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The Bipolar Longings of Thumos: a Feminist Rereading of Plato's Republic

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The Bipolar Longings of Thumos: a Feminist Rereading of Plato's Republic The Bipolar Longings of Thumos: A Feminist Rereading of Plato's Republic CHRISTINA TARNOPOLSKY, McGill University Plato's treatment of thumos in the Republic might seem like an odd place to look for mining fresh feminist insights into the complex and political character of human desire. 1 The dialogue itself is often seen as one in which human desire is down played in favor of the godlike and self-sufficient philosopher-kings who are quite unlike the erotic, needy, and striving Socrates of Plato's Symposium (Bloom 1968, 423; Williams 1993, 98-102). For this very reason, feminists have usually looked to the latter dialogue in order to derive a notion of classical desire, either from the Aristophanic notion of eros as a striving for one's better half or from Diotima's notion of eros as a striving for wholeness and as the desire to give birth to a new self in the presence of the beloved. More pro­ blematically, Plato's treatment of thumos in the Republic has primarily been co-opted by conservative, anti-feminist thinkers who see it as the manly and warlike passion of anger or spiritedness that animates men's souls (Berns 1984, 335-348; Bloom 1968, 355, 376). Even commenta­ tors who do not share these kinds of political views tend to see Platonic thumos as that element of the soul which counters desire or eros be­ cause it counters those desires that are lodged in the epithumetic (appetitive/desiring) part of the soul (Koziak 2000, 75, 77; Allen 2000b, 252).2 In this paper I hope to challenge all of these views of the Republic by looking at the complex bipolar longings that characterize Plato's notion of thumos. While Plato does argue that thumos is different from the kinds of appetitive desires for sex, food, and drink that are lodged in the epithumetic part of the soul, he does not see thumos as lacking its own unique desires and longings. In Book Eight he makes it clear that the most political kinds of desires are lodged in this part of the soul when he www.s-ympos-ium-journal.com declares that the thumotic element (to thumoeides) is both victory-loving and honor-loving (philonikon ... kai philotimon) (Rep. 581bl-2). Al­ though Plato uses the traditional Greek notion of philia (affection/ friend­ ship) instead of eros (love/desire) in this passage to deSignate these longings (Liddell and Scott 1996, 1934, 691), his comprehensive teaching on thumos in the Republic is meant to show how these desires are distinct from the affection for those like us (philia) and from the desire for what is different from us (eros) because it involves the simultaneous desire to assert one's difference from others and to be recognized as like 298 The Bipolar Longings of Thumos The Bipolar Longings of Thumos 299 these others.3 I will also argue that Plato's treatment of thumos and the The flipside of this critique of the Athenians consists of Plato's critique bipolar longings that constitute it resonates more with contemporary of his teacher, Socrates. In coming to a deeper understanding of the thu­ psychoanalytic and feminist challenges to the classical Freudian theory of motic element of the soul, Plato realized that if he were to effect a desire than either the complementarity of Aristophanes's teaching on change in his fellow citizens or future democrats, then he would also 4 eros or the autoeroticism of Diotima's teaching on eros. Here I will be have to change the method of his and their teacher, Socrates. He would looking at Andrew Morrison's work, Shame: The Underside of Narcissism have to temper not just the wildness and harshness of the Athenians's and Jessica Benjamin's work, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Femi­ opposition to Socratic philosophy, but also the wildness and harshness of nism and the Problem of Domination, both of which challenge central socrates's philosophic nature (Bloom 1968, xvii) as this is dramatized in tenets of Freud's theory of desire as well as his theory of infantile nar­ the first book of the Republic. Accordingly, in the first part of this paper I cissism and omnipotence. I will argue that Plato's treatment of the turn to the problematic character of the Socratic elenchus as this comes 5 bipolar or bidirectional longings of thumos involves a notion of the subtle to light in the first book of the Republic. Here I argue that the interplay, harmony, and attunement between two needy and vulnerable aggressiveness and desire for omnipotence so central to the tyrant's soul beings, neither of whom seeks either complete domination over, or also lurks within the soul of Socrates. I also show that the diagnosis submission to, the other. Like Benjamin, Plato's theory of the funda­ Plato makes of the failed transference between Socrates and Thrasyma­ mentally social and intersubjective character of human being requires chus bears striking similarities to the failed intersubjectivity between the seeing assertion and recognition, the desire for distinction and the desire patient and therapist or the child and caretaker diagnosed by Morrison for connection, as equally primordial longings that are in productive and Benjamin, respectively. tension with one another in human life (Benjamin 1988, 12-28). Indeed, it is precisely because of Plato's deepening understanding of I will also argue that like Benjamin and Morrison, Plato saw the the bipolar desires characteristic of thumos that he is able to portray a potential for a breakdown of this productive tension or mutuality into the gentler, more musical, and more caring Socrates in Books Two through problematic desires for domination and submission (Benjamin) or omni­ Ten of the Republic. It is this Platonic Socrates whose newfound qualities potence (Morrison). Indeed my revision of the traditional interpretation will then reverberate in the souls of Glaucon and Adeimantus through a of Platonic thumos also requires a reorientation in our way of thinking much more positive process of transference. In the second section of the about the Republic and of Plato's complex relationship both to demo­ paper, I argue that the characters of Glaucon and Adeimantus dra­ cratic Athens and to his teacher, Socrates. Instead of reading the matically illustrate the two different elements of thumos, which need to Republic as an unambiguous defense of Socrates and his particular brand be harmonized properly and balanced in human life in order to avoid the of philosophy, and as a total rejection of Athenian democratic politics, I problematic desires for either total domination of (Glaucon) or sub­ see the Republic as actually containing Plato's own diagnosis of what it servience to (Adeimantus) others. In the third section of the paper, I was about Socratic philosophy and Plato's Athenian contemporaries that argue that Platonic thumos is distinct from both philia (fondness for resulted in such a problematic relationship between them. In Book One those like ourselves) and eros (desire for what is different from our­ of the Republic Plato actually shows that there is a problematic desire for selves) because it involves the simultaneous recognition of our similarity omnipotence and domination lurking in the souls of both Socrates and and differences from others. In the conclusion of the paper I show pre­ Socrates's interlocutors who secretly or not so secretly (Thrasymachus) cisely why the new Platonic musical education of thumos involves admire the tyrant's domination of everyone around him. For Plato, such maintaining a harmonious balance or tension between its two poles of fantasies of omnipotence and domination were central to the Athenian harshness and gentleness, self-assertion and caring for others. The mas­ imperialistic democratic imaginary, which predisposed the Athenians both culine, war-like and angry guardian, so often taken as the paradigm of collectively and individually to admire covertly the tyrant and his freedom Platonic thumos, can now be seen as an overdevelopment of just one of from all forms of restraint as the model for a false kind of democratic the two poles or musical modes that ought to comprise the delicate freedom (Tarnopolsky 2004, 482-3). I believe that the next nine books harmony of a well-balanced and finely tuned thumos. of the Republic represent Plato's attempt to replace this very problematic normative imaginary with one that instantiates more reasonable norms of engagement between needy and vulnerable beings. 300 The Bipolar Longings of Thumos The Bipolar Longings of Thumos 301 The Limitations of the Socratic Elenchus in RepublicOne kind of immoderation that can plague this dialectical interaction, thus harming both the "patient" and the "doctor" or "therapist." In Book One of the Republic, Socrates's arguments with Cephalus, I want to argue that Socrates's gluttony and indigestion dramatically Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus dramatically illustrate that the Socratic illustrate Plato's own diagnosis of the limitations of his teacher's method elenchus cannot suffice to persuade one's interlocutors to change their of comportment towards others. In Book One, Socrates never allows views even when they have been shown to be contradictory or either himself or his interlocutors to come to a fully adequate under­ inconsistent by this logical method of refutation. The most it can do is to standing of what justice is before proceeding to investigate whether it is make the person perplexed, and they may, like Cephalus, laugh the a virtue or a vice, and then whether it is profitable or unprofitable for refutation off and run away to make sacrifices (Rep. 331dl-8), or like human beings (Rep. 354b2-10). What has been said about justice in Polemarchus simply switch their views in response to the twists and Book I might well be truthful, but it has come out in such a way that turns of an argument (Rep.
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