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The Art of Living http://content.cdlib.org.oca.ucsc.edu/xtf/view?docId=ft1x0nb0jn&chunk... Preferred Citation: Nehamas, Alexander. The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1998 1998. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft1x0nb0jn/ The Art of Living Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault Alexander Nehamas UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford © 1998 The Regents of the University of California For Susan Glimcher and Nicholas Nehamas Preferred Citation: Nehamas, Alexander. The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1998 1998. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft1x0nb0jn/ For Susan Glimcher and Nicholas Nehamas ― ix ― PREFACE The invitation to deliver the Sather Classical Lectures is perhaps the greatest honor that can be bestowed on a classical scholar. When the scholar in question is not really a classicist, as I am not, the honor is even greater, but the responsibility it imposes is very heavy indeed. The honor the Department of Classics at the University of Claifornia at Berkeley did me by their invitation to be the Sather Professor of Classical Literature in 1992–93 filled me with joy. The sense of responsibility that came along with it filled me with terror. The terror soon outstripped the joy, and for a long time I was not at all sure that I would really be able to discharge my obligations in a reasonable manner. The lectures finally having been delivered in the Spring Term of 1993, I am now faced with the same sentiment of joy subdued by terror as I contemplate the book I have produced as a result. I am acutely aware of the book's inadequacies, and I realize in addition that some classical scholars may find that many of its concerns do not fit squarely with their own professional interests. Though that is something I am sorry for, it is an unavoidable feature of this work. A central part of the book's argument is that the effort to combine diverse and sometimes conflicting features into a unity is an activity crucial both to philosophy and to life and that its model—the model of the most extreme and alluring unity—is the Socrates of Plato's early dialogues. In that way, I combine my own philosophical interests with the little I know about classics and literary criticism, in the hope that the final 1 of 185 11/13/2007 9:54 PM The Art of Living http://content.cdlib.org.oca.ucsc.edu/xtf/view?docId=ft1x0nb0jn&chunk... combination can form a unity of its own. It is impossible to imagine how I can thank my colleagues at Berkeley ― x ― enough without at the same time repeating what so many others before me have already said. The department as a whole demonstrated an exquisite combination of tact and hospitality—tact in leaving me to myself while I was madly at work on those lectures that were still not finished by the time I arrived in California, and hospitality in welcoming me as one of their own once the series began. Mark Griffith was a constant source of good cheer and reassurance. I was particularly happy to renew my friendship with Tony Long, who also presented a set of very valuable comments on the first three lectures. Giovanni Ferrari and Kate Toll were intellectually interesting and socially elegant companions. My interactions with William Anderson, Stephen Miller, Charles Murgia, Ronald Stroud, and Thomas Rosenmeyer were consistently pleasant and profitable. Hans Sluga, whose comments on the second set of three lectures were particularly helpful, Judith Stacey, Bernard Williams, and Richard Wollheim were kind enough to discuss various aspects of my ideas with me while I was in California. John Cooper—a real model of what a friend and colleague should be, and to whom I owe so much over so many years and for so many different reasons, personal as well as intellectual—and Jerry Schneewind interrupted their own research at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford to come to Berkeley and offer me their company and encouragement. Froma Zeitlin gave me invaluable guidance while I was preparing my lectures: I hope I was able to return part of the favor while she was herself preparing and delivering her own Sather Lectures in 1995–96. Paul Guyer, despite our vastly different approaches to philosophy, has always helped me formulate and hone many of my views over many years and in various places, and I am grateful to him for his generosity. Myles Burnyeat heard me out on a number of occasions, and a particular suggestion he once made proved crucial to my final conception of Socrates' version of what this book calls the art of living. Vassilis Lambropoulos provoked me to think about some very difficult issues on the basis of his extraordinary reading of my introduction. The influence of Gregory Vlastos, who died before the lectures were delivered and with whose views on Socrates this book engages in a running dialogue, will be too obvious to every reader of this book for me to have to do anything but mention it here. I disagree with him on many important issues. I wish he could have been there and that I could have had the benefit of his stern but always considerate advice. I did not, by contrast, seek to benefit from Sarah Kofman's Socrate (Paris: Galilée, 1989). Her book discusses many of the authors I too address, but her approach differs so much from mine that to engage with her work, for which I have ― xi ― the deepest admiration, would have forced my argument to become even more convoluted than it already is. I hope to be able to write about her ideas on a separate occasion. I must also express my thanks to James Miller, who generously provided me with a transcript of the lectures of Michel Foucault that constitute the main subject of chapter 6, and for his interest in the main subject of this book. Rachel Barney, Philip Robbins, and Mika Provata provided me with efficient and cheerful research assistance. I am grateful to them for their efforts. I owe a deeper and more intimate debt to Thomas Laqueur, who participated in the conception, preparation, delivery, and revision of these lectures, from the very beginning to the very end. Considerate in listening, quick in understanding, thoughtful in advising, he has influenced every aspect of my work. Along with Gail Saliterman, he took the most generous practical care of me while I was living in Berkeley: I don't know what I would have done without him. He has shown me why Horace was right to say that a friend is one half of one's own soul. Susan Glimcher and Nicholas Nehamas, in their vastly different ways, put up with behavior on my part which I sincerely doubt I would have been able to forgive in them. A family makes what this book calls a philosophical life much more complex and difficult than it might otherwise be. But that complexity is worth accepting and integrating with the rest of one's life and work. My own family, who even agreed with all the good will in the world to cancel a long-planned trip to Greece on the eve of our departure so that this book could be finished in time, has proved to me that Nietzsche's quip, "A married philosopher belongs to comedy," is not simply wrong but a comically shallow and ignorant joke. There are no constraints on the materials of which a philosophic life can consist: I am grateful to have learned that lesson and I offer them my thanks for having taught it to me. 2 of 185 11/13/2007 9:54 PM The Art of Living http://content.cdlib.org.oca.ucsc.edu/xtf/view?docId=ft1x0nb0jn&chunk... ― xii ― When will you begin to live virtuously, Plato asked an old man who was telling him that he was attending a series of lectures on virtue. One must not just speculate for ever; one must one day also think about actual practice. But today we think that those who live as they teach are dreamers. Immanuel Kant, The Philosophical Encyclopaedia When one has no character one has to apply a method. Albert Camus, The Fall ― 1 ― INTRODUCTION Philosophy is a theoretical discipline. It has few practical implications for everyday life. The various fields of "applied" philosophy that have emerged in recent years—medical or business ethics, for example—have been quickly absorbed by the professions they concern. To the extent that they really are practical, these fields belong more to medicine or business than to philosophy itself. Philosophy also has few implications for the life of those who practice it. What philosophers study makes no more claim to affecting their personal lives than the work of physicists, mathematicians, or economists is expected to affect theirs. And yet there is a lingering sense in most people as well as in a few philosophers that somehow that is not how matters should be, a sense of puzzlement and even of disappointment that the lives of philosophers do not reflect their convictions. "Philosophy is a theoretical discipline." Like many general statements, this one too conceals a perfect tense in its apparently timeless "is." The truth is that philosophy has become a theoretical discipline over time and as a result of many complex historical developments. The "fact" that its "nature" is theoretical is nothing but the historically given reality that philosophy has mainly been practiced as a theoretical discipline for as long as the knowledge and memory of most philosophers extend.
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