G.R.F. Ferrari, Listening to the Cicadas, Pp. 95-102

G.R.F. Ferrari, Listening to the Cicadas, pp. 95-102: Socrates to compete Socrates is persuaded to rival Lysias with a new speech on the same theme only after much cajoling on Phaedrus' part. He had made the mistake of refusing to accept Phaedrus' opinion that Lysias had said all that there was to be said on the topic (235bl-cl) - an open invitation for so eager a fan of fine discourse as Phaedrus to badger him into substantiating his refusal by producing the goods (235d4- 236e7). That Socrates delivers his version of the non-lover's speech only under duress will prove important. It will help us to locate the voice of Socrates' non-lover in the moral development expressed through the three love-speeches taken as a series; and I shall return to it presently. But first I want to consider directly the content of his non-lover's overture, in order to assess how it differs from that of Lysias' non-lover. I will begin by focusing on the very different psychological picture that Socrates' non-lover sketches.9 We have seen how Lysias' man took for granted his and the boy's objectives in love, and concentrated on arguing that his was the most prudent path towards securing them. Socrates' character, in contrast, begins by discussing not means but ends, and stresses that ends can come into conflict. He takes us, for the first time, within the soul, and finds there a scene of struggle. It is true that in Lysias' speech the non-lover talks of fostering future benefit rather than immediate pleasure, and doing so because he is in control of himself and has not succumbed to erotic passion (233b6— c2); but we saw that his ethical ticket, to the extent that he can be pinned down to one, is hedonistic, and that he is not opposing pleasure to benefit as such, but the temporary pleasures of erotic association with the secure and long-term pleasures of erotic (but not passionate) friendship. He does not give the impression of aiming at something entirely different from the lover, but rather of setting his sights on the same target with a cooler eye. In Socrates' speech, by contrast, the seducer makes a point of explicitly opposing pleasure as a whole to his notion of the good, and assigning them as two potentially conflicting goals to two different principles in the soul: one, our natural desire (epithymia), which aims at pleasure, and the other an acquired judgment (doxa), which aims at what is best (237d6—e2). And throughout the speech he contrasts the selfish pleasure sought by the lover with a list of goods which the boy has the sense to pursue, but of which the lover's selfishness will deprive him. These goods are not presented as themselves pleasures (albeit more lasting pleasures) that the boy seeks in turn; rather, they are tagged with such epithets as 'good' (agathos), 'upright' (orthos), 'divine' (theios), 'most dear' (philtatos), 'valuable' (timios), and invariably contrasted with what the lover finds 'sweet' or 'pleasurable' {hedys) (see 238b7-cl; 239b4-8; 239c4-5; 239e3-240a2; 241c4-6). In other words, the non-lover styles these goods — which range from physical fitness and a life in the open air, through social and financial standing and a good relationship with one's family, to the training and development of character and understanding (psykhes paideusin, 241c5) — as choiceworthy in themselves, rather than for the pleasure they bring; and the lover's pursuit of sexual pleasure he therefore sees as a victory of that in him which seeks pleasure over that which seeks the good — a victory that leaves no room in his soul for any concern for the welfare of the beloved, since that goal has been exclusively assigned to the defeated principle (238al-c4). It is for this reason that the argument which bulked so prominently in Lysias' speech — the appeal to the fleeting and fickle nature of love - is relegated to the rearguard in the arguments marshalled by Socrates' man. He devotes his speech to listing the harm that a lover would do the boy while yet in love, and only at the end (240e7-241cl) turns to the additional point that, when he falls out of love, the boy can expect still more trouble from him. Lysias' non-lover takes a prudential approach, and so puts the appeal to instability in the van of his attack; for he has no desire to deny that a lover would bring the boy profit, but only that, through fickleness, he would not maximise such profit as he brings (in addition to incurring debts while in love). Socrates' non-lover reverses this emphasis. Because he has directly opposed the pursuit of pleasure to the pursuit of good, he is unwilling to see the lover as bringing any good to the relationship; and for him the expectation of fickleness comes simply as the last straw in a long catalogue of evils (240e8-9). He makes no attempt to integrate pleasure with the good; rather, he gives it the function of disguising and tempting us into what is not in our best interests, as when we fall for a charming flatterer, or succumb to the allure of a courtesan (240a9-b5) - although, he insists, the boy will not even get pleasure from the conventional type of liaison, let alone good; the pleasure will be all on the lover's side (240b6-c2). The non-lover's attitude to pleasure here is thus one of outright hostility. Moreover, he combines this with a measure of puzzlement. 'Some spirit has mixed' pleasure in with what is bad for us, he declares (tis daimon emeixe, 240a9). He cannot understand why this should be so, and does not attempt to; pleasure is a curse to be confronted, not understood. It is a severe and paternal voice, then, this voice that Socrates has adopted. There is none of the zestful audacity that we found in Lysias' non-lover, nor his potentially refreshing straightforwardness. And here it is important to bear in mind that Socrates' character is in reality no less a lover than any other of the boy's suitors (237b3—6). He yearns for the boy, with passion; and the whole speech is therefore an exercise in suppressing his deepest feelings. It is no exaggeration, indeed, to see it as a speech of self-hate. Considering that, according to the scenario Socrates has adopted from Lysias, his non-lover will expect the boy's sexual favours in return for his protection of the boy's best interests, it is quite remarkable to find him describing vividly, elaborately, and at length the horrors of submitting to the sexual pestering of an older man (240cl—e7). Doubtless he means to suggest that the boy can expect less pestering from him than from a lover (though he does not make this explicit); still, he declares the very act of sex with one who has lost his youth (never mind whether constantly solicited) to be an unpleasant chore (240cl-6, d6-e2) - a point which would seem to work against his own suit also. Yet this makes good psychological sense when we take into account the passionate love that he is attempting to conceal. Precisely because he does not want merely to use the boy for sex, but is really in love, he is sufficiently concerned for the feelings of the other to imagine how things seem from his standpoint, and in particular to appreciate vividly how his own weathered and alarmingly mature physique must look to one still fresh of limb. These are the anxieties of passionate involvement; and the theme is notable for its total absence from Lysias' speech (indeed, Lysias' persona gives no sign of any empathetic appreciation of the boy's feelings). But anxiety has here turned passion in against itself. Gripped by powerful feelings that he is uncertain of satisfying, Socrates' non-lover turns hostile against the very pleasure that he longs to taste; and as a result those longings become shameful, neither to be confessed nor understood ('some spirit' has mixed pleasure in with sex); and if satisfied at all, then by cunning and devious means. There is none of this in Lysias' man. The shamefulness of sex he recognises only as a matter of 'current custom' (ton nomon ton kathestekota, 231e3) and a possible source of fear in the boy, which he must work to allay. He himself makes no bones about wanting sex from the lad; and in general gives a no-nonsense impression of breezy, clear-headed confidence (see esp. 230e7- 231a2; 234c4- 5) where the Socratic persona is gothic and gloomy, and at times almost maudlin (see esp. 240a6; 241c2- 6). Nevertheless, it seems clear that Plato means Socrates' nonlover to come across as having the higher moral tone.10 His explicit distinction between pleasure and what is best, his talk of ethical rather than merely prudential conflict between these goals, his high valuation of 'educating the soul' (241c5) and of what he calls 'divine philosophy' {he theia philosophia, 239b4) - whatever his intentions, he boasts a distinctively moral superiority to the type of lover whom he would supplant. Lysias' man, by contrast, claims greater worthiness than the lover only on the strength of his having more sense. Yet from Socrates' subsequent disgust with what his adoption of the non- lover's mask has prompted him to say, together with his more sanguine criticisms in the second part of the dialogue (which we have already considered), it is equally clear that we are to think of this speech as still far from adequate in its ethical stance. Notice the implication. We have heard in Socrates' nonlover the voice of puritanism: by which I mean an automatic hostility towards pleasure as such, and an inability to integrate pleasure in an honest fashion with the pursuit of the good. And in the popular and encyclopedic conception of the history of Western philosophy, this is of course often thought of as Plato's own voice. That this is a mishearing is quite clear even from so classic a work as the Republic, in which we read, for example at IX 586d4- 587a2, that all parts of the soul and classes in the state have their appropriate pleasures, and that one of the results of pursuing the good is that each element can enjoy its pleasure without infringing on the pleasure of the others.11 But the Phaedrus does represent perhaps his most concerted reaction against puritanism. Of course, Plato too never fails to oppose the goal of pleasure to the goal of what is best. But he is not hostile to pleasure as such; rather, he holds that the true philosopher, precisely because he does not pursue the philosophic life primarily for the pleasure that it brings, will get to enjoy not only the pleasure appropriate to the philosophic life as such but also, and in due proportion, the pleasures of more commonplace practices. Pleasure, then, would be like a mislaid key: you only find it when you stop looking for it. So in the mythic hymn we will see Socrates transcend the simple opposition of pleasure and the good, and find a place for love, and its attendant delights, in the pursuit of what is best. But let us consider more closely the simplifications in the psychological picture that Socrates' non- lover paints. If we turn to his definition of love - the definition from which we have seen Plato spin such irony in the later critique of rhetoric — the limitations under which he works become apparent. It is obvious, he begins, that love is a kind of desire (epithymia, 237d3); but it is a fact that 'even those who are not in love desire what is beautiful' (237d4-5): so we need to understand more precisely what desire is, and what its species are. Robin rightly compares the quoted phrase with Diotima's speech in the Symposium (see R. lxix-lxx), especially Smp. 205b-d, in which she re- describes erotic passion as one among many kinds of desire for happiness, thereby laying the foundations of her account of the development of philosophic love, directed towards the beautiful as such, out of erotic beginnings. But this comparison only serves to display the opportunity that the non-lover has muffed. 'Desire for the beautiful' is ambivalent between the goals of pleasure and of the good; but in his subsequent definition he makes it clear that he thinks of desire as striving exclusively for pleasure, at the expense of what is best, and that by the desires of those who are not in love he meant the whole range of self-indulgent appetites among which erotic passion is to be ranked, such as gluttony and drunkenness (237d6—238c4). He shows no inkling, then, that 'desire for the beautiful' could be thought of as proper to the aims of that other principle in the soul: its better judgment. 12 That would be the path along which one could hope to integrate the desires of the whole soul; but Socrates' nonlover has instead paved the way for constant struggle.13 Nevertheless, even in Socrates' mythic hymn, as we shall see, it is only through struggle that integration is achieved. Thus it is no accident that in this speech we hear for the first time of the ideal of 'divine philosophy' (239b4) and witness a concern for clear definitions and rules of enquiry (237b7- d3),14 since by positing a struggle in the soul the non-lover has at least made an opening for a philosophically mature approach to the ethical issues raised by his suit, and a genuine advance on the thesis of Lysias' persona;15 so that for all the limitations of his definition of love, its redirection of the focus of discussion to within the soul has had a salutary effect. Hence too, even if Plato accords it only ironic praise in the course of Socrates' retrospective critique, this is to be thought of not as wholesale subversion but rather as a necessary qualification of praise that it has gone some way towards meriting. Many scholars recognise in the simplifications of Socrates' non-lover the ethical stance and non- technical vocabulary of the average person, such as Socrates also confronts in the Protagoras (352d sq.), where he claims that most people view their ethical life in terms of a conflict between acknowledging what is best and wanting what is pleasant.16 This I think is right; except that the Socratic persona's high-minded allusions to the 'training of the soul' and to 'divine philosophy' seem to put him on a rather more exalted level than the average, although still lacking in philosophic sophistication. We might compare the portrait of the honour-loving 'timocratic' man of the Republic (VIII 548b sq.), who is second only to the philosopher in ethical character. The honourloving person prizes what is best - in the sense of what will redound to his credit among his peers - above the mere satisfaction of his appetite for pleasure; but because he lacks a truly philosophic education, he has not reasoned himself into this course but is following tradition: obeying the voice of the father. Not really understanding why he should keep his appetite for pleasure in check, he simply represses it; with the result we might expect. The repressed appetite, as Plato imagines it, is disavowed in public but burns bright within the secret recesses of his soul; and he will sate it in private lovenests financed by clandestine wealth (for that too must not be openly amassed), in which he can thumb his nose at the paternal command with impunity: 'running away from the law as boys from a father' (548b6-7). And this private indulgence in what he feels is unworthy makes him the more hostile in public towards all that he regards as inferior: slaves, for example; to whom he is actively harsh rather than simply indifferent, 'as a sufficiently educated man would be' (549a2). These traits we have seen in Socrates' non-lover also: the hypocritical refusal to acknowledge the passion he longs to indulge; the repression of pleasure without proper understanding of why it should be repressed, or of what its proper place might be; and a consequent hostility and harshness towards it in his public stance.17 In terms of the simile that Socrates will fashion for the soul in the properly complex account that he gives of it in his mythic hymn, Lysias' non-lover speaks with the voice of the lustful black horse, for whom there can be no ethical conflict but at most a prudential deferral of the immediate satisfaction of pleasure for the sake of its future maximisation; Socrates' man adds to this drama the voice of the white horse, who seeks honour with the same unreflective determination that his black yoke-mate applies to the pursuit of pleasure, and so can do nothing but bluntly resist the other's aims when they come into conflict with its own;18 and although both characters claim to speak with the voice of reason, what we have yet to hear is reason's true voice: that of the charioteer, who cannot achieve his own ends without learning from and harmonising all voices in the soul.19 (...)