Plato at the Googleplex

by Rebecca Goldstein

  24In Plato’s dialogues, Socrates is very fond of using homely examples, and Plato was probably being faithful to the historic Socrates in having his character reach often for plebeian analogies and dwell on them at length, as a passage from Xenophon’s Memorabilia bears out. When Socrates was threatened by the oligarchs who briefly took control of Athens after the Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War (see chapter ζ), Critias, forbidding Socrates to speak philosophy publicly, said, “But at the same time you had better have done with your shoemakers, carpenters, and coppersmiths. These must be pretty well trodden out at heel by this time, considering the circulation you have given them” (Book IV).

  25“One statement at any rate I can make in regard to all who have written or who may write with a claim to knowledge of the subjects to which I devote myself—no matter how they pretend to have acquired it, whether from my instruction or from others or by their own discovery. Such writers can in my opinion have no real acquaintance with the subject. I certainly have composed no work in regard to it, nor shall I ever do so in future, for there is no way of putting it in words like other studies. Acquaintance with it must come rather after a long period of attendance on instruction in the subject itself, and of close companionship, when, suddenly, like a blaze kindled by a leaping spark, it is generated in the soul and at once becomes self-sustaining” (Seventh Letter 341c–d). This is rather an extraordinary admission by Plato, and has, in fact, led some to argue that the Seventh Letter must be authentic. A similar claim that he had never committed his philosophy to writing is made in Letter II (314b).

  26Plato is being cagey here. The line doesn’t come from any of his dialogues but rather from a fragment of lyrical poetry attributed to him: “I throw the apple at you, and if you are willing to love me, take it and share your girlhead with me; but if your thoughts are what I pray they are not, even then take it and consider how short-lived is beauty.” Epigrams, translated by J. M. Edmonds, in Elegy and Iambus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library, 1931), vol. 2. Revised by John M. Cooper and reprinted in Plato Collected Works, edited by John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997), p. 1, 744.

  27In Plato’s dialogues, Cheryl’s opinion is voiced by many of Socrates’ interlocutors, including, interestingly, a certain Anytus who makes a late entrance in the Meno, a dialogue that is concerned with the question of whether or not virtue can be taught. What is so interesting is that Anytus, who enters briefly into the discussion, being Meno’s host in Athens, is identified by most scholars as the very Anytus who will be one of Socrates’ three accusers. See chapter ζ. The Meno’s Anytus certainly behaves in a way consistent with such an action, showing great impatience with Socrates’ form of questioning. The eponymous character of the Meno is also quite interesting. A handsome young man, quite wealthy—the dialogue shows him with his several slaves (82a), one of whom Socrates is able to prod to derive a geometrical solution (82b–85b)—Meno opens the dialogue by asking Socrates if aretē—that is, virtue—can be taught. Socrates casually calls Meno a rascal (81e), and elsewhere (Crito 53d) Meno is described as lawless. Debra Nails writes: “It is Xenophon who depicts Meno as so thoroughly scurrilous as to deserve his end; whereas other generals were beheaded, Meno was tortured alive for a year before being tortured to death” (The People of Plato, p. 204). Xenophon represents Meno as being prepared to take all shortcuts to get ahead, including betraying friends (Anabasis 2.6). As always, Plato chooses his characters carefully.

  28Cf. “The fact that you might give one set of answers rather than another to standard philosophical questions will say nothing about how you will behave when something other than a point of philosophy is in dispute.” Stanley Fish, “Does Philosophy Matter?”

  29Historians can’t be completely certain that Plato never married since Athenian women rarely show up in the record. And then Plato does stipulate twice in the Laws that male citizens must marry.

  30“Barbarian” was the onomatopoeic word that the ancient Greeks used to refer to all foreigners, because to Greek ears non-Greek languages sounded like so much bar bar bar. Plato, in the Republic (469b–c), made what was then the rather radical argument that Greeks should not take other Greeks as slaves, even if they were defeated in war. A war between Greek poleis should be regarded as a civil war, and so the conventional rules of war—wholesale rape and pillage and enslavement—should not be permitted. He also argued in Laws that slaves should not be treated with violence, since it’s in our behavior toward those over whom we have control that our moral character is most deeply revealed—which doesn’t mean, he hastened to add, that we should spoil our slaves or treat them as if they were free (777c–d). As Peter Singer points out, Plato’s argument advanced the morality of his time, even if, from our vantage point, it was not very far. Singer further points out that the Bible likewise, in discussing the laws of slavery, distinguishes between those who are within one’s own tribe and all others. “When your brother is reduced to poverty and sells himself to you, you shall not use him to work for you as a slave.… Such slaves as you have, male or female, shall come from the nations round about you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy the children of those who have settled and lodge with you and such of their family as are born in the land. These may become your property, and you may leave them to your sons after you; you may use them as slaves permanently. But your fellow-Israelites you shall not drive with ruthless severity. Here is a code that could be disinterestedly recommended to Israelites, but hardly to Canaanites.” Peter Singer, The Expanding Circle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 112.

  31“The principle that the multitude ought to be in power rather than the few best … For the many (hoi polloi), of whom each individual is not a good (spoudaios) man, when they meet together may be better than the few good, if regarded not individually but collectively, just as a feast to which many contribute is better than a dinner provided out of a single purse. For each individual among the many has a share of excellence (aretē) and practical wisdom (phronēsis), and when they meet together, just as they become in a manner one man, who has many feet, and hands, and senses, so too with regard to their character and thought. Hence the many are better judges than a single man of music and poetry; for some understand one part, and some another, and among them they understand the whole. There is a similar combination of qualities in good (spoudaioi) men, who differ from any individual of the many, as the beautiful are said to differ from those who are not beautiful, and works of art from realities, because in them the scattered elements are combined, although, if taken separately, the eye of one person or some other feature in another person would be fairer than in the picture. Whether this principle can apply to every democracy, and to all bodies of men, is not clear.”

  32“Socrates, even before I met you they told me that in plain truth you are a perplexed man yourself and reduce others to perplexity.… If I may be flippant, I think that not only in outward appearance but in other respects as well you are exactly like the flat sting ray that one meets in the sea. Whenever anyone comes into contact with it, it numbs him, and that is the sort of thing that you seem to be doing to me now. My mind and my lips are literally numb, and I have nothing to reply to you. Yet I have spoken about virtue hundreds of times, held forth often on the subject in front of large audiences, and very well, too, or so I thought. Now I can’t even say what it is. In my opinion you are well advised not to leave Athens and live abroad. If you behaved like this as a foreigner in another country, you would most likely be arrested as a wizard.”

  33Plato gave Cheryl an answer in the Timaeus. He not only ascribes an organic cause to much mental illness, locating them in disorders of “the marrow” in the head (the brain) which links to marrow encased in the bones throughout the body (his way of explaining, without knowing about nerves, how communication takes place between the brain and the rest of the body); but he goes further and says that when mental disorders have gen
uine organic etiologies, such that the person’s will is rendered inoperative, then the person cannot be regarded as evil. “And if the seed of a man’s marrow grows to be overflowing abundance like a tree that bears an inordinately plentiful quantity of fruit, he is in for a long series of bursts of pain, or of pleasures, in the area of his desires and their fruition. These severe pleasures and pains drive him mad for the greater part of his life, and though his body has made his soul diseased and witless, people will think of him not as sick but as willfully evil” (86c–d). This is an extraordinary passage, pointing the way toward neuroscience. Plato gets the physiology wrong, of course, but he does get that it is neurophysiology that is determining the aberrant behavior, and he draws humane conclusions with which it would take psychiatry millennia to catch up. What a lot of tormenting of the mentally ill could have been avoided if only people had paid as much attention to this passage of the Timaeus as Galileo paid to the passages that inspired him to the new mathematical sciences.

  34For Plato, in the relevant passage of the Timaeus (86b–87b), this is the essential question. He suggests there that truly evil behavior is sufficient grounds for judging a person mentally unsound for organic reasons, though “bad education” plays a subsidiary role as well. “But it is not right to reproach people for them, for no one is willfully evil. A man becomes evil as a result of one or another corrupt condition of his body and an uneducated upbringing. No one who incurs these pernicious conditions would will to have them” (86d–e).

  35Cheryl is giving the historical Plato too much credit, though, of course, the Plato whom she encounters on his book tour, so eager to catch up on all the progress, scientific as well as ethical, that has been made in the last 2,400 years, would presumably soon understand that slavery is wrong. John Locke is sometimes credited with being the first philosopher to consistently argue against slavery, but neither is he altogether consistent nor was he the first. Orlando Patterson, in a private communication to me, writes: “The philosopher who traditionally gets pride of place for voicing the first strongly anti-slavery views is Montesquieu in Book 15 of The Spirit of the Laws. He did clearly state that it was evil, but his subsequent discussion explaining why slavery persisted rather complicates the matter. It is not entirely clear whether Montesquieu was merely summarizing the views traditionally given to justify slavery or was advocating a kind of pragmatic defense of the institution. If the latter, then pride of place should go to Bodin who, writing over 180 years earlier (Six Books of the Commonwealth, 1576), condemned slavery in terms much harsher than Montesquieu, or anyone else for that matter, before the Quaker abolitionists of the mid 18th century. What’s more, Bodin argued forcefully that the presence of slavery weakened the authority of the King. He was certainly far more consistent than Locke and I’m personally prepared to grant him pride of place among early modern philosophers.”

  36“Well, look at the man who has been knocking about in law courts and such places ever since he was a boy; and compare him with the man brought up in philosophy, in the life of a student. It is surely like comparing the upbringing of a slave with that of a free man. Because the one man always has what you mentioned just now—plenty of time. When he talks, he talks in peace and quiet, and his time is his own. It is so with us now: here we are beginning on our third new discussion; and he can do the same, if he is like us, and prefers the newcomer to the question in hand. It does not matter to such men whether they talk for a day or a year, if only they may hit upon that which is. But the other—the man of the law courts—is always in a hurry when he is talking; he has to speak with one eye on the clock” (Theaetetus 172d–e).

  γ

  IN THE SHADOW OF THE ACROPOLIS

  (illustration credit ill.4)

  Hippolocus begat me. I claim to be his son, and he sent me to Troy with strict instructions: Ever to excel (αἰὲν ἀριστεὐειν), to do better than others, and to bring glory to your forebears, who indeed were very great.… This is my ancestry; this is the blood I am proud to inherit.

  —Iliad 6.208

  Socrates was part of the urban scene. Yelp Ancient Athens would have highlighted him under Street Theater. He performed daily without ever passing the hat (Apology 33a–b), a regular at the agora, which was the center of the city, the site of its commercial, political, and cultural life, crowded with the mix of the city’s inhabitants—its many slaves, its non-citizen foreign residents or metics, and its male citizens, ranging from aristocrats to thētes, who were the common laborers,1 and its freewomen, though these last were mostly kept in their households and out of sight, especially if highborn. The agora was spread out beneath the sheer rock outcropping of the Acropolis on which the monuments to Athens’ new-gained imperialist glory were displayed, including the pièce de résistance, the Parthenon, erected from the white Pentelic marble that radiates a golden light when struck by late afternoon sun.

  The architectural splendors had arisen, phoenix-like, out of the ruins to which the older shrines of the Acropolis had been reduced in 480 B.C.E. by the invading Persians. During the second incursion of the Persians, the one that had brought mighty Xerxes himself into Greece to finish the job left undone by his father, Darius, who had died while making his follow-up war preparations, the Athenians strategically abandoned their city for the nearby island of Salamis.2 In the battle of Salamis, their naval forces, into which the Athenians, persuaded by the statesman and general Themistocles3 had poured their capital, defeated the massive forces of the invaders. Xerxes, perched on the gold-encrusted spectator’s throne he had set up on shore to view his anticipated victory, watched the bulk of his navy drown in the narrow straits, as the Greeks, through skill and cunning, outflanked his heavier boats. Xerxes beat it back to Persia, leaving a substantial force behind to get on with conquering the Greeks. The final routing of the Persians came soon after, at Plataea in 479.4

  Athens hadn’t, of course, vanquished the Persians all on its own. Other Greek states had joined in the Hellenic effort, with Sparta, whose military prowess on land was unsurpassed, sharing with Athens in the glory of driving the barbarians out of Hellas. But Sparta, at the close of the Persian Wars, had no wish to assume any ambitions that kept its citizen-soldiers away from Sparta. Its way of life, exclusively devoted to military values, was supported by an extensive helot population who did all the agricultural and other life-sustaining tasks and were always in danger of rebelling, making the Spartans disposed to stay put in Sparta.5 The very single-mindedness of their militarism led to their isolationism.6

  Athens was anything but isolationist. It had transformed its Delian League of allies, formed to keep the Ionian states from falling again under Persian tyranny, into tax-paying tributaries. More wealth flowed in from the rich silver mines discovered nearby in Laurium. These mines were worked by a multitude of slaves—according to scholars, upwards of twenty thousand, primarily captives of war. “The average life of a slave in the Athenian silver mines was less than a year. You entered the mine and never stood up again; you lived the rest of your life crouching, and soon you died,” as the philosopher Alexander Nehamas described this underside of Athenian grandeur in an interview, summing up: “We don’t admire the Greeks for their morality.”7

  But you were not meant to dwell on hidden squalor and pitiless exploitation as you gazed up at the perfectly proportioned Parthenon, so massive and yet seeming to float in an idealized form of materiality. What you were meant to think of were the most glorious possibilities for human achievement. You were meant to think of aretē, the most daunting reaches of human excellence, of a sort to provoke other men’s astonishment and put your name on many lips. You were meant to feel that here, in this most exceptional of all the city-states, among the most exceptional of all the peoples of the world, the Greek-speakers among the barbarians, the Ethos of the Extraordinary had been realized as nowhere else on earth. The ethos that undergirded the extraordinary strivings and achievements can be most briefly—and harshly—summarized as the view th
at the unexceptional life is not worth living. Ordinary lives don’t matter as extraordinary lives do. And if that is true, it follows with the certainty of a geometrical proof that no people could be living lives that mattered more than the citizens who lived in the shadow of the Acropolis.

  The Greek word ethos means “habit” or “custom,” and there is a kind of paradox in demanding that the extraordinary become habitual, customary. And yet this desideratum was an active force in the Athens that carried out its life beneath the Acropolis. It was a distinct aspect of the normative culture—the values-culture—not only of Athens but of the Greek-speaking peoples of the other poleis as well, being implicit in the Homeric works that were integral to Panhellenic culture (though notions of collective versus individual extraordinariness vied, the one associated more with Sparta, the other with Athens). The desideratum provided the context for the famous statement that Plato has his Socrates make in his Apology, that for a human being, the unexamined life is not worth living. This statement, which Plato has Socrates make after the Athenians had already voted him guilty of defying the norms of their city, represents a radical revision of the Ethos of the Extraordinary. “Unexamined” is substituted for “unexceptional.” Only one kind of extraordinary will do. The revision could not have been better designed to unsettle and enrage his fellow citizens. You’ll remember the trial didn’t end well for Socrates. But the revision is not so radical as to depart from the ethos altogether. That’s what made it so intolerably unsettling for his contemporaries, especially in the circumstances in which they found themselves in 399. This will be further explored in chapter ζ. For now, I just want to assert that Plato’s Socrates was being very Greek when he issued his harsh judgment regarding what lives aren’t worth living. Some intellectuals are apt to be pious about the statement, but when one examines it, it turns out to be, like so many piously regarded propositions, quite heinous.