The ancient quarrel unsettled plato and the erotics of tragic poetry

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO THE ANCIENT QUARREL UNSETTLED: PLATO AND THE EROTICS OF TRAGIC POETRY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDAC

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

THE ANCIENT QUARREL UNSETTLED:

PLATO AND THE EROTICS OF TRAGIC POETRY

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

JOHN U NEF COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL THOUGHT

BY THOMAS LUKE BARTSCHERER

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS DECEMBER 2011

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ii

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements v

Introduction 1

1 The nature and power of images 20

1.1 Mimêsis and the ontology of images 22

1.1.1 Painting 22

1.1.2 Poetry 41

1.2 The power of images—the psychology of belief and the spectacle of suffering 46

1.3 The power of images—the greatest accusation 54

2 The critique of tragedy in Republic X: limitations and reformulation 61

2.1 Thinking twice: formal considerations 62

2.2 Thinking twice: erôs, epôidê, pharmakon 65

2.2.1 Erôs 65

2.2.2 Epôidê 67

2.2.3 Pharmakon 71

2.3 Two premises, two problems 75

2.3.1 Was will das Logistikon? 76

2.3.2 That obscure object 86

2.4 Beyond the looking glass; or, the return of the repressed 97

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2.4.1 Elusive originals 102

2.4.2 "The god must be described as he is…" 111

3 "All those beautiful tragic things" 118

3.1 Tragedy and erôs: an overview 119

3.2 Poetics of tragedy and philosophy of the tragic: Plato and Aristotle 128

3.3 Philosophy of the tragic: Halliwell and Rosen 132

3.4 Erôs for the beautiful and tragedy 145

3.4.1 The beautiful [to kalon] 145

3.4.2 To kalon, poetry, tragedy 148

3.4.3 Tragic beauty: irony and enigma 155

3.5 Conclusion: A frenzied and savage master? 161

4 Erôs: tyrannical and philosophical 164

4.1 The puzzle 164

4.2 Duo erôte 166

4.2.1 Argument of the imagery 168

4.2.2 Tyrannical desire: unnecessary, insatiable, lawless 170

4.2.3 Philosophical desire: unnecessary, insatiable, lawless? 175

4.3 One love: different objects 180

4.4 The puzzle is a puzzle 185

iv

5 Tragedy, transgression, and psuchagôgia 189

5.1 Was will der Mensch? 191

5.2 The good, the beautiful, and the tragic 195

5.3 Love minus zero/no limit 201

Works Cited 207

v

Acknowledgements

First thanks goes to the John U Nef Committee on Social Thought, and especially to the chair of the Committee and my advisor, Robert B Pippin, for sustained and unwavering support What there is of value in the following work derives in large measure from the unique intellectual environment of the Committee, which Mr Pippin has done so much to foster For his guidance, support, and example, I am enormously grateful I also thank the other members of my

dissertation committee—John M Coetzee, Jonathan Lear, and Glenn W Most—who over many years have been generous with their time and attention, their criticism and encouragement Many other individuals and institutions have aided and abetted my work on this project Chief among them, David N McNeill, cherished interlocutor since 1994, and Ewa Atanassow,

helpmeet of a dozen years Both have read many drafts and virtually every page of this work I cannot overstate my gratitude With apologies to any whom I omit inadvertently, I would like also to thank the following individuals and institutions: Danielle Allen, Shadi Bartsch, Rita Bartscherer, Manuel Baumbach, Jonathan Beere, Paolo d’Iorio, Anne Wescott Eaton, Christiane Frey, Paul Friedrich, Anne Gamboa, the late David Grene, H U Gumbrecht, John T Hamilton, Martin Holtermann, Brett Keyser, Martin Korjenac, Brad Krumholz, Justine Malle, Katia

Mitova, Sandra Moog, James I Porter, James Redfield, Joan Retallack, Daniel Richter, Jarrell Robinson, Naomi Rood, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, Nicholas Rudall, Lauriana Sapienza, Eric Schliesser, Roger Scruton, Mark Strand, Claudia Strobel, William Stull, Chenxi Tang, Nathan Tarcov, Jonny Thakkar, David Tracy, Martin Vöhler, James Wengler, Antja Wessels, my

siblings and their spouses, the Bradley Foundation, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Earhart Foundation, the École Normale Supérieure, the European College of the Liberal Arts, the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Foundation, Heidelberg University, the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits

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Modernes—CNRS, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, the North American Cultural Laboratory, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation In accordance with custom, I emphasize that I alone bear responsibility for the shortcomings of this work

1

Introduction

“There is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.” This remark and the

argument to which it belongs, attributed by Socrates to himself in Book X of Plato’s Republic,

has not suffered from neglect in the history of Western letters Rejoinders come early For

Aristotle, the notion of a “quarrel” between philosophy and poetry simply makes no sense Poetry is, like rhetoric or ethics or politics or weather, something about which philosophy can provide a reasoned account; it is not the sort of thing that might be regarded as an alternative to

or opponent of philosophy.1 In Plutarch, the antagonism is replaced with complementarity: poetry is informed by philosophical argument and philosophy is sweetened with an admixture of poetic myth.2 Subsequent responses, varying greatly in content, form, and tone, continue to appear from the time of the neoplatonists through to the twenty-first century The list would rival

Leporello’s catalogo for its magnitude and diversity.3 What I provide in this introduction is a

1 I agree with the many commentators who regard Aristotle’s Poetics as a response to the critique of poetry we find

in Plato, and especially in Republic X Halliwell (1998) offers a particularly detailed account of the relationship between the Poetics and the Republic See also Fuhrmann (1973), Gould (1964), and Kannicht (1980)

2 As Hunter and Russell observe, Plutarch’s De Audiendis Poetis 15d likely contains a direct allusion to Plato’s

formulation of the ancient quarrel (Plutarch (2011))

3 To get a sense of the sheer range of periods in which and authors for whom the quarrel is of pressing concern (in some cases, the concern being to reject the idea that there is such a quarrel), consider just a few prominent examples Neoplatonists, and Proclus in particular, inherit Plato’s interest in investigating the relationship between philosophy and poetry and they typically share with Plutarch a more harmonious conception of this relationship For the

Romantic writers of the 18 th and 19 th centuries, Plato’s formulation of the quarrel had profound resonance, as seen for example in Shelley’s “Defense of Poetry” and in much of Coleridge’s work (see James Vigus’s chapter, “The Ancient Quarrel Between Poetry and Philosophy,” in Vigus (2009), 63-92) For a revisiting of this tension from the perspective of a 20 th century novelist, see Italo Calvino’s “Philosophy and Literature,” in Calvino (1986), 39-49 Paul de Man, commenting on Plato, remarks that “philosophy and literature” are “the two activities of the human intellect that are both closest and the most impenetrable to each other,” in De Man (1979), 103 One may also recall

how Stanley Cavell concludes The Claim of Reason: “But can philosophy become literature and still know itself?” in

Cavell (1979), 496 Finally, in a recent study of the work of J M Coetzee, Stephen Mulhall argues that through the character of Elizabeth Costello, Coetzee re-visits questions about the relationship between philosophy and literature first formulated by Plato, but that Costello does so “in ways that can only be properly understood if we understand that our relationship to her is as a literary creation” (Mulhall (2009), 3)

2

highly selective survey of recent publications to identify the field within which the present study moves, and then a summary of my central concerns to reveal the absence of field at which it aims

In brief and broad terms, I will be arguing that for Plato, the quarrel contrasts two

fundamentally different conceptions of the nature and purpose of discursive activity and the ethical implications of each The distinction Plato proposes between philosophy and poetry is not, at root, a matter of formal criteria, such as meter or diction Nor is it simply the difference

between myth-making and account-giving, or between muthos and logos Moreover, I do not

believe we are to understand the quarrel to have been resolved within the confines of the

Republic, nor the arguments Socrates makes to constitute philosophy’s victory over poetry (or,

for that matter, philosophy’s incapacity to defeat its opponent) As I shall indicate in this

introduction and elaborate in detail in the study that follows, on my reading the quarrel turns on

the nature of what Plato calls erôs As modes of discourse, philosophy and poetry manifest

different understandings of the character and fate of erotic striving and constitute two different responses to the human condition

Three monographs dedicated to the ancient quarrel in various manifestations, published in the last three decades, appeared at about ten year intervals beginning in 1990 They provide a

convenient framework for this survey I begin with Thomas Gould’s The Ancient Quarrel

Between Poetry and Philosophy (1990), then take up Susan Levin’s The Ancient Quarrel

Between Philosophy and Poetry Revisited (2001), and turn finally to Raymond Barfield’s The Ancient Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry (2011).4 For Gould, the quarrel to which

4 Stanley Rosen’s The Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry: Studies in Ancient Thought (1988) was published

prior to all three mentioned above and includes chapters published as essays many years earlier I discuss Rosen’s work in detail in Chapter Three See also Most (2011), discussed below, and Kannicht (1980)

Gould’s argument turns on his account of pathos He defines pathos as “the operative event

in stories essential to popular religion and tragedy: catastrophic suffering, undergone by some great figure, man or god, far in excess of the sufferer's deserts” (ix).5 “Poetry” in the Republic’s

formulation of the ancient quarrel can be regarded, according to Gould, as "the enterprise of

those who wish to move hearers with accounts of a pathe”; philosophy, by contrast, is the

"mission of those who are hostile to this enterprise” (x) Gould further argues that poets and philosophers, so understood, are responding to fundamental and ineradicable features of human psychology that are irreconcilable We are in part driven by a desire, elevated to the highest principle in Socratic ethics, to lead our lives, to be alone responsible for the state of our souls Yet part of us also longs to believe that we are not responsible and therefore not guilty of the ills

5 I discuss the term pathos in some detail in Chapter One Gould, for his part, argues that the revelation of the hero’s underserved suffering—his pathos—was at the center of the religion of hero worship and initiation into the

mysteries and was central to the epic tradition as well From these sources, according to Gould, the celebration and

exploitation of pathos became the central feature of Attic tragedy See his chapter, “Pathos in Greek Religion,”

Gould (1990), 22-28

4

that befall us According to Gould, the great contribution of Plato’s poetics is to recognize how the difference between philosophy and poetry corresponds to this fundamental split in the human soul It is the discovery

that there has always been and must always be an irreconcilable difference between two drives within the human psyche: the rage to believe in justice, fed by philosophy, morality, theology, criticism, and other rational endeavor; and a rage

to believe in injustice, fed by poetry, myth, religion, and other expressions of our dreamer selves (85)

Plato’s insight, as Gould sees it, is inherited and his explanatory project advanced by modern psychoanalysis, and in particular, by Freud’s discovery that the superego, which Gould takes to be a rough equivalent of the middle part, the spirited part, of Socrates’ tripartite division, can itself be a source of misery through the experience of guilt (xix-xx) Plato recognizes that

“tragedy and rationality” cannot be reconciled, but offers an insufficient account of the

“counterrational pleasure we get from tragedy,” which for Gould is supplied by modern

psychoanalysis (xxvi) From the point of view of practical moral philosophy, moreover, this insufficient understanding leads Plato to embrace absolutely the dictates of Socratic rationalism

and to regard the pathos of tragic drama as an immoral satisfaction of the desire to have done

with self-responsibility From Gould’s perspective, one should recognize that the “rage to believe

in injustice” cannot be ignored or extirpated It must, to a certain extent, be gratified But at the same time, it should not be allowed to predominate Gould’s study makes the case that the

representation of pathos, as for example in tragic drama, is necessary for psychic and societal

health, but also aims to moderate its influence by clarifying the source and workings of it power The rest of Gould’s sprawling account examines the manifestations and ramifications of these central claims over a vast expanse of time, from Homeric epic to 20th century political rhetoric A great many questions can and have been raised about Gould’s argument, both in its

vicarious pleasure in, the pathos of tragedy On Gould’s reading of Plato, the pity felt by the

spectator of tragedy turns out to be a kind of projected self-pity: the spectator suffers because he recognizes his own plight in that of the suffering hero, and then again in reflecting on his (the spectator’s) own suffering The pleasure arises from the satisfaction of the desire to be a passive victim rather than to be actively responsible for one’s own suffering

It is an interesting idea, which some scholars have explored further.7 Yet we can note some immediate difficulties When Socrates explicitly identifies the desires and pleasures of each part

of the soul in the Republic (580d-581e), at least on the face of it nothing like a desire for

victimhood is indicated He speaks of the desire for wisdom, the desire for honor, and the desire for gain: where among these is the desire to be off the hook, ethically speaking? This question leads to another difficulty with Gould’s argument He blends together the fairly clear tripartite

psychology of the earlier books of the Republic with the considerably murkier, seemingly

bipartite psychology of Book X without accounting for the differences between the two Socrates

6 See, for example, the reviews by Halliwell (1992) and Salkever (1991) Central problems include scanty evidence

for his claims about the role of pathos in Greek religion; an assumed, rather than argued for, unity in the conception

of pathos, despite what appears to be a great deal of variety; a simplified account of the complex relationship

between Platonic and Freudian psychology; and, in the context of a book that covers an impressively vast range of periods and issues, an unwillingness to engage in a sustained way with thinkers other than Plato and Freud who have tackled similar issues and come to quite different conclusions from those proposed by Gould

7 See, for example, Halliwell (2002), 117, whom I discuss at length in Chapter Three, and Johnson and Clapp (2005), 148-49 David McNeill accepts the self-reflexive character of Socrates’ account of tragedy, but argues that the pity it elicits “need not express itself in self-pity” but may rather lead to “philosophic contemplation of our own experiences” (McNeill (2010), 234-35)

6

does in Book X speak of “the pitying part” [to eleinon] of the soul, which he says is strengthened

by attending to tragic poetry and, as a result, is more difficult to restrain from feeling self-pity This picture of the soul, with its pitying part, fits Gould’s argument somewhat better than the earlier account, although it is still a step to go from self-pity to self-exculpation On the other hand, the tripartite soul is critical for Gould because on his reading it anticipates Freud’s

superego

Perhaps the main virtue of Gould’s study is to recognize that the quarrel between

philosophy and poetry, as it appears in the Republic, should be understood as a fundamental

opposition, one that is deeply rooted in the dialogue and is a defining feature of Plato’s thought I share Gould’s conviction that the critique of poetry in Book X is not, as some have argued, a mere digression, appendix, or afterthought.8 I also agree that the significance of the quarrel, for Plato, is best understood in terms of moral psychology.9 Finally, I think Gould is right to place tragic poetry, in particular, at the center of Plato’s concerns I shall, however, offer a

substantially different interpretation of Plato’s account of tragedy and why it is the primary focus

of the critique of poetry in Book X

Ten years after the publication of Gould’s study, Susan Levin returns to the topic with The Ancient Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry Revisited: Plato and the Greek Literary

8 Shorey refers to all of Book X as "in a sense an appendix" and calls the discussion of poetry "an intervening digression" that serves chiefly to "rest the emotions between two culminating points" (Plato (1935), 1:lxi, 2:xxii);

Nettleship (1901) holds that the discussion of poetry in Book X "is disconnected from the rest of the Republic" and

"breaks the continuity" (304); Cross and Woozley (1964) write that Book X "must be regarded as an appendix" (263); Annas (1981) calls it an “excrescence” (335); and even the judicious Adam says the discussion of poetry in Book X is "of the nature of an episode, and might have been omitted without injury to the artistic unity of the dialogue" Plato (1963), II:384 Nehamas (1999), in opposing this view, cites additional proponents of the "appendix" idea (256), including Else (1972) Those joining Nehamas in explicitly dismissing the dismissers of the critique of poetry in Book X include Halliwell (1988), Ferrari (1989), 129 and Levin (2001), 152

9 As will become clear in what follows, I do not agree with Gould that the ontological dimensions of the critique of poetry are “peripheral” to the main psychological argument (31)

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Tradition Levin’s declared purpose is to demonstrate that Plato’s thought is informed by, and in

conversation with, the literary tradition that preceded him in ways and to an extent that had not been acknowledged Levin is particularly concerned to document this influence in the realm of what she calls the “philosophy of language.” Much of the book is dedicated to this task, focusing particularly on etymology, eponymy, and the use of “functional terms,” (e.g., terms used to denote kinship) Levin’s overarching contention is that the literary authors of the Greek

tradition—in which she includes the epic, lyric, and dramatic poets as well as Herodotus—were

at least as significant for the development of Plato’s thought as the so-called pre-Socratic

philosophers It is only in the final chapter that she comes to a direct consideration of the ancient

quarrel as it appears in the Republic

On Levin’s reading, Socrates’ formulation of the quarrel is a straightforward presentation

of two different views regarding the roles of poetry and philosophy, respectively, within the city

in speech discussed in the Republic and, she seems to think, within Greek society more

generally.10 Plato is, according to Levin, firmly on the side of philosophy, which is presented as the “preeminent technê” (Levin 2001, 12) “Plato,” she maintains, “‘wins’ for philosophy the

quarrel [diaphora] between it and poetry by arguing, against tradition, that philosophy should be

the teacher of adults and hence supplant poetry in this way as the educator of Greece” (129) Yet this does not mean, on her interpretation, that for Plato there is no role for poetry in the best regime Rather, Plato “reserves an important role for … poetry both in the project of attitude

10 For the most part, Levin limits her discussion to what she refers to as “the ideal polis.” She does however extend

the claim, indicating that the arguments for the superiority of poetry within the ideal city apply equally in the real cities that constitute “Greece” (129, 166) Levin does not indicate why what holds in the hypothetical city should be thought to hold also in real cities On this issue, I agree with Gadamer: "The state is a state in thought, not any state

on earth Its purpose is to bring something to light and not to provide an actual design for an improved order in real political life," Gadamer (1980), 48

8

formation that is the focus of early education and in the broader communal context, where poetic compositions will be integral to a range of civic occasions” (12)

Levin rightly recognizes and persuasively documents the “tremendous influence of

traditional literary education” in classical Athens Not only Homer, but “over time, Hesiod, Pindar, and the tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were also recognized as

influential educators” (8) Levin also makes the important point that, through the dramatic

festivals, this literary tradition was formative not only for a small elite but for a large portion of the Athenian public While neither of these is in itself a novel observation, both are important to bear in mind when thinking about what is at stake in Socrates’ critique of poetry, culminating in the ancient quarrel.11 Levin furthermore reminds us of how contemporary conceptions of the boundaries between academic disciplines—philosophy, classical studies, literature—can distort our view of Plato’s authorial project.12 Her work shows how, in Plato’s own authorship, we see evidence that in the cultural tradition to which he is responding there was in effect no firm

distinction between poetry and philosophy To understand the genesis and significance of the stark difference proposed by Socrates, it is necessary to abandon, or at least bracket,

contemporary assumptions about what constitutes academic disciplines and discourses

Although Levin indicates her interest in what she refers to as the “‘literary’” or “‘poetic’” aspects of the dialogues (the quotation marks are hers), she is not much concerned in this study

to consider the hermeneutical implications of such things as irony, character, or dramatic action

Even the fundamental distinction between imitated speech [mimêsis] and narration [diêgêsis],

11 On the influence of the literary tradition on Plato, with a particular emphasis on the significance of the transition from oral to written culture, see Havelock (1963) For a general account of classical education, see Marrou (1965) Regarding the dramatic festivals, Levin mainly follows Pickard-Cambridge (1988)

12 Nussbaum (1986) is a deliberate effort to correct such misperception

9

which is made by Socrates himself within the Republic, does not come into play in her

interpretation She ascribes the arguments that Socrates proposes regarding poetry directly to Plato without comment and further takes these arguments to amount to philosophy’s side of the quarrel, which, as Levin puts it, “wins” over poetry While I think—and argue in Chapter One—that the account of poetry Socrates outlines in Book X is considerably more sophisticated and interesting than has often been recognized, I also think—and argue in Chapter Two—that this surface argument has decisive limitations, which the dialogue itself, to a significant degree through literary devices, brings to attention A more comprehensive account of the significance

of the quarrel for Plato’s thought requires that we move beyond those limitations, while still remaining within the text of Plato’s dialogues, as I aim to do in Chapters Three, Four, and Five

It should also be mentioned that Levin, unlike Gould, takes little notice of the particular

emphasis on tragedy, an aspect of Plato’s thinking on poetry that will be prominent in my

interpretation Levin does provide, as she indicates, “a powerful reminder of how central the quarrel with poetry is for Plato” (167) Yet to think that Plato regards the quarrel as settled in

favor of philosophy—as philosophy is represented by Socrates’ argument in Republic X—is on

my reading to neglect the underlying questions Plato aims to raise, which pertain in part to the very possibility of philosophy as so represented

Raymond Barfield, in his recently published monograph, The Ancient Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry (2011), does to a certain extent address these underlying questions The

book is an expansive study of the ancient quarrel in its original formulation in Plato and in its subsequent reception, loosely conceived, presented in eleven episodes, each of which focuses on one or more key figures from Aristotle through to Mikhail Bahktin Barfield would agree with Levin, although he doesn’t discuss her work directly, regarding the profound influence of the

10

literary tradition on Plato’s thought, a tradition that includes figures like Homer and Hesiod no less than Parmenides and Heraclitus It is, Barfield argues, “precisely the similarities between poetry and philosophy that lend energy to the quarrelsome relationship between the two” (2) Barfield, with Levin and others I shall discuss presently, regards the quarrel as something

“created before our eyes” in the Republic (17) Through much of his discussion, Barfield also

seems to agree with Levin on a number of points about which I have raised concerns He

assumes, without argument, that Socrates speaks on behalf of Plato, that Plato is to be understood

as an unambiguous advocate of philosophy, and that the philosophy Plato is advocating in

opposition to poetry is represented by the kinds of arguments presented by Socrates in Book X Barfield does, however, bring to the fore what I regard to be some of the key issues in Plato’s formulation of the ancient quarrel

Weaving together the discussions of poetry in the Republic and the Ion, Barfield maintains

that for Plato, while poetry may provide “starting points for philosophical inquiry,” the inquiry itself must take place within the realm of reasoned discourse.13 Because the wisdom of poetry, such as it is, is not achieved by dialectical inquiry but bestowed through inspiration, and because poetry depicts and plays upon emotion, it is not an integral part of, and can even be a distraction from, philosophical investigation Barfield identifies and acknowledges this critique, but then raises an important question He points out that there “is a motivating force in the act of

philosophy that might properly be called a feeling” (20) He refers to this as “transcendental

13 Barfield does not comment directly on the differences between the Republic and the Ion in regard to how poetry is portrayed and explained Most prominently: imitation (mimêsis and related words) is central to the former, not mentioned in the latter, while inspiration (entheos and related words) is the key concept in the latter, but is not mentioned in the Republic I discuss this issue in Chapter Two

11

feeling,” and later clarifies it as “the conviction that ‘life is good’” (20).14 While I ultimately disagree that the relevant “feeling” should be identified in this way, Barfield’s argument is illuminating He writes:

If a poet does make a claim to induce any sense of “life as good,” the philosophical rejoinder Socrates offers is that such recognition requires some

concept of what goodness is But the converse might be argued: to begin a discussion about goodness, one must first experience something as good in order

to question the nature of that experience Philosophical thought must have some fundamental experience with which to begin, an experience that is in some sense necessarily unreasoned, prior to reason’s work, which occurs while the

questioning mind is “absent” or at least precedes the activity of questioning and analysis (20)

Again, while I do not agree about the content of the “sense” induced by poetry, the salient point is that, for Plato, the quarrel turns ultimately on a question of non-discursive experience that orients and directs a way of life.15 On my reading, this experience is encountered in,

provided by, both poetry and philosophy What Barfield calls the “motivating force” is, in

Plato’s language, properly referred to as erôs.16 Seen in this light, the ancient quarrel raises a

complex psychological question both about erôs (the desire itself, manifest in the attraction to

philosophical or poetic discourse) and about that which inspires and sustains erotic desire (the

content of the discourses) For Plato, erôs is, in the first place (and possibly also in the last

14 Barfield indicates that he is borrowing language here from J A Stewart

15 See the discussion in Lear (2006) of the “orienting” power of poetry, which through allegory [hyponoia] can

convey meanings that enter “the psyche beneath the radar of critical thought” (27) On Lear’s account of Socrates’ argument, the child’s incapacity to distinguish between the surface and the deeper meaning of an allegory (see

Republic 378d-e) is analogous to the typical adult’s incapacity to recognize the “allegorical nature of ordinary

experience” (35) Thus the mythical and allegorical aspects of Plato’s writing can have an orienting, or re-orienting effect on his adult reader, different from but analogous to the effect that stories have on the developing psyche of a child

16 The “original experience” evoked here is akin to what Robert Pippin has called “original erotic attachment” in Pippin (2010), 15-19 My own account is indebted to Pippin’s formulation of this problem as manifest in the

writings of both Plato and Nietzsche See also Pippin (1997), 358-65

12

place), a response to beauty [to kalon].17 It is here, as the present study argues, that Plato’s particular emphasis on tragedy, which is addressed by neither Barfield nor Levin, comes into play

Barfield recognizes the relevance of erôs to the questions he is addressing and concludes his chapter on Plato with a discussion of the Phaedrus and the Symposium He argues that Plato

styles himself as a “new poet” who “will sing about what lies beyond the heavens where true being resides in a manner touchable only by reason” (24) Yet Barfield also sees that any writing that contains an account of “true being” will be subject to the same kind of critiques Socrates levels against poetry Plato’s writing, he suggests, is meant to replace traditional poetry,

attracting and enthralling the reader, facilitating the kind of “fundamental experience” that will draw its readers into a life of inquiry Such a project, however, encounters a problem brought out

by Barfield as follows:

If we are to persist in the training of the soul, we must believe training is for some end But until the soul has actually reached the final revelation, it cannot be certain that the goal toward which it is working is actually reachable Indeed, it cannot be certain that the goal is real at all (26)

This dilemma is explicitly thematized at various points in the dialogues when Socrates

encourages his interlocutors to persevere in their investigations A particularly prominent

example comes in the Meno, when Meno expresses doubt about the possibility of ever learning

anything new Socrates responds by encouraging Meno not to give up There are of course

17 As recounted in the Symposium, Diotima asks Socrates about the lover of beauty: if he were to get that which he

loves, what would he have? Socrates responds that he is unable to answer the question, so Diotima replaces the

beautiful [to kalon] with the good [to agathon] Socrates responds that the lover of the good will be happy

[eudaimôn] and the conversation proceeds to the point at which Diotima defines erôs as the desire for the good to be one’s own always (204d-206a) Beauty soon returns, however, and erôs is redefined as the desire to “engender and give birth in the beautiful” (206e) The final stage of Diotima’s speech, moreover, is all about erôs for beauty,

culminating in the life-justifying vision of beauty itself with no mention of the good This vacillation between the good and the beautiful points up what I regard to be a central and unresolved question regarding the ultimate object

of erôs that, as I shall be arguing, corresponds to the terms of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry

13

multiple and familiar ironies in the fact that Socrates’ response is to recount what he says he has heard from priests and priestesses and divine poets about reincarnation and the doctrine of

recollection He proposes to rely on the kind of authority he at other times treats skeptically, and

he invokes myth to inspire confidence in dialectical inquiry My point is that, as Barfield

recognizes, just this kind of irony is also at play in the relationship between Plato and his readers Barfield canvases several potential Platonic responses to this dilemma At one point, he

adduces the “perfect revelations” vouchsafed to Socrates by Diotima in the Symposium One who

beholds the form of the beautiful, writes Barfield, “experiences a vision without becoming

ecstatic or possessed by a god, without losing reason … the vision is attained in part through reason properly used This is the source of a new and better type of poetry, the sort of poetry

Plato writes” (28) Now, while the Symposium may well offer a description of the kind of erotic attachment that could sustain a life, this does not mean that to read the Symposium is to have the

relevant experience Even in the context of the dialogue, we should note, the “revelation” is heavily qualified All of what Diotima says is seen as through a glass darkly: it is what

Apollodorus says Aristodemus says about what Socrates said quite along time ago about what Diotima said years before that Moreover, Diotima explicitly warns Socrates, just prior to these final revelations, that he may not be able to able to follow her (210a)

Barfield suggests, alternatively, that Plato relies on the example of Socrates to combat the erotic power of traditional poetry The dialogues may not themselves reveal “true being” in a way that can inspire attachment to a way of life, but they provide an example of a person

dedicated to the search for “true being” and “this example prods us to persist along the way” (27) Here again, however, it is one thing to see Socrates engaged in dialectical reasoning,

something different to know why he does so There is, to be sure, a great deal of argument in the

14

dialogues for the superiority of the examined life But there is also, persistently, the suggestion—

most saliently in the discussions of erôs—that rational discourse is not sufficient to account for

the attachment to a way of life Moreover, when Socrates is presented as exemplary, there is always the danger that one may come to love Socrates rather than that which Socrates loved

This very danger seems to be on display in the Symposium, where we are presented one version

after another of individuals (Apollodorus, Aristodemus, Alcibiades) who have fallen in love with Socrates but have not adopted his way of life in the deepest sense (though barefoot Aristodemus seems to have adopted his lifestyle).18 Barfield refers to Socrates, misunderstood in this way, as a

“false image” and calls this consummation of desire as “false completion” (30) He suggests that Plato’s presentation of Socrates, and his writing in general, is designed to circumvent this by pointing beyond itself “The task of the true poet,” he writes, “is to make an image that sparks love, without becoming itself the false object of that love” (31) In the end, Barfield’s version of the relationship between philosophy and poetry in Plato looks more like a happy marriage than a quarrel “True poetry,” he concludes, “creates the starting point from which philosophy

proceeds” (31)

This however, as I shall discuss in Chapter Three, is to decide the matter in favor of

poetry Plato is here presented as a “true poet” because his writing points beyond itself, but to what does it point, and how does one evaluate the truth or falsity of that toward which it points?

Or, to put it in moral terms, the goodness or badness of that toward which it points? The

question, again, is about that which is deemed worthy of love and devotion in the most profound sense How does one know, for that matter, that the writing points toward anything at all, rather

18 As McNeill observes, Apollodorus and Alcibaides do not understand “the implication of Socrates’ poetic

association of himself with daimonic Eros The daimonic, on Socrates’ account, is nothing in itself; it is beautiful or

good only insofar as it directs one toward that which is itself beautiful or good” (McNeill (2010), 270)

this understanding of philosophical erôs is to be differentiated from the equally object-less desire that Plato characterizes in the Republic as tyrannical

While Barfield was motivated to revisit the original site of the quarrel by reflecting on what

he saw as its prodigious legacy, one might also be motivated by the question of its prehistory There has been a tacit assumption, and at times an explicit contention, among at least some scholars that the ancient quarrel really was “ancient” when Plato was writing—that is to say, that the antagonism suggested by Socrates’ formulation referred to a pre-existing tension between two different modes of discourse Curtius, for example, writes that “Plato’s criticism of Homer is the culmination of the ‘quarrel’ between philosophy and poetry that was already ancient in Plato’s time” (Curtius 1990, 204).20 However, as Glenn Most observes in a recently published study of the issue, there is scant evidence in the pre-Platonic record of philosophers criticizing poets, and with the exception of Old Comedy, there is even less evidence of poets attacking philosophers.21 Most analyzes the passages of poetry cited by Socrates as evidence for the

19 Rosen (1988), whom I discuss in Chapter Three, recognizes this problem and makes the explicit connection to Nietzsche

20 Additional examples where this is made explicit include Kannicht (1980), Gould (1990), and Richardson (1992)

In other work, e.g Nussbaum (1990), the assumption is implicit

21 Most (2011) Most notes that Nightingale (1995) and Murray (1996) reach similar conclusions Adam, writing his

commentary on the Republic at the start of the 20th century, calls attention to the paucity of pre-Platonic evidence indicating the existence of such a quarrel (Plato (1963), II.417)

16

quarrel (607b-c) and argues that, while all of them seem to be in the style of Old Comedy, they are deliberately presented as anonymous fragments, generalized by Plato to refer not to specific individuals, but to “larger discursive structures” (19).22 We might add that this is in marked

contrast to many other citations from poets in the Republic, where Socrates routinely specifies

the author.Most, following Nightingale (60) and Murray (231), concludes that “this opposition [sc between philosophy and poetry] may even be in the process of being constructed” by Plato

in the Republic itself (19)

If it is the case that Socrates, in speaking of the ancient quarrel, is not recalling a familiar notion but is rather proposing a new insight, then the importance of revisiting the original

formulation of the quarrel gains in urgency For if this is not a piece of literary history, if the very distinction between philosophy and poetry—which, as we have seen, has been a recurring concern throughout the subsequent history of Western culture—is being first formulated and

crystallized in the Republic, the question of Plato’s purpose in doing so becomes paramount

In the Phaedrus, Socrates suggests that dialectic is a matter of seeing together those things

that belong together and separating things that belong apart, cutting up each thing “according to its species along its natural joints,” and he claims to be “a lover of these divisions and

collections” (266a-b).23 It is in this light that I approach Plato’s formulation of the ancient

quarrel I regard it as a dialectical operation More specifically, I see it as an attempt not only to

22 It is a bit of a puzzle that Socrates would only cite passages that come, or sound like them come, from comedy, given the unambiguous emphasis on tragedy throughout Book X Socrates refers explicitly to comedy only once in Book X (606c), while references to tragedy and tragic poets abound The explanation may simply be, as Most (2011) suggests, that the only direct criticism of philosophy by poets in the preceding literary tradition was to be found in

Old Comedy Plato presents the quarrel as pertaining to all of poetry, conceived (as it is in the Republic) as a

discourse in opposition to philosophy, and clearly suggests that tragedy is the focal point For rhetorical purposes, however, he makes due with and massages the evidence on hand to support his larger point

23 I use the translation by Nehamas and Woodruff in Plato (1997a)

17

identify the differences between the two named modes of discourse, but also to show that they embody fundamentally different conceptions of the human condition and of how one ought to live The irony, as I shall argue in Chapter Three, is that the two modes are conceived in such a way that the explicit endorsement of either is an implicit endorsement of its opposite Plato’s position on this, I argue, is aporetic: the quarrel is deliberately unsettled

The discussion of the relationship between philosophy and poetry in the Republic and

elsewhere in Plato is thus not meant, as many have argued, to settle the matter It is rather

designed to demonstrate the limits of such discursive activity and to investigate the underlying principles and practical effectiveness of each.24 Moreover, as I aim to show, Plato is particularly concerned with tragedy—with what he calls tragedy, at least—because of its connection to

another of Plato’s central themes, erôs

Ÿ

The main concerns of my investigation, which I shall summarize presently, are expressed

pithily—aphoristically, one might say—in a remark by Socrates that I borrow from the Minos

Tragedy, says Socrates to his unnamed interlocutor, is the most “soul-leading

[psuchagôgikôtaton]” form of poetry (321a).25 In the present study, I argue that tragedy is, from

24 This approach to Plato has precedent among his earliest interpreters in the Academy As Tarrant (2000) argues, it was typical among the Academic readers of Plato to see the dialogues as designed to suggest “ways in which a problem might be approached or a question answered," rather than to decide the question (10) Some went so far as

to argue that Plato was "systematic in his non-commitment, or even that he took a stance that was hostile to

commitment" (13-14)

25 In the most substantial recent commentary on the Minos, Joachim Dalfen notes that the dialogue had been

accepted as an authentic work of Plato throughout antiquity, but that since the early 19 th century its authenticity has been questioned Dalfen reviews the debate and concludes the dialogue was most likely not written by Plato, but that

it shares a great deal in common, both in style and substance, with the Gorgias and with dialogues scholars typically ascribe to Plato’s “early” period (Plato (2009), 26-27) Glenn Morrow, in his monograph on the Laws, and Thomas Pangle, in his translation of and commentary on several dialogues, both regard the Minos as authentically Platonic (Morrow (1993), 35; Plato (1987), 1-22) Dalfen notes the similarity between this passage in the Minos and what Socrates argues in Republic X (166)

18

Plato’s perspective, poetry par excellence This means that what is said about poetry, particularly

in its relationship to philosophy, is exhibited most clearly in the case of tragedy It also means that the potency Plato ascribes to poetry is exemplified most fully in the case of tragedy

Psuchagôgikôtaton is an apt term to express what I regard as Plato’s general conception of the

power in question The word is an adjective in the superlative form, derived the substantive for

“soul” [psuchê] and the verb “to lead” [agô— “I lead”] Psuchagôgia and its cognates appear prior to Plato in connection with revivification rituals, as for example in Aeschylus’ Persians (687) and Aristophanes’ Birds (1555) It is the act of calling upon the dead and leading them, in a

sense, back to life: a notion not devoid of erotic resonance Beyond the strictly ritual context, the word-group is used to signify enchantment, bewitchment, or persuasion. 26 In the Phaedrus, Socrates says that rhetoric is “an art of leading the soul through words” [technê psuchagôgia … dia logon] (261a cf 271c) For Plato, as I read him, this is also the power of tragedy To

understand the workings of this power it is essential to consider Plato’s conception of erôs It is

in fact in the Phaedrus where we find the most vivid depiction in all of Plato of the kind of

orienting erotic attachment that I referred to above As Socrates explains, this attachment is the experience of the soul in response to beauty (250d-252c).27 Plato’s concern with soul-leading

26 For this broader use, see for example Isocrates 2.49 and 9.10; Xenophon, Memorobilia 3.10.6, and Plato, Timaeus 71a; Laws 909b; Phaedrus 261a and 271c Yunis notes that the passages in the Phaedrus call attention to the literal

meaning of the term, though he perhaps goes too far in saying that this usage “discards any notion of religious ritual

or magic” Plato (2011), 236 This is, after all, a dialogue in which a divine madness is praised and a complex myth

is invoked to account for human erotic experience Even as Socrates, at the start of the dialogue, eschews

mythological accounts of meteorological phenomenon, he acknowledges that he is in a profound sense unknown to himself (230a) There is throughout the dialogue the acknowledgment of something unknown about what constitutes

and moves the soul There is also the suggestion, on multiple levels, that a polyvalent discourse, embracing logos and muthos, might be necessary, even if not sufficient, in the effort to account for and educe the human soul

27 Aristotle uses a cognate, the verb form psuchagôgeô, to characterize the power of tragedy (1450a33), and beauty (to kalon) is also a key concept in his discussion Despite many similarities, however, Aristotle’s treatment of

tragedy differs profoundly from Plato’s See Chapter 3, below

19

power of tragedy and his concern with erôs, I shall be arguing, intersect in the vexed issue of

tragic beauty

In general terms, I maintain that the quarrel between philosophy and poetry turns ultimately

on the question of erôs, in the expansive sense in which Plato uses this term While all

manifestations of human desire can be comprehended under the general heading of erôs, at least

as it is presented by Socrates in the Symposium, philosophy is portrayed as the highest and most complete manifestation of erotic striving Philosophical erôs, as the desire to know, is directed toward and determined by its proper cognitive objects, the beautiful and/or the good Erôs is

therefore, at least in principle, satiable, but also, and for that reason, subject to surcease Even in

dialogues in which Socrates offers this account of philosophical erôs, however, he also

elaborates and explores the power of tragedy to arouse, capture, and sustain the erotic

imagination What this power reveals, I argue, is a conception of desire that, unlike the

philosophical conception, has no proper object The spectator of tragedy—the lover of tragedy—

does not behold any delimited object of desire but rather witnesses a display of the transgression

of limit as such On my reading of the dialogues, tragic beauty—which Plato is the first to isolate

and analyze—is the spectacle of perpetual transgression The contrast with philosophical erôs

could not be more pronounced For insofar as tragic beauty is regarded as the object of human striving, human desire is perpetually sustained but, by the same token, radically insatiable

Therein lies the root of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry as Plato conceives it At stake here are issues in aesthetics as well as ethics, questions as relevant to moral psychology as they are to literary criticism In broadest terms, Plato’s engagement with tragedy is a reflection on the nature and fate of desire: the conditions under which it is or can be sustained, and the possibility

of its fulfillment

20

1 The nature and power of images

The critique of poetry in Book X of Plato's Republic has so often been attacked or

dismissed that it has difficulty gaining a fair hearing Part of the explanation for this lies in the tendency to read the text from the top down, so to speak, beginning with assumptions about Plato's "theory of ideas" and interpreting the discussion in that light In this chapter, I shall be attempting the reverse: to read from the ground up, attending to the common sense intuitions that motivate the argument and making a plea for its plausibility.1 I shall eventually want to claim that even on a maximally charitable interpretation, there are serious limitations to Socrates' account, but to discern those limitations clearly, it is best to first put his case as strongly as possible

I track the critique as it unfolds in three consecutive—ultimately, I maintain, unified—

arguments Through the analogy with painting, the distinction between image and original, and the concept of a divided and desiring soul, Socrates renders an account of the human intercourse with images that ultimately posits tragic poetry as a formidable rival for philosophy As Socrates suggests at the close of the critique, this rivalry can be understood in erotic terms To get there, however, we need first to explicate the analysis of the nature and power of images

I should at the outset say a word about Plato’s nomenclature The key substantive used in

Book X to refer to that which a mimetic maker makes is eidôlon For example, when Socrates

asks Glaucon whether, if a man were able to make both “the thing to be imitated

[mimêsthêsomenon] and the phantom [eidôlon],” he would be serious about making phantoms

1 This bottom-up approach is inspired in part by as yet unpublished work by James Redfield on Book X, although Redfield's interests and conclusions are quite different from mine (Redfield (2005))

21

Eidôlon is distinguished in Plato, although not always consistently, from eikôn As a general rule, eidôlon signifies a copy that is less in truth and being than its original; eikôn is a more neutral

word, not necessarily implying ontological inferiority However, there is some overlap A

reflection in water may be referred to as an eidôlon (520c) or as an eikôn (402b-c), for example And although eikôn is not used to refer to the work of artists in Book X, Socrates does use eikôn earlier to refer to “images of animals” made by craftsmen [dêmiourgoi], where the reference

seems to be to the work of painters or sculptors (401b).2 It is also worth noting that while an

image in the lowest section of the divided line is an eikôn (509e ff), the images on the wall in the cave in Book VII are referred to as eidôla (520c).3 In Book X, Socrates also draws on the phainô word-group (phainomenon, phantasma), denoting in a very basic sense “something which

appears,” to identify the objects painters and poets make.4 There does not seem to be a rigidly systematic deployment of nomenclature here Rather, Socrates is conducting an inquiry into a cluster of familiar, loosely related objects and experiences, effectively de-familiarizing them through his questions and observations, compelling reflection, and gradually developing an account of the nature and power of what, taken as a group, we may refer to as images To make clear the differences among, and also what is common to, these various kinds of objects is, as I understand it, part of Socrates’ intention in these discussions

2 When Socrates first introduces the idea of the mimetic maker in Book X, he refers to him as a craftsman

[dêmiourgos] who is to be distinguished from the manual artisans [cheirotechnoi] (596c) Shortly thereafter, the painter is explicitly identified as a mimetic maker [mimêtês], differentiated from such craftsmen as, for example, the carpenter [klinopoios] (597d-e) The idea seems to be that “craftsmen” is the genus, within which manual artists and

mimetic makers are species Carpenters belong to the former group; painters (and, as he will soon argue, poets) belong to the latter

3 In the Sophist, we seem to get a clear typology of images, but there too the nomenclature is not always consistent

See note 11

4 For a discussion of eikon, eidolon, and phantasma in Book X, see Halliwell (1988)

22

1.1 Mimêsis and the ontology of images

Socrates begins, characteristically, with a question: "Could you tell me in general what

mimêsis is?,” he asks Glaucon “For neither do I myself quite apprehend what it would be at

(585c).”5 He does not ask Glaucon for a direct answer, but rather, prompts him first to reflect on the way in which objects are made, taking the simple example of a couch And although his ultimate purpose is to disclose the nature of images in poetry, he begins by way of an analogy with painting Now, painted images obviously differ in many respects from those in poetry, but

we are implicitly asked to entertain the possibility that, in respect of mimêsis, there is some essential sense in which they are the same, and it is that sense which Socrates endeavors to bring

to light Let us first consider, therefore, what Socrates tries to achieve by beginning with the example of painting That done, we can then consider how the analogy works with regard to the real topic of concern, tragic poetry

5 I have used the English translations of the Republic by Bloom (Plato (1968)) and Shorey (Plato (1935)), the latter

cited in boldface to differentiate it Occasional minor alterations are not marked; my own translations are marked as such

6 It is in part because the term has such a broad range of meanings that Socrates must take Glaucon through a step by

step inquiry into it For an overview of mimêsis as a term and concept, see Halliwell (1986), 121; for a more detailed discussion see Halliwell (2002), 37-48 Important work on the mimêsis word-group in the fourth century and earlier

includes Else (1958), Keuls (1978), Koller (1954), Halliwell (1986), 109ff, Halliwell (2002), 15-22, Havelock (1963), 57-59, Nehamas (1999)

At the same time, the two must in some sense resemble one another, since it is this resemblance

that permits us to correlate them—the painted image is of a couch, and not, say, of a chariot.8 The crux of the issue comes across in the following exchange:

“I suppose you’ll say that [the painter] doesn’t truly make what he makes And yet in a certain way the painter too does make a couch, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” [Glaucon] said, “he too makes what looks like a couch” (596e).9The painter makes what looks like a couch; he makes the appearance of a couch But what,

in relation to the original couch, is that thing which looks like it? What is a mimetic image? That difficult question, which will subsequently have a long and illustrious history in western

philosophy, is what Socrates attempts to formulate through the discussion of a painted couch

He does not argue that the image is “an object sui generis, to be judged,” as R G Collingwood

7 Murray represents the general consensus when she writes, "Mimesis is a protean term, whose precise connotations vary according to context, but broadly speaking, mimesis and its cognates indicate a relation between something which is and something made to resemble it," Murray (1996), 3 See further bibliography in note 6

8 Certainly there are many cases in which a pre-established code that does not rely on resemblance facilitates

recognition Architectural plans indicate elevation through conventional code, not resemblance But this is not what

Socrates has in mind here, and it seems unlikey that he would consider an architectural plan to be mimetic in the

specified sense

9 "alla phêseis ouk alêthê, oimai, auton poiein ha poiei kaitoi tropôi ye tini kai ho zôgraphos klinên poiei ê ou; Nai,

ephê, phainomenên ye kai houtos" (596e) All Republic passages in Greek are from the Oxford Classical Text edited

by Slings (Plato (2003))

24

puts it in his influential interpretation, “by a standard peculiar to itself.”10 Nor is it accurate to claim, as Alexander Nehamas does in rejecting Collingwood, that Plato’s position is “exactly the reverse,” i.e., that Plato holds that “the imitator of an F thing produces a seeming F thing, an object whose identity is constituted by the thing that it seems to be, not by any properties that it might have in its own right" (Nehamas 1999, 262-63) The position advanced in Book X of the

Republic lies in between these two extremes and is more puzzling than either of them What

Socrates plainly emphasizes is what we might call the ontological ambiguity of the mimetic

image: there is a way in which the painter makes something that is a couch, and a way in which what he makes is not a couch

We can locate this claim at several points As we have already seen, Socrates proposes that the painter "doesn’t truly make what he makes And yet in a certain way the painter too does make a couch,” a position to which Glaucon gives assent (596e) Just prior to this, Socrates introduces the idea of the mimetic artist with the same ambiguity, “Tell me, do you deny

altogether the possibility of such a craftsman, or do you admit that in a sense [tini men tropôi] there could be such a creator of all these things, and in another sense [tini de] not?” (596 d-e) It

is later asserted simply that the mimetic artist "makes what look like beings but are not." The

issue, again, is what those things are that "look like beings” (599a) In the Sophist, the

ambiguous ontological status of images is summarized in the Stranger's remark that an image, 11

10 Collingwood argues that the mimetic image does have this independent status, that this is the implication of the

“doctrine of the three degrees of reality,” (Collingwood (1925), 159) He sees this as the first step in any "real philosophy of art," which must "distinguish art from science and morality and handicraft and … assert that it has a sphere of its own,” a position that is likewise not put forward by Plato’s Socrates, nor is it one that the author or his character would espouse (159) Nehamas opposes Collingwood's notion of the radical independence of the art object, but he goes too far in the other direction (Nehamas (1999), 262)

11 As we noted early in the context of the Republic, so too in the Sophist, Plato’s nomenclature can be fairly loose In this section (239d-240c), the question is whether the sophist is an image-maker [eidôlopoios], which leads the Stranger to ask what an image [eidôlon] is It is in pursuing this latter question that the interlocutors come to note the

25

though "not really being [ouk on … ontôs]," nevertheless "really is that which we call an

image."12 Jacob Klein catches the character of this idea nicely when he writes that for Plato,

“‘image’ is uniquely that which is not what it is.”13

However paradoxical this formulation might sound, I would like to suggest that there is some intuitive plausibility to what Socrates says Most of the objects in our world do not

immediately pose an ontological puzzle We are utterly familiar with couches and tables; we use them without wondering about them Their being in our world does not immediately raise a question about their being.14 Not so with an image of a couch painted on a flat piece of wood The image immediately raises a question about its being by resembling something else, and doing so not just accidentally but essentially.15 If we see only paint and wood, we are not seeing the image, and likewise if we see only a couch (a trompe l’oeil in a literal sense) Socrates is

ambiguous ontological status of images, which however are at this point referred to as eikones (240b12) Earlier in the dialogue, eidôlon is clearly marked out as the genus, of which eikôn and phantasma are differing species But what is said about the being of eikones at 240b12 would seem to apply equally to phantasmata In other words,

eikôn at this point seems equivalent to the genus-term eidôlon

eikona;" (Plato (1900)) The majority of English translators, as well as Heidegger in his commentary on the Sophist,

omit the second ouk Friedländer (1969a), 520n39 and Kohnke (1957) believe it should be retained Even if it is

retained, the ontological ambiguity remains, for the Stranger would still be saying that what we “really call an

image” [estin ontôs hên legomen eikona ] “really is not” [ouk ontôs estin], that is to say, “does not have being,” or

“is not in its being” or “is not really real.” This is how Burnet reads it in a subsequent article, in which he argues that

the second “ouk” should be restored (Burnet (1920), 137) His translation: “then does it not follow that what we

speak of as really an image is not really real.”

13Klein (1965), 115 Klein is discussing the eikones as they are presented in connection with the divided line in Book

VI As I shall be arguing in Chapter Two, the treatment of images in Books VI and X are complementary

14 Heidegger expresses this as the "withdrawing" of what is "ready-to-hand": “The peculiarity of what is proximally

ready-to-hand [zuhanden] is that, in order to be ready-to-hand, it must, at it were, withdraw [zurückziehen] in order

to be ready-to-hand quite authentically” (Heidegger (1962), 99)

15 Benardete makes a similar observation in his commentary on the Sophist: “The beings do not at once raise

questions, images do," (Plato (1986), II:119)

Through the analogy with painting, Socrates is attempting to account for the inherent duality, or "two-foldedness" of our intercourse with images.18 As we shall see below, this

objective side of the argument, which ascribes ontological ambiguity to images, will be

complemented by a subjective account later in Book X that posits a bifurcation in the mind of the

spectator For now, however, let us remain with the objects of mimêsis, but turn to an aspect of

the painting analogy that conspicuously lacks the intuitive plausibility we have noted thus far Socrates proposes that the couches and tables made by craftsmen—those objects of familiarity

16 Allen comes close to this understanding of the situation when he argues that Plato is recognizing a distinction between apprehending a picture "as a picture" and apprehending it "as an art object." In the first case, we see an object that "does not differ in type or degree from its original"—the couch and the piece of wood with paint on it are, seen in this way, ontologically the same in degree and type Apprehended as an art object, however, the picture is "relational," dependent on and less real than its original" (Allen (1971), 175) The question Plato raises here about the peculiar relationship between a mimetic image and its original had currency in other ancient authors

as well See, for example, Xenophon's depiction of Socrates' interview with the painter Parrhasius and the sculptor

Cleiton (Memorabilia, 3.10.1-8) He asks the latter how he manages to produce the "appearance of life" in his

sculptures Surveying an (admittedly thin) historical record, Halliwell concludes that "we can be confident that

questions regarding the status and character of visual mimêsis were under discussion in classical Athens (Halliwell

(2002), 120)

17 One may want to object that many things both “are” and “are not” what they are: a broken piano, for instance, or

an unfinished table Such things, however, are either on their way to becoming or retreating from what they are A painting of a piano isn’t on its way to become a piano It is what it is (a painting of a piano), but what it is dependent

on what it is not

18 The term comes from Richard Wollheim; see note 58

“And what about the couchmaker? Weren’t you just saying that he doesn’t make the form, which is what we, of course, say a couch is, but a certain couch?”

“Yes,” he said, “I was saying that.”

“Then, if he doesn’t make what is, he wouldn’t make the being but something that

is like the being, but is not being” (597a).20The carpenter is the craftsman of a couch (597d), but what he makes is not completely

being (597a) The carpenter’s couch, then, is also something that “is not what it is,” but unlike in

the case of the painted image, this claim does not have prima facie plausibility As noted above, a couch or table or any other piece of equipment from our daily lives seems to be eminently what it

is, so much so that what it is, the being of the couch, does not pose itself as a question.21 And yet

19 Nehamas persuasively counters the common misconception that "Plato accuses art of being an imitation of an imitation" (Nehamas (1999), 261) But Socrates does still argue that artistic images are imitations of other

likenesses, not beings, a point that Nehamas elides Socrates is making a distinction between mimetic images (made

by the painter or poet) and non-mimetic images, made by the craftsman What Nehamas calls Plato’s “linguistic

vacillation”—the fact that poets are called both makers of images and imitators of images—is not indicative of

Plato's failure to mark the distinction (263) The mimetic artist does make an image, but in doing so, he is imitating

an original that in its turn is also an image So he is both a maker and an imitator of images

20 The end of the passage cited reads: “oukoun ei mê ho estin poiei, ouk an to on poioi, alla ti toiouton hoion to on,

on de ou;” (597a3-4)

21 Of course, something may happen to prompt us to confront this question In Heidegger’s language, the object may

become conspicuous [auffällig], as for example, when it breaks (Heidegger (1962), 102 ff.) In the present case,

Glaucon is prompted by Socrates to reflect on the question

28

Socrates claims that these objects, which serve as the originals relative to the images made by

painters, are in turn images of some other objects that truly are.22

In asking the question, Socrates claims that he and Glaucon are following a “customary

procedure,” positing a single form [eidos] for each of the various manys that bear the same name

Thus, there are many couches, but only one form of couch The form is not made by the

carpenter who makes the couches that are used for reclining, but that carpenter looks to the form,

or idea, when making a particular couch (596a-b).23

It is this invocation of the form of couch and subsequent references to a tripartite

categorization of objects (form/artifact/mimetic image) that has inspired the familiar top-down

approach to the critique of poetry in Book X Plato’s doctrinal commitment to a "theory of

forms,” so the argument goes, compels him to see poetic images as deficient in being and

potentially deceptive.24 Even setting aside the general debate about the status of the forms in Plato's dialogues, it is important to recognize at the very least that, compared with other passages that deal with the forms, what is said in Book X about them is, as one critic puts it, "enormously peculiar."25

22 Allen characterizes this as "the problem of eidôla [images]," which applies both to mimetic images and the

originals of those images: "Though we must say that they are," he writes, "we must also say that they are not" (Allen (1971), 181)

23 Eidos and idea are used virtually interchangeably in Book X to refer to that which is in the complete sense

24 To illustrate this familiar position: “If the actual world is only an approximation to the real, if particulars partake

of universals by means of imitation … this forces an inescapable conclusion on Plato in respect of works of art

which have already been shown to be mimetic…: artistic products are copies of copies, twice removed from reality They are then not only inferior to what we have got already, but ludicrously redundant At best they are unnecessary;

at worst, they are deceptive” (emphasis added) (Shaper (1968), 44)

25 Nehamas (1999), 257 On the dubiousness of this appeal to the forms, specifically in relation to the way the forms are treated elsewhere in Plato, see the following, all of which I draw on here: Cherniss (1932), Griswold (1981), Janaway (1995), 112, Nehamas (1999), Halliwell (1988) In contrast, Adam maintains that we have here "an authoritative exposition of the Ideal theory on one of its many sides," Plato (1963), II:387

29

To summarize the most salient peculiarities:

1 it is suggested here (597b-d), and no where else in the Platonic corpus, that a god makes the forms, a position which conflicts with the usual assertion that the forms are eternal and self-subsistent;

2 unlike the earlier discussions of forms in the Republic, Book X relies on the

one-over-many argument and implies that there is a form for every artifact, both of which raise serious difficulties26;

3 Socrates argues in Book X that the god made only one of each thing because, “if he should make only two, there would again appear one of which they both would possess the form or idea, and that would be the couch that really is in and of itself, and not the other two” (597c); but the problem re-asserts itself once the carpenter’s bed is said to be like (597a) or to be an image (600e) of the form; in other words, that which the two share in common and which constitutes their likeness would seem to be the real form, but to explain the commonality again would require positing another form, leading to the infinite regress,

the familiar "third man argument" (cf Parmenides 132e);

4 the carpenter, it would seem from this presentation, has knowledge of the forms (or at least, of the form of couch), whereas earlier in the book knowledge of the forms was

reserved for philosophers who had gone through long and rigorous training (596b)

26 Aristotle, for one, denies that on Plato’s understanding there can be forms of artifacts (Metaphysics, 991b6-7), and Plato’s own Parmenides raises doubts about the possibility that there is a form for every object in the world (130 c- d) But cf Cratylus 389b3, which seems to allow forms of artifacts For a discussion of the one-over-many argument

and its relation to other bases for positing the existence of forms, see Nehamas (1973), Nehamas (1975), Griswold (1981)

30

Given these difficulties and the conspicuously tentative formulations used by Socrates and Glaucon when referring to forms in this section, we should be wary of explicating the critique of poetry on the basis of assumptions about Plato’s commitment to a “theory of forms.”27 But that still leaves the task of explaining why Socrates chooses to cast the argument in these terms By beginning with painting, as we have seen, he is attempting to offer a plausible account of the ambiguity inherent in mimetic images: in some immediate, intuitive sense we can recognize that the painting of a couch "is not what it is.” But by insisting that the same, or something

analogous, is true of the carpenter’s couch—that it too manifests an ontological ambiguity—Socrates complicates the matter, introducing a claim that, if anything, seems to contradict

immediate experience

One way to account for this, as we have seen, is to appeal to Plato’s putative doctrinal commitments Aside from the hermeneutical difficulties inherent in trying to establish what those commitments would be, such a solution also must ignore or somehow explain away the

peculiarities listed above Another approach is proposed by Harold Cherniss, who holds that what is said in Book X about the forms simply does not square with Platonic doctrine and argues that Plato’s aim in this section is “the final conviction of the mimetic arts” and the degradation of the artist, the pursuit of which trumps any commitment to doctrinal consistency.28 Charles

27 Glaucon is at times non-committal in these passages (597b3, b5, b7, d2), at one point saying, in response to the proposition that the carpenter’s couch ought not to be considered “completely being [teleôs … einai on]”, “Yes … at least that would be the opinion of those who spend their time in arguments of this kind” (597a) Socrates, for his part, introduces the idea of a couch-making god in this tentative manner: there is a bed “that is in nature, which we would say, I suppose, a god produced Or who else?,” to which Glaucon responds, “No one else, I suppose” (597b) See also 597d

28 Cherniss (1932), 239-40 Plato, Cherniss gamely maintains, is “willing to play perversely with the fundamental concepts of his metaphysics and the axioms of his faith" if it serves his rhetorical ends (241) Halliwell, in a similar vein, writes of the “ad hoc adaptation of the theory of forms" for the purpose of convicting mimetic art (Halliwell (1988), 110)

31

Griswold agrees with Cherniss that the treatment of forms in Book X is anomalous, but proposes that Socrates is being ironic and that the tripartite schema is an elaborate parody of the activity of mimetic poets.29 Nehamas, meanwhile, maintains that “little of what Socrates says about the Forms is actually relevant to his definition of imitation,” and so chooses not to pursue the issue (Nehamas 1999, 257)

I would like to suggest that there is a fairly straightforward way in which Socrates' tripartite schema serves the immediate purposes of the discussion, especially if we see the larger goal here

as not so much conviction or degradation of the arts and artists, but rather elucidation of the nature of mimetic images Socrates introduces a tripartition, in which two kinds of objects—exemplified by the carpenter's couch and the painter's couch—are both deemed to be images, can

be compared and contrasted as such, and can potentially be distinguished from what is not an

image This enables Socrates to hone his definition of mimêsis by juxtaposing mimetic images

with ones said to be made non-mimetically And as we shall see in Chapter Two, Socrates also uses the tripartite schema to indicate what is really at stake in the rivalry between philosophy and poetry

We have already noted the primary similarity between the painter’s couch and the

carpenter’s couch qua image Both, Socrates argues, are ontologically ambiguous; of each, it can

be said that it is a couch and that it is not a couch Let us first consider what it means to say that

an image "is not what it is," that the painter's or carpenter's couch, qua image, is not a couch In

holding this, Socrates is maintaining that an image is ontologically dependent on the original of which it is an image As R E Allen puts it, images and reflections "depend upon their original

29 “It is very improbable that Socrates intends this schema to be a true representation of his conception of the Whole;

it is far more probable that he intends it as a representation of the poet’s conception of the Whole” (Griswold (1981), 146)

32

both for their character and their existence; it depends on them for neither" (Allen 1971, 179) Socrates' reference to mirrors emphasizes this quality of an image The reflection of a couch in a mirror looks as it does because the couch looks as it does, and the former cannot exist without the latter Socrates holds that all images have something like this kind of dependence on

originals Now, there is a sense—a purely physical sense—in which the lines and shadings that make up a painting of a couch are ontologically independent of, and on the same level as, the couch itself Both are objects in the world But insofar as the lines and colors constitute an image

of a couch, Socrates maintains, they are ontologically dependent on an original

A separate, but related question regards the way in which we come to understand images Socrates' position implies that, just as the being of the image depends on the original, so too does our comprehension of images depend, in some essential way, on our familiarity with originals

Couches made by carpenters are ready-to-hand (zuhanden in Heidegger's sense), eminently

familiar, and the painted image draws on that familiarity Imagine two Attic panel paintings, one depicting two men beside one another in a chariot, the other depicting two men beside one

another on a couch In interpreting the images, the viewer draws on her familiarity with dimensional chariots and couches—what they are and what they are used for—and relies on this familiarity to interpret the scene Even disregarding other potential cues (such as the disposition

three-of the bodies, etc.), the viewer apprehends a difference based on familiarity with what people tend to do in chariots and what they tend to do on couches The viewer may be mistaken, and the artist may deliberately thwart expectations, but the viewer's attempt to comprehend the

significance of the images will nevertheless rely on a familiarity with the three-dimensional exemplars of the objects depicted

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An important clarification needs to be made here Does Socrates mean to be saying that a painting of a couch is dependent upon the existence of a particular three-dimensional couch, that very one which supposedly served as a model for the painter in making the image? This is

sometimes assumed, and when it is, it often becomes grounds for rejecting the whole argument

as nạve or obtuse about art Socrates, it is assumed, limits artistic mimêsis to a kind of radical

verisimilitude, its goal being the accurate reproduction of the appearance of existing objects. 30There are, however, no grounds for placing such strictures on Socrates’ conception of artistic

mimêsis, and good reason for believing otherwise.31 At one point in the Republic, Socrates asks

Glaucon whether he thinks a painter

“would be any the less a good painter, who, after portraying a pattern of the most beautiful human being and omitting no touch required for the perfection of the picture, should not be able to prove that it is actually possible for such a man to

exist?” “Not I, by Zeus,” he said (472d)

This passage and others in the dialogue strongly suggest that Socrates does not limit painting to the copying of discrete, existing objects.32 The claim is rather that images depend on originals in

a general way To the extent we recognize the world portrayed in a work of art, it is not because

we are familiar with the particular, existing objects, but because we have a general familiarity with objects of that kind Many questions might be raised about this theory To cite the most obvious complaint, artists often portray objects with which we can have no familiarity because

30 See, for example, Gombrich (1977), 83 and Annas (1981), 336 Even Adam offers an uncharacteristically, and unjustifiably, uncharitable gloss on Plato's meaning, claiming that the argument reduces the painter "to a mere mechanical copyist" (Plato (1963), II:393)

31 See Janaway (1995), 119-20 and Halliwell (2002), 136

32 See 484c and 500e-501c, which also imply that painters are not restricted to mechanical or photographic-like

reproduction of the phenomenal world See also Cratylus 430a-32d, with Halliwell (2002), 45-7, 118-47

Xenophon's Socrates makes a similar point talking to the painter Parrhasius: “And further, when you copy types of beauty, it is so difficult to find a perfect model that you combine the most beautiful details of several, and thus

contrive to make the whole figure look beautiful” (Memorabilia, 3.10.2, Xenophon (1979))