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Prologue to the Nay Science OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, Tue Mar 11 2014, NEWGEN PROLOGUE ! e story of philology does not begin in Germany. Its prelude appears in a violent encounter between a god and a maiden, in a story recounted by Plato. ! e Greek leg- end concerns the story of Orithuia, the daughter of the Athenian king Erechtheus. While playing on the banks of the river Ilisus with her friends, she is abducted by Boreas, or the North Wind. Socrates and Phaedrus, out for a walk outside the city walls, approach the river. Here is how the conversation between them unfolds: PHAEDRUS: Tell me, Socrates, isn’t it from somewhere near this stretch of the Ilisus that people say Boreas carried Orithuia away? SOCRATES: So they say. PHAEDRUS: Couldn’t this be the very spot? ! e stream is lovely, pure and clear, just right for girls to be playing nearby. SOCRATES: No, its two or three hundred yards farther downstream, where one crosses to get to the district of Agra. I think there is even an altar to Boreas there. PHAEDRUS: I hadn’t noticed it. But tell me, Socrates, in the name of Zeus, do you really believe that that legend is true? (Phaedrus 229a–c; Nehamas and Woodru# trans.) Since philology as the study of ancient accounts, mostly written, hangs on this ques- tion, let us pay special attention to Socrates’ response. SOCRATES: Actually, it would not be out of place for me to reject it, as our intellectu- als do. I could then tell a clever story: I could claim that a gust of North Wind blew her over the rocks where she was playing with Pharmaceia; and once she was killed that way people said she had been carried o# by Boreas—or was it, perhaps, from Areopagus? ! e story is also told that she was carried away from there instead. Now, Phaedrus, such explanations are amusing enough, but they are a job for a man I cannot envy at all. He’d have to be far too ingenious, and work too hard—mainly because after that he will have to go on and give a rational account of the form of Hippocentaurs, and then of the Chimera; and a whole $ ood of Gorgons and Pegasuses and other monsters, in large numbers and absurd forms, will overwhelm him. Anyone who does not believe in them, who wants to explain them away and make them plausible by means of some sort of rough ingenuity, will need a great deal of time.1 1 . “Rough ingenuity” here should be understood as a method of historicization or posi- tivising, as Socrates himself makes clear by his examples. Truth is thus reduced to method. ooxfordhb-9780199931347-fm.inddxfordhb-9780199931347-fm.indd xxii 33/11/2014/11/2014 99:48:47:48:47 PPMM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, Tue Mar 11 2014, NEWGEN xii PROLOGUE But I have no time for such things; and the reason, my friend, is this. I am still unable, as the Delphic inscription orders, to know myself; and it really seems to me ridiculous to look into other things before I have understood that. " is is why I do not concern myself with them. I accept what is generally believed, and, as I was say- ing, I look not into them but into my own self: Am I a beast more complicated and savage than Typhon, or am I a tamer, simpler animal with a share in a divine and gentle nature? But look, my friend—while we were talking, haven’t we reached the tree you were taking us to? ( Phaedrus 229c–230a) Who is Phaedrus? He is an Athenian youth, a lover of speeches, and, more important, someone who is later banished by the Athenians into exile for profan- ing the mysteries. " ese mysteries are part of a ritual associated with the goddess Persephone. " e Hymn to Demeter preserves her story: while she was gathering # owers with her friends, Hades the lord of the underworld seized her and took her to his kingdom. But, like Christ, she conquers death through love and is thus resur- rected, o$ ering the hope of immortality to all those who participate in her mysteries. We provide the Christ parallel with great sensitivity, not so much as to make a com- ment on Christ, but to clarify the often unacknowledged commitments of the com- mentators on ancient texts. In 415 BCE , as part of a deliberate and violent iconoclastic frenzy, the phallic statues of Hermes, which stood in the front yards of Athenian homes, were mutilated, and the mysteries profaned. Phaedrus, although young, beautiful, and a lover of logoi (i.e., semiscienti% c speeches on various matters), par- ticipated in the profanation of the mysteries and mocked the soteriological hope of the Athenians. It is to such an iconoclast, exiled for this reckless act, that Socrates is addressing his speech. Orithuia is a stand-in for Persephone, albeit lacking the god- dess’s soteriological hope: she is a mortal who simply dies. In the game of philology, matters of life and death hang in a balance. With the technical skill in reading texts comes the awesome responsibility to consider the mortal, philosophical, and ethical rami% cations of actions. Returning to the Phaedrus , we detect the positivistic, scienti % c leanings of Phaedrus. He is interested in speeches that are comprehensive and well-wrought, and he does not believe in either gods or accounts of them. He is a smug technician of words, pointedly without an ethical core. His adolescent, iconoclastic rationalism is either unaware of or puzzled by Socrates’ position, and he asks Socrates if he really believes in these tales. " is is a question that philology, as it is practiced today, does not explicitly ask, and thus we are grateful to Phaedrus for bringing forth this point. Socrates’ answer complicates the violent simplicity of Phaedrus’ question. " e ques- tion presents a false dichotomy: either you believe these tales and you are simplistic, old-fashioned, traditional, and unenlightened, or you do not believe these tales and you are enlightened, scienti% c, and wise. Plato’s genius consists in adding a further layer of complexity to this question: the freedom to think (as Socrates does) and the freedom to act (iconoclastically, as Phaedrus does). " us, individual and politi- cal activism lurks not too far in the background. Phaedrus is exiled, and Socrates, from the temporal point of view of the dialogue, will be executed. Socrates’ answer goes beyond the righteous ravings of the so-called enlightened self-determining ooxfordhb-9780199931347-fm.inddxfordhb-9780199931347-fm.indd xxiiii 33/11/2014/11/2014 99:48:47:48:47 PPMM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, Tue Mar 11 2014, NEWGEN PROLOGUE xiii individualist and yet does not subscribe to some ancient theocratic authority. Socrates’ answer displays a wise pragmatism that will sidestep both the political dichotomy of the individual versus the state and the intellectual dichotomy of belief versus reason. Turning the tables, Socrates himself o ! ers a dichotomy: either one is clever ( sophōtatos ) and dabbles in the childish task of demythologizing ancient nar- ratives, or one concerns oneself with self-knowledge. Socrates speaks from the point of view of the second option. He is a lover of wisdom (278d). # e di! erence between a mature and immature philology is precisely philosophy. Otherwise, it is a mere technique, a method. Socrates demonstrates that he is fully cognizant of what it is the clever intellectuals do. He himself provides a cameo of the $ rst clever philologist: $ rst disbelief and a pretension to intellectual maturity—to reject such tales. # en there is the scienti$ c demythologization: the god must be the North Wind. # en there is a collation of versions (“or, was it perhaps, from Areopagus?”). Finally, there is the forgetting of the seriousness of thinking, replaced instead by a “rough ingenuity” and much industry, that is, a hardworking ethic. Socrates, at least, $ nds this “amusing.” # e serious question here is the “know thyself” commanded by the Delphic inscription. Socrates restores the mythic and its task of de$ ning the mortal human being in relation to the divine. It is in that relation that the ultimate concern of being human comes to the fore, the most serious and profound question of the fate that determines our existence: death. # us, texts that raise the question of life and death or, more pointedly, the work of time and its all-encompassing destruc- tive work require a bit more than this amusing rough ingenuity, a product of those clever nonthinkers who have “a great deal of time.” Socrates alerts Phaedrus to the dangers of reducing Persephone to Orithuia by detheologizing narratives: one plays with mortal danger. Orithuia plays with Pharmaceia, who cannot save her. Pharmaceia, as Derrida has shown, is nothing other than writing itself. # us the second half of this dialogue is devoted to a critique of writing and to textuality in general. Once texts appear, they are always in danger of falling into the hands of those who treat them as dead information. # us, texts appear as epigrams, memen- tos of a wisdom that is no longer accessible. Socrates quotes the epigram on the tomb of Midas the Phrygian: A maid of bronze am I, on Midas’ tomb I lie As long as water % ows, and trees grow tall Shielding the grave where many come to cry # at Midas rests here I say to one and all. 2 2 . # e epigram is unusual because the order of its lines is irrelevant. It makes as much sense whether one begins at the end or the beginning, or anywhere in between.
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