SOCRATES: THE SOFTNESS OF THE TRAGIC HEROES
In his famous attack on the tragic poets in the Republic, Plato's Socrates apparently agrees with Nietzsche that, by portraying the greatest human beings as suffering beings, tragedy teaches that the world is fundamentally hostile to our aspirations for happiness.
Yet, while Nietzsche claims that tragedy inspires hardness and courage among human beings by encouraging us to face “the terror and horror of existence,” Socrates contends that tragedy inspires softness and even cowardice. At the beginning of Book III, after citing seven passages from the Iliad (4) and the Odyssey (3) in which Achilles, the goddess Circe, and Homer himself describe the nature of death and the afterlife, Socrates remarks: “We'll beg Homer and the other poets not to be harsh if we strike out these and all similar things. It's not that they are not poetic and sweet for the many to hear, but the more poetic they are, the less should they be heard by boys and men who must be free and accustomed to fearing slavery more than death.... Perhaps they're good for something else, but we fear that our guardians, as a result of such shivers, will get hotter and softer than they ought” (387b 1-c 5). Socrates then declares: “So we'd be right in taking out the wailings of renowned men and we'd give them to women — and not to the serious ones, at that — and to all the bad men” (387e^388aι; see also 381e1-6). And he proceeds to cite passages from the Iliad that represent Achilles bewailing the death of his friend Patroclus, Priam the death of his son Hector, the goddess Thetis the imminent death of her son Achilles, and Zeus the imminent deaths of Hector and of Zeus's own son Sarpedon (388a5-d1). Socrates suggests that the tragic poets' description of the human condition is so terrifying, and their accounts of their heroes' and gods' sorrow over the death of their loved ones are so moving and so infectious, that they inspire us, their audience, with an overpowering fear and grief, and teach us that such fear and grief are proper responses to our mortal condition.[112] In contrast to Nietzsche, then, Socrates suggests that the manly and courageous spirit of tragic human beings is simply shattered by the tragic vision of life.Yet Socrates' claim about the effects of tragedy is perplexing since his discussion centers on Achilles, to whom Nietzsche, for example, refers as “the greatest hero” (1967, 43). What can he possibly mean by suggesting that Achilles is soft and unmanly? Is this not a preposterous charge against the hero most famous for his courage?
Socrates' account of tragedy focuses on Homer, the “leader” of tragedy {Republic 598d8) and “the most poetic and first of the tragic poets” (6oya2-3; see also 595b9-c2, 605cι0-d5). The context of Socrates' discussion of Homer and the other tragic poets is the education of the guardians or rulers of a just city, guardians whose “nature” is at least initially described here as “philosophic, spirited, swift, and strong” (376bιι-c5) and who will ultimately dwell in a city ruled by philosopher-kings. His fundamental criticism of Homer and the other tragic poets is that they would make such human beings unreasonably soft and cowardly by filling them with fear.
In the first place, Homer and the tragedians inspire their audience to fear the gods. For Homer depicts the gods as powerful and angry beings, who inflict harm on one another as well as on human beings, and he depicts his greatest hero, Achilles, as expressing a fear of the gods. Socrates insists: “We mustn't accept Homer's — or any other poet's... saying that
Two jars stand on Zeus's threshold
Full of dooms — the one of good,
the other of wretched;
and the man to whom Zeus gives a mixture of both,
At one time he happens on evil,
at another good;
but the man to whom he doesn't give a mixture, but
the second pure,
Evil misery, drives him over the divine earth;
nor that Zeus is a dispenser to us
Of good and evil alike” (379c9-e2)
And “as Aeschylus says, that
God plants the cause in mortals
When he wants to destroy a house utterly” (380a!—4).
Moreover, the poets terrify us from childhood on by teaching that the gods deceive us, that they are ubiquitous, but hide this fact, for “The gods, like wandering strangers, Take on every sort of shape and visit the cities” (381d3—4).
The tragic poets present us with a world in which we are always at the mercy of the gods, in which, at any moment, they may suddenly ruin our happiness by destroying all that we hold dear. And by presenting their heroes as being afraid of such ruin, the tragedians suggest that fear of the gods is the proper response to the world on the part of even the greatest of humans.Socrates argues that the poets should instead teach that, since the gods are perfect, they must be unchanging, self-sufficient, and uninvolved in human affairs and hence must not punish or even reward us. The guardians, then, must accept specifically that the evils humans suffer are not caused by the gods (see 379a7-c7, 380c6-381c2, 382e8-383a5). Socrates concludes his discussion of what the guardians should be taught about the gods by stating that the poets' depiction of the gods must be expunged, “if our guardians are going to be god-revering and divine insofar as a human being can possibly be” (383c3-5). Socrates reveals here that the goal of the education of the philosophic guardians is to make them as divine as possible and hence, it seems, as fearless and as self-sufficient as the immortal gods themselves. And by suggesting that the guardians are philosophic, Socrates seems to suggest that it is reasonable for human beings as a whole to strive to achieve a god-like selfsufficiency and to believe that such happiness is within their grasp.[113]
But, a defender of the poets might ask, how reasonable is it for mortal beings to model themselves on divine beings? As Homer's Achilles points out, the gods are immortal and therefore “are free from care” {Iliad 24.526). But precisely inasmuch as we human beings are not immortal, is it not reasonable for us to be fearful, and to fear above all the death that we and our loved ones must suffer? If happiness is possible for such beings as ourselves, must it not incorporate an awareness of the evil of death and hence a fear of death?
The fear of the gods inspired, according to Socrates, by the tragic poets is rooted in our fear of death.
We fear the gods specifically because we fear the death they may inflict on our loved ones and ourselves. Socrates accordingly proceeds to criticize Homer for teaching that “Hades' domain exists and is terrible” (386b4) and for presenting his greatest heroes as men who are terrified of death, their own and that of their loved ones. For do you suppose anyone who believes this, Socrates asks, “will be fearless in the face of death and choose death in battles above defeat and slavery?” (386b4-6). The belief that death is an evil, for oneself and for those one loves, Socrates affirms, renders even the greatest human beings so soft and so cowardly that they will prefer slavery to death (see 387C3—5).Yet the Homeric heroes that Socrates refers to here — Sarpedon, Odysseus, Priam, Hector, and above all Achilles — were clearly not cowards in battle, even though they all apparently believed that death was an evil. They were all clearly willing to fight and die rather than run away. In what sense does Socrates mean to suggest that they were soft?[114]
Socrates may mean to suggest that the Homeric heroes are soft, not because they are led by their fear of death to run away in battle, but because, rather than resigning themselves to their mortality and accept the hard truth that death is an inevitable evil, they are led by their fear of death to hope that the gods may protect them and their loved ones from that evil. For, as the passages Socrates cites and refers to here indicate, the gods depicted by Homer and the other tragic poets are not only angry and terrifying; they can also be loving and beneficent beings. Zeus loves Hector and his son Sarpedon. The goddess Thetis loves her son Achilles. Apollo protects his priest Chryses. And Zeus dispenses good to human beings as well as evil (388b8-dι, 392e2-394a7, 379c9-e2; consider as well 363a6-e3, 364^5-365a3). Furthermore, Socrates suggests through the passages he cites that, according to Homer and the tragic poets, the gods do protect some human beings from the evil of death.
It is true that, in the seven passages Socrates cites at the beginning of Book III, the second one presents the judgment of Hades himself, the god of the underworld, that his domain is hateful to gods and men, and the fifth one presents the soul of Patroclus bewailing his death as he descends into Hades (386d1-2, 9—10). But it is also true that, in the third passage cited, Achilles concludes, after dreaming of Patroclus, that there is life after death, that the dead resemble the living, and that, specifically, his beloved Patroclus lives on in the House of Hades, in an afterlife, as a soul and a phantom, albeit without intelligence (386d4-5). To be sure, the dead Achilles is presented in the first passage declaring that he would rather live as a serf than be ruler over the dead (386c5-7). But the very section of the Odyssey alluded to there presents Achilles in company with his beloved Patroclus and capable of taking pleasure in the news of the heroism of his still living son (11.465—540). Furthermore, the section of the Odyssey alluded to in the seventh passage cited by Socrates presents Achilles in seemingly pleasant conversation with Patroclus, Ajax, and Agamemnon (387^x5—8; Odyssey 24.15—204). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, in the fourth and central citation of Socrates, the goddess Circe reveals to Odysseus that Teiresias lives on after death with intelligence {Odyssey 10.490—95). The poets, then, do not simply present death as an evil, but also offer hope for an afterlife of eternal well-being.10 So Socrates may mean to suggest that the tragic, Homeric heroes are soft because they do not accept death as a natural necessity but regard it as an avoidable evil, and hope that the gods may rescue them from it. He may mean to suggest that the poets encourage us to be soft by encouraging us, not to run away in battle, but to hope that the gods may save us, and those we love, from the evil of death. Socrates' criticism of tragedy, then, may be this: by teaching that death is a terrible evil, tragedy teaches that human happiness is unattainable through our own efforts and that therefore our only hope for human happiness lies with the gods. For only they can possibly protect us and our loved ones from the evil of death. The seemingly bleak vision set forth by the tragic poets and their heroes is not simply bleak. It contains hope, a pious hope that Socrates suggests is unreasonable, self- indulgent, and soft.[115] [116]The suggestion that tragedy is fundamentally pious may seem surprising. At first glance, tragedy would seem to be at odds with piety, since heroic men do not deserve to suffer, and it would seem that, if there are gods who care for us, if there are providential gods, they would not permit such suffering. Yet, Socrates suggests that, while tragedies may seem to call into question the existence of divine providence, they more emphatically teach us our need for divine providence. For, precisely if even great human beings suffer terrible things, is not the lot of human beings, when left on our own, a miserable one? Is man not miserable without God? And does this thought not inspire in us the longing to believe in gods who care for us, in gods who constitute our only hope for a relief from evils? Does it not inspire in us the hope that, beneath or beyond the surface of a world without providence, there is a providential order whose mysterious workings are not yet revealed to us, but whose existence our heartfelt longing for happiness points to?
Yet if Socrates means to suggest that the proper response to our mortality and that of our loved ones is not fear of death and hope that the gods may protect us from it, but resignation before the inevitability of death, one must wonder, why is such resignation reasonable? How can such resignation in the face of terrible evil be compatible with a happy or even a tolerable life? Socrates argues that the poets should teach that men who are decent will never lament or wail in the face of death because “for the decent man... being dead is not a terrible thing” (38yd5~6). He suggests here that it is only possible to accept death without fear if one believes that death is not an evil. Yet Socrates offers no argument here for his contention that death is not an evil. He does, however, offer a second reason that the decent man will not lament or wail in the fact of death. The decent man “is most of all sufficient unto himself for living well and, in contrast to others, has least need of another” (387dιι-eι). Since the decent man needs others less than other human beings, he is more selfsufficient than other humans. The happiness of the decent man is as selfsufficient as it is possible for human happiness to be. The decent man, then, evidently strives to be as self-sufficient as the gods.
Yet even the decent man is not truly self-sufficient. “Then for him it is least terrible to be deprived of a son, or a brother, or money, or of anything else of the sort.... Then he laments the least and bears it most gently when some such misfortune overtakes him” (387e3-7). Even the decent man, then, laments the loss of a loved one. But must he not consequently fear the death of a loved one, albeit less than other humans do? Furthermore, must he not fear his own death as an evil?
Finally, insofar as the self-sufficiency strived for by the decent man is not wholly achievable for human beings, is it a reasonable goal? Is the price of striving not to need others, and hence not to love others, a price worth paying for such beings as ourselves? Is there not something shallow and sterile about a life without loved ones?
After referring to Homer's moving representations of Achilles' grief over the death of Patroclus, Priam's grief over the death of his son Hector, Thetis's grief over the death of her son Achilles, Zeus's grief over the death of Hector, and Zeus's grief over the death of his son Sarpedon, Socrates remarks to his companion: “For, my dear Adei- mantus, if our young should seriously hear such things and not laugh scornfully at them as unworthy speeches, it's not very likely that any one of them would believe these things to be unworthy of himself, a human being, and would reproach himself for them, if it should enter into his head to say or do such thing. Rather, with neither shame nor endurance, he would chant many dirges and laments at the slightest sufferings” (388d2-7). Socrates suggests that a decent human being should not only feel little grief over the death of a loved one but should laugh scornfully at the grief of Achilles over Patroclus and Priam over Hector. The decent man should find such grief so unreasonable that it seems ridiculous, a subject of comedy rather than tragedy. Socrates speaks here as though the model for a decent and reasonable human being is the young Cephalus, who laughs at the tales of Hades when he is young (330d7-e2; see 328c7-d4, 329b2-d5). But how reasonable is such a frivolous, heartless, and uncomprehending view of the grief of others? Furthermore, how sustainable is such laughter at death? After all, the very Cephalus who laughs at the tales of Hades when he is young is terrified by those tales when he himself is on the threshold of death (330d7-331aι; see also 328cι-3, 331d6-9). Is the lighthearted resignation of the young philosophic guardian described by Socrates not bought at the price of an inhuman and foolish blindness to the evil of death? Is the grief of an Achilles or Priam not closer to reason than the laughter of such a Cephalus-like guardian, at least insofar as Achilles and Priam recognize the genuine evil of death?
Socrates returns to his criticism of the tragic poets' depiction of the sorrows of their heroes in Book X. There, however, he himself stresses that the decent man will indeed grieve at the death of a loved one, just as the tragic poets teach, but that the decent man will do so only in private (6θ3d5-604a8). Socrates acknowledges, then, that the tragic poets reveal the truth about the sorrows of the decent in the face of the evil of death. The poets, it seems, reveal the truth about the evil of death and the sorrows of the human condition.12 But Socrates criticizes the poets for weakening our courage and reason by encouraging us to lament openly rather than suppress our grief. The tragic poet “awakens this [grieving] part of the soul and nourishes it, and, by making it strong, destroys the calculating part... When even the best of us hears Homer or any other of the tragic poets imitating one of the heroes in mourning and making quite an extended speech in lamentation, or, if you like, singing and beating his breast, you know that we enjoy it and that we give ourselves over to following the imitation; suffering along with the hero in all seriousness, we praise as a good poet the man who puts us in this state.... But when personal sorrow comes to one of us, you are aware that, on the contrary, we pride ourselves if we are able to keep quiet and bear up, taking this to be the part of a man and what we then praised to be that of a woman.... [W]hat is then held down by force in our own misfortunes and has hungered for tears and sufficient lament and satisfaction... is that which now gets satisfaction and enjoyment from the poets. What is by nature best in us, because it hasn't been adequately educated by argument or habit, relaxes its guard over this mournful part because it sees another's sufferings” (605b3-606b1).
Socrates' criticism here is that, by portraying openly and truthfully the private sorrows of decent human beings, of the human condition, tragic poets weaken our capacity to suppress our own sorrows by force and thereby weaken or even destroy our capacity to reason. Yet, while it is certainly true that one cannot think clearly about the world and about oneself when one is overwhelmed with sorrow, it would also seem to be true that one cannot think clearly about the world and about oneself without facing the truth about the evil of death and the sorrows of our mortal condition. Would not a genuinely reasonable, philosophic life have to face this hard truth as the tragic poets encourage us to do?
Socrates goes on to suggest that it is the political community, speaking through the law, that demands that human beings hide their grief in the face of death on the grounds that “the human things” are not “worthy of great seriousness” (604b9-c1). The law demands that humans sacrifice their well-being, their friends and children, for example, for the sake of the community, and that they not regard such sacrifice seriously, as a serious loss. But, as Socrates himself acknowledges, the loss of loved ones is a real loss, as the poets point out, however much men may try to hide that loss. The demand that one not regard such sacrifice as a serious sacrifice is therefore not reasonable. But furthermore, how reasonable is it for a human being not to take “the human things,” and hence, for example, our mortal nature and condition, seriously? In Plato's Phaedo, Socrates himself, on the day of his own death, declares that philosophers “themselves practice nothing but dying and being dead” (64^4—6). In this way, he suggests that reflection on death is at the center of the philosopher's activity. Are the tragedians, then, not right to encourage us to take death seriously, according to Socrates?
In Book X of the Republic, Socrates goes on to assert that death is not an evil for humans, that the soul is immortal, and that the good enjoy an everlasting happiness (6θ8cι-621d3). In this way, he seems to end the dialogue by rejecting entirely the somber view of life set forth by the tragic poets. But, even leaving aside the question of whether any afterlife could be simply happy for such beings as ourselves (consider Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 109^32— 1100a30, 1101a22-1101b9), the claim that there is an afterlife in which the good are rewarded is an unproven assertion or myth, as Socrates himself acknowledges here, as well as in the Phaedo (Republic 611a10-612a5; Phaedo 63b5-c4, 84c5-7, 86d5-e4, 91a1-b7, 106c9-e7, 107a8-b9). The tragic portrayal of the evil of death, and of the sorrows of human beings in the face of death, then, would seem to be truthful. Are the tragic poets not right to draw our attention to the truth of our mortality and to the sadness such mortality bequeaths to any human life? Must the lover of wisdom not face that unlovely truth?
The Republic indicates that Socrates is indeed aware that the wisdom the philosopher seeks encompasses painful and ugly truths and hence that the austere capacity to endure pain is necessary for the philosophic life. To be sure, Socrates stresses in the dialogue the erotic character of the love of wisdom, and thereby suggests that the wisdom the philosopher pursues is simply and wholly beautiful, “an overwhelming beauty” (474b4-476d7, 485d3-eι, 5θ8d4-509a7). But in the image of the cave, Socrates suggests that the philosopher must, at least initially, be compelled to seek wisdom. “Take a man who is released and suddenly compelled to stand up, to turn his neck around, to walk and look up toward the light; and who, moreover, in doing all this is in pain and, because he is dazzled, is unable to make out those things whose shadows he saw before. What do you suppose he'd say if someone were to tell him that before he saw silly nothings, while now, because he is somewhat nearer to what is, and more turned toward beings, he sees more correctly; and, in particular, showing him each of the things that pass by, were to compel the man to answer his questions about what they are? Don't you suppose he'd be at a loss and believe that what was seen before is truer than what is now shown?... And, if he compelled him to look at the light itself, would his eyes hurt and would he flee, turning away to those things that he is able to make out and hold them to be really clearer than what is being shown?... And if... someone dragged him away from there by force along the rough, steep, upward way and didn't let him go before he had dragged him out into the light of the sun, wouldn't he be distressed and annoyed at being so dragged?” (515c6-516a3). Through this strikingly unerotic account of the philosophic liberation from the illusions of the cave, Socrates indicates that the quest for wisdom is, in an important sense, a painful quest, and suggests that that quest entails facing such painful truths as the truth of our mortality (compare 5∑5eι-4 with 33θdι-331d9).
Socrates does insist, as he says in the Apology, that the philosophic life is the greatest good for a human being (38a!-7). The world is so built and man is so built that he can find his satisfaction and his joy in reflecting on the truth about the world.[117] In this respect, at least, nature is not indifferent but rather friendly to the human longing for wisdom and happiness. But the happiness of the philosopher is not pure, but mixed with sadness. For, precisely insofar as the philosophic life is a happy one, the philosopher must be saddened by the truth that such happiness must end. As Diotima observes, and Socrates agrees, in the Symposium, “all human beings... want the good things to be theirs always” (205a5-8; see also 2θ6a3-13).
The Socratic thesis is that the acquisition of wisdom is the greatest good, and hence that it is good for us human beings to know even the harsh truth about our mortality. Indeed, as already mentioned, Socrates declares in the Phaedo that philosophers practice nothing but dying and being dead (64^4—6). Yet, according to Plato's Phaedo, Socrates spends the time before his own death engaged, at least in part, in the unphilo- sophic activity of composing music and telling mythical tales in order to gratify his wish to believe that the soul is immortal (6θc8-61b7, 61d1θ-e4, 7θb5-7,91a1-b7, 1θ8c3-114d7). The dying Socrates does not simply or primarily reflect on death. Though it may be good to know one's mortality, it may not be good to reflect on that evil continuously. Perhaps the philosophic practice of dying and being dead consists not only of learning how to face and accept the necessity of death, but also of learning how and when to spare oneself the unnecessary pain of thinking relentlessly about one's own death. 14 As the Socratic Prospero says at the end of Shakespeare's Tempest, “Every third thought shall be my grave” (V.i.312 - emphasis added). But then the philosopher's happiness is a somber one, shadowed by the awareness of death. And so the tragic poets who draw attention to the sorrows of mortal life are not so very different from the Socratic philosopher who practices dying and being dead.[118] [119]
Socrates' clearest criticism of the tragic poets is that they encourage us to wallow in grief at our mortality, as their heroes do. By presenting the sufferings of those whom they present as exemplary human beings, the tragic poets teach the terrifying lesson that human happiness is impossible in this life. More specifically, by teaching that there are mysterious and powerful gods who have the power to destroy us or to spare us from destruction, the poets inspire in their audience a religious terror. But by teaching us that the gods may spare us as well as destroy us, the poets teach the audience to place their hopes for human happiness in the gods and to devote themselves to appeasing the gods in some fashion. Socrates' fundamental criticism of the tragic poets is that, through their heroes, they point their audience away from reason and toward a fearful but also hopeful piety.
Yet this criticism assumes that the tragic poets view their heroes as exemplary human beings, that Homer, for example, simply admires his Achilles or that Sophocles simply admires his Oedipus. But is this true, even according to Socrates? At the end of Book II of the Republic, Socrates remarks to Adeimantus: “But Hera's bindings by her son, and Hephaestus' being cast out by his father when he was about to help out his mother who was being beaten, and all the battles of the gods Homer made, must not be accepted in the city, whether they are made with a hidden sense or without a hidden sense. A young thing can't judge what is hidden sense and what is not; but what he takes into his opinions at that age has a tendency to become hard and ineradicable” (378d3-eι; see also Xenophon Symposium 3.6). Socrates suggests here that Homer may not share the religious or the tragic perspective of his heroes. Socrates' criticism of the heroes of Homer and the tragic poets, then, may be a criticism that the tragic poets themselves share. Perhaps Socrates' blistering attack on the tragic poets in the Republic is directed at the surface and not at the inner, “hidden sense” of their poems. To examine the thesis, pointed to by Socrates, that the tragic poets themselves may be critics of the tragic view of life, we must turn to the full elaboration of that thesis in Aristotle's Poetics.