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Lovers of Sophia

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by Jason Reza Jorjani


  from Socrates himself, that eros or “erotic love” is the only thing that he real y understands!

  A review of the egregious flaws of logic in the dialogue Alcibiades, which Plato obviously intended to be cross-referenced with

  Symposium, attests to the truth of many of Alcibiades charges that Socrates is actual y a Great Deceiver and Seducer – a satyr playing

  enchanting flute tunes. With reference to Friedrich Nietzsche’s

  analysis of Apollonian and Dionysian archetypes in The Birth of

  Tragedy, I work to undermine Nietzsche’s own view of ‘Socrates’ as an Apollonian figure responsible for the degeneration of Dionysian

  dramatic art. Instead, I interpret the closing of Symposium as a call for a new art form, namely Philosophy, which would strike a

  dynamic balance between the Dionysian and the Apollonian.

  Alcibiades compares being seized by Socrates’ philosophy

  to being bitten by a poisonous snake. In ancient Greece, snake

  poison was among a class of dangerous medicinal cures known as

  pharmakea. The person who administers a pharmakon – which is a poison but can be a cure in the right dosage and at the right time

  – is a pharmakeus, a “witch doctor” or “black magician.” Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s treatment of this question in his essay “Plato’s

  Pharmacy”, I build on what has already been elaborated to push

  beyond where even Derrida dares to go. I conclude by suggesting that

  Plato’s entire philosophical project may be a pharmakon – a poison that is also a cure, and that the history of occidental rationalism may have been set in motion as one man’s attempt to deliberately mislead

  people so as to force them to develop certain latent mental faculties.

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  In the end, I return to the question of Plato’s Homeric context,

  situating his opposition to the poetry and art of his time in the

  context of its all-pervasive mimesis – an unreflective and imitative embodiment of traditional views, customs, and values. In light

  of the essay’s argument as a whole, one is led toward the startling

  realization that far from being an enemy of art, this man who began

  his career as a tragic poet, was combating an uncreative and stagnant

  traditional ‘art’ form with an avant-garde Art of his own creation.

  Philosophy, as it began with Plato, is a fundamental y different endeavor than the naively earnest Truth-seeking of Heraclitus, or

  Parmenides, or any number of Oriental sages.

  1. The Historical Backdrop of Platonic Thought

  One cannot understand Plato without recognizing his complex

  appropriation of Heraclitus and Parmenides, and to that end, it is

  necessary to first consider the doctrines of these two thinkers in

  their own right. Yet in order to appreciate the dawn of Philosophy

  among the pre-Socratics we need to take the even more preliminary

  step of briefly envisioning the Homeric age of the Greeks, which

  stands as its backdrop. This will also be important for our ultimate

  evaluation of Plato’s motives for composing his dialogues in the

  diabolical y deceptive manner that he did.

  In Greece of the second millennium BC, we see a culture

  completely absorbed in an ancient mythology whose origins are lost

  in the dark ages of man. It is a grim mythology where the might

  of heroes makes right, and man is always trying to find reprieve

  from the jealousy and wrath of feuding gods by offering sacrifices

  of animals and riches of gold and jewels up to appease them. As is

  well known the pantheon of ancient Greek Gods was a dramatical y

  exaggerated reflection of the realm of mortals, replete with sexual

  and feudal intrigue, murder and war. More disturbing is that,

  especial y in the Iliad, this human drama has a particularly soulless 32

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  quality.3 In The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the

  Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes notes that Greek words like psyche, phrenes and noos that much later develop the connotation of “mind”,

  “heart” and “soul” are rendered anachronistical y as such by modern

  translators. They have a more physical sense in the older language

  of the Iliad. No one, neither mortal nor god, could escape Fate, and a ‘god’ intervenes whenever a mortal must make a crucial decision.

  Jaynes argues that we would be making a mistake to interpret

  these incidents as metaphorical, for the subtlety involved in the

  use of metaphor was not yet grasped by the Greeks of the late 2nd

  millennium BC. Rather, we ought to take the absolute power of fate

  and the constant intercession of the gods as evidence of a startling

  lack of a sense of personal agency and rational deliberation.4 The

  ultimate Fate consigned to archaic Greek man was death conceived

  of in the earliest traditions as a passage to Hades, the eternal abode of shades. It was an underworld of shadows where good and bad

  would wander equal y bereft. In light of this woeful end the only

  purpose of life, brilliantly fulfilled by heroes, was to win a fame

  that would promise immortality through dramatic deeds worthy

  of remembrance in the songs of poets. In short, we find a society

  completely mesmerized by its reflection in the distorting mirror of

  its own mythology.

  For six centuries, from at least the Trojan War in 1230 BC to

  Hesiod’s Theogony in 650 BC, we see essential y no change in the mythic world-view of the Greeks. Hesiod’s “Theogony”, which

  according to Jonathan Barnes had “no serious rivals”, is a genealogical story that sees the world proceed from Chaos and Earth. On the one

  side Chaos gives birth to Night and Erebos, which in turn produce

  aether and day. On the other side, Earth produces heaven, mountain

  and seas, which in turn give rise to a series of Gods (Oceanus,

  Thethys, Theia, Hyperion, Kreios, Eurybie) that in union with each

  other produce the Rivers, Sun, Moon, and Dawn. Final y, the union

  3 Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (New York: Mariner Books, 1990), 69-71.

  4 Ibid., 67-84.

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  of Dawn and Astraios (a grandchild of sea and earth) produces the

  wind and stars.5 There were other less significant, perhaps more

  natural, cosmological speculations contemporary to the one above

  recounted by Hesiod. However, as classicist M.L. Mil s notes, these

  speculations were very primitive:

  ...physical speculation existed in Hesiod’s time. It seems,

  however, to have been limited to the interpretation of man’s

  immediate environment. Man is earth and water. Thunder and

  lightening are somehow caused by wind. Rain and moisture are

  drawn up from the rivers [by a god] and conveyed across land

  by the wind. Ask what the stars are, and the only answer is that

  they are children of Eos and Astraios. Ask about night and day:

  Night is the daughter of Chaos, the sister and wife of Erebos, the

  mother of Aither and Day, death and sleep, and various others.

  Night and Day go in and out of a certain house, in turn, crossing

  a great bronze threshold, at appointed times. What is the sun

  made of, or makes it rise and set? No answer.6

  By “Philosophy” I understand most basical y an inquiry into the

  Truth concer
ning the ultimate nature of reality or the structure of existence [Metaphysics/Epistemology] in order to discover the

  principles of the good life in accordance with this Truth, or how people may live ‘rightly’ rather than ‘wrongly’ [Ethics/Politics]. On

  that definition, the first metaphysical and ethical thinker of ancient Greece, whose own work has come down to us, is Heraclitus of

  Ephesus. All we have left of his writings are Fragments. 7 Piecing them together, we arrive at something like the following worldview.

  The thought of Heraclitus begins in a rejection of the folk

  understanding of the polytheistic gods and traditional mythological

  5 Jonathan Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy (New York: Penguin Books, 1971), 203-204.

  6 M.L. Mil s, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford: Carendon Press, 1971), 204-205.

  7 Charles H. Kahn, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

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  answers to fundamental cosmological and ethical questions, like

  how the world was created, why, how we should live with each other

  in it, and what lies beyond it. More daringly, he rejects the authorities that embodied these views and the regimes that sanctioned them

  (and whose rule was sanctioned by them) – i.e. the priesthood and all contemporary forms of government (be it the oppression of the

  people by the undeserving few or the tyranny of the mob over the

  deserving few). Heraclitus did not reject these pat answers and

  schemes in order to replace them with new ones. Rather, he chose

  to leave fundamental questions open, either by evoking a mysterious

  terminus to understanding, or by offering deliberately contradictory

  answers that try to force one beyond the limits of rational thinking.

  In this first metaphysical vision of the Greeks, the world is

  comprehended as an abstract process of Becoming, whose closest

  tangible analogy is that of an Eternal Fire. This Becoming is one

  with Being, as the manifested expression of its ineffable potentiality, and also as one with the Nothingness of Death, which is what Being

  would be reduced to if Becoming did not shelter it. Again, in this

  we do not see the world as an effect of some primordial cause or

  causes (as it would be portrayed in Mythology or Religion), rather

  it has always come forth from itself and always wil . The Eternal Fire is a Oneness that is Plurality and all of the discordant strife of the dimension of plurality generatively conceals a deeper harmony of

  cosmic communion. The right-order of the cosmos – the Logos –

  is an expression of a supreme Intelligence that Heraclitus cal s “the

  Wise One” and that is the Consciousness of Being.

  This Metaphysics is the ground for an ethics that revolves

  around Conscience. Heraclitus rejects moral Law, which in his time

  was intimately bound up with ritualism. The notion of Conscience

  is fundamental y different from morality or religious duty and is

  absent from the most ancient Greek Mythology. It is concerned with

  the greater concept of “soul”, which is equal y absent from ancient

  mythologies that speak only of a “spirit” more or less equivalent

  with the breath ( pneuma). For Heraclitus, the phenomenological experience of the world’s presence nakedly shining-forth like an 35

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  eternal revelation (a Sun “which never sets”) should compel one to

  thoughts, words and deeds that accord with each other in a perfect

  honesty that personal authenticity. Human beings should not

  deceive themselves and each other by hiding in their own fanciful

  thoughts and opinions. This would be an affront to Being, which

  lays itself out before us without reservation. Yet precisely because

  the Sun of Truth is so scintil ating in its presence, it hides itself by making us want to turn away so as not to be blinded.

  Ultimately, Being is even one with us (our source and end), and

  moreover, since it is conscious and intelligent, there is a sense in

  which it perceives our deceitfulness from within. This discerning

  presence of Being within us, which perceives our own fol y of deceit

  before it, is the Conscience. We sense it as an almost visceral feeling of inner discord (a burning of the heart) because the right order is

  deep within ourselves, but our lack of self-transparency blocks its

  manifestation. By the same token, if we open and clear conscience

  through authenticity, the agency of Being within us will align us with the right-order that it sustains throughout the cosmos. Thus at the

  dawn of Philosophy, we have a metaphysical truth that consists in

  the phenomenological experience of the world’s presencing, and an

  ethical notion of the opening of conscience through a truthfulness

  synonymous with ruthless honesty before oneself and others.

  Responding directly to the Heracliteans, in his Way of Truth8

  Parmenides of Elea follows a profound urge to sever Being from

  Becoming, regarding the former alone as an all-pervasive “One”

  that is inherently posited by consciousness while denying the latter

  as total il usion. “Thinking and the thought ‘it is’ are the same” –

  this is his basic axiom. Parmenides also severs the mind from the

  body and urges us to use the former in order to transcend the latter’s depraved delusions and know the unseen ideal. Here, for the first

  time, we have an epistemological conception of ‘Truth’, one that

  consists in a knowing subject and a non-sensible object from which

  it is separated by the veil of il usion that is the sensible realm. This discrepancy between what lies before one’s eyes and what exists in

  8 Parmenides of Elea, Fragments (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000).

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  an unseen reality within the grasp of Reason, opens the door to the

  dialectical arguments or proofs which come to characterize Western

  Philosophy after Parmenides.

  That Parmenides’ move is indeed an idealist and rationalizing

  revolution is attested to by the fact that it effects a fundamental

  change in the pseudo-scientific speculations of the Pre-Socratics.

  Before Parmenides these “natural” speculations were implicitly

  grounded in a phenomenological conception of Truth epitomized

  by Heraclitus. What is was taken for granted as ‘true’ so that all of the elements conjured up to explain the creation and composition

  of the world were transmutations of various substances actual y

  existing in the world of experience: water, earth, fire and air in their manifestations as primordial oceans and mud or as the fiery stars

  and aether. We see this in Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and

  Xenophanes.

  Suddenly, after Parmenides philosophical thought is redefined

  in terms of abstraction. Zeno’s tract of Paradoxes consists of a set of ad absurdum proofs rational y demonstrating that common-sense phenomenological notions of ‘space and time’ do not possess

  absolute reality and because what is relative does not possess

  ‘Being’ – they possess no reality at al . Anaxagoras tel s us of eternal qualities which cannot be seen (or hardly even conceived) but

  which nonetheless give rise to the forms of the world by impressing

  themselves upon the primordial mass of Chaos through motion.

  Empedocles banishes the Intellect as unnecessary in this
process,

  replacing it with the “random combination of elements of which

  some are purposive and capable of life”.

  From here it is only a short step to the apex of idealist

  abstraction in Atomism. Responding to Zeno’s paradox of motion

  Democritus argues that for there to be Being at all it must not be

  infinitely divisible because otherwise it would col apse into Not-

  Being. Thus Being is reduced to a plurality of indivisible units.

  Democritus explains that these “atoms” hover in eternal motion in

  infinite space, forming things by “purposeless causality”. We do not

  perceive much of what is perceptible (in the atomic realm) because

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  our senses are not suited for it. Our impressions are mediated, they

  do not reach our eyes directly but only via refraction and distortion

  by air atoms, our eyes then also further modify the image. Similarly,

  sound is a delusion that arises from the rapid motion of air atoms.

  Both the proto-Platonic metaphysics of Anaxagoras and the proto-

  Aristotelian empiricism of Democritus share common roots in

  Parmenides’ conception of an ideal dimension beyond the il usory world of the senses but within the grasp of the intellect.

  2. Crafting the Forms Between Being & Nothingness

  Aristotle tel s us that in his youth Plato studied with a Heraclitean

  teacher and that he maintained the Heraclitean world-view that he

  accepted at that time throughout his life. According to Aristotle, it

  is based upon an acceptance of the Heraclitean view pertaining to

  the sensible world of becoming, that Plato proposed his Theory of

  Forms. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle writes of his own teacher: For as a young man Plato was original y an associate of Cratylus

  and Heraclitean opinions, to the effect that all perceptible things

  were in a permanent state of flux and that there was no knowledge

  of them, and these things he also later on maintained.9

  Now the starting point for those who came up with the Theory of

  Forms was a conviction of the truth of the Heraclitean considerations

  to the effect that all perceptible objects are in a permanent state of flux, so that a condition on the very possibility of knowledge and

  understanding was the existence in addition to the perceptible ones

 

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