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Aspects of Aeschines of Sphettus' Philosophy

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Aspects of Aeschines of Sphettus' Philosophy Shock, Erotics, Plagiarism, and Fraud: Aspects of Aeschines of Sphettus’ Philosophy Claudia Mársico Universidad de Buenos Aires The Socratic philosophers had different destinies. Some of them formed lines of tradition that kept their memory alive, despite the gradual loss of their texts. This was not the case for Aeschines, whose sole student, Xenocrates, it is said, was stolen away by Plato.1 That he lacked a school legacy, however, did not diminish Aeschines’ prominence within the Socratic circle. Despite being a minor among minors, Aeschines is a key figure for understanding that circle. The doxography about him reveals a twofold perspective: behind a few positive observations about him is an unrelentingly harsh critical nucleus. In this chapter I will tackle, in light of this twofold perspective, both the legacy of Socrates in Aeschines’ philosophy and its innovation. I argue that Aeschines developed an original method that uses mental shock to provoke his readers into improvement. In what follows I will examine this theme in the dialogues of Aeschines and, more specifically, in his two dialogues on erôs, (1) Alcibiades and (2) Aspasia.This will allow (3) to connect these results with fragments from other dialogues and (4) to review the evidence that associates Aeschines with the so-called disciples who lost their way. My goal is to understand Aeschinean philosophy and the reasons it was rejected by its opponents inside and outside the complex climate of the Socratic group. 1 The Shock Method Much scholarship studies the so-called Socratic elenchus. It often analyses the existential aspects of this method and uses Plato’s dialogues for the textual material.2 When the Platonic Socrates refutes his interlocutor, he frequently makes him feel ashamed; it is also clear that he deploys the elenchus to eradi- 1 Athenaeus, citing Hegesander, said Xenocrates was his only pupil (xi.507c = ssr vi a 1), though Diogenes Laertius mentions another disciple named “Aristotle the Myth” (dl 2.63 = ssr iv a 24). 2 See Vlastos, 1982, 37; Renaud, 2010, 183–198; Inverso 2014, 47–60. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004341227_011 aeschines on shock, erotics, plagiarism, and fraud 203 cate false beliefs, and in some contexts to obtain knowledge. As we shall see, the dialogues of Aeschines offer valuable material illustrating an opposing model, where Socrates alters the mind and mood of his fellows. Aeschines stresses the shock caused by arguments, not principally worried about knowledge or strictly theoretical issues. Thus there is a difference of aim among the Socratic models. While the “major” Socratics—Antisthenes, Plato, and Xenophon— have knowledge as their goal, Aeschines disclaims epistêmê and prioritizes a kind of spiritual healing that does not rest upon ontological assumptions like Plato’s theory of Forms or Antisthenes’ orthotês onomatôn. For Aeschines, the transmission of philosophy means the practice of mental shock carried out by erôs. This shock is more than the aporia of the Platonic dialogues, since it is not just a moment of the method but, as we will see, its very core. It is traditional to believe that Socrates acts upon the soul of another by a peculiar kind of erotic mania. Yet this leads to a difficulty in understanding his pedagogical method. His erôs would thus seem restricted to those strictly considered his eromenoi, his beloveds; but there are many others who receive the benefits of his training. Aeschines is among those—at least no ancient source testifies to his being Socrates’ eromenos—although he surely did not think of himself as simply a non-benefiting witness of Socrates’ practices. Hence it is plausible to suppose that Aeschines benefited from Socrates’ erôs but did so in a different way than an eromenos like Alcibiades. Therefore, the problem concerns the way Socrates benefited those who were his eromenoi and those who were not. Some elements to clarify the relationship between Socrates and his beloved can be inferred from Aeschines’ Alcibiades, while the Aspasia helps us to understand how erôs was useful to other people as well. Let us begin with the shock method as applied to Socrates’ beloved. Few figures received as much attention from the Socratics as Alcibiades. Euclides, Phaedo, Antisthenes, and Plato wrote works entitled Alcibiades,3 and the list of authors and works grows if we take into account explicit mentions or appearances of Alcibiades elsewhere in the Socratic literature. The most famous occur in Plato’s Symposium and in the Socratic works of Xenophon. Many emphasize the young nobleman’s charm. However, Alcibiades was also one of the rejected suitors of Socrates. Two testimonies to this fact should be examined together. In the first, the Platonic Socrates says ironically that he does not want an intimate relationship with the younger Alcibiades (Symp. 219a). 3 See on Euclides, dl 2.108 (= ssr ii a 10); on Antisthenes, dl 6.15–18 (= ssr v a 41), and on Phaedo, Suda s.v. Φαίδων (= ssr iii a 8)..
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