Philosophy and Locality, Pt 2 – Socratic Piety
“Tell me then, what is the pious, and what is the impious, do you say?”
— Socrates, as depicted in Plato’s Euthyphro, 5d (trans. Grube)
“Questioning is the piety of thought.”
— Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” 35 (trans. Lovett)
In the first part of this series (and part 3 can be found here), we discussed how Hegel’s model of philosophy is captured by his motto: “What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational.” (Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, 10 – trans. Knox). Hegel believes that we unavoidably begin philosophizing within “what is actual,” i.e., the local world as it is familiar to us, including all its biases, contradictions, and contingencies. Hegel understands that we must start existing somewhere in particular (Dasein), but existence as we find it is just how things happen to be for us and the world could be seen as standing differently for those who find themselves in other times and places. Thus, Hegel identifies philosophy with the attempt to take the particularities of existence up into the universal: the movement from the existential to the essential, from how things are to how they ought to be. That is, the philosopher’s concern is not limited to the way things appear from his or her perspective, viewed at this time or from this place, “as a . . ., I think . . . .” Rather, the philosopher is concerned with how things stand for everyone; philosophy is aimed at the universally normative, and not merely the familiar presumptions of our locality.
Hegel, however, is wary of “one-sidedness.” That is, he argues that, since existence is our starting place, the validity of our end point entails the validity of our original locality. The normativity of philosophical wisdom presupposes the normative standing of its beginnings. Thus, the universal must extend to the particular in the sense that philosophy will demonstrate that its normativity was implicit in the localized existence where it began. The seemingly contingent and conflicted place where we originate is thereby shown to be an integral part of the process that is Absolute Knowing; the local as it actually exists is essential to the universal that ought to exist. Wisdom is the movement from local existence (the particular) to the ultimate essence of things (the universal) and back again. Thus, for Hegel, the world of contingent existence is redeemed by philosophy. The philosopher reveals that history as it has actually occurred (what is actual) is precisely how it ought to be (what is rational). To return to Plato’s metaphor of the cave, Hegel’s philosopher does not abandon the shadows on the wall in favor of the essential Being revealed by the light of the sun outside, but instead returns to the cave to show that the shadows are themselves integral moments in the overall process that is the Absolute. The local is the manifestation of the Absolute at some stage of its history of self-realization.
Hegel certainly learned some of these lessons from Plato; one might say “one side.” For example, in the Phaedo, Plato has Socrates differentiate his philosophical inquiry from that of “natural scientists” in terms of a demand for an overall normative explanation of the world:
“I was delighted with this cause and it seemed to me good, in a way, that Mind should be the cause of all. I thought that if this were so, the directing Mind would direct everything and arrange each thing in the way that was best. If then one wished to know the cause of each thing, why it comes to be or perishes or exists, one had to find what was the best way for it to be, or to be acted upon, or to act. On these premises then it benefitted a man to investigate only, about this and other things, what is best.” (Plato, Phaedo, 97c-d, trans. Grube)
I don’t read “Mind” here as literally a designing intelligence that whipped up the universe according to an idealized recipe. (Plato goes out of his way to have Timaeus tell us that his account along those lines is a likely myth, and I think it is important that this story does not come from Socrates.) Rather, the point is that philosophy is the overcoming of the merely existing in favor of that which ought to be. Intelligibility is not how things merely seem to us (which is always biased and confronted by contradictions), but the grasping of how things are and ought to be from all possible perspectives. Plato famously articulates the universal, normative stance of the philosopher in the Republic when he distinguishes knowledge from belief. The latter is “in between” knowledge and ignorance, because it concerns “what partakes in both being and not being, and cannot correctly be called purely one or the other” (Plato, Republic, 478a10e, trans. Reeves). Belief is then the stance one takes from the standpoint of the local. From where we happen to exist things may appear beautiful or pious, but when viewed from another locality, they will seem equally ugly or impious. Since belief only latches onto what is and is not, its is “a wandering, in-between object grasped by an in-between power” (Republic, 479d5). Knowledge, however, deals “with what is, to know how what is as it is” (Republic, 477b10). That is, knowledge is not concerned merely with how things seem to be from some locality, but with how they really are, in-themselves regardless from where they are viewed. Knowledge is concerned, for example, with beauty and piety as they are utterly unmixed with the ugly or impious – the universals of beauty and piety, freed from how they look to us. Thus those “devoted to the thing itself are the ones we call, not ‘philodoxers,’ but ‘philosophers’” (Republic, 480a10). In short, philosophy does not settle for the customary beliefs and opinions of our local perspective (which are always possibly contradicted from the next locality), but endeavors for knowledge that is not dependent on mere familiarity. Plato’s philosopher is not satisfied with holding “in between” being and non-being, and instead strives for (loves) what is unambiguously Being above all else.
Thus, Plato demands that the philosopher climb the ladder up from Dasein, but does he likewise expect him to climb back down to redeem the local? That story is a bit more complicated for Plato than for Hegel, and here is where will see the two philosophers part company. Earlier in the Republic Plato has Socrates specify the practices necessary to justice in the city, including infanticide, a rigged lottery to decide who gets the annual occasion for sex, the separation of children from their natural parents along with the complete dissolution of all natural family ties, strict censorship of all the arts, etc., etc. These suggestions are odious to our modern sensibilities, but they were pretty off-putting to the ancient Athenian ear too. That is, these features of the ideal city (the the supposed form or essence of justice in political arrangements, according to the Socrates of the Republic) run contrary to much of what actual human beings have always valued in their lives. In the dialogue, Glaucon (who was Plato’s brother), is not entirely convinced that an arrangement so distasteful is even possible: “The more you talk like that, the less we will let you get away without explaining how this constitution could come into existence,” so “let’s now try to convince ourselves of just this: that it is possible and how it is possible . . .” (Republic, 472b1, 471e10).
The answer Plato puts in Socrates’ mouth is revealing:
“Do you think, then, that someone would be any less good a painter if he painted a model of what the most beautiful human being would be like, and rendered everything in the picture perfectly well, but could not demonstrate that such a man could actually exist?” (Republic, 472d5)
Of course , Glaucon responds with “No, by Zeus, I do not,” so Plato’s point (at least as he puts it in the mouth of Socrates here) is that it is not troubling that the ideal cannot be shown to be possible in real concrete existence. Remember, for Hegel, the philosopher ascends to knowledge but then descends to redeem belief as necessary in the process of achieving the Absolute. Hegel maintains that the actual is the rational and the rational is the actual, so philosophical knowledge must entail a concrete possibility (and actuality), e.g., the ideal of justice as discovered by the philosopher must have an existential reality (if not now, then in an emerging End of History). Plato (at least in the Republic), however, does not claim that existence (the actual, Dasein) and the rational (essence, the universal) are necessarily united. For Plato, it is no strike against the philosopher if the object of absolute knowledge about justice cannot be instantiated in any actually existing political arrangement. All existence for Plato is mixed between being and not being, and therefore Dasein is the business of the philodoxer (who dabbles in mere opinion or belief) not the philosopher (who is concerned with absolute knowing). The Platonic philosopher does not look to an End of History when the actual and the rational will be brought to unity. Thus, Plato has Socrates claim in the Phaedo that philosophy is preparation for death. Philosophy is being-on-to-death not primarily because it will prepare one for a smoother transition to whatever comes next, but rather the philosopher becomes as if dead to the ordinary world. The philosopher, for Plato, is indifferent to existence in its familiarity. Richard Rojcewicz makes this point superbly:
“The lesson of the Phaedo: the struggle of the soul to come into its own autonomous existence is a struggle against unexamined presuppositions, the unexamined life, taking things for granted. The body is not the prison of the soul; on the contrary, the prison is constituted by secondhand knowledge, idle talk, average everydayness, mediocrity. The prison is inauthenticity. The soul of the philosopher needs to be dead to what ‘they’ say, needs to release itself from thralldom to the ways things are bandied about in everyday chatter. The soul comes into its own by separating itself from everyday life. That, if we read Plato carefully, is how philosophizing is dying. In other words, the Socratic method, refusal to accept the usual substitution of beings for Being, coincides with philosophizing, with separating the soul from its prison, with authentic anticipation of death.” (Rojcewicz, Heidegger, Plato, Philosophy, Death: An Atmosphere of Mortality, 24).
Dasein, being somewhere in particular, is no longer a concern for Plato’s philosopher, for he has become dead to the world of ordinary existence and there is no going back once one has turned away from the shadows on the wall. Whereas Hegel would have the philosopher return to the cave after enjoying the vision of the Good (the Absolute), Plato would have him push the proverbial ladder away even to the point of accepting a sort of death. The philosopher is dead in the sense of being irrelevant or utterly obscure when viewed from the standpoint of the locality from which he began.
With some subtly we can see this point in Plato’s own presentation of the “Allegory of the Cave.” After telling the tale of the prisoner’s liberation, ascent beyond, and return to the cave as the philosopher (with the result of his being killed by his fellow prisoners), Socrates argues that
“It is our task as founders, then to compel the best nature to learn what was said before to be the most important thing: namely, to see the good; to ascend that ascent. And when they have ascended and looked sufficiently, we must not allow them to do what they are allowed to do now . . . to stay there and refuse to go down again to the prisoners in the cave and share their labors and honors, whether the inferior ones or the more excellent ones.” (Republic, 519c7-d6).
That sounds very much like the Hegelian project: the philosopher “ascends that ascent” to the visions of the Absolute and then returns to the place where he began to do the work of redeeming existence as it was originally found in the light of this knew-found knowledge. That hardly sounds as though the philosopher is for all intents and purposes dead to ordinary Dasein, but instead begins a progressive project of taking up the local into the universal. Be that as it may, the picture is more complicated. Glaucon worries that Socrates is doing an injustice to the philosopher: “You mean we are to treat them unjustly, making them live a worse life when they could live a better one?” (Republic, 519d7) The philosopher has, through his own efforts, achieved a state no longer in between the being and not being of particular beings, but is instead in the presence of Being. To descend from those heights is more than can justly be asked of anyone.
In response, Plato has Socrates point out to Glaucon that the point of the law is not “making any one class in the city do outstandingly well, but is contriving to produce this condition in the city as a whole,” i.e., the end is the good of the city, not the philosopher (Republic, 519d10). Moreover, the concern for the good of the whole over his own enjoyment of absolute knowing “won’t be unjustly treating those who have become philosophers in our city,” because the city has seen to it that the philosopher is “better and more completely educated than the others” (Republic, 520b5). In other words, the philosopher owes his education to the city, so he likewise owes the fruits of that education to the same. Thus, “the city will be awake, governed by us and by you [the philosophers]; not dreaming like the majority of cities nowadays, governed by men who fight against one another over shadows” (Republic, 520c5). Now that the philosopher returns to pay his debt to his humble beginnings, these contradictory shadows can be brought under universal rule. Hegel approves.
There is, however, a suspicious irony to Socrates’ reply. In his very telling of the “Allegory of the Cave,” Plato’s Socrates predicts that “anyone who tried to free the prisoners and lead them upward” would be killed if “they could somehow get their hands on him” (Republic, 517a5). The entire episode is a not so thinly veiled reference to the historical Socrates’ fate at the hands of Athens for his supposed impiety toward the founding traditions of the city. The actual citizens were not all that enthusiastic about the proposal of taking their local pieties up into the Absolute. Moreover, it’s not insignificant that by the time Plato wrote the Republic many of its characters (including not only Socrates, but also Plato’s own brothers) had died violently in the factional struggles following on Athens’s geopolitical foibles of the era. In this light, it is hard to take the suggestion of optimism for philosophy to play the role of redeeming everyday Dasein seriously as it comes from Plato’s mouth.
Notice, however, that in the optimistic remarks above, Plato’s Socrates is referring to “our city” or “the city,” which is the ideal city they have been constructing according to the essence of justice throughout the dialogue. Socrates does not have any actually existing city in mind, but only the ideal city. Though in a city instantiating the essence of justice the philosopher has an obligation to return to the cave, this is not the case in actual cities as we find them in the wild:
“When people like you come to be in other cities, they are justified in not sharing in others’ labor. After all, they have grown there spontaneously, against the will of the constitution in each of them. And when something grows of its own accord and owes no debt for its upbringing, it has justice on its side when it is not keen to pay anyone for its upbringining.” (Republic, 520a9-b5)
Only in the ideal city does the philosopher owe a debt back to his hometown. In cities that are not perfected instances of the ideal, the philosopher achieves the Absolute in spite of (not because of!), his beginnings in some particular locality. These “other cities” wherein the philosopher has no obligation to return to the common world include every existing city! Remember, as we discussed earlier, the Socrates of Republic does not believe that the ideal (the object of philosophical reflection) need be a real possibility for concrete existence. The subtext of the Republic reveals that, not only is it unnecessary that the rational can be the real, but that Plato thinks there is no such possibility. The philosopher is inevitably a dead man with respect to the concretely existing world. Philosophy in the ideal would return to its beginnings, but the world we have, where our Dasein begins, is not receptive to this homecoming – Socrates was executed. Thus, for Plato, the philosopher is oriented toward some other world.
Curiously, Plato’s teacher did not heed this doctrine that Plato puts in his mouth. As Plato recounts in the Crito, Socrates had the opportunity to escape from prison prior it his execution. Though he never denied the injustice of his death sentence, Socrates tells Crito that he will not take the opportunity to escape because “it is impious to bring violence to bear against your mother or father; it is much more so to use it against your country” (Crito, 51c1-2). Socrates argues that he owes a debt to Athens as it is the place of his origin, and the fact that his fellow citizen’s have betrayed him does not cancel the debt his very existence generated. In other words, even if the philosopher must struggle against his beginnings to achieve the ethereal heights, this does not absolve him of the obligations incurred by the fact that without his Dasein he wouldn’t exist at all. Even though Socrates has seen a higher philosophical truth, he remains pious toward the local deities. Thus, Socrates decides to remain in prison and accept his death at the hands of the very city to which he is remaining loyal.
This is quite interesting, though confusing, as Socrates was essentially convicted of impiety. Furthermore, remember the first glimpse of Socrates that we get from Plato is the debate over the essence of piety he had while awaiting trial. Euthyphro (who was a priest, a supposed expert in the essence of piety) has come to court to try his father for capital murder, and the debate with Socrates is occasioned because “they say, it is impious for a son to prosecute his father for murder.” (Euthyphro, 4e1). Of course, Euthyphro is exposed by Socrates as only having belief or opinion regarding piety (the limited and contradicted claims of local appearances). Notice, however, in the Crito Socrates falls relies on the conventional notion of piety toward one’s origins (it would be impious to betray one’s mother or father, even when they have done a grievous wrong) in his own decision to stay in prison and be executed. Socrates claims that Athens has been like a parent to him, and it is impious to betray one’s parents come what may. On top of that, we have the later argument in the Republic to the effect that the philosopher has no absolute obligation to his beginnings.
Can sense be made of this mélange? Maybe there is simply a rift between Plato and Socrates on this issue. Possibly, Plato believes that the old man had a failure of philosophical nerve by going back into the cave and trying to Make Athens Great Again. This might explain why Plato goes out of his way to absent himself from Socrates’s execution in the Phaedo: “I wasn’t there, so don’t think I endorse what happened. I thought he should’ve moved on!” Piety to locality was a fool’s errand, and the philosopher only squanders his wisdom in trying to liberate the other prisoners from the shadows on the cave wall. They are rather fond of those images, which are often quite flattering to the viewer. It’s lonely at the top, but that’s no reason to get dragged back into the bottom, especially when it’s not going to do any good. Socrates would have done better to shake the Athenian dust off his feet and take up permanent residence in the realm of the forms. On this interpretation, Plato’s philosopher is wisely aloof and happily accepts his practical exile (“death” to everyday Dasein), and the Republic is a warning to burgeoning philosophers not to get caught up in Socratic sentimentality.
I cannot rule out that reading Plato’s intentions, but we might alternatively see him as trying to vindicate Socrates by arguing that he was the most pious man in Athens. One who truly loves something will not tolerate its being a sham. If my marriage, however much I cherish it, is a living lie, then I would want to know as much rather than unwittingly indulging a cruel illusion. In fact, one might say that the philosopher is someone who cannot settle for the sneaking suggestion that his existence is a sham. This demand that one’s Dasein not be a living lie is an expression of love for it and loyalty to it, and it provides the initial impetus toward philosophizing. One makes the greatest demand of what she esteems the most. Socrates claimed to learn from the Oracle that “The unexamined life is not worth living” and it was through that mouth that Apollo was supposed to have demanded “Know thy self!” If our lives and our very selves are constituted by the local commitments and traditions we have inherited, then the Oracle counsels us to put these foundations into question. That is not to hold our Dasein in contempt, but to ask only that it be worthy of our piety. Socrates’s philosophical questioning reveals the Athenian Dasein as a sham in many ways. What “they say” about piety, justice, beauty, courage, etc., was revealed as a flimsy and convenient set of opinions. As anyone could see beforehand, this revelation could not be tolerated, and therefore Socrates’s insistence on holding the local to the standards of the universal was unavoidably quixotic and ultimately self-destructive. Socratic piety is ironic and tragic. Since Plato thinks the ideal is not here in the concrete world, the philosopher must live in a sort of constant antagonism with the rudiments of his existence. Unlike Hegel, Plato does not hold out hope for the philosophical redemption of our local beginnings; the rational does not have commerce with the actual. The philosopher can see the Sun, but he cannot help but to suffer distraction from that vision because of his love for the earth on which he stands. Living at odds with the ground out of which one has sprouted inevitably ends badly, but that is the price the philosopher pays for the love of wisdom and loyalty to his beginnings. He cannot resist the siren call of the former, while his very humanity obligates him to the latter. Indeed, ours is a “complicated form of life.” In part 3 of this series, we will put Socratic piety and Hegelian optimism into a dialogue with Merleau-Ponty’s existentialism.
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