Tag Archives: Ancient Philosophy

Socrates’ Swan Song

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In the maddening swirl of language, we seldom reflect on the meaning of individual words or phrases.  It is not so surprising then, when we pass by even more obscure idioms and metaphors, although this paradoxically does not prevent us from using them again in turn!

One of these phrases is “swan song”, often meaning the last effort or final production coming from someone in his respective field before retirement, or sometimes, death.  This idea has a long pedigree in Western thought.  It first appears in literature in Aeschylus (Agamemnon, 1444), and has not performed its own swan song in our communal imagination since.  The idea behind the myth was that the swan is silent its entire life save the prescience it is granted of its oncoming death, then the swan pours out the first and final charming melodies from its soul.

Socrates himself alludes to this myth, albeit not without commenting on what he sees as its probable origin:

But I seem to you more common than the swans regarding prophecy, which when they sense that it necessary that they die, they sing in the interval before death, indeed, at that time, especially and most beautifully do they sing, rejoicing that they are about to go to the divine, the very thing they serve.  And men, because of their own fear of death, they both slander the swans and they say that the swans lament their death singing because of pain, and they do not consider that no bird sings when in hunger or cold or during any other pain it undergoes, nor does the nightingale, the swallow, nor the hoopoe, which they say laments singing because of its pain.  But these do not appear to me to sing because they are pained, nor do the swans, but I think, since they are prophetic, being from Apollo, and foreknowing the good things in Hades they sing and rejoice during that day more than in the time before.  I myself think I am a co-laborer of the swans and a priest of the same god, and I have the gift of prophecy from my master not worse than theirs, nor do I think I am freed from a life more melancholy than theirs.

ὡς ἔοικε, τῶν κύκνων δοκῶ φαυλότερος ὑμῖν εἶναι τὴν μαντικήν, οἳ ἐπειδὰν αἴσθωνται ὅτι δεῖ αὐτοὺς ἀποθανεῖν, ᾁδοντες καὶ ἐν τῷ πρόσθεν χρόνῳ, τότε δὴ πλεῖστα καὶ κάλλιστα ᾁδουσι, γεγηθότες ὅτι μέλλουσι παρὰ τὸν θεὸν ἀπιέναι οὗπέρ εἰσι θεράποντες. οἱ δ᾽ ἄνθρωποι διὰ τὸ αὑτῶν δέος τοῦ θανάτου καὶ τῶν κύκνων καταψεύδονται, καί φασιν αὐτοὺς θρηνοῦντας τὸν θάνατον ὑπὸ λύπης ἐξᾴδειν, καὶ οὐ λογίζονται ὅτι οὐδὲν ὄρνεον ᾁδει ὅταν πεινῇ ἢ ῥιγῷ ἤ τινα ἄλλην λύπην λυπῆται, οὐδὲ αὐτὴ ἥ τε ἀηδὼν καὶ χελιδὼν καὶ ὁ ἔποψ, ἃ δή φασι διὰ λύπην θρηνοῦντα ᾁδειν. ἀλλ᾽ οὔτε ταῦτά μοι φαίνεται λυπούμενα ᾁδειν οὔτε οἱ κύκνοι, ἀλλ᾽ ἅτε οἶμαι τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ὄντες, μαντικοί τέ εἰσι καὶ προειδότες τὰ ἐν Ἅιδου ἀγαθὰ ᾁδουσι καὶ τέρπονται ἐκείνην τὴν ἡμέραν διαφερόντως ἢ ἐν τῷ ἔμπροσθεν χρόνῳ. ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς ἡγοῦμαι ὁμόδουλός τε εἶναι τῶν κύκνων καὶ ἱερὸς τοῦ αὐτοῦ θεοῦ, καὶ οὐ χεῖρον ἐκείνων τὴν μαντικὴν ἔχειν παρὰ τοῦ δεσπότου, οὐδὲ δυσθυμότερον αὐτῶν τοῦ βίου ἀπαλλάττεσθαι. ἀλλὰ τούτου γ᾽ ἕνεκα λέγειν τε χρὴ καὶ ἐρωτᾶν ὅτι ἂν βούλησθε, ἕως ἂν Ἀθηναίων ἐῶσιν ἄνδρες ἕνδεκα. Phaedo 84e-85b

Mirroring the Ego: Aristotle’s Origin of Friendship Part 1

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Like few philosophers before or since, Aristotle is a keen taxonomist.  He orders and arranges things, ideas and arguments into various categories, some of which are very helpful.  Others seem bizarre or quaint to the modern reader.

In the Nichomachean Ethics Aristotle devotes an entire chapter to discussing friendship.  Aristotle divides friendships into three categories: the perfect, the pleasurable, and the useful.  As one could guess, you can do no better than a perfect friendship.  As Aristotle launches upon one of his characteristic asides he discusses the origin of friendship in general.

The marks of friendship with respect to the relationships of our intimates, and by which friendships themselves are defined, appear to come from our relationship with ourselves.  For they define the friend as someone who wishes or does the good, or what appears good, on account of the other, or as someone who wishes his friend to exist and to live for his own sake.  This is the same thing mothers feel toward their children, or friends who have come into conflict.  Others define the friend as someone who spends time and chooses the same things as his friend or as someone who shares in the joy and sorrow of the friend.  This latter definition especially concerns mothers.  With one of these ideas they also define friendship.  Each of these is found in the good man’s relation with himself (and with respect to other men, in that way in which they think they are such, just as it is said, virtue and the good man seem to be the measure for each).  The good man is likeminded with himself, and he grasps at the same things with his entire soul.  And he wishes the good for himself and what appears to be good, and he does it (for to do good is characteristic of a good man) and on account of himself (that is, for the sake of the intellectual faculty, which very thing each man seems to be).

τὰ φιλικὰ δὲ τὰ πρὸς τοὺς πέλας, καὶ οἷς αἱ φιλίαι ὁρίζονται, ἔοικεν ἐκ τῶν πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐληλυθέναι. τιθέασι γὰρ φίλον τὸν βουλόμενον καὶ πράττοντα τἀγαθὰ ἢ τὰ φαινόμενα ἐκείνου ἕνεκα, ἢ τὸν βουλόμενον εἶναι καὶ 1166a.5ζῆν τὸν φίλον αὐτοῦ χάριν· ὅπερ αἱ μητέρες πρὸς τὰ τέκνα πεπόνθασι, καὶ τῶν φίλων οἱ προσκεκρουκότες. οἳ δὲ τὸν συνδιάγοντα καὶ ταὐτὰ αἱρούμενον, ἢ τὸν συναλγοῦντα καὶ συγχαίροντα τῷ φίλῳ· μάλιστα δὲ καὶ τοῦτο περὶ τὰς μητέρας συμβαίνει. τούτων δέ τινι καὶ τὴν φιλίαν 1166a.10ὁρίζονται. πρὸς ἑαυτὸν δὲ τούτων ἕκαστον τῷ ἐπιεικεῖ ὑπάρχει (τοῖς δὲ λοιποῖς, ᾗ τοιοῦτοι ὑπολαμβάνουσιν εἶναι· ἔοικε δέ, καθάπερ εἴρηται, μέτρον ἑκάστων ἡ ἀρετὴ καὶ ὁ σπουδαῖος εἶναι)· οὗτος γὰρ ὁμογνωμονεῖ ἑαυτῷ, καὶ τῶν αὐτῶν ὀρέγεται κατὰ πᾶσαν τὴν ψυχήν· καὶ βούλεται 1166a.15δὴ ἑαυτῷ τἀγαθὰ καὶ τὰ φαινόμενα καὶ πράττει (τοῦ γὰρ ἀγαθοῦ τἀγαθὸν διαπονεῖν) καὶ ἑαυτοῦ ἕνεκα (τοῦ γὰρ διανοητικοῦ χάριν, ὅπερ ἕκαστος εἶναι δοκεῖ)· NE 1166a1-17

Here as elsewhere, Aristotle appeals to the definition of friendship as someone wishing well for another person for the sake of that person.  To perhaps oversimplify it: relational altruism.  Now altruism, as it turns out, is quite the tedious topic, tending toward an exhaustive regress.  Every time seemingly altruistic motives are displayed, a gainsayer can point here or there and say, “See, you really did it to satisfy x or y for yourself!”  This problem or paradox of altruism, however, as vexatious as it is for us, does not seem to have arisen by the time of Aristotle.  Nevertheless, since this definition– doing something for someone else’s sake alone –seems integral to Aristotle’s attempts at understanding friendship, we are saddled with solving the implications of this difficulty ourselves.

The problem is that Aristotle affirms (1) Friendship is wishing well for the other for his own sake (2) Friendship originates from the relationship we have for ourselves.  The difficulty for me in accepting both these beliefs is that (1) seems precluded by (2).  If friendship is really an extension of my own relationship toward myself, then only in so far as that relationship partakes or mirrors my own relationship toward myself, can it be said that it is a friendship.  However, this very idea undercuts the notion that we do things merely for the sake of the friend as in (1).  For example, if a friendship either becomes or appears to become different than our relationship with ourselves, will we not dissolve the friendship?  Yes, as I understand it, in accord with (2), but no, if we consider (1) alone.

I will discuss in the next post a possible solution to this problem.

Plato’s Pharmacy

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Phaedrus: Tell me, Socrates, wasn’t it here, indeed from this spot, that Boreas is said to have snatched Oreithuia from the Ilisus?

[Socrates and Phaedrus haggle over the precise location of the abduction for a few lines.]

Socrates: But if I should disbelieve it [the abduction] as the wise men do, I would not be strange; but as a wise man I would say that the wind of Boreas pushed her down from the nearest rocks as she was playing with pharmakeia (sun Pharmakeia). And thus having died, it is said she was snatched at the hands of Boreas, or from the mount of Ares. For this account also says she was snatched from there, not here. While I think such things elegant, they are from a man who is too clever, a busybody and not a fortunate man either, in so far as it is necessary for him after this to amend the form of the hippocentaur, and again, that of the centaur, and a crowd of such gorgons and pegasuses and a number of other extraordinary things as well as certain others of a strange and terrible nature. If anyone disbelieves in these creatures, and reduces each according to its likelihood, seeing that he is using a kind of rustic wisdom, he will need a lot of leisure.  For myself there is no such leisure.

Φαῖδροςεἰπέ μοι, ὦ Σώκρατες, οὐκ ἐνθένδε μέντοι ποθὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἰλισοῦ λέγεται ὁ Βορέας τὴν Ὠρείθυιαν ἁρπάσαι;

paucis versibus extractis

Σωκράτηςἀλλ᾽ εἰ ἀπιστοίην, ὥσπερ οἱ σοφοί, οὐκ ἂν ἄτοπος εἴην, εἶτα σοφιζόμενος φαίην αὐτὴν πνεῦμα Βορέου κατὰ τῶν πλησίον πετρῶν σὺν Φαρμακείᾳ παίζουσαν ὦσαι, καὶ οὕτω δὴ τελευτήσασαν λεχθῆναι ὑπὸ τοῦ Βορέου ἀνάρπαστον [229δ] γεγονέναι—ἢ ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου: λέγεται γὰρ αὖ καὶ οὗτος ὁ λόγος, ὡς ἐκεῖθεν ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐνθένδε ἡρπάσθη. ἐγὼ δέ, ὦ Φαῖδρε, ἄλλως μὲν τὰ τοιαῦτα χαρίεντα ἡγοῦμαι, λίαν δὲ δεινοῦ καὶ ἐπιπόνου καὶ οὐ πάνυ εὐτυχοῦς ἀνδρός, κατ᾽ ἄλλο μὲν οὐδέν, ὅτι δ᾽ αὐτῷ ἀνάγκη μετὰ τοῦτο τὸ τῶν Ἱπποκενταύρων εἶδος ἐπανορθοῦσθαι, καὶ αὖθις τὸ τῆς Χιμαίρας, καὶ ἐπιρρεῖ δὲ ὄχλος τοιούτων Γοργόνων καὶ Πηγάσων καὶ [229ε] ἄλλων ἀμηχάνων πλήθη τε καὶ ἀτοπίαι τερατολόγων τινῶν φύσεων: αἷς εἴ τις ἀπιστῶν προσβιβᾷ κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἕκαστον, ἅτε ἀγροίκῳ τινὶ σοφίᾳ χρώμενος, πολλῆς αὐτῷ σχολῆς δεήσει. ἐμοὶ δὲ πρὸς αὐτὰ οὐδαμῶς ἐστι σχολή…
Phaedrus 229b-d

The particular attitude being described in this passage, a perspective today referred to as scientific reductionism, leads Socrates to pronounce that the reduction of phenomena to scientific “facts” takes no less ingenuity than it does facts. We can not but help to giggle at Socrates’ methodological exasperation at the mismeasures and guesses of the “wise men”.

I have found it a little strange however, that when this passage has been translated, Pharmaceia (uncapitalized, like every other word, in manuscripts) is translated as the name of Oreithuia’s playmate rather than literally. Pharmaceia, as the dictionary has it, is a medicine, the first asides mention specific instances of it as an emetic and as an abortifacient. Of the three translations I have read, however, each of them translates the word as a proper name.

It would seem well-fitted and more apt to translate the word as drug here. As they are wont, the wise men deconstruct fables according to individual elements of probability, and they do so by extracting the literal from the metaphorical.

For instance, when Boreas, the North Wind, is said to have snatched someone, the wise man considers the question, “What would it mean if we said the wind ‘snatched’ and ‘took away’ someone?”. The answer, if we had discarded the possibility of theophany at the outset, and of course we have, is that the wind swept someone away to their own demise.

Similarly, donning the perspective of a wise man, when we hear that Oreithuia was playing with Pharmaceia, would we immediately think of Pharmaceia as a mere name, or would we proceed farther, considering that this name also signified something else?
I think the later is more likely. On the wise men’s take, Oreithuia has played around with drugs and, in an altered state, comes too near some perilous cliffs, when an inopportune gust pushes her over the cliff.

One could almost imagine her as a wild eyed flower child prancing in the nude on the very precipice.