Abstract
The very suggestion that there might be a connection between Platonic philosophy and tragedy might seem at first strange. If the severe criticisms of tragedy in Books III and X of Plato’s Republic are taken as Plato’s literal teaching on the subject rather than, say, a ‘provocation’ to the thoughtful reader, then it is hard to imagine how the question of whether there is a ‘tragic’ dimension to Platonic philosophy could seriously arise. Unless we invoke explanations from psychopathology, how could a writer so harshly critical of tragedy knowingly include a tragic dimension within his own conception of philosophy? And indeed, many commentators, from very different schools of Platonic interpretation, have argued that the portrayal of philosophy in the dialogues is not tragic, and, according to some authors, even thoroughly anti-tragic. Thus Allan Bloom, in the ‘commentary’ to his edition of Plato’s Republic, characterizes that dialogue (it is less clear whether he would say the same for the dialogues altogether) as a ‘divine comedy’2 and more recently, Martha Nussbaum, in her The Fragility of Goodness, devotes the central part of the book to arguing that Plato’s philosophical standpoint abandons the tragic insight of his predecessors which only Aristotle restores.3
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Notes
I borrow this wonderfully apt term from Mitchell Miller’s ‘Platonic Provocations: Reflections on the Soul and the Good in the Republic’, in Dominic J. O’Meara (ed.) Platonic Investigations (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1985), pp. 163–93.
Allan Bloom, The kepublic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1968), p. 381. See also pp. 407–8.
Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). See, for example, page 134, where the dialogues are characterized as ‘anti-tragic drama’. Nussbaum’s interpretation of Plato on this issue is successfully refuted by David Roochnik, ‘The Tragic Philosopher: A Critique of Martha Nussbaum’, unpublished manuscript.
John Harman, ‘The Unhappy Philosopher: Plato’s Republic as Tragedy’, Polity, vol. XVIII, no. 4, Summer, 1986, pp. 577–94. Stanley Rosen has argued consistently and persuasively that the Platonic portrayal of philosophy is somehow both tragic and comic. See for example his Plato’s Symposium (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 286.
Contre Nussbaum, op. cit., who characterizes our original condition as ‘perfect and self-sufficient physical beings’ (p. 172).
This is not contradicted by Aristophanes’ later claim that ‘the best’ of these types are the homosexual pairs, of whom the boys enter into politics when they grow up (192a). One need only look quickly at Aristophanes’ plays and note the low opinion he generally has of politicians, to see how thoroughly ironic this ‘praise’ of homosexuality is. Note that in his plays, tyrants are regularly portrayed as homosexuals.
I emphasize that I am not hereby claiming a ‘definition’ of tragedy. I believe there is altogether too much emphasis by scholars on the supposed importance of definition in the Platonic dialogues. It should be noted that, with the bizarre and very superficial exception of the definitions of the four cardinal virtues in the Republic (428a ff.), the attempts at definitions — of piety, courage, friendship, sophrosyne, knowledge — nearly always fail. The real intent of the regular failure to ‘define’ the virtues may well be to finally drive us away from an obsession with the closure of definition.
Symposium, 193c. I follow, with some alterations, the translation ot Suzy Groden, The Symposium of Plato (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970).
I emphasize that eros can be a source of nobility, not that it is somehow noble ‘in itself’. One of the ways in which Diotima establishes the status of eros as ‘in the middle’ is that it is in the middle between nobility and baseness (202 ff.). The point is that erotic striving can be noble, and therefore can take on this important dimension of tragic experience.
Although even of this creation Diotima insists there is ‘something divine’ (206c).
Symposium, 203b ff. It is instructive that ‘Poros’, in another of its possible meanings as ‘way’ or ‘path’, is the root word of the privative, ‘aporia’, that recognition of his lack of knowledge so characteristic of Socrates’ philosophic stance.
Diotima does not emphasize what is clearly compatible with this claim, namely, that eros can no less be the source of the worst of human aspirations. Plato shows his full cognizance of this by emphasizing in the Republic the connection between eros and tyranny (573b,c,d). The Republic must thus be read in counterpoint to the Symposium. Whereas the Symposium emphasizes (and possibly exaggerates) the potential greatness of eros while remaining virtually silent on its dangers, the Republic, conversely, emphasizes and even exaggerates the dangers, but virtually suppresses the potential value. In my view, we totally misunderstand Plato’s intent here if we resolve this conflict by claiming that Plato ‘changed his mind on eros’ between the two dialogues.
Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). See especially chapters 5–7. A similar point is made more moderately (and implicitly) by Mitchell Miller in his Plato’s Par’menides: The Conversion of the Soul (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). The full and ‘non-imagistic’ access to the Forms which Miller sees Plato as arguing for seriously would seem to make the project of wisdom completeable. Under these circumstances, it would be difficult to construe philosophy as ‘tragic’. See especially pp. 18–25.
Hence the significance of the title of chapter 6 of The Fragility of Goodness: ‘The Speech of Alcibiades: A Reading of the Symposium.’ op. cit., pp. 165–234.
Vlastos, Gregory, P’latonic Studies, 2nd edn. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 1–34.
Nussbaum, op. cit., pp. 167 ff. for the emphasis on individual love in Alcibiades’ speech, pp. 173 for her recognition that Aristophanes’ speech also exhibits this personal emphasis.
Ibid, p. 198. Nussbaum makes clear that she takes the teaching of Socrates’ speech, consistent as it is with the ‘otherworldliness’ of the Phaedo and Republic, as Plato’s own view. See for example pages 152 ff. and 192 ff. On page 195 she characterizes ‘personal eros’ as ‘the plague’ which Diotima cures!
If only this view were maintained consistently when considering dialogues such as the Sophist, Statesman, or Timaeus, where Socrates is virtually silent!
It is no less significant that she is a woman, though the importance of this is not directly germane to this paper.
Drew Hyland, ‘Taking the Longer Road: The Irony of Plato’s Republic’, forthcoming in Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, and especially Hyland, Drew, ‘Plato’s Three Waves and the Question of Utopia’, forthcoming.
For other ways in which the philosopher of the Republic is tragic, see Harman, John D., ‘The Unhappy Philosopher: Plato’s Republic as Tragedy’, Polity, vol. XVIII, no. 4, Summer 1986, pp. 577–94.
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Hyland, D.A. (1993). Philosophy and Tragedy in the Platonic Dialogues. In: Georgopoulos, N. (eds) Tragedy and Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22759-4_8
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