Plato and the Body

Reconsidering Socratic Asceticism

Coleen P. Zoller

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781438470832
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

For centuries, it has been the prevailing view that in prioritizing the soul, Plato ignores or even abhors the body; however, in Plato and the Body Coleen P. Zoller argues that Plato does value the body and the role it plays in philosophical life, focusing on Plato's use of Socrates as an exemplar. Zoller reveals a more refined conception of the ascetic lifestyle epitomized by Socrates in Plato's Phaedo, Symposium, Phaedrus, Gorgias, and Republic. Her interpretation illuminates why those who want to be wise and good have reason to be curious about and love the natural world and the bodies in it, and has implications for how we understand Plato's metaphysical and political commitments. This book shows the relevance of this broader understanding of Plato for work on a variety of relevant contemporary issues, including sexual morality, poverty, wealth inequality, and peace.

Chapter 1

Interpreting Asceticism in Plato

1.1 Loving Wisdom and Living in a Body

Many commentators have assumed that Plato is responsible for originating the view that loving wisdom is incongruous with being embodied. For instance, many feminists are critical of what they call Plato’s “somatophobia” and take his dualistic metaphysical worldview to be incompatible with feminism.1 And at the opposite end of the political spectrum, Strauss also accuses Plato of ignoring the body, erôs, and nature.2 However, we are missing something about his dialogues when we accuse Plato of beginning the tradition that suppresses the importance of the physical in the life of the philosopher or any human being. My primary aim in this project is to offer insight into Plato’s nuanced attitude toward the physical universe in general, and human bodies in particular, because this pertains to his understanding of what philosophy is and what philosophers do. As Plato developed what we now call philosophy, he set a framework that involves analytical thought in addition to a particular kind of lifestyle. Yet, on account of a caricature of his views concerning the physical, Plato is often named as the originator of an embarrassing view of embodied life.

One of Plato’s main goals is to use his character Socrates3 as an exemplar of the philosopher’s special and rare nature. He has Socrates call himself a philosopher (Ap. 29d, Phd. 61a); and in most of his dialogues, Plato demonstrates that by observing Socrates we can learn about the lifestyle that is conducive to inquiry. But Plato’s Socrates is not a simple character; his peculiar words and deeds are not always easy to interpret. Among the many complex aspects of Plato’s Socrates is his remarkable self-discipline, what the Greeks would call askesis (practice; training). His self-discipline is highlighted in the dialogues, dovetailing with his desire to pursue knowledge and do what he thinks is best. Socrates’s conversations with his interlocutors sometimes tempt us to believe that doing the right thing is easy when one has knowledge of what is best. However, Plato’s Socrates usually claims not to have any substantial knowledge (Ap. 21b-d). This leaves Plato’s readers at a bit of a loss with respect to the exact nature of Socrates’s self-discipline. Many Platonic dialogues aim at the vindication of Socrates and philosophy, both of which can be difficult to understand. My project focuses on cultivating a more refined conception of the ascetic lifestyle epitomized by Plato’s Socrates in the Phaedo, Symposium, Phaedrus, Gorgias, and Republic.4

Who is Plato’s Socrates? This book will remind us that he is a philosopher deeply engaged in worldly matters, who uses his body to enjoy eating (Smp. 220a) and drinking (Smp. 220a), to sleep peacefully (Crt. 44a; Prt. 310b-c; Smp. 223d), to have sexual intercourse, to create a family (Ap. 34d; Crt. 60a), to participate in democracy, serving his community as a gadfly, a soldier (Smp. 219e; Chrm. 153b-d), and a member of the Council (Ap. 32b-c), to stand up to tyranny (Ap. 32d-e), to look after his circle of friends, to walk daily to the agora, to stroll the outskirts of Athens and observe the beauty of nature (Phdr. 229a-b), to travel to Piraeus for a religious festival (R. 327a), to adore beautiful people (Smp. 212c, 216d, 218e; Prt. 309a-b, 316a; Chrm. 153d-154d, 155d), to flirt (Phdr. 234d, 237a-b, Smp. 213d, Chrm. 156a), to be in love with Alcibiades (Grg. 481d), to follow his erotic passion for ideas and virtues. Is this down-to-earth life consistent with his asceticism?

For the sake of uncovering Plato’s vision of how human beings who want to be wise and good should be disposed toward the physical world and the human body, we must understand Plato’s answers to the following questions: What attitudes and dispositions do wisdom lovers have? How exactly do philosophers care for the soul, and what treatment of the body does that psychic care5 dictate? In what sorts of activities do philosophers participate? What do they value, and why? Or, to put it generally, what sort of lifestyle is entailed by the askesis of which Socrates is an exemplar? Plato’s answers to these kinds of questions reflect his sense of the standards of philosophy. Here I will try to clarify Plato’s account of these matters without being constrained by the need to conform to the interpretation of Platonism that became conventional, which is linked especially to the Phaedo. As Roochnik writes, “This dialogue gives voice to what is surely the most familiar characterization of Platonic philosophy: it is a quest for an ‘otherworldly’ wisdom, for a realm far above, and superior to, the earthly and mortal.”6 Like Roochnik, I challenge some of the fundamental assumptions about Plato made by those who espouse the most traditional interpretation of Platonic philosophy as otherworldly.7

In this introductory chapter, I will compare and contrast two interpretations of asceticism; briefly examine some consequences of misinterpreting Socratic asceticism, especially for women, people of color, the other animals, and nature itself; examine the analogical reasoning Plato relies on to advance innovative claims; consider the transformation of vernacular that arises out of Plato’s use of analogical reasoning; call attention to Plato’s use of pedagogical irony; and lay out the plan for the other chapters.

1.2 Two Interpretations of Socratic Asceticism

Conceiving of the soul as what animates the material stuff of the body causes Plato to consider the soul a human being’s true self.8 As a result, he is deeply concerned with how one ought to think of and treat the soul. Nevertheless, throughout the dialogues Plato makes clear that the question of how one should be disposed toward the soul is very much intertwined with the question of how one ought to handle the body, especially given that Plato’s dialogues indicate that the largest aspect of the soul, the appetite, is charged with wanting what the human body needs to survive. Some of the appetite’s pleasures come from restoration in the body, and although appetite belongs to the soul, the appetite in particular, and soul in general, could not be more essentially connected with the body. It is misguided to think the soul can be properly cared for while the body is renounced, and I will demonstrate that Plato does not make this mistake as some critics have thought.

A widespread and popular characterization of Plato assumes that his dualistic metaphysics requires the renunciation of all things physical, including the desires and needs of the human body. Plato variously describes the relation between the soul and the body as a prisoner in a cage (Phd. 82e3; Cra. 400c), a tomb (Cra. 400b; Grg. 493a), an oyster in its shell (Phdr. 250c6), a barnacle-covered sea-soaked creature (R. 611d–612a), an orbit shaken by a commotion (Ti. 43c-d), a person dressed in a costume to be stripped off (Grg. 524d), and the victim of a bad influence, maimed by the association (R. 611b). These metaphors vary in the degree to which they denounce the body, but they hold up the soul as more authentic than and superior to the body. However, I believe that a misinterpretation of the nature of Socrates’s asceticism and his attitude toward the physical took hold when Neoplatonists such as Plotinus interpreted the Platonic dialogues with their own philosophical positions in mind, including the conviction that ethical-philosophical aspirations require treating matter as evil.9 The view that matter is evil precipitates the austere treatment of the body and abhorrence of the physical world. These thinkers take the physical endeavors of life, such as sleeping, eating, being sexual, to be unimportant, detrimental in fact, to one who loves wisdom and goodness, and as a result, they roundly condemn the body. From this point of view, the way to contend with physically oriented desires in the soul is by attempting to eliminate them. According to Plotinus, the only situation better than not having to consider one’s embodiment at all is that one experiences just enough physical illness to remind one why the body is the sort of despicable thing one is right to neglect.10

Neoplatonists regard the obliteration of the passions as the self-discipline appropriate for a philosopher. Plotinus held up “as an example to all who practised philosophy” a friend who ate only every other day, whose “renunciation and indifference to the needs of life” caused him to be “so gouty that he had to be carried in a chair,” in addition to not being able to stretch out his hands.11 Such injurious consequences of living an austere life do not disturb Plotinus at all; to him, all that matters is thought. Of Plotinus himself, Porphyry writes, “Even sleep he reduced by taking very little food, often not even a piece of bread, and by his continuous turning in contemplation to his intellect.”12 Conveying the view that it is a misfortune to be born into a body, Plotinus refused to have his likeness created by artists13 and even rejected the notion of celebrating his own birthday (though he enthusiastically celebrated Plato’s and Socrates’s birthdays).14 When Porphyry tells us that Plotinus refused medical treatments,15 repudiated meat eating,16 and slept and ate very little,17 we might be tempted to think of Plotinus as a stern person, impervious to the needs and desires of the body. But when we learn that Plotinus was sickly,18 with bad eyesight,19 and had at age eight been shamed for his continuing desire to breastfeed,20 it is no wonder that Porphyry begins On the Life of Plotinus with the following opening line: “Plotinus, the philosopher of our times, seemed ashamed of being in the body.”21 If the shame Porphyry discusses plays a role in Plotinus’s thought, it is crucial not to assume automatically that Plato takes the human body as the epicenter of shame as well.

Given that Plotinus claims to be nothing more than an interpreter and continuator of Plato,22 the important differences between Plato’s views of embodiment and those of Plotinus were glossed over. Plotinus set the tone for subsequent readings of Plato by interpreting Plato in a way that was more in line with his own views, and thus began the legacy of interpreting Plato as a philosopher for whom the body is a source of shame. While the Neoplatonists were tempted to see their austere version of asceticism in Plato, in fact, careful consideration of the dialogues reveals a much more sophisticated conception of asceticism associated with Plato’s Socrates.23

Before we explore whether or not Plato is the kind of ascetic his Neoplatonic and medieval Christian inheritors make him out to be, we must delve further into the meaning of asceticism. The Greek term askesis typically referred to athletic exercise. It is characteristic of Plato to make analogies between the body and the soul, and with respect to the issue of training, he was the first Western thinker to assert that human beings should pursue both the discipline that brings physical health as well as the kind that brings psychic health. Although some Indian and Chinese views of holistic medicine predate him by roughly 2,500 years, in the West Plato is the first proponent of holistic medicine despite merely sketching his view. We see this commitment to holistic medicine when he has Socrates say that, just as one part of the body cannot be treated successfully without treating the entire body, “one should not attempt to cure the body apart from the soul” (Chrm. 156c-e).24

This position is echoed also by Timaeus when he asserts the importance of not exercising the soul without the body or the body without the soul “so that each may be balanced by the other and so be sound” (Ti. 88b-c).25 Republic 403d also comments on the relation between body and soul, suggesting that “a fit body doesn’t by its own virtue make the soul good, but instead the opposite is true—a good soul by its own virtue makes the body as good as possible.”26 Yet, later in the Republic, Plato has Socrates say, “It’s clear that [a person of understanding] will always cultivate the harmony of the body for the sake of the consonance of his soul” (591c-d). If we combine these notions, we arrive at Plato’s theory of holistic medicine: a healthy soul facilitates physical health, and a healthy body reinforces the health of the soul.

It was common in Plato’s time for individuals to employ physical trainers to assist them in their physical exercise. Having had his own psychic trainer (the historical Socrates), Plato wrote dialogues that exhort readers to engage in askesis that improves the condition of the soul, and Plato believes the care of the soul is not disconnected from the embodied life. As Peterson explains, “Care for the soul is a very practical matter of figuring out how you will conduct your life day to day. It is care for your dispositions and beliefs, your mental and emotional equipment out of which you act everyday. (Socrates does not mean that care for the soul is concern for some separable item stuck in the body, the tending of which is separate from concern for the activities of daily life.)”27

Unfortunately, the term askesis became increasingly identified with the austere view of psychic training maintained by the Neoplatonists and some medieval Christians. When the Christian version of askesis became primary, the Socratic/Platonic notion of askesis, a practice that is not linked to the austere rejection of pleasure and the physical, became secondary. As the original understanding of the term took a backseat to the Christian conception, discussing asceticism became a tricky business because of the potential for equivocation between these two dramatically different approaches to self-discipline.

Here I will contrast two interpretations of Plato’s conception of askesis, which I refer to as “austere dualism” and “normative dualism.”28 Austere dualism denotes the interpretation of Plato that construes him as a strict metaphysical dualist whose contention that the physical world is not real leads him to renounce all things physical, especially the huma...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Interpreting Asceticism in Plato
• Chapter 2. Moderation and Training for Death in the Phaedo
• Chapter 3. Beauty, Education, and Erotic Ascent in the Symposium and Phaedrus
• Chapter 4. Health, Justice, and Peace in the Republic and Gorgias
• Chapter 5. Interpretative Possibilities for the Late Dialogues
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index
• Back Cover