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1 Imagination for Philosophical Exercise in Plato’s Republic: The Story of Gyges’ Ring and the Simile of the Sun
2 Dionysian Plato in the Symposium
3 Separation of Body and Soul in Plato’s Phaedo: An Unprecedented Ontological Operation in the Affinity Argument
Gabriele Cornelli 4 Plato and the “Internal Dialogue”: An Ancient Answer for a New Model of the Self
Alexandru-Ovidiu Gacea 5 Pathos in the Theaetetus
6 The Analogy Between Vice and Disease from the Republic to the Timaeus
7 Why Is the World Soul Composed of Being, Sameness and Difference?
Luca Pitteloud 8 Can One Speak of Teleology In Plato?
9 Nomos: Logismós ton Epithymion. Plato’s Laws and the (De)formation of Desires
Juliano Paccos Caram
Introduction
This volume consists of a selection of papers presented at an international conference on Plato, which occurred at the Federal University of ABC, Brazil, in 2016. Present at the event were a number of scholars of international repute, along with a number of younger scholars, from Brazil and the rest of the world. The aim of the conference was to increase international dialogue and to discuss new approaches to Plato’s philosophy, especially in the burgeoning fields of Platonic ontology and psychology. The selections in this volume include only works which discuss Plato’s middle and late periods, periods which are increasingly studied both as precursors to Aristotelian philosophy and as having philosophical interest in their own right. Despite this cohesion of period, the papers themselves come from a wide variety of approaches and provide a good sense of the current state of Platonic scholarship worldwide.
The papers published in this volume focus on Plato’s Republic (Notomi, Renaut), Symposium (Santoro), Phaedo (Cornelli), Theaetetus (Keeling, Gacea), Sophist (Gacea), Timaeus (Brisson, Renaut, Pitteloud), and Laws (Caram). Some are concerned more with psychology than with ontology or vice versa, but all of them deal in some way with both areas.
1. We begin with the Republic. In “Imagination for Philosophical Exercise in Plato’s Republic: The Story of Gyges’ Ring and the Simile of the Sun,” Noburu Notomi discusses two of the Republic’s most famous images. In Republic X, Plato notoriously casts a harsh light upon the practice of image-making, placing it in in the third place in the ontological and epistemological hierarchies, with the Forms at the highest rung. Many commentators thereby conclude that his attitude toward images and image-making is unremittingly negative. Yet, Plato himself frequently uses images to convey his views, including (quite famously) in the Republic. Notomi attempts to resuscitate the tarnished image of images. He argues that images can represent reality in special ways for Plato and that imagination is an effective method of inquiry to reveal a reality heretofore unknown to us. To illustrate the epistemic utility of imagination, he first re-examines Plato’s famous image of Gyges’ Ring in Republic II, so as to demonstrate that Plato
ascribes to images a special role of transforming our souls. He then turns to analyze the role of imagination in the Simile of the Sun in Book VI.
2. We will return later to the Republic. But first, Fernando Santoro (“Dionysian Plato in the Symposium”) puts us in a Bacchaean mood while leading us through the Symposium. The personalities in this dialogue are, he argues, representations of literary types. The Symposium’s characters wear different masks, each representing a different wisdom tradition. The dialogue celebrates not just Eros and Aphrodite but also Dionysus (177e), who (argues Santoro) can be found lurking beneath three masks worn in the Symposium. First, Aristophanes’ speech portrays a cosmogony based on a theogony with an Orphic inspiration. Second, Diotima’s speech, under the dialectic and ascetic mask of philosophy, intends to initiate us into the mysteries. The rite’s second step makes the jump from the particular to the universal. Finally, the confessional discourse of Alcibiades, in which he unmasks both himself and Socrates, is an epoptic revelation for initiates or else the desecration of a mystery. The third stage reveals a deep truth that is only revealed when one is taken by the madness or drunkenness of love.
3. We turn next to the Phaedo, in Gabriele Cornelli’s “Separation of Body and Soul in Plato’s Phaedo: An Unprecedented Ontological Operation in the Affinity Argument.” The topic here is the distinction between body and soul. Cornelli argues that in fact two different construals of this separation are at work in the dialogue. There is, first, a moral separation, regarding what a philosopher should take care of: philosophers ought to mind the soul and not the body. A second separation is more ontological: the soul is so independent from the body that is declared to survive after its death. Although both concepts of this separation are familiar, due to the success they had throughout the history of Platonism until today, the duplicity of meanings expressed in the Phaedo leads to an irrevocable ambiguity. This ambiguity has usually been resolved by admitting that the moral dualism would be just a kind of anticipated death of the body, as conditio sine qua non for the full and successful practice of philosophy. What Cornelli suggests, however, is a quite different solution to the ambiguity. Contrary to the Forms, the soul can take on sensible features, and for this reason one must care for one’s soul above the body. This gives rise to the dialogue’s ethical aspects. Here it is the moral separation of body and soul, rather than any ontological assumption, that ends up guiding the moral and epistemological consequences of the dialogue. These consequences require a continual epistemological and moral effort of the soul.
4. For the second part of the volume, we turn to Plato’s late period. Alexandru Ovidiu Gacea, in “Plato and the ‘Internal Dialogue’,” discusses that famous Platonic idea, found both in the Theaetetus and the Sophist, that thinking is a dialogue one has with oneself. Against some trends in the understanding of this idea, Gacea suggests that its “internal” aspect is best construed in physical terms. The idea that thinking is a dialogue is understood in terms of a number of distinguishable “voices” which form a microcommunity. We thereby learn that thinking is a physical process associated with breathing and that it consists of a “coming together” of multiple “voices.” “Inner dialogue,” he argues, is
mirrored in the overall structure of Plato’s works, and it represents the very way philosophical debate ought to be conducted, i.e., as an open-ended search for knowledge, one that never concludes with a definite, unified perspective on reality but that searches into to bring the plurality of “voices” into a responsive relationship.
5. Staying in the Theaetetus and continuing on a similar theme, Evan Keeling, in “Pathos in the Theaetetus,” raises a challenge to the widely accepted view that subjective knowledge did not make its appearance until Augustine and that idealism was only made possible by Descartes. The theory of perception associated with Protagoras in the Theaetetus includes the view that one’s pathē constitute truth and knowledge. As pathos usually means “experience,” as it does in later Greek epistemology and psychology, this would seem to indicate that Protagoras or someone in his circle held that there is subjective knowledge: knowledge of our own experiences. Keeling argues that this is an illusion: in these passages, pathos denotes the quality of an external physical object, not an internal experience.
6. In “The Analogy Between Vice and Disease from the Republic to the Timaeus,” Olivier Renaut analyzes Plato’s famous analogy between health and virtue and vice and disease, with this paper focusing on the latter pair. He begins with the Republic before exploring this issue in the Timaeus as well. What is a strict analogy in the Republic seems to refer to a causal interaction between body and soul in the Timaeus: vice can emerge from a malign disposition of the body, and conversely, vice can cause or feed new bodily diseases in a disharmonious and neglected body. Renaut argues that, even so, there is a consistent use of the analogy between vice and disease in the Republic and the Timaeus. The fact that we tend not to blame people for their bodily diseases plus the claim that psychic diseases are involuntary in the Timaeus might seem to undermine the idea that we are morally responsible for them. Renaut argues, however, that the Republic and Timaeus account is compatible with the agent’s responsibility regarding his ethical and physical good condition, within a strong normative approach of diseases, both from the body and the soul.
7. Next, Luca Pitteloud turns us full force to the Timaeus in his “Why is the World Soul composed by Being, Sameness and Difference?” Pitteloud discusses a number of vexed issues involving the Demiurge, the Receptacle, and especially the World Soul, trying to determine the relationship between the nature of the World Soul in the Timaeus and its functionality. The paper discusses the following dimensions of the World Soul: (a) its composition, (b) its mathematical structure, (c) its moving function, and (d) its cognitive function. Pitteloud reads the World Soul’s ontological constitution as articulated within the framework of the teleological dimension of the discourse, showing that it is the two functions of the Word Soul (moving and cognitive) that justify why it possesses the structure of an intermediate mixture constituted from being, sameness, and difference. As such, it is the proper causality (aitia), which is exemplified by the Demiurge’s teleological deduction in Timaeus’ discourse, that determines the auxiliary causality (sunaitia), namely, the structure of the World Soul.
8. With Luc Brisson’s “Can One Speak of Teleology in Plato?,” we continue our exploration of the Timaeus. Apropos of Pitteloud’s discussion of teleology, Brisson asks if we ought to take there to be teleology in the Timaeus and how it should be understood. To answer this question, the Demiurge’s reasoning (the way he wishes to fashion the best possible world) must be related to the way the universe is ordered. As we find also in Aristotle, there is a psychological description of the function of the first Unmoved Mover (object of desire) in order to explain, the world, in Plato, the teleology appears within the Demiurge’s nous.
9. We conclude with the Laws and the end of Plato’s own philosophical career. In “Nomos: logismós ton epithymion. Laws VI and VII and the (de)formation of Desires,” Juliano Paccos Caram investigates how a city’s laws and educational structure influence the desires and the virtue of its citizens. The focus will be on how correct education and laws influence the desires of the citizenry, with an eye toward the role of the formation and distortion of desires in the moral education of young politicians.
We hope this volume will be helpful both to new and advanced scholars of Plato’s philosophy, those who wish to examine Plato’s psychology and ontology and all their richness and complexity. These are fruitful areas to explore, and any insights Plato had to share with us deserve to reach a wider audience.
Center for Natural and Human Sciences (CCNH)
Universidade Federal do ABC
São Paulo, Brazil
Department of Philosophy
University of Sao Paulo
São Paulo, Brazil
Luca Pitteloud
Evan Keeling
Chapter 1 Imagination for Philosophical Exercise in Plato’s Republic: The Story of Gyges’ Ring and the Simile of the Sun
Noburu Notomi
1.1 Preliminary Remarks at Interpreting Plato’s Images
1.1.1 Ambivalence in Plato’s Philosophy
of Images
Reading the notorious criticism of poetry in Book X of the Republic, modern commentators often condemn Plato as being unduly harsh to artistic imagination. They take him to see fine arts (painting and poetry) only as representing the actual world, leaving no room for creative imagination. Indeed, in that argument, Plato places image-making in the third place among the ontological and epistemological hierarchies, where the Forms occupy the highest degree.1 One might try to defend him against this criticism, for example, by referring to the positive evaluation of artistic mania, suggested in the Phaedrus 2 But I think we should re-examine the role and potentiality of images and imagination in the Republic itself, since this dialogue makes full use of images, i.e. similes, analogies and stories. First, let us consider a certain ambivalence about images in the Republic, where philosophers have often noted contradictory features.3 On the one hand, Plato presents in this long dialogue many impressive images; in particular, the simile of the
1 Rep. X, 597e3-9, cf. 602c1-3: the page-line reference from the Republic is from Slings (2003). For image-making in Book X in contrast with that in the Sophist, see Notomi (2011).
2 See Phdr. 244a-245c, esp. 245a.
3 For example, Robinson (1953, pp. 220–221), discusses ‘incoherence’ in Plato’s treatment of images.
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at ‘New Perspectives on Plato’s Philosophy’ at UF ABC, São Bernardo do Campo, in Brasil in 30 June 2016 and at ‘Ancient Worlds Research Cluster Meeting’ at Yale-NUS, in Singapore in 26 October 2016. I thank participants in the two meetings for valuable comments.
N. Notomi (*)
Department of Philosophy, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
L. Pitteloud, E. Keeling (eds.), Psychology and Ontology in Plato, Philosophical Studies Series 139, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04654-5_1
1
Notomi
Cave is deemed one of the most fascinating ‘images’ in the entire Western literary canon. On the other hand, he became an ‘iconoclastic’ philosopher in the history of Western philosophy. That is because, apart from the critical arguments in Book X, he locates the power of imaging (eikasia) at the lowest level of the epistemological hierarchy in Books VI–VII.4 In this way, Plato is at the same time praised for splendid imagination and condemned as an enemy of imagination. This ambivalence is what I will try to clarify in this chapter.
Plato’s main purpose for introducing the ontological scheme of the original and the image in the Republic is clear enough. In order to distinguish between the just and the unjust life in terms of happiness, the main speaker, Socrates, proposes ontological and epistemological hierarchies of reality in the central books (i.e. V–VII), according to which each type’s happiness and pleasure are evaluated, culminating in Book IX. For this purpose, it is necessary to formulate the degrees of reality from the highest to the lowest within the theory of transcendent Forms.
The degrees of reality are illustrated by differences between the original and its image, explained, for example, in the following way: Socrates himself is real as the original and called ‘Socrates’ in a proper way, whereas his portrait or statue, though called ‘Socrates’, is less real, since it is an image that merely represents a part of Socrates.5 In this way, they are found at different levels of reality.
The Republic uses this scheme in the form of analogy and tries to demonstrate that the unjust person’s life is like a shadow or an image in comparison with that of the just person. The analogy shows that the former is much less happy than the latter. The contest of pleasures concludes that the unjust person experiences not real pleasures but shadows of pleasure only.6 In this scheme, images (eidōla) and shadows are treated as inferior or defective entities.7
On the other hand, the ontological and epistemological hierarchies do not exclude the potential significance of using images in philosophical arguments. In addition to skia (shadow), some other words are used, namely, eidōlon (image), eikōn (likeness, simile), phantasma (apparition) and phantasia (appearance).8 This group of words
5 Aristotle calls this ‘homonymous’ in Cat. 1, 1a1-6 (though there is another interpretation of the passage) and Metaph. A9, 991a5-8.
6 Cf. IX, 583b5, 586b7-c6 (phantom of Helen), 587c8-10.
7 To prove this, Socrates carefully uses the image of ‘shadow’ (skia), most vividly in the similes of the Line and the Cave: cf. Line, VI, 510a1, e2; Cave, VII, 515a7, b9, c2, d1, 516a6, e7, 517d9, 532b7, c2, 3. The person who comes out of the cave and returns is able to discern images (i.e. shadows) in the cave (the actual word used in VII, 520c3-4 is ‘images’ eidōla), whereas other people are quarrelling with one another over shadows: cf. VII, 520c7 (skiamachein). In Book X, skiagraphia (shadow-painting) is mentioned as deceiving people in the criticism of poets. Cf. X, 602d3. See also a negative comment in VII, 523b6. For skiagraphia, see Keuls (1974, pp. 111–116), and (1978, pp. 81–83): the apparent virtues are called skiagraphia of virtues in II, 365c3-4. The image of ‘shadow’ is used differently in each context: the depicted justice is called a shadow of justice in IV, 443c4-5; falsehood in speech is explained as a shadow of the inner state of falsehood in II, 382b6-c2.
8 Phantasma, II, 382a2, VI, 510a1 (Line), VII, 516b5 (Cave), 532c2 (Cave), IX, 584a9 (pleasure), X, 598b3, 5, 599a3 (mimēsis); phantasia, II, 382e10: this probably is the first example in the Greek
N.
1 Imagination for Philosophical Exercise in Plato’s Republic: The Story…
is classified more clearly in the later dialogue, Sophist: the image (eidōlon) is a genus, of which a likeness and an apparition are distinguished, the former as true and the latter as false and deceptive.9 In the Republic, on the other hand, Plato seems to assume similar connotations in using these words in each context, but does not define them. It rather demonstrates different uses; some are more didactic, while others are heuristic.
It is, therefore, necessary to re-examine what role Plato gives to images in this dialogue. I will prove that images represent reality in special ways, and that the simile is not simply a didactic method of explaining familiar objects, but is an effective method of inquiry to reveal a reality unknown to us. My aim is to show that the image is not to be fixed in a lower (or the lowest) state of the ontological and epistemological hierarchies, as modern philosophers interpret it.
In this chapter, I demonstrate that Plato ascribes to images a special role of transforming our souls, by examining the famous story of Gyges’ ring (Sect. 2); then, by analysing the simile of the Sun, I hope to show that images are real in the sense that they reveal to us the world beyond sensible things (Sect. 3). These two examples by no means exhaust the richness of images in the Republic, but I hope they represent two important aspects. The first is a psychological exercise for changing ourselves, and the latter illustrates an ontological possibility for such images.
1.1.2 Eastern Reflections on the Image: Sakabe and Izutsu
In order to discuss the issue of the image and imagination, we modern readers of Plato should perhaps change and widen our perspectives first, since we are deeply involved in the negative view of the image, which is normally supposed to come from Plato’s metaphysics. In order to rehabilitate our conception of the image, I think it is worth looking at two Japanese philosophers, who re-examine the concept of an image positively: Megumi Sakabe (坂部恵, 1936–2009), who re-evaluates the Japanese traditional thought and vocabulary, and Toshihiko Izutsu (井筒俊彦, 1914–1993), who discusses the possibilities of the spiritual ‘Orient’, mainly focusing on the Sufist philosophy of illumination.10 Although these thinkers may appear to be alien to Greek philosophy, it is interesting that both develop their ideas in response to Plato’s philosophy of images.
Megumi Sakabe pursued the philosophical potentiality of the Japanese language, including Yamato-kotoba, i.e. native Japanese words, to reconsider or relativize Western philosophy. In his collection of essays, Hermeneutics of the Mask (仮面の 解釈学),11 he first shows that modern Western philosophers assume the self-identical literature; see Notomi (1999, pp. 262–263).
9 Soph. 235c-236c8, 265a10-266e6; see Notomi (1999, pp. 147–155, 272) and (2011).
10 For the philosophy of Izutsu, see Wakamatsu (2014).
11 Sakabe (1976), especially Ch. I.3, ‘a sketch on Kage’ and IV.2 ‘Utsushi-mi’.
ego and take the world as ‘representation’ to the subject (cf. ‘metaphysics of presence’). This modern obsession misses the important sense of metamorphosis in philosophy.
To present an alternative, Sakabe examines the Japanese word ‘kage’ (shadow 影、陰、蔭). We may sometimes recognise in kage an appearance of a higher reality, as one may see there a part and the ‘other’ of our own self. He then reminds us of Plato’s simile of the Cave along with the ‘material imagination’ of Gaston Bachelard (L’eau et les rêves). Sakabe suggests a fusion or interchange between kage and reality. Kage is not just an inferior appearance of the real object, but contains the potential power of fundamentally shaking our consciousness and ordinary sense of reality; it awakens us and may lead us back to our origin.
Kage means ‘shadow’ or ‘image’, but also ‘light’. On the surface of water, it reflects (utsu-su) the world. Sakabe discusses the etymological connotation of ‘utsushi’, which comes from ‘utsu-ru’ (to transfer 写、映、移、遷、憑). Utsu-ri (noun) basically means something emerging at another place with the same form and content. Therefore, its basic meaning is, first, a projection of the very form or shape on another place; second, a colour or scent transfers to another thing; and, third, an evil spirit that possesses something. Its derivative word ‘utsu-tsu’ means reality, but Sakabe notes that it does not correspond to ‘presence’ in the Western traditional metaphysics. Rather, it signifies a transition or interaction between absence and presence, life and death, the invisible or formless and the visible and form. Between these, we see no absolute hierarchy, since they reflect each other and transform between themselves to keep an identity of utsu-tsu. Therefore, utsu-tsu occasionally overlaps with, or changes into, yume (dream). This dynamic relation and balance constitutes a reality, and therefore, transfer or metaphor (metaphora) is an essential factor of our world.
Toshihiko Izutsu, the scholar of Islamic philosophy, classifies and examines three types of ‘Oriental’ philosophy in his book Consciousness and Essence12; the second type is the symbolist philosophy including Gnosticism, Shamanism, Tantrism, Sufism and other forms of mysticism. He argues that this tradition takes the archetypal images in the subconscious domain to be the universal essence of reality, to be evoked through poetic or mythopoetic imagination. Izutsu first points out that human consciousness as a whole is image-productive and full of images.
The mystic tradition of Oriental philosophy sees the image-experience as a kind of reality-experience: for example, Shamanism experiences the real world as appearing as the world of images. Izutsu introduces the notion of the ‘imaginal world’ (mundus imaginalis), which is more real than what we ordinarily see as the ‘real world’. This word was coined by Henry Corbin (1903–1978) in explaining Suhrawardi, the twelfth-century Persian Sufi philosopher, as opposed to the common adjective ‘imaginary’, which has always been treated negatively, as something
12 Izutsu (1983). For Izutsu, ‘Oriental’ (Tōyō) means not a geographical, but a ‘spiritual’ place, as Suhrawardi’s ‘Mashriq’.
1 Imagination for Philosophical Exercise in Plato’s Republic: The Story…
unreal, in the Western philosophy. The ‘imaginal world’ is a core in the mystic and Platonist philosophy of Suhrawardi.13 Izutsu discusses the image as follows:
For men of commonsense who see things from the empirical basis, the ‘metaphor’ which lacks the material basis is nothing but the ‘likeness’, i.e. a shadowy thing. But from another viewpoint, this shadowy entity turns out to have far more dense existence than real things in our empirical world. For Suhrawardi – and thinkers of Shamanism, Gnosticism, Tantrism –, the things in what we call the ‘real world’ are nothing but literally ‘shadowy entities’, or shadows of shadow. The true weight of reality lies in the ‘metaphor’. Otherwise, how can we explain the overwhelming reality, for example, of the Tantric Mandala Space, which consists only of images? (Consciousness and Essence, VIII, p. 203)
In the hierarchy of reality, Suhrawardi posits the independent intermediary world, which is governed by the cognitive power of imagination but nevertheless is more real than the sensible world. From this, Izutsu takes hints as to rehabilitate the notion of images, for the understanding of our deep consciousness. It is interesting that several philosophers of Islamic mysticism, namely, Suhrawardi, Ibn Arabi and Molla Sadra, regarded themselves as followers of Plato’s philosophy and as interpreting his theory of Forms in a new form. Images play a central role in their interpretations.
I hope we can learn some hints from these Japanese philosophers that an image is not to be fixed in a lower or the lowest state of the ontological and epistemological hierarchy, as Western philosophers usually presuppose. There is another possibility that the image concerns reality in a different way. Let us see whether this is true for Plato.
1.2 The Story of Gyges’ Ring
1.2.1 Thought-Experiment
First, I take up one notable example of using images: the story of Gyges’ ring.14 The narrative starts with vivid but strange images: a sudden storm and an earthquake, the bronze horse and the dead body lying under the earth. We can see in this example how imagination changes our conception of the world and ourselves.
In Book II, Glaucon embarks on a tough challenge to justice and presents this impressive story as making a ‘thought-experiment’15 about human nature. He suggests that we can clearly see his point, ‘if in our thoughts [tēi dianoiāi] we grant to a just and an unjust person the freedom to do whatever they like’ (359b9-c1).16
13 Cf. Jambet (1981, pp. 40–41).
14 The initial text contains a difficulty, but I refer to the story as ‘Gyges’ ring’, as most people do. See note 17.
15 Cf. Laird (2001, pp. 20–21).
16 For the Republic, translation of Grube-Reeve (1992) is used, occasionally with some modifications.
I believe that a ‘thought-experiment’ (Gedankenexperiment in German) is an appropriate way of understanding this hypothetical and imaginary argument. One might doubt its validity and effectiveness for the reason that the possession of a magical ring is an unreal hypothesis or that a man never becomes invisible. One might even deny that all actions by invisible men are undetected. But this is a misunderstanding of how ‘thought-experiments’ work. Glaucon and Adeimantus challenge our ordinary conception about justice by insisting that we do just things only because we want to appear to be just to onlookers, while we will do unjust things if we are unobserved; we worry about the slightest chance of being noticed and therefore refrain from doing injustice. Accordingly, if we examine whether this suggestion is true or not, we need a pure state of being unseen, for instance, being made completely invisible by a magical power.
This is analogous to any scientific experiment in a laboratory. Scientists engage in an experiment in some unnatural condition, made as pure and as ideal as possible, in order to test their hypotheses. Likewise, Glaucon prepares in the story of Gyges a hypothetical condition without any impure factor, in order to reflect on our human nature.
He starts the story as follows:
The freedom I mentioned would be most easily realized if both people (sc. just and unjust) had the power they say Gyges the ancestor of the Lydian17 possessed. The story goes that he was a shepherd in the service of the ruler of Lydia… (II, 359c7-d3)
The Lydian shepherd Gyges obtained by a mysterious chance a magical ring that makes its wearer invisible. Recognising this power, he seduced the queen and slew the king to possess the kingdom. By this story, Glaucon suggests that any just man would do similar things to what unjust people would do, if he should obtain that ring that rendered him invisible. He insists that the thought-experiment uncovers the truth of human nature. Is this true? We should just imagine!
‘Thought-experiments’ utilise the faculty of imagination, and the story of Gyges’ ring can be characterised as being extraordinarily abundant in imagery. Some of the images are related to other motifs appearing in different contexts. For example, the great hole open to the underworld18 is reminiscent of the foundation myth of the
17 All the manuscripts read ‘τῷ Γύγου τοῦ
ῳ’ in 359d1-2, which literally means ‘to the ancestor of Gyges the Lydian’. If this is correct, it contradicts Socrates’ later reference in Book X: ‘whether someone possesses the ring of Gyges (ton Gygou daktylion), or not’ (612b3). While a few commentators (James Adam and Andrew Laird) defend this reading of the manuscript, I believe that the text should be emended in one way or another. Adam (1902, vol. I, p. 70, pp. 126–127), suggests that Glaucon talks about the homonymous ancestor of Gyges; Laird (2001, p. 22), suggests that Socrates later mistakes the reference. Both proposals seem fairly implausible. Since either reference has something wrong, the present passage should be emended if we consider the obvious reminiscence of the famous story as recorded in Herodotus. I suggest that we either change ‘Γύγου’ to ‘Γύγῃ’ according to the Scholion and read it as ‘to Gyges, the ancestor of the Lydian’, or omit it to read ‘to the ancestor of the Lydian’ (Hermann, Campbell), or Slings (2005, pp. 22–24), proposes as a ‘trial balloon’ to omit ‘τῷ προγόνῳ’ as a gloss and change the rest to ‘Γύγηι τῶι Λυδῶι’. However, I prefer a simpler emendation.
18 Cf. II, 359d3-5.
ideal city, which tells the people that they were born under the earth.19 The myth of the earth-born, which comes from Hesiod, includes the races of gold, silver, iron and bronze. 20 We remember that the mysterious horse seen in the hole was made of bronze.
Also, the motif of ‘going down’ is suggested in the first words of Socrates’ report, ‘I went down [katebēn] to the Piraeus yesterday’.21 In the simile of the Line, ‘up and down’ represent different stages, and in the Cave, ‘going down’ means a philosopher’s return to the political activities in this world. Finally, the myth of Er depicts the downward and upward paths through two openings in the heavens and in the earth.22 Thus, the image of Gyges’ going down into the hole foreshadows various descending movements of just and unjust persons.
1.2.2 Transformation Through Imagination
By telling the story, Glaucon assumes that we, the ordinary listeners, will imagine ourselves acting like Gyges: that is, doing whatever we like without shame or fear. This imagination comes from the imaginative power of the story, and we can understand why it raises serious problems even today in moral philosophy. If both just and unjust persons would act in the same way under any unobserved situation, what does justice or morality really mean?23
After the long discussion from Book II, however, Socrates triumphantly declares the conclusion in Book X:
And haven’t we found that justice itself is the best thing for the soul itself, and that the soul -- whether it has the ring of Gyges or even it together with the cap of Hades -- should do just things?
We have. That’s absolutely true. (X, 612b1-5)
This statement astonishes us, since we readers initially thought we ourselves would behave like Gyges. But now Glaucon fully agrees to Socrates’ conclusion. What happens after his challenge?
In Books II–X, we have gone through the full argument of demonstrating that the just person lives a happy life, whereas the unjust person, in particular a tyrant, lives the unhappiest of lives. Already in the middle of the argument, when justice in the soul is shown in Book IV, Socrates alludes to a situation similar to that of Gyges:
19 Cf. III, 414d4-415c8. The image of ‘underworld’ in Greek mythology and the Republic is discussed in Männlein-Robert (2013).
20 III, 414c4-415d6, cf. VIII, 546d7-547b7; Hesiod, Works and Days 109–201.
21 Cf. I, 327a1. For these first words, see Burnyeat (1998).
22 Cf. X. 614b8-e1.
23 Modern philosophers may well answer like the ancient sophists that morality is a matter of social contracts.
For example, if we had to come to an agreement about whether someone similar in nature and training to our city had embezzled a deposit of gold or silver that he had accepted, who do you think would consider him to have done it rather than someone who isn’t like him? No one. (IV. 442e4-443a2)
A just person trained in the ideal city would never steal a deposit. At this stage, Glaucon agrees that justice is profitable, no matter how he or she may appear to others. This is half of the way to reject the challenge to justice; the other half is to show how unprofitable the unjust life is.24
Having completed the entire argument, we eventually come to imagine that we would no longer act as Gyges did, even if we had a magical ring to make ourselves invisible or even if we saw many opportunities to do unjust things without fear of arrest. This means that the long discussion with various images has changed our conceptions of life. In other words, we ourselves have changed through reading the dialogue.
Now we can check at which stage we are standing by the thought-experiment of imagination, whereas we may initially have imagined ourselves desiring to do whatever we like, for example, by robbing others of valuable things or obtaining power by killing others. But we are now persuaded by Socrates’ argument that justice is good in itself, not because of its results or reputation or appearances. Then, we believe that a just person, who holds a good politeia in his or her soul, never desires such unjust things. This is a result of imaging ourselves in a certain way.
Returning to the original story, although Gyges at first looks to be nothing more than an innocent shepherd, we now recognise that from the beginning he was a potential tyrant (and later became a real tyrant)25 because he did not hesitate to steal a ring out from the corpse when he was unseen. Therefore, Gyges is far from a spotless model of humanity, with whom we can safely identify ourselves. We are now aware that we should not live like him.
Thus, the thought-experiment of Gyges’ ring was a test for our own inner state and at the same time a device for the transformation of the soul. This imagination, performed with many images, awakens our soul and makes us realise what our real nature is. Thus, speaking in images is a philosophical way of transcending our present situation into true nature and reality.
We find that transformation is an important theme of the dialogue. Reading the story of Gyges’ ring, ‘becoming invisible’ initially shakes our ordinary views on appearance and reality. Then we find that the ordinary state of our soul is like Glaucus, the sea-god.26 Yet, as the dialogue itself reveals, we can purify our soul by converting its ‘eye’ to reality by the power of imagination.
24 In spite of the initial conclusion in 445a-b, a full discussion is needed in Books VIII and IX.
25 The intertextuality of this story with Herodotus, Archilochus, Hippias and the Republic itself (VIII 566c1-d4, in particular) plays a crucial role in understanding of Gyges as ‘tyrant’. For this, see my analysis in Notomi (2010).
26 Cf. X, 611c6-612a7. For the sea-god Glaucus in Phd. 108d, see Clay (1985).
N. Notomi
1.3 The Simile of the Sun
1.3.1 Introducing the Sun
Next, we should consider how images work, for us, the readers of the dialogue, in the central discussion of the theory of Forms. At the climax of the whole dialogue, the Form of the good is presented as the greatest subject of learning in Book VI (504c9-506b1). Socrates talks about it through three similes. He introduces the first one with great caution:
So let’s abandon the quest for what the good itself is for the time being, for even to arrive at my own view about it is too big a topic for the discussion we are now started on. But I am willing to tell you about what is apparently an offspring of the good and most like it. (VI, 506d7-e3)
This introduction at first sounds enigmatic. But the ‘offspring’ Socrates is presenting turns out to be the sun.
The sun and light are not a new topic in the dialogue, but both appear in some other contexts. In Book IV, the inquirers are said to make justice light up as if they were ‘rubbing fire-sticks together’ through comparison between justice in the city and that in the soul.27 In Book VI, philosophy for many people is compared to ‘fire’, which goes out and is never relighted, with reference to Heraclitus’ saying ‘the sun is new each day’.28 He regards fire as the fundamental element and calls the universe (kosmos) ‘everliving fire’.29 By recalling the images of ‘sun’ and ‘fire’ in Heraclitus, Socrates rejects the negative view of philosophy shared by ordinary people. This is in sharp contrast with what Plato takes as the essence of the sun. In the Timaeus, the Demiurge created the sun together with the other celestial bodies for determining and preserving of the numbers of ‘time’ (Tim. 38c); he ‘kindled a light which now we call the sun, to the end that it might shine, so far as possible, throughout the whole Heaven’ (39b). The sun does not shine by reflected light, as Empedocles proposes, nor does it move around a ‘central fire’, as is sometimes ascribed to Pythagoreans.30 The sun sits in the highest position in this visible world. Now the image of the sun is used in a totally different mode, first in the simile of the Sun, and subsequently in the Cave.
27 Cf. IV, 435a2-3: the verb ‘eklampein’ (shine out) reminds us of ‘katalamein’ in the simile of the Sun (VI, 508c9, d4).
28 Cf. VI, 498a7-9. DK 22 B6 (Arist. Meteor. B2, 355a13). Heraclitus also talks about the sun: B3 (its size), B94 (measure), B99 (relation to the stars) and B100.
29 ‘It ever was and is and will be: fire everliving, kindled in measures and in measures going out’ (DK 22 B30, second half, trans. Kahn).
30 For this contrast, see Taylor (1928, pp. 212–214).
1.3.2 Images for Transcendence
When we hear (or read) the simile (eikōn) of the Sun, I suggest that we will experience four stages to move towards transcendental reality. We’ll find this simile to be a self-conscious device to lead us up to the Form of the good.
[Stage 0] Before the image
Before starting the upward path, it is worth remembering the initial state of the introduction of the image.
When Socrates is asked to explain what the good itself is as the greatest subject of a philosopher’s learning, he first declares that he does not know it.31 This is a typical disavowal of knowledge by Socrates, such as is told in the Apology. Because of this claim, he asks his interlocutors to make allowances, namely, to leave on one side the very question of what the good itself is. Instead, he is going to tell them ‘something which is a child of the good, and very similar to it’.32 This careful introduction implies that the simile is not showing familiar things, but something else.
[Stage 1] Presenting the sensible image in our mind
In the first stage, Socrates presents the ordinary image of the sun as the ‘child’ of what we seek. He examines the mechanism of sight and induces the audience to the third factor of sight, namely, ‘light’ and its cause, as follows:
Which of the gods in heaven would you name as the cause and controller of this, the one whose light causes our sight to see in the best way and the visible things to be seen?
The same one you and others would name. Obviously the answer to your question is the sun. (VI, 508a4-8)
Placing before our mind’s eye the image of the sun, which is a real object in this world, we now understand that it is at once an object of and the cause of sight. His audience does not yet understand what the sun represents here, but they can easily imagine ‘the sun’ in this world. Remember that they are not seeing it now, since the dialogue is held in the house of Cephalus at night.33
[Stage 2] Searching for what it is an image of
Next, Socrates urges us to think the sun as an image of something else. He says, ‘this is what you must take me to mean by the child of the good, which the good produces as its own analogue’.34 The analogy is carefully constructed: the sun is to eyesight what this something is to the intellect.
[A1] Eye, sight; [A2] visible things; [A3] light, sun; [A4] growing living things
31 Cf. VI, 505a4-6, 506c2-3; see also I, 354b9-c3.
32 Cf. VI, 506e2 (quoted above in 1.3.1): ‘ekgonos’ (child) and ‘homoiotatos’ (very similar).
33 The initial proposal of going out to see the torch race on horseback at the Bendis festival (I, 328a1-b3) seems to be totally neglected, probably because they are deeply rapt in the intense discussion.
34 Cf. VI, 508b12-13.
[B1] Soul, intellect; [B2] things known; [B3] truth, good; [B4] giving reality to things A: B = offspring : parent = image : original = sensible (visible) : intelligible
The analogy between the image (A) and its original (B) indicates the degrees of reality.
Although we do not yet know what the good is, we can imagine what it is like in relation to the sun. By tracing the analogical relation back from the image to its original, we now image the good, whose image is the sun in our living world.
[Stage 3] Seeing our world as an image
Once we grasp this analogical relation, the sun and this world come to be seen not as the reality, as we believed them to be before, but as images of the good and the intelligible world. The use of the mental image of the sun as image changes and overturns our ordinary belief of this world. We now realise that our world is only what our senses can detect, in contrast to the world comprehended by the intellect, and is less real than the latter. To take the sun as the image of the good makes us transcend our everyday perspective: to anticipate something beyond.
[Stage 4] Seeing the Forms in images
Finally, Socrates gives us an image of the world of Forms in words. The Form of the good provides intelligible objects with the ability to be known and also with their being and existence. Thus, even the highest reality, ‘superior to being in rank and power’ (509b8-9), is depicted in words, such that we can barely image it. The shining sun represents this feature.
What we finally have in mind as the world of Forms—the true reality—is again an image. Besides the description of the things outside the cave,35 the great myth of the Phaedrus most vividly gives us the verbal image of the Forms.36 This imaged world, or what is called the ‘imaginal world’, is more real than all that we believe to be real. This is the final stage of transcendence through imagination.
The four-stage experience becomes possible through the philosophical role of eikōn, which means both image and simile.37 It reaches its climax in the simile of the Cave.38 The eikōn plays a crucial part in leading us to higher realities and revealing new perspectives through the imaginative power. We can observe that they are not simply inferior entities of more substantial things, but they themselves embody something real.
In this experience, the Sun makes an ascent to another stage and a transfer (metaphora) of realities. This interaction between images and realities itself is a possibility of reality.
35 Cf. VII, 516a5-c3.
36 Esp. Phdr. 246a3-248e3.
37 Cf. VI, 509a9-10.
38 Cf. VII, 515a4, 517a8; see also the comparison to discuss Pythagoreans in VII, 531b4-8. A simile about parents and child illustrates education of dialectic, in VII, 538c4-5.
1.3.3
Beyond the Sun
After the simile of the Sun, the sun appears again in the Line and the Cave.39 Here light and darkness become main factors, and the upward path to the sun represents the process of awakening the soul’s intelligence.40 It is interesting to see that the Cave no longer speaks of the sun as being in the visible world. The sun exists outside the cave, as the ultimate object of our soul’s sight. It seems that this is the true ‘sun’, of which what we call the ‘sun’ is only an image.
[Stage 5] Beyond the image
Furthermore, when Socrates comes to explain the final stage of a philosophers’ education (namely, dialectic), he suddenly indicates that they are now on a different stage from the previous ones, of mathematical education. He declares that they no longer continue to use images:
You won’t be able to follow me any longer, Glaucon, even though there is no lack of eagerness on my part to lead you, for you would no longer be seeing an image or simile [eikona] of what we’re describing, but the truth itself. At any rate, that’s how it appears to me. (VII, 533a1-4)
Here, Socrates clearly appeals to the double sense of the word eikōn, namely, ‘image’ and ‘simile’. This implies that the preceding argument is pursued on the second level in the epistemological hierarchy, named ‘thinking’ (dianoia), where images have to be employed, in contrast with ‘intellect’ (nous) performed by dialectic on the first level, which investigates the truth without using any images. Nevertheless, Socrates suggests that the coming description of dialectic is what appears (phainetai) to him or ‘something like this’ (toiouton ti). An image is indispensable for the philosophical argument even at this moment. This is the true ambivalence that Plato faces.
1.4 Conclusion
In the Republic, Plato uses a variety of ‘images’ for many purposes, so we should not oversimplify the roles they play in the argument. But against the current view that he treats them unfavourably, I have shown their special roles of transformation of our soul and of transcendence towards reality. This is possible because the image possesses a strong power to overturn our ordinary sense of ‘reality’ and reveal the truth. For this, as Sakabe points out, it works by shaking our sense of the world and uncovers the truth that we are far from standing on solid ground. Images are not simply a means of illustration in teaching or persuasion concerning what the speaker (or author) already knows and can
explain without using them. On the contrary, it may be the case that images enable us to obtain new ideas of invisible entities. In this sense, images embody higher realities. This is what Izutsu discusses with reference to Suhrawardi.
I have shown that Plato must have been aware of the ambivalence of images. Yet it is exactly in this feature that images exercise their power in philosophical discussions. What we see as ‘reality’ is only an image, and what we regard as an ‘image’ may be a true reality. This sensitivity and anticipation lies at the core of Plato’s philosophy.
References
Adam, J. (1902). The Republic of Plato, edited with critical notes, commentary and appendices, in two volumes, second edition with an introduction by D. A. Rees, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Burnyeat, M. F. (1998). First words: A valedictory lecture. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 43, 1–20.
Clay, D. (1985). The Art of Glaukos (Plato Phaedo 108D4-9). American Journal of Philology, 106, 230–236.
Grube, G. M. A. (1992). Plato, Republic. Reeve, C. D. C. (Trans.) revised. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Izutsu, T. (1983). Ishiki to Honshitsu (Consciousness and Essence), in Japanese. Tokyo, Japan: Iwanami Shoten.
Jambet, C. (ed.) (1981). Henry Corbin. In Cahier de l’Herne, No. 39, Consacré à Henry Corbin. Keuls, E. (1974). Plato on painting. American Journal of Philology, 95, 100–127.
Keuls, E. (1978). Plato and Greek painting. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Laird, A. (2001). Ringing the changes on Gyges: Philosophy and the formation of fiction in Plato’s Republic Journal of Hellenic Studies, 121, 12–29.
Männlein-Robert, I. (2013). Katabasis und Höhle: Philosophische Entwürfe der (Unter-) Welt in Platons Politeia. In N. Notomi & L. Brisson (Eds.), Dialogues on Plato’s Politeia (Republic) (pp. 242–251). Sankt Augustin, Germany: Academia.
Notomi, N. (1999). The Unity of Plato’s, Sophist: between the sophist and the philosopher Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Notomi, N. (2010). Glaucon’s challenge. In: Bosch-Veciana, A., Monserrat-Molas, J. (eds.), Philosophy and dialogue, Studies on Plato’s Dialogues II (pp. 35–50), Barcelona, Barceonesa d’Editions, Societat Catalana de Filosofia.
Notomi, N. (2011). Image-making in Republic X and the Sophist. In P. Destrée & F.-G. Herrmann (Eds.), Plato and the poets (pp. 299–326). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Robinson, R. (1953). Plato’s earlier dialectic. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Sakabe, M. (1976). Kamen-no Kaishaku-gaku (Hermeneutics of the Mask), in Japanese. Tokyo, Japan: Tokyo University Press.
Slings, S. R. (2003). Platonis Rempublicam, recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit, Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Slings, S.R. (2005). Critical notes on Plato’s Politeia. G. Boter & J. van Ophuijsen (Eds.). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Taylor, A. E. (1928). A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. Oxford, England: Clarendon.
Wakamatsu, E. (2014). Toshihiko Izutsu and the philosophy of word: in search of the spiritual Orient. J. C. Hoff (Trans.). Tokyo, Japan: International House of Japan.
Chapter 2 Dionysian Plato in the Symposium
Fernando Santoro
Thanks to the delirium, have arisen the rites, cathartic, initiatory, ridding whom is involved in them from the evils of both the present and the future, and making men, animated by a prophetic spirit, find the means to protect themselves against those evils.—Plato, Phaedrus 244e
There are at least three characters in the Symposium who serve as voices of Dionysus: Aristophanes, Diotima, and Alcibiades. From them, we recognize the three stages of an Orphic initiation: firstly, the symbolic interpretation; secondly, the contemplative asceticism; and finally, the epoptic revelation. Plato built the symposium scene not only as a convivial party but also as a teletical, initiatory rite.
The theological aspect of the Symposium is not ignored: the speeches of the guests are eulogies to Eros. In each character, Eros assumes a different aspect, parallel to the fields of action and knowledge of each one. In Socrates, Eros becomes determinant for the definitions of philosopher and philosophy. But Eros and Aphrodite are not the only gods celebrated in the Symposium. With wine, every symposium is a celebration of Dionysus. Philosophy is an Erotic quest, as Socrates shows in the Symposium; it is also an Apollonian interpretation, as Socrates himself shows us in Apology. Could we say, together with Plato, that philosophy is also a delusional, teletical, and Dionysian activity?
Some aspects of Platonic philosophy bring it closer to the wisdom and activity of the harvest of Dionysus. One relates to the scenic form of dialogues that make Plato a dramatic philosopher. In the dialogues speak the characters of Plato, while he himself is in the background, like a playwright. Thus, he belongs to the same Dionysian court as the poets, writers of comedy and tragedy, no matter how much he criticizes them. The theatre of ideas makes him adopt one of the main characteristics of Dionysus: the use of the mask, the many masks that cancel or hide the subjective presence of an author. There remains the thought itself that is not attached
F. Santoro (*)
Philosophy Department, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
L. Pitteloud, E. Keeling (eds.), Psychology and Ontology in Plato, Philosophical Studies Series 139, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04654-5_2
to either opinion or doctrine, which transits from different perspectives and is in force in transit or likewise in trance.
Another aspect is precisely the appreciation of trance and delirium, as we witness in the Phaedrus, where the initiating cathartic deliriums are mentioned amongst the favourable gifts that the gods reserve for us. It is not because Socrates is the example of prudence and philosophical temperance that will cease the delirium about the origins of names in the Cratylus (Buarque, 2011) or the course of souls in Republic and in Phaedrus. Furthermore, there is the ethical and political interest of wine and the act of drinking together, which appears not only in the Symposium but also in the Laws.
Nietzsche incites a prejudice with regard to Plato’s Socrates: that this represents the decadence of tragic philosophy amongst the Greeks (Götzen-Dämmerung, [1888] 1988). I want to contribute a little more to the problematization of this judgement, presenting three Dionysian masks in the Symposium, to accompany the three moments of a ritual initiation to the mysteries.
2.1 Aristophanes
Aristophanes is presented as someone whose vital occupation is around Dionysus and Aphrodite (177e). Permit me a literal reading: Aristophanes deals with questions involving the gods, Dionysus and Aphrodite, from the point of view of theology. He indicates his theological perspective by reproaching men of “not being sensitive to the potency of Eros, for if they perceived it, they would erect the greatest temples and altars and make the greatest sacrifices”.
Aristophanes’ dialogue comes from a background of Orphic-Dionysian wisdom. From this background also come theatrical spectacles such as comedy and tragedy, so it is not surprising to find comic and tragic elements in his dialogue. Aristophanes is the first Dionysian mask that is found in Plato’s Symposium
Aristophanes announces that to eulogize the powers of Eros, it is necessary “to learn about human nature and its affections” (189d). His myth tells a genealogy of the human race, in a tragic plot like that of Prometheus. First, men lived in an idyllic, powerful, and self-sufficient condition; they were strong and doubly fast because they were twice what we are today: four legs, four arms, two faces on one head, four ears, two sexes, etc. Their shape was spherical and entirely whole. There weren’t two genders, but three: the masculine, child of the Sun; the feminine, child of the Earth; and the androgynous, child of the Moon, who had characteristics both of the male and the female. Since they were very powerful and self-sufficient, arrogantly, they turned against the gods. Zeus punishes this hubris by breaking them in half. The description of the ball men and the surgery, cutting and stitching, undertaken by Zeus and Apollo is carried out with comical figures and vocabulary, complete with cartwheels, one-legged leaps, stretched skin, patched navels, wrinkles, and rivets. After the operation was completed, the number of men had doubled, but their power weakened by half, and the significant point is that they ceased to be self-sufficient,
F. Santoro
having gained the present human condition of the needy, who have to run after what satisfies them; they are no longer whole but beings that are missing part of themselves. Half dispersed, they ran to join the halves they had split from, and when they joined, they did not tear apart, and they became inseparable. The gods again took action: they changed the genders of the humans, they made the union of the sexes result in the generation of offspring, and most significantly, they caused the union to cause pleasure and satisfaction that allows lovers to separate and return to the other tasks of life. Aristophanian wisdom: pleasure is not what attracts lovers but something that when fulfilled allows them to separate! Love that conveys joy is what heals the indigence of the primordial split and at the same time allows a harmonious life to each of the halves. This loving union gains the meaningful name of symbolon: the ceramic tessera that friends break in two, as a sign of friendship and hospitality. Each friend is the bearer of what completes the other.
Here is the core of what we call Dionysian wisdom: the eternal return—the breakdown of parts as missing, the search for the cathartic resolution in full. Compare this to the cosmogonic myth pronounced by the chorus of The Birds of Aristophanes, in this case the real author and not the character of Plato.
It is impossible not to suspect that this text guided Plato in the composition of fictional speech. It is a cosmogony, from the perspective of birds, in which the fundamental generator element is an egg laid at night and the deities are all winged. Aristophanes explores the oviparous image in a comic way, but the expression of cosmogonies with egg images and winged gods, particularly the love, is not new.
Unlike the myth told in the Symposium, it is not about the origin of men but the origin of the gods. However, there are already Orphic-Dionysian elements analogous to the Symposium. Firstly, the image of a primordial sphere, the cosmic egg, is similar to the original men, spherical and whole. These men, in the myth told in the Symposium, are direct descendants of cosmic entities: the sun, the earth, and the moon. That is why, they are circular like them. The sphere and circle are recurrent images of Dionysian wisdom. Beyond that, we have the presence of Eros with his power responsible for mixing all things and intertwining the lovers.
The construction of the cosmogonic myth of Birds follows in a form of parody the cosmogonies which are present in the Orphic myths, taking advantage of the images, the cosmic entities, and the foundation of Dionysian wisdom: happiness in the original spherical whole. To mimic Aristophanes, Plato did not choose to reproduce the texts of the playwright but used the same method to parody comically, from sources of the same lineage. He did not copy Aristophanes, but, as a good dramatist, he placed himself in his perspective of poetic composition. Therefore, I believe that the anthropogonic myth told by the Aristophanes of the Symposium is constructed from the anthropogonic Orphic myths, just as the cosmogonic myth of The Birds is made from their cosmogonic myths.
The anthropogonic Orphic myth is the myth of the dismemberment of Dionysus. Dionysus is the cosmic link between immortal deities and mortal beings. Dionysus is the Life that is renewed in the cycles of nature: the seasons, the passing of generations. In him death is not the end but the return to the starting point, for a new beginning. It is this myth of the dismemberment of Dionysus and then resurrection that is
latent in the myth of the humans born from the cut into two halves, told by the Aristophanes of the Symposium, with the same tragic plot and its significant elements, although sometimes remixed. In the Orphic myth of Initiation (the Teleté), the death and rebirth of Dionysus Zagreus immediately precede the emergence of men. The Titans tear, cook, roast, and eat Dionysus, minus his heart, which was collected by Athena (or Hermes), and the remains, which are buried by Apollo. Zeus smites the Titans. From their ashes or more likely from soot, men are born. The versions differ, but the result of the punishment of the Titans by Zeus is always the emergence of humanity. In all versions, it is an anthropogony, as described by the Aristophanes of the Symposium.
I assume Plato constructs the myth told in the Symposium in the same way that Aristophanes himself constructed the theogonic myth in the choir of The Birds: as a parody of passages of the Teleté. The procedure is the same: the difference is in the passages taken for the parody. Aristophanes chooses the beginning of theogony, which shows the primordial deities, Protogonos and Eros. Plato chooses the part that deals with the last generation of divine power according to the Orphic narrative, in the passage that relates the dismemberment of Dionysus Zagreus perpetrated by the Titans, from whose ashes men emerged. Why choose this model? Certainly because the Aristophanes of Plato is one of the mouthpieces of Dionysus in the Symposium. In the Dionysian celebration, the body is prepared with food and drink; an initiation is made with incantatory speeches, praising a primordial cosmogonic god, until the hour of revelation reserved for the initiates arrives. Aristophanes has an introductory function in the course of the rite, wearing the Dionysian mask of the anthropogonic speech.
A final observation on the relationship between the Aristophanes myth of the Symposium and the Teleté: the name that Aristophanes himself gives his image of love as an attraction between two halves of a whole is sýmbolon. The word, beyond the image of the departed tessera, which we have already mentioned, evidently also evokes the symbolic interpretation of the images: the main function of theogonic myths in the Orphic initiation rites. A very important part of the initiation is the learning of hermeneutics, for understanding the meaning of the symbols of the rite.
2.2 Diotima
Diotima is a person who will bring forward the speech on Eros, which is reputed as the true theory of Platonic love. This speech begins with a refutation, followed by a theogonic narrative, explained by a cosmogonic theory based on a model of procreation, and ends with the prescription of an ascetic initiation that culminates in a transcendent contemplation. Ascesis is the second moment of the Teleté, so Diotima is the second mask of Dionysus. It is the speech of a priestess whose wisdom in women's affairs is reflected by an erotic model based on the processes of conception, gestation and parturition. The feminine presence is another trait of the
Dionysian religiosity, surrounded by the chthonic cults to Gaia, Demeter, and Persephone.
After the initial refutation, Diotima will present a theory of the “intermediate” (Metaxu). This theory is then applied to the essential determination of Eros, not as a god but as an intermediary deity between a god, perfect and beautiful, and a mortal, devoid of everything. Eros, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither god nor mortal, is a great Demon (Daimon), a mediator.
In the theogonic narrative of Diotima, Eros is conceived in the party of Aphrodite’s birth, having as parents Poros (expediency) and Penia (deficiency). The theogonic speech overcomes the double negation of attributes, which there was in the refutative speech (neither mortal nor immortal), by a kind of cyclic synthesis (on the same day, germinate, die, and resurrect). The solution to the cyclical return, evidenced by the resurrection, in the interval of 1 day, points to a type of Dionysian wisdom. The Eros of the myth of Diotima is born, dies, and is reborn as the Dionysus of Orphic theogonies or as the Night and all the stars.
Diotima’s theogony will be interpreted, by herself, as cosmogony. Not in the sense of a genesis of the cosmos but in a cosmic theory of genesis. Thus, the definition of the nature of Eros leads to a theory of love as the universal impulse of procreation in all of Nature. Procreation is interpreted as resulting from the love of mortals such that they are always alive and as a way of making mortals, in a sense, partake in immortality.
The conception of cyclical transience implied in the idea of generation, as that which enables the mortal to be somehow perpetual, resonates with the cycle of the wisdom of the masks. Time is what does not conserve the attributes; in it, nothing ceases and everything passes. Body and soul of mortals are born and die and are preserved by the procreation and replenishment of the old who go by the new that comes. The buds will endure a while longer than their parents. The life of mortals will go through the continuous passing of time as long as procreation repeats itself. Thus, Diotima describes how what is immortal becomes immanent in all the tasks of Nature.
Diotima calls epoptic the last initiatory stage of the erotic subjects, as the final stage of revelation of Eleusinian mysteries. The word designates the procedures related to epópsis: a vision (ópsis) upwards or above (epi) which can observe the world below in a privileged and global form and observe more closely the things above.
The initiatory escalation is the second scheme of negative dialectic in Diotima’s speech. Here it is not a matter of negating opposites in pairs “neither this nor that” but negating one position for another which will be negated by the following successively: “this; but not this, that; but not that, another; but not another, and so on”. The stages are always fleeting: like the living characters of Dionysus, only the vitality of transit is preserved.
There are seven degrees of loving initiation: love of one body, and afterwards all bodies, follows the love of souls and the love of the beautiful crafts, of the laws, and of the sciences, until it reached the highest loving science one that contemplates the beauty in itself by itself.
The objective of climbing is not just the last step but also a view of the whole process done from the beginning. Therefore, the last step is not an eschatological extreme but a teleological principle from which everything is and also can be contemplated. Beauty itself is also what gives meaning and makes beautiful each previous step and each of its objects.
In Diotima’s speech, ideal transcendence is only reached by men who have passed correctly love for the young and who have fulfilled each stage of the journey. There is no effortless jump without the experience of the various levels of love. It is necessary to reach each step, in order to negate it. Therefore, treating Diotima’s doctrine and Platonic love as an absolute contempt for the inferior levels of love is not to consider it as a whole but only to have a partial, non-epoptic view of it—and averse to the very idea of transcendence and contemplation. The dialectical negation in the development process integrates each previous step into the next step and all steps into the last step.
Diotima’s description of the beautiful in itself is enchanting, seductive, and narcotic in all its succession of negatives, and we run the risk of being charmed and lost in 20 rhythmic periods of private qualification before understanding the decisive phrase about its positive universality, based on the participation of all that is beautiful in this beautiful culmination. The most depleted abstraction is not the truth. Truth is all the way, whose negation is the Dionysian wheel that runs through it.
2.3 Alcibiades
So, the deepest revelation to the initiates, the true epópsis, the third stage that closes the Teleté rite, enters abruptly through the gates of Agathon’s house. It enters through the inebriated speech of Alcibiades, who challenges Socrates to interrupt him if he does not tell the truth. Through Alcibiades is the truth reserved for the initiates spoken, a truth which can only be spoken between four walls. The truth revealed by the inebriation of wine. What Dionysus reveals.
Alcibiades arrives intoxicated, in turmoil, by the arms of the flute, girded with a bacchant crown of ivy and violets, like a satyr, mouthpiece of the god. He sits between Agathon and Socrates, not perceiving the latter. He passes the crown to the honouree and is frightened when he turns and sees Socrates at his side. Alcibiades complains about the proximity between the other two ... and Socrates already warned Agathon of the general’s jealousy and amorous fury. The raging fury of a bacchant.
Alcibiades takes part of the ribbons and flowers that he has placed on Agathon and then also crowns Socrates because “all men he beats in arguments, not only yesterday like you, but always”. Without knowing of the contention of the speeches, the newly arrived judge awards prizes to the victors. Not only the judge, the man then takes the position of symposiarch, not elected by men but designated directly by the god: “You seem in full sobriety. It is what should not be allowed among you,
F. Santoro
2 Dionysian Plato in the Symposium
but drink”.1 Eryximachus intervenes: he must also praise Eros! Alcibiades hesitates, considering that he alone is inebriated and yet tries to turn to Socrates, saying that he did not allow him to praise anyone else, man or god! Eryximachus decides with irony to propose that he praise Socrates. Agathon praised Eros as beloved, the erômenos. Socrates corrected him, praising Eros as lover, the erastés. Now Alcibiades will praise the master erastés of all banquets, who was his own lover. He will remove the mask from the universal speeches and bring the contention to the individuals, in the intimacy of the alcove. Only the initiates are allowed to remove the mask, but under the protection of the walls.
Alcibiades, to eulogize Socrates, resorts to the form of Silenus’s statues, the wise satyr of Dionysus’s cortege, ugly in appearance, half-man, half-goat, guardian of the tragic wisdom of the finitude of being and of men. Silenus’s statues have hollowedout pieces, and precious images of gods are hidden in them. What a revealing image of Socrates, whose appearance is notoriously ugly but, in speech, conceals amazing beauty! Even his speeches begin to appear insignificant, questioning, dealing with potters and cobblers, and end up reaching ecstasy in the highest realms of the super heavenly world.
Not only Silenus but also Marsyas, another satyr, the most charming, most seductive flautist. Socrates charms and, like the flautists, but without the flute, enthralled those who were there. Everyone there was just witnesses. A wise satyr, who sneaks in, an enthusiastic satyr, what better image of Socrates’ ironic dialectic and paederastic seduction? Alcibiades opens in confession:
Much more than the corybantes in their transports, my heart beats and tears flow under the effect of their speeches ... At cost, then, as if I were withdrawing from the sirens, I close my ears and retreat, so that you do not sit there and your feet grow old. [...] I, it is before this man that I am ashamed. [...] in the state of being bitten by the viper [...] bitten by philosophical speeches that have more virulence than the viper. (215 e)
Here is the man completely subdued by the drug that imposes on him the desire, which gives him pleasure, which hallucinates and consumes him. Alcibiades is totally incontinent in his passion for Socrates. But that man disdains him, plays with his feelings, and mocks him. He does not bow to his beauty nor to his riches or honours. In his eulogy of injured love, the doors of intimacy open up one after another; until in his confession, he reaches the foot of the bed completely alone with the man. Alcibiades at his most beautiful, most desired, most courted, tries to give himself up. But after talking, Socrates simply leaves. Alcibiades invites him to gymnastics; but after fighting, Socrates leaves. Finally, he invites him to dine “as a lover setting a trap for the beloved”; once, with the lights off, totally possessed, Alcibiades makes the proposal, which in each term follows the rules of aristocratic pederasty, already enunciated by Pausanias, less by a wretched and miserable detail. He, the young man, who should be beloved and listen to the proposal, passionately takes the initiative and the place of lover, erastés, that was to be played by the most experienced. Epoptic revelation of the shame of shames: having spent the night in an
1 213e.
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parmi les guides les plus actifs de la civilisation contemporaine, en bien comme en mal.
— … Pas plus qu’un représentant qualifié du travail, de cette formidable puissance qui s’appelle « les syndicats ouvriers ». Le camarade Jouhaux n’a jamais songé à se présenter, et nul n’y pense pour lui. L’Académie échantillonne les anciennes forces dirigeantes de la communauté, non pas celles qui ne sont apparues que depuis Richelieu. En cela elle manque d’imagination. Mais cela viendra un jour. Par degrés. Très lentement. Comme toutes les vieilles institutions, l’Académie ne peut évoluer qu’en ayant l’air de ne pas évoluer. A cet égard elle est presque logée à la même enseigne que l’Église catholique.
— Et, poursuivit Pamphile, est-ce qu’elle sert à quelque chose, l’Académie ? J’avoue que je ne discerne pas bien à quoi. Vous n’allez point, n’est-ce pas, me parler du Dictionnaire. Il serait dérisoire d’assembler depuis quatre siècles quarante personnes, en aucune façon du reste, pour la plus grande part, préparées par leur profession à ce travail, et de les habiller en vert pomme, uniquement pour rédiger un Dictionnaire !
— Rien de plus certain. Mais, Pamphile, à quoi sert aux Anglais de mettre, dans l’abbaye de Westminster, les statues de leurs grands hommes, dont la plupart ne se recommandent point des mérites de leurs sculpteurs ?
— L’Angleterre les veut ainsi honorer ; ce faisant, elle s’honore elle-même. Cela lui donne, aux yeux des étrangers et de ses propres citoyens, quelque grandeur.
— L’Académie Française, pareillement, est une sorte de musée, mais de personnages encore en vie. Et voyez un peu, entre parenthèses, l’évolution qui s’est faite dans l’esprit national : en associant lorsqu’elle fut créée, de grands seigneurs et de simples écrivains, son fondateur entendait relever ceux-ci devant l’opinion ; du moins c’est ainsi qu’on le considéra bientôt. A cette heure, c’est plutôt la présence des écrivains qui relève, devant l’opinion, la qualité de ceux de ses membres qui ne sont point des
professionnels de la pensée écrite. De là vient même cette erreur générale, dont vous venez de vous faire l’écho, que pour faire partie de l’Académie, l’on devrait être auteur. Cela prouve l’éminente situation des écrivains dans la société contemporaine — en France, car il n’en est pas tout à fait de même ailleurs. On peut dire que les lettres de noblesse de la profession littéraire, chez nous, datent de 1635, année, comme chacun sait, de la fondation de l’Académie.
C’est pourquoi les écrivains tiennent tant à en être ; et la sélection distinguée de la compagnie lui vaut, à l’étranger, une estime qui n’est pas sans exercer une salutaire influence. L’Académie, on l’a vu pendant la guerre, et depuis, est un excellent agent de propagande nationale.
— Voilà pour l’étranger. Mais à l’intérieur ?
— A l’intérieur, au point de vue strictement littéraire, il est bien possible qu’elle ne serve pas à grand’chose, malgré les récompenses dont elle est dispensatrice. Indirectement, il n’en est pas de même.
— Indirectement ?
— Elle agit comme frein régulateur. Il n’est pas d’écrivain de quelque mérite, c’est-à-dire de quelque ambition, qui ne se figure avoir l’épée d’académicien dans son plumier. Cela n’est pas sans exercer une action, après tout bienfaisante, sur sa manière de concevoir l’œuvre d’art, et son respect de la langue. Par essence, la profession est anarchique, elle se place au-dessus des conventions morales et sociales. Il arrive qu’on s’en aperçoive un peu trop, bien qu’il ne me semble pas mauvais, en somme, qu’il en soit ainsi. Mais son désordre et, si j’ose dire, son irrespect souvent heureux, seraient bien plus grands encore si les écrivains ne songeaient parfois à se réserver, le temps venu, les faveurs de celle qu’entre eux ils appellent « la vieille dame ».
— Cela me paraît vrai… et je n’y avais point pensé.
— Mon cher Pamphile, ce qu’il y a toujours de plus difficile à distinguer, c’est ce qu’on a quotidiennement sous les yeux, justement parce qu’on a l’habitude de le voir, et qu’alors on n’y fait
plus attention. Telles sont les actions et les réactions des différents éléments de la société contemporaine les uns sur les autres.
— Vous parliez tout à l’heure des prix, si nombreux, que l’Académie distribue chaque année. Vous n’avez pas l’air d’y porter grand intérêt.
— C’était pour aller vite, et parce que j’avais autre chose à dire. En réalité, ils aident à vivre quelques modestes et sérieux travailleurs que leurs ouvrages n’enrichissent pas, dans le domaine de l’histoire, même littéraire, et de la morale. Pour ceux de pure littérature, il n’en va pas tout à fait ainsi, par cette raison sans doute qu’il y en a trop, et que l’attention s’y égare. Peut-être aussi parce que, agissant, comme je l’ai dit, à la manière d’un frein, l’Académie suit de loin le goût du public et les tendances des auteurs, au lieu de les provoquer.
— Mais il y a aussi les prix de vertu, les prix d’encouragement aux familles nombreuses, que sais-je encore !
— Oui. Cela est, en principe, excellent. Toutefois je n’envisage pas sans une certaine inquiétude ce développement des attributions de l’Académie. Son budget est considérable, elle dispose d’une large fortune, qui va sans cesse en grandissant. Elle en fait, certes, le meilleur usage. Pourtant je redoute que, comme celle des congrégations, cette fortune ne finisse par susciter des convoitises administratives, encouragées par quelques éléments extrêmes de l’opinion publique.
— Et alors ?
— Alors, il y aura une crise de l’Académie, extérieure à elle, et peut-être intérieure.
— Vous le regretteriez ?
— Je l’avoue. L’Académie demeure, quoi qu’on puisse dire, une jolie plume au chapeau de la communauté française. Elle fait quelque bien, et nul mal. Elle est connue, du moins de nom, du dernier des paysans et des ouvriers. Elle est la preuve antique, et toujours vivante à leur regard, qu’il est chez nous d’autres
puissances que celles de l’argent et de la politique. Cela n’est pas rien.
— Mais enfin, demanda Pamphile, est-il exact qu’il existe, à l’Académie, une droite et une gauche ?
— Il n’y a guère là qu’une apparence. La vérité est que, dans une compagnie qui se recrute par cooptation, il faut bien voter pour ou contre quelqu’un, et par conséquent former des groupes qui s’accordent chacun, un peu d’avance, sur le choix d’un candidat. Sinon le scrutin offrirait des résultats encore plus imprévus que ceux dont, parfois, s’étonne le public. Ce n’est que dans ce sens que l’on peut dire, parlant grossièrement, qu’il existe une droite et une gauche à l’Académie.
— Alors l’Académie ne fait pas de politique ?
— Certes non ! A quoi cela lui servirait-il ? Elle ne peut exercer, en cette matière, aucune action. Il faut se souvenir seulement que, depuis trois quarts de siècle, elle agit, ou prétend agir, à la manière d’un frein, comme je vous l’ai dit — ce qui tient un peu, sans doute, à l’âge moyen de ses membres, assez élevé, et à leurs origines sociales. C’est ainsi qu’elle tend ordinairement à l’opposition. Sous le second Empire, elle était libérale. Sous le régime actuel, elle est plutôt conservatrice.
« Je souhaiterais vous faire observer que, du temps du second Empire, son attitude prenait une certaine importance politique, du fait que les discours de ses membres étaient une des rares manifestations d’opinion qui parvinssent aux Français. Les délibérations mêmes du corps législatif n’étaient pas publiques. Mais aujourd’hui que tout le monde peut dire n’importe quoi à l’occasion de n’importe quoi et au sujet de n’importe qui, un discours académique demeure, dans tous les sens du terme, « académique », et voilà tout. A peine s’émeut-on légèrement quand un immortel qualifie le coup d’État du 2 décembre « d’opération de police un peu rude ».
« Pour en revenir aux élections à l’Académie, et à cette fameuse division en droite et en gauche, il est à noter que, dans les moments mêmes où les augures déclarent gravement que la majorité appartient à la droite, cela n’empêche jamais un candidat passant pour être « de gauche » d’être élu ; et réciproquement. C’est que les relations personnelles entre un candidat et ses électeurs, et aussi la prise en considération sérieuse de ses titres, jouent au bout du compte un plus grand rôle que cette prétendue division politique. Seulement…
— Seulement quoi ?
— Pamphile, avez-vous remarqué qu’il est souvent beaucoup plus aisé, surtout avec le scrutin uninominal, de prévoir le résultat d’une élection au suffrage universel que d’une élection au suffrage restreint — d’un député que d’un sénateur ? C’est que, plus le corps électoral est réduit, et plus les possibilités de combinaisons, plus les tractations, secrètes ou avouées, sont nombreuses. C’est ce qui se passe, malgré le secours de l’Esprit Saint, pour l’élection d’un pape. C’est ce qui arrive aussi quelquefois aux élections académiques pour certains fauteuils.
— Et cela est décevant pour la galerie !
— Rassurez-vous. Si le candidat battu est académisable, il aura bientôt sa revanche.
— Mais qu’est-ce qu’un candidat véritablement académisable ?
— Ah ! vous m’en demandez trop !… On est académisable pour des titres non littéraires, un rang distingué dans l’armée, la diplomatie, l’Église, la politique. On n’est pas académisable, même si l’on est un écrivain, un historien, un philosophe de valeur, sans une certaine « tenue » mondaine, ou tout au moins bourgeoise… Verlaine n’était pas académisable, et M. Jean Aicard l’était… Encore une fois l’Académie est un cercle : on ne doit pas donner à craindre par ses mœurs, ses fréquentations, son caractère, que l’on compromettra, aux yeux du vulgaire, la réputation du cercle.
— Vous venez de me dire que les fonctions d’homme politique rendent académisable. Le public s’en étonne.
— Il en fut toujours ainsi. C’est une vieille tradition. Il peut arriver seulement que, à de certains instants, il y ait trop d’hommes politiques à l’Académie. Mais c’est que celle-ci, comme tous les autres corps électoraux, est sujette à des engouements…
« Par ailleurs, il est des candidats non académisables qui sont malgré tout candidats. Il en est dont on s’amuse. Il en est aussi de charmants. Je veux, demain, que vous fassiez la connaissance de mon ami Covielle : il est candidat, par principe, à tous les fauteuils vacants.
— Il n’est jamais entré dans ma pensée, nous dit Covielle, même au cas où je devrais vivre plus longtemps qu’Arganthonius, roi de Gadar, lequel, au dire de Pline l’Ancien, vit briller l’aurore de sa cent quatre-vingtième année, que je serais véritablement un jour de l’Académie. Je me présente infatigablement : ce qui n’est pas du tout la même chose.
« Je me présente parce que j’ai fait une découverte. C’est que les membres de l’Académie Française sont les seuls humains, en France, chez lesquels on puisse pénétrer, sur simple lettre d’audience, sans avoir jamais eu l’honneur de leur avoir été présenté ! Quand on n’a pas de relations, ou bien uniquement, comme moi, des relations ennuyeuses, c’est un avantage inappréciable. Une tradition bienveillante, ancienne et généreuse, veut qu’ils ne puissent refuser d’accueillir aucun candidat. J’imagine pourtant que ces immortels sont aussi occupés que les ordinaires mortels ; tout le monde, de notre temps, a quelque chose à faire, les minutes sont comptées. Cependant je crois qu’il est sans exemple qu’un académicien ait jamais refusé le quart d’heure d’usage à n’importe quel candidat, même au candidat que je suis : cela est admirable et touchant.
« Il ne saurait y avoir façon plus agréable d’employer son temps. Il doit y avoir un art de recevoir les impétrants à l’Académie qui s’apprend peu à peu, et dont les principes se sont transmis, tendant à la perfection, pendant quatre cents ans. Aucun de ceux que j’ai
vus ne m’a promis sa voix. Ils sont incapables d’une telle erreur de goût, dérisoire et grossière. Ils m’ont fait savoir, au contraire, qu’ils ne me l’accorderaient point. Mais avec quel souci des nuances, quelle courtoisie ! Depuis que je suis né, je n’avais entendu dire si grand bien de moi ; même il ne m’est jamais arrivé d’en penser autant.
« Je ne serai jamais de l’Académie. Je n’ai jamais nourri cette illusion. Mais j’en viens parfois à songer que c’est dommage : parce que, si j’en étais, une grâce particulière descendrait peut-être sur ma tête, qui me prêterait le talent d’inspirer un si subtil et délicat plaisir en vous disant « non ». Les femmes elles-mêmes ne le possèdent pas à ce point. Ajoutez à cela qu’après vous avoir parlé de vous, de façon si flatteuse, on vous parle quelquefois des autres — des autres candidats. On ne vous en dit jamais de mal : cela serait contraire aux principes. Mais on ne vous en dit pas de bien ; on y met une gentille malice. Et puis, cinq minutes encore, on vous parle d’autre chose, et l’on vous en parle d’une manière divine. J’ai trouvé là ce que j’ai souhaité toute ma vie, et ce qui, toute ma vie, m’avait manqué, une conversation.
« Je crois me souvenir que vous écrivez dans les journaux. Je vous supplie de ne point rapporter ces confidences : trop de gens après cela voudraient être candidats, et je répugne à imposer ce surcroît de charges à ceux dont je garde un si reconnaissant souvenir Ce serait, vous l’estimerez sûrement comme moi, mal payer l’agrément si rare dont j’ai joui. Je préfère d’ailleurs, par pur égoïsme, garder pour moi ce secret délicieux, et en user.
« Car je veux être candidat à l’Académie jusqu’à ma mort. J’y suis fermement décidé ; cette vocation s’est révélée à mon esprit et à mon cœur. Réfléchissez qu’il y a toujours de trente à trente-cinq visites à faire, chaque fois quatre cent vingt-cinq minutes de cette causerie d’où l’on sort rasséréné, avec l’impression qu’on est quelqu’un. Pour retomber dans la plate réalité, pour recommencer à se juger à sa mince valeur, il faut se retrouver avec des gens qui ne sont pas académiciens, tels que vous. Tandis que là, même les regards, ô miracle, même les regards ne vous découragent point.
« Je vais vous avouer une chose : même si je pouvais être de l’Académie, je ne le voudrais pas, afin d’avoir l’occasion de me représenter. Et je compte recommencer toutes les fois que l’occasion s’en offrira. Ce sera désormais ma carrière. »
CHAPITRE XXI
OÙ L’ON VA…
Pamphile vient de publier son premier roman. Il est à cette heure le poulain, ou l’un des poulains, d’un éditeur actif ; il sait, à vingtquatre ans, soigner ses intérêts d’écrivain avec une intelligence et un bonheur qui m’émerveillent, en me choquant un peu ; il collabore à quelques-unes de ces revues où les jeunes gens d’aujourd’hui s’appliquent à couvrir des apparences d’une intellectualité grave un lyrisme sous-jacent, peut-être plus amoral et individualiste encore que celui des générations précédentes — toutefois aristocratique et anti-démocratique. Enfin il s’efforce d’être de son temps. C’est bien naturel, je ne songe pas un instant à le lui reprocher.
J’ai lu son ouvrage avec curiosité, et aussi avec intérêt. Un intérêt véritable, je vous assure. D’abord ce n’est pas ça du tout que j’aurais écrit, je n’y aurais jamais pensé. C’est bien quelque chose. S’il faisait ce que j’ai fait, à quoi servirait-il qu’il eût pris la plume ? Son roman n’est nullement à mettre de côté, encore qu’il ne soit pas entièrement satisfaisant. Il est imparfaitement composé, il montre, à côté de trouvailles, d’expressions neuves et ingénieuses, des faiblesses singulières, une méconnaissance parfois inquiétante du génie de la langue. Il unit, dans un mauvais mariage, ainsi que l’a déjà marqué M. Robert Lejeune au sujet de quelques-uns de ses contemporains émules, « au style à images vives et incohérentes,
très mauvais pour les yeux fatigués, le style en sauts de carpe, où des tronçons de phrases se tordent, se retournent, échantillons de toutes les inversions, ellipses, anacoluthes, possibles en français ».
Ce qui me paraît plus inquiétant encore, c’est qu’il emploie les mots à contresens, ou tout au moins de façon fort plate, parce qu’il ignore leur origine et leur histoire, qu’il ne connaît point l’art de leur rendre leur fraîcheur et leur jeunesse en les allant retremper à ces sources. Nous sommes en vérité à une époque où, en toute occurrence, la monnaie de papier, dont la valeur change à chaque instant, a remplacé l’étalon d’or.
Tout cela me gêne. Tout cela me donne le sentiment d’une chose qui n’est pas faite pour durer, d’une œuvre qui n’a pas le souci d’être un chef-d’œuvre, mais seulement un objet de consommation immédiate — le sentiment, enfin, de « la mode » remplaçant « l’art ». C’est fait pour cette année-ci, non pour l’éternité. Ça n’est pas en bronze ni en marbre, mais en soie légère.
Et pourtant c’est plein de qualités ! D’abord cela constitue, sur notre époque, un précieux document. C’est vu avec des yeux de sauvage qui parle comme il voit. Cela révèle des tas de choses que je n’aurais su ni discerner ni décrire avec mes vieux outils, ces outils d’un si bon métal, et dont la trempe a résisté aux siècles. C’est assez creux dans l’invention générale, et d’une construction lâche, mais si riche dans l’observation du détail, de « l’accident ». Et c’est l’accident qui fait la réalité. Et puis, c’est amusant ! Il n’y a pas à dire, c’est amusant ! Peut-être seulement comme la dernière création d’un grand couturier, non pas d’un grand sculpteur ni d’un grand peintre. Mais c’est toujours ça. Et j’y sens davantage la manifestation directe d’un tempérament, malgré l’insuffisance de la technique, peut-être même à cause de cette insuffisance comme chez beaucoup de peintres de nos jours.
Enfin, chose curieuse, les ouvrages mêmes de ceux qui s’affirment, avec le plus d’assurance, anti-romantiques, semblent bien souvent beaucoup plus anti-classiques qu’anti-romantiques. Je veux dire qu’on n’y rencontre guère le souci de la mesure et de la composition. Marcel Proust lui-même est un écrivain rare et
remarquable. Mais si, comme on le voulait aux époques classiques — et du reste comme le voulaient encore les grands romantiques, — l’art consiste dans le choix, où est l’art, dans cette prose qui veut tout dire, et ne choisit rien ? Pourtant elle en a. Mais ce n’est pas celui-ci.
Autre caractère à signaler. Cette littérature de jeunes, singulièrement intelligente, manque singulièrement de jeunesse et d’ingénuité. Souvent d’humanité. Ce sont des qualités qu’on rencontre toutefois dans le Nono de Gaston Roupnel, dans la Nêne de Pérochon. Mais c’est justement peut-être parce que ces œuvres en manifestent qu’elles paraissent discutables, qu’elles n’ont pas, dans notre France contemporaine, la place qu’on leur accorderait ailleurs, en Angleterre par exemple. Le courant ne se dirige pas de ce côté.
C’est par cette recherche, excessive parfois, et comme « cocaïnique » de l’intelligence, et par ce défaut d’ingénuité, que les tendances de notre littérature contemporaine diffèrent en effet de celles de la littérature contemporaine anglo-saxonne ; et c’est, j’imagine, pour cette cause qu’elle a tant de peine, malgré tous ses efforts, à paraître une littérature « d’action ». Elle a parfois une propension malheureuse à confondre le roman d’action et le roman d’aventures.
Il serait assez facile de démontrer que c’est juste le contraire.
Mais, d’un point de vue tout extérieur, qui n’est point cependant sans signification, ces deux littératures, l’anglaise et la française, offrent de nos jours une apparence commune : l’abondance de la production.
Cela vient d’abord de ce que, dans les deux pays, la « demande » est très supérieure à ce qu’elle était il y a un demisiècle. Beaucoup plus de personnes ont appris à lire, et lisent en effet. En même temps les classes qui ont, assez récemment, appris à lire, bénéficient de plus gros salaires et de plus de loisirs. Dans les deux pays ce progrès de l’instruction générale, et ces loisirs, sont le fruit du développement des institutions démocratiques. Il ne semble
pas, en France du moins, que tous les écrivains en témoignent à celles-ci une égale gratitude.
Mais il n’y a pas que cet accroissement du nombre des lecteurs. Il y a aussi augmentation du nombre des auteurs.
Dans les pays anglo-saxons ceux-ci, depuis longtemps, ne se recrutaient pas uniquement dans la peu nombreuse aristocratie qui a passé par les établissements secondaires de Harrow, d’Eton, de Rugby ou de Windsor, par les grandes universités de Cambridge et d’Oxford ; ou aux États-Unis, dans les écoles analogues. Ils venaient d’un peu partout : témoin Kipling, Wells, Conrad, Jack London, Mark Twain et tant d’autres.
Notre belle langue écrite, depuis quatre siècles, est une plante de culture intensive, qui n’a pu croître que sur le terrain des études classiques, et, par suite, jusqu’à l’époque actuelle, à la faveur d’un enseignement secondaire fondé sur la connaissance plus ou moins approfondie plutôt moins que plus — des langues anciennes. Cet enseignement n’était donné qu’aux enfants de la bourgeoisie. C’est lui qui formait presque tous nos écrivains. On compterait sur les doigts d’une seule main ceux qui, au XIXe siècle, et même au XXe siècle, ne sont point sortis d’un lycée, d’un collège — ou d’un séminaire. Tout cela, je l’ai déjà signalé au début de ce petit livre.
Cependant supputez la population de ces établissements d’enseignement secondaire en 1850 et de nos jours : en trois quarts de siècle, elle a triplé. Cela tient à deux causes : il y a plus de familles en état de faire donner cet enseignement à leurs enfants ; et il y a, en raison des sollicitudes du régime, plus de bourses accordées à des enfants pauvres. La concurrence des établissements religieux élargit encore le chiffre de cette population.
Il est clair, que, si l’on apprend à écrire à un plus grand nombre de jeunes gens, il y en aura aussi un plus grand nombre qui écriront. Il existe donc en somme, de nos jours, plus d’hommes de lettres, pour la même raison qu’il y a plus d’avocats, de médecins et d’ingénieurs.
Il faut ajouter à cela que l’enseignement primaire, par ses écoles normales, a créé une culture primaire supérieure, qui a produit ellemême quelques écrivains, et de mérite : tel ce Pergaud, dont la guerre nous a privés.
C’est donc une floraison extrêmement drue à laquelle nous assistons. Elle donne des fleurs de toutes sortes, qui n’ont pas toutes le même parfum, ni le même éclat, ni la même rareté. On en discerne toutefois appartenant à des espèces neuves, encore non classées, et dont un botaniste dirait, à tout le moins, qu’on en pourrait tirer quelque chose en la cultivant, car l’impression générale est celle-ci :
Beaucoup d’œuvres, plus qu’auparavant, montrent une personnalité forte, des mérites d’ordres divers, annonçant, en quelque mesure, un renouveau. Fort peu — peut-être moins qu’auparavant — qui soient entièrement satisfaisantes, offrent un caractère définitif… On dirait de la littérature d’une démocratie qui s’aristocratise.
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