Return to the Cave: Philia , Eros, and the Erotic-Hermetic Structure of the Philosophical Life

AbstractIn the scholarly literature on Plato’s Republic, one of the abiding questions has been and remains: why must the philosopher return to the cave? Socrates’s claim that philosophers will do so willingly thanks to their feeling of duty to the polis is rather unsatisfying and doesn’t mesh with the ethical framework presented by the Republic as a whole. Here, I draw on the work of Eric Voegelin and John von Heyking, in order to propose a two-axis model of what I call the erotic-hermetic structure of the philosophical life. By emphasizing the horizontal (i.e. hermetic, or interpersonal) element of the philosophical life, I argue that the philosopher, in order to be what he or she is in the fullest sense, must return to the cave. Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 All references to Plato’s Republic are cited using Stephanus numbers. The edition cited throughout is Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. Francis MacDonald Cornford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941).2 For a concise statement of the nature of the problem, see Timothy A. Mahoney, “Do Plato’s Philosopher-Rulers Sacrifice Self-Interest to Justice?,” Phronesis 37, no. 3 (1992): 265–7.3 Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato’s Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 269; Zdravko Planinc, Plato’s Political Philosophy: Prudence in the Republic and the Laws (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 36.4 Planinc, Plato’s Political Philosophy: Prudence in the Republic and the Laws, 36. It should also be noted that others have attempted to solve the problem by arguing that Plato's “real” definition of justice is found in Book I, where Socrates asserts that justice really means not harming others (335e). See Roslyn Weiss, Philosophers in the Republic: Plato’s Two Paradigms (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), 189–90.5 Gabriel Zamosc, “The Political Significance of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave,” Ideas y Valores 66, no. 165 (2017): 238.6 Nettleship provides the classic statement on the parallels between the divided line and the allegory of the cave. See Richard Lewis Nettleship, Lectures on the Republic of Plato (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1901), Ch. X.7 A. S. Ferguson, “Plato's Simile of Light. Part I. The Similes of the Sun and the Line,” The Classical Quarterly 15, no. 3/4 (1921); A. S. Ferguson, “Plato's Simile of Light. Part II. The Allegory of the Cave,” The Classical Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1922); C. Strang, “Plato’s Analogy of the Cave,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 4 (1986); Stanley Rosen, Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1969), 191-3; Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 66ff; Eric Voegelin, Order and History, Volume 3: Plato and Aristotle, ed. Dante Germino, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 16, (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 166-71.8 For a helpful discussion of the development of the thinking of this second camp, see: Zamosc, “The Political Significance of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave,” 237; Planinc, Plato’s Political Philosophy: Prudence in the Republic and the Laws, Ch. 1.9 Planinc, Plato’s Political Philosophy: Prudence in the Republic and the Laws, 46.10 Ferguson, “Plato's Simile of Light. Part I. The Similes of the Sun and the Line,” 133.11 Ferguson, 134.12 Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle, 166.13 Voegelin, 166.14 Voegelin, 167–8; Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. Francis MacDonald Cornford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), 227 (518e).15 Voegelin, 169.16 Voegelin, 170-1.17 Plato, Five Dialogues, trans. G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002), 118 (80d).18 For a full description of this structure, which can be applied in a range of philosophical contexts, see Eric Voegelin, “Reason: The Classic Experience,” in The Eric Voegelin Reader: Politics, History, Consciousness, ed. Charles R. Embry and Glenn Hughes (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2017).19 Eric Voegelin, Order and History, Volume 4: The Ecumenic Age, ed. Michael Franz, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 17, (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 56.20 Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle, 167.21 Plato, The Symposium, trans. M. C. Howatson, ed. M. C. Howatson and Frisbee C. C. Sheffield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 38–9 (202d–e).22 Plato, 37–8 (202a–b).23 Plato, 39 (203a).24 Voegelin, “Reason: The Classic Experience,” 232–3.25 Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics, trans. Gerhart Niemeyer, ed. David Walsh, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 6, (Columbia, MO: University of Columbia Press, 2002), 352.26 Voegelin, 324–5.27 Voegelin, 325.28 Plato, Five Dialogues, 117–8 (79a–c).29 Plato, 118 (80b).30 Voegelin highlights that the dialogue begins with the words “war and battle,” a foreshadowing of the failure of Socrates's efforts to establish some sort of meaningful communication with his interlocutors. Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle, 83.31 Plato, Gorgias, trans. Chris Emlyn-Jones (New York: Penguin, 2004), 65 (481d).32 Plato, 65 (481d).33 Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle, 83.34 “Discussion between you and me is an absurd affair; all the time we have been talking we have never ceased to revolve in an endless circle of mutual misunderstanding” Plato, Gorgias, 123 (517c).35 As Voegelin points out, the possibility that one's love will be misdirected away from the good and toward evil becomes a key them in the later books of the Republic. Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle, 83.36 Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle, 90.37 Voegelin, 90.38 Eric Voegelin, “Science, Politics and Gnosticism,” in Modernity Without Restraint: The Political Religions, The New Science of Politics, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, ed. Thomas A. Hollweck, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 5 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 259.39 This chapter is deeply indebted to the analysis found in John John von Heyking, The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), Ch. 4. It should be noted that there has been much debate over the status of Plato's aims and conclusions in this dialogue subtle and problematic dialogue. These debates turn on the various senses in which φίλοζ (philos) might have been understood in Attic Greek. Interestingly, Robinson sees the dialogue as an expression of the real problem Plato faced when confronting the dissonance between the self-sufficient philosopher who has knowledge of the good and one's need for friends. Of course, this is apposite to the present question on the philosopher's return to the cave. See David B. Robinson, “Plato’s ‘Lysis’: The Structural Problem,” Illinois Classical Studies 11, no. 1 (1986): 72; David K. Glidden, “The Lysis on Loving One’s Own,” The Classical Quarterly 31, no. 1 (1981): 58; A.W. Price, Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), Ch. 1.40 Robinson, “Plato’s ‘Lysis’: The Structural Problem,” 72.41 Plato, Plato’s Lysis, trans. Terry Penner and Christopher Rowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 4–9 (204c–06c).42 Plato, Plato’s Lysis, 4 (204b).43 Paul Friedländer, Plato: An Introduction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Legacy Library, 1969), 50.44 Friedländer, 51.45 Francisco J. Gonzalez, “How to read a Platonic prologue: Lysis 203a–207d,” in Plato as Author: The Rhetoric of Philosophy, ed. Ann N. Michelini (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2003), 25.46 Christopher Planeaux, “Socrates, an Unreliable Narrator? The Dramatic Setting of the ‘Lysis’,” Classical Philology 96, no. 1 (2001): 7. Quoted in John von Heyking, The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship, 106.47 Plato, Plato’s Lysis, 330 (207c); 350 (223a).48 John von Heyking, The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship, 106.49 Here I am generally drawing on von Heyking’s discussion of the Hymn in von Heyking, The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship, 116–8.50 Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, ed. G. P. Goold, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White, The Loeb Classical Library, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), 393.51 Hesiod, 395.52 Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, 395.53 John von Heyking, The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship, 116.54 Jenny Strauss Clay, The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Homeric Hymns (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2006), 102.55 F. G. Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre (Göttingen, 1857), I:343. As quoted in Clay, The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Homeric Hymns, 102.56 Clay, The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Homeric Hymns, 102.57 Plato, Gorgias, 507a.58 Plato, Gorgias, 505e–06b.59 I submit that the very fact that Socrates engages in philosophical discussion to the very last moment of his life is significant in this regard. Plato, Five Dialogues, 104 (67c).60 Eric Voegelin, Order and History, Volume 2: The World of the Polis, ed. Athanasios Moulakis, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 15, (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 311. See also Leo Strauss, “What is Poltical Philosophy?,” The Journal of Politics 19, no. 3 (1957): 343.