The Way of the Platonic Socrates

S. Montgomery Ewegen

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780253047564
  9780253047557
• eBook ISBN:
  9780253047595
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

"This extraordinary new work" by the philosopher and author of Plato's Cratylus "has given us nothing less than a radically new Socrates" (Michael Naas, author of Plato and the Invention of Life).

Who is Socrates? While most readers know him as the central figure in Plato's work, he is hard to characterize. In this book, S. Montgomery Ewegen opens this long-standing and difficult question once again. Reading Socrates against a number of Platonic texts, Ewegen sets out to understand the way of Socrates.

Looking closely at the Socrates that emerges from the dramatic and philosophical contexts of Plato's works, Ewegen considers questions of withdrawal, retreat, powerlessness, poverty, concealment, and release and how they construct a new view of this powerful but strange and uncanny figure. Ewegen's withdrawn Socrates forever evades rigid interpretation and must instead remain a deep and insoluble question.

1Retreat (ἀναχώρησις)

Phaedo/Timaeus

ALREADY AT THE inception; already, that is, within those texts that gave rise to the so-called Western philosophical tradition, a tradition that has been little more than an attempt to think through or beyond the way of the Platonic Socrates; already within this beginning—or, at the very least, at one passing moment within it—Socrates’s way of retreat was remarked upon. In the same speech in Plato’s Symposium in which the enduring strangeness of Socrates’s way is emphasized (see Symp. 215dff.)—a speech to which we shall return at length in chapter 3—Alcibiades draws attention to, and indeed emphasizes, the anachoratic way of Socrates: “It was worthwhile to behold Socrates when the army retreated [ἀνεχώρει] in flight from Delium. . . . The soldiers were then in rout, and while he and Laches were retreating [ἀνεχώρει] together, I came upon them by chance” (Sym. 221a). One might say that Socrates’s retreat, his ἀναχώρησις, was such as to make the enemy itself retreat in the face of it, making way for him as he made his way back from danger. Here, one sees retreat as a strategy of warfare, not, however, a strategy of winning a battle but rather of withdrawing from battle in such a way as to preserve one’s self and one’s own, a retreat made for the sake of the self and protecting that self against destruction, a gesture that, though Alcibiades describes it as robust (ἐρρωμένως) (Sym. 221b), nonetheless bespeaks a moment of weakness in the face of something more powerful—a weakness, however, that precisely preserves the integrity of the self.

What if such a movement of retreat, such a gesture of ἀναχώρησις, proved to be indicative of more than a military strategy? What if Alcibiades’s underscoring of Socrates’s retreat served to adumbrate or intimate an ἀναχώρησις that served as the very foundation—or, rather, the very abyss—of Socrates’s essence? What if a similar anachoratic gesture proved to be a—or even the—grounding moment of Socrates’s philosophical way, at least to the extent that a retreat (a gesture of backward-moving withdrawal) can serve as a ground? What if the way of the Platonic Socrates, in its most fundamental operations, consisted of weakness in the face of something more powerful? In order to address these questions—questions that, at this stage, can only have the appearance of groundless and preliminary conjectures—the present chapter turns to the Phaedo and the Timaeus, two texts that, despite many salient and irreducible differences, resonate with one another around the theme of retreat (ἀναχώρησις). Throughout these two texts, the figure of retreat shows itself and plays itself out in various ways; most notably, it is seen to play a constitutive role both in the fundamental structure of the looks (εἰδη) of beings and the fundamental structure of the χώρα, which is that without which beings could never be. By reading these two texts alongside one another and following them down their various retreats, the ground will be set for arguing in subsequent chapters that the way of the Platonic Socrates consists of an anachoratic gesture characterized by a certain powerlessness in the face of something other. In other words, by reading the anachoratic movements of the Timaeus and the Phaedo alongside one another, the essentially anachoratic way of the Platonic Socrates will announce itself.

Phaedo

During that moment in the Phaedo when he looks back on the way of his life, reflecting on the origin and development of that way (τρόπος) and the manner by which it differs from the methods (τῆς μεθόδου) of those who came before (Phd. 97b)—during, in other words, that moment when an old Socrates looks back and considers the position of a young Socrates—Socrates describes his mature philosophical position, one that consists of nothing other than a kind of retreat made from out of a posture of fear.¹ After recounting the danger of looking at things without sufficient mediation—as a spectator looks on a solar eclipse with bare eyes—Socrates explains the gesture of his so-called second sailing, that moment when one is compelled, in the face of the wind’s withdrawal, to take to the oars and propel oneself forward: “I thought this sort of thing over and feared [ἔδεισα] that I might be totally soul-blinded if I looked at things with my eyes and attempted to grasp them by each of the senses. So it seemed to me that I should flee into λόγοι [εὶς τοὺς λόγους καταφυγόντα] and look in them for the truth of beings [τῶν ὄντων τὴν ἀλήθειαν]” (Phd. 99e; my emphasis). The very movement of the second sailing—a moment expressly said to be made out of fear (δείδω)—is one of fleeing in the face of danger, of withdrawing from that danger toward the safety of refuge. Λόγος provided the space—the place, the χώρα—into which Socrates could retreat and in which he could find refuge from the danger of looking at matters solely through the senses; and it is precisely such fearful retreat that allows Socrates to discover the truth of beings (τῶν ὄντων τὴν ἀλήθειαν), the truth, that is, of how things stand with respect to beings in their very being.

Socrates then amplifies the character of this fearful retreat into λόγος. Specifically, such fleeing takes place as the setting down (ὑποθέμενος) of a certain account, namely, “that there is some such beautiful itself by itself [αὐτὸ καθ᾽ αὑτὸ] and a good and a big and all the others” (Phd. 100b). This hypothesis is to serve as the explanation of the causes (τῆς αἰτίας) of the many beautiful, good, and big sensible things by referring them to some single self-same look (εἶδος) with which they commune (κοινωνία), some nonsensible One (in each case) to which they are gathered. It is to these looks (εἰδη) that Socrates retreats as he withdraws in fear from looking toward beings solely with his senses.

Having thus delineated what the retreat into λόγος entails, Socrates exhorts his company (in this case Cebes) to retreat along with him: “If you grant me this [συγχωρεῖς] [i.e., that the beautiful itself and the good itself are], I hope, from them, to show you the cause and to discover how soul is something deathless” (Phd. 100b–c). The Greek word translated above as “grant” is συγχωρεῖς. Socrates is asking that Cebes acquiesce to his hypothesis, that he consent to what his hypothesis sets forth. Literally, συγ-χωρέω is a yielding, a giving way to another. As the root χωρέω suggests, it is a gesture that withdraws in such a manner as to make a space, a χώρα, for something, dis-placing itself to make a place for another. Συγχωρέω, as a granting, is the opening of a space that yields to another’s view or positing, making way for it. Heard in this manner, what Socrates is saying to Cebes is that if he were to yield to his setting down of the hypothesis regarding, for example, beauty itself, thereby making a space for it, Socrates could show him the truth regarding the being that they are seeking (namely, the soul). In other words, Socrates is saying that if Cebes were to retreat along with him into the χώρα of the λόγος, into the safe (ἀσφαλὲς) hypothesis (Phd. 100e) that makes a space for the looks of beings, they would be able to discover the truth they are seeking. Only through such a retreat will the truth be given a space in which to show itself.

One notes, too, that such a granting, such a συγχωρέω, structurally contains within itself a moment of deference or concession to another, a yielding that thus implies a certain measure of self-effacement or self-displacement on the part of the person enacting it. In granting something to the other—in yielding to them by making way for that other—one is erasing oneself and one’s position to precisely that extent. So understood, συγχωρέω entails a certain moment of weakness in the face of the other, a weakness by which one recedes one’s self and its position and grants power—rightness, correctness, truth, and so on—to the other. Moreover, in granting a hypothesis regarding the manner in which the truth of beings shows itself through the looks in λόγος, Cebes would be enacting a gesture of deference not to Socrates himself but rather to the λόγος to which Socrates gives voice. Granting the hypothesis would thus entail the receding or erasing of the self and its own perspective whereby the λόγος pertaining to the hypothesis would be given a space—even a refuge—in which it might unfold.

A little later there is a break in the narrative action. Echecrates—he to whom the entire story of Socrates’s final hours is being told—comments, not without some irony, on the lucidity of the preceding explanation (Phd. 102a). He then urges Phaedo to continue the account, to which Phaedo responds with the following extended passage:

Once all of this had been granted him [συνεχωρήθη], and it was agreed that each of the looks [τῶν εἰδῶν] was something and that everything else that has a share in them gets its name from these very things, here’s what he asked next: “Now if you say yes to all this [i.e., if you grant it, if you make space, a χώρα, for it] . . . then whenever you claim that Simmias is bigger than Socrates but smaller than Phaedo, aren’t you on those occasions asserting that both these things, bigness and smallness, are in Simmias [ἐν τῷ Σιμμίᾳ]?” (Phd. 102a–b; my emphasis)

What is accomplished through the making way for the hypothesis of the looks is the possibility of a reception: namely, the reception of a single, self-same look in (ἐν) a sensible thing, in this case the reception of bigness or smallness in Cebes. This reception in turn allows the function of the look as cause to come to light: for it is precisely through its participation with, or reception of, the single look that the sensible thing is what it is (Phd. 102d). Through receiving the look—by making a place, a χώρα, for it—the sensible thing comes into its own, becoming the being that it is: and all of this only if one first makes way for the hypothesis of the looks, fleeing to them in λόγος in a gesture of a yielding retreat, a retreat made in fear of soul blindness, a retreat that yields in self-effacing deference to the λόγος.

What should be observed is that this retreat into λόγος allows for the very communion of being and becoming, of the look of a being and the sensible being of which it is the look. By making way for Socrates’s hypothesis, Cebes grants that Simmias “is” only big insofar as he holds (μετέχω) the big itself within himself. It is the reception of the hypothesis of the looks—which is the very content of the second sailing, the turn to λόγοι—that makes a space (χώρα) for a communion (κοινωνία) of being and becoming. Phrased more directly: it is the retreat into λόγος, made in a fearful gesture of yielding retreat, that makes a space for the manifestation of being within beings. It is by retreating fearfully from the senses and their pernicious allure toward the hypothesis of the looks that, in deferring to such a λόγος regarding the interdependency of being and λόγος, one is able to make a space within oneself for an apprehension of the truth of beings—that is, the being of beings.

Moreover, the looks themselves, in their very identity as looks, are characterized by a certain sort of retreat. In order to clarify the movements that characterize the reception of the looks, Socrates describes what happens when two opposing looks seek to occupy the same place at the same time. Within the particular thing (in this case, Simmias), bigness must retreat from smallness as the latter advances. As smallness comes on Simmias, either bigness must “flee and retreat [φεύγειν καὶ ὑπεκχωρεῖν] . . . or it must already have perished by the time that smallness came near it” (Phd. 102d–e). As a result of this fleeing, Simmias—who was big while holding on to, or participating with, bigness—now becomes small as bigness retreats and gives way to smallness (say, if someone bigger happens to come and stand next to him). Socrates’s point is that, while Simmias would become smaller on the advancement of smallness, bigness itself—that is, the look of bigness—would be nowise affected. Rather, bigness itself would flee and retreat, not having the strength (οὐ τετόλμηκεν) to become small (Phd. 102e), thus staying the same as itself as it retreats from the body of Simmias. Because it retreats from being overtaken by its opposite, the look of a thing is able to maintain itself as itself, is able to maintain its self-identity and self-sameness. A look timidly retreats, then, into itself, away from the danger of self-corruption: the self-identity of the looks takes place as this retreat, this fleeing, from opposition.² As the second sailing has shown, λόγος is the place, the χώρα, the refuge wherein this retreat occurs. Such, at least, is Socrates’s safe hypothesis, made in retreat from fear of danger, made on the day of his death while contemplating that which will, in the end, force him to retreat into complete silence.

Timaeus

Not long after the beginning of the Timaeus—not long, therefore, after Socrates has welcomed those present (and noted those absent) and has set the scene for the discourses to come by recounting the conversations of the previous day—Socrates withdraws from the conversation: “I, in exchange for my speeches of yesterday, must keep silent and listen in turn” (Tim. 27a). Socrates does indeed keep his silence, uttering only two more brief remarks before yielding the floor entirely to Timaeus, who speaks for the remainder of the text that bears his name. The beginning of the Timaeus thus presents Socrates withdrawing from speaking, making a space in which some other (namely, Timaeus) may make a λόγος, therefore making that λόγος possible by making a space in which to receive it.

Stated with a different emphasis, one could say that Socrates, in yielding to Timaeus, defers to him in a self-receding gesture, effectively erasing himself for the remainder of the long conversation that follows; and although Socra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Wandering (πλάνη): Apology
• 1 Retreat (ἀναχώρησις): Phaedo/Timaeus
• 2 Power(lessness) (ἀδυναμία): Gorgias
• 3 Poverty (πενία): Symposium
• 4 Indebtedness (ὀφείλεια): Statesman
• 5 Ignorance (ἄγνοια): Protagoras
• 6 Releasement (λύσις): Republic
• Epilogue: Plato
• Bibliography
• Index
• Index of Greek Terms
• About the Author