18 Conclusions
Remove their swelling Epithetes thick laid
As varnish on a Harlot’s cheek, the rest,
Thin sown with aught of profit or delight,
Will far be found unworthy to compare
With Sion‘s songs, to all true tastes excelling,
Where God is prais’d aright, and Godlike men,
The Holiest of Holies, and his Saints;
Such are from God inspir’d, not such from thee…..
So speaks Milton’s Christ in Paradise Regained (4.343-50), lambasting Greek poetry for its lack of true spiritual value. Remove the various poetical figures (“thick laid/ As varnish on a harlot’s cheek”), he says, and what remains is not much in comparison to the splendors found in Scriptures. What is the remnant that does remain when tragedy is stripped of art? Some simple observations: listen to oracles; do not behave irrationally; honor the gods; honor guests; don’t be hubristic. Are these original teachings that one will not have learned unless one has gone to the theatre? Whatever the value of Greek tragedy, its educative function is surely not very great; nor indeed is the educative function of literature generally. Art works differently from school: art stirs up the emotions. When we see a villain get his just deserts, we rejoice; when we see honest people suffer unjustly, we feel pity, and so on. In the young, art helps train the emotions to react properly; later, it pleases by causing the emotions to work, for there is pleasure in the operation of human functions, in the exercise of emotions. Art is moral when it manipulates our emotions in good ways, immoral when it manipulates our emotions in bad ways. Now insofar as the Platonic dialogues are art—and even the most hard-nosed critic admits their artistic qualities—they aim at an emotional reaction and not at discursive learning. It has been the purpose of this book to explore this dimension of the dialogues. If the dialogues have appeared so stripped of deep philosophy as to appear anemically bland, the reaction fails to recognize just how successful they have in fact been: for two thousand years and more they have stirred people to study philosophy and to join in the Socratic search for truth; for two thousand years and more they have inspired people “To follow knowledge, like a sinking star, / Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.”
Here I shall attempt to lay out the positive teachings that emerge from the dialogues analyzed. Now just as the teachings of Greek tragedy, removed from the artistic works, may appear slight, so perhaps may the teachings of the dialogues. Simplicity does not, of course, invalidate truth; nevertheless, bald, true statements do not enchant the imagination. It is more satisfying to go away from a graduate seminar on the Timaeus believing that Plato thought the world made of elemental triangles arranged in various proportions than carrying the lesson that one should be wary of scientific quackery. Yet the art of the Timaeus suggests the latter to have been the teaching: the dialogue exposes arrogant intellectual presumptuousness as the great satirists Moliere, Swift, and Aristophanes might have exposed it. A great many of Plato’s dialogues seem, according to this interpretation, to have attacked presumption. No doubt Plato was continuing the Socratic mission of testing those who proudly trumpeted their wisdom to the world. Thus the Symposium mocks those who presume to knowledge about the gods; it teaches us to beware of those who make up stories about the gods and expect them to be believed: people tend to create gods in their own images or to promote their own interests. This surely is a teaching usefully learned in all generations. The Phaedrus is an attack on the enthusiasm for listening to speeches. Cleverness like Lysias’s is no guarantee of truth or sense. Almost the same teaching is found in the Menexenus, where Socrates shows how easily speeches on set themes may be made up. The Protagoras warns about the impossibility of reaching truth by oratorical contests. It seems to warn us about the manipulative power of people to abuse language. How poor Simonides’ poem suffered when it was twisted beyond recognition as each interlocutor read into it his own views.
A few of the dialogues seem to have as their purpose the preservation of Socrates’ memory. Thus, the Phaedo shows how courageously Socrates met his death; the Crito shows him sticking to his post and choosing to stand by the best argument he has, even when such choice means death. The Theaetetus, Euthyphro, and Lysis show how little Socrates corrupted youth. Even if his conversations with the various characters in these dialogues are aporetic and leave the youths bewildered, how has bewilderment harmed them? In the case of Euthyphro, the conversation seems to have had no effect at all, and if there has been no effect, there has obviously been no corruption. And the others—Lysis, Menexenus, Theaetetus—have perhaps been made a little humbler by their experience with Socrates.
In some dialogues, like the Gorgias, Cratylus, and Laches, and (perhaps) the Symposium, we learn to follow the mean. In these dialogues various extreme positions are taken, by Socrates or the interlocutors, and the absurdity of each extreme is depicted. The audience or reader goes away from the dialogue realizing the folly of the extremes and thinking that perhaps wisdom lies in the mean. Thus in the Gorgias we see that the excessively contemplative life of Socrates and the deficiently contemplative life of Callicles are neither of them suitable to guide a state; in the Cratylus we learn that the positions of excess naturalism and excess conventionalism are alike unable to explain language; in the Laches we see that courage is a special kind of virtue that requires both knowledge and ignorance and a steadfastness of spirit; in the Symposium, we see perhaps the sorrows that come from the excessively sexed life of Alcibiades and the deficiently sexed life of Socrates.
A schoolmaster like Plato would of course be expected to deal with questions of education; and indeed, every dialogue in one way or another deals with it: the Meno warns against memorized set arguments as unable to help one handle life, its long joke on recollection simply part of the attack on memorization; the Republic similarly advises one to engage directly and personally in philosophy; the Laches shows the importance of education and the need for good teachers; so too does the Protagoras, where the problem of finding teachers to cultivate the soul is specifically addressed. Whole poleis may also be in need of good teachers, and the Apology shows how little Athens is concerned with having them. If anything damns Athens, schoolmaster Plato is showing in Socrates’ defense, it is her reluctance to accept Socrates as her teacher.
These are the teachings that emerge from a dramatic reading of Plato. I admit that they are devoid of the metaphysical, epistemological, ontological, logical, political, ethical profundity that philosophers have found in the dialogues. Yet they are positive teachings and the kind of teachings that art provides. They are also teachings that would be good to absorb into our consciousness. The history of the world with its dismal record of theological charlatans, of demagogic propagandists, of bleary-eyed philosophers and mindless politicians, of scientific hucksters, and of people who abandoned argument whenever it threatened some practical advantage—shows how important to the world were the lessons Plato had to teach in his dialogues. If one complains that art is less successful than philosophy at teaching these things, we might point out that philosophy has not saved the world either. As Imlac says in Johnson’s Rasselas, “[Philosophers] talk like angels, but live like men.”
Plato hoped, no doubt, that his dialogues would arouse in his readers interest in intellectual matters. Roused sufficiently, the readers might enroll, or enroll their sons in the Academy. We who teach know that inspiring the young to pursue instruction is of no little importance. The real work of education, after all, goes on in the classroom, in the rigorous and continuous argument with students, in the relentless struggle to banish opinion and replace it with knowledge, in the joint quest for truths, in the awakening of sleeping souls.
