A student emailed me

 

A student emailed me:

“I was at Barbara's [Barbara Day’s] place the other day and we were talking about the interviews she made with you in 1997 for her book The Velvet Philosophers. How did you relate the conversations and Ideas of Greek philosophers to the contemporary situation in Czechoslovakia at the time you were involved with the underground seminars? 

Did you directly or indirectly practice the philosophy of Plato in your real life? If you did, how? If you didn't, why?”

 

I replied:

“I enjoy reading Plato, but in those days, I was not interested in his philosophy, I was interested in Socrates. In 1970-1975 I worked as a turbine operator in 'condensation', under a low-pressure turbine, in the bowels of the ancient 19th century Power Plant. As I was reading, there, Plato's Republic, I found uncanny similarities between Plato's bent on censorship - even the songs were strictly prescribed by the Guardians in his Republic - and the censorship in Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion of 1968, with its destruction of all free thinking in the official mass media. A chain of incidents created a situation in which, in the end, I became a Platonic scholar.

It all began with the visit of Dr Anthony Kenny, the Master of Balliol, in my seminar in Prague in April 1980. In the afternoon, my wife Zdena was taking Kenny and his wife sight-seeing. My seminar began at six, Kenny and his wife arrived at half past five. Kenny took Aristotle's Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics out of his bag, showed me a page from the 10th book of the Nicomachean and from the 8th book Eudemian ethics: 'Julius, in my talk I shall refer to these two passages. Would you translate them for your students at the beginning of the seminar?' I looked at the Nicomachean Ethics, I had the passage heavily underlined, with exclamation marks. Aristotle argues there that philosophy is the key to good life, for you can do philosophy as long as you live, even in isolation, with nobody to discuss it with. It can improve your life as long as you live. But I never read the Eudemian Ethics. I told Kenny that I must go into the kitchen and read the Eudemian passage at least once.

 

I just managed to read the last line of the Eudemian passage when my wife came: 'Julius, you must come, the room is full of people.' I went, sat beside Kenny, who turned to me: 'Julius, would you translate these two passages from Aristotle’s Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, for I shall be referring to them in my talk.' I replied: 'Yes Tony, I shall read aloud each sentence in Ancient Greek and then give my Czech version of it.'

 

It was a long exhibition, which Kenny thus offered to me. I began with the Nicomachean and ended with the Eudemian passage. When I finished the translation, Kenny said that the two Ethics have three books in common, which are printed only in the Nicomachen Ethics; in the Eudemian Ethics they are omitted with an explanation that EE 4-6 = EN 5-7. Against this tradition, as Kenny discovered by computer analysis of style, the three books stylistically belong to the Eudemian Ethics. In his view, the two Ethics differ in the conception of good life. In the Nicomachean passage happiness consists in contemplative activity; philosophy is the key to good life. In the Eudemian Ethics, happiness consists in an ideal functioning of every part of the soul. The Eudemian conception is critical of the Nicomachean conception. The hero of the Nicomachean Ethics, who devotes his life to philosophy, unless he is called for to do so, is not wise but cunning, and turns out, by the standards of the Eudemian Ethics, to be a vicious and ignoble character. Kenny stated that only the Edemian Ethics is Aristotle’s.

 

After translating Kenny, I said that for us the Nicomachean passage was valuable: “We never know when we all end in prison. If this happens, it is good to know that philosophy can make our life better even in prison. I believe that when Aristotle wrote that passage, he had in mind Socrates in the Phaedo; a philosophic discussion with his followers and friends transformed Socrates’ last day into the best day of his life. Kenny riposted: “Julius, wouldn't you agree that Socrates was a good man, but a poor philosopher, whereas Plato was a good philosopher, but a devious man?” I replied: “Tony, I don't agree. Plato is full of Socrates. You obviously draw a dividing line through Plato’s dialogues; dialogues which are below what you consider to be philosophy, it’s Socrates; dialogues in which philosophy begins, it's Plato. I don't make any such dividing line through Plato's dialogues.' – Big banging on the door, the Secret Police marched in; they began by taking away Kenny and his wife. In the night they took them to the border-crossing, and let them go to West Germany on foot.

 

In May, Kathy Wilkes came to spend a week with us. She was eager to hear all about Kenny's visit. As I was trying to explain it to her, I said: 'Diogenes Laertius in his ‘Life of Plato’ says that the Phaedrus was Plato's first dialogue. In all my reading of Plato I found nothing that would force me to reject that ancient tradition.' Kathy exclaimed: 'You can't be serious!' I said: 'We are leaving Prague for Oxford in September. Come in August, for a month, and let us read the Phaedrus together.'

 

She came, we did. August was beautiful, we spent most of the time in Stromovka (a great park, a former hunting ground of the Kings) on a bench. In that joint reading I came upon the first important indication that Plato wrote the Phaedrus before the Thirty Tyrants took power, i.e. some five years prior to Socrates' death.

 

The Palinode ends with Socrates’ prayer to Eros, the god of Love:

“Dear God of Love … If in our earlier speech Phaedrus and I said anything harsh against you, blame Lysias as the instigator of the speech, and make him cease from speeches of that kind, turning him instead, as his brother Polemarchus has been turned, to philosophy, so that his lover here may no longer waver as he does now between the two choices, but may single-mindedly direct his life towards love with the aid of philosophy.”

Polemarchus was put to death by the Thirty Tyrants, because he was the richest man in Athens, and they were eager to get their hands on those riches. Lysias wrote in his speech Against Eratosthenes:

“Polemarchus received from the Thirty their accustomed order to drink hemlock, with no statement made as to the reason for his execution: so far did he come short of being tried and defending himself … they had all that silver and gold, with copper, jewellery, furniture and women’s apparel beyond what they ever expected to get … and yet to what extremes of insatiable greed for gain did they go, in this revelation that they made of their personal character! For some twisted gold earrings, which Polemarchus’ wife chanced to have, were taken out of her ears by Melobius as soon as ever he entered the house.”

How could Plato’s Socrates have urged Lysias to follow the example of his brother Polemarchus, after the latter found his death in the hands of the Thirty Tyrants?

 

 

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Socrates’ last reason for the Palinode deserves special attention; there is no place for it in the Palinode. Let me repeat it:

“And indeed, good Phaedrus, had we been heard by a man of noble character, who loved another such as himself – us saying that for some trifling reason lovers conceive hatred towards their loved ones – he would think that we were brought up among sailors, and never saw a free Eros (eleutheron Erȏta). Then out of shame for what this man would think, and out of fear of Eros, I shall wash the bitter taste out of my mouth with a wholesome speech.”

The Palinode is about love without sexual intercourse, which is inspired by philosophy and guided by the Forms. There is a place in the Palinode in which sexual intercourse is admitted and tolerated, but it is a very different intercourse from the one guided by the free Eros:

“But if the lovers turn to a coarser way of life, without philosophy, then when they are drinking, or in some other moment of carelessness, they take that choice that is called blessed by the many, and carry it through. And once having done so, they continue with it, but sparingly, because what they are doing has not been approved by their whole mind.”

It is this kind of constrained attitude to sexual intercourse from which the free Eros makes lovers free.

But there is a place in the Palinode at which Plato transgresses his philosophic love guided and constrained by the Forms: “This experience, fair boy, people call Eros, but when you hear what the gods call him, you will laugh because of your youth: ‘The immortals call him the grower of wings, because of his wing-growing force.’ Hermeias, the ancient commentator, says that this verse appears to be of Plato’s own invention.

This invention of Plato is related to the story of Ganymede: “As the fair boy comes close to his lover in talks on philosophy, and even closer in the gymnasium, where they are touching each other, then the spring of that stream, which Zeus as lover of Ganymede named desire (himeros), flows in abundance upon the lover, some sinking within him, some flowing off as he brims over. And like an echo that returns to its source, so the stream of beauty passes back into the fair boy through his eyes and causes his wings to grow, filling in turn his soul with love. So he is in love, but with what he does not know. He does not know what has happened to him, nor can he even say what it is.”

There can be little doubt that Plato introduces the story of Zeus and Ganymede into the Palinode to glorify homosexual intercourse, but the erotic relationship he speaks about, that of Zeus to his cupbearer, of an elderly philosopher to a fair boy in the bloom of his virginity, is not the same as the relationships entertained by those who enjoy free Eros.

Note 1

Plato in his old age commented on the Zeus and Ganymede story:

‘When the female and male get together for the purpose of procreation, the pleasure they get from it seems to be in accordance with nature, whereas the coupling of male with male, or female with female, is thought to be contrary to nature – and an enormity of the highest order, due to the abandonment of self-control where pleasure is concerned. Certainly we all blame Cretans for the story of Ganymede; we think they are spinning a yarn. Since their laws were believed to come from Zeus, we think they added this story about Zeus so that they could claim Zeus’s authority for their enjoyment of this pleasure too.’ (Plato, Laws 636c2-d4, tr. Tom Griffith.)

Malcolm Schofield comments; ‘According to Homer, Ganymede was a young Trojan carried off to heaven on account of his outstanding beauty to become Zeus’s cupbearer (Iliad 20.231-5). The homoerotic dimension of the relationship becomes explicit in later poetry and in Attic art.’ (Plato Laws, Cambridge texts in the history of Political thought, Cambridge University Press 2016.)

Tom Griffith and Malcolm Scofield Say in their Editorial note: ‘The notes to the translation (by MS) have benefited in various ways from TG’s scrutiny, and the translations in their final form are the outcome of several rounds of comment by MS and rethinking by TG.’

All that work was worth it; the translation is simply glorious. The Authors showed what great possibilities there are in English language, how true it can be to the Greek original by being true to the English idiom. In the given passage I did not like the phrase ‘we think they are spinning a yarn’: What on earth can it be in the original? I looked, and I was amazed. Plato says hȏs logopoiȇsantȏn toutȏn, which the authors’ ‘we think … yarn’ renders perfectly.

Note 2

I haven’t come across a translation that translates Plato’s eleutheron Erȏta as the Greek has it, i.e. as ‘free Love’ or ‘free Eros’. Jowett ‘translates’ eleutheron Erȏta as ‘good manners’ (‘sailors to which good manners were unknown’); Hackforth ‘translates’ ‘a case of noble love’. But Walter Hamilton is pretty good, I must admit: ‘love between freeborn men’ (published 1973); Rowe ‘a love of the sort that belongs to free men’ (published 1986).

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Socrates never accomplished his promised rival talk. Having denounced Eros as madness that made the lover untrustworthy, peevish, jealous, disagreeable, harmful to the boy’s property, his body, and his mind, Socrates said: “You will hear nothing more from me; let this be the end of my talk.”

Phaedrus protested: “But I thought you would go on and argue that the boy ought to grant his favours [surrender his virginity] to a non-lover. Why do you stop?” Socrates replied: “Haven’t you noticed that I’m already speaking in epic verses, despite my fault-finding? If I begin praising the other man, I’ll become possessed by the Nymphs to whom you exposed me. I will take myself off across the river, before you force me into something worse.”

Phaedrus begs him to stop, and Socrates stops: “When I was about to cross the river, there came to me my familiar divine sign, which always stops me when I am about to do something or other. And I seemed to hear a voice, forbidding me to leave the spot until I made atonement for my offence. Don’t you hold Eros to be a god, the child of Aphrodite? If Eros is a divine being, he cannot be evil.”

“I must purify myself, and there is an ancient purification which was known to Stesichoros, though not to Homer. When Stesichoros got blind because of his defamation of Helen, he wrote a Palinode: ‘This story is not true. You never sailed in the well-decked ships. You never went to the citadel of Troy.’ And he straightway recovered his sight.”

“I shall be wiser; I shall make Palinode to Eros before I get blind.”

“And indeed, good Phaedrus, had we been heard by a man of noble character, who loved another such as himself – us saying that for some trifling cause lovers conceive bitter hatred towards their loved ones – he would think that we were brought up among sailors, and never saw a free Eros (eleutheron Erȏta). Then out of shame for what this man would think, and out of fear of Eros, I shall wash the bitter taste out of my mouth with a wholesome speech.”

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Socrates in his speech, rival to the speech of Lysias, addresses a fair boy as a non-lover:

“If we mean to deliberate successfully about anything, we must know what it is we are deliberating about.  The question before us is whether one should rather enter into friendship with lover or non-lover. We must therefore begin with a definition of Eros, what he is, and what power he has.

Everyone will agree that Eros is a desire, and we know that men desire beautiful boys without being lovers. How are we to distinguish the lover and the non-lover?

In each of us there are two guiding principles: 1/ an innate desire for pleasure, and 2/ an acquired judgement that aims at what is best. In the non-lover the 2^nd principle has mastery over the 1^st; he is guided by the judgement that aims at what is best. In the lover the 2^nd principle is overpowered by and subjected to the 1^st. He is dragged towards pleasure he derives from the beautiful boy he loves.

Eros is irrational desire, pursuing the enjoyment of beauty, which has gained mastery over the judgement that prompts to right conduct.

 

With this definition before us, let us discuss whether love is beneficial or injurious.

A man dominated by desire and enslaved to pleasure is a sick man. He will always seek to make his beloved weak and feeble. He debars him from the advantages of society, which would make a real man of him, and especially from society which would give him wisdom. No access to philosophy can he possibly permit to his beloved, for he dreads becoming an object of contempt. He is always employed in reducing him to inferiority. Making him totally dependent, he secures the maximum pleasure to himself, and does the maximum damage to the boy’s mind.

And as to the body, he will be pursuing someone soft rather than tough, brought up in a shadowed light rather than in the light of the sun, who for lack of natural charm makes himself beautiful with artificial cosmetics and ornaments.

A lover is disagreeable for a boy to spend his days with, as he sees a face which is old, and with everything else that follows on that, which it is unpleasant even to hear mentioned, let alone to be continually compelled to deal with.

A lover is harmful while his love lasts, and when it’s spent, he is untrustworthy for the days to come, for which he promised many things, and so barely held the boy to bear his company, painful as it was. Now, when he should be paying what he owes, he changes in himself, adopting sense and sanity instead of love and madness. His beloved demands a return for favours done in the past, and so he runs away. The boy runs after him, crying indignantly to high heaven, totally unaware that he ought never to have granted favours to a lover, inevitably demented, but far rather to a non-lover who is possessed of reason and is master of himself.

Consider this, fair youth, and know that in the attentions of a lover there is no real kindness; he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you. As wolves love lambs, so lovers love their beloved boys.

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Ending his reading of Lysias’ discourse, Phaedrus asked Socrates: “What do you think about the speech? Apart from other things, isn’t its choice of words quite superior? Isn’t it spoken beautifully?” Socrates: “Heavenly, so that I was beside myself. And this happened to me because of you, Phaedrus, for you were beaming as you read. Because I thought you understood these things better than I, I followed you, and following you, I joined you in Bacchic revelry.”

Phaedrus: “Well, well; do you want to be joking? But seriously, do you think that any Greek could say better and more about the same matter?” Socrates: “I paid attention only to the rhetorical aspect of it. And it seemed to me that he said the same thing again and again, as if he didn’t have much to say about it, or because he didn’t care. And he seemed to me to be showing off his ability to say the same things in different ways, and each time to the best effect.”

Phaedrus: “Socrates, what you say is nonsense. For the speech is the best. Lysias didn’t omit anything worth saying, so that nobody can say anything else about the matter, which would be more valuable.” Socrates: “I cannot agree with you. For if I did, to please you, wise men and women would refute me, who spoke and wrote about it in the past.”

Phaedrus: “What men and women? Where have you heard anything better?” Socrates: “I cannot tell you, but I must have heard it from somebody, for my breast is full; I feel I can say other things, and not worse, about this matter. I know that it cannot have come from myself, for I know well my ignorance. And now, because of my ignorance, I can’t even say from whom I have heard it.”

Phaedrus: “But this is excellent. Socrates, do just what you say. Say more and better things about it than Lysias did. In my turn, I promise to set up at Delphi a golden life-size statue, not only of myself but of you also.”

PS

Phaedrus was a rich man at the time of the dramatic setting of the Phaedrus. Only with this fact in mind the reader can properly appreciate what Socrates does with Phaedrus in the course of the dialogue. The dialogue ends with Socrates’ prayer to the local deities: “May I count him rich who is wise; and as for gold, may I possess so much of it as only a wise man might bare and carry with him.”

Phaedrus: “Make it a prayer for me too, since friends have all things in common.”