THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
THE ANCIENT QUARREL UNSETTLED:
PLATO AND THE EROTICS OF TRAGIC POETRY
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO
THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
JOHN U. NEF COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL THOUGHT
BY
THOMAS LUKE BARTSCHERER
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ... v
Introduction ... 1
1 The nature and power of images ... 20
1.1 Mimêsis and the ontology of images ... 22
1.1.1 Painting ... 22
1.1.2 Poetry ... 41
1.2 The power of images—the psychology of belief and the spectacle of suffering ... 46
1.3 The power of images—the greatest accusation ... 54
2 The critique of tragedy in Republic X: limitations and reformulation ... 61
2.1 Thinking twice: formal considerations ... 62
2.2 Thinking twice: erôs, epôidê, pharmakon ... 65
2.2.1 Erôs ... 65
2.2.2 Epôidê ... 67
2.2.3 Pharmakon ... 71
2.3 Two premises, two problems ... 75
2.3.1 Was will das Logistikon? ... 76
2.3.2 That obscure object ... 86
2.4.1 Elusive originals ... 102
2.4.2 "The god must be described as he is…" ... 111
3 "All those beautiful tragic things" ... 118
3.1 Tragedy and erôs: an overview ... 119
3.2 Poetics of tragedy and philosophy of the tragic: Plato and Aristotle ... 128
3.3 Philosophy of the tragic: Halliwell and Rosen ... 132
3.4 Erôs for the beautiful and tragedy ... 145
3.4.1 The beautiful [to kalon] ... 145
3.4.2 To kalon, poetry, tragedy ... 148
3.4.3 Tragic beauty: irony and enigma ... 155
3.5 Conclusion: A frenzied and savage master? ... 161
4 Erôs: tyrannical and philosophical ... 164
4.1 The puzzle ... 164
4.2 Duo erôte ... 166
4.2.1 Argument of the imagery ... 168
4.2.2 Tyrannical desire: unnecessary, insatiable, lawless ... 170
4.2.3 Philosophical desire: unnecessary, insatiable, lawless? ... 175
4.3 One love: different objects ... 180
5 Tragedy, transgression, and psuchagôgia ... 189
5.1 Was will der Mensch? ... 191
5.2 The good, the beautiful, and the tragic ... 195
5.3 Love minus zero/no limit ... 201
Works Cited ... 207
Acknowledgements
First thanks goes to the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, and especially to the chair of
the Committee and my advisor, Robert B. Pippin, for sustained and unwavering support. What
there is of value in the following work derives in large measure from the unique intellectual
environment of the Committee, which Mr. Pippin has done so much to foster. For his guidance,
support, and example, I am enormously grateful. I also thank the other members of my
dissertation committee—John M. Coetzee, Jonathan Lear, and Glenn W. Most—who over many
years have been generous with their time and attention, their criticism and encouragement.
Many other individuals and institutions have aided and abetted my work on this project. Chief
among them, David N. McNeill, cherished interlocutor since 1994, and Ewa Atanassow,
helpmeet of a dozen years. Both have read many drafts and virtually every page of this work. I
cannot overstate my gratitude. With apologies to any whom I omit inadvertently, I would like
also to thank the following individuals and institutions: Danielle Allen, Shadi Bartsch, Rita
Bartscherer, Manuel Baumbach, Jonathan Beere, Paolo d’Iorio, Anne Wescott Eaton, Christiane
Frey, Paul Friedrich, Anne Gamboa, the late David Grene, H. U. Gumbrecht, John T. Hamilton,
Martin Holtermann, Brett Keyser, Martin Korjenac, Brad Krumholz, Justine Malle, Katia
Mitova, Sandra Moog, James I. Porter, James Redfield, Joan Retallack, Daniel Richter, Jarrell
Robinson, Naomi Rood, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, Nicholas Rudall, Lauriana Sapienza, Eric
Schliesser, Roger Scruton, Mark Strand, Claudia Strobel, William Stull, Chenxi Tang, Nathan
Tarcov, Jonny Thakkar, David Tracy, Martin Vöhler, James Wengler, Antja Wessels, my
siblings and their spouses, the Bradley Foundation, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the
Earhart Foundation, the École Normale Supérieure, the European College of the Liberal Arts, the
Modernes—CNRS, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, the North American Cultural
Laboratory, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. In accordance with custom, I emphasize that I
alone bear responsibility for the shortcomings of this work.
Introduction
“There is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.” This remark and the
argument to which it belongs, attributed by Socrates to himself in Book X of Plato’s Republic,
has not suffered from neglect in the history of Western letters. Rejoinders come early. For
Aristotle, the notion of a “quarrel” between philosophy and poetry simply makes no sense.
Poetry is, like rhetoric or ethics or politics or weather, something about which philosophy can
provide a reasoned account; it is not the sort of thing that might be regarded as an alternative to
or opponent of philosophy.1 In Plutarch, the antagonism is replaced with complementarity:
poetry is informed by philosophical argument and philosophy is sweetened with an admixture of
poetic myth.2 Subsequent responses, varying greatly in content, form, and tone, continue to
appear from the time of the neoplatonists through to the twenty-first century. The list would rival
Leporello’s catalogo for its magnitude and diversity.3 What I provide in this introduction is a
1 I agree with the many commentators who regard Aristotle’s Poetics as a response to the critique of poetry we find
in Plato, and especially in Republic X. Halliwell (1998) offers a particularly detailed account of the relationship between the Poetics and the Republic. See also Fuhrmann (1973), Gould (1964), and Kannicht (1980).
2 As Hunter and Russell observe, Plutarch’s De Audiendis Poetis 15d likely contains a direct allusion to Plato’s
formulation of the ancient quarrel (Plutarch (2011)).
3 To get a sense of the sheer range of periods in which and authors for whom the quarrel is of pressing concern (in
some cases, the concern being to reject the idea that there is such a quarrel), consider just a few prominent examples. Neoplatonists, and Proclus in particular, inherit Plato’s interest in investigating the relationship between philosophy and poetry and they typically share with Plutarch a more harmonious conception of this relationship. For the Romantic writers of the 18th and 19th centuries, Plato’s formulation of the quarrel had profound resonance, as seen
for example in Shelley’s “Defense of Poetry” and in much of Coleridge’s work (see James Vigus’s chapter, “The Ancient Quarrel Between Poetry and Philosophy,” in Vigus (2009), 63-92). For a revisiting of this tension from the perspective of a 20th century novelist, see Italo Calvino’s “Philosophy and Literature,” in Calvino (1986), 39-49.
highly selective survey of recent publications to identify the field within which the present study
moves, and then a summary of my central concerns to reveal the absence of field at which it
aims.
In brief and broad terms, I will be arguing that for Plato, the quarrel contrasts two
fundamentally different conceptions of the nature and purpose of discursive activity and the
ethical implications of each. The distinction Plato proposes between philosophy and poetry is
not, at root, a matter of formal criteria, such as meter or diction. Nor is it simply the difference
between myth-making and account-giving, or between muthos and logos. Moreover, I do not
believe we are to understand the quarrel to have been resolved within the confines of the
Republic, nor the arguments Socrates makes to constitute philosophy’s victory over poetry (or,
for that matter, philosophy’s incapacity to defeat its opponent). As I shall indicate in this
introduction and elaborate in detail in the study that follows, on my reading the quarrel turns on
the nature of what Plato calls erôs. As modes of discourse, philosophy and poetry manifest
different understandings of the character and fate of erotic striving and constitute two different
responses to the human condition.
Three monographs dedicated to the ancient quarrel in various manifestations, published in
the last three decades, appeared at about ten year intervals beginning in 1990. They provide a
convenient framework for this survey. I begin with Thomas Gould’s The Ancient Quarrel
Between Poetry and Philosophy (1990), then take up Susan Levin’s The Ancient Quarrel
Between Philosophy and Poetry Revisited (2001), and turn finally to Raymond Barfield’s The
Ancient Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry (2011).4 For Gould, the quarrel to which
4 Stanley Rosen’s The Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry: Studies in Ancient Thought (1988) was published
Socrates refers is “a permanent state of affairs,” a fundamental disagreement about the nature of
moral responsibility in relation to fate and the divine (Gould 1990, xxvi). Philosophy, on
Gould’s understanding, is essentially a worldview based on the premise that human beings, not
the gods, are entirely responsible for their own happiness or misery. “In 'philosophy,'” he writes,
“are included not only the systematic thinkers like Heraclitus … but anyone who complained that
the gods ought not to be envisaged as the authors of all human misery, deserved and undeserved
alike” (214). Poetry, by contrast, represents the view that “divine injustice” is responsible for
human misery and, as a corollary, that human beings are not responsible for their own lot and so
are relieved of guilt for their own suffering. Poetry in this sense is aligned, Gould argues, with
those religious traditions that ascribe human misfortune to divine will or plan.
Gould’s argument turns on his account of pathos. He defines pathos as “the operative event
in stories essential to popular religion and tragedy: catastrophic suffering, undergone by some
great figure, man or god, far in excess of the sufferer's deserts” (ix).5 “Poetry” in the Republic’s
formulation of the ancient quarrel can be regarded, according to Gould, as "the enterprise of
those who wish to move hearers with accounts of a pathe”; philosophy, by contrast, is the
"mission of those who are hostile to this enterprise” (x). Gould further argues that poets and
philosophers, so understood, are responding to fundamental and ineradicable features of human
psychology that are irreconcilable. We are in part driven by a desire, elevated to the highest
principle in Socratic ethics, to lead our lives, to be alone responsible for the state of our souls.
Yet part of us also longs to believe that we are not responsible and therefore not guilty of the ills
5 I discuss the term pathos in some detail in Chapter One. Gould, for his part, argues that the revelation of the hero’s
that befall us. According to Gould, the great contribution of Plato’s poetics is to recognize how
the difference between philosophy and poetry corresponds to this fundamental split in the human
soul. It is the discovery
that there has always been and must always be an irreconcilable difference
between two drives within the human psyche: the rage to believe in justice, fed by philosophy, morality, theology, criticism, and other rational endeavor; and a rage to believe in injustice, fed by poetry, myth, religion, and other expressions of our dreamer selves (85).
Plato’s insight, as Gould sees it, is inherited and his explanatory project advanced by
modern psychoanalysis, and in particular, by Freud’s discovery that the superego, which Gould
takes to be a rough equivalent of the middle part, the spirited part, of Socrates’ tripartite division,
can itself be a source of misery through the experience of guilt (xix-xx). Plato recognizes that
“tragedy and rationality” cannot be reconciled, but offers an insufficient account of the
“counterrational pleasure we get from tragedy,” which for Gould is supplied by modern
psychoanalysis (xxvi). From the point of view of practical moral philosophy, moreover, this
insufficient understanding leads Plato to embrace absolutely the dictates of Socratic rationalism
and to regard the pathos of tragic drama as an immoral satisfaction of the desire to have done
with self-responsibility. From Gould’s perspective, one should recognize that the “rage to believe
in injustice” cannot be ignored or extirpated. It must, to a certain extent, be gratified. But at the
same time, it should not be allowed to predominate. Gould’s study makes the case that the
representation of pathos, as for example in tragic drama, is necessary for psychic and societal
health, but also aims to moderate its influence by clarifying the source and workings of it power.
The rest of Gould’s sprawling account examines the manifestations and ramifications of
these central claims over a vast expanse of time, from Homeric epic to 20th century political
overarching claims and in the details.6 For present purposes, we need only make a few additional
remarks. At the root of Gould’s argument is the claim that a part of the soul naturally and
ineluctably desires evidence of what the author calls “divine injustice.” Something there is in
everyone that wishes to be a victim, and it is this part of the soul that responds to, and takes
vicarious pleasure in, the pathos of tragedy. On Gould’s reading of Plato, the pity felt by the
spectator of tragedy turns out to be a kind of projected self-pity: the spectator suffers because he
recognizes his own plight in that of the suffering hero, and then again in reflecting on his (the
spectator’s) own suffering. The pleasure arises from the satisfaction of the desire to be a passive
victim rather than to be actively responsible for one’s own suffering.
It is an interesting idea, which some scholars have explored further.7 Yet we can note some
immediate difficulties. When Socrates explicitly identifies the desires and pleasures of each part
of the soul in the Republic (580d-581e), at least on the face of it nothing like a desire for
victimhood is indicated. He speaks of the desire for wisdom, the desire for honor, and the desire
for gain: where among these is the desire to be off the hook, ethically speaking? This question
leads to another difficulty with Gould’s argument. He blends together the fairly clear tripartite
psychology of the earlier books of the Republic with the considerably murkier, seemingly
bipartite psychology of Book X without accounting for the differences between the two. Socrates
6 See, for example, the reviews by Halliwell (1992) and Salkever (1991). Central problems include scanty evidence
for his claims about the role of pathos in Greek religion; an assumed, rather than argued for, unity in the conception of pathos, despite what appears to be a great deal of variety; a simplified account of the complex relationship between Platonic and Freudian psychology; and, in the context of a book that covers an impressively vast range of periods and issues, an unwillingness to engage in a sustained way with thinkers other than Plato and Freud who have tackled similar issues and come to quite different conclusions from those proposed by Gould.
7
does in Book X speak of “the pitying part” [to eleinon] of the soul, which he says is strengthened
by attending to tragic poetry and, as a result, is more difficult to restrain from feeling self-pity.
This picture of the soul, with its pitying part, fits Gould’s argument somewhat better than the
earlier account, although it is still a step to go from self-pity to self-exculpation. On the other
hand, the tripartite soul is critical for Gould because on his reading it anticipates Freud’s
superego.
Perhaps the main virtue of Gould’s study is to recognize that the quarrel between
philosophy and poetry, as it appears in the Republic, should be understood as a fundamental
opposition, one that is deeply rooted in the dialogue and is a defining feature of Plato’s thought. I
share Gould’s conviction that the critique of poetry in Book X is not, as some have argued, a
mere digression, appendix, or afterthought.8 I also agree that the significance of the quarrel, for
Plato, is best understood in terms of moral psychology.9 Finally, I think Gould is right to place
tragic poetry, in particular, at the center of Plato’s concerns. I shall, however, offer a
substantially different interpretation of Plato’s account of tragedy and why it is the primary focus
of the critique of poetry in Book X.
Ten years after the publication of Gould’s study, Susan Levin returns to the topic with The
Ancient Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry Revisited: Plato and the Greek Literary
8 Shorey refers to all of Book X as "in a sense an appendix" and calls the discussion of poetry "an intervening
digression" that serves chiefly to "rest the emotions between two culminating points" (Plato (1935), 1:lxi, 2:xxii); Nettleship (1901) holds that the discussion of poetry in Book X "is disconnected from the rest of the Republic" and "breaks the continuity" (304); Cross and Woozley (1964) write that Book X "must be regarded as an appendix" (263); Annas (1981) calls it an “excrescence” (335); and even the judicious Adam says the discussion of poetry in Book X is "of the nature of an episode, and might have been omitted without injury to the artistic unity of the dialogue" Plato (1963), II:384. Nehamas (1999), in opposing this view, cites additional proponents of the "appendix" idea (256), including Else (1972). Those joining Nehamas in explicitly dismissing the dismissers of the critique of poetry in Book X include Halliwell (1988), Ferrari (1989), 129 and Levin (2001), 152.
9 As will become clear in what follows, I do not agree with Gould that the ontological dimensions of the critique of
Tradition. Levin’s declared purpose is to demonstrate that Plato’s thought is informed by, and in
conversation with, the literary tradition that preceded him in ways and to an extent that had not
been acknowledged. Levin is particularly concerned to document this influence in the realm of
what she calls the “philosophy of language.” Much of the book is dedicated to this task, focusing
particularly on etymology, eponymy, and the use of “functional terms,” (e.g., terms used to
denote kinship). Levin’s overarching contention is that the literary authors of the Greek
tradition—in which she includes the epic, lyric, and dramatic poets as well as Herodotus—were
at least as significant for the development of Plato’s thought as the so-called pre-Socratic
philosophers. It is only in the final chapter that she comes to a direct consideration of the ancient
quarrel as it appears in the Republic.
On Levin’s reading, Socrates’ formulation of the quarrel is a straightforward presentation
of two different views regarding the roles of poetry and philosophy, respectively, within the city
in speech discussed in the Republic and, she seems to think, within Greek society more
generally.10 Plato is, according to Levin, firmly on the side of philosophy, which is presented as
the “preeminent technê” (Levin 2001, 12). “Plato,” she maintains, “‘wins’ for philosophy the
quarrel [diaphora] between it and poetry by arguing, against tradition, that philosophy should be
the teacher of adults and hence supplant poetry in this way as the educator of Greece” (129). Yet
this does not mean, on her interpretation, that for Plato there is no role for poetry in the best
regime. Rather, Plato “reserves an important role for … poetry both in the project of attitude
10 For the most part, Levin limits her discussion to what she refers to as “the ideal polis.” She does however extend
the claim, indicating that the arguments for the superiority of poetry within the ideal city apply equally in the real cities that constitute “Greece” (129, 166). Levin does not indicate why what holds in the hypothetical city should be thought to hold also in real cities. On this issue, I agree with Gadamer: "The state is a state in thought, not any state on earth. Its purpose is to bring something to light and not to provide an actual design for an improved order in real political life," Gadamer (1980), 48.
formation that is the focus of early education and in the broader communal context, where poetic
compositions will be integral to a range of civic occasions” (12).
Levin rightly recognizes and persuasively documents the “tremendous influence of
traditional literary education” in classical Athens. Not only Homer, but “over time, Hesiod,
Pindar, and the tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were also recognized as
influential educators” (8). Levin also makes the important point that, through the dramatic
festivals, this literary tradition was formative not only for a small elite but for a large portion of
the Athenian public. While neither of these is in itself a novel observation, both are important to
bear in mind when thinking about what is at stake in Socrates’ critique of poetry, culminating in
the ancient quarrel.11 Levin furthermore reminds us of how contemporary conceptions of the
boundaries between academic disciplines—philosophy, classical studies, literature—can distort
our view of Plato’s authorial project.12 Her work shows how, in Plato’s own authorship, we see
evidence that in the cultural tradition to which he is responding there was in effect no firm
distinction between poetry and philosophy. To understand the genesis and significance of the
stark difference proposed by Socrates, it is necessary to abandon, or at least bracket,
contemporary assumptions about what constitutes academic disciplines and discourses.
Although Levin indicates her interest in what she refers to as the “‘literary’” or “‘poetic’”
aspects of the dialogues (the quotation marks are hers), she is not much concerned in this study
to consider the hermeneutical implications of such things as irony, character, or dramatic action.
Even the fundamental distinction between imitated speech [mimêsis] and narration [diêgêsis],
11 On the influence of the literary tradition on Plato, with a particular emphasis on the significance of the transition
from oral to written culture, see Havelock (1963). For a general account of classical education, see Marrou (1965). Regarding the dramatic festivals, Levin mainly follows Pickard-Cambridge (1988).
12 Nussbaum (1986) is a deliberate effort to correct such misperception.
which is made by Socrates himself within the Republic, does not come into play in her
interpretation. She ascribes the arguments that Socrates proposes regarding poetry directly to
Plato without comment and further takes these arguments to amount to philosophy’s side of the
quarrel, which, as Levin puts it, “wins” over poetry. While I think—and argue in Chapter One—
that the account of poetry Socrates outlines in Book X is considerably more sophisticated and
interesting than has often been recognized, I also think—and argue in Chapter Two—that this
surface argument has decisive limitations, which the dialogue itself, to a significant degree
through literary devices, brings to attention. A more comprehensive account of the significance
of the quarrel for Plato’s thought requires that we move beyond those limitations, while still
remaining within the text of Plato’s dialogues, as I aim to do in Chapters Three, Four, and Five.
It should also be mentioned that Levin, unlike Gould, takes little notice of the particular
emphasis on tragedy, an aspect of Plato’s thinking on poetry that will be prominent in my
interpretation. Levin does provide, as she indicates, “a powerful reminder of how central the
quarrel with poetry is for Plato” (167). Yet to think that Plato regards the quarrel as settled in
favor of philosophy—as philosophy is represented by Socrates’ argument in Republic X—is on
my reading to neglect the underlying questions Plato aims to raise, which pertain in part to the
very possibility of philosophy as so represented.
Raymond Barfield, in his recently published monograph, The Ancient Quarrel Between
Philosophy and Poetry (2011), does to a certain extent address these underlying questions. The
book is an expansive study of the ancient quarrel in its original formulation in Plato and in its
subsequent reception, loosely conceived, presented in eleven episodes, each of which focuses on
one or more key figures from Aristotle through to Mikhail Bahktin. Barfield would agree with
literary tradition on Plato’s thought, a tradition that includes figures like Homer and Hesiod no
less than Parmenides and Heraclitus. It is, Barfield argues, “precisely the similarities between
poetry and philosophy that lend energy to the quarrelsome relationship between the two” (2).
Barfield, with Levin and others I shall discuss presently, regards the quarrel as something
“created before our eyes” in the Republic (17). Through much of his discussion, Barfield also
seems to agree with Levin on a number of points about which I have raised concerns. He
assumes, without argument, that Socrates speaks on behalf of Plato, that Plato is to be understood
as an unambiguous advocate of philosophy, and that the philosophy Plato is advocating in
opposition to poetry is represented by the kinds of arguments presented by Socrates in Book X.
Barfield does, however, bring to the fore what I regard to be some of the key issues in Plato’s
formulation of the ancient quarrel.
Weaving together the discussions of poetry in the Republic and the Ion, Barfield maintains
that for Plato, while poetry may provide “starting points for philosophical inquiry,” the inquiry
itself must take place within the realm of reasoned discourse.13 Because the wisdom of poetry,
such as it is, is not achieved by dialectical inquiry but bestowed through inspiration, and because
poetry depicts and plays upon emotion, it is not an integral part of, and can even be a distraction
from, philosophical investigation. Barfield identifies and acknowledges this critique, but then
raises an important question. He points out that there “is a motivating force in the act of
philosophy that might properly be called a feeling” (20). He refers to this as “transcendental
13
feeling,” and later clarifies it as “the conviction that ‘life is good’” (20).14 While I ultimately
disagree that the relevant “feeling” should be identified in this way, Barfield’s argument is
illuminating. He writes:
If a poet does make a claim to induce any sense of “life as good,” the
philosophical rejoinder Socrates offers is that such recognition requires some concept of what goodness is. But the converse might be argued: to begin a discussion about goodness, one must first experience something as good in order to question the nature of that experience. Philosophical thought must have some fundamental experience with which to begin, an experience that is in some sense necessarily unreasoned, prior to reason’s work, which occurs while the
questioning mind is “absent” or at least precedes the activity of questioning and analysis (20).
Again, while I do not agree about the content of the “sense” induced by poetry, the salient
point is that, for Plato, the quarrel turns ultimately on a question of non-discursive experience
that orients and directs a way of life.15 On my reading, this experience is encountered in,
provided by, both poetry and philosophy. What Barfield calls the “motivating force” is, in
Plato’s language, properly referred to as erôs.16 Seen in this light, the ancient quarrel raises a
complex psychological question both about erôs (the desire itself, manifest in the attraction to
philosophical or poetic discourse) and about that which inspires and sustains erotic desire (the
content of the discourses). For Plato, erôs is, in the first place (and possibly also in the last
14 Barfield indicates that he is borrowing language here from J. A. Stewart.
15 See the discussion in Lear (2006) of the “orienting” power of poetry, which through allegory [hyponoia] can
convey meanings that enter “the psyche beneath the radar of critical thought” (27). On Lear’s account of Socrates’ argument, the child’s incapacity to distinguish between the surface and the deeper meaning of an allegory (see Republic 378d-e) is analogous to the typical adult’s incapacity to recognize the “allegorical nature of ordinary experience” (35). Thus the mythical and allegorical aspects of Plato’s writing can have an orienting, or re-orienting effect on his adult reader, different from but analogous to the effect that stories have on the developing psyche of a child.
16 The “original experience” evoked here is akin to what Robert Pippin has called “original erotic attachment” in
place), a response to beauty [to kalon].17 It is here, as the present study argues, that Plato’s
particular emphasis on tragedy, which is addressed by neither Barfield nor Levin, comes into
play.
Barfield recognizes the relevance of erôs to the questions he is addressing and concludes
his chapter on Plato with a discussion of the Phaedrus and the Symposium. He argues that Plato
styles himself as a “new poet” who “will sing about what lies beyond the heavens where true
being resides in a manner touchable only by reason” (24). Yet Barfield also sees that any writing
that contains an account of “true being” will be subject to the same kind of critiques Socrates
levels against poetry. Plato’s writing, he suggests, is meant to replace traditional poetry,
attracting and enthralling the reader, facilitating the kind of “fundamental experience” that will
draw its readers into a life of inquiry. Such a project, however, encounters a problem brought out
by Barfield as follows:
If we are to persist in the training of the soul, we must believe training is for some end. But until the soul has actually reached the final revelation, it cannot be certain that the goal toward which it is working is actually reachable. Indeed, it cannot be certain that the goal is real at all (26).
This dilemma is explicitly thematized at various points in the dialogues when Socrates
encourages his interlocutors to persevere in their investigations. A particularly prominent
example comes in the Meno, when Meno expresses doubt about the possibility of ever learning
anything new. Socrates responds by encouraging Meno not to give up. There are of course
17 As recounted in the Symposium, Diotima asks Socrates about the lover of beauty: if he were to get that which he
loves, what would he have? Socrates responds that he is unable to answer the question, so Diotima replaces the beautiful [to kalon] with the good [to agathon]. Socrates responds that the lover of the good will be happy
multiple and familiar ironies in the fact that Socrates’ response is to recount what he says he has
heard from priests and priestesses and divine poets about reincarnation and the doctrine of
recollection. He proposes to rely on the kind of authority he at other times treats skeptically, and
he invokes myth to inspire confidence in dialectical inquiry. My point is that, as Barfield
recognizes, just this kind of irony is also at play in the relationship between Plato and his readers.
Barfield canvases several potential Platonic responses to this dilemma. At one point, he
adduces the “perfect revelations” vouchsafed to Socrates by Diotima in the Symposium. One who
beholds the form of the beautiful, writes Barfield, “experiences a vision without becoming
ecstatic or possessed by a god, without losing reason … the vision is attained in part through
reason properly used. This is the source of a new and better type of poetry, the sort of poetry
Plato writes” (28). Now, while the Symposium may well offer a description of the kind of erotic
attachment that could sustain a life, this does not mean that to read the Symposium is to have the
relevant experience. Even in the context of the dialogue, we should note, the “revelation” is
heavily qualified. All of what Diotima says is seen as through a glass darkly: it is what
Apollodorus says Aristodemus says about what Socrates said quite along time ago about what
Diotima said years before that. Moreover, Diotima explicitly warns Socrates, just prior to these
final revelations, that he may not be able to able to follow her (210a).
Barfield suggests, alternatively, that Plato relies on the example of Socrates to combat the
erotic power of traditional poetry. The dialogues may not themselves reveal “true being” in a
way that can inspire attachment to a way of life, but they provide an example of a person
dedicated to the search for “true being” and “this example prods us to persist along the way”
(27). Here again, however, it is one thing to see Socrates engaged in dialectical reasoning,
dialogues for the superiority of the examined life. But there is also, persistently, the suggestion—
most saliently in the discussions of erôs—that rational discourse is not sufficient to account for
the attachment to a way of life. Moreover, when Socrates is presented as exemplary, there is
always the danger that one may come to love Socrates rather than that which Socrates loved.
This very danger seems to be on display in the Symposium, where we are presented one version
after another of individuals (Apollodorus, Aristodemus, Alcibiades) who have fallen in love with
Socrates but have not adopted his way of life in the deepest sense (though barefoot Aristodemus
seems to have adopted his lifestyle).18 Barfield refers to Socrates, misunderstood in this way, as a
“false image” and calls this consummation of desire as “false completion” (30). He suggests that
Plato’s presentation of Socrates, and his writing in general, is designed to circumvent this by
pointing beyond itself. “The task of the true poet,” he writes, “is to make an image that sparks
love, without becoming itself the false object of that love” (31). In the end, Barfield’s version of
the relationship between philosophy and poetry in Plato looks more like a happy marriage than a
quarrel. “True poetry,” he concludes, “creates the starting point from which philosophy
proceeds” (31).
This however, as I shall discuss in Chapter Three, is to decide the matter in favor of
poetry. Plato is here presented as a “true poet” because his writing points beyond itself, but to
what does it point, and how does one evaluate the truth or falsity of that toward which it points?
Or, to put it in moral terms, the goodness or badness of that toward which it points? The
question, again, is about that which is deemed worthy of love and devotion in the most profound
sense. How does one know, for that matter, that the writing points toward anything at all, rather
18 As McNeill observes, Apollodorus and Alcibaides do not understand “the implication of Socrates’ poetic
than being a vague gesture toward the beyond, or simply toward nothing? If one acknowledges
that “true being” cannot be revealed through discursive activity (“the limits of language”
(Barfield 2011, 25)) it seems to be sheer will—what Nietzsche calls the will to power—or blind
piety to claim this status for Plato and his writing.19 Moreover, as I discuss Chapters Three and
Four, in the absence of any determinant account of the object of desire, it is difficult to see how
this understanding of philosophical erôs is to be differentiated from the equally object-less desire
that Plato characterizes in the Republic as tyrannical.
While Barfield was motivated to revisit the original site of the quarrel by reflecting on what
he saw as its prodigious legacy, one might also be motivated by the question of its prehistory.
There has been a tacit assumption, and at times an explicit contention, among at least some
scholars that the ancient quarrel really was “ancient” when Plato was writing—that is to say, that
the antagonism suggested by Socrates’ formulation referred to a pre-existing tension between
two different modes of discourse. Curtius, for example, writes that “Plato’s criticism of Homer is
the culmination of the ‘quarrel’ between philosophy and poetry that was already ancient in
Plato’s time” (Curtius 1990, 204).20 However, as Glenn Most observes in a recently published
study of the issue, there is scant evidence in the pre-Platonic record of philosophers criticizing
poets, and with the exception of Old Comedy, there is even less evidence of poets attacking
philosophers.21 Most analyzes the passages of poetry cited by Socrates as evidence for the
19 Rosen (1988), whom I discuss in Chapter Three, recognizes this problem and makes the explicit connection to
Nietzsche.
20 Additional examples where this is made explicit include Kannicht (1980), Gould (1990), and Richardson (1992).
In other work, e.g. Nussbaum (1990), the assumption is implicit.
21Most (2011). Most notes that Nightingale (1995) and Murray (1996) reach similar conclusions. Adam, writing his
commentary on the Republic at the start of the 20th century, calls attention to the paucity of pre-Platonic evidence
quarrel (607b-c) and argues that, while all of them seem to be in the style of Old Comedy, they
are deliberately presented as anonymous fragments, generalized by Plato to refer not to specific
individuals, but to “larger discursive structures” (19).22 We might add that this is in marked
contrast to many other citations from poets in the Republic, where Socrates routinely specifies
the author.Most, following Nightingale (60) and Murray (231), concludes that “this opposition
[sc. between philosophy and poetry] may even be in the process of being constructed” by Plato
in the Republic itself (19).
If it is the case that Socrates, in speaking of the ancient quarrel, is not recalling a familiar
notion but is rather proposing a new insight, then the importance of revisiting the original
formulation of the quarrel gains in urgency. For if this is not a piece of literary history, if the
very distinction between philosophy and poetry—which, as we have seen, has been a recurring
concern throughout the subsequent history of Western culture—is being first formulated and
crystallized in the Republic, the question of Plato’s purpose in doing so becomes paramount.
In the Phaedrus, Socrates suggests that dialectic is a matter of seeing together those things
that belong together and separating things that belong apart, cutting up each thing “according to
its species along its natural joints,” and he claims to be “a lover of these divisions and
collections” (266a-b).23 It is in this light that I approach Plato’s formulation of the ancient
quarrel. I regard it as a dialectical operation. More specifically, I see it as an attempt not only to
22 It is a bit of a puzzle that Socrates would only cite passages that come, or sound like them come, from comedy,
given the unambiguous emphasis on tragedy throughout Book X. Socrates refers explicitly to comedy only once in Book X (606c), while references to tragedy and tragic poets abound. The explanation may simply be, as Most (2011) suggests, that the only direct criticism of philosophy by poets in the preceding literary tradition was to be found in Old Comedy. Plato presents the quarrel as pertaining to all of poetry, conceived (as it is in the Republic) as a discourse in opposition to philosophy, and clearly suggests that tragedy is the focal point. For rhetorical purposes, however, he makes due with and massages the evidence on hand to support his larger point.
identify the differences between the two named modes of discourse, but also to show that they
embody fundamentally different conceptions of the human condition and of how one ought to
live. The irony, as I shall argue in Chapter Three, is that the two modes are conceived in such a
way that the explicit endorsement of either is an implicit endorsement of its opposite. Plato’s
position on this, I argue, is aporetic: the quarrel is deliberately unsettled.
The discussion of the relationship between philosophy and poetry in the Republic and
elsewhere in Plato is thus not meant, as many have argued, to settle the matter. It is rather
designed to demonstrate the limits of such discursive activity and to investigate the underlying
principles and practical effectiveness of each.24 Moreover, as I aim to show, Plato is particularly
concerned with tragedy—with what he calls tragedy, at least—because of its connection to
another of Plato’s central themes, erôs.
The main concerns of my investigation, which I shall summarize presently, are expressed
pithily—aphoristically, one might say—in a remark by Socrates that I borrow from the Minos.
Tragedy, says Socrates to his unnamed interlocutor, is the most “soul-leading
[psuchagôgikôtaton]” form of poetry (321a).25 In the present study, I argue that tragedy is, from
24 This approach to Plato has precedent among his earliest interpreters in the Academy. As Tarrant (2000) argues, it
was typical among the Academic readers of Plato to see the dialogues as designed to suggest “ways in which a problem might be approached or a question answered," rather than to decide the question (10). Some went so far as to argue that Plato was "systematic in his non-commitment, or even that he took a stance that was hostile to commitment" (13-14).
25 In the most substantial recent commentary on the Minos, Joachim Dalfen notes that the dialogue had been
accepted as an authentic work of Plato throughout antiquity, but that since the early 19th century its authenticity has
Plato’s perspective, poetry par excellence. This means that what is said about poetry, particularly
in its relationship to philosophy, is exhibited most clearly in the case of tragedy. It also means
that the potency Plato ascribes to poetry is exemplified most fully in the case of tragedy.
Psuchagôgikôtaton is an apt term to express what I regard as Plato’s general conception of the
power in question. The word is an adjective in the superlative form, derived the substantive for
“soul” [psuchê] and the verb “to lead” [agô— “I lead”]. Psuchagôgia and its cognates appear
prior to Plato in connection with revivification rituals, as for example in Aeschylus’ Persians
(687) and Aristophanes’ Birds (1555). It is the act of calling upon the dead and leading them, in a
sense, back to life: a notion not devoid of erotic resonance. Beyond the strictly ritual context, the
word-group is used to signify enchantment, bewitchment, or persuasion. 26 In the Phaedrus,
Socrates says that rhetoric is “an art of leading the soul through words” [technê psuchagôgia …
dia logon] (261a cf. 271c). For Plato, as I read him, this is also the power of tragedy. To
understand the workings of this power it is essential to consider Plato’s conception of erôs. It is
in fact in the Phaedrus where we find the most vivid depiction in all of Plato of the kind of
orienting erotic attachment that I referred to above. As Socrates explains, this attachment is the
experience of the soul in response to beauty (250d-252c).27 Plato’s concern with soul-leading
26 For this broader use, see for example Isocrates 2.49 and 9.10; Xenophon, Memorobilia 3.10.6, and Plato, Timaeus
71a; Laws 909b; Phaedrus 261a and 271c. Yunis notes that the passages in the Phaedrus call attention to the literal meaning of the term, though he perhaps goes too far in saying that this usage “discards any notion of religious ritual or magic” Plato (2011), 236. This is, after all, a dialogue in which a divine madness is praised and a complex myth is invoked to account for human erotic experience. Even as Socrates, at the start of the dialogue, eschews
mythological accounts of meteorological phenomenon, he acknowledges that he is in a profound sense unknown to himself (230a). There is throughout the dialogue the acknowledgment of something unknown about what constitutes and moves the soul. There is also the suggestion, on multiple levels, that a polyvalent discourse, embracing logos and muthos, might be necessary, even if not sufficient, in the effort to account for and educe the human soul.
27 Aristotle uses a cognate, the verb form psuchagôgeô, to characterize the power of tragedy (1450a33), and beauty
power of tragedy and his concern with erôs, I shall be arguing, intersect in the vexed issue of
tragic beauty.
In general terms, I maintain that the quarrel between philosophy and poetry turns ultimately
on the question of erôs, in the expansive sense in which Plato uses this term. While all
manifestations of human desire can be comprehended under the general heading of erôs, at least
as it is presented by Socrates in the Symposium, philosophy is portrayed as the highest and most
complete manifestation of erotic striving. Philosophical erôs, as the desire to know, is directed
toward and determined by its proper cognitive objects, the beautiful and/or the good. Erôs is
therefore, at least in principle, satiable, but also, and for that reason, subject to surcease. Even in
dialogues in which Socrates offers this account of philosophical erôs, however, he also
elaborates and explores the power of tragedy to arouse, capture, and sustain the erotic
imagination. What this power reveals, I argue, is a conception of desire that, unlike the
philosophical conception, has no proper object. The spectator of tragedy—the lover of tragedy—
does not behold any delimited object of desire but rather witnesses a display of the transgression
of limit as such. On my reading of the dialogues, tragic beauty—which Plato is the first to isolate
and analyze—is the spectacle of perpetual transgression. The contrast with philosophical erôs
could not be more pronounced. For insofar as tragic beauty is regarded as the object of human
striving, human desire is perpetually sustained but, by the same token, radically insatiable.
Therein lies the root of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry as Plato conceives it. At stake
here are issues in aesthetics as well as ethics, questions as relevant to moral psychology as they
are to literary criticism. In broadest terms, Plato’s engagement with tragedy is a reflection on the
nature and fate of desire: the conditions under which it is or can be sustained, and the possibility
1
The nature and power of images
The critique of poetry in Book X of Plato's Republic has so often been attacked or
dismissed that it has difficulty gaining a fair hearing. Part of the explanation for this lies in the
tendency to read the text from the top down, so to speak, beginning with assumptions about
Plato's "theory of ideas" and interpreting the discussion in that light. In this chapter, I shall be
attempting the reverse: to read from the ground up, attending to the common sense intuitions that
motivate the argument and making a plea for its plausibility.1 I shall eventually want to claim
that even on a maximally charitable interpretation, there are serious limitations to Socrates'
account, but to discern those limitations clearly, it is best to first put his case as strongly as
possible.
I track the critique as it unfolds in three consecutive—ultimately, I maintain, unified—
arguments. Through the analogy with painting, the distinction between image and original, and
the concept of a divided and desiring soul, Socrates renders an account of the human intercourse
with images that ultimately posits tragic poetry as a formidable rival for philosophy. As Socrates
suggests at the close of the critique, this rivalry can be understood in erotic terms. To get there,
however, we need first to explicate the analysis of the nature and power of images.
I should at the outset say a word about Plato’s nomenclature. The key substantive used in
Book X to refer to that which a mimetic maker makes is eidôlon. For example, when Socrates
asks Glaucon whether, if a man were able to make both “the thing to be imitated
[mimêsthêsomenon] and the phantom [eidôlon],” he would be serious about making phantoms.
1 This bottom-up approach is inspired in part by as yet unpublished work by James Redfield on Book X, although
Eidôlon is distinguished in Plato, although not always consistently, from eikôn. As a general rule,
eidôlon signifies a copy that is less in truth and being than its original; eikôn is a more neutral
word, not necessarily implying ontological inferiority. However, there is some overlap. A
reflection in water may be referred to as an eidôlon (520c) or as an eikôn (402b-c), for example.
And although eikôn is not used to refer to the work of artists in Book X, Socrates does use eikôn
earlier to refer to “images of animals” made by craftsmen [dêmiourgoi], where the reference
seems to be to the work of painters or sculptors (401b).2 It is also worth noting that while an
image in the lowest section of the divided line is an eikôn (509e ff), the images on the wall in the
cave in Book VII are referred to as eidôla (520c).3 In Book X, Socrates also draws on the phainô
word-group (phainomenon, phantasma), denoting in a very basic sense “something which
appears,” to identify the objects painters and poets make.4 There does not seem to be a rigidly
systematic deployment of nomenclature here. Rather, Socrates is conducting an inquiry into a
cluster of familiar, loosely related objects and experiences, effectively de-familiarizing them
through his questions and observations, compelling reflection, and gradually developing an
account of the nature and power of what, taken as a group, we may refer to as images. To make
clear the differences among, and also what is common to, these various kinds of objects is, as I
understand it, part of Socrates’ intention in these discussions.
2 When Socrates first introduces the idea of the mimetic maker in Book X, he refers to him as a craftsman
[dêmiourgos] who is to be distinguished from the manual artisans [cheirotechnoi] (596c). Shortly thereafter, the painter is explicitly identified as a mimetic maker [mimêtês], differentiated from such craftsmen as, for example, the carpenter [klinopoios] (597d-e). The idea seems to be that “craftsmen” is the genus, within which manual artists and mimetic makers are species. Carpenters belong to the former group; painters (and, as he will soon argue, poets) belong to the latter.
3
In the Sophist, we seem to get a clear typology of images, but there too the nomenclature is not always consistent. See note 11.
1.1 Mimêsis and the ontology of images
Socrates begins, characteristically, with a question: "Could you tell me in general what
mimêsis is?,” he asks Glaucon. “For neither do I myself quite apprehend what it would be at
(585c).”5 He does not ask Glaucon for a direct answer, but rather, prompts him first to reflect on
the way in which objects are made, taking the simple example of a couch. And although his
ultimate purpose is to disclose the nature of images in poetry, he begins by way of an analogy
with painting. Now, painted images obviously differ in many respects from those in poetry, but
we are implicitly asked to entertain the possibility that, in respect of mimêsis, there is some
essential sense in which they are the same, and it is that sense which Socrates endeavors to bring
to light. Let us first consider, therefore, what Socrates tries to achieve by beginning with the
example of painting. That done, we can then consider how the analogy works with regard to the
real topic of concern, tragic poetry.
1.1.1 Painting
Mimêsis and related terms have a wide range of application at the time Plato is writing. In
the Republic, for example, Socrates uses it in earlier books to denote dramatic impersonation as
distinct, in a formal sense, from narration (392c ff.) and to refer to the correspondence between a
harmonic mode in music and certain human actions and experiences (399a-b), while elsewhere in
the Platonic corpus the term has still other connotations. 6 At the root is the idea of a resemblance
5 I have used the English translations of the Republic by Bloom (Plato (1968)) and Shorey (Plato (1935)), the latter
cited in boldface to differentiate it. Occasional minor alterations are not marked; my own translations are marked as such.
6
between two distinct things, but the particulars of that resemblance may vary greatly from case to
case.7 In the Book X discussion, by using painting as the exemplar of mimêsis, Socrates
foregrounds visual appearance as the significant factor in the comparison, and in so doing, he
emphasizes both the similarity and the difference in appearance between the two relevant
objects. The image of a couch made by the painter certainly differs in some respects from that
which a carpenter makes. Most prominently, the former is in two dimensions, the latter in three.
At the same time, the two must in some sense resemble one another, since it is this resemblance
that permits us to correlate them—the painted image is of a couch, and not, say, of a chariot.8
The crux of the issue comes across in the following exchange:
“I suppose you’ll say that [the painter] doesn’t truly make what he makes. And yet in a certain way the painter too does make a couch, doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” [Glaucon] said, “he too makes what looks like a couch” (596e).9
The painter makes what looks like a couch; he makes the appearance of a couch. But what,
in relation to the original couch, is that thing which looks like it? What is a mimetic image? That
difficult question, which will subsequently have a long and illustrious history in western
philosophy, is what Socrates attempts to formulate through the discussion of a painted couch.
He does not argue that the image is “an object sui generis, to be judged,” as R. G. Collingwood
7 Murray represents the general consensus when she writes, "Mimesis is a protean term, whose precise connotations
vary according to context, but broadly speaking, mimesis and its cognates indicate a relation between something which is and something made to resemble it," Murray (1996), 3. See further bibliography in note 6.
8 Certainly there are many cases in which a pre-established code that does not rely on resemblance facilitates
recognition. Architectural plans indicate elevation through conventional code, not resemblance. But this is not what Socrates has in mind here, and it seems unlikey that he would consider an architectural plan to be mimetic in the specified sense.
9 "alla phêseis ouk alêthê, oimai, auton poiein ha poiei. kaitoi tropôi ye tini kai ho zôgraphos klinên poiei. ê ou; Nai,
puts it in his influential interpretation, “by a standard peculiar to itself.”10 Nor is it accurate to
claim, as Alexander Nehamas does in rejecting Collingwood, that Plato’s position is “exactly the
reverse,” i.e., that Plato holds that “the imitator of an F thing produces a seeming F thing, an
object whose identity is constituted by the thing that it seems to be, not by any properties that it
might have in its own right" (Nehamas 1999, 262-63). The position advanced in Book X of the
Republic lies in between these two extremes and is more puzzling than either of them. What
Socrates plainly emphasizes is what we might call the ontological ambiguity of the mimetic
image: there is a way in which the painter makes something that is a couch, and a way in which
what he makes is not a couch.
We can locate this claim at several points. As we have already seen, Socrates proposes that
the painter "doesn’t truly make what he makes. And yet in a certain way the painter too does
make a couch,” a position to which Glaucon gives assent (596e). Just prior to this, Socrates
introduces the idea of the mimetic artist with the same ambiguity, “Tell me, do you deny
altogether the possibility of such a craftsman, or do you admit that in a sense [tini men tropôi]
there could be such a creator of all these things, and in another sense [tini de] not?” (596 d-e). It
is later asserted simply that the mimetic artist "makes what look like beings but are not." The
issue, again, is what those things are that "look like beings” (599a). In the Sophist, the
ambiguous ontological status of images is summarized in the Stranger's remark that an image, 11
10 Collingwood argues that the mimetic image does have this independent status, that this is the implication of the
“doctrine of the three degrees of reality,” (Collingwood (1925), 159). He sees this as the first step in any "real philosophy of art," which must "distinguish art from science and morality and handicraft and … assert that it has a sphere of its own,” a position that is likewise not put forward by Plato’s Socrates, nor is it one that the author or his character would espouse (159). Nehamas opposes Collingwood's notion of the radical independence of the art object, but he goes too far in the other direction (Nehamas (1999), 262).
11 As we noted early in the context of the Republic, so too in the Sophist, Plato’s nomenclature can be fairly loose. In
though "not really being [ouk on … ontôs]," nevertheless "really is that which we call an
image."12 Jacob Klein catches the character of this idea nicely when he writes that for Plato,
“‘image’ is uniquely that which is not what it is.”13
However paradoxical this formulation might sound, I would like to suggest that there is
some intuitive plausibility to what Socrates says. Most of the objects in our world do not
immediately pose an ontological puzzle. We are utterly familiar with couches and tables; we use
them without wondering about them. Their being in our world does not immediately raise a
question about their being.14 Not so with an image of a couch painted on a flat piece of wood.
The image immediately raises a question about its being by resembling something else, and
doing so not just accidentally but essentially.15 If we see only paint and wood, we are not seeing
the image, and likewise if we see only a couch (a trompe l’oeil in a literal sense). Socrates is
ambiguous ontological status of images, which however are at this point referred to as eikones (240b12). Earlier in the dialogue, eidôlon is clearly marked out as the genus, of which eikôn and phantasma are differing species. But what is said about the being of eikones at 240b12 would seem to apply equally to phantasmata. In other words, eikôn at this point seems equivalent to the genus-term eidôlon.
12
240b12-13 (my translation). There has been some debate over the text. I follow the most recent OCT edition, edited by Duke, Hicken, et al. in accepting Badham’s emendation to the majority of the manuscripts, omitting the second “ouk” after “ara.” The OCT text reads: “ouk on ara ontôs, estin ontôs hên legomen eikona;” (240b12-13) (Plato (1995)). Burnet, in the earlier OCT edition, printed: "Ouk on ara [ouk] ontôs estin ontôs hên legomen eikona;" (Plato (1900)). The majority of English translators, as well as Heidegger in his commentary on the Sophist, omit the second ouk. Friedländer (1969a), 520n39 and Kohnke (1957) believe it should be retained. Even if it is retained, the ontological ambiguity remains, for the Stranger would still be saying that what we “really call an image” [estin ontôs hên legomen eikona ] “really is not” [ouk ontôs estin], that is to say, “does not have being,” or “is not in its being” or “is not really real.” This is how Burnet reads it in a subsequent article, in which he argues that the second “ouk” should be restored (Burnet (1920), 137). His translation: “then does it not follow that what we speak of as really an image is not really real.”
13Klein (1965), 115. Klein is discussing the eikones as they are presented in connection with the divided line in Book
VI. As I shall be arguing in Chapter Two, the treatment of images in Books VI and X are complementary.
14Heidegger expresses this as the "withdrawing" of what is "ready-to-hand": “The peculiarity of what is proximally
ready-to-hand [zuhanden] is that, in order to be ready-to-hand, it must, at it were, withdraw [zurückziehen] in order to be ready-to-hand quite authentically” (Heidegger (1962), 99).
15 Benardete makes a similar observation in his commentary on the Sophist: “The beings do not at once raise
proposing that insofar as we call it the image (or painting or representation, etc.) of a couch, we
are implying a certain ontological ambiguity, saying that the thing to which we are referring both
is and is not a couch.16 To anticipate the subsequent direction of the inquiry for a moment, we
can note here the analogous ambiguity in the three-dimensional world of the tragic theatre: the
actor on the stage both is and is not Oedipus, son of Laius and Jocasta. If we see only a human
being reciting words that he has memorized, we do not see the character in the play; if we see
only Oedipus, we fail to see the enactment as an image.17
Through the analogy with painting, Socrates is attempting to account for the inherent
duality, or "two-foldedness" of our intercourse with images.18 As we shall see below, this
objective side of the argument, which ascribes ontological ambiguity to images, will be
complemented by a subjective account later in Book X that posits a bifurcation in the mind of the
spectator. For now, however, let us remain with the objects of mimêsis, but turn to an aspect of
the painting analogy that conspicuously lacks the intuitive plausibility we have noted thus far.
Socrates proposes that the couches and tables made by craftsmen—those objects of familiarity
16 Allen comes close to this understanding of the situation when he argues that Plato is recognizing a distinction
between apprehending a picture "as a picture" and apprehending it "as an art object." In the first case, we see an object that "does not differ in type or degree from its original"—the couch and the piece of wood with paint on it are, seen in this way, ontologically the same in degree and type. Apprehended as an art object, however, the picture is "relational," dependent on and less real than its original" (Allen (1971), 175). The question Plato raises here about the peculiar relationship between a mimetic image and its original had currency in other ancient authors as well. See, for example, Xenophon's depiction of Socrates' interview with the painter Parrhasius and the sculptor Cleiton (Memorabilia, 3.10.1-8). He asks the latter how he manages to produce the "appearance of life" in his sculptures. Surveying an (admittedly thin) historical record, Halliwell concludes that "we can be confident that questions regarding the status and character of visual mimêsis were under discussion in classical Athens (Halliwell (2002), 120).
17 One may want to object that many things both “are” and “are not” what they are: a broken piano, for instance, or
an unfinished table. Such things, however, are either on their way to becoming or retreating from what they are. A painting of a piano isn’t on its way to become a piano. It is what it is (a painting of a piano), but what it is dependent on what it is not.
that we use unquestioningly and that are the originals relative to the copies made by painters—
are themselves images in the sense specified—that they too are ontologically ambigious.19
Immediately after the passage cited above in which Glaucon assents to the claim that the painter
both makes and does not make a couch, or as Glaucon rephrases it, that he makes “what looks
like a couch,” Socrates asks:
“And what about the couchmaker? Weren’t you just saying that he doesn’t make the form, which is what we, of course, say a couch is, but a certain couch?” “Yes,” he said, “I was saying that.”
“Then, if he doesn’t make what is, he wouldn’t make the being but something that is like the being, but is not being” (597a).20
The carpenter is the craftsman of a couch (597d), but what he makes is not completely
being (597a). The carpenter’s couch, then, is also something that “is not what it is,” but unlike in
the case of the painted image, this claim does not have prima facie plausibility. As noted above, a
couch or table or any other piece of equipment from our daily lives seems to be eminently what it
is, so much so that what it is, the being of the couch, does not pose itself as a question.21 And yet
19 Nehamas persuasively counters the common misconception that "Plato accuses art of being an imitation of an
imitation" (Nehamas (1999), 261). But Socrates does still argue that artistic images are imitations of other
likenesses, not beings, a point that Nehamas elides. Socrates is making a distinction between mimetic images (made by the painter or poet) and non-mimetic images, made by the craftsman. What Nehamas calls Plato’s “linguistic vacillation”—the fact that poets are called both makers of images and imitators of images—is not indicative of Plato's failure to mark the distinction (263). The mimetic artist does make an image, but in doing so, he is imitating an original that in its turn is also an image. So he is both a maker and an imitator of images.
20 The end of the passage cited reads: “oukoun ei mê ho estin poiei, ouk an to on poioi, alla ti toiouton hoion to on,
on de ou;” (597a3-4).
21 Of course, something may happen to prompt us to confront this question. In Heidegger’s language, the object may
