Rosen, Stanley - The Quarrel Between Poetry and Philosophyh - Studies in Ancient Thought - Stanley Rosen-Routledge (2014)

The Quarrel Between
Philosophy and Poetry

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The Quarrel Between
Studies in Ancient Thought
Stanley Rosen
Paperback published in 1993 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rosen, Stanley, 1929-
The quarrel between philosophy and poetry.
Includes index.
1. Philosophy. 2. Philosophy, Ancient.
3. Poetics. I. Title.
B73.R67 1988 101 87-28628
ISBN 0-415-00184-6 ISBN 0-415-90745-4 (pb)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Rosen, Stanley
The quarrel between philosophy and poetry:
studies in ancient thought.
1. Poetics 2. Imagination 3. Creation
(Literary, artistic, etc.).
I. Title
808.1 PN 1041
ISBN 978-0-415-90745-3 (Pbk)

Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Preface vii
1 The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry 1

2 Philosophy and Revolution 27
3 Plato's Myth of the Reversed Cosmos 56
4 The Nonlover in Plato's Phaedrus 78
5 Socrates as Concealed Lover 91
6 The Role of Eros in Plato's Republic 102
7 Thought and Touch: A Note on Aristotle's De Anima 119
8 Heidegger's Interpretation of Plato 127
9 Much Ado About Nothing: Aristotle contra Eleaticism 148
10 Remarks on Nietzsche's "Platonism" 183
Notes 204
Index of Names 222
Acknowledgments
Permission to reprint the following is gratefully acknowledged:
"Plato's Myth of the Reversed Cosmos," Review of Metaphysics,

VoIXXXIII, No.1, September, 1979.
"The Nonlover in Plato's Phaedrus, " Man and World, Vol.2, No.3, 1969,
pp. 423-37. Copyright © 1969 by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht,
Holland.
"The Role of Eros in Plato's Republic," Review of Metaphysics, March
1965.
"Thought and Touch: A Note on Aristotle's De Anima, "Phronesis, Vol. VI,
No.2,1961.
Preface
The studies collected in this volume have been written at various

times during the past thirty years. They were produced as expressions
of a continuous effort to understand whether philosophy is possible.
Their author came to the academic practice of philosophy from po-
etry. He had been convinced as an adolescent of the truth of T. S.
Eliot's observation that philosophy and poetry are two different lan-
guages about the same world. Leo Strauss helped him to understand
that there is an irreconcilable tension between these two languages
as they are commonly conceived. Unfortunately, Strauss's own con-
ception of philosophy was incapable of defending itself against the
poetry of Nietzsche and Heidegger.
This is not the place to describe the itinerary to which the present
author was led by dissatisfaction with Strauss's Farabian conceal-
ment of the dilemma of decadence . The extraordinary achievements
of Leo Strauss must not be minimized. But on Strauss's own account,
they exhibit an impasse between reason and revelation, which by the
nature of the claims of each, gives the edge to revelation. Stated with
the brevity appropriate to a preface, this awards the victory to poetry.
With all honor to the welfare of the multitude, a poetic con-
cealment of the triumph of poetry over philosophy is a deeply dis-
appointing fulfillment of a teaching that exalted philosophy above
all other human activities . But so too is the public repudiation of
poetry, in the name of the thesis that philosophy is the technical
resolution of "puzzles." Analytical philosophy, for all its charms, pro-
vided no alternative to Strauss on the one hand or to Nietzsche and
Heidegger on the other. On the contrary, it suffered from a fatal lack
of self-understanding: it did not see that techne is a species of poetry.
When this self-knowledge arrived at last, it was in the form of dec-
adence, the prelude to postmodernism.
If we attempt to refresh ourselves from the weariness induced
by the inferior poetry of the second half of the twentieth century, and
return to the Greeks, we find the origin of the quarrel between phi-
losophy and poetry in the ambiguous senses of mythos and logos.
viii Preface
There is no doubt that philosophy has something to do with logos .

Let us go so far as to assert that a l~gos is a reasoned account. But
what does this mean? Are there no circumstances in which mythoi
are reasonable, to say nothing of the fact that the distinction between
the two words is relatively late?
An account is reasonable if it is appropriate. Thus the best math-
ematicians understand when it is inappropriate to offer an equation
as an account of phenomena. At least initial light is shed upon the
quarrel between philosophy and poetry when we take our bearings
by Plato's distinction between the two kinds of measure: the arith-
metical and the appropriate or fitting. This distinction is essentially
the same as Pascal's distinction between the esprit geometrique and
the esprit de finesse .
Is it not, however, the esprit de finesse that distinguishes between
itself and the esprit geometrique? In other words, does not the return
to the presumably superior poetry of the ancients simply confirm the
triumph of poetry over philosophy? We can take at least one more
step by raising the following question. How can the esprit de finesse
be the root of itself and of the esprit geometrique? Is there not a deeper
root of which these two attunements of the soul are branches?
The point can be illustrated by an introductory contrast between
Plato and Aristotle. In Plato, the whole (to holon) is exhibited within
the dialogues by myth, and more comprehensively by the dramatic
or poetic form of the dialogues themselves. Aristotle advocates the
replacement of myth by logos, and he gives up the dialogue form for
what may most simply be called monologue. The result seems to be
that there is no account of the whole as whole, but only separate
accounts of distinct families of phenomena. Not even the science of
first principles provides us with an account, or for that matter with
a phenomenological description, of the unity articulated as the tri-
partition of theory, practice, and production.
This tripartition is anticipated in Plato's Republic by the Socratic
tripartition of citizens in the "city laid up in speeches" (IX, S92all:
a good example of the use of logos as blended together with mythos).
The principle of political unity, one could almost say, is for Socrates
the division of labor. It is assumed that each person has one char-
acteristic "work" that he or she does best, and that justice, or the
uni ty of the city, requires each person to mind his or her own business
or to do his or her own work.
From our present standpoint, the most interesting feature of the
city laid up in speeches is in the order of the stages of education. The
citizens are first habituated to virtue by music, or the cultivation of
the esprit de finesse. Mathematics, or the cultivation of the esprit geo-
Preface ix
metrique, comes later, and in serious form, it is restricted to a small

class of citizens: to the guardians or potential philosophers. The So-
cratic vision of the order of human life suggests that poetry, which
is ostensibly to be banished from the city, must in fact rule over
philosophy. This suggestion seems to be confirmed by the noble lie:
the root of the division of labor is the myth of the earth born gold,
silver, and bronze souls.
One could object to this that the prudential or tactical employ-
ment of music and myth is a secondary consequence of Socrates'
"geometrical" analysis of human existence. But the term "geometri-
cal" functions here in a metaphorical or poetic sense . In other words,
one must first see the differences in nature before one can divide them
with precision. It is true that seeing, or more generally, perceiving,
is already a dividing. This follows from the principle that to perceive
is to perceive something Uust as to be is to be something). But division
is itself divided into the ordered set of finesse and geometry.
Put bluntly, it cannot be the case that philosophy originates in
geometry . Yet each attempt to identify the root of geometry and fi-
nesse seems to result in the assertion of finesse. To identify is here
not simply to name but to explain, hence to analyze, and therefore
to divide. Our attempt to explain the whole has produced an im-
mediate bifurcation, which cannot be reunified by asserting the
name, or for that matter offering a description, of one of its parts .
On the other hand, if the attempt to explain the root leads us nec-
essarily to assert the priority of the branch of finesse (or of the "on-
tological" domain that corresponds to finesse), then "fundamental
ontology" is impossible, or rather, it is possible only by a descent
from philosophy to poetry. Does this not mean that philosophy is
impossible?
If to describe or to explain is to analyze, then every attempt to
describe or to explain unity (in the sense of the ground), or the whole
as whole rather than as articulated sum of parts, is necessarily a
concealment or dissolution of the whole. This is the plain sense of
Heidegger's doctrine of the concealment of Being. It is also the tacit
basis for the empiricist or "analytical" denial of the whole, a denial,
incidentally, that is shared by the postmodernists.
What follows from the impossibility of an analytical or concep-
tual explanation of the unity of the whole? Either there is no whole,
which is to say that the wholeness or unity of our experience is a
perspective, that is, a poem. Or, at a somewhat deeper level of this
response, it is we who must supply a cosmological myth of the whole
with an accordingly rhetorical justification. Or, finally, philosophy
is grounded by a conceptually empty intellectual intuition of the Ide-
x Preface
alist sort, which can itself be described only metaphorically. In all

three cases, poetry again triumphs .
It should be emphasized that the attempt to engage in philosophy
without foundations is an entirely spurious enterprise that substi-
tutes technical production, and hence poetry once more, for genuine
thinking about the possibility of philosophy. The generation of Amer-
ican academic philosophers now drawing to its close has been dom-
inated by puzzle solvers. These demiurges did not see, or did not wish
to see, that their puzzles were technical artifacts, produced in obe-
dience to the rhetoric of the early modern, and decisively French,
Enlightenment.
This blindness led first to the loss of the comprehensive vision
of the Enlightenment, still evident, if through a glass darkly, in the
great personalities of logical positivism. The result was nihilism,
lightly camouflaged by technical arrogance. But techne is infinite in
its variety. Hence the next step in the decay of Enlightenment, the
triumph of the rhetoric of infinite variety, or the sequel to the re-
placement of unity by identity: the dissolution of identity by differ-
ence. By the cunning of history, if not of reason, the postphilosophical
kings of difference are also French: d'Alembert deconstructed is
Derrida.
The preceding reflections would seem to terminate in a compre-
hensive alternative. If there is a whole, that is to say, a unity to human
experience, it is accessible only via poetry, whereas if there is no
whole, then we are forced to invent it, again via poetry. In either case,
philosophy is devoted to the role of servant, perhaps as prime min-
ister or counselor of state to the poet-kings. The history of philosophy
is accordingly revealed as the chronicle of the progressive defeat of
rebellious counselors, or of their steady transformation into poets on
the one hand and technicians on the other. The noble vision of phi-
losophy as the perfection of the human soul is replaced by the ignoble
vision of philosophy as the art of rhetoric.
Palin eks arches: let us begin again, as Socrates says. The initial
distinction between the arithmetical and the fitting, or between ge-
ometry and finesse, suggests that the vision of the whole originates
as a division. Can it be that there is no quarrel at all between phi-
losophy and poetry, but that the two are inseparable? To put this in
another way, were we not too hasty in assigning finesse to the domain
of poetry? Or was our error the assumption that the apparent un-
speakableness of the vision of unity between finesse and geometry
leads necessarily to a poetical surrogate for speech appropriate to the
vision of unity?
Preface xi
The unity of an internally articulated element is exactly the same

in all cases; what differs is the pattern of articulation. The ability to
distinguish one pattern from another suggests that the whole is vis-
ible in the coherence of the diversity of its parts. The whole is not
some further pattern superimposed onto an open sequence of di-
versely patterned elements. Conversely, openness, or the apparently
unending nature of the sequence, does not preclude unity or whole-
ness. Interestingly enough, this inference is merely a discursive ex-
tension of the implicit hypothesis of mathematics .
In the present case, the possibility of philosophy depends upon
whether the coherence of diversity, or the ability to distinguish be-
tween better and worse as well as between true and false in any
internally articulated element of an open sequence, provides us with
the means to a poetic production of the whole, without itself being
a poem . In other words, the issue does not turn upon the division
between finesse and geometry, but upon the unity necessary to di-
vision. The fact that there is a multiplicity of perspectives, or that
our worldview is a poem, does not entail that the world is a poem.
The preceding formulation could be regarded as nothing more
than a quasi-Platonic articulation of the Aristotelian assertion that
art completes nature. Nature requires to be completed by art: man
is the artist-animal who must produce the human world. Plato's
Ideas, Aristotle's categories, and Kant's transcendental ego, are all
poetic versions of this natural necessity. That is to say, they are the
formulation of a problem, not a technical resolution of a puzzle. Phi-
losophy is then not the mere stating of the fundamental problems,
nor of their "typical" solutions: the "grand seigneur" approach to
philosophy, in which Heiterkeit replaces "the infinite labor of nega-
tivity," leads to aesthetic skepticism, or another version of poetry.
To the ancient celebration of play, one must add the modern respect
for work.
Philosophy is, and has always been, the comprehensive articu-
lation of problematicity. It is therefore both true and false to say that
there is no root unifying the two branches of geometry and finesse:
true, if one is searching for a third attunement of the soul, but false,
when one realizes that philosophy, and nothing but philosophy, is
the root.
The quarrel between philosophy and poetry is thus a secondary
consequence of the primary unity between philosophy and poetry.
The quarrel arises when we attempt to identify and describe the prin-
ciple of unity itself; and this attempt leads invariably to the triumph
of poetry. The triumph occurs at a secondary level that is perceived
as primary. In slightly different terms, the quarrel between philos-
xii Preface
ophy and poetry is technical or methodological: it arises when techne

assumes the dominant role in philosophy, and so when philosophy
has already transformed itself into poetry . The quarrel is therefore
specious, not merely secondary, because it is already evidence that
there is no genuine quarrel. The quarrel is itself the triumph of poetry.
This must suffice as a general statement of the approach under-
lying the essays in the present volume. It must be emphasized that
the essays are not themselves directed to a further development of
that approach. They are intended as investigations of specific inter-
nally articulated elements of an open sequence. The function of a
preface is not to resolve the problem of unity, but to suggest what
that problem is.
Perhaps a historical example of the problem may be useful by
way of rounding off these prefatory remarks. According to Aristotle,
man is by nature a political animal. Nowhere in the Platonic dia-
logues does such a statement occur. To the contrary, the metaphor of
weaving, which is regularly employed to designate the art of politics,
exhibits the Platonic thesis that the polis is a work of art. Political
health is natural only as a consequence of philosophical art. But na-
ture raises so many obstacles to the exercise of this art as to render
its success extremely unlikely, if not impossible.
Aristotle's position is intrinsic to his tripartition of theory, prac-
tice, and production. The city is for him not a work of art but the
natural growth of human activity. Its completion is therefore inde-
pendent of philosophy, but for that reason it is also essentially in-
dependent of poetry. The expulsion of the poets from Socrates' city
is a secondary act that owes its justification to the actual dependence
of the city upon poetry in the primary sense. The Aristotelian states-
man does not need to camouflage the Platonic mastery of nature be-
neath the poetical mask of rhetoric and religion.
One may take two quite different attitudes toward Aristotle's
political writings. On the one hand, he may be commended for in-
sulating politics from philosophical madness. On the other hand, he
may be criticized for overestimating the power of sobriety and prac-
tical intelligence. In general, there is a marked tendency throughout
Aristotle's writings to overstate the case for moderation and, ulti-
mately, the reasonableness of nature.
It would be an interesting enterprise to attempt to determine the
degree to which this overstatement is responsible for what at first
sight seems entirely un-Aristotelian: the temptation to master nature
by technical devices. This is of course not to overlook the role played
in the emergence of modernity by conceptions of nature as hostile
and (a separate point) as radically contingent.
Preface xiii
Such an enterprise would take us altogether beyond the scope of

the present volume. Let one point suffice as a paradigm for subse-
quent investigations. Plato is closer to the Greek tragedians than is
Aristotle. We do not find in the Platonic dialogues an excessive respect
for the friendliness of nature to man. It is in the disjunction between
nature as telos and nature as both trans- and sub-human that poetry
gains its purchase, or rather, discovers its necessity. This is the Pla-
tonic counterpart to the stimulation of technical mastery by the rea-
sonableness of nature. One could do worse than to see here the dif-
ference between Platonic madness and Aristotelian sobriety.
During the past two decades, it has become increasingly fash-
ionable to insist that philosophy is no longer possible. If, however,
the current view of the history of metaphysics as Platonism, and so
as a concealed version of the productions of the will to power, is to
be accepted, then philosophy was never possible, or at least it has
never existed. The possibility of philosophy stands or falls upon the
possibility of a philosophical madness that is more sober than so-
briety. This is no doubt a deeply problematical formulation. But it
is not a puzzle.
Stanley Rosen
1988
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1
The Quarrel between
I
In Book Ten of the Republic, Socrates refers to a long-standing
quarrel between philosophy and poetry. The ensuing discussion of
this quarrel raises two fundamental questions for the reader. First:
what precisely is the nature of the quarrel? Second: if we assume
that Socrates takes the side of philosophy, how are we to reconcile
this with the fact that Plato, the creator of the dramatic Socrates, is,
as the author of philosophical dialogues, himself a poet? This problem
is obviously related to the question of why Plato presents Socrates
in the Phaedrus as a sharp critic of writing. If we take the term "po-
etry" (poiesis) in its extended sense of "production," the question of
writing is clearly a specific instance of the more general issue.
These problems lead to the more fundamental question whether
there is a difference in nature between philosophy and poetry, as
opposed to conventional differences in the use of meter, rhyme, and
diction . It is not difficult to see that in the Republic, despite some
confusion in the order of discussion, two charges are leveled against
poetry. First, it produces images instead of a direct apprehension of
originals, or in other words, falsehoods masquerading as the truth.
Second, poetry is morally or politically defective because it encour-
ages the license of desire, and in particular, of Eros.
As we reflect upon the Republic, however, as well as upon the
balance of the Platonic corpus, these charges become ambiguous. I
have already mentioned the fact that the Republic, like all Platonic
dialogues (not to say all writings) is itself a poem . The thoughtful
reader will wonder whether Plato himself can validate his distinction
between originals and images by means of a writing, that is to say,
a poem, and so, presumably, an image. Second, in the Republic Soc-
2 The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry
rates justifies "medicinal" or "noble" lies on the part of the philo-

sophical guardians, for the benefit of the city. Third, whereas Eros
is restricted in the Republic by mathematics, which is intimately con-
nected to philosophy, and in a sense is identified as its essence, it is
also true that, even in the Republic, but more extensively elsewhere,
Socrates is explicit about the erotic nature of philosophy.
These questions are sufficient to warrant another look at the
quarrel between philosophy and poetry. We take our bearings, prop-
erly enough, by the explicit mention of the quarrel in the Republic,
X, 607bS. Socrates goes on to justify the exclusion from his and Glau-
con's city of "the hedonic poetic and mimesis" (607c4-S). "For if you
admit to citizenship the pleasure-seasoned Muse in lyric or epic, plea-
sure and pain will rule for you in the city instead of nomos and that
which is commonly held to be the best logos" (607aS-8).
It is worth noting that nomos should be translated here as "cus-
tom" rather than "law." Whereas specific laws are certainly men-
tioned in the Republic, positive law does not carry the same weight
here as in the Laws. In the present passage, this general point takes
on specific form by the use of the somewhat vague expression "that
which is commonly held to be the best logos." The philosopher-kings
rule by philosophical doxa, and hence by phronesis or sound judgment
as well as by political myths, rather than by an elaborate legal code
like the one developed in the Laws. This will be of some importance
later in our study.
Meanwhile, we observe that the logos which has constrained us
to expel poetry from our city (607b3) is not merely (if at all) the quasi-
mathematical logos of philosophical dialectic. The logos in question
is political. Therefore, the expulsion will be revoked when the ad-
vocates of poetry, who are not themselves poets but friendly to her,
will speak in prose in her behalf. What they must show is that poetry
is "not only pleasant but beneficial to political regimes and human
life" (607d6-9).
Such a line of defense would be clearly inadequate, and even
irrelevant, if the major charge against poetry were "ontological" or
"epistemological" (to use non-Platonic terms). Socrates says that we
ourselves feel the charm of poetry (607c6-7); it will therefore be to
our advantage if she shows herself to be not only pleasant but ben-
eficial. The fact that this demonstration must be conducted in prose
neither obliterates the possible benefits of poetry nor does it establish
anything more than a conventional distinction between poetry and
prose. The deeper question remains that of originals and images, as
well as the political significance of images.
It is evidently the case that poetry will be granted citizenship if
The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry 3
she can show herself capable of telling nothing but medicinal or noble
lies. The question of mimesis would therefore seem to be irrelevant.
The most one could say is that, since poets do not, as poets, grasp
the truth (600e4-6), they must be regulated in their art by those who
do grasp it. On the other hand, if, despite the rhetorical praise for a
pure dialectic of forms (which we shall consider below), no human
being can grasp the difference between originals and images in logos,
then what is commonly taken to be the best logos is actually doxa,
namely, the "rational opinions" of the wise (in Aristotle's expression).
The question will then present itself with special force: what is the
difference between philosophy and poetry? Or alternatively: why
does mathematics claim to provide us with a paradigm for philo-
sophical rule?
However, let us move more slowly. Let us say for the moment
only that the discussion of the imitation of the unique or "god-made"
bed is singularly unilluminating with respect to the political defi-
ciency of poetry. This deficiency was already plain in Books Two and
Three, and it was emphasized in Book Eight with respect to the tragic
poets, and especially Euripides. We learn there that the tragedians
are to be denied entrance into our city because they speak to the
crowd and "drag the political regimes into tyrannies and democra-
cies" (568c2-5) .
According to Socrates, democracy regards freedom as the good
(562b12); this leads it to permit each citizen to do whatever he wishes
(557b4-6) or in other words to arrange his life as he pleases (557b9-
to). Such a government is a "pleasant, anarchic, and variegated re-
gime" (558c3-5) . Because of its diversity, it would be judged by many
to be most beautiful, namely, by those whose judgment is like that
of "boys and women when they see intricate things" (557c7-9; d .
Statesman 303b 1).
A democracy is thus characterized by license (eksousia: 557b5,
8) and pleasure (558al-2) rather than by excellence or virtue, or in
other words not merely by pleasure but by unnecessary desire
(558d4-9). Socrates' precise meaning follows from his contention that
democracy is converted into tyranny through its insatiable desire for
freedom (562b9-d5). At the beginning of Book Nine, Socrates says
that the previous discussion of the desires was insufficient. There
follows a treatment of uncontrolled, mad, shameful desire which cul-
minates in the identification of Eros and tyranny (573b6, 574d8ff).
Socrates goes on to say of the tyrannical man: "the Eros in him
will live tyrannically in complete anarchy and lawlessness" (575al-
2). We cannot avoid thinking of philosophical madness and Eros, and
of the fact that the mad philosopher, very much like his prudent
counterpart in the Statesman (see below), is bound by logos and phro-

nesis, or even by dialectic, the science of the free man (Sophist 253c6-
10), and certainly not by nomos.
In sum, the tyrant is maddened by desire and Eros (578alO-12).
What is the difference between the philosopher and the tyrant? The
answer to this question turns upon the difference between the phi-
losopher and the poet, for which we are now searching. To put the
point as simply as possible, poetry is associated with the tyranny of
Eros, whereas the philosopher presumably differs from the poet by
his apprehension of originals, or the so-called Platonic forms. It is
still unclear whether such an apprehension is possible, or if it is pos-
sible, why it should serve to moderate Eros in such a way as to leave
the philosopher sufficiently mad to philosophize, yet not mad enough
to become a tyrant.
Do not the philosophers of the Republic return from the appre-
hension of pure forms into the cave, in order to impose their doxa
upon the nonphilosophers? They can hardly be said to impose the
apprehension of pure forms, or their elaborate mathematical edu-
cation, upon their fellow citizens. Why is their political activity not
tyranny? Socrates' implied answer is that the guardians are not ty-
rants because they restrain their sexual Eros. But those of us who
have read Freud may wonder whether this answer is sufficient. And
to say that the philosophers are virtuous because they do good to the
city is to commit a petitio. If justice is ta heautou prattein, we require
a demonstration that the "business" or "things" of the nonphiloso-
pher are either the same as, or determined by, the "things" of the
philosopher. But the first alternative is excluded by the natural dif-
ference between philosopher and nonphilosopher, and the second is
the main thesis of a philosophical tyranny.
In any case, since poetry caters to pleasure or incites human
beings to licentious liberty, and thus to the rule of desire, specifically,
of sexual desire, the quarrel between philosophy and poetry seems
to be essentially a quarrel between sexual restraint and sexual li-
cense. This makes sense in view of the obvious connection between
sexuality and genesis or production (although that link is not made
in the Phaedrus, in distinction to the Symposium). But it does not
explain why sexual license is inferior to sexual restraint.
In other words, appeal to the political explanation is circular,
because the merits of the sexually restrained city are derived either
from a conventional, and hence nonphilosophical, view of virtue, or
else from the ostensible superiority of philosophy to poetry. But we
still do not know the difference between philosophy and poetry. Con-
trary to Socrates' stated and implied arguments, sexual license is

entirely compatible with eugenics, even with a mathematically reg-
ulated eugenics (VIII, 546alff; see esp. b3-4).
With this in mind, we return to the discussion of mimesis at the
beginning of Book Ten. This passage follows directly upon the con-
clusion of Socrates' praise for the rule of pleasure by philosophy (IX,
586e4ff). That which is furthest from law and order is furthest from
philosophy and logos, namely, "the erotic and tyrannical desires" (IX,
587a7-bl). The city in which philosophy rules is not to be found on
the earth. Perhaps, says Socrates, "there is a paradigm of it laid up
in heaven for whoever wishes to see it and, having seen it, to establish
it within himself. It makes no difference whether it exists anywhere
or ever will exist." Whoever wishes to do so, will practice the con-
stitution of this city, and of none other (592b2-5).
The city in speech (592a 11: te en logo is keimene) is therefore, as
we may infer, a copy of the heavenly paradigm. The philosopher who,
like Socrates, constructs the city in his discourse, engages in prosodic
mimesis of the political "Idea." Whether one calls this mimesis poetry
or not is irrelevant to its productive or demiurgic, as well as to its
mimetic, character. Furthermore, Socrates is now himself the par-
adigm, thanks to Plato's dramatic mimesis of his speech, for subse-
quent political demiurges. Finally, the guardians within the city are
"made" by the nomos (VII, 51gel-520a4) and, their souls having been
trained by musical images of the original forms of the free man's
virtues (III, 401a7-c9), themselves become "demiurges of the freedom
of the city" (III, 394b9-cl).
However seriously we take Socrates' metaphor of the heavenly
paradigm of the philosophical city, it is thus apparent that the pro-
duction of the city on earth, in both speech and (if possible) in deed,
is saturated with mimesis. There is no question here of a noetic ap-
prehension or recollection of an original pure form. The mimesis of
the "heavenly" paradigm is a practico-productive act. Furthermore,
although Socrates speaks for the most part in prose, he not only makes
use of myths or falsehoods but is himself a character within a phil-
osophical drama, and therefore the sense of his speeches must be
interpreted, like that of any other fictional character, within the con-
text of the dramatic structure of the dialogue.
To repeat an earlier point, poetry cannot be simply a matter of
meter, rhyme, and diction. As Socrates himself insists, the crucial
issue is the political utility of mimesis . But Socrates' (and Plato's) own
practice makes it obvious that mimesis is, or can be, of considerable
political utility, and indeed, that it is politically indispensable . The
association of poetry with tyranny and sexual license seems to be
exaggerated if not in fact arbitrary. So far as the distinction between

poetry and prose is concerned, there is obviously no reason why prose
cannot be employed to encourage sexual license. Conversely, poetry
in the traditional sense can be and has been used with an effectiveness
at least as great as that of prose to indoctrinate its listeners or readers
in sexual abstinence or moderation in general.
This preliminary survey of the problem has failed to answer the
question of why Socrates turns to the criticism of mimetic poetry at
the beginning of Book Ten. This book seems to be a peroration or
appendix to the proper task of the Republic, namely, the defense of
justice, or the refutation of the claim that injustice is advantageous
to the man who is completely unjust, but who is believed to be just
(IX, 588bl-4). If we grant the contention that poetry encourages li-
cense, and therefore erotic tyranny, and further that erotic license is
the principal enemy of the just or philosophically governed city, what
is the connection between this license and the imitation in poetry or
painting of physical artifacts like beds or tables?
This puzzle may be stated in another way. Socrates' criticism of
mimesis turns upon the ostensible fact that whereas artisans like the
carpenter imitate the unique form corresponding to a multiplicity of
artifacts, such as the unique bed, the poet (or painter) imitates the
artifact, and is thus "three steps from the king," namely from the
form (eidos) or "the bed itself" (X, 597a2, e6ff), and so from the truth.
Apart from the obvious rejoinder that the poet (and even the painter)
may well be imitating the same "form" that is the original of car-
pentry, there are two objections to Socrates' argument that follow
from the larger discussion of the Republic.
First, the political deficiency of poetry is regularly identified as
its service to and unlicensed encouragement of pleasure rather than
political utility. But as we have just noticed, there is no reason to
assume, on Socratic grounds, that falsehood, and more specifically,
false images, cannot be politically useful. We have only to recall Soc-
rates' earlier endorsement of medicinal lies, and in particular of the
noble lie upon which the tripartite structure of the just city is founded
(II, 382c6ff; III, 389b2ff; III, 414b8ff; V, 459c2-dl). Second, the po-
litical function of poetry, for better or worse, has nothing to do with
the copying of physical artifacts, or more generally, with the pro-
duction, veridical or otherwise, of images of things.
In order to see the peculiarity of Socrates' procedure, one has
only to ask how the production of a false image of a bed could lead
to sexual license on the part of its beholders . If beds are regarded as
peculiarly inflammatory artifacts, it must be granted that the car-
penter's copy is far more dangerous to sexual continence than the
poet's. Poetry enters into the political and moral arena when it tells
a tale of the use to which beds are put. In other words, if poetry
imitates anything of political significance, it is the states of the
human soul or the actions of everyday life . Strictly speaking, however,
poems are inventions of possible states or actions, and not imitations .
Poems imitate in the secondary sense that they represent types of
persons through their inventions (d. X, 603c4-S; and Ion S31c1-d7).
But the same may be said of Socrates' descriptions in prose of the
types of human beings to which there correspond types of regime.
The ambiguity of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry is
thus intensified by the apparently inaccurate, even obtuse, descrip-
tion of the "mimetic" nature of poetry. To this the following consid-
eration may be appended. At least since Proclus, readers have sus-
pected that the reference to a form or nature (in the special sense of
a Platonic Idea) of the bed is a sign of the ironical intention of Plato.
It is at least dubious whether there are Platonic Ideas of artifacts.
This is implied by Socrates' contention that the unique form or nature
of the bed is produced by god (theon ergasasthai: X, S97bS-7). The
question whether there is one divine bed or many does not affect the
fact that "god" is himself on Socrates' account a poet or demiurge.
We are entitled to assert that this poet-god must have imitated
his own "Idea" of a bed in producing the ontological form. It is en-
tirely unclear what it means to speak of god as the "natural producer"
(phytourgon: S97dS) of the form of the bed, since this form, as pro-
duced, is the copy of an invention, rather than of something which
exists by nature. Of course, Socrates is using the bed as an example
of a one over many that "we are accustomed to posit in each such
case" (S96aS-8). But by choosing such an example, he implies that
the difference between "natural" beings and artifacts is irrelevant to
the understanding of the one over many. And this tends to support
the view that all such" ones" are inventions or productions of a divine
demiurge or poet (S97dl-2) .
One might wish to cite the comparison of hypergenerated es-
sences (ousiai) to mathematical entities in Book Seven (S27bS-6; c4-
6). But this is inconclusive, since such ousiai, even though "beyond'"
the domain of genesis, might still have been produced by a demiurgic
deity. And in fact, the good, or the Idea of the good, which imparts
to perceptible things "being and essence," is thereby the principle of
the generation of pure forms, as is well brought out by the metaphor
of the sun, principle of generated things on the earth (VII, S09b6ff).
On balance, one must conclude that the Republic, despite the central
role assigned to mathematics in connection with the exposition of
the nature of philosophy, regularly speaks of "Platonic Ideas " with
metaphors or similes, i.e ., in poetic language, which refers to these

Ideas as produced. There is no evidence that Socrates regards this as
politically dangerous .
I noted above that the poet imitates (if he imitates at all) human
actions or states of the soul. The art of poetry (whatever may be said
about painting) does not consist in the imitation of beds or other
artifacts, with the purpose of persuading us that these imitations are
physical artifacts . This point can be stated more generally. Plato as
well as his immediate students assign three distinguishable prop-
erties to the Ideas or pure forms .
The first property is the mathematical or "ontological" structure
of the Idea, for example as constituted by the joint action of the One
and the unlimited dyad, or as possessing an internal structure of
monadic elements in some sense analogous to numbers. The second
property is "phenomenological", namely, the "look" of a cow or a
horse , by which each natural individual is identified as an instance
of a determinate form . The third property is "hierarchical," namely,
the degree of excellence attributed to the form, or its position within
the eidetic hierarchy of the structural elements of the intelligible
cosmos. None of these is the proper original of poetic mimesis.
Or rather, none of these is the object of poetry in the traditional
senses of epic, dramatic, and lyric mimesis. The criticism of poetic
mimesis in Book Three, 394elff, which distinguishes it from narra-
tive, condemns the imitation of more than one occupation or manner
of life (and not only of a bad manner) . The poet, as mimic, pretends
to be a person whom he is not; he does not pretend to be a thing or
an Idea. Naturally, he pretends to know (according to Socrates) that
which he does not know. But there is no question here of ontology .
The contemporary defense of poetry, for example by Heidegger,
attributes to the poetic art the manifestation or unveiling of that
which Plato would call an "Idea" or ousia. But the Socratic critique
does not say that the poet "veils" the Ideas. The accusation is polit-
ical. One must connect the critique of Book Three with that of Book
Ten. The latter is an illustration of the more general thesis that all
types of mimesis (tous allous hapantas tous mimetikous) are an outrage
or destruction of the discursive intellect of those who listen to them
(tes ton akouonton dianoias), if they do not possess the remedy (phar-
makon) : namely, knowledge of what mimetic art actually is (595b3-
7).
There are three points to be made about this passage . First, as I
have already noted, a Platonic dialogue qualifies as a type of poetic
mimesis. PIa to speaks on behalf of, or as if he were, all of his drama tic
characters, exactly as do Homer and the tragedians (III, 393a2ff).
Second, in the immediate context, Socrates says explicitly that poetry

is to be excluded from the city if it is of the mimetic type (X, 595a5:
hose mimetike) . This leaves open the gates of the city to poetry in
which the poet speaks in his own voice" and does not try to turn our
discursive intelligence aside" or to deceive us into supposing that
someone else than he is speaking (III, 393a6-7).
According to Socrates, tragedy and comedy are entirely mimetic,
epic poetry is a mixture of mimesis and narration (as are other types);
whereas the dithyramb is purely narrative (III, 394b8-c5). There fol-
lows a lengthy discussion of mimesis that turns upon the inability of
the same man to imitate many things as well as he can one thing
(394e2-7) . The general principle is throughout moral. An imperfect
imitation misleads or does not provide the same utility as does a
perfect imitation. This is plain from Socrates' statement about the
guardians. If they are permitted to imitate anything, it should from
childhood on be what is fitting to them: "men who are brave, tem-
perate, pious, free, and all other things of this sort" (395b8-e4).
This brings us to the third point. Poetry is destructive of the
dianoia if we lack the appropriate remedy or medicine (phannakon).
This destructiveness does not touch our knowledge of pure forms but
rather of the political use of things by the technites. Just as falsehoods
may be used for medicinal purposes, so too with knowledge. If we
put to one side the private interest of the philosopher in the truth for
its own sake , knowledge plays the same role in the Republic as does
falsehood: it must be useful to the city. The philosopher, exactly like
all other citizens, is produced by the nomos, "not that it may allow
each man to take whatever direction he wishes, but in order to use
each one for the binding-together of the city" (VII, 520al-5). The
medicinal lie (III, 389b2-9) is from a political standpoint on the same
level as the medicinal truth. The possession of the phannakon thus
negates the principle "one person, one occupation ." It is permitted
to imitate more than one occupation for the benefit of the city. And
in the decisive case , the guardians do not imitate, but actually prac-
tice, two occupations: the military and the philosophical. It follows
that philosophy is from a political standpoint, namely, as an internal
instrument of the city, on a par with, but not superior to, poetry.
On the basis of all these passages, we may draw together the
following inferences. First: whereas nonmimetic poetry may be de-
fective for political or moral reasons, it does not corrupt the dianoia
and so is immune from the criticism of mimetic art presented by
Socrates in Book Ten of the Republic. Second: the defect of mimetic
art is political or moral, not ontological or phenomenological. Its
danger lies , not in an abstract misrepresentation of the eidetic hi-
erarchy, but in the concrete misrepresentation of the moral character

of the gods, in a favorable representation of immoral human beings,
and in general, in the misuse of mimesis by which the same man is
led to imitate many things, rather than the one good thing he imitates
best.
There is something more that needs to be said on this point. We
have seen that Socrates, and a fortiori Plato, that is to say the phi-
losopher as founder of the city, imitates all of the citizens. Socrates
presents himself in various dialogues as "connoisseur" of the various
sciences and arts, and not only as erotician or "specialist" concerning
the soul. But what in fact is a specialist concerning the soul? What
is the difference between the philosopher and the poet on this point?
Is not the poet plainly superior? At a less profound level, how does
Homer's description of the military art suffer in comparison with the
description given by Socrates? If at all, only with respect to the moral
or political employment of that art. In sum, Socrates, like the guard-
ians, mayor may not be "poets" in the narrow sense. But they are
without doubt mythologists "for the sake of utility" (III, 398a8: ophe-
lias heneka). This also follows from the fact that narrative poetry
seems to be permitted to remain in the city . From an "ontological"
standpoint, narration is as "mimetic" as mimesis. That is to say, the
forbidden imitation is of the soul, not of Ideas. And if one possesses
the pharmakon, which can hardly be vision, let alone knowledge, of
the Ideas, the censorship is suspended .
The third inference is the most important one. The guardians
may employ mimesis, and hence mimetic poetry, for the benefit of
the city, because they possess the remedy (pharmakon), i.e., they know
what they are doing. But this means that Socrates, and of course, in
the first instance, Plato, that is, the philosopher who founds the city,
may lie, whether in prose or in verse, for the benefit of the city . One
could argue that since philosophy acquires knowledge, it is a higher
activity than poetry. But this in itself does not constitute a quarrel
between the two, and furthermore, the argument is compromised by
the mimetic nature of philosophy itself.
Our last inference has far-reaching consequences for the inter-
preter of the Platonic dialogue . Whereas the importance of the dra-
matic and rhetorical dimensions of the dialogues has been acknowl-
edged more frequently in the past decade, there is still a marked
unwillingness to draw the obvious conclusion. No doubt philosophy
is distinguished from poetry and sophistry within the dialogues by
its dedication to truth and hatred of the lie in the soul. But this por-
trait presents philosophy in its private identity, whereas the Platonic
dialogues, like any published writing, are political documents .
The least one can say is that the dialogues have both purely theo-
retical and political functions. But the comprehensive portrait is po-
litical, and therefore we must assume, in keeping with Socrates' own
procedures, that the portrait of pure theory is itself accommodated
to Plato's political or moral intentions. Plato gives us a poetic portrait
of philosophy, not a theoretical one. He gives us rhetorical or (to use
an appropriate anachronism) ideological testimonials to the life of
pure theory, as for example the art of dialectic. But these testimonials
are not supplemented by straightforward and extensive theoretical
examples. It is not by chance that there is no agreement among stu-
dents of Plato as to the nature of dialectic or of the so-called "theory
of Ideas."
In sum: it is entirely clear that Plato practices "esotericism," and
that those who extract what they take to be Plato's theoretical views
or "arguments" from their dialogical and poetic presentation are
studying images of their own theoretical presuppositions, but not
Plato. I mean by this, not that arguments have no place in Plato, or
in philosophy, but rather that one must be a poet as well as a phi-
losopher in order to determine what are the Platonic arguments. Just
as Homer is and is not Achilles, Odysseus, Helen, and Andromache,
so too Plato is and is not Socrates, Alcibiades, Prot agoras , and
Diotima.
That this conclusion, which is beyond dispute, should continue
to draw opprobrium onto those who assert it, is a sign of the wide-
spread failure to understand Socrates' account of the quarrel between
philosophy and poetry. It is an echo of the eighteenth-century En-
lightenment, or in other words, is itself an unconscious exhibition of
the rhetoric of openness . As unconscious, it leads to the absurd con-
sequence that technical incompetence regards itself as technical com-
petence. The answer to the question of how to read a Platonic dialogue
is, however, not technical at all. There is no techne for correct reading,
and hence none for determining which are the genuine Platonic "ar-
guments," whereas there is of course a techne for determining the
validity of a "logical" argument. In the largest and most compre-
hensive sense of the term, the problem of Platonic interpretation is
erotic, and hence, to borrow an expression from Socrates, it is a mat-
ter for the idiotes, not for the technician.
II
According to Socrates, all poets since Homer have been "imi-

tators of images of virtue and of the other things which they make,
but they do not lay hold of the truth" (X, 600e4-6). As we have now
seen, the fact (if it is a fact) that poets do not grasp the truth about
Platonic forms is irrelevant to the main investigation of the Republic,
which is justice, or as Socrates says in Book Nine (578c6-7), "with
the greatest of all things, the good and the bad life." Whereas knowl-
edge is needed for that investigation, there is nothing in the Republic
to support the view that, if "good" means "politically good," namely,
"a life livable in the just or philosophical city," this life requires the
possession of the science of dialectic, or precise knowledge of forms.
To the contrary, the discussion of philosophy in the middle books
of the Republic is explicitly characterized by Socrates as a digression
to the investigation of justice and the just life (VIII, S43c4). In that
digression, the account given by Socrates of Ideas, the good, and di-
alectic, is sketchy, poetical, and incomplete (VI, S06el; S09c7-1O; VII,
S17b6-cf. VI, SOSel-S06aS; VII, 523a8; and the very important
S36c1, where his speech about philosophy is called a game).
In other words, all that is needed for the inquiry into the good
life is an image of philosophy in the narrower, private, or "mathe-
matical" sense. One might object that whereas Socrates' account is
incomplete, it might have been more precise. But this is to assume
that Socrates is wise rather than a philosopher, or to go against Soc-
rates' own testimony. It is to assume that a science of dialectic, and
hence a precise knowledge of pure forms, is possible . But this con-
tradicts all the evidence of the dialogues.
One might argue that, if we accept the thesis of esotericism, Soc-
rates (or Plato) may well be lying, or concealing knowledge of di-
alectic and the forms. In other words, on this account, the poetic
portrait of even the mathematical nature of philosophy is entirely
exoteric. All that remains for proponents of this view is to supply us
with the science of dialectic and knowledge of forms, together with
a convincing explanation of why Plato concealed this science from
his readers. To this I add that such a view reinforces the inference
that full knowledge of the nature of philosophy is politically unnec-
essary and (since it is suppressed) undesirable.
Let me emphasize that in my view, the principles of Socrates',
and of Plato's, conceptions of philosophy are indeed to be found
within the dialogues. My point is that a science of dialectic and
"mathematical" knowledge of the pure forms is rendered impossible
by these principles. Plato practices esotericism (to state the matter
very generally) in the sense that he seeks to persuade us that philos-
ophy has won, or can win, its quarrel with poetry. Were he to have
lied about his principles as well, he would have published treatises
rather than dialogues. Differently stated, within the dialogues, there
are two portraits of philosophy as mathematical and poetic. But the
portraits themselves are poetic. These are facts. The task of the in-
terpreter is to explain them.
The quarrel between philosophy and poetry is in the first instance
political or moral. Stated in terms less exaggerated than those of the
Republic, the quarrel amounts to this: poetry encourages desire, and
hence the will. It encourages production for the sake of satisfying the
desires, or in other words defines completeness as satisfaction. Phi-
losophy, on the other hand, advocates the restriction of the desires
or the transformation of desire in accord with the definition of com-
pleteness as wisdom. Philosophy has the advantage over poetry of
being able to explain what it understands by wisdom. But poetry has
the advantage over philosophy in that part of wisdom, and indeed,
the regulative part, is poetic .
The identification of poetry and tyranny is thus explained; it is
the tyranny of desire as unhindered by teleology or a hierarchy of
ends. In the extreme case, man desires to become, not merely the
master and possessor of nature, but the producer of nature. He wishes
to transform nature into an artifact or poem. Coordinately, the con-
nection between the tyranny of desire and Eros is rooted in the pri-
macy of production. In order to satisfy his desires completely, man
must recreate the world in his own image. Eros is accordingly un-
masked as narcissism.
In order to triumph over poetry, the philosophical Eros must be
restrained from narcissism, if I may employ an appropriate meta-
phor, by the replacement of mirrors with Ideas. Whereas one sees an
image of oneself upon looking into a mirror, Ideas do not reflect. There
are no images of Ideas. If I may summarize a long argument which
I have presented elsewhere in full (in my book, Plato's Sophist [New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1983]) there are either correct or in-
correct images of Ideas. But correct images are, as correct, indistin-
guishable from the originals, whereas incorrect images are images
of something else.
Ideas (if there are any) therefore terminate the reflexivity or per-
spectival nature of vision; as one could also express this, they give
rise to full, complete, or pure vision, with no room left over for speech.
Whatever one says about Ideas is therefore an image of something
else . Plato employs the metaphor of recollection in this context; dis-
course about Ideas is in fact discourse about our recollections of Ideas.
In other words, it is discourse about images, and hence of discursively
modified artifacts which the dianoia produces in the absence of direct
contact with the Ideas themselves. At a still more vulgar level of
production, these images are called predicates (not, of course, by
Plato).
Almost inadvertantly, by the process of our reflection upon the

Republic, the quarrel between philosophy and poetry has evolved
from one that is political in the conventional or usual sense into a
more fundamental quarrel between two ways of responding to human
desire, or, to give desire its official Platonic name, to Eros. To return
to the conventional level, Socrates does not actually, despite his ex-
plicit statement to that effect, expel poetry from his city but rather
subordinates it to philosophy. As we have seen, the philosopher must
imitate the poet "for the benefit of the city."
This can be understood as an imitation for the sake of justice to
all citizens. As such, it is a self-sacrifice on the part of the philoso-
phers, or a restriction of philosophical desire by obligation to the
nomoi which have produced philosophy. Philosophers who dwell in
other, that is, actual cities, are not bound by this obligation (VII,
520a6ff). This is because, in actual cities, philosophy is a spontaneous
growth and not a production of the ci ty. In other words, in actual
cities, philosophers are natural, whereas in Socrates' city, they are
artifacts or poems.
The artifactual status of philosophers in Socrates' city corre-
sponds very well to the poetic account of the philosophical culmi-
nation of the mathematical education, as well as to the status of the
Ideas as divine artifacts. Whatever status we assign to Socrates'
founding discourse, in the city itself, poetry triumphs and rules com-
pletely. We must now gradually descend from the heights of the pre-
vious several paragraphs to a continuation of our circumstantial in-
vestigation. We start with a question. Given the political triumph of
poetry, what has happened to the pharmakon or remedy of knowledge
that was supposed to preserve the guardians from the debilitating
effects of falsehoods, i.e., of poetry?
If we assume that poets lack knowledge because they produce
false images, or pretend to produce true ones, then someone must be
in possession of the distinction between true and false images. This
in turn requires that someone possess direct apprehension of the orig-
inals. We shall now verify that no one in the city founded by Socrates
is in possession of such an apprehension. The case need not be made
in exhaustive detail; I will give only the essential points.
In the section of the Republic that has come to be known famil-
iarly as "the divided line," Socrates uses that image to distinguish
between the visible and intelligible places (topoi) or "forms" (eide:
VI, 509dlff). The visible place is subdivided into two parts, one of
images and the other of perceivable beings, both natural and arti-
factual, to which the images correspond.
The intelligible place is divided into two parts as well, the first
of which corresponds to dianoia. The soul investigates this domain

by using the perceivable things (part two of the visible place) as im-
ages (51Ob4-5). In so doing, it proceeds like the geometers "who make
use of visible forms and construct speeches about them, although they
are not thinking about these, but rather about those things of which
they are images" (51Od5-7).
In other words, the dianoia thinks, or as we must say, attempts
to think about the geometrical originals, to which it has access only
via their perceptible images. Whereas in the visible domain percep-
tible things are originals, in the intelligible domain they are images.
The intellect or soul is required to employ hypotheses in dianoetic
thinking, namely, hypothetical formal properties which are based on
the use of perceptible things as images of presumed originals (511a3-
8). These hypotheses sustain the "formal" results of dianoetic think-
ing, which is consequently dependent upon "images" in establishing
its conclusions. Accordingly, these conclusions are themselves hy-
pothetical. The hypotheses as well as the conclusions rest upon im-
ages . Hence there is no independent access to originals, no way to
determine that the results of geometry are not dianoetic construc- .
tions or poems. Such a determination can be made, if at all, by noesis,
or thinking exclusively via pure forms (511c1-2).
The distinction between the original and the image corresponds
to the distinction between noesis and dianoia . Noesis is a pure intel-
lectual perception of pure form, whereas dianoia is the construction
of discursive images, on the basis of nondiscursive or ontic images,
of those originals. This leads directly to an aporia. Given the inse-
parability between dianoia and images, that is to say, between dis-
course and images, there can be no direct discourse about forms
themselves.
In Socrates' very cryptic account of noetic dialectic, we are told
only that it too makes hypotheses, but treats these as mere beginnings
which raise it up to the level of the nonhypothetical, at which point
it proceeds exclusively via forms to forms, and so concludes with
forms (511b3-8) . It would be foolish for anyone to pretend to under-
stand exactly what Socrates means here, but I believe that one point
is clear. Logos or discourse is mentioned as grasping the noetic by
way of the dialectical "making" of temporary hypotheses (tas hy-
potheseis poioumenos ouk archas: 511 b4-5).
Once the leap from hypotheses to forms has been accomplished,
there is no reference to discourse. Glaucon thus restates his under-
standing of Socrates' contention as follows: "you wish to distinguish
that which is contemplated by the dialectical science of Being and
the intelligible as clearer than the [result] of what are called the arts,
whose principles are hypotheses, and are forced to use the discursive
intellect (dianoia) ... " (Sl1c4-7). Dianoetic viewing (Sllc8) is thus
distinct from noetic theorizing (SllcS-6).
Pure eidetic theory is silent, exactly as in the myth of the soul
told by Socrates in the Phaedrus. As I have argued elsewhere at length,
the same situation obtains throughout the Platonic dialogues. How-
ever, in order to buttress our present results, I will now show that
the same conclusions follow from a crucial passage in the Philebus.
This dialogue is widely regarded as belonging to Plato's last period,
and so to contain doctrines that go beyond those presented in the
Republic. More usefully, the discussion in the Philebus links the quasi-
mathematical treatment of forms with an investigation into the good
life and the roles played therein by pleasure and intelligence. We can
therefore use the later dialogue as a control on our interpretation of
the earlier one.
The passage that interests us begins at SSc4. In it, Socrates pro-
vides a diaeresis of knowledge (episteme) . In previous sections, plea-
sure has been subjected to a rigorous examination, one which shows
that it cannot be a good, or more properly, that it cannot be the good,
i.e., the principle of the good life. We must now conduct a similar
examination of intellect and knowledge (nous and episteme), in order
to determine what is purest in them by nature (S6c4ff). The purest
parts will provide us with the truest parts of intellect and knowledge,
which may then be compared with the truest parts of pleasure.
Socrates turns directly to a diaeresis of knowledge. This was not
his procedure in the case of pleasure . Instead, Socrates analyzed plea-
sure from various, ambiguously related standpoints, such as the het-
erogeneous and homogeneous or impure and pure; the bad, the harm-
less, and the good; the true and the false, and so on. Whereas no one
would deny that the types of knowledge present us with various dif-
ficulties, they are nevertheless easier to articulate into their elements
than is pleasure .
Episteme is a technical construction, whereas pleasure is a per-
vasive natural phenomenon. Knowledge is separable from other
human possessions or activities, and it may be divided into its several
kinds from a variety of standpoints. Pleasure is difficult if not im-
possible to separate from other aspects of human life; furthermore,
it is not a genus so much as a pure quality which does not separate
into species except through the mediation of external objects that
please.
A rapid survey of the Platonic dialogues shows us that, whereas
there is some variation in the principle by which the sciences are
divided, the range of that variation is rather narrow. In the Gorgias
(449d8ff), the arts are divided initially into those of the handworkers
and such practices, and those which function via logos. Examples of
each are painting on the one hand and arithmetic on the other. In
the Charm ides (165c4ff), the major division of the arts is into those
with separate products, like housebuilding and clothesmaking, and
those whose objects are not separate, like medicine and arithmetic
or geometry.
It is worth pausing for a moment over this association between
medicine and arithmetic. As is well known, the Aristotelian distinc-
tion of the arts into theoretical, practical, and productive is virtually
absent in Plato (for an indication of its presence, see Charmides
163alO-12). We normally find a distinction between what Aristotle
might call "theoretical" or what are called in the dialogues non-
productive arts on the one hand, and the "practico-productive" arts
on the other. Medicine is theoretical in the sense that it studies na-
ture; it is nonproductive in the sense that it does not bring into being
a separate entity. This is of interest in considering the relation be-
tween "medicinal" lies and philosophy in the Republic.
It would lead us too far afield to explore the role of medicine in
the Platonic dialogues in this essay . Suffice it to say that there is an
obvious connection between medicine and philosophical rhetoric, or
the art of adjusting one's speech to the ipdividual soul (see Phaedrus
268a8ff and 270blff, where medicine and the true art of rhetoric are
extensively compared). Persuasive language is as much a pharmakon
as the drug administered at the right time and in the proper amount
to the appropriate patient. In both cases, a knowledge of nature is
required (Phaedrus 270c1-2).
The object of rhetoric is the human soul, whereas the object of
medicine is the human body. In both cases, the aim of the art is to
produce health. We may grant that no separate entity results from
this mode of "production." But the arts are man-centered, as arith-
metic is not. It is evident that rhetoric is "political," but not so evident
that medicine is. One could claim that medicine is the theoretical
paradigm for the practico-productive problem of how to determine
political health, and so to produce virtuous citizens. Nevertheless, as
an art that modifies human life, medicine cannot be altogether free
of a political dimension.
The connection between medicine and rhetoric raises the deep
question of the sense in which politics is a productive art. This ques-
tion is concealed by the association of medicine with arithmetic. It
makes more immediate sense to associate medicine with music and
gymnastic, or in other words with those arts having a formative, and
consequently productive function in politics. If it is objected that
medicine has also a theoretical dimension, the reply must be that so

do music and gymnastic. Put in one last way, the theoretical part of
the formative arts is either arithmetic or something akin to
arithmetic.
Thus in the Republic (VII, 521 d8ff), the distinction is made be-
tween the nonphilosophical arts like music and gymnastic, and the
study needed by all other activities, a study which does lead to phi-
losophy: number and calculation. However, number and calculation
have nothing directly to do with politics; they are "purely theoreti-
cal." In other words, arithmetic becomes political "measurement"
only when mediated by "medicine" (in the sense of the man-centered
study of nature), and hence as present within music and gymnastic .
Two other dialogues may be briefly cited. The fundamental di-
vision in the Sophist (219a8ff) is between the poetic arts like farming
and mimesis, and the acquiring arts like learning and fighting. The
Sophist is not explicitly concerned with politics, and indeed, it gives
a peculiarly apolitical portrait of the nature of sophistry. But this is
only on the surface, as is already evident from the initial association
of learning with fighting. The Eleatic Stranger regularly employs the
metaphors of hunting and wrestling for philosophy: one must force
nature to reveal her secrets in a way that is not entirely different from
the procedure recommended by the founders of modernity (for a de-
tailed discussion of the relevant Platonic texts, see my Plato's Sym-
posium, revised edition [Yale University Press, New Haven, 1987],
pp. 339ff). Finally, in the Statesman (258b6ff), the primary distinction
of the arts is into those like arithmetic which are "bare of practice"
(i.e., of the production and management of what did not previously
exist), and those which do engage in production and management.
It is obvious that the Platonic dialogues favor the division of the
arts or types of knowledge into those which produce something and
those which do not. If we disregard ambiguous cases like fighting,
this amounts to a distinction between poetry and mathematics. It
would be tempting to conclude that mathematics is virtually iden-
tical to, or paradigmatic of philosophy, thereby providing ourselves
with a technical parallel to the quarrel between poetry and philos-
ophy. However, we have already seen that such a conclusion is in-
validated by the Republic. Not only is mathematics inferior to di-
alectic, but the philosophical investigation of the good life is much
more like poetry than it is like mathematics . Furthermore, mathe-
matics itself seems to be productive. Similar results will follow from
our study of the diaeresis of knowledge in the Philebus, with one
apparent qualification.
Two other points should at least be registered here. Whereas the
arts are relatively easy to articulate (although the results vary with
the principle of division employed) and pleasure is quite difficult,
intellect (nous) is impossible to analyze. We may distinguish the func-
tions of the soul, of which nous is one. But we cannot distinguish the
properties of nous because it is monoeidetic or homogeneous. Nous,
taken as synonymous with noesis, rather than as the general term for
the cluster of properties like dianoia, noesis, phronesis, and so on, has
no internal structure. It is the capacity to grasp or view pure forms,
just as it is for Aristotle, and nothing more analytically precise can
be said of it because of its lack of internal structure.
Nous, taken as noesis, is surprisingly like "the altogether not" (to
medamos on). This lack of internal structure is not a deficiency but
a necessity, if a vision of forms is to be possible in which cognitive
structure does not interfere with the purity of that vision. I note in
passing that any reference to the properties or "predicates" of forms
is always grounded in a prepredicative perception of those forms, in
Aristotle as well as in Plato. The unity of predication cannot be
grounded in an "analytical" statement which itself consists of the
division of an essence into (or from) its predicates.This is why dianoia
must be unified by noesis.
We can, of course, produce poetic descriptions of nous, but these
employ metaphors as well as predicates. Predicative discourse, or
dianoia, as analytical, is thus necessarily "productive" in the sense
that "concepts" or images are produced as surrogates for pure forms
as well as for the unity of the pure form. Thus the classificatory prin-
ciples of the arts are derived from human intention or activity, and
not from some arbitrary "natural" hierarchy. For example, the dis-
tinction between arithmetic or the nonproductive arts and the pro-
ductive arts is already artificial or productive, and underlies the se-
rious question whether arithmetic itself is altogether distinct from
production. Suffice it to say here that poetry is already present within
diaeresis, the ancestor of modern "theory construction" or
"concepts. "
To come back directly to the Philebus, Socrates begins the dia-
eresis of science (episteme) as follows: "well then, for us, I suppose,
part of the science with respect to knowledge is demiurgic, and part
concerns education and nurture" (55dl-3). Socrates' slightly cum-
bersome terminology brings out the point that both parts of episteme
are "mathematical" in the comprehensive sense of encompassing
"the things that are understood." Making is also a kind of knowing.
This is why Socrates regularly begins his investigation of knowledge
with a humble techne like shoemaking or carpentry.
It is initially surprising that, in a dialogue devoted to the question
of the principle of the good life , Socrates does not proceed to divide
the educational and the nurturing arts . A moment's reflection makes
clear that we are not primarily concerned with abstract knowledge
or philosophy in the narrow, "theoretical" sense, but rather with the
production of a mixture: the life that is best because it is a proper
mixture of intelligence and pleasure (59dlO-e3). Socrates says ex-
plicitly: it is a proper discursive image to compare us to demiurges,
since we are producing something, namely, the good life (d. 22c5ff).
In other words, our inquiry here is no more purely theoretical
than it was in the Republic. Whereas it is true that counting and
measuring occur in all the arts, it is not true that philosophy is equiv-
alent to counting and measuring. If arithmetic is the paradigm of
nonproductive knowledge, then philosophy, although it includes
arithmetic, falls under the complementary cut of productive knowl-
edge. This shows us that the division of the sciences into productive
and nonproductive is not exhaustive; it cannot lead to a coherent
concept, or to two compatible concepts of distinct types of science.
To anticipate a later development, we can divide arithmetic into pure
and impure . To do so, however, renders the nature of philosophy
inaccessible instead of leading to its clarification.
This result is reflected in the attempt to divide the elements of
the good life. Whereas intellect may be the element in the mixed life
most akin to whatever makes that life desirable and good, it is not
itself the cause of the mixture (22c1-23b4, esp. 22d5). The cause of
the mixture of intellect and pleasure is a fourth kind or form (eidos)
differing from the mixture and its two elements (23c12ff). This
amounts to the contention that the human intellect cannot be the
cause of the mixture by which it participates within, and rules, the
best human life. To employ a modern expression, man cannot make
himself. Similarly, arithmetic cannot itself be the cause of the mix-
ture within which it is the "ruling" element. More precisely, there
are two different senses of "ruling," or (as we shall see) two different
senses of "measure," and it is the nonarithmetical measure that rules
by producing a mixture within which arithmetic is a pervasive
element.
This consideration helps us to understand what appears as an
inconsistency in Socrates' presentation. He identifies intellect and
sound judgment (phronesis) as together constituting a component of
the good or mixed life, and the cause of the mixture as a fourth form
in addition to the three forms of intellect, pleasure, and mixture ( =
the mixed). But he also subsequently insists that this fourth cause is
itself intellect (28clff).
This identification is associated with piety by Protarchus, Soc-
rates' interlocutor, an association to which Socrates has no objection

(28dSff, esp. el-2). Thus Socrates distinguishes between his own in-
tellect and that of god. At 30clff, Socrates concludes that the causal
intellect is resident in the soul of Zeus, and it is on this basis that he
draws his conclusion: intellect belongs to the fourth (causal) form
(30dl, dlO-e3).
To summarize: the divine or causative intellect is not the same
as the human intellect which, however, of the various elements in
the good life for humans, most closely resembles it. Divine intellect
stands to human intellect as pure arithmetic stands to impure arith-
metic . By itself, pure arithmetic can make nothing: it is the non-
productive science par excellence. God, on the other hand, is a de-
miurge. We may infer, by parity of reasoning, that the divine intellect
is an instrument in the making of which the divine soul ( = Zeus) is
the agent. It is analytically or cognitively possible to distinguish the
divine intellect from the soul of the divine demiurge, just as it is
analytically possible to distinguish pure from impure arithmetic . But
the result is not philosophy in the latter case, just as no human life
can result from the former distinction.
It therefore makes perfect sense that we should continue our di-
vision of the sciences falling under the demiurgic part. Only in this
way can we enact the educational episteme concerning the good life.
And this means that, with respect to the good life, there is no division
between the educational and demiurgic sciences. A nondemiurgic,
epistemic paideia is entirely irrelevant to the concerns of the Philebus.
Similarly, the discussions of forms, eidetic numbering, dialectic, and
cosmic properties like the limited and the unlimited playa role in
the Philebus analogous to the one played in the Republic by the digres-
sion on philosophy. This is to say that they playa demiurgic or poetic
role.
The attempt to extract from these discussions a quasi-mathe-
matical methodology is, if not entirely misguided, certainly an ob-
stacle to the proper understanding of the Philebus as a unified pro-
duction. This attempt arises from the same misunderstanding of the
quarrel between philosophy and poetry that we noticed previously.
The quarrel is not resolved by equating philosophy with mathemat-
ics. In such an equation, philosophy disappears, thereby giving the
palm to poetry, or to what we may call the art of interpreting formal
calculi by the construction of hermeneutical models. In sum, it is not
mimesis alone that leads poetry to corrupt the dianoia, but rather
mimesis that is ruled by desire instead of by intellect (no us) and
judgment (phronesis). The discursive intelligence cannot rule itself
because it is finally indiscriminate: it says everything, poetry as well

as mathematics .
Step two of the division of science begins as follows: "let us first
consider whether in the manual arts (cheirotechnikais) one part is
closer to episteme and the other part less so, and so that the first part
must be regarded as the purest (kai dei ta men has katharatata nom-
izein) and the second as less pure" (SSdS-8). In this statement, the
two verbs "consider" and "regard" refer to two distinct intellectual
operations.
The discursive intellect or dianoia, which in Plato is intimately
related to "calculation" (logismos) , makes formal distinctions be-
tween kinds of art. Judgment then decides (nomizein) which part is
purest. It must, in other words, apply a criterion of purity, and thus
evaluate the significance of structural properties in terms of the in-
tentions of the diaeretician. The criterion is a "law" (nomos) that
expresses a human intention, and not merely a formal expression of
complexity or a "formula." The law designates "the ruling elements"
(las toinun hegemonikas: SSdlO); this is already an interpretation of
formal structure. Contrary to the instructions of the Eleatic Stranger
in the Sophist (227a7-c6), diaeresis not only classifies like with like;
it also distinguishes between better and worse. Diaeresis is from the
outset a mixture of theory and practice; but this is to say that it is
productive or demiurgic.
This last point is brought out by Socrates as follows. He leads
Protarchus to agree that, without arithmetic, measuring, and weigh-
ing, the remainder of the arts would be paltry or inferior (SSel-4).
We should have to fall back upon conjecture, literally, upon the use
of images (eikazein), and so to exercise the sensations by experience
and routine as well as by guesswork (SSeS-S6al). It is therefore ev-
ident that arithmetic, or counting, measuring, and weighing, rules
in the arts. This decision in turn follows from the assumption that
episteme, in its official or philosophical sense, means "precise knowl-
edge" rather than "practical know-how."
The criterion, in other words, has little or nothing to do with the
utility of the arts; instead, it honors a formal property of art in gen-
eral. The arts classified as "less precise" (S6cS), namely, music, med-
icine, agriculture, piloting, and generalship (S6a3-b3), are extremely
useful, even indispensable. Their lack of precision corresponds to the
nature of things, not to a deficient mathematical element. The value
of precision is thus relative to nature and to human intention .
Equally important in the passage just cited is the classification
of medicine with the less precise arts. In the Charm ides, we recall,
medicine was classified with arithmetic. This is a clear indication
that the classifications in the dialogues are always "rhetorical" in

the sense of being relativized to the immediate discussion. Medicine
is an "ambiguous" art; it is both theoretical and practico-productive,
exactly, as I have argued.
If we attempt to render each of the arts precise (as for example
by an exhaustive or quasi-mathematical diaeresis that functions as
a universal method), then, with the possible exception of arithmetic
and its cognate arts, we destroy rather than perfect the remainder.
Similarly, we might establish the purity of arithmetic by such a meth-
odology, but this would require us to separate it from all of the other
arts, thereby depriving them of their "ruler." Establishment of the
paradigm of precision is of great theoretical importance, but in a
practico-productive investigation, such as that of the good life, the
function of the ruling element is always relative to its subjects, i.e.,
to a mixture.
This point is illustrated by Socrates' treatment of pure and im-
pure arithmetic in the remainder of the diaeresis. We note to begin
with that the examples given by Socrates of the more precise arts
are shipbuilding and housebuilding or, more generally, woodworking
or building (56b4-c3). One should observe that without medicine and
agriculture, housebuilding would be a useless activity; similarly, the
art of the pilot is what gives value to the art of shipbuilding. The less
precise arts therefore rule the more precise arts when our criterion
is human life.
It is also important to observe that the obvious presence of count-
ing, measuring, and weighing in the less precise arts does not enforce
the Socratic inference that these constitute the ruling element. They
are of course indispensable, but so too are other intellectual, spiritual,
and physical qualities. What sense does it make to claim that arith-
metic is the ruling element in the art of the pilot or the farmer? This
observation is an important prelude to the distinction between two
kinds of measure, which I shall introduce below .
To continue with the immediate context, there follows a discus-
sion of mathematics, pure and applied, which is of considerable in-
terest in its own right, but which for our purposes need not be studied
in detail. The main point is this. The "vulgar" mathematician counts
with "unequal units," i.e., kinds or forms of things (such as armies
or oxen, hence as in "two armies," "two oxen") . The philosophical
mathematician, on the other hand, counts with homogeneous monads
or pure numbers (56dl-57a4).
At this stage of the diaeresis, the arts have disappeared; demiurgy
or poetry has been replaced by mathematics. Socrates could have
arrived at the same result by dividing the educational and nurturing
part of episteme. If his purpose is to show Protarchus that the purest

element in the productive arts is mathematics (S7aS-b2), he has not
yet shown that this is the case in the nonproductive arts. Differently
stated, he has not yet shown that precision is the ruling element in
knowledge altogether, but at most (and paradoxically in some if not
all cases) that it rules the productive part of knowledge.
In other words, this division of the arts fails to establish that the
mathematical measurement (metretike) is the same as the measure
that has been designated by "the eternal" as the highest or ruling
element in the good life (66a6). In fact, it is obvious, as we have al-
ready established, that they are not the same. "Measure, moderation,
and fitness" (metron kai to metrion kai kairion) are not arithmetical
or precise but rather political or prudential, as the Eleatic Stranger
shows in the Statesman (284alff, 30Sd6-e8). In the Stranger's for-
mulation, phronesis is the natural ruler of the laws, whether political
or technical (294a6ff). By phronesis, the Stranger means the sound
judgment that allows the philosopher to decide in each case what is
to be done . What else could Socrates mean by phronesis in the Phi-
lebus, where he regularly employs that term, either by itself or in
conjunction with no us, to name the element in the mixed life most
resembling the good?
III
The closing pages of the Philebus are too complex to summarize

here, and the constant shifting of terms, as well as the outright dis-
agreement between the final descriptions of the good life and its ele-
ments on the one hand, and the main sections of the dialogue on the
other, threaten to make a shambles of any coherent interpretation.
The dramatic effect is that of the intrusion of life's irregularity upon
any effort at systematic analysis, or in other words, the triumph of
impure over pure arithmetic.
Our intentions, however, are much more modest than that of a
comprehensive interpretation. It is almost enough to say that the
demotion of intellect and judgment to third place on the list of ele-
ments within the mixed life that claim to resemble the good (66bS),
and the assignment of first and second places to various kinds of
measure and beauty (66a4-b3), serve to confirm the results of our
analysis of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry in the
Republic.
In the Philebus, philosophical arithmetic is said to study "what
remains always the same without mixture" (ta aei kata ta auta ho-
sautos amiktotata echonta), and so to provide "steadfast, pure, true,
and what we call unmixed" knowledge (59c2-6). But human life

plainly belongs to those things that have come to be, are coming to
be, and will come to be, that is, to the continuously changing or
perishing, about which precise knowledge is impossible (58e4-59b3).
It does not follow that there is no knowledge of what remains
always the same. Furthermore, this knowledge provides a kind of
skeleton to the living and hence imprecise knowledge of human being.
But the skeleton is not alive. In other words, human life is like the
demiurgic part of knowledge taken in its entirety, and not at all like
philosophical arithmetic. The latter may well be marvelously supe-
rior "in precision and truth" to the nonphilosophical arts (57c9-d2);
but for this very reason it is not the "fitting" paradigm of the element
in knowledge that rules with respect to the criterion of the principle
of the good life.
Neither can we resolve the issue merely by substituting "sound
judgment" (phronesis), the art of the statesman, for the arithmetical
art of the philosopher, or (let us say) for the mathematical intellect,
which is dianoia, not no us understood as noesis. The promotion of
phronesis must be accompanied by the recognition that the good
human life is not, so to speak, an "ontological" but a demiurgic or
poetic mixture. Sound judgment cannot rule except by producing or
constructing a good life from the endless and endlessly varying par-
ticularities of human existence.
The extraordinary variation of terminology, and the extreme con-
fusion of the "arithmetical" articulation of steps in the argument, as
well as of the positions in the hierarchy, are dramatic illustrations
of the inappropriateness of purity and precision as paradigmatic for
the attempt to understand human life. They are accordingly inap-
propriate as the paradigm for wisdom. The fact is that there is no
single or pure and precise paradigm for wisdom, which is a divine
mixture, not an atomic element. We cannot arrive at a precise or
steadfast enumeration of the attributes of the good life. To understand
human life is to live it, and hence to produce or construct the details
of the mixture, whose components may vary from one standpoint to
another. Anything less than this is either platitude or sclerosis.
So long as we take them in their conventional senses, there is an
essential discontinuity between poetry and mathematics. As a direct
consequence, if philosophy is represented by the paradigm of math-
ematics, then it can never win its quarrel with poetry. The victory
goes to poetry, which directs mathematics and gives it human sig-
nificance. This is the easiest stratum of Plato's esoteric teaching; it
is so to speak silently but directly conveyed by the fact of the dialogue.
Nor is the triumph of poetry a guarantee of political license and on-
tological relativism. Whether we take it as mimesis or direct vision,

poetry is as capable as mathematics of perceiving the eternal.
I want to close this study with a suggestion. There is a deeper
level to Platonic esotericism, although it too begins with the surface
of the dialogues. Poets and philosophers in their conventional ident-
ities are quarreling about the best human life, and so, not about eter-
nity, but rather about the artifacts which render eternity accessible.
Poetry, like philosophy, when each is taken apart from the other, runs
the risk of replacing the whole by a part, or in other words of replacing
the original with an image. The dialogues suggest that this quarrel
is not, and cannot be, resolved. Instead, to employ a Hegelian term,
it is subia ted into a demiurgic discourse that is neither poetry nor
philosophy but philosophical poetry.
Philosophy without poetry, exactly like poetry without philoso-
phy, is immoderate or unmeasured. In the last analysis, there is no
quarrel between philosophy and poetry. But the last analysis is not
the first. Even within the limits of the Tenth Book of the Republic, it
cannot be too strongly emphasized that Socrates begins with the
quarrel but ends with the myth of Er. The pedagogical function of
the Republic is that of a pharmakon or noble lie, which is designed
to inoculate us against the vitiating consequences of the recognition
that justice is impossible.
As a corollary of Platonic medicine, the Republic shows that the
statement of the rule of mathematics is a poem, or that Homer was
wrong when he said that "the rule of many is not good; let there be
one king." To conclude, it turns out that the poets (in the traditional
sense of the term) are more fanatical than the philosophers (in the
Platonic sense of the term). The significance of the so-called two Pla-
tonic principles of the One and the unlimited dyad is that there are
two kings, or if you prefer, that dualism is the king of all men. Triadic
synthesis is just a garrulous form of the silence of unity.
2
Philosophy and
Revolution
I
The attribution of a revolutionary role to philosophy is normally
taken to be a characteristic of the modern epoch . Modernity, under-
stood very generally as the age initiated approximately by the En-
lightenment, is thus conceived as a revolution against the "grand
alliance" between classical thought and Christian faith. In this view,
the history of modern philosophy is a series of explications of the
revolutionary content of the Enlightenment. This revolution assumes
a special form in the nineteenth century. Whether one calls it de-
cadence, or the decisive preparation for the millennium, there is an
obvious bifurcation of revolutionary energy. The main force of sci-
entific rationalism, in its practical embodiment as bourgeois society,
is attacked by two counterrevolutionary armies, one on the left and
one on the right. The commanders of these counterrevolutionary ar-
mies are, of course, Marx and Nietzsche. What one may therefore call
the tripartition of the modern impulse gives rise to confusion about
whether the twentieth century is a continuation of modernity, or
some new age. However, whatever name we give to our century, there
seems to be no diminution of revolutionary enthusiasm. What is now
called "analytical philosophy" has its immediate origins in a revo-
lution against German Idealism and German philosophies of history.
On the continent, the revolution associated with Martin Heidegger
also directs sporadic cannon fire against Idealism, yet may perhaps
be better understood as an attempt to purify Idealism by revolution-
ary fire. In either case, we have two opposing forces, one (the analysts)
claiming to represent the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the other
(the existential or fundamental ontologists) very obviously involved
in a repudiation of the spirit of the Enlightenment. Mention must be
28 Philosophy and Revolution
made of Husserlian phenomenology, with its revolutionary slogan,

"to the things themselves," and its ambiguous mixture of Idealism
and Positivism, an ambiguity underlying the fragmentation of phe-
nomenology into subcamps reflecting the diverse influences of Hei-
degger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, to say nothing of others.
Let this suffice as a map of our revolutionary antecedents. It is
enough to glance at this map as we try to find our way through the
maze of barricades that have been erected in our own generation.
For the past ten or twenty years, we have been living in an age of
eclecticism, which some may prefer to call an age of synthesis or
communion . Existential ontologists and phenomenologists, each in
their own way, have been reaching out toward a rapprochement with
linguistic analysis. The analysts, for two reasons, have not been able
altogether to resist the seductions of their ostensible enemies . In the
first place, the theoretical foundations of analytical philosophy, as
distinct from technical progress, have not proved adequate to their
task. Secondly, the social and political climate within which analyt-
ical philosophy functions, namely, the universities, makes doctrinal
purity impossible. Marxism, or more generally, the revolution of the
left, has softened the vaunted "hard-headedness" of the analytical
community, thereby rendering it susceptible to the viruses of struc-
turalism, critical rationalism, hermeneutics, and, to put it bluntly,
whatever is going. In the midst of this revolutionary confusion, we
may detect still another counterrevolution, or pockets of counterre-
volution, united somewhat loosely by the conviction that philosophy
is dead. In the United States, so far as I can see, those who speak,
either explicitly or implicitly, of the death of philosophy are referring
to the death of traditional philosophy; that is, they speak as revi-
sionist late-Wittgensteinians. Given the fluidity of both late-Wittgen-
steinianism and the circumstances of our intellectual community, it
is possible for American counterrevolutionaries to make common
cause with those European generals of counterrevolution stemming
from Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Husser!' The watchword be-
hind the barricades of our leading universities may be paraphrased
as follows: "Habermas and Derrida today; the Marquis de Sade
tomorrow! "
In all this hullabaloo, there is one position which cannot be taken
seriously, and that, of course, is the view that traditional philosophy,
or still more specifically, classical philosophy, remains a viable al-
ternative for the intelligent individual of the late twentieth century.
The study of philosophia perennis, and so too of Plato and Aristotle,
is either a branch of philology or else an exercise in revolution. By
this last I mean that traditional philosophy is taken seriously only
Philosophy and Revolution 29
to the extent that it can be assimilated and thus transformed into

one version or another of the modern, or postmodern revolution. Un-
derlying this repudiation of the seriousness or vitality of, say, Greek
philosophy, is the conviction that, in its original form, it is the com-
mon enemy of all modern revolutionaries. To state this in another
way, it is taken for granted that classical philosophy is not revolu-
tionary. Those who today attack bourgeois society (and who does
not?) are therefore united, however diverse their credos, by the ex-
plicit or implicit conviction that they are attacking Plato and
Platonism.
I do not wish to deny that there is a difference between antiquity
and modernity. However, I do claim that the modern perception of
antiquity has been distorted by the very conviction of the moderns
that they are the first to equate philosophy with revolution. In my
opinion, a better statement of the case would be this: philosophy is
by its nature revolutionary. However, philosophers may differ con-
cerning tactics . Fundamentally, they may differ concerning what
counts as success. And this difference leads to a split between covert
and overt revolution. This issue may be dealt with in the form of the
question of the public presentation of philosophy. To what extent can
the philosopher, as philosopher, have a public existence? The En-
lightenment may be understood as a revolution launched on the hy-
pothesis, or rather, conviction, that, thanks to mathematics and ex-
perimental science, all men can become philosophers. The ambiguity
of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophy is due to the fact
that this hypothesis could not be stated publicly, given the continued
rule of the Graeco-Christian alliance. One way to understand the am-
biguity of our century is to note that in it, such a hypothesis can be
and has been stated publicly. Unfortunately, there is no longer una-
nimity concerning what it means to be a philosopher, or in the ex-
treme case, whether it is desirable to be a philosopher.
The modern age is widely perceived as an epoch of revolution
and counterrevolution. However, the same cannot be said for our
perception of classical antiquity. I have suggested that the funda-
mental manifestation of our misperception of Greek thought is a fail-
ure to penetrate the surface disguises of concealed revolution. The
notion of a concealed revolution strikes us as a contradiction in terms.
In a sense, this is true: the Greeks were dialectical thinkers, not in
the modern or Hegelian manner, but in a way that accords with the
accessible ambiguities of everyday experience. The problem of the
relation between philosophy and everyday life is visible within every-
day life, even if philosophy's true nature is not. I should like to in-
troduce my own reading of the Greek situation in as noncontroversial
a way as possible. For our purposes, the key question is the relation
between stability and change. According to Socrates, in a passage to
which I shall return below, with the single exception of Parmenides,
the wise men of Greece believe that change is primary, or that sta-
bility is an illusion. If science or rational knowledge is the conquest
of change by the acquisition of stable principles, axioms, or ends,
then the wise men of Greece imply that the only scientific knowledge
is the knowledge of the comprehensiveness of change. I note a cor-
ollary of this principle, which is expressed in political language:
nomos (custom or law) is the king of all men. This is not a statement
of orthodoxy, as it is normally understood today. Since there is no
rational knowledge of change, and since physis is change, there is no
rational foundation for nomos. In the absence of mathematical phys-
ics, or a scientific mastery of natural change, the truth about nature
must be subordinated to, and so concealed by, our adherence to
nomos. The welfare of political society depends upon this subordi-
nation and concealment. "
In my opinion, there are three stages to the development of the
Greek teaching about stability and change. The first stage may be
called that of the "wise men" or men of practical intelligence. These
men, although they may have studied the writings of'the early phi-
losophers or physiologoi, do not necessarily, or even normally, express
themselves in language that is perceived by the modern reader as
"philosophical." They are more usually poets like Homer or histo-
rians like Herodotus and Thucydides. I am going to present below a
more extended analysis of some Herodotean texts; here I merely sum-
marize the main point of pre-Socratic wisdom. Nature is kinesis. Man,
as a natural being, is also kinesis. The mark of human nature is in-
telligence; and the most intelligent human beings devise customs or
laws to protect us against natural change. Since intelligence is itself
change, the true essence of nomos is change as well. There is thus no
natural base of stability to give support to nomos. There is no human
nature of a stable kind. To the extent that man differs from other
natural beings, it lies in his capacity to "slow down" the destructive
changes of nature by constructing modes of behavior that change at
a slower rate than would a life unassisted by these constructions.
Stability is thus in fact an illusion: this is the archaic version of
Nietzsche's maxim that art is worth more than the truth. Art and
illusion preserve us, whereas the truth destroys us . It is thus an im-
mediate inference of good sense that the truth must be concealed or
veiled by illusion. If philosophy is permissible or desirable at all, it
can only be as a thoroughly private activity on the part of a few.
The second stage coincides with the rise of the Sophists. In gen-
era!, the characteristic theoretical orientation of the Sophists is the

same as that just attributed to the wise men. However, there is an
important modification. Whatever their motives, the Sophists engage
in a partial public presentation of the truth about nature. The degree
of publicity inherent in Sophistry is obvious from the fact that they
announce themselves as professors of wisdom, and it is easily visible
in the details of their teachings. Sophistical wisdom is not restricted
to the few wise men in their private reflections or discussions; it is
available to any citizen who can afford the fee . On the other hand,
the partial degree of this public revelation is also clear from the de-
pendence of the Sophists upon political life itself. It is not merely the
case that the Sophist depends upon the laws in order to collect his
fee. If there is no political stability, then the teaching of the Sophists
becomes useless, since the avowed purpose of this teaching is to
achieve political success. We may therefore describe Sophistry as the
potentially revolutionary publication in a partly-concealed form of
the truth about nature. However, it is immediately evident that So-
phistry is intrinsically unstable, and so that it is politically danger-
ous. The Sophist admits that nature is change, and so too that nomos
is lacking in divine foundation. The good is the pleasant, which is to
say that truth is defined by desire. This is the vulgar version of the
classical formulation of Nietzsche's doctrine of the will to power. I
shall be illustrating the peculiar character of Sophistry by a discus-
sion of Platonic texts, and specifically by passages in the Protagoras
and Gorgias. I have several reasons for discussing Plato's analysis of
Sophistry rather than the Sophistical texts as they have passed down
to us. The most important reason is that the central purpose of this
essay is to bring out the revolutionary transformation by Plato of the
pervasive views of his predecessors concerning what we would call
the relation between theory and practice. It is therefore precisely
Plato's interpretation of Sophistry that interests me here. I might
also mention that, in my opinion, we come to understand the char-
acter of Sophistry only by the assistance of Plato's portrait, which is
surprisingly explicit, and of course is also philosophically "self-con-
scious," as the Sophists were not.
The third stage in the process I am describing is to be found in
the dialogues of Plato. In this summary paragraph, I shall make no
distinction between Socrates and Plato, except to say that Socrates
wrote nothing, and was thus obviously of a different opinion than
Plato concerning the public stance of the philosopher. Not to see this
difference is to be guilty of a failure of perception comparable in
magnitude to the failure to perceive the significance of the dialogue
form . The Socratic revolution was one of partial deed: Socrates did
not philosophize in public, as is often asserted, on the basis of no

evidence beyond a failure to distinguish between philosophers on the
one hand, and youths and Sophists on the other. But Socrates did
engage publicly in an imitation of philosophy. He gave a partly public
defense of philosophy before the public forum, which was both a
statement as to the nature of philosophy, and an assurance that phi-
losophy submits to the public nomos. The Platonic revolution was
much more radical. In publishing his dialogues, Plato engaged in a
revolution of speech. However, in publishing dialogues rather than
treatises, he partly concealed his speech. We need to mention only
two points in the public Platonic speech. First: by publicizing the
"doctrine" of Ideas, Plato denied the primacy of change, and thus
grounded philosophy in the stability of nature. Second: the public
presentation of the Ideas, or the portrait of Socrates taking advantage
of Athenian love of speech to "corrupt" the best young Athenians, is
balanced by the public praise of Spartan virtue. The dialectic of Ath-
ens and Sparta is the virtuous presentation of philosophy. Philosophy
must be publicly defended if only to distinguish it from Sophistry,
but also to destroy Sophistry, which leads inevitably to the vulgar-
ization of political life.
In this essay, my primary interest is with the first and second
stages of the Greek formulation of physics and politics (a more ac-
curate expression than "theory and practice"). I shall of course be
making some remarks about Plato here, but I reserve my main anal-
ysis of his treatment of the relation between physics and politics for
the following essay. Before closing this introductory section, I remind
the reader of my general intention. I am in the process of defending
the thesis that philosophy is by its nature revolutionary, and in so
doing, I am contributing to a rectification of the popular perception
of Plato. I do not do this as a "Platonist," but in order to make clear
to the modern or contemporary reader what is the actual political
formulation of the "quarrel between the ancients and the moderns."
In so doing, I speak as a modern, not an ancient. There can be no
accurate public debate about the public existence of philosophy if we
do not understand the elements of this quarrel. One last reminder: I
do not suggest in any way that all the elements of this debate are to
be found in the present essay. I do insist that the elements presented
here are necessary for that debate . For example, it would be possible,
but misleading, to characterize the difference between antiquity and
modernity as one of physics. Such a characterization leads too easily
to the assumption that the moderns win the quarrel because they
possess mathematical physics, or the rational mastery of natural
change . This assumption is the basis of much superstition in our
epoch. I leave it at this: we cannot understand the relation between

physics and politics by beginning with a formulation of that relation
in terms of physics, let alone mathematical physics .
II
It would be an understatement to say that contemporary phi-

losophers are not much interested in Herodotus. The loss, I suggest,
is theirs. In what follows, I shall not be claiming that Herodotus was
a philosopher in the modern sense of the term. I have characterized
him as a "wise man," a term that is often used in an ironical and
pejorative sense by professional philosophers today. Whether this use
reflects an admission of intellectual bankruptcy or a revolutionary
new conception of philosophy, remains to be seen. We need not call
Herodotus a philosopher in order to say that he attempts to know
the truth about man and the gods, hence about physics and politics.
If Herodotus no longer strikes us as a profound thinker, this is due
largely to his opposition to the public appearance of serious theo-
retical reflection. This opposition is expressed in and reinforced by
an unusually rich and subtle style, one aspect of which is its surface
simplicity. One cannot exhibit this except by fidelity to his meticu-
lous use of concrete detail. In order to do so, while illustrating the
general principles of his thought, I shall for the most part restrict my
analysis to the first three books of Herodotus' History. It goes without
saying that a complete study of Herodotus would deal with his entire
work. However, I believe that I can make my points with a special
appropriateness by concentrating upon those books which have often
been taken as peripheral to Herodotus' main purpose, the narration
of the events of the Persian War.
We must first be certain that we understand Herodotus' purpose.
He tells us in his opening sentence that his intentions are much
broader than to give an account of the Persian War. He identifies his
publication as a historia, but this term does not possess the same
meaning as the modern "history." A historia is an inquiry, or the
knowledge obtained by an inquiry. It may therefore refer to a phil-
osophical inquiry. A historia is distinguished from two other kinds
of writing: poetry (especially the epopoiie of Homer) and the chron-
icles or tales (logioi) ofthe Persians and Egyptians (1.1; 11.3, 77, 116-
120).1 The poet (Homer) represses information if it is not compatible
with the epic; but Herodotus will write on principle of the stories or
traditions he has heard (11 .120, 123). At first this seems to mean that
Herodotus is franker than Homer, but a moment's reflection shows
that this does not follow. For at 11.123, Herodotus says that those who
find the Egyptian stories persuasive may accept them; his own func-
tion is to record them all. Herodotus both casts doubt upon the logioi
(some of which he explicitly repudiates) and suggests that it is up to
the reader to decide in each case which is reputable, and why it is
compatible with the purpose of the historia to record each tale. This
does not entail Herodotus sharing the modern historian's desire to
record everything about the past, wie es eigentlich gewesen war. Her-
odotus' inquiry is not restricted to the past; it is equally dedicated
to the present. But more specifically, the indiscriminate or exhaustive
gathering of facts is not the function of the historiai but rather of the
logioi. The Egyptians who dwell in the corn country are by far the
best logioi whom Herodotus has tested by conversation, because they
are the greatest cultivators of the memory (11.77).
Herodotus again indicates that he has not indulged in an indis-
criminate recording of tales when he discusses his trip to Phoenicia
to investigate stories told to him by the Egyptians about Heracles.
He then says: "The Greeks say many other things without having
looked upon them (anepiskept6s)" and "the Greeks seem to me ... to
be altogether ignorant of the nature and customs of the Egyptians"
(11.44-45). Herodotus no less than Thucydides expends great efforts
to certify the evidence of his inquiry. His efforts differ from those of
Thucydides in so far as his inquiry is also different. Herodotus sheds
light on the character of his inquiry by using the term anepiskept6s
in criticism of the Greeks: they speak without having directly seen
what they describe. We may restate Herodotus' position as follows:
whatever one says ought to be based upon direct inspection. But it
does not follow that one ought to say whatever one has seen. I believe
that this is related to the interesting omission in the first sentence of
the historia of reference to any subsequent concern for speeches. Her-
odotus refers there to his interest in great and marvelous deeds, and
especially to war. Of course, Herodotus records many speeches, and
sometimes discusses his method of speech writing. But he never does
this in as explicit and regulative a manner as Thucydides. This con-
cern with visibility leads Herodotus to make an Odyssean journey to
many cities in order to look upon the objects of his discourse. As he
says when discussing the source of the Nile, he judges the unknown
or unperceived by the visible (11.33). This would seem to imply that
the gods or divine things are judged in the light of our vision of men
or natural events . The tendency of the wise men to take journeys
around the civilized world thus sets them apart from Socrates, who
holds to a different conception of visibility. As Socrates notes in the
Phaedo, we are blinded by looking directly at the sun. By analogy,
we ought not to look directly at things with our eyes but rather by
way of speeches (99d4-e6). This has a practical and a theoretical

sense. If speeches are better than visible things, we can learn of the
world through the speeches of others . But more fundamentally, the
Socratic distinction refers to a domain of forms or Ideas which are
seen with the eye of the intellect. For Herodotus and the wise men,
there is no such domain; hence the need to travel in the world of the
sunlight. The failure of the Greeks to do so leads them to err con-
cerning the nature (physis) and custom (nomos) of the Egyptians.
Let us notice one more qualification concerning the recording of
tales. In a previously cited passage (11.123), Herodotus implies that
he will record whatever he has been told. But this is not his actual
intention. Herodotus continuously refuses to mention certain details
which are well known to him, the most important of these pertaining
to religion . It is not self-evident how Herodotus distinguishes between
what may be said about religion and what may not, but he explicitly
states that he is not acting from caprice. He refuses, for example, to
tell us why the Egyptians consecrate animals to the gods, for this
would lead him into speech about" divine things, which I especially
flee from mentioning," unless constrained by necessity (11.65). The
sense of necessity is not further clarified. But Herodotus' reticence
about the divine is on the record. Either everything Herodotus does
tell us about religion has been motivated by necessity (an unlikely
hypothesis), or else Herodotus draws some distinction between re-
ligious customs and the divine. However this may be, the following
suggestion is possible. In an interesting passage, Herodotus tells us
that he restricts his discussion of religion because he believes that
all men know the same about the gods. Again he says that what he
tells us will be by the necessity of the narrative (11.3) . The very next
chapter begins with the phrase "As for human affairs ... " and pro-
ceeds with copious details. Herodotus does not flee from speaking
about human affairs, even though he may do so in a cryptic manner.
He distinguishes between the human and the divine affairs. Human
affairs are not divine. Man is independent of the gods (assuming that
the gods exist), and Herodotus' subject is the affairs of man as so
independent. If all men know the same about the gods, and this
knowledge takes the form of nomos, then the nomos of one city is
exchangeable for the nomos of another. To say that nomos is the king
of all men is to say that men do not perceive this equivalence; they
do not understand the truth about the gods .
What is the truth about the gods? Given the equivalence of re-
ligious nomoi, we are entitled to infer that each particular religious
nomos is false; for each claims to be the sole right nomos. The extreme
consequence of this is that human affairs are not divine because the
divine does not exist in a humanly useful or accessible form. How

could it, if the cosmos is pervasive change? However, let us move
more slowly. Herodotus tells us at the beginning of his historia that
he is concerned with human deeds. In his preface, Herodotus is totally
silent about the gods. The independence of man from the gods, in-
cidentally, accentuates the marvelousness of human deeds. It is quite
amusing that Herodotus makes the aforementioned distinction be-
tween human and divine affairs in his account of the Egyptians who,
he tells us, are extraordinarily pious: they fear god more than do all
other men (11.37) . Those who are extremely pious will not draw the
inference that, if all men know the same about the gods, then the
Greek religion is no better than barbarian superstition. In a parallel
vein, Herodotus drops the distinction between Greek and barbarian;
he wishes to preserve the deeds of both. 2
The Egyptians, the most religious of mortals, whose knowledge
of the gods is essentially the same as that of the Greeks, pay no divine
honor to heroes . For they deny that men could be descended from
the gods (11.50, 143). Thus the people who are on the surface most
religious, in fact make human life independent of the gods. Herodotus
directs us to look more deeply than the surface of piety. This dis-
tinction between the appearance and the reality of piety corresponds
to the distinction, also made in contrasting the Greeks and Egyptians,
between physis and nomos. It should be compared with Herodotus'
later praise of the Scythians (in Book Four). The Scythians are no-
mads . They have no city and hence are not civilized: they could pos-
sess no theoretical excellence. Nevertheless, Herodotus ironically
calls them the wisest of observed peoples in the most important
human respect, although he does not admire them in other ways.
Their wisdom consists in this: they cannot be captured in war, while
their enemies necessarily perish in the act of pursuing them. This
"wisdom" is due to the fact that the Scythians live on horseback,
which is also the cause of their permanent lack of wisdom in the Greek
sense (IV.46).3 Having no city, they are completely mobile . Since they
are themselves always in motion, they cannot be destroyed by the
motions from which cities decay. Their motion, and so their "wis-
dom," is a crude imitation of the wisdom and the motion of Hero-
dotus. The appearance of barbarism, of excessive motion, contains a
deeper, more serious level, a level of "wisdom" that surpasses the
wisdom of the civilised Greeks. There is a tension between the wisdom
of motion or travel, and the city or political affairs. The wisdom de-
rived by Herodotus from his travels is not directly applicable to the
affairs of the ci ty.
The distinction between men and gods leads to the distinction
between nature or change and custom or rest. Man is by nature in-

dependent of the gods because nature is change. There can be no
eternal and hierarchical relationship between man and the gods; it
is precisely nomos, not the gods, that rules all men . Herodotus thus
reverses the Parmenidean distinction between the appearance of mo-
tion and the reality of rest. Nature includes gods, men, and the world.
All have a common nature because all are changing. There is no dis-
tinction between divine and human nature, not because men are di-
vine, but because there are no gods . Men, gods, and the world have
all come into being, as Herodotus puts it in his public teaching. He
thus denies the eternal, or rest, or the Being of the Parmenidean, and
hence Socratic, philosophers. As he puts it in the case of the gods,
the Greeks knew nothing until "the other day" about their origin and
forms. Hesiod and Homer, no more than four hundred years earlier,
made the Greek theogony, and gave to the gods their names, honors,
and duties, while pointing out their forms . And both Homer and He-
siod say that the gods came into being from Ocean and Tethys, or
from some prior source (11.53).4 The confusing plurality of gods and
genealogies in Hesiod reminds us of the Egyptians. On the surface
we have the present rule of the Olympians (not without inner strife),
but the origins are literally chaotic. The origins are in motion, and
Socrates, in a discussion of Heraclitus and the contention that every-
thing is changing, in fact attributes this doctrine to Homer and the
ancients, who, he says, concealed their meaning from the multitude
in poetry (Theaetetus 180c7ff). Similarly, Herodotus says that the
whole race of man (11.15) and the earth (11.28) have come into being.
According to Herodotus, the Egyptians, next to the Libyans, are
the healthiest people, thanks to their unchanging climate; for diseases
come especially when men are subject to change (11.77). If the Egyp-
tians are free of the sickness one might anticipate from a changing
cosmology of excessive gods, it is because they have not thought
through the consequences of their piety. They dwell in a surface of
calm, imitative of their climate. Nomos veils over the ultimate Her-
aclitean unrest. It is the Greeks who are in danger of succumbing
prematurely to natural kinesis, because they are inclined to investi-
gate nature. Paradoxically enough, this reflectiveness is due to what
could be called, in comparison with the Scythians, the Greek surface
stillness or citified way of life. It is thus clear that standing still is not
in itself enough to produce philosophy; if it were, the Egyptians would
be philosophers. What we require is both surface stillness and intel-
lectual wonder, to use a Socratic term . The Greek problem lies in
their fundamental impiety, which cannot be stilled by a profusion of
popular gods and religious customs . The diseases of change cannot,
of course, be avoided for long. Let us say that the Scythians and
Herodotus represent the two extreme ways of postponing the disease
of existence, whereas the Egyptians represent a way between these
two extremes. One must therefore ask whether it would not be better
for the Greeks to imitate the Egyptians rather than Herodotus. Stated
somewhat differently, perhaps Herodotus imitates the Egyptians in
his public presentation of his wisdom.
To imitate the Egyptians in a general sense does not require us
to accept their specific beliefs. For example, the Greeks are wiser than
the Egyptians because they worship heroes or trace their lineage from
the gods. Divine descent is the fundamental principle of the sanctity
of the nomos, and so of moderation (as opposed to stagnation). It
serves to preserve health for the majority for as long as possible.
Doom can only be postponed, but wise or moderate men may at least
die happily. The most we can hope for is to get safely through life:
death is the last disease and the escape from disease. Exactly why
Greek moderation, whether of the few or the many, differs from Egyp-
tian stagnation, is not yet clear. One could, of course, attribute it to
the difference between the Greek and the Egyptian climate. Whatever
the reason, we would be wrong to reject the Egyptians outright. Greek
political health depends upon the capacity of Greek wise men to make
a judicious adaptation of Egyptian piety.
I leave it at a last remark concerning religion and piety. In dis-
cussing the outrages committed by the Persian king Cambyses, Her-
odotus says that Cambyses was clearly mad, for otherwise he would
not have mocked the holy rites and customs (III.38) . This cannot be
because the rites and customs are truly sacred, but must be because
men believe them to be sacred. And man's preference for his own
nomoi is his best safeguard against the corruption of change. Political
wisdom thus requires a reverence for the ancestral. Customs are crit-
icized by Herodotus if they contain deviations from regularity. An
example is his distaste for the Babylonian custom which requires
every native woman to have sexual intercourse with a stranger once
in her life (I. 199). When community of women is the regular custom,
as among the Massagetae and Agathyrsi, Herodotus raises no objec-
tion (I.216; IV.104; d. I.140). The single irregularity, in face of other-
wise uniform chastity, is too dangerous to be left uncensured, for it
gives experience in vice to everyone. By reinforcing his condemnation
of Cambyses with a story about the relativity of burial rites, Hero-
dotus comes quite close to revealing his opinion of religion, although
he partially disguises it by attributing the experiment to Darius
(III.38). Herodotus is scrupulous, despite his avowed reticence in
mentioning the divine things, in recording the heterogeneity of burial
rites, nor does he ever express shock or disapproval at these ways .

Nothing could be less pious. The implied equivalence of burial rites
is an implied refutation of pagan religion.
III
This much concerning how Herodotus writes, and the connection

between the problem of writing and religion. We turn now to Her-
odotus as political thinker. Herodotus' political views are obliquely
presented in his recording of a conspiracy, a revolution, and the first
political dialogue in western literature. Whereas it is obvious that
Herodotus has anticipated Plato in the invention of political dialogue,
his conversation is designed to explain the founding of an actual re-
gime . The discussion is of the Persian rebellion against the Magi
(III.68-87). It falls naturally into three parts: (1) the conspiracy (68-
79); (2) the dialogue about the new regime (80-84); (3) the decision
about the new ruler (85-87). The theoretical discussion is thus sur-
rounded by sections dealing, as we shall see, with violence and deceit.
The section on conspiracy is longer than the other two sections com-
bined. It too falls naturally into three parts: (i) Otanes' discovery and
his convocation of the conspirators (68-70); (ii) the dialogue about
the conspiracy, together with a description of the counterconspiracy
of the Magi (71-74); (iii) the failure of the Magian and the success of
the Persian conspiracy (75-79).
As a prelude to the entire section, we may notice Chapter Sixty-
five, in which Cambyses, whose madness had permitted the Magi to
take power, summarizes his own folly and the revolt itself, in a period
of recaptured lucidity . He states one of Herodotus' favorite themes:
"Man's nature does not permit his turning aside the future." Again,
nature and chaotic change are linked . Cambyses demands that the
Persians recover the throne, either by deceit or by might, depending
upon which was responsible for their losing it. He does not mention
the third possibility th'a t the two occurred together, although this
was what actually happened. Smerdis the Magian had been substi-
tuted for Smerdis the son of Cyrus, whom Prexaspes had killed at
Cambyses' instruction, This instruction was due to a dream which,
in the event, Cambyses misinterpreted. The regularity with which
men in high places are deceived by ambiguous dreams or oracles is
too striking to be accidental: the gods are the presumed authors of
dreams and oracles. Men try to fashion their conduct on the basis of
these presumed messages, but there is no real harmony between the
divine and the human intellect. Herodotus has discovered the "her-
meneutical problem ." At the very least, if the gods speak to man, they
are unable to speak clearly because they are subordinate to higher

forces or a will that is veiled from man . Nevertheless, no herme-
neutical problem exists, since the event reveals the sense of the divine
message.
Acting upon information received from his daughter, Otanes-
who will speak for democracy-organizes the conspiracy. His mo-
tives are freedom (from the Medes) and justice (against the impostor) .
The seven conspirators engage in a dialogue of six speeches: three by
Darius , two by Otanes, and one by Gobryas, who is entirely subor-
dinate to Darius . Otanes and Darius are the central figures, but Darius
is twice as forceful. The dialogue falls into two groups of three
speeches each. Darius begins the first group by recommending im-
mediate action . He emphasizes the haste with which he has come to
arrange for the death of the impostor Smerdis, and in this brief speech
reveals his eagerness to seize the throne. Otanes replies that Darius
is the son of a good father and seems no less good. However, he should
not act without counsel but rather more moderately; additional allies
are required . Otanes emphasizes our initial impression of Darius'
rashness, as well as of his own moderation. He implies modestly that
it is his own counsel which Darius needs, and he shows his lack of
interest in personal power by wishing to bring others into the scheme.
Otanes prefers the many to the few. Darius responds sharply: he re-
jects Otanes' advice as mortally dangerous and indicates that he dis-
trusts the other conspirators already. If they delay, he warns, some-
one will betray them to the Magi for gain. Therefore, unless they act
at once, he will protect himself by going directly to the Magus and
informing him of the plot.
At this point, it seems to be well established that Darius is am-
bitious, rash, suspicious, and even unprincipled. In fact, it would
follow that Otanes, the moderate and presumably prudent man, must
have failed to judge Darius correctly. His attempt to restrain Darius,
whom he had called "good" (agathos), succeeds only in moving Darius
to an extreme position. Even if Otanes recognizes Darius as a rash
and ruthless man, his patronizing effort at restraint is all the more
inept. We are in doubt as to our original estimate of the speakers (70-
71). Darius' threat is decisive; in the second set of speeches, we see
that Otanes has been outmaneuvered at one stroke (72) . He indicates
his surrender, and also that the dialogue is in a second phase, by
asking how it will be possible for the conspirators to gain entrance
into the palace. Darius' response is extremely interesting. Hitherto
he has spoken directly to the point, as befits an unprincipled, head-
strong, and ambitious man. Suddenly he reverses his tactics, and
makes a rather elaborate introduction to an answer that should be
obvious to conspirators against the throne. "There are many things

impossible to reveal in speech but possible in deed. Some things can
be spoken, but no noble (lampron) deed is engendered." Why this
reticence, given our prior view of Darius' freedom from moral
scruple? His answer to Otanes, when it does come, is both clear and
bold: "Where it is necessary to lie, one must do so." Men lie or tell
the truth for the same reason : gain, either immediate or eventual.
Two reasons may be given for Darius' caution, one from his view-
point and one from Herodotus' as political psychologist. In Book One,
Herodotus says of the Persians that they hold it unlawful to speak of
what it is forbidden to do, and "they believe that the most shameful
thing of all is to tell a lie" (1.138). Despite his own accommodating
nature, Darius must be cautious in proposing that Persian gentlemen
ought to lie. As we learn from 1.135, the Persians are more than all
other men susceptible to foreign customs. Persian virtue is especially
fragile. Darius is about to set what must be for his suspicious nature
a very dangerous precedent. If he finally obtains the throne, his
present companions may later conspire against him. Having lied
once, it is easier to lie a second time. The very fact of the conspiracy
is sufficiently dangerous in this respect. The rule of the false Smerdis
may be unjust and foreign . But it is quite compatible with aristocratic
behavior to obey a code of honor even while engaged in war. In an
aristocratic light, to tell a lie is worse than to murder a tyrant and
impostor. As for Herodotus, by so constructing his dialogue, he shows
that justice and freedom may depend upon lies and murder, just as
political debate is rooted in conspiracy and violence. Herodotus an-
ticipates Machiavelli by suggesting that good states may depend upon
a foundation of violence.
Political action is the redistribution of natural changes in an at-
tempt to postpone chaos. In the last analysis, this means that the
establishment of order depends upon self-interest, not the gods. Her-
odotus makes this connection by having Darius emphasize that men
tell the truth and lie for the same end: gain. Gain is the link between
chaotic origins and surface piety. Gain replaces the gods. Darius, of
course, is not a philosopher; the exigencies of political existence have
taught him what Herodotus infers from looking directly at the actions
of political men. In political activity, Darius' form of " moderation"
(boldness and lying veiled by caution) replaces that of Otanes. Mod-
eration is a mean between two extremes. Otanes' version of moder-
ation is the middle of the first set of three speeches, whereas Darius'
version is the middle of the second and more decisive set. Given the
nature of political origins, Darius is more prudent than Otanes. Self-
interest is the basis of nobility. But the converse is also true: at the
core of nobility is self-interest.
Thus Herodotus indicates that men like Otanes, however virtuous
they may be, have not thought through the foundations of political
activity. They cannot grasp the revolutionary nature of political foun-
dations because they lack an insight into the link between revolution
and thought. Life is change and change is inevitably for the worse.
Life is thus more like war than like peace, and the attempt to un-
derstand life is necessarily the study of war, not of peace. Still, there
is a sense in which Otanes is right. Darius is forced to reveal the ugly
underside of human affairs in order to move his collaborators to the
necessary action. Their naivete, together with the pressure of events,
leads Darius to a slight overstatement of his case. Herodotus subtly
corrects him in the chapters about the Magian attempt to use Prex-
aspes in silencing Persian suspicion (74-75). Prexaspes agrees to as-
sist them in deceiving the Persians. The Magi trust him because Cam-
byses, during his madness, had killed Prexaspes' son. But Prexaspes
betrays the Magi. No sooner are the Persians assembled than he tells
them the truth about the false Smerdis, exhorts the Persians to re-
capture their throne, and kills himself by leaping from the tower on
which he had been standing. Prexaspes has lied twice, but the result
is splendid or noble. Herodotus' language underlines the interplay of
visibility and invisibility, of appearance and reality. Prexaspes "made
manifest the truth, saying that he had before hidden it." He speaks
now from necessity, just as he kept silent when the truth would not
have been safe (75.2).5 This seems to agree with Darius' earlier state-
ment, but there is a crucial difference. Prexaspes is not governed by
self-interest: he has already lost his son, he loses the power granted
by the Magi, and he loses his life . The "gain" which determines his
behavior is not his own but that of the Persian people. Herodotus
tells us that Prexaspes was a trustworthy or esteemed gentleman.
Darius is thus partly wrong to say that splendid action cannot follow
from lies. However, the splendid act terminates in the death of the
actor. There is an ambiguity in the relation between splendid deeds
and political utility. A full understanding of political affairs would
require us to grasp fully the dialectic of Darius and Prexaspes. The
triumph of the ruthless is somehow dependent upon the sacrifice of
the noble. Such, I believe, is the message of all political revolutions .
The Persian conspirators, unaware of the Prexaspes episode, offer
prayers to cover over their lies and proceed to the palace (76). They
learn of the events just described as they are at "mid-point": they
are balanced between the fact of their conspiracy and its possible
enactment. Again the group dissolves into two factions, led respec-
tively by Darius and Otanes. Otanes and his partisans urge post-
ponement; the attack should not be made when affairs are in a fer-
ment. Darius and his supporters insist upon continuing straightway.
Herodotus shows the superstition of the Persians (which will shortly
be useful to Darius) by attributing the adoption of the extremist po-
sition to an omen. Seven hawks appear in pursuit of two vultures
and tear them to pieces. The vultures, of course, represent the Magi.
This is the first of three strokes of luck, by all of which Darius is
benefited. When the conspirators arrive at the palace, it is unnec-
essary for them to lie, although they had been prepared to do so. The
guards suspect nothing and let them in without asking any questions.
"They seemed to be under god's care" (77). Next, the eunuch's ques-
tions concerning their presence are terminated, not by lies, but by
the more honorable expedient of force. Finally, when the Persians are
a step away from victory, Gobryas, Darius' chief supporter, is locked
in a struggle with one of the Magi. The room is dark, and Darius
hesitates to strike a blow for fear that he will kill Gobryas . Gobryas
insists that Darius act; chance directs the dagger in such a way that
the Magus is killed and Gobryas is unharmed. Previously, Darius had
hesitated to speak; here, he hesitates to act. Both cases are compatible
with his peculiar moderation. Gobryas is a valuable piece of property
and should not be lost unless absolutely necessary. As Herodotus re-
ports later, the Persians came to speak of Darius as a "huckster"
because "he tried to profit in everything" (89). Cambyses and Cyrus
were regarded as a "despot" and "father," respectively. Apparently
the art of politics requires all three qualities.
In a transitional chapter (79) the Persians, led by the seven con-
spirators, slaughter the Magi. Before the new government can be
founded, one's opponents must be slaughtered, as Machiavelli
teaches. It is significant that the Persians sanctify the slaughter by
making its anniversary a festival. So much for the conspiracy. We
turn next to the political dialogue.
IV
This dialogue occurs five days after the slaughter of the Magi,
"when the tumult subsided." The atmosphere is calmer than during
the conspiratorial dialogue. Seven distinct speeches or topics are
mentioned: the defenses of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy;
Otanes' withdrawal from the election of the king; the privileges of
Otanes; the privileges of the group; the procedure for choosing the
king (80-84). In the defense of the regimes, aristocracy is given the
central position of moderation. The pivotal speech of this section is
Otanes' rejection of the throne, and the last three topics are parallel
to the first three. Herodotus insists that the speeches really took place,
although "some Greeks do not believe it" (80).
Otanes begins by recommending that affairs should be invested
in the Persians as a whole. His moderation and indecision lead him
to support the plethos or many. Otanes seems almost to be thinking
out loud and in some confusion. He says first that he does not think
"one of us" should be monarch, rather than that there should be no
monarch at all. This may be an attempt to find a principle by which
to persuade Darius to vote against monarchy. It may be also a toying
with the idea of himself as monarch. The reason which Otanes gives
for opposing monarchy is that "it is neither pleasant nor good."6 This
is a characteristic thesis of the many. A monarch, Otanes warns, can
do whatever he wishes, and this gives rise to hybris. "Even the best
of all men, holding such power, would be moved beyond the tradi-
tional customs." Perhaps this sentence is intended to be self-refer-
ential. In any case, Otanes' desire to protect the Persians against in-
dividual excess moves him to defend the rule of the many :
"everything is in the many." This raises the question of the status of
the few, which Otanes either overlooks or suppresses.
Otanes speaks of monarchy or tyranny without distinguishing
between them, whereas Darius speaks exclusively of monarchy. For
Otanes, all forms of individual rule are equally base. All give rise to
hybris and envy, and so possess every wickedness. Then Otanes in-
troduces the one point which the speeches of the three advocates have
in common. He attributes change and violence to the regime against
which he argues. The worst features of the tyrant are that "he changes
the laws of the land, rapes women, and kills men without a trial."
In praise of the rule of the multitude, which has the most beautiful
name of isonomia, he says that offices are distributed by lot, the mag-
istrate is held responsible for his acts, and all proposals are carried
out in common. This counterdescription is not parallel to the state-
ment of the defects of a monarchy: nothing is said about freedom
from rape and untried executions. The violence characteristic of mon-
archies cannot be eliminated merely by the institution of the lot and
universal franchise . The multitude has its own violence, which Otanes
suppresses.
Megabyzus, the next speaker, is quick to point out that Otanes,
in his timidity, has fallen into a greater danger than the one he seeks
to avoid. (Otanes never mentions the aristocracy or oligarchy: he
moves from one extreme to the other.) Otanes' critique of tyranny is
entirely acceptable to Megabyzus, but in asking that power be given
to the people, Otanes has erred in his judgment of the best. Megabyzus
is the only speaker to suggest that he favors the rule of intellect; he

alone mentions knowledge or intelligence.7 Thus, in criticizing the
"useless rabble," he not only accuses them of being more hybristic
than the tyrant, but also of being less intelligent. Here is the crucial
sentence of his speech: "When the tyrant acts, he does so knowingly;
but the mob acts in ignorance. For how could it understand when it
was neither taught nor can see for itself the noble and fitting, but
flings itself into the midst of affairs without intellect (nous), like a
torrential river" (81). The rabble is the political equivalent of the
chaotic beginnings: the flowing river of Homer, Hesiod, and Hera-
clitus. The beginnings are thus the same as the ends of human life.
They are without nous; hence the few must seek to slow down the
flow of the river by the artifices of their own intelligence. Megabyzus
concludes by wishing a democracy onto those of whom the Persians
think ill. He votes for an aristocracy (among whom the conspirators
will be numbered), for the mob should be in the hands of the best.
Whereas Otanes says nothing about the few, Megabyzus speaks on
behalf of both groups. Finally, we note that he does not speak against
a monarchy.
Darius is the next to speak. He says that Megabyzus is right about
the mob, but wrong about the oligarchy. Just as Darius never uses
the word "tyrant" (tyrannos), so too he never speaks of "the best"
(hoi aristoi) but rather of "oligarchy" or rule by the few. When he
says "the best" (ho aristos) , he refers to the king. Darius attempts
first to prove the superiority of a monarchy by pushing Megabyzus'
argument to its apparent conclusion: "it would appear that no one
is better than the one best man" (82). We may pass by the weaknesses
in this contention. There follows a curious conjunction of reasons for
preferring a monarch. As the best man, his counsels are the best, so
the mob will never blame him. Furthermore, his measures against
evildoers are kept as secret as possible. Darius does not say that the
best or the few will never blame him. Will the huckster seek the
property of the few, while deriving his support from the many? The
desirability of secrecy in punishing evil is also ambiguous. It could
conceivably refer to the punishment of conspirators against the
throne. Darius goes on to argue that the faults of the two other re-
gimes necessarily culminate in the establishment of a monarchy. The
oligarchs struggle for power, and the resulting bloodshed and dis-
ruptive change give birth to a monarchy. The democracy is neces-
sarily characterized by malpractice, which again produces faction.
The evil continues until one of the demos comes forward to eradicate
it. The people then make him monarch, thanks to their admiration
for his efforts. In sum, a monarchy should be established from the

beginning.
Change and violence find their cessation in the "stillness" of a
monarchy . And Darius' two examples confirm our suspicions that the
oligarchs are the "evildoers" to be punished. In both cases, it is they
who commit the crimes through their pursuit of power and wealth.
Darius plans to restrain the few and be supported by the many . He
criticizes the oligarchic regime, but is silent about the democracy,
except for its oligarchic element. Darius' final argument emphasizes
the unhealthy character of change by appealing to tradition and the
conservatism of the aristocracy . Just as the Persians were initially
freed by one man, so should they now institute a monarchy. And
besides, "it is not right to change the customs of our forefathers, for
there are none better." Darius alludes to Cyrus as the initial liberator
of the Persians, but implicitly, he is reminding the interlocutors that
their present freedom is due to his boldness. It was this boldness, we
recall, that led him to recommend violating the customs of the
forefa thers.
Otanes' second speech, after the vote has been carried by the
promonarchists, reminds his comrades that they are revolutionaries.
He begins with the words "gentleman revolutionaries" (83), and
makes explicit that one of them will undoubtedly become king, re-
gardless of the manner of selection. But he himself wishes to with-
draw from the competition: "I wish neither to rule nor to be ruled."
This is the exemplification of the classical criticism of democracy:
where everyone rules, there is no ruler. In truly political life, each
citizen rules and is ruled in turn. Democracy relies upon the lot; in
the absence of a ruling principle, chance prevails. So too Otanes de-
mands freedom from the will of the king and the Persian nomoi for
himself and his descendents . Incidentally, we see here again the spe-
cious nature of Darius' appeal to the unchanging ancestral customs.
In an interregnum, new customs must be established. Finally, the
conspirators decide upon a method for choosing the king, one which
is to say the least an innovation. They will ride out into the suburbs
at dawn. He whose horse first neighs when the sun is up will be king.
Every reader of this passage must be struck by its initial ab-
surdity. Upon reflection, however, I believe that we can understand
the deeper intent of this patent fiction. In the first place, we are shown
the cunning of Darius, in contrast to the naivete of his fellow con-
spirators. The man who counsels lying is also prepared to mock the
traditional views on the divine basis of new regimes. He is thus an
excellent instrument for Herodotus to indicate his own skepticism on
this point. Darius consorts with his groom Oebares, urging him to
devise a scheme that will bring them victory. By having recourse to

the specialist, Darius is led to replace piety by obscenity . Darius'
horse is persuaded to neigh by the scent of its favorite mare. The
passion of a horse replaces the deliberation of the gods. Finally, it is the
cunning of reason that inflects passion in the direction of enlightened
ambition. In Book One, the wise Solon, discussing happiness with
Croesus, tells him that man is all chance (1.32). The episode with
Darius and Oebares corrects Solon's teaching: to paraphrase Ma-
chiavelli, fortuna is a female goddess who therefore respects the
strong. The wisdom of Herodotus, of which we have acquired a
glimpse in these paragraphs, becomes fully visible only when we have
thought through the speeches of Solon and the deeds of Darius.
v
We are engaged in a study of the pre-Socratic formulation of the
relation between theory and practice. What does Herodotus say on
this perplexing topic? There is an obvious difference between the
practice of Darius and that of Herodotus. However, the difference in
their speeches seems to be practical rather than theoretical. I mean
to suggest by this that the wisdom of Darius is not prima facie in
conflict with the wisdom of Herodotus. We approach their disagree-
ment if we think of Darius as a character in Herodotus' version of a
Platonic dialogue . For Darius, as for Callicles in Plato's Gorgias, phi-
losophy is an erroneous or childish inference from the nature of
things. If nature is change and life is war, then the purpose of intel-
ligence is to copy nature: the warrior is the highest form of philos-
opher. However, even for the warrior, the purpose of war is in some
sense peace, the necessary condition for the enjoyment of the fruits
of conquest. A secure peace can never be enforced by arms or deeds
alone; speech is also necessary. Nomos is the force of speech; it is the
king of all men, including kings. The warrior-king must conceal his
duplicity beneath the veil of nomos. Differently stated, nomos is a
duplicitous appearance of force which pretends to be peace. But the
warrior-king requires duplicity, which places him at the mercy of the
skilled talkers or interpreters of nomos. This is the step from the wise
men to the Sophists. The wise men are unwilling to engage in rivalry
with Darius for political power; to this extent, they resemble Otanes .
The pleasure of the wise men consists in looking and talking; their
duplicity is exercised in the intricacy of their speech about the visible.
They are unwilling to compromise the purity of theoretical pleasure
by the exigency of action. Eventually, however, the pleasure derived
from the power of speech overcomes the pleasure derived from the
capacity of vision. At this point, Sophistry is born.
The Sophist is not yet ready to become a king; it remains for
Socrates, the archenemy of Sophistry, to enunciate the paradigm of
the philosopher-king. But neither is the Sophist prepared to abstain
from a public manifestation of the political implications of theory,
as are the wise men. I suggest that the Sophist is motivated by the
peculiarly political pleasure of intellectual vanity, as the wise men
are not. The wise man is content with the acknowledgment of the
few, and in private; the Sophist desires the acknowledgment of the
many, and in public. This leads the Sophist, not quite to a new wis-
dom, but to a much franker rhetoric than one finds in writers like
Herodotus. One could almost suggest that the Sophists say publicly
what Darius says in private. If this is not quite right, it at least points
in the right direction. The shift from Herodotean to Sophistical rhet-
oric carries with it a perhaps unnoticed theoretical shift. In order to
satisfy his vanity, the Sophist is required to become a revolutionary,
as Herodotus was not. Let me illustrate this by discussing briefly
some scenes from the Gorgias and Protagoras.
In the Gorgias, Socrates examines a famous orator, the founder
of the art of political rhetoric, as well as one of his students. These
examinations serve as a preface to the extensive debate with Callicles,
a man with political ambitions who is influenced by the Gorgian art
of rhetoric but who is not a " professor." Callicles obviously wishes
to master Gorgian rhetoric in order to acquire political power. It is
Callicles who uses the expression "law of nature" in a political sense,
the only such use in classical Greek literature. According to Callicles,
the strong are by nature better and deserve more than the weak.
Callicles appeals both to the law of nature and to natural right in
defending this thesis (483el-484bl).8 This doctrine can be connected
to the teaching of the Sophists by way of the Protagoras. Putting to
one side the various differences between the Gorgias and the Prota-
goras, taken together, they serve to illustrate how Plato understood
the political teaching of the Sophists and rhetoricians as well as of
their students. This illustration, incidentally, supplies an essential
supplement to the strangely apolitical discussion of the Sophists in
the dialogue Sophist. As Callicles makes clear, the "natural law" con-
cerning justice is acknowledged by all men, if only in private, however
they may speak in public. Callicles thus reveals, albeit in a relatively
private conversation, what I shall call the esoteric teaching of the
many. The purpose of this expression is not to invest something sim-
ple with a specious dignity, but to bring out the simplicity underlying
the ostensibly specious distinction between esotericism and exoter-
icism . As we see at once by consulting our actual and natural opin-

ions, the conventional teaching of virtue is in fact a noble lie at best,
and at worst, an ignoble attempt by the many weak individuals to
protect themselves against the few strong citizens.
We note that Gorgias does not profess to teach virtue or justice
as a part of the art (techne) of rhetoric (e.g. 457a2ff). I pass by the
difficulties this raises for him at Socrates' hands. There is a difference
between Gorgias and Protagoras, who does explicitly claim to teach
virtue (Protagoras 318a6ff). But the connection between rhetoric and
Sophistry is easy to establish. Gorgias claims that rhetoric has "all
the powers" (Gorgias 456a8), or in other words, that it can persuade
men to do anything at all. Whether or not rhetoric is used justly
depends upon the character of the individual technician , not on the
techne. In other words, Gorgias denies that virtue and knowledge are
the same. What passes for virtue must therefore be mere opinion or
nomos as distinct from knowledge or techne. The strong man is he
who can use prudence or intelligence as well as manliness (491a7ff).
This passage shows us the line of transition from Darius to Sophistry.
The brave and intelligent master of rhetoric can rule the weak; he
can get more than his share, or more than the share obtained by the
poor speaker. Since prudence, or the use of techne, has no moral im-
plications (as we have already learned from Darius) , and since cour-
age merely enables the prudent man to persist in his efforts to acquire
as much power as possible, the interpretation of virtue or justice
which governs his behavior is in fact derived from the nonphilo-
sophical or nontechnical many. It is derived from none other than
the weak. Everyone actually believes that the strong deserve more,
but only the strong can act on this natural doctrine. Callicles can
therefore praise simultaneously the Athenian multitude and the
strong few without sacrificing all show of consistency .
Socrates says that the Sophist and the rhetor are the same thing,
or very nearly the same thing (Gorgias 520a6-8). In the Republic, he
says that the Sophists teach public opinion (VI, 493a6ff). Callicles pro-
vides us with a mediation between Sophistry and rhetoric. And the
striking feature of his position is its frankness: he reveals what the
weak conceal. Again, Callicles is more like Darius than he is like Her-
odotus. As I have already suggested, Callicles tells us that the polis,
or political life, is based upon an ignoble lie, namely, the conventional
doctrines of justice and political virtue. With this necessary minimum
of enlightenment from the Gorgias, we turn to the Protagoras. The
most famous of Sophists combines the technique of rhetoric with the
claim to teach virtue as well. In addition, he seems to be marked by
the frankness of Callicles. According to Protagoras, the Sophists of
the past concealed their wisdom and teaching in order to avoid the
jealousy of the unwise, i.e., the multitude . But Protagoras reveals his
wisdom which, as Socrates identifies it, is political science (319a4:
ten politiken technen). Protagoras does not say that the multitude con-
ceal their opinions. He may therefore attempt to identify his frank
teaching with the frank opinions of the many : with the opinions of
the citizens in towns in which he seeks students. Protagoras may
contend that even though he teaches virtue, as others do not, his
teaching is not politically dangerous (as is that of Socrates). Prota-
goras merely improves the sons of citizens in the views which their
fathers already hold.
However, it is easy to see that Protagoras is not as frank as he
claims to be . In the first place, he explains his position by means of
a myth or concealed speech rather than by an explicit and discursive
account. In the second place, Protagoras blurs the issue which Cal-
licles makes extraordinarily clear. Whereas he initially identifies the
good and the pleasant, Callicles is shamed by Socrates into admitting
that some pleasures are base rather than noble, and consequently not
good (Gorgias 49SaS-6, 499b4ff). This revision, however, is compat-
ible with his identification of the "secret" teaching of the many and
the frank teaching of those few who are noble by nature. To the extent
that Callicles has a consistent position, he stands upon the doctrine
of the natural law or natural right. This position would surely not
be a safe basis for soliciting students among the sons of the politically
powerful Athenians. However, Callicles has no intention of doing so.
As Socrates indicates, Callicles plans to enter into politics (SlSalff),
not to become a teacher of rhetoric or virtue. Callicles' claims to
Socrates are surely not intended by him as a public political platform.
He develops these claims in order to justify his own anticipated po-
litical behavior, and so to show himself as wiser than Socrates. In
this strange sense, Callicles' debate with Socrates is theoretical rather
than practical. We have to assume that Callicles' theoretical frank-
ness will be concealed by practical duplicity or by a judicious use of
noble lies, when he actually enters the political arena. Callicles' pri-
vate vanity, or the desire to shine in the eyes of Gorgias, and hence
to outshine Socrates, will be replaced by his public vanity when he
seeks the support of his fellow citizens.
But Protagoras has no direct political ambition. His public vanity
is in a sense the same as his private vanity. Protagoras is a teacher
of virtue, a Sophist whose livelihood depends upon the tolerance of
the Athenian citizens, and so upon the goodwill of the many who
engage in political activity. Protagoras' public speeches cannot differ
as sharply from his private speeches as is the case with Callicles. It
is true that Protagoras can say things in the presence of Socrates and
the convened Sophists and their admirers that he would not wish to
say in the Athenian agora. But Protagoras' public speeches must be
in essential harmony with his private speeches, because his practical
teaching is in fact a theory or techne: the political techne. Protagoras
thus presents us with a new figure in the development of Greek wis-
dom: he is not assimilable to either Darius or Herodotus. He wishes
neither to rule directly nor to conceal his wisdom. Protagoras is an
intellectual.
In this light, it is interesting to see what Protagoras says about
the noble, the good, and the pleasant. At first, in his myth about the
origins of the city, he distinguishes the noble from the good (323-
328). The main point here is that the good, which includes justice as
its chief mark and is equivalent to virtue, is acquired by teaching,
whereas the noble is acquired from nature and chance. Shortly after
the myth, Protagoras retains this distinction between the noble and
the good, a distinction in which Socrates seems initially to acquiesce
(328-334). The noble is the opposite of the shameful. not of the evil;
the opposite of the evil is the good. Somewhat later in the dialogue,
in attempting to develop a proof for the thesis that no one knowingly
does evil things, Socrates unites the noble and the good (345). Pro-
tagoras resists this union by distinguishing courage from the unity
of wisdom, justice, temperance, and holiness (349). Socrates then be-
gins the line of argument that courage is knowledge of what to fear
(350) and so, part of the good or unity of virtue understood as genuine
knowledge (episteme; d. 345b6: there is only one kake praxis, namely,
to be deprived of knowledge).
Protagoras continues to resist. He distinguishes boldness from
courage. Courage differs from boldness as does strength from power.
Whereas boldness and strength come either from madness or knowl-
edge, courage comes from "nature and proper nurture of the soul"
just as strength comes from "nature and proper nurture of the body"
(349-351). Protagoras grants that the knowledgeably bold are cou-
rageous, thereby admitting a partial connection between knowledge
and courage; but he insists that these are distinct qualities. And fi-
nally, he contends that living pleasantly is living well upon the con-
dition that we are pleased by the noble (351). It would seem, then,
that Protagoras connects noble pleasure and courage, as distinct
from, if ambiguously related to, the unity of virtue qua knowledge.
This courage is, so to speak, the theoretical counterpart to the courage
or manliness praised by Callicles. It is thus distantly related to the
courage of Darius, who connects courage with the noble, as these are
understood by the aristocracy, even though he is prepared to separate

these two qualities at extreme moments.
Now Socrates identifies the distinction between good and bad
pleasures as one which is characteristic of the many (351). He sup-
presses here the distinction between the good and the noble, and
Protagoras allows it. This point is made explicit when Socrates asks:
"Isn't knowledge noble?" Protagoras replies: "Yes, it would be
shameful of me to deny this" (352). It would be shameful because
Protagoras purports to possess and to teach knowledge. Otherwise
put, Protagoras desires the admiration of the wise. Yet this admi-
ration is essentially dependent upon his obtaining the admiration of
the many. Protagoras drops his initial distinction between the noble
and the good out of shame before the many who, according to Soc-
rates, assimilate the noble into the good pleasures. By a further step
of his own, Socrates identifies these with knowledge, or says that they
depend upon knowledge. From this point on, Protagoras accepts the
identity of the noble, the good, and the pleasant. Callicles, on the
contrary, was shamed by Socrates into distinguishing noble from
base pleasures, whereas he too equated the noble and the good . Soc-
rates prepares for Protagoras' more extreme admission by himself
taking a more extreme position in the Protagoras than he does in the
Gorgias. He now demonstrates that everyone always wills the good,
i.e., the pleasant, bearing in mind the future consequences of acts,
not just their immediately pleasant or painful natures (354-355).
Why does Socrates equate the noble, the good, and the pleasant
with one another? I believe that the answer is quite simple. He is
arguing with Protagoras, the father of political science. Scientific
knowledge about political behavior includes knowledge of what I
have called the esoteric teaching of the many. This teaching may be
summarized in the principle that there is no essential difference be-
tween the good and the pleasant. As a scientist, Protagoras must know
this; as a teacher of political science, he must teach it. And yet, as
an educator, Protagoras must not insist too strongly upon this equa-
tion, since it could leave him open to charges of corrupting the young.
Protagorean hypocrisy mirrors the hypocrisy of political life; Socrates
brings this out with great skill, a skill that is invisible to those who
read the Protagoras as evidence of Socrates' temporary lapse into
hedonism, as though he were himself a professor who shifts his opin-
ions with the changing intellectual fashions.
To continue: Socrates says that what we need now is a "science
and art" that measures pleasure and pain (357). This art would pre-
sumably be the genuine political science which Protagoras initially
claimed to teach (319) . But Socrates postpones the investigation of
this "science and art." He leaves it at the conclusion that to be "over-

come by pleasure" in performing evil (and so base) deeds is to suc-
cumb to ignorance (357) . An excess of pleasure is thus ironically
equated with a deficiency of knowledge. The irony is lost on the Soph-
ists, all of whom now agree that the pleasant is the good and the
noble (358), or the proper life . This life depends upon knowledge. It
remains for Socrates to show that courage, initially excluded by Pro-
tagoras, is also knowledge (of what to fear: 358-360). Protagoras has
apparently reversed himself, and now accepts the identity of the
noble, the good, the pleasant, and knowledge. He does, however, say
at 35gelff, when being addressed privately rather than before the
entourage as a surrogate for the many, that it is his "constant opin-
ion" that the noble deeds are good and pleasant. This at least allows
for the possibility that some pleasant deeds may be ignoble.
VI
I have suggested that Socrates ironically defends hedonism as

part of his playful torture of Protagoras who, in the contemporary
expression, is made to dangle slowly, slowly in the wind. We need to
take a closer look at why Protagoras is susceptible to this treatment.
The many, contrary to Socrates' implication, are not frank or con-
sistent in their speeches about the good and the pleasant. This is made
clear by Callicles in the Gorgias. The many pay lip service to the
distinction between good and bad pleasures, and something more
than lip service, since the laws of the city incorporate that distinction .
If Protagoras denies the distinction, he will be violating the laws; and
thus he will become politically dangerous. On the other hand, every-
one admits privately that the way to political success is by an equa-
tion of the good with the pleasant, or by a disregard of the distinction
between noble and ignoble pleasures. Protagoras cannot accept as
the basis of his theoretical understanding of virtue what everyone
rejects as naive, without risking the public accusation of incompe-
tence. For this reason alone, consistent discourse is out of the question
for him. One could also say this. If the noble is not the same as knowl-
edge, then it is not clear what the connection is between Protagoras'
techne and noble pleasure. Socrates' identification of the noble and
the good provides a basis for the professional rehabilitation of So-
phistry . But it contradicts the public teaching of the many or the
laws of the city, which deny the equation of nobility or goodness with
pleasure .
The Sophists, of whom Protagoras is the theoretical model, can-
not speak frankly . They must practice esotericism, and in the very
act of claiming to tell the truth . It is at best unclear whether the

Sophist's lies are noble or ignoble. Much more clear is the fact that,
on the basis of the Sophistic teaching, the distinction between noble
and ignoble is purely conventional. The distinction becomes natural
only when it is equated with the distinction between the strong and
the weak. This inference might be buttressed by a close analysis of
the opening of Protagoras' myth. I note here only that, according to
this myth, the laws are conventional, like spelling and writing
(326c8-9); justice and the laws are like "the other human inventions"
(technemata: 327a8-bl). Protagoras thus contradicts his earlier as-
sertion in the same myth that "justice and shame" were a gift from
Zeus (322c2ff). On the other hand, the point of the myth or of its public
teaching is to associate the origin of political life with the gods. I call
this the public teaching of the myth because it is contradicted by the
thesis that the good is the pleasant. The situation is superficially but
amusingly plain from the fact that Protagoras requires public piety
in order to collect his fees from those who do not agree that his price
has been justified by his wares (328c 1-2). If there is no political order,
then Sophistry conveys no benefits. But political order depends upon
hypocrisy, not upon a public revelation of the truth about nature.
The theoretical doctrines of the Sophists and rhetoricians come
from the teachings of the philosophers and wise men. Gorgias, for
example, was a student of Empedocles. And Protagoras' understand-
ing of nature is obviously not much different from that of Herodotus.
All of them belong to the army of partisans of comprehensive genesis,
whose general, according to Socrates, is Homer (Theaetetus 152-153).
In the same passage, incidentally, Socrates asserts that Protagoras
concealed his true teachings from the many (I52c8-lO) . In the sub-
sequent analysis of the doctrine of comprehensive genesis, Socrates
shows it to be a materialist cosmogony in which body and soul, as
well as learning and care or practice, are generated from corporeal
elements (I53a5-c1).
If nature is radical change, then truth becomes the contingent
description of matter in motion. Speeches derive their validity from
the force with which they compel men to act. At the deepest level,
custom is a king by custom; even the maxim owes its force to its own
instability. The problem of wisdom or theory is thus the same as the
practical problem: how to restrain the destructive consequences of
natural change. In the case of Herodotus, wisdom is public obedience
to nomos and private contemplation of the ratios of motion. The wise
man recognizes the vanity of identifying himself with any contingent
ratio. The price of a universal contemplation of change is thus de-
tachment from this or that change. Darius stands for the political
man who attempts to master change or fortune, and thus to identify

the private and the public, or (as we call it) theory and practice. But
every attempt to identify theory and practice depends upon a ren-
dering public of the private. There must be a stage corresponding to
the conspiracy and dialogue of the Persians, during which Darius or
his student will have to speak frankly about what can be done. Darius
is thus the paradigm for the transition from the wise men to the
Sophists. Sophistry provides a quasi-philosophical formulation to the
thesis of Darius. It is the attempt to share in political power without
surrendering the status of the theoretician; I have called it by the
contemporary name of intellectualism. The intellectual makes his
living by charging a fee for his thoughts or speeches. In so doing, he
necessarily enters into the political domain . But the entry of thought
into the political domain is necessarily a revolutionary act. The pref-
erence of intellectuals for revolution is not peculiar to the modern
epoch. This preference is already visible, if in a partly concealed form,
in antiquity. And this is the necessary prerequisite for understanding
Plato's political philosophy, or the attempt to purge political life of
the dangers of Sophistry without returning entirely to the privacy of
Herodotus.
3
Plato's Myth of the
Reversed Cosmos
I
Every Platonic dialogue is a tangled web. The Sophist and the
Statesman, in which the paradigm of weaving plays a central role,
are especially complex in structure. In this paper, I shall look at the
Statesman from a variety of perspectives, following distinct but con-
nected threads in the web, and always heading toward, or with an
eye upon, the myth of the reversed cosmos. It will be necessary for
me to make a considerable number of small points and observations
on the text. However, such a procedure may be excused, given the
nature of the enterprise. And without this accumulation of detail,
such general remarks as I have to offer would be deprived of
substance.
Let me begin with a bit of numerology, or serious playfulness. If
we consult the dramatic order of the dialogues, rather than their
ostensible dates of composition, we find that the Statesman is the
fourth of seven dialogues set in the interval between the accusation
of Socrates and his death: Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Sophist, Statesman,
Apology, Crito, Phaedo. A moderately attentive reading of the Statesman
suggests that the number seven figures prominently in its structure.
This in itself is a striking aspect of the rather arbitrary, not to say
comical, appearance of precision that surfaces intermittently in the
dialogue. Among the various divisions and lists that occur, there are
seven kinds of possessions or tools (288alfO, seven kinds of slaves and
servants (289c4fO, and seven kinds of political regimes (302bSfO.
Somewhat less clear, but still visible, is the curious fact that the
Stranger makes seven distinguishable statements to explain why he
tells the myth.! Furthermore, although it would be quite difficult to
arrive at a noncontroversial plan of the parts of the dialogue, there
Plato's Myth of the Reversed Cosmos 57
are, I believe, six points at which the Stranger uses the word "palin"
in a phrase to assert quite clearly that we must make a new start by
going back to some definite earlier stage in the discussion. 2 This point
is complicated by the fact that the word "palin" occurs thirty-eight
times in the dialogue, along with eight instances of cognate terms.
It would, however, be possible to argue that "palin" is used to signal
seven main sections of the dialogue. The significance of these num-
bers may be open to dispute, but the effect of reversal or repetition
is not. As we may express it preliminarily, the motion of political life
is cyclical rather than linear. The pervasive motif in the Statesman
of a return to the origin is clearly related to the myth of the reversed
cosmos.
The reader may permit me two more statistical remarks. In his
recent commentary to the dialogue/ Jacob Klein calls attention to
the emphasis in the Statesman on mistakes . If we put to one side the
computational error made by Theodorus at the beginning of the dia-
logue, to which our attention is directed by Socrates senior, the
Stranger flags seven distinct errors committed in the course of his
discussion with Young Socrates.4 Finally, our dialogue is, I believe,
unique in presenting both a longer and shorter diaeresis leading to
the class or definition of the statesman, the first containing twelve
and the second nine steps, or a total of three times seven . It should
come as no surprise that the shorter way branches off at step seven
of the longer way.
A detailed study of the Platonic corpus would be necessary in
order to validate (or refute) the hypothesis that Plato, whether play-
fully or seriously, associated the number seven with the theme of
politics. What is beyond dispute is that, in the Statesman, there is a
recurring emphasis, both direct and indirect, on diaeresis, with the
attendant implication of rigorous conceptual analysis terminating in
exhaustive lists of relevant items . And throughout this fabric runs
the binding thread of the number seven. There is, however, also a
marked emphasis upon mistakes, confusions, and the need to start
anew, or to repeat correctly some previously botched step. Klein, in
the previously mentioned study, makes the reasonable suggestion
that the emphasis upon errors and new starts is appropriate to a
discussion of politics. However, this does not explain the concomitant
emphasis upon, or appearance of, scientific precision. Nor does it
explain the role actually played by diaeresis in the Statesman, as dis-
tinct from the propaganda uttered on its behalf by the Stranger, both
here and in the Sophist. It does not explain a central ambiguity in
the Statesman concerning the sense of statesmanship or the royal art.
A detailed analysis of this ambiguity would amount to a book-
58 Plato 's Myth of the Reversed Cosmos
length commentary. Nevertheless, it can be identified here with some

precision. On the one hand, there is the techne or episteme of politics,
ostensibly to be identified and defined by diaeresis. As we shall see
later, diaeresis abstracts from the human perspective, disregards
honor and nobility, and so lowers man's status to that of a herd of
animals. All this is evidently a consequence of the fact that diaeresis
is itself scientific or technical. On the other hand, there is the techne
or episteme of politics as it is actually practiced in cities, and so as
exhibited in the paradigm of phronesis, which may be translated as
"intelligence" in a sense close to, but somewhat broader than, the
Aristotelian sense of "practical intelligence." This art consists in the
knowledge of when to act for the preservation or improvement of the
health and safety of the citizens, and more specifically, with respect
to justice, the honorable or noble, and goodness. s There is perhaps
no reason why the same man may not possess both of the arts dis-
tinguished above. But they are obviously distinct and, as arts, mu-
tually exclusive. The diaeretic knowledge of political science excludes
the very perspective that defines phronesis or the political art. And
certainly there can be no definition of phronesis capable of serving
as a criterion for the exercise, in each individual case, of right
judgment.
We may express this problem in terms of the previously men-
tioned art of weaving. The Stranger makes much of this art, and its
affilia tes, carding and fulling, as a paradigm for the science of poli tics.
Weaving is an art by which wool is woven into clothing. A natural
product is thus transformed into an artifact, through an art tradi-
tionally performed by women; and the function of its product is to
protect the body against the excesses of nature . If politics must be
understood by analogy with weaving, then citizens are artifacts, pro-
duced from naturally generated human beings, by a more or less
effectively definable and so teachable method scarcely comparable
to phronesis. It would follow from this that politics, and so the polis,
is not natural. 6 The association of politics with weaving seems to be
an allusion to woman's central role in the family, as is also suggested
by the implicit definition of politics as care of the body . This implicit
definition is reinforced by the regularly employed icons of the phy-
sician, gymnastics trainer, and ship's pilot. We note also that weaving
is derived from the defensive species of making and possessing at
279c7ff. As we shall see in the myth, politics is portrayed in the States-
man as a defense against nature, and not as the masculine art of war.
One could even say that the traditionally masculine role of debating
in the assembly is reduced in importance, if it is not actually elim-
inated, by the paradigm of phronesis, and so by the equation of the

best regime with a monarchy.
Altogether unclear, then, is how the paradigm of weaving, any
more than the method of diaeresis, illuminates the knowledge of the
soul required by the man of phronesis, and so by the actual possessor
and practitioner of political understanding. To put the issue as
sharply as possible, there is a fundamental ambiguity in the States-
man between theory on the one hand and productive practice on the
other. 7 Near the end of the dialogue (305dlff), the Stranger concludes
that the true statesman does not do anything himself, but rules those
who are about to do something. However, this simply glides over an
ambiguity in the nature of politics, which is a branch of epitactic or
commanding theory . Granting that ruling is like architecture rather
than arithmetic (25gelff), it follows that the commands of the ar-
chitect are intelligible only in terms of the house to be produced,
whereas the arithmetician, the paradigm of pure critical theory or
gnosis, produces nothing. As the Stranger says explicitly at 261allff,
all rulers command "for the sake of some genesis." It is obvious that
one cannot issue commands suitable for producing excellent citizens
if one assimilates human beings into herd animals . So if diaeresis is
like arithmetic, it is incapable of defining politics which, like archi-
tecture , exemplifies a complex relationship between knowing and
making.
The ambiguity just sketched is especially evident in the States-
man in the roles assigned to diaeresis and weaving and so, indirectly,
in the strange interplay between precision and confusion. It looks as
though an excessive attempt at precision in the study of politics leads
to confusion. In the myth of the reversed cosmos, the theme may be
restated as the relation between physics and politics. This theme is
in one sense more accessible in the question of the difference between
nature and production. It will be helpful to notice how this question
arises in one of the most interesting sections of the dialogue, although
we cannot here study the passage in detail. After telling the myth
and concluding his sevenfold justification of the telling, the Stranger
observes that the situation is still unclear. It is, he says, more fitting
to portray every living being by speech and argument, for those who
are able to follow. For the others, one must use works of craftsman-
ship (277c3-6). These works include paintings and, as the passage
shows, myths (277b6ff). I add that they may also include devices like
diaeresis, a point to which we shall return below.
Meanwhile, the Stranger says that it is difficult to exhibit any-
thing great without using paradeigmata, and then presents a sketch
of what one might call, somewhat metaphorically, his "model the-
60 Plato's Myth of the Reversed Cosmos
ory." The word "paradeigma" may mean either model or example.

This ambiguity is reflected in the Stranger's remark that we need a
paradigm of paradigms (277d9ff). The illustration of the general case
is the alphabet. Just as a myth is like a tale told to children (268e4ff),
so discussion of the alphabet takes us back to our childhood (277e2ff).
Just as the myth produces a cosmos as the unity of a manifold of
images, so the alphabet encompasses unending strings of meaning
into its unity of elements. A Platonic myth is a conventional story,
hence a poem or work of craftsmanship, constructed to illustrate a
natural whole, whether the soul or the cosmos. So too, whereas this
or that alphabet is a conventional or arbitrary articulation of the
continuum of sound, the alphabet as a principle of intelligibility is
not conventional, at least not for Plato, as is shown by the doctrine
of Ideas as well as the greatest genera in the Sophist.
Nevertheless, there is an ambiguity here . According to the
Stranger, paradigms have their genesis when we "correctly believe"
that two elements in separate structures together fulfill or accomplish
"one true doxa" (278c3-6). The word "doxa" is employed repeatedly
in this section, and reminds us of the problem in the Theaetetus con-
cerning the nature of knowledge. Stated with necessary brevity, sci-
entific knowledge, as discursive, is a "weaving together" (the expres-
sion is from the Sophist) of elements. In other words, analysis is also
synthesis (a point often overlooked by contemporary analysts). There-
fore, we cannot grasp or see the elements in the same way by which
we arrive at their synthesis. Nor is it evident that, having arrived at
our synthesis, we see it as a unit in the same way by which we arrived
at its unity. But further, the act of seeing that X is an example of Y
is not the same as the act of deriving a conclusion from a set of prem-
ises, or of analyzing a compound into its elements. What we have to
see is that the structure of X and Yare somehow the same. That is,
we actually have to see something in X thanks to our vision of Y, and
this depends upon how things look to us. Hence the suitability of the
term "doxa" in this context. On the other hand, if X serves as an
example of Y thanks to some structure Z that is common to the two,
then the paradox of the third man seems to follow. Otherwise put,
we have simply moved our problem back a stage. The question is
now how we see the relevance of Z to X and Y. One other point here:
the example of the alphabet suggests that we directly perceive in-
stances of paradigmatic elements. But it does not illustrate construc-
tive examples such as the sense in which weaving is like politics. The
Stranger introduces the latter analogy somewhat apologetically at
279a7ff, and in so doing, swears ("by Zeus") for the only time in the
dialogue.
It looks, then, as though a paradigm is generated, possibly from

natural elements, but through the synthetic or creative participation
of the human intellect. In the case of myth, I believe that this is
obvious. But it is presumably not obvious in the case of diaeresis. I
want now to start a fresh line of investigation, concentrating upon
diaeresis, in order to deepen my suggestion that the mixture of pre-
cision and confusion in the Statesman centers upon the problem of
the relation between theory and productive practice, or alternatively,
between physics and politics.
II
The Eleatic Stranger constructs a cosmological myth, thereby

imitating in speech the deed of the divine demiurge. The Stranger
says that his myth contains some playfulness (268d8). We may infer
that the concoction also contains some serious elements. He intro-
duces the myth because of the failure of diaeresis in its assigned task,
namely, to separate out the statesman or chief herdsman of the
human tribe from such claimants to the title as merchants, farmers,
grain workers, gymnasts, and physicians. We must employ myth, as
he says, in order to purify the disgrace brought upon the logos by
diaeresis. This disgrace occurs in connection with the sorting out of
the human from the animal natures (268b8-d4). This is essentially
the error made by Theodorus, the master of calculation and geometry,
at the beginning of the dialogue, when he is said to give equal honor
to the sophist, statesman, and philosopher (257b2-4) . This neutrality
with respect to honor is also a feature of diaeresis.
We may pursue this point by asking whether diaeresis also con-
tains some playful elements. In the Sophist (226e8ff) the Stranger,
discussing the purification of living beings, observes that diaeresis
has produced some trivial subdivisions and many names that appear
to be laughable. One presumably laughable result is that the general
and the louse catcher are joined as equally dignified examples of the
tribe of hunters. This is because diaeresis is not concerned with what
is useful for mankind, but only with understanding technical rela-
tionships. This must mean, incidentally, that diaeresis is not con-
cerned with its own utility. There are also a number of jokes in the
diaereses of the Statesman, all designed to lower the status of man,
and so of political life and consequently of political science. One joke
is explicitly identified as such by the Stranger. The diaereses have
produced the famous joke that man shares the same fate as the most
tractable of beings, presumably the pig (266blOff; d. 263clff).
I said above that the ludicrous aspects of diaeresis arise from its
indifference to the human, or to what we may call its excessive se-

riousness. At 263alff the Stranger rebukes Young Socrates for having
suggested previously (262a3-c1) the division of living beings into hu-
mans and beasts. This suggestion, although "zealous and coura-
geous," is a technical error. It proposes a division into parts that are
not eide (looks or species). What follows if we take the Stranger se-
riously here? We will arrive at a definition of the human tribe as
consisting of hornless and/or featherless bipeds. But when one bears
in mind what has already been said on this point, as well as the fact
that the statesman's art is finally defined as that of weaving together
the divine and animal parts of the human soul (309clff), or in a
slightly earlier formulation, the brave and gentle natures, the polit-
ical uselessness of diaeresis should be evident. It does not produce a
politically useful eidos of the human tribe. But even worse, it provides
us with a definition of man that conceals his political capacity.
Let me emphasize at this point that I am well aware of the im-
portance of division and collection in the Statesman, or more gen-
erally, in discursive thinking. I am thus very far from denying all
philosophical significance to diaeresis. What I deny is that diaeresis
functions as a universal method, capable of capturing any genus, as
the Stranger asserts in Sophist 23Sc4-6 . Correlatively, I am calling
attention to the inappropriate, and even comical, use of diaeresis in
the Statesman with respect to the task of defining the true king. 8
Whatever may be the difference between theory and practice, no defi-
nition is sound if it conceals rather than captures the phenomena to
which it is addressed. An apolitical conception of man cannot lead
to a theoretically sound definition of the political art. Whatever may
be the right explanation of the importance of diaeresis, the uses to
which it is put in the Statesman are ambiguous and probably incoh-
erent. As to the ambiguity attendant upon the main role of diaeresis
in the dialogue, the Stranger gives three motives for its use. The first
we have already mentioned, namely, to define the statesman. The
second is to provide an exercise in the diaeretic method rather than
to define the statesman (28Sd4ff). And the third is the most practical
of all: the point to the discussion is said to be to determine which of
the actual regimes is most bearable (or least corrupt: 302bSff). I sug-
gest that if the main purpose of the Statesman is to provide a technical
exercise in the use of diaeresis, then the dialogue is a species of
comedy .
To continue: Young Socrates' division of animals into humans
and beasts was like that of the many, the Stranger says, who separate
humans into Hellenes and all the rest (262c10ff), or who divide num-
bers into the first ten thousand and all the rest. The analogy makes
clear the political defect of diaeresis . Young Socrates' division was

motivated by patriotism toward the human herd rather than by
sound logical technique. But without such patriotism, how can we
even perceive, let along define and practice the political art? Diaeresis
then is blind to the political nature of man, and so to the august or
holy and the reverse (266c10-d9). It seems to be a Platonic joke to
employ it in the search for the statesman. I believe it would be im-
possible to show that diaeresis plays any direct role in the delineation
of the political art. Let me add one more bit of evidence. In a some-
what confusing passage, the human herd is finally included in the
family of tame animals. According to the Stranger, "herd" and
"tame" are synonymous. The Stranger thus fails to divide the tame
family into herd animals and tame solitaries, nor does he consider
the possibility that there are wild as well as tame humans (263e6-
264bS) . If citizens are artifacts, then the counterargument to this
point, that man is by nature political (or belongs by nature to a tame
herd), is not valid . And common sense tells us that neither philoso-
phers nor tyrants are members of the herd, or tame in the same sense
as the other human beings.
The entire issue is sharpened by a long passage late in the dia-
logue, to which I can here only allude. At 293cSff, the Stranger begins
a long attack on nomos that is unparalleled for its severity in the
Platonic corpus. This attack is part of the identification of the political
science as rule by phronesis. Nomos, says the Stranger, is like a stub-
born and ignorant man who allows no questioning of his ways
and no changes for the better. Nomos is blind to the individual
case, whereas the true statesman must judge each individual case. In
terms of another important passage, the statesman must know how
to measure, not the general case or like the arithmetician, but what
is fitting or timely (284e2ff). This is also evident in the Stranger's
shocking statement that courage and moderation are enemies and
opposed to each other, and that they must be regulated by phronesis.
When either is the mark of behavior at an unfitting time, we blame
and balance it by its opposite (30Se7-307b8) . The rule of courage
and moderation by phronesis is analogous to the rule of the demotic
virtues by nous in the Republic. The thesis of the ostensible unity
of the virtues cannot be properly understood without bearing these
points in mind.
The identification of the art of ruling with phronesis is, to be sure,
a paradigm that must be modified in actual cities by strict adherence
to the rule of the law . Actual practice thus demands the exact opposite
of the paradigm of justice, a consequence that is not without its an-
alogies in the Republic. Nevertheless, the paradigm does not cease to
function. We must have recourse to law because of the impossibility

or extreme difficulty of obtaining rule by phronesis. But the laws are
presumed to have been promulgated by men of political science, i.e.,
of phronesis; and the role of this attribute in political life is too ob-
vious to require further documentation. What is not so obvious, but
still visible, is the vagueness with which the Stranger discusses the
origins of actual cities or legal codes. The presumption of phronesis
in the founding fathers is not the same as knowledge of their phro-
nesis. The origins of political life are ambiguous, not subject to sci-
entific determination. This thesis, together with the construction of
phronesis as the paradigm of political knowledge, makes sense if there
is no politically useful eidos of the human soul. It is worth mentioning
that in the Phaedrus, Socrates gives a demonstration of the cosmic
soul as the principle of change, but he tells a myth about the human
or personal soul.9 So too Socrates notes in the Phaedrus that philo-
sophical rhetoric is the art of knowing how to talk to souls of differing
kinds (271c10ff). This art is also recommended by Saint Paul, the
agent of the divine fisherman, or in the language of the Sophist, the
angler. Fishing and rhetoric, or the arts concerned with the tending
of the human soul, are more like weaving than they are like arithmetic
and diaeresis . Whereas diaeresis is analysis, weaving is synthesis, as
is the telling of myths or the constructing of the cosmos.
Let me summarize the line of thought developed in the last few
paragraphs . Diaeresis and phronesis are at odds with each other. Dia-
eresis cannot function intelligently without submitting to phronesis,
whereas for practical reasons, phronesis requires the assistance of
diaeresis. The difference between the two takes a variety of forms,
but perhaps the most comprehensive is this. Phronesis sees each in-
dividual case as it is. But diaeresis, like nomos, gathers together many
individual cases under a common stamplO which cannot capture the
natural features of the individuals. This suggests a perhaps surprising
hypothesis. Despite its connection with politics, and so with pro-
ductive practice, phronesis is a kind of gn6sis or the6ria, whereas dia-
eresis, despite its identification in the Sophist (253c6ff) as the free
man's or philosopher's science, seems to be practico-productive. We
would do well to remember the occasional passages in which the
diaeretician is said to cut the limbs as the priest cuts the sacrificial
animal (287c3ff), or in which he is instructed to make his eidetic cuts
at the natural joints, and not to break off parts like a clumsy butcher
(Phaedrus 265e O. In other words, the diaeretician is a competent or
skilled butcher. But butchers cut only corpses, just as the shepherd,
incidentally, tends his flock in preparation for the butcher's knife. If
we wish to know the soul (and so the true art of politics), we might
do better to follow the procedure of telling and interpreting myths.

In the Symposium Alcibiades reveals the nature of Socrates through
icons and compares him to a Silenus figure which, if we open it into
two parts, is found to contain images of the gods (215a4ff). The open-
ing up of images is one way of "cutting down the middle," as the
Stranger advises us to do in diaeresis (Statesman 262b6) . If we cut
open an image, we do not murder the original. Another version of
the ambiguous results of diaeresis, as well as of the ambiguous nature
of the political art, emerges from a comparison of 260b3 and 292b9 .
In the first passage, the Stranger distinguishes critical from epitactic
arts and derives politics from the latter. In the second passage, he
says that politics has been found to be both critical and epitactic.
This is a flat contradiction. It points toward the difference between
politics as a theoretical art and as productive practice.
Before concluding this section of my paper, I should like to make
one more textual observation . At 25gelff, the Stranger divides the
gnostic sciences in the aforementioned manner, namely, into those
which simply discern or judge (krinai) like arithmetic, and those
which not merely judge but also command, like architecture. So the
purely theoretical arts are critical; they must sift out what is from
what is not. In the Sophist, a special diaeresis is devoted to the house-
hold arts that are marked by dividing (diaeretika); the Stranger calls
these the discerning or diacritical kind (226blff). The initial examples
are taken from the preparation of grain for baking and wool for weav-
ing. But the Stranger goes on to divide the diacritical arts into those
that separate worse from better and those that separate like from
like. He next divides the former into arts that purify the body, like
gymnastics and medicine, and those that purify the soul. In this way
we move from baking and weaving to knowledge of good and evil or
of harmony and discord within the soul. We move, in other words,
to philosophy and statesmanship, as well as to their imitation, So-
phistry. The paradigms of baking and weaving suggest again that
dividing qua discerning is an activity in which we take from nature
something like grain and wool, and then stamp it with the seal of our
work. I suspect that this is what happens in the case of diaeresis,
which is thus the ancestor of the modern enterprise of concept con-
struction. In other words, there is a difference between the genuine
Ideas or "greatest genera" which are perceived by an intellectual
intuition, and the classes reached by the analytico-constructive work
of diaeresis. I find especially interesting in this context 284b7ff, where
the Stranger says that in the Sophist "we forced" (prosanankasamen)
nonbeing to be. So now, he continues, we must force the greater and
the less to come to be, not only relative to each other, but also with
respect to the genesis of the mean. The Stranger adds that it is a

bigger job to do the latter than the former. This suggests that, con-
trary to appearances, it is harder to understand political life than it
is to solve technical problems in logic and ontology.
I can now bring this section of my paper to a close. The Statesman
is concocted from a curious mixture of precision and ambiguity or
even confusion . This mixture is exemplified by the role which dia-
eresis plays in the dialogue. I do not want to go so far as to assert
that diaeresis has no serious function in the dialogue. To say nothing
else, a misleading or playful role is still a role, and may be a serious
one, in an indirect sense. I do however assert that diaeresis has no
serious and direct contribution to make to our understanding of the
political art. So the Stranger is not joking when he says that diaeresis
has disgraced itself. This is a valuable lesson for all of us, and es-
pecially for mathematicians or quasi-mathematicians. And it is al-
together compatible with the deeper lesson to be learned from our
thinking through the question of the role played by human produc-
tivity in the construction of a cosmos .
III
The following question may be said to underlie my paper to this

point. Is there a difference between the diaeretician's knowledge of
the art of the statesman and the statesman's knowledge of his own
art? If that art is phronesis, then the answer is certainly in the af-
firmative. There is a further question to which I have by no means
given an affirmative answer. Even assuming that the art of the dia-
eretician is productive, is it also the case that the statesman's art is
theoretical? These questions are reflected in the depths of the further
question why Plato wove together the dialogue on statesmanship
from elements like that of diaeresis and myth. It should come as no
surprise that the question why the Stranger tells the myth is as dif-
ficult to answer as the question concerning the exact role of diaeresis
in the dialogue. Although there is a sense in which the myth is clear
because it lacks the specious lucidity of diaeresis, it remains the case
that, just as in the paradigm of weaving and the art of diaeresis, the
exact contribution of the myth to the final understanding of the po-
litical art is impossible to pin down neatly. I have already observed
that the Stranger makes seven attempts to explain the function of
the myth. One might want to force some simplicity onto this manifold
by insisting that the main purpose of the myth is to correct an error
made by diaeresis . At 274elff this mistake is stated as follows . In the
diaeresis as it was conducted prior to the telling of the myth, we were
in fact defining the divine shepherd rather than his counterpart, the
mortal or proper statesman. The purpose of the myth is then osten-
sibly to draw the relevant distinction between the divine and the
human shepherd. However, the myth says nothing, or next to nothing,
about the human statesman and, as we shall see in a moment, it is
unusually obscure about the exact identity of the divine shepherd.
Just as there is a serious disanalogy between disaeresis andphronesis,
so too there is a crucial disanalogy between shepherds, whether di-
vine or human, and statesmen. The latter belong to the same species
as their flocks, whereas the former do not. However, if we bear in
mind the possibility of tame solitaries, it is also possible that states-
men of the epistemic sort, like philosophers, constitute a subspecies
or distinct type within the human herd . This apart, a second error is
noted at 275a8: we have not yet shown how the statesman rules the
polis . But this is illustrated neither by the myth nor by diaeresis . If
it is illustrated at all, then it is by the paradigm of weaving.
In my view, the purpose of the myth is to illustrate the ambiguous
nature of the relation between physics and politics, but not to resolve
this ambiguity. The ambiguity cannot be resolved; to do so would be
to remove the obscuri ty surrounding the origin of the polis, or to
transform political science from phronesis into a function of dianoia,
and so perhaps to make it accessible to diaeresis . The simplest way
in which to introduce the problem of the relation between physics
and politics is as follows. Either man is not by nature a political
animal, or we require two distinct senses of "nature." In either case,
the result is an unresolved dualism . We are left without an exact
conceptual analysis of the relation between physics (in the broad
sense of the study of nature) and politics, or alternatively, without a
definite circumscribing concept of nature, one underlying its two dis-
tinct senses. In a final formulation, we see here the origins of the
problem of the relation between theory and (productive) practice. In
the language of the Sophist, this is the problem of the relation between
making and acquiring . The problem is more familiar today as that
of the nature of praxis .
The Stranger concocts his myth from at least three distinct
sources: (1) the quarrel of Atreus and Thyestes, with the attendant
reversal of the cosmos by Zeus for one day, as a sign of his support
of Atreus; (2) the myth of the golden age of Cronos; (3) the myth of
the race of autochthonous mortals . In what follows, we shall have no
further concern with the Stranger's sources, but only with his ob-
viously novel tale. The reader will remember that, within the myth,
we have two cycles of the cosmos, one our own, which I shall some-
what inaccurately but conveniently refer to as the "normal cycle"
(inaccurately because, in a deeper sense, both cycles are normal), and

one in which all kinesis is reversed, which for the sake of convenience
I shall refer to as the "counternormal cycle." These two cycles to-
gether constitute what we may call the whole, or the work of the
divine demiurge . Since the counternormal cycle is associated with
Cronos and the normal cycle with Zeus, it looks as though we have
three deities or sets of deities. I shall be arguing that, as a matter of
fact, we have three different aspects of the same deity, or in a sense,
a kind of Hegelian synthesis of the two opposites, Cronos and Zeus.
The two cycles of cosmic change are accordingly in my reading con-
trary aspects of human existence in one and the same cosmos, aspects
which are in one way governed by the principle of noncontradiction,
but in another way not. In a sense reminiscent of the nature of Eros
in the Symposium, the "lived cosmos" (to coin a phrase) is continu-
ously coming to be what it is not and ceasing to be what it is. Human
life is marked by the flow of temporality in two distinguishable
senses, that of physics and of myth. It may even be the case that we
have two myths, one of which is called physics . Perhaps the least that
can be said is that myth weaves together physics and poetry in order
to concoct a cosmos that is bearable for human existence.
I turn now to a more consecutive analysis of the myth. Once upon
a time, there occurred (and will occur again) a sudden, unexpected
sight (phasma: 268e8ff). The Stranger and his auditors must rely upon
hearsay and recollection. There is evidently no eidos, for us at least,
of this vision . Young Socrates assumes that the Stranger refers to the
golden lamb in the tale of Atreus and Thyestes. But the Stranger is
not concerned with this, nor with the explicitly political elements of
the quarrel between the two brothers. Instead, he extracts the story
of the reversed cosmos and places it as just prior to each appearance
of our present or normal cosmic cycle . To this, the Stranger adds
elements of the stories about the rule of Cronos and the race of men
who sprang from the earth like plants, rather than through sexual
generation (269a6-b4). These tales, he says, as we have them from
antiquity, all refer back to a single cosmic pathos, which no one has
yet told, and which is the cause of the stories just mentioned, and of
others as well. The Stranger makes explicit that the concoction of old
tales is his own invention. He imitates the cosmic demiurge by orig-
inating an account of the origin. And like a god, he gives no expla-
nation of how he has come to grasp the first and last things.
In the counternormal cycle, "the god himself" guides and goes
together with the cosmos and cares for its generations. When the
measure of revolutions constituting this cycle has been completed,
the god lets go the tiller, and the cosmos begins to revolve sponta-
neously (automaton) in the opposite (normal) direction (269c4-d4).

The cosmic reversal occurs through an innate necessity (eks anankes
emphyton) . The counternormal motion is imposed upon the cosmos
by its corotating deity. The normal motion is of the cosmos' own
inclination, since it is alive and possesses phronesis, the capacity of
the perfect king. The reason for the reversal is as follows. It is fitting
only for the most divine of all things to remain always in the same
condition and to be the same, whereas the nature of body is not in
this category.
It is obvious that neither the constructor of the cosmos nor the
corotator can be among the most divine of beings. Furthermore, of
changing things, only the guide of all moving things is allowed to
turn itself forever. Now this presumably cannot be the corotator of
the counternormal cycle since, as we shall see later, he retires to his
watchtower (272eS). We may, of course, assume that he continues to
rotate, like a whirling dervish, but nothing is said to support this.
According to the Stranger, it is forbidden by divine law for what turns
itself forever to do so now in one direction and now in another. The
guide of all moving things, who is presumably the demiurge, must
then govern a cosmos that is a comprehensive dimension of change,
circumscribing the two cycles of normal and counternormal changes .
The comprehensive cosmos must compose or "sublate" the opposed
cycles into a unified change. The Stranger says that the interior cycles
cannot be both moved by gods because they would then be opposed
to each other, and this is as impossible as that one god should move
the whole now in one direction and now in another (269dS-270b2).
Clearly the comprehensive guide cannot be the counternormal
corotator in any straightforward sense, since he would then contra-
dict himself, which is impossible for phronesis (270al). What then is
the relation between the guide of the whole and the corotator as well
as the unguided normal cycle? I think we cannot avoid the inference
that it is dialectical in something like the Hegelian (or even Schel-
lingian) sense of the term. There is a notion of unidirectionality at
the comprehensive level which is nevertheless a dialectical vector of
in-themselves opposed changes. It is not by chance that the German
Idealists traced their dialectic back to the "One differentiating itself"
or the Platonic revision of Heraclitus. l l The cosmos is the living par-
adigm of the principle of noncontradiction, but as such, it is the sub-
lation and so preservation of a contradiction. Unity, so understood,
contains the excitation of divine or spiritual life. It is the identity of
identity and nonidentity.
Now the Stranger counsels us to consider the pathos of cosmic
reversal. The verb for considering is logisamenoi, "to calculate." So
at least the resonance of analytical ordo et mensura is to be heard in

our story. The moment of reversal is also the period of the greatest
changes for the various beings within the cosmos. In particular, there
is a great destruction of animals, and especially of human beings. To
anticipate, the cosmos acquires only good things from its creator.
Hence the destructiveness must come from the original nature of
body and therefore from necessity rather than from the gods. To con-
tinue, the Stranger begins his description of life within the counter-
normal cycle. The survivors of the great destruction stop growing
"older to look at" and begin to grow in the other direction, "as
though" (hoion) younger and tenderer. In other words, comprehen-
sive cosmic time continues despite the inversion process of normal
and counternormal cycles. During the counternormal cycle the ani-
mals are growing older by objective time. But in lived time or their
phenomenal condition, they are growing in such a way that we of
the normal cycle would call "younger." The Stranger's language sug-
gests not merely the distinction between comprehensive and cyclical
time, but also that human beings in the counternormal cycle do not
know or see themselves to be growing "younger." Eventually they
become like newborn children in both soul and body (270e6ff). In
other words, they grow steadily more childish and hence forget rather
than remember. This will be of importance below.
Death in the counternormal cycle is then not a return to the
womb since there is no sexual reproduction; it is instead a vanishing
(eksephanizeto). That is, the body vanishes whereas the soul, as we
later learn (272e2ff), falls into the earth as seed. We may perhaps
assume that the corpse also returns to the earth, but this is not stated
and in fact, if it were true, the cycle of counternormal genesis would
be interrupted. 12 The Stranger's verb "vanishing" allows and perhaps
suggests that the infant shrivels away into invisibility or nothingness,
and this is later modified in the case of the soul. In the normal epoch
mortals grow old, die, and return to the earth (273elOff). In the coun-
ternormal epoch they spring from the earth fully grown and aged,
seem to grow younger and then, whereas their souls return to the
earth, it is at least unclear whether their bodies do so. Suffice it to
say that the suppression of sexual reproduction interferes with the
inverse symmetry of change in the two cycles. And the revitalization
process entails a cessation of Eros.
This last point is obviously puzzling to Young Socrates. He raises
no questions about death, a topic of small interest to a youth. But he
does want to know how the animals were generated from each other
(271a2). The Stranger's reply is intended to cover all animals (270d6);
they are earth born in the counternormal cycle. The suppression of
Eros blurs the difference between humans and beasts Uust as does
the application of diaeresis). As will soon be pointed out, humans and
beasts may even converse with one another. The Stranger says that
the memory of the earthborn race was preserved by our first ances-
tors, who were born at the start of the normal cycle and so were direct
neighbors of the counternormal cycle. Survivors of the counternor-
mal cycle would begin to age in the normal cycle. It must be from
their testimony that the story of the autochthonous race is trans-
mitted. In the counternormal cycle old mortals spring up "sponta-
neously" from the earth, with no memory of their previous existence
(271dl, 272al-S). It is obvious that the counternormal residents are
marked throughout their lives by forgetting rather than by remem-
bering. This raises a small question as to how those suddenly caught
in the shift to the normal cycle can remember their previous resi-
dence . Our knowledge of the counternormal cycle may be prophetic
or recollective rather than empirical. So revitalization, the charac-
teristic of the counternormal epoch, is linked to a suppression of Eros,
work, and memory . We can safely assume that philosophy is absent
as well. This will soon become important. One further comment is
in order here. The Stranger says that the god exempts some mortals
from the earth born cycle and removes them to another destiny
(271c2). In his commentary, Campbell cites Phaedo 82a to support
the plausible inference that these are philosophers. If so, not merely
is philosophy absent from the counternormal cycle, but philosophers
do not need to be revitalized by a suppression of Eros, work, and
memory .
The next puzzle for Young Socrates is whether the golden age of
Cronos occurs in the counternormal or normal cycle (271c3-8). He
understands the cosmological phenomenon of the two cycles, but not
its political significance. And as we noted earlier, it is a pervasive
theme of the myth that knowledge of the cosmos is not the same as
knowledge of human existence. The Stranger tells Young Socrates
that he is asking about the age "in which everything occurs spon-
taneously for mortals." When the corotator drops the tiller, the cos-
mos moves spontaneously (269c7), whereas man and the necessities
of human life do not. Conversely, when human life is spontaneous,
the cosmos is not. Furthermore, it is obvious that in the counternor-
mal cycle, there is no political life in the proper sense of the term.
The corotator (Cronos) rules "the whole cycle," but the parts of the
cosmos have individual divine or daimonic rulers . The herd families
each have their own daimonic shepherd and so are not self-governing.
In order to be revitalized, mortals must rest from their political as
well as bodily labors.
So the age of Cronos belongs "least of all to the presently estab-

lished cycle, but entirely to the preceding one" (27lc8-d3). Ours is
an age of harsh origins and human work. The Stranger seems to agree
with Hegel and Marx that properly human existence depends upon
human labor. But his position is not entirely clear, as we shall see
at the end of the myth. In the counternormal cycle the animals are
tame, there is no politeia and no family, no memory of the previous
existence , no need to farm thanks to the spontaneous production of
plants, no need for clothing or bedding because of the mild climate
and soft grasses (271e4ff). I note in passing that there is no sorting
or diakritike of grain and wool in the counternormal cycle. Young
Socrates is unable to sort out or judge in which age man is more
blessed. The Stranger provides him with the criterion. If mortals,
having both leisure and the ability to converse with animals in the
counternormal cycle, engage in philosophy so that each kind con-
tributes from its unique perspective to the common store ofphronesis,
then that age is ten thousand times more blessed than our own.
The Stranger instructs us to pass by the decision as to which age
is most blessed, since no one can tell what was the desire (epithymia)
of the counternormal mortals for knowledge and the use of logos. It
would be easy to decide, however, if they merely eat, drink, and tell
myths to each other, like those that are now told about them in the
traditional stories (surely not in the Stranger's myth: 272b8-d4).
However, we may find it easy enough to conclude that in the absence
of memory, experience, Eros, and work, there can be no philosophy.
There is no mention of thymos, no opportunity for the development
of phronesis, and so it is likely that the counternormal epoch is an
age of epithymia. But none of this leads directly to the conclusion that
ours is an age ten thousand times more blessed than theirs . For the
Stranger is about to explain a crucial point, already noted by us. The
counternormal age is necessary in order to restore the normal age to
good order and perpetual existence. If the two cycles are to be under-
stood, as I suggest, as coordinate dimensions of human life, then for-
getfulness is necessary as an element in wakefulness or remembering.
There is a discontinuity within the human life process that prevents
us from being either wise or simply brutish. Temporal change repairs
as it wears away, and this is true, if in different senses, for the indi-
vidual as well as for the species. Hence the necessity for "us" of myths
about "them," namely, our reversed selves. The myth must be awak-
ened (272dS) from the sleep of forgetfulness in order to guide us to-
ward a proper appreciation of phronesis.
When the counternormal cycle comes to its completion and the
earthborn race has been reborn the preordained number of times,
the corotator drops the rudder of the helm and withdraws to his
periope, a place from which he can look round and so see the entire
cosmos (272eS). We may thus say that when the god is not working,
he engages in pure theory. In this way philosophy, which requires
the cessation of physical labor, is still an imitation of god. When the
god drops the tiller, "fate and innate desire" make the cosmos reverse
itself again. Campbell says here: "It is to be observed that this has a
direction opposite to the will of God." In other words, the cosmos by
its original nature desires the normal cycle or autarchy (ad 274aS).
It must be forced to enter and to remain within the counternormal
cycle. Despite the Stranger's assertion of the theological version of
the principle of noncontradiction, there is clearly some divine dis-
sonance imposed by necessity. The requirements of divine rule (the
guide of all change), changing directions of kinesis, and matter, are
incompatible with perfect concord among the gods . Either the cosmic
demiurge has constructed the cosmos to oppose the will of the co-
rotator or, if he is himself the corotator, he is in opposition to himself.
However, as the Stranger tells the story, this divine harmony re-
dounds to the advantage of mankind . His effort to conceal that dis-
harmony may be a test of our own capacity to compute with mythical
numbers. I note too that Zeus is mentioned by name just once in the
myth (272b2).
The shock of reversal initiated by the departure of the corotator
and his divine subordinates is again followed by large-scale destruc-
tion. Then things quiet down and the cosmos settles into "its own
accustomed way, caring for and ruling what is in itself and itself"
(273a6ff). It does this by remembering "the teaching of the demiurge
and father as much as possible" (273bl). The teaching of the corotator
is to submit to counternormal change. So once more the corotator
cannot be the demiurge. Beyond this, if the cosmos moves in ac-
cordance with the demiurge's teaching, in what sense is it sponta-
neous? Let us say that in our cycle the cosmos is only partly detached
from divine rule. This is also required by the apparent presence of a
"guide of all change" or the demiurge. The Stranger now introduces
his brief account of the act of creation. The memory of the cosmos is
stronger at the beginning of the normal cycle and grows weaker to-
ward the end. This deterioration of memory is due to the body, which
contains much disorder. The corporeal element is inherent in "the
primaeval nature," which was full of disorder before the arrival of
"the present cosmos" (273b2-6). As Campbell notes, "primaeval"
must refer to a stage prior to the beginning of the alternate cycles.
According to the Stranger the cosmos has received from its con-
structor everything noble. What is harsh and unjust comes from the
prior situation. During the counternormal cycle the cosmos produces

little that is bad and much that is good. This is no doubt because it
is under divine management. Under the normal cycle we move closer
and closer to primaeval disorder. Initially things go altogether beau-
tifully, but as the memory of the cosmos weakens it mixes in a little
good with much of the opposite. We note the likelihood that philos-
ophy can occur only in the figurative middle of the normal cycle. At
the beginning man is too busy working whereas toward the end life
is beginning its decline. As the decline accelerates and the cosmos
runs the risk of destruction, "the god who ordered it" (ho kosmesas
auton), seeing its danger and distressed (kedomenos) lest it dissolve
into unlimited unlikeness, again takes the seat of the helmsman
(273d4ff) . This sentence comes closer to identifying the demiurge with
the corotator than any of its predecessors, but it does not do so ex-
plicitly. The "ordering" in question could refer to the revitalizing
role of the counternormal motion. This interpretation is reinforced
by the next sentence. The corotator reverses the sickness and disso-
lution of the decaying normal cycle and so "makes it a cosmos" (kos-
mei) and sets it straight, making it deathless and ageless (273e2-4).
We can now summarize the theme of the cosmic gods as follows.
The demiurge, presumably also the guide of all change, creates the
cosmos as an alternation of two cycles. The counternormal cycle,
ruled by Cronos, is the presupposition for distinctively human exis-
tence, whereas the normal cycle, presumably autocratic but in fact
programmed by the demiurge, is the stage of sexuality, work, politics,
and philosophy. In a comprehensive sense the demiurge cares for the
cosmos altogether. But thanks to necessity he is forced to bifurcate
into two opposed cycles, in one of which he assumes the identity of
Cronos. We may now add that in the other he becomes, or functions
through the persona of, Zeus. The question of divine rule is posed
most ambiguously in the normal cycle. Despite the absence of a co-
rotator the cosmos follows memory and innate desire as well as ne-
cessity. Also worth noting is that the distress of the corotator at the
imminent destruction of the cosmos is designated by kedo, whereas
the Stranger normally uses epimeieia to designate political care (e.g.,
274b6, d4-S, 27SbS et pass.).
This ambiguity is increased by the final stage of the Stranger's
myth. At the beginning of the normal cycle the harsh nature of most
beasts reappears since they are without divine epimeleia. Further-
more the human animals are initially feeble and without resources
or arts (technai). They are consequently ravished by beasts and with-
out sufficient food and shelter. They cannot work properly because,
as the first generation of normal humans, they have never felt ne-
cessity . In short: man, when stripped of techne and divine assistance,

is in mortal peril from the physis of the normal cosmos. Let me em-
phasize this. The nature of the cosmos, whether in its counternormal
or its normal cycle, is hostile to human existence as we actually live
it. So it is not self-evident what noble or good things accrue to human
nature from the demiurgic construction alone. The initial normal
cycle must be enriched by "gifts from the gods," namely, "the nec-
essary doctrine and training; fire from Prometheus, technai from He-
phaestus and his fellow artisan, seeds and plants from others ... "
(274cSff). So during the reign of Zeus man is preserved by the Olym-
pian gods, and perhaps not with Zeus' entire approval, although the
Stranger says nothing on this score . The Olympian gods dwell within
the cosmos; hence Zeus cannot be a corotator. As the Stranger says:
since mankind has lost the epimeleia of the gods, they "had to manage
themselves and take care of themselves" (274d3ff). Yet at the begin-
ning of the same sentence he says that the Olympians' gifts have given
rise to "everything that constitutes human life."
I infer from this that the Olympian gods are concoctions or poems
which play a crucial role in the self-preservation of mankind. The
Stranger cannot be taken literally when he says that we imitate and
follow "the whole cosmos ... for all time, now in this way, now in
that" (274d6ff). But it does not follow that the Stranger is an atheist.
Myths about gods are not the result of disbelief but of an inability
to provide a logos concerning one's beliefs. Differently stated, the
philosopher believes in the intelligibility of the cosmos, but not in
the identity between intelligibility and discursively accessible and
non-self-contradictory lucidity. It is empirically evident that our
lives are woven together from remembering and forgetting or grow-
ing young as well as old. But this observation does not lead to an
ontology of human time in the modern sense. It is self-contradictory
in a vitiating sense to look for evident explanations of the evident
that are also transcendent or not evident. On the other hand, it is
self-contradictory in an existential sense to rely merely upon descrip-
tions of the evident, because what happens is woven together from
inconsistent elements.
Beyond this, man is faced with the problem of nature. A super-
ficial reading of the Platonic dialogues may give one the impression
that nature is always the standard. But Plato is not so superficial a
writer as to pretend to define his technical terms exhaustively. In
order to understand the meaning of physis in a Platonic dialogue, one
must understand the context in which the term occurs. At the same
time, Plato provides us with more or less directly accessible evidence
of the problem of the senses of nature, such as the present myth. The
teaching of the myth of the reversed world on this point is unmis-

takable to the patient reader. If we simply imitated nature we would
be destroyed by its harshness. However, the Stranger does not state
unambiguously that nature is our enemy, like Descartes' hypothetical
evil genius, to be mastered by techne and phronesis. Nature repairs
us and it wears us down. It furnishes us with the phronesis needed
to produce the tools to master natural necessity. Nature sets us a
puzzle and our survival depends upon the correct solution. In what
way shall we imitate her? Without the answer to that question, our
technical genius is worthless. I have been suggesting that the Platonic
dialogue, and especially the Statesman, imitates nature in presenting
us with a web of precision and ambiguity. The dialogues thus "ex-
pound" nature, not in the manner of a treatise, and neither as a doc-
trine in code, but as an imitation of the cosmos: an order that requires
our thinking for it to achieve its full nature. I have suggested that
the problem underlying the Statesman, and so the myth, is that of
the relation between physics and politics . Nature requires the rule
of intelligence in all technai and so too in politics. But political life,
despite its instability and complexity (294alO-c9), must be governed
in a way that is not naturally the best (297d7: ouk orthotaton), namely,
by nomoi. Hence phronesis expresses itself in politics by suppressing
itself. What we now call "rule-governed behavior" is not a sign of our
rational grasp of the world, but of our failure to achieve such a grasp .
No wise man, not even the wise technician, is bound by rules
(295a9ff). On the other hand, it would be wrong to say that nature
obeys no rules at all, since this would be equivalent to denying the
regularity of natural processes. It seems that the more we abstract
from human life, and so from politics, the more does nature obey
rules in some sense or another of the term. But even here (and even,
finally, in mathematics) it is impossible to formulate these rules com-
pletely and exactly .
Political life, then, is not altogether free, but it is partially detached
from nature. And it is precisely within the space of this partial de-
tachment that human life occurs. In order to prevent this partial
detachment within the heart of nature from decaying into disorder,
man invents myths as well as other tools and arts. Man's works and
deeds, and so his concepts and analogies, paradigms and dreams
share in the constitution of the cosmos. We may say that art completes
nature, but the meaning of this expression is that man cannot exist
simply in accordance with nature, and so he cannot exist as a pure
theoretician or physicist (in the classical sense of the term). Physics
and philosophy both emerge from the polis and to some extent never
leave it. So too the myth of the reversed cosmos is both a product
and an interpretation of political existence. It is both of and beyond

the polis. We cannot understand the myth except by preserving the
partial detachment, and so the partial connection, between physics
and politics. Philosophy stands to physics and politics as does the
divine demiurge to Cronos and Zeus . And this is why one can no more
banish ambiguity from philosophy than one can exclude it from
human life . It is not the completion of philosophy, but perhaps its
beginning, to appreciate the inexpugnable paradox of the human en-
terprise: the continuous weaving together of natural elements into a
garment intended to protect man from those same elements.
4
The Nonlover in
Plato's Phaedrus
I
In this paper, I offer an interpretation of the most neglected por-
tion of the Phaedrus: the beginning. My immediate purpose is to cast
light upon the philosophical function of that much and unjustly ma-
ligned character, the non lover. In a secondary sense, my paper is
intended as evidence of a thesis on how to read a Platonic dialogue.
Since I have defended this thesis at length in various publications, I
shall restrict myself in the present context to a detailed application
of the method I favor, rather than engage in polemical justifications
of that method. Only one preliminary comment: the method is sim-
plicity itself; it amounts to the careful and reflective consideration
of every aspect of the dialogue under study. As is especially appro-
priate in the study of a dialogue devoted to the perfect writing, I
assume nothing more than that Plato knew what he was doing, and
that all portions of his written text are meant to convey their meaning
to the careful reader. In this way Plato, rather than the interpreter,
or contemporary academic fashion, becomes the standard for what
is important in a Platonic dialogue; namely, everything.
The beginning of the Phaedrus is an invitation to return to the
beginning of the Symposium. Phaedrus, we recall, is the "father of
the logos" at Agathon's banquet; the dialectical ascent in the Sym-
posium begins dramatically from the fact that he is the beloved of
the physician Eryximachus. Eryximachus, himself a moderate
drinker, turns the banquet from drinking to a praise of Eros, in re-
This paper was delivered at the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy in Washington,
D.C., in December, 1968.
The Nonlover in Plato's Phaedrus 79
sponse to Phaedrus' complaint that the god has been neglected by

poets and other encomiasts. Despite the atmosphere of celebration,
excitement, and hybristic self-exaltation, the Symposium begins with
a sober mixture of medicine and utilitarianism. This note of sobriety
is never absent from the banquet, even during the presence of the
drunken Alcibiades, who reveals to us the sober interior of Socrates'
erotic hybris. Socrates' nocturnal behavior toward the young Alci-
biades is thus a reflection of the at least initial sobriety of the noc-
turnal guests of Agathon. The sobriety of Socrates would seem to be
the "erotic" peak or fulfillment of the apparently base sobriety of
Phaedrus .
This inner connection between Socrates and Phaedrus is rein-
forced by the dramatically later dialogue bearing Phaedrus' name.
This time, however, instead of being obscured by the darkness of the
night, the presence of other speakers, and the peculiar indirectness
of a recollection of a recollection, Socrates and Phaedrus are isolated
in the light of high noon, and presented directly to the reader without
any dramatic mediation . We are not in the home of the elegant tra-
gedian Agathon, but outside the city wall. In the Symposium, Socrates
takes the unusual step of wearing shoes; in the Phaedrus he is unshod,
but is portrayed for the only time in the Platonic corpus as walking
in the countryside. The sunlight, the dramatic immediacy, the iso-
lation of Socrates and Phaedrus, the simplicity of their surroundings,
all suggest a much more sober, and to that extent visible, setting for
a dialogue on love than is apparent in the Symposium. The setting of
the Phaedrus is in a way the inverse of the setting of the Symposium,
but there are certain features common to both. The first is the em-
phasis on something unusual concerning Socrates; the second is Soc-
rates' interest, for whatever reason, in speeches, especially in those
delivered by Sophists or students of Sophists. This interest in
speeches, of course, provides us with the initial explanation for the
link between Socrates and Phaedrus. Both are more interested in
talking than in doing; differently stated, both prefer the sobriety of
speeches about Eros to the madness of erotic possession .
Socrates insulates himself from the dangerous erotic currents of
the banquet by wearing shoes; he counters the excessive sobriety of
Phaedrus by meeting him in a beautiful country location with a spe-
cially erotic mythological significance; the rape of Oreithuia. How-
ever, let us note that, even in responding to the erotic defect of Phae-
drus, Socrates has recourse to speech-in this case, a myth-rather
than to deed . One might almost say that, in the Symposium, Socrates
employs corporeal protection (a bath and special clothing) whereas
in the Phaedrus, he employs psychic protection (myth and the praise
80 The Nonlover in Plato's Phaedrus
of madness). Despite the praise of madness in the Phaedrus, which

incidentally is absent from the Symposium (where only Alcibiades
links philosophy to mania), it is already evident that the greater so-
briety of the Phaedrus turns upon a more radical abstraction or ascent
from the body than is true of the Symposium. The Phaedrus deals with
the psyche and the vision of Ideas in a purer form than the Sympo-
sium. The purity of this form is not contradicted but underlined by
the praise of madness. The almost complete silence about divine mad-
ness in the Symposium is a sign of the defective nature of the dis-
cussion of Eros there portrayed. That is, the siknce about madness
is a kind of silence about the divine; for example, Socrates, following
Diotima, calls Eros a daimon in the Symposium, whereas in the Phae-
drus (242d9ff), he is said to be the son of Aphrodite, and a god. In the
Phaedrus, philosophy or madness is a "divine portion" or gift; in the
Symposium, the erotic ascent is entrusted to exclusively human su-
pervision. As we see from the polymorphous natures of the speakers
at the banquet, Eros unassisted by the divine is scarcely likely to
transcend itself in philosophy. Whatever we may say about the pe-
culiar nature of Socrates as portrayed in the Symposium, it is clear
that his speech does nothing to convert his auditors to philosophy,
and that he has failed completely in the case of the one man (among
the figures in the dialogues) who interested him most: Alcibiades.
Something is missing in the Symposium. We might call it the sobriety
of madness, with greater preparation for a phrase which, in itself,
seems too cryptic. Let us say simply that, by writing the Phaedrus,
Plato tells us that the Symposium is a necessary but insufficient step
in understanding the nature of Eros. We have to start again, and we
start once more with Phaedrus.
The name "Phaedrus" designates a human being rather than
something inanimate. It does not name an abstraction, like "The Re-
public"; an event, like "The Symposium"; or a human type, like "The
Sophist." Furthermore, "Phaedrus" is the name of a historical person,
not a mythical one like "Minos." The person is an approximate con-
temporary of Socrates, unlike "Parmenides," and someone to whom
Socrates is clearly superior-as is not apparent in the case of "Ti-
maeus." This superiority does not preclude regular association; Soc-
rates may not be a friend of Phaedrus in the strict sense of the term,
but he is a companion of Phaedrus, as he is not of "Protagoras." This
companionship is a kind of imitation of friendship, as is not true of
Socrates' relations with "Gorgias," "Meno," or "Hippias." Phaedrus
is not a young boy whom Socrates meets for the first time, and whose
nature he tests, like "Charmides" or "Theaetetus." He is not silent
like "Philebus," not a fanatic like "Euthyphro," not an old and sober
friend like "Crito," not a disciple like "Phaedo." So far we seem to

be proceeding entirely by negation. Even if this were so, the results
would be instructive, since a negative description, as we know from
theology, is perhaps the only way to define a unique entity. But we
can now be rather more positive. The connection between Socrates
and Phaedrus turns upon Eros. However, Socrates does not claim to
be in love with Phaedrus, as he does with "Alcibiades"; nor is it ever
suggested that Phaedrus loves Socrates. The point is that Socrates
and Phaedrus share a love for speeches. The love of speeches is more
sober than the love of bodies; Socrates and Phaedrus are united by
the sobriety of their Eros. However, Phaedrus' sobriety is base, be-
cause directed primarily to the care of his body; whereas Socrates'
sobriety is noble, because directed primarily to the care of his psyche.
Phaedrus and Socrates represent the two poles of erotic sobriety. The
difference between them is suggested in the Phaedrus by their dif-
ferent attitudes toward myth. Phaedrus may well be an atheist; Soc-
rates may well not be. Put less obliquely, Phaedrus represents the
degenerate nature of merely human or corporeally centered sobriety,
whereas Socrates' sobriety, as psychic or divine, is transformed into,
or indistinguishable from, divine madness. The peak of sobriety is at
once the peak of madness: the distinguishing mark, I may add, of
Plato's conception of philosophy.
The Phaedrus is not simply about Eros, as one might perhaps say
of the Symposium. It is also about speeches or rhetoric, and it cul-
minates in a discussion of writing. In the Symposium, speeches are
delivered as a consequence of Eros; in the Phaedrus, we are given a
discussion about the writing of speeches to Eros. Similarly, the Sym-
posium culminates in cryptic reference to a conversation between the
sober Socrates and the drunken poets Aristophanes and Agathon
about writing. In the Phaedrus, the discussion culminates in a tech-
nical conversation between the sober and nonpoetic Socrates and
Phaedrus about writing. The greater sobriety of the Phaedrus, in com-
parison to the Symposium, is shown by its movement from Eros to
the techne of writing, and thus to the mention of dialectic. The link
between Eros and writing is the psyche: more specifically, the myth
of the varieties of psychic madness, and primarily, of the divine or
philosophical madness . Thus we see again that implicit in the so-
briety of the Phaedrus is madness. To this extent, at least, the dialogue
would seem to be appropriately named: Socrates describes perfect
writing as a living being, and Phaedrus is a living being who loves
speeches. In less playful. or more sober, terms, the ascent to divine
madness, as a necessary completion to the teaching of the Symposium,
requires first a criticism of the teaching of the Symposium. And this
requires another look at the principle or progenitor of the earlier

discussion: Phaedrus. We require another look at sobriety before we
are ready to move on to madness (and I add parenthetically that this
is an excellent recipe for philosophy: two parts of sobriety to one part
of madness).
Although the sober Phaedrus and Socrates both claim to be erotic
about speeches, neither is a writer. Poetry and sexual generation are
both associated with madness; the sobriety of the Eros of Phaedrus
and Socrates has an explicitly passive inflection. Neither Phaedrus
nor Socrates generates speeches of his own . Of course, both "speak,"
but in the crucial instances, they either speak the speeches of others,
like actors (hypocrites), or else, in the case of Socrates at least, they
test the speeches generated by others. However, both may be re-
garded as indirect generators of speech. According to Socrates, Phae-
drus has inspired more speeches than anyone except Simmias. Ac-
cording to the Platonic dialogues, Socrates goads or stimulates men
into making speeches, thanks to a process which he calls "midwi-
fery," but which is perhaps more frankly portrayed in the Apology as
a kind of disagreeableness or ungentlemanliness. Phaedrus is a "fa-
ther" of logoi because of his beauty, whereas Socrates seems to cause
others to generate speeches because of his ugliness. Phaedrus' phys-
ical beauty seems to prevent his lovers from ascending to the love of
his not so beautiful psyche. Socrates' "ugly" behavior, together with
the manifest ugliness of his body, seems to pose no insurmountable
obstacle to the love of his unusually beautiful psyche: no obstacle,
that is, for those with eyes to see. In terms of the erotic ascent de-
scribed by Diotima in the Symposium, the transition from corporeal
to psychic Eros requires a "guide." Diotima does not explain how
this "guide" leads the lover to prefer the extremely beautiful psyche
of an ugly body to the not so beautiful psyche of a beautiful body. I
A genuine understanding of the difference between love for Phaedrus
and love for Socrates is not visible in the Symposium. Thus Alcibiades
is laughable to the other guests because of his obvious if incoherent
erotic attraction toward Socrates. Love of Socrates ceases to be laugh-
able when we understand the divine portion or fate by which madness
is transformed into sobriety, and sobriety into madness, or by which
the beautiful becomes ugly and the ugly beautiful. Let me approach
this point in a slightly different way. Phaedrus espouses the cause of
the non lover , both in the Symposium and in the dialogue bearing his
name. Socrates, although he defends the lover in the Phaedrus, does
so by developing a myth of the psyche, attributed to the poet Stes-
ichorus, the highest function of which consists in guiding us to the
essentially passive enterprise of looking at the Ideas. In the Sympo-
sium, Socrates presents himself as a student of the prophetess Dio-

tima, that is, as a young man who is defective in his erotic under-
standing, and who is taught that the peak of erotic activity is, again,
a kind of passive looking. Prophetess and poet agree that the highest
erotic man is, if not nonerotic, a divine voyeur. What does this mean
so far as the three main themes of the Phaedrus are concerned? Eros
is first criticized and then praised by two passive or "sterile" erotics,
who nevertheless paradoxically stimulate others to generate; this
praise, having been prepared by criticism, culminates in a speech
about the psyche, according to which human perfection, paradoxi-
cally called a species of divine madness, is identified as the passive-
erotic vision of nonerotic Ideas. And discussion of the themes intro-
duced in the first two parts of the dialogue leads to the technical
discussion of the techne of writing: a technical discussion between
two amateurs or nonpractitioners of the art in question.
One might well be tempted to conclude that the Phaedrus is a
comedy, on the basis of the observations just made. If so, however,
we must append that it is a "divine comedy," and hence not lacking
in tragic overtones. The praise of passivity is inseparable from the
Platonic conception of human perfection as a transcendence of the
corporeal Eros; the sobriety of the non lover has therefore something
essential in common with the madness of the philosopher. The ste-
rility of the passive erotic is similar to the antipoetic vision of the
eternal Ideas; even further, the attenuation or cessation of the cor-
poreal Eros, although accompanied by a flowering of the psychic
Eros. leads, precisely if the latter is successful, to the suppression of
one's human individuality. Wisdom as the fulfillment of philosophy,
at least if wisdom is perfect vision of perfection, amounts to the trans-
formation of man into a god-or rather, into a noetic Idea. Only in
this case, one may suggest, would the meaning of the otherwise mys-
terious saying of Parmenides become perspicuous: to gar auto noein
estin te kai einai.
II
Socrates encounters Phaedrus on the way from Lysias, son of

Cephalus, who was Socrates' host in the Republic. Phaedrus is walk-
ing in the country for reasons of health, in accord with the advice of
Acumenus, the physician, and father of Eryximachus. He no doubt
needs the exercise in order to recuperate from what Socrates calls
the "banquet" of speeches\ offered by Lysias (227al-b7). Phaedrus
allows medicine to tend his body and rhetoric to tend his psyche. The
defect of rhetoric as psychic medicine is suggested by the fact that
it lacks moderation; as a consequence, the lover of rhetoric seems

actually to be ruled by the corporeal physician. In any case, Phaedrus
has no trouble in interesting Socrates in the topic discussed at this
new banquet: Lysias has written that a beautiful youth "ought to
gratify the non-lover rather than the lover" (227b8-c8).2 Phaedrus
refers to Lysias' speech as "refined"; Socrates points out that, with
some expansion, its elegance would be properly called "useful to the
demos," with whom he ironically associates himself (227c7-d2). Let
us bear in mind the conjunction of the nonlover, the demos, and
utility . Meanwhile, we observe that Phaedrus regards Lysias as the
most talented writer of the day, and would rather be able to memorize
his speeches than come into a fortune (228al-4). Phaedrus imitates
the philosopher in valuing speeches and memory beyond money; un-
like the philosopher, he admires "democratic" rather than "aristo-
cratic" speeches. Presumably he believes that rhetoric is more useful
than money, although in view of his tastes, this may be an error on
his part. The most charitable, as well as the most cautious, inter-
pretation is probably that Phaedrus loves speeches or rhetoric for
selfish reasons, but transcends his selfishness by virtue of his love for
speeches. And this love is passive or imitates the non lover whose
praise he admires : Phaedrus wishes that he could memorize Lysias'
speeches, not that he could write his own.
Socrates has a "disease for listening to speeches" (228b6) which,
he implies, can be ameliorated by Phaedrus. Phaedrus' "medicine"
will be shared by doctor and patient alike; the repetition of Lysias'
speech will induce a mutual corybantic enthusiasm that replaces the
atmosphere of intoxication in the Symposium (228b7) . To anticipate
Socrates' remark upon the conclusion of the speech, Phaedrus is
transformed by rhetoric into a Dionysian reveler, an appropriately
feminine condition in which Socrates claims to share (234dl-6). How
different this is from Phaedrus' characteristic passivity, we may eas-
ily infer from his conversation with Socrates about the myth of Boreas
and Oreithuia. Phaedrus is vague on the geographical details, and
obviously does not believe in the truth of the story.3 As Socrates im-
plies, Phaedrus interprets myths in terms of physics, like Anaxagoras
and Metrodorus. Socrates finds this kind of demythologizing "charm-
ing"-that is, it indeed charms men away from the more important
task of understanding themselves, and hence amounts to a "kind of
boorish wisdom" (229c6-230a6). Socrates must devote his time to
investigating his own puzzling nature, which he compares to myth-
ical beasts. It is not clear to him whether he is more complex and
puffed up than Typhon, or whether he has a more divine and less
vain nature; as we might say, Socrates has not yet understood the
nature of his own hybris . He does not therefore deny the possibility
of giving physical interpretation to myths, but rather its utility. A
proper study of the prodigious nature of man requires acquiescence
in conventional religious views (230alff). Despite his Bacchic sus-
ceptibilities, Phaedrus does not share this respect for nomos. His en-
thusiasm for rhetoric is selfish rather than political; Socrates indi-
cates that this selfishness leads to self-neglect and ignorance. There
is a sobriety in Socrates' madness, but a "madness" in Phaedrus'
sobriety. Although Phaedrus is accustomed to walk in the country-
side, whereas Socrates is not, he is ignorant of the topography and
associated myths, which Socrates knows. The countryside and trees
do not wish to teach Socrates, but he has learned from men their
human significance (230d3). This love of learning, interestingly
enough, permits Socrates to appreciate the natural beauty of the lo-
cale in a "most unusual" manner-as though he were a stranger
seeing it for the first time. Socrates suggests that this is indeed the
case, and that he has been lured into the country by his hunger for
speeches (230dSff) . Whether this is true or not, Socrates is not
"drugged" (230d6) by the prospect of a feast, so as to be unable to
make an intense and articulate response to the environment. Phae-
drus, on the contrary, is aware of almost nothing but Lysias' speech
and his desire-quickly divined by the mantic Socrates (228d7)-to
recite it to Socrates.
We are now approaching high noon, the hottest part of the day
and in the hottest season of the year. The two companions have
"turned aside" from their walk to sit down beneath a plane tree, with
bare feet-normal for Socrates, unusual for Phaedrus-for wading
in the stream. The location is marked by grace, purity, and clarity;
as Socrates says, it is a good place for maidens to play (but not per-
haps for Bacchic maidens). Light and shade, heat and coolness, re-
clining humans and a flowing stream, feminine nature and masculine
logos : the setting takes on the character of a harmony of opposites
(229al-c3) . This is especially appropriate for the demonstration of
the identity between the divine forms of sobriety and madness . Phae-
drus, mad with love for Lysias' apparently nonerotic speech, has been
prevented by Socrates' prophetic sobriety from testing his memory,
and will read to Socrates from the copy he had concealed beneath
his cloak.
III
Lysias, author of the demotic and utilitarian praise of the non-
lover, is a rhetorician and logographos, especially famous for his
courtroom speeches. He appears at the beginning of the Republic, in
the home of his father, Cephalus. The members of this family are
there portrayed as conceiving of justice in terms of utility. The ascent
in the Phaedrus from the non lover to the lover is parallel to the ascent
in the Republic from a utilitarian interpretation of justice to the vir-
tual identification of justice with moderation and its subordination
to philosophy. In the Symposium, which emphasizes the hybristic
nature of Eros, justice is not mentioned as one of his attributes . The
one man who seems seriously concerned with justice is Alcibiades,
whose intoxicated appearance at the banquet tranforms it into a trial
of Socrates for hybris, with himself as the plaintiff. Alcibiades' speech
soon reveals, however, that even though he may be correct in his
perception of Socrates' nature, his own complaint against Socrates
is unjust and rooted in immoderateness. I suggest that the Phaedrus
begins with Lysias' speech in order to indicate something about the
defective or incomplete nature of the Symposium. Eros and justice,
as the Republic makes explicit, are, if not simply incompatible, op-
posites which need a "third" element to bind them into harmony .
The sobriety of the non lover is more like moderation than is the mad-
ness of the lover. An immoderate criticism of the passive Eros is no
more just than a praise of Eros that is silent about justice. In the
Phaedrus, the ascent from sobriety to madness is not an "abstraction"
but rather a sublation, just as, in the Republic, the notion of utility
is not discarded but sublated into the final interpretation of justice.
In the Symposium, Phaedrus is the father of the logos; in the
Phaedrus, it is Lysias who serves this purpose . the speech of Lysias
both criticizes the end of the Symposium and returns us to the theme
of the beginning. Our new start is an improvement on the beginning
of the Symposium in two ways . First, it is the speech of a professional
rhetorician or generator of discourses, and not simply of a lover of
discourses. Second, the professionalism of the author renders his
speech free from contradictory or obscuring effects that might arise
from the enthusiasm of the speaker. Lysias' mastery of the rhetorical
techne permits him to give a "disinterested" or just presentation of
the merits of the nonlover. His speech imitates philosophy to this
extent: it combines technical skill with praise for the utility of so-
briety; Lysias is a sober, rather than a mad or inspired, poet. On the
other hand, this latter fact represents the defective nature of Lysias'
speech; it inspires Phaedrus, but for the wrong reasons, because it is
not itself inspired .
Let us now turn to the main points of Lysias' speech. As is be-
fitting its sober message, the speech begins-and indeed continues
throughout; see Hackforth's outraged commentary4-with no rhe-
torical flourish; its rhetoric, one might almost say, is anti rhetorical.
The boy knows the situation, and the non lover has already spoken of
their "joint interest" (230e7): there is to be an exchange of goods, or
a wholesale rather than a retail business contract. Lovers confer ben-
efits freely only while their desire lasts; the cessation of the erotic
desire thereby endangers, perhaps terminates, the advantages en-
joyed by the beloved. The nonlover, on the contrary, because he acts
from freedom rather than necessity, in a sober and businesslike man-
ner, which does not interfere with an efficient and technically ac-
curate calculation of profits and losses, nor lead him to quarrel with
relatives over the distribution of property, may devote his energies
to the benefit of the beloved (231al-b7). The nonlover's case rests
upon a distinction between "what I need" (han deomai) and the desire
(epithymia) of Eros. Is this defensible? At least in this sense: according
to the nonlover, he desires gratification, as an "objectified" com-
modity, independent of the personality of the boy, who is to him not
a beloved but a reified unit in the free-market economy, whose wares
are subject to the laws of supply and demand. The non lover agrees
in part with Marx's analysis of capitalism, but approves of the results.
Objectivity grounded in a technically competent selfishness is pref-
erable for buyer and seller to the authentic, human esteem praised
by Marxists and existentialists.
Like the modern exemplar of the Protestant ethic, the nonlover
pri~es himself upon his autonomy and industrious efficiency; like the
philosopher, he is a sober master of the techne of division and col-
lection (Le., of profits and losses). He acts in accordance with his own
capacity, both toward himself and his family as well as toward reified
youths; whereas the lover is carried beyond his capacity, with con-
sequent injustice to all concerned, by the transcendence of madness.
In sum, he combines the qualities of hedonism, utilitarianism, and
technicism in such a way as to abstract from such human qualities
as the beautiful and ugly or the noble and the base. Like the philos-
opher, he disregards human individuality in his pursuit of the general
or steadfast. But the manner in which he does so leads to a trans-
formation in the meaning of the true and the false; by beginning from
the lowest or common denominator of animal passion, the nonlover
terminates in the advanced sciences of cost accounting, game theory,
and, in an anticipatory sense, of computer-based psychology. The
origin of this line of development is in the distinction between erotic
and nonerotic desire; the former turns upon the personality or hu-
maneness of the beloved, and the latter upon the common physio-
logical structure of buyer and seller. The lover is presented as faithful,
not to the beloved, but to his desire for the beloved as beloved;
whereas the nonlover is uninterested in the lovableness of the boy,
but is faithful exclusively to the possibilities for gratification, con-

sidered physiologically or in terms of the body in virtual disregard
for the psyche-probably even for certain bodily qualities, although
nothing is said on this point. The nonlover minimizes the connection
between his position and desire; however, reflection shows that his
more serious claim is not to eliminate desire but to make it auton-
omous. His own autonomy is not from desire but from the ananke of
Eros, or the transhuman, i.e ., what we call the divine. The non lover
is a "humanist" as well as a hedonist, utilitarian, and technicist. But
his humanism is inseparable from, or rather identical with, a de-
basement of the human to the physiological. In slightly different
terms, the successful application of the quasi-mathematical version
of division and collection to human affairs depends upon the de-
basement of Eros by physiology.s
Eros is an illness leading to immoderateness or the inability to
master oneself (231d2fO; the combination of rhetoric and medicine
represented by Lysias and Phaedrus cures the illness, or makes self-
mastery possible thanks to a new and lower interpretation of the self.
There are very few lovers, or at least few excellent lovers, whereas
there are many candidates for the title of "extremely useful"; as Soc-
rates initially observed, the non lover is a democrat in addition to
being a humanist, hedonist, utilitarian, and technicist (231d6-e2).
Since "desire" means "physiological gratification," the nonlover
brings us egalitarianism or freedom from the subjectivity of value
judgments. Strictly speaking, it should even be irrelevant whether
non lovers and nonbeloveds are physically beautiful, young, or in any
other corporeally oriented sense (even perhaps their sex) preeminent.
But now the defect in Lysias' exoteric or obvious teaching becomes
manifest. In a democratic business society of the kind sketched by
the nonlover, there is a contradiction between physiological egali-
tarianism and the difference between the rich and the poor. This is
related to an implied physiological difference between the non lover
and the object of his "non-erotic" desire . The nonlover takes it for
granted throughout his speech that the boy is not himself motivated
by erotic but by financial considerations, or at least by concern for
his reputation: for "keeping up appearances" (231e3-232e2). Thus he
regularly refers to his relationship with the boy as one of philia rather
than eros, of "gratification" rather than "desire".6 The pederastic
relationship is regularly contrasted to the relation of friendship (cf.
231c1, 233c6 et passim) or said to interfere with it. But "friendship,"
as we know, means "advantage," and since "advantage" is essentially
economic, while certainly not erotic, it would seem to be most ad-
vantageous for the youth to gratify only the wealthiest nonlovers.
Even further, his best interests may lie in the sober plundering of
wealthy lovers whose technical vision is blinded by the madness of
erotic passion. This continues to hold true even if the youth is also
motivated by the nonerotic or physiological need for gratification.
Where all other factors are irrelevant, a rich "friend" must be pref-
erable to a poor one.
It is not clear that the non lover sees this defect in his position.
For example, he observes that lovers must fear rivals possessing
greater wealth or intelligence (232c4-8). Apparently the non lover
does not share these fears because he has achieved what he needs di'
areten (232d4-S); i.e., through his own efficient management of the
joint advantage of himself and the boy in question-through his in-
telligence or techne. We have to realize, furthermore, that only a man
of a certain degree of wealth or business acumen could profitably
avail himself of the argument of the nonlover. The nonlover clearly
assumes that, although others may be richer than he, he is rich
enough; if others are more intelligent, he is intelligent enough. In-
deed, if he loses one boy to a superior rival, there are surely many
others, just as there are many nonlovers. His teaching, like many
another techne, is a substitute for personal excellence, and its very
persuasiveness is a better protection for his own interests than the
advantages traditionally predicated of a lover. Nevertheless, in the
last analysis, the teaching of the nonlover turns upon the difference
between rich and poor; it is oligarchical rather than democratic.
What of the tacit assumption that the boy is either nonerotic or
prefers money to the higher considerations? According to the non-
lover, friendship comes from intelligence rather than from Eros,
again, incidentally, an imitation of the philosophical teaching. That
is: in the erotic relation, physical desire for a specific individual pre-
cedes, and is the condition for, friendship. In the case of the nonlover,
who is disinterestedly interested in physical gratification, and ob-
jective toward, or disinterested in, the personal or lovable attributes
of the person, friendship-i.e., a rational relationship based upon
mutual advantage-precedes physical gratification (232e3-233aS).
This means that the nonlover, thanks to the impersonal, and hence
sober or less compelling, nature of his physical desire, can guarantee
the financial advantage of the boy prior to gratification . It is the
vulgarity or bestiality of the nonlover's position, and not his freedom
from desire, that makes his suit more advantageous. In fact, the non-
lover is moved by Eros, but by a very low form of Eros. The success
of his argument then turns upon the possession of wealth, and the
capacity to corrupt the young by employing the techne of rhetoric to
excite greed rather than lust. The non lover is in fact a concealed lover,
however base a lover.
Before we rebel against the baseness of the nonlover, let us re-
member the results of the earlier stage of our investigation. It is per-
fectly reasonable to claim that passion interferes with friendship, as
well as with the pursuit of the useful, the just, and the true. Fur-
thermore, the non lover praises moderation, intelligence, and a pru-
dent concern for the future (233b6fO. He is eager to improve the con-
dition of his friend, to free his perception of pleasure from the pain
accompanying Eros, to teach him self-mastery, and to balance justice
with mercy. I have pointed out that this whole argument is, among
other things, a legitimate criticism of the general teaching of the
Symposium. This is made clear in an amusing way. The erotic man
(as the Symposium asserts) is the most needy man. If one must gratify
the most needy, then one must gratify the worst rather than the best.
In philosophical language, if we love what we do not have, must not
the lover of goodness be bad? Those men who strive most assiduously
for perfection must themselves be worthless (233dSff). In other words,
the erotic mania, if it is not regulated by a divine fate, or a prophetic
synopsis, is extraordinarily dangerous, and more likely even in the
rarest cases to produce an AIcibiades than a Socrates. We must first
have what we desire, thanks to divine madness, precisely in order to
desire it soberly. Thus the nonlover warns us that to follow Diotima's
advice would mean inviting beggars rather than friends to our "pri-
vate banquets" (233el). He suggests, in effect, that this is the mistake
made by Agathon; and, appropriately enough, at this point his speech
sounds more like that of Pausanias (Agathon's lover) than like that
of Phaedrus, or like a mixture of the speeches of Pausanias and Phae-
drus. One should gratify those moderate, sober, stable, clever lovers
(who for prudential reasons call themselves "nonlovers") who are
best able to show their gratitude. In exoteric terms, one should gratify
those on whose pensions (ousia) one can rely; in esoteric terms, one
should gratify those who already possess the good or ousia in the
ontological sense (233e6-234cS). In sum: the basesness of Lysias'
speech contains a serious teaching, or rather two serious teachings,
in however ironical a form. As always in Plato, the low prefigures the
high; the philosopher must learn to understand dirt and other low
things if he is to understand the psyche and, finally, the cosmos. The
difference between the philosopher and the gentleman leads the latter
to recoil from vulgarity, whereas the philosopher has inured himself
to practice his akribologia even upon a "tedious piece of rhetoric"
which, in Hackforth's words, "deserves little comment."7 The non-
lover, then, teaches us something about human baseness, but he also
has something to say about the nature of philosophy.
5
Socrates as
Concealed Lover
Three speeches make up the bulk of Plato's Phaedrus. Before con-

sidering the second speech, which is the main subject of this essay,l
it is necessary for me to make a few remarks about the first speech,
ostensibly written by Lysias. I contend that the concealed lover is
not merely a contingent or totally playful moment on the way toward
altogether more important things in a single Platonic dialogue. On
the contrary, the Socrates of the Platonic dialogues is indeed a "con-
cealed lover"; that is, the lover is Plato, concealed (here) within the
persona of Socrates. Differently stated, Plato is both lover and non-
lover; Socrates poses as a lover, but his Eros is defective. It would
be going too far to say that he is a nonlover, but it would be a still
greater exaggeration to refer to him as an erotic madman. In cautious
terms, regardless of the difference between Plato and Socrates, there
can be no doubt, when all the evidence is considered carefully, that
the philosophical nature must combine the natures of the lover and
the nonlover?
The three speeches in the Phaedrus constitute an erotic ascent
from the nonlover via the concealed lover to the lover in the full or
manic sense . The essential link in the three speeches is the gradual
intensification of physiological appetite into madness. As such, the
link is a reminder, or even a repetition, of the main thesis of the
Symposium. But the Phaedrus differs from the Symposium in teaching
that physiological appetite is unable to transform itself into philo-
sophical or (as we may call it) spiritual Eros. Eros in the genuinely
spiritual sense is a gift of the gods, a divine madness. Still more
sharply put, Eros is a god in the Phaedrus, whereas he is merely a
daimon in the Symposium. In the Symposium, the daimonic Eros is
closely associated, if not quite identified, with genesis, continuously
ceasing to be what it was, and coming to be what it is not. In the
92 Socrates as Concealed Lover
Phaedrus, Eros, if not quite free from the motions of genesis, is no

longer equivalent to these motions. Eros has acquired in the Phaedrus
a certain detachment from the dissolving and constituting motions
of genesis; its motion is now circular or perpetual.
Contrary to his role in the Symposium, Eros now continuously
preserves shape or form . Just as the circular motion of the psyche
defines its immortality, so the circular Eros of the psyche (circular
because repeating by way of anamnesis what has already transpired)
permits the vision of eternal beings. The psyche, at least in some of
its instances, is an eternal voyeur of eternity; and this is both different
from and an advance upon the teaching of the Symposium. In the
Symposium, immortality is restricted to the negative vision of divine
beauty (described in negations), entirely within the perspective of
mortal existence. It takes its positive form in the Symposium as the
generation of beautiful speeches or as the generation of bodies in
accordance with the difference of kinds . But this is obviously to say
that there is no immortality for the human individual. Less obviously,
it casts doubt upon the possibility of immortality understood as an
upward ascent, so long as that upward ascent is defined as a gen-
eralizing or perfecting of discontinuous and imperfect acts of genesis.
The radical difference between the two dialogues is thus contained
in the following denial of a maxim from Heraclitus: the way up is not
the same as the way down .
According to the Phaedrus, philosophy, whether understood as
an erotic purification or as the successive refinement of discourse, is
possible only as a divine gift, as madness or as prophetic anamnesis,
two themes which are absent from the Symposium. Curiously enough,
despite its emphasis upon intoxication and mania, the Phaedrus is
also more ,sober or discursive than the Symposium. This greater so-
briety takes two main forms . Whereas the Symposium concludes in
corporeal intoxication and a suppressed discussion of poetry, the
Phaedrus concludes in a technical discussion of dialectic and rhetoric.
Second, whereas the Symposium begins, in the speeches on love, with
a pallid defense of love which is a disguised defense of the nonlover,
the Phaedrus begins with an explicit defense of the nonlover, in a
sense given in two different forms (although, as we shall see, the
second version is quite ambiguous) . The central section on love is
thus surrounded by examples of the techne of rhetoric on the one hand
and by a technical discussion of techne on the other. Even the praise
of love is itself constructed as an invocation to conquer erotic appeti te
or to abstract from the body, an abstraction more complete than that
of the Symposium because it does not terminate in any form of gen-
erating, whether of speeches or bodies. 3
Socrates as Concealed Lover 93
The attempt of the erotic psyche in the Symposium to extinguish

or at least to transfigure its Eros into the passive-receptive state of
the divine voyeur is evidently accomplished in the Phaedrus. The psy-
che, throughout the great second speech ofSocrates, is almost completely
silent. As discarnate, or absorbed in recollective ascent, the psyche
generates no speeches of any kind, other than an interior debate be-
tween the two horses as to whether to have sex with a beautiful youth
(254a3ff). And the speech about this virtually silent ascent is itself
relatively "silent," or a myth. Even further, it is a myth which Soc-
rates does not speak in his own name, but which he attributes to a
poet, Stesichorus. Immortality, we are told, is the silent confrontation
of silent Ideas. As it would seem, divine madness is silence rather
than speech. We see here a lucid illustration of the defectiveness of
the Platonic position when viewed from a Hegelian perspective. The
"alienation" of psyche from body corresponds to the separation be-
tween forms and genesis, or to the detachment of spirit from the world
on the one hand and the essence or significance of the world on the
other. For Plato, however, the defect (if that is the right term) is part
of the scheme of things. There can be no discursive account of the
whole because there is no whole, except in the sense of a discontin-
uous continuum which continuously eludes our efforts to "weave it
together" in logic . Speech about divine madness can therefore only
be myth or poetry. Still, for Plato, as speech, it is more sober than
madness or total silence, even if a form of sobriety different from that
employed to discuss the techne of rhetoric. If love is madness, speech
about love is more or less sober. One cannot speak about love when
one is altogether mad. Put more cautiously, whatever may be true of
prophecy and poetry, philosophical speech requires a detachment
from erotic madness. It is therefore impossible simply to equate Eros
and philosophy, as the Symposium apparently does. The teaching of
the Symposium must then be clarified and even corrected. Part of this
correction will be a partial rehabilitation of the nonlover.
This partial rehabilitation is the main function of the first two
speeches in the Phaedrus. In the first speech, we are told that there
is an opposition between friendship and erotic desire. Surely it is not
simply false to suggest that friendship is more compatible with a
rational calculation of common advantage than with an overpower-
ing, maddening passion. To take the immediate case, if either Phae-
drus or Socrates is subject to madness, it is in the form of a "sickness"
or desire for speeches (228b6, 231d2; hereafter, numbers in paren-
theses will give passages in the Phaedrus unless otherwise stated). It
is never seriously suggested in the Phaedrus that either is erotically
attracted to the other. The "Dionysian revelry" in which they are
united (234dl-6) is entirely impersonal: a daimonic, even divine per-

ception of beauty, powerful enough to raise Phaedrus above the low
form of selfishness which first led him to admire Lysias' speech. The
ascent of Phaedrus, however, is prefigured in the speech of Lysias
himself, which may be understood in two different senses, one low
and the other moderately high. An initially moderate desire is per-
suaded by an appropriately restricted or sober intelligence to dis-
regard all factors in the human situation but that of the gratifying
of physical desire . The low teaching, physical gratification, is bal-
anced by a high teaching, praise of intelligence, the necessary in-
strument for the calculation of advantage . We may see here a pro-
totypical version of "the cunning of reason ." But intelligence is here
logismos rather than logos. If intelligence means efficiency, and ef-
ficiency is defined, as in all forms of technicism, by corporeal plea-
sure, then the distinction between intelligence and desire disappears.
Intelligence is not merely an instrument of desire, but it is the finally
unintelligible projection of desire. Nevertheless, the speech of Lysias,
precisely as a low detachment from erotic madness, introduces the
nonerotic or technical, and technically discursive, component in
philosophy.
Let us now turn to the second speech, or the mediation between

the nonlover and the lover. One of the differences between Plato and
Hegel can be indicated here with respect to the function of mediation .
In Hegel, if C mediates between A and B, it does so by raising both
to a higher or more comprehensive level. In Plato, on the other hand,
the middle term may be, and in crucial cases is, on a lower level than
one of its elements. This is clear from the Philebus, where the mean
between the lives of intelligence and of pleasure , the only mean which
is genuinely choice-worthy for mankind, is lower than the first and
higher than the second of its elements. Plato's " realism" enforces a
mediation which is also a compromise between the high and the low,
whereas Hegel's "idealism" raises the low up to the high. From the
Hegelian perspective, the Platonic doctrine is defective because an
enforced compromise is unstable and soon falls apart. Hegel could
well maintain that, in raising the low up to the high, he completes
what is actually the Platonic enterprise, namely, to give a complete
account of the whole. The instability of the Platonic middle term is
the counterpart to the absence of the whole in any sense other than
a discontinuous continuum. In other terms, the Platonic difficulty
of distinguishing the image from the original is visible in the difficulty
of distinguishing the nonlover from the lover, or the non philosopher
from the philosopher. The necessity of the philosopher to combine
the natures of the lover and the non lover is thus due to his inability
to rise from the level of philosophy to that of wisdom: he is separated
from wisdom by the separation of his mind or spirit from the Ideas,
and thus must combine a passive receptivity with an active discur-
siveness in an ultimately unstable manner.
The concealed lover contains elements of both the nonlover and
the lover. In addition, his mask is an anticipation of the link between
Eros and rhetoric, or the need to accommodate one's speeches to the
psychic nature of one's interlocutor. To whatever degree it is correct
to speak of Phaedrus as a lover, he must nevertheless be led by stages
toward the silence of divine madness. More generally, divine madness
is not the same as human madness; those of us who are human rather
than divine need to hear speeches which begin from our humanity,
but in such a way as to initiate the dialectical ascent represented
subsequently in the struggle between the charioteer and his two
steeds. It does us no good to begin with the myth of the charioteer
in our analytical study of the dialogue if we are still at the level to
which Phaedrus has attained at the beginning of the discussion. Nor
can we achieve the level of the central myth until we have reappro-
priated the reasonable elements in the low or even nonerotic level
which Phaedrus initially symbolizes. Stated somewhat differently,
the very process of understanding the peak of the dialogue, the myth
of Stesichorus, is already in part a process of bringing it down to our
own human level of analytical discourse, and to this extent it amounts
to a descent to the level of the concealed lover.
Socrates excites Phaedrus' philological appetite, thereby begin-
ning his purification or ascent, by claiming to know a better speech
praising the nonlover than that written by Lysias . In face of Socrates'
reticence, Phaedrus offers him a bribe if he will only recite the speech
in question. The nine Athenian archons must dedicate a statue of
themselves at Delphi if they break their oath and take bribes. Phae-
drus will dedicate a statue of himself and Socrates in exchange for
the speech. Phaedrus is a corrupt "archon"; he represents the cor-
ruption of the Athenian polis. We see here a hinted answer to the
seldom asked but crucial question of why Socrates is interested in
conducting the education of Phaedrus. Just as the concealed lover
mediates between the nonlover and the lover, so too Phaedrus and
men like him, who are halfway between the vulgar and the refined,
will perhaps be able to mediate between the Athenian polis and phi-
losophy. But the reference to an icon or image of Socrates (236b3-
4) has a more immediate significance. We are at once reminded of
Alcibiades' speech in the Symposium, which he calls an icon, and
which contains the famous icon of Socrates as a Silenus figure.
Whereas Alcibiades reveals that Socrates' external ugliness conceals

inner "statues of gods," Phaedrus demands that Socrates reveal the
beautiful speech concealed within his breast. Despite his apparently
lower erotic status, Phaedrus is the instrument of a greater revelation
of Socrates' nature than that presented by Alcibiades. Alcibiades'
drunken and quasi-erotic madness is replaced by the attempt to con-
clude a business contract with Socrates for an exchange of goods.
Whereas Socrates remains as enigmatic as ever in the Symposium
despite or because of the hybristic revelations of Alcibiades, the con-
cealment of Socrates in the Phaedrus is a preparatory step on the way
toward the revelation of the nature of psyche. Socrates remains an
undeciphered image in the Symposium, whereas he is replaced in the
Phaedrus, first by an image of man altogether, and then by a discus-
sion of what might be called "the hermeneutics of imagery" or the
art of making, and so of interpreting, perfect speeches. In sum, the
Phaedrus rises to a level of universality never achieved by the Sym-
posium. The sobriety of Socrates in the Symposium is human rather
than divine, and so restricts or excludes the ascent to the divine mad-
ness. Instead of divine madness, we are given the human madness of
Alcibiades and the inadequate revelation of Diotima: inadequate be-
cause it is circumscribed by genesis, by the immanent upward re-
finement of speech which is not transfigured by the divine gift of
recollection.
Phaedrus' initial bribe is followed by an implied threat of force
(241e4, 242a4); finally, he swears by the plane tree that, if Socrates
does not recite the praise of the nonlover, he will never again repeat
any speeches to him. Socrates' philologia is at least as great as that
of Phaedrus; he now acquiesces. And Phaedrus, amusingly enough,
has been led upward in his choice of threats: bribery, coercion by
physical force, silence-threats which themselves correspond to the
three speeches in the dialogue: base calculation of mutual advantage,
rhetorical or concealed coercion, the silence of divine madness. Soc-
rates now covers his head, i.e., his body, in shame, as he later says,
at the speech he is about to deliver (243b6). The speech of the con-
cealed lover is delivered by a concealed body; a shameful act has a
salutary effect (namely, to edify Phaedrus or to raise him up from
Lysian baseness). Hence, whereas Phaedrus threatens to use force, it
is actually Socrates who employs it, in the concealed form of rhetoric .
We see here once more a subterranean connection between this
section of the Phaedrus and the Alcibiades section of the Symposium.
In the Symposium, Socrates uses rhetoric to transform the Eros of
Alcibiades into a kind of friendship, however imperfect. In the Phae-
drus, the same general situation obtains. Corporeal Eros serves to
attract bodies; the detachment of speech serves to inflect Eros from

the body to the psyche. As one might put it, erotic detachment is
concealed or sublimated erotic attraction. The internal dialectic of
Eros led in the Symposium to self-contradiction or loss of structure,
whether in the cancellation of speech by silence or in the personal
incoherence of men like Alcibiades. 4 The main reason for this loss of
structure is that, despite the many discourses in the Symposium, it
contains no adequate account of speech. As one might also put this
point, there is no adequate account of the inadequacies of discursive
speech. Whereas the non lover stands in a way for the passive recep-
tivity of noetic intuition, he is in another sense the dramatic image
of the sobriety of philosophical discourse. Perhaps we may suggest
that Plato tries to resolve this contradiction in the nature of the non-
lover by raising him to the level of divine love or madness. Unfor-
tunately, the contradiction between speech and silence remains un-
resolved at this level as well. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the
"incoherence" of the Phaedrus lies at a deeper and hence more illu-
minating level than is true of the Symposium. The dialectical trans-
formations of lover and nonlover, mediated in an unstable way by
the persona of the concealed lover, manage to capture in a more
conceptual manner the nature of an Eros who is ceasing to be what
he was and coming to be what he is not. In one last formulation, the
Phaedrus brings us face-to-face with the need for a "logic of silence"
which is something like the Hegelian logic of double negation. By
standing on the roof of the cosmos, with our noetic vision directed
out toward the hyper-Uranian being, we have reached the absolute
limit of Platonism, and thus the necessary state of negativity which
will lead to the "second negation" of Hegel.
In any event, the Symposium does not take seriously enough the
role of the nonlover, and this requires us to rethink the nature of
Eros, or to begin again with Phaedrus. The fundamental defect of the
Symposium might be said to be the falseness of the claim that only
the lover desires the beautiful. 5 Like the circlemen in Aristophanes'
myth, the cosmos of the Symposium continuously falls apart into dis-
parate but originally related halves: lover and nonlover, beauty and
ugliness. Just as the highest erotic function is impossible without the
discursive detachment of the nonlover, so the philosophical enter-
prise is not accomplished by a perception of beauty which excludes
ugliness. Philosophy is vision and speech, attraction and detachment:
it is vision and speech of the whole, of the beautiful and the ugly .
Hence the desire of the nonlover, although less beautiful than the
desire of the lover, is not less true. There is a difference between truth
and beauty which is concealed by the rhetoric of the Symposium. 6 In
the Symposium, the true nature of the non lover is concealed by the
rhetoric of beauty . In the Phaedrus, ·the erotic interior of the nonlover
is concealed by the rhetoric, not quite of ugliness, but certainly of
something akin to baseness. I put the point in this indirect way be-
cause even the speech of Lysias has a positive or useful content. We
are now, incidentally, in a position to surmise the intrinsic unity of
the dramatic structure of the Phaedrus, which has been invisible to
so many of its readers because of their disinterest in the problem of
the non- and concealed lover. The silent psyche is the center sur-
rounded by speech itself and by speech about speech. Speech about
speech, or a discussion of rhetoric and dialectic, is related to the
speech of the nonlover. More sharply still, speech is dependent upon
nonerotic "detachment," as well as upon erotic madness or "attrac-
tion." The incoherence of the Phaedrus, to which I alluded a moment
ago, is not a defect of its dramatic structure, but an intrinsic aporia
of Platonism , and perhaps of philosophy per se. The peak of speech
is silence.
This last observation needs to be developed. I permit myself a
prefatory observation. Those of us who have not been hypnotized by
the injunctions of the later Wittgenstein to "keep talking" will re-
member from Hegel (if not from the earlier Wittgenstein) that in-
definite discourse leads to the "bad infinity" of self-canceling chat-
ter. 7 The silence of noetic intuition (or of private language) can be
translated into significant and stable public discourse only if that
discourse is circular or complete. The internal clarity of a finite or
broken line of analysis is soon dissolved into silence by the infinite
wastes on either end of the line . Hence the unusual instability (to
avoid all stronger language) of "analytical" criticism of Plato's logic,
which criticism is merely an instance of the aporiai it (sometimes)
uncovers . A stable criticism of Plato's logic is in my opinion possible,
if at all, only through the use of Hegelian logic . But this observation
is not an excuse for the defects in Plato's "argumentation." It is rather
a recommendation to state as carefully as possible the nature of that
defect. In the Phaedrus, Socrates or Plato proceeds by indirection and
dramatic enactment , but these are no less eloquent than logical
symbolism.
To return to details, let us notice that Socrates' speech about
speech (the last third of the Phaedrus) only partially prepares us to
understand the speech about silence. Socrates does not tell us how
Stesichorus learned the nature of psyche; he never suggests that it was
by using the rhetoric and dialectic of the concluding third of the
dialogue, any more than he suggests an identity between the forms
of dialectical diaeresis and the hyper-Uranian beings of the manic
intuition. The silence of the ascending or discarnate psyche at the

center of the Phaedrus is identical with the fundamental silence of
the dialogue concerning the nature of prophetic speech. To repeat,
the peak of the dialogue about speech is in fact silence. But the slopes
of that peak are discursive, and in two different senses. The way up
is not the same as the way down. The way up is the dialectical trans-
formation of base or nonerotic desire into noble or erotic desire, with
the concomitant Au/hebung of the legitimate element of the non lover.
The way down, after the recollection of the hyper-Uranian beings, is
the technical discussion of rhetoric and dialectic. s The way up teaches
us that the highest revelation of divinity is possible for man only by
the comprehensive (and comprehending) transformation of his hu-
manity; if Eros is a god, man is in a certain fundamental sense a
nonlover. Gods need not speak, because speech is a mark of imper-
fection or incompleteness. 9 But the paradoxical character of human
nature lies in the fact that the silence of desire is as necessary to its
striving for perfection as is nondesiring speech. Speech makes desire
articulate; desire gives speech impetus and direction. Speech trans-
forms corporeal into psychic desire; desire transforms speech from
calculation into philosophy. One could therefore suggest that, for
Plato, man will avoid being dissected by a vengeful Zeus, and so
plunged into total silence, only if he learns to understand his body.
In the transition from the speech of Lysias to Socrates' first
speech, an agreement is struck between Socrates and Phaedrus. Soc-
rates accepts the task of defending the nonlover, but reveals him to
be in fact a concealed lover. This revelation is pedagogically or rhe-
torically sound because Phaedrus' love of base speeches transcends
the baseness of what is said. More generally, human desire, precisely
because it depends upon intelligence for its gratification, is ultimately
the desire for a complete or perfectly satisfactory account of desire.
The concealed lover "rationalizes" the prudential calculation of the
nonlover by explicit emphasis upon the subordination of desire to
knowledge. He does this by what amounts to a distinction between
appetite and deliberation. This distinction is implicit in the simplest
instance of desire, which is thus seen to consist of two contradictory
elements. The erotic appetite, in order to be satisfied, gives rise to a
deliberation which is itself nonerotic. In order to satisfy his appetite,
man must regain possession of himself, "recollect" himself, or detach
himself from that appetite, and in this sense he must "conceal" his
Eros, not merely from the object desired, but from himself as well.
The structure of Eros, vaguely indicated in the Symposium as ceasing
to be what it is and coming to be what it is not, is more sharply
visible in the Phaedrus as the differentiation, within the continuum

of human life, of attraction and detachment.
The concealed lover develops the distinction between attraction
and detachment by making explicit his criticism of the Symposium:
"We know also that even nonlovers desire beautiful things. In what
way can we distinguish the lover and the nonlover?" (237d4-5; cf.
Symposium 201a8-1O). He answers his own question by equating the
lover with the natural desire for pleasure, and the nonlover with the
acquired opinion that aims at the best. The non lover transforms or
masters nature by transforming the desire for pleasure, through the
instrumentality of discursive intelligence, into the desire for the
best. 10 This desire or intention is an opinion; the concealed lover
teaches that it is necessary for man to improve upon nature. Desire
qua natural is called hybris, whereas the acquired opinion is iden-
tified as temperance. According to the concealed lover, nature does
not furnish us with opinions about "the best," i.e., about the order
of excellence of the desires (or of the objects desired: 237e2-238a2).
In an easily intelligible sense, opinion, the fruit of detached delib-
eration, is not natural. In modern language, one must work to acquire
temperance or a taste for the best; this work is the Hegelian over-
coming of nature by spirit. Nor should we forget that, for Hegel,
discourse is the tool by which spirit performs its work. The hybris of
nature must be contained by the temperance of opinion. The ex-
amples given by the concealed lover of hybris are the excessive forms
of eating, drinking, and Eros: all, in their temperate form, necessary
for human existence. But temperance is not furnished by nature; the
concealed lover does not indicate the source of the humanizing de-
liberations by which man is preserved from bestiality or erotic hybris.
We shall have to wait for the third speech in order to hear that
the humanity of man is a divine gift. The teaching of the concealed
lover, unlike that of Hegel, is a defective anticipation of the Stesi-
chorean revelation which amounts to a version of linguistic conven-
tionalism. The attempt to master Eros through speech can succeed
only if the speech is complete or synoptic. For Plato (but not for Hegel)
this means that speech is grounded in silent poetic vision of hyper-
Uranian beings. If there is no such synopsis, speech dissolves into
perspectival approximation, and there is no basis external to speech
by recourse to which we may prefer one perspective to another. Taken
apart from noetic synopsis, the concealed lover soon deteriorates into
the non lover of the base variety. The position of the nonlover in the
low sense leads to a Verdinglichung of desire, or to a split between
humaneness and desire. Man is alienated from his desire, and sub-
sequently enslaved by it. The equation of intelligence with efficiency
leads finally to a deterioration of efficiency, to the debasement of the

beloved, and thence to self-debasement, or to pain rather than to
pleasure. The concealed lover implies correctly that the Lysian non-
lover is actually an incompetent lover; but his own pretense requires
him to criticize Eros and nature, or to identify his own greater in-
telligence and articulateness with an opinion about the best. Since
this opinion is not certified by god or nature in the sense of a noetic
standard, we have little trouble in discerning its true origin. It is a
crystallization of the very desire which the concealed lover rejects in
the case of the lover. Briefly put, the psychic Eros is a concealed or
specious version of the corporeal Eros. The psyche is at best an "epi-
phenomenon" of the body, and in that sense, it is unnatural.
The dramatic defect of the concealed lover's speech is as follows .
If he succeeds in seducing the beloved with his discourse, he will
necessarily fail, since there will be no reason for the beloved to gratify
him. The handsome youth, thanks to the critique of nature and the
praise of opinion or verbal skill, will have been turned, not quite
toward philosophy, but toward sophistry, or the technical mastery
of prudential calculation. The philosophical defect is not quite so
obvious, but by no means altogether obscure. If opinion rules nature,
then opinion becomes a second nature. The "unreasonableness" or
hybris of nature is merely transferred to the level of opinion, for so
long as discourse is unable to complete itself or to provide its own
standard in the satisfaction of desire by reason . In other words, opin-
ion can triumph over the base nature only by a distinction between
base and noble nature which is not itself a mere opinion . The sophistic
position, or the consequence of the teaching of the concealed lover,
thus returns us to the reification of desire which was the consequence
of the nonlover's teaching. Since the concealed lover is himself an
improvement on, or development from, the nonlover, the result of
experience in rhetoric, we have a fruitless dialectical circle in which
the two are continuously transformed into each other. Each is ceasing
to be what he was and coming to be what he is not. We thus return
to the negativity of the Symposium, except for the new content of the
non lover's necessary contribution to philosophy. In a way analogous
to Hegel's treatment of Spinoza, the double negation of concealed
and non lover will be transformed into the "positive" or more com-
prehensive teaching of the divine madman. Unfortunately for the He-
gelian, the divine circle is one of silence rather than conceptual
10goS.11
6
The Role of Eros in
Plato's Republic
In this essay, I should like to present some evidence for a hy-

pothesis about Plato's conception of philosophy, and at the same time
to illustrate one or two of the problems which face the would-be
interpreter of the Platonic dialogue. These two goals are related by
the fact that the difficulty in interpretation arises from what I take
to be Plato's conception of philosophy . When judged by the standard
of contemporary procedures, Plato seems to think of philosophy as
composed of two incompatible aspects. In attempting to give simple
names to each of these aspects, one runs the risk of engaging in ov-
ersimplification. Nevertheless, the aspects have been apparent, under
one set of names or another, to most of Plato's readers. If we are aware
that the terms are tentative and metaphorical, I believe we shall not
go far wrong in calling the aspects the poetic and the mathematical.
This is not to suggest that philosophy for Plato is the mere sum of
poetry and mathematics. Plato criticizes both poetry and mathe-
matics from the viewpoint of philosophy; that is, he rejects the claim
of each to be a rival of or on the same level as philosophy. Instead,
I am suggesting that for Plato, philosophy includes as its most fun-
damental dimensions two methods, literally "ways" or "paths"
which are analogous to poetry and mathematics. In the dialogues,
these paths do not always converge into a single highway; in some
cases, the convergence of the paths is camouflaged. As I shall try to
show, Plato leaves signs along the way for the attentive reader, which
This essay is a slightly expanded version of a lecture delivered at the University of

Wisconsin in March, 1964, as part of my function as postdoctoral research fellow in
the Humanities Research Institute during the academic year 1963-64. I wish to thank
the members of the Institute for an unusually fruitful year.
The Role of Eros in Plato's Republic 103
point toward the actual convergence as well as the reason for the
camouflage.
The first part of my hypothesis, then, is simple enough, and would
be accepted in principle by most students of Plato: the dramatic struc-
ture of the dialogues is an essential part of their philosophical mean-
ing. 1 With respect to the poetic and mathematical aspects of philos-
ophy, we may distinguish three general kinds of dialogue. For
example, consider the Sophist and Statesman, where Socrates is vir-
tually silent: the principal interlocutors are mathematicians and an
Eleatic Stranger, a student of Parmenides, although one who is not
always loyal to his master's teaching of what might be called monadic
homogeneity. In these dialogues, the mathematical character of phi-
losophy is not merely emphasized but exaggerated, and any attempt
to interpret them must take this fact into account. Otherwise, we
shall not be able to understand why the Stranger seems to classify
the general's art in the same species of the genus hunting as the louse
catcher. The significance of this step, which does not stem from hu-
manitarian considerations, but rather illustrates how the human be-
comes invisible from the mathematical viewpoint, contributes its
share to the obscurity of these two dialogues. Second, there are dia-
logues like the Phaedrus and Symposium, in which the style, the in-
terlocutors, and even the subject matter seem to be largely poetic
and rhetorical. Here, the overwhelming impression is of enthusiasm,
divine madness, and intoxication in speech and deed. Finally, there
are dialogues like the Philebus and Republic, in which it is not so easy
to say whether poetry or mathematics predominates, if indeed either
may be said to do so.
According to the second part of my hypothesis, the poetic and
mathematical aspects of philosophy are not mutually incompatible,
but represent the two fundamental inflections of what Plato calls
Eros . Eros is a striving for wholeness or perfection, a combination of
poverty and contrivance, of need mitigated by a presentiment of com-
pleteness. This presentiment cannot be fulfilled, but its goal is knowl-
edge of the Ideas, and thus an adequate vision of the Good. The Good
is one, and thereby signifies the unity within diversity of philosophy.
Just as our experience is diverse, so too must be the procedures by
which we respond to experience. Just as goodness is reflected in the
variety of Ideas, so the unity of Eros is refracted into a variety of
methods or ways.
If this part of the hypothesis is correct, then it must be possible
to find unity within the splendid diversity of the Platonic dialogues.
By "unity" I do not mean a "system" in the modern sense of that
term. This word, when applied to philosophy, reflects the extraor-
104 The Role of Eros in Plato's Republic
dinary influence of mathematics upon our conception of reason, and

so it suggests the divorce of the two aspects which are unified in
Plato's dialogues. For Plato, there is a poetic as well as a mathe-
matical idiom of rational speech. If philosophy means being reason-
able in the diverse ways which are appropriate to the varieties of
experience, and if the dialogues are successful portrai ts of philosophy,
then it must be possible to show that these portraits are not incon-
sistent. It must also be possible to explain why Plato did not include,
or give equal weight to, all the principal features of philosophy in
each portrai t.
As the third part of my hypothesis, I shall argue that there is a
specific relationship between the Symposium and the Republic, which
turns upon the role assigned in each to Eros, whereby each dialogue
illustrates primarily or exaggeratedly one of the two main aspects of
philosophy . The function of Eros will in turn be connected to the
problem of the relationship between philosophy and politics or po-
litical justice. I shall speak of the connection between justice and the
mathematical aspect of philosophy, and then close with some unfor-
tunately but necessarily obscure conjectures about the unity of the
good. Let me begin by considering some features of the dramatic
structures of the Symposium and Republic, in order to make explicit
how I conceive them to complement each other. At first sight, it would
appear that the Republic, in its Spartan pursuit of political unity and
justice, mentions Eros only to chastize it. In Book Nine, Eros is iden-
tified as a tyrant, the principle of daring and injustice which brings
the utmost misery to individual and city alike. 2 The condemnation
of Eros is clearly related to the criticism of poetry and its careful
restriction within the just city. The issue is not simply the erotic
content of many poems, but the question of genesis or making (poiesis)
as a consequence of Eros. To put the point in its simplest form, Plato
holds that the poet makes or generates his images, whereas the phi-
losopher finds or sees the ungenerated, eternal, impersonal Ideas.
On the other hand, poetry and rhetoric playa dominant role in
the Symposium and Phaedrus, which give us the fullest description
of Eros. Poetry is not free from philosophical rule, but it is, to say
the least, a flourishing subject. But the city in which poetry flourishes
is not the city of the Republic. This difference is illuminated by the
different settings of the dialogues. The Phaedrus takes place outside
the city walls (an unusual appearance of Socrates in the countryside),
and the Symposium at a private drinking party, to which only a small
group of highly sophisticated, mature friends have been invited. 3 The
Republic, on the other hand, occurs within the city walls, in the harbor
of the Piraeus, during the day of an important religious festival (in
The Role of Eros in Plato's Republic lOS
fact, between two such events), not by invitation but through a com-
bination of chance and constraint, in the home of a resident alien, in
the presence of strangers and youths . Eros is an affair of privacy,
either of the night or the countryside outside the city walls, of drun-
ken enthusiasm which overflows into divine madness. In the Sym-
posium, both the content of the speeches and the metaphors of the
language are frankly sexual. In the Republic, the tone seems to be set
from the beginning by Cephalus' praise of sexual continence. 4
The picture of philosophy in the Symposium and Phaedrus is
painted by poetry, and one is led to wonder whether the painting is
not a self-portrait. In the Republic, the virtual expulsion of poetry
seems to be the necessary complement to the emphasis upon math-
ematics, the essence of sobriety, in the central discussion of educa-
tion. The love of beauty in the Symposium seems to be replaced by
the praise of justice in the Republic. In the Symposium, the conver-
sation is private, stimulated by wine, and culminates in the cryptic
revelation of mysteries . In the Republic, the conversation is not
merely public and sober, but it emphasizes the lack of privacy among
the guardians as well as their complete sobriety, and the revelation
of mysteries is replaced by the indoctrination of citizens in the noble
lie: a secret upon which the just city is founded. s In the Republic,
which defines justice as "minding one's own business" and constructs
a just city by the principle of the division of labor, Socrates tells us
that the same poets do not excel in the writing of tragedy and comedy .
In the Symposium, which emphasizes the completeness of the phi-
losopher rather than of the city, Socrates' last words force his scarcely
conscious companions, the tragedian Agathon and the comedian Ar-
istophanes, to agree that the same man may excel as a writer of com-
edy and tragedy. 6
I shall now try to relate these points of difference by discussing
the role played in each dialogue by a kind of violence : to hybris and
also to constraint. This will also make clear the relevance of the theme
of justice. The Symposium (like the Phaedrus), both in its content and
dramatic structure, relates Eros to poetry, inspiration, madness, and
privacy, and thereby opposes it to politics and public justice. Thus
Socrates' hybris , the quality of tyrants, is emphasized throughout the
Symposium, but especially by Agathon and Alcibiades, the two most
beautiful speakers in the dialogue, and rival lovers of Socrates. 7 We
have already seen that the Republic denigrates Eros by identifying it
as the principle of tyranny, and relates the suppression or restriction
of Eros to mathematics, sobriety, lack of privacy, and so to politics
and public justice.s For this reason, Socrates in particular and the
philosopher-king in general are never referred to as hybristic or
shown as acting in a hybristic manner. As I shall later indicate, when

Socrates comes to a daring or dangerous point in the argument, he
is reluctant to proceed, and it is invariably Glaucon who urges, almost
forces, him to continue.
This point can be illustrated by considering the beginning of each
dialogue. In the Symposium, an unknown man named Glaucon begins
the dialogue (within the narration of Apollodorus) by using a legal
metaphor to "force" Apollodorus to remain and tell him about the
private banquet. 9 Similarly, Alcibiades, in his revelation of Socrates'
true nature, refers to the symposiasts as "gentlemen of the jury," and
Agathon earlier threatens to take Socrates to court in a dispute over
wisdom. \0 In the Republic, Socrates and Glaucon (Plato's brother) are
"persuaded" to remain by language which, however playful, appeals
to physical strength rather than to legal forms. It is not Socrates but
Glaucon who initiates acquiescence in the face of this constraint."
Socrates wishes to return to Athens, but is compelled to remain by
the insistence of young men who are not his close friends. Thus his
subsequent speech, in which the just city is founded, takes place
under the shadow of constraint. In the Symposium, Socrates freely
accepts an invitation to a private party where he speaks with relative
frankness, even with hybris. The constraint in the Symposium is legal,
a "court," as it were, before which the private speeches of the ban-
quet, and especially the hybris of Socrates, are brought. The con-
straint in the Republic is not legal because it is prepolitical, prior to
and the cause of the founding of the just city.
Let us now consider these details in the light of the possible re-
lationship between the Republic and the Symposium. The beginning
of the Republic, the dialogue devoted to justice, shows dramatically
how the just city has its origins in injustice or constraint. Socrates
must be forced to engage in the conversation, as is emphasized by
Cephalus' opening remark that Socrates seldom visits him.'2 Socrates
is forced to descend into the cave (the first word of the dialogue,
kateben, means "I went down"), and so to found the just city, in which
the most excellent men must sacrifice their leisure and the pursuit
of philosophy in order to govern. An interesting comparison can be
made here between Plato and Machiavelli, the founders of ancient
and modern political philosophy. For both, a virtuous political order
depends upon initial violence. Socrates says that all those over the
age of ten must be expelled from the city by the philosopher-king. In
the Prince, Machiavelli is more explicit about the necessary conse-
quences of the fact that a just city can be founded only from uncorrupt
material. But once the city is established, and it becomes possible to
speak of citizens, Plato indicates that the greatest violence is done to
the rulers rather than to the citizens, and it is spiritual rather than
physical.
The serious question then arises: why does Socrates submit to
constraint, and why does he submit philosophers to the constraint
of ruling? One may suggest that he does so out of benevolence, but
this cannot be regarded as an adequate reason, since Socrates in the
Republic compares the blessedness of the few with the madness of
the many, and the philosopher who enters into political life in actual
cities with a man among beasts. 13 In the Seventh Letter, Plato says
that the true philosopher has no time to fight about human things,
and there is a suggestion in the Statesman that philosophers find all
the freedom they can hope for as private citizens in a democracy.14
I believe that the answer to this question must be sought elsewhere.
The Symposium, by publishing the private speeches, by revealing
mysteries, exhibits the Eros and hybris of Socrates, or the tyrannical
aspects of philosophy, which flow from the essentially private or tran-
spolitical interest of the philosopher. The purpose of the Symposium
is to acquaint us with the daring and poetic aspect of philosophy ;
but in fulfilling that purpose, it levels a public charge against the
nature of philosophy. The Symposium brings philosophy to the court
of the city, just as the unknown Glaucon brings Apollodorus to court
in his metaphorical request to hear the speeches, and as Alcibiades
brings the hybris of Socrates before the symposiasts. In the Republic,
we hear the defense which philosophy makes to the public charge,
but the defense is so subtly constructed that it is at the same time a
criticism of the public or the city. On the surface of the Republic,
Socrates vindicates philosophy by having it make a gift of justice to
the city. In the interior of the Republic, he tells us that this gift has
its origins in injustice.
Let me rephrase this last statement. I believe that for Plato, the
attempt to achieve perfect justice is an act of hybris; like the desire
for perfect wisdom, it expresses man's wish to become a god. IS The
desire for wisdom, however, as it is partially satisfied, also becomes
self-moderating. The desire for justice does not; the more we have of
it, the more we want. To give the most important example: the emer-
gence of the characteristically modern conception of philosophy as
the pursuit of unlimited power is inseparable from a belief that an-
cient thought subjected man to an unjust bondage to nature. Plato's
defense of philosophy, although he admits the hybristic nature of the
desire for wisdom, is nevertheless inseparable from the belief that
man's obedience to nature is just or the ground of justice. A concern
for justice, as well as for the preservation of philosophy, leads Plato
to camouflage the hybristic character of philosophy; one result of this
is that he also camouflages the defect of what we might call a rage

for justice. If Eros is associated with hybris and tyranny, then it is
important for Socrates, as the public defender of the political re-
sponsibility of philosophy, to minimize the connection between Eros
and philosophy. Eros, as the striving by the individual for completion,
leads him away from and beyond the city and political justice. Eros,
like tyranny, encourages the individual to disregard nomos, and so
it encourages the individual to treason. Philosophy, which begins in
the distinction between physis and nomos, exemplifies treasonable
Eros. When treason becomes customary, it assumes the form of a
virtue rather than a vice. But we must not be prevented by the course
of history from understanding the essential situation about which
Plato is speaking.
I am then, to a certain extent, making the same suggestion about
the Republic that Spinoza and Rousseau made about Machiavelli's
Prince: that it is a kind of satire, whose exaggerations are meant to
teach the opposite of what they explicitly say. In terms of this sug-
gestion, the just city is not founded for the sake of philosophy, but
the philosopher's convenience is restricted for the sake of the just
city. (Hence, too, the irony of Socrates' praise of Sparta: political
virtue, and not philosophy, is the tyrant that requires restrictions
upon freedom of speech and thought.) The attempt to prove that a
work or speech is ironical usually suffers from the same difficulties
as the attempt to explain the point of a joke. Nevertheless, Plato has
not altogether covered his tracks; for if he had done so, he would have
been unable to teach us. The irony of the Republic can be shown by
pointing out a neglected and yet obvious feature. If justice means
"one man, one task," or minding one's own business, then there is
no place in the just city for the philosopher, who minds everyone's
business, who attempts to imitate the whole, just as Socrates plays
all the parts within the city in the very act of founding and describing
it, exactly the procedure for which Homer is so severely chastized! 16
Philosophy establishes the principle of justice as the restriction of
each man to his proper share. Yet in so doing, it seems already to
claim more than its share. Despite the suppression ofhybris and Eros,
philosophy is once again, albeit without comment, revealed as unjust
and tyrannical. But if we exclude philosophy from the city as unjust,
how will public justice, which depends upon the philosopher-king,
be maintained?
Reflections of this sort lead to the following suggestion. The de-
nigration of Eros in the Republic, as the principle of private immod-
eration, is at least partially due to the defense of public moderation,
and of philosophy as the defender of public virtue or justice. Eros is
publicly chasti zed and suppressed, but as we have just seen, it does
not follow that the nature of philosophy is privately no longer regarded
as erotic. Even further: if the origin of the just city is dependent upon
philosophy, and if philosophy is essentially erotic, then despite the
public rebuke given to Eros, the city is erotic in its very origins. The
ci ty is a form of Eros, as becomes clear when we think of the brotherly
love of its citizens for each other, and of their filial love for the land
from which they believe themselves to have been generated. 17 But
the city is not the highest form of Eros, as is symbolized by its origin
in a lie, however noble. ls
Let me recapitulate briefly: The Symposium and Republic seem
to differ sharply in their portraits of philosophy. This difference is
emphasized by details in their dramatic structure, and the hinge of
the difference is hybris, which associates philosophy in the Sympo-
sium with Eros and injustice. I have already suggested that the por-
trait of philosophy in the Republic is in fact equally hybristic and
erotic. I should like next to concentrate upon the surprisingly im-
portant role which Eros plays in the Republic by a rather close in-
spection of the character of Glaucon .
The just city may be described as an attempt to suppress Eros,
both of body and psyche. 19 We are familiar from Freud with the view
that such a suppression is an inverse eroticism. Let us now consider
the earlier development of this insight by Plato. Sexual intercourse
and reproduction in the just city are subjected to the most careful
regulation. Those few laws and institutions which the Republic dis-
cusses in any detail, with the massive exception of the program for
philosophical education, are concerned with sexual relations, breed-
ing, and the traits or differences of the two sexes. Similarly, philos-
ophy or the Eros of the psyche seems to be stripped of its erotic traits
and restricted to a small minority, who may pursue it privately only
when age has ended their political service, and presumably moder-
ated their sexual appetite. The erotic nature of the city is well ex-
pressed in Socrates' description of the manner of its decay. There will
come a time when the rulers "pass by" or elude the laws governing
reproduction "and generate children when it is not fitting."20 The
essence of the law is adherence to the perfect number whereby the
time for divine begetting is computed. In other words, mathematics
rules or suppresses Eros. Plato tries to constrain what Glaucon calls
erotic by geometric necessity. But erotic necessity is triumphant, for
the city, like every generated thing, must pass away.21
The just city is an aristocracy; the first form into which it de-
teriorates is that of a timocracy.22 I shall now argue that the mark
of deterioration is present from the very founding of the just city, in
the form of Eros camouflaged as thymos or spiritedness, a necessary

component of the city. The mark of deterioration is represented in
the dialogue by Glaucon. A timocracy is characterized primarily by
"the dominance of the spirited" element in the psyche, by "love of
contention and love of honor."23 Adeimantus says of the timocratic
man that he will resemble Glaucon "with respect to love of conten-
tion."24 Socrates agrees, but points out the differences between Glau-
con and the timocratic man. The latter will be more stubborn, less
refined (amousoteron) or educated, but a lover of music and listening
to speeches, although not himself a rhetorician, harsh to rather than
scornful of slaves, gentle to the freeborn, obedient to rulers, a lover
of office and honor, zealous to rule because of his military prowess
rather than his political merits, a lover of gymnastics and hunting.25
Socrates' reply, so far as it casts light upon the nature of Glaucon, is
ambiguous; we cannot pause to inspect all of its nuances. As the
comparatives indicate, the difference between Glaucon and the tim-
ocratic man is to some extent one of degree rather than of kind. They
agree in philonikia or love of contention, but (apparently) Glaucon is
not characterized by the love of honor. The love of contention is an
exaggeration of the spirited or warlike part of the psyche . According
to the speech of Socrates just summarized, it would seem that Glau-
con's love of contentiousness or his spiritedness takes neither the form
of listening nor of fighting. What then is left?
If the timocratic man differs from Glaucon in being fond of lis-
tening, but not of speaking, may we not infer that Glaucon, although
a poor listener, is fond of rhetorical debate? Nor should it be forgotten
that, in later years, Glaucon participated in an attempt to establish
a tyranny in Athens: his love of contention apparently deepened into
a love of honor and office as well. In the Republic, then, Glaucon is
a potential timocrat. His fondness for rhetorical debate is the surface
form of his own Eros, and it leads him to acquiesce in the show of
force by Polemarchus and his companions at the beginning of the
dialogue. Glaucon joins Polemarchus (the "war-lord") through this
acquiescence, and so forces Socrates, who clearly wishes to go home,
to engage in the dialogue, and thereby to found the just city. He also
thereby associates himself with Polemarchus, who, when Socrates
asks if he and his companions may be persuaded to release himself
and Glaucon, replies: "How should you be able to persuade those
who don't listen?"26 Glaucon is a bad listener, and Socrates gets his
revenge some two hundred pages later, in his usual subtle mannerP
But we must not allow Socrates' subtlety to blind us to the fact that
Glaucon's defects as a listener condition the nature of what Socrates
will say to him . They condition the character of the city which Soc-
The Role of Eros in Plato's Republic III
rates describes, It is too frequently assumed that the city described

in the Republic is Plato's serious answer to the political problem. In
one sense, this may well be true, namely, by showing that there is
no solution to the political problem. But in considering the status of
the details of the description, we must remember that they are di-
rected toward young boys in an effort to educate them by compen-
sating for their defects. The assumption in question is all the less
justified in view of Socrates' frequent warnings that the discussion
is not about the very best man and city, is not completely stated, and
that it is even a game or joke.28
It is not difficult to show that Glaucon is the most important of
Socrates' interlocutors in the Republic, and that this importance is
related to his erotic nature. 29 As the proximate cause of the dialogue,
Glaucon is the "pre-founder" of the just city, and symbolizes its erotic
underside. As a potentially timocratic man, he symbolizes its ulti-
mate downfall, should it in fact ever be established. There is even an
important connection between Glaucon and the presence of philos-
ophy in the just city. Socrates first described an unusually simple
and austere city, in which there is neither philosophy nor meat eating,
and which he calls "the true city ."3o Glaucon objects to this city that
it is fit only for pigs because of the absence of meat or relish, and so
he forces Socrates to enlarge the city, thereby permitting the entrance
not only of luxury but of philosophy as well. 31 There is a connection
between meat eating and spiritedness which, when regulated by phi-
losophy, preserves the city, but which also contains the seeds of the
city's destruction. 32 Although Plato is neither a pacifist nor a vege-
tarian, he understands the element of truth to which these habits are
directed. From a slightly different viewpoint, the spiritedness of Glau-
con is still amenable to control by philosophy, and so is related to
philosophical Eros. Thus Socrates explicitly identifies Glaucon as an
"erotic man" (aner er6tikos), and Glaucon is associated in a number
of amusing passages with Eros .33 In the most important of these pas-
sages, he agrees to be considered as erotic "for the sake of the logos. "34
The reference to philosophy is unmistakable, and the exchange occurs
in connection with the "third wave," or the most paradoxical of Soc-
rates' innovations upon which the just city depends, namely, that
philosophers must be kings .35 Glaucon is the interlocutor in all sec-
tions dealing explicitly with the nature of philosophy.36 In addition,
he keeps the conversation going at crucial moments when it is either
apparently finished or when Socrates is reluctant to continue, and
thus he earns the appellation of "always most manly" or "brave."37
I have discussed Glaucon's character at length because it sheds
light on the role of Eros in the Republic. For a variety of reasons, Plato
decided to suppress or transform Eros in the course of describing the

just city. In the first place, Eros is connected with private striving
and immoderation. When the immoderation concerns the body, the
result is tyranny or a tyrannical nature . When immoderation is a
characteristic of the psyche, the result is potentially a philosophical
nature. In each case, there is a conflict between Eros and political
justice. The tyrant, of course, is the unjust man par excellence; the
Eros of the body is explicitly condemned, and every effort is made
throughout the dialogue to abstract from it. But the direction of this
abstraction cannot simply be toward the Eros of the psyche, since
that direction is essentially trans-political. On the other hand, the
Eros of the psyche cannot be condemned outright, because to do so
would be to condemn philosophy, and the just city depends upon the
rule of philosophers. Therefore Plato follows two paths at one time:
he disguises or camouflages philosophical Eros by emphasizing the
impersonal aspect of philosophy, in which it is related to or very much
resembles mathematics. Mathematics is a general and thus anony-
mous enterprise; in this sense it is public rather than private. Al-
though numbers are for Plato (like Ideas) heterogeneous rather than
homogeneous, the fact remains that the method of mathematics is
entirely impersonal, and in this sense it imitates the principle of jus-
tice, which allots to each exactly what he deserves, independently of
any "personal" considerations. The "blindness" of justice, its disin-
terestedness, its appeal to universal rules, all refer to an abstraction
from particulars, from that which cannot be expressed in general
formulas. This is, of course, an oversimplification of the principle of
justice, which, if it is analogous to mathematics or mathematical
procedures, has two fundamental aspects, as Aristotle discusses at
length in the Nicomachean Ethics.
There is a geometrical as well as an arithmetical proportion of
justice. In order to give each man what he deserves, it is necessary
to know, not merely the law or abstract right, but human nature in
the concrete variety of its forms. Here the analogy with mathematics
breaks down, despite the terminology, at least for Plato and Aristotle.
For the study of mathematics does not teach us about human nature,
but turns our attention away from the human to the divine. It is
poetry, suppressed if not expelled from the just city, which comes
closest to the philosophical study of the various forms which human
nature may assume. The expulsion of poetry is related to the fact that
Plato opposes the development of a diversity within human nature
in the just city. Of course it is true that philosophy is meant to replace
poetry, but nevertheless, the mathematical character of philosophy
is stressed, and this corresponds to the restriction of human diversity
to three kinds. In the first two kinds, the members of each are virtually
homogeneous within their kind; in the third case, the members are
homogeneous with respect to their public behavior. 38 The philoso-
pher must be unjust to himself for the sake of that noble simplicity
upon which political justice depends.
The stress upon mathematics, then, emphasizes the impersonal,
general, complete character of the just city; the stress upon Eros (and
so upon poetry) in the Symposium emphasizes the personal, the in-
dividual, and the incomplete nature of the individual psyche. As it
approaches to perfect justice, the city becomes less and less human,
more and more divine. But paradoxically, in so doing, the city be-
comes less and less just, and not simply in the sense that philosophers
are forced to rule. Closer to the mark is the fact that philosophers
are not themselves wise, but lovers of wisdom or permanently in-
complete. The justice imparted by philosophical kings is incomplete
justice. Put differently, justice is itself a characteristic of the incom-
pleteness of man, and so of human existence. Justice "imitates" com-
pleteness; it attempts to rectify or compensate for the diverse man-
ifestations of human incompleteness, of human defect. Men need
justice for the same reason that they need philosophy: because they
are men and not gods. The gods, being perfect, do not need justice,
but at the most dispense it to imperfect man. Plato replaces the an-
thropomorphic gods of pagan religion with the inhuman, impersonal,
nonconscious, perfect Ideas, to which the notion of justice is inap-
plicable, and which are studied by men with a method that resembles
certain aspects of the mathematical method, although deviating from
it in some crucial ways.39 The more we know the Ideas, the more we
die; Le., the less we are human, the more we are divine. The more
we know the Ideas, the more we recede from the condition which is
characterized by justice and injustice .
Since men are not gods, the city in the Republic may be just, but
imperfectly so, perfect justice being equivalent to the absence of jus-
tice. This means that Plato cannot completely or consistently cam-
ouflage philosophical Eros by an exaggeration of mathematics and
properties analogous to mathematical properties. There is, however,
an eidos or form of the psyche which, when directed tacitly by phi-
losophy, serves to "politicize" Eros: I refer to spiritedness. This is the
second way in which Plato camouflages Eros, or bends it to political
use. Socrates introduces the role of spiritedness in the guardian's
psyche by comparing him to a well-bred watchdog. 40 He indicates
the connection between spiri tedness and Eros by a further compar-
ison between the dog and the philosopher.41 The "philosophical" na-
ture of the well-bred dog leads him to be gentle to his friends and
those whom he knows, and the opposite to those he does not know .42
In this case, the knowledge of the dog is equivalent to its good breed-
ing; in the guardian, good breeding is the result of the laws of the
city, which in turn are established by philosopher-kings like Socrates.
Spiritedness and gentleness in themselves are opposites;43 they can
be mediated or harmonized only by philosophy. The erotic nature of
the psyche takes three forms: passion, spiritedness, and reason or the
love of wisdom .44 The gentleness of philosophical Eros is required to
regulate the spirited Eros in order to prevent it from falling under
the sway of the passionate Eros. But conversely, the philosophical
city cannot survive without the protection of spiritedness.
This is reemphasized by the crucial passage in which Socrates
introduces the philosopher-king, without whom the just city is im-
possible.45 The context draws our attention to the martial or spirited
character of Glaucon. 46 When Socrates makes his "most paradoxical"
proposal, Glaucon warns him that it will lead many powerful men
to assault him physically, but assures Socrates that he will defend
him as best he can. 47 Of course, the means which Glaucon offers as
support are quite peaceful: good will, encouragement, and superior
answers to Socrates' questions. But the danger of the enterprise and
the spiritedness of Glaucon's support can hardly be misunderstood.
Socrates agrees to try to convince their opponents, "since you offer
such a great war-alliance."48 Glaucon is a complex and subtle nature,
but it is not unfair to say that his Eros is more like that of a soldier
than a philosopher. Throughout the dialogue, as I have already in-
dicated, he both encourages and protects Socrates at particularly
dangerous turns in the argument. And in the present passage, shortly
after the remarks just cited, Socrates calls Glaucon an erotic man
with respect to the love of young boys, whether beautiful or ugly.49
As we have seen, Glaucon agrees only to be a lover of logos, and thus
he tries to associate himself with philosophy. In the dialogue, at least,
Glaucon becomes a guardian or man with a silver psyche, whose
spiritedness is regulated by, and so serves to protect, reason. This
"taming" of Glaucon, related to the training of a watchdog, sym-
bolizes the manner in which reason camouflages Eros in the city by
spiritedness. Glaucon's Eros must be directed away from young boys,
and so from its potentially tyrannical form, toward the city and
justice. 50
The just city is generated by the mating of philosophy and the
needs of heterogeneous human nature. In order to obtain justice, phi-
losophy must to a considerable extent render this heterogeneity ho-
mogeneous, and it does so by a kind of mathematical equalization
and abstraction . Furthermore, all generated things are subject to cor-
ruption and death. In order to defend the just city from corruption,
to preserve its life for as long as possible, philosophy must employ
tamed or trained spirited Eros. Trained spiritedness is the publicly
accessible and acceptable form of Eros. The generated, and so mortal
nature of the city is camouflaged by spirited patriotism. The noble
lie interprets the city's genesis in such a way as to make it divine
rather than human, to make it as close to immortal as possible. 51 At
the same time, it radically separates the autochthonous citizens of
the just city from all other men, who, as citizens of human or im-
perfect and so unjust cities, must be regarded as enemies. 52 Despite
the gentleness of philosophy, the just city must be warlike or spirited.
Given the obedience of the citizens to the laws, gentleness is directed
within the city's boundaries, and hostile spiritedness is directed out-
ward beyond the boundaries. But the relation of inner and outer does
not simply hold between the just city on the one hand and all other
cities on the other. We are forced to consider the fact that the just
city itself has an inner and outer dimension: a surface and a depth.
Within the depths is philosophy; on the surface is virtue or patriot-
ism. 53 We have seen in some detail that the surface is spirited Eros.
I can now bring my second theme to a focus : the depth is gentle Eros.
That is, philosophy in the Republic retains its erotic nature; there is
no contradiction with the teaching of the Symposium, but only a dif-
ference of emphasis. 54
I have followed the character of Glaucon as a thread which re-
veals the figure in the carpet of the Republic. The Republic is an ex-
ample of what the Eleatic Stranger calls "the royal art of weaving ."
Philosophical Eros and soldierly spiritedness are the warp and woof
of the Platonic tapestry. As in a tapestry, the meaning of the Republic
as a whole is not the same as the meaning of its parts. When we see
the intricacy of the total design, it comes as no surprise that the
description of philosophy in the middle books is permeated with
erotic language. The center of the tapestry is the peak of the argu-
ment; the threads which radiate from the center draw their deepest
meaning from it. And in the center of the center, we find the essential
teaching of the Symposium. Kings or the sons of kings will become
philosophers, if at all, by some divine inspiration. And the lover of
wisdom, the erotic man par excellence, will never be rid of the birth
pains of the psyche, will never find completeness or satisfaction, until
he knows the Ideas through the part of his psyche which is akin to
them. 55
An erotic necessity, to use Glaucon's phrase,56 seems to emanate
from the approach of philosophy, and to alter the character of the
examples and language of the conversation. The discussion preceding
the introduction of philosophy concerns the regulation of mating and

reproduction . This regulation of Eros is necessary for the unity of the
city,57 which serves here as an anticipation of the unity of the Good.
Speech about the unity of the city is replaced, through an erotic ne-
cessity, by speech about philosophy and the unity of the Good. Sim-
ilarly, Glaucon's love of boys is replaced by the love of logos, the
ascent of the Symposium. Socrates uses the love of boys, wine, and
glory58-again the themes of the Symposium-to introduce the lover
of wisdom. And the love of the beautiful in itself, as in the Symposium,
is the peak of the transition from love of things to love of Ideas. 59
Here also is a nuance which hints at the difference in emphasis be-
tween the Symposium and Republic: in the Symposium, Socrates com-
pares his wisdom to a dream, whereas in the Republic, the life of the
lover of bodies is called a dream.6o
The richness of erotic language, which I have merely suggested
here, culminates in the discussion of the Good in Books Seven and
Eight. A striking feature of this discussion is that its central image
is one of generation: of sexual reproduction. Socrates does not speak
of the Good in itself, but through the image of the sun. This image
combines intellectual clarity and erotic obscurity: a perfect image of
Plato's conception of philosophy. The sun generates visible things,
and is itself, in Socrates' metaphor, an offspring or child of the Good
in itself.61 This metaphor is related to Socrates' repeated insistence
that the entire discussion of the Good is tentative and incomplete.
He speaks of his language as prophetic and divining, thereby again
indicating its relation to the divine madness of the Symposium. 62
By presenting a poetic discussion of the Good as the peak of a
quasi-mathematical ascent to the Ideas, Plato reminds us that the
Good is a unity of diverse but complementary ways or modes of
speech. The Good is the light in which we see what we are talking
about. As the light of logos, it cannot be identified with moral virtue,
and so it cannot be understood by reference to political justice, which
Socrates calls a "demotic virtue ."63 The demotic justice refers to the
unity of the city; philosophical justice refers to the unity of logos.
Wisdom alone, or apprehension of the Ideas, says Socrates, is virtue
of the psyche. 64 Political justice or virtue thus pertains to the body,
and so to a dream life. In the language of the Republic, only those
who are fully awake can say why political justice is good.
In the Republic, mathematics comes closest to the dialectical as-
cent to the Good, although as a separate discipline it is defective in
comparison with dialectic. The relation between mathematics and
the Good is exemplified by the well-authenticated story of Plato's
famous lecture on the Good, in which, to the surprise of his audience
(which apparently included Aristotle, Speusippus and Xenocrates),

he dealt exclusively with mathematics and the unity of the Good. 65
I have already given some reasons for regarding the connection be-
tween the Good and the mathematical aspect of philosophy as an
appropriate one. But I have also tried to do justice to the connection
between the Good and the poetic aspect of philosophy. Just as light
is the "third" which makes sight possible by binding the eye to its
objects,66 so the Good is the bond (syndesmos) which unites the two
main aspects of philosophy. The poetic aspect receives its frankest
treatment in the Symposium; this frankness raises difficulties which
are circumspectly handled in the Republic. We may also speak of the
private and public aspects of philosophy. The private aspect is related
to the particularity of poetry and the immoderateness or hybris of
divine madness. The public aspect is related to the universality of
mathematics and the moderation of justice. If it is fair to say that
the Symposium is about madness and the Republic about sobriety, I
think it an appropriate comment on Plato's subtlety to add that the
discussion of the Good appears in the context of sobriety, but in the
language of madness.
According to the Old Testament, when God created the light, He
saw that it was good. Except for the idea of a creator, these words
are close to the thought of Plato. Every particular sense of the word
"good," when we think about it carefully, leads us upward to the
goodness of intelligibility. The intelligibility of a particular exhibits
its participation in universality. The Good in itself, like mathematical
truth, is public, universal, impersonal. But the act whereby a man
apprehends the Good is particular or private. This distinction again
corresponds approximately to the difference between the Republic
and the Symposium. But the difference is overcome when we remem-
ber that the desire to articulate our vision of the Good is erotic. One
mode of such an articulation is mathematics. For Plato, a mathe-
matical speech is not complete in itself. To complete it, we have to
use nonmathematical or philosophical language. This is to say that
philosophy is not simply the sum of mathematics and poetry, but the
completion of each.
Every human act points beyond itself to a speech which accounts
for that act. Every human speech, in giving its account, points to the
Good with greater or less success, depending upon the degree of its
fluency. "Fluency" is thus another name for what Plato meant by
Eros. A distrust of Eros may be found among responsible men in all
walks of life. In our time and country, it is especially noticeable
among the spokesmen for reason and lucidity in philosophy. Plato
indicates that this distrust is not altogether unreasonable by the
structure of the Republic. At the same time, he has given us the Sym-
posium to show that this distrust is not altogether reasonable . Lu-
cidity is a consequence of fire, and one can hardly be surprised that
some should fear its flames . But an unerotic lucidity generates a su-
perficial clarity which is as unjust to human experience as an exces-
sive insistence upon justice. Each person in every age, and especially
in our own, must decide for him or herself whether it is justice or
slavery which reduces the color of light to a self-righteously uniform
grey.
7
Thought and Touch:

A Note on
Aristotle's De Anima
In the history of philosophy, it would be difficult to discover an

effort to explain the nature of thought which does not make some
fundamental analogy between the processes of thinking and sense-
perception. This is as true in the case of "metaphysicians," "ideal-
ists," and "mystics" as it is of "materialists" or "empiricists."l Even
where such an analogy is not explicitly made (if only to be subse-
quently revised in purely intellectual terms), it seems to be possible
to infer it from the terms and concepts employed by whatever phi-
losopher we may be considering. The capacity whereby "thought
thinks itself" without recourse to analogies, terms, and concepts
drawn from sense-perception, seems to be restricted either to God or
no us (the god of the philosophers) . Every human effort to transcend
(whether partially or altogether) the body is conditioned, to one de-
gree or another, by its corporeal beginning. This condition is exhib-
ited in the fact that words or phrases employed both by philosophical
and ordinary speech to designate the processes of thinking, are largely
derived from the three senses of sight, hearing, and touch. We may
notice two radical examples. (1) The man of faith sees manifestations
or revelations of God; or he hears God's words, directly, or in the
voices of prophets . (2) The man of logic is faithful to a procedure, the
name of which is derived from legein: speech as the instrument of
logic is related etymologically to "collecting" or "gathering to-
gether," the most obvious meaning of which is dependent upon the
A version of this paper was delivered at the Eastern Division meetings of the American
Philosophical Association in December, 1961.
120 Thought and Touch: A Note on Aristotle's De Anima
sense of touch . Thus Kant, for instance, in the Critique o{Pure Reason,
"gathers together" the particulars made accessible through An-
schauung and synthesizes them into wholes (and the relations of
wholes) by the interaction of Anschauung with the transcendental
imagination. The Kantian "gathering together," whereby the know-
able world is "made," would seem to be a mixture, or synthesis, of
activities explicable primarily by seeing and touching. The categories
must "embrace" their schemata, they must "touch" the particulars
in order to subsume them, just as the particulars must be touched
or embraced by the forms of space and time. On the other hand, the
transcendental ego must "see" the particulars as they are grasped by
the forms of perception, it must "see" the subsumption or synthesis
of particulars by categories, and it must "see" the relationship be-
tween categories in the act of judgment.
Whatever the proper interpretation of Kant, it is fruitful to in-
quire whether one may generally differentiate philosophical analyses
of thought according as they give precedence to one of the three senses
of sight, hearing, or touch. One might then go on to determine the
pervasive consequences of choosing one sense rather than another as
of essential importance to an account of thinking. Among the great
Greek philosophers, it seems at first glance that, in terms of this
criterion, they divide into two camps: first, the empiricists, materi-
alists, and scientists, for whom touch predominates; and the "me-
taphysicians" (a word which must be enclosed in quotation marks
when applied to the classical Greeks), for whom sight is of primary
importance. Of course, any effort consistently to employ this initial
distinction, without further qualifications, would soon lead to failure
perhaps in every case. Is not geometry, for example, a mode of theoria,
and so an analogue of sight? Granted that the atomists explain
thought as a material (and so, in principle, tangible) process, do they
not also differentiate atoms in terms of their shapes or forms (and
so, in principle, of their visual properties)? The enterprise makes sense
so long as we attempt to ascertain, not which sense is exclusively
employed as the example from which thought is expounded, but
which sense predominates (explicitly or implicitly). The demonstra-
tion of such a predominance, furthermore, must be complex and con-
crete in each individual case, and can seldom if ever be concluded
merely through a superficial collection of the terms that each phi-
losopher employs . To mention only one obvious difficulty, a philos-
opher may employ , at various places, different terms, now drawn from
one sense, now from another. It would be careless, to say the least,
to assume that the sense to which he refers most frequently is nec-
essarily the one which plays the most fundamental role in his phi-
Thought and Touch: A Note on Aristotle's De Anima 121
losophy. We must in each case analyze thoroughly the total doctrine

concerning thought, presented by the author, in order to find what
we are looking for : which of the senses he tends to use as the paradigm
for the structure and function of thinking, and the broader conse-
quences of this tendency for his general conception of the structure
of reality .
In the following remarks about Aristotle, no claim to such a com-
plete analysis is made or intended. I hope to show just this much:
the De Anima, which contains Aristotle's fullest account of the process
of thinking (as distinct from the objects, or the results, of thought,
or from the logical rules whereby that process is governed), rests
fundamentally upon an analogy between thought and touch. Con-
trary to the impression given by the opening lines of the Metaphysics,
Aristotle rejects the Platonic interpretation of thinking as a kind of
seeing. This rejection is inseparable from Aristotle's conception of ta
onta, the "beings" or things about which one thinks, and it underlies
Aristotle's critical revision of Plato's theory of eide. By identifying the
eidos or idea of a thing with its individual, finite form, Aristotle makes
it possible for the mind, in thinking, to grasp the being or essence of
a thing, and so he makes possible the accomplishment, and not just
the pursuit, of wisdom or certitude, a step which he does not himself
clearly or unambiguously take, but for which he at least lays the
foundation .2 I hope to show that the way in which Aristotle develops
his account of thinking, although it is intended to refute the conten-
tion presented by Socrates in the Platonic dialogues that the psyche
(i.e., fundamentally the noetic aspect of the psyche) cannot distinctly
grasp itself actually supports that Socratic contention. Indirectly, I be-
lieve one may suggest that, if the Aristotelian rejection of the im-
portance given to sight by Plato and his own subsequent analogy
between thought and touch, is inadequate, then so, too, is his rejec-
tion of the Platonic theory of ideai. 3 In any case the following remarks
are offered as partial support of such claims. They do not pretend to
exhaust the riches of the De Anima, let alone to do justice to the entire
Aristotelian conception of thought.
One of the fundamental problems in philosophy is whether man
sees or touches reality as it is, or whether he makes the objects which
he sees and touches or decisively forms them in the process of per-
ceiving them . But we can neither see clearly nor make well the things
or beings (ta onta) of the world, and the world itself as the order of
its things (kosmos), unless we see (or touch) the relationship between
things seen-touched and made on the one hand, and that which sees-
touches and makes on the other. Even if seeing-touching is essentially
making, there is a fundamental sense in which we must first see or
122 Thought and Touch : A Note on Aristotle's De Anima
theorein before we can make or do (prattein); we must first "see" even

in order to determine whether theoria is ultimately touching. And
that which we must see, that within which our questions are illu-
minated, if not answered, is the psyche. Things and world emerge
within the perspectives illuminated by the psyche because he psyche
ta onta pos estin.4 Somehow the psyche is the things which are; some-
how it must itself be seen and thought as it is: we must somehow
grasp it directly as it itself grasps the things which are. We can grasp
the psyche only if it can somehow grasp itself. The psyche can grasp
itself only if it can somehow stand before itself as a visible (or tan-
gible) entity. Entities are visible (or tangible) because they have de-
lineated edges which distinguish them from other entities. Aristotle
does not explain (as does Kant, for example) how the entity is unified,
or transformed from a succession of multiplicities into a unity. Just
as does Plato with his ideai, Aristotle begins with entities whose unity
is already expressed by the delineation or definition which he calls
a form (eidos).5 The form renders the thing actual by bringing or
grasping it from the potentiality of matter, and the actuality of a
thing is its logos, i.e ., its exposition or explanation: eti tou dynamei
ontos logos he entelecheia. 6 The bringing forward or setting up of the
thing from potentiality to actuality in the grasp of its form is directly
analogous to the way in which the psyche grasps the thing through
the two functions of sensation (aisthesis) and thought (noesis) :
apathes ara dei (sic. to noein) einai, dektikon de tou eidous kai dy-
namei toiouton alIa me touto, kai homoios echein, hosper to ais-
thetikon pros ta aistheta, houtO ton noun pros ta noeta. 7
The logos of thinking results from the grasping by nous of the eidos
of the entity, just as the perception of a thing grasps its eidos in a
material imprint, as the signet is imprinted onto wax. s The sense
somehow becomes identical with the sensed; in sensation, the object
is assimilated to the sensing psyche and is thus identical in quality
with it. 9 So, too, the noetic psyche becomes identical in thinking with
the thing thought: holos de ho nous estin ho kat' energeian ta
pragmata. \0
This identification presumes the accessibility of ta pragmata or
ta onta to the sensitive (aesthetic) and noetic modes of the psyche in
the same sense that, in ordinary experience, things are accessible to
our sight and touch. Aristotle makes precisely this assumption. Sim-
ple sensation and noesis cannot err; error is always in the realm of
synthesis. I I The psyche, as aesthetic and noetic, is so formed as di-
rectly to grasp the things or ousiai in the world. That is, it grasps
them as objects delineated by forms, it grasps them directly in their
essential unity, their "whatness," their to ti en einai. 12 Thus Aristotle,

in a passage of central importance, compares the mind (i .e., the noetic
psyche) to the hand: kai gar he cheir organon estin organon, kai ho
no us eidos eidon kai he aisthesis eidos aistheton. 13 By conceiving of
thought as analogous to perception, Aristotle is led to define thinking
by analogy from touch, the most fundamental of our senses, the sense
which defines life itself.14 It is the character of the sense of touch
which determines whether a man will have a good or bad mental
nature. IS Touch alone of all the senses perceives by immediate con-
tact. 16 Despite the opening lines of the Metaphysics, then, it is not
sight, but touch, which is the most philosophical of the senses, be-
cause touch is prior to, more general, and more intimately related to
ta pragmata than sight. 17 "Seeing" is just a kind of touching. We grasp
the forms of the things which are, and thereby know them: touch is
the differentiation of forms which is the necessary condition for know-
ing. Knowing is touching.
Just as the physical hand can touch only concrete individuals
(formal delimitations of extension), so, too, with the mental "hand."
In discussing the difference between aisthesis and episteme, Aristotle
says: ton kath' hekaston he kat' energeian aisthesis, he d'episteme ton
katholou; tauta d'en autei pos esti tei psychei. IB The universal is some-
how (pos) in the psyche: i.e., it is somehow grasped from the individual
entities grasped somehow from potentiality by the actuality of their
forms. We note in passing that Aristotle has now introduced three
distinct (though analogous) and unexplained "graspings" in his ac-
count of thought. The point here at issue is that the account of thought
is inseparable from Aristotle's conception of Being itself, of the way
in which things are. Things are touchable; i.e ., they are discriminable
through aesthetic-noetic touch, which is presumably, qua touching,
an "identification" in both the literal and figurative senses. Through
touch, the psyche identifies things by becoming identical with them.
The "touch" which identifies the universal is derivative from the
"touch" which identifies with the particular. That is, Being is par-
ticular: epei de oude pragma outhen estin para ta megethe, hos dokei,
ta aistheta kechorismenon. 19 That which is, is primarily an ousia,20
i.e., an extended sensible object. 21 For this reason, thinking is im-
possible without sense-perception, and that which is thought is (pri-
marily) that which is perceived: en tois eidesi tois aisthetois ta noeta
esti, ta te en aphairesei legomena kai hosa ton aistheton hekseis kai
pathe. 22 More strictly: not only is thinking dependent upon sensation,
but when one actively thinks, one necessarily does so with an accom-
panying image: kai dia touto oute me aisthanomenos methen outhen
an mathoi oude ksuneie, hotan te theore, ananke hama phantasma ti
124 Thought and Touch: A Note on Aristotle's De Anima
theorein. 23 In slightly different words: the psyche never thinks without

an image, which serves as ifit were a perception. 24
If, then, the psyche is to grasp itself directly, it must be primarily
imaginable: i.e., it must have an eidos, and therefore it must be per-
ceptible. It must be material: an entity or ousia. As such, it must be
actual, an entelecheia having a logos which expresses its to ti en einai.
But by Aristotle's own account, and despite his assurance that nous
is thinkable in the same way that its objects are,25 none of this is
possible. The impossibility of grasping the psyche (Le., the noetic
mode, which is the crucial one) stems from the impossibility of touch-
ing its eidos. The psyche is unable to identify with its eidos, not be-
cause it already is its eidos, but because, except in a vague and met-
aphorical sense, it has no eidos. The non-eidetic character of the
psyche may be specified as follows. Assuming that the psyche is the
eidos eidon, this eidos will depend in fact upon the power of the psyche
to identify with, i.e., to be, each eidos; but Aristotle's exposition does
not, as we shall see, allow us to accept this hypothesis. More fun-
damentally, however, it follows from Aristotle's account that the psy-
che is not, except when it is not itselp6 Consider again the analogy
between the mind and the hand. The hand, in grasping the object,
may be said to hold it, not to become it. The hand "discerns" the form
of the held object precisely by retaining intact its own form, and so
by continuing to exist independently of, delimited from, what it
holds. The thing is held in the hand, and identification occurs, be-
cause there is no identity of hand and thing. If there were such an
identity, every thing, upon being held or touched, would become a
hand. Or else the hand would become each thing; e.g., an apple, a
stone, a coin. The hand, in this alternative, would no longer be a hand:
qua hand, it would not be. Furthermore, the relationship between
hand and thing held is not analogous to the result of impressing a
signet into wax. The signet participates physically in the wax and
produces a new form: we say that the wax is formed by the signet.
Not so in the case of the hand: the hand is not formed by the thing
held; it rather follows the contours of the form of the thing held (as
the eye follows the contours of the thing seen), it holds itself in the
form of the thing held (and even then only to a limited extent): by
"holding itself," it preserves its own form independently of the form
of the thing held.
In the case of thinking, the "holding" or "touching" of the eidos
cannot be a unity. Aristotle says: ou gar ho lithos en tei psychei, alla
to eidos. 27 But if the eidos of the stone is being held in the mind in a
way analogous to the holding of the stone in the hand, then the eidos
cannot at the same time be in the stone. Mental grasping is exclusively
formal: the stone incarnate is not in the mind. Mental grasping must
then be an abstracting of the form from the stone, a taking away from
the stone of its form, which is held in the mind (by hypothesis) as
the hand holds the stone. If, however, the form and matter in the
stone are sundered, then the stone is destroyed: the act of knowing
is then identical with the act of destruction, which is absurd. To
mention only one consequence, unnecessary though it may be, if
knowing were destroying, then the same thing could not be known
again, nor at once by several persons. It is clear that this alternative
need not be pursued. If the form in the mind merely imitates (e.g.,
"photographs") the form in the stone, then it is wrong, and even
senseless, to say, as does Aristotle constantly, that mind and thing
are formally identical in active knowing. If they were identical the
stone would be in the mind; if they are not identical, then the mind
has a form of its own (just as the hand does), which it holds onto while
somehow "holding" what it knows. This separate, enduring form
would then be separately knowable, at least, if not directly to itself,
then to another mind seeking to know it. But this is merely to admit
that the mind cannot think or grasp itself because it is already itself.
The consequences of Aristotle's account are radically more obscure.
For Aristotle has in effect denied that the mind has a separate, en-
during form of its own. That which has a form, is in actuality; it is
not mind, however, but the individual man who persists actually as
an ousia. The mind is not the man, it is not the body, it is not a body.
It moves from potentiality into actuality by somehow grasping an-
other individual form . Since it is actualized by the form of another,
it is not actually itself a form. It comes from nothing, somehow
through the instrumentality of the body (with which it is not iden-
tical), and becomes somehow something not itself. It is not, except
when it is not itself
What is it? It is somehow ta pragmata, ta onta. 28 The mind (and
so the psyche) must be grasped from among ta onta: it must be ab-
stracted from the things which it sees. To see itself directly, it would
have to be entirely other than it is. What is it? It is that which is
other than it is. To see itself, it would have to be that which is in itself
It would have to be an on or pragma, an ousia in the primary sense
of the term. Thus, the psyche is bound into the multiplicity of its
objects; it is bound by multiplicity as well as unity. Its unlimited
power of self-transformation29 depends upon the other, just as the
power to transform itself depends upon its unity (in some sense of
the word). Self and other, the one and the many, unity and succession:
these are the self-differentiations of the psyche. Not merely, then, does
the psyche not think itself, qua itself, but it does not know how to
126 Thought and Touch : A Note on Aristotle's De Anima
think itself, and consequently, it does not know whether it ever thinks
itself. For how could the psyche, which thinks by becoming an entity
or determinate form, even know what it would be like to think pure
or indetenninate form? Precisely then if the psyche is itself formally
indeterminate, it cannot think itself, since to do so would be to de-
termine the indeterminate.
I conclude that (1) Aristotle has not established his analogy be-
tween thinking and touching; (2) his treatment of the noetic psyche
leads to the Platonic doctrine of the incapacity of the psyche to see
itself directly. The indeterminability of the indeterminate leads to
the question of how, if the psyche exists, we can conceive it as a finite
single entity. Can the psyche see its finite existence in the recognition
of other psychai? But in what sense can it have even an indirect rec-
ognition of another psyche? In no determinate sense, as we have al-
ready seen. Furthermore, the psyche cannot infer its finitude (i.e., its
(onn or boundary) from the unlimited sequence of determinate stages
in its career of "being" ta onta. Neither can the psyche define itself
by conceiving of its death or nonexistence, for it cannot become the
form of that which is not, and so which has no form .30 There remains
(within the boundaries of philosophy) just one more possibility; the
psyche infers its finitude (its form) from the indirect evidence of the
existence of other psychai. The multiplicity of finite psychai consti-
tutes a community or polis, a class of indirect traces (of the psyche)
having a common structure which mirrors the structure of the psyche.
And just as there is a multiplicity of citizens within the polis, so too
is there a multiplicity of poleis. The multiplicity of citizens (or of
poleis) is the public, Le., visible, presentation of the invisible psychai.
Man is a zoon logon exon because he is a zoon politikon. The structure
of the city casts light on the functions and powers of the citizens, and
vice versa. The city is the psyche writ large. Thus the Socratic con-
ception of the philosophical significance of political experience: we
wish to see the psyche because it is the place within which the con-
ditions of visibility themselves become visible. But our eyesight is
not keen enough to see the psyche itself; we cannot determine the
indeterminable.31 We turn therefore toward the city, within which
the psyche becomes visible. The articulated structure of the city, the
structure which both differentiates and integrates the possible modes
of experience, is the mirror image of the psyche. Thus the attempt to
touch the psyche is transformed into an attempt to see it.
8
Heidegger's
Interpretation of
Plato
Since this paper deals with some fundamental aspects in the

thought of both Heidegger and Plato, it is essential that I state from
the beginning the limits of my intentions. From the viewpoint of both,
no study of Heidegger's interpretation of Plato could pretend to be
adequate that had not mastered their work as a whole . As both would
agree, the "work" of the philosopher is to think the whole; one there-
fore "masters" the work of a philosopher by himself thinking the
whole in itself, and not merely as it appears in the work of others. A
peculiarity of philosophical thought, as both would perhaps again
agree , is that, although in one sense a part of the whole, it is that
part which mirrors or reveals the whole as a whole. 1 By virtue of the
synoptic character of philosophical thought, one may see an image
of the whole through a consideration of some of its parts. The most
I dare to hope for is that this paper is such an image; I shall be quite
content if the reader regards it as a mythos rather than a logos. It is
an inquiry (historia) that "looks for" (zetein) as it "looks at" (theorein).
In these obscure regions, I am guided by the words of Heraclitus:
"If one does not hope, he will not find the unhoped-for, as not to be
found and inaccessible."2 I take "hope" to stand for the pathos or
Stimmung which opens the soul to the otherwise unseen light of
Being. The mood of hope is frequently called "wonder" (thauma) by
the Greeks; both Plato and Aristotle tell us that it is the origin of
This paper was delivered in a lecture to the graduate philosophy club at Yale University
on January 13, 1966 and was also read to the philosophy department at c. w. Post
College on May 11, 1966.
128 Heidegger's Interpretation of Plato
philosophy. In my own interpretation of Plato's image of the cave,

Socrates silently alludes to wonder when he asks Glaucon to suppose
that one of the cave dwellers, "having been released (from his chains),
is forced instantly (eksaiphnes) to stand up, to turn his head, to walk
toward and look at the light (of the fire) ."3 The periagoge or "con-
version" is not originally paideia or "education," but the instanta-
neous illumination of wonder which permits paideia to occur. 4 It is
this instant of conversion which drags the released man up into the
light of the sun. Wonder opens man's eyes to the light of the good
through the divine spark, the theia moira, the mania, or gift of the
gods, as Plato variously calls the horizon of instantaneous vision. s
The image of the cave is central to Heidegger's interpretation of
Plato. I refer to it at the beginning of this paper, and will return to
it at the end, in order to suggest that Heidegger's interpretation, for
all its help in reading Plato, is a very serious misinterpretation. But
I shall try to do this in a way which does justice to Heidegger's in-
tentions as well as those of Plato. My procedure is therefore somewhat
different from the one which has often been taken by classicists and
historians of philosophy . In my view, this procedure is at bottom
inadequate, not merely because it rests upon the circular acceptance
of conventional hermeneutics, but more specifically because the tra-
ditional picture of Plato as painted by modern scientific and geistes-
geschichtliche scholarship prevents us from seeing important resem-
blances between Plato and Heidegger. Apparently Heidegger himself
has been influenced by that traditional picture, even in the "oddity"
of his approach to Plato. At least he shows no awareness that the
differences between himself and Plato may be viewed from within
the horizon of a common endeavor. Let me give an introductory
sketch of the balance of this paper with a few more words about the
image of the cave.
The "releasement" of the cave dweller by the instantaneous
agency of wonder is reminiscent of what Heidegger calls Gelassenheit.
Wonder leaves man free to let beings be, as they are, independently
of his subjective Vorstellungen of them in the world of doksa. The
difference between the sunlight and the firelight is the Platonic an-
alogue to the "ontological difference" drawn by Heidegger between
Sein and Seienden. Heidegger's "lighting-process of Being" (Lichtung
des Seins) is in Plato the light of the good, and the things in the sun-
light are the Ideas, accessible to noesis or instantaneous vision. The
cave represents doksa ("seeming" in the sense of "opinion"), and vi-
sion by flickering firelight, that is, of the images cast by the fire, and
is the moving, Le., temporal, or discursive thought of dianoia. These
images, we must remember, are the shadows of puppets, presumably
Heidegger's Interpretation of Plato 129
made as well as manipulated by men, an aspect of his own image

which Socrates strangely ignores in the balance of his exposition. I
suggest that the puppets and puppet-masters stand for what Hei-
degger would call the Vorstellungen of Subjektitdt, and so the unre-
cognized ground of dianoetic thinking, in which must be included
what Socrates calls pistis and eikasia when he discusses the divided
line prior to introducing the image of the cave. It is thus man or man's
thought which moves, and neither the Ideas nor the Good. The real
problem in understanding the image of the cave is the unstated re-
lationship between sunlight and firelight, or between noesis and
dianoia.
In other words, the openness which characterizes man in the
"cave" of the world is not the same as the openness of the Good in
the domain of the Ideas. Man shares in the openness of the Good
thanks to his share of the divine nous, or noetic intuition. In order
for man to become aware of this divine gift, he must understand the
direction of his striving or intentionality, which Plato calls Eros, or
more fundamentally, the daimonic .6 And yet he cannot see that di-
rection without the gift itself: hence the circularity of existence 7
which is the ground of the so-called "hermeneutic circle." Eros is the
Platonic version of Sorge, or the directed openness of Time. But within
the interstices of the moments of Eros, another transcendent or ec-
static "place" or "clearing" is opened up: to eksaiphnes, within which
man sees the Ideas, and to the degree that he can see it reflected in
their visibility, the Good. Being or the Good conceals itself as revealed
in the forms of the Ideas, in the formlessness of mind, and in the
flickering quasi forms of spatio-temporal individuals. Mind, one may
say in this connection, is that aspect of Being which stands for the
whole by standing to its thoughts as Being stands to beings . But the
minding, caring, or Eros of mind, and so the light in and by which
it speaks, although it derives the luminosity of its light from Being,
constitutes a difference within Being, as is clear from the fact that
Ideas do not speak.
Socrates calls Being "the Good," and still more erotically "the
sun,"8 not because he has "objectified" Being, but because of what
may be explained as a fundamental disagreement with Heidegger
about Being itself. At first glance, the "sun" is at least in some crucial
respects surprisingly like Heidegger's Sein. It is the giver of life as
well as light, and so of man and speech . Its light can blind as well
as illuminate, and hence "truth" as "presence" or "unconcealment"
is inseparable from "absence" or a hiddenness by virtue of light itself.
Its rising and setting may be understood as defining time and so, too,
historically: the sun's motion thus opens up the horizon within which,
and only within which, we see it. In these and similar terms, Hei-
degger's Sein is even more like the sun than that of Plato, or so I
would suggest. For Heidegger, thanks to the temporal nature of the
horizon of man's vision, Being is a process or Bewegung that "occurs"
(ereignet) as a show in and through man or Dasein. Whatever may lie
"behind" the horizon of temporality as an unseen source or unity ,
Being as presence or emanation from that unity is confined by time
in the very act by which time opens the showplace within which
Being presents itself to man. In the most fundamental sense, the time
within which the show occurs and man's viewing of it are one and
the same; that is, the openness of Sein and the openness of Da-sein
are one and the same. Given his special etymologies of the consti-
tutive terms, Heidegger accepts the Parmenidean utterance that to
gar auto noein estin te kai einai. 9 To auto is the Zwiefalt within Being
between itself and thought; but at the root of this duality is a unity
which one might call their need for each other. 1O For Plato, on the
contrary, einai has no need of noein. There is a difference between
"sunlight" and "firelight" corresponding to the double duality be-
tween Being and beings on the one hand, and noesis and dianoia on
the other. Thought needs Being, but this need can be gratified only
by way of beings. In sum: Being is the Good, and beings (ta ontos
onta) are the Ideas. Being is visible/concealed only as or in the form
of Ideas or beings, which in turn present themselves to man as ap-
pearances (ta phainomena).
Since Being and thought are not united in Plato by a reciprocal
need, it is less fruitful to speak of a "duality" here than of a "harmony
of opposites." The unity between the One and the many has reference
in Plato to the structure of beings, and so to mind only as a being,
but not between Being simply and thought or mind simply. Mind is
opposed to Being as the living or thinking to the nonliving or non-
thinking. Of course, if we consider such passages as Timaeus 35alff,
we may say that, for Plato, Ideas, mind, and spatio-temporal partic-
ulars are related (syngeneis) by the common elements of the unchang-
ing, indivisible, or eternal ousia, sameness, and otherness. But this
is merely to render somewhat more precise the structural relation of
beings as beings. The recipe in question fails to explain why one kind
of being is alive and thinking, whereas the others are not. The problem
is reemphasized rather than resolved if we take seriously the figure
of the demiurge as an ultimate principle of unification, since again,
there is an opposition between the demiurge and the Ideas on the
one hand, and the demiurge and the receptacle on the other. This is
scarcely a problem which is peculiar to Plato; in the history of phi-
losophy, one finds a variety of proposed solutions which cannot be
examined here. Perhaps I may simply mention the situation in Kant

because of its relevance as an intermediate situation between Plato
and Heidegger. In Kant we have the three "dimensions" of tran-
scendental ego, phenomena, and things-in-themselves or the nou-
menal. The distinction between phenomenal and noumenal is main-
tained by the schematism, or generally time as the product of the
pure productive transcendental imagination. I I As the form of inner
sense, time is the form of the phenomenal world, which is conse-
quently temporal, as the noumenal world is not. Furthermore, since
time is the product of the transcendental imagination, it defines a
"horizontal" dualism between the transcendental ego and the phe-
nomenal-noumenal, which we may call the "vertical" dualism. In
other words, as a function of the transcendental ego, the transcen-
dental imagination is obviously not itself in time.
Restricting our attention to these three Kantian dimensions, may
we not say that the openness of the phenomenal is different from the
openness of the transcendental, and that both in turn differ from the
closure of the noumenal, which reveals itself, so to speak, only in the
domain of practice? And as in the case with Plato's demiurge, if we
look to God for the ultimate principle of unification of the three di-
mensions, a problem arises. God cannot properly be said to have
"created" the transcendental ego, which Kant thought of as a logical
condition binding even God in the creation of an intelligence con-
forming to sensible extension . So far as such an intelligence is con-
cerned, its own activity is the ground for every instance of combi-
nation or unity in its objects. 12 I can only suggest here that unity in
the world of human thought seems finally to emerge from the pro-
duction of time by the transcendental ego; and this of course is Hei-
degger's own conclusion in his first Kant book. 13 Since the same can-
not be said of the transcendental ego or of God, the result is as follows:
the openness of the eternal is not the same as the openness of the
temporal.
Differently stated, the eternal is atemporally "present" as the
ground of temporal presence or of temporality altogether. But the
manner of "atemporal presence" is not the same in Kant as it is in
Plato. God is something more than the Platonic demiurge. Nor can
the transcendental ego be equated with the Ideas. If we restate the
three dimensions in Kant as God, transcendental ego, and the activity
of the human mind in its spatio-temporal form or bond, we may say
that in each case the principle of unity is a kind of mind or thinking,
whatever the difficulties which arise in attempting to unify, or even
harmonize, the three different kinds. Kant, despite his concern for
morality or practice, is on the way toward identifying Being and
mind: even morality is grounded in the autonomy of thinking mind.

And thanks to the root function of the transcendental imagination,
he is on the way toward making time the horizon within which Being,
even atemporal or eternal Being, "occurs."
To return to Plato and Heidegger, they differ radically in this
respect: for Plato, time is not the horizon of openness within which
Being lights up beings (and thereby reveals itself as concealed). In-
stead, Being is the horizon of openness within which time occurs as
the intermittently illuminated twilight of man's existence. Second,
openness in Plato is only partly mental: ta eide are not the same as
ta noemata. Whereas Heidegger's formulation of the correlation be-
tween Being and man, or his "phenomenology," is unmistakably
Kantian in its development of thinking, and so of time, as the struc-
ture common to both, Heidegger differs from Kant in that, even in
his later works, he attempts to eliminate every trace of the transcend-
ent from his phenomenology or henneneutic of the world. For Hei-
degger, to name "man" is to name residence in the fourfold unity of
heaven, earth, divine and mortal, a residence with things. 14 Thus the
heavenly or divine is immanent in man's worldly life, very much as
in Greek thought; it does not refer to the transcendental Christian
God, as He is in himself apart from his revelation to man. At the same
time, the complete immanence of human existence provides a link
between Heidegger and Christianity. Since the world is bounded by
temporality, and Being emanates from a hidden source, it is possible
for the Christian reader to find in Heidegger both the contingency of
human existence and the Deus absconditus of his own faith . IS
Let me recapitulate what has been said thus far. The most general
way to state the error of Heidegger's interpretation of Plato is by
observing that Plato recognizes the difference between Being and
beings, between the light and what is uncovered or illuminated. For
this reason, Plato sought to avoid a speech which would temporalize,
objectify, or rationalize Being itself. 16 The openness of Being, as prior
to distinctions of beings, particular speeches, kinds of measuring, and
the subject-object relationship, is the unstated luminosity within
which the dialogues are themselves visible. The dialogues become
intelligible only when we perceive this unstated luminosity, which
is directly present as the silence of Plato. The spoken voice of the
dialogues occurs always within the cave (if not always in the language
of the cave). We may emerge from this cave at any instant that we
hear the silent accompanying voice of Plato. In my opinion, Heidegger
goes wrong because he is not sufficiently attentive to the silence of
Plato. Still more specifically, he never confronts the significance of
Socratic irony or the dramatic form of the dialogues.
Heidegger is resolved in the face of Angst, but never playful. I

suggest that this may account for the surprisingly conventional char-
acter of Heidegger's unorthodoxy in the interpretation of Plato. It is
true that Heidegger inverts the conventional or obvious interpreta-
tion of the Platonic Ideas by rendering them in a Kantian perspective.
But an inversion of orthodoxy, as Heidegger himself has reminded
us in the case of Sartre, is still grounded in convention. In Heidegger's
treatment, the Platonic Idea becomes more radically an epistemo-
logical concept than in the work of the most ordinary of analysts.
Like the most professorial of philologians, Heidegger normally ig-
nores the dialectical context of those sentences which he abstracts
for analysis, as though they were independent, technical propositions
instead of the speech of irony. His procedure in this vein is also rem-
iniscent of the way in which Rudolf Carnap casts positive scorn on
one of Heidegger's negative utterances. Even when Heidegger seems
to be aware of the dramatic context, as in Platons Lehre von der Wahr-
heit, he refers only to those aspects of it which seem to serve his
purpose. He ignores the details even when insisting upon an individ-
ual nuance. In proceeding abruptly to the voice of Being, Heidegger
does not do justice to the Platonic view that it can be recorded only
via the infinitely subtle echoes in becoming.
Heidegger's account of Plato turns upon his interpretation of the
Ideas as a distortion of beings by the rational or categorizing function
of mind, and so as the decisive step in the veiling over of Being. As
he states it, in the original and authentic Greek teaching, Being is
understood as the presence of visibility, in the dual sense of "sprout-
ing" or "opening forth" (physis) and "gathering together" or "col-
lecting" (logos)P The appearance or presentation of beings within
the openness (Lichtung) of Being, is a process, happening, or even-
tuation whereby Being both diversifies itself by spilling out from an
unknown and silent source, and also collects or gathers itself together
in the common bonds of sight and hearing. ls But the happenings or
events of this process (beings) draw our attention away from the pro-
cess itself (Being); we are tempted into the description of beings in
their heterogeneity and specificity, into the technical activity of sort-
ing and measuring in accordance with kinds. Being is then conceived
as a general property of beings, instead of as their ground or source.
We consequently fail to observe the difference between Being and
beings. Being is not thought in its own terms but as an abstraction
or derivative from beings. 19
Plato renders Being invisible by sundering logos from physis and
thereby creating the two realms of the supersensible and the phe-
nomenaI.2° Whereas previously "truth" or "uncoveredness" was the
same as "Being" or the process of sprouting forth and gathering to-

gether in the openness of presence, it is now conceived as a property
of statements about beings. "Truth" is now defined as "correctness"
in the sense of similarity or correspondence between propositional
speech and the separate Ideas?1 Man is thus sundered from lived
intimacy and integrity with Being. Truth is no longer an activity of
manifestation or uncovering in which man participates, and by which
he is "in touch with" what presents itself,22 Wisdom no longer retains
its authentic meaning of "knowing one's way about in that which is
present as the uncovered and which is the continuous as that which
appears."23 Philosophy is no longer life, but a preparation for dying;
or more accurately, it is the death of physis through the instrumen-
tality of the sundered and so altered logos.
The Platonic murder of physis is perpetrated in the name of the
Ideas. In his concern with the visibility of beings, Plato mistook their
"look" or "face," how they seem to man, for what they genuinely
present themselves to be .24 According to Heidegger, the Ideas are
"appearances" in the sense of subjective projections rather than the
presentation of presence as it is allowed to be by a thinking which
is not willful but marked by Gelassenheit. 25 This is the nub of Hei-
degger's conventional orthodoxy: he completes a line of argument
which goes back through Nietzsche, Marx, Hegel, even Kant, to the
beginnings of the modern era. What we may call the "historical in-
dividual" (an individual bud or sprout of physis) first points itself out
as a that (to hoti) . This is the facticity, as well as the finitude and
temporality of beings, which emerge from the aperture of openness
in the bonds of time: mittence is intermittent. Plato covers over the
that by transforming it into a what (ti esti).26 The facticity of Dasein
is replaced by the Idea of man, or the groundless play of Being is
replaced by the technical principle of the ground?7
The idea or picture by which Plato designates the what is in fact
a photograph, a categorial re-presentation that hangs over, and so
renders invisible, the that. 28 I suggest that the Heideggerean "that"
has its own proximate historical origins in Kant's Ding-an-sich, and
so in the Empfindungen as prior to synthesis by the transcendental
imagination?9 The deepest concern of Heidegger's thought is to by-
pass the machinery of the transcendental ego, in order to stand before
the presynthetic Empfindung or individual moment of the tempor-
ality of Being. 30 There are two implications associated with this con-
cern. First, Heidegger accepts the Kantian conception of reason as
ordering, synthesizing, projective, or positing structure, even while
condemning these activities as the obscuration of Being. 31 From this
perspective, the Platonic Idea is a primitive version of the principle
of modern epistemology. The Idea is the first product of the will to

power, or the will to will, whereby man makes use of the buds of
Being while himself attempting to replace the plant. In addition to
this, the unique historical individual, the that of beings apart from
the subjective what, is analogous to a moment of time conceived as
existing independently of the formal properties by which a moment
is designated: as the "pure stuff' of time, something in itself, but not
deriving its self from categories which express mental unifications
imposed from outside the moment.
In the first part of this paper, I began with a general comparison

between Plato and Heidegger, formulated in terms of the image of
the cave and the sun, gave the example of Kant as an intermediate
position between them, and then summarized the particulars of Hei-
degger's treatment of Plato throughout his writings . In this part, I
shall try to combine generality and particularity by taking up certain
pervasive features of Heidegger's interpretation of Plato. As I have
al~eady indicated, the issue which is common to these features is the
problem of openness: that is, the relation between Being and time,
as it emerges from a consideration of thinking, speaking, and doing.
Once again, my account is in no sense intended as complete; I hope
merely to sketch out the broad picture of what is involved in a genuine
comparison of Plato and Heidegger.
According to the Platonic dialogues as they have always been
understood, the presence of visibility or intelligibility is the timeless
presence of Ideas as ungenerated, unchanging, neither spatial nor
temporal, both general and particular, somehow accessible as both
that and what, or in the visibility of the instance (the temporal shadow
of the instant) as both same and other. In addition, the dialogues say
nothing of a noetic structure which constructs or projects formal
unity from or by operations upon a previously indeterminate man-
ifold. Instead, no us "sees" or "grasps" the manifold as formally de-
termined or differentiated. Noetic vision as described in the dialogues
is in fact the "letting be" of beings as they present themselves within
the light of the Good. 32 I am tempted to say that it is Plato rather
than Heidegger who genuinely counsels Gelassenheit in the presence
of Being. For Plato, the noetic "activity" is a pathos in the sense of
self-surrender to the presence of the visible, an absenting in this pres-
ence of the self-ish projections of dianoia or (in Heidegger's sense)
ratio. It is discursive reason (dianoia) which performs the temporal
activity of gathering or weaving together in logoi what has been re-
membered of the instantaneous (to eksaiphnes), transtemporal, and
in that sense ecstatic vision of the Ideas. 33 The logos of dianoia, or
human speech, is self-ish, or what man brings to the self-less vision

of noesis. Dianoia is the Bewegung which speaks or categorizes, and
so obscures as it represents, the stillness of noesis. One of the most
difficult problems in Plato is whether this "stillness" is also a "si-
lence," and in what sense one can say what one has seen in the ecstatic
instant. 34 Here Plato comes very close to Heidegger's view that "lan-
guage speaks as the ringing of silence."35 Perhaps the difference is
this: for Heidegger, "thinking is a hearing that sees,"36 whereas for
Plato, it is a seeing that hears.
If I may speculate further in this vein, vision seems more appro-
priate than hearing to instantaneous occurrence. Hearing "takes
time" just as does dianoetic thinking. Whether we hear words or the
ringing of silence, there is a sequence constituting the message with
an internal structure that is temporal rather than spatial. Within this
metaphor, there can be an instantaneous look which we then trans-
late into speech by means of temporality. In hearing, there is a gath-
ering together of one word after another, or a movement of thought
that may be "measured" by the "before" and "after" of the words.
In seeing, the before and after of the spatial elements of the vision
may be simultaneous, as in the Gestalt of a single glance. As I un-
derstand Heidegger, noetic vision is for him a looking-around-at or
circumscribing of what has been gathered together in hearing. For
Plato, on the other hand, it is hearing which moves or follows after
the visible in the dimension of recollection . Speech then arises from
the erotic striving after the completeness of the Ideas. We remember
temporally, and so self-ishly, the vision of completeness in the ecstasy
of the instant. The transcendence of time is thus for Plato immanent
in the sense of interstitial: Instantaneous vision occurs in the inter-
stices between the moments of time, and serves to hold these mo-
ments together as the visible world. 37 The wholeness of what is held
together can be spoken only in myth, or with respect to the paradig-
matic function of vision, the attempt to speak in spatial, visual
terms. 38 Since it takes time to see as well as to speak in the spatio-
temporal world, there can be no complete vision or speech within
that world.
Human speech is for Plato a "moving image of eternity."39 Con-
sequently, man is not needed "to guard or watch over (hUlen) the
unhiddenness and hiddenness of every essence (Wesen) on this earth,"
as Heidegger puts it. 40 Watching is not watching over; we must dis-
tinguish between the presence of Being and its appearance to man.
In other words, Plato is not a phenomenologist; the distinction be-
tween Ideas and ta phainomena corresponds to that between two
kinds of visibility. Man is peculiar in his ability to move between
these two domains, but his movement is not an integral component

of the mode of visibility of the Ideas. 41 For Heidegger, however, there
is no Being without man. 42 One might express the difference between
the two thinkers by saying that the movement of intermediacy or
doksa in Plato is not the Geschehnis or Geschick of Geschichte. It is
not the voice of Being but the voice of man . Although Heidegger fre-
quently emphasizes that Being occurs independently of man's acts,
choices, or will,43 this occurrence is as such to and for man, and is
consequently described in formal or structural terms which derive
their meaning from the role of man as participant. As the teacher
says in a difficult to translate but important passage in Gelassenheit:
Human nature is released to that-which-regions and used by it
accordingly for this reason alone-because man has no power
over the truth, and this remains independent of him. The truth
can abide independently of man only because human nature as
releasement to that-which-regions is used by it in regioning-to-
man (Vergegnis) and for the preservation of the conditioning pro-
cess of things [Bedingnis: i.e., the process by which things become
visible in the region). The independence of truth from man is ev-
idently a relation to human nature, which relation rests on the
regioning (Vergegnis) of human nature in that-which-regions. 44
To comment on this passage: openness occurs, or is open, as open
to or around man, and man himself is a region of that openness:
namely, the region within which openness shows itself. Man does not
make or will openness, nor the truth that shows itself in openness,
but he is needed in order that there be a show. Openness in Heidegger
is therefore equivalent to man's "visual" field, in the language of
sight. In Plato, on the contrary, the openness of man's visual field is
into an openness that transcends what man can see.45 Since both
Plato and Heidegger are men rather than gods, they can only speak
the language of men, and say what men can see. But for Heidegger,
man's speech brings das Seiende into openness.46 The structure of
openness can be appropriately described in terms of openness-to-
man, however difficult the task of forging an adequate terminology.
What looks like the anthropomorphic dimension in Heidegger's lan-
guage is then not myth but the speech of Being. Differently stated:
both Plato and Heidegger might agree that openness to man is only
the visible "side" of the horizon of Being. For Heidegger, however,
nothing can be said about openness-away-from-man, beyond refer-
ring to it as the source or origin of the occurrence of the Being-process.
Being emanates unto man out of an invisible "opening." But it is Being
which so emanates; in speaking of the phenomenological unity be-
tween man and openness-to-man, we are speaking of Being. Our

speech is the speech of Being: i.e., Being speaks.
In the language of Sein und Zeit, man is radically in-the-world:
that is, in this world, the Lebenswelt of doksa, and so of temporality,
which functions as boundary in the double sense of delimiting and
defining. For Plato, on the other hand, openness-to-man as a being-
in-this-world is like the opening into a cave, an openness of flickering
shadows rather than of the lighting-up process of Being, but one in
which by a divine fate or madness we are enabled to discern the
visibility of Being as open away from man. The discernment of Being
in this world enables man to exist ek-statically in another "world."47
The opening into the cave is the horizon of our vision, but as such it
is also visible as an opening out of the cave. This vision or recognition,
that there can be no cave except as enclosed by an external horizon,
is the first step in the upward motion away from human openness.48
Even as a resident of the cave world of doksa, man may intermittently
leave or transcend that world for "another place." But the step up
is also a step down, namely, by the light from the external horizon
which illuminates, and so identifies, the opening of the cave.
To terminate this line of speculation, we see that when Heidegger
makes man the shepherd of Being, he suppresses the fact that shep-
herds are ultimately the agents of butchers and wool merchants. As
a recent interpreter, Father G. S. Seidel, puts it:
But since being gives itself ("es gibt") to Dasein, it is man that
comes to determine the course which being is to have in history.
It is Dasein that comes to determine the fate not only of mankind
in this regard, but even of being itself, since it is Dasein that first
brings being along a way that is in the open (Weg des Entbergens).49
In other words, if "letting-be" is also a "grasping" or "taking in"

analogous to the gathering up of the harvest, man's activity, as dis-
tinct from the pathos of theoria, does not merely tend to or watch,
but imprints. 50 Man plays a part in forming both the shape and sig-
nificance of the crop, which is a crop only thanks to man. The am-
biguity to which I refer is clearly if unintentionally revealed in the
following passage from Father Richardson's highly sympathetic ac-
count of Heidegger. He says that the function of Dasein
is to gather into concentration the overwhelming power of Being
and thus contain (noein) its dynamic advance in such a way as
to force it into the disclosure through which the non-concealment
(truth) of beings comes-to-pass ... in forcing Being into disclo-
sure, There-being must let-be (manifest) the negativity as well
51
Perhaps it is true that Heidegger, as he and his disciples claim,

has escaped the relativism implicit in the subject-object relation. 52
So far as I can see, there is still a strong component of what must be
called "anthropomorphism" in his portrait of Being. And the reason
for this is the immanence or this-worldliness of openness as radically
inseparable from the openness of man to Being. To the immanence
of openness qua thinking there corresponds an immanence of open-
ness qua speaking. At the same time, Heidegger's lack of sympathy
for the Platonic mode of speech leads him to accuse it of what
amounts to subjectivism, in however preliminary a form. In so doing,
Heidegger replaces the playfulness of Platonic dialectic by the utter
seriousness of history. Thus for Heidegger, the nature of Being varies
at different times because of its dependence as visibility upon how
it looks to the great thinkers of a given epoch,53 whereas for Plato
visibility endures in and as itself at all times, regardless of how it is
seen by anyone. The fundamental "timelessness" of the Platonic di-
alectic is a denial of the philosophical relevance of history in any but
its literal sense of "inquiry." I playfully suggest that Heidegger's doc-
trine of radical historicity is in part the consequence of an excessive
seriousness or "realism" which prevents him from appreciating the
playfulness of Plato's "idealistic" dialectic. The very few instances of
Heidegger's irony that I have observed are bitter rather than playful.
In general, Heidegger makes no jokes: his is a spiel-los Sprache von
der Spiel des Seins. 54
Heidegger's seriousness was evident from the popular sections
of Sein und Zeit, in which he analyzes the "fallen" condition of human
existence in unmistakably Christian tones .55 One has only to contrast
his Daseinsanalytik with the equivalent surface-stratum of the Pla-
tonic dialogues, with their "pagan" portrait of daily life, to see the
difference between a timely and timeless account of time. Just as
melodramatic essays on the philosophical significance of play are no
substitute for the dramas of a playful psyche, so one cannot under-
stand irony by translating it into the List der Vernunft or the speech
of Being. It is not Being but man who is ironical. According to Hei-
degger, Western philosophy since the time of Plato may be called
dialectic. 56 But Heidegger interprets" dialectic" as kategorein or "ad-
dressing something as something," which is in turn a "thinking
through and discussing of the gene tou ontos"; i.e., "dialectic" is for
Heidegger exclusively the techne of division and collection in ac-
cordance with kinds. "Dialectic" as Heidegger understands it is es-
sentially logic, as he indicates in reference to Hegel. 57 Heidegger ig-
nores the playful or ironical dialectic of man: specifically human
speech is almost at once replaced by specifically divine speech, by
"metaphysics" or "onto-theo-Iogy" (and then in turn by the utterance

of Being). Therefore he seems to be quite deaf to the possibility that
there is a note of irony in the dialogical speeches about the techniques
of division and collection. Despite his "unusual" etymologizing, Hei-
degger's interpretation of Platonic dialectic is in its own way as in-
adequate as that of orthodox classicists. Heidegger" epistemologizes"
Plato.
Although Heidegger says next to nothing about "dialectic," he is
quite loquacious on the subject of logos. 58 By considering very briefly
his treatment of logos, we are able to see the Heideggerian replace-
ment for human dialectic: namely, what I am tempted to call with
very little irony "the silence of agriculture." The simplest translation
for the Greek word dialektike is "conversation." We might also say
"through" or "by means of speech," thereby indicating the sense of
an activity or directed motion. The verb lego, as Heidegger has con-
tinually emphasized, means "to pick up," "to gather," or "to choose"
as well as "to say." Thus" dialogue" or "dialectic" might be defined
by "collection" as well as by "conversation." Dialectic, in a Heideg-
gerian mode, would then be a turning-toward, and so an attending-
to, which is also a living-with what has been gathered together. In
an essay on logos, Heidegger gives as its original and authentic mean-
ing "the collecting laying-down and laying before of what collectively
presents itself."59 Thus speech is derived from the activities of se-
lecting and collecting, and still more fundamentally, from the sim-
plest acts of human life, such as gathering the harvest or selecting
the best grapes for winemaking. That which has been collected, lies
before us and so displays itself or appears, in a rest which is conse-
quently a derivative-and a temporary derivative-of the motion of
collection.
There are a number of observations to be made with respect to
this interpretation of logos. To begin with, it makes the silence of
doing into the ground or paradigm of the speech of thinking.60 Instead
of human dialectic, we begin with prephilosophical silence. No men-
tion is made of the fact that this silence is already defined by speech.
But apart from this, the kind of silence which functions as paradig-
matic is especially instructive. So far as I am aware, the Greeks made
love at least as frequently as they made wine. And yet, if I am not
mistaken, Heidegger never mentions the sexual meanings of such
related words as synousia or dialego when he etymologizes upon the
existential senses of Greek words for "being" and "speaking." Why
is agriculture ontologically superior to Eros? Is that superiority ont-
ically evident? Not to me .61 I should also say here that the act of
gathering in the harvest relates man silently to the mute plants,
whereas Eros normally relates human to human in a situation in

which speech is a natural component. Performatory utterances are
proper between lovers ("with this ring I do thee wed") but not be-
tween man and the grape ("with this press I do thee crush"). It is
true that the power of the grape may move us to an ode to Bacchus,
but Heidegger is not concerned with this "humanization" of vini-
culture in his etymologizing. Man brings speech to the soil, whereas
speech emerges from within Eros.
By returning to the "founding" or geschichtliche senses of tech-
nical philosophical terms in archaic ordinary speech, Heidegger gives
the impression of moving back from the rationalizations of meta-
physics to authentic thinking, and so to the origins of thinking in its
initial harmony with Being, prior to the dis-junction between noein
and einai, or the sundering of logos from physis. But everything de-
pends upon the kind of motion by which we are returned to the origin,
and so to the relation between motion and rest within the origin.
Throughout his writings and in a variety of ways, Heidegger treats
rest as a "tarrying-in" or derivative of motion. 62 And motion in the
ontological sense, as for example in his analysis of the worldliness of
Dasein, is always understood to be primarily temporal rather than
spatia1.63 His interpretation of Anwesenheit, parousia, and the like as
"presence" in a sense derived from the verb tense or temporal present
is thus essentially related to his etymology of logos as a "gathering
together." The unity of thought (noein) and speech (legein) conceived
as the "taking up," "preserving," or "taking care of" what has been
"gathered" or "stored up" is grounded in the conception of physis as
growth, and so as birth and death: it is grounded in temporality, and
in temporality conceived in terms of human activity. This latter point
is perhaps more evident in Sein und Zeit than in the later works, since
in the former, Zeitlichkeit is grounded in the "Da" of Da-sein, or the
worldliness of the world as a referential structure of human signifi-
cances.64 But it remains true in the later works, even though Zeitli-
chkeit seems to be replaced by Geschichtlichkeit as the Geschick des
Seins. In each case, by conceiving of Being within the horizon of time,
Heidegger never takes seriously the possibility that the temporal
present is itself a derivative of the trans-temporal presence of
visibility.65
The discussion of thinking and speaking has taken place in terms
of a contrast between dialectical and (radically) historical speech;
that is, with respect to the difference between Plato and Heidegger
concerning speech as uncovering or opening, and hence as regards
its temporality . The whole discussion serves as an anticipation of the
third term which, as I mentioned at the beginning of this part of my
paper, is relevant to an account of the problem of openness: doing.

The role or meaning of human doing is implicit throughout any ad-
equate analysis of Heidegger's conceptions of thinking and speaking.
The question of that role emerged explicitly in my discussion of the
difference for Heidegger between his Sorge and Platonic Eros. Being
needs man (even if only occasionally66), whereas for Plato, it is only
the case that man needs Being. Let me restate this question: to what
extent does man as agent share in the process by which Being occurs
or presents itself? The answer to this question also determines our
attitude toward history, that is, to the question whether there is such
a thing as historicity. In other words, the whole issue of historicity is
subordinate to the problem of whether or in what sense "opening"
is a human "doing." I shall sketch the difference between Plato and
Heidegger on these problems by returning to the question of the re-
lation between openness and time.
Even if physis in the sense of eidos should be historically posterior
to physis in the sense of growth, there is no reason to assume an
inverse identity between the order of history and that of authentic
thought or the uncovering of truth. If there were, then we should have
to agree with Pindar that "water is best" and become disciples of
Thales, the original instrument of the Seinsgeschick that has deter-
mined Western Geschichte.67 Here as elsewhere we may note the cryp-
tic influence of Hegel on Heidegger's teaching. 68 Of course, like Hegel,
Heidegger does not mean to suggest that Being is temporal in the
way of beings.69 For both, the structure of time is meant to escape
the transience of its moments. In Sein und Zeit, the nontransient na-
ture of the structure of time was evident in the form of the existentials
of Dasein (the immanent counterpart to the structures of the tran-
scendental ego of Kant). In one of the latest works of Heidegger with
which I am familiar, the same point is expressed in a more funda-
mental manner. In an unpublished lecture from 1962 entitled Zeit
und Sein, Heidegger speaks of Zeitraum, or the structure of time itself,
rather than of the structure of the temporality of Dasein. The situation
now seems to be as follows: in order for Being to be characterized
by "there" (and so of course by "here"), or by ecstatic location, di-
rectedness or intentionally structured openness must be established.
Previously, this openness was grounded in Dasein.70 But now Hei-
degger resituates this "ground" in the source or origin of the Being-
process: "Zeitraum names the openness that clears (lichtet) itself in
the joint self-sufficiency of future, past, and present."71 Being as An-
wesenheit or presence occurs as a givenness within this clearing. It
now looks as though Heidegger distinguishes between Sein and Da-
sein, but as we shall see, the look is deceptive.
I have just used the phrase "occurs as a givenness"; Heidegger

says "Es gibt Sein" and "Es gibt Zeit." The Es is to be defined out
of geben (like the "that which" in Gegnet), or the sending of Being
within the clearing of time, and thereby as what defines Being and
time in their togetherness (zusammengehoren): as Ereignis, which nor-
mally means "event" or "occurrence." In this key term, there is al-
ready a suggestion of the ambiguous relation between Being and man
in the "late" Heidegger. As is often the case, Heidegger employs a
word which normally carries a temporal, historical, or even human
meaning, but in what he insists is a special or extra-ordinary sense.
Thus, although we are told that Ereignis is a unique term, which in
its special sense can no more be adequately translated than logos or
Tao, Heidegger explicates its significance by speaking of both Eigenen
and eignen: one's own or proper possession (somewhat reminiscent
of the definition of Dasein as "my own Being"72), together with the
notion of suitability or fitness. 73 Or again: "In the sending of the
G-eschick of Being, in the sufficiency of Time, a dedication, a trans-
ferring points itself out, namely of Being as presense and time as reach
(scope, range) in Ereignis."74 Geschick normally means "fate," but
Heidegger employs it in the sense of "order": namely, the order
whereby Being consoles man by clearing itself, or filling up the Zeit-
Spiel-Raum,75 i.e., as the "over against each other" of Being and
man. 76
If we try to combine these representative passages from the later
Heidegger, the result, as I understand it, is this. Openness is implicitly
intentionally structured in a way which reveals itself to man as
time. 77 Being presents itself within this openness, and its presence is
thus radically temporal. In speaking of "presenting," "giving," "send-
ing," "consoling," "appropriate," and indeed of "past, present, fu-
ture," we acknowledge the inseparability of the unity "openness-pres-
ence-within-openness" from man (or Dasein). As Heidegger says in
his preface to the Richardson volume:
If we replace 'Time' by: the lighting of the self-hiding of Anwesen
(presence as holding itself together and before), then Being defines
itself out of the projective scope of Time. But this results only in
so far as the lighting of self-hiding puts to its use a thinking that
corresponds to it. Anwesen (Being) belongs to the lighting of self-
hiding (Time). Lighting of self-hiding (Time) produces Anwesen
(Being).78
That is: Being belongs to time as that which hides itself within it; as
so hiding, it appears (i.e ., presents itself) as the structural process of
temporality.
This "appearance" is not an illusion, but how Being presents

itself to (human) thought. Man can never cease to think temporally,
any more than he could cease (while still a man) to see beings. Being
can only be "seen" as the masked self-presentation, masked by beings
in temporally directed order (Geschick). This temporally directed
order, the unity of Being and time with respect to openness, visibility,
and presence, i.e., with respect to thought, and so to man (who also
stands in the lighting of Being), is Ereignis: the logos or Tao of Hei-
degger's teaching. 79 It is the rest of the total assemblage of motion,
and thus reminiscent of the transcendental Bewegung of Hegel's Ab-
solute. Thus we read in Gelassenheit, apropos of the occasion for
releasement:
Scholar: But that means, such an occasion brings us to the path which
seems to be nothing else than releasement itself ...
Teacher: . . . which is something like rest.
Scholar: From here on it is suddenly clearer to me the extent to which
movement (Bewegung) comes out of rest and stays within rest.
Teacher: Releasement would then be not only the path, but the movement
(along it).
Scholar: Where does this strange path go, and where does the movement
along it rest?
Teacher: Where else but in that-which-regions, to which releasement is
what it is?8o
In other words, the "resting" or "abiding" of man, things, and re-

gions, or of openness altogether in its regionality, is also a "tarrying"
or motion which Heidegger again expresses in his later writings as
das Geviert: the fourfold assemblage of man and gods, heaven and
earth, whose reciprocal excitation defines the structure of "the
thing."81
Thus I agree with the following remark by Father Richardson in
the conclusion to his long and useful study:
Heidegger's perspective from beginning to end remains phenom-
enological. By this we mean that he is concerned only with the
process by which beings are lit up and reveal themselves as what
they are for and to man. 82
Such a process necessarily requires as an integral element the doing

or acting of man. As I previously suggested, the inseparability of mind
or thought from Being or beings is evident in the attribution of "fu-
ture, past, present" to the play of Zeitraum. This directional structure,
whatever it may be "in itself," is described from the outset in terms
of thought which finds its way about in the clearing of temporality .

What I am urging is this: there is no such thing as "future, past,
present," and certainly no significance to that order of the tenses,
except to Dasein or its equivalent. The structure of Being, time, Ges-
chick, Ereignis, or what you will, is from the outset expressed in terms
of the structure of human time . Ereignis (to use this word as a sum-
mary of the rest) is how Being looks to man: the face of Being, or
exactly what Heidegger says about the Platonic Idea. Nor is this con-
sequence altered by the fact that the "look" is not conceived in terms
of the subject-object relation but in terms of the horizon of that
relation. 83
There is of course this radical difference between Ereignis and
the Platonic Idea. Ereignis "occurs" within the horizon of time,
whereas the Idea does not "occur" or is not itself an instance of tem-
poral structure, even though visible or present through time. Fur-
thermore, at least so far as the exclusively phenomenological domain
of Heidegger is concerned, openness in the triple sense of "clearing"
or "light" or "viewer," and "the viewed" is temporally, and so hu-
manly, understood: not perhaps in a subjectivistic or relativistic
sense, but certainly in a way deeply akin to that of Kant 's transcen-
dental ego. For Plato, as I have already pointed out, this is not the
case. The three domains of man, light, and Ideas are distinct if re-
lated. 84 Heidegger seems to present us with a more coherent or un-
ified portrait of Being than does Plato; on the other hand, this unity
is subject to continuous dissolution because its binding structures
are defined or articulated in terms of human time. That is, Heideg-
ger's doctrine of time is inadequate because immanent time serves
as the paradigm for transcendental time . In fact, as is especially clear
in Sein und Zeit, Heidegger uses "transcendence" and "ekstasis" in
a specifically immanent or intratemporal sense. There is literally
nothing to hold open the "clearing" which provides the theater for
the various activities of Being, activities inseparable from human
doing.
Heidegger's "clearing" is defined or held open by the direction-
ality internal to the illumination of self-concealment. But this direc-
tionality can hold itself together only by structural referentiality
which directs temporal flow without itself consisting of that flow.
Differently put, the openness of a horizon is not the same as the trans-
formation or sequence of illuminations thanks to which we can see
in that openness. In quasi-Platonic language, the configuration of the
sequence defines a form or idea which is not equivalent to the flow
of the members of the sequence. 8S Whereas in the Heideggerian teach-
ing, the unity of Ereignis leads finally to the identity of light, viewer,
and viewed without being able to account for their differentiation,

in the Platonic teaching, the difference of the three is the starting
point. Whether or not Plato can account for the harmony of the three
in one cosmos, his teaching seems to me more accurate to the very
phenomenological situation which Heidegger is ostensibly explain-
ing. As I understand Heidegger, there is nothing anywhere in his ac-
count which allows for the phenomenological presentation of the
eternal or transtemporal; such a possibility is ruled out from the very
beginning, ostensibly in obedience to the "facticity" of human ex-
istence. But the whole question concerns the nature of that facticity.
Heidegger ultimately reduces all phenomena to a process of illumi-
nations, which is at least reminiscent of the reduction of the cosmos
to atoms moving in the void, but which he paradoxically describes
in anthropomorphic terms. Plato comes closer to saving the
phenomena.
To conclude this section of my paper: for Heidegger, the inten-
tional, directed, and so directing or illuminating structure of time,
derived from the phenomenon of visibility-to-man, provides the
"space" within which Being occurs as the fourfold or reciprocally
defining Bewegungen of heaven and earth, men and gods . The simplest
way to contrast the Platonic teaching is by summarizing the defects
which it would ascribe to Heidegger's account of time: (1) the on-
tological account of time is actually an articulation of the "ontic"
facticity of Dasein's temporal existence as intentionally directed
within the tridimensional unity of past, present, and future. But to
on is in advance regarded as to phainomenon. Although Heidegger
interprets to phainomenon as "presence" of Being itself rather than
"appearance" or "illusion," "presence" is "presence-to-man" as the
abiding or tarrying of temporality . Heidegger's "phenomenology" is
no longer concerned with "essences" but with "facts" in the sense of
"occurrences." (2) Even as an account of how time looks to man, this
phenomenology is defective, since it rules out the possibility of the
presence of the eternal or genuinely trans temporal within the very
structure of to phainomenon. One of the most important results of
this procedure is to blur if not to suppress altogether the difference
between man and Being. (3) More specifically, time cannot supply
from within itself the structure of its own Being. That is, Heidegger
fails to explain how time holds itself together within each of its mo-
ments, let alone as the opening or clearing within which Being occurs,
since that opening is itself an occurrence. (4) Heidegger singles out
time as more fundamental than space, but this assumption seems to
hold only if we accept as fundamental the temporality of man's ex-
istence. In fact, Heidegger cannot speak of time except through spa-
tial terms: the least one could say is that both dimensions seem to
be equally necessary in an account of human existence. And the ne-
cessity of space (i.e., of human space) is a clue to an inadequacy in
Heidegger's otherwise excellent discussion of openness as the horizon
of noetic vision. (5) Finally, it is hard to see how Heidegger, despite
his distinction between Geschichte and Historie, makes it possible for
man to take a responsible stand toward history. One must seriously
question the adequacy of the resolute acceptance of tradition-i.e.,
what happens-as a criterion for human conduct. An ontology which
cannot assist man in his struggle to preserve himself from his own
actions runs the risk of Nihilism, which I regard as the consequence
of the claustrophobia of complete immanentism masquerading as
freedom.86
9
Much Ado about Nothing:
Aristotle contra Eleaticism
I
The Problem
Philosophy has long been accustomed to two fundamental criti-
cisms: that it loses itself in grandiose speculation or else becomes
obsessed with technical minutiae. According to its traditional ene-
mies, philosophy does too much or too little. These enemies imply
that they know what is fitting for philosophy, or what Plato calls to
metrion. "Nothing in excess": so speak the enemies of philosophy.
This maxim is attributed to Pindar, and casts light upon the quarrel
between philosophy and poetry. The attribution, however, in the frag-
mentary form in which it has come down to us, displays a suggestive
ambiguity: "the wise praise excessively the statement 'nothing in
excess." '''1 The Greek word perissos can mean "abundantly" or "ex-
cessively." Pindar's endorsement of moderation may also contain a
note of reserve. It reminds us of the uneasy relation in the Platonic
dialogues between moderation and madness.
This by way of preface to the present investigation. The question
with which I shall be concerned is certainly grandiose; but neither
can it be formulated without plunging us into technical minutiae. In
fact, it can scarcely be formulated at all . We cannot quite ask (al-
though we must) "what is Nothing?" since "what" stands for some-
thing. What then does "Nothing" stand for? Plainly it is unsatisfac-
tory to reply that "Nothing" stands for nothing, unless we can state
the meaning of "nothing."
At this point in reflections of so nebulous a kind, one often meets
with the following retort: "Nothing" is a concept with a sense but
with no reference. However, this will not do. To begin with, a concept
Much Ado about Nothing: Aristotle contra Eleaticism 149
is something quite definite; it exists. The same cannot be said of

Nothing. Yet the "negation" of this contention, or the assertion that
Nothing does not exist, whereas it is true (assuming that only "some-
thing" exists), tells us nothing definite, or as one can say, positive,
about Nothing.
In other words, a concept is intelligible only if it has a sense (even
if, as cannot be true of the concept "Nothing," its sense is its refer-
ence), and a sense must consist of at least some affirmative assertions.
If the sense is entirely negative, we have not affirmed anything. Per-
haps even worse, we have made use of Nothing to explain its concept.
Finally, "Nothing" is not defined as the concept without reference-
since many concepts, e.g., "square circle," have no reference, yet are
plainly not the concept "Nothing." We may therefore want to say
that " Nothing" is the set of all concepts without reference, or the set
containing the set which contains the null-set. But this is a definite
technical construction, to say nothing of other problems .
One is inclined to protest that something has gone badly wrong
here. Surely we all have a satisfactory understanding of the word
"Nothing." How could the essay you are now reading have been writ-
ten, and how could you be reading it, if this were not the case? There
are many ways to say what we mean by "Nothing," such as "complete
absence" or "total void." This commonsensical protest is, I think,
somehow justified. The problem comes when we try to say how it is
justified.
This is because our understanding of words like "Being" or "ex-
istence " and of statements like "Something is something" all depend
upon our understanding of words like "Nothing" or " nonexistence,"
or of negative statements like "something is not something." We can-
not explain the negative terms by replacing them with positive ones,
whereas to paraphrase them with other negative terms is to commit
a petitio. For example, the everyday expression "complete absence"
is merely a variant on the assertion that nothing is present. But this
in turn means that Nothing is present, which is precisely what re-
quires explanation. (Those who object to "Nothing is present" may
replace it with" Nothing is absent." That will teach them!)
A popular line of thought would have us believe that statements
like "nothing is present" are incomplete versions of statements like
"nothing of such-and-such a kind is present." On this view, to treat
"nothing" as a noun is a grammatical error. A noun requires a ref-
erence, and only things can fill that role. Things may exist or not
exist, but in either case, we are referring to things of a definite kind.
150 Much Ado about Nothing: Aristotle contra Eleaticism
"Nothing" therefore means "no thing" and "thing" means "thing of

such-and-such a kind."
However, this line of analysis begs the question. It fails to con-
sider with sufficient care the meaning of "no" in the expression "no
things." "No" is a quantifier and tells us that there is nothing to count
of the type designated by the values of the variables falling within
its scope. Its sense thus depends upon the sense of "nothing." By
telling us that there is nothing to count, the quantifier either makes
use of what we need to define, or else tells us that Nothing is un-
countable. The first reply is circular, and the second is an admission
that quantification theory is irrelevant to our inquiry.
In general, "not," like "nothing," is a primitive logical term
which we must understand in order to engage in analytical reasoning.
The term is not explained by analytical reasoning. This is because
analytical reasoning is itself based upon certain metaphysical or on-
tological assumptions, such as the previously mentioned principle
that to be is to be something definite, a unit or a countable element,
or (in the extreme case of transfinite entities) something that we can
name. In his exhaustive discussion of negation, Haskell Curry2 dis-
tinguishes five kinds of constructive negation, which boil down to
versions of absurdity and refutability. Of these two, Curry says re-
futability is basic, and the refutation of p is the assertion of non-po
We thus conclude by defining refutability in terms of negation, in-
stead of defining negation in terms of refutability.
Our procedure, as "logical" or "analytical" thinkers, with respect
to Nothing, is the extreme case of a general tendency to replace an
insoluble problem, however fundamental, with an invented trans-
lation or surrogate. In this way, we can also invent a solution: the
problem is replaced by a technical construction, and what man con-
structs, he can also deconstruct. In other words, the solution is pre-
supposed by the rules of the technique governing its construction as
a puzzle. Problems are replaced by puzzles. What looks like a great
advance in technical rigor (and may in fact be so) is actually the
triumph of poetry over philosophy. Puzzles are poems or artifacts.
A concern with Nothing thus turns out to be an investigation into
the possibility of philosophy. I should like to insist that it is not a
concern about a "puzzle," to be solved by some ingenious formalism.
But this does not excuse us from the need to inspect with precision
a variety of proposed technical solutions to the problem. Only by
making such investigations do we earn the right to look for other
ways of responding to the exigencies of explaining what is not there.
This essay is such an investigation.
II
Father Parmenides
Philosophy begins in Greece as an attempt to explain the unifying
principle of the whole. But what is meant by "the whole"? Is it the
sum of all things (ta sympanta) or the formal unity of that sum, which
is thus not an element in the sum (to holon)? The first suggestion (a
sum) would seem to be excluded by the simple reflection that to know
the number of elements in a totality is not to know the principle by
which the elements constitute a totality. The principle of a sum is
enumeration or mathematics (to make a long story short), but math-
ematics cannot answer the question of what it itself is as a unity or
principle.
We therefore prefer the second suggestion: a formal unity. But
this reply is also full of obscurity. If the principle of the whole is a
form, it must be distinguishable from the forms of the elements con-
stituting a whole; otherwise, it will be merely an element in a sum.
But as so distinguishable, what has it in common with these ele-
ments? If it is not itself an element within a sum, can it be counted?
If it cannot be counted, how can it be anything at all, at least while
we adhere to the principle that to be is to be something, and hence
something countable?
Neither is there any exit from our troubles by seizing upon the
unity of the whole as its principle. This is because the unity of the
whole cannot differ from the unity of any constitutive element. To
say that the whole is unified by unity is thus not to say anything, or
to utter a platitude, because "unity" has no internal structure, and
so cannot be explained analytically. What we actually want is some
response to the question: how have these elements been brought to-
gether into a unity?
Attempts to define unity with precision must begin by replacing
it with identity or equality, since a definition is an analysis, and there
can be no analysis of what lacks internal structure. But these re-
placements simply multiply units, or presuppose what they are os-
tensibly defining. Perhaps an example will be helpful. We may at-
tribute the unity of a horse to the species-form horse. But as we have
just seen, there is no difference between the unity of the horse and
the unity of the species-form horse. Thus we still have to explain the
unity of the species-form. To say that the horse is unified by its spe-
cies-form is just to say that the horse is unified by being a horse .
In short: unity qua unity is invisible. We "see" it only as present
within a diversity. It is therefore exactly analogous to Nothing, which
cannot be "seen" in itself, but only within, or at the "edges" of, some-
thing. Just as attempts to define unity by way of diversity must fail,

so too must attempts to define Nothing by something (or Something)
fail. By the same token, until we can come to some understanding of
unity and Nothing, we shall be unable to explain what we mean by
the whole. If unity cannot be distinguished from Nothing, then the
whole, by virtue of its unity, is indistinguishable from Nothing. For
after all, to say that everything is unified by Nothing is tantamount
to Nihilism, not to philosophy.
I have introduced these abstruse reflections in order to invoke
the problematic underlying the origin of philosophy in Greece, and
in particular by Parmenides who, for our purposes, will count as the
first philosopher. At this point, we are faced with the need to choose
between alternative assumptions. First, we may argue that, since
whatever is, is, as identifiable, a unity, and further that since nothing
stands between one unity and another, the whole constitutes a single
unity. Hence Being is one.
This contention, which is of course the teaching attributed to
Parmenides, requires that we entirely disregard Nothing or "the al-
together not" (to medamos on). Unfortunately, it carries with it the
consequence that diversity, multiplicity, and alteration of all kinds
seem to, but do not "actually" occur; i.e., they have no place in the
unitary plenum of Being. Hence, as Hegel pointed out, at the level of
ontology or theory, Being is indistinguishable from Nothing and (in
the Eleatic, but not the Hegelian philosophy) nothing "rational" can
be said of it. There is no logos of Being, but only myth or poetry. That
brings us to the second of our alternatives. We may say, with Plato
and Aristotle, in modification of Parmenides, that whereas there is
nothing between one form and another, i.e., one unity and another,
there is a sense in which "nothing" is indeed something, namely oth-
erness (Plato) or privation (Aristotle).
Philosophy, in the sense of giving an account (logon didonai) of
the whole, begins with Parmenides. Since Parmenides holds that
nothing precise or determinate can be said of Nothing, it is necessary
for him to exclude from any form of discursive consideration what
the Eleatic Stranger in Plato's Sophist (237a4ff) calls "the altogether
not." But this Parmenidean beginning is also an ending, for the reason
which has just been given. By enforcing silence concerning Nothing,
Parmenides recognized that he was also enforcing silence concerning
plurality and diversity.
The Eleatic Stranger, who is neither Parmenides nor Plato, but
who is more garrulous than the former and more precise than the
latter, makes a second beginning. Contrary to traditional interpre-
tation, he does not commit a parricide against "father Parmenides."
Instead, he says that we shall "interrogate by torture" the saying of

Parmenides, and thereby "constrain nonbeing in a way to be, and
being in a way not to be" (Sophist 241c7-d7). This procedure is ex-
plicitly distinguished by him from parricide. In fact, we obey Par-
menides' injunction against all discursive contact with "the alto-
gether not" (except, of course, for utterance of the injunction itself).
It is precisely at this point that the problem of Nothing disap-
pears from the rational or "account-giving" tradition of Western phi-
losophy, to be replaced by the technical consequence of human " con-
straint." We would therefore do well to study it with great care. I
have attempted to do so elsewhere,3 and will say only a bare mini-
mum in this essay about the Eleatic Stranger's innovation. Instead,
I propose to consider the indispensable elements of Aristotle's cri-
tique of Eleaticism, or his revision of the Eleatic Stranger's treatment
of nonbeing. I hope to show how Aristotle, who may be taken as
paradigmatic for analytical rationalism, unsuccessfully attempts to
avoid the problem of Nothing by "constraining" nonbeing in a way
to be, and being in a way not to be. This constraint leads to the
replacement of the altogether not by privation, or the absence of a
formal property, which is nevertheless determined as the absence of
a definite property by the form itself.
Let us take our bearings by Aristotle's criticism of the Eleatics
in the Physics, Book A, Chapters 8-9. These are the thinkers who,
misled by inexperience, say that
none of the beings comes to be or passes away, since it would be
necessary for what comes to be to do so either from being or from
nonbeing, whereas both of these are impossible. For neither can
being come to be (since it is already) , nor can anything come to
be from nonbeing; something underlying is required (191 a26-31) .
In this passage, nonbeing means Nothing, and not the negation

of some identity which is actually some other identity . In other words,
the Eleatics deny a condition intermediate between Being and Noth-
ing. Hence, if Being ("what is") were to enter into being ( = come to
bet it could do so only from the void, or from the complete absence
of a productive source. This is ruled out as impossible, although no
supportive reasoning is provided.
Aristotle says that these inexperienced thinkers went on to claim
that there are not ( = do not exist) many beings, but only Being itself
(191a32-33) . He does not explain how the denial of multiplicity fol-
lows from the denial of genesis . The reasoning is perhaps as follows.
In a multiplicity, one element is different from, or other than, and
so is not, the other elements. As one could put this, the Eleatics must
have anticipated a fatal defect in the technical innovation of the

Eleatic Stranger. Whereas "other than" may not be completely syn-
onymous with "is not," in the relevant cases, the translation does not
eliminate but depends upon the antecedent intelligibility of the neg-
ative particle as negative.
This is easily seen with the help of modern notation. The Stranger
wishes to say that "s is not P" means "s is other than P, namely, Q."
But the meaning of the new statement depends upon our tacit aware-
ness that Q is not P. The generalized version of the Stranger's analysis
is then:
not - P = Q(Q # P)
where P and Q are forms or predicates, as the case may be. Since
"¥-" means "is not," it is plain that the definition makes use in the
definiens of what was to be eliminated in the definiendum. In short,
multiplicity depends upon the ineliminability of "ontological" (and
not just "syntactical") negativity. But this has to be avoided if a ra-
tional account of the whole is to be possible. There cannot be any
gaps in the plenum of Being, which is consequently one.
This argument, however, has nothing to do with genesis. Instead,
it rests upon the rejection of ontological difference. Once we rule out
ontological difference, then of course genesis is also eliminated. Un-
fortunately, so too is analytical discourse. Aristotle's fundamental
task is therefore to explain how ontological difference (and so ana-
lytical discourse) is possible, without thereby opening discontinuities
or voids within the plenum of Being. He must, in other words, replace
the plenum by a continuum, or discover a way of explaining otherness
that does not depend upon the altogether not. Failing this, he can
provide no theoretical account of genesis. If on the other hand on-
tological difference is possible, then so too is multiplicity, entirely
apart from genesis. Being might be an un generated multiplicity of
formal elements. And the admission of ontological difference is not
in itself enough to account for genesis. We still require an account of
how the transition from the absence of something to its presence is
possible.
It is important to emphasize that the existence or occurrence of
genesis as a phenomenological fact of everyday experience is not at
issue here. Our concern is with the principles, with a rational expla-
nation, both of the possibility and the intelligibility of genesis. With
this in mind, we return to the Physics, Book A, Chapters 8-9. Aristotle
goes on to draw a crucial distinction. A certain person may possess

the art of medicine, and so be a physician, but not all that he does
is done on the condition of. or thanks to his identity as, a physician.
This person cures the sick as a physician, but he builds a house as a
carpenter, not as a physician. The expression "as" (hei) becomes a
technical term for Aristotle, one which points out a difference or dif-
ferences within the same person . We shall follow tradition in ren-
dering it as qua (191a33-bS).
A physician does, suffers, or becomes something thanks to his
identity as a physician, ifhe does it qua physician (191b6-8). This is
a cumbersome expression, turning upon the coordination of two dis-
tinct elements, eks iatrou and hei iatros. We act from the doctorly
nature if we act as doctor. On the other hand, to act "as" (qua) a
doctor is scarcely different from acting "from" (eks) being a doctor.
Let us however pass this by and allow Aristotle his point. More im-
portant, he does not seem to notice that the difference between acting
qua physician and qua carpenter already turns upon a formal or on-
tological difference within the same person or unity. The identity
"physician" is not the identity "carpenter." Once more, the question
is not whether we are empirically or phenomenologically capable of
making this distinction. The question is whether the distinction ad-
mits of a theoretical explanation.
Aristotle's analysis of the "qua" distinction is intended to serve
as a theoretical component within his doctrine of privation . He begins
as follows: "it is clear that [the statement] 'coming to be out of nonbe-
ing' means this : 'qua nonbeing" '" (to hei me on: 191b9-1O). Let us
anticipate his subsequent completion of this step. A human being is
generated from the appropriate matter through the agency of the
appropriate form. Prior to the moment of genesis, the form is absent
from the matter. This matter is something definite in its own right,
e.g., sperm and egg. But qua the relevant form of what it will become,
it is absence, privation, nonbeing.
Notice that, in order for this account to work, he must regard
privation as "somehow form" (kai gar he steresis eidos pas estin: B 1,
193b19-20). There is here a tripartition. Matter is distinct from form
(what it becomes) but also from privation (hemeis men gar hyien kai
steresin heteron phamen einai). Matter is nonbeing accidentally (kata
symbebekos), whereas privation is nonbeing intrinsically or in accord
with its own nature (kath' hauten: A 9, 192a3-S). This is required in
order that matter be free either to become or not to become a certain
form, and this in turn requires that it be free to receive a variety of
privations, with no one of which it can be identical.
It also follows that Aristotle must distinguish between "poten-
tiality" (the capacity of such-and-such matter to become such-and-

such a form) and "privation" (the condition within such-and-such
matter whereby it is not this definite form, but can become so) . Re-
member that matter is itself a blend of form and matter, e.g., the
form of sperm and/or egg imprinted onto a substrate (which is itself
a combination of matter and form, going back in this way to prime
matter) . Matter as sperm or liquid is something definite and therefore
cannot be identified as nonbeing. This role is reserved for the pri-
vation . But privation cannot be the altogether not, or Parmenides'
injunction is violated. It must also be "somehow" something, and
this "something" comes to it via the form of which it is the privation.
The privation is "in one sense" being or form, and "in another
sense" nonbeing. But both senses must be kath' hauten or intrinsic
to the privation. If a given privation were not intrinsically a given
form, then ultimately no privation could be distinguished from any
other. That is, all privations would be identically nothing in them-
selves, but only accidentally something, and this accidental being
would inhere in nothing. Aristotle conveys this crucial point with the
entirely unsatisfactory assertion that privation is "somehow" form.
Aristotle's explanation does not succeed. He wants to say both
that something comes to be out of something and that it comes to be
out of nothing. This requires him to identify "nothing" ( = nonbeing)
as something, or still worse, as in one sense something and in another
sense not. The definiteness of a privation derives from the sense in
which it is a form. This definiteness specifies the sense in which it is
nonbeing . And all of this rests upon what it means to say that pri-
vation is "somehow" a form. How can what is not a form also be a
form?
It will not do to look to some factor outside the privation to
account for this definiteness, as for example the material substratum.
The latter is itself "potentially" the given form, but not yet that form .
And the "not yet" is precisely the privation. Aristotle simply assumes
what he needs to prove: that "somehow" the continuity of genesis
allows the form to influence or to account for the privation within
matter. In so doing, he falls out of theory and back into phenomeno-
logical description.
To say this in another way, Aristotle fails to distinguish the two
senses of qua, because he cannot distinguish them from the third
element, the unity in which both senses inhere, and by which they
are themselves distinguished. In the case of the carpenter and the
physician, that third element is the given person who possesses both
identities. There is, however, no element analogous to the given per-
son in the case of the privation. There are only the two distinct ele-
ments: privation qua form and privation qua nonbeing.
I repeat: in order to have a chance at success, Aristotle requires
an element (not matter: d. 193b 19-20) within privation that is nei-
ther form nor nonbeing. We may call this the unity of privation, but
there is still a problem here. Unity is a property of form: something
is unified as something by a form. But privation does not have such
a unifying form; if it did, it would be that form, and not a privation.
And unity in itself is invisible, as we saw previously. The concept of
privation is therefore incoherent. Aristotle has succeeded in saying
nothing more than that a given form is sometimes present and some-
times absent.
There is more, however. The ontological difference between "qua
carpenter" and "qua physician" is rooted or grounded within the
unity of the person. But this is not enough to supply us· with an ac-
count (logos) of difference as other than the altogether not. The unity
of the person qua unity is indistinguishable from the unity of a non-
person qua unity. Unity can no more account for the qua-distinction
than can an appeal to the altogether not.
In fact, from a discursive standpoint, to appeal to unity is the
same as to appeal to the altogether not. It is an appeal to the empirical
or phenomenological fact that two distinct identities, each not the
other, stand together within a perceived unity, this person, who is
and is not each in turn. There are three formal properties here: person,
carpenter, and physician. None of these corresponds to, or explains,
the "not" in "qua carpenter, not qua physician" or vice versa. Indeed,
"qua" does not explain but already contains negation within itself. 4
III
Intermission
The problem set for philosophy is how to speak the truth (as
opposed to opinion) about Being, without in any way mentioning or
invoking Nothing. This restriction is necessary because (1) nothing
can be said of a definite kind about nothing, and (2) because of the
presupposition that nothing comes to be from nothing. Since what
is, is what it is, it must always have been. There is no third state
between Being and Nothing. Genesis is theoretically impossible, or
at least inexplicable.
We are inclined not to appreciate the force of Parmenides' ar-
gument for a number of reasons. To begin with, two thousand years
of the Christian tradition have vitiated our unwillingness to accept
a creation ex nihilo. Still more directly, the empirical evidence for
genesis is unimpeachable, whereas the evidence for Being and Noth-

ing is at best marginal. To deny the genuineness of genesis is patently
absurd; we are inclined by our very existence to assume that, if there
is some standpoint from which the fact of genesis cannot be con-
firmed, that line of inquiry is senseless. And finally, modern math-
ematics seems to have provided us with a successful theoretical ac-
count of change in all its forms, and certainly as generation and decay.
The peculiarity of the Parmenidean teaching is especially in-
structive with respect to the peculiarity of philosophy. With the
steady transformation of philosophy into technical analysis, that is,
thanks to the overwhelming influence of mathematical and experi-
mental science on our conception of philosophy, we tend to lose our
sense of the legitimacy of the oddness of traditional philosophy. Phi-
losophy has become respectable as an academic discipline, and this
is true by extension of "post-philosophy" as well.
The fact is, however, that the oddness of traditional "metaphys-
ical" questions (if that is the right word) takes nothing away from
their urgency, if our intention is to know the truth about the ultimate
structure of the whole . It is no aspersion on the value of mathematics
or logical analysis to insist that those who reject odd questions, like
the one we are pursuing, as senseless, have simply rejected philos-
ophy in its original sense. But it does not follow that they have re-
placed it with something superior. This is because the old, odd ques-
tions remain, whether we pay attention to them or not. And if we do
not, then we do not know what we are talking about, however fluent
is our mode of expression.
When we philosophize, or do mathematics, or engage in any dis-
cursive activity, much of the time we are talking about Nothing. The
history of philosophical discourse is the history of the attempt to
transform this into talk about something. To this extent, philosophy
is responsible for its own transformation into technical construction,
or the triumph of poetry. There is a fundamental sense in which phi-
losophy cannot do anything. There are certain problems which cannot
be resolved, but which need to be properly formulated in order to
legitimate solutions of other problems.
Now I certainly do not wish to claim that mathematics is unable
to do its work properly without a proper understanding of the prob-
lem of Nothing. My point is rather that mathematics is incapable of
addressing itself to this problem. This is obvious with respect to gen-
esis. Mathematical analysis does not explain how to talk about Being
and Nothing; it incorporates theoretical decisions (or prejudices)
about how this is to be done. Similarly, it gives no ontological ex-
planation of genesis . As is sometimes said today, mathematics is "on-
Much Ado about Nothing : Aristotle contra Eleaticism 159
tologically neutral. " This is both true and false. It is false because
mathematics is already the expression of ontological doctrines. It is
true because these doctrines are nei ther noticed nor discussed by
mathematics as it does its work of describing the external world.
Modern mathematical science owes its success in large part to
the assumption that there is nothing but genesis or change. Thus rest
is treated as the limit-case of motion, and unity is replaced by iden-
tity. As a consequence, so-called mathematical "Platonism" never
addresses itself to the question of unity, difference, Being, and Noth-
ing. Instead, it tacitly employs them in the task of analyzing structure,
which is already constituted by unity, difference, Being, and Nothing.
It goes without saying that the teaching of Parmenides is useless
for scientific progress. The force of this truism has to a considerable
extent been weakened by the creation of historical and philological
Wissenschaft, in which philosophical speculation tends to be replaced
by technical considerations. This topic is too large in itself to be given
more than mention here . I want to say only that it is not possible to
understand Parmenides by the application of grammatical rules de-
riving from Alexandrian textbooks, or by assimilating a genius of the
highest order into the thought patterns of "archaic folk" or "preli-
terate society." Neither can we understand him by distorting his pre-
technical thought into the structures of modern analytical devices,
all of which beg the questions that interest him.
These remarks are not intended to legitimate ignorant specula-
tion or a denigration of philology. Neither are they intended to de-
nigrate the legitimate and indispensable use of techne. They are in-
tended to underline the oddness, from the scientific or
wissenschaftliche viewpoint, of the problem of Nothing. To come back
to the philosophical situation, Parmenides begins with the invocation
to avoid Nothing. He accordingly believes himself to be, or at least
is regarded as, a monist. In fact , however, Parmenides is a dualist.
He does not deny the "existence" of Nothing, since this is , to say the
least, superfluous.
No one claims that Nothing "exists," i.e., that it is a being.s The
legitimate hypothesis is rather that there are two principles, Being
and Nothing, both necessary for any attempt to account for the whole,
and not reducible the one to the other. Parmenidean dualism amounts
to the admission that there are two principles , Being and Nothing,
but the insistence that discursive explanation make use of just one,
Being. This invocation is obeyed by his successors (and I mean to
include such thinkers as Frege, Husserl, Heidegger, and twentieth-
century analytical philosophy in all of its versions, among the
Eleatics).
Plato in effect begins with the premise that it is theoretically

unsatisfactory to leave genesis and difference unexplained. To put his
point with maximum simplicity, we must at least consider the pos-
sibility (advocated by the Eleatic Stranger) that the ontological ele-
ment common to genesis and difference is otherness. Plato accord-
ingly assigns to the Stranger the claim that the "semantic back-up"
or ontological principle of otherness explains the work of the syntactic
function of negation.
It is thus evident that the discussion in the Sophist, following the
injunction of Parmenides, does not deal with Nothing ( = the alto-
gether not), but with the more limited case of negation. We may
represent this as usual by "s is not P" (in which the variables may
be forms as well as instances of forms). All other considerations to
one side, this line of analysis is unsatisfactory because otherness is
already a mixture of Being and Nothing. Hence it cannot explain how
Nothing is to be eliminated from our ontological program, to be re-
placed by a "positive" surrogate.
To say that one thing is other than another is certainly to mean
that the first thing is itself and not the second thing. As a Hegelian
might put it, the first thing is not, precisely because it is: a man is
not a nonman precisely as a man. This is of course a logical triviality,
but it is a metaphysical truth of the most profound implications. For
a thing to be what it is, it must, as what it is, and not in some other
respect, not be what it is not.
Everything depends here upon whether we take "not to be" as
something positive or negative. If we take it positively, then nega-
tivity simply disappears. If we take it negatively, then Nothing is
affirmed. Aristotle's solution, "on the one hand this, on the other that"
simply begs the question, as we have now seen . The two "hands" are
not united by a "body." Qua carpenter, the person is not qua phy-
sician; with respect to this distinction, there is no contradiction. But
the person who unites both roles is, as that person, not some other
person, nor indeed, is he some nonperson. Hence the person is-and-
is-not.
This conclusion is not a "grammatical error" to be rectified by
recourse to predication, i.e., by asking "is what and is not what other
predicate?" To ask this is itself a mistake; it misses the point of the
problem . It descends from a philosophical to a grammatical level
without grasping that grammar incorporates the problem instead of
removing it. The doctrine of predication is not a response to the ques-
tion of how the person exhibits the unity that enables him to function
as the bearer of predicates. Instead, it replaces unity and difference
by identity and predication.
Furthermore, identity is explained on the basis of predication (x

= y if and only if the predicates of x are in one-to-one correspondence
with the predicates of y). Predication itself is left unexplained: I mean
by this that no account is given of how one predicate differs from
another. But also, as I am about to show, we are not told what it
means to negate a predicate, i.e., to say that S is not P or any other
formal variation on that schema.
The problem here, briefly stated, is the one already noted in the
thesis of the Eleatic Stranger, and it is not affected by a shift to pred-
icate logic. In all such cases, an attempt is made to give a "positive"
interpretation to negation. All these attempts, like the doctrine of
predication itself, rest on the Aristotelian paradigm of the qua-dis-
tinction, or "on the one hand this, on the other hand that." But the
qua-distinction contains and depends upon the prior intelligibility of
what it is supposed to explain. I think it is worth saying that recourse
to the doctrine of predication is the most overused and ineffectual
move in contemporary philosophy. And this is to take nothing from
its usefulness as a grammatical truth.
It is a striking fact about Aristotle's treatment of nonbeing that
he never discusses the problem of the mixture of Being and Nothing.
Not merely does he avoid Nothing; he also avoids Being. On this
point, Heidegger is certainly correct. Aristotle's expressions for
"being"-on, to on, ousia, to ti en einai, eidos, and so on-all refer to
something determinate, hence to something that is distinct from
something else, and so is a countable element within a totality. Thus
the science that provides wisdom is knowledge of the principles and
causes, and not knowledge of the principle, not knowledge of the
whole qua whole.
As is well known, there cannot for Aristotle be one science of the
whole, because "being is said in various senses." There are kinds of
beings, each with its own principles, and so with its definite and
separate knowledge . The principles of one branch of knowledge can-
not serve as the principles of another branch of knowledge. This gives
rise to the notorious problem of the sense, if any, in which "meta-
physics" is itself a science. For how can there be one set of principles
from which all other principles are derivable, without violating the
heterogeneity of knowledge, which is itself rooted in the heteroge-
neity of being?
Aristotle of course gives extensive and invaluable analyses of
what we mean by terms like unity, difference, otherness, being,
nonbeing, and so on. But he does not attempt to explain how unity
and difference are themselves unified, except on the basis of the qua-
distinction . And this is not an explanation at all, but in a way some-
thing worse, because it gives the impression of having removed the

problem . The long and inconclusive analyses of the unity of ousia,
primarily in Book Z of the Metaphysics, deal with the problem of the
unification of elements (essence and attributes) each of which is al-
ready a unity of unity and difference.
One could say with considerable justice that there is no meta-
physics at all in Aristotle, but rather an attack upon metaphysics
rooted to a considerable extent in the structure of natural language.
This is especially obvious in Aristotle's treatment of nonbeing. It is
also evident in his doctrine of intellectual abstraction, which under-
lies the treatment of unity, difference, sameness, and so on as formal
properties of generated individual things. The two striking exceptions
to this general situation are prime matter and intellect. Strictly
speaking, these have no form, precisely because it is their task to take
on all forms. The closest approach to Nothing is accordingly to be
found in the very bases of Aristotle's doctrine, or in what one might
call the foundation and the ceiling. 6
By beginning from form, matter, and privation, Aristotle tacitly
rejects the Eleatic beginning from Being and Nothing. I do not deny
that Aristotle's beginning is more "sensible." My point is that it is
philosophically inadequate to the problems posed by Parmenides.
These problems are not sensible; they are profound, and therefore
frightening. One is inclined to cover them up, or to attempt to ex-
tirpate them. But this is tantamount to covering over our own eyes,
not to changing the nature of the visible and the invisible.
Nevertheless, we must emphasize that Aristotle has a sensible
motive in his criticism, not merely of Parmenides, but also of Plato.
From an Aristotelian standpoint, Plato remains an Eleatic because
he cannot explain genesis . As Aristotle puts this in the Physics (A 9,
192a8-9), Plato's principles are intended to constitute a triad,
namely, the one, the great, and the small. However, he explains, this
triad is actually a dyad, because the Platonists make the great and
the small equally non being (hoi de to me on to mega kai to mikron
homoios: 192a6-7). Aristotle accuses Plato of overlooking the genu-
inely third element, namely, privation (192a12).
In other words, Plato misidentified nonbeing with the dyadic
principle of matter. There is thus no genuine intermediate between
the Platonic surrogates for Being and Nothing. Hence Plato can no
more explain genesis than can Parmenides (see also Metaphysics A 6,
987b20ft). Aristotle does not discuss the Eleatic Stranger's pure form,
otherness, because he regards the forms as themselves composed of
the one, the great, and the small. Paradoxically, one could also say
that, in keeping with the Aristotelian analysis, there is no difference

in Plato between form and matter: Plato, so to speak, is a Leibnizean.
The distinction between form and matter is obviously funda-
mental for the doctrine of privation, which is, in a sense, that dis-
tinction itself. I want to close this section with an extended remark
about the difference between Aristotelian privation and Platonic oth-
erness. It is true for both Plato and Aristotle that being has no con-
trary. With respect to Aristotle, this is sometimes expressed by the
observation that the negative particle must be understood to modify
the predicate term, not the copula. This observation, although not
entirely mistaken, is certainly inadequate.
A species-form is not a property; it has properties . To say, for
example, that matter is not form, or that a tree is not a human being,
is not to negate a predicate-term. In fact, a form cannot be negated
on Aristotelian grounds; to do so would be to negate being or to make
nonbeing the contrary of being. As we shall see below, Aristotle can-
not account at all for the negation corresponding to the absence or
privation of a form from matter, nor can he explain the "technical"
meaning of statements like "this form is not that form."
With respect to ontological difference, the Platonic doctrine of
forms is superior to the Aristotelian doctrine of predication. This is
because Plato at least tries (in the persona of the Eleatic Stranger)
to separate the principle of difference from the principle of being (in
his two pure forms, being and otherness) . This solution fails on tech-
nical grounds, but it is a genuine attempt in the sense that it is ad-
dressed to the right problem . The doctrine of predication is not. Those
who attempt to convert the "later" Plato into a prototypical cham-
pion of predication are merely transmitting Aristotelian prejudices,
usually in late-modern or "Fregean" variations.
IV
The Megarians
The teaching of Parmenides leads to a denial of difference or
multiplicity as well as of genesis or a condition intermediate between
Being and Nothing. Conversely, Aristotle denies the radical separa-
tion of Being and Nothing, or affirms genesis. Unity and difference
are for him accordingly abstractions from genesis, or the result of
considering the generated individual thing (the primary ousia) now
in one way, now in another.
The importance of accounting for genesis is given paradigmatic
focus in Aristotle's Metaphysics e by his quarrel with the Megarian
school of Eleatic thinkers . It seems at first glance that the Megarians
164 Much Ado about Nothing; Aristotle contra Eleaticism
deny the fact of genesis because, as Aristotle puts it, they deny the
distinction between (what he calls) actuality and potentiality.
In what follows, I propose to make Aristotle's quarrel with the
Megarians the center of my investigation of privation, predication,
and the act-potency distinction. This will provide a focus for our dis-
cussion that is faithful to Aristotle's insistence upon the primacy of
genesis. It will also enable us to explain a fundamental philosophical
distinction between what I have been intermittently calling the "on-
tological" and "phenomenological" standpoints. In the course of
my investigation, I shall argue that Aristotle fails to refute the Me-
garian thesis concerning genesis, and indeed, that he does not even
state it accurately.7
We start with the report by Aristotle that the Megarians in effect
deny an intermediate state between Being and Nothing. In other
words, they deny that there are gaps in the plenum of Being. Aristotle
formulates this point in terms of his own distinction between ac-
tuality and potentiality. As he puts it, the Megarians claim that this
distinction does attribute such gaps to Being. Why is this?
We will use Aristotle's own illustration. A man who is about to
build a house has not yet built it. "Not yet" here means (for the
Megarians) "not," i.e., no building is occurring. The Megarians hold
accordingly that one is able to do something only when one is doing
it (hotan energei monon dynasthai), and so that when one is not doing
or acting, one lacks a potency to do (8 3, l046b29ff). Aristotle's in-
ference from this thesis may be summarized in the following asser-
tion: "if what has been deprived of potency is incapable, what is not
[actually] coming to be will be incapable of coming to be" (1047alO-
11). As he goes on to say, "these doctrines abolish both change and
genesis" (1047a14).
I maintain that we cannot understand the Megarian thesis by
taking them to deny the empirical or phenomenological fact of gen-
esis or change. More specifically, they are not denying the empirical
distinction between being able to build and building, or in other
words that there is a time when the house has not yet been built and
a time subsequent when it has. If they denied this fact, there would
be nothing for them to dispute with Aristotle. The dispute, as Aristotle
says explicitly of his refutation of the Megarians, is based upon how
we use language, and so, upon how to talk rationally about experience
(8 3, 1047a20ff).
The quarrel between Aristotle and the Megarians is about met-
aphysics, not the fact of genesis . To repeat an earlier point, Aristotle
is in the process of rejecting metaphysics-that is, of insisting that
a theoretical account of experience must "save the phenomena" in
the sense of beginning from the distinctions or articulations of ex-

perience, as they appear. The Megarians are claiming that these dis-
tinctions, as they appear, are inexplicable in their own terms .
We may therefore anticipate that the Megarians will, or must,
give an alternative theoretical explanation for the fact of genesis. Our
concern here has nothing to do with historical or philological pre-
cision. Whatever the tradition records of the actual statements of the
Megarians, our task is to understand them on the basis of the me-
taphysical enterprise expressed in Parmenides' injunction against
Nothing . As concisely as possible, here is the "corrected" Megarian
response to Aristotle . Each stage of what Aristotle calls "potential-
ity," and so too of motion as the "actualization of potentiality," is,
ontologically or metaphysically speaking, a complete actuality, and
thus, Being without gaps .
This account (which we shall expand below) does not do away
with difference or multiplicity, since it must employ a plurality of
(what Aristotle calls) actualities. But then , neither does Parmenides
do away with multiplicity at the phenomenological level. The unity
of Being is for Parmenides continuous and unbroken within multi-
plicity. So too with the Megarians. What look like two separate stages,
namely, being about to do something, and doing it, are two "ac-
tualities," namely, an actual power or capacity to do something, and
actually doing it. But the multiplicity of the "actualities" is not the
metaphysically decisive feature . This feature is that each "is," and
is so fully, i.e ., that Being is a unity throughout every actuality.
I do not maintain for a moment that the Megarian thesis is suc-
cessful; for example, it leaves entirely unexplained how appearances
appear, or to put this point in terms of Parmenides himself, the Eleat-
ics cannot explain why there are two ways, or why there is diversity ,
and so human beings, rather than merely unity, and so Nothing. I
am making two other points. First : the Megarians, like Parmenides,
are responding to a serious problem. Second: Aristotle apparently
believes himself to have resolved this problem; instead, he translates
it into some other problem. And his translations are finally vitiated
by the problem which is correctly identified by Parmenides.
At this point we should interject a terminological remark. The
Aristotelian term dynamis can be translated into English as either
"potentiality" or "power" ( = capacity). As we shall see, it is difficult
if not impossible to distinguish sharply between power and actuality .
This is an important element in the Megarian thesis, and it is a per-
fectly legitimate one. We may also note that Aristotle distinguishes
between dynamis or "potentiality" and endechomenon or "possibil-
ity," a modal term that is coordinate to ananke or "necessity."
I shall have relatively little to say in this study about problems

of modality, not because they are unimportant, but because they are
too complex to take up within the bounds of this paper. The omission
(which I hope to rectify elsewhere) may be justified on the ground
that we are concerned with non being and Nothing. One cannot make
sense out of modality (e.g., what is meant by "possible worlds" or
the statement that "possible worlds exist") until we have achieved
some clarity about the more fundamental problem with which we
are now concerned.
To return to the Megarians, since they are unfortunately too
mad to engage in coherent discourse, let us pose the following ques-
tion to Aristotle on their behalf. "If there is no absolute Nothing or
altogether not, where does one locate nonbeing?" Aristotle's official
reply, we recall, is: "in privation." We also recall the fundamental
ambiguity intrinsic to privation; it is both "somehow" form (namely,
the form "of which" it is the privation) and "in itself" (kath' hauten)
nonbeing.
The Megarian query can therefore be pressed in two distinguish-
able but related directions. Either we may insist upon the ambiguity
of the internal structure of privation, or we may rephrase our initial
question by asking: "where does one locate the privation?" In the
first case, whatever is meant by "somehow," it is certain that, qua
form, privation is not and cannot be nonbeing. Therefore, the pri-
vation qua nonbeing must be either matter or the altogether not.
We must at all costs avoid the latter alternative, so we are forced
to embrace the former. But this carries with it two further difficulties.
First: Aristotle has already distinguished between privation and mat-
ter (Physics A 9, 192a3-S). Second, matter is what it is only through
form. Matter apart from form may be "somehow" an ousia; but if so,
it is distinct from ousia qua eidos as well as qua the product of the
combination of matter with form, and by itself it plays no role in the
logos of a thing (Metaphysics Z 10, 103Salff, a7-8, and a20-21). The
identification of matter as ousia thus comes dangerously close to hy-
postasizing nonbeing.
Put in another way, matter is potentially a form as well as a
privation. Since in itself it is neither the one nor the other, we seem
to be justified in defining matter as potentiality.8 A potentiality, how-
ever, is a privation, and a privation is intrinsically nonbeing. No mat-
ter where we start, we come back to Aristotle's failure either to iden-
tify nonbeing as an actual form or to separate it sharply, whether via
privation, matter, or potentiality, from an actual form. As a result,
the answer to the second question ("where does one locate the pri-
vation?") is of course "in matter," but this answer seems merely to
locate nonbeing in a substantialized Nothing, and thus to violate the

injunction of Parmenides in an unusually confusing way, a way that
is incompatible with Aristotle's orientation in terms of "things" or
ta onta understood as ta phainomena.
This preliminary inspection of Aristotle's quarrel with the Me-
garians has not vindicated the theoretical presuppositions of his criti-
cism . In the good old Socratic expression, palin eks arches (" once more
from the beginning") . The question is too important to allow our
attention to flag .
V
Ousia and Predication
The doctrine of predication is the linguistic correlate to the doc-
trine of categories or ways of being (ta onta: Metaphysics e 1,
1047b27-32).9 We must now consider it as it bears upon the problem
of nonbeing . And we start with a problem. Aristotle claims that we
determine the essence of an individual thing by identifying its es-
sential properties. However, in order to distinguish the essential from
the accidental properties, we require a criterion, which can only be
knowledge of the essence.lO
In order to escape the charge of circularity, Aristotle must claim
in addition that we intuit the essence. Unfortunately, this claim is
quite controversial, and has been interpreted in a number of ways ."
On either extreme, trouble is sure to follow (and intermediate posi-
tions beg the question in both ways). If we deny that intellectual
intuition occurs, then the only way in which to avoid circularity is
by opening an infinite regress of linguistic definitions. But if (as I
believe the texts require) we affirm intellectual intuition, there is
apparently nothing to serve as the content of that intuition.
Stated in advance, the nub of the problem is Aristotle 's repeated
insistence that the essence is not "predicative," i.e ., that whatever
its internal structure (if it has any), it cannot be discursively described
in accordance with, or as a result of, rational knowledge of the es-
sential properties of a thing. Before we substantiate this formulation ,
the following observation is necessary . If the content of the intuition
of an essence is not accessible to predicative discourse, then we are
tacitly identifying that content as unity. But unity is discursively
vacuous because it lacks any internal structure. As Aristotle says, "it
is not accidentally that the essence of unity and unity are one" (hen
to heni einai kai hen: Metaphysics Z, 1031 b30-1 032a2). In other words,
unity is the same everywhere, in itself or in given units (cf. Z 16,
1040b15-19).
To move more systematically, we begin by noting that either the

essence has properties or it does not. If it does not, then nothing can
be said of it. If it does, then these properties are either the essential
properties or some other properties. But the latter alternative leads
to absurdity; the essential properties cease to be essential, or the more
genuinely essential properties do not belong to the essence (and some-
thing like Platonism in the pejorative sense follows). The properties
of the essence must then (tautologically) be the essential properties. 12
The question then arises: what is it about these essential prop-
erties which constitutes the content of our intuition of the essence?
An intuition is not a discursive listing of properties, and in any event,
such a listing (i.e., the thesis that knowledge of the essence is lin-
guistic rather than intuitive) is excluded by a variety of explicit Ar-
istotelian statements. For example, at De Anima III 6, 430b26-30,
Aristotle says that there is no predication in thinking the ousia or to
ti en einai.
In the Nicomachean Ethics VI 3, 1141a7, he says that nous grasps
the archai, and a few lines later, that "nous is of the boundary-points"
or "definitions," namely, "of which there is no logos" (ho men nous
ton horon, hon ouk esti logos: 1142a25). However one translates horon,
it certainly refers to "principles" or "limit-points" which make pos-
sible discursive analysis, and so cannot be its products. I therefore
take this passage to buttress the text just cited from the De Anima.
Aristotle says that the essence is not a sum of predicates at Met-
aphysics Z 13, 1039aI4-23; that is, it is rather an asyntheton or unity.
This text is clarified by H 3, 1043b4ff and 1044a7ff, where we are told
that the essence is not a compound; e.g., the essence of man is not a
compound or sum of "animal" and "two-footed." But neither is the
unity of the essence a point or monad, since if it were, we could not
distinguish one essence from another. Instead, says Aristotle, the es-
sential unity is rather an entelechy and a sort of nature (H 3, 1044a9).
Since the unity is not a sum or compound, and not a point or
monad, it must consist of the essential properties, as we noted above.
Hence it is an "entelechy or sort of nature," namely, something with
an internal structure that allows it to be distinguished from other
natures and therefore (presumably) known. The only other possibility
is that the essence is a certain order or structure of properties, which
order constitutes an internally articulated structure. But at Z 12,
1038a34ff, Aristotle rules out this possibility as well. The essence, he
says there, cannot be a taksis, order or arrangement; for "how ought
one to cognize the before and the after?"
To summarize: the essence is not of a predicative structure; it is
not a sum or list of properties; it is not an order of properties; it is
not a monadic point. How then is it to be defined by a scientific

definition? (H 3, 1043bl). In my opinion, the only answer compatible
with the texts is this : we intuit the essence as a kind of noetic picture
or unified structure. This noetic picture serves as the paradigm for
our discursive scientific definition. But there is, whether noticed by
Aristotle or not, a disjunction between the intuition and the logos or
horismos that corresponds exactly to the separation of the Platonic
form from its instances in Aristotle's criticism of his master.
The disjunction between the intuition of the essence and the defi-
nition is Nothing, which, apparently excluded from First Philosophy,
has returned to haunt us . But the situation is worse than this, since
Nothing is also "present" within both the matter and the form or
essence itself. It is present in the matter as the privation, and in the
essence in the unspeakable unity of the essential properties . Accord-
ingly, the primary ousia or synthesis of form and matter, which Ar-
istotle compares to the elements constituting a syllable (Z 17,
1041 b4ff) , deteriorates into the contingent historical individual of
modern philosophy. After all, the combination of letters into a syl-
lable is conventional, not natural. It is possible, but not necessary .
And so potentiality, contrary to Aristotle's contention (A 6, 1071b22-
26 and 1072a3-S), is unqualifiedly prior to actuality. (See also e 8-
9, 10S1a2ff: actuality is both prior to and better than potentiality.)
In his attempt to refute the Eleatics, and specifically the Megarians,
Aristotle becomes a nihilist.
Since one cannot explain discursively what it means to " belong
to" without falling into a circle, from which one cannot escape except
by recourse to a prediscursive or nondiscursive intuition, neither Ar-
istotelian episteme nor modern set theory can solve the problem of
essential being. 13 But what of nonessential being, and for that matter,
of the so-called "essential" properties considered as objects of sen-
sation and cognition, hence of discursive knowledge, which is now
indistinguishable from so-called "accidental" properties?
In turning to this stage of our investigation, we begin with an
important passage from the Metaphysics (E 2, 1026b2ff), in which
Aristotle says that accidental properties (ta symbebekota) do not share
in theory or science. "Accident is nothing more than a sort of name"
(1026b12-13). Still more sharply, "it seems that the accidental is very
close to nonbeing" (eggus ti tou me ontos: 1026b2l). The reason for
this extreme statement is undoubtedly that essential properties (pre-
vious difficulties to one side) are contained within the ousia or form.
Since accidents cannot be so located, their formal status remains a
mystery in Aristotle.
This remark must suffice on the ambiguous topic of accidents .
Our direct concern is with negative predication. "Negation" (apo-

phasis) is a syntactical term; "privation" (steresis) , we recall, is its
ontological coordinate. Both are defined with respect to a unity or
ousia that serves as the logical subject of a negative predication (Met-
aphysics r 3, lO04a9-16) . The difficulty to which this gives rise is by
now easy to anticipate.
Forms cannot have privations. They are either actual or poten-
tial, that is, altogether present or altogether absent. The potentiality,
or as one could say the potential presence (but actual absence) of the
form inheres in a material substratum. It would not be incorrect,
although it is not perspicuous, to say that the potentiality is "present"
within the given material substratum.
This term is equivalent to the assertion that a potentiality is not
a complete nullity, but derives a kind of opaque specificity from the
precise form "of which" it is the potentiality. We know which form
this is, on the basis of previous experience, namely, experience of
which forms always or for the most part actualize within matter of
such-and-such a kind, under such-and-such conditions.
The difficulty is that since there are no privations within forms,
there cannot be genuine negative predications about their inner
structure. Furthermore, denials of identity are strictly speaking im-
possible with respect to forms of differing genera, since the privations
or potentialities that provide semantic and ontological backup to the
negation particle must belong to one genus or another, but not to
more than one. Nor is it easy to see how a denial of identity between
two forms of the same genus could be analyzed.
Take the example "a horse is not a zebra." Strictly speaking, the
"not" must mean that there is a privation in the material substratum
of a horse corresponding to the form "zebra." But this is impossible,
and is being excluded by the negative statement. Similar problems
arise in the case of negative existentials. I restrict myself to consid-
ering statements of the type "centaurs do not exist." This must mean
that there is no material substratum capable of containing a poten-
tiality of the appropriate form "centaur." In this case, however, there
cannot be a centaur-privation to provide semantic and ontological
backup to the "not" in the statement under consideration.
Now for a closer look at the text. Aristotle distinguishes between
two kinds of negation in a passage of extreme difficulty:
Since it pertains to a single science to consider opposites, and the
opposite of unity is plurality, and it pertains to one science to
consider negation and privation, because in both cases we are
considering unity, of which there occurs a negation or in which
there is a privation (for either we say simply that [unity] is not

present, or [say that it is not present] in some genus. In the latter
[complex case of the genus] , the difference is present in the unity ,
in addition to and apart from what is contained in the negation.
For the negation of unity is its absence; but in the privation there
occurs a certain substrate-nature, of which the privation is pro-
nounced) .. . .14
I note first that the term" difference" (diaphora) is distinguished

by Aristotle from "other" (heteron) in Metaphysics I 3, 1054b 19ff.
Whereas each thing is "other" than everything else, a "difference"
distinguishes one definite species or genus from another. It is there-
fore an essential property. With respect to an earlier remark, "dif-
ference" is narrower than "otherness," the Platonic translation of
negation; so too essential negative predication is narrower than Pla-
tonic negation. This apart, negation and privation both pertain to,
i.e ., modify, the unity of a proposition which itself pertains to, or
exhibits, the formal unity of a definite incarnate individual.
Aristotle distinguishes two cases, one simple and the other com-
plex. In the simple case, unity is removed by the "presence" of a
negation or a privation, depending upon whether we are referring to
the proposition or its ontological coordinate. Since no genus is in-
volved, the simple case covers nonessential negation. The difficulty
here was anticipated in our inspection of the remark about the "near-
ness" of accidental being to nonbeing.
Take as a simple example "Socrates is not black." In the case of
the proposition, the unity dissolved is "Socrates is black." But what
is the ontological coordinate to this false unity? Since Socrates is in
fact white, it must be "white Socrates," and this unity is certainly
not dissolved. Since the color of Socrates' skin is not an essential
property, we may say that the potentiality in his material substratum
to acquire skin color has accidentally received the tint "white." But
since the white tint is in fact present, the privation of a definite color
is not present.
This of course could be denied; Socrates might have been black
while remaining Socrates, since skin color is accidental. I regard this
as full of its own difficulties, but will limit myself to this remark. If
a privation corresponding to "black" skin is present, so too are pri-
vations for all other possible skin colors. In any event, the objection
is irrelevant, since to say that Socrates might have been black is not
the same as to say that his ontological unity is dissolved, nor is it the
same as to say that he is not black.
I leave it at this, since we are more concerned with essential
predication (if that is indeed possible). In the complex case, we have
a species belonging to a genus and defined or distinguished by at

least two differences, one corresponding to the genus and the other
to the species. The privation to which the negation corresponds is an
additional presence; i.e., it signals the absence of a property other than
the difference with which we are concerned. Aristotle's wording
makes it probable that the generic difference remains independent
of the negation.
In other words, the negation states that (1) the unity of a species
within a genus is absent; (2) the genus has not been totally dissolved;
and (3) the unity has been partially dissolved by the negative pred-
icate, which signals a privation or an absent property other than the
difference just noticed. This absent property must be essential to the
species; otherwise, there would be no difference between the simple
and the complex cases.
The reader may be wondering initially what it means to say that
a unity is partially dissolved. Aristotle must have noticed this am-
biguity, or so I take the point of the final lines in our citation. Despite
the negation and its coordinate privation, the substratum remains,
and so too the incarnate individual. In the simple case, it was ap-
parently not necessary to bother with this precision. Why not? Pre-
sumably because of the absence of a difference or essential property;
the negation was "accidental."
Let us now try to construct an example that corresponds to the
details of the complex case. This simple exercise should bring out the
incoherence of Aristotle's analysis. I start with "man is not four-
footed." This is certainly a true proposition. And it is at least possible
to argue that "four-footed man" is the dissolved unity to which Ar-
istotle refers. Furthermore, the negation of "four-footed" does not
dissolve the unity of "man." Unfortunately, there is no difference
mentioned as present in the unity "man" apart from the content of
the negation. Since man is actually two-footed, it is unclear how to
defend the claim that "four-footed man" is a unity, except in the
entirely external sense of an imagined linguistic entity. We are there-
fore required to say that it is not necessary to mention the difference
which is present in the unity apart from the negation. What counts
is only that the negation actually leaves such a difference intact.
With this clarification accomplished, we have still not recon-
structed Aristotle's theoretical explanation of the meaning of the true
and sensible statement "man is not four-footed." The "not" must refer
to that aspect of the substratum which takes the form "n feet." But
in the case of man, the value of n is essentially "two." Hence there
cannot be a privation in the material substratum of man that is given
opaque identity as "absence of what could be present, namely, four

feet." Aristotle's theory is at least a partial failure .
Let us therefore shift our attention to the false statement "man
is not two-footed." Again, the "not" must refer to a privation in the
material substratum of man that concerns the number of feet be-
longing to man's essence. The problem is now in a way the reverse
of that in the previous example. Since man is by nature a two-footed
animal, there are no normal men who have more or less than two
feet; this is precisely why the sentence is false. The two feet being
normally or essentially present, there is no privation of the requisite
type. It is correct to say that the statement is false because it refers
to a separation in ta onta which does not occur (8 10, 1051a34ff). But
the separation or the "not" has been left unexplained by the precise
theory which is intended to explain it.
We may now state the general situation. The negation of an es-
sential property is impossible because there are no privations in es-
sences or forms . There is no room within form for negation, or for
the ontological coordinate of a negation, because form is filled up with
itself Being is a plenum; it has no gaps. Presumably it has essential
differences, since it is heterogeneous and multispecific. But there is
no way to account for the intelligibility of statements acknowledging
that multiplicity, such as "this difference is not that difference," "this
species is not that species," and " this genus is not that genus."
If these statements have no theoretical meaning, then neither
does the key statement that being is heterogeneous, or that " being
has many senses." The phenomenological fact of formal multiplicity
stands, but it is at odds with ontology . More cautiously, Aristotle's
technical doctrine is once more seen to confirm the "mad" Megarian
thesis, i.e., the thesis of Parmenides. There is a simple way to return
to phenomenological common sense, namely, by granting the pres-
ence of Nothing as visible in every negation or privation, hence in
every difference or formal property. On this point, however, Aristotle
is at one with Parmenides. For such an acknowledgment makes on-
tology, or the science of being qua being, and also of the principles
and causes of the whole, intrinsically impossible. And this, the "ra-
tionalist" philosophers will never admit.
VI
Dynamis and Energeia
We must now say something more directly about "potentiality."
It is well known that Aristotle has proposed more than one division
of the sense of dynamis. The first division is between the dynamis as
a kata kinesin legomenon, in the sense of change,1s and the dynamis

as correlative to energeia (Metaphysics 8 1, 1046a2). One may also
distinguish among the dynameis kata kinesin those which are with
logos and those which are without logos, that is to say, those which
one acquires by habit or knowledge, and those which are innate (8
6-7). Aristotle is interested above all in the correlative to energeia or
actuality, but the potentialities referring to change are of primary
importance for the controversy with the Megarians.
I begin with a general statement of the difficulty. Is there a theo-
retical explanation, in accord with the principles of Aristotle, of the
appearance of change? Aristotle, we recall, defines change as "the
entelechy of a dynamis" or as the actualization of a potentiality as the
change, but not as the form toward which the change is directed
(Physics f 1, 201a1Off, 201a27). The entelechy of change qua change,
as we may call it, does not fulfil itself but rather occurs as on the
way toward fulfillment. It is "extinguished" rather than fulfilled in
the end of the change and the immediate presence of something else,
Le., of some other form (f 2, 201b30).
The "being" of change is therefore not a potentiality inherent in
an actual form or ousia. It is presumably in the material substratum.
But the substratum derives its shape or nature as substratum of this
form from the form itself. If the being of change is inherent in the
substratum, it is then a potentiality within a potentiality. More spe-
cifically, it is a privation within a potentiality. But which privation?
Not of the present form, and not of the form which actualizes at the
extinction of the change. The actualization of change is then the re-
moval of a privation, Le., it is a parousia or presence to which no
genuine form corresponds. One is entitled to suggest that, on Aris-
totle's analysis, change is the perturbation of Nothing.16
As most commentators have remarked, Aristotle's technical ter-
minology originates in a consideration of everyday language and ex-
perience. It is important to try to understand the pretechnical senses
of dynamis and energeia as part of our clarification of Aristotle's doc-
trine of nonbeing. This understanding does not require exhaustive
philological investigations, since on Aristotelian principles everyday
experience is the same for all normal speakers of (what we today call)
natural languages. If there is no such common experience, then Ar-
istotle's doctrines are wrong at the outset, and not worth considering.
But even worse, all doctrines about how to speak correctly about
nonbeing, or about being, are historical inventions or poems. I will
not attempt to "prove" the contrary, but will rather show how Ar-
istotle's "pretheoretical" reasoning can be reconstructed from our
own experience.
We are obliged to follow this route, given the initial problem:

how are we to translate energeia into English? If we deny the afore-
mentioned common experience, and replace it with a technical term
from contemporary English, then we have immediately shifted from
Aristotle's doctrine to our own. On the other hand, to replace the
term with yet another technical term from Aristotle's texts is to ex-
plain the unknown through the unknown. However one approaches
the problem, it is unavoidable that we attempt to reconstruct Aris-
totle's thinking about experience. Let us now do so.
First I shall complete my remark about the translation of ener-
geia. Thus far I have been routinely following custom and calling it
an "actuality." But this seems to be too static; it refers to the result
of an activity, not to the activity itself. And energeia certainly carries
within it the notion of nonkinetic action, e.g., the shift from absence
to presence. Conversely, if we translate energeia as activity, we lose
touch with the fulfillment in the shift.
Energeia refers to both activity and actualization; there is no
sharp distinction between the process and the product of an energeia
(Metaphysics e 8, lOS0a2lff) . It would accordingly be misleading to
use as a standard translation "activity and actuality," since this
expression implies precisely such a distinction. The suggestion has
been made that we translate energeia in a more general sense as
"being at work." Unfortunately, this is circular, because energeia des-
ignates the primary sense of "being."
I note also that if we call by the name of energeia that sort of
work in which the activity and the product are inseparable, this
would render energeia synonymous with praxis. Let us therefore pro-
ceed by a reflection on the normal sense of "work." At the risk of
irritating hermeneutical sensibilities, I propose to admit that the im-
plications of everyday English are not very different from those of
the everyday language of ancient Greece in this respect.
In archaic Greek, the word argos means "not to do one's work,"
of which the most important example is perhaps the failure to cul-
tivate the soil. By extension, the word may signify "lazy." The couple
argos-ergon leads us therefore to a situation (still visible in Plato) in
which no explicit distinction is made between practice and produc-
tion. To do one's work is to produce that which human beings require,
whether it be in agriculture, in managing one's household, or in war.
Work is thus linked to necessity and to excellence. A man reveals
himself thereby; he shows the stuff of which he is made, or his "sub-
stance," in his work. This idea is the basis for the usual Greek dis-
tinction between words and deeds. A man may say one thing and do
another: what counts is the deed. Words may conceal, but work re-
veals; it is what it shows itself to be. Words may be true or false, but
in order to know which, one must compare them with the deeds.
If the work of a man is to make speeches, he is therefore either
an orator or a poet. In the former case, his words are judged by their
consequences. In the latter case, the poet is either a liar or else some-
one who "works" in the service of the gods, and thus again someone
whose words may be judged by their consequences. As for rhetori-
cians, Sophists, and philosophers, they are dangerous precisely to the
degree in which their words cannot be measured by deeds or facts ,
or again-which comes to the same thing-to the degree in which
any and all facts seem to confirm their speeches. This is perhaps why
twentieth-century thinkers tend to prefer pragmatism under one form
or another to "speculative" metaphysics, and tend to define theory
as construction rather than as reception or vision . Apparently deeds
point out the truth, whereas speeches merely promise it. In this sense,
dynamis seems to be closer to speeches than is energeia.
Work is therefore necessary and manifest, whereas speech is not
necessarily the one or the other. 17 And Athenian praise for the skill
of excellent speakers was normally regulated by conditions of utility.
The love of discourse simply for the pleasure of speaking well seems
to have been the mark of idle sons of rich families and of their cunning
corrupters. But even the least cunning of the latter held out the prom-
ise that their words would be useful for obtaining certain advantages.
Here again the excellence of the activity was measured by its product.
The product is the accomplishment of work qua activity . In this
sense, speech is fulfilled within the energeia. The products of the ac-
tivity of natural genesis and of artificial production fulfill their re-
spective activity, but they may also be separated from this initial
function. For example, we make use of flowers as decorations and
signs, of neutered animals as pets, and so on. Living things may be
detached from the dynamis of generation.
If however we shift from the individual to the species, Aristotle's
meaning becomes clearer. The work of genesis, as it manifests itself
via the continual presence of the form of the species, cannot be sep-
arated from that presence. However, what reproduces is not the form
of the species but the corporeal individual. The work of physical re-
production is therefore not in itself the work that produces the ener-
geia, which, to be sure, is not generated but eternal.
The work of genesis thus has two dimensions which do not simply
correspond to the difference between form and matter, but which are
distinguished by this difference. These dimensions are the sexual gen-
eration of the individual and the work by which the form of the spe-
cies presents itself. We must approach the species discursively via
Much Ado about Nothing : Aristotle contra Eleaticism 177
the individual. For Aristotle, the work of the species terminates in

the presence of an individual thing which it may not itself produce.
The species and the individual are thus "present" in two different
senses.
Either one may reproach Aristotle for having separated the es-
sence from those individual things of which it is the essence, or else
the work by which the species presents itself depends upon the life
and the work of the material instance. One has here a parallel to the
everyday sense in which the promise of speech is fulfilled in deed;
but it is not, for Aristotle, a very happy parallel. For it makes of the
energeia of the species either a generated individual or else an un-
speakable phantom. And if the concrete individuals are themselves
the fulfillment of the energeia, it is accordingly senseless to say that
the product and the activity of the energeia are inseparable. 18
We must, I think, conclude that reflection upon work sheds very
little light on the sense in which the procedure and the product may
be considered as inseparable . Let us therefore turn to the dynamis
(with which Aristotle himself begins), in order to see whether this
will convey us to the correct sense . Dynamis has two primary senses:
(1) the power or capacity to do something; (2) the possibility that a
thing may be other than it is.
In the first sense, a strong and skillful man is a good fighter,
whether he is actually fighting or not; and a king is capable of pun-
ishing, whether he in fact does so or not. These examples bring into
relief a decisive fact. To frighten one's opponents simply by showing
oneself or by making a threatening gesture is in both cases a con-
sequence of what one is now, not of that which one may become. To
be powerful means to be actually powerful: the distinction between
dynamis and energeia vanishes.
In the second sense of dynamis, the prince regent may become,
but is not yet, king. A stone may become, but is not yet, a statue; and
so on. I shall leave open the question whether one may express oneself
in this way in all cases in which the potential X has the power to
become x. Besides, as Jaako Hintikka has shown, Aristotle does not
define what he means by "possible" in a univocal manner.19 All this
has interesting implications for modal logic, which we must leave for
another occasion. Our main concern is not so much to know if each
possibility must actualize; it concerns that which one may call the
ontological status of each possibility prior to actualization. In the
two cases of power and possibility, if we consider solely the dynamis,
the product or fulfillment is not yet present.
The power inscribed in the title of king or in the fist of the boxer
is not the same thing as a punishment by the first or a blow by the
second. Similarly, the potentiality of the stone to become a statue is

not a distinct ousia, but it pertains to the ousia of the stone as the
king's power of action pertains to the ousia of the king. There are
thus two different senses here of "belongs to," in accordance with
two principal senses of dynamis.
First, the power of the king is not only an essential attribute, but
itself expresses completely what it means to be king. Our difficulty
in explaining correctly what we intend to say by the power of a king
thus illustrates in a peculiarly fortunate manner the difficulty in ex~
plaining an essence grasped by intuition . When we begin to make a
list of the attributes of royal power, we find ourselves in the process
of describing the essence of royalty. On the other hand, it would be
possible to deny that each of these attributes is essential to the nature
of royal power.
It would not be difficult to find examples in the natural sciences
of the same phenomenon, examples which lead to the denial of nat~
ural species. However, even if we could define a king precisely, it
would thereby become impossible to distinguish, in the case of a given
king, between his power and his actuality. This brings me to the
second sense of "belongs to." A possibility (or a kinetic dynamis) may
belong to an ousia (in the sense of a concrete individual), but it cannot
belong to it essentially. It is not an essential property of a stone to
become a statue, nor of a sculptor to transform a piece of stone into
a statue. In the first case, the concept of belonging is indistinguishable
from the concept of essence. In the second case, the concept of be-
longing is useless for our attempt to determine exactly what we mean
by essence.
The situation of power reduces to this. If deeds are more certain
than speech, then the fundamental property of a being is that which
permits it to do its work. In this case the dynamis is an energeia. If
we refuse to consider either powers or works as more fundamental,
then there is no energeia. The case of possibility thus reduces to this:
the possibility of becoming something depends upon the presence of
the power of becoming it. As a consequence, the second sense of dy-
namis risks collapsing into the first sense, of which we have already
seen that it is indiscernible from energeia. It seems therefore that,
once again, the Megarian thesis has been established.
VII
The Megarians Again
I have underlined the fact that the Megarians, as Eleatics, refuse
to attribute being to nonbeing (since they separate Being from Noth-
ing). This refusal does not oblige them to deny that change takes
place, any more than it so obliged Parmenides. We may explain their

thesis positively by saying that they demand a theoretical account
of change which leaves no void in the unity or plenum of Being. Ar-
istotle is plainly in agreement with them on one decisive point: he
insists that being has no contrary (and so, no negation).
Aristotle's solution to the problem of Nothing is thus obtained,
curiously enough, by a procedure analogous to the Megarian proce-
dure concerning change. The Megarians, according to Aristotle, do
not deny the powers of carpenters or the fact that they build houses .
In Aristotle's terminology, they rather affirm that the power to build
is identical with the act of constructing (Metaphysics e 3, 1046b29).
We now ask: how is one to make sense out of the denial of change?
This cannot be done by denying that carpenters construct houses
from time to time, or that they begin to do so upon occasion and have
not yet done so on other occasions . One obtains better results by
saying: that which looks like a void in the unity of Being, for example,
the possibility that a carpenter, who is not at this moment building,
may start to do so shortly, testifies rather to the presence of the power
to construct, a power inherent in the presence of the carpenter, who
is himself a manifestation of human being, and so on in the same
way, until one arrives at the following thesis: Being is fully present.
According to this thesis, "change" is a manner of speaking about
Being or, to apply a Heideggerian expression to another purpose,
about the appearances that "veil over" the present but invisible
Being. This thesis may seem to us to be desperate and unconvincing.
In a fundamental sense, however, its motivation is identical to that
of the "sensible" Aristotelian thesis. Both the Megarians and Aristotle
wish to avoid mentioning Nothing. The difference between the two
theses is that Aristotle supposes himself to have discovered a way
round the problem of the altogether not that allows him to ground
an ontology in the appearance of change, whereas the Megarians
make no such supposition.
The Aristotelian thesis is summarized as follows by Pierre
Aubenque:
For Aristotle, negation occurs in the proposition only; but the

proposition, even the negative proposition , does not concern
nonbeing , but rather being. Human discourse-in this case, pred-
icative discourse which an Eleatic conception of nonbeing would
place precisely in question-is that by which the negative arrives
at being ... it is predicative discourse which , in performing dis-
sociations within being, makes possible there the work of
negation. 20
As we have now seen, the ontological correlate to negation is the

privation, and it is at this point that Aristotle's solution collapses. To
this I would add that the" dissociations within being" already contain
Nothing in a sense that the doctrine of privation, even if we overlook
its intrinsic incoherence, cannot explain, as for example negative
statements about forms.
In sum: (1) there are no privations within forms; (2) even if Ar-
istotle says that hyle is an ousia, or in H. Happ's words, that it has
a certain power,21 its power is not eidetic; since the primary sense
of "being" is eidos, the attribution of ousia to hyle either hypostasizes
Nothing or allows it to infiltrate into the discontinuities in the hi-
erarchy of ousiai; (3) according to Aristotle, privations or potential-
ities are always for this or for that, i.e., they are defined by their
corresponding actuality (8 6, 1048a35ff); but privations are in one
sense nonbeing, in another sense form. As privations, they are the
absence of form, and hence nothing, i.e., nothing definite. What is
"somehow" defined by the absent form (nevertheless somehow
present) is Nothing.
The Megarians, like Aristotle, refuse to attribute Being to Nothing
or to affirm the altogether not. But they are more consistent, more
rigid theoreticians than Aristotle. They will not attempt to replace
Nothing with something. For this reason, the Megarian ontology is,
obviously enough, analytically worthless, since it consists finally of
just one sentence: Being is one. It may be that its only merit is truth.
The Megarians, like all unrestricted Eleatics, accept that there
are two ways of talking about the world which have nothing to do
wi th one another. This is not so far from modern science, according
to which there is no phenomenological connection between a sci-
entific explanation and the phenomena explained. Especially when
reading contemporary cosmology, one could claim that the phenom-
ena make no sense: no univocal sense, that is. They can be explained
however we like, and so with or without obedience to the principle
of noncontradiction. The phenomena qua phenomena, contrary to
Aristotle, license the imagination to "explain" them, not reason.
We have already had occasion to note Aristotle's statement that
his refutation of the Megarians is based upon how we use language,
and so, upon how to talk rationally about experience (8 3, 1047a20ff).
Like most philosophers or restricted Megarians, Aristotle refuses to
accept that there are two discontinuous languages. He therefore in-
vents a conceptual schematism and tries to force it onto experience.
But experience is intractable. Its intractability is epitomized in its
refusal to yield to the embraces of a theory that abolishes the alto-
gether not.
And yet, if to "theorize" is something more than "to gaze upon,"

if it is to offer a rational account of the whole, then we reach an
impasse. The theorist insists upon offering a technical explanation
of Nothing, and so of "not." But technical explanations are some-
thing; in fact, they are something quite specific, namely, artifacts or
poems . It looks as though technical theorizing, which is motivated
to a considerable extent by the desire to exclude "rhapsodizing" from
philosophy, succeeds instead in replacing philosophy with poetry, or
technical rhapsody.
I close with a reference to the useful controversy between K.
Barthlein and J. Stallmach concerning Aristotle's refutation of the
Megarians. This will illustrate how the best and most indispensable
of philological analyses require the complement of philosophical re-
flection. The controversy was provoked by Barthlein's critical dis-
cussion of Stallmach's book on energeia and dynamis.22 To my mind
the essence of this dispute turns upon the interpretation of e 5,
l048a16-21.
Barthlein regards this passage as an affirmation that the rational
kinetic dynameis contain, in their very definition or in their structure,
the absence of any obstacle to their fulfillment. In this case, we have
what Barthlein calls a Total-Moglichkeit, which he specifies as a po-
tentiality which it is impossible to distinguish from an actuality. This
is because, according to Aristotle, where there are no obstacles to
such a dynamis, it must fulfil itselP3 Accordingly, Barthlein asserts
that Aristotle has two principal conceptions of dynamis, the "total"
conception of e 5 and the "partial" or" disjunctive" conception of e
3 and 6-9 . He means by the latter the conception of a dynamis that
is agent or patient, considered apart from and not conjointly with a
corresponding element (agent or patient), nor with the presence of
the external condition of desire or choice.
Barthlein holds that the Megarian thesis seems plausible with
respect to the "total" conception of e 5, but that Aristotle refutes the
Megarians by making use of the "partial" conception.24 Stallmach
denies all the essential elements of this analysis. However, his cri-
tique reduces to the admission that, if Barthlein's interpretation with
respect to 1048a16-21 were correct, the rational dynameis would be
transformed into examples of the same nature as the irrational dy-
nameis (which actualize directly upon the copresence of the agent
and the patient); or else they would become actualizations of rational
dynameis.25
I have two brief comments to make about this complex debate.
First: Stallmach seems to be right in his version of what Aristotle
ought to have said in order to avoid Megarianism, given his own
exposition of that doctrine (85, l048a16-21). But it seems that Bar-

thlein is right when he expounds what Aristotle actually says in this
passage. Second: none of this, however useful it may be, clarifies the
more profound question of why the Megarians say what they say, or
if Aristotle's version of the controversy is satisfactory.
As a last example, consider the interesting observation of Bar-
thlein according to which, when Aristotle develops his doctrines, he
always tends to separate the active and the passive elements of the
dynamis and the hyle.26 But does this not suggest an initial incoh-
erence in the dynamis-energeia distinction? Does not the dynamis dis-
solve into form and matter because the idea of an agent is already
the same as that of an activity, or at least includes it? And once these
become separated, how are they to be reconciled?
Aristotle's quarrel with the Megarians has been of interest to us
as a dramatic example of the consequences of obeying the injunction
of Parmenides against the altogether not. This injunction appears to
be quite sensible; indeed, one might contend that it is madness to
disobey father Parmenides. Nevertheless, strict obedience results in
the silence of monism, whereas qualified obedience-i.e., the attempt
to replace the original problem with a technical surrogate-results
in the unending speech of dualism, or erasure of discourse as it is
spoken by the Nothing it seeks to avoid.
Philosophy, says Hegel, must strive against the temptation to be
edifying. However, it is the reverse of edification to draw a cautionary
moral from our long story. The very step by which philosophy seeks
to triumph over poetry ensures the triumph of poetry over philoso-
phy . If that triumph is desirable, it certainly cannot be because of a
gain in our knowledge of the truth about the whole. It can only be
because every attempt to grasp the whole leads inevitably to the cap-
ture of a part, and because truth about any part is rooted in Nothing,
which thus is seen to be accessible to human beings neither in itself
nor by a successful technical surrogate, but through the inadequacy
of praxis.
10
Remarks on
Nietzsche's "Platonism"
I
This paper is intended to clarify the sense in which Nietzsche
may be said to engage in a rhetoric of nihilism. The topic will be
explored by way of a comparison between Plato and Nietzsche. The
first step in articulating the structure of the investigation is to dis-
tinguish two different senses of the expression "rhetoric of nihilism."
This distinction will lead directly to an explanation of the pertinence
of the comparison just proposed.
One may engage in the rhetorical assertion of nihilism, as for
example by insisting upon the salutary and liberating consequences
of the thesis that "everything is permitted." Conversely, one may
employ rhetoric in order to conceal the destructive consequences of
a nihilism that is in effect already present but not entirely recognized.
Whereas these types of rhetoric are in principle distinct, it is obvious
that they may also be combined.
Nietzsche himself combines these two rhetorics in a way that is
both straightforward and perplexing. On the one hand, he argues that
nihilism is the liberating precondition for the greatest example of
creativity: the creation of a new table of values. In the course of mak-
ing this argument, Nietzsche distinguishes between the "noble" or
creative and the "base" or decadent nihilism. The difference between
the noble and the base nihilism is not "objective" or veridical but
consists in the difference between the active and reactive determi-
nation of the spirit. The difference is thus one of response; in each
case, the situation to which we respond is the same .
Since the "facts" (to the extent that there are any facts) are in
both cases the same, one cannot be converted from base to noble
nihilism by empirical evidence or deductive argumentation, whether
184 Remarks on Nietzsche's "Platonism"
scientific or metaphysical. What we require here is a rhetorical trans-

formation of mood. At the same time, Nietzsche makes entirely clear
that the "facts" themselves, when properly understood, guarantee the
base nihilism. Proper understanding is synonymous with decadence.
To say this in another way, Nietzsche tells us quite candidly that
nihilism is the proper response to a sound understanding of the truth.
It is for this reason that Nietzsche avoids a vitiating self-contradiction
when he asserts that there is no truth, that is to say, no truth other
than an intrinsic chaos which validates any, and therefore no, com-
prehensive interpretation or evaluation of human existence. He is also
entirely explicit in advocating a "forgetting" of the truth that there
is no truth, or a veiling over of this truth by a rhetorical invocation
to health and creativity.
If we keep in mind both aspects of Nietzsche's presentation of
nihilism, then our first general impression of his rhetoric is that of
incoherence, not to say chaos. If the difference between the noble and
the base nihilism is merely one of mood (namely, the desire to create
as distinguished from the absence of desire), then noble nihilism is
a false version or duplicitous mask of base nihilism. Health turns out
to be sickness, namely, lying, or a refusal to face up to the truth.
In this case, Nietzsche, the self-styled first honest philosopher,
is merely another decadent thinker who lacks the courage and in-
tegrity to teach mankind that creativity is delusion, or more sharply,
that values are intrinsically valueless. How can one mood be better
than another when "better" and "worse" are themselves perspec-
tives, that is to say, consequences of moods, of the presence or absence
of desire or the will to power? If moods are physiological, then to say
that health is better than sickness is simply to assert the perspective
of health, or to utter the platitude that power is more puwerful than
impotence.
A somewhat deeper reflection on Nietzsche's rhetoric may lead
us to the following possibility. On the face of it, there is no way in
which to reconcile a stirring invocation to creativity with a passionate
unmasking of the sameness of creation and destruction, that is to say,
of the valuelessness of every creation. No doubt it is (psychologically)
true that a creation is valuable for its creator, but this is a perspectival
truth, or what Nietzsche himself calls a salutary delusion.
If Nietzsche's sole, or overriding, intention was to incite us to
create new values, then he should have suppressed his brutally frank
destruction of every basis, natural or supernatural, for distinguishing
between the valuable and the valueless. One may claim that the de-
struction of all such bases is necessary for the greatest act of creation,
Remarks on Nietzsche's "Platonism" 185
that of the basis itself. In this case, however, creation is rooted in

self-deception, or unexamined, and hence dishonest enthusiasm.
Conversely, however, it cannot be likely that Nietzsche's main
purpose was to instill in the human race the same extreme decadence
that he attributes to himself. If this were so, then his regular cele-
bration of creative forgetting or rebirth would make no sense. We
may therefore be tempted to look for a deeper level of intention, one
in which these two apparently incompatible sides to Nietzsche's rhet-
oric are unified.
What could such an intention be? Perhaps Nietzsche was ad-
dressing two distinct types of human spirit, with the intention of
enlightening one type in the truth that there is no truth (or that art
is worth more than the truth), and the concomitant intention of obfus-
cating the understanding of another type by deceiving it into a Dion-
ysian frenzy of renewal. Perhaps. But does this unify the two rhetorics
or simply reassert them as distinct and coordinate?
Or is Nietzsche's deepest teaching precisely this: that there is no
intrinsic unity, but only two types of response to chaos, each with its
intrinsic excellence, each with its appropriate moment in any given
cycle of the eternal return of the similar? This possibility leads to a
further reflection. Perhaps the tension (if not indeed the contradic-
tion) intrinsic to the simultaneous addressing of these two distinct
(and incompatible) types is itself "perspectival" or local, that is, his-
torical and, in the deepest or Greek sense of the term, political?
This line of thought carries with it the corollary that Nietzsche 's
rhetoric of nihilism can be understood, not as the expression of his
underlying ontology, whether implicit or explicit, but rather as the
consequence of his conscious rejection of the very possibility of on-
tology. And this in turn brings us to the heart of the matter. Without
a doubt, the most influential interpretation of Nietzsche in our cen-
tury is that of Heidegger, according to whom Nietzsche is a meta-
physician: the last of the Platonists who constitute the history of west-
ern metaphysics. Our own suggestion runs directly counter to this
interpretation.
There can be no question of establishing in a single article as
thorough and detailed an interpretation of Nietzsche as Heidegger
has given us in his extensive essays and volumes devoted to that task.
Nevertheless, it is not unreasonable for us to examine in some detail
the essential Heideggerian thesis, to the effect that Nietzsche was an
unwitting Platonist. Indeed, we are required to examine this thesis,
given the plain evidence of the nature of Nietzsche's texts, which have
been summarized in the opening paragraphs of this essay.
The texts are at once explicit, directly intelligible, and incoherent
or mysterious. Nietzsche insists upon his own profundity, and he

warns us that everything deep loves a mask. It is not prima facie
evident that there is no metaphysical ground underlying the incoh-
erent elements of Nietzsche's rhetoric. But neither is it prima facie
evident that the ground is, as it were, both metaphysical and frac-
tured. If we take seriously Nietzsche's reference to masks, and his
distinction between esotericism and exotericism, it is more likely that
the concealed ground, whether or not metaphysical, is coherent and
both well understood and intended by Nietzsche .
In the course of investigating the essential contention of Heideg-
ger's interpretation of Nietzsche, it will also be necessary to arrive
at some determination of the nature of Platonism. Once again, only
persuasive indications can be offered in this article . The most we may
hope for is that these indications are enough to stimulate the ex-
haustive study of Plato's dialogues that would be required for any
serious approach to the thinker concealed behind the masks of dra-
matic personae, themselves concealed within the complexities of
texts that cannot be readily identified as either poems or philosoph-
ical treatises, but which are surely closer to poetry than to the phil-
osophical treatise.
When we put to one side the scholastic interpretations of Plato,
and look directly at the dialogues, we find something resembling the
situation just noticed in Nietzsche's texts. The surface is entirely rhet-
oric, and a rhetoric in which the parts seem to every careful reader
both to constitute a whole, and again, as soon as we scrutinize them
in detail, to cancel one another out. The fundamental difference be-
tween Plato and Nietzsche, taking them as they present themselves
to us, is that Plato says nothing in his own name, whereas Nietzsche
states everything in his own name, including the thesis that every-
thing is permitted.)
It seems initially plausible that the difference between Plato's
rhetoric of indirection and Nietzsche's rhetoric of frankness is at least
partially explicable by the radically different historical circum-
stances under which they wrote. If this is right, we are again pointed
away from metaphysics and ontology toward politics in the compre-
hensive sense of the term. Needless to say, this in itself does not prove
that Plato was no Platonist, that is to say, no metaphysician. It does
nothing more than to suggest the following hermeneutical principle.
If we start with the texts, and thus as good philologists (hence
very much in the spirit of Nietzsche himself), then the initial and
massive evidence at our disposal is neither metaphysical nor onto-
logical, but rhetorical or poetic. To give a crucial example: we cannot
understand Plato's dialogues by starting with the various fragmen-
tary discussions within them of the "Platonic Ideas." To the contrary,

we arrive legitimately at the discussions of the Ideas only after we
have mastered the rhetorical presentation of these discussions .
Those who take their bearings by the Ideas, and who elaborate
a "theory" (in the modern or constructive sense of the term) of Ideas
in direct contradiction to the dialogical procedure of Plato, may very
well become Platonists, or at least produce something called Platon-
ism. In no way, however, does it follow from this procedure that Plato
was himself a Platonist. The history of Platonism begins with Aris-
totle, not with Plato.
In an age of hermeneutics, with its correlative emphasis upon
textuality and writing, it seems entirely acceptable to distinguish
between Plato, the author of the Platonic dialogues, and Platonism.
I shall not argue in this essay that Heidegger is mistaken to identify
the history of Western metaphysics as Platonism. My point is instead
that neither Nietzsche nor Plato is a Platonist. In providing evidence
for this point, I shall hope to illustrate the difference as well as the
similarity between these two authors .
In the remarks to follow, I shall contend that neither Nietzsche
nor Plato advocates a "metaphysics" in the sense of an "ontology"
of the Being of beings (Sein des Seienden) . This is not an oversight on
their part, nor have they "forgotten" to ask the question concerning
the nature of truth or of Being as contrasted to the Being of beings.
I shall also contend that it is an integral part of the teaching of both
Nietzsche and Plato that it must be presented by means of a complex
rhetoric. The importance of rhetoric is in each case the consequence
of the impossibility of ontology.
The difference between the Nietzschean and the Platonic rhetoric
provides us with the best way in which to formulate the difference
between their fundamental doctrines. I would offer the following pro-
visional statement of this difference. Nietzsche replaces the "onto-
logical" concerns of his predecessors with poetry or art, whereas Plato
transforms the poetic presentation of ontology by the pre-Socratics
into an unresolvable quarrel between poetry and philosophy. The
Platonic dialogue is precisely between poetry and philosophy. The
Nietzschean monologue, even as dramatically represented by the
speeches and cryptic conversations of Zarathustra, is an acknowl-
edgment of the triumph of poetry.
Let me emphasize a further point. The triumph of poetry guar-
antees the triumph of nihilism, namely, of the ineradicable priority
of nothingness as the origin or condition of creation, but also as the
"essence" of each creation. The radical nullity of the superhuman
"cosmos" is the necessary condition for the elevation of human beings
to the status of creative gods. This helps to explain Nietzsche's double

rhetoric. The need to establish radical nullity must be the stepping-
stone to the rhetorical inducement of creative intoxication.
Plato avoids nihilism only if he can sustain the conversation be-
tween poetry and philosophy. It would be tempting to say that the
conversation must be philosophically sustained, but this formulation
is easily seen to be defective . This is immediately obvious from the
poetic nature of the dialogues. Whether or not Plato possessed a "se-
cret" or unwritten teaching, it is immediately obvious that he was
unable to present a philosophical formulation of the conversation or
quarrel between poetry and philosophy. As is plain from similar quar-
rels in our own century, as well as from the nature of the case, if
philosophy is like mathematics, phenomenology, or fundamental on-
tology, it cannot sustain or ground itself, but must be sustained or
grounded by poetry or rhetoric.
Even if we assume that the principles of things, or the correct
methods of philosophical investigation, are mathematical or quasi-
mathematical, it remains necessary to justify philosophy, and pre-
cisely with respect to its turning away from human or nonmathe-
matical experience, or else with respect to the distortion of the non-
mathematical by the mathematical. This problem does not arise for
Nietzsche, because he rejects the mathematical or reduces it to a
product of psychology, more specifically, of spiritual production.
However, he faces an analogous problem because he also reduces the
spirit (the ego, self-consciousness, etc.) to physiology, and physiology
to chaos .
The quarrel between Heidegger and Platonism, which we shall
consider primarily in terms of his quarrel with Nietzsche, is thus a
continuation of the long-standing quarrel between poetry and phi-
losophy. My fundamental objection to Heidegger's interpretation of
Nietzsche can now be stated. On Heidegger's account, "Platonism"
is indistinguishable from poetry, namely, from the production of a
world by the will to power. It follows that Heidegger himself is the
only genuine philosopher, or the true Plato, namely, the thinker who
sustains the quarrel between poetry and philosophy through the me-
dium of anew, third type of language that is neither poetry nor
philosophy.
This interpretation is erroneous because it attributes an ontology
to Plato, or let us sayan ontological intention, which culminates in
poetry. It is also erroneous in attributing an unconscious ontological
commitment to Nietzsche. An accurate account of the history of phi-
losophy would then look something like this. There are three fun-
damental"positions" or teachings: (1) the position of Plato and Hei-
degger, or genuine Platonism, namely, the attempt to preserve the

quarrel between poetry and philosophy in a third language that is
the origin of both; (2) "Platonism," or the self-deluded attempt to
replace poetry by a fundamentally mathematical philosophy which
is actually itself poetry; (3) the teaching of Nietzsche, or the self-
conscious recognition that poetry is triumphant over philosophy.
What is today called "postmodernism" is a version of the teaching
of Nietzsche.
II
And now to the evidence. I shall have to present many details,

but there is no other way in which to make my case. According to
Heidegger, Nietzsche's thought is fundamentally metaphysics. Hei-
degger means by metaphysics "the truth of beings as such in their
totality ."2 If we take Nietzsche seriously as a thinker, we find that
thinking is for him "representing the existent as the existent." Hei-
degger adds: "every metaphysical thinking is onto-logy or it is al-
together nothing" (p. 194). To be sure, Nietzsche does not envision
himself as a metaphysician or ontologist, but rather "as the coun-
termovement against metaphysics; that is, for him, against Platon-
ism" (p . 200). Nietzsche announces the death of God, namely, that
"the supersensuous world is without effective force" (p . 200). But
Heidegger replies that Nietzsche's thought "as mere countermove-
ment remains . .. in fact necessarily, like every 'anti,' detained in the
essence of that against which it applies" (p. 200) . Nietzsche remains
entangled in metaphysics or the thinking of nihilism, i.e., the "ab-
sence of a supersensuous, obligatory world" (p. 200).
We may summarize the balance of Heidegger's argument in the
Holzwege essay as follows. For Nietzsche, the history of western met-
aphysics is nihilism, namely, devaluation (Entwertung) and trans-
valuation (Umwertung) . Nihilism , and hence metaphysics, is the pro-
duction or projection of values (Werte) and hence their
"deconstruction" (p. 206) . Values are in turn perspectives or view-
points. Heidegger quotes Nietzsche: "The standpoint of 'value' is the
standpoint of conservation, intensification-conditions with respect to
the relative extent of life within Becoming."3
Values are the conditions for the possibility of life; as such, they
are direct expressions of the will to power: "Will to power, becoming,
life, and Being in the broadest sense signify the same thing in
Nietzsche's language" (p. 213) . The conditions are not transcenden-
tal: they are the will to power, or the will willing itself. (In other
words, "Der Wille zur Macht ist das Wesen der Macht": p. 217). Hence
life is nothing "beyond" itself, and points to "nothing" beyond itself.

There is no supersensuous or transcendental dimension. The will to
power is "the innermost essence of Being" ("das innerste Wesen des
Seins"),4 namely, of Being (Sein) in its metaphysical sense: "the ex-
istent as a totality" ("das Seiende im Ganzen": p. 218).
But the will evidently presents itself within human life in two
different forms: as truth and as art. Nietzsche reverses Platonism by
making art prior to truth. Art is "the essence of every willing, that
opens perspectives and occupies them" (p. 222). These perspectives
are values. Metaphysics from Plato to Nietzsche stamps Being with
the seal of values: "when the Being of beings is stamped with value,
and when its essence is thereby sealed, then every way to the expe-
rience of Being within this metaphysics is ... extinguished" (p. 238).
Nietzsche's thought is therefore not the overcoming, but the com-
pletion, of metaphysics, and hence of Platonism.
To say that art is worth more than the truth is for Heidegger to
say only that art is a more intensive, life-enhancing manifestation of
the will to power than is the truth . Art and truth remain values. But
why do values conceal the essence of Being? We cannot repeat Hei-
degger's argument here, which is in any case well known. I will
merely remind you of some of the highlights. Values are projects of
subjectivity and hence they reify Being, Le ., cover it over with the
specific manifestations of the human will as mediated by the "Pla-
tonic" apparatus of Ideas, categories, and correspondences. s
According to Heidegger, Nietzsche is a Platonist because he im-
poses onto Being the "what is it?" (ti esti) or "what," and so the "look"
or viewpoint of the knower.6 Heidegger says: "The truth is for
Nietzsche not the essence of the true, but the true itself, what satisfies
the essence of truth." Nietzsche, like Plato and all of western meta-
physics, neglects "the question about the essence of truth."7
The Platonic form (eidos) and the Nietzschean value (Wert) are
the two end points, the alpha and the omega of metaphysics, namely,
the covering over of Being, and hence of truth as "nondissimulat-
edness" (Unverstelltheit),8 by the specific manifestations of Being. In
other words, Being must show itself as beings; but these conceal the
showing forth itself, or what shows itself as other than itself. Meta-
physics cannot be blamed for observing the beings (ta onta), since
these are alone directly visible, and therefore accessible, to the theo-
retical intelligence. From the very outset, the desire (eros) to know
and the desire for certainty or power (Wille zur Macht), coincide. But
it is only with Nietzsche that this coincidence becomes explicit. Ta
onta are consequently not, when taken as what is, the direct mani-
festation of Being. Instead, they are perspectival products of the will
to power, which is concealed in the illusion of the "objectivity" of

things. And these things in their turn conceal Being. Discursive in-
telligence (Dianoia), ratio, reason (Vernunft) are the demiurgic or po-
etic makers of a double concealment of Being. This double conceal-
ment remains in force even though, like Nietzsche, we succeed in
revealing its identity as double concealment.
For Nietzsche, what we call "knowing" is the schematizing of
chaos. 9 In other words, the "world," or the consequence of artistic
perspectivism, is intrinsically chaos . This thesis appears at all stages
of Nietzsche's thinking. We find it, for example, at the beginning of
Book III of The Gay Science (Die frohliche Wissenschaft) : "The total
character of the world is indeed for all eternity chaos, not in the sense
of a missing necessity, but of a missing order, structure, form, beauty,
wisdom, and the rest of our aesthetic humanizing names."10
In the fragments dating from 1886 and 1887, Nietzsche empha-
sizes that not only is there no "thing in itself" or "subject in itself";
there is also no appearance (Erscheinung).11 All categories by which
we distinguish a '" "world in itself from a world as appearance" are
"of sensuous origin: read off from the empirical world."12 But the
empirical world is itself a construction: "the world of the 'phenom-
ena' is the manufactured world, which we feel as real. The 'reality'
lies in the continuous repetition of similar, known, familiar things,
in their logicized character, in the belief that we can here calculate,
compute."13 However, contrary to Heidegger's interpretation,
Nietzsche does not fail to raise the question of the essence of truth.
He does, of course, give a non-Heideggerian answer to this question:
"the opposite of this phenomenal world is not 'the true world, but
the formless-unformulatable world of sensations-chaos-therefore
another manner of phenomenal world, one which is for us
'unknowable."'14
When Nietzsche says that the world is an artwork giving birth
to itself,15 he means that chaos produces continuously changing im-
ages of itself which, as visible, are false, but as changing, are a true
representation of chaos. To employ a term from Plato's Sophist, each
world is a fantasm of chaos. "The world, that somehow concerns us,
is false; that is, is no fact but a thickening and rounding-off of a
meager sum of observations; it is 'in flow' as something becoming,
as an ever newly self-displacing falsehood which never approaches
to the truth: for-there is no 'truth."'i6
Let us first observe that Nietzsche is not reiterating a Kantian
standpoint here. The world is not a synthesis of categories and sen-
sations (Empfindungen); to the contrary, categories are themselves
"read off from the empirical world." They are the perspectives or
values projected onto "sensations," i.e., what Kant calls Empfindun-

gen, but which Nietzsche identifies as chaos. But as so projected, they
are not constructions of the transcendental ego. "The living is Being;
there is no other Being."!7 There is nothing beyond life, i.e., Becom-
ing. And life is desire (Begehren), not thinking (Denken): "-our think-
ing and estimating is only an expression for underlying governing
desires-the desires specialize themselves ever more: their unity is
the will to power."!8 Becoming is already a derivative notion or the
level at which desires (Begehrungen) "specialize" as the interplay of
subject and object, as a world, as a false image of chaos.
It is appropriate to compare a Nietzschean "world" to a Platonic
"fantasm" for the following reason. The fantasm conceals the original
by distorting its "measurements," yet at the same time adjusts these
to human perspective, and hence may fulfill a salutary function.
Needless to say, chaos has no intrinsic "measurements" (or "mea-
sures"), but for this reason, an "accurate" image of chaos would itself
be chaotic, and hence useless, not to say harmful, to human beings.
Perhaps the fundamental difference between Plato and Nietzsche
is that for Plato, there are originals, together with a prediscursive
vision that somehow allows us to regulate our discourse in such a
way as to distinguish between the salutary and the harmful, the noble
and the base, the true and the false. For Nietzsche, there are no such
originals. The original is chaos. It therefore necessarily follows that
"salutary" and "harmful," "noble" and "base," and of course "true"
and "false," are all derivative notions. They are interpretations.
I take this to be a crucial point in Nietzsche's thought: the unity
of desires is the will to power. But unity is logical structure; it is the
world of intelligible things (onta). "Toward the understanding of
logic: . . . the will to similarity is the will to power."!9 Hence the will
to similarity or sameness (Gleichheit) and also the eternal return of
the same, are products of the will to power. Here we can indeed em-
ploy a Heideggerian expression. The will to power is the will to will.
The will to power wills itself, not as a "self," a unified world, or a
principle, but as an unending process of chaotic transformations of
chaos . This process is as such always the same: it is the eternal return
of the same. The distinction between the Platonic or Kantian "su-
persensuous" world and the perspectival world of appearances is
overcome by recognition of these two worlds as products of the will
to power. But the will to power is itself the identity within difference
of these two worlds, and as such, the unity of each. It is itself ac-
cordingly a product, and hence a false image, a fantasm, of chaos.
"All unity is unity only as organization and interplay."20
Nietzsche's double rhetoric, which we may very loosely associate
with his distinction between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, is

then "united" by the absence of a unifying bond or center: the center
is chaos. Nietzsche inserts his own will to power into this absent
center. He has not, to repeat, forgotten to think the nature of truth.
He explicitly thinks it as chaos. He certainly fails to explain why or
how chaos manifests itself, first, as a continuously changing series of
worlds, and second, as bifurcated into viewer and viewpoint. He does
not explain how he himself, or his will to power, exhibits the intrinsic
unity required to assume the status of a creator god in the heart of
chaos .
But how could he, since any such explanation would bring order
out of chaos? Chaos would lose its ontological priority. For Nietzsche,
this is impossible, because every explanation of the structure of the
world is already a perspective. As such, it is an imposition of unity
onto chaos by the will to power, which is itself not genuinely fun-
damental except as a perpetually changing image of what is alone
the same, precisely as always other: chaos .
The following observation might be made at this point. Is not
the thesis of intrinsic chaos itself an interpretation? I believe that we
are required to answer this question in the affirmative. But nothing
needs to be changed in our own understanding of Nietzsche as a result
of this affirmation . Either the interpretation of the " whole" (to use
the official philosophical term) as chaos is an accurate or a false
image. If it is an accurate image, then the whole is indeed chaos;
furthermore, what seems like the coherent, or at least cohering, di-
mension of Nietzsche's doctrine collapses into internal disorder. But
this is to say that the coherent dimension of Nietzsche 's teaching is
a false image of chaos . It is a salutary or noble lie.
If, on the other hand, the interpretation is a false image and the
whole is not intrinsically chaos, then there must be an underlying
order or cosmos, and Nietzsche 's regular account of chaos is a lie.
Could it be a noble lie? The only conceivable justification for such
an interpretation would be that Nietzsche regards it as salutary to
convince human beings of intrinsic chaos in order to persuade us, or
rather to trick us into believing, that we are, or can be, creators. Chaos
is then a false image of order; Nietzsche is a "reverse Platonist."
In somewhat different terms, Nietzsche would then presumably
believe that, whereas there is a natural order, this order is bad for
human beings. I do not regard this as an implausible hypothesis in
itself, but in the present context, it carries with it an insuperable
difficulty. If it is necessary to deny that there exists a natural order
in order to persuade human beings that they are able to create new
194 Remarks on Nietzsche's " Platonism"
worlds, or values, then reflection persuades us that the correct vision

of the natural order prevents creation.
This could in turn be so if and only if the natural order in fact
prevents creation, and does not merely discourage it. Otherwise, the
"correct" vision of natural order would not be correct. Differently,
and more directly, stated, all that Nietzsche would need to do is to
explain that the natural order discourages but does not prevent or
forbid creation. And in this case, the natural order permits creation,
regardless of the difficulty of the creative act. Indeed, Nietzsche him-
self regularly insists upon this difficulty-as is most dramatically
evident in his doctrine of the superman , but in other ways as well.
The net result of this line of reasoning, which I shall break off
here, is that Nietzsche ought to teach, not that there is no natural
order, but that there is a natural order certifying human creativity.
This is obvious from the fact that the thesis of intrinsic chaos robs
creation of its intrinsic value. In other words, the incoherence in
Nietzsche's teaching, manifest in the two types of rhetoric which we
are attempting to reconcile, is a disastrous consequence of a sup-
posedly prudential concealment of the truth about the whole, namely,
by the false but noble image of intrinsic chaos . On this alternative,
then, Nietzsche is shown to be, not simply incoherent, but incom-
petent, and in fact, stupid. I cannot believe that any reader will find
this an attractive hypothesis .
I conclude that we are required to accept the doctrine of intrinsic
chaos as Nietzsche's own, that is , as seriously advocated by him, even
though it is also correct to call it an interpretation. The "correctness"
of the interpretation will be demonstrated by Nietzsche's success in
convincing human beings of its truth, that is, by the imposition of
his will to power.
I therefore doubt that Heidegger is right to say that Nietzsche
had not thought out the relation between the will to power and the
eternal return. 21 The will to power is not the willing of what was and
what will be, as Heidegger asserts. Instead, it is the unity of what I
shall call here the subjective and objective sides of what was and
what will be. It is the chaotic unity of creator and creation. I agree
with Heidegger that the will to power is "only the unfolding of the
original and preceding project of existents as eternal return of the
similar."22 But the eternal return is only the unfolding of chaos, which
is neither one nor many, neither same nor other, but all of these at
once.
It may seem paradoxical, yet I believe it to be true that Heideg-
ger's interpretation of Nietzsche is too "rationalist." Heidegger in-
sists upon making a kind of conceptual sense out of Nietzsche, per-
haps because he insists upon regarding Nietzsche as a metaphysician

or ontologist. But the eternal return is not a " ground" in any me-
taphysically useful sense. As Nietzsche recognized, it is the most
frightening, most extreme form of nihilism . "Let us think this thought
in its most frightening form: existence, just as it is, without sense
and end, but unavoidably returning, without a finale in nothingness:
the eternal return."23
Heidegger would no doubt reply that precisely if I am right, then
Nietzsche conceals Being underneath the manifested worlds or false
images of chaos. I prefer to say that Nietzsche neither forgets nor
conceals Being: he explains it quite explicitly. Being is chaos. If it
were not chaos, one could not create new worlds. The analogous thesis
in Heidegger's own thought does not refer to an original chaos, but
its consequences seem to me to be entirely similar to those of
Nietzsche's thought.
For Heidegger there is an unintelligible origination, unintelli-
gible because concealed by that which is originated. One may take
an "active" or a "passive" attitude toward Heidegger's central thesis .
Either we may argue that the unintelligibility of the origin renders
it irrelevant to human speech and deed, and hence that we are free
to create-or at least to interpret our speeches and deeds as creations.
Or else we may hold that each "mittence" of Being (i.e., each gift of
a world by the invisible origin) is a destiny-not a human act of
creation-and in fact, that creation is impossible, or in other words,
that human action is "meaningless" in the strict sense that it is ne-
cessitated by the origin . I might add that, on either alternative, Hei-
degger appears to be a "Platonist" himself, as Derrida, if! have rightly
understood him, has argued at length. Whether this makes Derrida
superior to Heidegger depends upon whether we prefer an incoherent
account of intrinsic incoherence to a veiled account of coherence.
Heidegger does not employ the notion of the will to power in his
own postmetaphysical thought. Other reasons aside, he no doubt
wishes to overcome the concealment of Being by subjectivity: "With
the subjectivity of the subject, the will comes into view as its essence.
Modern metaphysics, as the metaphysics of subjectivity, thinks the
Being of beings in the sense of willing."24 But the notion of power is
implicit in the notion of Heidegger's virtually untranslatable tech-
nical terms Ereignis, Geschehen, Geschenk (event, happening, gift),
and so on. Heidegger separates the implicit power of Being from
human willing. But this simply guarantees human ontological im-
potence; it does not guarantee that Being will show or give itself in
any but a concealed form. "Nature loves to hide," as Heraclitus
pointed out. Perhaps that is why we must put her to the torture.
However this may be, Heidegger has explained nothing that is

left unexplained by Nietzsche. In my opinion, Heidegger merely re-
turns to the metaphors of Neo-Platonism, Christianity, and a kind of
postmodern Romanticism. Nietzsche, to my taste, is more straight-
forward. Heidegger's denial of the possibility of ontology is veiled by
the ambiguous hint of creativity, a hint that is compromised by the
fatalistic dimension in his account of the origin and its "gifts."
Nietzsche more straightforwardly denies the possibility of ontology.
There is no logos of the Being of beings as a totality (Sein des Seienden
im Ganzen) because logoi are false images of chaos: false images in
the Platonic sense of fantasmata. As such, they may be better or more
understandable than correct images, but only because they conceal
the chaos at the heart of things. If we attempt to separate Being from
its accumulated interpretations, the resultant "semantic substra-
tum" is chaos. 25 And chaos admits of no questioning. There is nothing
to question .
In other words, to the extent that Nietzsche speaks of Being, he
never identifies it as "presence" (Anwesenheit) in the "Platonist"
sense. "That everything returns, is the most extreme approach of a world
of becoming to a world of Being: peak of contemplation. "26 In speaking
of Being, Nietzsche recognizes that its false image, Becoming, is
"without sense and end" Cohne Sinn und Ziel"). Being is, so to speak,
meaninglessness and goallessness . It is absence (Abwesenheit, apou-
sia) or nothingness (Nichts). Meaning, formal structure, the falsifi-
cation of the senses by reason: all this, together with Being, "is an
empty fiction. The 'apparent world' is the only one: the 'true world'
is merely a supe1Venient falsehood . ... " And again: "the signs which
one has given to 'true Being' are the signs of non-Being, of nothing-
ness-one has constructed the 'true world' out of the contradiction
to the actual world: an apparent world in fact, insofar as it is merely
a moralist-optical deception."27
Some time ago I observed that the fundamental role assigned by
Nietzsche to chaos makes it impossible for him to explain appearance
or becoming. Nietzsche is not a Fichtean Idealist, for whom the sub-
ject-object distinction, and hence the structure of the world, is a
project of the Absolute Ego. Perhaps one can say that Nietzschean
chaos anticipates the Derridean differance. There is no ontological
foundation for the "moralist-optical deception" Cmoralisch-optische
Hiuschung"): if there were, Nietzsche would indeed be a "Platonist"
in the Heideggerian sense. On the contrary, the absence of such a
foundation, the primacy of nothingness (Nichts), the meaninglessness
(Sinnlosigkeit) of the eternal return, are one and the same condition
for the transvaluation of values or the creation of a new world, by
what we may dare to call a "world-historical" manifestation of the

will to power.
And this, I suggest, is Nietzsche's "Platonism": he employs a gen-
naion pseudos, a noble lie that is the foundation of the distinction
between the noble and the base, the high and the low, the active and
the passive nihilism. The noble lie is the concealment of the truth
about chaos, but not in the sense that this truth is never stated. On
the contrary, Nietzsche is quite explicit about the absence of truth.
He is explicit about the advocacy of a noble forgetting of the intrinsic
meaninglessness and goallessness of every creation.
Up to a point, this is exactly like Socrates' explicit procedure in
the Republic, where he makes it entirely clear that the so-called" just"
city is based upon a noble lie. However, this and other moments of
unusual Platonic frankness are muffled by what one might call a
salutary or medicinal (also a Platonic term) rhetoric . Plato's sober
rhetoric, one could suggest, points to a partly Nietzschean conception
of human beings as estranged within nature . His mad or "Dionysiac"
rhetoric points to a transcendence of human existence, not to its po-
litical salvation. Unlike Nietzsche, however, Plato also possesses a
sober political rhetoric which is akin to his mad rhetoric in its de-
pendence upon the notion of a natural order, that is, of an order at
least sufficient to sustain phronesis, or the judgment of intelligence.
Plato is thus more complex than Nietzsche, or as one could also put
it, radically less frank.
It would be tempting to refer to the doctrine of the eternal return
as Nietzsche's "esoteric" or genuine teaching. The doctrine of the
world-creative function of the will to power would then be the tran-
sition between the genuine and the "exoteric" or "political" teaching
of what is called in Thus Spoke Zarathustra the superman
(Obennensch) .
This terminology, which is derived from Nietzsche's own use of
the terms, is nevertheless too cumbersome, since Nietzsche is equally
frank about both sides of his teaching. Perhaps it would be better to
say that Nietzsche's dual frankness constitutes his esotericism, which
is concealed by the "positive" or creative (i.e., the Dionysian) element.
The result of this concealment is precisely the exoteric conception of
Nietzsche as a "liberator," a conception which is especially evident
among the "postmodern" thinkers of the Left.
One may suspect that Nietzsche adjusted his rhetoric to fit the
tenor of the late nineteenth century, or in other words, that he made
use of "advanced" or late modern materialism and decadence (which
he endorses rather than denies) in such a way as to make possible
salutary creation rather than the equally likely reign of the last men.
The difference between Nietzsche's and Plato's rhetoric (not quite so

great as seems to be the case at first sight) is then partially explained
by the difference in historical circumstances, as I noted earlier.
In Zarathustra, Nietzsche makes clear that all gods are human
inventions and that the beyond (Jenseits) is "a heavenly nothingness"
("ein himmlisches Nichts"). In the same passage Zarathustra adds:
"and the belly of Being indeed does not speak to humans, unless it
be as a human." He goes on to identify the voice from the belly of
Being as his ego Ueh): "yes, this I and the contradiction and chaos
of this I speaks still most honestly of its Being, of this creating, willing,
evaluating I, which is the measure and the value of things."28
We know, of course, that this "!" is in fact a false image of the
unconscious: of desire and the will to power, which are in turn false
images of chaos. The world is an interpretation (and in that sense a
creation) of the individual 1, or a balance of action and reaction in
the perspectival world-making of each individual center of power
against the others.29 But the I is a projection of the will to power.
Differently stated, every world is an interpretation,30 but the unique-
ness of each interpretation is an illusion or false image of the absolute
homogeneity of whatever happens-an illusion identified by
Nietzsche as a "moral perspective."31 And "who interprets?-our af-
fects" ("Wer legt aus?-Unsere Affekte").32
Art is worth more than the truth 33 because the illusion of unique-
ness is necessary for the enhancement of life (even though the unique
is merely a local manifestation of power). This is expressed by
Nietzsche in the following fragment: "My main thesis: there are no
moral phenomena but only a moral[istie] interpretation of these phe-
nomena. This interpretation itself is of extra-moral origin. "34 When
Nietzsche says: "the same text permits countless interpretations:
there is no 'correct' interpretation,"35 he is not making a purely philo-
logical observation. However, neither is he asserting the primacy of
uniqueness . The multiplicity of interpretations, the relativity of
meanings, or what one might call the hermeneutical nature of Being,
are all an illusion, albeit a salutary one. The "extra-moral" origin of
moral interpretation is chaos, the primacy of nothingness, the most
extreme form of nihilism.
"The will to false appearance, to illusion, to deception, to be-
coming and to change ... [is] deeper, more original, more meta-
physical than the will to truth, to actuality, to Being."36 Life depends
upon, and in its human form is itself, deception and concealment.
The Dionysian yea-saying to the world as it is "including the wish
for its absolute recurrence and eternity"37 is thus the transition point
between Nietzsche's esoteric doctrine (comprehensive nihilism) and
his exoteric doctrine (the affirmation of a life-enhancing creation of

new values).
Sobriety is first the clear perception of chaos, meaninglessness,
purposelessness. Next, this perception induces Dionysian intoxica-
tion or recognition that the primacy of chaos is the condition for the
possibility of creation. Then the Dionysiac forgets or suppresses the
Apollonian dimension within his intoxication, and thereby in fact
creates or interprets. Or as Nietzsche says of the "coming philoso-
phers" ("kommenden Philosophen") in Beyond Good and Evil, "all
philosophers up to now have loved their truths. But they will cer-
tainly not be dogmatists. It must offend their pride, even their taste,
if their truth is supposed to be a truth for everyman. 'My judgment
is my judgment: no one else has an easy right to it'-so perhaps speaks
such a philosopher of the future."
This entire paragraph (Der Freie Geist, no. 43) contains a beautiful
formulation of Nietzsche's transitional teaching. Allow me to call it
an esoteric formulation of the exoteric: "in the end must it be as it
is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for
the profound, subtleties and shudders for the refined, and, altogether
and in brief, everything rare for the rare ."38
"The coming philosophers" ("Die kommenden Philosophen") are
the "supermen" or creators who have been intoxicated by their own
strength into forgetting the sober, clarifying, hence decadent truth
that there is no truth. This passage reminds one of Socrates' sur-
prisingly blunt statement in the Philebus (28C): "the wise all agree,
thereby exalting themselves, that intellect (no us) is their king of
heaven and of earth." One should compare here Nietzsche's Twilight
of the Idols: to say that the true world is graspable by the wise is
equivalent to saying "I, Plato, am the truth."39
It is at this point that we touch upon the genuine "Platonism"
of Nietzsche, and so too upon their fundamental difference. The ques-
tion is one of rhetoric, not of ontology. I would not deny that the
many enigmatic discussions in the dialogues of forms (eide and ideai)
point to a crucial difference between Plato and Nietzsche. But the
Ideas of Socrates, as he tells us in the Phaedo, are the "strongest
hypotheses" and "safest response"40 that he can make about the na-
tures of things.
As I have shown elsewhere in detail, there is no ontology in Plato,
no univocal sense of Being as presence (Anwesenheit).41 There are, of
course, fragmentary, inconclusive, and playful discussions of what
we could at most call fragments pointing toward ontology. Contrary
to Heidegger's contemporary proxy, Derrida, the Platonic forms are
absent from discursive thinking, whether written or spoken.
I will give some indication here of the essential support for this
statement. There is a discontinuity between Eros and the Ideas or
"hyperuranian beings" in the Phaedrus that makes ontology impos-
sible. This is easily illustrated by a careful analysis of Socrates' myth
of the soul, and especially of the culminating vision of the hyperur-
anian beings by the philosophical soul, as distinct from the Olympian
gods. The charioteer of the philosophical soul raises his head only
above the surface of the cosmos "and is carried around by the rev-
olution, disturbed by the horses and viewing the beings with diffi-
culty."42 Exactly the same disjunction follows from the still fashion-
able linguistic or predicationalist interpretation of the Sophist.
Linguistic constructions or concepts are not pure forms but discursive
images of the silent conditions of discourse.
Linguistic horizons are scientifically neutered versions of
Nietzsche's perspectives. For this reason, much if not all of twentieth-
century "analytical" philosophy is at bottom a kind of pallid Nietz-
scheanism. So long as one insists upon a distinction between seman-
tics and syntax, one preserves the distinction between Plato and
Nietzsche. However, the distinction between semantics and syntax
is rooted in a disjunction between silence and speech. And a speech
without meanings is as silent as a Platonic intuition (noesis) of pure
meanings. For our present purposes, the result is as follows. The so-
called "middle" doctrine of Platonism terminates in the silence of
vision, whereas the so-called "later" doctrine of Platonism, if it is a
proto-Fregean doctrine, terminates in Nietzschean linguistic per-
spectivism or constructivism. As a consequence, if there is any dif-
ference between Plato and Nietzsche, it is the difference between
silence and speech. Nietzsche, the paradigm of late-modern decad-
ence, enunciates with all possible clarity his esoteric and his exoteric
doctrines. Plato does not.
There is an exoteric discussion of the distinction between the
esoteric and the exoteric in Beyond Good and Evil: "the exotericist
.. . sees things from below upward,-the esotericist however from
above below! There are heights of the soul from which, when we see
out, even tragedy ceases to have a tragic effect."43 This is, so to speak,
the level of the Apollonian, just before one surrenders to the Dionysian
intoxication of what Socrates calls in the Philebus the self-exaltation
of the wise. Plato, on whose "hiddenness and Sphinx-nature" ("Ver-
borgenheit und Sphinx-Natur") Nietzsche comments earlier,44 as-
signs his most extensive discussion of esotericism to the sophist Pro-
tagoras in the dialogue bearing his name and to the drunken
Alcibiades in the Symposium. 45
Apparently sophists and drunkards are more candid than Pla-
tonic philosophers. Or to make the same point in another way, the

members of the army of Homer, the partisans of the thesis that every-
thing changes,46-and hence Nietzsche, the disciple of Heraclitus47 -
cannot state their principal doctrine without exposing the exoteric
status of all doctrines of stability. Nietzsche tells us explicitly: "every-
thing deep loves the mask ... every deep spirit employs a mask."48
Plato on the other hand tells us nothing explicitly. Only his masks
speak-and to the superficial Geist, this fact is not even visible.
When one takes seriously Plato's playfulness, and reflects upon
the fact that he wrote dialogues or poems, not treatises on ontology,
it is perhaps possible to understand how he might have agreed with
the following assertion of Nietzsche: "Art and nothing but art. Art is
the great rendering-possible of life, the great guide to life, the great
stimulus to life."49 The most radical version of art is the production
of values, that is, of a perspective or world-interpretation. The Phae-
drus makes clear that the vision of hyperuranian beings, in which
our interpretation of the cosmos is rooted, is deeply problematical
with respect to the possibility of a discursive justification of our in-
terpretation. The same point is made by Diotima in the Symposium.
Eros, she explains to the young Socrates, is neither mortal nor im-
mortal, but something in between: a daimon. Its power is "to inter-
pret (henneneuon) and convey the things from humans to gods and
the things from gods to humans ... Being in the middle, and so filled
up with both, it thus binds together the whole to itself."50
The fundamental theme of the Symposium and Phaedrus can be
stated as follows. Whether the Ideas are "beyond" or "within" the
world (and so, whether Eros is divine or only daimonic), the purely
visible nature of the Ideas makes every interpretation of the world
erotic rather than ontological. Nietzsche's "Platonism" then comes
to this: what Plato calls "erotic," he calls "intoxicated" (as Heidegger
observes).51 Nor should it be overlooked that Plato entrusts the pre-
sentation of the doctrine of Eros to a man who is incapable of be-
coming intoxicated. 52 Alcibiades, who points this out, while himself
intoxicated, also reveals that Socrates is unerotic . The difficult ques-
tion is whether the relation between the sober Socrates and the erotic
hermeneutic of divine madness is analogous to the relation between
the sober and decadent Nietzsche and his prophecies-whether those
in his own voice or those presented via Zarathustra-of intoxicated
creators of the future .
I believe it is more accurate to draw an analogy between
Nietzsche and Plato rather than between Nietzsche and Socrates. We
do not need to enter here into the long question of Nietzsche's portrait
of Socrates, although we might note his remark that "Plato for ex-
ample becomes in my hands a caricature" ("Plato zum Beispiel wird

bei mir zu Carikatur").53 Plato, whom Nietzsche also calls "a great
Cagliostro" (" ein grosser Cagliostro")54 is the creator of both Socrates
and Alcibiades, but never of an intoxicated Socrates or a philosophical
Alcibiades .
Nevertheless, it is Socrates who praises intoxication, and Alci-
biades who praises sobriety. But this is to say that Plato praises
both-exactly like Nietzsche . Once again, the difference between the
two is Nietzsche's greater frankness. I believe that this has something
to do with Nietzsche's remark that it is today sometimes necessary
to speak and act coarsely: "that of which one does not speak loudly
and scream, is not there. "55 Sometimes-but by no means always .
But the deepest difference, as I have already indicated, turns on
the point of Ideas, although not at all, I believe, in the sense of the
usual interpretations. The Ideas are silent paradigms of what eludes
discourse even as regulating it. Nietzsche's use of optical metaphors
should not prevent us from understanding that if "the total character
of the world is indeed in all eternity chaos," then there is nothing to
see, except for "illusion" (Schein) in Hegel's sense of the term .
The absence of ontology in Nietzsche is entirely compatible with
a perpetual and comprehensive discursivity: a continuous veiling
over of Nichts with words, i.e., with interpretations. The circularity
of the eternal return is thus a perhaps unconscious caricature of the
circularity of the Hegelian concept (Begriff). From this "perspective,"
Nietzsche may be understood as a consequence of Hegel's failure to
assimilate Platonic forms or Aristotelian categories, that is, to render
intellectual intuition completely articulate. The forms and categor-
ies, having been assimilated into discourse, cannot serve as a stan-
dard external to discourse by which to distinguish sense from non-
sense, or truth from art. Outside of discourse, there is-nothing. If
we identify "nothing" as chaos, the result is Nietzsche.
Nietzsche can and must say everything, precisely because where
everything is talk-that is to say interpretation-everything is per-
mitted. Philosophy, precisely by transforming itself into art, becomes
nihilism. Plato, on the contrary, says nothing, as he makes clear, for
example, in his Second and Seventh Letters. 56 The dialogues are art-
works about a Socrates grown young (or new) and beautiful; they are
not ontological treatises. Philosophy is represented in these artworks
by the disjunction between Eros and Idea: it is represented by the
fantasms or false images of erotic interpretations of silence. But this
is entirely necessary, since there are no accurate interpretations of
Ideas . Or better: accurate images would give a false picture of the
Ideas because, as accurate, they would not be images at all, but the
Ideas themselves . Human beings, however, are not Ideas but lovers
of the Ideas . We desire what we lack, yet what we lack "structures"
or directs our desire.
Everything therefore comes down to the question whether we
desire ourselves, whether the Ideas are "perspectives," "values," or
"projects" of the will to power. Or does it? For suppose that the Nietz-
schean thesis is true. If desire articulates itself into perspectivity, do
not the same fundamental questions of Platonism remain to be an-
swered? Certainly Nietzsche admits as much, since his "positive" or
"exoteric" teaching-unlike that of his twentieth-century disciples-
stands or falls upon the possibility of distinguishing the high from
the low, the noble from the base, the deep from the superficial-and
not merely the healthy from the sick or the strong from the weak.
As Nietzsche himself says: "It is understood that the perspectives
from beneath upward give rise to entirely different expressions than
those from above downwards."57 Contrary to Heraclitus, the way up
is not the same as the way down. And that is Nietzsche's Platonism.
Notes

1. Logioi may be related to logion or "oracle" in the sense of a speech which is not
based upon rational investigation. Numbers in parentheses in the text refer to
the book (Roman) and chapter (Arabic) of the Greek edition as printed by the
Oxford Classical Texts .
2. See 1.57: the Greeks once spoke a barbarian tongue (d. II.1S8).
3. Cf. IV.76: the Scythians hate foreign customs, especially Greek customs.
4. Cf. Homer, Iliad XIV.201; Hesiod, Theogony, esp. 104-11S.
S. Cf. the terms used by and about Darius in the preceding chapters, especially the
word lampron which indicates the link between visibility and nobility.
6. Cf. Iliad 11.169-206, where Odysseus takes almost the reverse position: "the rule
of many is not good." However, Odysseus omits "pleasant" here; as an aristocrat,
he is presumably not a hedonist.
7. Ch. 81: in his brief speech, there are nine distinct words or phrases alluding to
intelligence.
8. kata nomon ge ton tes physeos, to tes physeos dikaion. Numbers in parentheses will
now refer to the Stephanus edition of the Greek text of the dialogues.

1. 268aS-c10, 271e4ff, 272dSff, 273e4 , 274blff, 274el , 27Sb1.
2. 264b6, 268dS, 27Sc9, 276e6, 279al, 287b1. M. Remi Brague calls to my attention
that palin and anapalin occur fourteen times in the myth. He also notes that the
dialogue begins with the particle H, the seventh letter in the Greek alphabet.
3. Jacob Klein , Plato's Trilogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
4. 262a3ff, 268a4-dS , 274elff (in this passage, two mistakes are noted), 276c3ff
(again, two mistakes are noted) , 277al-c6 .
S. 294a6-c9, 29Se4ff, 296c4-297b4 et pass.
6. Cf. 301d8ff: actual cities produce no one who is by nature a true king.
7. Plato rarely, and only indirectly, distinguishes between practice and production .
8. For favorable references to division and collection in the Statesman, see, inter alia,
282b6ff, 284e1Off, 286d4ff.
9. At Phaedrus 24Se3, we are told that there is an ousia and logos of the soul as arche
Notes to 64-97 205
kinese6s. But d. 246a3ff and cMf: there is no logos of the idea of god, and only a
god could tell us what is the divine soul (i.e ., in gods or mortals).
10. Cf. the use of episphragizo at 258c4-6 and Campbell's remark on this passage in
his commentary: "The mind is here viewed as giving her impress to objects, and
not as receiving impressions from them .. . ." See Lewis Campbell, The Sophistes
and Politicus of Plato (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1867).
11. Cf. Symposium 187a4.
12. Campbell takes ek ges palin anastrephomenon at 271a6 to refer back to 270e8ff,
and says, "The bodies which earth has absorbed she gives forth again to be the
habitations of other souls ." Perhaps so, but the Stranger's language encourages
a different interpretation.

1. Cf. my Plato's Symposium (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 265ff;
and Symposium 21Oa4ff.
2. Socrates quotes Pindar, Isthmian I, lines 1-2, in such a way as to compare Phae-
drus to "my mother Thebes." Pin dar places the glory of his polis beyond every-
thing else . For Socrates, the love of speeches transcends the polis; this is related
to the location of the dialogue outside the city wall.
3. 229c4 : I take his oath to show exasperation with those who believe such tales ;
this is certainly how Socrates responds to Phaedrus' question .
4. R. Hackforth, Plato's Phaearus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952).
5. Cf. Sophist 227a7ff.
6. E.g. 231el-2, 232b4 (where philia is equated with hedone) , 232d4 , 232el , 232e6.
7. Hackforth, Plato's Phaedrus, p . 31.

I. The present work may be taken as a sequel to my "The Role of the Non-Lover in
Plato's Phaedrus," Man and World 2 (1969): 423-37 . The two papers together con-
stitute parts of a longer interpretation which is in progress.
2. In the text , I make occasional remarks comparing Plato with Hegel. This has to
do with my ultimate intention: a comparison of the two philosophers' teachings
on the soul. I leave the remarks here as harmless and as perhaps contributing
something to the main argument, even though their primary function lies in con-
tributing to the aforementioned more comprehensive study.
3. This is not altered by the notoriously sexual symbolism in part of Socrates' rhe-
torical description of the ascent from the body. The Aufhebung of corporeal by
spiritual Eros entails an assimilation of the details of the former into the latter.
4. See the interpretation of the speech of Aristophanes in my Plato's Symposium (New
Haven : Yale University Press, 1968), pp . 120-58 .
5. Symposium 200a5-b8: Eros is the desire for what it lacks , namely, beauty; and
201a2-b3: Eros is love of beauty and not of ugliness .
6. Symposium 198c5-d7, where Socrates indicates that speaking the truth means
206 Notes to 9S-105
here selecting the most beautiful aspects of the issue and arranging them in the
most seemly manner.
7. This point has been most elaborated by Alexandre Kojeve. Cf. the introduction
to his Essai d'une histoire raisonnee de la philosophie pai'enne (Paris: Gallimard,
1965).
S. The separation of these technai from the speech of Stesichorus has something to
do with the absence of mathematics in the discussion of the descending incar-
nations of the psyche. Cf. Z. Diesendruck, Struktur und Charakter des platonischen
Phaidros (Vienna and Leipzig: Wilhelm Braumiiller, 1927), p . 52.
9. Perhaps this is why philosophies obsessed with language suffer frequently from
anti theological ire (or exclude the divine from the zone of human intelligibility).
10. Cf. the teachings of the "founding fathers" of modernity like Descartes, according
to whom natural passions are disciplined by "abstract" intelligence , which is itself
the method or instrument of the desire for the best (= mastery of nature).
II. The concealed lover interprets Eros in physiological terms; as his language in-
dicates, Eros is as "clear" as the body itself (237d3-4, 23Sb5-7; d . L. Robin's
note, in the Bude edition, to 237a). In this speech, the silence and manifest visi-
bility of Eros are intimately related. Ambiguity is a property of speech, not of
phenomena. What "appears" or "presents itself" is, prior to speech, simply what
shows itself as it shows itself. Prior to speech, the phenomenon is in a way rem-
iniscent of the Platonic Idea. This gives us a hint of the way in which the higher
position is implicit in the lower.

1. The best example of the practical application of this principle is Leo Strauss's
essay on the Republic in The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1964). The general approach ofthe present essay, as well as a number of its details,
is deeply indebted to Professor Strauss.
2. 573b6, 574dS, 575a3, 576bll, 579d5-S. The connection between philosophical
Eros and tyranny is ironically indicated at 56Sb5: the wise poets who praise tyr-
anny will understand why we expel them from the just city, and forgive us.
3. The difference between the Phaedrus and Symposium is indicated by the fact that
the former, which contains an explicit discussion of diairesis, takes place at high
noon and in the sunlight, whereas the latter occurs in the evening and by artificial
light.
4. See Republic 449dl: apparently Socrates would have liked to avoid altogether the
discussion of sex, but paidopaiia is one form of poiesis with which the city cannot
dispense.
5. Republic 39Se6: the guardians must not be drunk; 416d6-7 : they shall have no
privacy, anyone may enter another's room without knocking. At 414bS, where the
noble lie is introduced, Socrates points out that it may not persuade the guardians:
they must , in other words, keep secret from the people their knowledge that it is
a lie; d . 376d9: the education of the young begins with lies. Also relevant is Soc-
rates' statement that mimetic poetry is a concealment of the poet (393c11). Al-
though Socrates narrates the Republic, he nevertheless imitates all the characters.
In the (from this viewpoint) more complex Symposium, Apollodorus is the nar-
rator, and within his narration, Aristodemus; the speakers, however, are not im-
Notes to 105-110 207
itated by Socrates, but seem to stand forth as themselves . This is not really the
case; nevertheless, Socrates is more visible in the Symposium than in the Republic,
and this is emphasized by the frank speech of Alcibiades, who comments explicitly
on the hidden or inner nature of Socrates (2 I 5a4ff. especially 216d5-e5) .
6. Republic 395a3, Symposium 223d3 . Eros is defined as love of the whole (of all
goods) and eudaimonia at Symposium 205dl.
7. Socrates is called hybristic by Agathon at 175e7 and by Alcibiades at 215b7 and
219c5 . At 217e5 , Alcibiades refers to Socrates' arrogant behavior toward his
beauty. He compares the surface of Socrates' logoi to the skin of a hybristic satyr
at 221e3. This simile is related to Alcibiades' revelation that Socrates has practiced
irony toward men throughout his life (216e4-5). For instances of Socrates' hy-
bristic behavior, consider 174a9, 174el-2, I 77d6, 199al-2.
8. See note 6 above and the obvious reference to diairesis at Republic 534b8 (d.
476a9fO. At 485alO, Socrates says that the philosopher avoids genesis and
destruction .
9. I follow the interpretation of Arnold Hug, Platons Symposium (Leipzig: Tenbner,
1884); d. his note to 172a4.
10. 175e7, 219c5.
II. Cf. 327c9, c12 , 328b2. In the Symposium, Apollodorus is going up to Athens from
Phalerum, he is seen from behind, and a friend named Glaucon uses "force" to
restrain him .
12. 328c6 .
13. Republic 496b5-d2. Cf. 491a7, 496all.
14. In addition to the Seventh Letter, the point is made at Republic 500b8. The reference
to the Statesman is at 303bl.
IS . Very instructive in this connection are the remarks of Malebranche in the Re-
cherche de la Verite, Book Two, Chapter Four, " De l'imagination de Seneque."
16. See Republic 596d8: the psyche is compared to a mirror, and the whole may be
imitated by rotating a mirror to encompass the reflections of heaven and earth.
For the injustice done to philosophers in the just city, see 519d8.
17. 414d2 .
18 . Thus Hegel, and those thinkers for whom the state (= polis) is the highest form
of human (= erotic) development, must make practice identical with theory. They
must remove the noble lie and put in its place a kind of universal enlightenment ,
or a situation in which the laws of the state are identical with the truths of reason.
19. See Leo Strauss, The City and Man, pp . 111-12 et passim.
20. Republic 546b2.
21. 546a2-3, b3.
22 . 545b6.
23 . 548c5-7.
24 . 548d8.
25 . 548el. For Glaucon 's cultivation or education, see 398el (su gar mousikos) and
51Od4 (Glaucon is familiar with the axiomatic method of mathematics) .
26 . 327c12. See note II above.
27 . On Glaucon's behalf, we should mention 450b6, where he says that noetic men
208 Notes to 110-111
should spend their whole life listening to speeches like those of the present oc-
casion. His intentions as a youth are good, however badly he will turn out later.
Glaucon is a less interesting version of a type whose outstanding example is Al-
cibiades . Cf. 435d6 for an example of Glaucon as a poor listener; he is content
with the "shorter way" in the discussion of the three forms in the psyche.
28. 506el, 509c7-1O, 533al , 536c1, 539bl , 544a1.
29. A complete study of the Republic would of course take into account the nature of
Adeimantus , to say nothing of the other interlocutors. It will suffice to mention
here that Adeimantus is austere rather than erotic. As an example of his austerity,
see 378a7: Adeimantus is the interlocutor in the section on poetic censorship. He
is quick to agree that the stories of the poets are bad and that, even if they are
true, they should be replaced by beautiful lies . See Leo Strauss, The City and Man,
pp . 90-91 , 95,99-100.
30. Republic 372e6. Cf. 369dll . It is no accident that Adeimantus is the interlocutor
when Socrates founds the austere" city of pigs." This is a good place to point out
that, in this section of my paper, I am especially indebted to observations made
by Leo Strauss, and the references in the present note and the next two are dis-
cussed by him in the previously cited essay on the Republic.
31. Philosophy depends upon leisure , which in turn requires wealth , one of whose
products is also luxury and moral corruption. This is one reason for setting the
dialogue in the Piraeus, in the home of Cephalus, a wealthy shield manufacturer
and resident alien. In this way, the connection between philosophy and war, and
the detachment of philosophy from nomos, or the tension between philosophy and
the polis, are also indicated.
32. For the connection between Glaucon and meat eating, see 372c2, 468d6 and e3,
475c3 , 479bll. For evidence of his martial nature , cf. 471c9, 473e6-474bl. Con-
sider also 328alff.
33. 474d4, 468b9-12, 468c3 . The section introducing the philosopher-king is peppered
with warlike words (closely related to Eros); consider 470b4ff.
34. 475a3-5.
35. 472a3 , 473c11.
36. There is one apparent exception to this statement: 487b-506d, in which Adei-
mantus and Socrates discuss why there is a tension between philosophers and
the city; the main theme here is the charge that philosophy makes men strange,
depraved, even useless to the city. Socrates goes on to explain why the many hate
philosophy and how philosophical psyches are corrupted . The real aim of the
section is not to describe the philosopher as he is in himself, but to prepare for
the possible taming of the non philosophers or the many (496d 1-5: the philosopher
is compared to a man among beasts who would be killed if he went into politics
under actual circumstances), just as Socrates has "tamed" Thrasymachus (498c9:
they are now friends, "not being previously enemies"). Cf. 502al: if the many
cannot be convinced, they may at least be shamed into agreement concerning the
need for philosopher-kings. Thus the purpose of this section is to instill or make
use of austerity . For Socrates' more serious version of austerity, see 540e5: every-
one over the age of ten must be expelled from the city.
37. 357a2 . At 414c8, Glaucon encourages Socrates to tell the noble lie; at 451b2 he
acquits Socrates of involuntary homicide (against the Athenian laws); at 506d2
he breaks into the conversation between Socrates and Adeimantus just noted, in
Notes to 113-115 209
order to force Socrates to continue the discussion of the good. Cf. 36Sc4 where he
insists that Socrates continue the investigation of justice and injustice.
3S. I leave it an open question whether the philosopher-kings would be homogeneous
with respect to their private knowledge; i.e., whether all would know , and there-
fore think the same thing: truth or true opinion. For the opposition to diversity,
see 557c7-9: it is a characteristic of democracies, judged to be beautiful by women
and children .
39. It is quite true that mathematics is criticized in the Republic, but relative to
philosophy or dialectic . My point is that the Republic emphasizes the importance
of mathematics as a preparation for philosophical dialectic, which resembles (but
is of course different from) the mathematical method . For a crucial statement of
the relation between mathematics and philosophy, see 526bl: the study of dian-
oetic numbers makes the psyche apply aute tei noesei .. . ep' auten ten aletheian.
Cf. 526el. Mathematics is the only study besides dialectic whose objects have true
being (tou gar aei ontos he ge6metrike gnosis estin: Glaucon's words, but spoken
in agreement with Socrates). See also 525a6, 531d9. The reason why mathematical
technai merely "dream" of being (533b6) is because they cannot give an account
or logos . In contemporary terms , "mathematical logic" is not logos. It also follows
from the considerations presented in this essay that the Republic should be under-
stood as a preparation for the mathematically oriented "later" dialogues.
40 . Republic 375a2ff, esp . 375b7 .
41. 375elO.
42 . 375el.
43. 375c6-S .
44 . See especially 5S0dlO, where the forms of the psyche are discussed in terms of
their defining desires or loves.
45. 473c11.
46. E.g., 472al-b2.
47. 473e6, 474bl. The proposal is called most paradoxical at 472a3.
4S. 474b3-4 . In the Republic, philosophy is frequently compared to war or described
in martial terms; in addition to references already given, see 534bS, where the
defense of one's understanding of the Idea of the good is compared to a war (h6sper
en machei) . See also 496d4, 517a5 : the non philosophers would kill the philoso-
phers if they could; cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations II. I. iv. For the connection
between mathematics and war, see 525c1.
49. 474d4 .
50. That Glaucon needs to be tamed or guided toward justice is shown by the be-
ginning of Book Two. He is not content with the refutation of Thrasymachus and
insists that Socrates defend justice in itself, even if it should have entirely bad
consequences. In other words, he is not convinced that justice has good conse-
quences, and does not know whether it is desirable in itself.
51. 497c1: the just city alone is divine; all others are human in their natures and
deeds.
52. Consider also 470b4 , where Socrates associates to men oikeion kai syngenes in
opposition to to de allotrion kai othneion. Cf. 39Sa6-7: Socrates sends the excellent
poet to other cities, about whose corruption he is unconcerned .
210 Notes to 115-119
53. According to Socrates, philosophy makes the psyche gentle: 41Oel. The gentleness
of philosophy is not the same as justice, which must be spirited in punishing the
unjust; at 51Sd9 Socrates says that wisdom alone is a virtue of the psyche. The
others are "called" virtues; d. 619b7. See 500d7, where sophrosyne and dikaiosyne
are identified as forms of "the demotic virtue." The philosopher becomes orderly
and divine, not by submitting to justice, but by associating with the divine order.
At 540b4, philosophers are said to regard political participation as "necessary,"
not "beautiful" or "noble."
54. This has of course been noticed by others, e.g ., L. Robin, La Theorie platonicienne
de ['amour (Paris: PUF, 1964), p. IS2 : "II est impossible en effet de meconnaitre
les analogies generales de l'ascension qui mene Ie dialecticien de la Republique
jusqu'a I'Idee du Bien avec celle qui conduit l'amoureux du Banquet jusqu'a l'Idee
du Beau." But the similarity is misleading if not explained in the context of the
differences between the two dialogues.
55. Republic 499b7-c2; d . 493a1, where Socrates says that it requires a theou moira
to save anyone in present or unjust cities. For the kinship between Ideas and
psyche , see 490aS-b7. Note here (b5) the strange phrase gennesas noun kai
aletheian.
56. 45Sd5 .
57. 462ff.
5S. 475b4.
59. 476b4, c4.
60 . Symposium 175e1; Republic 476c4.
61. Republic 506elff, esp. 50Sb12: ton tou agathou ekgonon, etc . This imagery is related
to the fact that Socrates has been constrained by Glaucon (Su gar . . . anankazon
. . . ) to speak of the Good: 509c1 . •
62. For the prophetic or divine character of Socrates' speech about the Good, see
505el-506a5 and 523aS. For its incompleteness or tentativeness, 506e1, 509c7-
10, 5 17b6. At 507a4-5, Socrates, having said that he will give a token of the Good
rather than the Good itself, warns Glaucon to be sure that the token he receives
is not fraudulent . Without some discernment or divination of the Good, Glaucon
could not act upon this warning. Cf. 51Sc5: to one degree or another, the capacity
for knowledge is in each psyche. This is, of course, connected with the theory of
recollection .
63 . See note 53 above.
64 . Republic 504d4.
65. H. Cherniss, The Riddle of the Early Academy (Berkeley: University of California
Press , 1945), p. I. Cherniss says "the unity of goodness," although in a footnote
he adds that agathon estin hen does not mean ". "the Good is one,' although this
is probably what was meant."
66. 507d11.
7. Thought and Touch: A Note on Aristotle's De Anima

1. Whether "metaphysics" means "the things after the physical things" or "the things
above the physical things" (in other words, whether its origins are Greek or Chris-
tian), its subject matter is only intelligible with reference to the physical or
perceptible.
Notes to 121-122 211
2. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle defines Sophia as tanten ton proton archon kai aition
einai theoretiken (982b8) and then proceeds to explain these principles and causes.
On the other hand, he is unclear as to whether God alone is wise, or chiefly wise
(983alO). See also 1028b3: the question ti to on was, is, and always will be, baffling
to us . The step toward wisdom is unambiguously extended in modern philosophy
by Descartes, for example, whose clear and distinct ideas are more Aristotelian
than Platonic, as the "stuff," immanent in thought (and "grasped" from the study
of extension through the procedures of mathematical physics), from which the
intelligible world is constructed. The initial Aristotelian step was completed, how-
ever, not by Descartes but by Hegel (at least such is Hegel's claim).
3. For Aristotle, the form must also be somehow separate from the concrete thing,
since eidos is generically different from matter, whereas all generated things, nat-
ural and artificial, are composites of matter and form. Ungenerated or eternal
entities, as pure form, are virtually equivalent to ideai (it is hard to say that, for
Aristotle, they possess intelligible forms). See Metaphysics 1034a33ff. The form is
prior to the individual precisely because that which generates is capable of pro-
ducing an individual, whose form is the same as that of its generator: the form
of the individual exists prior to the individual itself (this is stated explicitly at
1034bllff). In other words, actuality as eidos is prior to potentiality or matter
(1049b4ff). See also lOS0a1S: eti he hyle esti dynamei, hoti elthoi an eis to eidos;
hotan de ge energeia ei, tote en Wi eidei estin. For Aristotle, forms (except those of
eternal unmoved movers) are general qua identical throughout a species, and
particular qua actual only within perishable individuals .
4. De Anima, 431b21.
S. See Metaphysics, I 037b II: dia ti pote hen estin hou ton logon horismon einai ...
His answer seems to be (1037b2S): ho gar horismos logos tis estin heis kai ousias,
hoste henos tinos dei auton einai logon. But this does not tell us how an individual
is a unity. See also 1038blOff: if an individual substance had parts, these parts
would be prior to it. But substance is prior to everything else. On the other hand,
a substance, as a form, or as a concrete unity of form and matter, does have
"elements"; otherwise, it would be absolutely One, and so ungraspable (Cp.
1039a1Sff, I040bI6ff) . The question remains: how do these "elements" constitute
a unity? For Aristotle, this is not a real question, since it means merely to ask,
"why is a thing itself?" (since to on and to hen are the same): 1041a14. Or else,
the answer is merely, "because it has such and such a form." (104Ib9ff). Cpo also
104Sal4ff and lOS2aff. In general, one may conjecture that, for Aristotle, to speak
of a "synthesis" of multiplicities into unity is to suggest that reality, or Being, is
not given as intelligible in itself (i.e., as distinguishable into forms), but that man
somehow makes forms, and so reality itself. Kant is led to posit such syntheses
because he rejects Aristotle's claim that the psyche becomes the form of the entity:
for Kant, the form of the entity is a determination of the Ego .
6. De Anima, 41Sb14.
7. Ibid., 429a1S.
8. Ibid., 424a17.
9 . Ibid., 424alff, 418a3.
10. Ibid., 431b17; cpo 430a19, 431b26ff, etc.
II. Ibid., 418a1S, 418a24, 430a26, 430bl, 430b28: these difficult passages can only
be alluded to here. Consider 432a9: symploke gar noematon esti to alethes e pseudos.
212 Notes to 123-124
It would seem then that an individual noema cannot be either true or false: i.e. ,
it is just given or existent. Cpo Metaphysics 1010blff for a distinction between the
aisthesis, which cannot be false, and the fantasia , or impression of an aisthesis
(which is not the same as the latter). See also note 5 above: for Aristotle, beings
are accessible to man prior to synthesis, and are not "made" by synthesis.
12. Ibid. , 430b28.
13. Ibid., 432a1.
14. Ibid., 435b16: tautei de horistai to zoon; aneu gar haphes dedektai hoti adynaton
einai zoon.
15. Ibid., 421a20ff.
16. Ibid., 435a17: he d'haphe toi auton haptesthai estin, dio kai tounoma touto echei.
17. Cpo Metaphysics 980a21-27. The more revealing formulation is to be found at
Metaphysics 1072b20ff: "nous thinks itself through sharing the thing thought; for,
touching and thinking it, it becomes the object, so that nous and noeton are the
same." The mind grasps rather than sees; thus the identity of mind and thing,
which is not present in Plato. It is this identity which makes possible wisdom or
certitude (and the further possibility of transforming reality). Touch perceives by
immediate contact, whereas there is a distance between sight and thing seen. For
Plato's view that philosophy begins with sight, see, among other passages, Timaeus
47a-b . One should also consider Metaphysics 1063a14 for the function of the heav-
ens in regulating philosophical discourse: it may be well to repeat that my in-
tention is not to claim that sight was of no importance for Aristotle; that would
indeed be absurd.
18. De Anima, 417b22 .
19 . Ibid., 432a3.
20. Ibid., 415b12 ; cpo 41Oa11.
21. At Metaphysics 985b25, he says that incorporeal beings exist. The subsequent
discussion shows him to be thinking of mathematical objects. And from 1071 b3ff,
we learn that nous and the unmoved movers are immaterial substances (ousiai).
Mathematical objects, however, are not ousiai (e .g., 1001b2, 1076aff, 1080a13ff,
1087aff, etc .), whereas it is doubtful whether we actually grasp the unmoved mov-
ers in thought. Furthermore, at Metaphysics 1017b24, Aristotle so defines ousia
as to apply to eidos: namely , an independent thing (tode); and eide are immaterial
(generically different from matter: 1024blOff). But, at 1033b20, in speaking of
created things, he says unqualifiedly that an eidos is not a tode, but a toionde (i.e.,
"of such a kind" -a characteristic). The definitive discussion of the kinds of ousiai
occurs in Book Twelve (1069a30ff): these kinds are (1) sensible (a) eternal (heavenly
bodies), (b) perishable (natural physical things); (2) immutable (insensible), i.e.,
the unmoved movers and nous.
22 . De Anima, 432a3ff.
23 . Ibid., loc. cit.
24 . Ibid., 431a14ff, 431b2. For the definition of phantasia as a movement hypo tes
aistheseos tes kat' energeian gignomene.
25. Ibid., 430a2ff.
26. Compare the Hegelian conception whereby man's mode of existence is " not to be
that which he is" and to become "that which he is not ." But man (i.e ., psyche)
Notes to 124-129 213
has as his form the sum of becomings which constitutes the actualization of Geist.
See Phenomenology of Mind (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1952), p. 32.
27. De Anima, 431b26 .
28 . At Metaphysics 1032a32, Aristotle says: 'Apo technes de gignetai hoson to eidos en
tei psychei. If the form of a created thing is in the psyche, then (a) it is separate
from the thing made, in just the way which Aristotle blames Plato for maintaining;
(b) in knowing or thinking some created X, the psyche does not grasp the form of
X, but rather thinks itself as the other; i.e., it thinks an aspect of itself, but not
itself as a single form . Is there, finally , a radical difference between thinking
natural and artificial objects? Must we revise De Anima 431 b20 so that, in thinking
natural things, the psyche is somehow ta onta, whereas , with respect to artificial
things, ta onta are somehow the psyche?
29. De Anima 429a18: panta noei [sc. ho nous] . ..
30. Aristotle avoids deriving the psyche from " nothing" in the Heideggerian sense, in
so far as potentiality must inhere in a prior actuality . The definition of the psyche
can only be derived, as we are now arguing , from a consideration of the actuality
within which the psyche emerges. Nevertheless, in so far as the psyche has no form
of its own , it remains even for Aristotle an ambiguous mixture of "something"
and "nothing." Cp o Plato, Sophist 240elff for a discussion of the copresence of
Being and non-Being, in the structure of the Whole. Aristotle's psyche "is" (po-
tentially) everything, i.e ., the form of the Whole. The Hegelian conception of Geist
may be regarded as (by intention) the completion, or complete actualization of,
Aristotle's psyche, which is itself a version of the Socratic-Platonic conception .
Hegel reconciles the distinction between (living) finite psyche and world-soul or
nous by Aufhebung of the former into the latter. Compare Aristotle's doctrine of
immortality as the absorption of the individual into the world-soul.
31. See Xenophon , Memorabilia, X.3ff, where Socrates discusses with a painter how
the eidos of the psyche or the states of the psyche as mirrored in the body, may
be imitated. But this is one aspect of political existence, upon which both the
states of the psyche and the skills of the painter, depend. In other words, it would
be short sighted and misleading to think of art as the medium through which the
psyche is imitated, without thinking of the political context of art.
8. Heidegger's Interpretation of Plato

1. Republic 537c7; Was is das-die Philosophie? (Pfullingen: G. Neske Verlag, 1956),
pp. 2lff. Was is das will henceforth be represented as WPH.
2. Diels, Fr. 18 .
3. Republic 5 I 5c6ff.
4. The elaborate program for educating philosophers in the just city depends for its
enactment upon the prior existence of philosophers . The way up is not quite the
same as the way down, which precedes it.
5. E .g. Phaedrus 244a5ff; d. Epistles VII, 341df.
6. Symposium 203a6: Eros is only one of the daimons .
7. In Plato, the wholeness of human existence is "circular," as prefigured in the myth
of the circle-men in Aristophanes' speech in the Symposium. I have discussed this
214 Notes to 129-134
elsewhere at some length. Cf. Sein und Zeit, 7th ed. (Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer
Verlag, 1953), pp. 152-53. Henceforth SZ.
8. Cf. "The Role of Eros in Plato's Republic."
9. Diels B3; Vortriige und Aufsiitze (Pfullingen: G. Neske Verlag, 1954), pp. 249ff.
Henceforth VA.
10. Cf. Was heisst Denken? (Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1954), pp. 114-26; 146ff.
Henceforth WHD.
11 . Kritikderreinen Vernunft BI79-180. This also resolves the dualism within Verstand
between intuition and the categories.
12. Ibid., B130: " . . . we cannot represent to ourselves anything as combined in the
object which we have not ourselves previously combined ... ."
13 . Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Frankfurt-am-Main : Vittorio Klostermann,
1951), pp. 127ff. Henceforth KPM.
14. VA, p. 157.
15. Cf. W. J. Richardson, S. J. , Heidegger (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1963), p . 640. Hence-
forth Richardson; and Identitiit und Differenz (pfullingen: G. Neske Verlag, 1957),
pp . 70-71. Henceforth /D.
16. In this connection, one should consider carefully Phaedrus 229c4ff.
17. Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik (Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1953), pp. 11,
131-34, 142. Henceforth EM; VA pp. 269ff. At p. 274 of VA, Heidegger says that
physis means the same as zoe: "life" is here defined as "stepping out" or emerging
into view. In EM, p. 11, however, he states that physis includes as instances the
course of the heavens, the waves of the sea, etc . We see here the beginning of his
interpretation of Being as the fourfold : heaven and earth, human and divine,
which are explicitly mentioned.
18 . " Process," "happening," and "eventuation" translate Bewegung, Geshchehen, and
Ereignis. For the unknown and unthought character of the "source," d . lD, p. 44;
Nietzsche (Pfullingen: G. Neske Verlag, 1961), Vol. I., p. 471; Vol. II., p. 484; Un-
terwegs zur Sprache (Pfullingen: G. Neske Verlag, 1959), p. 31. Henceforth US. For
the common root of sight and hearing, see Der Satz vom Grund (pfullingen: G.
Neske Verlag, 1957), pp. 86ff. Henceforth SG.
19. Nietzsche II , pp. 211,486 .
20. Ibid., pp. 430ff.
21 . EM, p. 142; Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit (Bern: A. Francke A. G., 1954), pp. 41-
42, 49. Henceforth PLW. Also, from the same volume, Uber den "Humanismus",
p. 106. Henceforth UH.
22 . EM, pp. 134, 146; WHD, pp. 73-74, 122-26; VA, pp. 208ff.
23 . PLW, p. 47.
24. Vom Wesen des Grundes (Frankfurt-am-Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1955), p. 41.
Henceforth WG; WPH, pp. 16, 24-27; PLW, pp . 34, 46; EM, p . 139.
25 . Cf. PLW, p . 51 , with Gelassenheit (pfullingen: G. Neske Verlag, 1959), passim;
Nietzsche II , p. 452.
26. For the discussion of to hoti and ti esti, d . especially Nietzsche II, pp. 400ff. (Here
and elsewhere, e.g., WG, p . 41, Heidegger erroneously makes the idea equivalent
to Moglichkeit).
Notes to 134-137 215
27. SG, pp. 59, 90, 185ff.

28 . Nietzsche II, pp . nff.
29. Cf. Gerhard Kruger 's brilliant essay, "Uber Kants Lehre von der Zeit" in Anteile:
Martin Heidegger zum 60 Geburtstag (Frankfurt-am-Main: Vittorio Klostermann,
1950).
30. Such is my understanding of Gelassenheit.
31. ZurSeinsfrage (Frankfurt-am-Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1956), p. 9 . Henceforth
ZS; SG, p. 125 ; Kants These uber das Sein (Frankfurt-am-Main: Vittorio Kloster-
mann, 1963), pp . 9, 12, 16; Die Frage Nach dem Ding (Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer
Verlag, 1962),pp.114-15 , 171-73, 178, 186. Throughout his writings, Heidegger
gives "histories" of thinking as ratio, percipere, Vorstellung, etc., as obscurations
or " objectifications" of Being; e.g., Nietzsche II, pp. 229ff.
32. A good example of this is Sophist 248d4ff, where the activity (poema) of knowing
is related to the psyche or mind : the changeless objects of knowledge cannot
undergo a pathos.
33. Cf. Sophist 248dlOff, 250c1, 25ge5 : it is life, nous or the dianoetic logos which
moves, not the megista gene, to on and the symploke eid{m (kinesis is here treated
as an eidos or genos) . For to eksaiphnes, d. notes 5 and 37.
34. In this connection, one should consider the various remarks in the dialogues about
dreaming and divining; e.g., Republic 505el-506a5, 523a8; Theaetetus 201d8ff, et
passim.
35. US, p . 30.
36 . SG, p . 86 .
37 . The problem of the Instant and the relation between "Being and Time" is treated
by Plato in the Parmenides 156df. In discussing the hypothesis that to hen esti,
i .e., that it is or exists, and so partakes of time, Parmenides derives the consequence
that to hen must both move and rest, and that the change from movement to rest,
as identical with neither, cannot occur in time, but must occur in to eksaiphnes
(the instant): alla he eksaiphnes haute physis atopos tis enkathetai metaksy tes ki-
neseos te kai staseos ... (d. , Aristotle's doctrine of actualization). If the Instant
occurs between any two moments of time (within which there may be either
motion or rest, but not a change from one to the other), then either (I) the Instant
both rests (between mk and mk + I) and moves (from between one pair of moments
to another), or else (2) time passes discontinuously through the Instant. That is,
the Instant makes time discontinuous ; it makes the "rest" of mk and the "move-
ment" from mk to mk +I . As the context shows, the Instant is neither Being nor
non-Being (and so, neither is to hen when in it); Being and non-Being are coor-
dinate, and as such, subordinate to what we may call Actuality, for want of a
better name ( = the Instant). Cf. SZ, p. 338 (on der Augenblick) .
38. Phaedrus 346c6: there is no logos of a deathless thing, and no noesis sufficient to
operate independently of imagination . Consider in this connection SZ, p. 6, where
Heidegger objects to myth that it speaks of Sein as a Seiendes.
39. Phaedrus 247dl: dianoia goes round with the moving world, and sees the hyper-
uranian beings dia chronou; d. Theaetetus 206d 1, Philebus 17b3: speech flows. See
also Sophist 263e3ff.
40. VA, p. 40.
41 . Symposium 202e3ff.
216 Notes to 137-141
42. Cf. S2, pp . 212ff; and Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes (Stuttgart : Reclam, 1960), p.
100. Henceforth UK.
43. E.g., PLW, p. 50; UH, p . 75 .
44 . Gelassenheit, pp . 65-66. I have modified a translation by John Anderson and Hans
Freund (New York: Harper and Row, 1966).
45 . Phaedrus 247b6ff: the surface of the hyperuranian visible is still, whereas dianoia
moves: this is Plato's "version" of Gegend.
46. UK, p. 84; d. 2S, p. 28 .
47. Phaedo 109b4ff.
48 . Cf. Theaetetus 176bl.
49 . G. S . Seidel, S. J ., Martin Heidegger and the Pre-Socratics (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1964), p . 24.
50. Cf. WHD, pp . 124-25 .
51. Richardson, p. 296; d . EM, pp . 131ff.
52. E.g., in "Hegel und die Griechen" (Die Gegenwart der Griechen im neueren Denken
[Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1960], p . 55) .
53. E.g. , Nietzsche II , p . 257; d . pp . 37, 43-44 , 98, 332; and Nietzsche I, pp. 173-74;
SG, pp . 158, 176; ID , p . 65. These are only examples of a theme which appears
continually throughout Heidegger's work.
54. Consider here Theaetetus 145blOff, where Socrates indicates that mathematicians
do not joke. There is something "mathematical" about Heidegger's approach to
and account of Being.
55. Cf. Otto P6ggeler, Heidegger (Pfullingen : G. Neske Verlag, 1963), pp. 35ff, and US,
p . 96.
56 . Nietzsche I, p. 529.
57 . Ibid., p . 530.
58. Representative discussions may be found in VA, 208ff; WHD, pp. 122ff.
59. VA, p . 212 .
60. Thus, e. g. , in S2, theory is regarded as an abstraction from the concrete use of
beings as "tools" in daily life. It is true that Heidegger makes Rede an existential
in S2, but even there, speech is given a primordial interpretation similar to the
one in his later writings .
61 . In Plato, farming is praised by Eryximachus, the spokesman in the Symposium
for technicism (186e4ff) ; in the Laws (889c5ff), the Athenian Stranger associates
farming with materialism . In the Symposium speech replaces drinking (agricul-
ture-viniculture); in the Laws, however, it is pointed out that drinking serves to
test men's psyches by making them talk freely (649a4ff). Heidegger seems to re-
commend viniculture, but not symposia or drinking.
62 . For some representative passages, d. Die Frage nach dem Ding, pp. 33ff; Nietzsche
II, pp . 13,485,489; SG, p. 144; "Vom Wesen und Begriff der Physis, Aristoteles
Physik B1 ," in II Pensiero, Part I (May-August, 1958): 138. In US, p. 213 , Heidegger
says : "Die Zeit selbst im Ganzen ihres Wesens bewegt sich nicht, ruht still." But
Ruhe is for Heidegger self-constraining motion .
63. S2, pp. 367ff.
64 . Ibid., pp . 350ff.
Notes to 141-147 217
65. Cf. Timaeus 37e4ff; and note 34 above .

66 . Nietzsche II, p . 486 .
67. Cf. my essay "Thales: the Beginning of Philosophy" in Essays in Philosophy (Uni-
versity Park, Penn.: Penn State Press, 1962).
68 . Heidegger deals explicitly with the difference between himself and Hegel in ID,
e.g. , p. -43 . He is not so explicit about the similarities.
69 . SZ, pp . 18-19; d. Poggeler, Heidegger, p. 186.
70. SZ, pp. 133, 157ff.
71. The quotations are from a privately circulated copy of this unpublished lecture.
Here the reference is to p. 8. For a very similar statement in the published writings,
d . US, pp. 214-15: "Zeitigend-einraumend be-wegt das Selbige des Zeit-Spiel-
Raumes das Gegen-einander-uber der vier Welt-Gegenden: Erde und Himmel,
Gott und Mensch-das Weltspiel." The soundless, calling gathering of this Be-
wegung is "die Sprache des Wesens."
72 . SZ, pp. 41-42.
73. ID, pp. 28ff (d. the original sense of ousia as "private property").
74. Zeit und Sein, unpublished text , p. 10.
75 . SG. , pp. 109, 130.
76 . Ibid., p. 158.
77. UK, p. 58.
78. Richardson, p. xxi.
79. Cf. Richardson, pp . 638ff on the ambiguity of Ereignis: it means (1) some third
thing other than einai and noein prior to and unifying both ; (2) Being itself as
Geschick.
80. Gelassenheit, pp . 46-47; again I modify somewhat the translation by Anderson
and Freund .
81. VA ("Das Ding"), pp. 163ff. For Plato, contrast Phaedo 90c2ff.
82. Richardson, p. 627.
83 . Cf. A. de Waelhens, "Reflections on Heidegger's Development," International Phil-
osophical Quarterly (Sept. 1965): 490. In speaking of SZ, he gives a consequence
of its teaching, not stated by Heidegger, and which he says would no longer cor-
respond with the latter's thought: "If the time that is anterior to the World and
the time that marks the course of things are but modes derived from the tem-
porality that springs from our Being itself, then we must go one step further and
maintain that the Being of beings, that which is time in them, is likewise a mode
that has issued from the Being of that being which comprehends Being." With
the appropriate shifts in terminology and emphasis, however, I suspect that this
consequence does correspond to the later Heidegger's thought.
84. Cf. Sophist 248e6ff, Timaeus 34a8ff, Philebus 30alff.
85. Cf. the distinction between Wesen and Sein made by Oscar Becker in "Platonische
Idee und ontologische Differenz," (Dasein und Dawesen [Pfullingen: G. Neske Ver-
lag, 1965], pp. 157ff).
86 . See SZ, p . 310, for a statement of the resolute, sober, and angstvoll acceptance of
this world in its fadic temporality . Entschlossenheit makes us illusions-frei but
therefore excessively sober, in my opinion.
218 Notes to 148-168
9. "Much Ado About Nothing: Aristotle Contra Eleaticism

1. sophoi de kai to meden agan epos ainesan perissos: Oxford Classical Texts, fro204.
2. Haskell Curry , Foundations of Mathematical Logic (New York: Dover, 1977), pp.
254ff.
3. Plato's Sophist (New Haven : Yale University Press , 1983).
4 . For a different version of the deficiency in the Aristotelian doctrine of unity, see
Enrico Berti, "II Valore 'Teologico' del Principio di Non Contraddizione nella
Metafisica Aristotelica," in Studi Aristotelici (Padua : L. U. Japadre, 1975), p. 101.
Berti points out that metaphysics depends upon a unity to being which is' not
accessible via predication: "non e attingibile positivamente, rna solo negativa-
mente ." See also the valuable monograph by Elmar Treptow, Der Zusammenhang
zwischen der Metaphysik und der zweiten Analytik des Aristoteles: Epimeleia Bd. 5
(Munich and Salzburg: Verlag Anton Pustet, 1966), p. 53, on three kinds of unity,
of which the unity of metaphysical objects is immediate and unanalyzable.
5. Hegel claims that Being and Nothing are the same; but his Nichts is not the
altogether not. It is the determination "Being" considered as lacking in any other
determinations.
6. On this last point , compare the discussion in Ute Cuzzoni, Grund und Allgemeinheit
(Meisenheim am Clan : Verlag Anton Hain, 1975), pp. 174-77.
7. See also Martin Heidegger, Aristoteles, Metaphysik Theta 1-3, Gesamtausgabe, Bd.
33 (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1981), p . 165. For the importance of predi-
cation (linked with the categories and the act-potency distinction, d. Metaphysics
6 10, 1051a34ff and E 4, 1027b25-34. The true-false distinction can easily be shown
to reduce to the other two cases.
8. Metaphysics HI , 1042a27: hylen de lego he me tode ti ousa energeia dynamei esti
tode ti.
9. For further discussion, see for example , Enrico Berti, "II principio di non con-
traddizione come criterio supremo di significanza nella metafisica Aristotelica"
in Studi Aristotelici, p . 69; and Walter Leszl, Logic and Metaphysics in Aristotle
(Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1970), p. 49 . Leszl is quite right to say that "the division
of the categories does not have anything to do with the rules of language," i.e.,
it is an ontology, not a semantics. But ontology is nevertheless reflected in the
structure of natural language.
10. In this essay, I translate ousia as essence. The question concerning the relation
between ousia and to ti en einai is settled for us by passages of which Metaphysics
Z 6, 1032b31 is representative: ousia is to ti en einai. See also 1032a4.
11 . For representative views, see Klaus Oehler, Die Lehre vom noetischen und dia-
noetischen Denken bei Platon und Aristoteles (Munich: Verlag C. H . Beck, 1962),
pp. 182ff, 211, and 218; Jonathan Barnes, Aristotle's Posterior Analytics (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1975), remark apropos 100b5; Lambros Couloubaritsis, "Y'a-t-
il une intuition des principes chez Aristote?" in Review Internationale de Philo-
sophie, No. 133-34 (1980): 440-71.
12. It has been suggested to me that the properties belonging to a thing kath' haute
are distinct from the intuited and discursively inaccessible properties. But this
is contradicted by Metaphysics ~ 18, 1022a25ff, where a kath' hauto property is
identified as an element in the to ti en einai. This apart, how could we unify the
two distinct sets of essential properties?
Notes to 169-181 219
13 . At Metaphysics Z 17, 1041alOff, Aristotle says that to ask why a thing is itself, is
not a (genuine) question. The deeper reason for this is that a thing is essentially
itself because of its essential properties. But these cannot be demonstratively
ascertained.
14. My translation is based on the text printed by W. Christ, Aristotelis Metaphysica
(Leipzig: Teubner, 1903), with my own expansions in square brackets. This is the
last edition of the traditional manuscript that is free of the excessive and fanciful
transformations by "scientific" Wissenschaft, i.e., by the prejudices of nineteenth-
century philosophy : r 3, 1004a9-16: epei de mias tantikeimena theoresai, toi d'heni
antikeitai plethos, apophasin de kai steresin mias esti theoresai dia to amphoteros
theoreisthai to hen, hou he apophasis e he steresis (he gar haplos legomen, hoti ouch
hyparchei ekeino e tini genei; entha men oun toi heni he diaphora prosesti para to
en tei apophasei; apousia gar he apophasis ekeinou estin; en de lei sleresei kai hy-
pokeimene tis physis gignelai, kath' hes legelai he sleresis);
15. In Melaphysics r 4, 1004a14, Aristotle says that the difference prosesti ("is present
in") the unity of the genus. In b 2, lO13b 13-15, he explicitly opposes parousia to
apousia and to sleresis. In Physics A 7, 191a3ff, he speaks of the parousia and
apousia of contraries in a substratum.
16. Jaako Hintikka has given another version of the problem which deserves extensive
mention. As he puts it, a kinetic potentiality, understood as an actuality in its
own right, is instantly present in the sense that, for example, as soon as I begin
to construct a house, the kinetic entelechy is present. Hence, for Aristotle, all the
potentialities threaten to realize themselves too soon, that is to say, instantly:
Aristotle on Modality and Determinism (with U. Remes and S. Knuutila), Acta Phi-
losophica Fennica, vol. 29, no . 1 (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co, 1977),
p. 18. Aristotle thus tends toward Megarianism (p. 17; d . pp. 45, 74, 99, Ill). I
agree, but with the additional remark that Aristotle's "solution" to the Megarian
problem leads to Nihilism, the actual ontological sense of Eleaticism.
17. This is one of the reasons why philosophy is not present in the "city of pigs" in
Plato's Republic.
18. I note in passing that doctrines like that of divine thinking increase our difficulties.
If the noesis tes noeseos is invoked in order to actualize the species-forms, then
these latter seem to have been deprived of their ostensible capacity to fulfill their
innate promise by showing themselves either directly or in their generated prod-
ucts. This problem is linked to one signaled by Wolfgang Wieland in Die aristo-
telische Physik (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962), p. 276 : how can a
natural eidos be a Ie/os?
19. Jaako Hintikka, Time and Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973).
20. Pierre Aubenque, Le probleme de !'etre chez Aristote (Paris: PUF, 1962), p. 156.
21. H. Happ, Hyle (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971). See Metaphysics Z 3, 1029a20ff.
22. K. Barthlein, "Untersuchungen zur aristotelischen Modaltheorie," in Archiv fur
Geschichte der Philosophie, Bd. 45 (1963), pp. 43-67; J. Stallmach, "Vertritt Ar-
istoteles Metaphysik IX 5 selbst den Megarischen Moglichkeitsbegriff?" in op. cit.,
Bd. 47 (1965), pp. 191-205.
23. Barthlein, "Untersuchungen," p. 55; Metaphysics T 5, 1048a8ff.
24. Barthlein, "Untersuchungen," pp. 57, 61-66.
25. Stall mach, "Vertritt," p. 199.
220 Notes to 182-198
26 . Barthlein, "Untersuchungen," p . 64. But see T 7, 1049a5-7 .
to. Remarks on Nietzsche's "Platonism"

1. It is true that one must distinguish between Nietzsche and Zarathustra. But noth-
ing essential in Also Sprach Zarathustra is missing from the later writings.
2. Martin Heidegger, "Nietzsches Wort "Gott ist tot" '" in Hoiz.wege (Frankfurt am
Main: 1950), p . 193.
3. Nietzsche's unpublished writings will be cited from the edition of G. Colli and
M. Montinari (Berlin and New York: 1967); hereafter KGW, followed by volume
number, number of manuscript folio, and fragment number. Hoiz.wege, p. 210;
Wille zur Macht 715 ; KGW VIII, 11 , 73.
4. WM 693; KGW VIII. 14, 80 .
5. M. Heidegger, Nietzsche, Bd. I, (Pfullingen: 1961), pp. 529ff.
6. Nietzsche 1, p. 208; II, pp. 14ff and especially pp . 403ff.
7 . Nietzsche 1, p. 175.
8. Ibid., p. 215.
9. KGW, VIII. 14. 125.
10. Nietzsche's published works are cited from the edition of K. Schlechta (Munich:
1954ff). Schlechta II, p. 115 .
11. KGW, VIII, 9. 91.
12. KGW, VIII. 9. 98.
13. KGW, VIII. 9. 106.
14. KGW, VIII. 9 . 106.
15 . KGW, VIII. 2. 114.
16. KGW, VIII. 2. 108.
17. KGW, VIII . 1. 24.
18. KGW, VIII. 1. 30.
19. KGW, VIII. 2. 90.
20. KGW, VIII. 2. 87.
21. Nietzsche I, pp. 425ff.
22. Ibid., p. 427 .
23. KGW, VIII. 5. 71 . 6.
24. Holzwege, p. 225.
25. Cf. Jean Granier, Le probleme de la verite dans la philosophie de Nietzsche (Paris:
1966), p. 304: "C'est Iii Ie sens de la these capitale de Nietzsche selon laquelle ...
I'Etre est toujours et necessairement Etre-interpriue."
26. KGW, VIII. 7. 54.
27. Gotzen-Dammerung in Schlechta, II, pp. 958, 960.
28 . Schlechta II, pp. 297-8 (Von der Hinterweltlern).
29. KGW, VIII. 14. 184.
30. KGW, VIII. I. 115.
Notes to 198-203 221
31. KGW, VIII . 2. 20f.

32. KGW, VIII . 2. 190.
33. See KGW, VIII . 17. 3-4.
34. KGW, VIII. 2. 165 .
35. KGW, VIII. I. 120.
36. KGW, VIII. 17.3.
37. KGW, VIII . 10.3.
38. Schlechta II, p . 605.
39. Schlechta II, p. 963.
40. Phaedo 100A and 100D.
41. See my Plato's Sophist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).
42 . 248A : kai mogis kathorosa ta onta . ..
43. Schlechta II, p. 595 (par. 30).
44 . Ibid, p . 594 (par. 28).
45 . Protagoras 316-317; Symposium 215ff.
46 . Theaetetus 152-153 .
47 . Cf. Die frohliche Wissenschaft, Schlechta II, p . 99 .
48. Jenseits von Gut und Bose in Schlechta II, pp. 603-04 (par. 40).
49. KGW, VIII . II. 415 .
50. Symposium 202D-E.
51. Nietzsche I, p . 195.
52. Symposium 176C, 220A.
53. KGW, VIII . 14. 116.
54 . Ibid.
55. KGW, VIII. I. 134.
56. Letters 314C, 34IB-D.
57. KGW, VIII. 2. 182.
Index of Names
Plato and Socrates are not included in this index as their names
appear throughout the entire volume.
Agathon: 78,81,90 Heidegger, Martin : 27-28, 127-47, 179,

Alcibiades: 78,80,82,90 , 95-97, 106 185-203
Apollodorus: 106-07 Heraclitus : 69,127 , 195,203
Aristophanes: 81, 97 Herodotus: 30, 33-49, 54-55
Aristotle: 3, 28, 112, 119-26, 148-82 Hesiod: 37
Atreus and Thyestes: 67-68 Homer: 8, 11,26,30,33,37,54
Aubenque , Pierre: 179 Husser!, Edmund: 28
Barthlein, K.: 181-82 Kant, Immanuel: 120-22,131-35,191-

92
Callicles: 47-53 Klein, Jacob, 57
Cambyses: 38-39,42-43
Campbell, L. : 71, 73 Lysias: 83-86,90-91
Carnap, Rudolph: 133
Cephalus: 83, 86, 105 Machiavelli, Niccolo: 47, 106, 108
Cronos: 67-68 , 72, 74, 77 Marx, Kar!: 27-28
Curry, Haskell : 150 Megabyzus: 44-45
Cyrus : 39,46 Mer!eau-Ponty, Maurice: 28
Darius : 40-49, 51, 54-55 Nietzsche, Friedrich: 27-28, 183-203

Derrida, Jacques: 27,195-96,199
Diotima: 82, 201 Oebares: 46-47
Otanes:39-47
Eryximachus : 78
Eleatic Stranger: 24, 56-57 passim, 103, Parmenides: 30, 103, 130, 151-82 passim
liS, 153-54, 163 Pausanias: 90
Phaedrus: 78-101 passim
Glaucon: 24, 106-18 passim Pindar: 148
Gobryas: 40, 43 Polemarchus : 110
Gorgias: 48-49 Prexaspis: 39,42
Proclus: 7
Habermas, Jiirgen : 28 Protagoras: 49-54
Hackforth, R. : 86,90 Protarchus: 20, 22
Happ, H.: 180
Hegel, G. W. F .: 69,94,97-101,142, Ricjardson, W. J.: 138, 143
152, 182,202 Rousseau, J. J.: 108
Index 223
de Sade, Marquis: 28 Theodorus : 61

Schelling, F. W. J.: 69 Thucydides: 30
Seidel , G. S.: 138
Smerdis: 39, 41-42 Wittgenstein , Ludwig: 28, 98
Solon: 47
Spinoza, B.: 108 Young Socrates: 57,62-63 , 70-71
Stallmach, J. : 181-82
Zarathustra : 187 , 201
Thales: 142 Zeus : 67-68, 73-75 , 77

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The Quarrel Between

Philosophy and Poetry

© 1988 Routledge, Chapman & Hall, Inc.

Routledge is an imprint a/the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

ISBN 978-0-415-90745-3 (Pbk)

1 The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry 1

Permission to reprint the following is gratefully acknowledged:

"Plato's Myth of the Reversed Cosmos," Review of Metaphysics,

The studies collected in this volume have been written at various

There is no doubt that philosophy has something to do with logos .

metrique, comes later, and in serious form, it is restricted to a small

alist sort, which can itself be described only metaphorically. In all

The unity of an internally articulated element is exactly the same

ophy and poetry is technical or methodological: it arises when techne

Such an enterprise would take us altogether beyond the scope of

rates justifies "medicinal" or "noble" lies on the part of the philo-

counterpart in the Statesman (see below), is bound by logos and phro-

trary to Socrates' stated and implied arguments, sexual license is

exaggerated if not in fact arbitrary. So far as the distinction between

metaphors or similes, i.e ., in poetic language, which refers to these

Second, in the immediate context, Socrates says explicitly that poetry

erarchy, but in the concrete misrepresentation of the moral character

According to Socrates, all poets since Homer have been "imi-

Almost inadvertantly, by the process of our reflection upon the

of which corresponds to dianoia. The soul investigates this domain

medicine has also a theoretical dimension, the reply must be that so

rates' interlocutor, an association to which Socrates has no objection

because it is finally indiscriminate: it says everything, poetry as well

that the classifications in the dialogues are always "rhetorical" in

part of episteme. If his purpose is to show Protarchus that the purest

The closing pages of the Philebus are too complex to summarize

and what we call unmixed" knowledge (59c2-6). But human life

tological relativism. Whether we take it as mimesis or direct vision,

made of Husserlian phenomenology, with its revolutionary slogan,

to the extent that it can be assimilated and thus transformed into

era!, the characteristic theoretical orientation of the Sophists is the

not philosophize in public, as is often asserted, on the basis of no

epoch. I leave it at this: we cannot understand the relation between

It would be an understatement to say that contemporary phi-

way of speeches (99d4-e6). This has a practical and a theoretical

divine does not exist in a humanly useful or accessible form. How

between nature or change and custom or rest. Man is by nature in-

rites, nor does he ever express shock or disapproval at these ways .

This much concerning how Herodotus writes, and the connection

are unable to speak clearly because they are subordinate to higher

obvious to conspirators against the throne. "There are many things

is the only speaker to suggest that he favors the rule of intellect; he

for his efforts. In sum, a monarchy should be established from the

devise a scheme that will bring them victory. By having recourse to

icism . As we see at once by consulting our actual and natural opin-

understood by the aristocracy, even though he is prepared to separate

this "science and art." He leaves it at the conclusion that to be "over-

I have suggested that Socrates ironically defends hedonism as

act of claiming to tell the truth . It is at best unclear whether the

man who attempts to master change or fortune, and thus to identify

length commentary. Nevertheless, it can be identified here with some

inated, by the paradigm of phronesis, and so by the equation of the

ory." The word "paradeigma" may mean either model or example.

It looks, then, as though a paradigm is generated, possibly from

The Eleatic Stranger constructs a cosmological myth, thereby