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Lot-Casting, Divine Interference and Chance in the Myth of Er

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Lot-Casting, Divine Interference and Chance in the Myth of Er apeiron 2017; 50(1): 67–79 Viktor Ilievski* Lot-casting, Divine Interference and Chance in the Myth of Er DOI 10.1515/apeiron-2015-0065 Abstract: The aim of this paper is to throw some additional light on the lot-casting episode of the Republic’s Myth of Er. It is largely a reaction to McPherran’sviews presented in his 2010 chapter entitled “Virtue, Luck and Choice at the End of the Republic.” I agree with his statement that the purpose of the lottery is to somehow absolve the gods from the responsibility for each soul’schoiceoflifeandthe subsequent happiness and badness attached to it. Unlike McPherran, however, I argue that this strategy is a successful one, and discloses no traces of divine interference, which would endanger its credibility. Nevertheless, although the lot- casting process effectively diverts the responsibility for its outcome from the gods onto tychē, the scope of this strategy is very narrow, and actually limited to the placement of the souls in the choice-queue. By the end of the paper I touch upon the concept of tychē as employed in the Myth, and conclude that it is equivalent with the folk concept of chance. Keywords: Plato, Myth of Er, lot-casting, divine interference, chance In this paper I shall focus on a minute part of the provocative and rich in content Myth of Er, related at the very end of Plato’s Republic. I shall deal with a single aspect of the passage which, in conjunction with the brief statement in book II (379c1-7),1 marks the historical beginning of the efforts to provide an answer to the Problem of Evil, i. e. to produce a theodicy. The story of the disembodied souls’ post-mortem act of choosing the next body begins at 617d. An integral part of that story is what one may call the lottery episode, a rather intriguing few lines which pose several interpretative challenges and call for further comments. 1 “Therefore, said I, since god is good, he could not be the cause of everything, as the multitude claims, but would be responsible for a few things that pertain to the humans, while free of responsibility for many others. For, much lesser are the goods in our lives then the evils. And nobody else but god should be counted as responsible for the good things, but as far as the bad ones are concerned, some other causes must be sought, and not god.” *Corresponding author: Viktor Ilievski, Vladimir Komarov 21/20 Skopje 1000, Macedonia (the former Yugoslav Republic of), E-mail: [email protected] 68 Viktor Ilievski On the pages that follow their elucidation is attempted. My approach to the issue is largely a reaction to McPherran’s interpretation of the lottery episode in his 2010 chapter entitled “Virtue, Luck, and Choice at the End of the Republic”. As far as the Myth of Er as a whole is concerned, it has been leading the commentators to varied conclusions, and has been arousing disparate feelings in them, ranging from deep admiration to strong depreciation. Stewart intro- duces his discussion of the myth with the following sentence: “We come now to the Myth of Er (Rep. 614Aff.), the greatest of Plato's Eschatological Myths, whether the fullness of its matter or the splendour of its form be considered.”2 This stands in stark contrast to Annas, who finds it to be “a painful shock;” she is dumbfound by its “childishness” and its “vulgarity [which] seems to pull us right down to the level of Cephalus, where you take justice seriously only when you start thinking about hell-fire.”3 Still, most of the scholars dealing with the closing pages of the Republic remain more moderate and balanced in their judgment of the Myth’s philosophic value, emphasizing both its merits, and the seemingly insoluble difficulties that it gives rise to. The fascinating tale of Er, probably the most puzzling of Plato’s four great eschatological myths,4 commences after Socrates already presented to Glaucon some this-worldly advantages that a just person rightly enjoys, and is meant to illustrate those much greater, albeit unobservable, rewards he is going to receive in the afterlife. In it, the reader is introduced to a brave soldier of the name of Er, the son of Armenius, of Pamphylia,5 who was killed in an unspecified war. His lifeless body, left on the battlefield, had resisted decomposition for ten days, 2 Steward (1905, 132). 3 Annas (1981, 349). She takes a more positive turn on the Myth in Annas (1982). Her inter- pretation of the Myth from (1981) to (1982) also changes, even radically. While in the former she finds the Myth, unless thoroughly demythologized, “to offer us an entirely consequentialist reason for being just” (p. 349), in the latter she sees it as fitting, though awkwardly, in the Republic’s main moral argument, and, despite its immediate context, as excluding the con- sequentialist reasons for being just, unlike the Gorgias and Phaedo myths (see p. 137). For a well-founded critique of Anna’s views, and the thesis that the Myth of Er not only perfectly fits with, but also adds to the overall argument of the Republic, see Johnson (1999). Another highly recommendable interpretation of the Myth and its place in the dialogue is Ferrari 2009. 4 The other three being those related in the Gorgias, Phaedo and Phaedrus. The eschatological account of the Laws X misses most of the scenery and picturesqueness of both traditional and Platonic myths, and should be viewed separately from them. 5 An ancient maritime region in southern Asia Minor, inhabited by a mixture of tribes, includ- ing Greek colonists. Therefrom the name. Adam (1902, 614B) cites several fanciful ancient opinions on Er’s identity. Platt (1911) holds that Ēros tou Armeniou means ‘Er, the Armenian,’ and that ‘the Pamphylian’ is a playfully used epithet. He believes to have identified both the historical person behind Plato’s character, and the exact battle in which he was killed. Lot-casting in the Myth of Er 69 and after being collected and placed on a funeral pyre by his relatives, on the twelfth day was miraculously revived. Immediately after coming back to life, he related to the mourners the astounding story of his experience in the nether- world. This wonderful report consists of four sections – with two elucidating comments interjected into the third one – and a closing advice which winds up not only Er’s tale, but also the dialogue as a whole.6 The lottery episode is to be found in the third section of Er’s story, where the reader follows the souls as they arrive at the cosmic beam of light and are bidden to approach the goddess Necessity’s daughter Lachesis. While they are gathering around her throne, an unnamed prophet7 steps out, takes from the lap of Lachesis lots and patterns of life, and, ascending a high-raised tribune, addresses the assembly on behalf of his mistress. Then the souls, qualified by the prophet as ephemeral,8 learn that they are about to embark on another course of earthly life; that their daimon will not be assigned to them, but they will choose it themselves;9 that samples of lives will be presented to them, 6 In Section one (614c-616b) the meadow where the departed souls meet and are being judged is described, together with the two openings in the ground and in the sky into and from which the souls of the blessed and the damned are entering and exiting. In Section two (616b-617d) is given a portrayal of the souls’ journey to the pillar of light and the cosmic spindle, where they behold goddess Necessity and her three daughters, the Moirai. In Section three (617d-621a) the process of choosing the next body under the direction of an unnamed prophet is described in some detail, after which Lachesis, Klotho and Atropos confirm the choice and make it irreversible. Section four (621a-b) contains the depiction of the journey through the Plain of Oblivion, the drinking from the River of Forgetfulness, and the consequent fall into a new embodiment. Johnson (1999, 7ff) also discerns four ‘scenes’ and ‘a final speech,’ roughly corresponding to those mentioned here, while Halliwell (2007, 536) recognizes only three sections, merging the fourth one into the third. These, in the order of their appearance, enact “the three great ideas of eschatological judgment, cosmological necessity, and reincarnation or metempsychosis” (Halliwell 2007). 7 This figure is bound to remain mysterious. For some possible reasons why Plato wanted to employ him, see McPherran (2010, 138). 8 psychai ephēmeroi, souls living for a day. By this phrase Plato does not mean to stealthily introduce the idea that his advocating of the concept of immortality has been all along but a dramatic fiction, as Thayer (1988, 376–8) alleges. Such an understanding stands in contra- diction with much of what Plato said, and receives no textual support, except maybe indirectly from some documentably early dialogues (see, e. g., the Apology 40c-e). It is a figurative expression, aiming to underline the inauspicious condition that arises due to the soul’s connection with the body. In and of itself, the soul is immortal (athanaton ge ē psychē phainetai ousa (Phd. 114c); psychē pasa athanatos (Phdr. 245c), etc). 9 Shorey (1937, 507, n. c) quotes the opinion of Zeller and Nestle that this is an intentional correction of Phaedo 107d, where the daimon is said to be allotted to the soul, which is also the traditional view (see Adam 1902, 617d, and Green 1948, 421, App.
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