Even in Mathematics, or disciplines which aspire to Mathematical exactitude or apodicticity - like Economics- students have to learn the Greek alphabet and to deploy Greek words- like 'Economics' itself- in a sense Aristotle would not have recognized.
Plato's Symposium occurred at a strange time. Some young men, disguising their faces under their cloaks- 'hoodies' we'd now call them- had run amok defacing statues of Hermes- the messenger God of Diplomacy and Interpretation- hence the word 'Hermeneutics'- and the notion of 'keeping channels of communication open'.
Was this an act of drunken rowdyism or was there a political meaning to this shameful act? Perhaps, the message was, Athens should turn its back on the peacenik 'proxenos'- the Ambassador or, more accurately, the native with an emotional tie to a foreign polis, who served as its advocate or helpful intermediary.
The other great scandal of the day, was the supposed involvement of some members of the elite- including people who attended the Symposium Plato immortalized- were privately celebrating the Eleusian Mysteries- which involved a ceremonial 'rebirth'- in a manner subversive of the system of lineages by which the Polis was ordered.
Supposing the rumors were true, why would the people of Athens felt so threatened by a private ceremony?
One view of Athens is that it had achieved prosperity and what Joseph Nye calls 'soft power', thanks to its openness to ideas, ancient- for example the Arts and Sciences of immemorial Egypt- and contemporary- even the Indian 'gymnosophist' had a place. However, that very openness, might have fuelled paranoia, that some new cult or coalition might subvert the constitution for private gain. Perhaps, what worried people most was that new ties, different to those of blood, and new protocols of mutual obligation, which owed nothing to traditional institutions, were being established at a time when their own security and economic well being appeared increasingly precarious.
As an island nation, protected by 'wooden walls'- i.e. its Navy- Britain has always identified with Athens. Its very insularity depended upon an unceasing maritime vigilance and activity which brought it into touch with the remotest continents. Its laws protected those fleeing persecution as well as those who wished to participate in its global commerce. Its Social Structure, too, encouraged class mobility based on enterprise and education. Now, following the Brexit vote, some are questioning Britain's future path.
It has been suggested that Athens' uniqueness stems from a reform of Solon's such that it became the Greek City where the 'metic'- i.e. the skilled migrant or freed slave- could best flourish and enhance both the 'hard' and 'soft power' of the Polis. It has been pointed out that the scene for Plato's Republic- a dialogue concerned with the ideal political order for a City State- was the house of a metic, Cephalus, a wealthy retired merchant. Lysias, the son of Cephalus, achieved fame as a teacher of rhetoric and legal speech-writer. During the reign of the 'Thirty Tyrants'- oligarchs imposed upon Athens by its enemy, Sparta- he and his brother were seized as aliens and ordered to be put to death- Lysias was lucky to get away. Later he returned to prosecute those at whose hands his family had suffered.
Plato's dialogues referred to people who were well known to have played a part, or to have suffered, during the political vicissitudes which Athens underwent as it struggled to balance the desire for unjust enrichment through foreign adventures with its own vulnerabilities to its envious rivals and the rising power of the Persian satrap. These strains were reduplicated within the polity. Some aristocrats had inherited great wealth and, like the young Alcibiades, improved on their natural endowments and attractions by cultivating the art of rhetoric- as taught by sophists like Gorgias, a native of Sicily who had earned great wealth from his lectures- so as to sway the assembly to punish their rivals and enemies while granting them power to achieve their own ambitions.
In the Republic, Socrates argues that since an Aristocracy might, over time, diminish in inherited wealth, there was a danger that the young Aristocrat, feeling his inheritance insufficient, would become overly ambitious and driven by 'thymos' (spiritedness). Thus an Aristocracy might give way to a 'Timocracy' where Glory counted for most and military adventurism became endemic unless checked by the Law Courts or the General Assembly of the citizens. The Timocrat would then seek to escape these curbs by gaining fabulous wealth so as to hire lawyers and venal politicians. Thus the Timocracy would become an Oligarchy. The son of the oligarch, however, having grown up without ever having felt the pinch of want or the need to economize, might be resentful of any curb whatsoever upon his conduct and value freedom (negative freedom, we might say, as the absence of restraint) above all things and thus advocate of a type of Democracy freed of all Legal or Institutional constraint.
At present, Donald Trump has been hailed by some as representing a Democracy fed up with 'political correctness' and as giving a voice to those left behind by 'the elites' and the 'experts'. His son-in-law, scion of a very wealth family, seems to have put an end to Gov. Chris Christie's ambitions in the new Administration because the latter prosecuted and put the former's father in jail. It may thus appear that Trump's victory is that of an oligarchy which has turned to Democracy so as to remove any check upon its actions and attitudes.
However, the opposite point might be argued with greater empirical evidence. The oligarchy already had a favorable regime when it came to Capital mobility and could afford to sacrifice the pretense of a 'rules based' liberal world order, or a domestic commitment to restoring living standards and life chances. The fact is, Obama focused on the 'Rust belt' while being prepared to take a hit in the 'Sun belt' in 2012 and this strategy worked against the billionaire Romney. Hillary Clinton had a well financed 'top down' campaign but failed to mobilize local networks where it most mattered. It was a case of 'win-win' for the oligarchy.
Still, whatever Brexit and Trump's victory portends, it is difficult to believe that the political history of ancient Athens could have very much relevance or predictive power to our hi-tech globalized world. Indeed, it is not clear that Socrates or Plato or Xenophon or that humble metic-philosophers like 'Simon the shoemaker'- who was closest to Socrates in social class- actually did anything to retard or advance the cause of good government in their native Polis.
Indeed, ever since Nietzche, the modern world has found Socrates's method of argumentation less and less appealing. Karl Popper attacked Plato for having given a philosophical justification for the worst totalitarian regimes. Currently, Plato's ideas are associated with the notion- congenial to certain billionaires- that we all actually live in a computer simulation.
In this context, can Plato's Symposium be read in a manner which offers us hope?
One reason to think so has to do with the fact that Socrates isn't indulging here in the sort of word games or rhetorical tricks which appear seductive to entitled adolescents, as yet, barred from the agora or the full possession of their Trust Fund and hence who are forced to mark time in the groves of Academe for the nonce.
Poets speak of Love as 'two becoming one'- 'a more perfect union'- but that's just a metaphor- a figure of speech- and any grand narrative involving the soul which features 'the transfiguring power of Love' stumbles at the first and most obvious hurdle. Eros may draw two together but that story ends with the calling of the mid-wife (Socrates's mother was one) and so what actually happens is that 'two becomes three'. A husband may well browbeat his wife, or a wife may establish ascendancy over her husband, but when a child is born and begins to speak, all the agreed meanings of terms used in domestic discourse are turned on their head. For, metic households, it often happens that Mum and Dad actually speak a different language from the child! It is the child's idioms and methods of argument that the parents pick up. Even in aristocratic households, children slowly get the upper hand. It is their needs and interests which gradually modify domestic discourse and reshape its mise en scene.
Over time, as such contacts are kept up, we see that something new has been born- Wittgenstein would call it a 'language game'- and it is this 'game' which, like a child reshaping domestic discourse, takes the lead in giving communication a horizon on the far side of the Hermeneutic bubble.
The Academy thinks that Socrates was inventing a couvade ritual- a false pregnancy which men complain of suffering- by which imaginary animals became available for, not the dinner table, but to provide questing fewmets for a Scholastic Unicorn hunt.
The story of Agnodice tells a different story. Socrates was put to death for 'seducing the young men'. Agnodice, who trained in Egypt, disguised herself as a man to visit women in travail. She was accused of 'seducing the young women'. She easily cleared herself of that charge by lifting her skirt.
Agnodice did real good. Men did not vote to kill her because their own hope for sons depended on her skills.
Socrates' death made no real difference. That's why he chose to both die and practice 'mousikie'- i.e the ancient equivalent of what Bob Dylan just got the Nobel prize for- but what was his big shtick?
Metaxu - that empathic and imaginative middle way taught by the Buddha, and known as barzakh to the Sufis and antarabhava or bardo to the Hindus and Buddhists.
This is a difficult concept to understand. It hasn't been particularly fruitful in the Academy. Yet, somehow it strikes a chord with ordinary people
I happen to be a Hindu whose 'kula devam' (family deity) is Kumara- best depicted as a little boy who wants to sleep between his parents. However, they melt into each other to become 'Ardhanarishvara'- God who is half woman, half man. The puzzled infant asks his elder brother Ganesha, who symoblises wisdom- 'what happens to the other half of Mum, of Dad, when they merge to form Ardhanarishvara?'
Ganesha replies 'They re-appear on Earth as Everyman, Everywoman.'
Perhaps, we make a mistake in thinking that the Greeks broke the tradition of the ancient, pre-Greek, Eleusian Religion by splitting up the Godhead into different and warring divinities. Perhaps, that was just a dramatic manner of speaking or a useful heuristic for essentially Statistical, or Empirical, Sciences.
Socrates's strange Symposium ends by offering us a vision of our own being as, like the baby Kumara, the child of both Poverty and Possession- the mendicant Shiva and the All-Maternal Power known as Shakti.
Socio-biology- Dawkin's 'extended phenotype principle'- permits us to view all living things as existing kinetically only by reason of a sort of potentially maternal affection our every constituent part bears some potential constituent part of every possible other. It may be infinitely plastic. Yet, there is a part of us which finds the prospect appalling and utterly estranging.
Thomas De Quincey recounted his opium fuelled vision of the promiscuous inter-connectedness of Dawkins' Bios in a purple passage which much influenced Oscar Wilde-
'Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by parroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphynxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.'
At about the same time, a young Etonian was reading a book about Kerala- 'the Empire of the Nairs'- written a few years earlier by another old Etonian. Shelley, for it was he, was inspired by the nobility and freedom of Nair women and wrote an incandescent translation of Plato's Symposium which, eighty years later, inspired South Indian poets.
I must admit, I find Shelley dull- and Subramaniyam Bharati, Shelley's Tamil disciple, is something of a joke figure nowadays- yet I am compelled to admit that Plato's Symposium will always be read by a select few- an 'elite' if you like, but an 'elite' vanguard storming the battlements of entrenched privilege- in a liberative manner.
What do you think?
Have I been carried away by my own wind of words?
Or can Symposia still matter?
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