the same time a certain development within the private. Under the tyrants, pol-
itics was a zero-sum game; w1!,_at was good for the tyrant and his clique was bad
for evewne else. but under isagoria What is good for each is good for all. If, as
Herodotus here claims, isagoria is a serious or zealous matter (chrema
spoudaion), that is because only it unleashes the spoude, the seriousness or zeal,
of each of the city's citizens. "Once freed each was eager (proethyme:eto) to
undertake deeds on his own behalf." Without denying that the sequel wm reveal
some problems to be ironed out- it's not as if Herodotus presents Athens as supe-
rior in all respects to Sparta-the initial indication is that this emancipation which
is at the same time the politicization of the individual's ambition on his own
behalf is a highly positive development.
Still, while this aspect of Herodotus' teaching parallels in some respects the
project of early modernity, we must note a crucial distinction. Not for him or his
Athenians the devolution of human strife from the political plane to the economic
or "social" one. The accomplishments of the new Athens unfolded on the field of
battle rather than in any peaceful pursuit. They increased their own city at the
direct expense of others. Freed of tyranny, they took to acting like so many
tyrants. That for which the Athenians were eager (proethymeeto, a term cognate
with thymos), was victory over other cities; that was the good of which each con-
ceived himself now to enjoy an equal share by virtue of his equal say. Viewed in
contrast with the rough spoude of the Athenians, liberal acquisitiveness seems a
designer passion, carefully crafted to split the difference between thymos and
eros-while "pacifying" both by promoting only "peaceful" competition.
Herodotus delivers his positive judgment of the new dispensation after
showing us just one example of Athenian democracy in warlike practice (5.77).
An astonishing example it is, however, as the very first action of the unencum-
bered Athenians to win two major battles in a single day against the Boiotians and
Chalkidians. This is the deed that strikes such fear into the Spartans that they
mount their abortive attempt to replace isagoria with the Peisistratids (5.90).
Someone else whose eye is on Athens is Aristagoras of Miletus. Aristagoras
is determined for crooked reasons of his own to organize a revolt of the Hellenic
cities ofAsia Minor from the Persian King. Rebuffed in his requests for assistance
by the Spartan king Kleomenes ( 5.49-51 ), Aristagoras turns next to Athens as the
second most powerful Hellenic city (5.97). (This confirms how quickly Athens
has risen in the world under the aegis of democracy.)
Aristagoras' plan for a revolt is a ibad one. He easily enlists the Athenians in
it. "'It seems," notes Herodotus drily, ·~pat~! is easier to fool many men than one;

-
 Democracy in Motion 131

K.leomenes the Spartan was only one, but Aristagoras could not fool him, though
he managed to do so to 30,000 Athenians" (5.97)
So we must balance Herodotus's recent high praise of the Athenians with his
deftly ingenuous comment here. Of course it was not for their wisdom that he had
lauded them earlier, but for their energy, which, as we saw, was essentially their
feistiness. It's just that feistiness that is on display here. The fact is that even prior
the appearance of Aristagoras on their doorstep, the Athenians have "resolved to
be openly at enmity with the Persians," who, following in the footsteps of the
Spartans, have arrogantly demanded of them that they take back the exiled tyrant
Hippias (5.96). So what we see now is that same spiritedness which the Athenians
had previously displayed against their Hellenic neighbors, newly focused on a
still more formidable enemy. It is not Aristagoras who deceives the Athenians so
much as their own anger at the Persians; he is merely the right machinator in the
right place at the right time.
Still, this episode raises many questions about democracy. Is the people as
feckless as it is energetic? Herodotus, who so recently seemed not only to endorse
Otanes' praise of democracy but to strengthen it by stressing the potency of the
people in foreign affairs, now echoes Megabyzus, whose rejoinder to Otanes
offered the most hostile critique of democracy to be found in the work. In partic-
ular his likening of the people in its mindlessness to a raging torrent resonates in
the present case: one feature of such a torrent is that it is subject to diversion. The
very vigor of democracy now appears its Achilles' heel: we can expect its worst
wounds to be self-inflicted. While Otanes had presented a vision of democracy in
which leadership nowhere figured, we can now see that Megabyzus was right in
pointing to leadership as the crucial problem. While Otanes had implicitly
rejected strong leadership as tending toward the oppression of the people,
Megabyzus deplores its absence from democracy. Obviously Herodotus here
endorses that view: led by its anger, the people is only too susceptible to being led
by its nose.
Which is to say that Herodotus' point of view, the great strength of demo-
cracy- ,...& success at mobilizing the previously private passions of the citizens on
'"-..l>ehalf of the puh!j~-is at the same time its potentially fatal flaw. Two incidents,
one from before and one from after the democratic transformation at Athens,
demonstrate both the power and the ambiguity of the politicization of the private.
On an unspecified earlier occasion, the Athenians had sent an expedition
against their longtime foes the Aeginetans from which only one man returned to
tell the tale. The women of the city, however, were not having any of his tale.
Swarming him in the midst of the public assembly, each in turn, asking what had
become of her husband, stabbed him with the iron pin of the brooch that fastened
her garments. And so he died. The male citizens, finding this violent outburst
even more upsetting than the disaster itself, passed a law forbidding their women
from wearing costumes fastened by brooches.
132 CLIFFORD ORWIN

The corresponding incident from the democratic epoch of Athens is as

follows. Late in the Persian Wars, after the Persian defeats at Artemision and
Salamis and the King's flight back to Persia, his viceroy Mardonios attempts to
detach the Athenians from the Hellenic confederacy. At this stage the Athenians
have abandoned their city a second time (having regained it once but finding
themselves unable to hold it for want of support from the other Hellenes), so the
entire city is camping out wretchedly at Salamis. Mardonios, seeing that even at
this late hour Hellas would be his for the taking if only Athens would step out of
his way, makes her an offer too good to refuse. The Athenian Lykidas moves
before his fellow members of the council that this proposal be put before the peo-
ple. But when the latter hear of his motion, they surround him and stone him on
the spot (9.5). "[And] when the Athenian women heard what was happening, one
woman summoned another and took her along, and they went at their own
prompting to [his] house, where they stoned to death his wife and children."
Obviously the Athenian women have adjusted to the loss of their brooch-pins.
In predemocratic Athens, even the most extreme behavior of the city's
women is normal in a certain sense. The widows remain domestic beings, each
responding to the general calamity as one to herself only. The intensity of their
private grief bursts all public bounds.
In the affair of Lykidas, on the other hand, the rage of the women, in emula-
tion of that of their husbands, erupts on behalf of the public. They are more
terrible than Madame Defarge, for no memory of private injustice suffered exten-
uates their vengefulness. It is entirely civic or disinterested. If they remain
somehow feminine it is in their vigilant attention to the private sphere: their men
would not have thought to stone Lykidas' widows and children. This is to say,
however, that the men would have respected the boundary between public and pri-
vate, while the women quite obliterate it. There could be no more extreme
instance of the democratic politicization of the private. Yet the obduracy of the
Athenian people, in tandem with the prudence of Themistokles, made the largest
contribution of any city to the salvation of Hellas (7.139). 12
So Herodotus' praise of isagoria at 5. 78 proves to refute Megabyzos' critique
of demokratia only imperfectly. To be sure Megabyzos was wrong in thinking that
the torrent of popular energy was destructive only and that therefore its emanci-
pation should be wished only on one's enemy. (In fact democratic Athens proves
Persia's most formidable enemy.) Yet as the episode of Aristagoras suggests, and
the stonings of Lykidas and his family confirm, the surge of popular passion tends
naturally to overflow its banks. Otanes' presentation of isonomia had been
entirely too bloodless; if the people's proneness to folly had escaped him, so too
had its uncouth vitality and stubbornness. Having eulogized the rule of the

12 To be sure the obduracy of the people depended on that of their gods (cf. especially
8.51-53, 8.65, 8.77, 8. 143 [but cf. 8.144], 9.7, 9.42-43, 9.65, 9.100-101, 9.116-20)
 Democracy in Motion 133

plethos as free of the vices of the rule of one, he had nothing further to say. His
grasp of democracy was only a negative one. Megabyzos, on the other hand, had
recognized the lack of leadership as democracy's greatest problem. The emanci-
pation of nature is at the same time the greatest power and the verge of chaos: it
threatens "the political equivalent of the chaotic beginnings."
Without passing beyond Book Three, Rosen in his essay has "tried to show
how Herodotus' conservative formulation of political freedom is linked to his
acceptance of the pre-Socratic (or pre-Parmenidean) teaching about nature or the
origins."
Man is free just because of his independence from the gods, because of the
chaotic origins. This motion is man's nature as well, it leads to the political
expansion and rise of civilization which culminates in the Persian war. (351)

Ultimately, it is impossible to restrain the force of motion; as Yeats put it,

"things fall apart, the center cannot hold." But Herodotus will do his best to
hold things together. (352)

We might say then of democracy that it is the regime in which the truth about
man and the world comes closest to being apparent. As the most dynamic it is in
a sense the most natural regime. Yet it is also the most liable to self-destruction.
Not only Herodotus but the democratic statesman who takes his bearings from
him "will do his best to hold things together." When Rosen speaks of"Herodotus'
conservative formulation of political freedom" he means to imply the political
necessity of veiling the truth of the natural primacy of motion, which is identical
with that of man's independence from the gods. If Rosen's Herodotus is intransi-
gently political, it is because he is (unlike the Herodotus of the scholars)
intransigently philosophical. Philosophy is higher than politics but depends on
politics: "true freedom depends upon the theoretically lower but practically indis-
pensable public freedom." Piety must inform and limit the public conception of
freedom, yet precisely in so doing it obstructs the way to freedom in the true or
private sense.
If Professor Rosen is right about this, then nothing could be truer or further
from the truth than the old perception of Herodotus as credulous in matters of
piety. In fact we will find him as skeptical of piety as he is solicitous of it. But
precisely in having followed Professor Rosen in identifying piety as Herodotus'
pivotal theme, I have disqualified it as a topic for an occasional essay, however
celebratory that occasion. Therefore my piece will end here. May it have served
to remind the reader of that early study of Herodotus on which Professor Rosen's
reputation won't rest.
Aristotle's Commonsensical Cosmology
David Roocbnik
Boston University

Aristotle's cosmology is, on the one hand, dead as a doornail. After all, among his
other claims are these: the heavenly bodies go around the earth on a fixed circu-
lar path; they are ontologically superior to, more "honorable" and "divine:" than
bodies found on earth; they are weightless and eternal. We know these statements
to be false, even laughably so. The sun, not the earth, is the center of our solar
system, the planets do not move in circular orbits, matter is homogeneous, and
stars have both weight and a history. Given these facts, what can Aristotle's cos-
mology possibly teach us today? Can it ever be anything more than an
antiquarian's relic?
The task of this essay is both to examine and defend the philosophical value
of the arguments Aristotle makes on behalf of his cosmology in De Caelo 1.1- 3.
As such, it is a test, or perhaps a limit, or a worst case scenario for the study of
his thought in general. While a contemporary "virtue ethicist" will, for example,
readily grant the significance and value of the Nicomachean Ethics, an analogous
claim made for his cosmology seems impossible. Unlike ethics, western science
seems to have progressed so far that it has left Aristotle deeply buried in the dust.
This paper will suggest otherwise. 1
The strength of Aristotle's cosmological argumentation lies in its reliance on
ordinary experience and commonsense, concepts explored in depth in Stanley
Rosen's The Elusiveness of the Ordinary. 2 Simply put, De Caelo begins with the
phenomena of ordinary experience, and then by means of the syllogism, which
itself emanates from ordinary experience, projects these phenomena onto the
heavens. The result is thus a commonsensical cosmology, an articulated world in
which human beings find themselves essentially at home. Citing the four features
of ordinary experience Rosen identifies, one could say that the Aristotelian
"heavens" exhibit "the inner connection between truth and goodness, the exem-
plification of a unified process, regularity, and comprehensiveness" (259) that we
are familiar with here on earth.

A early inspiration for this paper comes from Paul Feyerabend's essay, "In Defence
of Aristotle" in Progress and Rationality in Science, G. Radnitsky and G. Andersson
(eds); Boston: Reidel, 1978, pp. 144-80.
2 All quotations from Stanley Rosen, The Elusiveness of the Ordinary (New Haven:
Yale, 2002) will be indicated simply by a page number in parenthesis.

134
 Aristotle s Commonsensical Cosmology 135

The following sketches the arguments in De Caelo 1.1- 3 that conclude with
the statements that the heavenly bodies move in circular orbits and are ontologi-
cally superior to those found below the moon. The first three premises contain
basic elements of his physics.

1. There are three, and only three, magnitudes or dimensions: Lines are those
magnitudes divisible in one way (eph 'hen: 268a7) or direction; surfaces, in two
ways; and bodies, in three. Body is therefore the complete (teleion: 268a22) mag-
nitude.3 As we will discuss below, this coupling of the "three" and the notion of
completeness, or wholeness, is crucial to the entire argument.

2. Some bodies are natural, some not. Natural bodies have the principle of
motion in themselves, and move "according to place" (ldnesis kata topon:
268b 17), i.e., achieve locomotion. There are two general forms of simple locomo-
tion because there are only two simple magnitudes, namely straight and circular
lines. Because motion proceeding on straight lines has two directions, up or away
from the center (apo tou mesou) and down or towards the center (epi to meson),
there are three forms of simple motion. Thus, just as "body was completed (apete-
lesthe) by the number three, so now is its motion" (268b25).

3. There are four simple bodies: fire, earth, water and air. There are also com-
plex bodies compounded of these. Each of the simple bodies has a natural form
of locomotion, which is also simple. Fire and air move upwards in straight lines,
while earth and water move downwards in straight lines. Because there are three
forms of locomotion, there must be "a simple body naturally so constituted as to
move in a circle in virtue of its own nature" (269a7).

These dense passages are difficult to unpack. They rely on Aristotle's defini-
hon of a natural being as one with the principle of motion and rest within itself
(see Physics 11.x), his doctrine of the four elements, i.e., his proto-chemistry, and
his notion of a natural place and a corresponding natural motion. Implicit as well
is the location of the earth at the "center" of the world. For the moment, however
unlikely these assertions may seem, let them stand as is. They will be discussed
near the end of this essay. What is most relevant now is the way Aristotle argues.
In that regard, let us move forward.

4. The simple body that moves in a circle must be composed of a fifth

element unlike the four sublunary ones, all of which naturally move in straight
lines.

3 All citations from De Caelo come from the Loeb Edition, translated by W.K.C.
Guthrie (Cambridge, 1986). As is always the case with Loeb citations, line numbers
are not entirely precise.
136 DAVID ROOCHNIK

5. Circular motion is "primary" because the circle, unlike any other figure
composed of straight lines, is complete (teleion: 269a20). An infinite line cannot
be complete for the obvious reason that it has no end (telos), and a finite line
segment can always be extended (269a23). Because "a motion which is prior to
another is the motion of a body prior in nature," heavenly bodies are "more divine
than and prior to" (269a32) sublunar ones.

6. Aristotle sums up: ••Thus the reasoning (sullogizomenos) from all our
premises goes to make us believe (pisteuseien) that there is some other body sep-
arate from those around us here, and of a higher (timioteran) nature in proportion
as it is removed from the sublunary world (269b l 5r''

What is striking about these arguments is, as Aristotle himself indicates in 6.,
how "syllogistic" or "logical" they are. By assuming that there are three kinds of
simple locomotion (up, down, around) and that the four sublunary elements all
move in straight lines, a "slot" is open and must be filled: something must move
in a circle, and by this reasoning only the heavenly bodies are available to perfonn
such a task.
In order to attribute the qualities of weightlessness and eternity to these bod-
ies, Aristotle argues as follows:

7. The heavy is "that whose nature it is to move towards the center, the light
that whose nature it is to move away from the center" (269b25). Because all sim-
ple bodies have only one natural motion, the heavenly bodies moving in a circular
orbit have no weight.

8. The opposite of up is down, and of down up. But the circle has no oppo-
site. Because "everything that is generated comes into being out of an opposite"
and "opposites have opposite motions" (270al5), the heavenly bodies moving in
circular orbits are neither generated nor perish. "It looks then as if nature
correctly exempted from the class of opposites that which was to be ungenerated
and indestrucible" (270a20).

To appreciate the nature of Aristotle's argumentation, it is useful first to con-

sider some objections to it. Recall, for example, Francis Bacon's classic
complaint in the New Organon 1.13: "the syllogism is... no match for the subtlety
of nature. It commands assent therefore to the proposition, but does not take hold
of the thing." For Bacon, syllogistical science fails to apprehend the truth about
nature because it is essentially anthropomorphic. It projects human understand-
ing onto a field in which it does not belong. More specifically, "the human
undestanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order
and regularity in the world than it finds." Bacon's example of this tendency to
 s
Aristotle Commonsensical Cosmology 137

error is Aristotelian: "Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect
circles" (1.45). 4
On the one hand, Bacon is quite right in his diagnosis: Aristotle's cosmolog-
ical arguments are syllogistic. Because there are three forms of simple motion,
something must move in a circle and logic, not ruthlessly empirical observation,
dictates that this cannot be composed of a sublunary element. Such argument
does indeed "suppose" a strong sense of "order and regularity." Because
wholeness is triadic, and because the "cosmos" is just that, namely an ordered
whole, there must be three dimensions and three forms of simple motion. The
heavenly bodies move in a circular orbit because the argument dictates that some-
thing must.
Bacon is also right to characterize this sort of reasoning as anthropomorphic.
It projects a hwnan conception of order onto the heavens. As we shall see, rather
than being its weakness, this is precisely the argument's strength.
Aristotle's cosmology discloses celestial phenomena as they show them-
selves in ordinary experience. It explains the shape of the hwnan, naked-eye,
earth-bound, and commonsensical encounter with the world around and the sky
above. To elaborate, let us return to the first claim made above, namely that there
are only three dimensions, and that threeness and completeness form a concep-
tual pair. Aristotle defends this, the crucial premise of the entire argument, with
the following:

(1) ''There is no magnitude not included in these [the three dimensions]; for
three are all (to ta tria panta einai) and 'in three ways' (to tris) is the same as 'in all
ways' (pantei). For just as the Pythagoreans say, the all and all things has been deter-
mined (horistai) by the number three. For end (teleute'), middle (meson) and
beginning (arche) hold the number of the all, and their number is three. Hence it is
that we have taken this nwnber from nature, as it were one of her laws (268a9-13)."
The entire argument rests on the proposition that "three are all." This in tum
depends on Aristotle's conception of the "all" or the "whole."5 A whole is a unity
of parts, a structure constituted by a beginning, a middle and an end. Aristotle
neither explains what he means here nor defends his claim. He must, then, take it
as a given. But of what sort? I suggest it is a given of our ordinary experience

4 I do not suggest that Aristotle alone devised the notion of circular orbits. The
Babylonians probably conceived of the great circle or belt of the zodiac with its
twelve constellations. Anaximenes had a notion of the rotating sphere. Eudoxus
conceived of the sun, moon, and five planets occupying a set of ideal concentric
spheres uniformly rotating the earth.
5 In this context the two words can be treated as synonyms, although Aristotle differ-
entiates them in Metaphysics V.xxvi. Clearly his definition of the "whole" in that
context applies to the pan as discussed in De Caelo.
138 DAVID ROOCHNIK

which, just as Rosen has it, requires unity or wholeness. To elaborate and explain,
we must look elsewhere in Aristotle's writings.
Consider, for example, how Aristotle initially defines tragedy in the Poetics: it is
an "imitation of an action (praxeos) that is serious, complete (te/eias) and of a
certain magnitude ..." ( l 449b25). Later he reformulates: "tragedy is an imitation
of an action that is complete and whole (ho/es: 1450b25)," and he defines a whole
in the same terms he uses in De Caelo: "that which has a beginning, middle and
an end" (1450b27).6
A good tragedy must have a unified plot (muthos) structure. Plot, "the
arrangement (sunthesin) of the incidents" (1450a5), is also described as an
"imitation of the action" ( l 450a4), and so it becomes the central element, or as
Aristotle calls it, the "soul" (1450a37), of tragedy as such. Without a unified
narrative or plot, a drama is no more than a string of episodes. It is not only a bad
piece of work, but also a lifeless one.
A good tragedy requires narrative wiity because it is an imitation of a praxis.
Like many of Aristotle's critical terms, this one is equivocal. In the broadest
sense, it can refer to any kind of "doing" whatsoever. It names, for example, the
activities of animals (Historia Animalium 487a10). In the narrowest sense, such
a8 is found in Nicomachean Ethics, III. I (the discussion of the voluntary and
involuntary), it refers only to those specific actions human beings perform. There
is, in addition, an in-between sense, namely as a human life conceived neither as
an isolated action, nor as a sequence of merely biological activities, but as the
consistent and characteristic pattern of activity a human being engages in over a
long period of time. This is the sense Aristotle has in mind when he says in the
Politics (1325a32) that "happiness is a praxis." Happiness does not occur in an
isolated or single moment. It is the work ofa life-time. This sense ofpraxis comes
close to what Aristotle calls energeia in his definition of happiness in the Ethics
as "energeia in conformity with virtue" ( 1098b3 l ). 7
A tragedy imitates a praxis (or a portion of praxis) in this last sense. It must
have a unified plot structure because praxis conceived as a human life is a unified
whole. In a chronological sense, a life has a beginning, a middle and an end. We
begin in childhood, we mature, and at the end of our lives we decline. In order for
our lives to have any sort of practical unity and meaning, there must be a coherent
structuring of these parts. Human life, in other words, must have a narrative
structure. We must be able to tell our "stories." When it comes to an excellent
human being, such a story would have ithree main chapters: a childhood spent in
the successful absorption of a set of good habits inculcated by an attentive
community; a middle age spent flourishing, i.e., doing everything well that an

6 Translations from the Poetics are my own. The Greek text is S. Butcher, Aristotle s
Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (NY: Dover, 1951 ).
7 Translations from the Nicomachean Ethics are my own. The Greek text is I. Bywater,
Aristotelis "Ethica Nicomachea " (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962).
 Aristotle s Commonsensical Cosmology 139

excellent human being can and therefore should do; and an old age facing decline
and its inevitable suffering as well can possibly be expected.
As Rosen puts it, "the stories that we tell about ourselves are made possible
by certain pervasive traits of ordinary experience" (259). Primary among these
traits are ''unity and regularity" (266). For human life to have "meaning and
value" (267) it must be a unity of parts; it must be a whole. Consequently it must
have, broadly speaking, a beginning, middle and end.
To return to De Caelo: Aristotle begins with the phenomenon of wholeness
as threeness. He then projects this phenomenon onto the cosmos as such.
Although it is not chronological, the world has a story: it makes sense. The various
elements fit in their proper place. Again, Rosen is helpful in articulating this
Aristotelian, this anthropomorphic, move.

The unity and regularity of praxis, the domain of intellectual activity through
speeches and deeds, is itself dependent upon the unity and regularity of
existence, to which we sometimes refer... as the order of nature (266).

Consider a second example. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle defines

moral virtue as "a stable disposition involving choice and consisting in the mean
relative to us" (1106b36). (The word meson (1106b7) can also be translated, as it
is in De Caelo, as "center.") The mean is in-between excess and deficiency. So,
for instance, courage is the mean in-between fearing too much (cowardice) and
not fearing enough (recklessness). Like its narrative counterpart, the moral life is
structured triadically. The moral life can be lived well because moral questions
can be answered well. An excellent human being has good judgment and so when
facing a moral question-e.g., should I give money to the beggar?-can attain the
right answer. Because a right answer is possible, two wrong answers are also pos-
sible. One can give too much or too little to the beggar.
Aristotle no more defends (in a logical sense) the ·notion of the moral mean
in the Ethics than he does the statement "three is all" in De Caelo. He takes it as
a given. This is because he has such a strong sense of the intelligibility and the
meaningfulness, which in tum require the wholeness, of the moral life.. To
explain, consider his argument on behalf of the "highest good" in Ethics 1.2:

If then among our actions there is some end which we wish for because of
itself, and because of which we wish for everything else, and if we do not
choose everything because of something else-since if we did it would go on
indefinitely, and as a result desire would be empty and vain-clearly this would
be the highest good (I 094a 18-22).

This argument is an enthymeme. Its suppressed premise-suppressed because

Aristotle takes it as evident- is that desire is not empty or vain, that life has
140 DAVID ROOCllNIK

meaning. Therefore, the sequence of ends or goods-A is for the sake of B, which
is for the sake of C, and so on-cannot be infinite. It must stop, and so can in
principle be completed.
Aristotle allows this supposition because he takes it to be phenomenologi-
cally evident. Human beings consistently appear to act as if their decisions matter
and their desires are neither futile nor pointless. If the sequence of ends or goods
were infinite, then no good or end, and hence no desire, would matter more than
any other After all, compared to (divided by) infinity any finite good is equiva-
lent to nothing. In short, human life, as it is actually experienced, appears to have
meaning.
(To be specific: the English "meaning" has two basic senses. The first is the
semantic, as in "the word 'table' means 'a flat top placed on legs."' And there is
the purposive: "I meant to tum the lights off." Both senses are operative in the
phrase "life has meaning:" it is both purposive and its purposive structure can be
explained or articulated.)
Because life is experienced as meaningful, good judgment on moral matters
is possible. Therefore, Aristotle implicitly argues, a mean in-between excess and
deficiency is the basis or the target of such good judgment. The moral life is intel-
ligible: it is presented in ordinary experience as a triadic whole.
Rosen again captures these features of ordinary life. "At all levels of
conscious activity, we prefer correctness or truth to incorrectness or falsehood ....
Human activity is intrinsically a process of 'trying to get it right"' (262). From
these commonsensical observations, Rosen infers, "The goodness of reason is
directly visible at the level of ordinary experience" (260).
These remarks are thoroughly Aristotelian in spirit. When it comes to
practical decisions, "trying to get it right" implies hitting the "center" or the
"mean:" not too much, not too little.

A third way in which triadic wholeness is given to us by the phenomena is

more directly related to De Caelo, namely the human experience of place (topos)
and the directionality attendant upon it. Because we occupy, and are aware of
occupying, a place in the world, and because we can move from place to place,
we experience ourselves as located in a center that is flanked. We experience
place directionally. Above us is up; below us is down. To one side of us is left, to
the other is right.
These directions, which are meaningless or arbitrary in a modem physics of
infinite space, are constitutive of Aristotle's cosmos. As mentioned above, there
are two forms of simple locomotion corresponding to two simple lines: the
straight and the circle. Air and fire naturally move up, "away from the center."
Earth and water move down, "towards the center." The moon is above us, the earth
below our feet. (Furthermore, the universe revolves from right to left, from east
to west: see II .11.)
 Aristotle s Commonsensical Cosmology 141

The kind of reasoning exemplified above (and the examples could be

multiplied)8 provides a Baconian critic with a ready target, one almost too easy
to hit. Aristotle attributes what seem to be merely anthropomorphic and arbitrary
characterizations of directionality- to the left ofme, right ofme, above and below
me- to the cosmos itself. On the one hand, such criticism is again quite right. On
the other, if Aristotle's cosmology can be defended as anything other than an
interesting relic, it would have to be along just these phenomenological lines. The
cosmos, as we experience it from earth, does have a center. The earth is the cen-
ter, not of an infinite universe, but of our lives. The sun rises in the east and moves
across the sky, setting in the west. The stars are above us because in order to see
them we must tilt our head backwards, and look up and away from our own bod-
ies on earth. They must be made of "different stuff." After all, unlike anything else
on earth, they do not move in straight (or compounded) lines, and they do not fall
down. Fire does naturally move upwards. After all, in lighting a cigarette we posi-
tion the match under it.

To return to De Caelo: Aristotle's argument on behalf of triadicity continues

with the following:

(2) Natural language supports the contention that "three is all," for of two
things we say "both" not "all." This latter term we employ only when at least three
are in question. In speaking thus, we are accepting "nature herself for our guide"
(268al 1- 20).
Aristotle summons a feature of natural language, more prominent in Greek
than English (because of the former's use of the dual), to solidify his cosmologi-
cal argument. Of two objects, we typically say "both" rather than "all." If I ask
you, "which of your eyes hurt?" you might answer "both do." You would not say
"all do." If I ask you, "which of your fingers hurt?" you might well say "all do."
From this observation of ordinary language, Aristotle concludes that threeness is
constitutive of "allness" or "wholeness." Again, this is because an all or whole is
a unity of parts, and this requires a beginning, middle and end. These terms need
not be interpreted chronologicaly or linearly. The key is that there must be some
"middle," some connection between the other two. As Rosen puts it, "unity is in
fact a unity of differences" (271 ). In order for a pair to become an all there must
be more than just the two items: there must be a principle, a means of uniting
them in their difference. There must be a third.
In a different vein, but also relying on the epistemic value of ordinary
language, Aristotle says this:

8 Human temporality of course provides another example. Time is experienced

triadically, with a present- a center, where we are now-flanked by the past and
future.
142 DAVID ROOCHNIK

It seems too that the name of this first body has been passed down to the pres-
ent time by the ancients, who thought of it in the way as we do, for we cannot
help believing that the same beliefs (doxas) recur to men not once nor twice
but over and over again...Thus they, believing that the primary body was
something different from earth and fire and air and water, gave the name
aither to the uppermost region, choosing its title from the fact that it 'runs
always' (aei thein) (270bl 5- 25).

Of course, the Baconian critic would find it a horrible mistake to project

features of Greek or English onto the "screen" of non-human nature. This, how-
ever, is a central principle of Aristotelian "phenomenology." The phenomena for
Aristotle, as several commentators have argued, are drenched in language.9 How
something appears is not only closely related to what "we" say about it, but also
suggestive of the nature of reality itself. The fact that "we" do not call a pair an
"all" has epistemic force. Indeed, this use of the "we" is common in Aristotle.
"We," for example, speak of four causes; this is evidence that by nature there are
four causes. (See Physics 195a4.) "We" have ten basic modes of predication.
There really are ten categories. (See Categories lb25.)

(3) Aristotle cites religious phenomena on behalf of his cosmological claim:

"[We] make use of [the three] even for the worship of the gods" (268a15).
Even if this is a reference to the Greek practice of taking oaths to the heroes,
gods and to Zeus, its significance goes further. As Aristotle will later assert, "aII
men have a conception of the gods, and all assign the highest place to the divine"
(270b5). Because gods are above there must be a mediation between heaven and
earth. In other words, there must be a beginning, middle and end. Whether this
takes the form of animal-human-divine, or mortal-daimon-immortal (se·e
Symposium 202d), or father-son-holy spirit, religious thinking proceeds
triadically.
Speaking specifically about this tendency, but in a way that summarizes
much of what has been discussed so far, Aristotle says this:

From what has been said it is apparent (phaneron) why, if someone trusts our
hypotheses (ei tis tois hupokeimenois pisteuei) the primary body of all is eter-
nal, suffers neither growth nor diminution, but is ageless unalterable and
impassive. It seems that the argument (logos) gives witness (marturein) to the
phenomena (ta phainomena) and the phenomena give witness to the argument.
All men have a conception of gods, and all assign the highest place to the
divine (270b5).

9 Consider G.E.L. Owen, "Tithenai ta Phainomena," and W. Wieland, "Aristotle's

Physics and the Problem of Inquiry into Principles," both in Articles on Aristotle, Vol.
I, ed. J. Barnes (1975: Duckworth), pp. 113-40.
 Aristotle s Commonsensical Cosmology 143

The logos gives witness to the phenomena, and vice versa. Both the
phenomena and the phenomenology can be trusted to inform us of the way
things are.

The phrase "saving the phenomena"-sozein ta phainomena, sa/vare

phenomena- has long been associated with the history of astronomy and its goal of
empirical and predictive adequacy. The phrase is inspired (although not used) by
Aristotle. But as is apparent from the discussion above, his conception of the phe-
nomena goes far beyond observations of planetary motion. As we have just seen, it
includes ordinary language, religion, the naked-eye, earth-bound, finite human
experience of space and time. Such is the commonsensical cosmology. Stars are
above us and are made of special stuff, water always flows downwards, and the
earth is the center of existence...our existence. The world makes sense because
wholeness, structured by threeness, is given to us in our ordinary experience. Unless
we are in moods of debilitating anxiety, we are largely at home in the world.
The Baconian criticism is, on the one hand, quite right. Aristotle "mingles"
the human with the non-human. He projects the human experience of meaning
and order, the essential ingredients of commonsense, onto the cosmos itself. The
Baconian might well agree with Aristotle's analysis of commonsense, but then
deny the move that attaches it to things in the world. Aristotle, by contrast, has
enormous confidence that commonsense, the phenomena, the endoxa, the way
people speak is fundamentally informative of the way things are.
Rosen rightly says that "it is a fundamental condition of human existence that
we intend to respond correctly to things, experiences, events, and so on, as they
actually are" (263). According to Aristotle, this intention regularly meets with
success. As he puts it, "human beings are naturally and sufficiently disposed
towards the truth and most of the time attain the truth" (Rhetoric, 1355al0). 10 We
are beings who live in truth, who "truth" (a/etheuei: see Nicomachean Ethics,
113915), and so can trust commonsense. He expresses this sentiment as follows:

The study of truth is in one sense difficult, in another easy. This is shown by
the fact that whereas no one person can obtain an adequate grasp of it, we can-
not all fail in the attempt; each thinker makes some statement about the natural
world and as an individual contributes little or nothing to the inquiry; but a
combination of all conjectures results in something considerable. Truth is like
the proverbial door which no one can miss, in this sense our study will be
easy; but the fact that we cannot, although having some grasp of the whole,
grasp a particular part, shows its difficulty (Metaphysics, 993a30-b l 0). 11

I0 Translation is my own. The Greek text is W. D. Ross, Aristotelis "Ars Rhetorica "
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959).
11 Translation is my own. The Greek text is W.D. Ross, Aristotle s Metaphysics
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).
144 DAVID R OOCHNIK

To summarize: Aristotle has enormous confidence in the human capacity to

perceive and then to understand accurately the "natural world." Natural beings
show themselves to us as they really are. Appearances and the ordinary language
used to articulate them can be trusted. We are, most of the time (or "normally"),
at home in the world.

This essay must close with some (necessarily inadequate) remarks about the
syllogism, the logical means by which the phenomena are projected onto the
heavens. Recall that Bacon derides it: "the syllogism is...no match for the subtlety
of nature. It commands assent therefore to the proposition, but does not take hold
of the thing."
Three lines of Aristotelian response: First, "things" or nature itself is syllo-
gistically arranged, at least insofar as the syllogism expresses the logic of class
inclusion. Consider, for example, Aristotle's conception of the hierarchy of living
beings or of "souls." All living beings have the "nutritive soul," i.e., share in meta-
bolic activity and reproduction. Animals have in addition a "perceptive soul,"
minimally the sense of touch, maximally all five senses. Human beings have
"mind" in addition. Each of higher order of life must have all the biological func-
tions of those orders below them. A human being engages in metabolic activity
and perception. (See De Anima 11.1- 5.)
Syllogisms can easily be extracted from these biological observations. For
example: all human beings are animals; all animals engage in metabolic activity;
therefore, all human beings engage in metabolic activity. Or: all animals have
sense perception; a rabbit is an animal; therefore, a rabbit has sense perception.
These are not merely sterile logical formalisms. Instead, they express the order of
nature itself.
Second, Aristotle's conception of the syllogism emerges not from an analysis
of the abstract forms of thought, but from the give and take of dialectical
exchange. Such, at least, is Ernst Kapp 's argument. He begins by noting that the
Topics is the earliest and thus the seminal logical work, and that its purpose is to
establish a method for the kind of argumentation that goes on between questioner
and responder in a dialectical "game." He then notes that the definition of the
syllogism there asserted- namely, "an argument in which, certain things having
been laid down, something other than these things necessarily results through
them" (Topics, 100a25- 26) 12- is virtually the same as that given in the Prior
Analytics. Equipped with these observations, he concludes:
Thus it happened that at the beginning of systematical logical research a
syllogism was not sought and was not found among or within the thoughts of
the solitary thinker or in his books or formal lectures, but that the original

12 I follow Forster's translation in the Loeb edition (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 1976).
 Aristotle s Commonsensical Cosmology 145

subject matter of logic was the "dialectical syllogism," the syllogism that
develops in conversation. 13

The syllogism, then, is not a mere formalism, but an organic development of

the way people argue with one another when playing the game of dialectic, which
itself is the distillation of the practices of ordinary conversation (and which of
course was depicted in the Platonic dialogues.) To quote Kapp again: "logic was
originally conceived as science of what happens, not when we are thinking for
ourselves, but when we are talking and trying to convince one another." 14
Third: the much maligned syllogism expresses its own kind of wholeness,
which like that of good stories, our experience of the intelligibility of the moral
life, and of the directionality of place, is triadic in nature. It depends, after all, on
a "middle" term.

The remarks above on the nature of the syllogism (which obviously require
much elaboration) should clarify the meaning of the verb "project" used through-
out this essay. It is not meant to suggest the Freudian sense of transference.
Instead, it is intended to bring to mind something like "an overhead projector,"
one which throws, but retains the form and proportions of, an enlarged image of
an original onto a big screen. Aristotle's cosmology uses the syllogism to project
an image (an eikon not a phantasm) of the structure of phenomena familiar to us
here on earth onto the heavens. The result is a cosmos, a world infused by
commonsense.

To close: in a lecture titled "Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity,"

written in the dreadful year of 1935, Husserl wrote "The European nations are sick.
Europe itself, it is said, is in crisis" (270). 15 Husserl was specific in his diagnosis:
''The European crisis has its roots in a misguided rationalism" (290).
A materialist, mechanistic conception of nature, studied by a mathematically
based science and taking place in an infinite space, not only spawned the power-
ful technologies we now both take for granted and deeply fear, but has come to
dominate western culture itself. Like a giant shadow, modem science and
technology have blotted out all other forms of human knowledge and inquiry.
Most important, the hegemony of modem science, based always on the paradigm
of mathematical physics, has obliterated the possibility of gaining knowledge of
the "meaning" of human life itself. For this "meaning" requires natural or
ordinary language, and resists mathematical or scientific articulation.

13 Kapp, Ernst. Greek Foundations ofTraditional logic. New York, Columbia University
Press, 1942), p. 17. Thanks to Bret Doyle who brought this to my attention.
14 Ibid., p. 19.
15 Husserl, E. 1970: The Crisis of European Sciences an Transcendental Philosophy.
Translated by D. Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
146 DAVID ROOCHNIK

What Husserl said about Einstein typifies his critique of modem European
rationality:

Einstein's revolutionary innovations concern the fonnulae through which the

idealized and naively objectified physics is dealt with. But how fonnulae in
general, how mathematical objectification in general, receive meaning on the
foundation oflife and the intuitively given surrounding world-of this we learn
nothing; and thus Einstein does not refonn the space and time in which our
vital life runs its course (295).

To make the same point, Husserl says this: "the scientist does not become a
subject of investigation" (295). In other words, modem science, always speaking
the language of mathematics, "objectifies" the world. It understands how the
material things work, but has nothing whatsoever to say about the unique
"meaning" or "the vital life" human beings, including the scientists themselves,
actually experience. "No objective science can do justice to the very subjectivity
which accomplishes science" (295). Modem science is in this sense dehumaniz-
ing. It presents the technician with the opportunity to manipulate the natural
world, but says and knows nothing about what it is like for a human being
actually to live in it.
Consider the simplest possible example, one already mentioned. Since
Copernicus we have known that the earth revolves around the sun and so is not,
as Aristotle thought, the center of the universe. On the one hand, this scientific
fact allows no dissent. On the other hand, it also conceals a compelling truth: for
human beings, the center of our daily lives will always be the earth. It is where
we live. To describe the dawn, we invariably say "the sun has risen," even though,
from an astronomical perspective, this is false. Ordinary life, as well as ordinary
language, speak against the Copernican revolution.
The purpose of Aristotle's cosmology is precisely to speak for ordinary life,
i.e., to articulate the phenomena and explain how the natural world appears from
a human perspective. What Aristotle achieves is exactly what Husserl ca1iled for,
namely a logos, a rational account, of how the world presents itself to earth-bound
human beings. Unlike the modem scientist and, as Rosen has argued, far better
than the twentieth century phenomenologist, Aristotle can explain what the world
means to us. 16 For him, the scientist, as well as the experience of the ordinary
human being, is indeed "a subject of investigation." 17

16 Rosen's critique of Husserl perhaps could be summarized thus: "the ordinary is .. .

replaced within philosophical analysis by a theoretical artifact" (J-2). Aristotle, by
contrast, allows the ordinary to speak for itself.
17 I trust Stanley Rosen would not be entirely displeased with the sentiments of this
paper. But if there are mistakes, either in its reasoning or its reading of Aristotle, they
are surely mine alone.
The Politics of the Afterlife in Plato's Gorgias
Damjan de Krnjevic-Miskovic

Stanley Rosen recited a verse of scripture to me the first time we met. It was in
response to a question about the nature of wisdom. "She is a tree of life to those
who hold fast to her," he had said, referring to the definition of wisdom or
hochma in the Proverbs. In Judaism, the ascent to the Tree of Life is accom-
plished through the study of Torah. In Rosen's case, this ascent is accomplished
through the erotic pursuit of wisdom or sophia. In Judaism, the contemplation
and application ofTorah to one's life brings about tikkun, the correction and repair
of the world. God talks to man through Torah and the tradition, and man talks to
God through avodath or service and tefilah or prayer. For Rosen, the quest for
wisdom through eros is the way to eudaimonia or flourishing, the way up from
nihilism and poetry.
In his The Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry. writing on Heidegger
and Plato, Rosen remarks on the fundamental peculiarity of the philosophic
endeavor: "although in one sense a part of the whole, it is that part which mirrors
or reveals the whole as a whole. By virtue of the synoptic character of philosoph-
ical thought, one may see an image of the whole through a consideration of some
of its parts." Soon thereafter, without a trace of false humility, Rosen comments
on the ambition of the essay in question-and, I think, by analogy applicable to
Rosen's whole enterprise: "The most I dare hope for ... is such an image; I shall
be quite content if the reader regards it as a muthos rather than a logos. It is an
inquiry (historia) that 'looks for' (zetein) as it ' looks at' (theorein)" [QBPP 127].
Rosen could have added that the place from which he 'looks for' as he
'looks at' is high up among the finest branches of the Tree of Life: Rosen has
ascended mightily without somehow having reduced himself to leaping from
mountaintop to mountaintop. Rosen's antidote to the art of mountain climbing is
the art of tree climbing. Philosophic eros is the antidote to will to power.
Philosophic wonder destroys the will to destroy without curing one of the
revolutionary zeal necessary for philosophy to take place. The apparent obscurity
of these paragraphs of introduction will become clearer as we enter the universe
of Plato's Gorgias.

***

147
148 D A MJAN UE KRNJEVIC- MI SKOVIC

Every day, Rosen demonstrates what he writes about, namely what it means
to be guided by the Heracleitean affirmation that if one does not hope, one will
not find that-for-which-he-does-not-hope, believing that that it was not to be
found and inaccessible. Rosen interprets this 'hope' "to stand for the pathos or
Stimmung which opens the soul to the otherwise unseen light of Being." As he
says, "the mood of hope is frequently called 'wonder' (thauma) by the Greeks;
both Plato and Aristotle tell us that it is the origin of philosophy. In my own inter-
pretation of Plato's image of the cave," Rosen continues, "Socrates silently
alludes to wonder when he asks Glaucon to suppose that one of the cave dwellers,
'having been released [from his chains], is forced instantly (eksaiphnes) to stand
up, to tum his head, to walk toward and look at the light [of the fire)' [Republic
515c6--ff.]. The periagoge or 'conversion' is not originally paideia or 'education',
but the instantaneous illumination of wonder which permits paideia t:o occur.
It is," concludes Rosen, "this instant conversion which drags the released man up
into the light of sun. Wonder opens man's eyes to the light of the good through the
divine spark, the theia moira, the mania, or gift of the gods, as Plato variously
calls the horizon of instantaneous vision" [QBPP 127- 28). Rosenian wonder is
awesome to see (Homer would say, thauma idesthai), combining as it does the
humility and hubris of philosophers unwilling to gaze at the permanent contem-
poraneity of nihilism with resignation.
Plato's Gorgias ends with a Socratic telling of the politics of the afterlife in
the form of a logos disguised as a muthos. Rosen has declared that Plato's politi-
cal philosophy is the "attempt to purge political life of the dangers of Sophistry
without returning entirely to the privacy of Herodotus" [QBPP 55). I will seek to
gain deeper access to a part of the whole of Plato: his politics of the afterlife,
uncovering the connection in philosophy between the rhetoric of t:ruthtelling and
mythmaking in the context of affirming the ontological priority of the good.
For Rosen, sophistry-of which "Protagoras is the theoretical model" [QBPP
5 3]- "is the attempt to share in political power without surrendering the status of
the theoretician" [QBPP 55): sophists wish neither to rule directly nor to conceal
their wisdom. In a dramatic tum in the Sophist, the Eleatic Stranger characterizes
the property properly belonging to the sophist as contradiction or disputation
[Sophist 232b]. The association of the sophist with the art of disputation signals
agreement with the thesis of Socrates in the Gorgias that sophistry is similar to,
if not the same as, oratory [520a]. In the Republic, Socrates says that the sophists
teach public opinion, gathering together in one place what the people say and
"call[ing] it wisdom, having organized it as an art" (Republic 493a6--ff). For the
sophist, then, opinion is higher than knowledge; the sophist is like the contempo-
rary pollster in America. Socrates' criticism is founded on his being able to claim
that there is a difference between wisdom and the ability to persuade
the people about the common good on the basis of their own opinions about the
what that good is. The necessary implication of this is that the philosopher has

- · - · ~.
 The Politics of the Afterlife in Plato s Gorgias 149

knowledge about the common good, and that that not only this knowledge but all
non-technical knowledge is not based on the publicly held opinions of the
common good but on something more permanent, namely knowledge of human
nature, of the human soul. Only thusly can the Socratic claim to rank-order the
ways of lives of human beings have any standing, for rank-ordering properly
implies knowledge of the common good. This does not solve the problem of
demonstrating to the many that popular opinions-their opinions- about the
common good are invalid. This can require a particular combination of muthos
and logos, and in due course, this essay win explore this theme, for that is what
Socrates' presentation of politics of the afterlife in the Gorgias is about.
In contemporary language, sophists are public intellectuals who engage in
the "potentially revolutionary publication in a partly-concealed form of the truth
about nature," as Rosen says [QBPP 31]. The danger of sophistry is rooted in its
view that nature is change, "and so too that nomos is lacking a divine foundation.
The good is the pleasant, which is to say that the truth is defined by desire. This
is the Vl!llgar version of the classical formulation of Nietzsche's doctrine of the
will to power" [QBPP 31 ]. This denial of the unity of nomos and the divine is, in
Rosen's account, accomplished first by Herodotus.
For Herodotus, "human affairs are not divine. Man is independent of the
gods (assuming that the gods exist), and Herodotus's subject is the affairs of man
as so independent. If all men know the same about the gods, and this knowledge
takes the form of nomos," Rosen reasons, "then the nomos of one city is
exchangeable for the nomos of another. To say that nomos is the king of all men
is to say that men do not perceive this equivalence; they do not understand the
truth about the gods. [. .. ] The extreme consequence of this is that human affairs
are not divine because the divine does not exist in a humanly useful or accessible
form. How could it ifthe cosmos is pervasive change?" [QBPP 35-36]. The intel-
lectual roots of sophistry are thus to be found in that which undergirds the
Herodotean inquiry.
Further along, Rosen reasons that the "distinction between men and gods
leads to the distinction between nature or clhange and custom or rest. Man is by
nature independent of the gods because nature is change. There can be no eternal
and hierarchical relationship between man and the gods; it is precisely nomos, not
the gods, that rules all men." Rosen concludes: "Herodotus thus reverses the
Parmenidean distinction between the appearance of motion and the reality of rest.
Nature includes gods, men, and the world. All have a common nature because all
are changing. There is no distinction between divine and human nature, not
because men are divine, but because there are no gods. [. . .] [Herodotus] thus
denies the eternal, or rest, or the Being of the Parmenidean, and hence Socratic,
philosophers" [QBPP 37]. According to Rosen, what is required as a remedy is
not popular piety and religious customs, but a movement toward what late
modems would call a teleological ontology, requiring a surface stillness of the
150 DAMJAN DE KRNJEVIC-MISKOVIC

sort the famously pious Egyptians maintain-"because they have not thought
through the consequences of their piety"-as well as "intellectual wonder"
[QBPP 37]. The political health of Greece, in other words, "depends upon the
capacity of Greek wise men to make a judicious adaptation of Egyptian piety"
[QBPP 38].
But a direct approach to this problem-i.e. a straightforward pursuit of this
teleological account of the whol~is impossible for reasons which are intelligible
to those familiar with the philosophical implications of the second sailing image:
Plato has no "ontology" in the sense that Hegel claims to have. In more than a few
cases, the approach outlined in the Gorgias seems to be the best possible one.
However, before turning to that dialogue, I ought to complete my consideration
of Rosen's definition of Plato's political philosophy.
The first political dialogue in the Western tradition takes place in the context
of a conversation in Persia about regime change, as we say now, by the men who
had brought about its very destruction. Its hero is Darius, the future king. It
teaches: ( l) that "men lie or tell the truth for the same reason: gain, either imme-
diate or eventual"; (2) that "justice and freedom may depend upon lies and murder,
just as political debate is rooted in conspiracy and violence. Herodotus anticipates
Machiavelli by suggesting that good states may depend upon a foundation of
violence"; and (3) that "political action is the redistribution of natural changes in
an attempt to postpone chaos" [QBPP 41]. Political order's establishment depends
on human self-interest, not the gods. As Rosen says, "gain is the link between
chaotic origins and surface piety: Gain replaces the gods" [QBPP 41].
Later in the same essay, Rosen suggests that Darius is to Herodotus what
Socrates is to Plato, and that Darius and the Callicles of the Gorgias have much
in common. Rosen characterizes Callicles as "provid[ing] us with a mediation
between Sophistry and rhetoric[... ]: he reveals what the weak conceal" [QBPP
49], that is, what Rosen calls "our actual and natural opinions" about politics:
that "the conventional teaching of virtue is in fact a noble lie at best, and at
worst, an ignoble attempt by the many weak individuals to protect themselves
against the few strong citizens" [QBPP 49]. This "law of nature," this "natural
right" teaching [483e3, 484bl], Rosen calls the "esoteric teaching of the many"
[QBPP 48].
The ignoble lie upon which political life is based for Callicles and I>arius is
presented by both of them in relatively private settings. If pushed in public, say at
a trial, they could (and would, unhesitatingly) offer denials that could maintain a
ring of objective plausibility. Rosen says that for both Darius and Callicles,

philosophy is an erroneous or childish inference from the nature of things. If

nature is change and life is war, then the purpose of intelligence is to copy
nature: the warrior is the highest fonn of philosopher. However, even for the
warrior, the purpose of war is in some sense peace, the necessary condition
 The Politics of the Afterlife in Plato s Gorgias 151

for the enjoyment of the fruits of conquest. A secure peace can never be
enforced by arms or deeds alone; speech is also necessary. Nomos is the force
of speech; it is the king of all men, including kings. The warrior-king must
conceal his duplicity beneath the veil of nomos. Differently stated, nomos is
a duplicitous appearance of force which pretends to be peace. But the war-
rior-king requires duplicity, which places him at the mercy of the skilled
talkers or interpreters of nomos. This is the step from the wise men to the
Sophists. The wise men are unwilling to engage in rivalry with Darius for
political power[ ...] . The pleasure of the wise men consists in looking and
talking; their duplicity is exercised in the intricacy of their speech about the
visible. They are unwilling to compromise the purity of theoretical pleasure
by the exigency of action. Eventually, however, the pleasure derived from the
power of speech overcomes the pleasure derived from the capacity of vision.
At this point, Sophistry is born (QBPP 47-48).

Sophistry gives birth to itself out of the ambitious desire to have the vain
claim of its adherents to being the best teacher of virtue validated in the light of
day, that is, publicly and by the many (as well as by the few). "In order to satisfy
his vanity," Rosen writes, "the Sophist is required to become a revolutionary"
[QBPP 48].
Recalling Rosen's definition of Plato's political philosophy-"the attempt to
purge political life of the dangers of Sophistry without returning entirely to the
privacy of Herodotus" [QBPP 55]- yields the following insight: Socrates'
conversation with Callicles, the spokesman for the esoteric teaching of the many,
which culminates in the necessarily mythic presentation of the politics of the
afterlife by him who is presented as his opponent, shows the necessity of sustain-
ing intelligibly the conversation between poetry and philosophy, change and
stability. This dialogue, more than others, points to the fact that the desirability of
philosophy-itself by nature revolutionary-is connected to its ability to engage
in what Rosen has called concealed revolution. In a letter to Alexandre Kojeve
dated 22 April 1957, Leo Strauss takes a different approach. "the meaning of the
Gorgias," writes Strauss, is that "the relation of the philosopher to the people is
mediated by a certain kind of rhetorician who arouses fear of punishment after
death; the philosopher can guide these rhetoricians but can not do their work."
Indeed, Strauss continues, "I do not believe in the possibility of a conversation
of Socrates with the people." This difference in emphasis notwithstanding, both
would agree that to philosophize with a hammer, or with the esprit de geometrie,
may become necessary, but only when that which needs knocking down is
otherwise unable, or unworthy of the privilege, to remain standing.

***
152 DA~1JAN DE KRNJEVIC- M ISKOVIC

The final proof or demonstration Socrates offers to Callicles at the end of the
Gorgias concerning the fact that he would bear death easily if he were to come to
his end through lack of flattering rhetoric, through the right practice of politics,
is offered in the form of what Socrates says is a very noble or beautiful logos but
what he says he thinks Callicles will consider a muthos. The easy bearing of death
is predicated on putting one's hand to the true political art and being or becom-
ing, as Socrates says at various times, a political man, a good man, a good citizen;
put differently, Callicles will bear death lightly if he were to continue the right
practice of politics, namely to the giving of speeches with a view to articulating
what is the best for the Athenians and for himself. In the immediate sequel,
Socrates says that he will tell to Callicles the things which compose the logos as
being true [523a2- 3]. This, of course, is different from Socrates saying that he
will tell Callicles that these things are simply or fully true. Socrates' careful
formulation leaves room for lies- as long as they are presented as being true.
Socrates next says to Callicles that the things which compose the logos consist in
the fact that "no one fears dying itself, who is not, all in all, most irrational and
unmanly, but he fears doing injustice; for to arrive in Hades with one's soul full
of many unjust deeds is the ultimate of evils" [522e]. The logos then is a teaching
about true or final judgment on one's life or soul by the gods in Hades.
Callicles, the partisan and invoker of pleasure, does not express pleasure at
the possibility of hearing a Socratic myth. The philosopher is not the unmanly one
in truth; rather, the unmanly man is he who insists on self-preservation at all costs
Later on, Socrates indicates with greater strength that the true manly man is the
philosopher. Ironically, by Callicles' own definition, Socrates is more manly than
he-not that he would accept that. (In the same letter to Kojeve mentioned above,
Strauss writes "in the Republic everyone is just and moderate, but only the elite
is manly (and wise); manliness and wisdom belong together, for philosophy does
not wish to be edifying as your hero [i.e. Hegel] says.") To return to the thread of
the argument: the criterion of true or final judgment on one's life by the gods in
Hades is justice: more specifically, whether one had lived his life by the proper stan-
dards of justice or not. I suggest, provisionally, that the theme of the Gorgias as a
whole, which is not apparent at first blush, is somehow connected to the tlheme of
its final part, the drawing out of which I shall concern myself in this essay.
This theme is connected with the problem of the two "great use[s] of
rhetoric" as defined by Socrates in his conversation with Polus: the first is self-
accusation [480al - 2, 480cl- 3] the second is the conditional or possible ("if")
necessity of having to "do evil to someone, either enemy or whomever," that is,
the necessity to "provide in every way, by acting and by speaking, that he not pay
the just penalty [... ], and if he has done unjust deeds worthy of death, that he
shall not die-above all that he never die but [. .. ] be deathless in being wicked,
and if not this, that he [... ] live for as long a time as possible in being such"
[480e5-6, 480e7-48lb5].
 The Politics of the Afterlife in Plato s Gorgias 153

The first "great use of rhetoric," the first type of medicine for the soul, so to
speak, is useless for the just man, for he has no cause for self-accusation (this
problem is mitigated but not eliminated by the fact that he can still make use of
it in case his friends, relatives or city act unjustly; the second use, the punishment
of the enemy through what would be understood commonly to be non-punishment,
even encouragement to injustice, seems problematical for two reasons. First, as
Socrates makes clear, it would not be desirable from your own point of view for
this unjust man to do injustice to you [480e7]. Second, the basis for this discus-
sion of the punishment of the enemy, that is, a discussion of the standard of right
judgment, occurs only at the end of the dialogue (in the context of what seems to
be logos but which reads like a muthos). In brief, both stated uses of right rhetoric
point to the superiority of the good to the just. This is curious considering that
the subject matter of just rhetoric is justice, understood to be either self-accusa-
tion of injustice-the first use-or punishment- the second use-of the enemy
through active prevention ofjust punishment being served to him. Let me put that
alongside with what Socrates says to Callicles right before he begins the logos, as
noted already above. Socrates says that he will tell to Callicles the things which
compose the logos as being true [523a2- 3], which is different from him saying
that he will tell Callicles these things as being simply or fully true. As already
noted, Socrates' careful formulation leave room for the telling of lies- as long as
they are presented as being true, that is, as long as the appearance of truth is main-
tained. (We hold these truths to be self-evident, you could say.) Telling the truth
is different from telling the full truth. And so, telling the full truth, which can
mean that to tell the truth it is necessary to tell lies as being true, and a muthos
disguised or presented like a logos seems to conform to my hypothesis that
Plato's Socrates in the Gorgias points to the superiority of the good to the just.
The actual telling of the logos is divided into two sections [523a3-cl;
523cl- 524a7]. The logos is then followed by Socrates' own hermeneutical
restatement and a series of urgings to Callides. The first section of the telling of
the logos begins by a Socratic appeal to or reliance on the authority of Homer.
Socrates says that Zeus, Poseidon, and Pluto divided the empire among them-
selves after they inherit it peacefully (parelabon) from their father, Kronos.
Socrates is referring to Iliad 15.187-92 where Zeus warns Poseidon that he must
step away from the battle or else face his wrath. Socrates does not mention this
threat of violence. Neither does he mention the even more explicit statement in
Iliad 14.203-4 that Zeus revolted violently against the rule of his father. This
seems perfectly consistent with the silence, which runs throughout almost the
whole dialogue, concerning violence (cf. 447al). Justice is to be rightly under-
stood in abstraction from conventional ways of (bodily) punishment. Justice is not
subservient to motion, to kines is, but is rather an essential component of rest, of
the permanence of things, of things which remain after motion ceases. Just judg-
ment concerns itself with the soul, which is another way of saying that the
154 DAMJAN DE KRNJEVIC-MISKOVIC

intimate connection human beings have with the good can only be established via
the just (hence the latter's necessarily lower ontological status). This intimate con-
nection seems unable to be established in the context of concern for the body.
Socrates says next that from the time of Kronos to this day there has existed
and "always" will continue to exist a nomos among the gods concerning human
beings. This nomos is defined as "he among human beings who went through
life justly and piously, when he came to his end, would go away to the islands
of the blessed to dwell in total happiness apart from evils, while he who lived
unjustly and godlessly would go to the prison of retribution and judgment," This
nomos, the origin about which Socrates is silent, covers the fates of human
beings in the afterlife through the binding together of the human and the divine,
or of justice and piety. Note that Socrates does not mention in this context the
connection between justice and moderation and courage as he does earlier in the
dialogue.
Socrates says next that in the time of Kronos and while Zeus' rule was still
new, the methods of judgment were flawed in two ways: both the judges who
judged the men and the men who were themselves judged were still alive. Justice
and motion seem to be in tension with each other. And so, says Socrates, "the
judgments were decided badly"; i.e. unjust and impious human beings were end-
ing up in the islands of the blessed while just and pious men were ending up in
Tartaros. The age of Kronos (and the pre-reform age of Zeus) is characterized by
the problem of outcome not being always suited to desert. This is the theme of the
dialogue as a whole. Socrates' afterlife is one of accountable self-remembering
whose purpose it is to illustrate that putting one's faith in something other than
virtue leads to deception. Both the judges and the judged are alive and can be
deceived because of the perception that the body and the soul are one, in the sense
that the actions of the body can mask the real condition of the soul even after the
body has become separated from the soul. It may also have something to do with
the separation of justice from moderation and courage.
In the age of Kronos, the nomos which regulates fate is fallible. While it
"exists always and to this day" among the gods, this nomos is as fallible as any
merely human law is, for the gods, just like human beings, change their minds and
want different things at different times. The age of Kronos personifies the
problem of justice which the age of Zeus will claim to solve. Before moving on
to the second section of the logos itself, I ought to make clear my speculation. It
is or will be clear that the nomos outlined in the first part of the logos is subject
to change. Does it not then follow tlhat the question of the permanence of all
things pious come to the fore? In other words, the attempt by the gods, by Zeus,
to correct or solve the problem of justice brings to light the problem of the gods
themselves. The attempt to resolve the political problem brings to a new, brighter
light the theologico-political dimensions of the problem of the origin of authority
(this is made more obvious by Socrates' explicit omission of the necessity of

. -~
 The Politics of the Afterlife in Plato s Gorgias 155

violence or injustice in any regime change-even one which leads to the

establishment of justice).
The second section of the telling of the logos begins by Socrates taking
the place of Homer, the champion of motion over rest. Socrates dispenses with
the authority of Homer and puts directly into the mouth of Zeus the remainder
of the telling of the logos. Socrates' beautiful or noble logos, the contents of
which he had said he tells as being true, contains the words of Zeus spoken to one
of his brothers and to other gods long ago, at the time of the founding. It is literally
impossible for Socrates to have knowledge of what was said- unless he is a god
or a poet. Socrates nowhere in this dialogue claims such things (although this
impossibility may be explainable by the temporal illogic of its dramatic presentation.
However, the implication is clear: as Socrates presents Zeus to be the new (and
improved) Kronos, so Socrates presents himself as the new and improved Homer.
Justice is at home when all is at rest, it rests while motion dominates rest. One
could say that Socrates is a Homer who does not require the frenzied song of the
Muse. The Socratic philosopher is the new Homer. The philosopher knows
nothing about that which he knows everything about; the poet can be made to
know everything about that which he knows nothing about- for only the Muse
knows. This is paramount to telling stories or myths as if they were true, or telling
"lies like the truth"- as the Muses in the proem to Hesiod's Theogony put it.
Perhaps the understanding of Socrates as the new Homer may explain Socrates'
reluctance to explicitly acknowledge the violence, the de facto patricide, of the
transition from the age of Kronos to the age of Zeus.
Socrates' Zeus begins by saying that he will make the problem of outcome
not necessarily corresponding to desert stop from coming to pass in the afterlife,
when motion loses its pride of place or appearance. Even Zeus cannot return men
to before the Fall, so to speak. Zeus cannot fight the power of the body; the most
he can do is wait for it to die. Men are judged badly because they are tried clothed,
that is, while they are still living, while they are still in motion. Hence, many who
have base souls cover them up with beautiful bodies, lineage, and wealth. When
the time of their trial arrives, many witnesses, presumably of good repute, go with
them to bear witness that they have lived justly. The judges are deceived by such
men because they too have bodies, thus confirming the human confusion as to the
difference between body and soul, motion and rest. And so their souls are fully
covered over, like a screen, with clothing. In other words, they pass judgment on
the fully clothed themselves fully clothed.
Sight of the true state of the soul is screened or obscured by the body and its
pleasant accouterments. The appearance of pleasure to another concerned with
pleasure is enough to (sometimes) mask what lies underneath. The age ofKronos
is dominated by the senses (from the human perspective, the age of Kronos is
Calliclean in orientation and goal; it also seems to correspond more faithfully to
the everyday experience of human beings in motion). According to the Zeus of

...-
156 O AMJAN DE KRNJEVIC-MIS KOVIC

Socrates, human beings and their judges do not know how to recognize what is
inside (soul) from what is outside (body). This is the main obstacle to proper
judgment. Zeus must reform the judges' inability to recognize without prejudice
in order to make the attempt to resolve the problem of justice (this is precisely
analogous to the way Socrates will present the right practice of politics).
Of course, the above reform pre-supposes the possibility that the distinction
between body and soul, between appearance and reality, is a real and relevant one.
Included in the pre-supposition of a distinction between surface and depth is an
awareness of inequality, for some souls deserve to dwell in complete happiness
and away from evil while other souls deserve to go to the prison of retribution and
judgment, as Socrates has already said (it is important to note that Callicles must
and indeed does accept this awareness of inequality but chooses to accept or pre-
fer the opposite of inequality's corollary). In the age of K.ronos, the necessity for
such distinctions is not recognized by human beings but only by the gods. Pluto
and those in charge of the islands of the blessed, as well as Zeus, are aware of the
relevance of the distinction between body and soul in judging human beings
rightly or justly. The conduct ofjudges and the judged in the age of K.ronos is sim-
ilar to the actual and advocated conduct of accuser, accused, and judge(s) in the
law courts, the citation concerning which I have given above. This is to be taken
in contradistinction to Socrates whose situation he had himself earlier described
in the language of the conditional possibility of human judgment as being "tried
as a doctor accused by a cook would be tried among children" [52le3-4]. The
supremacy of the body in motion articulated by the domination of the senses or
appearances in judgment is called into question by the one who has nous. The
concern with reputation,. and the inability to distinguish truth from lies like the
truth as well as from lies simply, is perhaps the chief characteristic of the age of
K.ronos from the point of view of human beings, as well as maybe from the point
of K.ronos, in the sense that the god did not take care to enforce the distinction
about which he may have known. Perhaps the chief characteristic of the age of
Zeus from the point of view of Socrates (and his Zeus) is the separation of truth
(mind or soul) from appearance (body). The mind rules in the age of Zeus, not the
senses. Socrates strongly implies that he is a human being from the age of Zeus
living in the Calliclean age of Kronos. This and other things suggest further that
Socrates points to a fundamental similarity between himself and Zeus and to a
fundamental difference between himself and the human types represented by
Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles. Socrates presents himself as living as a god among
men in their world, regulated as it is by their laws, laws which place undue
emphasis on the body, on motion. This is understandable given that we all live in
the world of things and not in the world of the mind, of course, but it points, it
seems to me, to the proper rank-ordering of the two worlds.
Socrates' Zeus now presents the details of the reforms of his father's nomos.
These details implicate both those to be judged and the judges. Note that Socrates
 The Politics of the Afterlife in Plato s Gorgias 157

presents Zeus as acting when confronted with the problem of desert not always
conforming to outcome-even in the afterlife. Zeus says that human beings must
be stopped from foreknowing their death. This allows one to make timely prepa-
rations to conceal the true state of one's soul, to adorn one's soul. Foreknowledge
of death allows human beings to confuse the last day of life with the first day of
death. As a result, human beings do not consider the body and soul to be separate
(in the age of Zeus, they somehow know that their souls will survive their bodies).
In the age of Kronos, death, understood as the coming forward of the soul, had
no significant meaning because in the age of Kronos, motion reigns over rest.
Zeus then says that Prometheus has already been told to stop human beings
from having access to the foreknowledge of death. It is unclear why Prometheus
appears not to have done what Zeus had already told him to do-that is, before
Hades and the others had arrived. This of course means that Zeus knew of the
problem before it was brought to his attention, perhaps because he is in posses-
sion of that which characterizes the age of his rule, nous. Socrates does not here
say why Zeus did not act on his knowledge, although it may have something to do
with the consolidation of political power after a regime change. If this is the case,
the politics of the afterlife aren't so different from the politics in this life.
Prudential statesmanship appears to be a factor in the instauration of divine
justice in the afterlife as well. The administration of justice is impossible without
a phronemos.
Next, human beings must be tried naked, without soul-screens, i.e. without
their bodies, without cosmetics, that is to say, they must be tried when they are
dead, when their bodies are at rest. Thus, human beings are no longer in control
of their own trials, of their own fates. Moreover, the decider of the trial, the judge,
must also be naked, dead, and must with his soul contemplate the soul of each
man immediately upon that man's unwarned death. He must also leave behind on
earth all his kinsfolk and adornment. The key ingredient of just judgment is the
contemplation of the judged's bare soul by the equally bare soul of the judge. The
judges, Zeus tells us, are his sons, themselves gods. It is necessary to infer that
they must possess nous, for Zeus does not suggest that his sons got the job of
judging because of their lineage but rather because of their natural qualifications.
So, the resolution of the desert-outcome problem-the apparent impossibility of
which (coupled with a lack of understanding of the possibility of anything higher
than the just) drove Callicles and those like him to those like Gorgias, is contin-
gent on the imposition of an order which guarantees that the judges, the rulers,
possess nous and are able and willing to act on it.
Socrates' Zeus does everything in his power to ensure the resolution of the
problem of justice. This is indicated most directly in the closing words of the
logos, when the Zeus of Socrates says "that the decision about the journey for
human beings may be as just as possible." The formulation "as much as possible"
recalls the final formulation of what at the time Socrates was about to present as
158 DAMJAN DE KRNJEVIC- MISKOVIC

a logos, namely, that he will tell the things to be told "as being true" [524a6,
523a2]. In the latter case, I had suggested that Socrates' careful formulation had
left room for lies-as long as those lies were presented as being true. This had
further suggested a distinction between telling things as being true and telling true
things truthfully. The full truth is truer than what seems to be the truth; the second
understood in light of the first shows why the second cannot be and thus is not
really a logos.
That Socrates tells Callicles he will consider the logos a muthos is, I believe,
a compliment the meaning of which Callicles does and will not understand.
Callicles is not persuaded by Socratic logos, whether adorned or not, because he
equates erotic ascent with love of the people. The muthos-logos is meant, in part,
to demonstrate what it is about Callicles that prevents him from understanding the
consequences of Socrates' reply, namely that this problem is not a cause for
infuriation for those who have "nous, as the logos indicates" [51 l b7]. Eros points
upward only with nous. Eros divorced from nous leads to what Pascal called
distractions or divertissements and to what in Greek is called kinesis. Zeus then
cannot fully solve the problem of justice, which amounts to saying that Zeus
cannot overcome the human fact of corporeality, i.e. that which encourages
immoderation and cowardice. Plato here yields much to Callicles-whose
thinking is an admixture of materialism and hesitant nihilism- but in such a way
as to overcome him.
In Hermeneutics as Politics, Rosen writes that "esoteric as well as exoteric
Platonism is grounded in the thesis that we have a satisfactory understanding of
the natural articulation of life that is not the same as the assumption of the eternal
order." Nature provides Wlassisted human reason with the "basis for learning
from experience, or engaging in calculation (logismos) of a mathematical as well
as a political kind. But this type of natural reasonableness is not sufficient to
grasp intellectually the eternal order of the whole. At this point, divine madness
is required." It may be that what man learn from experience leads him to discover
the "natural foundation for willing the eternal order to be" [HAP 126-7], but this
is not enough for those who believe that man can jump straight to being and avoid
nothingness. However that may be, the attempt to solve the problem of justice
through nous and psuche by going through what appears to be a beautiful muthos
instead of bland logos points to the idea that there is something higher than the
just, namely the good, for otherwise there could be no such thing as an uncon-
demnable lie. That which seems to move Zeus toward a regime of justice is an
understanding that the Calliclean appeal to injustice and the corresponding denial
of the good is a denigration of human beings in the name of their self-exaltation.
Near the end of the dialogue Socrates assures Callicles that he will suffer nothing
terrible, as long as he practices virtue as Socrates does, "And after we have
practiced in common thus, then at least, if it seems we ought, shall we apply
 The Politics of the Afterlife in Plato s Gorgias 159

ourselves to political affairs; or we shall take counsel on what sort of thing seems
good to us then, when we are better at taking counsel than now" [527]. This
liberation, through the muthos, from nihilistic freedom, literal truth, and negative
justice is necessary for the soul to have any meaning or significance. What
remains unclear to me is whether this meaning is anything more than a myth.
Kant's Philosophical Use of Mathematics
Negative Magnitudes

Eva Brann
St. John s College, Annapolis

I hope that this consideration of a peculiar little work of great interest by Kant
will do honor and give pleasure to my friend Stanley Rosen. The text is an essay
called "An Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into
Philosophy (Weltweisheit)." Its date is 1763.
Its appeal to me has these three aspects: First there is the tentative mode
expressed in the title; here we hear Kant's pre-critical voice- not yet the
magisterially conclusive notes of the Critique of Pure Reason ( 1781) but a tone
at once spiritedly daring and gropingly uncertain. A second and more specific
aspect is the inchoate appearance of major elements of the first Critique; we can
see its thinking come into being. The third appealing aspect of the essay is its ped-
agogic suggestiveness; for a teacher seeking to help students reflect on
mathematical formalisms, it is a useful source.
The piece on negative magnitudes has been eclipsed by its much longer con-
temporary, "The Only Possible Basis of Proof for a Demonstration of God's
Existence (Dasein)," dated 1763. This essay was subjected to an extensive and
deep analysis by Heidegger in his lecture course of 1927 (The Problems of
Phenomenology, translated and edited by Albert Hofstadter, Indiana University
Press, 1982, ~ 8); his elucidation of Kant's use of the term "reality" is particularly
relevant to the essay on negative magnitudes.
What evidently drew Heidegger's attention to this essay, however, was its
brisk definition of Dasein- his central word- as "absolute position." When the
verb "is" is used not as a copula to relate a subject to its predicate as in "God is
omnipotent" but is asserted abruptly, absolutely, as in "God is" or "God exists,"
it signifies, Kant claims, a mere positing of an object. By this, in Heidegger's
interpretation, Kant means that the object is affirmed by a knowing subject as
available to perception: (I observe, incidentally, that in order to express the
character of existence as non-attributive absolute position more adequately, Kant
proposes language that anticipates the existential quantifier of propositional
logic: We should say not "A narwhal is an animal" but "There exists an animal, the
narwhal, which has unicorn-attributes.") In other words, existence is not a predicate

160
 Kant s Philosophical Use of Mathematics 161

and adds no objective attribute to God's essence. Since it is the crux of what Kant
first called the ontological argument (whose best known proponent is Anselm) that
existence is a necessary attribute of God's essence, Kant's understanding of exis-
tence as a non-predicate seems to be a refutation of that proof.
Kant's own demonstration calls on the concept of a "real-ground"
(Rea/grund) that emerges in the essay on negative magnitudes, to be discussed
below. This concept in tum involves the postulate that essence is prior to existence
and actuality to possibility. Since Heidegger's thinking is dominated by the
reverse claim, he is a severe if respectful critic of Kant's understanding. He
regards Kant's exposition of existence as a half-way house, situated between the
notion of existence as one predicate among others and his own understanding of
Dasein as "extantness," i.e. "being-at-hand," with respect to things and "being in
the world" with respect to human beings.
There is yet another contemporary essay that has bearing on the essay about
negative magnitudes, the "Enquiry Concerning the Evidence of the Principles of
Natural Theology and Morality, in Answer to a Question Posed by the Royal
Academy of the Sciences at Berlin for 1763." The aim of this essay (which did
not win the prize) was to establish what evidence and certainty natural theology
is capable of; it is thus a discourse on method. It begins with an investigation of
the difference between mathematics and metaphysics (a difference that plays a
major role even in Kant's last work, the Opus Postumum).
Thus both pieces, the one on God's existence and the other on theological
certainty, illuminate the essay on negative magnitudes, the former through its
concept of an ultimate reality and the latter through its restrictions on the use of
mathematics in first philosophy. I will draw on them in my exploration.

***
Anyone who has stepped out for a moment from the routine familiarity of opera-
tions with signed numbers will have wondered just how, say, 5, +5, 151 differ from
each other, and, furthermore, whether +5 and - 5 are operations on or
qualifications of the number 5. Although his essay concerns numerable magni-
tudes, especially those discovered in nature, questions of that sort seem to have
been going through Kant's mind, as he considered the illuminations that the actual
quantification of experience might offer to philosophy.
In the essay on natural theology Kant sets out four definitive reasons why the
mathematical method is inapplicable to philosophy and is not the way to certainty
in metaphysics(~ 1-4):
1. Mathematical definitions are "synthetic," in the sense that the mathe-
matician does not analyze a given concept, but first synthesizes or constructs it,
i.e., puts it together at will. (In the first Critique synthesis will have acquired a
deeper meaning; it will no longer mean arbitrary construction but an act of the
162 EVA BRANN

understanding expressing in the imagination the formative givens of the

intuition.) In philosophy or, as Kant says interchangeably, Weltweisheit, "world-
wisdom" (as distinguished from the scholastic philosophy of mere, unapplied
concepts, see Logic, Intro. III), on the other hand, definitions are analytic, in the
sense that concepts are given to, not made by, the philosopher, and he then
endeavors to analyze them into their implicit elements. (In the Critique a way
will be found for the philosopher too to form pure synthetic judgments.)
2. Mathematics is always concrete, in that the arithmetician symbolizes his
numbers and operations perceptibly, and the geometer visibly draws his figures.
(In the Critique these inscriptions will be within the field of the imaginative
intuition.) Philosophers, on the other hand, use words exclusively, and these
signify, in Kant's understanding, abstractly, non-pictorially. (In the Critique this
rift between word and picture is closed.)
3. The mathematician tries to employ a minimum of unproved propositions
(i.e., axioms and postulates), while the philosopher makes indefinitely many
assumptions, as needed. (In the Critique the principles of experience will be
systematically restricted.)
4. The objects of mathematics are easy and simple (!), those of philosophy
difficult and involved.
In the Preface of "The Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative
Magnitudes into Philosophy" Kant accordingly eschews the introduction of math-
ematical method into philosophy, but censures the neglect of the application of
mathematical matter to the objects of philosophy. The really useful mathematical
doctrines are, however, only those that are applicable to natural science.
(This restriction prefigures the use of mathematics in the Critique, where its role
is the constitution and understanding of the system of nature, i.e., of matter in
quantitative and qualitative change.) As a preliminary example, Kant gives the
continuity of space, which is, if inexplicitly, postulated in the Euclidean geometry
he assumes. The concept of continuity will give insight, he thinks (but explains
no further), into the ultimate ground of the possibility of space. (The claim does
prefigure the arguments for the esitablishment of a spatial intuition in the
Critique.) The main example in this piece will, of course, be the concept of
negative magnitudes, which Kant now proceeds to clarify and apply. I shall fol-
low his arguments through the three sections of the essay.

First Section
There are two types of opposition: logical, through contradiction and real,
without contradiction. If contradictories are logically connected, the result is a
"negative nothing, an unthinkable" (nihil negativum irrepresentabile; now as later
in the Critique, representabile = cogitabile, i.e., to think is to represent in the
cognitive faculty). Thus a body in motion is a "something" (which is in the
Critique the highest objective concept, i.e., that of an object in general); so is a

. ·~
 Kant s Philosophical Use of Mathematics 163

body at rest. But a body at the same time in motion and at rest is an unthinkable
nothing. It is not so much a non-object incapable of being as a less-than-nothing
incapable of being thought.
Real-opposition (Realentgegensetzung), on the other hand, involves no contra-
diction and thus no unthinkability. For this opposition does not cancel the being of
the object thus qualified; it remains a something and thinkable (cogitabile). Suppose
a body impelled in one direction and also driven by a counterforce in the other. The
resulting motion may be none = 0, but the body so affected is not a no-thing.
Kant calls this result nihil privativum representabile, where privativum has a
dynamic sense, as of an achieved condition. This nothing is to be termed zero = 0.
Kant also refers to real-opposition as real-repugnance (Realrepugnanz)
because two precisely antagonistic predicates of an object cancel each other, though
they do not annihilate the object they qualify. Moreover, it is somewhat arbitrary (or
rather, determined by extraneous human interests) which pole is called negative. For
example, "dark" may seem to us intrinsically negative, but it is cancelled by its own
negation "not-dark" (which might, of course, actually be light). Thus one may say
that in real-repugnance both opposing predicates are affirmative.
Kant gives, among others, the following example. Suppose a person owes
100 dollars and is, at the same time, owed this sum. This debtor-lender is worth 0
dollars, since the two conditions cancel each other, but this fact does not cancel
him, the bearer of these modifications.
Kant then offers an example (slightly adjusted by me) which expands the
concept of real-opposition. Suppose a vessel going from Portugal to Brazil is car-
ried due west by an east wind with an impelling force that would cause it to run
12 miles on a certain day, and is also subject to a countervailing current retarding
it by 5 miles; the boat's total progress is seven miles a day. Here the result is not
= 0. It is clear that Kant regards real-opposition as taking place along a scaled
spectrum of quantifiable qualities at whose center there might be (though there is
not always) a neutral fulcrum, 0.
If there is an "origin," then on one side there are the positive quantities, on the
other those that can be regarded either as the relative negatives of the former, or as
opposed positives in their own right. Thus the opening question, what is really
meant by +5, - 5 and J5J, might be answered by Kant like this: The plus or minus
sign is neither an implicit operation nor a qualification of the number as itself
inherently positive or negative, for the number is, like its "absolute" expression J5J,
always positive. The plus and minus signs signify rather the relation ofnumbers to
each other: -5 is the negative of +5; it is negative only in relation to a positive five.
To be sure, since Kant is not speaking of bare numbers but of magnitudes symbol-
izing quantified properties such as are representable along one dimension, being
in real-opposition, so the application to pure numbers is conjectural.
Objects in real-opposition have, of course, many negations besides those
directly opposing a positive: a ship sailing westward is also not sailing southward,
164 EVA BRANN

but its course is in real-opposition only to the eastern direction. Moreover. there
are cases, say of lack of motion, which are not the result of real opposing forces
but of a total absence of impelling force. Negation that is the result of real-oppo-
sition Kant calls privatio, that which has no positive ground is called defectus or
absentia. His example of an absent or null result is what we would call potential
energy (not to be confused with "potential-opposition," see below): "Thus the
thunder that art discovered for the sake of destruction lies stored up for a future
war in the threatening silence of an arsenal of a prince, until, when a treacherous
tinder touches it, it blows up like lightning and devastates everything around it."
Aside from Kant's pacifistic poetry, this example shows that Kant is considering
only the magnitudes of actualized forces.
It is pretty clear that what Kant is struggling to do is to present a conceptual
underpinning for what we call directed magnitudes as they occur in the world,
'including signed numbers insofar as they represent natural qualities, whose plus
or minus tells us whether we are to move respectively to the right or the left along
the line-spectrum (conceived as a straight line, where left is negative by
convention). Not that Kant is thinking of our mathematical number line.-He
does not even mention an origin (=O), and his opposition-spectra are evidently not
necessarily infinite in either direction. While he does insist on the relative direc-
tionality of negative numbers, insofar as they countennand their positives, he also
reiterates that the negatively directed magnitudes are not negative numbers if
these are regarded as being less than 0.
For the use of directed magnitudes in philosophy it will in fact be essential
that the opposed quantities are indeed inherently positive, as will be shown in
Section Three. Hence a debt can be called negative capital, falling negative rising,
and so on, where it is our perspective that gives a negative emotional tint to one
of the tenns. Kant sums it up in a basic law and its converse: l. Real-repugnance
takes place between two positives, power against power, which cann.ot be
contradictories but must be of the same kind (while the complement class in a
contradiction, e.g., "non-dark objects," is not necessarily of the "same kind" as
"dark objects"; they might be invisible objects). 2. Where a positive opposes its
proper positive, a real cancellation will occur.
Furthennore certain rules of operation follow. For example, if the opposites
are quantitatively equal, their sum will = 0, or A - A = 0, which shows, Kant
explains, that both A's are positive (since A = A). Also A + 0 = A and A - 0 =A,
since no oppositions are involved. But 0 - A is philosophically impossible
since positives cannot be subtracted from nothing: There are no inherently
negative qualities and so, as was said. no directed magnitudes inherently less
than 0 (!).This odd-sounding but unavoidable consequence will have important
metaphysical implications.
Real-repugnance, strange though its label be, has an Aristotelian antecedent.
It is, I want to argue, a dynamic version of the logical opposition Aristotle calls
 Kant s Philosophical Use of Mathematics 165

contrariety (Metaphysics X, 4). Kant himself says as much in his Anthropology of

1798; he there contrasts contradiction or logical opposition (Gegenteil) with con-
trariety or real-opposition ( Widerspiel, ~ 60).
As a formal logical opposition contrariety occurs in the Square of
Opposition, which is a tabulation of the Aristotelian doctrine on the subject: If the
basic proposition is "Every S is P," its contradictory is "Some S is not P" and! its
contrary is "No S is P." Contradictories cannot both be true nor can they both be
false, but contraries, though they cannot both be true, can both be false; for if not
every S be P, yet might it be false that no S is P. Contrary propositions bear a
certain formal relation to contrary terms, for these cannot both at once belong to
an object but they might both fail to belong to it. Thus an object could not be at
once pitch black and pure white, but it needn't be either, which is untrue of
contradictories, such as black and not-black.
The above paragraph is really a digression to show that it is not contrary
propositions but contrary terms denoting qualities that are related to Kant's real-
opposition. Contraries are qualities which are not simply in abrupt polar
opposition (though their extremes delimit a maximum difference) but are
connected through a spectrum of gradations. Aristotle makes privation a particular
case of contrariety, and for Kant negation, interpreted as privatio (in German
Beraubung), "deprivation," introduces into some of the ranges of opposition a
kind of null point or zero through which the quality goes by degrees into a nega-
tive or oppositional mode. (As was noted, not all the spectra have such a center;
for example when bodies are brought to rest = 0 by countervailing forces this 0 is
not an origin in the spectrum of forces but is a net effect in the bodies' position,
measured in spatial extension rather than as qualitative intensity.) Some of Kant's
examples will be given below.
What turns contrariety into real-repugnance is the dynamic view Kant takes
of this opposition: It means not just being supinely, matter-of-factly opposed; it
means being antagonistically, aggressively opposed. Moreover, this striving in
many different dimensions of quality is quantifiable in degrees of intensity, as
Kant's examples will show.

Second Section
Kant now calls for examples from 1. physics, 2. psychology, 3. morality.
1. In physics his prime example is impenetrability, which is a positive force,
a true repulsion that might thus also be called "negative attraction." For attraction
is a cause, contrarily directed, by which a body compels others to push into its
own space.
2. From psychology (Seelenlehre) come Kant's most pungent examples of real-
opposition. He raises the question whether aversion could be called "negative
pleasure." The fact that in German aversion, Unlust, looks like a direct contradic-
tory of pleasure, Lust, gives him pause, but he observes that in "real-understanding"
166 EVA BRANN

(Realverstand), meaning in actual psychic perception, aversion is not just a nega-

tion of desire or even its diminution, but a real-repugnance, a positive perception.
Then, to illustrate, comes an almost comical quantification: A Spartan mother hears
of her son's heroism; a high degree of pleasure ensues, say of 4 degrees. Then
comes the news of his death. If the resulting Unlust were a mere negation it would
equal 0, but 4 + 0 = 4, as if the death made no difference to her delight. Kant con-
cedes however (some notion of a mother's feeling!) that the positive Unlust of his
death, the real-repugnance, will diminish the mother's Lust at her son's bravery by
one degree, which will therefore = 3.
In the same vein, disgust is negative desire, hate negative love, ugliness
negative beauty, error negative truth, and so on. Kant warns against regarding this
terminology as mere word mongering: It is a philosophical pitfall to regard the
evils of positive privation as mere defects. Thus Kant is denying, surely quite inci-
dentally, the theological doctrine (found in Plotinus, Augustine, Thomas) of evil
as privation of good (privatio boni), for in Kant's view in this essay evil, though
a relative negation, is yet a positive force.
3. Kant naturally regards his concept of real-opposition as having important
uses in "practical prudence" (We/tweisheit), that is, applied morality. Non-virtue
(Untugend) is, in human beings, not a mere denial of virtue (Tugend), but a pos-
itively negative virtue, vice. This is the case because humans, unlike animals
which are morally unendowed, have an "inner moral feeling" that drives them to
good actions. For instance they harbor a law of neighborly love. To do bad deeds,
human beings have to overcome this natural inclination to good.
(A quarter century later, in the second Critique, the Critique ofPractical Reason,
1788, Kant will, on the contrary, see the test of true morality in the overcoming
of natural inclinations.)
Thus certain people must make a noticeable effort to engage even in sins of
omission (such as neglecting to offer neighborly help), which differ from sins of
commission (hurting one's neighbor) only in degree; hence the slide from the one
to the other is all too smooth, though the beginning is effortful.
Kant apologizes for what may seem to enlightened readers the prolixity of his
exposition. He is writing for a "indocile breed of judges, which, because they
spend their lives with a single book, understand nothing but what is contained
therein." The book is, I imagine, the Bible.
In an appended Remark, Kant forestalls the notion that the world conceived
in such a dynamic balance is capable neither of augmentation nor perfection. He
points out l. that in potential oppositions (to be explained below) though the total
quantity of effect may = 0, yet there may be an increase in apparent change, as
when bodies widen the distance between them; 2. that it is the very antagonism
of natural forces that keeps the world in its perfectly regular courses; and 3. that
though desire and aversion do balance each other considered as positive
quantities oppositely signed, who would claim that aversion is to be called a
 Kant s Philosophical Use of Mathematics 167

perfection? Moreover, though the net quantity of moral action in two people may
be the same, yet the quality of the one who acted from the better intention is to
be more greatly valued. Kant adds that these calculi don't apply to the godhead
which is blessed not through an external good but through itself.
Third Section
Kant introduces this section, which contains his startling application of the
concept of real-opposition to metaphysics, by insisting once more that it is a mere
attempt, very imperfect though promising: It is better to put before the public
uncertain essays than dogmatically decked-out pretenses of profundity. This sec-
tion iis accordingly called "Containing Some Reflections Which Can Be
Preparatory for the Application of the Concept Here Thought Out to the Objects
of Philosophy." I dwell on this language because it is not a tone familiar to those
of us who have spent time with the three Critiques.
Everyone easily understands how it is that something is not-the positive
ground for its being is absent; there is no reason for it to be. But how does some-
thing cease to be? The question arises because we must understand every
passing-away as a negative becoming. As such it requires a real or positive
ground.
In the first two sections Kant had spoken of real-opposition or real-
repugnance, by which were meant normally apprehensible contrarieties. Now, in
the third section, he introduces real-grounds (Rea/griinde). As far as I can make
out from the examples, real-grounds are natural, including psychic, causes:
forces, powers, and acts exercised by material or psychic agents. "Real" here is
used not as in real-opposition, which is opposed to logical contradiction, but it
seems to mean "affecting perceptible existence." Real-grounds seem to be a first-
level, underlying causal reality, apprehended through its effects. Thus Kant uses
"reality"-and, as we shall see, "existence," "being" (Wesen), as well as "actual-
ity" ( Wirklichkeit}---quite loosely in these exploratory essays; Heidegger shows
that Kant's later systematic meaning of reality is the "whatness" of a thing, aU its
possible predicates, its essence, while existence is perceptibility.
Kant's examples are mainly from the soul. It costs real effort to refrain from
laughing, to dissipate grief, even to abstract from a manifold representation for the
sake of clarity; thus abstraction is negative attention. Even the apparently random
succession of thoughts has real grounds which are "hidden in the depths of the
mind (Geist)," i.e., in what we call the subconscious. Whether the change is in the
condition of matter and thus through external causes, or of the mind and thus
through inner causes, the necessity for a causal real-opposition remains the same.
Kant is focusing here, it seems to me, on a partial converse to, and a kind of
complement of, a question, evidently not asked by the ancients, which is to
become a modem preoccupation: "Why does something exist rather than
nothing?" It was first raised as a metaphysical problem with a theological answer
168 EVA BRANN

by Leibniz ("The Principles of Nature and Grace, Founded on Reason," 1714),

and was repeatedly taken up by Heidegger (especially in "What is Metaphysics,"
1949), who treated it as "the basic question of metaphysics," though to be
resolved without recourse to theology.
Leibniz asks for a reason, sufficient and ultimate, to account for the existence
of a universe of things in progress and finds it in God. Kant, on the other hand,
asks for an adequate reason why a present condition in the world should go out of
existence and finds real-opposition as the cause, though an unexplained cause
which, Kant says at the end of the essay, he has been and will be thinking about
and will in the future write about- This appears to be a harbinger of Critical
works not to appear for almost two decades. Meanwhile the metaphysical conse-
quences are exceedingly strange: The sum total of all real grounds equals zero,
and "the whole of the world is in itself Nothing." More of this below.
2. Kant says that the theses to be here proposed seem to him "of the most
extreme importance." First, however, he distinguishes real-opposition, or as he
now calls it, "actual" opposition, from "possible" or "potential" opposition. The
latter type of opposites are also each other's negatives, real to be sure, but not, as
it happens, in conflict. Thus two forces, each other's opposites, may be driving two
bodies in opposite directions: They have the potential to cancel each other's motion
but do not actually do so in the given situation. So also one person's desire may be
the other's aversion, yet their ability to stymie each other is only a possibility.
Kant then offers the following first general thesis:
In all natural changes of the world their positive sum, insofar as it is
estimated by the addition of agreeing (not opposed) positions and the
subtraction from one another ofthose in real-opposition, is neither increased
nor diminished.

Recall Newton's Third Law of Motion (Philophiae Natura/is Principia

Mathematica, 1687):
To every action there is opposed an equal reaction: or, the mutual actions of
two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.

It is pretty evident that Kant is struggling to ground in metaphysics and apply

to the human world the most dynamic of Newton's Laws of Motion or perhaps the
Law of the Conservation of Momentum, which is implied in (or, some argue,
implies) the law of equal action and reaction; it states that when the forces acting
on bodies in the same and in contrary directions are summed (over time) the
quantity of motion (i.e., the mass compounded with velocity = mv) is not
changed. Kant says without proof that although this rule of mechanics is not
usually deduced from the metaphysical ground from which his first thesis is
derived, yet it could be. (The first Critique will be partly devoted to giving the
transcendental grounds of the laws of motion and conservation.)
 Kant s Philosophical Use of Mathematics 169

Not only bodies in motion but souls in emotion obey the law of conservation,
and so do humans in action. Astoundingly, Kant realiy means this: For every
"world-change," i.e., every ..natural" change (which includes the psychic realm)
there is an equal and opposed change, so that the sum of measured final positions,
i.e., states of existence taken globally, is equal to what it was before the change,
or the total effect = 0.
Every becoming, then, induces an actual or potential counter- becoming or
cessation. It can now be seen why Kant introduced potential real-opposition:
Kant's forces not only act in opposed pairs but they may act on different objects,
i.e., the real-opposition may not be actualized in one body or one soul or even in
the same mode in one soul. Nevertheless these potential oppositions enter into the
summed effects of the world-total.
Kant then goes on to give more concrete non-mechanical examples-though
these are not non-natural, because (as will still be true in the Critiques) the soul,
excepting in its practical-moral employment of reason, is subject to natural
dynamic forces. The examples of this third section differ from the ones in the pre-
vious section exactly as the course of the exposition requires: They are cases not
of actual but of potential real-opposition. Thus if one person's pleasure and dis-
pleasure arise not from the same object, but the same ground that caused pleasure
in one object is also the true ground for feeling displeasure in another, then in
analogy to two bodies moving in contrary directions by repulsion, there is one
potential real-ground and cause for the positive and the negative feeling. These
feelings oppose but also bypass each other; they may cancel each other but need
not do so. This is why the Stoic sage had to eradicate all pleasurable drives-
because they always engender an associated but diverse displeasure that affects
the final value of the pleasure, though perhaps not the actual pleasure itself. Even
in the use of the understanding, we find that to the degree that one idea is clari-
fied, the others may be obscured, though surely not by the clarification. Kant adds
that in the most perfect Being the zero sum result does not hold, as will be shown.
Now comes the second thesis, which is simply the translation of the first the-
sis into its causative grounds:

All real-grounds ofthe universe, ifone sums those similarly directed and sub-
tracts those opposed to one another. yield a result which is equal to zero.

Kant immediately states: "The whole of the world is in itself nothing, except
insofar as it is something through the will of someone other." Regarded by itself,
th.e sum of all existing reality = O; the world is an almost Heraclitean system of
balanced oppositions, of mutually negating positivities. In relation to the divine
will the sum of all possible reality, of the world's existence, is, however, positive.
But it itself is not therefore in real-opposition to the divine will; it is not the
godhead's relative negation. Consequently existence, i.e., whatever is perceptibly
th.ere in the world, is through its internal relations nothing, but in relation to the
170 EVA BRANN

grounding will of the divinity it is something; it is positive. For there can be no

real-opposition of the world to the divine will. (This thought is still to be found
in the Opus Postumum.)
The nullity of the physical and psychical world in its summed effects, the
nothingness of the underlying universe of summed causes, and the positivity of
creation only in relation to God- Kant presents these results without any
discernible pathos, without acknowledgment that this cancellation of the world-
whole of effe.ct and cause might bear a religious or moral interpretation beyond
the intellectual proof of God's existence. Nor can I discover that he ever reverted
to this nullifying construal of the laws of conservation. Perhaps it is to be
regarded as a passing notion that served as a spur to further inquiry into the
world's relation to its ground. (Kant does hold on to the "law of the antagonism
in all community of matter by means of motion"; any divergence from its
reciprocity would, he now argues, move the very center of gravity of the universe,
Metaphysical Foundations ofNatural Science of 1786, ~ 563. In this essay too the
notion of real-opposition is put to work in the specific antagonism of repulsion
and attraction, forces which between them are responsible for the way matter, i.e.,
"the movable," fills space. However, the explanation of these forces in their speci-
ficity remains an unsolved problem for Kant into the Opus Postumum.)
So Kant concludes by making explicit the heretofore assumed conversion:
Because the internal sum of existence is zero, it follows that the "real-groWlds,"
i.e., the forces and powers producing effects in the world, must be in a correspon-
ding opposition: The realm of existing and possible reality is in itself shot through
with grounding polarities that cancel existence, though in respect to the divine
will (Kant doesn't speak of "God" in this context) it has positive being (Wesen).
This overt conclusion of the last section is surprising since it follows close on the
assertion that the zero sum of all existence flows necessarily from the grounding
being ( Wesen) of the world; it is hard to tell whether the zero sum of effects is
responsible for or is derived from the underlying real-opposition of causes. I hesitate
to detect Kant in unwittingly circular reasoning here. (He is, to be sure, the master of
intentional circularity in the Critique, where the grounds of the possibility of expe-
rience are inferred from experience while experience is certified by the grounds.
Perhaps the apparent circle in the above paragraph is a precursor of critical thinking.)
The metaphysical intention is however quite clear: 1. The world exists as a
complex of quantifiably opposed effects; negative magnitudes express such relative
opposition; when summed with their positives they yield zero. 2. Underlying
these existences, there is a realm of grounds; these are forces, powers and actions;
they are also in mutually cancelling opposition, and, like their effects, they are so
only relative to each other. 3. In respect to an ultimate ground they are positive,
yet no real-opposition to it is possible. Kant himself knows that he has not yet
sufficiently clarified the character of real-grounds, nor their relation to the
divine will.
 Kant s Philosophical Use of Mathematics 171

His first definition of a real-ground actually occurs in a General Remark

appended to the third, final section of the essay. A logical ground is one whose
consequence can be clearly seen through the law of identity; for example compo-
sition is a ground of divisibility, i.e., it is identical with part of the meaning of the
concept and can be educed from it analytically. A real-ground, by contrast, has a
relation to its effect which, although quite truly expressed as a concept, yet allows
no judgment, no true understanding, of the real-ground's mode of action. In other
words, the relation of a real cause to its effect is not apprehensible by mere logi-
cal analysis. (Here, of course, is formulated the problem that Kant will solve in
the Critique by means of the "synthetic judgment a priori"- the cognition in
which real connections are made-not, of course, by the logical law of identity
but through our cognitive constitution.)
In this essay, this understanding of a real-ground raises-for the first time for
Kant-the fundamental question of causation: "How should I understand it
THAT, BECAUSE THERE IS SOMETHING, THERE [S SOMETHING ELSE?''
The will of God is something. The existing world is something else altogether. Yet
the will of God is the ultimate real-ground of the world's existence. Kant says that
no talk of cause, effect, power and act will help: God and world are totally each
other's other and yet through one of them the other is posited. And the same holds
on a lower level for the natural causes in the world, be they of an event or its can-
cellation. Kant promises an explication in the future, but for now he remarks only
that the relation of real-ground to what is posited or cancelled through it cannot
be expressed in a judgment, i.e., a mental "representation of the unity of a con-
sciousness of different representations," but is in fact only a mere, non-analyzable
concept, that is, a general representation or a thought (Logic if l, 17). Kant is say-
ing that the relation of an effect to its cause cannot be articulated as an affirmed
attribution of a predicate to a subject. It is his way of expressing Hume's rejection
of empirically grounded causation. (In the Critique the attempt to make God's
causal relation to the world comprehensible to reason will be shown to be hope-
less, but causality within the world will be grounded in the very constitution of
the spatial intuition.)
So ends the essay in which the reflection on negative magnitudes has led,
through the concept of real-opposition, directly to the problem of causal connection
and indirectly to God as ultimate cause. I have not done justice to the exploratory
tone of the essay, to Kant's witty derision of those who get stuck in premature dog-
matism, and to his sense of having made a mere, even insufficiently explicated,
beginning, but a beginning of something very important: the inquiry into causation.

***
An elucidation of some of the matters left unclear in the essay on negative
magnitudes occurs in the essay on "The Only Possible Grounds of Proof for a
172 EVA BRANN

Demonstration of God's Existence" of the same year ( 1763), and it seems to me

so daring that I cannot resist carrying this exposition a little further. The reflec-
tions I shall refer to are not those that most interested Heidegger, the ones
concerning existence as position, but those dwelling on the relation of possibility
to actuality (or as Kant says, to existence) and on an absolutely necessary
"existent" (Dasein; First Part, Second and Third Reflections).
Possibility, Kant says, depends entirely on the law of contradiction: That is a
possible something the thought of which accords with what is thought in it. This
"comparison" of a subject with its predicates through the law of contradiction is
to be called logical or formal possibility; a triangle cannot have other than three
angles, for that would contradict its definition. But it also has something
additional, a given character as a triangle in general or in particular, say a right-
angled triangle; these are the data of its material or real possibility.
Therewith possibility without prior existence is abolished. For a thing is not
only impossible-a "no-thing"-when contradictory predications are made of it,
when it is formally impossible, but also when it offers no real material, no data,
to thinking. For then all thinking ceases, for everything possible must be some-
thing thinkable, must offer stuff for thought. It follows that for Kant possibility is
conditioned on actuality.
There is, to be sure, no formal inner contradiction in the brute negation of all
existence, since nothing has been posited to begin with. But that there be a
possibility and that nonetheless nothing actual exist-that is contradictory. For if
nothing exists, nothing material is given to be thought about. Therefore to say that
nothing exists is, according to the previous analysis of existence (Dasein) as a
positing act of thought, to think and say that there is absolutely nothing. And then
to add that something is possible is clearly self-contradictory, for no material for
thinking at all is given. Thinking involves material givens; without them it
contradicts its own character. Thus the cancellation of the material data of
possibility also cancels possibility. It is absolutely impossible that nothing should
exist. I understand Kant to mean that one can-logically-deny all existence, but
having denied it one cannot then retrieve its possibility.
The only really elucidating example of a necessary existence is, Kant says,
that of the unique Subject (i.e., God), to be touched on below. Meanwhile, if
we ask, for example, how existence precedes possibility in respect to "body," we
may grant that the concept body contains no logical impossibility, yet to call on
its predicates of extension, impenetrability, force, to be the data of possibility
(either assumed or experienced) in the absence of actually existing, given bodies,
is quite unwarranted. Without such data the concept "body" is empty. (We see
here the forerunner of the dictum in the first Critique that the mere functions of
the understanding are empty without the givens of intuition.)
Then Kant explains the concept of an absolutely necessary existence. To say
that it is that whose contradictory is in itself impossible is a merely nominal
 s
Kant Philosophical Use of Mathematics 173

explanation. Since existenc.e is no predicate, its denial can never conflict with
other predicates. However to deny the positing of the thing itself is not a denial of
predicates but of something else, and hence is not contradictory. Kant is looking
not for logical but "real-necessity" (Realnotwendigkeit), for what cannot be
denied in any "real-explanation" (Realerkliirong). This is it: "What I am to regard
as absolutely nothing and impossible must be that which eradicates all thinking."
Now total nonexistence in fact cancels all the material and data of thought, and
hence it is impossible.
It follows that there is an absolutely necessary being. For all possibility
assumes something actual, whose cancellation would itself cancel all inner possi-
bility, i.e., the real coherence of predicates. That part of existence, on the other
hand, which does not provide the material for all that is thinkable, but without
which there would still be matter for thought-and thus possibility- that part is,
although in a real sense possible, yet in the same sense conditionally possible, i.e.,
contingent; not all existence is necessary. (In his Inaugural Dissertation of 1770
Kant will say that all worldly substances are in fact contingent since they main-
tain reciprocal relations, while necessary beings are independent,~ 19.)
Kant now goes on to show that the one necessary, non-contingent existence
is God, a being that is one, simple, unchangeable, eternal, and a spirit. But its
philosophically most important attribute is that it is (in scholastic terms) the ens
realissimum, the most real being, that which contains the highest reality. For it
contains all the givens, the data, of possibility either as directly determining
other existences or as being the real-ground of which they are the consequences.
(In the Critique, the ens realissimum will be relegated to the status of an ideal of
reason, a regulative idea that marshals our thoughts of the world.)
Does the attribution to God of the most and the highest reality mean that all
realities, i.e., all real attributes, must be assigned to God? Here the concepts of
the essay on negative magnitudes come into their own: It is common doctrine that
one reality can never contradict another reality, since both are truly affirmed. But
this assertion leaves out of account the notion of real-repugnance, i.e., of real-
opposition. Realities may, indeed must, oppose each other without one of them
being in itself negative.- That was the essay's main finding. In God, however,
even real-opposition cannot take place, because that would result in privation or
defect and would contradict God's maximal reality. Thus God contains no reali-
ties in opposition to his positive predicates; for example, the real-oppositions
attributable to bodies, such as being subject to contrary forces, cannot without
contradiction belong to a being that has intellect and will; hence the ens realis-
simus has clear positive determinations.
It is, it seems to me, implicit in these pre-Critical essays that neither existence
(Dasein) nor actuality (Wirklichkeit) is as yet convertible with subjective percep-
tibility, though both will indeed be so later, as Heidegger observes. Instead these
terms mean objective givenness, thereness, be it sensorily received or essentially
174 EVA BRANN

apprehended. The road to the first Critique will be the development of this con-
version from the object of experience as given to the subject to its being
constituted in the subject. The roots, however, of the primacy of the subject are
already present in one respect, now to be shown.

***
There is, then, necessarily a God, a being comprehending not all, but all the
highest positive reality. He is a real-ground of the world; the world, in turn,
amounts quantitatively to a self-cancelled nothing, though it may well be qualita-
tively positive. One way to get hold of this- by Kant's own frequent
confession-still inchoate complex is to ask just how daring a departure from tra-
dition it is.
Kant, who without naming Anselm is attempting to rebut his argument for
the existence of God, calls his own proof "ontological" (later in the Critique that
is what he will call Anselm-type proofs). Anselm argues (Proslogium 2, 4) that
God is a maximal being whose essence is to be thought as largely and inclusively
as possible; thus it must include the predicate existence. This is what Kant denies,
but he accepts something that seems to me even deeper in, or rather behind,
Anselm's argument: that when I must think that God exists, he exists. But this is
thinking of the type Kant himself engages in on an even deeper level when he
makes God's existence follow from the existential necessities of thinking: What
is required for thinking to be possible must necessarily exist. Here Anselm and
Kant are brothers under the skin. I can think of counterarguments to their
assumption (though without being quite persuaded by them): Is it utterly impos-
sible that a being which must exist in thought fails to exist in fact- is it so totally
unthinkable? Is it not possible to think that thinking can do utterly without the
material, the data grounded either in a highest reality, as in the essay on God's
existence, or in some sensory influx from a transcendent outside, as in the first
Critique? Is it unthinkable that possibilities do not disappear when actualities
fail, but that there is spontaneous, autonomous, self-generated, worldless think-
ing:? Kant has, it seems, levered the Cartesian-type certification for personal
existence; Cogito, ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am," into a proof of God's exis-
tence: Cogito ergo Deus est, "I think therefore there is a God." But what if
"I think" entails instead: "/make the world," if I myself give myself the data?
Such misgivings and intimations aside (they will become Kant's own in the
Opus Postumum ), he has found an approach to a question that seems never to have
occupied the ancients and was, as was mentioned, first formulated by Leibniz
(Principles ofNature and Grace, 7): "Why does something exist rather than noth-
ing? For 'nothing' is simpler and easier than 'something."' Leibniz finds the
answer in the ultimate sufficient reason called God. Kant argues the other way
around: Nothing is harder than something, indeed impossible for thought, and
 Kant s Philosophical Use of Mathematics 175

God becomes necessary not as a sufficient reason inferred from the world's exis-
tence but as a necessary being implied by human thinking.
In 1763, having proved in one essay the necessary existence of the highest
and most real ground and so (for the time being) answered Leibniz's question,
Kant is left with the unanswered next question of the essay on negative
magnitudes quoted above, which he prints in block letters: "How can I understand
THAT BECAUSE SOMETHING IS, SOMETHING ELSE MIGHT BE?" In
other words, having proved God's existence, how can I understand him, or his
agents in the world, as causal grounds? (This very same question will be
presented, as was said, in the Critique as unanswerable by logical thinking alone,
but solved with the aid of the a priori relations given in the intuition.)
By 1781, the year of the first edition of the first Critique, Kant will have
given up not only his own so circumstantially prepared ontological proof, the only
possible one, as he had thought, but also in principle any expectation of a theo-
retical demonstration of God's existence-and so, it seems, any rational
explanation of the first question, why there is existence at all.
The second question, on the other hand, is just what the Critique addresses.
Kant distinguishes cosmological freedom, the power to make an absolute begin-
ning, from causality according to natural law, which is rule-governed
consequence acting within what already exists. An insight into the first, into
absolute causation, i.e., creation, Kant shows, is in principle impossible for us, for
it is beyond the limits of human reason. The second causality, that of lawful
succession, of cause and effect in natural events, is grounded in the synthesizing
character of our cognitive constitution. The essays here considered show Kant-
and for my part I find this intellectually moving-casting about for disparate
dues to the concepts and claims which would one day come to cohere in his
master edifice.
Origins of Enchantment
Conceptual Continuities in the Ontology of Political Wholeness

Waller R. Newell
Carleton University

"The Greek form is replaced by the mooem concept; this in tum reflects the
initially ambiguous shift from nature to subjectivity as the locus of objectivity."

Stanley Rosen, G. W.F. Hegel, p. 143.

I
In this essay, I will explore a specific motif in the meaning of political commu-
nity common to the works of some major European thinkers including Rousseau,
Schiller, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger. My specific aim is to set forth
some continuities in the ontology of political wholeness that characterizes
German Idealism as a mode of discourse-continuities that converge in what I
term (for reasons I will elaborate momentarily) the transposition of eros.
Common to the political philosophies I will explore is the exploration of a holis-
tic conception of civic community that provides the existential and theoretical
contexts for the practice of citizenship, the elucidation of rights and duties, the
debate about justice, the emergence of civic virtue, and the pursuit of satisfac-
tion and meaning on both an individual and a communitarian level. In this
respect, the tradition of German Idealism, originating in the influence of
Rousseau, attempts to restore the classical conception of political ontology as
against the general (although not unexceptionable) assumption of Enlightenment
political theory that human beings are individualistic by nature and that, conse-
quently, the social contract has no more than an instrumental value to its
members. 1

s
Shlomo Avineri, Hegel Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge, 1982),
pp. 134-35; Isaiah Berlin, The Roots ofRomanticism (Princeton, 1999), pp. 124-27;
Karl Lowith, From Hegel to Nietzsche, Green trans. (Doubleday Anchor, 1967), p.
306; Bernard Yack, The longing for Total Revolution (Princeton, 1986), pp. 145-62;
s
Steven B. Smith, Hegel Critique of Liberalism: Rights in Context (Chicago, 1989),
pp. 7- 9.

176
 Origins of Enchantment 177

Aristotle had consolidated the communitarian tradition in pre-liberal political

theory with his conception of the political community as a life-long education, in
which the moral and intellectual virtues solicited by the responsibilities of
collective self-government also cultivate the soul's potential for happiness, so that
informed and vigorous citizenship is at once altruistic with respect to one's fellow
citizens and eudaimonistic with respect to each citizen's fulfillment. Rousseau and
his German devotees consciously retrieve this expansive and pedagogical under-
standing of the political community to mitigate what they believed to be modern
liberalism's tendencies toward crass materialism, philistinism, plutocracy and
political apathy. But at the same time, they believed it was possible to combine the
holism of the classical conception of civic community with the positive achieve-
ments of modernity: the Enlightenment's insistence on the irreducible autonomy
and dignity of every individual qua individual, as against the sometimes despotic
incursions of feudal and religious collectivism. The grandeur of German Idealism
springs from this noble longing for what Schiller called "the third realm" or, as
Schelling evoked it with an allusion to Homer, mankind's journey home from the
lonely odyssey of modern individualism to the Ithaca of the coming age, a home-
land in which human beings are free as individuals, but within the comforting
contexts of history, tradition and the indeterminate richness of the life-world. 2
But if the thinkers I am exploring in this essay share in common the vision
of a coming restoration of Aristotelian community and civic friendship without
sacrificing modern autonomy, their works are haunted by a problem unique to
modernity: the troubling status ofreason in relation to life and the pursuit of hap-
piness. For the ancient thinkers, no such conflict between reason and happiness
was conceivable, either in principle or in wisely guided practice. Aristotle and the
other classical thinkers present civic life as an ascent from lower to higher kinds
of perfection, from bodily moderation to informed citizenship and, on the basis of
the moral qualities perfected through serving the common good, a final ascent
towards the transcendental good that endows the cosmos with harmony, order and
proportionality. As Aristotle puts it, the wholeness pursued by the city is ulti-
mately an instantiation of the wholeness and repose that govern the cosmos
(Politics 1325b23). The polis points to the cosmopolis of reason and happiness by
way of the civic virtues. Thus, the mind's ascent toward philosophical contempla-
tion is at the same time the soul's progressive achievement of emotional and
aesthetic satisfaction. Transcendence is both theoretically enlightening and
psychologically therapeutic.
Modern philosophy, by contrast, begins by demolishing the classical teleology
linking the human pursuit of wholeness through the civic association with the

2 Friedrich Schiller, letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, Snell trans. (Ungar,
1965), pp. 112-13; Schelling, Samtliche Werke, Pt.I, vol.3, pp. 628, 341; The Ages
ofthe World, Frederick de Wolfe Bolman, Jr., trans. (New York, 1942), pp. 84, 90-91.
178 WALLER R. NEWELL

wholeness that characterizes the cosmos, whereby, in pursuing civic satisfaction,

we are cultivating the divine spark in our souls that connects us to the beautiful
harmonies of the world. By reducing the cosmos to the Baconian and Newtonian
physics of matter in motion, modem philosophy treats nature as the sub-
phenomenal substratum of chance out of which visible phenomena unfathomably
issue. The reasoning power by which we classify those random motions and
assign their causality is accordingly severed from the objective being of the
cosmos and re-conceptualized as an anthropocentric faculty. By this means
human beings, finding themselves in a world of dangerously random and morally
purposeless forces, impose their wills on nature and re-shape it to provide an arti-
ficial state that will protect them from its ravages. This will also protect them
from their own propensities to exploitation and mastery- the upsurge of what
Machiavelli calls "the malignity of Fortuna" into human nature through the
passions.
Whereas the classics conceived of nature in terms of telos, form and final
cause, modernity identifies nature with origin and genesis. Thus, whereas for the
classics nature entails reason, order and virtue, for the modems-illustrated early
on by Machiavelli-nature is a sub-phenomenal void of origination which is
indifferent to the superstructures of reason, order and virtue, if not outright hos-
tile to them ("the malignity of Fortuna" again). Consequently, whereas for the
classics, reason and man's place in the cosmos are entailed by nature, for the mod-
ems, reason is an anthropocentric quality which enables man to fight back and
perhaps control or master Fortuna. Whereas for the classics, the passions properly
understood lead to their own self-transcendence, so that in properly fulfilling our
erotic longings (as sketched by Diotima in Plato's Symposium) our soul is ulti-
mately led to an approximation of the intelligible harmony and repose that
characterize the cosmos, for early modems such as Machiavelli and Hobbes,
nature repulses our efforts to find happiness. Fortuna is not beneficent, but she
does teach us the valuable lesson that our longings for happiness have no onto-
logical or metaphysical grounding in the non-human world. When we realize that
nature is alienating, we will be goaded into summoning from ourselves the will-
power to fight back and change our natural circumstances. By attributing to the
examples of the most "outstanding virtue" the capacity to "introduce into matter
whatever form they pleased," Machiavelli transfers to the "virtue of their (that is,
the greatest princes') mind" a capacity to fashion or re-fashion nature ex nihilo
traditionally reserved for God.3
The great counter-movement to these identifications: of nature with genesis
and of virtue with the anthropocentric will to assert mastery over nature, is
crystallized by Rousseau. Like the early modem thinkers, Rousseau also identifies
nature with genesis. Like them, therefore, he also rejects the classical view that

3 Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Mansfield trans. (Chicago, 1985), p. 25.

'
 Origins of Enchantment 179

reason, order and virtue are entailed by nature-understood as a teleological

conception of the cosmos. Unlike the early modem thinkers, however, Rousseau
regards nature as beneficent and as the source of human happiness and repose. He
thus restores the classical concern with happiness on the basis of the modem
account of nature as genesis. For the classics, happiness was an ascent from the
moral virtues to the intellectual virtues, so that the aspirations of the mind for its
fullest satisfaction entailed along the way our duties as citizens. A few progressed
far enough in the development of the contemplative virtues that their minds were
drawn close to, and in some manner harmonized with, the ordered cycles of the
cosmos. For Rousseau, by contrast, happiness is the immediate and immanent gift
of nature to all human beings. Not only is it not necessary for us to ascend
through the moral and intellectual virtues, but these products of civilization alien-
ate us from the sweet sentiment of existence which is given to every human. In
his Reveries, Rousseau often describes natural happiness as a complete loss of
self, of the awareness that one is a self, not through the transcendence of the self
in the direction of the eternal, but through a descent behind, or recession from, the
self into the pre-self, into the primordial origins ''without taking the trouble to
think."4 Rousseau transposes to the origins that erotic wholeness which for the
classics could only be aimed at through a teleological ascent solicited and guided
by the final end. For the early modems, nature is bad and reason is the anthro-
pocentric tool for its repression and reform. For Rousseau, nature is good, and
therefore modem rationality lacks even the utilitarian or instrumental benefi-
cence that it possesses for Machiavelli or Hobbes. The question inherited from
Rousseau by German Idealism is vexing: How can reason be reconciled with
nature understood as a beneficent, life-affirming, world-generating void of
origination, given that the beneficence of the origins invalidates the modem iden-
tification of reason with utilitarian mastery but at the same time prevents any
return to the classical account of nature as an orderly cosmos that entails reason?
One answer to this question is broached by Rousseau himself, and given full
expression by Kant. Human beings are necessarily divided into (a) a natural
happiness to which they cannot return under the conditions of civilization and
(b) a self-conscious, rational and willing half that alienates them from the unself-
conscious sweetness and repose of the origins. Ordinarily, reason and will are
used to stimulate the desires beyond their simple natural equilibrium and devise
the means to gratify these sophisticated, inflamed passions. By formalizing the
will, by willing only what can be willed for mankind in general, our alienated,
unnatural half can tum back against the natural desires corrupted by civilization
and paradoxically restore a simulacrum of the equality, austerity and repose that
nature originally gave us as an unself-conscious gift for which no such spiritual

4 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Reveries du Promeneur Solitaire. Jacques Voisine ed.

(Garnier-Flammarion, 1964), pp. 95- 105.
180 WAL L ER R. NEWELL

striving is necessary. The generalized will has willing itself as its object to the
degree humanly possible, and therefore does not have as its object the satisfaction
of any natural inclination with its empirical correlates in the world governed by
necessity and scientific reasoning. The generalized will, or will to will, cannot
heal the division in the self and return it to nature. But it can achieve a certain dig-
nity, employing the purified will as a bulwark against the corruption of whatever
remains in us of nature's beneficent residue.
The other answer, developed by Schiller, Schelling and Hegel among others,
is to argue that this divided Kantian self is both unbearable and unnecessary.
According to Schiller (and, on some readings, the Kant of The Critique of
Judgement), the divided self can achieve unity through aesthetic fulfillment.
Nature as a void of origination expresses itself, achieves a certain kind of flower-
ing, as the work of art- as Schiller puts it, aesthetic education is a path to freedom
"through" beauty. 5 We do not so much will art as the product of an isolated
individual ego as let it come forth through us, an upsurge from the origins that
finds clarity, form and sublimity through its interaction with human creative
faculties. In Schelling's and Hegel's idealism, nature as the world-artist develops
and expresses itself, rising out of the primordial depths and flowering throughout
the millennia, like an enormous symphony made up of many cultural and artistic
achievements. History unifies world and self. For the classics, the soul achieves
unity by rising toward and approximating, through the cultivation of the moral
and intellectual virtues, the eternal harmonies of the cosmos. For German
Idealism, nature as genesis unifies the human self by enveloping the self in its
mutable, time-bound processes, and expresses itself by rising to culture through
the human self. As Schelling describes the ages of mankind, the history of the
world mirrors Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, a modem period of struggle, mastery
and the emergence of human subjectivity, individuality and autonomy, followed
by the current era in which this liberated individual, longing for a reconciliation
with nature, history, culture and an organic feeling of unity with other people,
embarks on the journey home to Ithaca.

II
Let me sum up my argument to this point: When Rousseau and his German heirs
attempt their noble return to the holistic politics of the ancients, they are faced
with a dire difficulty. Whereas, for the classics, reason was the sole reliable path
to natural satisfaction, the early moderns saw it very differently. For them, reason

5 M. H. Abrams, p. 185, Natural Supernaturalism (Norton, 1973), p. 185; Arthur

Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Harvard, 1936), pp. 293-98; Hans-Georg
Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, F.G. Lawrence trans. (The MIT Press,
1983), p. 35.
 Origins of Enchantment 181

is an instrument for the conquest of nature, including our own natures, which,
lacking any intrinsic potential for virtue, are necessarily prone to war unless they
are curbed by the artificial restraints of the social contract. Whereas, for the
ancients, human reason is but a reflection of the noetic harmony that structures
the cosmos, making nature both intelligible and beneficent, for the early moderns,
reason has no necessary mooring in the patterns of nature; these regularities are
evidently indifferent and perhaps even hostile to human longings for happiness.
I now want to argue that the tensions within German Idealism, the profound and
sometimes even hostile debates among its major expositors, flow from their
differing attempts to reconcile this modern conflict between nature and reason, or,
as it is variously expressed, the is and the ought, the real and the ideal, or
happiness and virtue.
The key to their resolution of this conflict is a fundamental re-thinking of
being, in which the modern understanding of nature as non-teleological sub-
phenomenal motion is endowed with the capacity of the classical conception of
nature to offer human beings a trans-human grounding and communal context for
their longings for moral and intellectual self-cultivation. I term this fundamental
re-thinking the transposition of eros. I use the term eros in the Platonic sense of
an ordered longing for wholeness. That longing for wholeness is now transposed
from an orientation toward the motionless super-sensible stability identified by
classical metaphysics with the transcendental Good to the mysterious richness of
genesis and indeterminacy, the enchantment of the origins. Ontologically, this re-
thinking of nature as beneficent (as in the classical view of the cosmos) but also
time-bound and generative (as in the modern view of nature as motion) provides
a common conceptual substructure for Schelling's understanding of Absolute
Identity ("the infinitely finite"), Hegel's concept of Spirit as a "self-originating
wealth of shapes," Marx's concept of species-being, Nietzsche's concept of the
whole as the "world artist" expressing itself as will to power, and what Heidegger
evokes as the call of Being.6 What generates the turbulent debate within German
Idealism from Schelling to Heidegger is how this organic, holistic conception of
nature as a dynamic equilibrium of life forces expresses itself through its human
agents in the mediating forms of civic and aesthetic wholeness. In other words,
does Being develop itself out of its matrix of origination into a transparent meta-
physics and a final teaching about politics, culture and justice? Does Being
progress?
Thus, I am suggesting that German Idealism can be usefully understood as
an internal dialogue about the meaning of the transposition of eros, the funda-
mental Rousseauan inversion of classical teleology whereby nature is identified

6 Stanley Rosen, G. W.F. Hegel, (Yale, 1974), pp. 56-62; F.WJ. Schelling, Bruno or On
the Natural and Divine Principle of Things, Yater trans. (SUNY 1984),
pp. 14Cr53.
182 WALLER R. NEWELL

with a limitless and teeming Ursprung, a self-revealing, life-affirming and

spiritually energizing matrix of origination. The internal dialogue centers
around how that matrix of origination issues through human action so as to
come to presence, to be immanentized, within the phenomenology of observ-
able human civilization. All of the thinkers within this continental tradition of
political philosophy are radical de-subjectivists. Not one of them shares the pre-
vailing assumption of the Enlightenment that human beings are first and
foremost individuals with no intrinsic connection to one another or to the
currents of time, history and heritage. Every one of them believes that human
beings find themselves always already enmeshed with a tacit underlying
communality, more or less accessible under the more or less alienating condi-
tions of the present epoch of modernity. Each argues that, in order for human
beings to be free and happy within a co-operative association, they must somehow
break the shackles of their current alienation and re-orient themselves toward
this immanent communality.
Of course this question sharpens the debate concerning the precise relation-
ship between the immanent communality granted us by the matrix of origination,
and the phenomenology in which it manifests itself. To what extent is the
phenomenology the dialectical ladder to the sought-for communality? To what
extent is it, on the contrary, an iron cage of determinacy and reified social and
political hierarchies that cut us off from the life-world? On the basis of this debate
over the relationship of the phenomenology of everyday experience (including
authority, civic life and aesthetic culture) to the underlying ontology of the origins
(and Rousseau's transposition of eros) emerge the more familiar debates between
Hegel and Marx or Heidegger and Nietzsche concerning the philosophy of his-
tory, religion, art and the question of the best social order.
Hegel locates in the mediating circumstances of the historical process those
limitations on human will and spontaneity that the classics had located in the eter-
nal structures of the cosmos. Progress for Hegel is thus cumulative rather than
revolutionary. Marx and Nietzsche, despite profoundly differing views on other
issues, both object to so much of the agenda for active historical creativity being
reserved for the objective dimension of the historical process and claim it instead
for the dynamic transformative powers of the human bearers of emancipation.
Heidegger in tum rebels against what he sees as this increasing subjectivization
of the immanent self-presencing of history as "destining" ( Geschictlichkeit). 7 He
identifies the will to creative liberation through historical action as the cause,
rather than the remedy, of modem man's alienation and calls instead for a pensive
submission to the currents of temporality that ground our tacit experience of
being-in-the-world and being-with-others prior to all assertions of will to recon-
struct the environment.

7 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Max Niemeyer, 1979), p. 385.

 Origins of Enchantment 183

Hegel had famously argued that the grand historical symphony evoked by
Schelling must include the unedifying world of modern Lockean liberalism,
utilitarianism and analytical and empirical rationality. Schelling had understood
nature in terms of an unfathomable primordial genesis which expresses itself by
distinguishing itself from itself as a delineable aesthetic experience, a work of art,
music or literature. For Hegel, too, Being is a genesis that distinguishes itself
from itself in order to "be" in the concrete phenomenal sense. But, Hegel argues,
Being negates its own distinctions cumulatively, and therefore actually progresses
teleologically, in contrast with Schelling's view that Being is a plenum within
which discrete aesthetic phenomena emerge alongside each other without a
dialectical resolution in one direction over time. Hegel's understanding of Spirit
transposes the classical account of teleology as a recurrently repeatable ascent
from origins to ends sub specie aeternitatis to a single ascent by the entire human
species in time from the earliest epochs to the present, so that in the
Phenomenology ofSpirit he uses the imagery of Plato's Divided Line to describe
the progress of history from the parti-colored mists of the dawn of self-
consciousness to the "spiritual daylight of the present."8 By presenting Geist as
a process that unfolds and flowers by progressively negating itself "by crucifying
its own distinctions and preserving them through their crucifixion" Hegel claims
to have synthesized the modern conquest of nature (Machiavelli and Hobbes)
with the anti-modern or what we would now term post-modernist longing for
immediate wholeness and immanence (Rousseau and the Romantics). Both
poles of modernity, Hegel argues, are abstractions from Spirit, independent from
one another only in the act of analytical understanding, always unified in
experience and therefore always mediated and tempered by one another. Truth, in
Hegel's formulation, is the unity of Subject and Substance.9 That is to say, truth
is the synthesis of the modern subjectivistic conquest of nature with its anthro-
pocentric and utilitarian conception of rationality and the Schellingian longing for
the self's reabsorption into the primordial void of origination. This synthesis is
meant to prevent both a Romantic flight from the muck of politics into merely
personal aesthetic enjoyments and the Jacobin impulse to shatter and re-construct
all human institutions so as to return us to the Arcadian bliss of the origins.
With Heidegger, we reach the dismantling of this grand Hegelian edifice, the
science of Spirit, and hence one of the explicit founders of post-modernism.
Heidegger's philosophy may be characterized briefly but not misleadingly as
historicity without teleological progress or development. Much like Schelling in
some ways, for Heidegger, Being is a genesis that unfolds, that presences itself as
an art work or a historical community, but does not develop. Unlike Hegelian

8 G.W.F. Hegel, Phanomenologie des Geistes, Hoffmeister ed. (F. Meiner, 1952), # 177.
9 Hegel, Phanomeno/ogie, #17- 19; Michael Rosen, Hegel sDialectic and its Criticism
(Cambridge, 1982), pp. 78- 84; Abrams, pp. 217- 37.
184 WALLER R. NEWELL

Geist, for Heidegger, Being does not seek a focal point within itself, does not seek
to become self-conscious, does not try to become an object "for itself," thereby
using its human agents to develop itself through struggle, negation, victory and
progress. Being reveals. Being gives. Because Being is to be understood in terms
of the primordial origins rather than in terms of the ontic, thingly or metaphysical
end, Being is fundamentally characterized by finitude, impermanence and
perishability. Historicity without progress might also be termed existentialism.
But Heidegger also claims in Being and Time to ground phenomenology
(including the historical existence of peoples) in his primordialist account of
Being. Heidegger's phenomenology, however, is not like Hegel's, for whom phe-
nomenology reveals the "shapes" of self-consciousness as they cumulatively and
progressively unfold Spirit's odyssey. Heidegger's phenomenology, by contrast,
limns the cycles of existence, of time-bound being in the world, that form the
deep ontological structures of any possible world.
Like many of his generation, Heidegger did not think it possible to believe
in the teleological progress of history after the events of World War One and the
crisis of modernity they both expressed and radicalized, leading to the prolonged
political, economic and cultural upheavals of the twenties and thirties. The
modem, subjectivistic side of Geist that Hegel thought would be tamed and
mediated by the longing for wholeness (while simultaneously shaking the latter
out of its tendency to Romantic flight, sentimentality and despair) had burst
forth from the constraints of Hegelian mediation to reveal itself as the impera-
tive for global technological domination. Heidegger's response to the failure of
the Hegelian science of Spirit to contain the modernist pole of the dialectic was
to dismantle this dialectic altogether so as to liberate Being from its entangle-
ment with reason understood as culminating in modem technological rationality.
Heidegger's phenomenology deconstructs the historical evolution of reason and
returns to the sheer indeterminacy out of which, in Hegel's account, it had dialec-
tically developed. Heidegger's remedy for the assimilation of reason to
technology is to re-inaugurate the transposition of eros at is most original and
primordial level, prior to all causal and analytical mediation, and all positive
accounts of the teleological progress of history. No Hegelian synthesis of
Subject and Substance is possible, according to Heidegger, because history itself
has revealed that Western reason as such (not just modem rationality, but down
to its very origins in Plato and even the preeSocratics) is metaphysical and hence,
even since Anaximander and certainly after Plato, incipient global technology.
For Heidegger, the collapse of modem rationality is the collapse of Western
philosophy as such, the discrediting of its search for eternal clarity and perma-
nence. Now, instead of this ocular assault upon Being, we can only listen and wait
for Being to touch us again from within the depths of its finitude through our fini-
tude as mortals. This involves returning to the origins of the Western tradition of
philosophy and re-thinking works such as Plato's in light of the contemporary
 Origins of Enchantment 185

withdrawal of Being. This is not a question of exposing Plato as wrong, because

Being needs to '"presence" as form. But we do need to re-think Plato in order to
see how what is properly only one moment in the unfolding of Being the moment
of visible "presencing" or "lighting" was at the very outset of the West's destiny
elevated as the only intelligible perspective on Being, so that Being was reified as
another and higher kind of thing. 10 When Being is reified as an exclusively
thingly mode of being, the primordial origins of Being are then stigmatized and
banished to a lower realm of mere appearance, becoming, change and decay.
Being as eidos, telos and final cause then tum back on Being as genesis and
attempt to reconstruct the latter in light of these stable archetypes of perfection,
the ontological origin of technology, which for Heidegger is the distinct destining
of Being for the West. Thus, whereas Leo Strauss, for example, would argue that
only with modem thinkers like Machiavelli and Hobbes does reason become an
instrument for the conquest of nature and technological domination, for
Heidegger, the West's destiny as "the working out of metaphysics as technology"
is already launched in Plato.

Ill
I should make it clear at this point my own preferences in this debate over the
transposition of eros. For, although Hegel 's philosophy is only one variant of what
I have termed the transposition of eros, my approach to the whole paradigm of
continental political thought is in a sense Hegelian. As we have observed, Hegel's
answer to the question of how freedom and nature might be reconciled through
educational culture is the teleological progress of history. For us modems, in
other words, the place occupied by the soul in the classical understanding of polit-
ical community is replaced by history-or, in Hegelian terms, the historical
process- in a deliberate assimilation of theological terminology, by Geist or
Spirit. History is a phenomenology of the (Holy) Spirit. 11
The key to understanding Hegel's conception of Spirit is his argument,
already touched upon, that "truth is the unity of subject and substance," or, as he
otherwise expresses it, the unity of Understanding ( Verstand) and Love. By the
former, he means (as had Schiller) the cold analytical thought premised on
modem man's alienation from nature and his growing power to master it through
scientific knowledge and technique. The political parallel of this analytical
dissection of nature's parts came with liberalism's vision of human beings as

10 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 3- 7.

11 Hegel, ibid. ; Early Theological Writings, Knox trans.(University of Pennsylvania,
1971), pp. 303-13; Werner Marx, Hegel 's Philosophy of Spirit (Harper and Row,
1975), pp. 54-57; Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 48, 67-68; Smith, pp.
184-86; Fred R. Dallmayr, G. W.F Hegel: Modernity and Politics (Sage, 1993), p. 33.
186 WALLER R. N EWELL

isolated individuals impersonally represented by the contractual state. Indeed, for

Hegel, the category of Verstand comprehends the whole complex of phenomena
that we identify with modernity- the interlocking modalities of rights discourse,
behavioristic reasoning, and the derivation of empirical observations in a logically
necessary manner from Newtonian general laws.
Love, by contrast, embodies our feeling of unity with our fellow human
beings and with nature. Spirit reconciles these two dimensions of existence. For
Hegel, history is a double-sided quest for solidarity and fulfillment. The progres-
sive pursuit of Understanding (including individual rights and the scientific
power to master nature which those rights both maximize and pre-suppose) itself
unexpectedly brings about the reign of Love. The human race pursues its freedom
through the outward and ostensible conquest of nature. But the Spirit of history
has all along been simultaneously embarked on an odyssey of fulfillment that it
pursues through its locus: mankind's pursuit of freedom. The result is the embod-
iment of reason and freedom in the present age, specifically in the form of the
nation-state with its representative institutions, personal liberties, tolerance, cul-
tural and religious communities and its recognition of human dignity whether it
is expressed through our autonomy as individuals or through our overlapping
memberships in the various communal contexts that are open to us. 12
Viewed subjectively or from a strictly secular and human perspective, this
historical process is the human pursuit of freedom beyond the contradictions
placed on it by the present. However, viewed more comprehensively and therefore
more adequately from the perspective of Objective Spirit, the progress of history
is Spirit's own development as it supersedes itself through the agency of man.
Because of this double-sided "negation of the negation," history can be viewed as
the cumulative progression through an ever-richer series of mediations. In this
way, the Hegelian dialectic tries to provide a way of understanding social and
political existence that gives fair weight to both the communitarian longing for
repose and reconciliation and to the more aggressive and transformative aspects
of modem autonomy, the "labor of the negative" in history, embracing mankind's
pursuit of political, economic and technological mastery over the natural environ-
ment. For Hegel, both dimensions-both Love and Understanding- are essential
for a stance toward civic existence that is both humane and realistic. Guided by
this synthesis, we can steer between the extremes of Jacobin fanaticism- the
attempt to impose from above, by revolutionary fiat, a single global pattern for
rational political and economic organization-and the Romantic retreat into a
purely apolitical realm of aesthetic bliss. Hegel's successors tend to exaggerate
one side or the other of this synthesis of community and autonomy and choosing
either communitarian spontaneity bereft of purposive rationality or the limitless
reconstruction of the world.

12 Avineri, pp. 180-84.

 Origins of Enchantment 187

In the lectmes published as the Philosophy of History, Hegel remarks that

"nothing vanishes in Spirit." 13 Contrary to a persistent misconception, Hegel does
not embrace a "stage theory" of history in which one era is seen as manifestly
and decisively outmoding its predecessor in a relentless march forward. Indeed,
his phenomenology is among other things an attempt to moderate this hubristic
modem assumption that the past has nothing to teach us about freedom or culture,
an arrogance wonderfully summed up by Flaubert in the masterpiece of his ficti-
tious artist Pellerin taking the shape of a giant canvas depicting Christ piloting a
locomotive through a virgin forest, entitled "Progress." Although Hegel does
present an historical chronology tracing the history of self-consciousness through
such "shapes" (Gestalten) as mastery and slavery, Stoicism and Skepticism,
Christianity and the Enlightenment, this phenomenology should not be viewed so
much as a straight arrow pointing forward as a series of circles rippling out from
and back toward their origin, evolving into more complex patterns as they inter-
mingle. Although, for Hegel, we cannot literally return to any past civilization, or
restore it in the present, the positive contributions of past epochs to the deepening
of Spirit (and therefore of the human spirit) remain with us as an organic heritage
that can be raised to consciousness through a dialectic of recollection.
Phenomenology is not only the philosophical recollection of these multiple his-
torical moments, but their actual therapeutic crystallization in the life of the
present. We cannot literally be Stoics or Epicureans, we cannot experience tragedy
precisely as the Greeks did, but we carry in us as a collective heritage residual
experiences of Stoic nobility, Epicurean skepticism, and tragic resignation that
form the well-spring of experiences and culture from which we derive our moral
energies as citizens and human beings in the present. In this respect, Hegel was
arguably the last great philosophical friend of liberal modernity, precisely because
he believed its narrow account of human experience needed supplementation from
a friendly outside source, the organic communitarianism that would ground liberal
rights within a shared culture that might approximate, for the citizens of modem
representative states, the pedagogical community extolled by Aristotle. 14
My hermeneutical approach to German Idealism is Hegelian in the sense just
described. I bring to it a three-fold purpose. On one level, these political theories
can be read independently of one another, since each thinker presents a powerful
and persuasive argument about the meaning of political community that to a very
large degree stands on its own merits, and does not need to be treated as a pre-cur-
sor or consequence of another philosophy. On another level, however, the thinkers
under consideration in this essay do consciously address and criticize each other,

13 G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, Sibree trans. (Dover, 1956), p. 79.
14 Avineri, p. 69; Hegel, Early Theological Writings, pp. 325-28; Dallmayr, pp. 249-51;
George Armstrong Kelly, Hegel s Retreat from Eleusis (Princeton, 1978),
pp. 113-15.
188 WALLER R. NEWELL

deliberately joining an inherited ontological pedigree in order to transform or

subvert it from within. The works of Schelling, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and
Heidegger are saturated with similar pre-occupations, and often with the same
technical vocabulary. In this respect, they do form a genealogy for the exploration
of the transposition of eros and the grounds it might offer for a just and fulfilling
account of political community, a genealogy with a leitmotif of problematics
stretching continuously from Schiller to Heidegger. Finally, however, the respective
political philosophies remain independent Gestalten in our on-going reflections on
political ontology, sturdier in their independence (in proper Hegelian fashion) pre-
cisely through their comparison and contrast with one another. They thereby remind
us that the adequacy of our reflections will stand or fall by their capacity to embrace
without reductionism, distortion or caricature the autonomous alternative that each
philosophy offers in illuminating the relationship between happiness and life.
Nothing vanishes in Spirit.
To situate my hermeneutical approach within the broader and more familiar
terrain of political theory, it bears re-emphasizing that for Hegel, Spirit is
concretely embodied in the nation-state. This, and this alone, in contrast with a
recent misunderstanding, is what he means by the now super-charged term " the
end of history." In the coming synthesis, Hegel tells us, the nation-state will
emerge as an organic mingling of political, aesthetic, religious and cultural bonds.
The nation-state will educate and acculturate. It will embody the history and tra-
ditions of a people, or of an association of peoples, so as to mediate the abstract,
universalistic and sometimes distant relationship between the state's representa-
tive institutions and its citizens. The healing force of religion in history,
reconciling the sometimes seemingly hopeless antagonism between
Understanding and Love- between rights and community, or the ought and the
is-this is the ultimate basis for Hegel's hopes for a renewed sense of civic
community within the prevailing world-view of modernity.
Hegel attempts to synthesize liberalism with communitarianism by arguing
that the nation-state embodies universalistic principles of rights and legitimacy in
the distinct historical evolution of particular peoples or associations of peoples.
In this way, the nation-state is the best hope for avoiding the characteristic
extremes of modernity: the Jacobin utopianism which tries to destroy all vestiges
of historical community, and the tribalism which tries to liberate the existentially
authentic "people" by dismantling the overlay of modernity. 15 Accordingly, just
as Hegel's successors attempt to dismantle the Hegelian synthesis ontologically
by de-constructing its polarities and exaggerating either our direct, tacit and
unmediated immersion in the immanent wholeness of the life-world (the realm of
Love) or our untrammeled subjective power to assert our wills over this life-world
and reconstruct it (the realm of Understanding), so do they, as the political and

15 Avineri, pp. 44-48, 228- 29.

 Origins of Enchantment 189

civic corollary of this ontological critique, tend to attack the legitimacy of the
nation-state as the concrete embodiment of Spirit, pulling it apart either in the
direction of globalizing technological rationalism or of tribal belonging.
In this way, the internal debate within German Idealism over the ramifications
of the transposition of eros, and the successive critiques launched against Hegelian
Spirit by the philosophies of Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger, bring us directly to
our own era, and remind us again that political philosophy always emerges from
the crucial dilemmas that we ourselves face as citizens grappling with the prob-
lematic relationship between liberalism and community. It is no longer possible for
us to embrace Hegel's progressive teleology of history in all aspects of its positive,
outward structure (for instance, its Eurocentricity, occasional insensitivity toward
or ignorance about non-Western cultures, and its assertion that Christianity has a
privileged place among modem faiths as "the religion of the Absolute").
Nevertheless, the internal structure of Spirit as the unity of subject and substance
mediated by historical context remains promising as a quasi-transcendental but
non-monistic account of civic community that is, in its respective moments, both
integrative and differentiated. Freed from the determinacy of a particular account
of progress the immanent structure of Spirit as the preservation of dynamic unity
through its ensemble of tensions can help to illuminate democratic citizenship as
an equilibrium of overlapping and mutually reinforcing spheres of public, private,
familial, erotic, cultural and religious avocations whose tension with one another
enliven, invigorate and enrich the elusive unity they pursue in common.
For these reasons, I am broadly sympathetic to Habermas' argument that,
while we are obliged to jettison Hegel's claims to have established the "absolute
science of Spirit," along with other ill-fated claims to the unity of theory and prac-
tice including Leninism, a return to Hegelian "forms of consciousness" and the
"shapes" that contextualize the polarities of individualism and communitarianism
within a distinct historical life-world is most desirable. Such a move can help us
to avoid the extremes either of Leninist "monism" or of "irrational decisionism"
without conceding politics entirely to the realm of the technical interest. 16 Hegel's
"shapes of consciousness" ground liberal autonomy within the hermeneutical
self-interpretation of communities mediated by a commonly held discursive her-
itage. This returns us to our earlier discussion of the assault on Hegelianism
launched by his successors, and especially to Heidegger's critique of the Hegelian
science of Spirit for its irredeemable propensity to assimilate itself to global tech-
nology. That critique can be answered from within Hegel's philosophy by
de-constructing the positive outward form of the science of Spirit and returning it
to its own underlying and more fundamental ontological flexibility without sacri-
ficing the mediating structures of civic and moral experience.

16 Juergen Habermas, Theory and Practice, J. Viertel trans. (Beacon Press, 1974),
pp. 41-44, 254-55.
On Giving Oneself the Law
Robert B. Pippin
University of Chicago

l. Kant's claim that morality is a matter of rationality clearly counts as a legacy

to contemporary philosophy. Thanks largely to the influence of John Rawls and
his legions of Kant scholar students, this Kantian position has again become a
contemporary option in debates about moral theory. It was also a great living
legacy to his German Idealist successors, although the nature of that linkage is
still not well understood. So before addressing what I want to claim is the central
issue in the contemporary appropriation of idealist moral theory (the idea of
"self-legislation") 1 I would like to begin with a brief comment about Hegel, the
relevance of which will, I hope, become clear by the end of this paper about Kant.
A common and understandable view of Hegel's ethical theory has it that
Hegel has a "social role" theory of right human conduct. What it is "right" to do
is supposed to be accounted for by appeal to the social role one occupies. Since
Hegel also regularly describes modem ethical life as rational, this last point must
mean that appealing to such ethical roles is for him a normative or justificatory
appeal, that such an appeal can function as a practical reason, a justification.2
"Because I am a father," "because that is what a good business man should do,"

The appeal to autonomy or self-legislation is also why Stanley Rosen regards Kant
as having started modern philosophy on a slippery slope, eventually culminating in
the Nietzschean creativity theory and in "hermeneutics as politics." See the new second
edition of his book by that title (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). I am
concerned here with a preliminary issue: how the difficult idea of"giving oneself the
law" could even be understood. One could thus see the following as preliminary to
an engagement with Rosen's charge against modern German philosophy.
2 Since Hegel denies philosophy any prescriptive role, many assume that any such
account is a purely descriptive or an explanatory, not a normative account. But that
would be the wrong inference to draw, since Hegel also clearly insists that occupy-
ing such modern roles is rational, that the roles in some way manifest the work of
reason, even while denying that this means "what a purely rational agent would will."
See "Hegel's Ethical Rationalism," in my Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), and my "The Realization of
Freedom: Hegel's Practical Philosophy," in The Cambridge Companion to German
Idealism, edited by Karl Ameriks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

190
 On Giving Onself the Law 191

or "because I am a citizen" would be the obvious sorts of candidates for what

Hegel must regard as practical reasons.
On the face of it, this is unsatisfying. Any practical argument which
concludes with this sort of justification appears clearly incomplete, to require
another, final step in which the justifiability and goodness of there being these
roles at all is defended universally and objectively. Only such a final step, it would
seem, could complete the invoking of this consideration to someone who
demands a justification. We might up the stakes by adding that such roles have
become "essential" to a person's identity, that I couldn't even begin to reflect on
what to do were I not to begin reflecting qua something or other, family member,
producer/worker/professional, or qua citizen. But that move only adds to the
suspicion that such considerations are not really playing a normative role, that
they instead describe some psychological or social necessity that delimits the
possibility of practical reasoning. There might be something interesting to say
about someone's social identity, but without the further step we are looking for
there is no clear reason to think that "what my social identity requires" could be
the sort of practical reason whose binding force others ought also to acknowledge.
Likewise, trying to make this next move and complete the argument by claiming
that such social functions are indispensable elements of any good or flourishing
life, or that they should be seen as the outcome of a rational historical process,
has come to look hopeless to most modem philosophers, almost all of whom have
come to accept a "plurality" of equally legitimate and incommensurable claims
about ultimate human ends or goods, and who, after the twentieth century, would
view any notion of historical progress as Panglossean.
This is a natural and plausible way to think about the limitations of what is
taken to be the Hegelian position. Assertions about the normative dimensions of
social roles, especially if they are understood to involve rights or entitlement
claims, must be able to survive, we think, a full "reflective endorsement," a
reasoned defense that does not presuppose our social roles, but concludes in
affirming them (if it does), and only thereby can such claims be said to count as
binding practical reasons for any reflective individual.
This line of thinking seems natural and unavoidable. It is however, already
quite theoretically "thick," and leads fairly directly to a Kantian position on obliga-
tion, or on the binding "source of normativity."3 If every sort of consideration can
count as a justifiable practical reason only if it survives some sort of reflective
endorsement test, and there are such tests, and some considerations do survive
them, and we can accept or reject such proposals because they pass or fail, then we

3 Indeed one other initial way to stress the differences between Kant's and Hegel's
approach is to note that Hegel must be striking out in some very different direction
because he appears to have no interest at all is any refutation of moral or normative
skepticism, appears to think it is wholly unnecessary.
192 ROBERT 8. PIPPIN

have claimed that reason can be practical in some way, that passing this reflective
endorsement test is, at some basic, fundamental level, what most matters, is the
crucial component in the rational source of normativity, and that it at least can moti-
vate agents. And we have at least opened a clear path to the claim that the question
of what we ought to do (especially the question of what we may never do) is finally
a matter of pure reason being practical, that there is a form of reflective reason not
already tied to any pursuit of contingent, material ends, and it too "can be practical,"
that all our actions can be judged pennissible or not by appeal to such an a priori
endorsement test. On such an account, being in a certain social role could never of
itself count as a reason to do anything. I must reflectively adopt the requirements of
such a role as a principle of action, actively require of myself a course of action,
determine that what I find myself engaged in ought to be engaged in or not.
3. And therewith the other, now very familiar side of the Kant-Hegel dialectic
on this issue begins to come into view as well. The list of counter-questions is
well known: in what sense can we be said to be normatively bound to, committed
to, what a purely practically rational agent would legislate as required? In what
sense am I, just qua agent, "committed" to the requirements of reflective endorse-
ment? Is there any such test? That is, does anything action-guiding really follow
from such a commitment, and is there any coherent theory of human motivation
that could account for the motivational efficacy of such an always over-riding
commitment? On the Hegelian picture, our claims on each other, our normative
rules, arise out of and are grounded in already on-going ways oflife, attachments,
institutions and dependencies. Some such attachments and dependencies are said
to be constitutive of being an individual human agent (at some historical period),
and any reflective abstraction from such involvements creates an artificial
construct, whose putative endorsements (if any determinate ones can be made
out) amount to a philosophical fantasy world, bear no relation to the requirements
of a concretely human life. 4
And so the familiar back-and-forth. According to Hegel's theory, such social
commitments and dependencies do not merely reflect beliefs about value held by
individuals for various reasons. They are much "deeper" than that, are in some
sense forms of life or, in Hegel's terms, "shapes (Gestalten) of spirit." On the
Kantian picture, this all ignores how radically we certainly can, in concreto,
detach ourselves from, reflect on, and possibly reject such inheritances, and can
thereby determine in some purely rational (or impersonal or not at all self-
regarding) way, what ought to be done. (In Korsgaard's words: "A good soldier
obeys orders, but a good human being doesn't massacre the innocent." (CK102))
However, we should also immediately note that, for both Kant and Hegel, to
understand each other as merely passively shaped by, and in our practical lives

4 Most obviously for the Hegelian side, the long period of childhood dependency in a
particular community counts as one of the un-abstractable features at issue.
 On Giving Onself the Law 193

merely expressing, the influences of socialization and habituation, communal

mores and roles, is to fail to accord each other the appropriate respect, dignity and
worth as the kinds of creatures we are. We are entitled to such respect because the
lives we lead are up to us, are actively led by us.5 Whatever social roles we inhabit
or conventions we act out, we have somehow made them our own; they function
as norms and ideals for us that we must actively and with some justification to
ourselves and others sustain, and which, like any ideal, we can hold and yet fail to
live up to. They are certainly not, according to Hegel, just regularities and dispo-
sitions. The worth of our lives is tied to their being free lives, and th.e ir being free
lives is tied to a capacity for some sort of reflection, and such reflection is reflec-
tion if genuinely reasoned, not merely expressive. The disagreement at issue turns
on the nature of this act of "making them our own" or "acknowledging their author-
ity" and so on Hegel's disagreement with equating such a dimension (which Hegel
calls simply "subjectivity") with individual "reflective endorsement," especially
when that is understood as the practicality of pure reason. And this finally brings
me back to my main topic: Kant on the self-imposed norms of reason.
4. The clearest way to state the radicality of the Kantian claim about the only
possible origin of normative commitments is to repeat his claim that we are
always only obligated to what we can, from our own first-person perspective,
rationally obligate ourselves to. 6 That is Kant's solution to the problem of obliga-
tion descended from the dead ends created by the divine command and natural
law traditions. 7 If human beings can be duty-bound, can be subject to a universal
law, then we must be able to explain how this is consistent with another indispen-
sable premise in Kant's Protestant enterprise: that human beings are full subjects
of their own lives, not subject to any normative authority they cannot, from their
first-person perspective, reflectively endorse. And the only way this is possible is
if they are both legislators of and subject to the laws they obey. Nothing about the
state of things, history, my social role, nature or even God can function as a
practical reason unless I count such a consideration as a reason to act, and in

5 On the importance of reflective, subjective allegiance in Hegel's theory of objective

spirit, see my "Hegel, Freedom, The Will: The Philosophy of Right, #1 - 33," in
Hegel: Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, ed. Ludwig Siep, (Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 1997); "Hegel on the Rationality and Priority of Ethical Life" in Idealism as
Modernism op. cit.; and "Hegel on Institutional Rationality," in The Southern
Journal ofPhilosophy, Vol. XXXIX, Supplement, "The Contemporary Relevance of
Hegel's Philosophy of Right" (200 I).
6 On what it means to occupy, necessarily, such a first-person perspective, see
Christine Korsgaard, "Morality as Freedom," in Creating the Kingdom of Ends
(CKE) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 162- 87.
7 A solution many now understand as descended from Pufendorf. See especially
Chapter Seven of J.B. Schneewind, The Invention ofAutonomy. A History of Modern
Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 118-40.
194 ROBERT 8 . PIPPIN

doing so, in Kant's language, I am giving myself the law. And I can only be said
to be genuinely conferring such value (as opposed to, say, just expressing an
inherited, socialized attitude) if I do so with reason. 8 It is a big and controversial
step to go on to say, as an extension of this claim, that since reflective reasoning
is the "source of value" in this way, we are, therefore, as a consequence of some
sort of "regress" argument, unconditionally bound to reason itself and its pure,
universal requirements, all with a kind of moral necessity, and in a way that can
guide a life, but it is an understandable step, and we shall examine it in due
course. As Korsgaard rightly put it, engaging in such reflective endorsement "is
not for Kant a way of justifying morality; it [subjecting myself only to what I can
reflectively endorse] is morality itself." (89)9 (From here on, I will be making use
of Korsgaard's version of Kant as representative of contemporary Kantian
approaches. There are of course other approaches, but several aspects of her
project seem to me to capture best the appeal of this reflective endorsement
ideal.)
So, in sum, both the attractiveness of the Kantian position against the
supposedly Hegelian, and its potential paradoxes, are evident in this famous,
densely dialectical claim from the Groundwork.

The will is thus not merely subject to the law [dem Gesetze unterworfen] but
is subject to the law in such a way that it must be regarded also as legislating
for itself [selbtsgesetzgebend] and only on this account as being subject to
the law (of which it can regard itself as the author [Urheber].) GL, Ak. 43 t .10

Surely the first point to make about Kant's claim is that it is metaphorical
The image of some sort of putatively law- less person making or originating or
legislating a principle and "only" thereby being bound to it-otherwise not bound
at all-makes it very hard to imagine on what sort of "basis" such a law-less
subject could decide what to legislate. Unless you are already bound to the
constraint of reason, on what basis could you "subject yourself" to such con-
straints? If rational reflection and ultimately reflective rationality itself are the
source of all human value, then the whole idea of authoring or legislating that
principle looks groundless, and the picture coming into focus looks more like

8 Cf. Korsgaard's account in "Kant's Formula of Humanity," CKE,"... in our actions

we view ourselves as having a value-conferring status in virtue of our rational nature.
We act as if our own choice were the sufficient condition of the goodness of its
object: this attitude is built into [a subjective principle of] rational action." P. 123.
9 Clearly, this claim will then also, in a different way, raise again the question of the
justification of morality so construed.
10 This from Paul, Romans 2: 14. See Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Nonnativity
(SN) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 100.
 On Giving Onself the Law 195

a melancholy Dane ready to "leap" or an anguished, near-sighted Frenchman

"condemned to be free," than the dutiful sage of Konigsberg. 11
Of course, some aspects of the metaphorical dimension of "authoring the
law" are not that obscure. "Reason legislates" when we simply determine what to
do on the basis of reasons, and when we do so, we are determining what will
count as decisive; it cannot be anyone else or any other authority unless we also
so determine. And in so determining, we are always relying on a principle of some
generality. "Because I felt like it" cannot ever be our legislated norm, even if we
think it is. But "Always to do what I feel inclined to at the moment" can be. But
this still leaves the basis of such determination-"ourselves as authors"--obscure
and so does not help explain Kant's paradoxically reflexive formulations-that
reason has itself for its object, that the will wills itself, and so forth.
Of course, again, at a sufficient level of generality, even very unKantian
predecessors like Christian Wolff could adopt such rhetoric. "Because we know
through reason what the law of nature prescribes [haben will], a rational person
needs no further law; he is rather by reason a law unto himself." 12 And
Since a rational person is a law unto himself and besides natural obligation
needs no other, so neither rewards nor punishment are for him motives for
good action and for the avoidance of bad ones. . . . And hence someone
rational performs the good because it is good and omits the bad because it
is bad, in which case he becomes like a god, as one who has no superior who
can obligate him to do the good and omit the bad ... but rather by the per-
fection of his nature, does this and omits that.13

Wolff's autonomy language is of course quite restricted by his rationalist

perfectionism (reason has an intelligible object in such legislation, not, as in Kant,
itself) and by his helping himself to the notion of "intrinsically motivating by
nature," a dodge that Kant cannot afford, but the emphasis on a kind of autonomy

11 Perhaps the clearest contemporary expression of the principle Kant is assuming can
be found, not surprisingly, in Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971 ). "(T)he self is prior to the ends which are affirmed by it."
(p. 560) The spirit of my response to that claim is similar to Nagel's concluding
objections to Korsgaard in SN. He is objecting to Korsgaard's account of why some-
one might sacrifice his life for others. Korsgaard she says it is because his very
"identity" is at stake and he could not live with himself if he betrayed the others.
Nagel says, quite rightly I think, "The real explanation is whatever would make it
impossible for him to live with himself and that is the non-first-personal reason
against the betrayal." p. 206. This can be the right response without, I think, any
necessary commitment to what Nagel calls "realism."
12 Christian Wolff, Gesammelte Schriften (New York: Olms, 1976) Abteilung 3.
Deutsche Ethik, (DE) §24.
13 DE, §38.
196 R OBERT 8. PIPPIN

and the flexible interpretability of being a law unto oneself, are still quite striking.
But the contrast with Kant's version is also striking. Kant is not just claiming that
we exclude empirical considerations and rely on what pure reason and no other
consideration can determine we ought to do. He is claiming something like "pure
practical reason determines that its law should be the constraint ofpure practical
reason, and it thereby submits to the authority ofthis law." This separation of pure
practical reason from itself and then this re-union is what is so metaphorically
puzzling. (For one thing, without some non-metaphorical gloss, the situation
looks like one Nietzsche might describe, where self-rule or self-mastery is simul-
taneously and perhaps indistinguishably, self-enslavement.)
Using some of the passages from Kant's Religion book, we might also make
more plausible the idea of someone's responsibility for "legislating" a life-plan in
which she determines that the moral law and not self-love is to be the always
super-ordinate principle in all her decisions. That would be a way of "electing" to
subject oneself to the law. 14 But that would not be an explanation of her being
duty-bound in the first place (which is the problem), only of the extent to which
she acknowledges and obeys the already binding law over the course of a whole
life. We surely do not want to be in the position of saying that the moral law is
obligatory only for those who have actually made it binding, and not binding
otherwise. The passage surely cannot be opening that door, but it obviously forces
on us the question of the compatibility between Kant's emphasis on autonomy and
the human source of value with his emphasis on unconditional, or, let us say,
unavoidable obligation.
5. Later in the Growundowrk it is at least clearer what Kant means to exclude
by his author or "Urheber" principle, and that points in a clearer direction. He
says that accepting the authority of any "external" command, or accepting a
course of action necessary to satisfy a sensible impulse, is an evasion of our very
status as actors at all, of what is involved in inhabiting the unavoidable first-
person viewpoint from which we must direct the course of our lives. (It is a little
unclear how to state this, since it is quite obviously important to Kant that the
appearance of just being commanded or being determined is itself a delusion, in
many cases a willful self-delusion. By "letting ourselves" be commanded or
determined we are actually not passive at all, but are determining ourselves to act
on such a principle, and this claim gets us closer to the " inescapability" that
Kant's Urheber principle must involve. A representative passage:
Now it is impossible to think of a reason that in full consciousness [mit ihrem
eigenen Bewu.Bsein] receives direction [eine Lenkung empfinge] as regards
its judgments from elsewhere; for then the subject would ascribe the

14 Cf. Korsgaard's "Morality as Freedom," CKE, pp. 164-67, and what she calls the
"Argument from Spontaneity."
 On Giving Onself the Law 197

determination of his faculty of judgment not to his reason, but to an impulse.

Reason must regard itself as the author [die Urherberin] of its principles inde-
pendent of foreign influences. Therefore as practical reason or as the will of
a rational being reason must regard itself as free. GL, Ak 448

6. Various possible ways of rendering Kant's "authorship of the moral law"

claim less metaphorical can now suggest themselves. As we have already begun
to intimate, most such ways are, paradoxically, ways of denying what the
metaphor itself suggests is possible: some state of not-being-obligated, which
then becomes, by an act of authorship and subjection, a state of being obligated.
The arguments amount to such a denial, and the strategy is already evident in the
passage just quoted, with its denial that it is "possible to think" that reason could
receive direction from elsewhere than reason, and with its claim about the practical
necessity of acting always "under the idea of freedom," and so on reflectively con-
sidered reasons. Such a strategy must accomplish this goal while also showing
that is nevertheless in some sense (if not the obvious one) ''up to us" whether we
are guided by reason or not. That is, for Kant what is wrong in immoral or unjust
actions consists in a violation of the minimal, formal constraints of rationality,
and it is only by being subject to such constraints that we can be said to be actors
at all. It must also be said that it is in some way up to us whether we subject
ourselves to such constraints or not, even though attempting to avoid such
requirements must also manifest that we are nonetheless already so subject. A
simpler way to put the point would be to say that for Kant, despite the surface
grammar, "person" is in no sense a substantive or metaphysical category, but in
some way or other, a practical achievement, and the attribution of the notion to an
other is an ascription not a description. As Fichte would say, the I posits itself; as
Hegel would say, Geist is a "result of itself." But we digress.
One way to show this (that there really can be no such literal "act" or that the
act of self-subjection must always already have gone on) is to show that we have
somehow always already undertaken the basic obligation in whatever we do, and
to be able to show that somehow that "already," and the claim of unavoidability
and necessity, do not cancel out the self-legislation demanded by the active
language of "authorship." (One wants to say that we are not bound to reason
because we bind ourselves to it, but that reason is "constitutive" of the "binding"
legislation without which there are no norms, and so without which there is no
way to lead a life.) 15 This has been called a "regress" argument and has received
a well known formulation by Korsgaard, although a somewhat different version
has also been proposed recently by Allen Wood. 16

15 Korsgaard uses this phrase at SN, p. 234.

16 Cf. Korsgaard's "Kant's Formula of Humanity," CKE, and her analysis of Kant's
Groundwork, pp. 428-89 on the practical version of reason's "regress to the uncon-
ditioned." P. 119-3 l. Wood's account in his Kant's Ethical Theory (Cambridge:
198 ROBERT 8. PIPPIN

7. I'll return to the moral dimensions of this sort of case later in this paper.
But first, before we reach the issues of practical unavoidability and implicit,
undeniable commitments, we need to make less metaphorical the whole idea of
our legislating rules or norms to ourselves, and our being bound to them by
"binding ourselves." And Korsgaard and others have argued that ordinary cases of
hypothetical imperatives can show this rather easily, and so demystify the self-
legislation language. This is important because the instrumental form is usually
taken as an unproblematic application of practical reasoning, and so it allows a
clear view, one would assume, of what practical reason can be said to require of
us (what the so-called "normativity of instrumental reason" amounts to) 17, and
thereby whether this language of self-legislation and authorship makes any sense
in that context.
The bas.ic idea in such an approach is not complicated. When I set an end, or
do not merely "wish" (in Kant's sense) to pursue an end, but "will," actually
resolve to pursue it, I can also be said thereby "to have committed myself" to
achieving the means necessary to attain it. By "authoring" one rule for myself (to
pursue an end) I have authored another and bound myself to it (to obtain the
means), whether I explicitly realize this or not. I set the rules for the game I decide
to play, and so can be said to have bound myself to play by them. If I am "ration-
ally bound" to obtaining such means then "I have bound myself" just by setting
the end, and reason will have been shown already to be practical, to have satis-
fied the "intemalism" requirement, or to have been shown really to motivate an
action. Not everyone, for example, must take organic chemistry to succeed in
college, but if I resolve to go to medical school, when I learn how important for
admittance a good grade in "o-chem" is, I must either give up the end, or follow
through on my commitment by attaining the relevant means. And the important
point here, from a Kantian perspective, is not at all the predictive point that some-
one who resolves to go to medical school will very probably, almost certainly,
sign up for that chemistry class. That would be a kind of third-person viewpoint
which treats beliefs about means as a kind of gate or shunt for desire, such that
beliefs about means merely direct the flow of motivational desire, which desire
for the end is still doing all the real motivational work. In this case, it seems quite
artificial to say, with the Humeans, that my desire to be a doctor remains the
motivating force in this way, and that it has been "guided through o-chem," so that

Cambridge University Press, 1999) depends on a strong claim about the "objective"
goodness which his Kant maintains must be claimed by anyone willing rationally in
setting that end (any end). His regress then turns on the value of the "source" of this
goodness. I have presented some objections to this approach in "Kant's Theory of
Value: On Allen Wood's Kant's Ethical Thought," Inquiry, Vol. 43, {summer, 2000).
17 Christine Korsgaard, "The Normativity of Instrumental Reason," in Ethics and
Practical Reason, ed. By Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1997), pp. 215- 54.
 On Giving Onself the Law 199

I somehow also "pick up a desire for it" on the way. Something more than that is
clearly going on here, since, speaking from the first-person perspective, I can
genuinely have that belief about the usefulness of o-chem and not "automatically"
head for the registrar's office. I can fail to live up to what I know it is rational for
me to do, even while I really do commit myself to the end in question and the
relevant means. And if this is so then we must admit something that Hume, in
effect, never did: that there is such a thing as practical reason, that there is a
"normativity of instrumental reason" as Korsgaard has put it, or there is a question,
as Kant put it, about the rational "necessitation" (or constraint, Notigung) of the
will in instrumental cases (GL, Ak, 417). The ultimate point of seeing things this
way is quite important (and one Hegel would agree with): that "to be rational just
is to be autonomous,"(my emphasis) or "to be governed by reason and to govern
yourself, are one and the same thing." (CK, NIR, 219) There are no laws out there
which we need to see and adopt our behavior to. There are only laws we give our-
selves, to which we are bound because we have committed ourselves to them,
such that, if we don't follow through, we won't have decided anything at all; we
won't be rational, that is: subjects, persons, agents.1 8 (The somewhat confusing
but very important point here is that being a subject means being able to fail to
be one, something that already tells us a lot about the uniquely practical, not
metaphysical status of subjectivity in the post-Kantian tradition.)
There is an awful lot packed into this last claim. The difficulties come when
we try to state in this case as well as the more ambitious case about moral
commitment or self-legislation, what all of this amounts to in detail, how to gloss
what it means to "govern ourselves" in cases like these. And, I want to show, the
model of individual agents "detaching" or disengaging themselves from their
concerns and lives, and then reflectively committing to or endorsing very general
principles of action by reliance on some "pre-commitment" form of practical
reasoning, will lead into one paradoxical situation after another. As we have seen,
the question is a very large one; it goes to the purport of this quintessentially
modem insistence that some consideration can count as a genuine reason for
action only if we "make it our own," adopt it in a way that we can defend (even
just to ourselves), and when we can be said to have adopted it because of such a
recognition of these justificatory considerations. On Korsgaard's account, this
means that a person is not being instrumentally rational and so not "governing
herself," her life is not her own, if she merely wants an end, has a certain belief
about the right means, and is pursuing those means. For Korsgaard, she must also
be pursuing the means because she believes she ought, that that is the rational
thing to do, that that rational identification of the means is a norm she can live up

18 Cf. the indispensable article by Dieter Henrich, "The Concept of Moral Insight and
Kant's Doctrine of the Fact of Reason," in The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant's
Philosophy; ed. Richard Velldey; transl. Jeffrey Edwards (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1994).
200 ROBERT 8. PIPPIN

to or not, all in order for her to count as self-governing and not "accidentally
rational."
This is quite a controversial way to put the matter because there is already an
ambiguity in such an account between being "guided" by reason and being "moti-
vated" by iit (terms that Korsgaard tends to treat as synonymous). Again, a
Humean could certainly accept the former. As just noted, this is precisely what
practical reason does in Hume: guide us to the means that in fact themselves lead
to an end. In so far as we are being rational at all, we follow that guidance, where
here being rational at all just means that nothing has gone causally haywire. But
in that sense of guidance (as Korsgaard points out), not going where such guiding
reason leads is nothing like a failure of rationality. It has to be a mistake, a break-
down, or ignorance or failure of memory, etc., or a change of heart about the end.
To show rational failure we have to show that we are motivated by what reason
requires when we act rationally, and that we can fail to heed this claim, even
though we acknowledge and accept it. That is a much different and more contro-
versial matter, and I don't think that anything Korsgaard says supports that claim.
At least at this point, the whole notion of "committing oneself" to an instrumental
norm and "following through" or "failing" even while still committed, is still
vague and metaphorical and needs to be clarified.
8. A major problem with all of this stems from Kant's complicated claim that,

(W)hoever wills the end, so far as reason has decisive influence on his action,
wills also the indispensably necessary steps to it that he can take. This propo-
sition, in what concerns the will, is analytic; for, in the willing of an object
as an effect, my causality, as an acting cause of this effect shown in my use
of the means to it, is already thought, and the imperative derives the concept
of actions necessary to this purpose from the concept of willing this purpose.
(GL, Ak, 417)

But if it is analytic that "whoever wills the end, wills the means," then we
have not imposed a normative law on ourselves with respect to these means, and
the direction we were just following is irrelevant; we should u-turn back to Hume.
According to Kant's strong analyticity claim, someone who does not pursue the
means necessary to the end that he has committed to is not being irrational, is not
failing to conform to a norm that he has imposed on himself. He simply reveals
that he had not "really" willed such an end after all; he merely wished it. The cri-
terion, the test, for having "really" willed it is willing the means. 19 You may tell
yourself and everyone else that you are working to dismantle capitalist class
inequalities, and you may give away a certain amount of money, ibut your Lexus

19 Cf. the "already thought" above, and the "derives the concept of actions necessary to
this purpose".
 On Giving Onself the law 201

and your Brion:i suits and your Tuscany villa tell us much more about your gen-
uine ends.
But there is an escape clause in this passage; the clause "so far as reason has
decisive influence on his action." And it is a good thing too, because besides
making this claim about analyticity, Kant also claims that hypothetical imperatives
are imperatives, and that must mean "norms that we adopt and can fail to
observe." Perhaps we can admit, in other words, that there may be self-deceived
cases like our limousine socialist. But there are also cases where the right analysis
of what happens when the means to an end are not sought is more directly a failure
of rationality; we are being irrational, and that just means: not abiding by the
norms we have legislated for ourselves, bound ourselves to. Surely this can happen
too. We want to go to medical school with every fiber of our being, but math
anxiety takes over when we face o-chem, and we sign up for art history classes
instead. That is, we can genuinely will an end, but fail to will the means simply
because the normative claim of reason fails. In such cases we should state the
analyticity principle more carefully: anyone who has reasons to pursue an end has
reasons to pursue the means relevant to it. Or whoever ought to pursue an end
(setting a goal is a normative matter too, after all), ought to pursue the means. We
have to state it this way because what is crucial about instrumental reason being
reason, normative, is that it must be able to fail; to be adopted and held, but
avoided and ignored at the relevant moment. Otherwise the language of norms
and hypothetical imperatives is inappropriate, and we should be talking about
what people are very likely going to do, given what else they are doing.
And Korsgaard gives a few plausible examples. A man who believes that an
injection will spare him from a deadly disease, and who wants to be spared,
nevertheless refuses the injection because he is terrified of needles. He does not
give up the end of survival and adopt as a priority the end of avoiding being stuck
by needles. And there is the classic Western or civil war movie scenario. Tex has
been shot in the leg and will die if the leg is not amputated. As his comrades
prepare to amputate, Tex begs them, in agony and fear, not to amputate. But we,
and his comrades, do not take such protestations as what he genuinely wills. We
(presumably) know that what he must really will is to stay alive, and we know that
his protestations are the irrational irruption of anxiety and fear, that he doesn't
really prefer avoiding amputation at all costs, prefer even death, to undergoing an
operation like that without anaesthetic.
9. This last case seems right, but we should be careful about concluding too
much from it. There are three problems.
In the first place, it simply is not easy to tell when a person has "really"
willed an end and is just irrationally "failing" to pursue the means he has norma-
tively committed himself to. Unless we want to beg all questions from the outset
and just require as a condition of agency always being prudentially concerned
with long-term benefit over short-term gains (as Nagel ultimately does), we don't
202 ROBERT 8. PIPPIN

have any clear right, certainly not a priori, to tell what a person's "true end" really
is in cases like the above. In the case of our limousine socialist, it seems much
more appropriate to say that he hasn't really set any end of abolishing the class
structure, even when he sincerely reports that belief, and the best evidence for
such a denial is that his actions show no serious intention of attaining the means
to do so. What distinguishes this from other cases, where we might want to say:
he has set the end but is "weak," and cannot muster the resolve to seek the means?
Why not say: his not seeking the means is very good evidence indeed that he has
not really set, willed, the end? In the case of Tex and our needle-avoider, we rely
on the assumption that the end of staying alive is an obvious one to impute, and
so we go the "weakness" route. But is it so outrageous to suppose that someone
might reckon a distant probability not as important as avoidance of an immanent
pain, that there is nothing that requires us to say that he is ''weak"; or to reject a
priori that someone might rather die than undergo a procedure that, to him, might
be worse than death itself; or that someone has no idea what is most important to
him and can argue himself into either position? (Korsgaard wants to claim that
"obligation in general is a reality of human life." (113). But what is going on here
hardly seems like Tex is "avoiding an obligation." It would certainly be odd if one
of his buddies pointed out to him, "But Tex, just by being alive and wanting to
live you have rationally obligated yourself to have your leg amputated.") I would
venture the bet that in most cases like this, where people profess (even to them-
selves) to have set an end, and do not seek the necessary means, that it is much
more likely that they have either not really set such an end, have changed their
mind about the end when confronted by difficult means, or, what is most likely,
have usually set the end in some qualified manner; as in- so long as it doesn't
cost me something else I value very highly. (This seems exactly how most people
adopt the end of staying married "'till death do them part.")20
Secondly, it is not at all clear just how, from a Kantian point of view, we are
supposed to state the elements in our irrational failure to live up to a norm we
have supposedly committed ourselves to. When Korsgaard mentions factors that
might explain how people can be said to become "irrational and weak-willed," she
mentions such things as "terror, idleness, shyness or depression," and she goes so
far as to call these "forces" that "block" "susceptibility to reason." (NIP, 229).
With respect to Tex, we hear: "The right thing to say is that fear is making Tex
irrational." (238) And in a similar passage, we read that "timidity, idleness and
depression ... will attempt to control or overrule my will." (246) For me to be
leading my life, she insists I must actively seize control of my own destiny,

20 There is a passage in SN where Korsgaard seems to make just this point. She points
to case where "rules and principles are constitutive of, and therefore internal to, the
activities themselves. If I am to walk I must put one foot in front of the other: this is
not a rule that externally constrains my walking, or boxes me in like the walls of a
labyrinth, or that I can with much coherence rebel against." My emphasis, p. 234.
 On Giving Onself the Law 203

"consciously pick up the reins, and make myself the cause of the end." When I
don't do this "I, considered as an agent, do not exist" and therefore "Conformity
to the instrumental principle is thus constitutive of having a will, in a sense it is
even what gives you a will."
Surely the first thing to say here is that Korsgaard has let her Kantian admi-
ration for autonomy get out of control. If, in not conforming to an instrumental
principle, I have ceased to be an agent, then surely what we have here is not my
failure of rationality. It sounds like: I haven't failed to realize a commitment;
something has happened to me, in all these examples, that prevents this realiza-
tion. Something "blocks" the motivating power of reason; fear "makes me
irrational," and so forth, all exactly as our Humean wanted to say earlier. This may
be a breakdown in the power of reason to motivate, but it all here sounds like a
disease or ex.ogenous interference, not my failure or weakness. What has
happened to the Kantian "incorporation" principle (which Korsgaard acceptsf 1,
according to which fears and desires and inclinations, while they may incline me
to do something, can never be counted, just by their occurrence, as motives to act,
that they must be incorporated in a maxim, taken as good reasons by an agent, for
them to count as my motives? If we take this incorporation principle to heart, it
becomes even less plausible to appeal to Korsgaard's "failure" or "weakness"
account since I must be counting some present anxiety, aversion or anticipation
as worth acting on, and if I am doing so, then I am diverting myself my from
the original end, not failing to follow through on a commitment.22 It makes a
great deal of difference, in other words, whether these emotional factors are said
to "control" or "overrule" my will, to use the two terms Korsgaard uses

21 Cf. especially her "Kant's Formula of Humanity," in CKE, pp. 110-14, and her cita-
tion of passages from the Metaphysics of Morals (e.g., pp. 387 and 392-these
passages have been quite influential in recent discussions of Kant, as the work of
Tom Hill evinces), and especially also the Conjectural Beginnings essay, and the
Religion book.
22 What is going wrong here, I think, originates in the Christian language of "weak-
ness," and so the corresponding appeal to "strength" of resolve. The common-sense
description of this as a case of irrationality is a good place to start. It would say that
Tex's refusal is "irrational" because the urgency of the situation, the sheer lack of
time and crisis conditions, require Tex to make a decision in such unusual circum-
stances that he does not decide what he very likely would, were he to be able to
reflect calmly and in full awareness of the facts and consequences. We might (and
usually do) add that he would like to identify as the "Real Tex" that calmly reflec-
tive agent. But this is a bit of a fantasy as well. In resisting the amputation, Tex is
not "too weak" to be the "Real Tex." He expresses and discovers something about
this real Tex in such resistance, something about the nature of his commitment to
life, the weight of his fear of pain, his ability (or lack of it) to invoke and rely on an
ideal picture of himself, and so on. He is not, in resisting, "weakly" the Real Tex.
He is just Tex.
204 ROBERT B. PIPPIN

synonymously. 23 They are not synonymous. If the former, "control," which

Korsgaard's examples suggest, we don't have an irrational action, but no action at
all, a breakdown in agency not its failure; if the latter, "overruling," we have a
case of counting something as worth more than something else, and so perhaps a
case of ignorance or foolishness, not weakness or wantonness.
Moreover, if we try to take a few steps back and argue that I am originally
responsible for the kind of character that would produce these emotional storms,
(that I have "chosen" it and so must live with the current consequences as my
fault, even if I can't do anything about it now) we will not only introduce all
sorts of "moral luck" problems involving the social conditions and opportunities
(or lack of them) under which such a character was formed (and so will have
undermined any strong "responsibility for my character" view), we will thereby
introduce again the implausible picture of some character-less agent choosing a
character as if a suit of clothes. 24 Indeed that implausible picture is already
suggested by Korsgaard's unusual language: that by committing yourself to some
instrumental norm, you "give yourself" a will in the first place. While we couldn't
ask for a better contemporary evocation of the route from Kant to Fichte (and his
/ch that posits itself), I'm not sure we want to open up that Pandora's box.25

23 Cf. also, in her "Morality as Freedom," CKE, "The person who acts from self-love
is not actively willing at all, but simply allowing herself to be controlled by the
passive part of her nature, which is in turn controlled by all of nature. From the
perspective of the noumenal world, ends we adopt under the influence of inclination
rather than morality do not even seem to be our own." P. 168. Something is clearly
going wrong here because most of our sensible ends are adopted "under the influ-
ence of inclination," and strictly speaking, the idea that someone can "allow"
themselves to be controlled, but is not thereby "actively willing" is incoherent. Not
much is gained, I would argue, when one simply bites the bullet on this one and claims
that, therefore, on the basis of these considerations, "evil is unintelligible." p. 171.
24 For Korsgaard's attempt to make the notion plausible, see "Morality as Freedom,"
CKE, p. 181.
25 What Korsga.ard wants to say (very clearly in the second of her recent Locke
lectures) is that it cannot just be tautologous that someone who wills the end wills
the means (and so: someone who doesn't will the means must not have willed the
end), because then the clear normative force of claims like "You really should see the
dentist about that tooth" would be hard to explain. But the Humean has no problem
denying there is such a thing as practical reason at all, so it is no objection to point
that out to him. (That is, he accepts that it cannot be said to be more irrational to
prefer the continuing toothache to a speedy resolution at the feared dentist's.) More
broadly, I think Korsgaard is right to criticize the Humean for explaining how the
motivational efficacy of some end pursued works causally, but do not agree that this
means hypothetical practical principles are norms in her sense. An "expressivist"
account of action, and an account of a revisable-over-time, provisional theory of
motivations (we very rarely know whether we have really opted for an end or not,
 On Giving Onse(f the law 205

Finally, third, while it is important to stress that we cannot be living norm-

govemed lives unless we can both acknowledge the authority of, and yet fail to
live up to, such norms, there are other ways of expressing and accounting for such
failure than by the problematic (and in Kant paradoxical) appeal to weakness, or
any other such Christian notion of a frailty usually tied to sensibility (or any such
notion of sin). When we find that we do not seize an opportunity to acquire means
to an end we had believed was an end of ours, something we had willed to pursue,
we simply could be said to fail to live up to an ideal we had of ourselves. Someone
simply finds out that she wasn't who she thought she was; all these years firmly
convinced that she was seeking A; it turns out she wasn't. We could of course put
this by saying that finds she did not have the "will power" or strength of resolve,
even though she had committed to A, but we have already seen the paradoxes of
that view. It seems more appropriate to invoke the language of self-knowledge
and self-assessment, and to concentrate on what her actions reveal about the ends
she really does care about. 26
I 0. However, at this point, it may be that our search for some de-metaphor-ized
account of the strong "authorship" interpretation of autonomy needs to take into
fuller account an aspect of the issue mentioned briefly earlier. We seem to be
getting into some trouble taking too literally some pre-law situation, whereas we
might want to try harder to undermine the possibility of such a putative option,
even while still trying to retain the authorship and self-subjection issues.
Entertaining such an option in order to show its normative impossibility, would
be the required argument. This gets us more directly to the "what we must be
taken to have obligated ourselves to" position.
Indeed, even in the instrumental case, we have not addressed all of what it
means to have "failed to live up to" a norm of instrumental rationality. As we saw,
in Korsgaard 's account that involves somehow failing to be an agent; not to have
set the course of my life, but to have allowed it to be set exogenously. (We have
also seen that it is unclear on a Kantian account how we should describe our doing
that, since, despite the hedge words, "letting" or "allowing," it is a doing.) But the
point at the moment is that we should describe the stake we have in our commit-
ment to observing the claims of reason a bit more fully. We don't just "come that
way," susceptible and responsive to such demands automatically. The point is that
we must commit and hold to the commitment or else we will not be subjects of
our lives; or the point is: what the commitment means to us. Since, according to
Korsgaard's Kant, when I don't hold to such commitments, "I, considered as an

until we see what we actually are willing to do) could fill out such a picture ofa non-
causal account. See my "Hegel's Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical
Life," forthcoming.
26 That is, the idea would be: those who pursue an end that a full or fuller use of reason
would not endorse are being "irrational," even if that pursuit cannot be traced to a
weak act of "will."
206 ROBERT B. PIPPIN

agent, do not exist," then this stake in reason "issue(s) in a deep way from our
sense of who we are." (SN, 18). Our very "practical identity" is at stake.
Practical identity in general " .. . is better understood as a description under
which you value yourself, under which you find your life worth living and your
actions to be worth undertaking." (SN, 101) There will be many contingent versions
of these-professor, husband, friend, American-so, even though in all of them,
I can be said to have a practical identity only by maintaining a commitment to the
nonns which constitute each, I could be said to ''adopt" one, "abandon" another,
and nothing about mine need have any claim on you. 27 But it is the next step in
the development of this line of thought that returns us to Kantian moral theory.
Are there "particular ways in which we must think of our identities"? If there are,
these will be the sought-after "moral identities," such that losing that would be
"worse than death"?28
We might first say that being a human being at all, or some universal feature
of being human, can function like this inescapable identity, such that "losing" it
would mean losing a recognizable human life, any course of existence that could
have value to a human being. Or at least we might say it as long as we keep faith
with Kant's "authorship" principle here too. We cannot lead a life at all without
authoring, and without commitments to, such practical identities, but therefore
the "value" of having any practical identity itself, and also the necessary condi-
tions for any such identity, does not have the same status as such particular roles
or identities. The value of reflective reasoning itself-the condition for anything
mattering to us in a distinctly human way--doesn 't arise out of contingent attach-
ments and dependencies; it is what we must keep faith with if we are to sustain
any identity at all. We have value as human beings because we value ourselves as
human beings, and the introduction of this notion of practical identity is supposed
to make more transparent, by means of this sort of regress, why we could not but

27 Cf also SN, pp. 239-41 . Korsgaard often appeals to a claim like: " . .. at the moment
of action, I must identify with my principle of choice if I am to regard myself as the
agent of the action at all." (p. 241)
28 Clearly these claims about practical identity have put us somewhere in the neigh-
borhood of the "social role" considerations that we noted at the outset. The
differences are also becoming clearer too. On this view of Kant, such roles, if they
are to function as normative constraints, must be seen as products of reflective
endorsement by each individual. An individual must be able to see himself as the
author, Urheber, of the role and its relationships. For Hegel on the other hand, the
practical roles are the prior conditions for any reflective content, and this not as a
matter of fact limitation, but as expressing the objective normative structure of
modern ethical life itself. But more famously, on Kant's account there is an ultimate
moral identity and attendant obligation that trumps any other contingent obligation,
and his case for that will return us to the most important manifestation of the self-
legislative metaphor.
 On Gfring Onse(f the Lau· 207

"value" our humanity.29 The direction suggested by the authorship principle is

supposed to lead to this argument form. To value anything and hold oneself to the
commitments necessary to attain it. is already to have valued this capacity itself,
to have acknowledged that we cannot be human just by being-, we must posit ends
and hold ourselves to norms, and so valuing that capacity above all is
inescapable.30
In this way all value depends on the value of humanity; other forms of prac-
tical identity matter in part because humanity requires them. This "human"
identity and the obligations it carries with it are therefore inescapable and perva-
sive, even though, given the kind of feature of human life it is, it is not an identity
one can be said simply to have, like a substance's identity through time. This
claim-that our human identity is a kind of result. a posit that we make and sustain
over time-would be taken up eagerly and would provoke much speculative gym-
nastics by later idealists, especially since, now that the very identity of a subject
is at issue, the dialectical dimension of a subject as an unusual "result of itself"
is clearly on view. And it is the source of some of Kant's own most speculative
moments. (The second Critique s invocation of a "fact" of reason in what appears
to be an unusual "exposition/demonstration" of the reality of human freedom
already appeals to this notion of making in the root, facere, or "making," of
Faktum. In this sense "acknowledging" the normative claims of reason is exactly
not what the ordinary meaning of fact, or knowing a fact, would imply; it is much
more like the "authoring" or self-legislation and self-subjection to such a norm.
Or, a commitment to practical reason is a deed, a "Faktum," something we do, not
something we passively notice or accept; it is effected.)31
11. But all of this only gets us so far, and not yet to any necessary moral
identity. In the first, and most well known place, this argument only shows that in
order to preserve any basic coherence in acting, you must be presumed to value
humanity in your own person, must value your reflective capacity. To argue for
some inescapable moral identity would be to argue that you cannot so legislate
such a value without valuing humanity, respecting such a reflective life-leading

29 SN, 121. Wood's version of this move is similar, but, because it involves quite a
substantive commitment, is considerably more controversial: I reveal "an esteem for
myself which ... is what holds me to my rational plan." Kant s Ethical Theory, op.
cit., p. 119. I should think that I hold to my plan simply because I still want the end,
even when my desire has turned into a calm passion, barely noticed as such.
30 "If we do not treat our humanity as normative, none of our other identities can be
normative, and then we can have no reason to act at all." SN, 129.
31 Or at least, that would be one, rather adventurous way of reading the Faktum claim,
in the spirit of Korsgaard's rather Fichtean Kantianism. For a general discussion of
the Faktum passage, see Karl Ameriks, "Pure Reason of Itself Alone Suffices to
Determine the Will" in Kants Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, ed. Otfried Hoeffe
(Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2002).
208 ROBERT 8. PIPPIN

capacity, in everyone. To show this, some try to demonstrate that we can start with
our own private, unavoidable, normative commitment to our own humanity, and
then reason in some "transcendental-argument" way that we are thereby committed
to acknowledging the value of humanity in another, in anyone at all. But even if
successful, this appears to show at most that I must acknowledge the value of each
person's humanity to him or her, and not that I must value your humanity. More
ambitious attempts, like Korsgaard's and Nagel's, start by attempting to deny that
my valuing my own humanity can really be understood as just my valuing my own
humanity. They argue in different ways that whatever reasons I have, originally,
from the outset, must be reasons to value humanity itself, and that means to be
committed to the value of humanity anywhere there are human beings. I can 't
value it in just my case alone, goes the argument; there couldn't be any "reasons"
to value it like that. And since I must value humanity itself in order to value my
instantiation of it, I am committed to respecting humanity as an end it itself, and
we would thus have shown a moral identity.
The question of whether this argument establishes such a moral commitment
to a universal value is one that would obviously require at least another paper. But
it is also unclear exactly what is being established by the claim, what "the value
of our own humanity," and so the inherent value of humanity itself, involves.
Korsgaard makes extraordinarily generous use of the argument form, so generous
as to render it immediately suspicious. She claims, for example, that our valuing,
taking care of and pleasure in, our animal nature presumes a commitment to the
value of animal sentience wherever we find it, and so gives us a way of thinking
about our duties to non-human animals. This seems to me like a quite a stretch,
and the source of the discomfort resides in how much is being deduced by noting
that we must value our animal nature in some sense. I don't think I have any views
about whether animality is a valuable thing, even if I take some pleasure in mine,
and I can't see that I am expressing such a view when I avoid cold and pain and
so forth. And this question points to the larger, similar issue at stake in the uni-
versal value of humanity. Any such moral identity, that view of ourselves as
merely one among many is, in the Rawlsean terms that Korsgaard adopts, merely
a "concept," a statement of the problem, not yet a "conception," a specification of
the substantive answer. That is, let us assume that taking the source of value to be
this capacity for reflective endorsement commits me to that value itself, and that
I can't be holding such a commitment, and so cannot be an agent, have an iden-
tity, if I do not respect that capacity in others. But this too is still a concept, not a
conception, a statement of the problem and not the solution. We don't for one
thing, know how important that value should be. If it is automatically a trump
against all other values, it would be hard to understand the kinds of real conflicts
(not just resistance to duty) that emerge in the conflicts between our contingent
practical identities and such a putative moral identity. And if it is so important as
to be of inestimable value, then, when I take risks for my own amusement, and so
 On Giving Onself the Law 209

value the pleasure of driving fast over safely maintaining my reflective endorsing
capacities, am I being immoral?
12. But more importantly, we cannot derive from a deductive analysis of a
rational agent alone any content for such a commitment, any sense of what makes
up this value of humanity, or the essence of freedom as reflective endorsement.
Given a "general" concept of ourselves as one-among-many, and as not relying
on any consideration in my evaluating that I am not also willing to grant you enti-
tlement to (which is all the regress argument allows us to say), the various
"conceptions" that could manifest such a commitment are far broader than the
specific "post-Enlightenment" ones that Korsgaard cites. As she often points out,
which conception satisfies such a concept does so "by way of practical identity."
We need to understand the distinctly human way in which persons acknowledge
and hold themselves to values before we can understand what in particular they
may not rationally ignore in others. As she points out,
... human identity has been differently constituted in different social worlds.
Sin, dishonour, and moral wrongness all represent conceptions of what one
cannot do without being diminished or disfigured, without loss of identity,
and therefore conceptions of what one must not do. 32

And,
The concept of moral wrongness as we now understand it belongs to the
world we live in, the one brought about by the Enlightenment, where one's
identity is one's relation to humanity itself.33

Exactly right, say we card-carrying Hegelians, but such a sweeping admis-

sion concedes the whole match between Kant and Hegel, and brings us round full
circle to the alternatives with which we began. If the distinctly moral realization
of the requirement of reciprocity inherent in any reflective end-setting is a matter
of "history" in this way, and there is nothing more we can say about the norma-
tive authority of this historical epoch, then the formal requirements everywhere
in force are nowhere near as important as the fact that the realization of these
requirements is socio-historically specific. This makes it unlikely that there could
be any deductive account of someone's core practical or moral identity and that
whatever legitimating account there might be will probably be developmental, not
deductive.
13. In this respect, Hegel may prove to be the more Kantian than this Kant.
As we have seen several times, the obvious Kantian thing to say here is that there
is no particular reason to grant our historical location in "late modernity" any
normative authority unless that form of life can be itself reflectively endorsed.

32 SN, p. I 17.
33 Ibid.
210 ROBERT 8 . PIPPIN

But given the road we have traveled, just trying to do so, fulfill such a criterion in
the way ''we" would understand such an attempt, would be merely, and in a question-
begging way, manifesting again the form of life we wanted to authorize. In
Hegel's language, the rational status of Enlightenment modernity can be estab-
lished, but not by means of a deductive methodology nor by an analysis of the
concept of agency. We still need some alternative way of accounting for how we
can be said to make these historically specific attachments, dependencies, social
roles and social ideals "our own," some alternate way of accounting for their
legislated character and our submission to such legislated results. Hegel's intu-
ition is here quite a useful one. He focuses our attention on the experience of
normative insufficiency, on a breakdown in a form oflife (a situation wherein we
cannot make them any longer "our own"), and thereby, through such a via negativa,
tries to provide a general theory of positive normative authority.
But that is of course another topic, and it would take a good deal of work to
show that everything changes when we regard norms as collectively legislated
over time, rather than elected by individual rational endorsement. I have only tried
to suggest here that it is unlikely that an account of the subjectivity of moral life
could rely on an appeal to something like such an individual endorsement test.
Christianity Is Platonism for the "People"
A Reinterpretation

Robert Rethy
Xavier University

1
In a notebook entry from around the time that many of the aphorisms that form
Beyond Good and Evil were being composed, Nietzsche wrote the following: "To
make an evil book someday, worse than Machiavelli .. ." 1 This is an important
hint for reading Beyond Good and Evil, which could be viewed, at least in part,
as a Nineteenth-Century version of The Prince and The Discourses, the advice to
the new philosopher-prince echoing the former as the vision of a return to the
virtu of the ancients corrupted by Christianity mirrors the central impulse of the
latter. In the twelfth chapter of Part II of the Discorsi we even have an anticipa-
tion of the locution "will to power," when Machiavelli speaks of the "natural
hatred" that republics and princes have for one another, a hatred which arises,
especially among republics, due to the greater virtu of their members, from their

Nietzsche, Kritische Gesamtausgabe: Werke (KGW) (ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari,

New York-Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967 ft), VII, 2, 26(349]. (All quotations of Nietzsche's
works will be from this edition, and all translations my own.) The whole note is as
follows: "To make an evil book someday, worse than Machiavelli and that very
German and sweetly-nasty, most subordinate devil of a Mephistopheles! /Its quali-
ties: cruel (pleasure in viewing how a beautiful type is destroyed)/seductive
(inviting to the doctrine that one must be both the one and the other)/mocking
toward the virtues of the monk, the philosopher, the self-important artist, etc., also
the good upright herd man/noble toward the curious, importunate, proletarians of
knowledge, also toward the pedantic, dissembler: no laughter, no rage." Nietzsche's
interest in Machiavelli at this time is indicated by another note in a notebook from
Spring 1884. Another projected book, entitled : "The New Enlightenment" has
chapters "Against the churches and priests/against the statesmen/against the good
natured, pitying/against the cultivated and luxury/in summa against Tartuffery/like
Machiavelli" (25(296)) Henning Ottrnann has a valuable discussion of Nietzsche's
interest in Machiavelli in Philosophie und Politik bei Nietzsche (Berlin-New York:
de Gruyter, 1987), pp. 281-92.

211
212 ROBERT RETHY

"ambition to dominate" [ambizione di dominare]. 2 It is thus certainly not

fortuitous that the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil begins with a reminiscence
of the famous conclusion of the penultimate chapter of II principe, entitled
"Quantum fortuna in rebus humanis possit, et quomodo illi sit occcurrendum."
Fortune has great power in human affairs, especially when human virtu does not
intervene, although even then, when fortune changes, men rarely do and they thus
suffer the consequences of their obstinacy. Machiavelli finishes advising his "new
prince" by saying that, nevertheless, with regard to fortune, "it is better to be
impetuous than respectful. Because fortune is a woman and it is necessary, wanting
to hold her underneath, to beat her and to jolt her. And it is seen that she lets her-
self be conquered more by these than by those who proceed coldly. And she is
always, as a woman, a friend of the young, because they are less respectful, more
ferocious and command her with more audacity."3 The changeableness of fortune
can be overcome, if only for a little while, by force of arms, though the mutability
and volatility of Dame Fortune can never fully be conquered.4 The comparison
with the beginning of Beyond Good and Evil is instructive: "Assuming that truth
is a woman-well then, isn't the suspicion well-grounded that all philosophers,
insofar as they were dogmatists, understood women badly?" Their seriousness,
importunity, awkward flat-footedness were hardly the way to entice a woman. The
complexity, contradictoriness, and hiddenness of truth is such that a less straight-
forward approach is called for. As we discover in the body of the text: not an
earnest face but a series of masks; not a logical argument, but a rhetorical flourish;
not exoteric clarity, but esoteric hints, not the plodding argument of the pedant,
but the wild leaps of the enthusiast are appropriate to such a task. If truth is a
woman, then conceptual dogma is less likely to ensnare her than a dancing god,
who is revealed at the work's end, and who is shown to be one who understands
how to enchant his woman, Ariadne. 5

2 Niccolo Macxhiavelli, Discorso sopra la prima deca de Tito Livio, ed. Sasso/Inglese
(Milan: Rizzoli, 1984), p. 513.
3 II principe (Milan:Amoldo Montadori, 1986), p. 113. Note the kinship between this
advice and the old woman's infamous advice to Zarathustra in "Of the old and young
female" (VI, 1, 82) Perhaps Zarathustra is being advised how to "love fate." The sup-
position of a connection is strengthened by JGB 147, which echoes Zarathustra's
female informant (in Italian) and attributes the thought to "old Florentine novellas."
4 For fortune in the Discorsi see III, 9: "How it is proper to change with the times if
one wants always to have good fortune." Machiavelli is dubious that human nature
can change as quickly and seamlessly as necessary, though presumably his advice is
meant to help encourage it. (III, 9, 4: p. 496)
5 See Beyond Good and Evil (JGB) 295. One of the early titles of Beyond Good and
Evil was Dionysus or the Holy Orgies. (VII, 3, 29(65) (Fall 1884-Beginning 1885)
There are many similar titles in the notebooks of this time, particularly those of
April-June 1885. See, e.g. 34(182): "Dionysus./Attempt at a divine manner oflphilos-
ophizing./By Friedrich Nietzsche."
 Christianity Is Platonism for the "People " 213

Nietzsche permits himself the hope, as the Preface moves away from the
trope of "woman," that "all dogmatizing" has been a bit of childishness and a
mere beginning, a "promise spanning millennia." As the false hopes of astrology
helped develop astronomy, and the false hopes of an afterlife gave rise to the
"grand style of architecture in Asia and Egypt," so may it be hoped that dogmatic
philosophy, the Vedanta-philosophy in Asia, Platonism in Europe, may also be a
"grand thing" that must first have appeared as a "monstrous and fear-inducing
grimace." The worst and most dangerous error has been a dogmatic error, "Plato's
invention of pure mind [Geist] and the good in itself," which denies "the perspec-
tival, the basic condition of all life." The final section of the Preface begins with
a discussion of the meaning of the "battle against Plato, or, to make it more intel-
ligible and to speak for the ' people', the battle against the Christian-ecclesiastical
pressure of millennia-because Christianity is Platonism for the 'people'- has
created a glorious mental tension [Spannung des Geistes] that has never yet
existed on earth, and with a bow so tensed one can now shoot for the furthest
goals." Though "European man" experiences such tension as a state of distress,
and democracy and the Church- Jesuitism6- have tried to relieve this tension by
reducing the contradictions within the soul and among men, Nietzsche confirms
that "we" as "good European and free, very free spirits," ourselves have them still:
"the full distress of the spirit and the full tension of its bow. And perhaps, the
arrow, the task, who knows? The goal ..."
It is not our task fully to analyze this complex document of Nietzsche's high
maturity, but only to put the phrase we are studying-"Christianity is Platonism
for the 'people"'-into the proper context. The preface, appropriately for a work
concerned with the ''philosophy of the future," focuses on Plato and "Platonism"
almost to the exclusion of Christianity. It is somewhat unsettling to find Plato's
name among the "dogmatists," aware as we are, and as Nietzsche surely was, of
the derivation of dogma from doxa and of the low standing of this latter in
the Platonic schema: the starting point, not the end of philosophy.7 Nor could
Plato's method be characterized as a "dogmatic" method, but rather as dramatic,
a philosophical agon. 8 Indeed, Beyond Good and Evil is notable precisely for its
nuanced view of Plato,9 one that does not match the rather "dogmatic" view of
Plato in the Preface. Between the assertion that "Christianity is Platonism for the
'people"' i.e. that Platonism is the source of the "dogmatic errors" of millennia, and

6 For the role of Jesuitism, see VIII, 1, l [ 179] (Fall 1885-Spring 1886).
7 See, for example, Rep. V, 477b.
8 "Socrates the common man: sly: becoming master of himself through clear under-
standing and strong will .... Dialectic is plebeian according to its origin. Plato's
fanaticism that of a poetic nature for its opposite. At the same time he notes, as ago-
na/ nature, that here the means for victory is given against all other fighters, and that
the capacity is rare." (VII, 2, 25[297]; Spring 1884)
9 See aphorisms 14, 28, 190, 204. This will be discussed below.
214 ROBERT RETHY

a suspicion, even in the Preface, that dogmatism is an inadequate characterization

of the form and matter of Plato's thought, we are left with a puzzle.

2
Two of Nietzsche's letters to Franz Overbeck will help unravel this puzzle as they
will shed light both on Nietzsche's relation to Plato and some much larger issues
as well. The first letter was written on March 31, 1885, approximately two months
before the Preface itself. Surrounded by seven paragraphs of mostly personal
information- about his state of health, travel and publication plans, the problems
of mutual acquaintances-Nietzsche writes: "I read, yesterday, for relaxation, the
Confessions of St. Augustine, with great regret that you were not here with me.
Oh this old rhetorician! How false and how theatrical! How I laughed .... What
psychological falsity... . Philosophical value equal to zero. Plebeian Platonism
[ Verpobelter Platonismus ], that is to say, a way of thinking that was invented for
the highest aristocracy of the soul arranged for slave natures. By the way, in this
book you see into the belly of Christianity. I stand by with the curiosity of a
radical physician and physiologist." 10
We can be fairly certain that the reading and interpretation of St. Augustine's
Confessions forms the basis of the epigram we have been examining. "Plebeian
Platonism" as the "belly of Christianity" becomes "Platonism is Christianity for
the 'people'." This is St. Augustine's "null" contribution to philosophy, the union
of Platonism, neo-Platonism and Christian doctrine, presumably as found in
Confessions 7, 9, 13 ff. For Nietzsche, the attempt to unite Platonism and
Christianity does violence to Platonism's essentially noble character, which is to
say that it mistakes Plato and Platonism by viewing it "from below" and thus is
blind to its heights: in terms used in Beyond Good and Evil, by an exoteric, not
esoteric reading of this most subtle of philosophers. 11 "Platonism for the 'people"'
is then a contradiction. As aristocratic, Platonism is a teaching about the order of
rank, animated by a pathos of distance, precisely the opposite of the pathos of

l0 Siimtliche Briefe: Kritische Studienausgabe, (KSB) ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari,

(Munich: dtv/NewYork-Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975- 1984), KSB 7:34. The emphasis is
in the original text.
11 On Plato's complexity, see VII, 3, 34[66] (April- June 1885), an earlier version of
JGB 190. For "exoteric-esoteric", see JGB 30. See also the important notebook
entry, contemporary with the publication of Beyond Good and Evil, and headed
"Exoteric-Esoteric" (VIII, l, 5[9]: Summer 1886-Fall 1887. ) I offered an interpre-
tation of this fragment in an unpublished paper, "'Exoteric-Esoteric': Nietzsche's
Metaphysics," delivered March 8, 1991 at the Metaphysical Society of America
meeting in State College, Pennsylvania. Contrast Rosen, The Question of Being
{pp. 226 ff.)
 Christianity Is Platonism for the "People" 215

equality of souls, the humility that animates Christianity. 12 Far from equating
Christianity and Platonism, Nietzsche's epigram, when viewed from this
perspective is a critique of the Christian conception of Platonism. Indeed, one
might say that this view of Platonism is part of the Jewish-Christian inversion of
values, as it transforms an aristocratic into a plebeian way of thinking. As we will
discuss below, the references to Plato and Platonism in Beyond Good and Evil
are correctives to the Christian democratization of Plato, as they emphasize the
aristocratic, ironical, hidden nature of Plato. "Christianity is Platonism for the
'people'," then, is not a characterization of Plato or even Platonism, but rather a
critical comment on Christianity, and a remark about one of its early interpretive
victims. 13 Yet Plato had been mentioned before in the Preface: we read of
"Plato's invention of pure mind and of the good in itself," the opening events in
the nightmare of dogmatic philosophy from which Europe is just beginning to
awake.
To complete our view of the Plato being addressed in the Preface to Beyond
Good and Evil, we may tum to another, earlier letter to Overbeck, who had sup-
plied Nietzsche with a copy of Gustav Teichmilller's Die wirkliche und die
scheinbare Welt, published in 1882. In a postcard dated 22 October 1883 he
wrote: "Dear old friend, on reading Teichmilller I am more and more struck with
amazement about how little I know Plato and how much Zarathustraplatonizei." 14
The precise meaning of this phrase with regard to Zarathustra is probably
connected to Teichmilller's interpretation of Plato, which views Hegel as a
"Platonist" and Heraclitean whose discussion of non-being in the Logic, for
example, adds nothing to Plato's in the Parmenides. 15 Using the Parmenides and
Sophist as his point of departure, Teichmilller takes Plato to be the first and chief
"pantheist," a perspective that philosophy has never been able to overcome and
that reached its culmination in Hegel. 16 The explicit textual reference in the letter
may involve his discussion of parousia, where there is a striking anticipation of
Zarathustra's language: "The idea can do nothing with its wealth [Reichthum) and
needs the needy [Bediirfiigen] that allows itself to receive gifts. [der sich
schenken und geben liijJt.] Thus Plato allows it to descend from the intelligible
heaven down into the darkness of the world and there in the appearances be

12 Augustine must supplement neo-Platonism with St. Paul in order to attain to the
proper humility of a true Christian. See Confessiones 7, 21, 27.
13 Criticism of Christian "hermeneutics" is a consistent element through Nietzsche's
career. See, e.g. Dawn 84 (V, I, 72) and Antichrist 42.
14 KSB 6:449. Stanley Rosen refers to this letter on pp. 22, 185 of his The Mask of
Enlightenment.
15 Gustav Teichrniiller, Die wirk/ich und die scheinbare Welt: Neue Grundlegukng der
Metaphysik (Breslau: Wilhelm Koebner Verlag, 1882), pp. 94, 143 ff.
16 pp. xix, I 08.
216 ROBERT RETHY

'present.' This Katabasis of the idea is its Parousia." 17 For Teichmilller, the
teaching of such dialogues is of the necessary dialectical interplay- an interplay
that is indistinguishable from contradiction- between the ideal and the actual,
and pantheism amounts to the denial of any real being outside of this exchange.
Equally important in this context is Teichmilller's view of Plato's esotericism,
explicitly with respect to the idea of "pure mind" as later taken over by
Christianity. In fact, the keystone of Teichmilller's "new foundation of meta-
physics" is the indispensability of Christianity, and particularly the Christian
conception of the individual soul or I, grasped in intellectual intuition, for an exit
from the circle of idealism which can never get past a "transcendental ego" and
hence is without an ontological ground, trapped in the cycle of insubstantial
"eidetic" giving and "phenomenal" receiving. 18 Thus, Teichmilller vigorously
denies that Plato, "even in a dream, could think of the immortality of the soul, or
of individual beings generally who were not somehow mere appearances." 19 This
view is supported by a lengthy note in the work's Preface distinguishing "exoteric,
orthodox Platonism" and "esoteric Platonic dialectic," the former used by the
Church fathers, the other with its pantheistic element misunderstood or rejected
by them. 20 There is no determinate concept of the individual and of personhood
in Plato. In a pointed statement about Christianity and Platonism, he explicitly
asserts that "we have no reason to hold that the conceptions of Plato which we
find among the Church fathers and many modems are authoritative in establish-
ing the true teaching of Plato."21
Nietzsche's debt to Teichmilller is evident in Beyond Good and Evil. The
discussion in its tenth aphorism of the "zeal and refinement" with which the
"problem 'of the actual and apparent world"' is confronted "everywhere in
Europe today" memorializes the title of his book. 22 The use of "perspectival" in

17 p. 342. For Zarathustra, see, e.g. the first section of the Vorreden (published even
earlier as Gay Science 342, lncipit tragoedia); Night Song (Zarathustra II, VI, l, 132
f.); and most explicitly in the later "Of the Poverty of the Richest," the final Dionysus
Dithyramb, which were originally associated with Zarathustra. (VI, 3, 44 l ff, esp. 444
f.) Nohl noted Teichmiiller's influence on Nietzsche in this and other respects in an
early article, "Eine historische Quelle zu Nietzsches Perspektivismu~. Teichmiiller,
die wirkliche und die scheinbare Welt, in Zeitschrift far Philosophie und philosophische
Kritik 149 (191 3), pp. 106--15.
18 p. 170.
19 p. xix.
20 p. xix n.
21 p. xx n.
22 In German, JGB 10 begins: "Der Eifer und die Feinheit, ich m0chte sogar sagen:
Schlauheit, mit denen man heute uberall in Europa dem Problem ' von der wirklichen
und der scheinbaren Welt' auf den Leib riickt . . ." (VI, 2, 16) The well-known
section in Twilight of the Idols entitled "How the 'True World' Finally Became a

. ~.
 Christianity Is Platonism for the "People" 217

the aphorism and elsewhere in Nietzsche shows his indebtedness to Teichmiiller's

favored term for the world of semblance.23 When Nietzsche speaks a bit later of
Plato's opposition to sensualism, reminding his readers that the Platonic way
of thinking was a noble way of thinking, and refers to the "sense-mob" [Sinnen-
Pobel], a reader of Teichmiiller might be reminded of his 'characterization of
"sensualists and positivists, who according to Cicero's assumption are the
plebeians among the philosophers."24 The emphatic recognition of the importance
of the esoteric and exoteric in JGB 30 along with the use of the terms might also
be due to Teichmiiller's use of the terms in his discussion of Plato.25 The enduring
influence of this view of Plato is testified to in the note of Spring 1888, i.e. the
last year of Nietzsche's philosophically productive life. After contrasting Platonic
"decadence" and sophistic honesty reading Greek culture, the note characterizes
Plato as a "grand Cagliostro," and Nietzsche proceeds to raise questions about his
honesty : "We know, at the least, that he wanted to have taught as absolute truth
what was not even conditionally held by him as truth: 'the individual existence
and individual immortality of 'souls."'26
From the perspective of Teichmiiller's work, then, the two doctrines named
by Nietzsche in his Preface are no longer identifiably Platonic: the "good in
itself" is a victim of a katabasis that necessarily involves it in the world of appear-
ances if it is not to be a mere will of the wisp, and the "pure mind" is a myth for
the "people" who could not manage the implications of the full pantheistic
doctrine of Platonism, which, for Teichmiiller, involves an acceptance of the
contradictory nature of things. 27

Fable," is a final hommage to Teichmiiller's "new metaphysics" (VI, 3, 75). Note also
its cyclical interrelation of Plato, the beginning of the true world (not necessarily the
"error," and Zarathustra, at error's end. See the conclusion of Rosen's interpretation
of this passage, The Question of Being, p. 175.
23 See pp. xvi, xvii, 183 ff.
24 op. cit., p. 15.
25 For indications of an early awareness of this in Nietzsche's understanding of Plato,
see the Einleitung in das Studium der platonischen Dialoge (1871- 1872), II:4:2: 55.
Rosen notes the importance of esotericism in Beyond Good and Evil in many publi-
cations, most recently in Metaphysics in Ordinary Language (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1999), pp. l f.
26 VIII, 3, 14 [116].
27 See the passage on the educability of the people in Plato: "it didn't occur to him to
teach children and the mob pure mathematics or pure philosophy. As a statesman he
knew that the people [Volk] must believe something in order to live correctly and
obey they laws since they are incapable of philosophical freedom and can neither
control themselves nor others." (xii) The passage about Plato and contradiction is on
p. 234. The whole passage, pp. 233-37 repays study about the relation of Plato and
Hegel.
218 ROBERT RETHY

Thus, the "indictment" of Plato in the Preface, and the identification of

Christianity and Platonism, are both evidence of the prevalence of historical
misappropriation. For Nietzsche, such a conflation of Christianity and Platonism
is evidence of the interpretive violence of Christianity, as exemplified by
St. Augustine, and its slavish impossibility of affirming a true order of rank; reading
with Teichmiiller, it grants "dogmas" to a fundamentally dialectical teaching.
Platonism as Christianity for the people cannot survive a sociological or meta-
physical analysis. It remains to be seen what Platonism, or Christianity might
actually be.

3
We would only be repeating Nietzsche himself if we said that the Plato presented
in the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil, and particularly in the parenthetical
phrase on which we have been concentrating, is a caricature.28 As already noted,
the references to Plato in the work itself give us a very different view, and focus
on Plato the aristocrat, the man of refinement and complexity, while the ideal of
the philosopher of the future, particularly as articulated in JGB 211, is not far
from the Platonic philosopher king. Nonetheless, as often, this caricature has had
a more vigorous life than the more detailed picture. It is one of the most visible
masks under which the philosopher, indeed Nietzsche's "neo-Platonic" philoso-
pher, lives in his writings.
Most notable is the role that the identification of Platonism and Christianity
in the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil plays in the most influential interpreta-
tion of Nietzsche of the past century. Indeed, Heidegger's use of this apparent
identity is not only central to his interpretation of Nietzsche, but also of meta-
physics and nihilism, and hence of great consequence for the whole of
"post-modem" philosophy. It is a tribute to the power, as well as the admitted
violence of his interpretation that he has been able to build such an imposing
edifice on such negligible foundations.
If we survey the classic Nietzschean texts on nihilism, texts that, in a selec-
tive manner, Heidegger himself examines in his different interpretations, we see
that there is an element common to all of them that is absent, or virtually so, from
Heidegger's interpretation: Nietzsche's focus on the "Christian" or "Christian-
moral" dimension. 29 A few quotations of familiar texts will make this plain:
"Nihilism stands before the door: whence does this most uncanny of guests come
to us: I. Point of departure: it is an error to point to 'distressful social

28 See VIII, 2, 10 [ 112] (Fall 1887).

29 LOwith objects to this in his early ( 1962) review of Heidegger's Nietzsche, the subject
of Strauss' letter discussed below (p. 15). See Aufsiitze und Vortriige, 1930-1970
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1971 ), p. 83 See also p. 98 for the independent importance
of Christianity to Western philosophy, unmentioned by Heidegger.
 Christianity Is Platonism for the "People" 219

circumstances' . . . as cause of nihilism.... Nihilism is set in a totally specific

interpretation, in the Christian-moral interpretation. . . . 2. The downfall of
Christianity-due to its morality ... which turns against the Christian God (the
sense of truthfulness highly developed by Christianity ..."30 Another note, from
the same period, has, as the "plan of the first book": l. The oncoming nihilism,
theoretical and practical. Fallacious derivation of it. . .. 2. Christianity perishing from
its morality. 'God is the truth' 'God is love' 'the just God'-the greatest event-'God
is dead-dully sensed.'. . . The signs. The European nihilism. Its cause: the
devaluation of the previous values."31 The well-known text entitled "The European
Nihilism:• itself the title of the lengthiest chapter in volume II of Heidegger's and the
name ofthe first book of the plan used for the posthumously published Will to Power,
begins "l. What advantages did the Christian moral hypothesis offer?"32
Yet Heidegger manages to mention Christianity, and Christian morality, only
in passing in his lengthy treatment of ''the European nihilism." He is contemptuous
of any contribution of Christianity to philosophy in its thirteenth chapter,
"Metaphysics and Anthropomorphy." According to this chapter, "a 'Christian
philosophy' remains even more senseless than the thought of a square circle."33
To preserve Nietzsche for philosophy, and to remove religious questions from his
examination of nihilism, Heidegger regularly uses the passage from the Preface
to Beyond Good and Evil that has been the subject of this paper. Thus, in the
seventh chapter, "Nihilism and the Man of Western History," he notes that
the "two-world doctrine" is what Nietzsche understands as the metaphysics of
Plato, with its opposition of a world of "being" and "appearance." "Insofar as
Christianity teaches that this world, as a vale of tears, is only a temporal transition
to an eternal bliss that lies in the beyond, Nietzsche can understand Christianity
as a whole as Platonism (two-world doctrine) for the people."34 The crucial
importance of this phrase for Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche is visible in
his treatment of it in the first volume of this work, toward the end of the first
lecture series in the chapter entitled "Truth in Platonism and in Positivism.
Nietzsche's Attempt at an Inversion of Platonism out of the Basic Experience of
Nihilism." Discussing Nietzsche's view of the ideal as a negation of life, he
writes: "Here is a new interpretation of Platonism. It arises from the fundamental
experience of the fact of nihilism and sees in this the original and determining
ground for the possibility of the advent of nihilism, of nay-saying to life.
Christianity for Nietzsche is nothing other than 'Platonism for the people', as

30 VIII, 1, 2( 127] (Fall 1885- Fall 1886) Also published as Will to Power l.
31 ibid., 2(131].
32 ibid., 5(71] Swnmer 1886-Fall 1887 . Portions of this lengthy, sixteen part notebook
entry were published in different sections of The Will to Power. This was published
as its fourth aphorism.
33 Heidegger, Nietzsche (Neske: Pfulllingen, 1961 ), p. 132.
34 ibid., 11:83.
220 ROBERT RETHY

Platonism however nihilism."35 The Heideggerian strategy is clear: the interpreter

can move seamlessly from references to Christianity to references to Plato, hence
avoiding any embarrassing "theological" or "ethical" discussions, and then move
straight to a discussion of nihilism as a metaphysical event. The degree to which
Heidegger shares this view of Christianity-one which we now know that
Nietzsche himself did not but which was formulated by a Father of the Church
with whose writings the Jesuit-educated Heidegger must have been well-
acquainted-is evident from the following important passage in his Beitriige zur
Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), written around the time the Nietzsche lectures were
delivered. In § 110, the second longest in the book, entitled "The idea, Platonism
and Idealism," after having (in no. 21) accused Nietzsche of being a final conse-
quence of Platonism in the very attempt at inverting it, he concedes, in number
22, that "[o]n the other hand Nietzsche is the one who first recognized the key
position of Plato and the significance of Platonism for the history of the west
(advent of nihilism). More exactly: he had intimations of Plato's key position." He
remained Platonic in his use of Platonic categories in his interpretation of pre-
Platonic philosophy. "However, and what weighs more, Nietzsche had detected
Platonism in its most hidden forms: Christianity and its secularizations are all
'Platonism for the people."•36
We can see the weight of this insight in Heidegger's essay, "Nietzsches Wort,
Gott ist tot." which gives a sort of summary of the Nietzsche lectures. Particularly
in this essay, which poses as a commentary on aphorism 125 of The Gay Science,
entitled "The madman," it is crucial for Heidegger to move swiftly from religion
to metaphysics, the "death of God" to the "absence of a supersensible world."37
Heidegger makes it very plain that if we take "God is dead" as "formula for unbe-
lief" we remain stuck in a "theological-apologetic" view and cannot grasp what
is important for Nietzsche, namely "what has happened with the truth of the
supersensible world and with its relation to the essence of man."38 The elision of
God, theology and belief from the discourse of this essay is made possible by an
allusion to the passage under discussion. In the first paragraph of his interpreta-
tion, after a reproduction of the aphorism itself and a quotation from aphorism
343 of The Gay Science that makes explicit the reference to the "Christian God,"
Heidegger explains that though the saying about the death of God is clearly about
the Christian God, "the names 'God' and 'Christian God' are used in Nietzsche's
thought for the designation of the supersensible world God is the name for the
region of ideas and ideals. This region of the supersensible has been held, since
Plato, more exactly, since the late-Hellenic and Christian interpretation of

35 Ibid., I: 182 f.
36 Martin Heidegger, Beitriige zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), ed. F-W von Hermann,
(Frankfurt a. M: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), p. 219.
37 Martin Heidegger, Holzwege, (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1950), p. 200.
38 ibid., p. 202.
 Christianity Is Platonism for the "People" 221

Platonic philosophy, as the true and genuinely actual world. . . . The temporal
world is the vale of tears in distinction from the stronghold of eternal bliss in the
beyond.... The saying 'God is dead' means: the supersensible world is without
effective force. It dispenses no life. Metaphysics, i.e. for Nietzsche Western
philosophy understood as Platonism, is at an end."39 Once this identification is
made, Heidegger is free to ignore the apparently essential role that "God" or the
"Christian God" plays in this aphorism, as he leaves unmentioned the role played
by Christianity in the unpublished, programmatic pieces on nihilism.
The power, if not the accuracy, of Heidegger's interpretation is evident sim-
ply by looking at the history of the interpretation of Nietzsche and
post-modernism, for which this essay and perspective on Platonism is canonical.
Even Leo Strauss, in a recently published letter to Karl Lowith (March 15, 1962),
written soon after the publication of Heidegger's Nietzsche lectures and Lowith 's
review of them, wrote: "I agree with Heidegger against you concerning the
subordinate status of the issue of Christianity as distinguished from Platonism. I
believe that the preface to Beyond Good and Evil is decisive in this respect.' 740 Yet
there is little doubt that the identification of Christianity and Platonism robs
Christianity of what, for Nietzsche, were two of its defining characteristics, i.e.
its denial of an order of rank among souls and its affirmation of the Jewish
"morality of pity," while it neglects the aristocratic aspect of Platonic philosophy
that was important for Nietzsche from the very beginning of his philosophical
career, and that only grew in importance as he learned, perhaps influenced by
Teichmiiller, to read Plato more carefully.

4
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche viewed Socrates as the "mystagogue of
science" responsible for the death of tragedy and the subsequent "net of thought"
that has spread over the globe, as "the one turning point and vortex of so-called
world history.'"' 1 As Plato's teacher he brings an end to the great tragic age and is
the "type of a form of existence unheard of before him, the type of the theoretical
man." 42 Emblematic of this age and of his effect is the act of erstwhile tragedian,

39 ibid., pp. 199 f. Note the similarity oflanguage-"vale oftears"- in this passage and
the one on Nietzsche II, 83, Christianity is finally dismissed as an object of
Nietzsche's attention, and hence Heidegger's, on pp. 202 f.
40 Leo Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften: Band 3 (ed. Heinrich and Weibke Meier,
Stuttgart-Weimar, 200 I) p. 686. In this letter Strauss, perhaps surprisingly given his
other hermeneutical positions, indicates his preference for Heidegger's interpretation
of Nietzsche, at odds with the author's own views, to Lowith whose views, Strauss
concedes, are more congruent with Nietzsche's own.
41 KGWIIl, l,96(GT§l5).
42 ibid., p. 94 (GT§l5).
222 R OBERT RETHY

Plato, who is said to have burned his poems in order to become Socrates' pupil.43
The three stages of history as enunciated in The Birth of Tragedy are the tragic
age, the theoretical age and, as we reach the nineteenth century, the post-Kantian,
Schopenhauerian-Wagnerian rebirth of Greek antiquity, the rebirth of tragedy. 44
Neither Christianity nor Judaism plays a role in this historical schema: history is
a story told in Classical Greek and modem German.
However, despite the repetitions of Heidegger, his acolytes and his critics, by
the time of Beyond Good and Evil the task is no longer the reversal of Platonism,
but the transvaluation of values, and the transvaluation involves the overcoming
of "slave morality,"-the overcoming of Judaism and its successor religion
Christianity.45 According to the central section of the central chapter of this work,
it is due to the Jews and their "miraculous feat" of the inversion of values "that
life on earth in the past 2,000 years has taken on a new and dangerous attraction."
What is new is the institution of the "slave rebellion" as a normal state, the
devaluation of the highest values. The danger it brings with it is that "most
uncanny of all guests," nihilism. The work's very title testifies to the centrality of
the "slave rebellion" in the resentful generation of values that are hostile to the
"master'' values which alone permit the expansion of life. To go "beyond good
and evil" is not to "reverse Plato" or go "beyond Plato," but to declare war on the
representative of the slave rebellion in modernity, i.e. Christianity.46 Nietzsche's
late works could not be clearer about this: The Antichrist was conceived as the
first book of the Transvaluation ofall Values, then as the Transvaluation of Values
tout court before it received its final subtitle: A Curse Upon Christianity. 47 The
penultimate section of Ecce Homo ends with the Voltairean "Ecrasez / 'infame,"
referring to Christianity, and the book ends with an even stronger plea for com-
prehension: "Have I been understood?- Dionysus vs. the Crucified ..." 48
The central historical roles have thus been exchanged. Socrates and Plato
have been replaced by Moses and Jesus, or Moses and Paul. Nietzsche's view that

43 ibid., p. 88(GT§14).
44 ibid., pp. 127 f(GT§20).
45 Nietzsche notes the absence of any discussion of Christianity in his later "Attempt at
a Self-Critique," §5, published in 1886, and interprets this as a "wary and hostile
silence." (ibid. p. 12).
46 Contrast Heidegger's remarks (Nietzsche I, 180) about Nietzsche's early note which,
along with the phrase we have been examining, is a pillar of his interpretation: "My
philosophy reversed Platonism." (III, 3, 7[156]). This note is crucial to Rosen's inter-
pretation of Nietzsche as well: note the subtitle of The Question of Being- "A
Reversal of Heidegger," and the title of the work's second half, on Nietzsche:
"Reversed Platonism." See the introductory remarks to the section, pp. 137- 39.
47 See VI, 3, 162-64; also Nietzsche, Kritische Studienngesamtausgabe, ed. G. Colli
and M. Montinari, (Berlin: de Gruyter., 1980), 14:434 f.
48 VI, 3, 372 .

.~•
 Christianity Is Platonism for the "People" 223

Christianity, particularly Christian morality is at the basis of the nihilism and

decadence of the nineteenth century, though fully developed in Beyond Good and
Evil, makes its first serious appearance in Dawn, published in 1880.49 Barely visi-
ble in this work, however, and only making its public appearance in later works,
are considerations of the indebtedness of Christianity to Judaism. Nevertheless,
the complex interaction of Jews, Romans and Germans is a particular theme of
the notebooks of this time. In one of the earliest Nietzsche wrote: "Christianity
°
arose out ofJudaism and from nothing else .. .''5 Christianity's victory as the hid-
den triumph of Judaism is also an explicit theme of Nietzsche's "Transvaluation
of All Values," i.e. The Antichrist. Although Jesus is presented, a la Tolstoy, as a
kind of Buddha explicitly opposed to the Jewish tendency toward revenge through
his major teaching, non-resistance to evil,51 or alternatively as a Dostoevskian
"idiot,"52 St. Paul, still "one of the most Jewish Jews who ever existed," in his
"rabbinical impudence"53 falsifies the history oflsrael and the meaning of the life
and death of Jesus and finally turns Christianity into a new Jewish sect, a new
"elect" opposed to the "chosen people" of an "Old Testament, so that, finally,
"The Christian is only a Jew of a 'freer' confession.''54 Far from being Platonism
for the people (das Volk) Christianity is Judaism for the peoples (the gentes).
To quote "Christianity is Platonism for the 'people"' as if it were Nietzsche's
considered characterization of Christianity and Platonism is completely to miss
the force and depth of Nietzsche's later hostility to Christianity, present precisely
in Beyond Good and Evil and Toward the Genealogy ofMorality as well as in later
works such as The Antichrist. Christianity remains a successor, but now a successor
religion. The two-world thesis presented by Heidegger as "Platonic," arising out
of an application of this phrase, is more appropriate to the criticism of

49 See the later Preface of 1886, V, I, 8 (§4). For the text itself, see the whole second
half of Book I (§§57- 92).
50 V, I, 3[137] (Early 1880). The consequence of this for Europe and the Germans is
drawn in other notes: "Europe has allowed an excess of Oriental morality to run ram-
pant in it, as the Jews have thought and worked it out. One will not be the happiest
and most sensible of people when one is so excessive when it comes to the moral and
transposes it into the divine, humanly impossible." (3[128]) Regarding the Germans
more specifically: "If one wishes to say that the Germans [Germane] are pre-formed
and predestined for Christianity, then one is certainly no lacking in shamelessness,
for the opposite is not only true, but even palpable. How should precisely the
Germans make a better home than other peoples for the invention of two distin-
guished Jews, of Jesus and Saul, the two most Jewish Jews that have perhaps ever
existed." (3[ 115])
51 See The Antichrist §§29, 31, 35, 42: VI, 3, 198, 200, 205 f., 213.
52 Ibid., §§ 26, 29, 31: pp. 194, 198, 200.
53 Ibid., §41: p. 213. In on the final sections of the work, Paul is called "the Jew, the
wandering Jew, the eternal Jew par excellence .. . (§58; VI, 3: p. 244).
54 ibid., §44: p. 218 f.
224 ROBERT RETHY

Christianity we find in Bauer, Feuerbach or Marx. Perhaps it is the resonance of

this phrase with the Marxian apothegm: "religion is the opiate of the 'people"' 55
that has allowed so many interpreters to forget the different valence of Volk in the
two thinkers.

5
As the common interpretation neglects the growing significance of Nietzsche's
moral critique and of the moral dimension of his conception of nihilism, so does
it overlook the ever-greater, or ever more explicit complexity of his evaluation of
Plato.56 Even at the time of The Birth ofTragedy Nietzsche found Plato's political
conceptions of the greatest interest and importance. In his final "Overview" to the
introductory portion of the lecture notes for his Introduction to the Study of
Platonic Dialogues from Winter 1871- 72 he wrote : "His legislative mission must
be understood as being at the center of the Platonic impulse. He counts himself
among the Solons, Lycurgus', etc. Everything he does he does with a view toward
this."57 It is not surprising, then, that a good number of the notebook entries from
this time concern the Platonic ldealstaat as the "model of a true Denkerstaat."58
The only printed evidence of such reflections, and of the importance of the
Platonic "ideal state" to Nietzsche at this time, is in his short essay The Greek
State, one of the "five forewords to five unwritten books" privately printed and
presented to Cosima Wagner as a Christmas gift in 1872. Its theme is the positive
connection between the "highest" culture and the "lowest" things, especially the
inseparability of slavery from culture. Its final paragraph is a peroration of the
"perfect state of Plato," "something greater than even the most warm-blooded
among his admirers believe." Plato had an intuition into the "genuine goal of the
state, Olympian existence and ever-renewed generation and preparation of genius,
in contrast to which all else is only a tool, resource, enablement." Nietzsche
excuses Plato's rejection of the artistic in favor of the "genius of wisdom and
knowledge" as a "rigid consequence of the ... Socratic judgment of art, which
Plato had made his own in battle against himself." The essay ends with a rhetori-
cally charged characterization of the Platonic state as a "hieroglyphic of a
profound and eternally to be interpreted mystery doctrine of the interconnection

55 Karl Marx, "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie" in S. Landshut, ed., Die
Friihschriften, (Stuttgart: Kroner, 1971 ), p. 208.
56 An excellent summary of Nietzsche's views of Plato, and a recognition of their
fundamental ambivalence may be found in Dieter Bremer, "Platonisches,
Antiplatonisches." (Nietzsche-Studien 8: 1974, pp. 39-103.)
57 II, 4, 54.
58 III, 3, 7[17] End 1870-April 1871, p. 148. For other similar notes, see 7[25. 113],
29[170] Summer- Fall 1873 and 30[17] Fall 1873- Winter 1873-1874.
 Christianity Is Platonism for the "People" 225

between state and genius. " 59 In a notebook entry from this time, Nietzsche writes
at the end of a list of topics regarding Plato: "Parmenides: Prelude, skepticism
about the theory. Plato fundamentally legislator and reformer, never skeptic about
that." 60
The tum to the Platonic ideal, as the "noble Hellenic ideal," in Beyond Good
and Evil, and its view that "genuine philosophers are commanders and law-
givers,"61 is thus a return, now purified of any suspicion that Plato himself was
responsible for the downfall of the pagan ideal and nourished by a theory of will
to power rather than artistic genius.62 The role of Plato in upholding this ideal of
"order of rank" with its return to the pre-eminence of the philosopher and the
"master task and masterfulness of philosophy"63 is visible in the book we have
been calling Nietzsche's last version of Transvaluation ofAll Values, namely The
Antichrist. At the work's end he contrasts the Christian teaching of equality with
the Aryan Book of Manu. Part of the "naturalness" and "higher reason" of the
latter is its "order of castes," which sanctions a "natural order" of "three types
with a physiologically different gravitational field." The first of the three types are
the few, the spiritual, the artistically gifted, "who rule not, because they want to,
but because they are, and they are not free to be second." The second are the
"guardians of right," the "noble warriors" who are the "executives of the most
spiritual." Third are the "mediocre," the most numerous, the "broad base of the
pyramid" that constitutes a "high culture." The kinship between this structure and
that of the Republic is manifest. We need not belabor either this or the fundamen-
tal difference between a "natural" polity in a Platonic cosmos and one in which
"the world is will to power- and nothing else." Nevertheless, far from overturn-
ing Platonism, the deepest protest against the Christian is made on the basis of a
newly formulated Platonic state. The Aryan-Platonic "order of castes, the order
59 III, 2, 270 f. Ottmann (op. cit.) discusses Nietzsche's early "aestheticizing
Platonism," pp. 44-48, along with other issues surrounding Nietzsche's political
Platonism, pp. 146 ff., 276 ff., 312 ff. It is tempting to view Nietzsche's affirmation
of the connection of slavery and art in these pieces sent to Cosima Wagner as a silent
critique of Richard Wagner's position in Art and Revolution, where the presence of
slavery was seen as the reason for the downfall of Greece's great artistic age, while
the contemporary hope was for a rebirth of an artistic age on the basis of universal
liberty and equality.
60 III, 3, 29 [174] Summer-Fall 1873, p. 196.
61 §211 (VI, 2, 149).
62 See Antichrist, §5 l: "It is not, as it is believed the corruption of antiquity itself, of
noble antiquity, that made Christianity possible. . . . The great number became
master; the democratism of the Christian instinct was victorious." (VI, 3, 229 f.) On
Plato as representative of noble antiquity, see also Bremer, pp. 76-80.
63 §204 (ibid., p. 135) Nietzsche here speaks of the absence from our modem world of
the "whole type of Heraclitus, Plato, Empedocles, and whatever other names these
royal and splendid spiritual solitaries might have had."
226 ROBERT RETHY

of rank, merely formulates the supreme law of life itself ... the inequality of
rights is the first condition for their being any rights at all," while the claim for
"equal rights"' is injustice. The Christian's denial of the order of rank manifested
in Plato and the Book of Manu shows why "Christ" and "Anarchist" are of the
same origin: they both deny the natural arche.64 In affirming a "long ladder of
the order of rank and value difference" 65 among human beings, Plato shows that
he, unlike modem "free thinkers," knows the answer to the question asked by the
last chapter of Beyond Good and Evil, "What is Noble?"

6
In the beginning was the word, the famous saying by a great smithy of phrases.
What do we have now, in the end? We may first ask what Nietzsche hoped to
achieve by saying that "Christianity is Platonism for the 'people"'? If we think
of Beyond Good and Evil as a self-proclaimed renewal of the esoteric art of
philosophy- a renewal of a Platonic art of whose Platonic roots we have seen that
Nietzsche was well aware-we might raise the question this way: what is the
exoteric meaning- the meaning "from below"- and how does it relate to the
esoteric meaning- the meaning "from above"? From below, that would be from
the crowd, here the crowd of free thinkers and atheists discussed in sections 44
and 58, filled with their "modem ideas" and animated by the nineteenth century's
own "divine form of naivete," its sense of superiority to religion as well as to
philosophy, its sense of the hegemony of science and the scientist which includes
the reflexive materialism and sensualism of sections 10 and 14. For the crowd of
"modem thinkers," two outmoded systems of thought are conjoined, and the
"two-world" interpretation of both, favored by post-Kantian critics and particu-
larly the Hegelian left, is joined. If Christianity is but a popularization of
Platonism, and Platonism, in an age of criticism and science, is itself a dogmatic
relic of a pre-scientific, pre-critical age, then both may be dismissed as philoso-
phies of the past, and philosophers of the future, already mobilized by Feuerbach
in the l 840's, may be ready to fight once again. Such warriors remain a large
segment of the Nietzschean cohort even today, readers for whom Nietzsche is an
apostle of freedom and of social diversity, an enemy of repressive Christianity and
rigid categorical structures.
From the esoteric view-from Nietzsche's point of view-such an interpre-
tation is not unexpected. It is ill-considered in its own terms, since it does not
conceive of the consequences of such an affirmation: the overcoming of

64 The Antichrist, § 57 (VI, 3, 23µ2).

65 JGB 257. This phrase is in the first sentence of the first section of this last chapter.
(VI, 2, 215) Compare the conclusion of Rosen's "Remarks on Nietzsche's
' Platonism"' in The Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry (New York-London:
Routledge, 1988), p. 203.
 Christianity Is Platonism for the "People" 227

Christianity and Platonism in this sense, of the two (or one) major world-
interpretation(s) of the past 2,000 years, leaves nothing standing. Science itself is
undermined by the rejection of Platonism, and the ethical certainties of nineteenth
century democratic humanism are dissolved by the rejection of Christianity's
"slave morality." The advent of that ''uncanniest of all guests" is near at hand as
the "self destruction of morality" and the "self-destruction of truth" work them-
selves out. But this is only to work out the hidden consequences of the surface
interpretation. The interpretation itself is inadequate, and symptomatic of the
interpreters, since it neglects the crucial role of the Volk, and is thus protected
from the deepest and most dangerous impulse, the dynamite66 that, a contempo-
rary reviewer correctly saw, animates this work: a call to the destruction of a
civilization based on universal human rights and human dignity, characterized by
Nietzsche as herd or slave morality, and its replacement by one based on the
"pathos of distance," the "order of rank," and "slavery of every sort."67 From such
a perspective, to think of "Platonism for the people" is to make a joke, either
unintended- as in the Confessions--0r intended, as in the Preface itself. Whoever
takes it seriously has already condemned himself as plebeian, has already shown
that he is not sensitive to the vast differenc.e between a noble way of thinking-
Platonism-and that way of thinking by means of which the slave has rebelled
and the mob has poisoned the source of all nobility.
Interpreted from above, the very title and subtitle of the work bespeak the
difference between the two teachings identified in this phrase. "Beyond Good and
Evil": that is, beyond Judeo-Christianity and its inversion of value. "Prelude to a

66 Nietzsche himself uses the term, presumably picked up later by Widmann in his well-
known review: J.V. Widmann, "Nietzsches gefahrliches Buch," Der Bund 16/17,
September 1886, reprinted in C.P Janz, Nietzsche: Biographie III (Munich: Carl
Hanser Verlag, 1979), p. 257ff Nietzsche gleefully acepted this characterization. The
third sentence of the final chapter of Ecce Homo, "Why I am a Destiny," asserts:
"I am not a man, I am dynamite." (VI, 3, 362). Nietzsche refers to this review as
evidence that he has been understood by at least one reader, in many subsequent
letters: to Koselitz, 20 Sept. 1886, to Deussen (same date), to Fritzsch, his publisher,
24 Sept. 1886, to von Meysenbug, 24 Sept. 1886, to Koselitz again, l 0 October 1886,
to his mother, (same date), and to his sister, 3 November 1886.
67 Compare Burckhardt's letter after reading Beyond Good and Evil. Burckhardt, one
of Nietzsche's three "intended readers" (cf. KSB 7:270: Taine and Bauer were the
other two) summarized its central themes as follows: "on the will in the peoples and
its current paralysis; on the antithesis of great assurance of well-being vs. a desired
education through danger; on industriousness as destructive of the religious instincts;
on the present herd man and his claims; on democracy as heir of Christianity; most
particularly, however, on the future strong on earth! Here you ascertain and exhibit
the probable conditions of their genesis and life in a way that must arouse the high-
est sympathy." (Burckhardt to Nietzsche, 26 Sept. 1886, Nietzsche, Briefwechsel:
Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Berlin-New York: de Gruyter, 1975 ft), III:4, 221 f.)
228 ROBERT R ETHY

Philosophy of the Future" : that is, toward a reinstitution of the order of rank and
of the task of the philosopher-lawgiver, of the Platonic view of the just polity and
the philosopher's task, based in the new interpretation of the commanding
authority of the philosopher.
Another group of readers remains: we are neither the crowd of nineteenth
century free-thinkers nor Nietzsche himself. What have we gained by this exhaus-
tive examination of a six-word phrase? Once we recognize the gulf of "rank"
between Christianity, with its roots in the "Jewish slave rebellion," and Platonism,
which arises from the culture that defines nobility for Nietzsche, we are led to
review his conception of nihilism, as fundamentally a moral or, more exactly,
moral-political phenomenon. The Heideggerian interpretation of nihilism as a
metaphysical or ontological event has little or no basis in Nietzsche's texts once
"Christianity is Platonism for the 'people"' has been eliminated as a straightfor-
ward identity. For Nietzsche, to be sure, nihilism demands a philosophical
response, which is not the same as a lucubration about being. The philosopher of
the future, about whom Nietzsche speaks, is a lawgiver and ruler. Only in this
sense can we confirm Heidegger's Nietzscheanism: his actions of 1933 are the
practical truth as the later lectures and writings are the theoretical retreat from the
"explosive" message of "Nietzsche's dangerous book." Knowing what we know
now, we can approach Nietzsche, Christianity, and Plato differently. We can learn
much from Heidegger's mistakes, both practical and interpretative, and substitute
theoretical boldness for his intellectual retreat, practical caution for his political
decisiveness. We need to try to grasp the true nature of Platonic nobility, as we
consider the deeper sources and consequences of Christianity and its denial, if we
are to understand the lesson of Nietzsche, self-styled antichrist and Platonic
philosopher of the future.
Where My Spade Turns
On Philosophy, Nihilism, and the Ordinary

Sharon Rider
Uppsa/a University (Sweden)

If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock, and my spade

is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do." 1

Introduction
The title of this essay may be startling to those readers who recognize the
reference as a quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein. And, I will in fact be discussing
certain recurring themes in Wittgenstein's philosophy which I take to be in har-
mony with a number of central insights in Rosen's thought, although the focus
throughout wm be on ideas, and not authors.
I have three reasons for undertaking this task. The first reason is purely auto-
biographical. I have been deeply influenced by Wittgenstein's work for the last
decade, but in the most fundamental respects, I see this influence as a continuation
of the philosophical training I received under the tutelage of Stanley Rosen.
Second, and more importantly, precisely because their work is so very different in
form, the reflections offered here have to do with what I take to be serious intel-
lectual and ethical concerns motivating the work of both men, rather than with the
technical arguments to which those concerns give rise, or with schools of thought,
traditions of interpretation, and so forth. They are questions such as: What is the
relationship between reason and the good, i.e. in what way, if any, is intelligibility
bound up with values? Or: What is the relationship between "everyday life,"
"ordinary experience" or "the life world" on the one hand, and philosophical
insight and conceptualization, on the other? Third, I believe that making clear
where there is. more agreement than may be assumed between these two so
radically different ways of viewing and engaging in the philosophical enterprise
can provide instructive cues to answering those general questions. Because the
point of the essay is conceptual rather than expository, I will take the liberty of

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, ( 1953) transl. G.E.M. Anscombe

(Basil Blackwell: 1958), §217.

229
230 SHARON RIDER

focussing primarily on issues discussed in Rosen's most recent treatment of

Wittgenstein (in Philosophy and Ordinary Experience and The Elusiveness of
the Ordinary), 2 although familiarity with his other writings will be assumed.
What I offer below is a way of understanding Wittgenstein that I take to be both
deeper and more philosophically interesting than the received view(s). While this
way of reading Wittgenstein is something that I in fact have learned from others,
the claims I make are to be taken as my own reflections, inspired by my under-
standing of Wittgenstein.3
Let me begin by saying something about what I do not take Wittgenstein to be
saying. A common picture of the later Wittgenstein's project is that it is intended
to help us delineate rules for meaningful speech on the basis of de facto speech.
Commenting on Wittgenstein's emphasis on ordinary language, Rosen writes:
He begins from the conventional or historical fact of the linguistic community
whose members speak in more or less the same way. It is as a member of this
community that the philosopher or speech therapist has access to standard
idioms and rules of linguistic use, by which to eliminate mistakes arising
from misuse of those idioms and rules. 4

I would say that one of the driving motivations behind the Investigations (in
contrast to the Tractatus) is the attempt to find a legitimate function for serious
philosophical thinking, given that philosophy has lost its mandate to legislate
norms. In itself, however, this insight need not entail the view that classical
philosophy was wrong or confused insofar as it attempted to assimilate the logical
and the ethical, but rather reflects the sober recognition that philosophy, as a

2 Stanley Rosen, Metaphysics in Ordinary Experience (Yale University Press: 1999;

St. Augustine's Press, 2006), and Stanley Rosen, The Elusiveness of the Ordinary:
Studies in the Possibility of Philosophy (Yale University Press: 2002).
3 A few interpretations and applications of Wittgenstein's philosophy that have
inspired some of the ideas sketched below are: Soren Stenlund, Language and
Philosophical Problems (Routledge: 1990); Martin Gustafsson, Entangled Sense
(Uppsala University Press: 2000); Par Segerdahl, Language Use (Macmillan: 1996);
Lars Hertzberg, "Wittgenstein and the Sharing of Language," in The Limits of
Experience (Acta Philosophica Fennica: 1994) and "On the Need for a Listener and
Community Standards," in The Practice of Language, Martin Gustafsson and Lars
Hertzberg (eds.), (Kluwer: 2002), and James Conant, "Wittgenstein on Meaning and
Use," in Philosophical Investigations 21 ( 1998).
4 Rosen 2002, p. 141. Perhaps the most prominent Wittgenstein interpreters who hold
something like this view are Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker (Wittgenstein: Rules,
Grammar and Necessity, Blackwell 1985). The issue of rule-following is crucial to,
and therefor, pervasive in Wittgenstein scholarship and interpretation, but clearly
beyond the scope of this essay. The reader is referred to an excellent review and
analysis of the problems in Martin Gustafsson (2000).
 Where My Spade Turns 231

matter of fact, no longer has a morally legislative function. In this respect, there
is clearly a Nietzschean element to Wittgenstein's thought.5 But, as I will try to
show, this recognition does not make Wittgenstein a nihilist, but rather, like
Nietzsche, a philosopher who is grappling with the problem of nihilism (among
other things).
For Nietzsche, as opposed to many of his disciples, "the problem of nihilism"
was not a theoretical issue, nor a rhetorical or literary trope, nor an intellectual
mannerism. His pronouncements on the revaluation of all values, the death of God
and so forth have overshadowed a more matter-of-fact expression of the same
concern: there seems to be nothing more worth taking seriously.
When Nietzsche denies that there are "moral facts," or when he derides
Kant's notion of the will as a "faculty," in other words, when he criticizes meta-
physics and theology, he does so, one might say, on ethical grounds: the kinds of
"facts" presented in theological and philosophical discourse, rather than expressing
incontrovertible truths as they claimed to, in effect, expressed moral demands.
Nietzsche rarely criticized ethical practices or personal beliefs per se; what he
criticized was the tendency of normative systems to parade around! as logically
binding facts (this is especially clear in 1Wilight of the Idols and The Antichrist).
On this reading of Nietzsche, he is not making a negative metaphysical claim
when he says, for example, "there are no moral facts whatsoever". He is saying
that it makes no sense to talk about "moral facts" at all. Thus it makes no sense,
really, to make the claim that nothing is morally true, if by that one means that
the truth of all ethical questions lay somewhere else, in, let us say, some
materialist conception of human life, for instance. The problem with philoso-
phers, as Nietzsche describes it in Beyond Good and Evil, Twilight of the Idols
and the Gay Science, is that they have been concerned with justifying a certain
moral order.
Nietzsche's assertion that "God is dead" is commonly treated as if it were
Nietzsche himself who committed deicide, as if Nietzsche demanded of his readers
that they cease believing in God, as if Nietzsche wanted to replace God with "the
absence of God" as a metaphysical starting-point, i.e. atheism as a philosophical
position. But one can also understand, for instance, book III of The Gay Science,
as simply pointing out that the language of guilt, punishment and reward, right
and wrong, good and evil, which were part of the religious way of life, had lost
their meaning, and that what remained were abstract codes and empty forms. In
this light, we can see Nietzsche's often trying praise of hardness, strength, will,
and nobility of character as words of encouragement to those who had the same

5 Despite deficiencies in his discussion of Wittgenstein's ostensible "faith" in ordinary

language, Erich Heller's comparison of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein is worth reading
in this context. See Erich Heller, The Importance of Nietzsche (University of
Chicago: I 988), chap. 8.
232 SHARON RIDER

suspicions. Nietzsche was encouraging what Heidegger would later characterize

as Beschlossenheit, resoluteness, in the face of the new facts of life. In this
respect, Nietzsche's ethical teaching is indistinguishable from his conceptual
analysis.
But we can appreciate his attempt to save humanity from nihilism, from the
sense that "there's nothing more worth taking seriously," without accepting his
proposed solutions. While it might have seemed plausible to Nietzsche that a
great work of philosophy, or art or literature could revivify culture by introducing
new values, or even re-introducing ancient ones, that is not a viable option for us
today, since even nineteenth-century ideas of literary or artistic greatness have
become obsolete.
Yet the problem of nihilism might not be the same problem for us today as it
was for Nietzsche. One might say that everything that Nietzsche feared has come
to pass, but then, looking at our lives and our culture not as a future possibility or
an historical event waiting to be interpreted a hundred years from now, but from
within, so to speak, it is not so certain that the situation is as bad as all that. While
we are constantly being bombarded with claims that we must, as enlightened
denizens of this the most enlightened epoch, see ourselves as atoms whirring
meaninglessly in the void, we have now, as always, the option of meeting such
claims with circumspection and even suspicion. We can follow Nietzsche's advice
in Beyond Good and Evil: "So let us, for once, be more cautious, let us be
'unphilosophical' ."6 I take the later Wittgenstein's philosophy to be "unphilo-
sophical" in precisely this regard.

Certainty and the Unsayable

It is true that the later Wittgenstein most certainly would say that the hypostatiza-
tion of the transcendental I as the source and guarantor of certainty is impossible
for us to take seriously anymore. This does not, however, entail the impossibility
of certainty, even in moral issues, that is often assumed to follow from that impos-
sibility. It is not that certainty is impossible; it just turns out to be something other
than what philosophers have thought. Certainty is something attained on the
basis, infamously, of the " unsayable". In what follows, I will attempt to show the
respect in which the unsayable is not the same as the silent. The unsayable is
actually quite articulate (if not garrulous). That is, it is constantly showing itself
in any number of things that we are inclined to say and do. But the things that we
are inclined to say and do are so complex and variegated that they cannot be stated

6 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, (1886) transl. R.J. Hollingdale
(Penguin: 1973), "On the Prejudices of the Philosophers" § 19.
 Where My Spade Turns 233

in this or that doctrine. Nonetheless, something can be said about our various and
sundry practices: this is what is meant by the notion of a rule. The notion of rule-
following is misleading, however, because we tend to think that first there is
a rule, and then we either follow this existent rule correctly, or incorrectly, or not
at all. For Wittgenstein, the rule derives its determinate meaning from practice,
and not the reverse. Thus, Rosen is naturally right when he describes
Wittgenstein's project as finding meaning in de facto praxis. Nonetheless, I think
that one should take great care to understand the import of this conceptual point
regarding the relationship between rules and practice, namely, that anything we
can say about what it means to do something presupposes the practice the
statement is intended to describe. This is the respect in which a full description
is "unsayable," that is, it never hits bottom. But Wittgenstein is not suggesting
that there are two kinds of knowledge/language, "propositional" or "discursive"
on the one hand, and some sort of "tacit knowledge" or "non-discursive insight,"
on the other. What makes Wittgenstein's later philosophy so difficult is that his
studies of "depth grammar" are comparable to Kant's transcendental reflections
insofar as they are not propositions about states of affairs at all. They are rather
meditations on the conditions for making such propositions (given the fact that
we can and do engage in such discourse) and, as such, "say nothing" about
anything:
We feel as if we had to penetrate phenomena: our investigation, however, is
directed not towards phenomena, but, as one might say, towards the "possi-
bilities" of phenomena. We remind ourselves, that is to say, of the kind of
statement that we make about phenomena[... ]. Our investigation is therefore
a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by
clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of
words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of
expressions in different regions of language. 7

Grammatical investigations naturally use language, presuppose language and

take place in language, since the whole point is to describe our form of life
from the point of view of lived experience (that is, from the point of view of
the user of language). The "given" for Wittgenstein is not "the contingent
practices and conventional ways of speaking of our historically particular
culture"; such a description presupposes our language and form of life as an
external object for consideration, a point of view which is parasitic upon the
first-person, or internal, perspective we all have in our everyday dealings with
language.

7 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical investigations, ( 1953) transl. G.E.M. Anscombe

(Basil Blackwell: 1958), §89.
234 SHARON RIDER

One may describe Wittgenstein's project as the attempt to do philosophy given

that we cannot lift ourselves up by our hair or step out of our skin: he describes our
linguistic practices as ours. And, for us, as language users and livers of our form of
life, that is, from the first-person perspective, there is nothing accidental, histori-
cally contingent or conventional about most of the things that are important to us,
least of all, moral and religious practice. There is plenty of room for ethical truth:
what you (we) really want. There is equal room for logical or philosophical truth:
what you (we) really mean. But these truths are not statements of fact in the scien-
tific sense, and the tendency to waffle between these sorts of insights and
statements of fact leads inexorably to philosophical confusion. Yet certainty in
these questions can be shown (most often in and through language, or discursive
practice, or whatever term one prefers), although not "stated" as such. Once more,
Rosen is certainly right to point out that if ordinary language is understood as "the
changing idiom of history," then it is indeed a theoretical construction. But from
the first-person perspective, language cannot be seen thus; and for Wittgenstein,
for whom genuine communication about the world is not only a possibility but an
actuality (and thus the starting point for all philosophical investigation), the goal
of philosophizing is to understand what we actually (really) mean.
If philosophy is about what we really can meaningfully say, this is neither
because meaning is prior to use, nor because there are conventional rules
determining what is an allowable move in a language game. It is rather because
in learning our native language, we "take in" the world. We cannot simply
choose "alternative" pictures or uses at will and still be able to mean at all. To
mean is not the same thing as to apply a theory of meaning (the choice of
which makes not the slightest difference for how we live our lives). For
Wittgenstein, the failure of philosophy to describe adequately and accurately
how it is that we can "mean," rather than suggesting that meaning is arbitrary
or uncertain, indicates that there is something fundamentally wrong with the
question. Another way of putting it is to ask, with Wittgenstein: "You ask how
meaning is possible? In what respect?" Posing the question this way,
Wittgenstein hopes to show how meaning is possible, in a way that is not a
general statement of fact (because the question of how meaning is possible is
not a question about a state of affairs).
Compare now what I have said above with the following remark, in which
Rosen criticizes what he takes to be Wittgenstein's implicit historicism:
Since grammars define families of language games or constitute a "life-
form," and life-forms are multiple as well as diverse, or in other words, since
there is no universal life form, any more than there is a universal form of the
proposition, it seems that human nature, and so what counts as ordinary or
healthy use, is a function of history, that is to say, of chance.8

8 Rosen 2002, p. 140.

-~
 Where My Spade Turns 235

To begin with, Rosen states that "grammars define families of language

games" or constitute a life-form. But what is meant by grammars here?
Wittgenstein writes:
In the use of words one might distinguish "surface" grammar from "depth"
grammar. What immediately impresses itself upon us about the use ofa word
is the way it is used in the construction of sentences, the part of the use--0ne
might say-that can be taken in by the ear.- And now compare the depth
grammar, say of the word "to mean," with what its surface grammar would
lead us to suspect. No wonder we find it difficult to know our way about. 9

Wittgenstein would not accept the idea that surface grammars (such as the
rules ·formulated by grammarians, or the logical combination of meaningful sen-
tences in the manner of Carnap's logical syntax) define forms oflife. It's not as if
Wittgenstein thinks that the most important things we can know about a form of
life is the prevalence of gendered articles or the prevalence of strong verbs within
a language group, or linguistic theory. Those sorts of rules are obviously arbitrary
insofar as they were developed precisely for scholastic instruction (primarily, in
fact, for foreign language instruction, that is, "official Greek"), 10 in the one case,
and developed within the particular history of the philosophy of language
stemming out of Frege and Russell, on the other, and are thus the result of
historical contingency. Historically speaking, the world of lakes and the practice
of swimming existed long before the grammarians parsed up language into verbs
and nouns, or the logicians formulated the rules for well-formed sentences.
Furthermore, in cultures in which speakers have no notion of verbs or nouns, peo-
ple talk about lakes and teach their children to swim, using language. The
suggestion that there is some grammar dictating these practices that these people
are implicitly following is, to say the very least, highly speculative, and, I do not
think a view that Wittgenstein would hold. So what is being suggested here? It
must be that depth grammar is what is definitive of a language and form of life.
And, insofar as we are philosophizing, that would be Wittgenstein's view. Depth
grammar describes, as it were, a horizon of our understanding, a point at which

9 Wittgenstein 1958, §664. Richard S0rli points out that, while the standard reading of
the distinction is to identify surface grammar with the "obvious syntactic features
of sentences and the words of which it is composed," and depth grammar with "the
combinatorial possibilities and impossibilities, of the circumstances of its use, and of
its consequences" (Hacker, cited in S0rli ), this reading neglects the importance
Wittgenstein ascribes to use. Thus what Wittgenstein intends by "surface grammar"
is close to the standard reading of "depth grammar." I follow S0rli in my use above.
See Richard S0rli, "Wittgenstein, Grammar and the Orthodoxy of the Ordinary,"
unpublished manuscript, 2002.
10 R.H. Robbins, A Short History of Linguistics (London: 1967), p. 13.
236 SHARON RIDER

nothing more can be said about meaning, although meaningful speech that is
revelatory of that horizon is both possible and actual (but not as an intellectual
discourse about some thing).
In the rest of the quote, a number of consequences are drawn from
Wittgenstein's refusal to engage in generalized discourse about "human nature,"
"a universal form of the proposition," etc., in particular that it results in histori-
cism. But Wittgenstein is not advocating an historicist view, simply by criticizing
an ahistoricist view. Once more, he is trying to avoid "saying too much," and thus
risk saying nothing ("nonsense"). Wittgenstein would presumably grant a number
of historicist assertions about particular cases, without embracing historicism as
such, that is, he would grant its point as critique in any number of contexts, but
refuse to grant it as a philosophical thesis or doctrine. 11 As a general thesis, his-
toricism assumes in advance of the formulation of any specific problem that the
problem ought to be formulated in such a way as to be amenable to historical
explanation. But Wittgenstein would first demand that we are clear about what it
is that we want to know before assuming an historicist stance.
As critique, historicist works mostly describe the de facto conditions in
which past thinkers worked, the intellectual debate of the period, the connotations
of certain terms in a given epoch and so forth. The motivation behind such stud-
ies is presumably the prevalence of treating philosophers in the past as if there
were no such conditions, as if philosophers did not in fact write in a certain con-
text and not another.
As a general thesis or starting-point, however, historicism seems inevitably
leads to a number of perplexities. First, the prioritizing of questions concerning
cultural bias, for example, is often assumed to be unproblematic given the histori-
cist starting-point. The historicist position provides a kind of metaphysical
justification for posing certain questions, and simply disregarding others, as those
become nonsensical within the historicist framework. Second, it presumes that
one can say something sensible about a culture as a whole, and thus moves from
being a modus operandi to an ontology. If we follow this line of thought to its
natural conclusion, we seems to be forced to embrace one of the following, to my
mind absurd, conclusions:
Past thinkers (or actors) were culturally limited. We, however, can see the
conditions of their thinking better than they could because of our historical
distance.
We are culturally limited, we cannot understand anything at all except for our
own cultural projections.
11 Here Koselleck's historicizing of historical thinking in Critique and Crisis:
Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (MIT: 1988) is relevant. The
historical coincidence of the development of "historical thinking" in the modem
sense and the advent of "critique" is a useful reminder to us that we are not nearly as
self-critical in our perpetual gesturing to "historical contingency" as some kind of
neutral fact as we ought to be.

....
 Where My Spade Turns 237

Interestingly enough, few draw these drastic conclusions, but at the same
time, neither do they draw a lesson from the fact that they are unprepared to do
so. I would say that the lesson to be drawn is that our own experience inoculates
us from such theoretical extremism in practice (although not in philosophy).
I take the Wittgensteinian position toward historicist claims to be that it is
something that must be decided from case to case, issue to issue. We cannot, in
advance of inquiry, decide, for instance, that either (i) there is no such thing as
sex and death per se, but only different cultural practices of, say, courtship and
religious mysticism, or (ii) there is only copulation and expiration, and these are
the basis for various arbitrary cultural expressions such as marriage and reli-
gious institutions. The question of the constancy of human nature can only be
decided in the context of a much more specified question, and with respect a pre-
determined and presumably narrow use of the notion of constancy. As a
hermeneutic principle, this means that the extent to which ancient texts, for
example, are intelligible or unintelligible to modem discourse is simply the
extent to which they are intelligible or unintelligible. The question is, what prob-
lems are you trying to solve? If an ancient text does, effectively, shed light on a
problem, then it is apparently intelligible in the relevant sense (even if only to a
few). As Rosen writes, "[i]t is our perception of human nature that makes Plato
and Aristotle intelligible to us." 12 But to ask if such perception in general is an
historical artifact or a part of the natural order is to pose a question that cannot
be decided once and for all. In Wittgensteinian terms, it is not a question we can
"get clear about".
More importantly, such a stance can only be taken towards an object of
inquiry, that is, towards language or culture as an object. Wittgenstein's remarks
are not about linguistic practice as an object of study, but are "internal" to actual
language use. In this respect, there are "logical" or "grammatical" remarks that
are not in the least arbitrary, that is, which show necessary relations, given the
language we have. There are certain facts about our language that cannot be
otherwise, whereas the philosophical explanations we develop to explain these
may well be historically contingent.
The concept of a line, one might want to say, is relative to the cultural and
linguistic horizon it inhabits. What would it mean, however, to say that there are
lines that lack length? However fuzzy and confused our idea of the dark side of
the moon as a possible object of perception, we can at least get started thinking
about it. And we certainly have no trouble grasping the claim that dogs perceive
odors that human beings cannot. Thus we may be tempted to say that there is or
could be a society or language in which lines were not always perceived as having
some length; say, a tribe in which all members suffer from some kind of hereditary
congenital blindness. In the imagined case, the tribe has survived without the

12 Rosen 1999, p. 221.

238 SHARON RIDER

capacity to perceive lines at all, and this might seem to provide evidence for the
notion that attributing length to lines is a convention, or as counter-evidence to
the notion that the association between length and lines is some sort of biological
fact about human psychology. But from the point of view of depth grammar, the
relationship between length and the notion of a line is internal; length belongs to
the meaning of a line. A notion of line without length would be a different use of
the word, a different concept, than the ordinary geometrical one. As a grammatical
remark, the foregoing is neither normative (it is not a prohibition against using
words as one wishes) nor informative (it provides no explanation); it is a descrip-
tion of a defining feature of the ordinary use of the word line.
Neither psychologistic nor conventionalist explanations of how we have the
notion of line that we have can get off the ground without assuming the mean-
ing ofline, lest they not know what it is they are explaining or disagreeing about
in the first place. In fact, they would have nothing to explain (they would have
no problem to pose). All empirical explanations (that is, explanations about
things) rely upon "grammatical facts" of this kind. To say that a line necessar-
ily has length is to reach the point at which "my spade turns". It's the sort of
remark that few would dream of questioning, but not because it's an implicit or
tacit theory. Rather, it's the sort of remark one arrives at when trying to define
what it is that one is talking about, what it is one is trying to explain, what it is
that one "really means". But it is, in a sense, a "transcendental" remark insofar
as it tells us nothing that wasn't already there with us from the moment we
learned how to use the word "line," and which simply has no use outside of
the context of such reflection. I take this to be Wittgenstein's point when he
remarks: "The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a
particular purpose. If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never
be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them". 13 The var-
ious ways we were trained to use "line," the nearly infinite number of
circumstances at home, in the playground and even the first-grade classroom
cannot be cursorily stated in a philosophical theory without falsification or
unwarranted speculation (which is not to say that such speculation and even
simplification is always unwarranted. One can imagine uses for it in, for exam-
ple, early childhood development studies, where one is interested in testing
various methods of early instruction to improve geometric understanding
among schoolchildren).
In response to the objection that either there is a natural order or there is only
construction, I would say that Wittgenstein simply refuses to accept that dichotomy
as helpful in a number of important philosophical issues, because the terms are
formulated at the outset before the posing of the particular question. That lines
have length is not a "construction," if by that we mean a convention that could be

13 Wittgenstein 1958, §127, §128.

-~
 Where My Spade Turns 239

otherwise. Objections with reference to non-Euclidean geometries or Poincare's

conventionalism are irrelevant here, since we are not talking about a working
definition, say, a line as the shortest distance between two points. Poincare's con-
ventionalist view of mathematics is largely in harmony with Wittgenstein's, but the
internal relation between the notion of line and the having of length is not a part
of mathematics. But is it a "natural fact"? Hardly. In an important sense, it's not a
"fact" at all. Rosen reads Wittgenstein as seeing nature as a theoretical construc-
tion, but I do not think that Wittgenstein sees ordinary use as theoretical in this
way. There is, however, a use of nature that is a theoretical construction, namely,
the "nature" of the natural sciences (which is often assumed in an unspecified and
fluid manner in philosophical discussion). Borrowing a phrase from Rosen, one
could say that it is not Wittgenstein's analysis of the "ordinary" that is endless, with
"no bottom and no top," but rather generalized philosophical notions of "nature,"
"custom" and so forth that are endless (because fluid). Words such as ·~nature" and
"culture," like words such as "object" or "I" tend to play the field in philosophical
discussion. When we "bring back words from their metaphysical to their everyday
use," we are, Wittgenstein says, bringing them back to the language-game which is
their original home, 14 or rather, calling them back to work when they've gone, as
Wittgenstein says, "on holiday". 15 This is the sense of the "extraordinary use" of
words in philosophy that we have to learn to resist if we are to attain the clarity that
is for Wittgenstein the goal of philosophy. But is clarity certainty? Can we say that
we are "certain" that lines have length?
The goal of certainty in modem philosophy seems to involve starting with
what cannot be doubted even in principle, and building up arguments on that basis.
For Wittgenstein, this philosophical notion of certainty that is both the starting-
point and ultimate goal is problematic. I will not rehearse Wittgenstein's discussion
of certainty here, but will rather limit myself to a few points relative to the discus-
sion above. I wiish to say that clarity is not certainty, but that we should perhaps not
be concerned with certainty in philosophy, precisely because certainty is some-
thing we aim at with regard to facts. Philosophy, however, can provide us with
clarity such that the issue of certainty never arises (because the kinds of insight
philosophy provides cannot be doubted). In "A Central Ambiguity in Descartes,"
Rosen notices that the rejection of everything that can be doubted in principle
presupposes the capacity to identify with certainty what constitutes dubious
knowledge. But is our distinct recognition that we are uncertain about something,
something about which we can be certain? Carl Page writes:
Certainty in all its fonns entails a meta-reflection, an assessment that a given
judgment has been made properly and correctly. It is a retrospective certifi-
cation that the evidence is in order and that the train of thought leading up to

14 Wittgenstein 1958, § 116.

15 Wittgenstein 1958, §38.
240 SHARON RIDER

the judgment has followed adequate procedures. Declarations of certainty in

actual cases are thus relative to the standards of evidence and ratiocination
presupposed for different types of judgement. 16

I take this to be an accurate and succinct description of the use of the notion
of certainty. And it invites the question, are all insights that cannot even in prin-
ciple be doubted, amenable to demands ofjustification, standards of evidence and
procedures of ratiocination? How could I, even in principle, satisfactorily demon-
strate that all lines have length? Or more to the point, how can I even begin to
doubt that lines have some length? What would such doubt mean? If I am looking
at two lines written on a blackboard two meters away, and describing what I see
for someone on the telephone, he might question whether or not my observation
about the relative lengths of the two lines is correct. And, in such a case, I may
well squint my eyes for a few seconds (checking the equipment, as it were), and
then I might be inclined to say, "Yes, I'm quite certain now. Line A is longer than
line B." In this case, I have reason to distrust the testimony of my senses, and
indeed, there is a procedure for checking the accuracy of my original statement.
The extent to which we speak of evidence is exactly the extent to which the state-
ment refers to a state of affairs, that state of affairs being the relative length of the
two drawn lines. Similarly, my certainty is tied to my assessment that the evidence
is in order.
What are we to make of the internal relation between lines and length then?
I would certainly want to say that it is indubitable, but this precisely because it is
not a fact or state of affairs, and therefore not susceptible of proofs either.
Evidence and justification belong to cases in which doubt has been introduced.
To state the matter perversely, we can only be certain about what can be doubted.
But this does not open the floodgates of nihilism, since accepting that certain
things simply cannot be doubted, that we have hit rock bottom, is merely to admit
the limits ofphilosophy. Wittgenstein's proposal is that philosophy is still possible
if it takes as its task to remind us of what we as human beings cannot doubt, and
leave the work of justification and meeting evidentiary demands to the special
sciences. To return to Rosen's critique of Descartes, one might say that Descartes'
"mistake," if one wishes to call it that, is to take the impossibility of his doubt-
ing that he is thinking substantively, that is, as a fact (as if he has identified some
thing, namely, the act of doubting). As Rosen argues in "Philosophy and
Ordinary Experience," the way out of the doubt raised by the rhetoric of science
is a "reconsideration .o f ordinary experience, and so too the rediscovery of the
starting points of philosophical investigation." 17

16 Carl Page, "Symbolic Mathematics and the Intellect Militant: On Modem Philosophy's
Revolutionary Spirit," in Journal ofthe History of Ideas, vol. 57, no. 2, p. 237.
17 Rosen 1999, p. 238.
 Where My Spade Turns 241

"The Highest Things"

One important theme in Rosen's work is the ranking of forms of life: distin-
guishing between good and bad, better and worse, coherent and incoherent, etc.,
or analyses and evaluations as two sides of the coin of judgment and discern-
ment. Both in the Preface to Metaphysics and Ordinary Language and in the
essay "Philosophy and Ordinary Experience," for example, Rosen suggests that
rank-ordering of forms of life are an essential element of philosophy, without
addressing explicitly certain objections that I take to be Wittgensteinian. In
particular, one could say something like the following: A rank-ordering is a
kind of systematization; but as Rosen has repeatedly pointed out, everyday life
is not systematic. A rank order that does not bear the mark of a systematic struc-
ture, if it were an honest and intelligent appraisal based on the facts of lived
experience would be an expression of wisdom, to be sure, but why philosophy?
(It is, among other things, the assimilation of the logical and the ethical in the
Tractatus that the later Wittgenstein takes issue with in Philosophische
Bemerkungen).
Isn't the point of an immanentist view of philosophy in the manner of
Wittgenstein to leave wisdom to the wise, and the analysis and dissolution of
philosophical problems to philosophers? Of course, there are wise philosophers,
as the example of Rosen strikingly illustrates, but there are wise men who are not
philosophers insofar as their wisdom is simply not relevant to problems of meta-
physics or epistemology. Similarly, there are "working philosophers" who have
made important contributions to our collective thinking, but who few of us would
be inclined to describe as "wise" in broader and deeper respects (Frege would,
I imagine, be an example of the latter). A philosopher may well combine deep
insight into human existence with trenchant conceptual analysis and breadth of
erudition (I suppose this is what we mean by calling Plato or Kant "great philoso-
phers"), but it is not clear that the relation is internal. Indeed, the sheer prevalence
of the one unaccompanied by the other would seem to indicate an external
relation. The philosophical rank-ordering, from whatever depths it may emerge,
is bound to be taken as doctrine and dogma among disciples, and, at the same
time, hardly needs to be stated for those who are capable of such discrimination.
But once again, this does not mean that the insights are false, uncertain, subjec-
tive or contingent.
Rosen is concerned that "by forbidding us to speak of that which cannot be
completely clarified, Wittgenstein condemns us to silence about what is of the
highest importance." 18 On the reading proposed here, Wittgenstein does not
forbid discussion of the highest and deepest things. He does, however, call into
question the idea that philosophy, by attaining conceptual clarity, provides moral
insight (what we referred to above as the assimilation of the moral into the

18 Rosen 2002, p. 144.

242 SHARON RIDER

logical). Another way of putting the point is to say that intellectual or philosoph-
ical or scientific problems are inseparable, even unintelligible, in isolation from
the intellectual discourse(s) which give rise to them. Existential or moral prob-
lems arise in the sphere of human action and intention, they are not problems that
can be solved by achieving clarity into the context in which they arise, that is, they
do not disappear just because we have understood them. In this respect, they are
"real problems," problems that may well be irresoluble, not because we're not
clever enough, but because they belong to human life: they may require of an
individual that he make a substantial decision, or take a stand that cannot be
justified on morally neutral grounds.
There is, of course, a clear connection between "wanting to know what lreally
mean," and "wanting to know what I really want," namely, they are both cases of
''wanting," or, in Rosen's terms, desire. But isn't it interesting for our understand-
ing of philosophy as being about "the highest things" of concern to us as human
beings, that "there are neither idealists nor materialists in everyday life"? 19
On the face of it, it would seem that philosophy is about very important
matters, since it calls into question our most basic assumptions, precisely in order
to secure certainty, to deliver us a sense of confidenc.e and trust in our capacity to
understand the world around us. It would be a terrible thing indeed if we were to
be mistaken about what is most essential.
Let me, for a moment, caricature the problems of philosophers. A philoso-
pher asks himself to what extent we can trust science or our everyday experience:
are there really cars, women, antelopes, neutrons, the square root of two and black
holes, and if there are, are they real in the same sense and in the same way? After
much blood, sweat and tears, he may come to the point at which he feels that has
come to grips with his problem. Perhaps he becomes an idealist, and maintains
that physical objects can only be described as objects/or us, that is, that phenom-
ena are real only insofar as they are objects for a consciousness. He feels
compelled to draw this conclusion from the insight that all knowledge presup-
poses a knower, every object that is observed or perceived presupposes the
existence of an observer, and so forth. Even the psychologist who, in his role of
psychologist treats the I as an object is himself a subject. If he attempts to observe
himself when observing something else, what he observes then is actually not
what he intended to observe, but rather the act of observing itself. And when
I observe myself, there is always something missing in the description, namely,
the observation that describes the I. If we take that observation into account in
the description, we have yet another observer, etc. This relationship between
the object and the subject of knowledge is unavoidable, according to our idealist.
It is quite simply a condition for consciousness. Thus the naive belief in a reality
independent of our thinking is eschewed.

19 Rosen 1999, p. 238.

 Where My Spade Turns 243

Another philosopher may take the realist position, and take for granted either
an immediate correspondence between objects and our ideas about them, or
attempt to show how thought and perception organize the "raw material," that is,
sense impressions. In both cases, the emphasis is on the knowledge we have of
objects, and the task becomes to explain the constitution of the world and our
knowledge of it (in our day, it is common to think in terms of brain function). One
may describe this view as a sort of epistemological optimism.
Regardless of whether our philosopher is an idealist or a realist, it is impor-
tant for him to feel that he has arrived at a deeper understanding in his meditations
on these questions, and not satisfied himself with how things ordinarily seem,
when he's not thinking philosophically. The point is, after all, to see through and
beyond our everyday ways of seeing and acting.
The question of to what extent and in what respect the world can be said to
be as it seems, and how much of what we perceive and experience is effected, or
even produced, by our consciousness, or neurobiological processes, or habitua-
tion and training in Indoeuropean linguistic and cultural practice, is a hotly
debated topic in philosophical journals, conferences and seminar rooms.
Naturally, since it concerns nothing less than the existence or non-existence of
the outer world.
Wittgenstein expresses a certain discomfort with the form of the question. In
order to see more clearly the weight of the question for us, for how we live our
lives (since, after all, these are very important questions), he tries to imagine a use
or application of this set of questions outside the journals, conferences and
seminar rooms. He writes in Zettel:

§413. One man is a convinced realist, another a convinced idealist and

teaches his children accordingly. In such an important matter as the existence
or non-existence of the external world, they don't want to teach their children
anything wrong.
What will the children be taught? To include in what they say: ''There are
physical objects'' or the opposite?
If someone does not believe in fairies, he does not need to teach his chil-
dren "There are no fairies: he can omit to teach them the word "fairy". On
what occasion are they to say: ''There are ..." or "There are no ..."? Only
when they meet people of the contrary belief.
§414. But the idealist will teach his children the word "chair" after all, for
of course he wants to teach them to do this and that, e.g. to fetch a chair. Then
where will the difference between what the idealist-educated children say and
the realist ones? Won't the difference only be one of a battle cry?
§415. For doesn't the game ''That is probably a ..."begin with disillusion?
And can the first attitude of all be directed towards a possible disillusion?
§416. "So does he have to begin by being taught a false certainty?
244 SHARON RIDER

There isn't any question of certainty or uncertainty yet in their language

game. Remember: they are learning to do something?20

Wittgenstein wants to bring philosophical questions, and answers, back to

life: back to the life, the world, which gave rise to them. And notice that the real-
ist and the idealist do to a great extent inhabit the same world. If my three-year
old has never seen a film or book in which fairies are represented or mentioned,
nor heard songs about fairies or heard them mentioned at all, how am I to make
him understand that they do not exist? Well, by showing him certain books and
singing certain songs, until he understood what a fairy is. Only then can I help
him understand that they do not exist in the same respect as an armchair or his
big sister. In the same way, I can eventually, if I am so inclined, train him to
understand that the world isn't always what it seems to be. But in order for him to
understand such comments, he must first be familiar with a world in which one
pours milk in a glass, turns on the light-switch when entering a room, waits for
the green light before crossing the street; in this familiar, homey world, the world
in which he learns how one says things and how one does them, there is still no
room for the sort of doubt out of which idealism and realism are born.
Is Wittgenstein's solution to the "big questions" with which philosophy has
struggled for two thousand years to return to the innocence of a three-year old?
Doesn't this way of reasoning amount to an exaltation or romanticizing of the
simple, the primitive, the everyday? I don't think so. Rather, the case is this:
Tinkerbell is a fairy, as much for the philosopher as for his young son. The differ-
ence consists mainly in that the father has already gone through the
disappointment that accompanied the insight that he would never meet Tinkerbell
"in real life". But recall Wittgenstein's question: "Can the first attitude be directed
towards a possible disillusion?" Shall a mother say to her son: "Jimmy, fetch the
chair, which furthermore exists!" Or express to him her meaning intention of his
brushing his (by her intended) teeth?
One obvious objection to the intentional absurdity of such a scenario is that
children are quite simply not capable of such abstractions. They have not learned
the intellectual discourses in which such abstractions are used. The question is if
we adult philosophers, who must in our daily dealings with the world, open doors,
tum on lights and pass the salt to each other at the dinner table are capable of it
either as a way oflife. In other words, the question is whether it is possible to be
mistaken about the existence of the outer world. How often can such a question
be posed in such a way that it means something concrete, that it makes a
difference for what we do, to be right or wrong?
Towards the end of "Sad Reason," Rosen takes up what he considers an inti-
mate connection between analytic thinking and evaluation. And there may indeed

20 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel, transl. G.E.M. Anscombe (Basil Blackwell: 1967).

 Where My Spade Turns 245

be some sort of "family resemblance" between the hardness of the logical must
and the hardness of the moral must, but they are clearly distinguishable, and, in
fact, distinct. In a certain respect, the latter is both logically and temporally prior.
I must already implicitly accept the obligations imposed on me by a sense of
logical responsibility if the logical must is to have any force. But it is precisely
the nature of that sense of responsibility that is so problematic. lsn 't traditional
metaphysics exactly the attempt to state that nature and its necessary conse-
quences? And isn't the failure of such statements in the past the cause of the
disillusionment with reason in our day? Rosen and Wittgenstein agree that the
philosopher has access, through his very humanity, to the standards, purposes and
values that underlie theoretical reflections and technical productions. But Rosen
thinks that we are forced to assume, explicitly or implicitly, "the constancy of
human nature as underlying historical change," if we are not to end up in "histor-
ically relative dialects". I take it that Wittgenstein would reject the general nature
of the formulation of the question that leads to this either/or. It seems to me that the
difference between Rosen and Wittgenstein on this point consists in this: for Rosen,
philosophy is the activity par excellence that tells us who we are. For Wittgenstein,
the answer to that question can only be found in our living our lives. 21

21 I thank Soren Stenlund, Mats Persson, Anders Odenstedt, Michael Gustavsson and
Niklas Forsberg for helpful comments, insights and suggestions.
Freedom from the Good
Heidegger's Idealist Grounding of Politics

Richard L. Velkley
The Catholic University ofAmerica

I. Introduction
Commentators on Heidegger often note three phases in his thinking as it relates to
politics: ( 1) the analysis of human existence or Dasein culminating in Being and
Time of 1927 and ending in 1933, which is apolitical or at least has only implicit
and rather vague political implications; (2) the explicit political engagement with
the National Socialist revolution from 1933 to around 1936, in which Heidegger
sees the chance to link his philosophical efforts for spiritual renewal of the West to
the dominant political forces in Germany; (3) the withdrawal in the middle to late
1930s from an active political approach to the overcoming of Western nihilistic
technology, with the adopting of a stance of awaiting the next dispensation of
Being in the arrival of new gods, as heralded by Hoelderlin, the poet of the German
nation who speaks for Germany's spiritual leadership of the West.
But it has also been claimed that the authentic comportment toward existence
described in Being and Time entails, in its account of the resolute affirmation of
fate, a radical decisionism which is continuous with Heidegger's political engage-
ment of 1933, even if specific features of National Socialism, such as its
biological racism, are not indicated by, or not even compatible with, Heidegger's
existential analysis. 1 Indeed one might discern an underlying continuity to all
three phases. Herman Philipse in his recently published Heidegger s Philosophy
of Being, has put forth the interesting hypothesis that the project running through
Heidegger's work is theological: Being and Time pursues a "Pascalian strategy"
of characterizing human existence as miserably fallen so as to provoke rejection
of the spiritually devastated rationalism of Western civilization and therewith a
search for redemption, whose features are essentially Christian;2 Heidegger then
in the years just following Being and Time (1929-1932) attempts to find what
Philipse calls the "metaphysical grace" for which the analysis of Dasein was

See Herman Philipse, Heidegger s Philosophy of Being: A Critical Interpretation

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 256--66.
2 Philipse, 223-29, 239-44.

246
 Freedom from the Good 247

preparation, an effort that ends in failure; Heidegger takes refuge in Nazism, a

desperate action which Philipse describes as religious conversion; that too ends in
disaster, and Heidegger's later thought consists in developing what Philipse terms
"postmonotheist theology" to save the West. 3 Philipse argues that in Heidegger's
later theological or eschatological scheme, Nazism still plays a positive role
insofar as it furthers the completion of the technological age through its absolute
assertion of the will to power. Since moral criticism of any agent in the fulfill-
ment of the West's historical destiny is beside the point, Heidegger's disavowal of
Nazism could never be more than equivocal at best.4
Philipse 's formulation has helpful features, but it overlooks some explicit
statements of the later Heidegger that strikingly show that the political reality of
the National Socialist movement held for him, even from the standpoint of utter
defeat and personal disgrace in 1945, a promise that he believed that he and others
in positions of authority_in the early 1930s failed to fulfill. These assertions shed
important light on Heidegger's political thinking; they indicate that Heidegger
perhaps never learned the "lesson" that all political engagement on behalf of his
philosophic vision is inherently mistaken.5 They point to a conception of politics
that, paradoxical as it may seem, might be called "idealist." I want to show that
this conception of politics, which surely in the years of Heidegger's service to the
revolutionary regime contains no hint of a basis in traditional revelation, is well
grounded in Heidegger's thought of the period 1929-1932. It is philosophically
a kind of idealism that drastically rejects theological or "metaphysical" grace, or
any turn to an infinite (superhuman) reality. 6 And it is an idealism in crucial
ways descended from the great tradition of German Idealism, by Heidegger's
own avowals. It also contains, I argue, an internal paradox which illuminates the

3 Philipse, 246-76.
4 Philipse, 276: Heidegger's view of National Socialism is "never unambiguously neg-
ative." Philipse goes further. He characterizes the later theological thought as
"spiritual Nazism" (270-72): grounded on the experience of the death of God as pro-
claimed by Nietzsche, and thus on the total withering of Christianity and its Platonic
roots, this pious thinking awaits new gods who support the particular folk, the
German folk, in its struggle with Western decadence. Heidegger's account of the his-
tory of the West gives no place to Judaism, even though its eschatological structure
has unmistakably Biblical sources. This is a special sort of Nazism to be sure: the
greatness of the folk is based not on biology but on the spirit of language and poetry.
5 See Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1983) 34: "One is inclined to say that Heidegger has learned the les-
son of 1933 more thoroughly than any other man."
6 See the account below of the Davos disputation with Cassirer, and the essay contem-
porary with it ( 1929) "Vom Wesen des Grundes," part II, conclusion, in Wegmarlcen,
vol. 9 of Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976),
161-62. Henceforth volumes from this edition will be cited as GA followed by the
volume number.
248 RICHARD L. VELKLEY

so-called "tum" (die Kehre) in Heidegger's thinking, and which can be viewed as
the hidden link between the Kantian idealism of the Davos disputation of 1929
and the post-Kantian idealism of later writings. Philipse's continuity-hypothesis
must undergo revision through more attention to this philosophical stratum in
Heidegger.

II. History as Metaphysics

Heidegger penned a remarkable document in 1945, "The Rectorate 1933/34:
Facts and Thoughts," which he gave to his son Hermann with the instruction to
publish it at "a specified time," and which appeared with the rectoral address of
1933, "The Self-Assertion of the German University," in 1983, seven years after
Heidegger's death. 7 It is a self-serving and in verifiable ways mendacious docu-
ment, to be sure. 8 Yet it is not simply dismissive of the National Socialist
movement; indeed Heidegger offers what is perhaps his most articulate justifica-
tion for participating in the revolution of 1933. "I saw at the time in the movement
that had come to power, the possibility of an innner gathering and renewal of the
people (das Volk) and a way for it to find its historical Western destiny. I believed
that the self-renewing university could be called on to work as the standard for
the inner gathering of the people."9 In hindsight he does not say that this percep-
tion of the movement was a mere delusion, although he does grant that
"mediocre and incompetent" persons in the movement stood in the way of
achieving higher goals. Instead Heidegger poses a remarkable "what if" question-
a sort of question he acknowledges to be risky. "But the question may be put:
what would have happened and would could have been prevented if in 1933 all
the competent forces (vermoegende Kraefte) had aroused themselves and slowly,
in secret persistence, purified and moderated the movement that came into
power?" 10

7 Die Se/bstbehauptung der deutschen Universitaet. Das Rektorat 1933134:

Tatsachen und Gedanken, with foreword by Hermann Heidegger (Frankfurt: V.
Klostermann, 1983), 6. These writings are reprinted in GA 16, Reden und andere
Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges, 1910-1976, which appeared this year (2000). I will
cite the more accessible earlier edition, referring to it as SdU. But the volume of
Reden contains many important things- speeches, lectures, official documents,
exhortations to students and faculty-that make evident the full range and inten-
sity of Heidegger's support of the new regime, even after his resignation from the
rectorate in spring 1934.
8 See Philipse, 24~9. whose chief source for biographical data is Hugo Ott, Martin
Heidegger: Unterwegs zu seiner Biographie (Frankfurt and New York: Campus
Verlag, 1988).
9 SdU, 23.
10 SdU, 25.
 Freedom from the Good 249

Heidegger never anywhere suggests that another regime or movement, actual

or possible, had the possibility for such direction from the "competent forces."
Certainly no Western democratic regime could be directed in this way. Thus the
Heidegger of 1945 had not broken with the Heidegger of 1933 as to the philo-
sophical rightness of his placing his prestige and talent behind the National
Socialist revolution, as rector of the University of Freiburg. His error was only in
underestimating the difficulties he would face in his efforts to shape the regime
toward higher ends. 11 Behind Heidegger's affirmation of the philosophical
rightness of his move is a conception of the relation of philosophy to practical life
that persists in his thought from early to late.
Scholarship on Heidegger has lacked the proper terms for describing this
relation. It is seldom noted that the hope of shaping the direction of political life
through the university, and the project of subordinating political life to higher
philosophical or cultural aims, are both well-established in the tradition of
German Idealist thought. 12 Even when this is noted, the deeper philosophical
premises behind this account of the relations of university, politics and philosophy
are not uncovered. This failure is not unrelated to the fact that contemporary
scholarship takes for granted the truth of many or most of these premises, in some
form. Most basically, this account assumes that philosophy is, or can be, the
dominant force in human affairs, and that human history is most fundamentally
the history of philosophy. Accordingly the principles of ordinary actors in political
and social life express, more or less directly, principles arrived at philosophically.
This must mean that politics, morality and religion ultimately are derived from
philosophical thought; the ordinary moral actor is thus in possession of a meta-
physical principle of morals, as Kant says. The spheres of politics, morality, and
religion do not maintain any degree of autonomy from philosophy; but
conversely, philosophy does not maintain any degree of autonomy from practical
life. Philosophy's meaning becomes that of wholly transforming practical life; or
rather, it becomes that transformation itself, the historical spirit effecting such
transformation. This is not to deny that certain individuals-philosophers, poets,
and statesmen----<;an have central historical roles as the leading spokesmen of that
spirit.
Heidegger's version of this idealism is supported by another assumption
bearing an unmistakable Kantian stamp: the core of existence for all human
beings is a kind of freedom, a capacity for transcending concerns variously
described as empirical, heteronomous, anthropological or ontic. As Heidegger
puts it, the core of human existence is the understanding of Being; the transcen-
dence that makes all human thought and action possible is philosophical

11 To accusations that he harmed individuals, groups, the university or Germany itself

by his actions, Heidegger's response is one of full denial.
12 A start is made by Miguel de Beistegui, Heidegger and the Political: Dystopias
(London: Routledge, 1988), 32-39.
250 RJCHARD L. VELKLEY

transcendence. As thus capable of transcending mere beings (Seienden) toward

the whole of Being (Sein) the human essence has the ability to look past the vulgar
concerns with comfort, security, and happiness, to face resolutely the totality of
existence, which is limited only by death. As becomes evident in the Davos dis-
putation, Heidegger is fully aware of the idealist and more specifically Kantian
origins of this acccount of freedom. It is not possible to argue here how this
idealist notion emerged in the eighteenth century in response to the perception
that modem scientific naturalism failed to provide an adequate account of the
unity and the ends of human knowledge.13
It would also be very helpful in this context to show that Heidegger, in his
effort to provide the foundation of metaphysics in the analysis of Dasein, saw
himself as addressing in the early twentieth century a situation much like that
Kant faced: the dominance of mathematico-empiricist philosophies that over-
threw the authority of metaphysics as the ground of the unity of ithe sciences and
as the reflection on the highest human telos. 14 Heidegger is much aware of his
debt to the German Idealist tradition, and this debt has also been widely discussed
in the scholarship. What has not been seen is the full scope of what that debt
means. When Heidegger asserts that Kant is the first philosopher since Plato and
Aristotle to take a further step in metaphysics, 15 the place of freedom in Kant's
metaphysical thought is present to Heidegger as central to that advance. But with
the Kantian account of freedom comes a particular conception of the relation of
metaphysics to practical life. I will argue that a version of this conception always
underlies Heidegger's thinking-at times quite plainly, at others more covertly.
Heidegger's version certainly no longer supports Kant's Enlightenment-universalist
idea of human dignity, but after 1932 it undergirds a Romantic exaltation of
particular people or folk (Greeks, Germans) with a universal mission of a philo-
sophical nature. 16 My concern is with showing how Heidegger grounds his
voelkisch thinking in idealist premises. I begin with the Kantianism of the Davos
disputation and tutn to later utterances in where the voelkisch element is
pronounced.

13 See the author's Freedom and the End ofReason: On the Moral Foundation ofKant s
Critical Philosophy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
14 See Schelling: Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809), GA 42, 61-72, and
Barash cited in note 16 below.
15 GA 9, "Vom Wesen des Grundes," 133, note.
16 In one notable self-accounting, Heidegger claims his thought renews and deepens a
concept of the essence of freedom emerging at the end of the 18th century: ''Freedom
now (in that period) has for the Germans a new sound and meaning. Freedom means:
adherence to the law of the folk-spirit, that manifests itself preeminently in the works
of poets, thinkers and statesmen ... Freedom: responsibility for the destiny of the
folk," "Die deutsche Universitaet," in GA 16, 291. This is two addresses, previously
unpublished, that Heidegger gave in a "course for foreigners"-dearly a performance
 Freedom from the Good 251

III. The Revision of Kant

The theme of freedom is a crucial link between the writings before and after
1933; a central factor in Heidegger's thinking on freedom is his study of Kant,
which is especially intense in the late 1920s and early 1930s. 17 For the signifi-
cance of Kant to Heidegger one of the most important documents is the spring
1929 disputation with Ernst Cassirer in Davos, Switzerland. 18 Heidegger was at
the time writing Kant and the Problem ofMetaphysics; this interprets the Critique
of Pure Reason as providing the foundations of ontology in the productive
imagination, which provides temporal intuitions as "schemata" for the categories
of the understanding- 19 Heidegger saw in Kant's argument an anticipation of his
own account of the temporal openness of human existence as the condition for
understanding Being.20 In the dispute with Cassirer, Heidegger defends his inter-
pretation against the Neo-Kantian view of Kant as providing a theory of the
natural sciences. Cassirer for his part asserts that he is not a Neo-Kantian as

of public service-at the University ofFreiburg in November 1934, after his resignation
from the rectorate. Heidegger traces this new concept to all of the leading thinkers
and poets of Germany of the age, and claims that it was the principle behind the
founding of the University of Berlin. This is one of Heidegger's most detailed state-
ments linking his thought to earlier German political thought and it concretely
ascribes a common root to his philosophy and National Socialism. Special praise is
given to Savigny, who "showed in relation to the essence of the state, that political
freedom and unfreedom does not depend on the form of state (Staatsform) but above
all on whether the power of the state is rooted in the nature and history of a folk, or is
entirely used up in the will of individual power-holders and governments" (294). For
the relation of Heidegger to the "historical school" of Savigny and Niebuhr, and to the
Romantic approach to history in general, see Jeffrey A. Barash, Martin Heidegger and
the Problem ofHistorical Meaning (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988).
17 Noteworthy in this regard are the seminar of winter 1927-28 on Kant's Kritik der
reinen Vernunft (GA 25) and that of summer 1930 on Kant's account of freedom in
the Dialectic of the same work (GA 31 ), bearing the title Vom Wesen der men-
sch/ichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die Philosophie.
18 This appears as the fourth appendix in the fourth edition (1973) of Kant und das
Problem der Metaphysik, which edition was reprinted as GA 3 (1991). The Davos
disputation occupies pages 274-96 of GA 3. I will not give page references for each
passage cited and discussed in what follows, but refer the reader to the entire text.
19 In a lecture given at Davos during the same Hochschulkurse (third appendix in GA
3), Heidegger put forth the famous thesis, argued in the book, that "Kant through his
own radicality brought himself before a position from which he had to draw back in
fear (zurueclcschrecken). That is to say: destruction of the foundations theretofore of
Western metaphysics (Spirit, Logos, Reason)" (GA 3, 273).
20 In the fourth edition of this book Heidegger says that Kant was for him just a
"refuge" (Zujlucht) whom he could treat as the spokesman for his own account of
Being; he says that he misunderstood both his own question and Kant at that time.
252 RICHARD L. VELKLEY

Heidegger defines Neo-Kantian, and that for two reasons: (l) he inquires into the
productive imagination for understanding the symbolic as the basis for a general
theory of culture; (2) he sees that the central problem for Kant is ethical: How is
freedom possible? In this latter inquiry Kant takes a remarkable step into the
supersensible, the mundus intelligibilis, wherein he discloses a universal moral
law that establishes the reality of freedom. At this point Cassirer challenges
Heidegger to make sense of this aspect of Kant on his interpretation. If Heidegger
treats Kant as a philosopher of finitude, for whom all knowledge is relative to
human Dasein, then what place can Kant have for the move into the infinity of
the supersensible and the eternal truths of the ethical?
Heidegger's reply is impressive and in part convincing. He notes that in the
Critique Kant is not concerned with "regional ontologies" of the physical
(nature), or the psychic (freedom or culture) but with metaphysica genera/is, the
basis for any ontological inquiry. Heidegger then denies that the move into ethics
is for Kant a move into the infinite; ethical imperatives can hold only for finite
beings; the moral is identical with autonomous or self-supporting reason and is
not derivable from a higher eternal ground; it is the transcending of the creatural
that can be carried out only by a finite creature. But now Heidegger calls ethics
itself into question, by claiming it is an error to stress the normative function of
the moral law. Through self-legislation Dasein constitutes itself, thus disclosing
the ontological significance of the law. Human existence does partake of a certain
infinity, the free "self-giving" or exhibitio originaria whereby the transcendental
imagination projects Being as a whole. Only a finite creature can have an ontology;
God as eternal being has no temporal projection of Being. Thus Heidegger links
the moral law to a finite being's understanding of Being as "thrown project":
Dasein's projective effort to illuminate Being which remains fundamentally
opaque and mysterious, as simply given to Dasein and not created by it.
Then more radically Heidegger asserts: the truth of Being exists only if a
finite human being, such as Dasein, exists. Eternity has meaning only within such
a being's "inner transcendence of time"; there is no eternal "beyond" finite being.
He then pronounces the task of his Destruktion of the philosophical tradition: his
whole critique of that tradition is that only on the basis of time as the gathering
together of past, present and future, is anything like substance, ousia, idea, and
the eternal law intelligible; since antiquity the problem of Being has been inter-
preted in terms of time, which was always addressed to the subject-matter in an
unintelligible way. Kant made the first step toward uncovering this presupposi-
tion, and to this end he raised the question "What is man?," therewith initiating

GA 3, XIV. For learned and penetrating discussions of Heidegger's relation to Kant

see Stanley Rosen, The Question ofBeing: A Reversal ofHeidegger (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1993), 192- 211, and The Elusiveness of the
Ordinary: Studies in the Possibility of Philosophy (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2002), 94-134. See also the references in note 43 below.
 Freedom from the Good 253

the metaphysics of Dasein. Heidegger says that as with Kant, his raising of the
question "What is man?" is not anthropological but metaphysical: it discloses
Dasein 's temporality as the condition for metaphysics. And as with Kant, his
analysis emphasizes the finitude of Dasein. Accordingly such anthropological
themes as anxiety and living toward death are adduced only for illuminating the
structure of human temporality.
Heidegger poses at this point the delicate question of the relation of his
philosophy to "world-view," a question that clearly relates to that of the moral
significance of freedom. Is Heidegger's analysis of Dasein pre-ethical, perhaps
ethically neutral? He handles this question with ambiguous, not to say obfuscating
formulations. Philosophy does not have the task of providing a world-view,
although world-view is the presupposition of philosophizing. This presupposition
is not, however, a doctrine, but solely the philosopher's effort to disclose in the act
of philosophizing the highest freedom of human existence. He shows freedom not
as an object of theory but as the act of setting-free. This at the same time discloses
metaphysics as a human happening, as historical. The philosopher pushes human
freedom to its limit, and forces man to confront at the limit of existence the
Nothingness that is inseparable from Being. This exposure of Dasein as free is for
Heidegger the terminus a quo of philosophy, and the entire problematic of his
thought. He has not formulated the terminus ad quern, which is the first concern
of Cassirer, namely, a philosophy of culture. But can Heidegger deny that his
renewal of the question of Being is motivated by a view of the worth and end of
human existence?
He proceeds to say that the philosophic exposing of the nothingness of human
Dasein is "not an occasion for pessimism or melancholy." Rather one must grasp
that an authentic existence needs opposition, and that philosophy must ''throw man
back into the hardness of his fate, away from the lazy aspect of a man who exploits
the work of the spirit." Thus genuine philosophy must be destructive, a radical
"bursting-open" (Sprengung) of tradition, as in the case of Kant, who in attempting
to lay the foundation of metaphysics was pressed toward finding that foundation in
the abyss (Abgrund). The foundation of philosophizing never ceases to be question-
able; the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quern to this extent coincide. The form
of life that affinns the inescapable questionability of the starting-point is the highest
form of existence. Yet man finds himself thrown into Being in an historical, even
accidental way. Echoing Aristotle's remark on the nature of the theoretical life,
Heidegger says that man is allowed only a few rare glimpses, at the pinnacle of his
possibility, of the totality of existence. Otherwise his life is overwhelmed by the
beings (Seienden) in terms of which he tends to view himself: as something "ontic,"
an empirically given object, not as the "eccentric" being open to beings as a whole
and himself at the same time. Human life ordinarily is either dispersed among
beings or withdrawn into itself: the hardest thing is to see that the self is insepara-
ble from Being, openness to which makes possible openness to self.
254 RJCHARD L. VELK.LEY

As an aside, Heidegger remarks that interpreting Kant's problematic in this

way precludes viewing it in an "isolated ethical" sense. The radicality of question-
ing precludes assuming an ethical end or justification for that questioning.
Moreover, it seems for Heidegger to preclude an orientation of radical questioning
toward the ethical or political questions, as the subject-matter for a thinking that
tries to answer the question "What is man?" Here Heidegger strikingly separates
himself not only from Kant, but from the entire tradition of philosophy since
Socrates. Still one discerns an indebtedness to Kant, the first philosopher to propose
that the inquiry into the moral, or the good, can be divorced from man's nature,
and specifically, the human natural concern with happiness. Heidegger advances
further in this direction by divorcing freedom from the good entirely.

IV. The Idealism of the Volk

In the memoir of 1945 Heidegger offers a sketch of the philosophic prehistory to
his assumption of the rectorate. He mentions first his 1929 Freiburg inaugural
address, "What is Metaphysics?" whose concern, he notes, was to uncover the
essential ground of the scattered multiplicity of academic disciplines in a concept
of truth. 21 It thus took the first step toward a philosophic reform of the university
on the basis of the questioning of Being and Time, which sought the ground of the
possibility of metaphysics in the analysis of human existence as temporal.
Heidegger then mentions a seminar and lecture on Plato, and a lecture on the
essence of truth, from the period of 1930-1932.22 The Plato seminar and lecture
are centrally on the cave-image of the Republic. One can surmise that Heidegger
mentions them because they are the basis for an anti-Platonic paideia, in which
liberation from the cave advances not toward the truth as idea, but as the uncon-
cealment (Unverborgenheit) of beings that was uncovered by the Presocratic
philosophers. Plato's doctrine ambiguously presupposes and conceals that original
ground of thinking, with fateful consequences for the West. Heidegger claims that
these lectures were censored by the Nazi authorities. 23
The crucial moment in this prehistory of the rectorate is Heidegger's account
of "how he saw the historical situation at that time." 24 In 1930 and 1932 Ernst
Juenger published the essay on "Total Mobilization" and the book The Worker;
Heidegger notes that he discussed these in a small circle with his assistant Brock,
and in these discussions Heidegger "tried to show that in these writings an essen-
tial understanding of Nietzsche's metaphysics was expressed, insofar as in the

21 SdU, 21. "Was ist Metaphysik?" GA 9, 103- 22.

22 Vom Wesen der Wahrheit: Zu Platons Hoehlengleichnis und Theaetet, GA 34
(seminar winter 1931/32); "Vom Wesen der Wahrheit," GA 9, 177-202; "Platons
Lehre der Wahrheit," GA 9, 203-38.
23 SdU, 22.
24 SdU, 24.
 Freedom from the Good 255

horizon ofthis metaphysics the history and the present of the West were seen and
foreseen." The circle reflected on what was coming (das Kommende) and later
events, Heidegger adds, confirmed what Juenger foretold, namely, the universal
domination of the will to power as the planetary destiny. Nietzsche declared the
advent of this reality with his pronouncement that "God is dead," which expresses
not just ordinary atheism but that within the history of humanity the supersensible
world, especially Christianity, has lost its moving power (wirkende Kraft).
Heidegger quoted this line of Nietzsche in the rectoral address of 1933.25 The
event of God's death, Heidegger now states, alone makes intelligible the two
world wars. In sum, Heidegger claims that in the period 1930-1933 he became
aware of nihilism as planetary destiny, which awareness forced on him a radical-
izing of the problem of the search for the ground of the sciences and the renewal
of the university.
It made clear to him the need to reflect on the overcoming of the metaphysics
of the will to power through a conversation with the Western tradition that returns
to its origin.26 This remark refers to Heidegger's efforts in the same period to go
behind Plato, in whom he saw the roots of the metaphysics of the will to power,
to the origin of the West in Presocratic thinking about Being. And he now asks
rhetorically, if the urgency of the problem did not warrant, for the sake of this
reflection on the part of the Germans (bei uns Deutschen), the awakening and the
leading into the field (ins Feld zufaehren) of those places that are considered the
seat of the pursuit of knowledge and learning-the German university? "With the
assumption of the rectorate I dared to make the experiment to save, purify and
secure the positive (in the National Socialist movement)."27
What did Heidegger see as positive in this movement? He asserts that in the
rectoral address his attempt was to see beyond the "deficiencies and crudities" of
the movement, toward its potential "to bring, one day, a gathering of the Westem-
historical essence of the German."28 His failures as administrator, he observes,
should not distract from the essential: that we stand in the midst of the comsum-
mation of nihilism and the death of God, and every "time-space is closed off from
the divine." At the same time "the overcoming of nihilism is announced in
German thinking and singing," although the Germans do not perceive this and
instead measure themselves by the standards of the prevailing nihilism. Thus they
"misunderstand the essence of an historical self-assertion." Heidegger's thought
can be reconstructed as follows: only the Germans are capable ofleading the West
out of nihilism because only they have the capacity to recover the forgotten

25 SdU, 13.
26 SdU, 25. Heidegger perhaps reads some thoughts of the later 1930s back into the
period l 93(}-1932. All the same, the memoir makes evident the persistence in
Heidegger's thought of the "idealist" orientation.
27 SdU, 26.
28 SdU, 39.
256 RICHARD L. V ELKLEY

beginning of the West; if the Germans are to fulfill this mission, they must be led
by the spiritual leaders in the universities; the latter must have the support of
political authority; only a movement that is both anti-democratic and intent on
asserting German superiority among the nations has the requisite authority; such
a movement came to power in 1933. Heidegger states that less possibility exists
in the present moment of 1945 than existed in 1933, "of opening blinded eyes to
a vision of the essential."29
Whereas Heidegger carefully grounds his 1933 assertion of the world-historical
destiny of the Germans in earlier reflections, it is striking that the writings before
1933 lack stress on Germanness. Section 74 of Being and Time briefly connects
the resolute affirming of destiny to the history of a people (Volk) as the destiny to
be affirmed. 30 Yet that work's analysis of human existence as preparation for
raising the question of Being does not give a special role to the Germans in
fulfilling that analysis. It seems to characterize the human situation in universal
and even timeless fashion. According to Heidegger's own account of how his eyes
were opened, it was Juenger who portrayed the darkness of the present in such
terms as to make evident the need for a radical overcoming of the nihilistic age,
through an historical recovery of the origins of the West. Such overcoming, since
it was to be realized in the world as a whole and not only in exceptional philo-
sophic individuals, would have to be carried out by a people or folk, the modem
successors to the Greeks. In no other way, it appeared to Heidegger in 1933, could
the original question of Being be raised again.
This national or voelkisch grounding of philosophy is found in statements
such as this one in the rectoral address: "For the Greeks science (Wissenschaft) is
not a 'cultural value' ( 'Kulturgut ') but the innermost determining center of the
whole popular-national existence (volklich-staatlichen Dasein)."31 For related
thoughts one can tum to the lectures of 1935, Introduction to Metaphysics, which
Heidegger published as a book in 1953.32 Heidegger writes that philosophy cannot
be immediately effective in practical life, or expect resonance quickly, even
though it may be in accord with "the inner history of a people." 33 He speaks of
the depth of the connection between Volk and philosophy in the following:
"Philosophy opens up the paths and perspectives for the knowing that establishes
measure and rank, in which and out of which a people (Volk) grasps its existence
(Dasein) in the historical-spiritual world, and brings to completion the knowing
that inspires, threatens and necessitates all questioning and judging."34

29 SdU, 39.
30 For discussion of this passage, see Philipse, 260-62.
31 SdU, 12.
32 Einfuehrung in die Metaphysik (Tuebingen: Niemeyer Verlag, 1953 and later edi-
tions), reprinted as GA 40. I will cite the Niemeyer edition as EM.
33 EM, 7.
34 EM, 8.
 Freedom from the Good 257

Philosophy fulfills the destiny of a people, not by lightening human burdens, as

in securing the foundations of a culture, but through inducing struggle and hard-
ship, since these are the condition for greatness. 35 In Heidegger's account the
Germans have already been granted the gift of struggle testing them for greatness,
by an historical fate that places them in a pincers between Russia and America.36
These powers embody the technological nihilism of modernity: "The same dreary
technological frenzy, the same unrestricted organization of the average man."37 In
this situation the Germans, who are the "metaphysical folk," must decide to move
themselves and the history of the West into the primal realm of the powers of
Being, or suffer the spiritual annihilation of Europe. The Germans alone can over-
come the modem misinterpretation of spirit (Geist) as cleverness, technical skill,
and cultural value, by raising anew the question of Being.38
But how can a folk accomplish this; what does it mean to say that a folk thinks
metaphysically? Heidegger in another set ofle.ctures quotes approvingly the line of
Hegel that "a cultivated people without a metaphysics is like a richly decorated
temple without a Holy of Holies."39 Yet Heidegger asserts that only a few actually
philosophize. "Which few? The creative transformers, the converters." They
arouse the folk to gather its forces, teaching it that its destiny is to further philo-
sophical questioning and thereby to assert spiritual leadership in the world. But as
in other contexts, Heidegger indicates here a paradoxical character to this effect of
the few with respect to the many: the teaching of the thinkers works slowly through
imperceptible pathways and detours, until at last their thought is no longer original
philosophizing, but "sinks down into the self-evidence of daily existence." It there-
fore must always be the task of the thinkers to unsettle the comfortable state of
metaphysical certainty that eventually arises out of their own thought, and to
expose once again the people to the hard truths of their spiritual destiny.
I conclude this discussion with a general observation: the writings of
Heidegger that discuss political matters directly show that these are of interest to
him only insofar as they can be brought to bear on the renewal of the question of
Being. Heidegger's political engagements show that the furthering of that renewal
takes precedence over any considerations of the good, the moral, and the just, as
these have been understood in in the philosophic tradition as having some univer-
sal articulation, reflecting ends (happiness, perfection, virtue) inherent in human
nature or reason. 40 Indeed for Heidegger the meaning of the renewed question

35 EM, 9.
36 EM, 29, 34.
37 EM, 28; cf. 35.
38 EM, 35-37.
39 Hegel, preface to first edition of l ogik ( 1812), cited by Heidegger in Parmenides
(seminar winter 1942/43), GA 54, 148-49.
40 GA 16, 294: "Savigny showed that right (das Recht) arises not solely and not prima-
rily from the formal legal thinking of legislation (Gesetzgebung), but rather, as in the
258 RIC HARD L. V ELKLEY

entails a reiinterpretation of such concerns as modes of fallenness, to the extent

that they tend to be placed ahead of the primary human historical concern of
"gathering forces" for the renewing of the question. Such a fall occurs when
discussions of National Socialism stress its moral evil rather than inquire about
its role in the history of Being's disclosure. It is wrong to think of Heidegger's
failure to comment on the moral evil of Nazism as merely a personal failure,
unrelated to his thought. Nor can one say that Heidegger simply did not get
around to discussing moral good and evil, because his concentration was on the
preliminary task of uncovering the ground in Being for such discussion. The turn
to Being is understood by Heidegger as entailing a complete reevaluation of the
meaning and place of "morality" in human affairs, such as very few people are
prepared to undertake or accept, as Heidegger himself discovered.

V. Idealism. Without Freedom

Heidegger in 1929 and after is forced to confront a certain paradox, not unrelated
to one in Kant. On the assumption that human beings possess universally a radical
kind of freedom, in an openness to Being that transcends all given beings, how is
it that human beings are universally "fallen" into the forgetting of Being? And
how has the present age emerged as an especially deep forgetfulness? How can
freedom be gained and lost, if it has no empirical or ontic basis? Heidegger saw
that his move from analysis of Dasein's temporality to Being (Sein) itself, by
passing through the "destructive" history of the ontology of time which he
planned as the second half of Being and Time, could not provide him with the
answer to that question. The freedom for openness to Being has been occluded by
technological domination of the world; this has its roots not in an ordinary "fall-
enness" of Dasein into beings, but in the planetary-historical fate in which Being
withdraws into oblivion. Accordingly Heidegger introduced a new formulation
about freedom: man is possessed by freedom, not freedom by man.41 In the last
analysis freedom for openness to Being is a gift of Being, granted to certain
peoples in certain epochs.42 It was such a gift that, in Heidegger's view, Germany
and therewith the West were granted in 1933, with the ascent to power of Hitler

case of language, from the folk-spirit of the peoples (Voelker), with their belief and
their customs."
41 "Vom Wesen der Wahrheit," GA 9, 190; see also Schelling (1936), GA 40, 15; "Der
Spruch Anaximanders" in Holzwege (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1950), 340-41.
42 For a formulation which has explicit reference to the contemporary political situation
(Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations) see GA 16, 333: "True historical
freedom as the independence of the recognition of one folk by another has no need
of the organized illusory community (Scheingemeinschaft) of a 'League of
Nations' ... The true historical freedom of the peoples (Voelker) of Europe is the
presupposition for the West's returning once again spiritually-historically to itself
 Freedom from the Good 259

and his revolution-a gift that was misunderstood and improperly used by the
Germans. At the same time, Heidegger's noting the universal fallenness or
Seinsvergessenheit of the epoch implies a greater gulf between the philosopher
and his milieu, than was implied in the analysis of Being and Time. Even as the
philosopher would ground his insight more deeply in the folk's potential for open-
ness to Being, he necessarily separates himself more sharply from its historical
actuality. This peculiar combination of identification and distance is possible only
on the basis of a transmutation of the folk into the "ideal" such as occurs in
Heidegger's thought.
In sum, the radicality of freedom that has no ground in human nature can
appear, or disappear, only at the whim of history, or fate, which demands the
proper attunement of mankind for its reception. Indeed the promise of such
freedom will appear most forcefully in those moments when ordinary reality,
with its ontic or merely "natural" concerns, is most threatened with destruction.
In this way nihilism, as the complete immersion in beings, can destroy itself
when its negative force is turned against the beings, thus compelling human life
to be free for openness to Being. The scourge of the earth is its savior: "Where
danger is, there grows salvation." Since, however, the promise of the 1933 rev-
olution was not fulfilled, and in 1945 the darkness of the American-Soviet
imperium descended over the world, mankind must await, indefinitely and
indeterminately, in the long convalescence ( Verwindung) of the technological
world-night, for the saving of mankind by other, more efficacious deities than
those that appeared in 1933.
Heidegger has a profound grasp of the radicality of philosophical question-
ing comparable with that of the greatest figures in the tradition. 43 But his divorce
of questioning from any natural-teleological basis, for which the German Idealist
concepts of freedom helped set the stage, has a paradoxical consequence. Such
questioning is unable to see clearly the political-moral phenomena which must
nourish it; a questioning that cannot see these phenomena cannot gain true
distance on them, and so risks becoming their slave. The paradox is not mitigated
if the servitude is not unwitting but voluntary, as in the case of Heidegger.

and for its securing its destiny in the great decision of the earth against the Asiatic."
That this last term refers to the Judaic and Christian heritage of the West cannot be
missed.
43 This perhaps emerges most forcefully from Heidegger's dialogues with philosophers
from the past. For accounts of his "dialogue" with Kant see the following: F. Schalow,
The Renewal of the Heidegger-Kant Dialogue: Action, Thought, and Responsibility
(Albany: SUNY Press, 1992) and C. Sherover, Heidegger. Kant and Time
{Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1971 ).
The True and the Bad Infinity
Donald Phillip Verene
Emory University

Philosophy as a branch of literature requires images. It is a kind of prose,

interspersed with poetry. The poetic moments of philosophical prose occur
through metaphors. These moments, as Horace says, are pictures. Although
reflective philosophy has its prose adorned by such pictures and is never without
them, speculative philosophy especially depends upon them. Speculative philos-
ophy is akin to poetry. Like poetry it attempts to express the True, which is
beyond language. Like Plato's philosophy, speculative philosophy can never be
written down. Although speculative philosophy is akin to poetry, it is not the same
as poetry. Poetry, as Hegel says, is immediate. It attempts to recover the immediacy
that is present in the myth, the immediacy of perception.
In reflective philosophy all that is thought is mediated. Immediacy itself is
left behind. In speculative philosophy immediacy is brought along in its mediacy,
in the way that poetry is brought along in its prose. It is not a perfect union
because philosophy has within it a propensity toward the concept. The thought of
the concept is by its nature prosaic. Speculative philosophy thus struggles to be
poetic. This struggle is true of Hegel, who announces in one of his earliest frag-
ments the need for a "mythology of reason." The mythology of reason is a
conception of what speculative philosophy is. Hegel opposes it to the thought of
"our literal-minded philosophers." Literal-minded philosophy is .limited to the
thought of reflection. The idea of reflection as an act of mind turning back upon
itself is brought into English philosophy by Locke and into French philosophy by
Descartes and thus into modem philosophy generally.6

R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Philosophical Method (Oxford; Clarendon, 1933),

ch. IO.
2 Horace, Ars poet., 361.
3 Plato, Letters, VII, 341 c-e.
4 G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen iiber die Asthetik, Werke, 20 vols. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1971), 13: 140-42.
5 G. W. F. Hegel, "Das alteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus," Werke, I:
234-36.
6 For the history of "reflection" in philosophy, see my Philosophy and the Return to
Self-Knowledge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), ch. I.

260
 The True and The Bad Infinity 261

Modem theory oflanguage is founded on the discovery ofthe ''understanding,"

which produces a knowledge of the object by means of reflection-what Kant
summarized in his doctrine of "transcendental reflection." As Hegel says, in
modem philosophy "reflective understanding took possession of philosophy,"
reflection became a slogan.7 Reason is lost. It becomes, as Kant sees it, the fog
banks of illusion that surround the blessed isle of the understanding, Kant's "land
of truth."8 In the security of the understanding Kant has found the kingdom of
Prester John, an epistemological inner Africa.
With the loss of reason is the loss of mythology. For mythical thought the true
is the whole grasped in its immediacy. Reason, the agency of speculative philo-
sophy, is the attempt to recover the wholeness of the mythical world in a new,
prosaic form. What happens in mythology in terms of a narrative of gods, men,
and nature happens in the mirror of reason in terms of a narrative of categories of
the real. The narrative of the myth holds together contradictions, reversals, coin-
cidences, and juxtapositions. The narrative of speculative philosophy holds the
phenomena of the world and their categories together through dialectic. The
narrative of speculative philosophy, unlike that of history, tells the one true story
under the idea of necessity. History is guided by Clio and orders events in terms
of what was, is, and is to come. Speculative philosophy is guided directly by
Mnemosyne, whom Hegel calls "the Absolute Muse."9 To narrate the world per
causas is to add necessity to what was, is, and is to come by relating events as
what had, has, and will have to be. Necessity is internal to dialectic.
As Hegel describes dialectic in the Phenomenology ofSpirit, consciousness can
be said to have experience only when it passes from an awareness of being-in-itself
to being- as-it-is-for-consciousness. These two moments, the double-Ansich, are
in an absolute bond such that each requires the existence of the other for its own
existence. 10 One does not have being without the other. The passage from one to
the other is necessity itself. Neither movement is in any way derived or derivable
from the other because there is no specifiable principle by which this movement
can occur. The dialectic these two moments exhibit is primordial and allows for
speculative philosophy to narrate the True as the whole. 11 All that there is stands
as an array of opposites.

7 G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der logik, ed. Georg Lasson, 2 vols. (Hamburg: Meiner,
1971), I: 26.
8 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Hamburg: Meiner, 1956), A 235- 36; B
294-95.
9 G. W. F. Hegel, "Uber Mythologie, Volkgeist und Kunst." Manuscript in the
Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin. For a translation of this passage
and comment, see my Hegel s Recollection: A Study ofImages in the Phenomenology
of Spirit (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), 36-37.
10 For discussion of the double Ansich, see Hegels Recollection, ch. 2.
11 "Das Wahre ist das Ganze," Phiinomenologie des Geistes, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister,
6th ed. (Hamburg: Meiner, 1952), 21.
262 DoNALD PHILLIP VERENE

The Phenomenology of Spirit records the fact that the constant feature of
experience is conjunction. All experience has the form of in-and-for-itself. In its
attempt to overcome the "andness" of its life consciousness undergoes illusion
after illusion, passing through the whole "gallery of pictures" of experience. 12
Andness is the key to the mythic apprehension of the world. For myth andness
remains unproblematic. Myth simply joins one immediacy to another. In mythi-
cal thought anything can be conjoined with anything else. But at the level of
consciousness that has begun to become philosophy, one thing is joined to another
through recollection. The andness of myth is collective; the andness of dialectic
is recollective.
Recollection requires, as Aristotle claims, a causal ordering of what is
recalled. 13 Consciousness is unable to attain the natural equilibrium of mythical
thought because it can never attain a complete unity of the two sides of its appre-
hension of the object. Each time consciousness believes itself to have found such
a union the unifying moment dissolves into an illusion. All of these illusions are
the stages of the Phenomenology ofSpirit and are the objects of the "science of
the experience of consciousness." At the final moment of "absolute knowing" the
shape of wisdom appears. It appears in the act of acceptance of the andness of
things, the realization that consciousness is a coincidence of opposites. The last
illusion that the life of consciousness is one thing is gone. The activity..of absolute
knowing is the ontology of the Science of Logic. The andness written into the
inner life of consciousness cannot be aufgehoben at the level of consciousness.
But once thiis andness is accepted for what it is, it can be thought.
Thought is distinguished by principles or categories. Categories are the
ultimates through which the real is formed. The category becomes a deliberate
way to confront the andness of experience and the inherent disjunction within
experience that conjunction implies. Logic is speculative philosophy and it is a
melancholic activity, for it is predicated on the truth that the doubleness internal
to consciousness can never be eliminated. It can be confronted as a moment of
thought-thought now without illusion. All of the categories through which
thought manages andness can be articulated as a system. The whole can never
simply be an object of one form of experience or another but an object of one
form of thought or another. It is melancholic, but it is not without humor, not
without the irony that is originally present in the idea of a dialectic in which one

12 Ph.G., 563.
13 Aristotle, On Memory, 453a6-IO.
14 BertoId Brecht, Fliichtlingsgespriiche (Berlin and Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1961 ),
108-11. My translation.
15 Brecht likely has in mind the Berlin irony found in the remark made on visiting
the gravesite of a friend and finding a large flower growing from it: ••My, how you've
changed, my friend!" I have found this in a poem in Berlin dialect, titled "Die
Seelenwanderung" ("The transmigration of souls"):
 The True and The Bad Infinity 263

thing is aufgehoben in another. The surprise of the Phenomenology ofSpirit is not

that some stages do not seem to follow from those before them but that any of
them seems to necessitate the next.
The melancholy side of both the Phenomenology ofSpirit and the Science of
Logic is that they are like dreams. They are like what Hegel says of the art work
that it is not alive in our time and so the artist must "place his imagination in a
past world; he must dream a world, but the character of dreaming, of not being
alive, of the past, is plainly stamped on his work." 16 The Science of Logic is
recollection because it takes the categories of the real from what is already
collected in language. The speculative philosopher is not present when language
is actively forming the world. The philosopher, like the owl of Minerva, comes to
language only after it has been formed, and discovers what is there. The philoso-
pher's melancholy comes from the fact that the immediacy of language, that
activity that is distinctly human, can never be fully recaptured, any more than can
the artist recapture the original life of the art work. The philosopher is, and must
remain, a memory expert.
The Hegelian John Findlay once expressed the view that the Phenomenology
ofSpirit is an auto-da-fe, a labor of the negative that makes way for the great truth
of the Science of Logic. 17 I have never been comfortable with this view. It would
suggest a comparison of the Phenomenology of Spirit with the justified supplizio
of Savonarola in the Piazza della Signoria of Florence, as well as with the myste-
rious and unnecessary burning of Giordano Bruno in the Campo dei Fiori of
Rome. The Phenomenology ofSpirit cannot be merely abandoned-the Hegelian
ladder of experience simply kicked away. Yet in some sense the Phenomenology of
Spirit cannot simply be dwelt upon as if it were the sum and substance of Hegel.
A turning point in my own thinking on this question occurred when I first
saw Stanley Rosen's book on G. W. F. Hegel: An Introduction to the Science of
Wisdom, when we were colleagues at Penn State. My eye immediately fell on the
chapter title, "From Logic to Phenomenology." 18 I knew that Rosen's attraction,
in Hegel, was primarily to the Logic. It was the work on which he was presenting
graduate seminars at that time. The Kojeveian title of Rosen's book moves
the reader immediately from "the science of the experience of consciousness"
of the Phenomenology of Spirit to the science of the logic, reminding me of
what I have always found most interesting in Alexandre Kojeve's lectures on
the phenomenology-his striking identification of absolute knowledge with the
wise man. 19

16 See Hegel s Recollection, 36.

17 This is the approach in John Findlay, Hegel: A ReEx.amination (London: Allen and
Unwin, 1958).
18 Stanley Rosen, G. W. F. Hegel: An Introduction to the Science of Wisdom (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974), ch. 6.
19 a
Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction la lecture de Hegel, ed. Raymond Queneau (Paris:
Gallimard, 1947), 306-35.
264 DoNALD PHILLIP VERENE

Rosen's chapter title is intellectually deft. Simply by reversing the order of

the Phenomenology ofSpirit and the Science ofthe Logic, he suggests a new way
to look at Hegel's project. Findlay's auto-da-fe is a formulation of the British
Hegelian view, that the Phenomenology of Spirit is an earlier work of Hegel and
not part of the system, similar to what in Kant would be seen as a "pre-critical"
period. The approach of British Hegelianism led to a serious overlooking of the
true genius present in the Phenomenology of Spirit that had to be discovered by
the French, notably Jean Hippolyte, and especially Kojeve. Rosen takes a step
beyond the French fixation on the Phenomenology by moving to the greater
Logic, but in so doing he finds a way to look back at the Phenomenology. I wish
to suggest my own version of this art of Wiederfinden, through attention to two
images that dominate the Hegelian system-the master-servant and the true and
bad infinity.
Of all the pictures or images in Hegel's Galerie von Bildern none has been
greater in its effect than the Herrschaft und Knechtschaft section of the
Phenomenology. There is no section of the Science of Logic more crucial to
Hegelian ontology and to the Hegelian system generally than that which Hegel
calls the true infinity (die wahrhafte Unendlichkeit) and the bad infinity (die
schlechte Unendlichkeit). Both of these images are great, I wish to claim, because
each contains below its surface a portrait of the true or speculative philosopher-
of who the philosopher in fact is. It is this sub-surface portrait of the philosopher
that attracts the philosophical reader to these images, even if this attraction is not
apparent to the reader. Only if we look between the two works, Sllspending them
in air and looking from the Phenomenology ofSpirit to the Science of Logic and
back, can we see what these master images hold in common in Hegel's circle.
All of the Hegelian philosophy is directed to the question of what it means to
be a philosopher. Hegel's passion is to know what philosophy is. His system is not
directed primarily to reform of the nation, to the unification of knowledge, or to
the meaning of history. What Hegel says on such issues is extremely valuable but
it is not the essence of his thought. He, like any philosopher, is occupied with
penetrating the question of what philosophy is, of the nature of its phi/ia and the
nature of sophia.
The Phenomenology ofSpirit is not the story of consciousness as such, rising
from its earliest forms. If this were so, the Phenomenology would begin with a
stage of mythical consciousness, a stage in which the world is simply felt and
expressed in terms of benign and malignant forces. 20 The Phenomenology of
Spirit is a work for philosophers. It begins when consciousness first experiences
skepticism toward the object, the response to which is sense-certainty. Thus the
Phenomenology of Spirit is the story of the rise of philosophical consciousness

20 Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, vol. 2, Das mythische Denken
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969), ix- xi .
 The True and The Bad Infinity 265

within consciousness in general. The pursuit of certainty in the earliest stages of

the Phenomenology is a response to the uneasiness of a natural skepticism, the
beginning of wisdom.
Wisdom begins in the quest for certainty as the answer to skepticism, but
wisdom can begin to take shape only when consciousness has outgrown its
attachment to sense experience as connected to the understanding. The turning
point is the inverted world (die verkehrte Welt), the result of which is a twofold
commitment by consciousness, one to the reality of itself as the basis of the
object, and at the same time, a commitment to dialectic as the means to form
oppositions. The experience of freedom that releases consciousness from its
being simply as consciousness rests on the realization that the object is made.
That the object is made is the basis of self-knowledge. Realization that the object
is made by consciousness is the first step toward overcoming certainty on behalf
of the true, for the true requires a knowledge through causes, something the
understanding, with its attachment to reflection, cannot comprehend. The sense
of the object as made is the beginning of speculation. All that is made occurs
through opposition, the subject matter of speculation.
Dialectic is the internal logic of opposites. It shows how one thing is
produced through the agency of the other. The flaw or illusion that consciousness
has as it passes from consciousness to self-consciousness is that it takes its newly
found self-reality as a certainty. It grasps that its object is made from its own reality,
but it fails to grasp that its own self-reality is also something made. It has yet to
penetrate the sense in which the dialectic is something self-caused. In this way it
has failed to master opposites.
The failure to master opposites, that is, to accept the genuine being of
"twoness," issues in the life-and-death struggle of masterhood and servitude. The
master or Herr is certain of his own being because of his dominance of the
Knecht. The illusion of Masterhood is the belief that the other can be dominated.
The work of the master is the management of the other as a means to the mastery
of the object. The master has a problem with his own reality, for his reality
becomes inconceivable apart from the means of the servant. The servant, not the
world, is the master's object. Without the servant, the master is not. The servant is
a vacuous actuality as long as the servant-self looks to the master as real. When
the servant remembers that there is a world of objects, the servant is free.
The servant is not just the opposite of the master, he is the opposite of the
objects of the world, the products of consciousness. The medium of the servant's
relation to these objects is his work. The work of the servant on the world is a
dialectic independent of the dialectic between master and servant. The master is
powerful but thoughtless. He does not know that his central problem is his own
reality. He must keep up the picture of his own reality or lose his position. Once
the servant ceases to believe in the reality of the master, the master is lost to
himself, but he can do nothing but struggle to claim his position.
266 DoNALD PHILLIP VERENE

The master sees all as politics. The servant has come to disbelieve in politics.
The servant is freed from politics because of his grasp of the reality of the nature
of things. For the master, politics is an absolute activity. But the servant, through
his work, has grasped the possibility of the absolute in the sense of acting in terms
of the nature of things. This sense of what is beyond politics is writ large by
Hegel's "absolute spirit" that emerges at the end of the Encyclopaedia, in which
absolute spirit emerges through art, religion, and philosophy.21 Even in political
theory, for Hegel world history is a larger reality than the nation.22 The philoso-
pher has no belief in politics, that is to say, in what the master believes.
In the Phenomenology ofSpirit, the struggle of master and servant results in
the philosophical life-forms of the stoic, the skeptic, and the melancholic, or what
Hegel in one of his powerful images calls the unhappy consciousness (ungliick-
liches Bewusstsein). The unhappy consciousness is the bad infinity, not as a
thought-form but as a phenomenon experienced by consciousness. The stoic,
skeptic, and melancholic are the three sides of the philosophical life. They are the
results of the realization by emerging philosophical consciousness that philosophy,
although existing within the dominance of the Herrschaft of the state, is not of it.
The philosopher is a threat to the state but assumes the guises of the stoic, skeptic,
or melancholic so as to appear harmless to its Herrschaft. The philosopher cannot
be dispensed with by the state because the philosopher as its servant holds the key
to the politician, the man of the state's reality. The philosopher appears variously
as a master of self-sufficiency and endurance, as a standard of criticism, or as
simply unhappy and harmless.
In the Phenomenology of Spirit what comes after these forms of self-
certainty is the stoicism of reason, the attempt to live within the natural order of
the world. This is followed by the social forms of spirit, in which the faith con-
sciousness has in each of them breaks down into skepticism. Society is certainly
the highway of despair, for consciousness, because it above all else is a world of
its own making. Absolute knowing is melancholic because it is the acceptance of
the ultimate twoness of consciousness, that there is no possibility of unification
with itself, of undifferentiated self-identity. The truth of the whole is that it is two.
There is no transcendent moment of unity. Acceptance of consciousness as it is,
is the key to wisdom.
There is no melancholic politics because the politician always believes in
politics and insists on apprehending the world on his own terms. The philosopher
never believes in politics, but believes in thought. When politics enters the room,
thought always leaves. The philosopher, faced with life in the state, practices the

21 G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyk/opiidie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse

(1830), ed. Friedhelm Nicolin and Otto Poggeler (Hamburg: Meiner, 1959), 44<k>3.
22 G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, 4th ed., ed. Johannes
Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Meiner, 1955), 288-97.
 The True and The Bad Infinity 267

logic of the mask, the logic that Hegel says is never understood by the
physiognomist or the phrenologist.23 The philosopher thus moves among the
disguises of stoic, skeptic, and melancholic.
Because in the very construction of consciousness, in the actual dialectic of
its birth, the master has fallen prey to the cunning of the servant, the politician is
uneasy with the philosopher. The politician is as uneasy with the philosopher as
was Leon the Tyrant of Philus, when he asked Pythagoras whether he was wise.
Pythagoras's answer was stoic, skeptical, and melancholic; he said that only the
gods were wise, that he was a lover of wisdom. The answer is stoic because it is
a stance of acceptance, skeptical because human wisdom is open to question, and
melancholic because wisdom is beyond us. Leon is then satisfied, because the
philosopher is as harmless and admiring as the pure spectator at the great games,
to whom Pythagoras likens the being of the philosopher.24
The speech to Leon is the mask that covers Pythagoras; what Pythagoras
leaves unsaid is whether the philosopher may possess human wisdom, a claim
Socrates openly makes in his final appearance before the State.25 It is the claim
Hegel makes in the preface to the Phenomenology ofSpirit, when he says he will
produce not the love of wisdom but wisdom itself, by means of his dialectic.26
What he will produce is self-knowledge. The Phenomenology is the greatest
treatise on self-knowledge since the ancients. The Phenomenology ofSpirit is the
necessary introduction to wisdom understood as a knowledge of things human
and divine and their causes. Divine wisdom is itself a kind of human wisdom. It
rests on the power of the philosopher to make the distinction. Politics can do
nothing in such an affair. Politics becomes a stage-play for the philosopher to
observe. The philosopher can watch each of the moments of common life
illustrate the logic of the illusions of Hegel's stages in the Phenomenology-his
ship of fools, his spiritual zoo writ large.
The spectation of the philosopher requires the speculative sentence. The
language of reason is the speculative sentence (spekulativer Satz). Speculative
philosophy requires a prose in which the sentence is a circle accomplished by a
dialectic internal to the subject and predicate. The meaning of the speculative
sentence moves from the subject to the predicate and back to the subject. The
returned meaning of the subject contains within it the meaning of the predicate,
now aufgehoben in this dialectical movement. Hegel says his system is a circle,
in fact a circle of circles.27 The system returns to itself in this most perfect of
geometric forms. What is true of the system is true of its smallest unity of
expression. The speculative sentence is an ouroboros.

23 Ph.G., 233.
24 Cicero, Tusc. 5.3.7ff.
25 Plato, Apology, 20 d-e.
26 Ph.G., 5.
27 Logik, 2: 504.
268 0oNALD PHILLIP VERENE

The reflective sentence that is the medium of the understanding is not

circular but classificatory. The predicate is simply the container of the subject, as
explicated in the principles of class logic. The language of the understanding is
tied to the separation of truth and falsity. What it can say is either true or false.
The language of reason is always a doubling-up, a speech in which the subject and
predicate are the partial truths and the partial falsities of each other. The reflec-
tive sentence is declarative, an assertion either describing or prescribing (in the
case of ethics) a state of a ffairs. The speculative sentence corresponds in ordinary
speech to the suggestion.
The logic of the suggestion follows neither the logic of imperatives nor the
logic of descriptions. A suggestion is a possible truth but not a mere possibility
because the suggestion, to be genuinely suggestive, must reflect an actual state of
affairs that is subject to true or false description. At the same time it must be pre-
scriptive in that it projects a meaningful course of thought or action in response
to a particular, problematic state of affairs. The suggestion has a doubleness of
mind. The suggestion is implicitly a likely story, in the way that any metaphor is
a fable in brief.28
The likely stories of the Platonic dialogues are the foundation of the specu-
lative sentence. They suggest the nature of what is. As likely, these stories are both
partially true and partially false. The speech of the true and the false, of partial
truths, is the speech of civilized interchange. Our speech to others, when it is
mannerly and civilized, is never flatly a truth stated or a lie fabricated. It is a way
of responding to others that is adjusted to the particular situation governed by the
coincidence of opposites, including that of truth and falsity. A model of this is the
Italian ideal of speaking con buon garbo, the ability to convey something nega-
tive and unfortunate in a manner that can soften its blow, make it acceptable. It is
an ideal of the proper speech of human events. 29
Speculative speech is rooted in human speech. It is not extraordinary.
Reflective speech, the logic of the understanding, is what is extraordinary and in
a sense anti-human, appropriate to the production of a knowledge of natural
objects but not appropriate to self-knowledge. It is not the speculative philosopher
who thinks abstractly, it is the reflective and conunon-sense thinker. The
speculative philosopher, when confronted with such literal-mindedness, can only
open his metaphysical overcoat and let loose the flashing star of wisdom.30 In

28 Giambattista Vico, Principi di scienza nuova d 'intorno a/la comune natura de/le
nazioni, in Opere, vol. l, ed. Andrea Battistini (Milan: Mondadori, 1990), par. 404.
On metaphor see Eva T. H. Brann, The World ofthe Imagination: Sum and Substance
(Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991 ), pt. 4, ch. 3.
29 This ideal has its zenith in the Renaissance, in Baldassare Castiglione, II libro de/
cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier) (1528) and Giovanni Della Casa, Galatea
ovvero de'costumi (Galatea, or On Manners) (1552-55).
30 G. W. F. Hegel, "Wer denkt abstrakt?" Werke 2: 575-8 l.
 The True and The Bad Infinity 269

speculative speech the self confronts its own nature and the world as a part of its
own reality, as a familiar other, a Du. In this relationship, speculative reason
assumes the relation to the other present in mythical thought, in which the world
is an alter-ego.
The subject of the speculative sentence is being, the category with which
Hegel begins the Science of Logic. The philosopher can produce no discourse on
being as such because as such being is as indeterminate as nothing. 31 Hegel's dis-
course on being, as it moves from the "nothingness" of being toward its
determinate sense, has a crucial moment when it reaches "infinity."32 Distinctive
to the philosopher is his ability to speak about infinity, for what is infinite is
beyond thought. The philosopher, unlike the physicist or the religionist, speaks of
infinity as such. The philosopher speaks of infinity as both within and beyond
experience.
In the Logic, the phenomenon that has made consciousness unhappy in the
Phenomenology, that has produced the original basis of philosophical melan-
choly, becomes an object of thought. The result is the idea of "bad infinity." Bad
infinity is undialectical "andness." that is, andness that cannot double-up, that
cannot become ambiguity. Bad infinity is the thought of an endless series in
which the last member of any given series can have a next member simply
conjoined to it. There are the members of the series and then there is another and
another and another, and so on. The infinite is not unlimited because its limit is
the finite. The infinite in its bad form is the negative of the finite, its opposite. It
evolves its endless series simply by conjunctions, not by any principle of deter-
mination. Andness is not a principle. It is repetitive addition in the sense that
Hegel describes it in the Phenomenology of Spirit in relation to the adding of
properties to a thing. 33 Adding property after property to a thing does not achieve
a principle of the internal determination of its nature. The process of ,conjunction
does not supply consciousness with the grasp of how the thing has these proper-
ties. The bad infinity can never produce a whole.
The principle proper to speculative philosophy is that the True is the Whole.
Without the ability to think the whole speculative philosophy is illusion, its
thoughts are the fogbanks beyond Kant's blessed isle of reflection. The true infinity
is the key idea to the nature of the whole, the idea that the speculative philosopher
cannot do without. It is his only relief from melancholy. The true infinity shows
the structure of thought upon which the dialectic itself depends. It is speculative
philosophy's secret and it is completely simple. The problem is to find a way to
visualize it. Josiah Royce has offered two ways to approach the true infinity:
through Georg Cantor's system of transfinite numbers, which shows how orders

31 Logik, l: 69.
32 Ibid., 1: 125-46.
33 Ph.G., 90-93.
270 DoNALD PHILLIP VERENE

of numbers can infinitely and determinately generate further orders of numbers;

and through the imaginary example of making a map that maps itself.34 Royce
has shown that the key to true infinity is the process of systematic self-
representation.
Cassirer has given us the best way to grasp the true infinity as a principle of
abstract thought, for he realized that the internal structure of Hegel's concept
(Begri.ff) is analogous to the indissolvable bond between the principle of a series
and its members, that can be symbolized as (x). 35 The (Begrifl) is a "concrete
universal." The ~ is the universal principle by which the series represented by x is
constructed. The universal has no meaning in and of itself without its realization
in the series. Without their bond with the universal rule that makes them a series,
the members of the series are simply random particulars. Cassirer regards ~x) as
the basis of function-concepts (Funktionsbegriffe), as opposed to substance-
concepts (Substanzbegri.ffe). The substance-concept, the basis of Aristotelian
class logic, is expressed in the reflective sentence. It has no inherent bond
between the class and its classified members leading to all the metaphysical
debates over quidditas.
Quiddity or haecceity is not an issue for the functional concept or the dialec-
tical concept. Any series of the form ~x) can be extended indefinitely, yet every
new member of the series is joined to it by the definite principle of the series. It
is not merely conjoined as in the bad infinite. Further, the ~ of the original bond
can be a member of another series of another logical order, and any member of a
series x can be a universal principle of a series of another logical order-similar
to the map that maps itself. The ~x) bond can expand in every direction. The
logic of the functional concept is an analog to the logic of the whole. There are no
limits to what can be included in a total pattern of expansion, but the expansion
is determinate at each of its moments. This logic is the thought of the absolute in
abstract tenns. It is the double bond of the in-itself and the in-itself-for-us. The
~(x) is being in-and-for-itself.
How can this process of the functional concept be transposed into an account
of the actual, to produce the True as the Whole? It requires an act of genius. It is
what is required for the schematism, which Kant says depends upon "an art lost
in the human soul."36 The schematism is the speculative moment that makes the
understanding possible. Kant understood the necessity of the schematism, but his
commitment to the terrestrial bonds of critical philosophy rendered impossible
any development of its possibilities. Every stage of Hegel's dialectic is a schema-
tism, a schematism not separated from the thing-in-itself.

34 Josiah Royce, The World and the Individual, vol. I (New York: Macmillan, 1899); see
the "Supplementary Essay," secs. 3 and 4.
35 Ernst Cassirer, Phi/osophie der symbolischen Formen, vol. 3, Phiinomenologie der
Erlcenntnis (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1958), 351- 55.
36 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 141; B 180-81.
 The True and The Bad Infinity 271

The philosopher is fre.ed from his servitude to the master by becoming the
master of the true infinity. The true infinity is the abstract portrait of freedom
because, like freedom, for Hegel it is the structure of self-determination.37 Self-
determination is the philosopher's natural stoicism. It is classical stoicism
aufgehoben. Classical stoicism is withdrawal from society. Its freedom is the
moral correlate to the logic of the bad infinity because in his solitary ethics the
classical stoic has no principle of self-development. His life is limited by society
in a way analogous to the limitation attached to the bad infinity by its opposition
to the finite. The philosophical self is in society but not of it. Speculative philo-
sophical stoicism is the stoicism of Socrates, whose activity is in the agora but
never of it. Having seen through the illusion of politics, the speculative philoso-
pher is in possession of the vision of the absolute. This possession is the reason
for the mask. The classical stoic is an open book; thus he can have only a partial
answer to the power of the master, the power of the state.
The philosophical ideal is the life of self-determination, the dialectic real-
ized. The master has not, nor he can have, a vision of the whole. He tells no likely
story but is a problem solver, a director of work for his own desire. The master
has the cunning of Ulysses, the cunning of the fox to solve the problems before
him through the dominance of the servant. The philosopher as servant acquires
the cunning of reason. He can comprehend the whole through spectation. The
story of the whole takes him beyond the state. If this became known, what would
be the reaction of the master and his believers?
The answer to this question is already known since the myth of the cave. It is
a lesson learned!. Knowledge of the whole is the basis of prudence. In the modem
world the cunning of reason begets the logic of the mask. It is as simple as that.

37 See Stanley Rosen, "Theory and Practice in Hegel: Union or Disunion," in Hegel's
Social and Political Thought, ed. Donald Phillip Verene (New Jersey and Sussex:
Humanities Press and Harvester Press, 1980), 34-46.