Eros and Socratic Political Philosophy

D. Levy

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137342713
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría política

Eros and Socratic Political Philosophy offers a new account of Plato's view of eros, or romantic love, by focusing on a question which has vexed many scholars: why does Plato's Socrates praise eros highly on some occasions but also criticize it harshly on others? Through detailed analyses of Plato's Republic, Phaedrus, and Symposium, Levy shows how, despite the apparent tensions between Socrates' statements about eros in each dialogue, these statements supplement each other well and serve to clarify Socrates' understanding of the complex relationship between eros, religious belief, and philosophy. Thus, Levy's interpretation sheds new light not only on Plato's view of eros, but also on his view of piety and philosophy, challenging common assumptions about the erotic nature of Socratic philosophy. This novel approach to classic political theory will incite discussion and interest among scholars of classics, philosophy, and political theory.

CHAPTER 1

THE REPUBLIC’S BLAME OF EROS

In the Republic, Socrates criticizes eros most consistently. To be sure, even in this dialogue, Socrates’s harshness toward eros is not complete: Socrates’s attribution of an eros for truth to the philosophic nature would seem to point us toward his praises of eros in the Phaedrus and Symposium (485a10–b1, 490b1–2).¹ But it is the harshness of Socrates’s treatment of eros in its most ordinary and, as I argue in chapter 3, precise sense, eros as the love of other human beings, that we are concerned to understand here. This harshness toward eros is most prominent in Book Five’s sexual legislation, where Socrates’s proposals entail the destruction of the private family, and in Book Nine’s treatment of the tyrannical soul, where the soul’s greatest corruption is traced to eros.² Accordingly, we divide our study of Socrates’s treatment of eros in the Republic into two parts. The first part begins with Socrates’s treatment of the family in Book Five, and then, in order to explain why Socrates’s best city requires this treatment of the family, we turn back to his discussion of the guardians’ education in Books Two and Three, as well as to his return to the topic of mourning in Book Ten, which helps clarify his earlier discussion of the guardians’ education. The second part of our study of Republic then focuses on the discussion of the tyrannical soul in Book Nine. As we shall see, the interpretation of each part complements the other.

Part I: On the Purpose of Socrates’s Sexual Legislation in Book Five

Our interest in the Republic’s treatment of eros is first aroused not by its brief explicit treatments of the subject, but by its shocking disregard of eros or the thorough subordination of the claims of eros to the demands of the city, that is, the city being founded in speech by Socrates along with Glaucon and Adeimantus, in Book Five. The Republic’s communism of women and children, if not also its endorsement of sexual equality within the guardian class, probably shocks us today as it did Glaucon, and, we infer, Greeks in general, when Socrates first pronounced it (457b–d, 452b–c). And this shock is doubtless due, at least in part, to the way the proposed legislation undermines ordinary erotic relationships.³ Why would Socrates so disregard or subordinate eros?

Answering this question is immediately complicated, however, by the multitude of justifications Socrates gives for the proposed legislation and by the apparent tension between these justifications. Equality of women is justified by Socrates’s claim that the women of the guardian class will in this way be made best and that nothing is better for the city than having the best possible men and women (456e), but in defense of communism of women and children, Socrates argues that the best thing for the city is unity, which communism aids by removing distinctions between the guardians (462a–b, 464a). The principle of the first argument, the promotion of excellence, runs counter to that of the second, sharing as much as possible in common, for excellence will belong only to some (cf. 456d5–6).⁴ Furthermore, communism is allegedly to make the guardians as much as possible like parts of a single human body (462c–d), but this aim seems to be at odds with the aim of the guardians’ education discussed in Book Three of promoting the guardians’ self-sufficiency and independence (387d11–e1).

Noting the discrepancies in his arguments and noting the comical atmosphere he cultivates in the midst of offering his proposals, one may draw the conclusion that Socrates is not making these proposals in complete seriousness.⁵ Considering the difficulties attending the argument for communism in particular—both the difficulties attending its justification and those which render its implementation, at best, a most unlikely occurrence (473c–e)—some have argued that Socrates’s radical reform of traditional family life is carried out not because Socrates thinks it best, but in order to show, in one way or another, the tension between political life, with its demand for unity among the citizens, and eros.⁶ This interpretation supposes that the justification for communism would be the city’s demand for unity, as Socrates claims, and that by showing us the ridiculousness and impossibility of the consequence of complete adherence to this demand, Socrates loosens its hold on us. To the extent that cities may dream of attaining such unity and freedom from faction, Socrates’s argument may well have this effect, but the very fact that Socrates suggests that cities have ends other than unity in the very context in which he is discussing communism suggests that perfect unity may not be the primary end of cities. In this case, Socrates’s reason for proposing communism may extend beyond illuminating the tension between the city’s demand for unity and the demands of eros.

Indeed, Book Five makes a new beginning in the Republic’s founding of a city that had seemed complete in Book Four (450a8, 427c6–d1), and this new beginning’s most fundamental addition to the original is the philosopher-king, who enters the dialogue as a mere means to the realization of the regime, but who appears ultimately to be the highest end of the city, for whose sake the prior legislation is necessary (473b–c; 497bf., 502b, 520a–b, 540b5–6, 543d1).⁷ Thus we turn to the details of Socrates’s proposals, seeking in particular to discover whether these reforms are not in fact somehow necessary for philosophic rule. If the sexual legislation should turn out to be necessary for the acceptance of philosophic rule, then it would seem that the tension is not so much between eros and politics as between ordinary eros and philosophy, or, more cautiously, ordinary eros and the highly paradoxical politics of the philosopher-king.⁸

Equality

It is not immediately obvious why Socrates first proposes equality among the guardians in Book Five. He had been asked only to clarify the character of his earlier proposal that the women and the children of the guardians would be held in common (449c, 423e). His earlier suggestion referred explicitly only to the maximal possible sharing of “women, marriage, and child-procreation” (423e7), and this was introduced as a means of preserving the education of the guardians, whom Socrates then explicitly limited to males (andres) (423e–424a; cf. 395d5–6). When, however, Socrates first proposes equality, it is after first replacing his listeners’ request for a description of the communism of women and children with the more pointed questions of its possibility and its goodness (449c–450c).⁹ And we, therefore, wonder whether it is not the addition of these questions that leads Socrates to take up the question of women’s equality.

It seems unlikely, however, that the equality of men and women within the guardian class would make it easier for Socrates to argue for the goodness of the communism, especially since, as we have seen, the arguments for the goodness of these two proposals seem to be in some tension with one another. Nor would adding the equality of women in the military make Socrates’s reforms more attractive to his listeners, although arousing a comic atmosphere in making this argument may help soften the shock of communism. Furthermore, the goodness of the proposed communism would surely have been in question even if Socrates had not made it explicit at the beginning of Book Five, because the discussion of each institution of the city has concerned its goodness as it was instituted (cf. 420b7–8). Thus, the question of possibility is Socrates’s main addition to the request of his interlocutors, and it may, therefore, be Socrates’s new concern with the possibility of communism that leads him to argue for equality. When Socrates turns from equality to communism he says that the law of communism “follows” the law of equality (457c7), which, as I discuss below, could suggest that equality is somehow a useful or necessary precursor to communism. It surely suggests that the two laws are linked more deeply than by the fact that they are both concerned with women.

The argument for equality is quite brief. No concern for women’s rights is apparent,¹⁰ as Glaucon’s ready acceptance of women in the guardian class seems motivated simply by the idea that this would be a good way for the city to use women. The two activities that women would presumably otherwise take up, child bearing and rearing, are simply discarded without discussion (451d–e). Again, in his final argument for equality, Socrates asserts that women educated as guardians will be better (for the city) than the other women, but offers for comparison no alternative tasks for women, as he had opposed shoemakers to the male guardians (456b–457a). Socrates’s justification of equality in terms of the usefulness of the greater number of guardians that it would permit thus lacks an argument for the suitability of guardianship to female nature in particular.

To be sure, Socrates appears to consider the question of the natural suitability of women to guardianship in the course of his argument for the possibility of equality. That is, Socrates presents his argument for the possibility of equality as an argument that equality accords with woman’s nature (452e–453b, 456b–c). Socrates first mentions female nature as that which would determine the limits or range of possibilities for any woman, and thus, determining whether equality is natural in this sense would simply demonstrate equality’s possibility (452e6–453a3). Yet Socrates next substitutes, without explanation, another meaning of nature, according to which what is natural is what most fulfills or is best for a certain kind of being (453b4–5). Now, by substituting an understanding of nature as the fulfillment of a particular kind of being for an understanding of nature as what determines the range of possibilities for that kind of being, Socrates directs attention away from the question of the possibility of equality,¹¹ and in this way, as we shall see, he prepares his listeners for his even more conspicuous avoidance of the question of the possibility of communism. But, in the meanwhile, he manages to call attention to the question of the suitability of guardianship for women.

Socrates does at first seem to argue that women are naturally suited to equality, but his use of nature as a standard ultimately appears to highlight the insufficiency of this argument.¹² The argument Socrates gives is for neither the natural fitness of women to any particular task nor the fitness of some women for the task of guardianship, although this fitness is subsequently asserted without argument (456a); rather, Socrates argues that women are generally inferior at all tasks (455c–d). If this is the case, it is doubtful that there would be enough exceptional women sufficiently fit for the tasks of the guardians, especially since these tasks require bodily strength for war, and bodily strength is the one quality that Socrates and Glaucon consistently note that women lack (451e1–2, 455e1–2, 456a10–11, 457a9–10).¹³ Yet, despite singling out war as a questionable task for woman’s nature (453a3–4), and despite mentioning in this context a nature’s need for adequate bodily strength if it is to be suited to a task (455b9), Socrates offers no argument that woman’s nature or her bodily strength is suited to war.

Socrates also highlights in Book Five’s later treatment of war the inappropriateness of putting women in battle. There, Socrates refers to men (andras) and then fathers (pateres), without mentioning women or mothers, leading their children in battle (467c).¹⁴ Glaucon takes Socrates’s hint and concludes the discussion of war by suggesting that women might not participate in battle, and if they do, they would be in the rear (471d). Socrates lets this go without correction.¹⁵ Socrates’s remark that refers only to the participation of men in warfare immediately follows Glaucon’s question as to whether bringing all the guardians’ children to battle does not constitute too great a risk, as the city could be unable to recover if all its children were lost (467b2–4), and this concern could well apply also to bringing the women to war, for far fewer men than women need survive to populate another generation.¹⁶ Perhaps, then, Socrates’s omission of women at war is not due only to concern about the bodily strength of women but also to concern about their usefulness as child bearers.

Yet it is this use of women that Socrates most conspicuously overlooks as he knowingly offers an inadequate argument for female equality within the guardian class. The basic point of Socrates’s argument is the inferiority of women in all tasks, and this, of course, includes the bearing and rearing of children, which Socrates had earlier proposed as the alternative to female equality (451d6–8). Whatever the case with rearing may be, women certainly excel all men at child-bearing,¹⁷ and thus the task most suited to and indicative of the distinctively female nature would seem to be the perfection of bearing children.¹⁸ Socrates’s raising of the question of woman’s nature and his subsequent argument, which simply denies any natural female excellence, when thought through, then calls attention to his dismissal, without argument, of the female role as child-bearer, and to his unwillingness to make or leave this as women’s principal occupation. The argument for the naturalness of equality thus calls our attention to at least one effect of the equality that is of particular importance to the communism of children: the denial that a guardian woman’s place may be in the home with the children.

Equality’s enforcement of the separation of woman from child is not its only connection with the subsequent communism. When Socrates begins his description of the communist laws, he refers back to the laws for equality, arguing that the mixing of the sexes in all activities, including naked exercise, and their living and dwelling in common, will inevitably lead to sexual relations cropping up among them as determined by “erotic necessities” (458c6–d7; cf. 452a11–b1).¹⁹ These sexual relations are not likely to be particularly monogamous, as is indicated by Socrates’s implication that they would be “irregular” without the city’s intervention (458d8–e1). Equality thus takes women away from their children and puts them among the men, at times without any clothes on. Looking ahead to the impermanence of the marriages and the childlessness required by the city’s communism (459e–460d), the equality of women appears as a means by which to weaken the attachment of women to their children and to specific men. This weakening of the women’s attachments should, in turn, weaken the attachment of men to their women and, since there will be obscurity regarding who is the child of whom, to their children, all of which would be necessary for the acceptance of communism by the guardians. It is in this way that the law of communism can be said to “follow” that of equality (457c7). This does not mean that communism is simply a consequence of equality, for additional laws are needed to enforce the communism, but it does imply that equality prepares the way by weakening the family.²⁰

Communism

Socrates introduces his discussion of the proposed communism of women and children with a ruse that attracts attention to the question of its goodness and thus allows Socrates to avoid the question of possibility. Immediately after Glaucon expresses doubt regarding both the goodness and the possibility of such communism, Socrates suggests that its goodness is undisputed and that he has only the question of possibility to answer (457d4–9). Quite naturally, this provokes an objection from Glaucon, and Socrates is compelled to answer the question of communism’s goodness (457e1–4). That Socrates’s intent was in fact to draw Glaucon’s attention to the question of goodness and distract him from that of possibility is confirmed by the sequel, where Socrates seeks and obtains permission to consider the character and goodness of communism while postponing the question of its possibility (458a–b). Socrates then follows this order of inquiry, reversing the order suggested in his initial statement of the questions, and the order he followed in the discussion of equality (450c8–9, 456c; cf. 452e4–5). To understand the significance of Socrates’s avoidance of the question of possibility for the discussion of communism as a whole, we must follow this theme a little further.

Socrates characterizes his request to put off the question of possibility as that of an idle man seeking to avoid weariness in deliberating about the possibility of what he desires, and Socrates admits that this procedure will make one still idler (45...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1.   The Republic’s Blame of Eros
• 2.   The Phaedrus’s Praise and Blame of Eros
• 3.   Socrates’s Symposium Speech
• Conclusion   Final Reflections on Socrates’s View of Eros
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index