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Contents

Preface

Introduction: Philosophical Ideas

1 Plato’s Poetics: A Reexamination

2 Hegel’s Dialectic: A Reexamination

3 Vico’s Science: A Reexamination

4 Cassirer’s Symbol: A Reexamination

Afterword: On the Contemplative Life

Notes

Works Cited

Preface

There is a tradition that Plato placed a notice at the entrance to the Academy—the school he founded on the outskirts of Athens, in the park and gymnasium sacred to the hero Academus—that no one was to be admitted who had not studied mathematics, geometry in particular. To comprehend geometric forms requires the ability of thought to make objects out of itself. Diogenes Laertius, in his account of Plato’s doctrines, says that “the object of thought is something constant from which nothing is subtracted, to which nothing is added. This is the nature of the eternal things, the attribute of which is to be ever alike and the same.” Thought makes distinctions within itself for itself.

The language of ideas, like the language of mathematics, is the preserve of the mind. From mathematics the philosopher learns the power of coherence. Coherence is the hallmark of reason, the key to the life of the mind, to the art of contemplation. Without ideas as its guide language remains at the level of simple speech, conveying meanings of the moment that pass away when the conditions of the moment change. Ideas take shape in time but act as the means to suspend it. They offer a sense of permanence.

The life of ideas is their interpretation. The mind in possession of ideas has the propensity to restate them, to engage in their reexamination. It is the task of philosophy to so engage itself with those ideas it has taken up. The chapters that follow are four examples of the reexamination of such ideas. Plato’s poetics and Hegel’s dialectics have long histories of controversy regarding how best to interpret them. Vico’s conception of science and Cassirer’s conception of symbol have been considered from various viewpoints, but not as extensively as have the doctrines of Plato and Hegel. We have attached the word “reexamination” to each of these chapters. Our intention is to suggest that what is often thought of one of the main ideas of each of these thinkers can benefit from further consideration.

Our approach to the ideas of these philosophers is that of ars topica, not ars critica. We regard these ideas as places from which to think through the meaning of the love of wisdom. Ideas subjected to ars critica are of little use if not connected to the ars topica through which they originate. Ars topica depends upon ingenium, the ability to grasp similarity in dissimilars, which requires the metaphor. The metaphor comes from outside time and gives reason its starting points. In the pursuit of critical thinking it is easily forgotten as to how what is assessed has originally come before the mind. In topical thinking we are brought by memory to recover the origin points of thought. These mental places contain the ideas. Such ideas are the pleasure of the mind and the medium of human culture.

Ideas are good because they are good to think. Without ideas the mind remains an instrument. All ideas are philosophical in that they are the medium of wisdom. Philosophical ideas as distinguished from ideas as such are ideas carried to the highest level of generality. They are analogous to Aristotle’s categories. They are like those predicates that can be attached to any existent. Philosophical ideas reign over all that there is—the human, natural, and divine. Thought always requires a vision. It is the vision that carries it forward, that animates the ideas.

The great philosophers, and all who pursue true philosophy, attempt to think beyond their time, to grasp the universal. The lover of wisdom will look for the ideas in their works that illuminate themes of philosophia perennis—God, self, world, freedom, and associated topics. To think philosophically is to make distinctions. The reader of philosophical works must master the art of finding the ideas that are great and lasting within each work of philosophy. They are the basis from which philosophy goes forth.

It is our intention that these pages should be a pleasure to read. They were a pleasure to write. What Horace, in Ars Poetica, says of the purpose of poetry, can be said of the purpose of philosophy: it should instruct, delight, and move. It is the best standard. Not all philosophy needs to be critical. Sometimes philosophy can simply be the pleasure that accompanies contemplation. Our aim is to present these thoughts in this spirit. Should the reader learn from them, enjoy them, and benefit from them, we will not have put them forth to no end.

This work is formulated on the premiss that the reader has a knowledge or partial knowledge of the works interpreted. Our choice of the works, ancient and modern, and the ideas they contain are those that have consumed our own reason and imagination, but we put them forth as having an objective value. All philosophical ideas cannot be addressed in a single space. We intend the ideas discussed here to be more than personal views—that what is said fits the texts themselves. The fact that ideas require interpretation means that there is no right or final meaning to be assigned to them. But some interpretations are better and more interesting than others. It is interest that guides interpretation and that aims at truth.

We thank Molly Black Verene for her skills in editing and typing the manuscript.

Introduction: Philosophical Ideas
Pythagoras’s Answer to Leon

His mode of instruction was double. And

among those who came to him, the ones

were called “knowers” (mathemetikoi),

the others “listeners” (akousmatikoi).

Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 37

The idea of wisdom is the beginning of philosophy and is what sustains the will to philosophize. In the discourse Plato arranges between Socrates and Diotima in the Symposium, Diotima informs Socrates of the meaning of the idea of wisdom (sophia). Diotima says: “In fact, you see, none of the gods loves wisdom or wants to become wise—for they are wise—and no one else who is wise already loves wisdom; on the other hand, no one who is ignorant will love wisdom either or want to become wise.” Socrates asks: “In that case, Diotima, who are the people who love wisdom if they are neither wise nor ignorant?”

Diotima says: “That’s obvious. A child could tell you. Those who love wisdom fall in between those two extremes. And Love [Eros] is one of them, because he is in love with what is beautiful, and wisdom is extremely beautiful. It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom and, as such, is in between being wise and being ignorant” (204b). The people who love wisdom are the philosophoi. The friendly love or fondness (philia) they have for wisdom places them between the extremes of being wise and being ignorant. In this same middle place is Eros. It is through Love, Eros, that we encounter beauty. Pursuit of the beautiful leads us to happiness (Eudaimonia), to having a good daimon, a spirit that will allow us to attain well-being and a good, flourishing life. The friendship with wisdom that characterizes the philosopher provides access to a sense of Eros that, through its powers of contemplation, pulls the mind toward the divine.

In the fifth book of the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero says: “Though we see that philosophy is a fact of great antiquity, yet its name is of recent origin” (5.3.7). He says that Pythagoras was the first to call himself a philosopher but he was not the first to be known as wise. Prior to Pythagoras having coined the word philosophos, the Seven Sages and Lycurgus, as well as such mythical figures as Ulysses, Nestor, Atlas, Promethus, and Cepheus were thought wise—such that their names became legend. Cicero says that Pythagoras spoke learnedly and eloquently with Leon, the tyrant of Phlius, the chief town of a small district of northeastern Peloponnesus.

Leon admired the genius and eloquence with which Pythagoras engaged in their discourse. He asked Pythagoras what skill (sophia) he professed. Pythagoras replied that he knew no skill but that he was a lover of wisdom (philosophos), making a word-play on sophia and philosophos. Leon, astonished by this unusual term, asked what philosophers were and how they differed from other human beings. Pythagoras replied with an analogy of the great games at Olympia, at which some sought fame and glory by competing, others were attracted to the games as an opportunity to profit from buying and selling, but a third group, the noblest of all, sought neither of these things but came to see and comprehend the nature of the spectacle.

Pythagoras said that, of these three types of persons at the games, the first and second corresponded to the lives of those who are slaves to ambition and honor and those who are slaves to money. But the third are rare spirits, who hold all else as nothing in order eagerly to understand the universe. They seek no personal gain and are pure spectators, engaged in a life of contemplation. These spectators are philosophers. The question Leon asks is typical of the thought of ancient Greece, which placed all individuals within one or another form of life. Leon wished to know where to place Pythagoras.

Cicero’s account is based on that of a dialogue of Heraclides of Pontus, (Peri tes apnou) relating the story of a woman whose breathing had stopped and whom the medical doctors were unable to save. Empedocles succeeded in restoring the woman to life by realizing that her condition was due to the temporary absence of her soul. Heraclides had been a pupil in Plato’s Academy at the same time as Aristotle and was known as a man of letters. This dialogue described the occasion of the banquet to celebrate Empedocles’ success in resurrecting the woman and the apotheosis of Empedocles that took place in the night following the banquet, when he ascended into the heavens. Empedocles’ wisdom was of a different order than that of the physicians, for to revive the woman required a knowledge of human nature as a whole. This knowledge entails the understanding of the nature of the universe and its divine order. The discussion concerning Pythagoras explains this sense of wisdom, although we are not told how Empedocles applied this wisdom to revive the woman.

Diogenes Laertius credits Pythagoras as the first to use the term “philosophy” and to call himself a “philosopher” when conversing with Leon. He adds to Heraclides’ account the claim that “no one is wise except god” (1.12). If we join this claim to Pythagoras’ reply to Leon we see how clever Pythagoras was. Leon, as the absolute ruler of the Phliasians, is wise in the sense of the skill necessary to gain and hold political power, and through it to obtain honor and wealth. Should Pythagoras have claimed that he was in fact wise, taking the term sophia in a sense beyond that available to Leon, Pythagoras would have commanded a divine power, like that of the gods. He would have had a kind of wisdom superior to Leon, placing himself in a precarious position.

Instead, Pythagoras is the exclusus amator of wisdom. He is interesting and novel, but harmless, occupying a position intermediate between the wisdom of practical skill and divine or complete wisdom. Pythagoras sets the stage such that the philosopher can claim a role that allows the philosopher to move freely within the realm of political power, but never of it. Yet because the philosopher does not regard the polis as ultimate, as do politicians and the hoi polloi, the philosopher, while wearing the mask of the “lover of wisdom,” is always a danger to the state because the philosopher does not take the polis as ultimate.

Phlius appears a second time in the history of philosophy. In the first lines of the Phaedo we learn that Phaedo is returning from Athens to his home on Elis and stops off at Phlius. He is questioned by Echecrates as to whether he was present at Socrates’ death in prison and whether he would be willing to give an account of it. Echecrates says: “Hardly anyone from Phlius visits Athens nowadays, nor has any stranger come from Athens for some time who could give us a clear account of what happened, except that he drank the poison and died, but nothing more” (57a–b). Phaedo then relates to Echecrates and a group of Pythagoreans the details of Socrates’ last day. The Pythagorean connection is present in the dialogue itself, in the presence of Simmias and Cebes, who discourse with Socrates on the immortality of the soul.

The intent of Plato is clear in his setting of the Phaedo in Phlius. It is in the Phaedo that Socrates defines philosophy as preparation for death. Socrates shifts the figure of the philosopher from the spectator of the natural world to the self in the human world. The Presocratics’ concern with nature becomes the Socratic concern with human nature. In the Phaedo Socrates redefines philosophy. We learn of this redefinition of who the philosopher is in the same place that the philosopher is first defined, and it is told directly to the present-day followers of Pythagoras. The beginning point for the philosopher is not the order of the universe but the order of the soul. We philosophize because we are mortal. The idea of wisdom is interwoven with the ignorance we have of the meaning of our mortality.

Simonides’ Discovery

Simonides, wisest of poets.

Polydore Vergil, On Discovery 1.1.8

The idea of memory is the necessary companion to the idea of wisdom. Without memory there cannot be knowledge. Cicero says: “Wisdom [sapientia] is the knowledge [scientia] of things divine and human and acquaintance with the cause of each of them” (Tusc. 4.26.57). There can be no learning without memory and no wisdom, for wisdom brings what is learned together into a whole. Eloquence (eloquentia) is to put the whole of a subject into words. To put the whole into words requires a knowledge per causas. In his little treatise On Memory, Aristotle says that to recollect “one must get hold of a starting-point. This explains why it is that persons are supposed to recollect sometimes by starting from ‘places’ [topoi]” (452a).

In his work On the Orator, Cicero relates the discovery of the connection between memory and places (topoi, loci) by Simonides of Ceos, who was known not only for the wisdom of his poetry but for his greed, being perhaps the first poet to charge a fee for his compositions. Simonides was commissioned by Scopas, a wealthy nobleman in Thessaly, to present a lyric composed for a banquet at his house. Simonides devoted a long passage of his poem to the twin gods, Castor and Pollux. After his presentation Scopas told Simonides he would pay him only half the agreed sum, and if he so wished he could seek the balance from Castor and Pollux.

As the banquet proceeded, a message was delivered to Simonides that there were two young men at the door who wished earnestly to see him. Simonides left the banquet hall and went out to meet the strangers, but found no one. In the interval, the roof of the hall fell in, killing Scopas and all his guests. The next day, when their friends and relatives came to bury them, they were unable to tell the corpses apart, as they were so severely crushed in the ruins. Simonides was able to identify them by recalling the places where each was reclining at table.

His ability to do so suggested to Simonides that the best aid to memory is orderly arrangement, such that persons wishing to train themselves in memory should select localities and associate with each place a mental image of what they desired to remember. The arrangement of these places will act as an internal writing, analogous to that on a wax tablet, allowing the speaker to bring forth in a single, orderly speech all that the speaker intended to say. Simonides’ mnemonic became the basis of the art of memory (De orat. 2.86.352–55). But who were the two young men who called for Simonides? Were they Castor and Pollux? Also, why did Simonides choose Castor and Pollux to include in his panegyric.

In Quintilian’s account, the poem was a victory ode for a boxer who had won the crown (Inst. orat. 11.214–17). Simonides’ digression into an encomium for Castor and Pollux is appropriate, given that Pollux was the great boxer. But Quintilian raises the question as to whether the poem was written for Scopas or for several other possible persons. He says it is agreed that Scopas perished at the banquet. If Scopas hosted the banquet in honor of a boxer, he may have withheld the fee because he concluded that Simonides padded his poem with praise of Castor and Pollux and did not make the effort to address the achievement of the honored guest, or to honor himself as host. Simonides violated a business agreement. Given his reputation for greed, Simonides would have taken the abridgement of his fee especially hard.

The mnenomic discovered by Simonides is that of “artificial” memory—memory that is the result of training in the selection and use of places to organize images to achieve proficiency in elocutio—to speak on a particular subject, to put thought into words. In 1550, near the end of his life, Giulio Camillo dictated, on seven mornings, in Milan, a little work, L’idea del theatro, published at Venice and Florence. Camillo was one of the most famous figures of the sixteenth century, known to his contemporaries as the “Divine Camillo,” but he has been forgotten by posterity.

Camillo realized that the mnemonic of artificial memory could be transposed from a method of rhetoric to a method of metaphysics. From the idea of the Theatrum mundi he formed the idea of the Theatro della memoria. The artificial memory allows for making a speech on a subject within the theater of the world. The theater of memory allows for making a complete speech of the world itself. Instead of arbitrarily selecting places with which to associate images or mental places, Camillo arranged a theater of master images. These pitture represented the components of mythology upon which culture is based and from which thought originates. Camillo unites Hebraic, Greek, and Roman images. These are the topoi of human memory, those sources from which knowledge is brought forth. They are the metaphors, the archai of the human world itself.

Representations of these were arranged in tiers of seven grades, divided by seven gangways proceeding upward from a stage. Versions of the theater were constructed in France and Italy. The spectator entered on the stage as an actor, facing the audience of the pitture. The entrant faced the contents of the treasure-house of human memory. The unstated secret of the theater was the principle of proportion, the principle of the just soul of Platonism. In this way the theater gave access to the Forms, for the images were imitations of the real order of things. To know all there was to know and hence acquire wisdom, whoever entered the stage of the theater needed to contemplate each of the figures on the seven grades, aided by the writings of Cicero, the greatest of orators, kept in drawers or coffers in the theater. The mind of the individual could thus be aligned with the divine mens.

Only those who were prepared to engage in this process of contemplative alignment could accomplish the purpose of the theater, as Camillo states in the first sentence of his little treatise. The rest of the treatise describes only the contents and arrangement of the theater. It does not explain it. Camillo says: “The most ancient and wisest writers have always had the habit of entrusting to their writings the secrets of God under obscure veils, so that they are not understood except by those who (as Christ says) have ears to hear, namely who by God are chosen to grasp his most sacred mysteries.”1

Those “who have ears to hear” are mentioned in Matthew (11:15), Mark (4:23), and Luke (8:8). Warning not to present lofty themes to the many are to be found in Plato’s Letters (2.314a), in the prologue to the Asclepius, in the Hermetica of Hermes Trismegistus, and in the Zohar of the Cabala. Camillo’s art of memory is a work for the neo-Platonic Friends of the Forms, an extension of the Academy. It is the means to attain the wisdom that the philosopher seeks, the means to produce the complete speech.

Aristotle’s Protrepticus

O philosophy, thou guide of life,

o thou explorer of virtue and

expeller of vice! Without thee what

could have become not only of me

but of the life of man altogether?

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.2.5

Among Aristotle’s early writings, the most important is his Protrepticus, the original of which has been lost in its entirety, but its essential content and narrative has been reconstructed. It is a “hortatory essay” (logos protrepticos), an exhortation intended to urge those who would take up the study of philosophy—to do so. The most famous passage, as it appears in the reconstructed text of Anton-Hermann Chroust, is: “The term ‘to philosophize’ (or, ‘to pursue philosophy’) implies two distinct things: first, whether or not we ought to seek [after philosophic truth] at all; and second, our dedication to philosophic speculation [philosophon theoria]” (par. 6).2

With this assertion as his theme, Aristotle pursues its meaning. He says that “there is a science of truth as well as a science of the excellence of the soul. . . . philosophic wisdom (phronesis) is the greatest of all goods, and, at the same time, the most useful of all things” (pars. 35–36). Aristotle concludes: “Since human life is capable of sharing in this faculty [of reasoning and of acquiring wisdom], however wretched and difficult it may be, it is yet so wisely ordained that man appears to be a god when compared with all other creatures. . . . This being so, we ought either to pursue philosophy or bid farewell to life and depart from this world, because all other things seem to be but utter nonsense and folly” (pars. 105–106). Philosophic wisdom takes two forms, as contemplative speculation (theoria) and as guiding conduct to achieve well-being (phronesis).

Chroust’s reconstruction is as above, but, as Chroust says, there is a tradition, stemming from Cicero, Quintilian, Lactantius, and Boethius, that the passage is more like this: “You say that one should (or must) philosophize; then you should (or must) philosophize. You say that one should not (or must not) philosophize, then (in order to prove your contention) you must philosophize. In any event, you must philosophize.” On the passage, put in this way, Quintilian comments: “Sometimes two propositions are put forward in such a way that the choice of either leads to the same conclusion: for example, “We must philosophize (even though we must not philosophize) [‘philosophandum est, etiam si non est philosophandum’]” (Inst. orat. 5.10.70).

The coming together of these two propositions is what Aristotle would call an aporia, an impass that thought brings on itself by arriving at two equally valid but opposed claims. Such an impass generates wonder (thauma), owing to which philosophy first began and by which it continues to be (Meta. 982b). It is a wonder to philosophy that it itself is. The attempt to preclude philosophy from the activity of thought requires an act of philosophizing. Philosophy is the only form of knowing that is justified by its own attempted act of denial. In this way philosophy imbeds itself in the human condition.

If we pass from Aristotle’s Protrepticus to Boethius’s masterpiece, the Consolation of Philosophy, the dialogue Boethius creates between himself and Lady Philosophy (Philosophia), we gain a further picture of how philosophy speaks to the human condition. Boethius’s work is a prosimetrum, prose interspersed with verse. It became one of the several books to gain universal appeal throughout the Middle Ages. In late Latin, consolatio meant “aid” or “support” rather than “consolation” or “comfort.” Boethius, in prison, facing his death, is visited by Lady Philosophy, who immediately drives away the Muses of poetry whom, Boethius says, had been helping him find the words for his grief. Their instruction in poetry is not enough. Only attention to philosophy will take us to a knowledge of virtue and true justice, as it resides in the human soul. Boethius must come to understand that politics is always the enemy of philosophy, that is, politics that takes the actions of the state as the key to human nature and conduct.

Boethius says: “But you, Lady, dwelling in me, drove from my soul’s depths all desire for mortal things, and to have made any room for sacrilege under your very eyes would have been wicked indeed, for daily you instilled into my ears and my mind the Pythagorean saying, “Follow God’” (1.4.140). Epou deo is one of the ancient precepts, like those on the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Philosophy has freed Boethius to be self-determinate and free. It allows him to comprehend the Socratic conception of philosophy as practice of death. The pursuit of philosophy transcends the need to trust in fortune (fortuna) because fortune is always wont to change into misfortune (2.1.60). Good fortune is not the Good, for the Good is unchanging; it is ultimate, and knows no opposite.

Philosophy further teaches that happiness cannot be obtained by political power. If we consider well what political power is, we will see that: “whenever the power that makes kings happy ends, there their lack of power creeps in and makes them miserable; in this way, then, kings must have a larger share of misery than happiness. Knowing by experience the dangers of his own position, one tyrant [Dionysius I of Syracuse (see Cicero, Tusc. 5.21.61–62)], likened his fears as king to the terror of the sword hanging over Damocles’ head” (3.5.12–17). Happiness can be found only through the power of the divine. Boethius says to Lady Philosophy, “you spoke of that same form of the good being the substance of God and of happiness, and you taught me that unity itself was the same thing as the good, which was sought after by the whole natural world” (3.12.88–94).

There is an element of the Stoic in Boethius as there is in every philosopher. As such, neither the Stoic nor the Epicurean position is acceptable. The true philosopher has the sense of self-sufficiency that Aristotle attributes to contemplation. A dedication to reason and to the power of thought to think itself makes the philosopher unreachable by the ordinary means whereby the non-philosopher is affected—wealth, honor, power, glory, pleasure (De Con. 3.2.46–48). Pleasure is acceptable to the philosopher, but not as the highest good.

The true philosopher engaged in contemplation (theoria) can enjoy ataraxia, peace of mind. When fear is removed, as in the peace of the garden of Epicurus, the philosopher can flourish, not as a public figure but as a human engaged in the distinctively human activity of friendship, of friendly conversation. But the Neo-Platonic philosopher, whether Socratic or Christian, unlike the Epicurean, does not take pleasure to be the highest good. Nor does the true philosopher conquer the fear of death by the study of natural philosophy in order to remove fear of the gods. Death is a natural condition of life, but those who have listened to Socrates in the Phaedo overcome the fear of death because of the immortality of the soul—a view Boethius accepts philosophically and in his commitment to Christianity.

If the propensity to philosophize cannot be overcome by an act of philosophizing, this propensity must be taken to its limit. In so doing there is a sense of self-sufficiency and peace of mind that is inherent in the love of wisdom. In this way Lady Philosophy, as the absolute Muse, guides us by means of memory, as she does Boethius, through what was, what is, and what is to come.

Plutarch’s Delphic Epsilon

After Trophonius and Agamades had built a temple for

Apollo at Delphi, they asked the god while worshipping

to recompense their deed and their toil, and in no small

way to be sure—nothing they could describe, but what

would be best for a human—and Apollo gave them a sign

that a gift would come. Three days later they were found

dead, confirming that death was what this god judged

best, the one to whom the rest of the gods conceded

primacy in divination.

Giannozzo Manetti, On Human Worth and Excellence 4.13;

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.47.114

The most often cited precept inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi urges the entrant to seek self-knowledge (gnothi seauton). The precept that accompanies it, to seek moderation (meden agan) is less discussed. But both are well known. Taken together they appear to offer a complete guide to life. Rarely cited is a third inscription, the letter epsilon or ΕΙ. Is this inscription intended as a precept, to accompany the other two and to stand alone? Or is it the beginning of a word or phrase, the completion of which is lost or was never made? There is no way to know what was intended. We are left with the task of drawing forth a meaning from it as it stands.

The most famous attempt at treating this issue is Plutarch’s “The Ε at Delphi,” that appears in his Moralia. Plutarch advances seven possible explanations of the Greek letter. Of its general status, Plutarch writes: “For the likelihood is that it was not by chance nor, as it were, by lot that this was the only letter that came to occupy first place with the god [Apollo] and attained the rank of a sacred offering and something worth seeing; but it is likely that those who, in the beginning, sought after knowledge of the god either discovered some peculiar and unusual potency in it or else used it as a token with reference to some other of the matters of the highest concern, and thus adopted it” (385a).

Apollo is the most Greek of all gods. With the Muses as his retinue, he is associated with the higher developments of civilization. In regard to ritual, especially ceremonies of purification, his oracles are the supreme authority. Delphi was the chief of his oracular shrines. It was to the Pythian at Delphi that Chaerephon, the friend of Socrates, went with his question of whether anyone was more wise than Socrates, as Socrates reports in the Apology (21a). Among the gods it was Apollo who most governed divination.

The first explanation asserts that the Wise Men were actually five in number, and not seven. They were Chilon, Thales, Solon, Bias, and Pittacus. These five, “after conferring together, dedicated that one of the letters which is fifth [ΕΙ] in alphabetical order and which stands for the number five, thus testifying for themselves before the god [Apollo] that they were five, and renouncing and rejecting the seventh and the sixth as having no connexion with themselves” (385f).

In the Protagoras, Plato lists “Thales of Miletus, Pittacus of Mytilene, Bias of Priene, our own Solon, Cleobulus of Lindus, Myson of Chen, and, the seventh in the list, Chilon of Sparta” (343a). The list of the Sages is given with variation by various authorities to include Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, who would replace Myson of Chen in Plato’s list. Myson was not a tyrant but was said to be the son of a tyrant. In Plutarch’s “Dinner of the Seven Wise Men,” Periander appears as the host of the dinner, not as one of the Seven (146d) The interpretation of the number five argues that Periander and Cleobulus were simply despots of their cities and had no claim to virtue or wisdom, but promoted themselves into the list through their power. They could not have been authors of the two famous inscriptions.

The second interpretation of ΕΙ claims “that Ε is the second in order of the vowels from the beginning, and the sun the second planet after the moon and that practically all the Greeks identify Apollo with the Sun” (386a–b). This claim is dismissed as far-fetched, a product of idle talk. A third interpretation is advanced, that ΕΙ represents “the figure and form of the consultation of the god, and it holds the first place in every question of those who consult the oracle and inquire IF . . .” (386c). ΕΙ is a conditional conjunction carrying the same meaning as Latin si, “if.” It expresses possibility, “supposing that,” asking what will be the result if a given action or decision is taken.

The hypothetical question introduced by “if” cannot be answered with the certainty of a logical deduction because it involves real events, not simply a connection of thoughts. Thus the oracle of the god gives only ambiguous answers. Such inquiries are analogous to a prayer addressed to the god that expresses the fulfillment of a desire. This expresses a fourth interpretation—that the “if” is in fact a way of expressing a request to the god such that those employing it “think that the particle contains an optative force no less than an interrogative” (386c–d). The hypothetical question asked of the oracle is inherently a prayer request that the god grant the desired outcome.

These interpretations lead to a fifth possibility, that ΕΙ in the sense of “if” is an indispensible term in the construction of a syllogism. This approach holds: “That the god is a most logical reasoner the great majority of his oracles show clearly; for surely it is a function of the same person both to solve and to invent ambiguities” (386e). The ambiguities of the oracle’s answers have a logical structure. The premises of a hypothetical syllogism can be conjoined so that, taken together, they imply the conclusion. The syllogism is the key to philosophical reasoning. “Since, then, philosophy is concerned with truth, and the illumination of truth is demonstration, and the inception of demonstration is the hypothetical syllogism, then with good reason the potent element that effects the connexion and produces this was consecrated by wise men to the god who is, above all, a lover of truth” (387a). The ability to grasp such logical connections is the basis of the ability to grasp the way in which “all present events follow in close conjunction with past events, and all future events follow in close conjunction with present events” (387b).

From this association of the letter with formal logic and philosophical reasoning there follows a sixth interpretation, that returns to the number five. Five is an important number in mathematics, physiology, philosophy, and music. It is claimed that Plato holds the supreme first principles to be five: “Being, Identity, Divergence, and fourth and fifth besides these, Motion and Rest,” and that “Evidently someone anticipated Plato in comprehending this before he did, and for that reason dedicated to the god an ΕI as a demonstration and symbol of the number of all the elements” (391b–c). It adds that Plato, “in speaking about a single world, says that if there are others besides ours, and ours is not the only one, then there are five altogether and no more” (389a). Problematic for this interpretation is that five divisions, elements, types, forms, and so on, can be found in all areas of human thought, as well as threes, fours, sevens, and tens. We are given no proof that five is fundamental.

The seventh interpretation is different in kind from the others because it considers the role the ΕI may play in relation to the other two precepts. This interpretation holds that “the significance of the letter is neither a numeral nor a place in a series nor a conjunction nor any of the subordinate parts of speech.” Instead, “it is an address and salutation to the god, complete in itself, which by being spoken, brings him who utters it to thoughts of the god’s power.” The Ε stands in a dialogical relation to anyone who is to enter the temple. Thus, “the god addresses each one of us as we approach him here with the words ‘Know Thyself,’ as a form of welcome, which certainly is in no wise of less import than ‘Hail’; and we in turn reply to him ‘Thou art,’ as rendering unto him a form of address which is truthful, free from deception, and the only one befitting him only, the assertion of Being [ontos]” (392a).

“Thou art” as an assertion of Being makes the distinction between the ever-lasting permanence of the divine order and the contingent and ever-changing condition of the human. Wisdom is to know and acknowledge the difference. ΕΙ is placed beside Gnothi seauton to remind us of this difference. Thus “we ought, as we pay Him reverence, to greet Him and to address Him with the words, ‘Thou art’; or even, I vow, as did some of the men of old, ‘Thou art One’ [ei hen]” (393b). The two inscriptions express both an antithesis and an accord. Thus “the one is an utterance addressed in awe and reverence to the god as existent through all eternity, the other is a reminder to mortal man of his own nature and the weaknesses that beset him” (394c). In this account the other precept, Meden agan, is not mentioned. It is assumed under the other two as a way of acting toward the god and as a way of acting toward ourselves.

The significance of ΕΙ as “Thou art” is endorsed by Pico della Mirandola in his “Oration on the Dignity of Man” (1486), one of the key works of the Renaissance. Pico says that the Delphic inscriptions are one of the things that compelled him to the study of philosophy. He regards “Nothing overmuch” as the standard for moral philosophy and “Know thyself” as including the pursuit of the investigation of all nature as well as human nature. He concludes: “When we are finally lighted in this knowledge by natural philosophy, and nearest to God are uttering the theological greeting, ei, that is, ‘Thou art,’ we shall likewise in bliss be addressing the true Apollo on intimate terms.”3

These precepts may take us, as they did Pico, to the study of philosophy. They provide the briefest and most profound guide to philosophical thought. We can say with confidence that all speculative philosophy—that which considers the True to be the whole—is no more than the expansion of the ideas condensed in these three archaic inscriptions. We are taken back to them over and over.

1 Plato’s Poetics: A Reexamination
The City in Speech

Plato relates himself to the world as a blessed spirit,

whom it pleases sometimes to stay for a while in the

world; he is not so much concerned to come to know

the world, because he already presupposes it, as to

communicate to it in a friendly way what he brings

along with him and what it needs.

Goethe, Materialien zur Geschichte der Farbenlehre – Materials on the History of the Doctrine of Colors, pt. 3

In the fifth book of the Laws, Plato reflects on the description of the state presented in the Republic. He says: “It may be that gods or a number of the children of gods inhabit this kind of state: if so, the life they live there, observing these rules, is a happy one indeed. And so men need look no further for their ideal: they should keep this state in view and try to find the one that most nearly resembles it” (739d-e). The city of the Republic exists only in the words that describe it. It is an eternal, natural republic, to which everyone has access since it has the structure of the human soul writ large.

The Republic is the completion of the speech Socrates gave in the Apology, regarding the relation of the philosopher to the city. At the end of the speech Socrates warns his accusers and the Athenians generally that they must consider the fact that they are mortal. No one can say what will transpire after death. Death may be a blessing, “for it is one of two things: either the dead are nothing and have no perception of anything, or it is, as we are told, a change and a relocating for the soul from here to another place” (40c-d). Knowing that the latter is possible, it is of utmost importance how one lives one’s life. We should “keep this one truth in mind, that a good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and that his affairs are not neglected by the gods” (41d).

The one concern for the philosopher, and for any human being, must be that expressed in the precept on the pronaos of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: “Know thyself [Gnothi seauton].” In the Phaedrus, Socrates says he has no time to engage in the pursuit of critical thinking concerning the plausibility of the legend that claims that Orithuia, daughter of the Athenian king Erechtheus, was abducted by Boreas, the North Wind, while playing with Nymphs on the banks of the Ilisus River, or to give a rational account of the form of the Hippocentaurs or the Chimera. Socrates says he has no time for such things because he is “still unable, as the Delphic inscription orders, to know myself” (230a). If the speech of the Republic is a continuation of the speech of the Apology, then self-knowledge requires comprehension of the ideal sense of the polis. In the ideal polis, as in a mirror, the self can see itself.

At the beginning of the Phaedo, Cebes conveys to Socrates a question from Evenus, as to what has induced him to write poetry while in prison, although he has never written poetry before. In the Apology, Socrates refers to Evenus as a sophist, but here he ironically calls him a “philosopher,” and instructs Cebes to tell Evenus that, if he is wise, he should follow him, as soon as possible, in death. Socrates says he put some fables of Aesop and the hymn to Apollo into verse because of a recurrent dream in which he was instructed to “practice and cultivate the arts” (60e). He had presumed himself to be in compliance with this instruction by practicing the art of philosophy, but now thought the dream might mean to compose poetry. Socrates says that poetry begins and ends only in fables. It precludes argument (logos). The fables of poetry are of no use to Socrates in regard to death, but philosophy is. The rest of the Phaedo concerns Socrates’ elenchos concerning the immortality of the soul.

The Republic, understood as a continuation of the Apology, is not first and foremost a theory of the state. The theory of the state is undertaken in it in order to articulate the Socratic pursuit of self-knowledge. Once the state is articulated as the self writ large, the politeia is divided, like the psyche, into three parts. The psyche consists of the rational (logistikon), the “spirited” (thymoeides), and the appetitive (epithmetikon) (Rep. 435e-44e). There are virtues and pathe appropriate to each, but when they function as aspects or elements of a whole, they stand in perfect proportion to each other. The result is justice (dikaiosyne) (Rep. 369a). Justice is not to be understood “with respect to a man’s minding his external business, but with respect to what is within, with respect to what truly concerns him and his own.” He does not allow “the three classes in the soul meddle with each other, but really sets his own house in good order and rules himself.” Having achieved this order: “he arranges himself, becomes his own friend, and harmonizes the three parts, exactly like three notes in a harmonic scale, lowest, highest, and middle” (Rep. 443d).

Having given this explanation, Socrates concludes: “If we should assert that we have found the just man and city and what justice really is in them, I don’t suppose we’d seem to be telling an utter lie” (Rep. 444a). In the Phaedo, the logistikon begins to acquire the power to be the unitary principle of the psyche. The rational element of the soul is the divine part of the mortal human being and is created by the demiourgos (Tim. 41c-d). Indeed, it is this element of the soul that directs the mind’s eye to the eide. If no harm can come to a good man, then what is a good man? It is who has a soul ordered such that it imitates the Good (agathon) (Rep. 504e-509e). The virtue of justice brings the soul as close as possible in a mortal being to the Good. Justice, the chief virtue of the cardinal virtues, those upon which all the others hinge, is a state of the soul. The city in speech allows us to grasp what a proportion is in human terms by visualizing the roles of the three social classes.

What self-knowledge is, is now evident. The musically ordered soul is the fulfillment of the Delphic precept. No harm can come to the justly ordered soul, for its possessor cannot acquire more. The just human being makes no one the worse for knowing him. To do so would be to sow discord in another’s soul. The good man requires friends in order to be a friend of himself. Justice does not depend upon defeating one’s enemies. To approach the world in terms of friends and enemies is to replace the love of wisdom with the love of politics. It is to depart from the city in speech which is the standard of the conception of justice and its source in the eide.

Justice seen as something simply social is nothing more than the quest for political power—external, not internal, to the soul. To identify justice with a particular social policy is simply to endorse the view of the sophist, Thrasymachus, “that the just is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger [kreitton]” (Rep. 338c), the view against which the Republic is written. Justice or injustice, then, on the sophistic view, is only a matter of political power. The vision of an eternal, natural republic is the master key to self-knowledge of the individual and to the life of self-determination it provides.

In the fourth book of the Laws, the Athenian says: “We maintain that laws which are not established for the good of the whole state are bogus laws, and when they favor particular sections of the community, their authors are not citizens but party-men; and people who say those laws have acclaim to be obeyed are wasting their breath” (715b). Just laws require a knowledge of the state as a whole. They are not just because they are believed to be so by some residents of the state who claim them on ethical grounds, but which are based on an ethics of their own perceptions of what is just. Only true philosophy can act as a correction to such a mistaken claim.