Vom zersprungenen Weltwerden (Libri Nigri 8) (German Edition)

Portrait of a Strange Man: Socrates in Images 2. Ascent of the Soul and Descent of the Body 2. Socrates and the Cardinal Virtues 3. Canonical Readings of the Text 3. Ethics as First Philosophy 2. The Fundamental Structures of Ethics 3. The Elemental, Sensibility and Il y a 3. Need and Living From the Elements 4. Eros and the Early Works 4. Ambiguity, Dualism and the Relegation of Eros: Eros in Totality and Infinity 5. Towards a Redemption of Philosophy 1. Ontology, Chronology, Methodology 1. Fundamental Ethics and the Pre-Ethical 2. Ethics and the Sensual 3. An-archy and Gift 3. The Erotic Paradigm Deepens: Proximity and Distance 3.

The One for the Other and the De-centring of the Subject 3. The Saying and the Said: Philosophy and Justice 4. Concluding Remarks and Problems: Eros, Philosophy and Ethics 4. The il y a and the Meaning of Being: Lack and Divine Origins 1. The Deficiency and Lack of Eros 1. Eros as Metaxu 1. The Origin of Eros: Metaxu and Doubleness 2. Empowerment and Creativity 2. Forms of Erotic Transcending: Power and the Excess of Self 3. Hermeneutic Eros and the Final Ascent: Vindicating Philosophy 3. Hermeneutic and Heuristic Identifications of Ultimacy 3.

Birth in Beauty Revisited: Eros as Spontaneous, Generous, Joyful 4. The Indictment One Last Time 4. The doctrine of eros in the Phaedrus 1. Eros in the Phaedrus 2. Dating and themes of the Phaedrus 3. The action of the dialogue 3. The speech of Lysias and the first speech of Socrates 3. The second speech of Socrates 4. Madness, inspiration, and reason 4. Affectivity and aesthetics 4. Primary Works 2.

Other Primary Works 2. Secondary Works 4. Other Secondary Works 4. In the intervening years, the themes of the work became somewhat dormant in my research, but never disappeared completely. It took the suggestion of my former colleague Mette Lebech, however, for me to return to the text and rework it for publi- cation. For this suggestion, I am very grateful. This is, then, a revisited, re- written, and updated version of the original thesis, which, I hope is also an improvement. I would like to thank the many colleagues, former students, and friends who generously read all or part of the book and whose invaluable contribu- tions have helped make the book as good as it could be.

Chief among these is William Desmond, who was not only a patient adviser, but also a signifi- cant philosophical influence on the development of the present work. I would also like to thank Mette Lebech, Richard Kearney, the late Thomas Kelly, and the late James McEvoy for their input at various stages of the development of the manuscript. I would also like to thank the many former students at Maynooth Uni- versity whose participation in seminars and courses in which the material was originally presented proved most valuable. I would also like to thank my friends and colleagues at my current institution, Nord University.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my wife Ellen, and our three beautiful children, Christoffer, Ella and Hannah for their love and support. The book is dedicated to my mother, Nuala and the memory of my late father, Sean. Whether these charges are founded or not remains to be seen but we know, at least, that Plato is willing to address them.

And, of course, his interest in this matter involves more than just his loyalty to his teacher. The trial of Socrates is, in a certain sense, the trial of philosophy. Socrates is the phi- losopher par excellence and yet he is accused of impiety and corruption, and so the implication is that it is not only Socrates but also philosophy that is 1 i.

Roger Hackforth suggests that the name Typhon may be con- nected with the word tuphos, meaning vanity. All future reference is to this edition unless otherwise stated. As apologist, Plato must defend not only Socrates but also Socratic activity; i. I will be asking whether the movement of philosophy is intrinsically hostile towards peaceful co-existence and ethical pluralism or whether it is their ground.

I will explore this from a certain, very definite perspective. The reason for this latter is that the questions of the relation of phi- losophy with otherness and the erotic quest for the Good are of specific concern for these thinkers. I am interested in the indictment of philosophy for the following rea- son: In the early dialogues of Plato, we see Socrates encountering some very high profile Athenians, convinced of their various expertise in matters such as virtue Meno , justice Republic I , courage Laches and piety Euthy- phro.

This is gener- ally thought to be an important reason for the resentment felt towards Socrates by his peers. If the reason for the execution of Socrates was petty jealousy alone, it is unlikely that Plato would devote so much time and effort to his various defences of the practice of philosophy. Socrates is aware, how- ever, that Meletus is a shield for those who did not wish to make their animosity towards Socrates public. If the indictment of philosophy is to be the theme, why not the Apology, or even the Republic?

It is a well-known feature of the Platonic Socrates that he professes ignorance on all matters. All matters but one. He will claim expertise only in matters of love. Plato himself recognises that while eros is of the essence of the phi- losophical soul, it is also essential to the soul of the tyrant. The Greeks often made a distinction between two types of eros.

These were Eros Ouranos, or heavenly eros and Eros Turranos, or tyrannical eros. Is philosophical eros a response to beauty and value, or the source of their valuation? Does it approach the divine with respect or seek, rather, to usurp the place of the divine and in doing so, arrogate to itself the position of sovereignty over the whole? This is a complex question and we shall see as we proceed that the eros of philosophy is ambiguous to the extent that it may realise either one of these possibilities. But the complexity of this question entails at least that we must take the indictment of philosophy seriously.

This is also intimately related to the command of the Delphic oracle. In coming truly to know ourselves, we come to see the centrality of eros for the human soul in gen- 7 Lysis c and Symposium d. Unless otherwise stated, all references to the Symposium are taken from Plato In fact, eros is of the essence of all souls.

Philosophy and tyranny are simply manifestations of excessive forms of eros. The Platonic phi- losopher claims to be marked most essentially by an erotic pursuit of truth and of the Good. If so, does not philosophy run the risk of embodying an insidious kind of violence in which all that is other is reduced to what can be known? In other words, philosophy runs the risk of reducing value to its own mean- ing-giving activity.

Or more specifically, the eros of the philosophical soul may entail a tendency towards both on account of its ineradicable ambiguity, so the task involves the cultivation of the best part of the self. On this understanding, philosophy may very well become a therapy for the soul. In short, the Symposium is the central text for the issue of the indict- ment of philosophy specifically because it puts the meaning of philosophi- cal eros in the dock.

In The Erotic Phenomenon, Jean-Luc Marion laments the lack of attention to love in philosophy, and by this he means not just the exploration of love as phenomenon, but of the meaning of love for and within philosophy. To do philosophy is not only about knowing, but about the enjoyment of knowledge and the act of knowing. In the Symposium, we find precisely this is at stake. Translated from French by Stephen E. University of Chicago Press, p.

The hermeneutical approach I employ, in this respect, is rooted in the attempt to articulate and reflect upon themes that are addressed and devel- opment at different times and places, but which are perennial in their inter- est for philosophy and for human life in general. This will not be a work of Platonic exegesis. Instead, I am interested in the themes that Plato explores and the readings which his texts afford. But texts are not infi- nitely malleable. While bringing Plato in contemporary debates, we must also recognize the integrity of the original text itself.

One must, in other words, avoid the Scylla of simple exegesis and the Charybdis of doing a violence to the text by finding in it only what one has oneself put there. As to how successful this approach has been, I leave to the reader to judge. Parts I and II will develop arguments in support of the indictment of the eros of Platonic philosophy alongside contemporary efforts to defend or re-work Platonic ideas against this indictment.

The readings of Plato will be taken mostly from the dialogue Symposium since it is in this dialogue that the canonical treatment philosophical eros is found. The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation. From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II. Translated from French by John B. Six of the speeches can be read as partly prefiguring the speech of Socrates, but their various emphases can also be read as offering critiques of Socratic eros to which Socrates will need to respond.

These are the speeches of Aristophanes, Alcibiades and Socrates. The reason is that I am interested in the indictment of phi- losophy and I believe that this indictment can be explored sufficiently through these three speeches. I have chosen to do this for reasons of space and also structural cohesion. Inasmuch as the speeches of Aristophanes and Alcibiades put forward fairly definite accounts of eros, they also entail a critique of Socratic or philosophical eros from different perspectives and it is precisely these critiques that I wish to explore.

If they cannot straightforwardly be considered Platonists, it is un- doubtedly true that Plato is a major spur for their thinking. Plato is either the greatest ally to their thinking or its greatest adversary. Furthermore, all three put reflections on the meaning of desire at the heart of their philosophical enterprises. Though they will not always use the language of eros in this respect, it will become clear that their works can 12 Martha Nussbaum makes this point.

The Fragility of Good- ness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, pp. Aristophanes speaks to the centrality of wholeness, Eryximachus emphasizes balance, while Phaedrus and Alcibiades emphasize sacrifice and particu- larity respectively. The Free Press, p. The emphases in each reading will vary, however, and my intention will differ slightly from one part to the next, so it would be best to say a few words about the purpose of each section in advance in order to throw some light on the project as a whole.

Tyranny and Tragedy Part I comprises a reading of the speech of Aristophanes16 alongside con- sideration of the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. Broadly speaking, this part deals the indictment of philosophy as hubristic in the sense that the eros of philosophy entails desire for a spiritual sovereignty that is, at root, tyranni- cal. The speech of Aristophanes is perhaps one of the most famous pas- sages in the Platonic corpus. It involves a tragic myth about the origin of the human race and the meaning of eros for the human soul.

What is espe- cially important here is a that Aristophanes offers a muthos, not a logos and b that it is a tragic muthos. The myth is tragic because it claims that the human being is generated out of an original, now sundered, erotic wholeness to which return is no longer possible. On this account, human existence is irrevocably tragic.

Furthermore, the point is expressed by Aris- tophanes as a myth and not a philosophical logos. These are both fictional creations of Plato but the situation is complicated by the fact that they are genuine historical personages and rather prominent ones at that. The task of the reader, therefore, is to refrain from reading their speeches as accurate historical documents whilst keeping in mind what we know about them both. This is partly an endorsement of his own craft but it also constitutes a warning against the dangers of philosophy.

Eros is a gift from the gods that ministers to our illness, according to Aristophanes. As such, there is no human expertise in this area. But such expertise is precisely what the philosopher claims — remember that this is the only area of Socratic expertise. Socrates claims to know what love signifies and thereby claims a kind of mastery of love through his philosophy.

Aristophanes consequently warns us against the hubris of philosophy and its quest to harness eros with a view to control through knowing. Acknowledged or not, philosophy seeks a return to the original erotic wholeness, in which, so the story goes, human beings were so full of their own power that they mounted a chal- lenge to the gods. Yet it is because of this kind of challenge that the human condition is tragic in the first place.

The irony throughout is that Aristophanes appears to fear that this de- sire for equality with the gods is really what is at stake in eros; that is, the attempt to close the circle by bringing the origin of love into the light of the known masks tyrannical ambition by wrestling what is the province of the gods into the hands of men.

And so recognising the perils of this posi- tion he seeks to re-orient human eros through poetry on the one hand and sexuality on the other. The hidden goal of eros is independence from one another and from the gods but the fruits of this pursuit will be disastrous. Philosophical eros is, in other words, a de- sire to alter the human place in the cosmos. The intention of Aristophanes, by contrast, is to reconcile the human being with his situation through the re-orientation of erotic desire.

This is carried out through the poeticisation of the human condition which, in contrast to philosophy, is able to suggest, in pictorial form, the dark, erotic power that underlies human self- transcending. Furthermore, the poet can redirect the orientation of erotic energy by making it a wholly bodily principle. In this way, the order of the city is safeguarded against what would otherwise be challenged by the ex- cessive nature of this energy. The impe- tus of philosophy for self-sufficiency is a threat to precisely this and so it threatens to undermine the very heart of the polis.

The philosophising of Socrates, for example, is expressly a-political in the sense that he looks beyond the city towards the heavens. The fragile balance of human community is disrupted thereby and the tolerable tyranny of the Olympians is replaced by an intolerable tyranny of men, each seeking sov- ereignty over the whole of reality. As against philosophy, poetry, here represented by the myth of Aris- tophanes, is able to teach us about ourselves and our relation to the whole. The poet is acutely aware of the tension between human eros and the type of ordered existence that sustains human community.

Philosophy upsets this balance by giving reign to the spiritual ambition or hubris latent in the spiritualisation of eros. Aristophanes will say that there is no techne of eros but, in fact, he will argue for poetry and the poets as mediators. They do not mediate eros as such but mediate between eros and the city. They will do this, not by suppressing eros, but by re-directing it to the body while the spiritual needs of man will be ministered by the poetic myths of the Olym- pians. In this way, peace is made possible insofar as we are reconciled with the gods and with each other.

Alongside the speech of Socrates, I will consider aspects of the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche. The point of this chapter is to read Nietzsche as a defender of Socrates and Plato in light of the indictment of philosophy as it is presented by Aristophanes. That is, for Aristophanes, philosophical eros manifests a desire to usurp the mystery of the cosmic order by reducing it to the work of the human soul.

In other words, the eros of the philosopher, in its concern for wholeness, ends up by acknowl- edging nothing other than itself and becomes tyrannical and self-serving. It would perhaps be better for all if Soc- rates would either accept the imposed limits of the city or just leave. His attitude to Plato, Socrates and even the practice of philosophy is always ambiguous.

His work always defies univocal interpretation and cannot be reduced to a program- matic or systematic set of discernible doctrines. For Nietzsche, the point is to affect a series of sometimes-inconsistent positions in order to explore what he considers to be the important questions of philosophy, without allowing this exploration to be reduced to system or dogma. This is also the case regarding his references to Plato and Socrates. He tends to equivocate between hailing them as inspirations and giants of spirit and renouncing them as crude or insidious moralisers.

In addition to this, his attitude to philosophy itself is rarely consistent. In his earliest major work, The Birth of Tragedy, he accuses philosophy of undermining the power of art or drama to justify human existence, not only by driving a wedge between the rational and irrational aspects of reality but by insisting that only the rational dimension is real.

In his ma- ture writings, he continues to espouse an almost Schopenhauerian meta- physics while refusing to resign himself to the pessimistic response of Schopenhauer to the tragedy of existence. He accepts from Schopenhauer, that is, the thesis that existence is marked by purposeless willing or striving but refuses to acknowledge that pessimism is the only legitimate human response to this.

Rather, he seeks to transvalue traditional notions of value, which he believes to be rooted in a spirit of negative ressentiment, so as to 19 In many respects, this position is quite close to the Aristophanic indictment as I have presented it, though I will be arguing that there is more to Nietzsche than this.

He means that the will-to-power or life-force of the self is naturally and spontaneously affirmative of itself and so seeks to release himself from the belief, rooted in cultural degeneration, that anything more is required. For Nietzsche, the fact that existence is purposeless according to a certain stan- dard, leads those of weak spirit to resent those whose strength allows them to be assertive and affirmative. As such, the weak generated standards of value and virtue that were nothing more than condemnations of the strength of the strong - that is to say, they were substantively negative.

It is in this respect that his reading of Socrates and Plato and his attitude to philosophy become important. While his attitude to Socrates and Plato, as I mentioned, is not always positive, I will focus on his endorsement of their work and on his sense of philosophy as a spiritual manifestation of the will to be affirma- tive. The great thinkers, he maintains, rose above the multitude and af- firmed existence through affirmation of themselves in their spiritual crea- tions. Socrates and Plato offered their readers doctrines about reality that were quite often moral in tone, but Nietzsche comes increasingly to suspect that these doctrines were nothing more than masks, behind which lay the truly self-affirming souls of these Greeks.

This means that Plato and Socra- tes sought to transform reality through the strength of their own wills. They may have been forced to present their spiritual creations in a way that the masses would understand but what is most important about them is their insistence on themselves through creative spiritual activity. In this sense, they served no purpose higher than their own vigour or will-to- power and again, they are memorable not for the details of their doctrines but for their ability to celebrate themselves both in their own time and across historical time.

Though Nietzsche only intermittently uses the terminology of eros, it is clear from the above that characterisation of Nietzsche as a thinker of eros is justified. Not only does he speak of the self-assertive dimension of will-to-power but also of its creative or generative dimension. These are both attributes normally associated with eros.

In other words, erotic vigour affirms exis- tence through an affirmation or expenditure of itself. Aristophanes had feared that eros uninhibited would assert itself to the point that even the gods would be threatened. Nietzsche acknowledges the truth of this warning but refuses to understand it negatively. By endorsing unbridled erotic will-to-power, Nietzsche seeks to uncover the sources of erotic striving and thereby to release human creative energies to the point that existence is justified for its own sake.

In this way, he seeks to replace fear, negation and resentment with joy, creativity and affirmation as the goals of human existence. In terms of the Aristophanic indictment, Nietzsche acknowledges it as true but claims that the unrestrained eros of the will-to-power of the strong is legitimised because of its will to affirm existence and, what is more, to be expressive of reality as it truly is.

Thus, he accepts the Aristophanic analysis but radically al- ters or transvalues its significance. What is important from the point of view of the present work is the question of whether this is actually true to Plato and Socrates. Is Nietzschean will-to-power what is really at stake in eros as discussed by Plato and Socrates?

Furthermore, if it is, is this view sustainable? That is, is Nietzschean eros, in any way, able to regulate itself so as to avoid the possibly tyrannical or violent excesses of eros? Nietzsche intends erotic self-affirmation to take the form of spiritual creativity but is there any means through which degeneration of this affirmative instinct into violent destruction can be avoided?

I will argue, for reasons that will be made clear in the text itself, that this Nietzschean position is neither faithful to Plato nor can succeed on its own terms. As such, we will continue to explore the issue. The Will to Knowledge and the Instrumentalization of the Other If part I deals with eros in its political sense, broadly understood, part II concerns the indictment of philosophy insofar as it relates to concrete hu- man relations.

Chapter three is a reading of the speech of Alcibiades in the Symposium. He was at one time a champion of the people, at another, the greatest enemy of the Athenian state. He was also a one-time associate of Socrates and student of philosophy though, at the time of the dialogue, he has be- come a reckless and dissolute politician. But has the character of Alcibiades developed as it has in spite of his association with Socrates or because of it? Is he the product of Socratic questioning or of the failure to integrate phi- losophy and public life? Compelled to give an encomium to eros, he chooses instead to tell the story of his own relationship and his unrequited love for Socrates.

The speech of Alcibiades is not particularly coherent and lacks a theo- retical context. He is impassive and unresponsive to the extent that while he may be a worthy object of love, he is incapable of returning love. Humans are no longer his fellows and thus the important juxtaposition in this speech between the love of a particular other Alcibiades , as against the love of ideas Socrates. He will also want to claim that if this philosophic eros can even be called eros, it is a strange form of that love that has little or nothing in common with the everyday understanding of the term.

In other words, Socrates is accused of draining all affectivity or spontaneity from love to the point that all that remains is cold calculation. Regardless of what we may make of Alcibiades, the suspicion persists that in his love of the abstract ideas or forms, the philosopher has become disconnected from his own humanity and more centrally from others.

Alci- biades offers us a picture of the philosopher as one who has not only tran- scended his own materiality but has come to view embodiment generally as repugnant. In what sense can he connect with his fellows, then? The phi- losopher claims to investigate the grounds of being and morality but, in aspiring to knowledge of what is ultimate, he looks with scorn on what is immanent.

That is, having ascended to relation with the Good, can he retain any interest in particular others? Indeed, Socrates, as object of love, is de- picted by Alcibiades as like the Good itself inasmuch as he is incapable of returning love. As such, the philosophical deployment of love is one that shuts down a fundamental aspect of human love, namely the need to be 20 Alcibiades, in fact, makes this explicit at Symposium d. We often tend to feel, along with Alcibiades and Pausanias in the same dialogue a , that anything and everything is justified in the name of love and that love suspends the laws of reason.

With regard to this point, I will pay close attention to some very influ- ential and important articles written on the subject. While critics are not generally inclined to sympathise with Alcibiades he is anything but an innocent , many do take the accusation of indifference towards, or instru- mentalization of others on the part of the philosopher seriously.

In this regard I will examine the sources that charge Platonic love with being in- strumentalist, self-serving and dualist to the extent that embodied person- hood is scorned. As with part I, this requires some prelimi- nary justification. Even if it is true that Socrates had no interest in sexual relations, this does not mean that he could not be ethically responsive to others. Though sexual indifference does not imply ethical indifference, it may be part of a wider problem that includes indifference to others generally. The Individual as Object of Love.

Princeton University Press, pp. On this view, others are valued only insofar as they advance my own ascent to contemplation of the forms. A similar critique is made by Anders Nygren, for whom eros is essentially self-interested and can never be for the other in any way. University of Chicago Press. It is an acquisitive love that can never generate anything like generosity from out of itself. Finally, Martha Nuss- baum has traced the disconnection of the erotic philosopher in relation to the em- bodied human condition. The Speech of Alcibiades: A Reading of the Symposium.

The Fragility of Goodness: And, of course, this was the point that is made by Vlastos and Nuss- baum. The form that this has taken, he claims, is in the philosophical insistence that the relation- ship of the subject to the universal, matched by the concept, is the primor- dial human relation. In other words, philosophy has claimed that the know- ing relation is prior to the ethical relation of the face-to-face. In this sense ethics is mediated by ontology. But if we make ontology antecedent to ethics, the result will be disregard for the otherness of the other to whom I am always equal in thought.

And so he insists on a relation that is more pri- mordial than what the western tradition has always thought of in terms of primordiality i. He is also quite taken with the notion of the primordiality of speech as it appears in the Phaedrus. Thus, he retains the separation of worlds though it is now the other that with which the ethical relation holds that appears on the far side of the divide.

The answer here is complicated. In the early works, Existence and Existents and Time and the Other , he seems to suggest that eros is the crucial term of the relation with alterity, specifically inasmuch as it opens a relation with a temporality which is not grounded in the Same. It initiates a relation with diachrony that allows the Same to care in a non-self-interested way.

Unlike eros, this desire does not emerge from need in the way eros tends to. An Essay on Exte- riority. Translated from French by Alphonso Lingis. Duquesne Univer- sity Press, pp. This is a strange critique as we will see in chapter 6. There are, however, certain problems generated by this solution. These include the problem of the third, or the problem of judgement.

If I am infinitely responsible before the other, how can I consider other others? How can I respond to a third person if I am infinitely responsible before the first? The weighing of competing claims is obviously incompatible with the logic of infinite responsibility, but in its absence, how can community become possible? A second problem has again to do with incarnation. Can it be called Good? Even if these questions can be answered successfully, our central prob- lem remains: Is philosophy essentially aller- gic to alterity or only a certain kind of philosophy?

In chapter 5, I will turn to his second major work, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence , in which many of the problems of the earlier work are addressed. This will be discussed in the text. We will return to this later. It is rather the site of the sovereignty of the individual existent. None of this is intended to lessen the radical otherness of the other since it does in fact deepen the sense of the call to responsibility. It is, rather, that alterity is now explored from within the constitution of subjectivity.

The notion of proximity that becomes so important in Otherwise than Being is in fact a key term in the description of erotic subjectivity in Totality and Infinity. There had always been a wedge between these two in the earlier work as there is, according to certain critics, in Platonic ontol- ogy. In the later work by contrast, ethics is the primor- dial relation while justice is now the measuring work of philosophy.

Justice is not unrelated to ethics but is nourished by it in the sense that the calcula- tions of philosophy are pursued for the sake of the responsibility of the sub- ject before the other. In this way, a path is opened for the possible vindica- tion of philosophy against the charges of hubris, tyranny, and corruption. The Athlone Press, pp. All of this goes to a renewed sense of the value of philosophy beyond anything that appeared in his earlier work.

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It enables a relation of goodness. Yet, it remains paradoxical that the initiation of goodness never escapes the notions of guilt, murder, claustro- phobia, and intolerable responsibility. It is as though my very being in the world is a crime so grave that I can never make amends while it is at the same time this very crime that gives me to be as ethical. Philosophical Eros and the Vindication of Philosophy In the third and final part of the book, I will offer a defence of Platonic eros on the basis of a reading of the speech of Socrates.

That is, we will ask whether Platonic eros requires either transvaluation or re- appropriation for the sake of ethics. I will argue that the relation between Platonic eros and otherness is far more complex than has been imagined. In the critiques dealt with, the eros of philosophy is thought in terms of a will-to-power or to absolute knowl- edge. In either case, the self struggles with and seeks to overcome what is other than it, either by incorporating or destroying it. In the myth of the dual parentage of eros in the Symposium Poros and Penia , Plato emphasizes the doubleness of eros as well as its ambiguity.

He suggests that the relation between eros and the Good is complex but insists upon a positive energy in eros to which philosophy must pay heed. In con- sequence of this, it is, in fact, the transcendent other that is the source of the transcending energy of eros. Thus Plato insists on a primordial relation- ality between eros and goodness beyond any and all determinations of Be- ing by the philosopher.

I will secondly examine the ascent passage of the Symposium.

egries sixties documents french edition Manual

This was the source of the critique of Alcibiades, if not also that of Aristophanes. Here, I will suggest that what is really entailed there is not ethical indiffer- ence or instrumentalization of others but rather a hermeneutics of eros in which the objects of erotic love are understood as communicating a more fundamental source of being. That is to say that immanence might be sug- gestive of transcendence for Plato. One of the most important implications of this is its impact on dualism. I will contend that the speech invites a non- dualist reading inasmuch as there is, on the one hand, a continuity albeit a progressive one in the attachment to the incarnate and immanent and to the transcendent.

On the other hand, I will argue that immanence cannot be valued for Plato in isolation from its ground in the Good. This means that it is only through the Good that particular incarnate others can be valued at all. It is, indeed, only in the light of the Good that they can be seen in their individuality. The eros of philosophy, indebted to the Good, involves the power to discern being in its plurality and otherness. The Good manifests itself in the light in which particulars bathe, which is to say that neither the Good itself nor the particulars are accessible independently of each other.

There is a two-way movement in Platonic eros — upward, towards the object of human desiring and downward, in the productive or generative activity of eros. Again, the intimacy of eros and the Good will be seen to be the ground of the work of philosophy or the soil that nourishes it. Attention to this source, both in eros and in what is other, allows erotic attachment to become a celebration of what is other, rather than a will to appropriation.

The eros of the philoso- pher becomes tyrannical only if it forgets the source of its capacity to dis- cern truth. With this, I will return to the other speeches and reassess the critiques we have already examined.

I will suggest that the humility of the philosophical soul before the Good counters the charge of hubris. The transcendence of the ob- ject of philosophical eros means that no simple return to self is possible so that eros remains dynamic and open throughout. It also means that no final determination of either the Good or the erotic soul is possible and this means that dynamism rather than dogmatism is given the final word by Plato.

The two most important points here will be a that the transcendence of the Good and the hermeneutics of eros mean that no absolutist position is available even while b the quest for truth is vindicated through a dialec- tic method that is capable of distinguishing difference and otherness through eros as attentive to the source of its own transcending. In this way, I will attempt to defend Plato against charges of both hubris and tyranny.

Part III will end with a brief discussion of the Phaedrus and the relation of the account of eros found here and the one just discussed. I will argue that while the Phaedrus places greater emphasis on the experience of love in the soul than was the case in the Symposium, it does not differ in any significant way as to the meaning of eros and what it denotes. I will take this charge seriously, devoting two-thirds of my thesis to its exploration. I will argue, however, that Plato and philosophy are finally vindicated. This does not mean that his accusers are simply wrong since each will identify a possible deployment of eros and the dangers that lie therein.

Plato and we must beware. Yet eros is also that very transcending force in the human soul without which relation with neither the Good nor goods at all, would be possible. The philosophical soul is erotic and the human soul is erotic. This will not require additional sup- port since this communication of inherent goodness is written into eros itself.

The Speech of Aristophanes and the first Indictment of Philosophy The speech of Aristophanes in the Symposium is one of the richest and best known passages in the Platonic corpus as is evidenced by the attention paid to it in the history of Platonic scholarship. I will not be insensitive to the particular understanding of the meaning of eros that is offered in this speech but my principal concern will to be to read it as an indictment of the practice of philosophy.

At stake in the speech of Aristophanes, as I read it, is the question of interpreting the meaning of eros as it relates to the truth of the cosmos and the truth of the human condition. It is, in short, a reflection on the relationship between physis and nomos. The speech proceeds through the elaboration of a series of important tensions which include, but are not limited to, the tension between the tragic nature of human existence and the desire for redemption, the tension between or- der and chaos and between physical and spiritual manifestations of erotic desire. All of these will serve to unfold the views of the character Aristo- phanes as to the correct deployment of eros as well as comment on the posi- tion of philosophy in relation to this.

He is, thus, con- cerned with the problem of erotic excess and especially that type of erotic 33 I have particularly in mind the treatment of the speech by Stanley Rosen in, Rosen, S. See also Mitchell, R. The Hymn to Eros: University Press of America; and Strauss, L. Introducing Aristophanes Athenians who are not only characters in the dialogue but historical person- ages about whom a great deal is known. At the same time, coherent interpretation will sometimes demand that we be suspicious of the statement of a belief that the historical personage would be unlikely to have held.

He is without doubt the most prominent comic playwright active during the Golden Age of the Athenian 34 In addition to Socrates, Aristophanes and Alcibiades, whose speech will be the subject of chapter three of the present work, are the best known. The fact that both of these played an important role in the actual trial and death of Socrates is, of course, crucially important and suggests that their appearance in this dialogue is not incidental.

Aristophanes famously opposes this practice in his written works as would have been well-known to any contemporary audience. This is not grounds for an outright rejection of the sincerity of this passage but it is grounds for suspicion. He lived through some of the most tumultuous times in Athe- nian history including the height of Athenian power prior to the Peloponne- sian war, the defeat of Athens at the hands of Sparta and the re-emergence of Athens under the auspices of the Athenian league of BC.

Through his comedies, he is known to have been a significant voice in Athenian politics in the sense that serious political commentary is often housed in the obscenity and buffoonery of his fictional creations. He was opposed to any attempt to confer democ- ratic voting rights on anyone but the landowning classes and was also op- posed to any changes in the system of education.

The Clouds of Aristophanes Regarding the relation between Plato and Aristophanes, the situation ap- pears to be very complex. Aristophanes was an older contemporary of Plato and it is likely that they were personally acquainted. As a student and friend of Socrates, Plato would have had every right to feel nothing but resentment for Aristophanes whose play Clouds is cited by Socrates in Apology as a con- 37 M. Aristophanes and the Defini- tion of Comedy.

Oxford University Press, p. However, they will often pro- vide an invaluable touchstone for the proper interpretation of the speech of the character Aristophanes. The value of philosophy, as it is expressed by the character of Socrates in the play, is that it can teach men to argue clearly, distinctly, and rationally, without giving heed to truth or justice.

This backfires spec- tacularly, though not unexpectedly, when, under the influence of Socrates, Pheidippides turns his back on the very ties of family. In addition to the comic situation generated by this series of events, a serious point is being made about the divisive potency of philosophy and its capacity to sunder even family relations.

Like war, it seems, philosophy can turn sons against fathers and erode the bonds of social cohesion. This turns out to be a disaster as Pheidippides is encouraged to turn against his own father and when Strepsiades himself goes to Socrates for advice, he is saved from committing acts of vice only through his inabil- ity to remember what he has been taught. In other words, he is saved from vice by his inability to be a philosopher. It is conceivable that Aristo- phanes detects in philosophical eros an eris similar to that of the spirit of war.

This is not unreasonable since eris, or strife, is the root of the eristic method used by both Socrates and the sophists. The true extent of their cynicism regarding matters of truth and justice is a matter of debate, though it was certainly advanta- geous to Plato to depict them in this way in order better to develop the con- trast between sophistry and the truly philosophical activity of Socrates. It is equally clear that there is something to the type represented by Socrates in Clouds even if it is exag- gerated. What is most important for the purposes of the speech, however, is the fact that there appears to be no distinction between philosophy and sophistry in the mind of Aristophanes.

And, as we have mentioned, Socrates cites this critique as influencing the views of many as to the nature of his intellectual activity. So if the type represented by Socrates is accurate, the question becomes to what extent Socrates represents the type. And if he does not, to what extent any difference between philosophy and sophistry is relevant. We might say that Aristophanes views the furtherance of civic vir- tue as incompatible with or threatened by any form of rigorous rationality and so if sophistry constitutes a dangerous and divisive development in Athenian society, so too does philosophy.

In spite of this, however, there is evidence of a fondness in Plato for Aristophanes and his works. Although Plato finally sides with Socrates against Aristophanes in the Symposium, it remains true that the presentation of the comic poet in the dialogue is, on the whole, sympathetic and charm- ing. He is also assigned one of the dialogues central speeches44 to which Socrates in his own speech is keen to respond.

Several anecdotes about the relation between Plato and Aristophanes have come down to us. Gorgias, Republic, Protagoras, Phaedrus. It is literally the central speech of the seven with three speeches either side of it. It may be that Plato admired the comic poet in whose works, even the crud- est of them, can be detected a festivity and affirmation of existence in the face of all that is laughable and contingent about human existence.

These points will, I hope, become clearer as we proceed. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Cambridge University Press, p. All future references are to this edition. The Works of Aristophanes. Great Books of the Western World vol. Translated from Greek by Benjamin B. This characterisation, of course, brings Aristophanes more into line with Nietzsche than with Plato.

Still, his speech retains an inspirational quality that the others lack. Yet it is interesting that this convenience comes as the result of a break in the original order of the proceedings. It is a chance happening that allows Aristophanes to speak after Eryximachus and before Agathon. More precisely, it is a chance bodily happening, an attack of the hiccups that forces Eryximachus to take the place of the comedian.

This is surely significant. After all, he could just as easily have had it that Aristo- phanes was seated on the right hand side of Eryximachus. In fact, he will not only present eros as a predominantly embodied phenome- non, but will also make it the site of the paradox of human power and frailty. As a result, he will claim that the body itself in its vulnerability constitutes a warning against the excesses of a spiritualised eros. As erotic beings, we are both strong enough to rebel against the gods, but too weak to live with the consequences. As for the results of this with regard to rationality and So- cratic eros we shall see shortly.

In the initial stages of his speech, Aristophanes makes two noteworthy manoeuvres. The first is his rejection of the technicism of Eryximachus. Eryximachus had spoken of a logos of eros which needed to be administered by skilled experts; i. Aristophanes rejects this notion by stating that there can be no such experts in matters of love. Eros can be neither harnessed, nor instrumentalized, and human beings cannot mediate between themselves and eros. Rather, eros is himself the physician. The obvious conclusion is that human beings are at the phanes, we know from Clouds, is an opponent of Sophism.

He is also the only guest in the Symposium who does not appear in the Protagoras and is also the only charac- ter that is not part of a couple of lovers. Henceforth all references will be included in the main text. It can neither be controlled nor rendered intelligible.

This being so, Aristophanes is already attacking Socrates by challenging the one area of expertise that he Socrates claims to have Symposium d-e; Lysis c.

• THE DOGS OF POMPEII.
• Princess Pickle and the Rainy Day.
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• Dangerous Ground.

As for Aristophanes and Eryximachus, we may already have guessed an important relation between their two speeches from the fact that Plato draws our attention to the reversal of the order in which they speak. But things are even more complex than this. After all, his hiccups did not simply go away of their own accord. Rather, he was forced to seek advice from the doctor and was cured only after applying the pre- scribed remedy. It is only after the application of the third of these that Aristophanes is able to stop.

Were it not for this, Aristophanes would have been condemned to pass the night making funny noises. Thus, in a sense, Aristophanes opposition to Eryximachus is only possible through the logos of the latter. On this see, Mitchell In keeping with the above, Aristophanes offers no logos of eros but a muthos. All of the speakers in the dialogue approach eros from the point of view of their own interests or profession.

Eryxima- chus had insisted that the meaning of eros was clear only to experts such as himself, Agathon will later speak of an aetheticized eros, Socrates will an- chor it in philosophy, while Alcibiades will relate it to politics. Aristophanes is a poet and so thinks about eros in poetic terms and in this way will seek to defend the priority of his own craft and the irreducibility of eros to techne. In a sense, there is nothing all that strange about this.

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On the other hand, it seems important that the account of eros, for the first time in the dialogue, takes the form of a myth. This is not only important with respect to the speeches that have been but also with regard to those that will come, specifi- cally the speech of Socrates. We will return to this point later. If Aristophanes is a poet, he is also a poet of the body.

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Thus he will insist on drawing attention as he already has done to the pathos of the human condition. That is to say, they interrupt the order of the speeches and, equally importantly, they interrupt the attempt to bring eros under the auspices of the discursive. That they interrupt Aristophanes himself is, in fact, part of his account of eros. Those who claim to discourse in god-like ways, that is, are still subject to the emi- nently fragile materiality of the body. Of course, we have seen how this is turned on its head in the exchange with Eryximachus but it is worth keeping this in mind as we proceed through the speech.

Since the body constitutes an interruption in the flow of speech, it fol- lows that pure rational speech cannot do justice to the complexity of the human situation. Even speech must be more enigmatic if it is, in fact, true that the body is the condition of speech. And so, at the very outset Aristo- phanes claims that myth is most appropriate to the discussion of eros. Eros is not intelligible. It is not subject to understanding but to faith.

And here Aristophanes is somewhat evangelical for his speech is not simply for the benefit of his co-symposiasts but for all. In this sense, his muthos is also a quasi- logos even if only in the narrow sense that it is a logos stating that there is no rational logos. Otherwise put, the logos of Aristophanes is, paradoxically, a logos that challenges the sovereignty of logos.

But it does so in a very specific way. It does not wonder, or feel amazement thaumazein because it knows everything in advance. It explains and by explaining dispenses with the need for philosophical curiosity. He opposes the hubris of Eryxima- chus, who thinks he already knows, and can explain by means of logos, while he opposes Socrates because he desires to know.

The point is brought out by the tragic myth that follows. Its stated purpose is to explain the fact of eros by outlining what is most essential to human being. This approach marks an important break with the previous speeches in the following way: In other words, all previous speakers had first of all traced the origin of eros in a cosmological view of the universe and only afterwards outlined the benefits of eros in the human context. First of all, you must learn about human nature, and what has happened to it.

Long ago, our nature was not the same as it is now but quite different d. Translated from Czech by Peter Lom. Stanford University Press, p. It is not a comic myth in spite of the fact that Aristophanes is a comedian. What had been separated is now the same. More precisely, Aristophanes proffers a genealogical account of eros in terms of an anthro- pological account. The previous speakers had understood the divine, cosmo- logical dimension of eros as prior to any impact on human beings. Aristo- phanes, though, foregrounds the human. His is an account in which humans appear before the gods55 to the extent that the gods are somewhat de- centred.

And it will turn out, as the speech proceeds, that eros is only rele- vant or meaningful for human beings. As for the speech, though, Aristophanes tells us that we were not once as we are now. Instead of two genders as we have now, there were three. The first two of these were the all male born of the Sun and the all female born of Earth. The third was a combination of the first two. These were male-female or androgyne. Aristophanes points out that whilst once this term designated a distinct human gender, it is now used only as a term of abuse e.

After all, the androgy- nes are a combination of the two genders and are, therefore, the link be- tween Earth and Sun. In their absence, the two realms are alienated from one another. This sets up the problem and, of course, allows eros to step in as the solution. If these circle-men are meant to represent the original human condition, then it is a condition with which we can no longer fully identify. Quite apart from the missing third gender, these proto-humans are simply other than we are.

These beings were entirely self-sufficient possessed as they were of great strength and the ability to reproduce themselves by themselves c. A Personal Perspective on Dr. Paul Janssen Futurelab is a member of Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them. Referee Paul Janssen collision.

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