Volume 40 Issue 2

Fall 2013
147

John S. Treantafelles

Socratic Testing: Protagoras 310a314b

175

Waseem El-Rayes

The Book of Religions Political and

Pedagogical Objectives

199

Marco Andreacchio

 eading Inferno IV as Key to

R
Dantes Comedy

221

Chris Barker

 reedom in Shakespeares English

F
History Plays

253

James Carey

 he Pleasure of Philosophizing and Its

T
Moral Foundation

283

Jrgen Gebhardt

Hermeneutics and Political Theory

305
309

Book Reviews:
Gregory A. McBrayer The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, translated and edited by
John T. Scott
James Fetter

 eason, Tradition, and the Good: MacIntyres

R
Tradition-Constituted Reason and Frankfurt
School Critical Theory by Jeffery L. Nicholas

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Socratic Testing: Protagoras 310a314b

147

Socratic Testing: Protagoras 310a314b

J o h n S . Tr e a n ta f e l l e s
California State University Los Angeles
[email protected]

Introduction
Socrates as inveterate questioner is a familiar figure in
the history of political philosophy, the paradigm of what a philosopher is
and what it means to philosophize by questioning. Less familiar however is
Socrates as tester, with purpose to his questioning, yet equally paradigmatic of what a philosopher is and what it means to philosophize by testing.
Although his questioning appeared to be sanctified by divine commandment
issuing from the Delphic oracle (Apology 21a22b), Socratess testing was
entirely self-induced, perhaps his clarification of divine intent, but in any case
rarely made explicit in Platos dialogues. Unrecognized as a tester Socrates
easily escaped the inclusion of that charge in the general indictment against
him, whereas his well-known and self-described reputation as a questioner
easily branded him a teacher, and therefore justified the indictments accusation of teaching.
But if testing is an instrument of teaching, designed to raise
awareness in the mind of the one tested some issue not exhausted by the
previous examples given in the questions asked, then Socrates would come
dangerously close to confirming long-held suspicions about him as one of the
teaching sophiststhe very group he tried to distance himself from as much
as possible at his trial. Or can someone like Socrates be a tester without necessarily being a teacher too? Platos Protagoras may provide us an answer. For
in this dialogue above all others Socrates clearly conducts himself as a tester throughout, and, by his own admission, expressly so in his conversation
with Hippocrates, a rather impetuous youth desperate for sophistic lessons.
2013 Interpretation, Inc.

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Volume 40 / Issue 2

And Socrates does this while at the same time decrying the profession of the
teaching sophists, even though he will presently convert them into testers
themselves, that is, more like the philosopher himself.
This essay accordingly examines what I am calling the Hippocrates section of Platos Protagoras from this perspective of Socratic
testing, not in order to resolve the question of virtues teachability, the ostensive subject of the dialogue, but to understand the activity of philosophy and
those engaged in it by testing others. Present if only by allusion are antecedents of philosophical themes addressed in subsequent dialogues, and brought
forth with all seriousness in the days surrounding Socratess trial and execution. In Protagoras Plato has seen fit to mark philosophys dramatic entrance
onto the world stage in the distinctive form of Socratic testing, arguably the
earliest antecedent, and onto a stage already crowded with the champions of
sophistry, for whom testing evidently was not fundamental to their pedagogy. If a maxim of Socratic philosophy is that the learnable is not necessarily
teachable, then immediately prior to challenging the sophists to prove virtue
is teachable in speech, Socrates demonstrates in deed by testing Hippocrates that the real burden rests with the student as learner rather than
the teacher as inculcator. If the entire sophistic enterprise of teaching virtue
is thus put into question, then the possibility of the just city ever coming into
being in deed has been irretrievably compromised.
By saying world stage rather than Athens simply I mean
to suggest that Plato has dramatically disclosed to readers of Protagoras a
feature of Socratic philosophy his Athenian public in general and Socratess
jurors in particular would never learn about, especially as the latter deliberated about his fate; namely, that Socrates was in some manner a tester, that
more was involved in his questioning than simply exposing to people their
ignorance, however much he seemed to argue only that at his trial. If Socratic
testing antedates the oracles judgment on Socratess wisdom, then the Hippocrates section would be the secular or terrestrial defense of philosophy in
its engagement with the nonphilosophical world. Here, it is Protagoras who
is proclaimed by all for his wisdom (310d311a), not Socrates, and where the
sophist will prophesy oraclelike that Socrates will someday become renowned
for wisdom (361e).
But did not Plato effectively make public to his Athenians as
well as to the world Socratess effort to test people by posing questions when,
at the beginning of Protagoras, he makes Socrates rehearse his just-concluded
meeting with Protagoras to his companion and those attending him? Not

Socratic Testing: Protagoras 310a314b

14 9

exactly. For the companion is not simply the public. Unfortunately this
has been obscured by a common mistranslation and misunderstanding of
a question the companion asks Socrates, and which not only has inspired
some erroneous arguments about the companions interests, but has falsely
accused Socrates of lying to Protagoras. These must be corrected, not only
for a better understanding of the companion and his question, but because
Socratess reply to it begins not with Protagoras, as one might expect, but
with the Hippocrates section, where testing makes it first appearance on
Platos world stage.
In order to understand the philosophical importance of the
Hippocrates section we must first recognize its setting within the entire Protagoras, then identify and correct the translation mistake, which in turn will
prompt more thought about the addressees of the dialogue, in particular, the
companion himself. For we cannot exclude the possibility that if Hippocrates
undergoes a Socratic test, the companion does as well, and most importantly,
any reader of Platos Protagoras. After all, it is Plato who is addressing his
readers through the medium of Socrates talking with one or more interlocutors. Indeed, in the most fundamental sense, all of Platos dialogues are tests
of the readers themselves.

 he Central Setting of the

T
Hippocrates Section
The Hippocrates section occupies a rather unique place in
the Platonic corpus. For unlike some of Platos other dialoguesthe Republic and Gorgias come readily to mindthe reason Socrates accompanies a
friend or companion to witness an event or speak to some notable individual
is rarely detailed as much as it is in his conversation with Hippocrates. And
yet Plato could have easily begun Protagoras in the narrative mode of the
Republic, with Socrates saying something to the effect I went down with
Hippocrates, son of Apollodorus and brother of Phason, to see Protagoras
who was staying at Calliass house. Regardless, the philosophical importance
of Socratess role as a tester in this section is not well recognized in the
literature on Protagoras.1 But if we consider the Hippocrates section in light
In fact the tendency is to dismiss this short Hippocrates section and even the shorter section
preceding it as simply ministerial, serving only to bring Socrates and the great sophist Protagoras
together. See Michael Gagarin, The Purpose of Platos Protagoras, Transactions and Proceedings of
the American Philological Association, no.100 (1969):135. One edition of Platos dialogues offers a
brief but nonetheless striking dismissal: unless readers are interested in fifth-century Greek social
and intellectual life they are encouraged to bypass most of the dialogue and instead to concentrate
on the last part where philosophy presumably begins in earnest. See Edith Hamilton and Huntington
1

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of the entire dialogue another picture gradually emerges. Protagoras divides

easily into three distinct sections, with the Hippocrates section as the central
conversation in the dialogue. First, there is Socratess brief enacted conversation with his companion (and some undefined others), wherein Socrates is
willing to narrate his just-concluded meeting with Protagoras (309a310a).
Second, there is the Hippocrates section, wherein Socrates describes the circumstances leading to his meeting with Protagoras (310a314e), and which I
will divide into three parts. As will be shown, after their opening exchanges
in part 1, there are in fact two different conversation parts with Socrates and
Hippocrates, each addressed and settled in a different manner, with the latter
part proving to be the only completed conversation in the whole Protagoras. In other words, in a dialogue famous for its aporetic character, the sense
of helplessness that permeates once an impasse arises, there is nevertheless
embedded within it a conversationa logosthat is in fact completed, arguably the pinnacle and most important conversation of the dialogue by its very
completion. Unlike the provisional end to part 2, Socrates will emphasize the
completion of the logos at the end of part 3. If the movement from a testing
to a logos is understood as an ascent from the more physical in parts 1 and
2 to the more intellectual in part 3, then from the centered Hippocrates section a descent marks the third and final section, comprising the bulk of the

Cairns, eds., The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961),308. If
this Hippocrates section is recognized at all, it is to analyze the questions Socrates asks: C. C. W.
Taylor, Plato: Protagoras (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976),6468; or to defend Hippocratess
answers against questions designed to silence rather than persuade him on the merits: John Beversluis, Cross-Examining Socrates: A Defense of the Interlocutors in Platos Early Dialogues (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000),24556. Largely unknown as a historical figure, perhaps even a
literary construction by Plato, there is nevertheless some evidence to suggest that Hippocrates was a
nephew to Pericles himself, which, if accurate, would itself justify a closer examination of this overlooked section. See Debra Nails, The People of Plato (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002),16970. Moreover,
Platos generous use of dramatic and comical scenes throughout the dialogue is taken as proof that
Protagoras is one of his earliest works, presumably lacking the metaphysical and epistemological
depth found in Platos more mature works. See J. C. B. Gosling and C. C. W. Taylor, The Greeks on
Pleasure (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982),6667. However, Protagoras may be the first of Platos works in
more important respects than the order in which he presumably wrote them. See Laurence Lampert,
How Philosophy Became Socratic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010),2, 2124, and Joseph
Cropsey, Platos World: Mans Place in the Cosmos (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995),ixx.
Worse still, these obtrusive dramatic and comical scenes can be understood as ever threatening to
overshadow Platos philosophical argument. See B. A. F. Hubbard and E. S. Karnofsky, Platos Protagoras: A Socratic Commentary, with foreword by M. F. Burnyeat (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1984),68; or worst of all as a dialogue with no serious philosophical intention. See Shannon Dubose,
The Argument Laughs at Socrates and Protagoras, Tulane Studies in Philosophy, no.22 (1973):1521;
all of which point to a work desperately in need of revision, for example, to reintroduce Hippocrates at
the end of the dialogue, whom Plato had apparently forgotten along the way. See H. D. F. Kitto, Poiesis
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966),284.

Socratic Testing: Protagoras 310a314b

151

dialogue, wherein Socrates will discuss the question of virtues teachability

with Protagoras, the other sophists, and other notables (314e362a).

A Translation Correction
Next I must identify and correct the aforementioned mistake the literature makes about the companions question and Socratess
motives, for as noted, this bears directly on the rest of the dialogue, including the Hippocrates section.2 Well into the third section, and at its very
end, Socrates tells Protagoras he has some appointment, now long overdue
(compare 335c with 362a), and must now depart, leaving the fundamental
question of virtues teachability in aporia, raised but unresolved. His imminent meeting with the companion is wrongly taken to be a chance meeting,
I would argue, because of a mistranslation and misunderstanding of a Greek
word that makes it appear Socrates really had no pressing business at all.
Translations of Protagoras 310a have the companion ask Socrates something
to the effect, If you are not busy why dont you narrate your meeting to us,
to which Socrates readily concedes, giving the impression that he had just
lied to Protagoras about some pressing appointment.3 But in the Greek text
the companion asks Socrates something very different, to the effect, Unless
there is some reason you cannot relate your meeting, please tell us, or, more
literally, Unless something prevents you, or more ominously and, I believe,
best expressing the tone of the companions question, Unless something
forbids you, please relate your meeting. The word the companion uses,
kluei, is never used in Greek to ask, to suggest, or to imply that someone is
busy, but rather that there is some obstacle or impediment in the way, as, for
example, when Parmenides queries Socrates how each idea, being one, can
nevertheless be in each of the participant objects, Socrates responds, What
prevents it? (Parmenides 131a).4 The more common and conventional Greek
way to suggest or imply one is busy uses the familiar ascholia, or ou schol,
2

Unless otherwise indicated all translations and transliterations are mine.

B. Jowett, The Works of Plato (New York: Tudor, 1937),136; W. R. M. Lamb, Plato, vol. 2, Laches
Protagoras Meno Euthydemus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977),95; Taylor, Plato:
Protagoras,2; Hubbard, Karnofsky, and Burnyeat, Platos Protagoras,2; Hamilton and Cairns,
Collected Dialogues,309. Jowett misappropriates the phrase if you have no engagement into the companions question and thereby distorts its meaning. Lamb follows suit with if you are disengaged.
Subsequent variations of if you are not busy propagate the mistake. A more literal translation is R.
E. Allen, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 3 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996),170. But even literal
translations have not prevented misinterpretations of the Greek idiom in this particular case.
3

4
This correct usage of the word can also be found in Plato, Theaetetus (142a143b, 190d, 209a),
Republic (439cd), Phaedo (108e), and Cratylus (384b); in Aristotle, Metaphysics (1007a10) and Politics
(1101a15); in Thucydides (1.142); and in Xenophon, Memorabilia (2.6.26).

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meaning without leisure, the former which Socrates in fact uses to excuse
himself from his conversation with Protagoras (335c), and the latter which
the eunuch doorkeeper earlier uses to turn Socrates and Hippocrates away
from entering Calliass house (314d).5 As to the unmistakable difference in
meaning between these two words, prevent and busy, that they cannot
be exchanged for each other in Greek at least, Socratess own juxtaposition
of the two words in the same sentence provides incontrovertible proof: in
the Apology (39e), the guilty verdict now rendered, Socrates says that while
the officials are busy nothing prevents him from speaking to those jurors
who voted to acquit him. We will have reason to revisit this passage shortly.
Nevertheless, let us assume for the moment that the companion does in fact ask Socrates to relate his meeting with Protagoras unless
he is busy. Then it is possible Socrates lies to the companion as well as to
Protagoras, or perhaps to neither of them, frustrating any effort to determine if there is a lie or where indeed the lie lies. Stated differently, if Plato
makes Socrates lie to Protagoras about an overdue appointment the lie is not
exposed by anything Plato makes the companion ask Socrates. But at about
the midpoint in the dialogue (335b) Socrates tells the companion that Protagoras grew uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation, and that he
now appeared unwilling to continue. Concluding that it was no longer worth
his while, Socrates appears to fabricate an appointment as an excuse to leave.
But where would that leave Hippocrates? Was it not for his sake that they
approached Protagoras? Would Socrates be willing to abandon Hippocrates
to the wolves? (See Sophist 231a.) Moreover, how can Plato justify constructing a dialogue in which philosophy in the form of Socratic testing makes its
debut on the world stage by irresponsibly casting one of the citys inexperienced youth to these predators? Did Plato blunder?6 As I will argue later, Plato
may have had good reason for making the companion and therefore any
reader of Protagoras overlook the fate of Hippocrates altogether, although he
had given us as well as the companion ample warning when he said, Well,
then, listen (310a, my emphasis). We are on notice: a test is at hand.
For the moment at least, the companions opening words,
and the inference he draws, one can argue, imply that Socrates is indeed the
appointment, albeit a late one: Socrates, where have you been? (309a).7 Else5
See also Plato, Theages (121a), Phaedo (58de), Euthyphro (6c), Theaetetus (172d), and Hippias Major
(281a).
6

Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952),30.

Contrary to what some have suggested, the companion therefore would have no reason to accost

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where Plato has made it dramatically clear when a chance meeting between
Socrates and someone else is about to take place: at the beginning of Phaedrus (227a) he makes Socrates ask Phaedrus where he has been and where he
is going, implying that Phaedrus is not someone Socrates is waiting to meet;
and at the beginning of the Lysis (203a) Hippothales asks Socrates virtually
the same question. By contrast, the companion does not ask Socrates and
where are you going?8

A Privileged Audience
Even so, the companion has not fared well by the literature
on Protagoras. But when correctly understood, his prevent/forbid question
does suggest a level of intellectual curiosity that elevates his motivation for
posing the question far above those who would discount it as mere gossip or
entertainment value,9 or attempt to dismiss him as largely undistinguished,
a virtual nobody.10 Why would Socrates spend time with someone like that?
Fortunately, Plato has provided some clues to think otherwise.
The companion is accompanied by a slave as well as some
others, all of whom have the leisure time to attend to Socratess narration.
Along with the intellectual nature of the question this suggests a level of substance and means far above the average Athenian citizen. Indeed, for most
Athenians, even those with slaves, work consumed so much of their time that
leisure and independence were regarded as Utopian.11 Simply stated, the
companion and those with him are not representative of the public. Moreover, Platos recorded Socratic conversations were always between Socrates
Socrates into revealing his recent whereabouts when all along he and those attending him have been
waiting for Socrates to arrive. See for example Allen, Dialogues,89; and Patrick Coby, Socrates and the
Sophistic Enlightenment: A Commentary on Platos Protagoras (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University
Press, 1987),20. One commentary, however, assumes throughout that Socrates is the companions
appointment. See Christopher Long, Crisis of Community: The Topology of Socratic Politics in
the Protagoras, Epoche15 (2011):36177. Cropseys analysis of that presumed appointment is more
guarded: Cropsey, Platos World,3. Unlike the confrontational chance meeting that opens the Republic (327c), Could you really persuade usif we dont listen? (my emphasis), Protagoras presents a
mutually cordial and beneficial setting for Socrates, on the one hand, and the companion and those
attending him, on the other.
In Plato the dramatic action usually takes place near or at the very beginning of his dialogues. See
L. R. Lind, Movement in Platos Dialogues, Classical and Modern Literature18, no.3 (1998):183.
8

9
Robert C. Bartlett, ed., Protagoras and Meno (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004),68; J. Peter
Euben, Corrupting Youth: Political Education, Democratic Culture, and Political Theory (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1997),239.
10

Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment,20.

11

M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 4043.

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and promising but often misguided young men (Hippocrates included), or

some distinguished visitor like Protagoras, the elites of society, but never
with craftsmen or common people.12 With the addressees of Protagoras in
mind, Socratess recounting of his conversations evidently was intended
dramatically speakingonly for members of that privileged group. Nothing
prevented him from revealing his whereabouts and doings to them. To be
sure, in Protagoras they and they alone were made aware of Socratess testing
intentions. It is only at his trial, many dramatic years later, hard upon his
conviction, that Socrates can now say nothing prevents him from speaking
to the common people, evidently for the first time, to the jurors that voted to
acquit him, that is, to the public (Apology 39e, the aforementioned passage
revisited). Socratess whole private and public career was bracketed by that
concern. It is in Platos Protagoras that Socrates offers his first response to it
by rehearsing for a privileged few not only his meeting with the sophist Protagoras, but the event that initiated it: Hippocratess early morning arrival.

The Hippocrates Section

We begin by observing that the Hippocrates section is also
bracketed, here by dramatic and comical scenes that distinguish it and set
it apart from the beginning and the rest of the dialogue. In fact, as early as
the nineteenth century classical scholars had already recognized Platos Protagoras above all his other dialogues for its extraordinary and skillful display
of such scenes.13 Rather than obstacles to Platos argument, or signs of his
immaturity, I would argue instead that these very scenes serve as didactic
rhetorical tools, although their employment in Platos dialogues has not been
well understood.14 In fact, there is a close affinity between Platos dialogues
and the works of the Old Comedy masters, but especially Aristophanes. To
put it more assertively, Platos presentation of Socrates is in striking contrast
to Aristophaness presentation of Socrates.15 That this is especially true of
the Hippocrates section can be seen in Platos adaptation of a comical stage
motif often found in both Old Comedy and Aristophanes: door knocking.16
12

Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978),57.

13

B. D. Turner, ed., The Protagoras of Plato (London: Percival, 1891),1819.

Leo Strauss, On Tyranny, rev. ed., ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2000),2628. For a general discussion on Platos use of comedy see William Chase
Greene, The Spirit of Comedy in Plato, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology31 (1920):63123;
and H. D. Rankin, Laughter, Humor and Related Topics in Plato, Classica et Mediaevalia28
(1969):186213.
14

15

Leo Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980),314.

16

Ariana Traill, Knocking on Knemons Door: Stagecraft and Symbolism in the Dyskolos,

Socratic Testing: Protagoras 310a314b

155

Yes, door knocking. Plato has unmistakably bracketed the beginning and the
end of the Hippocrates section with dramatic and comical scenes of door
knocking.17 Aristophaness play most closely related to Platos Protagoras in
this respect is the Clouds, wherein Socrates is comically portrayed as a hapless tester.
Notwithstanding the suggestive tone of the companions
question, the implied discretion necessary when sophists are involved, for
the moment at least Socratess willingness to narrate his meeting with Protagoras, and even to introduce Hippocrates as the cause thereof, disarms his
companions concerns, and this despite the impression that meetings with
sophists are secretive by nature, most likely shameful, and therefore not meant
for public dissemination. In fact, Plato portrays Socrates and Protagoras as
being familiar enough with each other to suggest previous but undisclosed
conversations between them (consider 361e). No formal introductions were
necessary here. And his portrayal of Hippocrates as desperate for Socratess
recommendation as the best way to join Protagoras also implies some already
existing personal relationship between Socrates and Protagoras. But it is only
at their present meeting that Protagoras will expound on his openness as
sophist (317b), thereby giving Socrates the warrant to reveal without necessarily betraying what is essentially a private meeting. Absent that warrant
would the world have ever learned of Hippocratess embarrassment and blush
at the mere thought of becoming a sophist during an even more private conversation with Socrates?
What Socratess narration exposes will not be any convenient
or even strategically placed lie,18 or some selfish concern for his own good
counsel,19 but rather the nature of sophistry itself, which otherwise would
have remained obscure had Plato not juxtaposed Socratic testing with these
sophists to introduce the Socratic Enlightenment.20 When properly underTransactions of the American Philological Association, no.131 (2001):87108; Elizabeth Hazelton
Haight, The Symbolism of the House Door in Classical Poetry (New York: Longmans, Green,
1950),3768.
17
Another door-knocking scene occurs in the Symposium (212ce) when a drunken Alcibiades and
his boisterous group arrive.
18

Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic,7981.

Robert C. Bartlett, Political Philosophy and Sophistry: An Introduction to Platos Protagoras,

American Journal of Political Science47 (2003):6162.
19

In reaction to the sophists, as well as the pre-Socratics, the Socratic Enlightenment can be understood as a movement of restrained practical expectations, an Enlightenment of residual doubt,
and the reconciliation of man to his cosmos, without necessarily dispiriting his nobility. See Joseph
20

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stood the companions prevent/forbid question identifies the antecedents to

an ongoing and problematic relationship between the few wise and the many
unwise, and how best to address it, here as well as in subsequent dialogues.
For Protagoras that relationship is necessarily complicated by the powerful
few in every city, forcing sophistry to disguise itself as one among the various
arts to avoid detection, a strategy doomed to fail, according to Protagoras
(316d317c). For Socrates, only when philosophers become kings, or kings
philosophize, will that problem ever be resolved. But we are a long way from
Platos Republic here.
 art 1: Philosophy Engages
P
the Nonphilosophical World
Socrates describes Hippocrates to his companion as the
son of Apollodorus and brother of Phason, and will soon introduce him
to Protagoras as coming from a great and wealthy family (316b). Referring to ones brother in a patronymic description is a rather unusual way to
introduce someone in the ancient Greek world.21 It will not be necessary to
introduce Hippocrates to Protagoras that way, presumably because itinerant
sophists would not be familiar with local family relations. Besides, Phason is
not interested in Protagoras. For the companion at least, more information
about Hippocrates was necessary to identify him, although members from a
family with that reputation should be easily recognized. In any case, the companion does not appear currently informed on Athenian intellectual trends:
he does not know Protagoras has been in town for three days, whereas Hippocrates and Phason, as well as Socrates, already know that big event. That
some among the privileged class know while others do not is itself a revelation about the guarded world in which sophists must move, and about which
Protagoras will presently give testimony. Hippocratess good fortune to know
may be due to a possible kinship with Pericles. (See note 1.) But the absence of
any independent historical evidence of Hippocratess achievements, including his brothers, leaves the impression that the familys greatness did not
carry through to its progeny. If Hippocrates and his family are historical figures, then Hippocratess obscurity would be one more example to challenge
Protagorass claim that virtue is teachable. Human goodness then would be
distributed disproportionately by some obscure formula administered by
nature, perhaps by divinity, or as we might say randomly or perhaps genetiCropsey, On Ancients and Moderns, Interpretation18, no.1 (Fall 1990):4446.
21

Nicholas Denyer, ed., Protagoras (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008),68.

Socratic Testing: Protagoras 310a314b

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cally, but in all cases irrespective of family relations. Protagoras will explain
it. Can he as a sophist do better? Protagoras will profess it.
Even more remarkable is that Hippocrates carries a staff and
uses it to knock rather forcefully on the door early that morning. Although
staffs were common male accoutrements in the ancient Greek world, we find
only one other reference in Plato, in the Greater Hippias (292a), where such
a staff could be used to strike Socrates.22 Be that as it may, banging on doors
with a staff may mark Hippocrates as an aggressive type of person, which he
certainly is; or the staff may be an aid in walking in darkness, which would
suggest Hippocrates is also a dependent type of person, which as we will
see he certainly is. To explain his recent absence Hippocrates tells Socrates
he had been away in Oenoe attempting to capture his escaped slave Satyros
(perhaps because he had been on the receiving end of those strikes one time
too many?). More remarkable still, only in Protagoras does Plato ever reveal
the name of any slave, although unnamed slaves play various roles in other
dialogues.23 Oenoe, an Athenian fortification located on the frontier between
Athens and Boeotia, near Megara and Plataea, and mentioned nowhere else
in Plato, is an oblique reference to some of the early causes of the Peloponnesian War.24 That frontier remained disputed territory, and evidently was
a convenient place for escaped slaves like Satyros to seek refuge. According
to Thucydides (1.139), Megaras willingness to harbor escaped slaves was a
contentious issue for the Athenians.
Doubtless, Plato carefully places Socratess dramatic world
debut as a tester in the shadow of the Peloponnesian War.25 His detailed
account of the itinerant sophists and other foreigners gathered at Calliass
house demonstrates that traveling between cities was still possible despite
growing hostilities. By contrast Plato locates Socrates in some undefined
place when he meets the companion and the others with him. And as he
begins the narration Socrates does not reveal exactly where he was or what
he was doing when Hippocrates arrived. Here the literature on Platos Protagoras draws two erroneous inferences about Socratess whereabouts and
22
On the use of staffs as weapons to strike someone see Thucydides 8.84; Xenophon, Anabasis 2.3 and
Hellenica 6.2.
23
Deborah Levine Gera, Porters, Paidagogoi, Jailers, and Attendants: Some Slaves in Plato, Scripta
Classica Israelica15 (1996):94.

Mark Munn, Thucydides on Plataea, the Beginning of the Peloponnesian War, and the Attic Question, in Oikistes: Studies in Constitutions, Colonies, and Military Power in the Ancient World, Offered
in Honor of A. J. Graham, ed. Vanessa B Gorman and Eric W. Robinson (Leiden: Brill, 2002),24569.
24

25

Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic,49.

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doings: almost without exception it assumes that Socrates is (1) at home, and
(2) asleep.26 Plato however has planted clues here and elsewhere to suggest
otherwise. Those clues are revelations about the nature of philosophy itself.
Is Socrates at home? He reports to the companion that someone opened the door for Hippocrates (310b). Someone? Obviously, there is
at least one other person present with Socrates, wherever he is. In this context, someone, in Greek tis, probably refers to a slave who opens the door.27
Did Socrates have a slave at home? Given his vaunted poverty that is highly
unlikely. More importantly, that this cannot be a Socrates domesticated
is proved by considering the dramatic date of the dialogue. Set in about
432433 BC, just before the start of the Peloponnesian War, Socrates would
have been about thirty-six years old.28 Some thirty-plus dramatic years later
references will be made in the Apology (41e) and Phaedo (116b) to Socratess
young sons. (A third son is described as older.) Needless to say, Socrates could
not have been married with young sons at the time he met Protagoras and
still have young sons at his trial and end of life. With the entire Platonic corpus in mind, for the sake of philosophy Plato never portrays a domesticated
Socrates at home in any dialogue, although at the end of the Symposium
(223d) Socrates can be described as homeward bound. If Socrates dwelled
anywhere it would certainly be in the marketplace, where, in all likelihood,
he meets the companion and those with him.29
What about a sleeping Socrates? Hippocrates, who somehow knows where Socrates can be found that early, also knows something
about his habits; without waiting to be announced he rushes in immediately
as the door opens and shouts, Socrates, are you awake or asleep? (310b).
And Socrates easily recognizes his voice despite the darkness: This is Hippocrates. But to whom does Socrates say this? Himself? To others present?
26
See for example Catherine H. Zuckert, Platos Philosophers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2009),218; and Beversluis, Cross-Examining Socrates,246. Such is desire to place Socrates at home, as
well as asleep, that at home can mean communal living. See Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment,26. However, there is no textual evidence to support such living arrangements for Socrates.
27

Denyer, Protagoras,68.

J. S. Morrison, The Place of Protagoras in Athenian Public Life (460415 B.C.), Classical Quarterly35, no. 1/2 (JanuaryApril 1941):116. See also John Walsh, The Dramatic Dates of Platos
Protagoras and the Lesson of Arete, Classical Quarterly34, no.1 (1984):1016; J. Adam and A. M.
Adam, Platonis Protagoras (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957),xxxvivii; and Lampert,
How Philosophy Became Socratic,14144.
28

Whereas Plato can dramatically portray Socrates physically present in the home of others, here, in
Calliass home, for example, metaphorically speaking, philosophy has no home. Consider the discussion on philosophical sects in Strauss, On Tyranny,19496.
29

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More importantly, with the entire Platonic corpus in mind, for the sake of
philosophy Plato never portrays Socrates asleep in any dialogue, that is, with
one exception: only in the Crito (43ac), where Socrates is imprisoned and
prevented from pursuing his lifes work, is he ever found sleeping, and even
then he would rather be awake. Perhaps we should also include the Phaedo
(117be), where the jail attendant instructs Socrates to walk about after taking the execution drug until his thighs feel heavy, then lie down that the drug
takes its effect, which he does. Here Socrates is really and finally asleep! Until
that moment it was Socrates the gadfly who tirelessly and endlessly worked to
awaken the city from its somnolent state, much like a large lethargic horse in
need of constant prodding (Apology 30e31b). Thus Hippocratess dramatic
entrance finds Socrates to be awake and on a skimpous, a small couch or pallet, possibly a bed. It is the sophist Prodicus who will be found lying down
wrapped in many covers (315d).
These two corrections bring to light the moral and intellectual discipline of the philosopher as he engages the nonphilosophical world,
only intimated in part 1 by Socratess deeds, but about which he discloses
more in the moments before his execution: that in pursuit of wisdom the
philosopher must abstract from the body, indeed, must depreciate the body
and all its afflictions that obstruct that search (Phaedo 64c66b). Does the
Platonic Socrates, on the world stage as it were, ever sleep, eat, drink, or have a
home? The meal promised in the Republic is never served. And when Socrates
is actually shown on stage drinking anything, it is the poisoned drug that
ends any and all afflictions his body could suffer.30 Must we then conclude
that the scant evidence Plato presents of Socratess deeds as a family man,
married with children, argues more for his civic duty than love of his own,
including procreation?31 In Protagoras, Socrates must be somewhere, but he
is not at home, certainly not asleep, for no man is worth much while asleep
(Laws 808b). It is Hippocrates who will need food and sleep before he can
seek out Socratess help (310cd).
If the answer to the question about Socratess physical
needshome, food, sleepis no, or even overwhelmingly negative, and yes
to the question about his limited obligations as man and citizen, then with
Socrates as the paradigm philosopher before us, in order for us to be both
The Symposium (175c) is an exception. There all begin eating, absent Socrates. When he finally arrives
it is reported in the past tense that Socrates ate and made libations with the others (176a). Only near the
very end is Socrates shown drinking with Agathon and Aristophanes from a shared jug (223c).
30

31

Cropsey, Platos World,183.

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good and wise, virtuous in other words, we would have to reach a state of
wisdom or knowledge so pure that the condition itself would be beyond the
most elemental needs of the body imposed on us by nature. It should be noted
that the battle against those basic necessities contemplates the conquest of
nature itself, withal human nature, a thought that will resonate deeply among
the modern thinkers to come, but which was already known to be problematic in the speeches and deeds of Platos Socrates.32 Although Socrates never
offered the philosophical life as a model for society at large, its bearing on
the limited prospects of virtues teachability here, as well as for the just city
in the Republic, recommends a very sobering ethos: that absent any claims
to apodictic truth, or precisely because of such claims, the practical human
response to them must be endless testing of those claims. At its humanly best
philosophy would be that morally fortified human activity in which each of
us continuously and endlessly tests the other without becoming dispirited or
necessarily collapsing into some form of misology.33
Platos dramatic portrayal of Hippocrates as rash and impetuous occurs during a time when the sophists emerged to give voice to the rapid
changes taking place in long established social and political institutions.34 As
those changes spread the authority of the patriarchic family weakened under
the stress. In a dialogue with so many firsts, Plato makes Socrates invoke
that patriarchic authority to admonish Hippocratess foolish behavior while
silently pointing to its weakened condition (313b). By the time Platos Republic
takes place, the family will have so weakened that only its reconstitution on
foundations of communism could save society at large. Here, in Protagoras,
Plato makes Hippocrates inadvertently divulge the familys weakness when
he explains why he arrived so early that morning. It was only after dinner
the night before, after he returned from pursuing his slave, that Phason told
him Protagoras was in town. In other words, he learns about Protagoras only
late and intentionally outside the hearing range of his father, who, if made
aware of his sons intentions would have immediately ended the matter then
and there with severe admonishments. Fear of paternal retribution prevented
Hippocrates from arriving at a more civil time. It would seem Hippocratess
father, like so many notable Athenian fathers, was so preoccupied with his
32

Ibid.,18286.

I am grateful to Joseph Cropsey for this insightful observation. As Cropsey notes in his discussion
on Theaetetus, It is Socrates purpose here as it is everywhere to teach the ethos of philosophy rather
than its doctrines (Cropsey, Platos World,35).
33

G. B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981),123. See
also W. K. C. Guthrie, The Sophists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971),4041.

34

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own fortune or other peoples affairs that he grew detached from his sons
and their activities, even their education (see Laches 178a180b). And what
about Socrates? Would he not also be implicated as a negligent father? Yes,
but for very different reasons. In the Apology (23c), in obedience to the god
as he understood his divine commission, Socrates neglected his citys affairs
as well as his own, leaving him in terrible poverty, and presumably unable to
provide for his family, to say nothing about any household slave. So he must
implore his jurors to see to his sons proper upbringing. If he truly believed
that virtue was not teachable, that even the great Pericles could not educate
his charges (319e), did Socrates then generate children out of some perverse
understanding of civic obligation that looked only to their generation but not
to their amelioration?35
But in Protagoras Socrates will invoke family authority
however weakened to chastise Hippocrates for not consulting his father, relations, and others near him about his intentions. That reference to his father
points to the absence of his fathers influence. The absence of any authoritative fatherly figure continues even at Calliass house. There Socrates will
observe how Callias emptied out a storeroom his father Hipponicos once
used in order now to accommodate all the visitors (315d). If the Greek word
for storeroom, tameion, can also mean treasury here, then Plato has dramatically portrayed Callias squandering his family wealth on sophists.36 And
with no father figure present Protagoras will easily claim inheritance of that
position by seniority (317c). When all are finally assembled together Socrates
will reintroduce Hippocrates simply, without any reference to his father.
Only after the sophists great performance does Socrates refer to Hippocrates
by his patrimony (328d). In this respect Platos Protagoras is more radical
or extreme than even his Republic, where the aged father figure Cephalus is
at least present and involved in the discussion before finding a convenient
excuse to dismiss himself (331d). It is certainly more radical and extreme
in that Socrates will seriously question what he will take for granted in the
Republic: virtues teachability.37

This disturbing thought would confirm Meletuss remarkable assertion that the laws and everyone
else except Socrates make the young noble and good (Plato, Apology 24d25b).
35

In the Apology (20ac) Socrates notes that Callias had spent more money on sophists than all
others combined.
36

John S. Treantafelles, On the Teachability of Virtue: Political Philosophys Paradox, Interpretation30, no.1 (Fall 2002):4142.

37

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After Hippocrates explains his recent absence, and Protagorass arrival as the cause of his early morning visit, Socrates observes in him
courage and vehemence (310d), in a quite physically agitated and excitable
condition, prompting him to ask, Has Protagoras done you an injustice?
With the juxtaposition of injustice and Protagoras Plato makes Socrates
invoke the common prejudice against the sophists: they mutilate and corrupt
their pupils (Meno 91c). Yes! Hippocrates laughs, Protagoras is guilty because
only he is wise but does not make me wise! Inadvertently, Hippocrates raises
an issue that is addressed later in the dialogue (364b) and also in the Republic
(540a): What obligation do the few wise have to the many unwise? In the
Republic the wise are obligated to rule the unwise. But here, for the moment
at least, it looks as if wisdom and injustice bear some relationship to each
other, and to which Protagoras implicitly points when he asserts the many
are just but not wise (329e), but in any case the rule of which would not obviously be in the interest of justice. Protagoras claims to teach good counsel,
how best to manage ones household affairs, and how to be most powerful in
speech and deed in the affairs of ones city (318e319a). Most powerful does
not necessarily mean most just.
The pairing of courage and vehemence in Hippocrates is a
rather unusual conjunction. In the Republic (439c442c) courage is easily
paired with spiritedness, not vehemence. Indeed, vehemence as the physical
and agitated expression of the bodily passions (love, hunger, thirst) belongs
to the irrational part of the soul. Having already established the calculating
part Socrates then moves to establish the third and last part of the soul, the
spirited part. With Hippocrates however Socrates makes no argument about
the parts of the soul and how they might be damaged by a sophist. From
Cratylus (404a) we learn that vehemence is linked to madness as an affect of
the body, both of which are not conducive to virtue. And from Phaedo (68c
and 108ab) we learn that courage is the trait of those who despise the body
and live in philosophy, whereas vehemence is the excitement of the passions
as the soul flutters about desirous of bodily affections. Hippocrates may demonstrate courage in pursuit of the sophist Protagoras, but if his body language
is any index to his mental acumen, it certainly augurs poorly for him as a
potential learner of something that may not be teachable but only learnable.
Vehemence here seems to play the role of spoiler that spiritedness plays in the
Republic. Both are evidently obstructions to virtues inculcation.
Absent family admonition Hippocrates will lean on public
opinion to defend his actions: All praise the man, Socrates, and say he is

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the wisest at speaking (310e). Socrates however will undermine public opinion by revealing its inconsistencies, and he will chastise Hippocrates using
harsher and more explicit admonishments than he could respectfully use
when patriarchic authority was in question. Hippocrates at that point will
have nowhere to turn but within himself. And there a glimmer of hope will
appear as his unfounded confidence will have been exposed and replaced
with the characteristic Socratic disposition at the moment he asks the What
is? question. With those stern words Socrates provisionally ends the testing rather abruptly, and suggests instead they now proceed to Calliass house.
Along the way, in part 3, a different discussion, a logos, will command their
undivided attention.
But before all this transpires Socrates playfully incites Hippocratess impetuousness: give Protagoras money, persuade him, and he
will make even you wise. Money is not the issue; convincing Protagoras is,
and that is why Hippocrates seeks out Socrates. He is familiar enough with
Socrates to mention his escaped slave Satyros, implying Socrates has some
ongoing interest in this master-slave relationship. And as witness to many
of Socratess interrogations he probably concluded that Socrates was indeed
persuasive but not necessarily wise. After all, how can someone claiming knowledge of ignorance be considered wise? Lest they miss Protagoras
altogether Hippocrates insists they leave immediately. Not so fast, Socrates
replies; given the time of day they should instead walk about in the courtyard
until daylight, then depart. But why move outside? Were there others inside
besides that someone who opened the door for Hippocrates? Or, lest he boil
over, did Socrates want Hippocrates to wind down a bit by walking about? If
Hippocratess physically agitated state is in any way an insight into his moral
and intellectual state, then his condition must be repaired before he can recognize and correct his mistakes, in other words, before he can benefit from
any instruction.
 art 2: Testing Hippocratess
P
Resolve (311b314c)
Accordingly, Socrates reveals to his companion a more
important if not the real reason for delaying their departure: he wants to
test Hippocratess rhm, his might or bodily strength, or what we can call
his nerve or resolve. Part 2 of the Hippocrates section commences with the
testing of an unsuspecting Hippocrates. We know from the Apology (21c
23c) that Socrates questioned all strata of Athenian society to confirm the
Delphic oracles judgment of him as he understood it. But his questions to

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Hippocrates are designed to test his resolve, an unrivaled event in the Platonic
corpus; for it is only in this part of the Hippocrates section that Plato explicitly portrays Socrates as a tester of someones resolve, indeed, long before the
word philosophy is actually spoken in the dialogue, in fact, twice only, and
both times quite ironically (335d and 342ab).
Now, in administering a test the tester does not necessarily
believe the arguments employed in the test itself (Theaetetus 157c). Indeed,
much later in Protagoras (341d) Socrates will suggest that the sophist Prodicus was only testing Protagorass ability to maintain an argument, that he did
not endorse any of the arguments he used; and a few pages later Socrates will
speculate whether Protagoras was in effect testing him, offering the sophist
the opportunity to state his own position on the matter; and in the end an
anthropomorphized logos will get the last laugh when all that testing has produced an unexpected result (361a). But with Hippocrates Socrates does not
test his argumentative skills, but, as is evident from his physical appearance,
the strength of his conviction, his resolve in pursuing wisdom from Protagoras. By rescuing an Athenian youth from imminent corruption Socrates
proves his long-standing civic loyalty to Athens and his future jurors. But I
believe Platos Socrates has a more immediate goal in mind: he wants to take
the measure of a very ambitious youth and if necessary deflect him from a
career in politics for which he was ill suited, but now dangerously armed with
sophistic rhetoric if he got his way. Whereas the first reported conversation
between Socrates and one of Athenss youth presents Socrates as a defender of
the local and ancestral, the looming presence of Alcibiades (the subject at the
very beginning of the dialogue) and Critias in Socratess informal circle could
only reinforce the fears many had of his corrupting influence.
Walking now in the courtyard Socratess testing compels
Hippocrates to realize what would happen to him if he studied with Protagoras. If he went and paid money to his namesake, Hippocrates of Cos,
Hippocrates would become a physician, or if to Polycleitus or Pheidias, a
sculptor. In each case he would pay and become an expert in and practice
the vocation of his teacher. What about Protagoras? Besides wise man what
other name is he called? When Socrates enumerated these artisans to identify their vocations for Hippocrates he excluded the physician Hippocrates
and replaced the sculptor Polycleitus with the poet Homer. The addition of
Homer as well as the omission of Hippocrates is instructive. By grouping
Protagoras with the poets and sculptors Plato directs us prospectively to the
Republic (595a601a), where Socrates will assign sophistry to the imitative

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arts, far removed from the truth, with Homer himself coming under severe
scrutiny for his inability to educate human beings. Of course, Socrates
excluded Homer from his first listing of artisans that Hippocrates could
approach because he was already dead for hundreds of years. But could not
Hippocrates approach Homer through his written works? And to become
what? A poet? A good human being? If, as Socrates insists later in Protagoras
(347e348a), we cannot question a text, then I surmise that Plato in a mode
of self-reflection anticipated how future generations would judge his works,
knowing well that if they could not question him by dialogue, they nevertheless could learn from his dialogues to question and test themselves as well as
each other.
Responding to Socratess question by invoking public opinion Hippocrates says everybody calls Protagoras a sophist. To study with
Protagoras then means Hippocrates will become a sophist and practice the
vocation of sophistry, a realization that causes him to blush right at daybreak,
enabling Socrates to witness his dramatic physical change: from an agitated
condition visible in the dim light to shame in the emerging sunlight. Hippocrates confesses that, if it is anything like the previous examples, he would
become a sophist himself. Poor Hippocrates! His resolve starts to buckle
under his shame as he begins to confront an emerging aporia. Socrates grasps
the moment and presses on: before the gods, would you not be ashamed to
present yourself to the Greeks as a sophist? (312a). Yes, he admits, if he must
say what is really on his mind. Not just the Athenians, but all Greek public
opinion has turned on Hippocrates, the very opinion he invoked and relied
upon to defend his pursuit of Protagoras.
Let us be precise on what causes Hippocrates to blush:
Socrates did not ask him if he would be ashamed to become a sophist, but
rather if he would be ashamed to present himself to all Greeks as a sophist. Socrates knows there are secret sophists, countless ones according to
Protagoras (316d). But why is sophistry so shameful? According to Aristotle
(Nicomachean Ethics 1128b101129a1), shame is an emotion found in the
young that prevents them from doing base actions. Why is sophistry a base
action and therefore shameful? In the same way that young men can admire
the works of Polycleitus and Pheidias, or the products of perfume makers and
dye makers, yet no high-minded youth would seek a career as a sculptor or
perfume maker and dye maker (see Plutarchs Pericles 1.42.3), accordingly,
public opinion can praise a sophists wisdom and yet still despise his profession. Why? Platos Euthyphro (3cd) offers us a clue: Athenians really do not

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care if someone is clever, so long as he does not teach his wisdom to others
and make them like himself. When that happens anger and jealousies are
unleashed, something Protagoras must and will address. The implicit thought
here is that fathers prefer to teach and educate their own sons, even if artlessly
and ineffectively, with admonishments whenever their sons transgress (Sophist
229e231a). A more effective way would first remove the obstacles to learning,
the greatest being ignorance of ones ignorance, or alternatively, to know that
one does not know, with questions intended to expose to the stubborn ones
that the beliefs they fervently hold and judge sound are really problematic or
full of contradictions. Once realized a sense of shame overcomes them and
forces an introspective eye to open. In effect they are made to participate in
their own self-reconstruction, which is to say they teach themselves by internalizing their self-dissatisfaction while simultaneously becoming mild to
others, in the event becoming more civilized; all of which could not happen
unless some interrogator deployed his art or skill. And what is that art? In the
Sophist (231a), with Socrates as a silent auditor, the art described is not the
expected Socratic method but noble or well-born sophistry.38
In spite of Socratess life-long protestations to the contrary
have philosophy and sophistry dissolved into each other? Apparently so if we
look prospectively to arguments in the Sophist. But if we look retrospectively
to its antecedents in part 2 of the Hippocrates section we find a significant
difference. Fathers and sophists alike embrace one and only one mode of
correction: fathers admonish, sophists question, both proceeding without
additional supplements. With Hippocrates, however, Socrates embraces both
methods, an early and tacit demonstration on his part that neither mode
described in the Sophist is sufficient by itself to affect needed changes in
the recalcitrant ones. Thus, in the mode of the sophist Socrates first poses
questions causing Hippocratess blush and self-realization of his aporetic
condition. An attractive solution quickly emerges allowing the young man
to save face, but not without its own consequences, leading Socrates to proceed now in the mode of an admonishing father with warnings of imminent
dangers to his soul.
To salvage Hippocratess dignity Socrates redirects his
ambition away from a career in sophistry, hence political, and towards a
nonvocational education befitting a private and free man (312b), a liberal
education. Instead of becoming an effective speaker and doer in the affairs
38
Cropsey, Platos World,7880. See also Seth Benardete, The Being of the Beautiful (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984),II.9798.

Socratic Testing: Protagoras 310a314b

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of his city Hippocrates will become socially responsible, a good and effective
citizen who knows his place in society. What a relief! But this too is fraught
with dangers: without knowing what a sophist is Hippocrates would be exposing his soul to all kinds of risks. Improperly taught, not only does the ruling
art corrupt the soul, but evidently so does the ruled art when it is improperly
taught. The word soul, psych, is mentioned no fewer than ten times here.
Hippocrates thinks he knows, but what he says is so vague that it can apply to
all artisans: A sophist is knowledgeable in wise matters (312c). This popular
understanding according to Aristotle can apply to anyone excellent in any art
or craft, and he gives as examples the wise sculptors Polycleitus and Pheidias
(Nic. Eth. 1141a715). Hippocrates tries again: a sophist is a master (epistats)
at making one a clever speaker, an important revision of his earlier statement that the sophist Protagoras is the wisest at speaking (310e). This helps,
but when Socrates asks Hippocrates what exactly is that knowledge the sophist has and with which he makes another a clever speaker, the young man can
no longer say. Hippocrates has now lost all his resolve.
Now in the mode of an admonishing father Socrates reprimands Hippocrates for his foolish behavior. If he was determined to do
something regarding his body Hippocrates would certainly consult his
friends and relations for advice before proceeding. But regarding his soul,
more precious than his body, and on which all his well-being depends, Hippocrates consults neither his father, his brother, nor any of his companions
(among which Socrates includes himself), but instead is willing to spend his
and all his friends wealth to get involved in a relationship of which he has
absolutely no understanding. Rather than answer the question, What is the
knowledge of the sophist? Socrates continues his fatherly admonishments,
now in the manner of a consumer advocate: the sophist is a merchant or
retailer of goods that nourish the soul, praising everything he sells regardless
of its effect on the buyer. When buying goods for ones body experts can be
consulted for their safety before applying or ingesting them. But when the
matter involves buying goods for ones soul a physician of the soul must be
consulted, some person who knows which goods are useful and which are
useless for the soul. The danger is greater here, for unlike the goods of the
body, the goods of the soul cannot be examined after they are purchased, but
must be ingested immediately, damaging or benefiting the buyer on the spot.
The physician of the soul appears to have come to light first as an arbiter in
the buyer-beware marketplace of the free exchange of ideas.39
39

On the assent of the political philosopher from an arbiter to a knower simply, see Leo Strauss, What

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The knowledge the sophist has, and which presumably

would answer the question Hippocrates cannot, seems connected to the
nourishment of the soul. Here Hippocrates finally shows some promise in
his self-understanding when he asks for the first time the familiar Socratic
What is? question: What is the soul nourished with? (313c). Lessons,
Socrates responds, then come the admonishments already noted. Hippocrates
of course will have a lot more to say in that undisclosed logos ahead in part 3.
But it is instructive that the last words the world ever hears him speak directly
make him sound like a Socratic, if a fledgling one at that. Nonetheless, his
undisclosed words are about to make him sound like a sophist as well.
But instead of stating what the sophists knowledge is
Socrates abruptly ends the testing, saying they should instead consult their
elders because they are too young to resolve, or literally, to take apart (dielesthai), so big a matter. But Socrates did not engage Hippocrates in making
fine distinctions but in testing him without him knowing it. Did he inveigle
Hippocrates into thinking they had been engaged in some kind of discourse
all along? Just at that moment when a discourse might have started by raising
the What is? question Socrates abruptly ends it provisionally by stating
they are ineligible to pursue the matter because of their youth. Would a discourse on the question What is a sophist? have proceeded differently than
a testing that led up to that question? The trilogy of dialogues, of which the
Sophist is a part, lies many dramatic years ahead.
Can Socrates really be serious about consulting elders? Would
they not respond typically in the manner Anytus did when asked about the
sophists (Meno 91c)? Or is Socrates saying there is a wisdom that comes only
with age? As we often hear and say, older but wiser.40 If wisdom is a part of
virtue and can be gained only through a complete life, then virtue would be
in large part unteachable. That would be devastating for Hippocrates, who
naively thought wisdom could be purchased for a price. But instead of seeking their elders Socrates announces it is time to proceed to Calliass house,
where they will find other sophists, and many other wise men, all of whom
they can consult. Perhaps lost on Hippocrates here is Socratess implicit revelation that one can be wise without necessarily being a sophist. With this
abrupt turnabout Socrates summarily signals the dismissal of the elders and
Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1973),7894. See also Lampert,
How Philosophy Became Socratic,8.
40
In the Republic (328e) Socrates asks the elder Cephalus the only question he himself could not
answer: What is it like to be old?

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their patriarchal authority. The physician of the soul will not be found within
their ranks. If their wisdom or authority is rooted in the supernatural, then
presumably the physician of the soul will not be found in the realm of the
divine either, certainly not among its earthly proxies. Invoking patriarchic
authority while quietly exposing its weakened condition, then dismissing it
and its supernatural foundation, is indeed a Socratic tour de force, and a fitting debut for the Socratic Enlightenment in all its implications.
Evidently Socrates had established enough, though only
provisionally, through testing Hippocrates that he could speak to the companion in the manner of the Athenian assembly: Doxan hmin tauta, So
resolved or So decreed (literally, These things seeming to us) that they
then started off for Calliass house (compare Republic 328b). Socrates does not
explicitly say whether Hippocrates passed or failed the test of his resolve. But
the fact they proceed suggests Hippocrates has been immunized sufficiently
by the What is? question that any potential danger would be minimized.
Surely his high regard for Protagoras has been tempered: whereas before he
was the wisest speaker, now he is simply a clever speaker. Besides, although
Hippocrates may not know it, we may assume the physician of the soul
attends him the entire way. But our expectations must be tempered by the
fact that no such physician was identified, that Socrates never referred to
himself, to philosophy, or to the philosopher-king in such terms, and that
this is the only explicit reference to the physician of the soul in the entire
Platonic corpus. Additionally, a physician of the soul suggests that something
is being taught, like all the other arts. Virtue should therefore be teachable.
But Socrates claimed he never taught anybody anything.
In any case, along their journey Socratess confidence in
Hippocratess transformation may have grown commensurate with his
growing self-awareness, a moral and intellectual rehabilitation in him that
began where his earlier shaming and admonishing left off. In the third and
concluding but undisclosed part of the Hippocrates section Plato provides
only a glimpse of that transformation, no direct statements, no accompanying vehement body language or physical change to mark it as would a blush,
but in its implication perhaps the most important part, as it were, the peak
of the dialogue. And there someone does in fact hear what was said. To that
concluding part we now turn.

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Part 3: An Undisclosed Logos (314ce)

Socrates now reports their arrival at Calliass portico where
another door-knocking scene concludes the Hippocrates section, just as an
earlier door-knocking scene began it in part 1. He also reports that they
became engaged in a discourse about some argument or speech, peri tinos
logou dielegometha, that came upon them along their journey, but does not
reveal one word of what was said. He does however emphasize something
about the nature of that discourse that is most noteworthy: Now in order
that it would not be unfinished, but having finished it completely, we would
thus go in, we stood in the portico and discoursed until we mutually agreed
with each other. Here we find the only completed conversation in the entire
Protagoras. Unlike the testing which Socrates ended provisionally, ostensibly
because their youth disqualified them, and unlike the rest of the dialogue
that follows (descends) ending in an impasse ostensibly because of some
pressing appointment, Socrates and Hippocrates now conduct a discourse
resolved to carry it to a mutual conclusion. Here a transformed Hippocrates
patiently stands engaged in discourse, only a door separating him from the
object of his desire: no forceful knocking, no rush to enter the house, no body
language worth reporting. By this discourse alone Socrates quietly reveals
that he ended his testing of Hippocrates on a pretense (see 314b), for otherwise their youthfulness should have thwarted their progress here as before.
Did he intentionally leave his meeting with Protagoras in an impasse with
another pretense? As I argued before, Socratess brief conversation with the
companion cannot implicate Socrates in any lie, and there is no other textual
evidence that proves Socrates conclusively lies, and only a suggestion that the
companion may indeed be that appointment.
With their discourse now drawing to its completion Calliass
eunuch doorkeeper just within overheard enough of it to conclude that here
were some more sophists. Notice that Socrates says We knocked, but does
not identify which of the two actually did, perhaps because resolved as they
were at the start of their journey, and now in complete accord, they acted
as a unit. Nor does Socrates say whether Hippocratess staff was employed,
which now seems long forgotten. Upon opening the door the eunuch doorkeeper proclaims, Aha! Some sophists. He is busy, then immediately slams
the door shut with all the strength he could muster. We knocked again, but
this time with the door remaining shut a reply comes from within: Human
beings, he says in a very condescending tone, did you not hear that he
has no leisure? Pleading their case Socrates says they have not come to see

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Callias, nor are they sophists, that they come in need of Protagoras, that there
is nothing to fear, and that he should announce their arrival. After a few lingering moments the door opens and they are finally admitted.
Socrates attributed the doorkeepers irascible mood to the
tedious task of constantly opening and closing the door for those arriving
to see the sophists. If true that would mean they could have arrived much
earlier than Socrates had led Hippocrates to believe. But Socrates needed an
excuse to delay their departure in order to conduct his test. Once admitted
they were soon followed in by Alcibiades and Critias, who apparently had
no trouble getting past the doorkeeper. Is Socratess explanation consistent
with the facts? Or is he drawing attention away from what was actually said
in their discourse as the real cause of the doorkeepers behavior? Socrates
also gave the impression their discourse came upon them more or less by
chance. But would they have stood in the portico that long to conclude a
random and presumably unimportant conversation when Protagoras was
just inside? To be sure, Socratess conversations had a way of meandering
unexpectedly (or so it would appear), with his interlocutors soon discovering they were forced to give accounts of themselves in the process (Laches
187e188a). Did Socrates draw attention to that discourse only to obscure its
significance by blaming a temperamental doorkeeper for making a terrible
mistake? But even that emasculated servant could figure out they sounded
like two sophists talking. Hippocrates, who at first desired to be a sophist by
any and all means, then having recoiled when Socratess testing exposed the
shameful and dire consequences, became engaged with Socrates in an intellectual discourse that, for all their efforts, now marked him as a member
of that disreputable profession. If not Hippocrates, certainly Socrates could
never escape that moniker sophist.

Conclusion
In the central Hippocrates section Plato introduced the public persona of philosophy in the form of Socratic testing, with Socrates as
philosophys paradigmatic tester and Hippocrates as his first recorded test
case, in order to demonstrate how philosophys disciplined calling engaged
the nonphilosophical world, when, I might add, it could not otherwise rule it
in the form of the philosopher-king. As witnessed in Socratess conversational
testing of Hippocrates, that persona first appeared as a consumer advocate
intervening in defense of a weakened but conspicuously absent patriarchal
authority, the latter only to be dismissed rather abruptly and replaced by
a suppositious craftsman, the physician of the soul. In the course of that

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testing Hippocrates experienced a dramatic transformation, proceeding

from a nescient knower to an embarrassed inept, then ascending from a
self-conscious questioner to a competent interlocutor, the latter Socratess
undisclosed contribution and improvement over the modes of fathers and
sophists. If the outcome arrived at was due in large part to Socratess conduct
as a tester, then he could justifiably have been identified as one of the teaching sophists. If however the outcome was due in large part to Hippocratess
conduct as a learner, then Socrates could rightfully claim he never taught anybody anything, while leaving open the possibility that he taught by example
rather than by precept, and therefore should never have been confused with
the teaching sophists. Knowing the details of that completed but undisclosed
logos could certainly help us understand the issue. Short of that, the Hippocrates section did reveal antecedents to abiding philosophical issues that
engaged Socrates in his lifes work. But the section also revealed Socratess
protreptic statement that our traditional and authoritative guides to human
goodness fall short by the light that Socratic philosophy casts on them. With
the entire Protagoras in mind, Plato evidently constructed the Hippocrates
section to demonstrate the inculcation of somethingcall it virtue or human
goodnessjust prior to making Socrates question Protagoras and by implication the pedagogy of all the sophists that it could be done at all, or at least
by a process fit to be called teaching.
If the testing of Hippocrates succeeded in the sense that he
is now mindful of his ignorance concerning matters affecting his soul, that
before he attempts to rule others he should first learn to rule himself, he is
nevertheless more isolated than he realizes. That craftsman, the physician of
the soul, may be the one thing needful, but he is nevertheless as rare as the
philosopher-king. Perhaps even more so; for unlike the formulaic expression
philosophers become kings, or kings philosophize, that Socrates conjures
in the Republic to describe the philosopher-king, he offers no such formula to
describe the physician of the soul, who he is or how he becomes that craftsman. If the prospects for achieving virtue writ small in one individual are so
daunting and improbable, how much more difficult would they be to achieve
virtue writ large in a city? Is the physician of the soul the antecedent of the
philosopher-king? However that is decided, in the immediate context, a logos
in part 3 evidently replaces and produces the desired effect that only a physician of the soul or a philosopher-king could if one were readily available.
Sophistry may offer some promise, but the third section of the dialogue that
follows will put it under such Socratic scrutiny, and end in aporia, that sophistry, like patriarchy, will prove inadequate to the task.

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173

So, absent apodictic truths, Socrates tested, and tested tirelessly: here at the start of his public career with Hippocrates and the other
sophists, no doubt through countless tests unreported by Plato, and finally to
his imprisonment and impending execution ending that career, where Socrates
confessed a desire to test a lifelong recurring dream that set him on the philosophical road, but about which now he had second thoughts as he prepared to
enter that other life (Phaedo 60e). If his legal conviction now prevented him
from testing others, he could still continue testing himself. Socratic testing
evidently is the bridge that joins the philosophers public persona and obligations with his private intellectual pursuits into one lifelong project.
Perhaps it is only fitting that an aporetic dialogue purposely
seals forever the only completed discourse in it, as it seals forever in the balance
the fate of one of its interlocutors. By leaving Hippocratess fate undisclosed
Platos Socrates compels us to reconcile the rarefied plane to which human
thought aspires with the knowledge that our human nature precludes us
from ever living there. That eunuch doorkeeper may represent the extremes
to which human ingenuity can devise scientific methods to overcome nature,
in modern terms, to conquer nature. But the ancient reports on the benefits
of emasculated servants according to Plato are somewhat equivocal (Laws
694d695c).41 In any case, it must be acknowledged that while the ancients
saw in nature the source of our human perfection on the plane of thought,
they also saw in that same nature the obstacles to realizing our human virtue
individually as well on the plane of politics.42 Diligently pursued Socratic
testing allows us the benefit of living in both worlds without forsaking
either. Nothing prevents it.

See Xenophon, Cyropaedia 7.5.6064; Herodotus 8.105.12; and Plato, Alcibiades 1 121d and
Republic 479c.
41

42

Cropsey, Platos World,18586.

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The Book of Religions Political and Pedagogical Objectives

175

The Book of Religions

Political and Pedagogical Objectives
Wa s e e m E l - R ay e s
Michigan State University
[email protected]
Abstract: This paper identifies and explores in detail two objectives for Alfarabis Book of
Religion. The first objective is political and aims to reconcile religion with philosophy. This
objective is addressed to the political and religious leadership of the larger political community. The second objective is pedagogical and aims to show how taking seriously the claims of
religion (and especially of virtuous religion) is an essential component of philosophic education. This objective is addressed to those inclined toward the philosophical way of life.

It is true that a little philosophy inclineth mans mind to atheism,

but depth in philosophy bringeth mens minds about to religion.
Francis Bacon
The whole Midwest is Lutheran. Even the atheists in the Midwest
are Lutherans. The God they dont believe in is Luthers God.
Garrison Keillor
It is recognized among scholars of medieval philosophy
that Alfarabi (870950), as the founder of Islamic political philosophy, has
set himself the task of reconciling, in the court of public opinion, religion
with philosophy.1 This is to say that part of Alfarabis objective in his political
See, for example, Charles E. Butterworth, Alfarabis Goal: Political Philosophy, not Political Theology, in Islam, the State, and Political Authority: Medieval Issues and Modern Concerns, ed. Asma
Afsaruddin (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011); Christopher A. Colmo, Breaking with Athens:
1

2013 Interpretation, Inc.

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teachings was to show how the philosophic way of life is not a danger to
religious life and religious devotion, and hence not a danger to the political community. Alfarabi is seen to argue that philosophy, far from being a
danger to the political community, is in fact essential to its well-being, and
consequently to the well-being of the religious way of life.
The Book of Religion (Kitb al-Milla) bears witness to the
scholarly insight into this important political objective by Alfarabi (BR, 56).2
But there is another aspect to Alfarabis argument in the Book of Religion that
does not seem to be given due attention by scholars: his attempt to show how
the study of religion, the taking seriously of its spiritual and moral claims on
the individual, is an essential component of the philosophic activity. Alfarabi
is not only concerned with the question of reconciling philosophy with those
who are religiously devoted, but he is also concerned with reconciling the
study of religion with those inclined to the rational way of life or, more precisely, those inclined to philosophy. Alfarabi has not only a political objective
in the Book of Religion but also a pedagogical one that argues the need for
the study of religion.3 This pedagogical objective is addressed to those individuals who, drawn to the promise of a rational (and perhaps contemplative)
way of life, are of the opinion that the life of philosophy is superior to the
Alfarabi as Founder (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005); Miriam Galston, Politics and Excellence:
The Political Philosophy of Alfarabi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Muhsin Mahdi,
Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy, with a foreword by Charles E. Butterworth
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); and Joshua Parens, An Islamic Philosophy of Virtuous
Religions: Introducing Alfarabi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005). It is important to
note here that the account of Alfarabi as the founder of Islamic political philosophy has its critics. See
for example Majid Fakhry, Al-Frbi, Founder of Islamic Neoplatonism: His Life, Works and Influence
(Oxford: Oneworld, 2002); and Dimitri Gutas, The Meaning of madan in al-Frbs Political Philosophy, Mlanges de lUniversit Saint-Joseph, no. 57 (2004): 25982. For an informative discussion
of Alfarabis Neoplatonism, see Miriam Galston, A Re-examination of al-Frbs Neoplatonism,
Journal of the History of Philosophy 15, no. 1 (1977): 1332.
2
All references to the Book of Religion (BR), Selected Aphorisms (SA), chapter 5 of the Enumeration of
the Sciences (ES), and The Harmonization of the Two Opinions of the Two Sages: Plato the Divine and
Aristotle (Harmonization) are to Alfarabi, The Political Writings: Selected Aphorisms and Other Texts,
translated and annotated by Charles E. Butterworth (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). The
Arabic numerals refer to the section number in Alfarabis treatises.
Section 5 of the Book of Religion explains, according to Alfarabi, the relationship between philosophy and religion. One way of reading this relationship is to understand that philosophy is of a higher
status than religion. But it is also possible to read this section as an attempt to show that a religious
way of life is not necessarily incompatible with reason (philosophy). Put differently, it is possible to
understand this section to mean that philosophy provides support to religious beliefs, that religious
beliefs are not irrational. Of course, the section seems to preclude the possibility that religious beliefs
are superrational.

Contrast this teaching with that of al-Ghazali in his Al-Munqidh min al-all, where he seems to
suggest, through example of his own life, that the path to religious enlightenment, to Sufism, had to go
through the study of philosophy.
3

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religious way of life. This does not necessarily mean that these individuals
are contemptuous of religion and piety. Many might see the political utility
of religion and its necessity for the masses. Some might even see a certain
nobility in the pious way of life; but this does not change the fact that, for
them, religion is a lie regardless of its nobility, and hence is of no use to them.
The Book of Religion, this paper argues, is partly addressed to these individuals, explaining that there is more to religion than simply its political utility.
Through the Book of Religion, Alfarabi illustrates how a philosophy, a love
of wisdom, is wrongheaded when it fails to take seriously the spiritual and
moral claims religion (and more precisely virtuous religion) makes not only
on the political community, but also on the individual. Such a philosophy is
wrongheaded because it fails to see the extent to which the individual is part
of the political community and part of the religion that makes the community. Accordingly, this philosophy is errant (cf. BR, 1 and 4).
In support of this thesis, this paper is divided into three
parts. The first part provides more content to the contention that, for Alfarabi, the pursuit of wisdom (i.e., philosophy) requires serious examination
of religious claims, and especially the claims of the virtuous religion. These
claims concern the divine origin of the universe and of all that is included in
it; that the universe is divinely ordered and just; that there is spiritual hierarchy in the universe; that this spiritual order gives meaning to intellectual and
moral hierarchy in the world human beings find themselves in; and that the
common good and happiness exist (cf. 23 with 1927). This part shows how,
according to Alfarabi, the concern with examining religion is born out of the
need to understand the problem of virtue, the problem of happiness and its
relation to the common good, and the concern with understanding the self.
The second part of this paper illustrates how Alfarabis pedagogical objective
(as outlined in part 1) unfolds in the Book of Religion. As will be seen below,
the way to comprehend this objective begins with a focus on the individual
exemplifying the embodiment of human virtue, real or imagined. This individual is the first ruler of a community, its lawgiver. In looking at the different
kinds of virtuous rulers, the reader is directed to consider the problem of
virtue as presented through the contrast between the virtuous first ruler and
the ignorant rulers. In thinking about the knowledge that the virtuous first
ruler possesses and that the ignorant rulers lack, the reader is directed to the
problem of happiness and its relation to the common good. And finally, in
thinking about the virtuous rulers knowledge of happiness and the common
good, the reader is moved to consider what makes the human soul whole
and complete (i.e., a perfect unity) and what relation this has with the belief

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in the virtuous religion. The third part of this paper focuses on the question
of the virtuous religion, and what kind of unity it possesses that is lacking in
the common religious experience as understood by Alfarabi. This part illustrates how the concern with the question of the virtuous religion is central
to the problems of virtue and happiness both for the individual and for the
political community. This part shows how, according to Alfarabi, the limitation of the traditional view (the legalistic and theological view) ought not to
mean the dismissal of the religious experience altogether. As argued below,
without articulating and understanding the question of virtuous religionas
the standard by which all religious experience is judged, according to Alfarabipolitical science, the practical approach to the problems of virtue and
happiness, cannot accomplish its task.
Part I: Religion and Wisdom
The reader of Alfarabis Book of Religion is immediately
introduced to the idea that religion consists of opinions and actions. These
opinions are determined and restricted by a communitys first ruler intending a purpose either for the sake of this community or by means of this
community (BR, 1). What is the relationship between the opinions and the
actions? One thing is certain, that the opinions are supposed to give coherence to the actions, for the opinions explain why people ought to do what
they are instructed to do, or at the very least explain the consequences of
following or not following what they are instructed to do (BR, 23). As is
shown later in this paper, Alfarabi suggests that in general, people practice
religion as opposed to living it. This means that there is a disconnect between
the opinions they supposedly believe and the actions they perform in fulfillment of these beliefs. It seems that they do not reflect on and do not live the
religious/spiritual purpose for the sake of which they supposedly do what
they do. They accept what they are supposed to accept and they believe that
they act accordingly. Of course, how well people perform what they are supposed to perform is often seen as an expression of the strength of their beliefs.
But does this practice, however well performed, reflect true conviction in the
virtue of ones religion? Or is this conviction a product of an accident of birth
and excellent performance of its actions little more than blind belief? These
questions, and others like them, call on those who are reflective to subject
their religious beliefs to rational examination. These questions, which Alfarabi wishes his readers to take seriously, are part of the argument that reason
should not be viewed as incompatible with a life of faith and paves the way for
reconciling religion with philosophy (i.e., allowing reason to function beyond

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the limitations imposed by the practice of jurisprudence and divine theology;

cf. BR, 910 and ES, 45). But, as will be seen below, these same questions are
intended as stepping stones in making the argument to those drawn to the
promise of philosophy to become aware of the extent to which the life of faith
shapes their own moral and intellectual outlook (and this despite the fact that
they do not practice religion).
In what follows, this part outlines three interconnected reasons Alfarabi provides in support of the argument that rational examination
of religious opinions and actions is essential to the well-being of the life of
faith.4 It also shows, in broader outline, how these same reasons are intended
to speak to those who deliberately take distance from the life of faith. In
speaking to these individuals, Alfarabi attempts to show them how the search
for an alternative way of life, if possible, requires a deeper consideration of the
power of that life they reject.
A reason why religious belief and practice needs to be subject to rational examination relates to the fact that all religions (even divine
ones: BR, 1) have a human agent or teacher as the medium for its message to
the wider political community. This human agent or teacher, according to
Alfarabi, is a communitys first ruler who prescribes to his people opinions
and actions restricted with stipulations. But the varieties of religious teachings experienced in the world indicate, at least to the believer, that not all
first rulers are virtuous. Alfarabi confirms this observation by affirming that
some first rulers are deceptive while others are errant, and by indicating that
all first rulers who are not virtuous are ignorant (BR, 1). This doubt regarding the assured virtue of first rulers is an invitation to reason about what
constitutes the virtue of the first ruler, an examination that begins with the
opinions and actions that embody this virtue (cf. ES, 5). But this rational
examination of the virtue of the first ruler ought to be of concern not only
to those religiously devoted, but also to those who feel distant from the religious experience. At the heart of the first rulers virtue, according to Alfarabi
(and as discussed in detail below), is his knowledge of genuine happiness and
This is the kind of argument that prepares the way for someone like Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (1126
1198) to make the case that the Law makes it obligatory to reflect upon existing things by means of
the intellect, and to consider them; and consideration is nothing more than inferring and drawing
out the unknown from the known; this is syllogistic reasoning or by means of syllogistic reasoning,
therefore, it is obligatory that we go about reflecting upon the existing things by means of intellectual
syllogistic reasoning. And it is evident that this manner of reflection the Law calls for and urges is the
most complete kind of reflection by means of the most complete kind of syllogistic reasoning and is
the one called demonstration (Averroes, Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory, trans. Charles E.
Butterworth [Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2001], 23).
4

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its relation to the common good. The first rulers prescribed opinions and
actions provide access to knowledge about these things and hence a unique
opportunity to engage with the problem of happiness and its possible relation
to the larger good of the political community.
A second reason for subjecting religious opinions and actions
to rational investigation is closely related to the concern with the larger good
of the political community and the requirements for unity as part and parcel of that good. Political unity requires religion to present its opinions in a
manner accessible to all members of the community. This means, according
to Alfarabi, that religion has to use the language of rhetoric and dialectics in
order to communicate its message to the wider public (BR, 6). But the best
that rhetoric and dialectics provide, Alfarabi maintains, are likenesses to
truth, especially concerning theoretical things (BR, 2 and 4). Accordingly,
those concerned about the virtue of their religious belief need to apply reason
in order to judge the extent to which these beliefs (opinions) approximate the
truth. As Alfarabi puts it, they need to ascertain, through primary knowledge
or demonstration, the truth of the prescribed opinions (BR, 4). So it seems
clearly beneficial for those who take the virtue of their faith seriously to
apply reason (self-reflection) to the prescribed opinions of their religion. But,
according to Alfarabi, it is also beneficial for those who, through a measure
of deliberation, take distance from religious belief and practice to be more
thoughtful regarding the prescribed religious opinions. After all, for those
who seek the truth, the prescribed opinions in religion are what they first
experience as representation of the truth, especially concerning the problem
of the common good and happiness (cf. BR, 12 with 11).5
A third reason that Alfarabi provides for the need to subject religious opinions to rational examination is a logical extension from
the previous point. Politics for Alfarabi, at least as he makes the argument
in the Book of Religion, does not exist independently of religious opinions
and actions. For Alfarabi, rational reflection on the one (religion or politics)
requires rational reflection on the other (politics or religion); for a man of
faith, personal salvation in the world to come requires correct opinions and
actions in this world (cf. ES, 1 with BR, 2). This, in turn, requires concern with
the well-being of the community (the problem of the common good), which
means concern with politics. Put differently, to be concerned with religious
matters means to be concerned with politics. If this speaks to the benefit of
5

See also ES, 1 and Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I.1.

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applying reason to religious opinions and actions, it can also speak to the
need to examine religion even for those who feel distant from the religious
way of life. If indeed human beings are political by nature,6 and religious
opinions and actions, according to Alfarabi, are what makes a community
possible, then those concerned with a fundamental understanding of politics
need to subject religious opinions and actions to rational examination; for
who they are, what they want to be, their likes and dislikes are formed and
reformed by being a part of a community that is born in and shaped by the
religious view.
If these three reasonsthe concern with virtue, the concern
with the truth of the common good as well as happiness, and the understanding of the selffail to capture the attention of those who are drawn
to the promise of the rational way of life, then Alfarabi introduces another
issue that reemphasizes the importance of these reasons for taking seriously
the claims of religion: the proper intellectual and political environment for
philosophy and the cultivation of the philosophers.
As a rule, philosophers are not spontaneously generated
like weeds. The truly philosophical, according to ancient and medieval philosophers, are a rare breed of human beings possessing unique and singular
qualities. But these qualities need a proper environment, along with cultivation and guidance, in order to flourish (ES, 3). This guidance, this cultivation,
could benefit from study under the tutelage of other philosophers;7 through
the instruction of exceptional teachers of philosophy; or through reading
and engaging with the books of philosophers.8 But this theoretical instruction in philosophy is not (as it seems) enough to make the naturally gifted
philosophical; for philosophy (as it seems) is not just putting knowledge in
the soul, but also a way of life that is informed by this knowledge.9 It is a way
6

Aristotle, Politics 1252b2532.

As one would assume Plato learned from Socrates, and Aristotle learned from Plato. Moses Maimonides (11351204) was supposedly inspired to write The Guide of the Perplexed in order to address
the intellectual needs of his pupil, Rabbi Joseph, and those like [him].
7

As Alfarabi did with respect to the works of Plato and Aristotle; as Ibn Rushd did with respect to
the works of Alfarabi, Plato, and Aristotle; and as Maimonides did with respect to the works of Ibn
Rushd, Alfarabi, Plato, and Aristotle.
8

According to Maimonides, it is exceedingly hard to teach others what one supposedly knows:
Know that whenever one of the perfect wishes to mention, either orally or in writing, something
that he understands of these secrets, according to the degree of his perfection, he is unable to explain
with complete clarity and coherence even the portion that he has apprehended, as he could do with
the other sciences whose teaching is generally recognized. Rather there will befall him when teaching
another that which he had undergone when learning himself. I mean to say that the subject matter
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of life that lives and breathes what it believes or knows is true. As it would
be said today, it is not just theory, but it is also practice. And just as studying the books of medicine does not make one a perfect physician, reading
the books of the philosophers does not make one a philosopher (cf. ES, 1).
Philosophy requires something else; it requires one to live and to experience life, the better to understand the theoretical. It requires, among other
things, examining healthy and unhealthy ways of living and being (cf. BR,
14c). What better way, from Alfarabis perspective, to begin this examination
than with inquiry regarding religious opinions and actions. This beginning
is essential, that is, not arbitrary or simply convenient. Take for example the
fact that the philosophic way of life is concerned with the question of happiness, and that it even seems to promise the attainment of happiness to those
who follow its way. The only other way of life that promises such happiness
is the religious way of life. Philosophy cannot be sure about the attainment
of happiness without first examining religious claims regarding this very
question. In addition, there is the fact that the individual is a product of the
political community, a fact that means he cannot be sufficient unto himself,
he needs the community for the fulfillment of his physical needs as well as
for the fulfillment of his potential as a human being (BR, 13). According to
the Book of Religion, for a political community to exist as a community it
requires religious covering, the purpose of which is to provide harmony and
order (BR, 1 and 2).10 A religious covering gives purpose to the community
and it promises rewards to those who follow its teachings and promises punishment to wrongdoers. The turn to philosophy by those in the community
naturally inclined to its charms might very well arise out of dissatisfaction
with the religious (pious) way of life. This is a dissatisfaction that might be
born out of the feeling that this way of life does not live up to the ideal it
promises. Alfarabi seems to suggest that this dissatisfaction speaks to a standard of virtue that is prephilosophic (primary) and is absorbed from the very
religious beliefs whose practice one finds dissatisfying. The standard here is
the standard of virtue that demands excellence in belief and practice. In the
face of what is observed as a disjunction between beliefs and practice in the
larger public, this standard leads some to intensify their beliefs (and practice)

will appear, flash, and then be hidden again, as though this were the nature of this subject matter, be
there much or little of it (Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963], 1:8).
10
In his Muqaddima, Ibn Khaldun maintains that this is a well-known teaching by the philosophers,
a teaching that he finds undemonstrated. See Muqaddima I.7273.

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to the level of fanaticism,11 while moving others to abandon altogether the

religious way in search for an alternative that would satisfy the longing for
happiness. It is this standard for virtue, absorbed from religious beliefs, that
Alfarabi asks to be examined.
Part II: The Problem according to Alfarabi
In trying to understand what Alfarabi says to those drawn
to the rational way of life, one needs first to understand how he addresses
them. Alfarabi addresses them by addressing the topic or subject that most
animates them: philosophy and, most importantly, the philosopher whom
they believe is the embodiment of human virtue. The Book of Religion, like
other political writings by Alfarabi, speaks of the common identity between
the philosopher, on the one hand, and the king in truth, the virtuous first
ruler, the lawgiver, or the Imam, on the other. And so, in speaking about
first rulers and lawgivers, Alfarabi speaks about philosophy and the philosophers, and, consequently, speaks to the philosophically inclined.
What does the Book of Religion say about the identity of the
lawgiver and the first ruler? Alfarabi speaks mostly in generalities regarding
possible divine gifts as well as happy coincidences of nature and nurture that
make it possible for the lawgiver, the first ruler, or the king in truth to come
into being (BR, 14a14b and 14d; see also ES, 3). But beyond these generalities, Alfarabi points to two specific things that seem to be necessary markers
for first rulers and lawgivers. First, this ruler possesses an understanding that
ultimate human happiness (whether for the individual or the community)
is politically dependent (BR, 1; see also ES, 1). This understanding, which is
rational according to Alfarabi, is accessible to many rational human beings,
but is not enough to make the many potential lawgivers. This is true for at
least one reason, which happens to be the second explicit marker of a first
ruler that Alfarabi points to: the rhetorical abilities necessary to persuade the
political community of what is conducive to their happiness (real or imagined) (BR, 6).
Alfarabi opens his Book of Religion with at least two intriguing claims. First, no matter how small or large a communityin the true
sense of the word communitymay be, it requires religion that defines its
See, for example, Platos Euthyphro. See also section iii in Alfarabis The Philosophy of Plato, Its
Parts, the Ranks of Order of Its Parts, from the Beginning to the End, in Alfarabi: Philosophy of Plato
and Aristotle, trans. Muhsin Mahdi, rev. ed., with foreword by Charles E. Butterworth and Thomas L.
Pangle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).
11

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purpose to exist as a community. Second, any religion (milla) worthy of the

name has a human medium or source, and this medium or source is the
communitys first ruler. From these two claimsthe necessity of religion in
human social organization, and its necessarily human dimensionAlfarabi
proceeds to articulate what distinguishes a virtuous religion from an ignorant one. There seems to be a clear black-and-white distinction between the
virtuous religion and the ignorant one: the virtuous religion is one that is
established by a virtuous first ruler who understands and knows what ultimate happiness is, and whothrough the determined and restricted opinions
and actions he prescribes for the communityseeks it as a genuine common
good, that is, a good that is truly good for him, as a lawgiver, as well as good
for those to whom the laws are given (BR, 1). The ignorant ruler, by contrast,
does not know or understand what ultimate happiness is, and seeksthrough
determined and restricted opinions and actions he prescribes for the communityinstead of genuine happiness, one of the ignorant goods (BR, 1). But
if there is a clear black-and-white distinction between the virtuous and the
ignorant religions, there are shades of grey when it comes to evaluating the
ignorant religions. All ignorant religions share the fact that they were established by ignorant first rulers, who are essentially ignorant of true happiness.
But these ignorant rulers differ from one another, according to Alfarabi, with
respect to two things: first, the end for which they establish religion, and second, the target for whom they seek that end (BR, 1).
According to Alfarabi, every religion, or, at the very least,
every religion that forms the basis of a large and self-sufficient community
(such as a city, a nation, or a group of nations), has a view of an afterlife in
which ultimate happiness can be attained. This otherworldly happiness is
what makes possible life in this world. This account of ultimate happiness
is always given by the first ruler of the community. In the beginning of this
treatise, Alfarabi describes two types of first rulers, namely, a virtuous first
ruler and three kinds of ignorant first rulers. In giving an account of these
ignorant rulers, Alfarabi states:
If [the rulership of the first ruler] is ignorant, then in what he prescribes [1] he seeks only to obtain, for himself by means of [everyone
under his rulership], one of the ignorant goods...to win that good,
be happy with it to the exclusion of them, and make those under his
rulership tools he uses to arrive at his purpose and to retain in his possession. Or [2] he seeks to obtain this good for them to the exclusion
of himself, or [3] both for himself and them; these two are the most
virtuous of the ignorant rulers. If that rulership of his is errant, in that

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he presumes himself to have virtue and wisdom and those under his
rulership presume and believe that of him without him being like that
[in fact], then he seeks that he and those under his rulership obtain
something presumed to be ultimate happiness without it being truly
so. If his rulership deceptive, in that he purposely strives for that without those under his rulership noticing it, then the people under his
rulership believe and presume that he has virtue and wisdom; on the
surface he seeks in what he prescribes that he and they obtain ultimate
happiness, whereas underneath it is that he obtain one of the ignorant
goods by means of them. (BR, 1; emphasis and numerals added)

Of the three kinds of ignorant first rulers, there is one that

uses people as tools by which he obtains for himself one of the ignorant
goodsthese being every earthly thing that human beings perceive as good
including health, well-being, wealth, pleasure, honor, glory, and conquest.
Then there are two other kinds of ignorant first rulers who, when compared
with the first ignorant one, are the more virtuous of ignorant first rulers.
Why more virtuous? Answer: in legislating the opinions and actions of religion, both kinds of first rulers show deep concern for the interest of the ruled.
The difference between the two most virtuous of the ignorant rulers is that
one ruler privileges the good of the ruled over his own, while the other seeks
through his legislation the common good with the ruled. Alfarabi does not
rank the two most virtuous of the ignorant rulers, but as he continues his
description of the different types of rulers, Alfarabi drops from consideration
the ruler who privileges the good of the ruled over his own, focusing instead
on the one who believes himself (and is believed by his followers) to know
what is good for himself and those under his rulershipthis is what Alfarabi
calls an errant rulership (BR, 1). In order to understand why Alfarabi drops
from explicit consideration the second kind of first ruler, one needs to take
note of what else he says about the ignorant rulerships.
Alfarabi began with three kinds of ignorant rulerships,
one that seeks the good of the ruler at the expense of the good of the ruled,
one that seeks the good of the ruled to the exclusion of the good the ruler,
and one that seeks the good of both the ruled and the ruler. In dropping
the second type of ignorant rulerships, Alfarabi leaves the reader with two
kinds of ignorant rule: a simply deceptive one, and a simply errant one.
A simply deceptive rulership is one in which the first ruler seeks, on the surface, in what he prescribes that he and [the ruled] obtain ultimate happiness,
whereas underneath it is that he obtain one of the ignorant goods by means of
them. A simply errant rulership, on the other hand, is one in which the ruler

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presumes himself to have virtue and wisdom and those under his rulership
presume and believe that of him without him being like that [in fact], then he
seeks that he and those under his rulership obtain something presumed to be
ultimate happiness without it being truly so (BR, 1).
And so, there is a deceptive ruler who does not believe in
ultimate happiness, but who uses this notion to gain the obedience and
service of the ruled; and there is also an errant ruler who does believe in a
confused notion of ultimate happiness, and who uses it effectively to gain
what he and the ruled believe to be the common good.
But where does the ruler that privileges the good of the ruled,
as he conceives it, over his own fit with respect to the difference between the
simply deceptive and the simply errant rulerships? Since this rulership does
not exploit the service of the ruled for the sake of the ruler, it is, along with
the errant rulership, more virtuous than the deceptive rulership. But insofar
as it does not believe in the ultimate good that it promises the ruled, it shares
something in common with the deceptive rulership, although it does so for
the benefit of the ruled. Despite its apparently noble objective, this kind of
rulership still is, along with the errant rulership, an ignorant rulership. In
this kind of rulership, the ruler gives the people something to live for, and
hence makes bearable for them the suffering of this world, but he himself
cannot partake in this good. And this is, in a way, self-contradictory. In
creating the condition for political harmony in the community, the ruler is
identifying with something greater than himself, something which motivates
him to create a noble lie. And yet he himself cannot find solace in this life, as
indicated by the fact that he puts the good of others ahead of his own. He does
not examine the nature of that good. Perhaps like Aristotle, in the beginning
of the Nicomachean Ethics, he accepts as an article of faith that even if [the
human good] is the same thing for an individual and a city, to secure and
preserve the good of the city appears to be something greater and more complete: the good of the individual by himself is certainly desirable enough, but
that of a nation and of cities is nobler and more divine.12 But unlike Aristotle
in the Nicomachean Ethics, he does not go on to investigate why this good is
believed to be nobler and more divine.13 As will be seen next, examining the
nature of the good begins, according to Alfarabi, with examining religion.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1094b5011; translation from Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics, trans.
Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

12

The more virtuous of ignorant rulers is the closest thing in this treatise to Alfarabis account of the
virtuous person who is part foreign to his ignorant city and who is likened to an animal that happens
13

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Part III: Religion and the Virtuous Religion

From the point of view of the religious person (and especially from the point of view of law and jurisprudence) religion consists of
two clear parts: opinions and actions. This division could be termed the traditional division of religion, and it allows the jurist, for example, to reduce the
complex religious teaching into manageable parts. Accordingly, as Alfarabi
declares, the science of jurisprudence has two parts: a part with respect to
opinions and a part with respect to actions (ES, 4).
The art of jurisprudence is that by which a human being is able to infer,
from the things the lawgiver declared specifically and determinately,
the determination of each of the things he did not specifically declare.
And he is able to aspire to a verification of that on the basis of the
purpose of the lawgiver in the religion he legislated with respect to the
nation for which it was legislated. (ES, 4; emphasis added)

But this traditional division, which facilitates the task of the jurist, also leads
to the compartmentalization of the religious experience, creating a barrier
between opinions and actions. This is clearly witnessed in Alfarabis careful
description of the task of the jurist in both chapter 5 of the Enumeration and
the Book of Religion (ES, 4 and BR, 910). The investigation by the jurist of
either opinions or actionseven if he is a specialist in both these areasis
independent of his investigation of the other. According to Alfarabi, to infer
actions that the lawgiver did not specifically declare does not require a study
of the opinions that the lawgiver declared specifically and determinately. In
fact, and as strange as this may at first sound, it is not even necessary for
the jurist to be thoroughly experienced in the lawgivers declared opinions
in order for him (the jurist) to establish the basis of the purpose of the lawgiver, with respect to the actions in the religion he legislated (BR, 9).
Dividing religion into two neatly separate realms of opinions and actions is also what dialectical theology does, according to Alfarabi:
The art of dialectical theology is a disposition by which a human being is
able to defend the specific opinions and actions that the founder of the religion declared and to refute by arguments whatever opposes it. This art is
also divided into two parts: a part with respect to opinions and a part with
respect to actions (ES, 5). What chapter 5 of the Enumeration and the Book
of Religion teach is that there is a clear division of labor when it comes to the
traditional study of opinions and actions, as is clearly seen in the division of
to have the legs of an animal belonging to an inferior species (BR, 14a).

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labor between jurisprudence and theology. An individual could be an expert

in both parts of jurisprudence, as well as in both parts of theology, but his
expertise in any part of either field of inquiry does not depend on his expertise in both fields of inquiry.14
Yet, following Alfarabis argument, this traditional division
of religion into opinions and actions is contrary to the view of philosophy.
Philosophy divides religion, especially virtuous religion, into a theoretical
and practical partsa division that happens to be after philosophys own
image and likeness:
Thus virtuous religion is similar to philosophy. Just as philosophy is
partly theoretical and partly practical, so it is with religion: the calculative theoretical part is what a human being is not able to do when he
knows it, whereas the practical part is what a human being is able to
do when he knows it. (BR, 5)

Religion

In order to understand the significance of this difference between the traditional and the philosophical division of religion, one needs to look at how
this treatise first divided religion (see figure 1).

Opinions

Theoretical
Things
Voluntary Things
Acts of Worship

Actions
Civic Acts
Figure 1: The traditional division of religion

The traditional way of dividing religion into two neatly

separate realms of opinions and actions separates opinions about theoretical
things (such as prophecy: cf. BR, 1) and about voluntary things (such as the
If it happens that there is a certain human being who has the ability to do both matters, he is a
jurist and a dialectical theologian. He defends them insofar as he is a theologian, and he infers them
insofar as he is a jurist (ES, 5).
14

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biographies of prophets) from proper actions of worship or praise of prophets. It is a division that relates, in the opinions about theoretical things, the
divine nature of justice, and relates, in the opinions about voluntary things,
how certain divinely inspired people encompassed this divine message of justice, as well as instructs, in the legislated actions, how the community ought
to praise (i.e., value) justice and act justly (BR, 2).

Religion

Philosophy, in its division of religion into theoretical and

practical parts, expands its practical part to include not only actions but also
opinions about voluntary things. After all, these are opinions that a human
being can do (i.e., imitate or pattern his life after) once he learns them (see
figure 2).

Calculative
Theoretical

Theoretical
Things
Opinions about
Voluntary Things

Practical

Acts of Worship
Civic Acts

Figure 2: The division of religion according to philosophy

In investigating the actions of religion (or virtuous religion),
practical philosophy does not stop at acts of worship and civic acts; it also
includes, under this investigation, opinions about voluntary things. In investigating whether actions of religion are virtuous or not, practical philosophy
does not stop at what the first ruler has determined and prescribed with
stipulations regarding actions, but it goes on to investigate in this relation
opinions about the first ruler himself, what is unique about him and what he
shares in common with other virtuous first rulers (cf. BR 2 with 14a).
According to Alfarabi, the division of religion into a calculative theoretical part and a practical part makes it easier (in a way) to identify

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the part that is fundamental in making the distinction between the virtuous religion and the errant one: Now any religion in which the first type of
opinions does not comprise what a human being can ascertain either from
himself or by demonstration and in which there is no likeness of anything he
can ascertain in one of these two ways is an errant religion (BR, 4).
This reading is consistent with Alfarabis discussion of the
difference between virtuous rulership and ignorant rulership. Recall that an
ignorant rulership seeks one of the ignorant goods, whereas virtuous rulership is one that seeks ultimate happiness that is truly happiness. Opinions
about happiness, Alfarabi informs in section 2, are included in the first
part of opinions, those about theoretical things: Then there are some that
describe death and the afterlife and, with respect to the afterlife, the happiness to which the most virtuous and the righteous proceed and the misery to
which the most depraved and profligate proceed (BR, 2).
But the division between the theoretical and practical parts
of the virtuous religion is not as clear-cut as the division between actions
and opinions. There is a much more obvious and stronger link between the
theoretical and the practical parts of religion than in that division which
sees religion as composed of opinions and actions. This stronger link is not
based on the fact that there are opinions in both parts of religion; rather the
link is the fact that the practical part of religion also deals with happiness, as
is seen in the following description of the voluntary opinions: Among the
second type of opinions are those that describe [exemplary men]...in former
times; and those that relate what they had in common, what good actions
were characteristic of each one, and where their souls and the souls of those
who followed and emulated them in cities and nations ended up in the afterlife (BR, 2).
But why would happiness be such a significant link? In the
first section of the Book of Religion Alfarabi argues that whether or not the
determined and prescribed actions aim at ultimate happiness is what makes
the difference between virtuous and ignorant rulership. And in section 4 he
argues that the difference between virtuous and errant religion is based on
whether or not the claims in the theoretical part of religion can be ascertained by means of primary knowledge or by demonstration. In section 5,
Alfarabi provides more information that is relevant to this question.
Dividing religion into a theoretical part and a practical
one is what, following Alfarabis description, makes religion similar to

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philosophy: just as philosophy is partly theoretical and partly practical, so

it is with religion (BR, 5). He then goes on to explain the full implication of
this similarity:
[1] The practical things in religion are those whose universals are in
practical philosophy. This is because the practical things in religion are
those universals made determinate by stipulations restricting them,
and what is restricted by stipulations is more particular than what is
pronounced unqualifiedly without stipulations. Therefore, [2] all virtuous laws are subordinate to the universals of practical philosophy.
[3] The theoretical opinions that are in religion have their demonstrative proofs in theoretical philosophy and are taken in religion without
demonstrative proofs. (BR, 5; numerals added)

This is what makes Alfarabi conclude that the two parts of which religion
consists are subordinate to philosophy. According to Alfarabi:
Something is said to be part of a science or to be subordinate to a science in one of two ways: either the demonstrative proofs or what is
assumed in it without demonstrative proofs occur in that science, or
the science comprising the universals is the one that gives the reasons
for the particulars subordinate to it. [4] The practical part of philosophy is, therefore, the one that gives the reasons for the stipulations by
which actions are made determinate: that for the sake of which they
were stipulated and the purpose intended to be obtained by means
of those stipulations. Further, [5] if to know something is to know it
demonstratively, then [6] this part of philosophy is the one that gives
the demonstrative proof for the determined actions that are in the
virtuous religion. [7] And since it is the theoretical part of philosophy
that gives demonstrative proofs for the theoretical part of religion, [8]
it is philosophy, then, that gives the demonstrative proofs of what the
virtuous religion encompasses. (BR, 5; numerals added)

What this argument clearly shows here is the centrality of the question of
happiness to philosophy in general and to the practical part of philosophy
in particular. For although the question of happiness is not the only subject
that the theoretical part of religion deals with (in fact it is the last opinion it
describes), happiness is the most important question for practical philosophy, since it is the first problem that political science investigates, according
to Alfarabi (BR, 11; but cf. ES, 1 and 3).
The first practical problem that confronts the political community in the absence of a true king is the problem of actions: it will be
necessaryconcerning everything done in the cities under rulership of the
predecessorfor the successor to follow in the footsteps of the predecessor with

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respect to what he determines. This is the work of the jurist whose main task
is to make a sound determination of each thing the lawgiver did not declare
specifically by extrapolating it or inferring it from the things he determined
by declaring them and to verify that on the basis of the lawgivers purpose in
the religion he legislated. This task will not come about successfully, Alfarabi
states, unless the jurists belief in the opinions of that religion is correct and
he possesses the virtues that are virtues in that religion (BR, 9; emphasis
added). In other words, it is not enough that the jurist has the ability to infer,
from the things the lawgiver declared specifically and determinately, the
determination of each of the things he did not specifically declare (ES, 4). It
is not enough because this inference needs to be informed by the purpose of
the lawgiver in the religion he legislated with respect to the nation for which it
was legislated. Note that the requirement here is that the jurist be religiously
virtuousnot virtuous simply.
Section 10 of the Book of Religion shows how difficult, if not
impossible, the task of the jurist is.15 But even if the jurist, by some extraordinary skill and talent, is successful in his task, it is not clear that the final
outcome of the jurists work would be optimal for the political community
(that it is in keeping with the lawgivers intention). That is to say, it is not clear
that the sound inference of actions would be productive of sound actions. Set
aside the question whether it is possible for a human being to meet all the
eight requirements that a jurist must have, according to Alfarabi, in order
to be successful jurist, and focus instead on what is clearly problematic or
unsound about the task of the jurist.
First, even though an important requirement of the jurist
is that his belief in the opinions of that religion is correct and he possesses
15
In section 10 of the Book of Religion, Alfarabi lists eight requirements that a jurist must have in
order to succeed in his work as a jurist. These requirements are (1) exhaustive knowledge of all actions
declared specifically by the lawgiver (in words and deeds); (2) cognizance of laws that was first legislated and then replaced by the first ruler; (3) cognizance of the language spoken by the first ruler and
the customary ways in which people of his time used their language; (4) cleverness at recognizing the
meaning intended by an equivocal name in the context in which it is used, as well as at recognizing
equivocalness in speech; (5) cleverness at recognizing when an expression is used in an unqualified
sense, whereas the intention of the speaker is more restricted; when an expression taken literally has
restricted meaning, whereas the intention of the speaker is more general; and when an expression is
used in a restricted, or general, or unqualified sense, whereas the intention of the speaker is what it
means literally; (6) cognizance of what is generally accepted and what is customary; (7) a capacity for
grasping similarities and differences in things, as well as a capacity for distinguishing what necessarily follows something from what does not; and (8) that the jurist find out the lawgivers utterances for
everything he legislated in speech, and his actions for whatever he legislated by doing it rather than by
uttering it.

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the virtues that are virtues in that religion (BR, 9), as a jurist he has to
approach religion as composed of two equally coherent realms that can be
equally understood on their own terms. This is why it seems possible for a
jurist to make sound inference of actions without recourse to opinions, and
vice versa, to make sound inference of opinions without recourse to actions
(BR, 910). A jurist can be expert in both actions and opinions, but, again,
determining what is sound with respect to one has little or nothing to do with
what is sound with respect to the other. And so the community of believers
needs to trust that its jurists are true believers in the opinions of its religion,
and that they are virtuous in the actions of this religion, but that faith and
that virtue do not seem to bear directly on the ability of the jurist to perform
his tasks. In performing his task, the jurist reinforces the division between
opinions and actions.
Second, the criterion for inferring sound actions, according
to Alfarabi, is for the jurist to follow in the footsteps of the predecessor with
respect to what he determines; he should not do anything differently nor
make any alteration, but should let everything the predecessor determined
remain the way it was (BR, 9). The idea here is to preserve whatever good
condition the first ruler has left his community in for as long a time as possible. But this is a very imperfect solution to a very serious political problem.
In determining the opinions and actions for a community, the first ruler,
the virtuous king, must take into consideration the particular circumstances
of time and space within which the community existsabove all he needs
to appeal to what the community understands with respect to generally
accepted or persuasive things (BR, 6). Put differently, at least part of what
makes the virtuous religion virtuous are actions determined and restricted
with stipulations (BR, 1) in harmony with the requirements of place and
time. What the art of jurisprudence does is preserve the unity of the community, through preserving the legacy of the first rulers law, but it cannot
preserve the virtue of these laws.
Third, in inferring sound actions the jurist must be informed
by the lawgivers purpose in the religion he legislated with respect to the
nation for which it was legislated (BR, 1). Set aside for now how the lawgivers
purpose (or the first rulers purpose) is not necessarily the same thing as the
lawgivers purpose in the religion. How does the jurist become informed in the
the lawgivers purpose in the religion? Answer: he comes to be informed in
this purpose through inferring it from the laws that the lawgiver has determined. But as it turns out, this approach provides precious little regarding

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knowledge of the lawgivers purpose as a first rulerthe purpose that determines whether the religion is virtuous or errant. And this stands to reason,
since jurisprudence about the practical matters of religion comprises only
things that are particulars of universals that are outside of religion. So, again
the work of the jurist (informed by purpose of the lawgiver in the religion he
legislated) can be productive in preserving the unity of the political community, but this work would be a poor substitute if one needs to know whether
this community is virtuous. To know this, one needs to turn to political science and theoretical science, for they contain the universals that compose the
two parts of religion.
What does political science do? Political Science investigates happiness first of all. Thus begins section 11 of the Book of Religion and
thus begins the new theme of political science to the end of the treatise (i.e.,
the discussion begins and continues for twenty-one sections). Why begin
with happiness first of all? In investigating happiness, political science
investigates the ultimate end that every founder, every first ruler, promises
his community. It investigates the end that gives meaning to determined
opinions and actions that the first ruler prescribes to his community; this
end explains to the people why they ought to believe in the opinions they are
supposed to believe in and why they should do the actions they are supposed
to do. And what is the result of this investigation? It is that, yes indeed, there
is such a thing as happiness, but it is if two kinds: happiness presumed to be
happiness without being such, and happiness that is truly happiness (BR, 11).
What distinguishes the two?
The latter is the one sought for its own sake; at no time is it sought in
order to obtain something else by it; indeed, all other things are sought
in order to obtain this one, and when it is obtained the search is given
up; it does not come about in this life, but rather in the next life which
is after this one; and it is called ultimate happiness. Examples of what
is presumed to be happiness but is not such are affluence, pleasures,
honor and being glorified, or anything else sought and acquired in
this life that the multitude calls goods. (BR, 11)

So it turns out that the ultimate happiness that the first ruler promises and
for the sake of which the political community exists is otherworldly. Political
science takes seriously the claims of religion, and in doing so, takes these
claims to their ultimate conclusion. It brings about cognizance that, yes
indeed, as religion claims, the ultimate happiness human beings seek is otherworldly, that none of the things sought in this world, which the multitude
calls goods, can bring about the hoped-for happiness.

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Having brought about cognizance of the two types of happiness, political science turns next to investigate the voluntary actions, ways of
life, moral habits, states of character, and dispositions until it gives an exhaustive account of all of them and covers them in details (BR, 12). Two questions
need to be asked here. First, why would political science see the investigation
of the voluntary things as logically following the investigation of happiness? Second, how does political science investigate the voluntary things?
A provisional answer to the first question would be as follows: since the outcome of the first thing that political science investigates was
to bring cognizance that ultimate happiness, which the first ruler promises,
does indeed existthat not all rulers are sincere in making this promise, or
are misinformed as to the true reality of what they promise, and that ultimate
happiness should not be confused with what the multitude believe it to be
the next logical step seems to be to investigate what can be done to produce
or attain this happiness: that is, to investigate the voluntary things (actions,
ways of life, moral habits, state of character, and dispositions). How should
human beings act, what path should they take in life, how should they treat
their fellow citizens and fellow human beings, and (perhaps above all) how
can they transform their inner qualities (malakt) in order to obtain ultimate
happiness? And so, in sum, the belief in ultimate happiness (which political
science brings cognizance of) is followed by the desire to know how it can
be obtainedthe desire to know what ought to be done, which assumes that
what ought to be done can be done, that it can be subject to volition, requires
the investigation of the voluntary things.
If this is so, then one needs to understand how political science investigates the voluntary things. According to Alfarabi, political science
is not merely capable of enumerating the voluntary things, but it is actually
able to give an exhaustive account of all of them and covers them in details
(BR, 12). But considering the fact of the seemingly infinite possibilities of what
is and can be done, of the moral choices that confront the individual, how is
political science able to cover in detail and give an exhaustive account of what
seems to be as inexhaustible as the numbers, combinations, and contexts of
the individuals and peoples who possess and do them? The answer to this
question seems to be as follows: political science cuts through all the noise
and clutter of the plethora of human actions, activities, and moral choices
by focusing its investigative energies on that which is much more manageable to study than the multitude of particular actions, that is, by focusing on
the opinions that supposedly inform these actions. In other words, political

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science investigates the voluntary actions, ways of life, moral habits, states of
character, and dispositions by investigating the opinions about the voluntary
things which form the second type of opinions specified in religion. From
the point of view of political science, these opinions about voluntary things
(about prophets, kings, leaders, and followers) are much, much more than
stories and moral anecdotes. They are practical opinions, the kind that
a human being is able to do when he knows it (BR, 5). If the first type of
opinions specified by religion give the teaching about happiness, the second
type can teach how this happiness is, or can be, attained. These opinions
about voluntary things, which political science investigates, explain what
prophets do, what makes kings virtuous, and what makes rulers righteous;
how leaders lead to the right way and to the truthhow the past shows them
to be all part of a long chain of succession. It describes what they shared in
common as prophets, as virtuous and righteous men, and what is unique
about each and every one of them. It explains the fate of the souls of these
individuals and the fate of the souls of those who set these individuals as their
exemplars and guides. It also explains what makes a king depraved, a ruler
profligate, and communities ignorant; how leaders lead to errant ways, and
how the past shows they all are part of a long succession. It describes what
these individuals shared in common as depraved, profligate, and errant men.
It describes the fate of the souls of these individuals and the fate of the souls
of those who used them as exemplars and guides (BR, 2). Next, these opinions
turn to the present and describe the contemporary virtuous kings, righteous
men, and leaders of the truth, describing what they have in common with
those who went before and what good actions are characteristic of them. And
then, there are the opinions that give an account of present profligate rulers,
errant leaders, and the inhabitants of ignorant communities in the present
time. Then it describes what they have in common with those who went
before, what evil actions are characteristic of them, and where their souls will
end up in the afterlife (BR, 2). Without the study of religion and religious
opinions, Alfarabi seems to argue, it is not possible for political science to
complete its essential work.
Conclusion
As argued in this paper, the Book of Religion has at least two
main objectives. The first is political and aims to make the case for reconciling religion with philosophy. The main audience for this objective is the
political and religious leadership that have genuine concern for the well-being
of the larger political community. In making the case for the involvement of

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philosophy in politics, the Book of Religion does not deny the important role
religion plays in making possible the unity and virtue of the political community. The Book of Religion does not also deny that jurisprudencethe highest
political art according to traditional political authorityplays (along with
theology) an essential role in preserving the unity of the community in accordance with the original intention of its lawgiver. But Alfarabi, through his
Book of Religion, raises serious doubts regarding the ability of jurisprudence
(and theology) to preserve the virtue of the political community. For this
objective to be achieved there is no substitute for philosophy, and especially
political philosophy. Political philosophy is needed because it can look beyond
the particular laws that the lawgiver legislatedlaws that are bounded by the
particular circumstance of the time and place the lawgiver finds himself in
and discover the universals that guide the purpose of these laws.
A second objective in the Book of Religion is pedagogical and
aims to make the case for taking seriously the claims of the virtuous religion.
The main audience for this objective is those individuals who are inclined
toward the rational way of life, the life of philosophy, and it teaches them that
the genuine pursuit of wisdom has to go through the study of religious faith
and practice. The Book of Religion explains how religious faith is part and
parcel of being human and that one cannot understand humanity, and hence
one cannot fully understand oneself, insofar as one is part of this humanity,
without taking seriously the claims of religion. Yes, religion is subordinate to
philosophy, Alfarabi says, but this does not change the fact that the road to
philosophical certainty (if possible) begins by examining religion.

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Unmasking Limbo: Reading Inferno IV as Key to Dantes Comedy

199

Unmasking Limbo:
Reading Inferno IV as Key to Dantes Comedy
M a r c o A n d r e ac c h i o
http://theologiapoetica.webs.com
[email protected]

ut Deus sit naturae artifex, homo Deus artificiorum

I. Preamble to the Problem of Limbo
And if they were before Christianity / they did not
render praise to God dutifully (e se furon dinanzi al
cristianesmo / non adorar debitamente a Dio)
Inferno IV.3738
Philosophywhose proper reason is hidden in the most
secret recesses of the divine mind! (Filosofiala cui
propia ragione nel secretissimo della divina mente!)
Convivio IV.30.vi
Limbo remains a stumbling block for contemporary Dante
scholarship as a whole. At the very least, the significance of Limbo with
respect to Dantes entire Comedy remains unclear and controversial. According to the three currently dominant scholarly readings, in his representation
of Limbo Dante (1) piously, if only imperfectly, conformed to Christian orthodoxy; (2) irreparably and unjustifiably departed from Christian orthodoxy;
or (3) superseded medieval Christianity as a precursor of modern Christian

2013 Interpretation, Inc.

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theology and its concurrent emphasis on subjectivity.1 Yet there are textual
grounds to doubt all three readings, even beyond the work of Cantor and
Fortin2 and other esoteric readings of Dante as justifiably heretic.3
Amilcare Iannucci, Dantes Limbo: At the Margins of Orthodoxy, in Dante and the Unorthodox:
The Aesthetics of Transgression, ed. James Miller (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press,
2005), 6382, attests to all three readings, preferring the third. Iannucci assumes that Dante uses
theology to further his poetic ends, ends which are, in turn, driven by his firm faith-convictions (72);
or that the poets profound faith-convictions (73) move him to portray Limbo as a Greek tragedy
of necessity (74) in the context of an emancipating inspired poetry, which, de facto, would be
replacing Christian medieval theology with a nondenominational, popular spirituality (7475, after
John Ahern, Singing the Book: Orality in the Reception of Dantes Comedy, in Dante: Contemporary
Perspectives, ed. Amilcare A. Iannucci [Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1997], 21439). Dantes
departure from medieval orthodoxy could then be conceived as signaling the evolutionary or
historical nature of orthodoxy: Dantes departure from one historical instantiation of orthodoxy
might be in tune with orthodoxys own historical transformation. Accordingly, in recent decades,
the reading of Dante as anticipating modernity has been given a distinctive semiotic (and thus
postphilosophical and decisively anti-Platonist) slant, whereby Dante emerges as a poet who, though
still tied to medieval theological beliefs, is already treading in the direction of postmodern literary
criticism. Exemplary in this respect are Zygmunt G. Baranski, Dantes Signs, in Dante and the
Middle Ages: Literary and Historical Essays, ed. John C. Barnes and Cormac Cuilleanin (Dublin:
Irish Academic Press, 1995), 13980; Teodolinda Barolini, The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing
Dante (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dantes Vision and the Circle
of Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Massimo Verdicchio, Della Dissimulazione: Allegoria e Ironia nella Commedia di Dante (Naples: La Citt del Sole, 2002); and Verdicchio,
The Poetics of Dantes Paradiso (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010). Of the four, Mazzotta
adheres least strictly to the demands of semiotics, often enriching semiological considerations with
literary-historical excursuses. Other scholars, while still reading Dante as advancing in the shadow
of postmodernity, emphasize sociotheological problems, or a (universal) secular spirituality. Exemplary are Ruedi Imbach, Dante, la Philosophie et les Lacs: Initiations la Philosophie Mdivale (Paris:
ditions du Cerf, 1996); Christian Moevs, The Metaphysics of Dantes Comedy (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008); and, on behalf of a global-historical Islam, Gregory B. Stone, Dantes Pluralism and the Islamic Philosophy of Religion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) (after Miguel Asn
Palacios, La escatologa musulmana en la Divina Comedia [Madrid: Real Academia Espaola, 1919]).
1

Paul A. Cantor, The Uncanonical Dante: The Divine Comedy and Islamic Philosophy, Philosophy
and Literature 20, no. 1 (1996): 13853; Ernest L. Fortin, Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages:
Dante and his Precursors, trans. Marc A. LePain (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002). Cantor in
particular presents Dante as Averroist in a poetic disguise. No doubt one can find Averroes in Dantes
works, but these notoriously draw upon innumerable sources, making use of them in the interests
of a transcendent end. Reducing Dante to any theological or philosophical personality is to do a
disservice to the inherent vitality of Dantes works, or to Dantes capacity to rise above all doctrinal
denominations. The philosophical quest for sources points to the community of eternal ideas
directly, not to any historical determination (Inferno IV.11520).
2

On Dante as sectarian heretic, see, e.g., Luigi Valli, Il Linguaggio Segreto di Dante e dei Fedeli
dAmore (Rome: Optima, 1928); and Ren Gunon, The Esoterism of Dante (Ghent, NY: Sophia
Perennis, 2004). Sectarian readings tend to rely heavily on evidence supplied to Dantes texts
from without, rather than drawn out of them. The extraneous evidence is then used to link fragments
(sometimes solitary keywords) from Dantes texts in order to prove Dantes particular allegiance
to one sect or another. In this respect, the reason tying Dantes words together is fathomed as something in need of being supplied to Dantes otherwise disconnected words ex machina. Nor is this
hermeneutical shortcoming averted by intellectual historians (for whom reason belongs to a history,
or to History singulare tantum) and semiologists (for whom reason is a myth devoid of substance),
since in the former case Dantes texts signify a context their author could not have been fully aware
of, whereas in the latter case the texts signify ad hoc only themselves qua bundles of free-floating
3

Unmasking Limbo: Reading Inferno IV as Key to Dantes Comedy

2 01

Possibly the most vexing question concerning Dantes Limbo

pertains specifically to the status of ancient or pagan philosophy and poetry
vis--vis the Christian revelation. In Inferno IV, which is the Canto Dante
dedicates to Limbo, noble pagans including great philosophical personalities
appearin the company of Averroesblissfully indifferent to Christianity
and Christs Harrowing of Hell. Averroess presence confirms the difficulty of
accounting for the presence of Saladin, the notorious opponent of Christian
crusaders. To say the least, not all the noblemen of Limbo are unaware of
Christianitys Good News. But in fact, given the stated familiarity (132) the
philosophical noblemen enjoy with each other, it is reasonable to conclude (as
we must, e.g., in the light of Purgatorio VII.3436) that they are all and even
all-too-well aware of the Christian context in which they remain suspended
(II.52, IV.45, 73: it is not clear if the noble inhabitants of Limbo are possessed
by or possessing their context).4 Yet, as far as we can tell, they are not
in the least disturbed by their failure to partake in Christs salvific plan.5
Why not? And why would Dante, as Christian explorer of Limbo, not try to
convert his philosophical brethren to a faith that might fulfill their deepest
longings? Or, if he did make such an attempte.g., in the course of his secretive conversation with fellow pagan poets (1035)why would he conceal it
from his reader? What is more, why would Dante ask the shadow of a pagan
mind reader, his master Virgil, to make him certain about the Christian
faith (4648)? What could an uncertain pagan,6 former rebel (ribellante)
against the Christian God (I.125), ever say that would make Dante certain
signifiers unbound to any overarching necessity. We are thus faced with two equally inadequate hermeneutical approaches to Dante (assuming genuine interpretation aims at illuminating an authorial
message for the reader), presupposing respectively (1) the blind necessity of a transcendence lacking
immanence (where the meaning of texts is a paradise to which their authorsat least until the
end of Historyhave access only retroactively, via their audiences grace) and (2) the equally blind
chance of immanence lacking transcendence (where meaning is a cat chasing its tail). On these conditions, there can hardly be any dialogue between an author and his audience.
Standard references and abbreviations for cited works by Dante Alighieri are as follows (indicative
dates of first redaction in brackets): Vita Nuova [1295], ed. Domenico De Robertis, in Opere minori,
vol. 1, pt. 1 (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi Editore, 1979); De Vulgari Eloquentia (DVE) [13035], ed.
P. V. Mengaldo, in Opere minori, vol. 2 (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi Editore, 1979); Convivio [13047],
ed Cesare Vasoli and Domenico De Robertis, in Opere minori, vol. 1, pt. 2 (Milan and Naples:
Ricciardi Editore, 1979); La Commedia secondo lantica vulgata (Comedy) [130821], ed. Giorgio
Petrocchi, 4 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 196667); Epistle XII [1315] and Epistle XIII [ca. 1317], in Dantis
Alagherii Epistolae, ed Paget Toynbee (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966).
4

For Christian scholasticism, Limbos philosophers are entitled to enjoy natural contemplation only
as long as they remain oblivious to the agency of Grace (see Serge-Thomas Bonino, ed., Surnaturel: A
Controversy at the Heart of Twentieth-Century Thomistic Thought [Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia, 2009]).

Compare I.6667where Virgils shadow is omo incertoand IV.1718, where the uncertain
man has the habit of strengthening the wayfarer in his doubting.

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about his faith? Is the wayfarers uncertain Christian faith to be confirmed

by Virgils reassurance that the noblemen of Limbo are altogether sinless
(and thus unneedy of divine judgment), or that the sinfulness that Christian
orthodox theology attributes to them is merely circumstantial or by birth
(V.112)?7 Or do the wayfarers interests lieas he suggests, e.g., in Inferno
I.13035not in any beatific vision, but in the vision of religious authoritys highest seat and of ancient spirits apparently pained by it (114 and 116,
anticipating IV.2528; see also III.7274)? Is there a significant difference
between wanting to be certain in ones faith and wanting to be certain about
that faith that wins every error (4748, after 3742; italics added)? Is Dante
supposing or inviting his reader to suppose that pagan magnanimity may be
a theological error that the Christian faith cannot overcome?
II. Limbo Unmasked
We return to Dantes Limbo by way of clarifying the status ancient philosophy or pura philosophia holds for the Apollonian
comedian (Paradiso II.8). In conceding that Dante is an eminently Apollonian or untragicthinker, we have not yet shown that Dante is an essentially
Christian thinker.
To understand Dante as Apollonian thinker is, first of all,to
recognize his distance from the teaching upheld most notably by ancient
tragedians that suffering or pain (pathos) teaches wisdom.8 Socrates had
questioned the wisdom of tragedians, suggesting that he understood tragedy better than tragedians understood it (notwithstanding the tragedians
intimations of otherworldly redemptionas withOedipus at Colonus). For
Iannucci, Dantes Limbo (esp. 6872) highlights various incongruities between Dantes unorthodox account of Limbo and Christian theologys orthodox counterparts. For instance, whereas
according to Christian orthodoxy Limbo is situated in the anti-Hell, with Dante it is situated in the
underworlds first circle, thereby remaining formally beyond salvation. On the basis of Dantes
account, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for theological orthodoxy to justify Christs
capacity to beatify any soul out of Limbo (as he does in Inferno IV.5561; see also Paradiso XX.43ff.).
Which is more, theological orthodoxy could hardly accept that Virgil departed from Hell, or that
pagans remainnot unlike the muse of Inferno II.8593eternally unscathed by any punishment.
But in fact, on account of Christian orthodoxy pagans should not be in Limbo in the first place.
7

Possibly the closest Dantes Virgil comes to ancient tragedians lesson is his suggestion that divine
justice spurs those who die in Gods ire, so that the fear [of God] turns into desire (s che la tema si
volve in disio: 126). Yetaside from the fact that here fear, rather than pain, teaches a lessoninsofar
as the desire in question anticipates the desire devoid of hope of Inferno IV.42 (it is perhaps a
mere coincidence that 42 multiplied by 3 is 126, and that Inferno III.126 anticipates verse 42 of its
subsequent Canto), and insofar as III.124 echoes the desire for knowledge expressed by the wayfarer
in III.7274, it is reasonable to conclude that Virgil is now referring to his readers own text-based shift
from fear of divine retribution to the desire of noblemen who fear no punishment, properly because
they are poetically immune to it (compare II.8593 and IV.4042).
8

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the Apollonian philosopher by antonomasia, pathos has at best a merely

cathartic function within a broader philosophicalcontext. Pain that does not
clear the way for philosophy is senseless.
Medieval Christianity places a rock over Socrates, so
that pathos is now conceived within the context of biblical expectations.
The Christian aufheben of Sophocles and the Apollonian Socrates yields
wonderful fruits, though at the dire price of eclipsing the original valence
of tragedy and therewith the original problem in response to whichSocratic
philosophy emerges in the first place. Both Socratism and Christian (medieval)theological orthodoxy agree that ancient tragedy is not the best answer
to the question of how we ought to live: the tragic life is neither the best
nor the most authenticlife. Yet Christian theology and Socrates disagree
as regardsthe nature of the limits of tragedy. For Christianity incorporates
within its soteriological vision the ancient tragedians diagnosis of the fundamentalfrailty of man in the face of fateful necessity (ananke). Socrates rejects
that diagnosis. Whereas Christianitys good news depends upon a special
divine revelation redeeming us from death, or raising us into a life of ecstatic
devotion (whereby fateful necessity is believed to be one with the unfathomable will of a supremely good God), Socratess good news is that redemption
from death is possible even in the absence of any divine revelation and therefore even in defiance of any obligation to believe in any divinitys existence.
Again, whereas Christianity stands or falls on the Resurrection, for Socrates
the afterlife is at best an expendable extension of philosophy.
In order to ascertain with precision where Dante stands on
the question of the limits of tragedywhether with Socrates or with Christianitywe must return to Dantes writings insofar as they provide us the
best or most reliable available clues concerning Dantes understanding of this
most urgent problem: how are we to live now?
Dantes extant formal statements on the distinction between
tragedy and comedy are found in Epistle XIII.29 and in the De Vulgari
Eloquentia (hereafter, DVE). With respect to its matter, tragedy is in the
beginning marvelous and peaceful, but in the end or upon its resolution it is
filthy and horrific (in principio est admirabilis et quieta, in fine seu exitu est
fetida et horribilis). With respect to its style (stilus), tragedy, being the loftiest
of poetic modes, treats of the highest things, namely, human ends: of health
or the bodys salvation (Salus), of the wills love (Amor), and of intellects
virtue (Virtus; as well as of things we conceive as deriving from them, as
long as they are not accidentally defiled: DVE II.4.vvi). Where these three

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ends are hierarchically ordered, so as to signify intellectual virtue Dante

will portray moral virtues, which in turn will be signified by physical virtues
(compare Convivio IV.17.xii; Purgatorio XVI.88102; and Paradiso IV.1960).
Yet, Dante left us a comedy, rather than a tragedy. His answer concerning
the nature of tragedy is not followed by a formal discussion of comedy, but
is his own Comedy, which, however, transcends formal distinctions between
tragedy and comedy, incorporating within itself the tragic style it formally
attributes to Virgil (Paradiso XXX.2224, after Inferno I.7987, XX.113, and
XXI.2). In the light of Convivio and DVE, are we to understand that Dantes
Comedy incorporates and transcends tragedy by placing the low (means) in
function of the high (ends), or by making the low signify the high, if only
gradually? A positive answer might be supported by the consideration that
the Comedy is an ascent from the obscure wilderness (selva oscura) of Inferno
I.2 to the uniform motion of the heavens of Paradiso XXXIII.14445. Yet the
Comedy does not end with the elevation of the low (our earthly means of
life) to the heavens; it does not resolve the vulgar in the sacred. The wayfarers
final leap of the will (13739), anticipated in Inferno II.36, is a solitary one
that leaves all worldly things beneath itself by conforming to a bolt of lightning (un fulgore: Paradiso XXXIII.14142), or a sudden recognition: Icaruss
foolish flight/leap (the folle volo made famous by Ulysses) is redeemable if
power (possa) is geometrically transferred from the lofty imagination (lalta
fantasia: 142) or the hope of heights (Inferno I.54) to virtue or the desire of
heights (compare Paradiso XXXIII.14245 and Inferno II.1012, 12738).
Dante as new Daedalus succeeds geometrically or through
poetic calculation in overcoming the distance between the means and ends
of life, and thus in measuring the distance between the circumference
of the universe and its center (13348). The distance between the human
painted effigy (131) and its natural backgroundor the one between the
nobile castello and the other side of the darkness it is seemingly buried
inis physically unconquerable, but it may be occupied, not collapsed, by
the poets virtuehis strength of mind, tying the means of understanding to
the understanding simpliciter. Making oneself eternal in this life is not an
impossible task.9
In Inferno XV, Brunetto Latiniwhom the wayfarer hails as the dear and good paternal image of
the man who, in the world in time, used to teach his spiritual son how man can make himself eternal (8385; compare XXIII.3739, where Virgil is mother)claims to live beyond his bodily death
in his book, entrusted as Treasure (precious not merely as per its title) to Dante, suggestively so that
the wayfarer may win the war against death (II.4) beyond all nominal appearances (XV.85, 11920,
124 and XVI.2227). Cantor, Uncanonical Dante, 14546, proposes that for Dante, after Averroes,
we have access to eternity in the sense that, in reading dead mens books, we can enter into dialogue
9

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The problem of tragedy intimated in the very first Canti

of the Comedy, most notably in relation to eternal damnation (our second
death, or seconda morte), finds a preliminary, if only tacit, extended treatment in Inferno IV. Here, Dante encounters noblemen or viri who respond to
the description the Florentine gives in DVE of tragic poets. These poets do not
appear to be tragic with respect to their proper matter, but with respect to
the matter or obscurity in which they are suspended, or lost (perduti: 41
and 80, after I.54), though they remain overtly indifferent to or unmoved by
it. In all other respects, the noblemen that Dante finds in Limbo are neither
tragic nor Christian. We begin to learn of them where the Comedys wayfarer
(Dantes self-transposition into the wild wilderness or selva selvaggia of his
poem) indicates that
based on listening
there never was a lamentation if not of sighs
which made the air eternal tremble;
andthat came about from pain without martyrs torments,
which had the swirling crowds, which were many and grand,
of infants and of females and of noblemen.
(Inferno IV.2530)

We find ourselves in an abysmalvalley (valle dabisso)that

wasbothobscure and deep, and cloudy (oscura e profonda erae nebulosa:
10). In abysmal darkness nothing can be discerned by mere sight (1112), so
that weremainin effectblind and consequently easily mistaken with regard
to appearances(1321). Most importantly, the wayfarer fails to distinguish
infants and females from noblemen, prompting Virgilwhose will (volere)is
by now one with that of his student (II.13940)to voice his will (vo) that
Dante know and be aware of his right to know(3133) the distinction between
infants and females, on the one hand, and noblemen, on the other (anticipating the distinctionintimated in 6263between sacred and vulgar history).
We are reminded obliquely of a passage from Dantes DVE
(II.7.ii), where the poet calls for discerning the virile/virtuous words
of noblemen from the smoky/superficial words of infants and females
(not properly ladies or noblewomen): only the first of the three have real depth;
they alone do not disappoint our loftiest expectations. Accordingly, though
all of the people who would seem to be visually indistinguishable from each
with them concerning permanent problems. In this contextCantor contendswe are to understand
the eternal condition of the noble inhabitants of Dantes Limbo.

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other (25 after 13) in the swirling crowds or vortexes (turbe) of Limbo are
sinlessin the respect that they now appear to have lived in a wilderness
or selva outside of the bonds of sacred law (34, 6566)one significant distinction may be gleaned from Virgils account (whereby night vision is
made possible via poetic speech, or by attending to the long sense of words;
cf., e.g., 1924 and 6769): whereas, as far as we can tell and notwithstanding
the theological expectations of Christian orthodoxy, the infants and females
of Dantes Limbo died simply unbaptized before Christianity (comparing 37,
6263, and III.7), the noblemen of Limbo died outside of Christianitys sacred
history andindifferent to any Christian obligation to adore a divinity (3438;
compare 129). Among these noblemen, not in the company of religiously
pious pagan femalesyet neither in the absence of noblewomen (12128)
stands suspended Virgil himself (3742).
Had Limbos noblemen died under Christianity, their
reward in the underworld would have been filled with martyrs torments
(28), since with the advent of Christianity the conditions for salvation from
the blind world (cieco mondo) of anonymity (compare 13 and III.3242)
have become more stringent than in classical antiquity, when one could be
rewarded with renown simply by poetically or outwardly adoring or singing
the lauds of a divinity, no matter how false and deceitful (compare I.7175
and IV.38). To be baptized under Christianity is to be submerged by Christianitys waters:10 it is not merely to be obliged to sing the lauds of a divinity
according to pagan norms, but to believe what one sings (where the adorar
debitamente a Dio of verse 38 entails a bondage of mente/mind to debito/
debt), or to love the object of ones divining praise.
Unlike weeping and hapless infants and females (2627),
noblemen such as Virgilmen who lived outside of Christianityare found
lost in Limbo notmerely because they were not baptized, but because they
did not bow to any obligation to adore a divinity in their heart: they remain
extraneous or no more than peripheral to any sacred history (5263). As
heroes extolled by poetic lore (cf., e.g., 13033 and 123 after I.71), Limbos
great spirits (spiriti magni: 119 after 32), both noblemen and noblewomen,
would seem to be especially fortunate to have defied religious authorities
outside of Christian theologians jurisdiction. For now and eternally, their
defiance may be excused by the fact that it was directed at false and deceiving Gods (including in part Saladins unnamed Allah: 129). Indeed, who
10
See Marco Andreacchio, Dantes Statius and Christianity: A Reading of Purgatorio XXI and XXII
in Their Poetic Context, Interpretation 39, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 7172.

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could be justly expected to love a false and deceiving God? Yet even if a rebellion had been waged, as it was by Virgil, against the emperor of the heavens
(I. 124)i.e., Fortuna (cf. VII.7396)it would have remained artfully, not
to say Averroistically, covert (compare IV.51, 144, VII.9193, and I.11921),
taking advantage of the Christian belief that its enactors did not know the
God against whom they rebelled (131). Their supposed ignorance would not
suffice to save them, but it would to convince God to leave them alone.
Christian authorities grant Virgil the liberty of living eternally the philosophical life of desire devoid of hope (IV.42)of a desire for
eternity independent of any special revelation or divine giftas long as it
wont interfere with the demand placed upon us in a Christian Age to privately believe beyond doubt what we may otherwise unreluctantly profess
in public (36 and 48). Yet Dante or Dantes God raises Virgil to transcend
the limits of Limbo. If only tacitly and indirectly, and thus covertlythough
also and most importantly, providentiallythe pagan does interfere with the
demands placed by Christian orthodoxy upon ancient philosophical poetry.
He does so at first by rising above the contents of poetic lore (including philosophers theological personae), and in this respect by regaining the honor of
metaphysical poets who, thanks to their mode of being (75), are capable
of walking on water with ease (1089) or of rising with equal ease to the
heavens of the mindin a locus open, luminous and lofty whence the contents of the poetic mind may be contemplated with ease, or even ecstatically
(compare 8081, 9496, 1089, 11520).
Followed by his Florentine student, Virgil regains his place
above the one reserved for him in a Christian context, not in spite of, but
by taking advantage of, his Christian fame. In Dantes life (77), Virgil is
renowned in the company of the great shadows or grand ombre of four
ancient poets (8081, 83): sovereign sword-yielding Homer, another Horace
characterized as satire, Ovid being third, and Lucan who is last (8690).
Our wayfarer acquires a distinct vision of these four great shadows upon
hearing from Virgil that the honorable people the Florentine had already
discerned in part (71) as many (74) are the one honored famed people
(lonrata nominanza: 76, after 72 and anticipating 92).
III. The onrata nominanza and its context
Dantes Limbo is a twofold world characterized by a distinctive chiaroscuro, where poetry marks the divided line between the quiet light
of contemplation and the trembling darkness of religious fear (6869, 82,

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15051; compare I.1921). The Canto or enchanting song (canzone, as the

cantio of the DVE) Dante dedicates to Limbo is Inferno IV and cardinal to our
accessing the luminous dimension of Limbo is the onrata nominanzafour
great poetic shadows that speak as one beautiful school (83, 9295). Their
images are unified nominally (nel nome) through a lonesome voice (voce
sola) in the respect that they emerge on one poetic way or in a heavenly mental image or poetic mind that Dante sees above distinctions (9196; compare
78, 11517 and 16). No less than Dantes own persona at war (II.3), the
images of the beautiful school are unified in writing in Dantes own unerring poetic mind (I.86, II.76; compare Vita Nuova XXV.8): not the persona or
ego of the wayfarer, but its authorial, impersonal mind is the unifying form of
the Comedys poetic journey (compare II.6 and IV.145); in the poetic or active
mind alone do speech and image, or hearing and seeing, coincide (II.58,
IV.147). For the human mindno less than the Logos or visibile parlare of
Purgatorio Xis capable of writing on two registers at once, making us
hear what we see by speaking within itself (1035, after 51). This way,
speech is the articulation of an image that ultimately is the mind itselfa
form that speaks tacitly or in silence.
The images of Dantes poetic mind give authority or nominal honor to Dante qua image or appearance of intellectual virtue (97100,
after I.82 and 8687; II.912; see also IV.13133). The honor that belongs to
the mind beyond the confines of the luminous aura of authority is attributed
to the minds persona within those same poetic confines. In Inferno IV, this
persona is raised by its own minds provisional images of authority, from
sixth or last place (102)where sovereign Homer is apparently, though
not literally firstto second according to Virgils prediction on account
of which Virgil himself shall be first (15; compare 9596 and I.8687; on
sovereignty, see IV.46 and 88). But Virgils literal prediction falls short of
Dantes own prediction or prophecy, so that just as the Saturnine Virgil of
the Aeneid replaces the Jovial Homer11 as lord of the highest song (segnor
de laltissimo canto), so does Dantes comedy replaceor reviveVirgils
philosophical tragedy (comparing the scenza e arte of 73 and the scientia
et ingenium of DVE II.1.viii) by drawing the highest out of the lowestas
lux ex tenebris or ex fulgore (6972): the last shall be first in the process of
reconciling all.12
For an extended examination of this conscious replacement, see Jacob Klein, On Dantes Mount of
Purgation, Cesare Barbieri Courier 7, no. 2 (Spring 1965): 2433.
11

The need for reconciliation is bespoken by Dantes selection of poetic authors. While Virgil tries
to replace mythical Homer as supreme guide in practical or political life, Horace, best known to
12

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It is through ancient poetry as converging in the person of

Virgil that Dantes poetry rises outside of ancient poetrys jurisdiction as celebrated by Christian theology (15051 after 77). But first poetry must return
to itself, if only provisionally, by way of reminding us of its ancient abode.
Followed by his faithful student, Virgil returns among the authoritative
shadows of ancient poets by way of reacquiring the authority or autonomy
he had apparently lost, or that he had lost in the eyes of many (compare I.30,
6063). As an early commentator of the Comedy suggested in reference to
Virgil, departed was his shadow from the memory of peoples, and now in
[Canto IV] it returns (partita era la sua ombra de la memoria de le genti, e
ora per questo libro vi torna).13
By serving the interests of Dantes quest, Virgil returnsif
only brieflyto ownership of his poetic voice, having long been reduced
to a famous sage (famoso saggio) in the Christian context against which
he had previously rebelled (I.89, 125). Virgils return to Limbo is qualified
by poetry itself as a reuniting with poetrys self-ownership or lofty authority,
even above the nominal honor or fame (74, 76, 115) that separates (diparte)
great poetic personalities from other lesser poets who honor them (75, after
I.82). The great shadows of fame are thus separated in accordance with the
loftiest poets monarchic desire, insofar as it ascends above poetic images
to rule them from the heavens of a sovereign mind (IV.9396, anticipating

medieval Christianity for his Satires, invites us to rise critically above the habit of merely following
other poets (see, e.g., Ars Poetica 910). As comedian, Horace leads the way in approaching Virgil
from behindif Virgil is to become first (as he appears in Vita Nuova XXV.9), displacing Homer,
who would then remain fourth in the lineup of the onrata nominanza. Directly after Horatian
comedy we would find Ovid, third, notorious teacher of love and poetic metamorphoses (including
the one by which Caesar was deified), no less than inspiration for Dantes early Vita Nuova, where
Virgil (first), Lucan (second), Horace (third), Homer (fourth), and Ovid (followed by Dantes own
book) appear in the course of an apology of the poetic art of making someone or something speak to
or through others, other things, or ideas (XXV.9). In Limbo, as we stand hierarchically behind or
beneath the great poets, we would approach or understand the relation between Virgil and Horace
in terms of Ovidian wisdom. Yet what would then be the status of a displaced Homeric lore? By
remaining last of six, the historian Lucan could help us recover or account for the Greek who was
left behind, by exposing the fictitious character of Virgils imperial history of Rome. This way, at
the antipodes of Dantes onrata nominanza we would have the light of Virgils imperial fiction and
the darkness of the horrors Lucan exposes beneath the shiny armor of imperial authority. On Dantes
incorporation of Lucan and Ovid, see further Inferno XXV.9497. On the Comedys integration of
Virgil and Ovid, as well as on the relation between Virgil and Lucan, see Michelangelo Picone, Dante
and the Classics, in Dante: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Iannucci. (Picone takes it for granted that
Dante intends to integrate classical poets in an ultimate Christian vision). On Dantes Purgatorio
references to other poets in Limbo, see Andreacchio, Dantes Statius and Christianity, 7276.
Cited light-mindedly in Robert Hollander, Virgils Return (Inferno IV.7981), http://www.
princeton.edu/~dante/ebdsa/hollander112412.html#one.

13

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Dantes soaring, in 11520, to contemplation, or inward vision, or vision of

the contents of the poetic mind).
The world over which great ancient poets have jurisdiction
appears as a fresh, green pasture (111)clear echo of Virgils Elysian Fields
within a circular cosmos reminiscent in structure of its Christian counterpart
(Paradiso XXII.134, 148): the latters seven spheres echo the seven circulations of lofty walls around the former (Inferno IV.107). But whereas
the Christian paradise appears outside of darkness, the ancient or pagan
garden is now hidden within darkness, defended around by one beautiful
stream (difeso intorno dun bel fiumicello: 108), namely the stream of poetic
verses. The valence of seven must then be twofoldin one case pointing
outwardly or physically, whereas in a properly poetic manner or mode,
pointing inwardly to the realm of ancient poetry. Yet upon poetically
entering the noble castle (nobile castello: IV.106) of Limbo, the Comedys
wayfarer finds himself on a stage enabling him to ascend above it so as to
behold the realm of poetry as a whole. Dantes mind takes precedence over
Virgils persona (and through him, over all six exponents of Limbos onrata
nominanza, including Virgil and his student) as true eagle of poetic legislation (9596 and DVE II.4.xi)anticipating the monarchic, earthly Latin
M (the emme at the end of a Latin terram anticipating the vernacular
terra of Paradiso XXVII.140) that in Paradiso XVIII.9314 further anticipates
the thousand (103) that, as intimated in Paradiso XXVII.14244, are the
years January (winter/darkness) would take to reach spring (light) owing to
erroneous imperial calculations (compare 143 and XVIII.126).15 Dantes own
intervention, or its true fruit (vero frutto: 148, after 126 and anticipating
XXVIII.87), is to come prior to the nominal replacement of spring by January,
reversing an error of the past (compare XVIII.9193, 113, and XXVII.142).
On the basis of this error, or erring from the right (diretta: 147) way, false
promises of salvation (XVIII.12732) obscure our natural endowments
and physical rewards through a perverted reading of religious authority as
inimical to our desires genuine flourishing (13336; compare 129). Dantes
intervention is to restore a right understanding of religious authorities before
the Cchurchs false fruit succeeds in obscuring spring altogether, or in misleading us into mistaking an ill example (malo essemplo: 126) for poetrys
true spring (as the mind of 118).
On contemporary readings of Paradiso XVIII as theologically daring, not to say preposterous,
see Rachel Jacoff, Diligite iustitiam: Loving Justice in Siena and Dantes Paradiso, MLN 124, no. 5
Supplement (Dec. 2009): S83S84.
14

15

See Fortin, Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages, 137.

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In Dantes poetic context, all of our sins (peccata)the

seven Ps of Purgatorio IX.112serve providentially as seven doors (sette
porte) through which we may access poetrys green pastures (in prato di fresca
verdura: Inferno IV.111), if only to rise above them as self-moving authors
(compare 11517 and Paradiso XVIII.10911, 118; compare further 1078
and 3536: whereas the seven pagan doors of Limbo are above water or
on the other side of water, baptism, being the sole door to the Christian
faith, is by definition underwater or submerged). Likewise, the legal sacred
history of Christianity introduced by hearsay in Inferno IV.5263a history
beginning from one first father alone and ending with many who are made
blessed (55 and 61)serves as prelude for the vision (119 after 32) of a poetic
soteriology that is only in part related to the Bible (129) and that begins physically with a woman in the company of many (121) and ascends, through those
who battle with a sword (as in Purgatorio XVIII.127) for a peace and liberty
(Inferno IV.12527) occasioned by women (128),16 to the seat of philosophy
(where the couple Socrates and Plato stands in Dantes own visionvid
o Socrate e Platoneas regal-Homers philosophical counterpart: 13444).
Whereas sacred history, through law and obedience (57), ends in the gift
of bliss (61), the vulgar history of paganism ends ostensibly in Averroess
making of the great commentary to Aristotle, the philosopher who is
16
Verse 128 lists four ancient Roman women (not mere females) renowned for their civil virtue: (1)
Lucretia, whose honorable suicide moved Lucius Brutus to found the Roman Republic by exiling
Lucretias rapist and overthrowing his father, the tyrant Tarquinius Superbus; (2) Julia, who, as long
as she lived, stood in the way of a military confrontation between her father Caesar and her husband
Pompey; (3) Marcia, known for her faithfulness to her husband, Cato Uticensis (the notoriously honest Stoic statesman who, as staunch republican, had opposed Caesar and who, in Convivio IV.28.xv,
is likened to the biblical God); (4) Cornelia, daughter of Scipio the African and mother to the liberal
statesmen Gaius and Tiberius Gracchus (as a widow, Cornelia befriended philosophers). Prior to
verse 128, we hear of three other womenmatriarch Electra (121), princess Camilla (124 after I.107)
and the Amazon queen, Pantasilea (124): the first stands at the beginning of a history of conflicts
beginning with Troy and ending in armed and lonesome Caesars rapaciousness; the second and third
women appear in the same verse, before a king (Latinus) sitting with his daughter Lavinia (anticipating Aristotles sitting in a family setting), who was to become Aeneass last wife and mother to his
son Silvius, through whom would extend the authoritative lineage leading to Caesar. Thus are made
manifest the heterogeneous sources of empire, but also two modes of governance, that of the tyrant
(who violates or attempts to overcome nature) and that of the monarch proper (intimating the proper
seat of philosophy). Accordingly, verse 128s final lineup of women includes Caesars daughter Julia,
seemingly cut off from her father and following the appearance of that Brutus who hunted [away]
the tyrant Tarquinius (127; echoing the greyhound that in I.109 shall hunt [away] the she-wolf).
Does Caesar (who was murdered by another Brutus) stand as a tyrant replacing earlier naturalmonarchic rule, which in turn anticipates a philosophical rule? Is the Roman Empire an obstacle
obscuring the natural nexus Monarchy-Philosophy? The fact that none of the women named in Canto
IV would count as mere females (30) suggests that what in a Christian theological context may appear
as the vortex of nature (2530, after III.10620), in the context of Virgilian poetry is a civil world well
ordered to philosophy (IV.12132). Yet, in Dantes context, the first context serves as occasion for the
recovery of a proper understanding of Virgils context (III.126).

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everywhere honored in the Middle Ages as the master of those who know
(l maestro di color che sanno: 131).17
Dantes emphasis on Aristotles notorious designation calls
to mind Dantes own adoption of Virgil as master of someone who does not
know, or at least of someone who pretends not to know (as Socrates), or of
someone who credits others for his own knowledge (as Plato). It is in the context of Dantes own Virgilian journey that Aristotle sits in a philosophical
family (seder tra filosofica famiglia: 132, mirroring the sedea of an ancestral
king in 12526), rather than soaring above it. And though we read that all
admire him and all do him honor (tutti lo miran, tutti onor li fanno) in the
respect that, somehow, they all comment upon him (comparing the fanno
of 133 and the feo of 144), Dante spends no time admiring or honoring Aristotle, but at once departs from all of the Stagirites admirers, led by his own
master, Virgil, through another way (per altra via), to explore the darkness
in which the idyllic scene of Canto IV is cast.18
Virgils tacit primacy, not only over Homer, but over all other
poetic great personalities, including those of statesmen and philosophers, is
made manifest in an action allusively, even cryptically, anticipated in speech,
No synthesis is either given or anticipated of sacred and vulgar histories. Dante admits no overarching history beyond attributes. See Jacob Klein, History and the Liberal Arts, in Lectures and
Essays, ed. Robert B. Williamson and Elliot Zuckerman (Annapolis, MD: St. Johns College Press,
1985), 13233.
17

A list of names/stances (13644), almost categoriessubdivided into three groupsfollows those

of Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato (though we may include a cryptic I referred to Dante himself, preceding and adjacent to the name of Socrates: 134). We begin with Democrituss materialism (Epicurus
is strategically omitted from the list and included as designation for heretics in X.1314), a Cynic
(Diogenes), four pre-Socratics (Anaxagoras, Thales, Empedocles, and Heraclitus), and a Stoic (Zeno
of Citium). This first group (grammatically, at some remove from Dantes vision) excludes political
life and order altogether. However, a second group (where vision is grammatically stressed, again)
from the encyclopedian Dioscorides (the good gatherer), to Orpheus and Cicero (Tulo), Linus and
moral Senecamakes politics and morality (both stemming from the legislative language of the
poet-theologians) its dominant features. A final groupwhich somehow integrates opposite features
from the two groups preceding itbegins with Euclid geometrician and Ptolemy [the Greco-Roman
astronomer] (thus, overtly against the grain of Democritus, who places the world [under the rule] of
chance: IV.136), and ends, via masters of medicine (Hippocrates and Galen, with Avicenna in their
midst, as if to anticipate philosophy), with Averroes, whose great commentary (gran comento: 144)
tacitly points back to the Platonic horizon or mind (whence the term comento) within which all other
thinkersboth apolitical and politicalare named geometrically. Yet already the geometry of
Dantes list suggests that, in order for us to return to Aristotleand through him to Plato, Socrates,
and Dantes own poetic medicinewe are to formally replace chance with a (cosmic) order that
Dioscorides merely intimates in his actions, thereby supplying a seemingly or still inadequate basis
for political life. How else, if not through the replacement in question, could Dante have ever aspired
to emulate Cicero in Christian times (Patrick Boyde, Human Vices and Human Worth in Dantes
Comedy [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000], 15)!
18

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when Virgil himself warns his student that the master shall be first and the
student second (io sar primo, e tu sarai secondo: 15). The closing verses of
Canto IV confirm to the reader that Virgils warning was correct: Dante shall
indeed follow his wise leader (savio duca). But how we are to understand
the mode of Dantes following is a problem the answer to which is articulated
throughout Canto IV, or after Virgils initial prophecy. If Virgil as philosophical poet tacitly replaces the prephilosophical poet Homer, is Dante to follow or
imitate his teacher by replacing philosophy with a postphilosophical poetry, or
Christian theology? Our reading suggests otherwise, since in Canto IV, not
to speak of the Comedy as a whole, the theological context of Christian orthodoxy, or more simply the God of Christianity, is replaced by Dantes own mind
as distinguished from Dantes personality or his personal soul. To be sure, in
ascending to the heavens of his poetic or active mind (in Aristotelian terms, a
nous poitikos), our wayfarer leaves out the whole sacred history of Christianity. What Dantes mind contains here is merely a wild historya veritable
spiritual wilderness (selvadi spiriti spessi: 66)that begins with myth and
ends with philosophy, or rather with Averroess great commentary on the
supposedly greatest philosopher (or even with philosophy in the context of
poetry, or with a memory of the philosophical life). Yet Dantes omission
serves as convenient occasion for a return to sacred history, which, considered from within Limbo, appears or disappears in the dark, obscured
in or by religious fear (15051). If Dante is to succeed in his original intent
(primo proposto) to rise as a lonesome philosophical counterpart of Saladin
(compare II.34 with IV.129) from a wilderness (selva) obscured in its sacred
valence to Apollonian heavens (I.2, 29, 3541, 54, 60; II.13438), then Virgils
mode or poetic style (stilo), which Dante takes for himself (8687), and
which entails a turn from prephilosophical poetry to philosophical poetry
or poetry moved by philosophy, may help the author of the Comedy lead the
way in turning back to philosophy by drawing sacred history under the
jurisdiction of a human nous poitikos. Philosophy regained rebels against
its segregation and alienation from the sacred, by advancing outside of its
glorious strictures, to examine the deepest mysteries of the Christian faith
(as our wayfarer does most notably in Paradiso XXXIII). Yet first Dante must
somehow justify his quest in the face of a postphilosophical poetry that denies
him rational access to the contents of faith, and that goes as far as to invite
us to forsake doubt-open-to-truth and bow fatalistically before fearsome
appearances (XX.8693, XXI.142, and XXII.1, 27; compare Inferno III.94
108 and Purgatorio XVI.88102). Our incapacity to rise above the sacred, as
we can above the vulgar or profane, is no proof of our incapacity to probe the

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sacred.19 Considered as a whole, the Comedy itself serves as justification for

Dantes endeavor, as for the philosophical life he chose to live (as per his 1315
Epistle XII, inter alia), in spite of the many religious men who would want to
make nonphilosophical use of philosophy (Convivio III.11.x): wanting to be
more than noblemen (Paradiso X.13032), they are likely to end up being less
than infants (whether as the mad sheep of V.80, or as the fish alluded to
in I.6772).
A detour is required with respect to a classical poetic
ascent to Parnassus, especially since the ascent is no longer reputed as either
right or true. The Comedys wayfarer must extend his way to explore the
conditions of possibility for his ascentfor an ascent that thereupon is to
proceed via a descent. Dantes ascending advance (andare) remains mediated by a reflective return (venire), so that poetic soaring serves as prelude
for philosophical diving.20 Otherwise, the poetic soaring must remain suspended in a darkness indifferent to it, just as it is indifferent to the darkness.
Dantes Comedy embraces both, exploring the abysmal hiatus separating our
lofty ends and the low or vulgar means of life. Accordingly, the Comedy
is not composed simply in the illustrious vulgate (volgare illustre) appropriate for pure or formal tragedies. Rather, the Comedy itself is an ascent to the
lost or obscured nobility of the vulgar, in the sense that the work raises
us to recognize its essential mode of communication between the lines
as an underlying language of virtue. For the Comedy is replenished with
humble speech appropriate for comedies (inferior with respect to tragedies), whereas the illustrious vulgate is appropriate for purely aristocratic
or heroic poetry that is sung (or formed by harmonious speech ready to be
recited melodically: DVE II.8.vi) and that in singing ascends to the heavens of virile virtue, having filtered out the popular/corporeal (II.3,
4.vxi, 6.viviii, and 7.iiv). The Comedy would be a tragedy (as with Brunetto
Latini)it would end in an overt defeat comparable to that of Dantes Ulyssess foolish flight (folle volo)if it did not conceal its illustrious speech,
its true nobility, beneath the veil of strange/vulgar humble verses and in the
shadow of prestigious authorities.21 Dante humbles himself in the Comedy,
Dantes stance reappears mutatis mutandis in Maurice Blondel, Lettre sur les exigences de la
pense contemporaine en matire dapologtique et sur la mthode de la philosophie dans ltude du
problme religieux, Annales de Philosophie chrtienne, no. 131 (1896): 33747, 46782, 599616; no.
132 (1896): 22567, 33750 (see esp. concluding paragraphs).
19

20

The interplay of going/advancing and coming/returning is most evident throughout Inferno II.

Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Comento alla Divina Comedia e gli Altri Scritti intorno a Dante, ed. Domenico
Guerra, 3 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1918), commentary on Inferno IX, Part I, Lesson 35, esp. last sentence.
21

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215

so as to condescend to the reader (not unlike the God of Paradiso IV), in

the attempt to raise him to virtue, instead of leaving him behind or below in
the wilderness of uneducated senses.
On Dantes account, Brunetto Latini remains municipal
or pagan insofar as he fails to speak in the shadow of authorities allowing
him to conduct his educational enterprise (the Treasure Latini entrusts to
Dante in Inferno XV.119) without being devoured by the she-wolf of Inferno
I. The beast does not want men to rise above mortality; it prohibits them
from undertaking the flight (volo) from the body to a mind unfettered by
illusions; it even condemns the flight as foolish (folle), as unjust and false.22
The way (via) of ancient poetry appears now in the dark and distorting light
of its condemnation. Reduced to municipal poetry, ancient poetry is not
recognized as having the right to ascend to the pinnacle of Parnassus or to
converse with the gods of Olympus (as in Latinis Tesoretto or Tesoro). In
order to reacquire his ancient right, the poet must wage a war (guerra)
against the she-wolf or its damning judgment. The poets war is against
death in its twofold valence, as that of the body and as that of poetic virtue (la
seconda morte of Inferno I).
It would be folly for Dante to wage a war directly against
the she-wolf. Another way (altro vaggio) is required to defeat the beast
a way by which poetry makes prudential use of the beast as vehicle for a
return to poetic contemplation (exemplary is Inferno XXXIII). Municipal or
pagan poets had not achieved this, whether because they had no need for
Dantes achievement (as in the case of pre-Christian poets), or because they
underestimated the threat of the she-wolf. Neither Brunetto Fiorentino
(Latini) nor the radically anticlerical fratelli damore (Brotherhood of Love)
achieved what Dante does.23 Yet Brunetto himself taught Dante that we can
When, in Inferno I, the upright way (diritta via) is marred/lost (smarrita) and the truthful/
genuine way (la verace via) is abandoned, evidently we are given to understand that the way is now
erroneously regarded as unjust and as false.

22

On the fratelli damore, see Valli, Linguaggio Segreto. The Christian love of God serves as cornerstone for all theological readings of Dante. Yet Dantes references to love present certain difficulties
for theologians, beginning with the poets silence concerning Gods love for poets in particular: in
the Comedy, divine love moves not poets but stars and planets (nor is moving equivalent to creating). Thus, for instance, in the final verses of Paradiso (XXXIII.14345) the poets desire (il mio disio)
allows itself to be turned back onto itself completely as a hypostatized will (il velle) by a love that
moves the sun and the other stars/planets, echoing Inferno I.1819, 3640 (where heavenly bodies are
poetic entities, or beautiful fictions) and VII.6799: the only way the poet as ancient architect (compare 133 and 139) finds to traverse infinity (13738), or to win his war against death (Inferno II.34), is
by projecting his desire into an eternal mind reminiscent of Aristotles unmoved mover. Only then
may the poetic mind emerge as Deus artificiorum. Far from being moved by God, Dantes poetic or

23

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achieve eternal glory in this life only where we are in possession of dignitas or
publicly recognized authority, if only by writing in the shadow of prestigious
personalitiessuch as clergymen / and literati great and of great fame
(compare DVE II.2.iiv and Inferno XV.8487, 10114). This dignitas Dante
sets out to acquire indirectly, or in poetic personae (most notably in Inferno
III), taking advantage of the fact that under Christianity Virgil has become
a famous sage (the famoso saggio of Inferno I). In the Comedy, Dante takes
creative desire, taking advantage of divine ire (141), casts itself strategically into the role of divine love.
Nor does Dante claim to be inspired by Gods love, especially where theologians are more likely to
surmise that he doese.g., in Purgatorio XXIV.53, where the Amor Dante speaks of can be none other
than the intellectual love of the Vita Nuova, and so love in a properly poetic context, or the sweet
love of the fratelli damore (compare 51 and 57; for a recent theological reading of these verses, see Vittorio Montemaggi, Contemplation, Charity and Creation Ex Nihilo in Dantes Commedia, Modern
Theology 29, no. 2 [April 2013]: 81). But furthest from Dantes own voice is the conclusion that philosophy is an error interfering with the Christian ascent from carnal love to purely spiritual love. Such is
the conclusion theological readings of the Comedy are likely to reach when stumbling upon passages
such as Purgatorio XXX.11531. In reading this passage, Pamela Williams, Through Human Love
to God: Essays on Dante and Petrarch (Leicester, UK: Troubador, 2007) (inter alia) presents Dantes
early love of Beatrice (as evoked in the Vita Nuova) literally, or as carnal (34). Williams reaches her
conclusion by relying upon a questionable interpretation of Purgatorio XXX.11517 as beginning to
suggest that, in his youth, Dante swore by carnal love until he went astray by loving philosophy (most
notably in the Convivio). Williams presents Purgatorio XXX as teaching that carnal love leads us to
spiritual love without any need for the false way of philosophy (see esp. XXX.12731). Yet in the Canto
in question, Beatrice identifies Dantes way that is not true (via non vera: 130) as one that follows
false images of the good (imagini di ben seguendo false: 131). In this context, the death of Beatrice
coincides with the death of poetry (after the morta poes of Purgatorio I.7), or of properly poetic
allegory, or of a proper understanding of flesh (the sensory) as veiling a hidden intent (compare
XXX.127 and 6769). The death of poetic allegory marks an obscuring of the philosophical sense of the
sensory. What Beatrice describes as untrue way (via non vera) can be no more than a philosophy cut
off from poetry, or a philosophy that no longer interprets appearances in a poetic context (as it had in
classical antiquity, fully conscious of the illusory nature of images): only upon regaining full access
to ancient poetry (Virgil) as its proper stage can philosophy avoid following, or being coerced into
following, false (poetic) images, missing the long (metaphorical) sense of words (131, 13641). Far
from being a youthful error, philosophy is the way that discerns the false from the true. Consequently,
the problem intimated by Beatrice in Paradiso XXX.12731 must pertain to a replacement of classical poetry with a literal context presupposing the ascent of poetry from the carnal to the purely
spiritual. Dante would then have turned away from the new poetry of Christianity, not in spite of
but self-consciously and properly because of its pure spirituality. Accordingly, in 13031 Beatrice
suggests, not that Dante errs in pursuing philosophical studies, but that philosophy becomes untrue
in a Christian context that replaces the allegory of poets with theological literalism (which then
appropriates for itself all allegorical speech). The false images of verse 131 must be Christian images
insofar as they are not interpreted rationally or philosophically in a poetic context. Yet in the Comedy
Dante proves that ancient poetry can be revived as proper context for philosophical interpretation,
not in spite of Christianity, but precisely insofar as Christianitys images qua images are no truer
than those of pagan antiquity. Whatever mystery theologians may believe that their images reveal, the
Comedy approaches it as a problem for philosophical doubt-open-to-truth. Suprarational, revealed
mysteries are tacitly replaced by the mystery or hiddenness of intelligibility open to doubt, so that the
Comedy finds itself in perfect agreement or harmonious continuity with the concluding verses of Convivio, where we read that philosophys reason is hidden in the deepest recesses of divine providence.
Key to the providential journey of the Comedy is the rational prophecy of Convivio.

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217

for himself the honor that other or Christian poets have bestowed upon the
ancient pagan (8287).
In borrowing Virgils honor, Dante raises it to heights Christian theology admits for no pagan. In more than one sense, Dante summons
Virgil to transcend the boundaries of his luminous oasis so as to explore the
darkness in which it is set, if only so that we may regain access to a light
that is not lost in darkness, or a reason that turns to darkness as key to our
self-understanding. Limbos lesson will prove of paramount importance in
Paradiso, as we face the temptation of heavenly bliss. By the time the wayfarer
faces it, he has already been crowned master or self-moving poet. He is now
fully aware that darkness is not merely that which is left outside of the light,
but that which lurks within the light, as a snake in Adams Gardennot to
speak of the snake hiding in Dantes own Virgilian selva (compare Inferno
IV.11820 and VII.8284, echoing Virgils Eclogues III.93: latet anguis in
herba).24 Nowhere more than in Paradiso are we to remain alert against insidious menaces, no matter how glorious our purported vision. To ignore this
lesson is to ignore Paradisos very marrow, to which already the first verses of
Canto I draw our attention, provided we do not follow translations by Dantes
postphilosophical readers.25 Paradiso I opens with a finely articulate warning precisely against the fideism of those who are likely to mistake Dantes
allegorical warning for the reassurance of a theological literalist:
The glory of him who moves everything
traversing the universe, penetrates and glows
in one part more and less elsewhere.
In the heaven that grasps more of its light
was I, and I saw things that to retell
neither knowledge nor power has he who descends thence above;
for approaching what it desires,
our intellect sinks into itself by so much,
that behind [it] memory cannot go.26
Vergil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid Bks. 16, ed. G. P. Goold, trans. H. R. Fairclough (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard Universiy Press, 1999).

24

25
Foremost among them, today, Robert Hollander: see Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, ed. and trans. Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander (New York: Anchor Books, 2007).

Paradiso I.19. Dantes original text reads, La gloria di colui che tutto muove / per luniverso
penetra e risplende / in una parte pi e meno altrove. / Nel ciel che pi de la sua luce prende / fu io, e
vidi cose che ridire / n sa n pu chi di l su discende; / perch appressando s al suo disire, / nostro
intelletto si profonda tanto, / che dietro la memoria non pu ire. Hollanders translation reads, The
glory of Him who moves all things / pervades the universe and shines / in one part more and in
another less. / I was in that heaven which receives / more of His light. He who comes down from there
/ can neither know nor tell what he has seen, / for, drawing near to its desire, / so deeply is our intellect
immersed / that memory cannot follow after it.
26

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Being key to verse 1, the term moves deserves special

emphasis suggesting that the him addressed moves the heavens, as opposed
to creating them (esp. ex nihilo). What is moved in verse 1 is tutto (the
Whole), rather than all things taken particularly (in their manifoldness):
everything is moved together, so that the movement in question is general
in character (as in the final verses of the Comedy and in Inferno VII). Compare per luniverso (Paradiso I.2) and the per una selva oscura of Inferno
I.2, where the poet reinvents himself traversing a wilderness (selva) that
is his own poem. On the sense of one part, see the references to part in
Inferno IV. Dante is suggesting that the more one part is illuminated, the
more its background remains in the dark. The light of verse 4 is not simply/directly Gods own, but of his glory. In this respect, it can blind us, as the
refracted aura of authority penetrating in one part or another of the Whole,
distracting us from everything around it. As per verse 4, unlike the receives
that we find in Hollander (inter alios), Dantes prende is active. Verses 56
indicate that those who descend from the heaven of light evidently lack
knowledge and power once they are down here, in relative darkness. In our
world, it becomes evident that those who claim to have risen to the heavens
have neither knowledge of them, nor the power required to report on them
authoritatively or convincingly (the power would have to be bestowed upon
a heavenly agent; on the reporting/retelling in question, see Inferno I.10).
In fact, as our intellect (Paradiso I.8 suggests the singularity of what is one
for all) unites itself to its object of desire, it buries itself in itself, forgetting
itself. The object of intellective desire appears here as a mirage that we do not
properly know (though we may believe we know it) and which we have no
power to reach. Accordingly, memory or the (imagined) image of the highest
object(s) of desire survives only at a distance, or where we do not foolishly
bury ourselves into our object of desire (as Narcissus).
The Comedys final words on the power of memory/imagination are found in the concluding verses of Paradiso (XXXIII), where the
imagination is transposed into the heavens. Dantes corrective to Narcissus
is geometrical (133). Dantes flight is that of the architect Daedalus (Narcissuss father): a poetic calculation enables Dante to fulminously (141) convert
his desire into its object or divined consummation by turning the lofty or
theological imagination (l alta fantasia: 142) back onto itself, so that it is
no longer assumed to follow or lag behind the object of desire. Instead, the
imaginations finite power is transferred or tacitly attributed to Fortuna, the
love that moves heavenly bodies. The newly empowered imagination goes
ahead of our intellect to create a fully credible or convincing illusiona

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219

fiction that theologians suppose to be beyond question. This way, the last
verses of Paradiso invite us to reconsider Paradiso I.9, which, though usually
read as indicating that imagination cannot follow intellect, may also mean
the reverse, namely, that our intellect has no power to follow theologians
imagination. Though memory may not reach our intellect from behind,
it may easily surpass it. Whether or not one may then want to follow our
transfigured fantasia to its ultimate abode is a question that the Virgil of
Inferno I.11823 leaves open.

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Freedom in Shakespeares English History Plays

221

Freedom in Shakespeares English History Plays1

C h r i s Ba r k e r
Ohio University
[email protected]

Thoughe the worlde and conscience be at debate /

Yet the worlde wyll I not despise / The worlde fyndeth men all thynge / And dothe me grete servyse.
The World and the Child, Anonymous (1552)

I . Introduction: Politics between

the Mirror of Princes and
the Mirror of Penitents 2
Students read Shakespeares plays to learn about politics
and office, love and friendship, and other great themes of human life. This
education is the core of the Shakespeare myth, which is that Shakespeare
educates the complete human beingman, woman, and citizen.3 In this
paper, I provide support for the truth of this myth by challenging the suggestion that the Shakespeare of the 1590s is a traditional theist who accepts
I would like to thank members of the Boston College Political Science faculty and Rita Koganzon for
their comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and both the anonymous reader and the editorial staff
of Interpretation for their help in preparing the final version. Joseph Gattermeyer assisted with the
citations and list of references. I also thank Chris Flannery, Brian Kennedy, Patrick Collins, and Tom
Karako for earlier conversations on these topics, and Harvey Mansfield for thoughts on Machiavelli.
Mark Blitz has been a constant intellectual guide. I would also like to thank the Jack Miller Center for
their generosity in funding my position during my research and writing. All errors are my own.
1

Conversion is the theatre of St. Paul, who is the miror and pattern of all converts and penitents
(Montagu, Miscellanea Spiritualia, quoted in Alison Shell, Shakespeare and Religion [London:
Methuen, 2010], 2628).

3
Michael D. Bristol, Shakespeare: The Myth, in A Companion to Shakespeare, ed. David Scott
Kastan (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 489502.

2013 Interpretation, Inc.

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the divine machinery of providential history, a secularizing Machiavel, or a

protorepublican advocating living together as equals under the rule of law.
Instead of these Shakespearian simplifications, I present Shakespeare as a
philosophical liberal who is interested in legitimacy, stability, participation,
security, and the place of the individual within society, but not in a way that
requires the complete enlightenment of his ages political forms and religious
life, or that denies enlightenment altogether.
The presumption of many scholars is that Shakespeare does
not have much to contribute to political theory. As Martin Dzelzainis notes,
Shakespeare is a nonentity in the history of political thought.4 Nevertheless, there has been a nearly fifty-year uptick in interest in Shakespeare as
a political thinker. Three different approaches to Shakespeares political
thought can be distinguished within this growing literature. One approach
excavates what Andrew Hadfield has called the ubiquitous republicanism
of the seventeenth century, and ties Shakespeares political preferences with
these early indications of republican tendencies.5 A somewhat different
approach considers Shakespeares political contribution to lie in what he says
about the various crises of succession and religion that animated political
life throughout Elizabeths reign.6 Yet another group of writers is concerned
primarily with the political philosophy dramatized in the plays.7
This paper falls roughly within the latter group of works. But
in order to account for Shakespeares political philosophy in a way that is not
deaf to contemporary political and philosophical context, I reopen an old
scholarly question concerning the tension between secular and providential
history. The best place to explore this tension is in Shakespeares English history plays, which offer the most sustained account of the meaning that lies

Martin Dzelzainis, Shakespeare and Political Thought, in A Companion to Shakespeare, 100116.

Andrew Hadfield, Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics (London: Thomson Learning, 2004);
Hadfield, Shakespeare and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 47; David
Armitage, Conal Condren, and Andrew Fitzmaurice, eds., Shakespeare and Early Modern Political
Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Howard Erskine-Hill, Poetry and the Realm of Politics: Shakespeare to Dryden (Oxford: Clarendon,
1996); Hadfield, Shakespeare and Republicanism.
6

7
Allan Bloom and Harry Jaffa, Shakespeares Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981);
Joseph Alulis and Vickie Sullivan, eds., Shakespeares Political Pageant (Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1996); John Alvis and Thomas West, eds., Shakespeare as Political Thinker (Wilmington,
DE: ISI Books, 2000); Leon Craig, Of Philosophers and Kings: Political Philosophy in Shakespeares
Macbeth and King Lear (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001); Mary Ann McGrail, Tyranny
in Shakespeare (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001).

Freedom in Shakespeares English History Plays

223

behind historical change.8 In my reading of these plays, Shakespeare offers a

deep, sympathetic, but ultimately critical response to the secular, antiprovidentialist history that becomes the foundation of modern liberalism.9 E. M.
Tillyard supplies the core idea of providentialist historiography, where the
narrated events reflect a providential order requiring that virtue is rewarded
and vice is punished,10 even if, in the thesis as it has been modified by other
scholars, Shakespeare cant quite himself believe in the moral order that he
portrays.11 The main alternative to thinking of Shakespeare as a providential
historian is grounded in the works of Niccol Machiavelli.12 Machiavellis
thought has become synonymous with the view that Christianity has caused
the modern world to misunderstand politics, and in particular that politics
is misunderstood because of a Christian misreading of history (D I Preface,
6; D II.2, 131).13 Machiavellis brand of humanism focuses on making room
8
Shakespeares two tetralogies (Richard II, 1 and 2 Henry IV, and Henry V; 1, 2, and 3 Henry VI and
Richard III) cover English history from 1398 to 1485. If you include King John and Henry VIII, Shakespeare covers the period from 1216 to 1533, with gaps in the years 12161398 and 14851520.

Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, trans. Elsa Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), xvxvi; Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1999), 177.
9

E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeares History Plays (New York: Penguin Books, 1991); Phyllis Rackin,
Stages of History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 8081.
10

11
Richard P. Wheeler and Hugh M. Richmond, Critical Essays on Shakespeares Richard III (Boston:
Twayne, 1999).

Tim Spiekerman, Shakespeares Political Realism: The English History Plays (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001). This work is perhaps the most comprehensive study of Machiavellis
presence in the English history plays. The tension developed here between providentialist and Machiavellian history is widely noted (e.g., E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture [New York:
Vintage Books, 1960], 8).
12

13
Machiavellis major works will be cited as D for The Discourses on Titus Livy and P for The Prince,
followed by chapter (Prince) or book and chapter numbers (Discourses). Where required, book and
chapter numbers will be followed by page numbers keyed to the following editions: Niccol Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1996); Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. and trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
There are many alternative approaches to providentialist history that do not focus on Machiavellis
influence. Some scholars emphasize the reformed consciences impact on Shakespeares development
of interiority. For Robert Hunter, Shakespeare and the Mystery of Gods Judgments (Athens: University
of Georgia Press, 1976), the reformation is necessary but not sufficient for the development of Shakespearian interiority. Martha T. Rozett, The Doctrine of Election and the Emergence of Elizabethan
Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984) also argues that the believers preoccupation
with Gods election and the Calvinists lack of assurance produces interiority within Elizabethan
drama (38). John S. Wilks, The Idea of Conscience in Renaissance Tragedy (London: Routledge, 1990)
places Shakespeare within the continuous development of Jacobean tragedy from Renaissance morality plays. For Shell, Shakespeare and Religion, religious morality has a place in Shakespeares dramatic
world but is something less than a master-narrative. Other approaches locate Thomas More as the
educator of Shakespeare (Charles A. Hallett and Elaine S. Hallett, The Artistic Links between William

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for the energetic acquisition of this-worldly glory, but as I shall show below,
increasing mans glory requires sapping the authority of God, undermining
providential history, and denying the commitment to otherworldly goods.14
Machiavellis vivere politico does not, however, simply deny
the sacred in order to energize political actors; instead, Machiavelli uses the
rhetoric of providentialism in order to add appeal to his project.15 I argue that
Shakespeare understands the Machiavellian approach to history not merely
as the replacement of what Machiavelli calls Heaven disarmed with armed
men, but instead with a new political religion that encourages active men, or
that replaces Heaven disarmed with Heaven armed.16 To anticipate the argument, Machiavelli realizes that a completely secular account of the world as
the interplay of necessity and chance does not promote political action, and
so he humanizes this world, personifying, to cite one memorable example,
fortune as a woman that can and should be conquered (P XXV, 101). Although
leading accounts of secularization do not systematically account for Machiavellis works,17 this should not deter Shakespeares reader from considering
what Shakespeare has to say about Machiavelli, and to ask whether Shakespeare, whom we propose as a serious political thinker, takes Machiavellis
challenge to providential history seriously.
In order to pursue Shakespeares critical appropriation of
Machiavellianism, one must first answer a prior question: Is Machiavelli
properly understood when he is presented as a liberal and as the founder of
modern liberal politics? Machiavellis republicanism has been the focus of
Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More: Radically Different Richards [New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2011]) or emphasize other humanistic, rhetorical, and Tacitean influences, for which see below.
Contextualist accounts also dwell on Shakespeares use of Machiavelli. For example, Hadfield,
Shakespeare and Republicanism, 10, reminds us that there were two queens in the realm for threequarters of Elizabeths reign; in Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics, 3677, Hadfield refocuses the
question of what Machiavellian virtue is by contextualizing the question of virtue within doubts
about the identity of true and false sovereigns.
14

For an account of the Realm of Politics which bears some resemblance to my own, see ErskineHill, Poetry and the Realm of Politics, 5. For the vivere politico, denoting the life concerned primarily
with politics as opposed to religious or other ethical claims, see Maurizio Viroli, Machiavelli and the
Republican Idea of Politics, in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and
Maurizio Viroli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 15261.
15

16
Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Vickie B. Sullivan, Neither Christian nor Pagan: Machiavellis Treatment of Religion in the Discourses, Polity
26, no. 2 (1993): 25980; Sullivan, Machiavellis Three Romes: Religion, Human Liberty, and Politics
Reformed (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996).
17
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007);
Michael Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

Freedom in Shakespeares English History Plays

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scholarly debate for centuries, with prominent voices like that of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau defending Machiavelli as a good republican against the often (but
not always) religiously inflected arguments made by anti-Machiavels such as
Innocent Gentillet and Frederick the Great. In recent decades, Machiavellis
contributions to republicanism have become a keystone of the Cambridge
Schools defense of civic republicanism and republican noninterference or
republican nondomination.18 The fundamental idea of J. G. A. Pocock is that
the Aristotelian paradigm of all civic humanism is achieved through
Machiavellis revival of the classical republic, although this revival militarizes virtue because Machiavelli thinks that modern republican citizenship
cannot foster or promise the fully participatory life without such militarism.19 Following early modern progenitors like Marchamont Nedham and
James Harrington, Quentin Skinners Neo-Roman argument holds that it
was Machiavelli who reintroduced the ancient conception of liberty as freedom from living in the power of the lord (in potestate domini).20 Interpreters
of Machiavelli within the Cambridge School have therefore come to hold that
modern, Machiavellian republicanism, based on the juridical distinction
between slave and freeman codified in the Roman laws of persons, proposes
a pathway not only to the enjoyment of negative liberty in general, but also to
the key republican value of freedom from domination.21
In his pioneering but controversial work Thoughts on Machiavelli, Leo Strauss interprets Machiavellis liberalism in terms of how well a
state achieves security and stability, a capacity that tends to be republican
J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 33360; Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998); Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 2829.
18

19
Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 213. But see Vickie B. Sullivan, Machiavellis Momentary Machiavellian Moment: A Reconsideration of Pococks Treatment of the Discourses, Political Theory 20, no.
2 (1992): 30918; and Christopher Nadon, Aristotle and the Republican Paradigm: A Reconsideration
of Pococks Machiavellian Moment, Review of Politics 58, no. 4 (1996): 67798, for criticisms of
Pococks Machiavelli and Pococks Aristotle, respectively.

Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, 3647. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 4041, argues
that manly civic virtue shapes fortuna as form acts on matter, and that the citizen makes himself
through action into the political animal that he was and should be by nature. Quentin Skinner, The
Republican Ideal of Political Liberty, in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Bock et al., 293309,
questions the paradoxical need to serve a certain sort of society in order to become most fully
ourselves. Developing Skinners basic thought, Philip Pettit argues that the core element of republicanism is the negative liberty of nondomination, the rich old idea of liberty characterized by Pettit
as the ability to look an authority figure in the eye (Pettit, Republicanism, viii, 49).
20

21

Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, 37, 39.

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but does not have to be (Thoughts, 288). Machiavellis use of Livy is misunderstood, Strauss writes, if republics or republicanism is taken to be the
sole or even the chief theme of the Discourses (317n51). Instead, in Machiavellis impartial advice to all parties and persons to acquire when they
can, Machiavelli himself transcends membership in the sect of republicans
or monarchs to become the teacher of both, and it is this ambivalence concerning forms that is distinctive of modern, liberal politics.22 Machiavellis
ambivalence about forms collapses the distinction between a criminal and a
noncriminal tyrant, and between the public-spirited founder of a republic
and the selfish founder of a tyranny (27273). Moreover, it denies the need
for citizens public-spirited change of heart such as one expects to find in
a civic republican (or in a Christian) writer (281). But why does Machiavelli
write his works to foster political liberalism, if he is not motivated by a patriotic or a republican project? Strauss characterizes Machiavellis aim as the
highest freedom as well as the highest glory (26768, 244, 282, 28688).
In Strausss interpretation of Machiavelli, the highest freedom is the freedom of the most excellent man who achieves immunity to the power of
chance through knowledge of the world (290). The second highest freedom comes from standing as one alone (uno solo) at the head of new political
orders, as Machiavelli explicitly invites the ambitious to do (D I.9, 2830). The
former liberty speaks to the broadest ambition of the imagination and makes
sense of the desire to author the great works of political philosophy, while the
latter appeals to the practical ambitions of those who desire to lead the men
that stand directly in front of them.
In Shakespeares English histories, the tension between the
highest liberty of the thinker and the ambitious liberty of the leader of men is
made more overt than it is in Machiavellis writings. Although Shakespeare
and Machiavelli both accept that the desire for the higher liberty is often put
to use in service to the very prosaic aim of security, Shakespeare is the one
who asks directly about the justice of this arrangement. While Machiavellian liberty as true, thoroughgoing independence, desirable as the only thing
truly worth having, and learned by observing the things of the world, is
never criticized by Shakespeare, Machiavellian political liberty is criticized
in the history plays as being incompletely informed about just that world
that it claims to know better than anyone else.23 For Machiavelli, knowing
22

Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavellis Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 293.

E.g., D II.1 and III.43; Harvey C. Mansfield, Strausss Machiavelli, Political Theory 3, no. 4 (1975):
37284; Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 263.

23

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the things of the world does not mean just knowing the bits and atoms of
nature: states and religions, or mixed bodies as distinguished from simple
bodies (i.e., natural bodies), also are included among the things of the world
(Thoughts, 17). But Shakespeare explicitly criticizes the completeness (and
perhaps the candor) of Machiavellis account of the complex social world, in
which Machiavelli praises men for seeking glory, even when the pursuit of
glory shows itself to result in exhaustion, injury, burden, and death. As Avery
Plaw writes, Shakespeare presents Machiavellian realism as consuming life
rather than fulfilling it.24
Shakespeares contribution to political liberalism consists in
a sharper, un-Machiavellian focus on the why and wherefore of ambition, and
in particular on Machiavellis intentional confusion of these higher and lower
liberties. In what my interpretation picks out as some of the most important
lines of the English history plays, Shakespeares most Machiavellian character, Richard III, dramatizes the self-contradiction behind Machiavellian
liberalism. Shakespeares deformed and denatured Richard III is said to
desire to rule over others to the death of all the world and all the world to
nothing (Richard III, I.ii.119, 232). Shakespeare puts these lines in the mouth
of the man who claims to be able to educate Machiavelli himself (3 Henry VI,
III.ii.181). By explicitly identifying Richard as a competitor of Machiavellis,
and by putting the language of world denial in Richards mouth, Shakespeare
suggests a sort of performative contradiction in Machiavellianism: those
who want to rule the world also want to negate or to deny it, Shakespeare
suggests. This (admittedly) odd characterization of the Machiavel calls into
question Machiavellis success in studying and knowing the ways of the
world (P XV, 61). Does Shakespeares Richard not actually know the world?
Does Machiavelli fail to do so?
One can, of course, simply dismiss these questions by saying that Shakespeare is a poet as well as a religious man, and that it is his
presentation of Richards Machiavellian ambition that is confused, rather
than the Machiavellian ambition itself. One could also say that the unworldly
portrayal of Machiavellianism is made in language suited to an audience
educated in medieval prophecy and eschatology, or even that Shakespeare
bends ideas to fit dramatic or metrical requirements. However, besides slighting Shakespeares intelligence and craftsmanship, easy solutions ignore the
differences in self-presentation and self-understanding between characters
Avery Plaw, Prince Harry: Shakespeares Critique of Machiavelli, Interpretation 33, no. 1 (2005):
21, 26, 40.
24

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such as Henry V and Richard III, and make it difficult to take Shakeapeares
historical reflections seriously, and for no better reason than because his
medium is the drama rather than the treatise. Instead, any charitable reader
should ask why Shakespeare chose to level this particular criticism in the
person of this particular character.25 If the interpretation offered here bears
weight, the answer is that the Machiavellian Richard is shown not to have
thought sufficiently about the reasonableness of the desire for glory. Shakespeares criticism is that modern, Machiavellian humanism is ultimately
confused about what liberty is.
The question of influences brings up one final preliminary
question: Just how well did Shakespeare know Machiavelli?26 Scholars like
Roe and (much earlier) Weissberger argue that Shakespeare could not help
but know Machiavelli well.27 Others are less certain,28 while still others, anticipating the approach of the present paper, look not so much to Machiavellis
reception history as to the agreement and disagreement between the political
theories of the two thinkers.29 According to this latter view, the question of
reception and knowledge does not need to be answered with precision. What
matters is not how well Shakespeare knew Machiavellis works, but instead
whether Shakespeare saw in Machiavelli a real alternative to providentialism.
Machiavellis major works must [fill] the gap between the seemingly unconnected denials of providence that are found in Machiavellis writings, as Leo
Strauss argues, for without such a connected chain of reasoning against the
authority of otherworldly powers, Machiavellis antiprovidentialist political teaching as a whole would be baseless (Thoughts, 203). In the absence of
While it is also undeniable that reason of state arguments, which pose a challenge to both civic
humanism and Christian accounts of the virtuous life, do not begin and end with Machiavelli
(Hadfield, Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics, 4), and that one could properly make an alternative
account which focuses on Tacitism and the renewal of skeptical thought in the early modern world, it
is also true that by naming Machiavelli, Shakespeare nods to the fact that Machiavelli has tried to take
responsibility for the chain of reasoning that is now popularly known as Machiavellianism rather
than Tacitism or Marsilianism (e.g., Mansfield, Machiavellis Virtue, 276; D III.6.1, 218).
25

As Roe argues, the 1602 translation of Gentillets 1576 book Discours Contre Machiavel would have
been the only English-language printed source for Machiavellis major works until the 1640s, but
this certainly does not mean that Shakespeare did not read a compendium, a manuscript translation
(first available in 1584) of the Italian text, or a French or Latin translation (John Roe, Shakespeare and
Machiavelli [Woodbridge, UK: Brewer, 2002], 311).
26

27
John Roe, Shakespeare and Machiavelli; L. Arnold Weissberger, Machiavelli and Tudor England,
Political Science Quarterly 42, no. 4 (1927): 589607.

Wolfgang Clemen, A Commentary on Shakespeares Richard III (Abington, UK: Routledge, 2005),
62n2. For Clemen, it is the version of Machiavelli created by Gentillet that Shakespeare knew.

28

Paul Cantor, Shakespeares Rome: Republic and Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976);
Spiekerman, Shakespeares Political Realism, 15366.
29

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an argument against providence or its equivalent, the Machiavellian project

to teach others about the way the world actually works, free from superstition and vain darkness, necessarily fails and becomes a vain Enlightenment
hope rather than the secure foundation of the Enlightenment.30 My inference, acceptable or not, is that Shakespeare saw that Machiavellian morality
requires a nontheistic basis, and responded to Machiavellis political ethics as
a serious alternative to providentialism.
The next section of this paper provides a schematic overview
of freedom in the English history plays. I briefly examine the chronology of
events from Richard II to Richard III in order to show how the theme of liberty
as independence is deepened by contrasts drawn between these two plays and
Henry V, which, in this reading, is the centerpiece of the two tetralogies. Section III examines Shakespeares presentation of the Machiavellian desire for
independence by focusing on Richards dramatic presentation of his desire
to rule as one alone (uno solo), to use the Machiavellian phrase. Section IV
presents Shakespeares trenchant criticism of Christianitys presence in what
Thomas Hobbes called the external forum (in foro externo), testing through
an analysis of the famous wooing scene (where Richard, then Duke of
Gloucester, woos Anne Neville, the widow of the slain Prince of Wales) the
allegation that Christianity weakens the liberal agent and enables tyranny.
Here, the aim is to show that despite Machiavellis and Shakespeares criticisms of Christianity, the power of Christianity is accepted by both authors.
Finally, Section V examines Shakespeares criticism of Machiavellis teaching
on the conscience by distinguishing between the natural and the religious
conscience. This section shows that Shakespeares Machiavelli asserts that the
latter is reducible to the former. In my conclusion, I argue that the Shakespearian criticism of Machiavellian liberty presented in this paper adds to
our understanding of modern liberalism by showing that the desire for independence stands in tension with modern, citizens liberty.

Machiavellis manuscript of Lucretiuss De rerum natura, with annotations in his handwriting, is

accounted for in Chauncey Finch, Machiavellis Copy of Lucretius, Classical Journal 56, no. 1 (1960):
2932 and Alison Brown, Philosophy and Religion in Machiavelli, in The Cambridge Companion
to Machiavelli, ed. John Najemy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 16267. Brown
includes an account of the annotations that supports the assumption that Machiavelli takes ancient
materialism very seriously.

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I I. The English History Plays

and the Desire for Freedom
Shakespeares politically minded readers have interpreted
the two tetralogies as retributive providential history, as Machiavellian lessons in policy, as contemporary political commentary, and as attempts to
subvert or sustain political ideologies. As noted above, this section deals only
with the first two interpretations: the English histories as providential history
or as Machiavellian history by example.
The disagreement between the two different approaches to
providentialism is captured nicely in John of Gaunts scepterd isle speech
in Richard II. Gaunts speech celebrates This royal throne of kings, this
scepterd isle / This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars / This other Eden, demiparadiseThis blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England (II.i.4167).
The strictly providentialist account of history interprets the subsequent ills of
the realm as punishments for the usurpation of the divinely sanctioned kings
crown. In support of this interpretation, Shakespeare shows that it is consequential, both politically and morally, to defy divine right: the land suffers
civil war when divine right is interrupted, and the individuals involved in
the usurpation are troubled by their consciences, as, for instance, in the case
of Henry IV, who promises to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to compensate for his moral error. On the other hand, Shakespeares dramatic context
sharply contrasts this England with the actual England of Richard II. As
Shakespeares Richard II argues, political actions cannot wash the balm
off from an anointed king, and yet rapacity, inordinate liberality, and the
pressures of flatterers on the court add up to a remarkably poor England. In
Shakespeares presentation, the ultimate deposition of Richard II by Henry
Bolingbroke, later Henry IV, seems like political relief as much as transgression. Likewise, the punishment of England is something that occurs during
as well as after Richard IIs poor rule, which suggests a regress of errors or the
inscrutability of Gods will.
If God punishes England for a specific English wrong, Shakespeare does not make any attempt to clarify whether this is so in the ambiguous
Richard II. For the reasons noted above, the emphasis on divine will may be
more persuasively read as the guiding thread of the first tetralogythe three
plays of Henry VI, and Richard III. The chaotic disorder of the realm in these
plays can be construed as a direct consequence of impious usurpation, which
crime is visited upon successive Lancastrian kings until the machinations of
Richard III, the scourge of God, a persecutor and executioner (in the

Freedom in Shakespeares English History Plays

2 31

words of Shakespeares Henry VI) that was ordainedas Richard himself

saysto clear the slate for the foundations of the Tudor dynasty. In this reading, the usurper Henry IV is a moral low point in the histories, and Henry
V is an improved version of his father, a peak preceding the descent into
the erring vision of England dominated by the Machiavellian Richard III.31
Of course, the problem with this reading of the plays is that Henry VI, criticized throughout the second tetralogy for an overly pious lack of policy, is not
helped by his piety and is harmed by his lack of policy. If the providentialist
reading was Shakespeares intended lesson, the anti-Lancastrian scourge of
God seems to hold the pious and impious alike in the same contempt, which
is a justifiable position to take only if Shakespeare thinks that the usurpation
of Richard IIs throne is so wicked that it taints Henry IV, V, and VI with an
equally indelible blot.
The alternative interpretation of the two tetralogies is the
Machiavellian interpretation. In this interpretation, a faulty prince (Richard II) steals the patrimonies of his subjects, just as, in the case of Edward IV,
the sovereign steals his subjects women (3 Henry VI, IV.iii.3640; P XVII,
67). Richard IIs impolitic acts unsettle the realm and prompt a coalition of
the nobles to rebel, led by the exiled Bolingbroke and aided by Northumberland (Henry Percy), the ladder up which Henry Bolingbroke climbs.
The remainder of Shakespeares account of Henry IVs reign charts the
dynamic of mobilization and sectarian conflict, beginning with Henry IVs
inevitable falling-out with the Percys, who, having brought him to power,
judge that they can take it away. This conflict is won by the forceful Henry
IV and his forceful and duplicitous son, who conceals himself behind a mask
of debauchery only to show his true political talents when the opportunity
is ripe. After the splendid reign of Henry V, during which he busies giddy
minds / With [successful] foreign quarrels, Henry Vs early death and the
As Paul Cantor has argued, Henry V is the perfect Machiavellian prince despite not being able to
master fortune and his own early death (Cantor, Shakespeares Henry V: From the Medieval to the
Modern World, in Perspectives on Politics in Shakespeare, ed. John Murley and Sean Sutton [Lanham,
MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006], 13, 28). If the argument made in this paper holds, it also applies
to the more visibly successful Henry V. The question of Shakespeares intent in presenting Henry V
as he does may hinge upon what is involved with Henrys becoming more myself (III.2.93; see also
Graham Bradshaw, Misrepresentations: Shakespeare and the Materialists [Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1993], 11224; Terry G. Sherwood, The Self in Early Modern Literature [Pittsburgh: Duquesne
University Press, 2007], 12627). Montaigne discusses the value of knowing how to belong to oneself,
and self-belongings tension with the successfully political life is perhaps the theme of Henry V
(Michel de Montaigne, Of Solitude, in The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald Frame
[Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965], 178). Whether self-cultivation is consistent with a
single model of excellence, with honor, and with the direction of the father are key questions raised by
Shakespeare.
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dissension during Henry VIs minority result in the loss of France, the murder of the realms protector, Gloucester, and civil war. Stepping into the power
vacuum is Edward IV, who is duped into ordering his own brother executed,
and whose other brother, Richard, takes the opportunity to kill off all his
competitors until Richard is nearly the last man standing. This brief overview
of the English histories suggests that Machiavellian insights into acquiring
and maintaining power are the keys to success and failure, and that the usual
Machiavellian policies (using ones own arms, ruling from within the land,
using overwhelming force) are the efficacious ones.
If we read the first tetralogy in the Machiavellian way (history as policy), Shakespeares account of the War of the Roses can be read
as an indictment of narrowly and crudely self-interested individualism. The
Duke of York desires to assure his own position after the treason of his father,
Richard, Earl of Cambridge; the Duke of Suffolk is an amorous and treasonous aspirant to rule as well as the de facto power behind Henry VI; the
cardinal of Winchester (Henry Beaufort) is motivated by personal hatred for
the protector, Gloucester; and Warwick, the kingmaker makes kings in a
realm where good reasons for supporting and sustaining political ambitions
have given way to personal agendas. Ironically, there are well known Machiavellian reasons for putting down such competing claims through eliminating
bloodlines and using severity, but, once again, it is unclear whether Shakespeares War of the Roses shows the results of Machiavellism or cases where
Machiavellian manipulations were improperly used or even left underused
(P III, 9; VIII, 3738; XVII, 65). As England declines from the poetic unity
described by Shakespeares Gaunt and fleetingly captured by Henry V, and
vibrates with the anarchic politics of the War of the Roses, all loyalty and all
political commitment are made to seem partisan.32 At an earlier point in the
English histories, Shakespeare depicts a realm in which there is still place for
the man who speaks and acts in honour / Led by the impartial conduct of my
soul, as the Lord Chief Justice says in 2 Henry IV. The newly minted Henry V
(the same man who had physically abused that same Chief Justice) affirms that
justice should be executed in a bold, just and impartial spirit, in the very act
of subordinating himself to the Chief Justice whom he had earlier wronged.
My concern for loyalty and for the Machiavellian insight into the inescapability of partisan politics
is explored in an interesting manner in the debate over the character of Kent in King Lear. Kent
presents himself as a loyal subject whose heart simply cannot endure (or change with the times) once
Lear has gone; a revisionist reading paints Kent as a rebel and a subversive (Michael McShane, Kents
Obscurred Course: A Covert Coup Attempt in 2.24 of Shakespeares King Lear, Interpretation 38,
no. 3 [2011]: 20542).
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But as the plays wear on, personal desires and fears seem to render allegiance
to the land, or to the Lancastrian and Yorkist parties, or to any sect, entirely
insecure. By the end of Richard III, Richards solipsism seems defensible in the
face of the unreality of any potentially legitimate coalition or claim to participate in a legitimate government, and Shakespeare seems to have offered a
thoroughly secular, political account of the collapse of political order.
However, Shakespeare raises important criticisms of the
Machiavellian prioritization of the city over the soul by implying, on several
occasions, that politics cannot be practiced in a manner that is consistent
with an individuals happiness.33 Fathers and sons are famously politically
divided during the bad days of the War of the Roses, leading to the unnatural occurrence of fathers killing sons and sons killing fathers in 3 Henry VI
(II.v.55124). Crucially, when necessity finally forces Shakespeares characters
to confront the full value of their lived lives, they face this sight with indecision and regret. In the case of both Hotspur in 2 Henry IV and Warwick in 3
Henry VI, for example, they rhapsodize about the bait-and-switch of politics,
wherein men seek glory and rule and in doing so give up their lives. In the
case of Henry IV, he has won the crown with pains and this victory seems
only to result in further pains (2 Henry IV, V.iv.194222). In Warwicks case,
the kingmaker acquires no more land than his bodys length.34 Similarly,
in Henry Vs famous ceremony speech (IV.1.281335), he praises the life of
the day-laborer who works in the light of the sun, and, able to sleep soundly,
never sees horrid night.35 In all these speeches Shakespeare implies that
the motive out of which a stable balance of power ultimately emergesthe
desire for ruleinvites psychic and physical pains that often outweigh its
pleasures. Richard II, who falls further from complete assurance about the
meaning of rule than perhaps any other Shakespearian character (Richard
II, III.ii.8388), puts the problematic tension between human ambition and
human limitation most succinctly:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?
(III.ii.17577)
I believe that the greatest good that one may do, and the most pleasing to God, is that which is
done for ones fatherland (Machiavelli, letter of April 16, 1527, quoted in Mansfield, Machiavellis
Virtue, 344n42).
33

34

Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust? (3 Henry VI, V.ii.27).

And, but for ceremony, such a wretch / Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep / Had the
fore-hand and vantage of a king (Henry V, IV.i.32931).
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If this is not exactly an argument for republican self-government, it certainly

calls into question the propriety of assigning sovereignty to the fallible body
of an individual. It also presents a contrast with Machiavellian history, since
Machiavelli emphasizes the storehouses of prudence and energy that are in
all of his acquisitive readers. Shakespeare dramatizes not only the urge to
acquire but also moral and prudential considerations militating against any
and all political acquisitiveness (P IX; D I.58, 11718).
The inference one draws from the English history plays is that
political liberty does not consist solely in the acquisition and maintenance of
power. If Machiavelli presents political history as an alternation of modes of
conduct that can and should change to suit the times, Shakespeare highlights
the high, human costs of the process that Machiavelli praises, and of being
the type of man that Machiavelli praises. Liberty in Shakespeares dramatic
world, then, is not simply liberty to become a useful tool of the impersonal
workings of a perpetual republic.36 As the exhausted laments concerning
the false gold of ceremony pile up, Shakespeare reminds his reader of the
limits on our joy in possession and therefore of the un-Machiavellian limits on acquisition.37 To simple or vulgar Machiavellians, Shakespeare asks:
What is it that we know about the things of the world when we have read
and understood Machiavelli? In the next section, I argue that Shakespeare
presents his political theory as one that is importantly concerned with the
happiness and the peace of the souls of individuals.38 Still, I will argue that
his criticism ofMachiavellianism is an internal criticism, designed to accommodate the care for the soul within or at least alongside Machiavellis insight
into the necessity of controlling the partisan cycle of regimes.

D III.17, 22; Mansfield, Machiavellis Virtue, 56, 121. On the subject of the perpetual republic,
Mansfield writes: No single state within Machiavellis system can last forever, but the whole can be
perpetual because the various fortunes, or the fates, of its members have been anticipated by Machiavelli (Machiavellis Virtue, 121).
36

This criticism recalls the Epicurean criticisms of the desire to wear purple in Lucretiuss famous
anthropology in On the Nature of Things. See Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, trans. Cyril Bailey
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1936), V.31733.
37

One might characterize Shakespeares rhetoric about the importance of the individuals happiness as softer and Machiavellis emphasis on the competitive treatment of ourselves and others
as harder. For the distinction between the harsher rhetoric of Manlius Torquatus and the softer
approach of Valerius Corvinus, see D III.22, 26468, and Christopher Nadon, Xenophons Prince:
Republic and Empire in the Cyropaedia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 2123.
38

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I II. Machiavellian Motives:

Independence
In the preceding section, the distinction between Shakespeares English histories as providential history and as Machiavellian reason
of state (ragion di stato) was rendered problematic by Shakespeares consideration of values extrinsic to the direct advancement of the state, such as
peace of mind. The concern for peace of mind, the emphasis on individual
happiness, may undermine the desire for glory and security upon which
Machiavellianism reliesat the least, seeing Hotspurs death from his own
point of view is sobering, whereas being shown Remirro de Orcos death
from Cesare Borgias point of view in the Prince is, in a way, empowering.
Machiavelli suppresses Shakespearian criticisms of the active, political life. If
the aforementioned Shakespearian examples can be interpreted as accounting for the failures of the Machiavellian understanding of political life, then
it may be said that Shakespeares Richard can indeed set the murderous
Machiavel to school.39 Shakespeares Richard is perhaps the character in the
English histories that most fully explores the practical side of his own desire
for freedom, although he does so by living out an interpretation of liberty as
ruling over others rather than by thinking about the meaning and value of
that liberty.
Richard IIIs Machiavellianism is not a matter of the stage
Machiavels penchant for force and fraud, but dramatizes what we might
call the worldview of Machiavellianism. For Shakespeares England,
Machiavellis preference of patrimonies over paters served as a rhetorical
commonplace.40 The particular trope of the fox and the lion, which Machiavelli uses to describe the education of the prince, became a favorite of
Renaissance audiences.41 The character of Shakespeares Richard III offers
even more grist for the philosophical mill. In a bravura display at the end of
the Henry VI plays, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, first describes how he will
attain his souls desire, the English crown: his golden time (3 Henry VI,
III.ii.1434).42 As noted at the beginning of this paper, Richards optimistic
Richard III is Shakespeares only systematic attempt to explore Machiavellian policy under its own
name. The other references to Machiavelli in the plays are found in 1 Henry VI, V.v.74 (to Alenon)
and to the Host in Merry Wives of Windsor III.i.93. For Alenon, see Erskine-Hill, Poetry and the
Realm of Politics, 24, 47.
39

40

Peter Platt, Shakespeare and Rhetorical Culture, in Companion to Shakespeare, 27796.

41

Andrew Hadfield, Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics, 81.

A search of Early English Books Online indicates that the phrase that can be used of many different
circumstances, including virginity, a fortunate situation, the acme of youth, or salvation. See Macbeth
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view of his secular attainments requires or at least rests upon a radical inversion of the here-and-now world: Ill make my heaven to dream upon the
crown, Richard argues, and, whiles I live, taccount this world but hell (III.
ii.16869). Shakespeares Richard concludes that from the torment of not
knowing how to find his way to the crown, he will free himself or hew
[his] way out.43 In the right-side-up world, we expect Richard to claim to
achieve the place that he deserves; but, in the world of uncertain values and
false kings, Richard presents himself (and perhaps all political actors) as
inhabitants of a living hell, as lying imposters like Sinon, and as not knowing how to be happy.44
If the Richard of 3 Henry VI is ambitious but not clearly or
reasonably so, Richards characterization in Richard III continues Shakespeares probing inquiry into what a liberating ambition would look like.
Richard first appears in the first scene and act of this play with the stage
direction solus, which is a unique beginning in Shakespeares corpus.45 In the
first speech of the play, Richard again argues, as he did in 3 Henry VI, that
since he cannot love, he is determined to prove a villain. But, as one critic
asks, determined by what or whom?46 Is it by providence or necessity, or by
the audience or by his own ambition? One may argue that it is his nature,
deformed and unnatural, that determines that he will seek vengeance
against nature for its crime against him.47 But, just as Richards complaints
about Edward IVs behavior and the derangement of degree provide an
for the golden round (I.v.29); 2 Henry VI for the golden mark I seek to hit (I.i.241).
And I,like one lost in a thorny wood / That rends the thorns and is rent with the thorns / Seeking
a way and straying from the way / Not knowing how to find the open air / But toiling desperately to
find it out, / Torment myself to catch the English crown / And from that torment I will free myself /
Or hew my way out with a bloody axe (3 Henry VI, III.ii.18197).
43

In Thomas Norths Elizabethan translation of Plutarchs Lives, Alcibiades is described as a chameleon who could put upon him any manners, customs or fashions, of what nation soever, and could
follow, exercise, and counterfeit them when he would, as well the good as the bad.

44

Rex solus may be intended here, which is a term used to contrast the king alone with the authority
of the King-in-parliament after the 1530s, for which see G. R. Elton, ed., The Tudor Constitution:
Documents and Commentary, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 14. In Shakespeares corpus, there are several occasions when characters enter or remain solus, especially if they
must do or say something that doesnt bear surveillance (e.g., Richard IIs prison speech on fortunes
slaves in Richard II, V.iii). The history of King Lear acted at the Dukes theatre / revivd with alterations by N. Tate of 1681 places a variant of the Bastard Edmunds speech at the beginning of the play,
where the stage directions indicate that he is solus. McGrail, Tyranny in Shakespeare, also points out
the unique opening of Richard III.
45

Harry Berger Jr., Conscience and Complicity in Richard III, in Richard III: Authoritative Text,
Contexts, Criticism, ed. Thomas Cartelli (New York: Norton, 2009).
46

47

McGrail, Tyranny in Shakespeare, 65.

Freedom in Shakespeares English History Plays

237

opportunity and an excuse for rebellion, we have only words to prove the
extent of Richards deformity. The judicious reader notes that arguments
about the destruction of degree are often partisan attacks on the legitimacy
and title of a competitor.48 Similarly, in his first soliloquy Richard may blame
the natural order so that the audience is less inclined to hold him personally
responsible for his crimes. Richards theme is solitary self-direction, but his
actual practice is constantly to manipulate others, and perhaps (why not?)
even the audience.
Throughout the play, Richard is presented as acting with
and through proxies and allies, but always for his own ends. He merely uses
others as temporary expedients without ascribing any essential dignity to
their own interests and aims. Even Buckingham, Richards other self and
councils consistory (II.ii.150), cannot keep pace with him, which results
in Buckinghams rebellion and ultimate execution (IV.ii.43). Richard, that is,
holds Buckingham to be his other self until Buckingham balks at being
Richards instrument in the killing of the two princes in the tower, and yet
still seeks to be assured that he will achieve the lands of Hereford. In a great
speech delivered upon the occasion of his murder of Henry VI, Richard has
the following to say in explanation of (and exhortation to) himself:
I that have neither pity, love, nor fear
I have no brother, I am like no brother;
And this word love which graybeards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another,
And not in me: I am myself alone.
(3 Henry VI, V.vi.6883)

Shakespeares Richard denies love, nature, and fellowship. Machiavellis

ambition to be alone is concealed within the worldly, social aim of pursuing
glory, but they are analogous aims. In his major works, Machiavelli stresses
the importance of being a sole founder (uno solo, in D I Preface, I.9, and P
XXIII).49 Machiavelli himself has decided to take a path as yet untrodden by
Hall asserts that Edward IV could have ruled peacefully, if it wasnt for Richard, while both More
and Shakespeare present several claims against the justice of Edwards reign (Edward Hall, The Union
of the Two Noble Families of Lancaster and York, ed. Richard Grafton [Ann Arbor, MI: Scolar, 1970]).
See also Edward IVs Title to the Throne Declared in Parliament (November 1461) and An Act for
the Settlement of the Crown upon Richard III and his Issue, with a Recapitulation of his Title (January
or February 1484), which accuse Edward of ruling so that this land was ruled by self-will and pleasure. These documents are reprinted as an appendix to Mortimer Levine, Tudor Dynastic Problems,
14601571 (New York: Allen & Unwin, 1973), 13233, 13537.
48

49
See also D III.35.2 and other references (for which see the glossaries of the editions of the Prince
and Discourses). Pocock (Machiavellian Moment, 187) does not give the notion the same resonance

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anyone, and he counsels that his founders should contrive to have authority alone. To self-reliant men he writes: those defenses alone are good, are
certain, and are lasting, that depend on you yourself and on your virtue (P
XXIV, 97). To have and to use others as equipment for your gain is one thing;
to depend upon them is politically dangerous. Machiavellis solus wants
to achieve political discretion to act in whatsoever manner he wants, free
from intervention. Hence, the new modes and orders described in Prince
XVXIX, and the willingness to be altogether bad (D I.27.1, 6263), are
Machiavellian discoveries or inventions presented to his readers as pathways
to the proper type of independence.
Machiavelli stresses the theme of being alone despite or
because of the fact that even his most mentally self-possessed princes dont
appear to have undertaken a complete political refounding. Machiavelli says
both that Cesare Borgia does everything right and also (and more subtly)
that he is a tool of the church and his father (P VII, 27, 29, 31, 46). Machiavelli
himself encourages captains to take their share of the glory, even encouraging his own readers to realize his projected perpetual republic. Does
Shakespeare count as one of that army of interlocutors and propagandists,
confirming Machiavellis foundational vision of modernity even as he makes
it more appealingly humanistic? Shakespeare is more blunt in reminding his
readers of the wide ditch between liberty and happiness, while Machiavelli
conceals this gap behind traditional appeals to Roman virtue, Italian patriotism, and the desire for political liberty. Shakespeare presents the successful
as complicit in their own delusion, giving fleeting voices to characters like
Warwick and Hotspur; Machiavelli, as noted, does not allow Cesare Borgia
to speak directly to the reader, and we are instead told by Machiavelli that
Cesare could have outdone himself by imagining his own fathers death and
by taking further control of the church. We are told, that is, how to see the
opportunity offered by Cesares political example, and to use it better (P VII,
28; D III.6, 222). Machiavellis bloody disputants, like T. S. Eliots attendant
lord, are sufficient to swell a progress but they suggest to the reader of
Machiavelli that the reader can do better, while in Shakespeare the Machiavellian suggests that something is lacking in the political life. Could what is
as Strauss and Mansfield. John of Florios sayings of Antonio Guevara, published in 1578, explain the
Machiavellian point succinctly: A litle after he sayth in prayse of God, I say, and confesse, that there
is but one only God creator, because he created al the worlde& man ought not to woorship but one
onely God, for euen as the worlde was created by one onely, so all creatures ought to woorshyp one
only: for euen as a Prince wyll not grant that another shal be called Prince in his Realme, so wyl not
God that any other God shal be worshipped in al the worlde (Florio, First Fruits, which yield Familiar
Speech, Merry Proverbs, Witty Sentences, and Golden Sayings [London, 1578]).

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missing be the life of religion, which Machiavelli manipulates but in which

he hardly seems to believe?

IV. The Weakness of the Modern World

Religion In Foro Externo: Annes Wooing
In the previous two sections, Richard III and the English
history plays provided evidence against reading Shakespeare as a vulgar historian of political success or failure. Shakespeare presents his cycle of history
plays as a critical engagement with Machiavellis attempt to control the cycle
of regimes, one in which the individual is given a place to speak on his own
behalf, and does so against the primacy of the political life.50 In the next section, the famous wooing scene from Richard III is interpreted as a reflection
on Christian belief in order to examine whether Shakespeares Richard is
constrained (or enabled) by Christian belief.
In act I, scene ii we are introduced to Anne, who was married to King Henry VIs son, Edward, before Richard killed both the son and
the father. In this famous wooing scene, which Shakespeare fabricates (rather
than borrows from his source material), Shakespeare develops what seems
to be a rather pointed criticism of Christianity.51 In my reading, the significance of the exchange between Richard and Anne is, primarily, to offer a
version of the Christianity as the source of political weakness argument
that has become traditional (D II.2, 278).52 Richard will use Christianity to
gain what he desires, meaning that the humble, loving moral orientation of
the true believer prepares the believer to be conquered. This is in fact what
happens to Anne, and Shakespeare shows that Richards realization that he
can invoke religion to suborn believers transforms him from one bearing
arms to one willing to give up his arms precisely to the one whom he will later
kill (as he does both with Anne, and, later, with the young Duke of York).
Like Machiavelli himself, Shakespeares Richard realizes that religious rhetoric can be used to attain political goods, like security, rather than to support
the ambitions of the clerical authorities of the medieval world (P XVIII, 70).
An obvious, excluded alternative is the extremely complex character of Falstaff, who is himself a Lollard (Sir John Oldcastle, as argued in Ellen Caldwell, Banish All the Wor(l)d: Falstaffs Iconoclastic
Threat to Kingship in Henry IV, Renascence 59 [2007]: 21947); a liar who takes credit for the death of
Hotspur, and who is resurrected from his pretended death; and who, in a comparison pointed out by
Harold Bloom and many others, bears a marked resemblance to Socrates in his actual death scene.
50

Roe, in contrast, thinks the scene is primarily about the manipulation of ungovernable instinct
(Shakespeare and Machiavelli, 1729).
51

For the weakness of those that Christianity seeks to defend, see Calvins attack on the Epicureans
(Institutes III.19).
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Lady, you know no rules of charity, Richard accuses Anne,

which renders good for bad, blessings for curses (I.ii.6667). Richard raises
a tough question with his accusation: on the grounds stated, should anyone
be charitable? In Richards gloss, the law of Christian charity is consistent
with forgiving Richard for his villainy, but even Richard is surprised by
his successful suit to win Annes affections. In his speech, which memorably begins, Was ever woman in this humor wood? / Was ever woman in
this humor won? he reflects that Anne has every reason to reject him, and
presumably Richard himself respects those reasons. But, Richard concludes
triumphantly, he can have her, like he will have his future crown, all the
world to nothing!53 The hyperbolic conversion from grieving wife to charitable dupe and ultimately to Richards wife does actually inspire Richard to
think that he has more power to change peoples minds and motives than he
had previously thought possible. The subsequent lines, Shine out, fair sun,
till I have bought a glass / That I may see my shadow as I pass, reminds
readers of Platos Republic of the low epistemological ranking of shadows,
but also (in this specific case) of their persuasiveness. Rhetorical shadow-play
works. From a soldier, then, Richards successful wooing transforms him into
something of a lying priest, one who is able to get people to do what he wants
simply by asking them to do it, appealing under cover of religion to the truer
motives (namely, vanity, fear, hope for gain, or security) that they do not want
to admit.54
The capacity of speech to turn the world upside down, allowing force to be ruled by fraud, is further explored in the wooing scene. In
their wrangling over whether Richard was in fact the murderer of Edward,
Prince of Wales, and Henry VI, Richard says to Anne: Your beauty was
the cause of that effect, meaning the murder, which beauty caused him to
dream the death of all the world (I.ii.119, 121). As a Christian, Anne is
open to the suggestion that Richard slew them not (her husband and his
father)that they live, as she mockingly replies, in some way (I.ii.87). She
believes that salvation opens the door to a new life, as Christian scripture
alleges, and concedes the possibility that Richard repents and has grown
humble. But perhaps she is most desirous of noble protection for the duration
Ellen Caldwell has explored aspects of the theme of this paper as they occur in Henry V. Banish
all the world, she argues (of Falstaffs reflections on his own importance to Hal), is a reformationist
rebuke of the false iconography of the Lancastrian monarchy (Caldwell, Banish All the Wor(l)d).

53

See, broadly, his precursors: Archbishop Scroop in 2 Henry IV (I.i.25861) turns insurrection to
religion; also, Winchester in I Henry VI (I.i and III.i) matches Yorks and Gloucesters ambition and
fraud.
54

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of the dynastic struggles? Uncharitably, we may conclude that her beliefs or

hopes that the world can be transformed by will are the precondition of the
world for Richard to bustle in.
To generalize this Machiavellian observation, the weaker
characters in Richard III have their opportunities imposed upon them by
other characters.55 So, for example, Richard asks Queen Elizabeth, whose
two sons Richard has already killed, for the hand of her daughter (I.iii.1516;
D III.12). He argues that she should forget their killings as water under the
bridge, and instead look to the security of her surviving daughter. Elizabeths
response is: Shall I forget myself to be myself? (IV.iv.435, emphasis added).
Richards answer, which inverts Prince Hals decision to remake his lower self
in the light of the higher, is yes. It is for the weaker characters to accept these
necessities rather than to choose to put themselves into a situation where they
can achieve as much happiness as one can. The ne plus ultra of this criticism
of weakness is Henry VI, a weak king who is ultimately murdered by Richard. Henry VI is offered as a not unsympathetic portrait of the unsuitability
of unvarying piety and (a certain form of) moderation in the pursuit of rule.
But as one historian says, the War of the Roses is not about issues of dynastic
succession, it is about the weakness of a bad king: the dynastic claims raised
during the War of the Roses did not predate that war, and the unrightwise usurper would probably have maintained his rule if he was halfway
competent.56 Shakespeare makes much of Henry VIs pious but ineffectual
rule, and even has Henry provide a self-justifying laundry list of his lovable
virtues (including pity, mildness, mercy, fiscal restraint, and moderation)
before Shakespeare has him stunningly and abruptly decide to retire from
politics (3 Henry VI, IV.viii.4147). Both this exit and the preceding character
development of Henry VI are criticized as the sort of weakness that arises in
the absence of knowledge about the stark realities of the world, one of which
is that pity, mildness, mercy, and other virtues are often political vices.57
In sum, Richard counsels Elizabeth, the woman whose children Richard has killed, not to harp on that string because it is past (IV.
iv.285). The same idea is captured by the offer of marriage to Anne, whose
See giving necessities in D I.7; Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 24653; Mansfield, Machiavellis
Virtue, 5556.
55

56

Levine, Tudor Dynastic Problems, 15, 24.

The fates of Bardolph, Pistol, and Falstaff in Henry V suggest the inescapability of political rewards
and punishments, as does the marriage of Catherine and Henry at the end of that play. There are other
suggestive vignettes, such as the induction by Falstaff of militia members, in 2 Henry IV.

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husband and father-in-law he killed. What matters is what can be changed.

As Queen Margaret is made to say in 3 Henry VI, what cannot be avoided
/ Twere childish weakness to lament or fear (V.iv.3738). But Margarets
reductive arguments get their comeuppance in her own subsequent misery,
inviting the reader to consider whether it is weakness to fear repeating the
same mistakes, and whose necessity is being imposed upon the weaker
characters. In a similarly skeptical spirit, one should ask how free the stronger (rather than the weaker) characters are. After all, isnt the whole story of
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, a tragic account of a completely clear-sighted
man who gets himself in trouble by willing himself into a situation where he
thinks he will achieve the maximum possible happinesshis golden time?
Prophecy: Religious Speech In Foro Externo
One way to consider the question of how much and how far
we can will our own happiness is to examine the status of prophecy and conscience in Richard III. Both conscience and prophecy offer predictions and
retrospections concerning the quality of our actions. The most important
providential prophecy in Richard III is Margarets curse, itself a response to
the Duke of Yorks curse in 3 Henry VI (I.iii.186232). In it, Margaret prophesies a bad end for those she claims have wronged her: Edward IV will die by
surfeit, and the Prince of Wales by violence; Edwards wife, Queen Elizabeth, is sentenced to extended mourning for her children and to disgrace;
Rivers, Dorset, and Hastings are prophesied an early death by accident;
and Richard himself will be gnawed by the worm of conscience. All these
predictions come true except for the death of Dorset, which does not figure
in Richard III.58
There are other important signs and prophecies in Richard
III that are given a credible connection to the actions of the characters, of
which two will be mentioned here. The first is the prophecy Richard introduces at the beginning of the drama to convince his brother, King Edward
IV, to imprison their brother George, Duke of Clarence (by G / His issue
disinherited should be). This prophecy comes true when Richard, Duke
of Gloucester, usurps the throne after killing Edward IVs sons. A second,
powerful example of prophecy at work is Lord Stanleys dream that the boar
(meaning Richard) will kill Stanley. Stanley perceives the danger that he is in,
Clemen, A Commentary on Shakespeares Richard III, 54. Buckingham also announces before
his death that Margarets curse has come to pass although she merely warned him about the dangers
posed by Richard. The stage directions of 3 Henry VI, which suggest that Rivers, Dorset, and Hastings
were not present at the death of Margarets son Edward, cast doubt on the justice of Margarets curse.
58

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and he chooses to relate that danger to a potential ally, Hastings, by sending

to him a messenger describing what that messenger calls his dream (III.
ii.16). In Thomas Mores History, Hastings coarsely responds that it is plain
witchcraft to believe in such dreams. Shakespeare more moderately has
Hastings say that he is surprised that Stanley trusts the mockry of unquiet
slumbers (III.ii.25). Mores editorial comment is apposite: A marvelous case
it is to hear either the warnings of that he should have voided or the tokens of
that he could not void.59 More presumably means that signs should provoke
thought even when they cannot be considered evidence in the strict sense of
the term. Shakespeare, although he does not provide his own editorial comments, shows just how correct Stanleys soul is, and how gullible Hastings is
for thinking he was in the good graces of the king, and for ignoring the signs
to the contrary.
If the aforementioned examples show that dreams and
prophecies are not without meaning in Shakespeares world, the invocation
of conscience also has political consequences. King Edward, for example,
wants to see the unity of Lancaster and York before his death, and so asks
Queen Elizabeths faction to swear perfect love towards the Yorkist faction
(II.i). This speech is entirely inefficacious, but when Buckingham is caught
out in rebellion, he points to the breaking of the oath he swore to Edward
IV as a cause of his downfall (V.i.1215). In prison, Clarence is tortured by
his own guilty conscience in a memorable speech, claiming that his guilt is
lengthened after life through horrific dreams, putting him in the hell that
Richard also felt himself to inhabit. Clarence did side with the Lancastrian
faction in 3 Henry VI, thus perjuring himself, but, as a repentant Edward IV
says after Clarence is executed, his crime was one of thought rather than
of deed. In conscientious dialogue with oneself or with others, it is efficacious to have broken ones oath even if oaths are not sufficiently powerful to
cause active self-restraint. Thus, we should infer that dreams, prophecies, and
portents matter, psychologically, as (at some point) do curses. As described
above, the weak characters all admit that their failures mean that Margarets
curse has come true. Moreover, weak characters try to prophesy and curse,
and, it seems, to impose their own justice upon those agents who are outside
of their control. The mild-mannered Anne curses Richard. Henry VI is killed
by Richard in the middle of a long-winded prophecy about Richards fate.
59
Thomas More, The Yale Edition of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vol. 2, The History of
King Richard III (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 50.

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The Enlightenment attempt to disabuse early modernity

of the belief in prophecies, curses, and the like is thus problematized by
Shakespeares apparent insistence upon including, allowing, and perhaps
propagating the anti-Enlightenment rhetoric of curses, prophecies, dreams,
and ghosts.60 As one historian of prophecies in this period notes, prophecy
had value and effect: it is like history made into poetry.61 Developing this
same point, Marjorie Garber writes that an absolute rejection of the irrational is a fatal misjudgment in the world of Richard III.62 While not making
an equivalency between history, prophecy, and Christian belief, Shakespeare
seems to contend that all of these are relevant to political life, insofar as political life is driven by beliefs expressed in a shared iconography that is much
wider in scope than what we now include in the sphere of public reason.63 As
noted above with reference to Machiavelli, the social world is a complex one,
and prophecies and providential narratives may also be numbered among
the things of the world.

 . Counter-Machiavellian Motives:
V
The Consciences Call In Foro Interno
The threads of Shakespeares discussion of political consequences of religious signs can be tied together if we infer that Shakespeare
affirms Machiavellis insight into the omnipresence of confusion of the
brain while accusing Machiavellians of just that confusion. By dramatizing rather than by ignoring and largely overruling the call of the conscience,
Shakespeare offers a better, more moderate account of our desire for liberty,
one which takes into account how we fall prey to the call of conscience.
For other treatments of rhetoric in Shakespeare, see Joseph A. Porter, The Drama of Speech Acts:
Shakespeares Lancastrian Tetralogy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979) (for the Second
Tetralogy); Dzelzainis, Shakespeare and Political Thought, 1012; and Platt, Shakespeare and
Rhetorical Culture. Quentin Skinners current work also develops this emphasis (Shakespeare and
Rhetorical Invention, Clarendon Lectures Hilary Term 2011).
60

61
Sharon L. Jansen, Political Protest and Prophecy under Henry VIII (Rochester, NY: Boydell &
Brewer, 1991), 15.
62
Marjorie Garber, Dream in Shakespeare: From Metaphor to Metamorphosis (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1974), 195.

Mary Bonaventure Mroz, Divine Vengence: A Study in the Philosophical Backgrounds of the Revenge
Motif as It Appears in Shakespeares Chronicle History Plays (New York: Haskell House, 1941); E. Pearlman, William Shakespeare: The History Plays (New York: Twayne, 1992). In passing, a partial response
to the republican Shakespeare argument may be made by noting that there is no attempt to theorize
citizenship under the equal, general rule of law in Shakespeares histories (Hadfield, Shakespeare and
Renaissance Politics and Shakespeare and Republicanism). Alvis also notes the surprising absence of
parliament in the English history plays, and Spiekerman (Shakespeares Political Realism, 169) points
out the absence of Magna Carta from King John.
63

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Analyzing Machiavellis defense of the liberty of the sole

founder requires an anatomization of Machiavellis often difficult arguments concerning religion, morality, conscience, liberty, virtue, chance, and
necessity. When seen as a whole, religion and the less fundamental theme
of morality are characterized by Machiavelli as confusion of the brain
(Thoughts, 232, 208, 217; D III.6, 22829).64 Machiavelli conveys an important part of his complex teaching by describing conscience not as the feeling
of wrong that is instilled by a punishing and rewarding god, but instead in
terms of the shared knowledge and fears of conspirators. Dwelling on one of
Machiavellis Roman (non-Christian) examples, Strauss notes that Latin conspirators against the Romans had awareness (coscienza)of many things
which they [the Latins] had done against the will of the Romans (Thoughts,
194). The Latins were fearless not because the Romans had been most unjust
to them or because they trusted in the justice of their cause, but because
they had awareness (conscientia) of their power on the one hand and of the
power of the Romans on the other (Thoughts, 195). Strauss assimilates both
types of awareness under the rubric of conscience, intending to show that
Machiavellis conscience, where man judges by himself and in solitude as to
what he ought to do, is equivalent to the voice of rational fear and rational
confidence.65 Such conscientious warnings need, in Machiavellis teaching, to
be protected from reverence for any external authority, whether god or man,
because those who claim to speak in a different and higher language, and
thus to deserve such reverence, are lying. All the things that are worth fearing
are intelligible to human beings by the free use of human reason.
Applying this interpretation of Machiavelli to Richard III,
one could infer that Shakespeares Richard III loses the Battle of Bosworth
because he has failed to mobilize the people by getting them to heed his
commands to fight against Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. Percys forces
stand and watch the battle, and Stanleys forces do not fight for him. The
Machiavellian lesson that you need others truly to be yourself has not been
properly executed by Richard. This is not surprising, because, as Blunt says,
there are only those around Richard who fear him, and, although fear may be
more reliable than love in the relations of princes to their subjects (P XVII),
Richard is not capable of cornering the market on fear (V.ii.20). Although
he has triedfor example, by playing on the fears of Edward IV concerning
64

There is a parallel in Hamlet IV.vii.12728.

Strausss reading is reminiscent of Heideggers analysis of the conscience in Division II of Being and
Time. See Thoughts on Machiavelli, 19395, 203, and Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan
Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 25078.
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Clarence, on Hastingss fears of the queens party, and, most obviously, by

seizing George (Stanleys son) as hostage in order to extract Stanleys loyalty
at Bosworthhe is unable to rule by fear alone, and to make his threats represent the effectual truth, whether by spectacular or concealed executions
(P VII, 2930; XV, 61). He was more successful, despite the misgivings stated
at the beginning of the play, by playing the (fraudulent) lover.
This failure seems to show that Richard is simply not a good
Machiavellian, and that he fails to execute Machiavellis plan with sufficient
thoroughness.66 But this Machiavellian style of criticism, implying that we
should simply find a better prince to imitate, and that everything truly is
knowable and manipulable, is at odds with the very searching criticism of
uno solo to which Shakespeare puts his Richard. In other words, it may be
sufficient in some contexts and for some purposes to say that Richard should
have seen his own plan through to its completion by, among other things,
the immediate execution of Buckingham or by disarming him with false
friendship, and also by the heinous killing of Stanleys son or by some other
temporizing response to Stanleys doubts.67 But the ultimate worth of Richard
IIIs executions of a Machiavellian plan must be judged by the quality of the
plan that is being executed. As argued above, it is not clear that a Machiavellian plan is a good plan.68
The textual crux where Shakespeares anti-Machiavellian
intervention is most clearly presented is in the narration of Richards automachia (to borrow a phrase from Shakespeares near-contemporary, George
Goodwin).69 When Richard finds himself to be truly alone, he is possessed
of (or by) a surprisingly bad conscience. Instead of merely abiding silently or
thoughtfully with his possible failure, Richard haunts himself with ghosts
In Holinsheds version, Richard addresses his troops and companions, admitting a wicked and
detestable deed (Raphael Holinshed, Shakespeares Holinshed: An Edition of Holinsheds Chronicles,
1587, ed. Richard Hosley [New York: Putnam, 1968], 263), but arguing that he has expiated it; that
Richmond is weak and a Welshman; and that he leads a weak bunch of Frenchmen and outlaws.
Richmond, in contrast, underscores the justice of his cause (265), and argues that this will cause men
to switch sides in battle. Instead of recording him asking for a horse, Holinshed has Richard refusing a
swift one to bring him away from the battle (268). Shakespeares account parallels Holinsheds insofar
as Richard argues against conscience while Richmond argues that the consciences authority and his
political intentions align.
66

Thus, Henry Vs parallel decision to kill the French prisoners at Agincourt appears to distinguish
Henry V from Richard III.
67

68

McGrail, Tyranny in Shakespeare, 59.

I sing my SELF; my Civil Warrs within / The Victories I howrely lose and win (Goodwin, quoted
in Sacvan Bercovitch, The Puritan Origins of the American Self [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1975], 19).
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almost prompting the question: How solus is Richard? In the most amazing
speech of the play, he exclaims:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I and I.
Is there a murderer here? No.Yes, I am.
Then fly.What, from myself?Great Reason why:
Lest I revenge.What, myself upon myself?
Alack, I love myself.Wherefore?For any good
That I myself have done unto myself?70
(V.iii.16167)

In Richards self-accusation, he invokes the Apostle Paul as witness to his fear,

although in his ambiguous fashion Shakespeare also describes the guilty consciences accusation as one being made in a thousand several tongues, as if
the number of accusers and not their quality made the accusation decisive.71
Finding himself weakened nearly beyond any capacity to continue, Richard
cries for the salvific intercession of Jesus,72 who will forgive him for what he
has done even if he did it in full confidence and with full moral knowledge
of the consequences. Reading Richards speech, one could think that Shakespeare vindicates religion by showing that only religious awe imposes limits
on the tyrannical will. But, in these lines, Shakespeare presents Richard as
a somewhat sympathetic or tragic figure rather than simply someone whose
fate should reassure us that the wicked are punished. Instead of reassurance,
Richards worries provoke real questions concerning the justice of Richards
God and the value of the religious conscience. As readers of Shakespeare, we
are clearly meant to avoid falling into the type of internal debate and civil
war from which Richard suffers, but what is the proper understanding of the
conscience that Shakespeare proposes?
Identifying the aim of Machiavellis fight with the AristotelianChristian tradition helps to put Shakespeares criticism of Machiavellianism
in perspective. According to the tradition, Christian liberty is dual: it consists
70
See 2 Corinthians 7:11 and Rozett, Doctrine of Election for the theme of self-revenge. As Rozett
notes, the last of the stages of repentence described in 2 Cor. 7:11 is revenge upon oneself. She also
cites Bradbook for the notion that the revenger ironically takes on the role of God, revenging himself
upon himself.

Earlier, Richard invokes Saint Peter (III.iv.81 and I.i.138; I.ii.34, 39). The alteration may mean
nothing, or it may reflect Richards growing sense of Christian accusation. (See footnote 2 for Pauline
accusation as the theater of conversion of penitents. See also III.ii.75 for the oath, by the holy rood,
which may reflect worries about painful punishment.) Calvin cites consciences thousand witnesses
as an ancient proverb (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge
[Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989], 141).
71

Have mercy, Jesu!Soft! I did but dream / O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me! (Richard III, V.iii.19495).

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in freedom from the carnal law, as Paul argued in Romans 7:4; and it also
gives reasons for obeying the temporal powers of the world: Romans 13 is
often cited.73 Glossing this tension between the authority of God and human
freedom, Leo Strauss reads Machiavelli as defending a flexible, natural
alternation between the practice of virtue and vice, reflecting the useful
fact that there is no authority of God, and that responding to absolute religious commandments marks a confusion of the brain. In the antithesis of
Calvins position on the conscience, the Machiavellian call of the conscience
is no more than a call to fear other men where it is necessary.74 Thus, Calvin
writes: Hence a law is said to bind the conscience, because it simply binds the
individual, without looking at men, or taking any account of them (emphasis
added). In his summary of Machiavellis teaching on the conscience, Strauss
characterizes Machiavellis interpretation of the natural conscience as a
kind of prudence which is frequently indistinguishable from mere calculation of worldly gain.75 As Romans 2.1416 argues, conscience can either
excuse or accuse, and Machiavellis intention is to excuse the sins that are
necessary and to accuse only impolitic crime.76 By recasting the authentic
voice of the conscience as one that heeds fearful premonitions of this-worldly
harms, Machiavelli indirectly fights against Aristotelian nature and Christian voluntarism by excusing necessary sins and accusing unnecessary ones,
whether unnecessary acts are vicious acts such as cruelty improperly used
or virtuous acts such as liberality and generosity misused. If it was given
full expression, this bourgeois conscience would spell the death of Aristotelian moral character as well as the death of the Christian conscience.
It is this politicized and bourgeois conscience that Shakespeare finds partially unsatisfactory. His criticism reaches its height in
Richard III, who is a perfectly Machiavellian character precisely because he
fails to execute the true project of philosophical citizenship. Although it is
difficult to pin down exactly how Shakespeare conceives of citizenship, citizenship, for Shakespeare, clearly does not mean standing alone, vulnerable to
attack, and wishing to trade your earthly kingdom for an animal (Richard III,
On Christian liberty, see the thirty-nine Articles of 1571, especially Article X, and Calvins Institutes, III.19 for the notion of two worlds, over which different kings and different laws can preside
(Institutes of the Christian Religion, 141).
73

74

Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 142; Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 24041.

75

Thoughts on Machiavelli, 196; Mansfield, Machiavellis Virtue, 26.

Wilks, Idea of Conscience in Renaissance Tragedy, 15. As Sullivan, Neither Christian nor Pagan,
notes, Machiavellis insufficiently cruel Romans can learn something about well-used cruelty from the
adherents of the Christian religion.
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V.iv.713). It does not mean being a tool of others plans and needs, and it does
not mean denying the efficacy of the religious conscience to which one ultimately falls prey. To employ theoretical language that Shakespeare may well
not approve, Machiavelli offers a new interpretation of voluntarism, this time
oriented on the corporeal rather than the otherworldlywillful materialism
replaces willful spiritualism. In contrast, Shakespeare teaches a more moderate reformation of the desire for liberty in the English history plays in two
ways. First, Shakespeare implies that the antiprovidential project mounted
by Machiavelli does not prove its claim that the only aim of human action
is political success. Second, Shakespeare reminds the ambitious individual
who is willing to set my life upon a cast, as Richard III is, that evidence that
the control of chance can be achieved through direct political action is thin.
Whether Shakespeares criticisms of Machiavellianism rely on a doctrine
of the soul and its reception of a natural law remains ambiguous.77 What
is dramatized in Richard III is instead a hesitant endorsement of enlightenment, one that exposes the dangers of unreflective willfulness as well as the
attractiveness of getting your own intellectual way, all the world to nothing.

 I. Conclusion: A Moderate
V
but Modern Shakespeare
In the character of Richard III, Shakespeare argues out the
two great themes of the English history plays: religion and politics. Shakespeares most Machiavellian character responds to traditional, providential
history by adapting the notion of a providential history to his own conception of political necessity. He exhorts men to serve their true selves, meaning
their lower selves. This version of ordered liberty is a recognizable aspect of
the modern liberal project, but it is not republican in any simple way: it is
not based on recognizably republican elements of government, such as the
rotation of offices or the equal liberty of subjects under law, or on democratic
values like dignity or the primacy of the voice of the people (D I.58). Instead,
the cycle of regimes remains balanced through controlled transgression, or
what James Madisons Federalist, No. 51 much later describes as ambition
made to counteract ambition. This form of agonistic republicanism depends,
in Machiavellis exposition of it, upon the closure of political life to the belief
in any life that is higher than the political. The philosophic life is caught up in
the Machiavellian dragnet as merely another form of ambitious idleness (D
See McGrail, Tyranny in Shakespeare, for the argument that Richards denial of natural right forces
him to seek a liberated self rather than rejoice in a rational soul aware of its proper place in the
cosmos.

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I Preface). In its closing off of these competing ways of life, Machiavellianism

resembles an imagined realm, an artificial island or a third Rome where the
life of the soul and of the mind is instrumentalized for the sake of political
liberty.78 Still, the modern orientation can be described as liberal because it
does offer the most accessible and stable understanding of citizens security,
the sine qua non even of the contemplative life. The liberal way of life requires
what Thomas Hobbes later calls rational fear, the suspicious ability to read
signs, and a sense for what it is that humans usually desire. It excuses many of
the actions that we seem to do from wickedness, instead relating these deeds
to intelligible motives such as profit and honor. It makes wickedness comprehensible to human prudence, however perverse or bloody, and, demystifying
human motivations, exposes the ugly but all-too-human reasons behind the
ire of a character like Margaret or the hopes of a character like Anne.
Shakespeare seems to offer two competing but equally
plausible readings of providence in the history plays. In the one, retribution
dominates the deeds and the consciences of those that transgress against Gods
will, leading to a chain of slaughter that ends in Henry VIIs accession. In the
competing interpretation, human retribution follows as the consequence of
failures of the right man to rule in the right way. Shakespeares criticisms of
Machiavelli clarify the indeterminacy of divine and natural right by suggesting
that Machiavellianism is a sophisticated attempt to outsmart religious authority and to reject a natural hierarchy in the name of the autonomous individual
who can defensibly claim to rule just because he has seen through the pretensions of clerics and has the prudence to organize brawn after his own spirit.
If my reading of the English history plays is correct, Shakespeare thinks that
the highest freedom of independence cannot be achieved in the Machiavellian
way. It is only available for the thinker in thought, for a philosophic poet or a
philosopher, but not for an active man whose worldly ambitions would require
the murder of everyone, including his own self, to achieve the liberation of that
self.79 Searching for liberation through politics only seems to lead to tyranny,
both over oneself and over others.

78

Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 255; Sullivan, Machiavellis Three Romes, 9.

Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespeares Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010) argues,
too modestly in my view, that Shakespeares goal is artistic autonomy rather than independence of
thought. It seems that a truly liberated poet can and should enjoy artistic autonomy and freedom of
thought. For the poets ability to combine liberating detachment and knowledge of the things of the
world, which may be the only (realistic) way of combining freedom of thought and artistic autonomy,
see Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 85.
79

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2 51

Shakespeares political theory has been ignored by the

majority of thinkers writing on the foundations of modern liberalism, to the
detriment of that theory of freedom and to the understanding of its historical
origins. Shakespeare does not make any systematic appearance in the standard histories of political thought, and, more surprisingly, is not a presence
in the most important accounts of the development of autonomy and of the
self.80 This is doubly surprising because so much of our language and ethical
orientation is the product of Shakespearian education. Above, I have focused
on the highest freedom as a political question. But if the interpretation developed in this paper is persuasive, Shakespeare offers a very serious account of
the limits of personal autonomy as well as the limits of our encumbered selves
in Richard III. Indeed, one could identify this care for the self as a dominant
theme in the Shakespearian corpus as a whole. A few sketchy remarks can
bear out this claim. As Macbeth says, I dare do all that may become a man /
Who dares do more is none (Macbeth I.vii.4546). Macbeth thinks of himself as whole and founded on a rock, but he quickly discovers what it is
to exceed those limits by shattering that rock. One of the more interesting
if not the most thoughtful of Shakespearian characters promises to stand
/ As if a man were author of himself. This quotation is not from Richard
III; the lines are spoken by Coriolanus, who has been asked to stand for his
place before the multitude, showing his scars in an ironical attempt to gain
personal authority on the shoulders of the crowd. But Coriolanus is able to
sustain the thought of autonomous existence for less than six lines of the
play, and hes physically kneeling before his matriarch within sixteen lines of
his promise.81 These Shakespearian reflections on individualism are indeed
warnings and tokens to marvel at. Coming at a time when Renaissance
humanism, skepticism, political upheaval, and the Reformation had radically altered the relations between citizen, man, and political community,
Shakespeares fundamental criticisms of Machiavellian independence serve
to remind us to think for ourselves. By reminding us of how little we know
about the human good, Shakespeare punctures Machiavellian commonplaces
that seem authoritative and does so without substituting one worldview for
another. This is the core of the education lampooned by the moniker the
Shakespeare myth.

Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Jerome Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
80

81

Coriolanus V.iii.36; Greenblatt, Shakespeares Freedom, 109.

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The Pleasure of Philosophizing and Its Moral Foundation

253

The Pleasure of Philosophizing

and Its Moral Foundation
Ja m e s C a r e y
St. Johns College, Santa Fe
[email protected]

The overarching theme of classical political philosophy,

according to those who have contributed most impressively to its recovery,
is the best regime. The best regime is the regime in which the comprehensive
political good is most successfully realized, the regime in which its members
live the best lives of which they are capable. But different human beings possess different capacities, and they are ruled by different desires. What is the
best life for one is not the best life for another, and the comprehensive political
good, whether envisioned in speech or realized in deed, is not homogeneous.
In raising the question of the best regime in full seriousness, the classical
political philosophers raise both the specifically political question of how the
different constituents of this regime can be harmonized and the specifically
philosophical question of what the best life is simply. The answer they give
to the latter question is that, though a life lived in the pursuit of wisdom is
not the only good life, it is much the best life, the most choiceworthy life, for
those who have what it takes to live it. The classical political philosophers do
not just wish to give this answer, however. They wish to argue in favor of it.
Philosophy is the quest for knowledge regarding the fundamental cause or causes of the whole, its constitution, and mans place within
it. This quest gives rise to pleasures that do not cloy and depend less on
circumstances beyond ones control than do other pleasures. The manifest
solidity of these pleasures, including their duration and their relative purity
and freedom from pain, suggests that the attempt to replace opinion with
knowledge about the questions that human reason of its very nature poses
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to itself is, all things considered, the most pleasant activity available to man.
Those who think that this is so are led to raise the question whether it is the
desire for pleasure itself, however refined and specifically human, that actually motivates the choice to engage in philosophy, or whether it is something
else. I shall argue that it is indeed something else, not accidentally but as a
matter of logical necessity. Before beginning my argument, however, I need
to justify a term that I shall be employing.
In Platos Republic, Socrates says that the soul of every single
man (psych henos hekastou) is divided into three parts. One of these he calls
the learning-loving and philosophical (philomatheskai philosophon) part.1
Aristotle says similarly that all mennot just many of them and certainly
not just a few of them, but all of themby nature desire to know.2 Plato and
Aristotle would, of course, hardly deny that in most people the philosophical
part of the soul does not get developed very far and that the desire to know
only occasionally prevails over the other desires. Moreover, philosophy itself
is understood by Plato and Aristotle to constitute a whole way of life, and
those who live this life are few in number. Accordingly, in what follows I
shall speak not of philosophy but of philosophizing, not of philosophia but
of philosophein.3 By philosophizing I mean no more than trying to understand matters of enduring significance by puzzling over them thoughtfully,
in solitude or in the company of others. I leave entirely to one side the enormous question whether philosophein ever attains, or even can attain, genuine
sophia regarding the world, our place in it, and its ultimate ground. And so
I also leave to one side the question whether philosophizing tends toward
theism or atheism.
Philosophizing is indeed pleasant, at least to those who
are not so insecure in their theism or so insecure in their atheism that they
experience anxiety whenever they sense that reason is on the move and, as
reason, is altogether indifferent to their anxiety. But what is the character of
this pleasure? In considering this question, which is said to be a concern of
political philosophy,4 I shall speak to points made by Plato, Aristotle, Thomas
Aquinas, and others. I shall not proceed chronologically, however. I begin my
1
Plato, Republic 580d2; 581b5; cf. 435e2. See Phaedrus, 279a 9: For by nature, my friend, some
sort of philosophy dwells in mans thinking (physei gar, phil, enesti tis philosophia ti tou andros
dianoii). The incessant Why? asked by very young children attests to the truth of Socratess claim.
2

Aristotle, Metaphysics 980a20.

Aristotle, Metaphysics 938b13; Nicomachean Ethics 1105b1619; Politics 1279b1116, 1331a1417.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1153b1.

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consideration of this question neither with the ancients nor with Thomas, but
with a philosopher who is despised by many who admire the ancients and by
many Thomists as well. I begin with Kant.
1. Kants Disjunction of Pleasure and Duty
Early in the Critique of Practical Reason Kant presents an
argument that I summarize as follows. There are two possible determining
grounds of choice. One of these is the desire to attain a feeling of pleasure
from the act in which one chooses to engage. The other is the desire to act
according to a rational principle that has the character of law, to do what it
commands because doing so is intrinsically good, whatever feeling it may
give rise to. The first determining ground is what Kant calls the lower faculty
of desire, which we share with irrational animals. The second is the higher
faculty of desire, which is nothing other than practical reason itself.5 Because
man is not only a rational being but a finite one as well, he has inclinations to
act according to the lower faculty of desire in opposition to the higher faculty
of desire. But action in accordance with reason is ipso facto obligatory.6 It is
a matter of duty, something one owes to oneself as a rational being. By virtue
of the lower faculty of desire we wish to feel good. By virtue of the higher
faculty we wish to be good. Kant thinks that there is a difference between
feeling good and being good. I shall abbreviate the two determining grounds
of choice as pleasure and duty. For Kant, there is no third.7
Whether reason by itself and independently of the desire
to feel good can actually determine the will is the guiding question of the
first part of the Critique of Practical Reason. Kant answers this question in
the affirmative. Reason by itself determines the will when one chooses to act
solely on maxims that could in principle be acted on by all rational beings
without thereby generating a practical contradiction, that is, situations in
which the ends aimed at by the maxims could not be realized.8
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Book 1, 3 Corollary, Remark 1, in Werke in Zehn
Bnden (hereafter Werke), ed. Wilhelm Weischedel (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1981), 6:132.
5

See Kants definition of an imperative, and thereby of obligation, in the Critique of Practical Reason,
Book 1, 1 Explanation, Remark, in Werke, 6:126.
6

Kant does not think that there is anything wrong with acting according to the lower faculty of
desire except in cases where doing so is ruled out by the higher faculty of desire.
7

By a maxim Kant means only a subjective principle of action, such as to go for a run three times a
week, or to memorize one good poem per month. Every maxim aims at an end. The ends of these two
maxims are, most likely, physical fitness and having a stock of poems on which to reflect when books
are out of reach. Reason allows us lots of leeway in choosing our maxims, some of which could be
8

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The first and much controverted version of Kants categorical imperative, Act only according to that maxim through which you can at
the same time will that it become a universal law, is a canon for maxims.9
As expressed, it is not a directive to perform a specific act. It offers no guidance for concrete decisions other than telling us, categorically, not to base our
decisions on maxims that, if universalized, would not be able to realize their
ends.10 The second version of the categorical imperative, which Kant thinks is
equivalent to the first version,11 is Act in such a way that you treat humanity,
both in your own person and in the person of another, always at the same
time as an end, and never merely as means.12 And this version of the categorical imperative gives rise to ends that are also duties. These duties, which
are characterized by wide latitude and thereby allow for some discretion in
deciding how they are to be fulfilled, are not merely formal. They are selfperfection and working for the happiness of others.13 Self-perfection, which
includes philosophizing for those who have the ability and the opportunity
to philosophize, is as much an achievement of the higher faculty of desire, of
practical reason, as is beneficence.
Kant argues that in assessing whether the ground of a particular choice is duty or pleasure, it makes no difference what the source of
pleasure happens to be, whether it derives from stimulation of the senses or
from the activity of the mind. Considered simply as a ground of choice, all
pleasure is essentially of the same kind. One pleasure differs from another
quite idiosyncratic. What reason does not allow, however, is acting on a maxim that, were everyone
else to act on it, could not achieve its end, for example, writing bad checks to get cash. If everyone
wrote bad checks to get cash no one would accept checks at all, and so no one would be able to get cash
by writing them. According to Kant, a maxim that could not achieve its end if universally adopted is
irrational and thereby immoral as well.
9

Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Chapter 2, in Werke, 6:51.

It is the nature of reason, as distinct from judgment, to make its pronouncements (to the philosopher and the nonphilosopher alike) in the language of universals. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure
Reason, B 357; B 36465; cf. B 172 and note a on that page.
10

That these are but two versions of the same imperative means that each implies the other. The
demonstration of their mutual implication is based on the distinction between a person and a thing,
succinctly expressed in the following passage: Everything in nature works according to laws. Only a
rational being has the ability to act according to the idea (Vorstellung) of laws, i.e., according to principles, and thereby has he a will (Werke, 6:41; cf. Critique of Practical Reason, Book 1, 7 Corollary
and Remark, in Werke, 6:142).
11

12

Werke, 6:61.

Kants detailed account of what is involved in self-perfection and beneficence is found neither in the
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals nor in the Critique of Practical Reason but in the Doctrine
of Virtue of the Metaphysics of Morals proper. There one discovers that Kantian ethics is not the
empty formalism it is frequently alleged to be.
13

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only in its duration, intensity, or closeness of association with pain. Kant

recognizes that there is an essential difference between pleasure on the one
hand, and a rational principle or argument on the other. The former is felt
whereas the latter is not felt but understood. Still, pleasure typically accompanies understanding, and this pleasure can be compared with a merely bodily
pleasure. For all pleasures as such have something in common. It is the feeling of agreeableness (Annehmlichkeit), whatever the source of the pleasures.
If the determination of the will rests on the feeling of agreeableness
or disagreeableness that [a man] expectsit is all the same to him
through what means of representation (Vorstellungsart) he is affected.
The only thing he considers in making a choice is how great, how
long-lasting, how easily obtained, and how often repeated this agreeableness is.14

Kant does not take issue with the claim that intellectual pleasures are by
and large more refined, more enduring, more accessible, and less dependent
on chance than are bodily pleasures. For that is to say no more than that,
in these respects, intellectual pleasures are more pleasant than the coarser
bodily pleasures. If a human being were to philosophize for the sake of the
pleasure he anticipated this activity to give rise to, his choice would be morally on a par with the choice to pursue bodily pleasures. If, however, the
reason a human being philosophizes is that he considers philosophizing to
be something he owes to himself as a rational being, to be a duty, then the
ground of his choice to philosophize is something different toto caelo from
anticipated pleasure.15
That one philosophizes as a matter of duty does not necessarily mean that one does so only reluctantly. Our word duty is derived
from the Latin debitumwhat is obligatory, what ought to be done. There
is nothing in the concept of duty that implies its performance must be more
painful than pleasant. In some circumstances doing ones duty can be quite
painful indeed, but in other certain circumstances it can be quite pleasant.
14
Critique of Practical Reason, Book 1, 3 Corollary, Remark 1, in Werke, 6:130. (Cf. Plato, Protagoras
356a7356b1.) Kant does not consider different pleasures in terms of their relative degrees of purity
because this issue does not affect his central point.

Kant argues that in the experience of the beautiful as distinct from the merely pleasant, the judgment that the object is beautiful precedes and is the ground of the pleasure we take in the object
(Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, 9, in Werke, 8:29598). If Kant is right about this, then he is
right a fortiori that the pleasure one takes in the often laborious activity of philosophizing, or for that
matter in mathematics, natural science, and other inquiries, follows and presupposes the recognition
that one has come to understand something, that this understanding is good, and that one is the better for it.
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One is aware of having done the right thing for the right reason, and this
awareness is pleasant, even on those occasions where the pain is much more
acutely felt than the pleasure.16
This fact gives rise to an objection that Kant addresses in
the Metaphysics of Morals: one does ones duty only because of the pleasure
one anticipates from doing so. The dutiful person, so the objection goes, is as
much a hedonist as anyone else. He just does not know himself well enough
to acknowledge this fact. Kants response to this objection is that one takes
pleasure in doing ones duty only because one is aware that doing so is intrinsically good. It is the conviction that one has done something worth doing for
its own sake that gives rise to the subsequent feeling of pleasure. Kant calls
this kind of pleasure moral pleasure. He distinguishes it from what he calls
sensibly dependent pleasure.17
Although moral pleasure, considered merely as a feeling,
is not essentially different from sensibly dependent pleasure, there is still a
cardinal difference between the two, a difference not of feeling but of causal
efficacy. Whereas sensibly dependent pleasure can serve as a determining
ground of choice, and does so exclusively for the consistent hedonist, moral
pleasure cannot serve as a determining ground of choice. It can be felt only
if duty, done for its own sake, is the determining ground of the choice. It is
a manifest contradiction to say that one does ones duty for its own sake, yet
only for the sake of the pleasure that one envisions to result from doing so.18
Kant recognizes that one cannot adopt and act on a maxim
for its own sake. For it is the very nature of the maxim to aim at an end
beyond itself. For example, one adopts and acts on the maxim to do ones
grocery shopping after work on Fridays not for the sake of this maxim itself
but for the end of acquisition and consumption. On the other hand, subjecting ones maxim to the strictures of the categorical imperative is doing ones
Kant overstates the matter when he says that doing our duty can reduce happiness, and hence
pleasure, to less than zero. As long as one is conscious of doing or having done ones (perhaps quite
painful) duty, some feeling of pleasure, however slight or evanescent, is present in the satisfaction that
accompanies this consciousness.
16

Kant, Preface to the Doctrine of Virtue of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Werke, 6:5056. This
argument of Kants bears restating because it exposes a recurrent fallacy present in all attempts to
debunk morality as closet hedonism.
17

To the common objection that we simply cannot do our duty for its own sake, that we can do our
duty only for the sake of an extrinsic reward, for anticipated pleasure either in this life or in another
one, Kant would respond that this claim is not at all self-evident; and he would ask for a proof of it,
with premises unambiguously stated.
18

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duty for its own sake. We do not thereby do away with what Kant calls our
boundless longing for happiness, with what could be called with greater precision our boundless longing for pleasure. We only place a restriction on
this longing: we refrain from acquisition by way of shoplifting, even if we are
virtually certain we can get away with it. We exercise this restriction for one
reason only: doing so is the way a rational being ought to act.
2. Pleasure and Progress
Kants reasoning sheds some light on the question of why
we choose to philosophize and why we take pleasure in philosophizing. I
propose the following. It is not that we consider philosophizing to be good
because we take pleasure in it. Rather, we take pleasure in philosophizing
because we think this activity is intrinsically good.19 The conviction that philosophizing is intrinsically good, whatever feeling it may give rise to, is the
determining ground of the choice to philosophize. But Kant has said that the
only two possible grounds for determining choice are duty and pleasure. If
he is right about that, and if pleasure is not the determining ground of the
choice to philosophize, then we have a disjunctive syllogism, the conclusion
of which is that the determining ground of the choice to philosophize must
be duty, albeit a duty of wide latitude.20 This syllogism is incontestably valid.
But is it sound? That is, are its premises true? Kant seems to have thought so.
Would the ancients have thought so as well?
Before addressing this question, let us consider two passages
by the greatest twentieth-century philosopher to speak to it, a philosopher
who generally sides with the ancients against the moderns, and against Kant
in particular, namely, Leo Strauss. In the first passage, from Natural Right
and History, Strauss states something that is obvious though, as far as I can
tell, overlooked or underestimated by his followers.
From the point of view of hedonism, nobility of character is good
because it is conducive to a life of pleasureit is not good for its
Something can please us in three different ways. (1) If the feeling of pleasure presupposes no
antecedent judgment about it one way or another, it is brute (immediate) pleasure. (2) If the feeling
of pleasure presupposes an antecedent judgment, it is not brute pleasure, but a rational (founded)
pleasure. (2a) If the feeling of pleasure presupposes the judgment that what gives rise to the pleasure
is good, then it is moral pleasure. (2b) If the feeling of pleasure presupposes the judgment that what
gives rise to the pleasure is beautiful, then it is aesthetic pleasure. There is then a most intimate relation, though not one of identity, between moral pleasure and aesthetic pleasure. Kant calls beauty the
symbol of morality (Critique of Judgment, 59, in Werke, 8:45863).
19

There are a variety of paths on which one can set out to fulfill the duty of self-perfection. Philosophizing is one of these paths. It is not the only path.
20

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own sake. According to the classics, this interpretation distorts the

phenomena as they are known from experience to every unbiased
and competent, i.e., not morally obtuse, man. We admire excellence without any regard to our pleasures or to our benefits. No one
understands by a good man or man of excellence a man who leads a
pleasant life.The phenomenon of admiration of human excellence
cannot be explained on hedonistic or utilitarian grounds, except
by means of ad hoc hypotheses. These hypotheses lead to the assertion that all admiration is, at best, a kind of telescoped calculation
of benefits for ourselves. They are the outcome of a materialistic or
crypto-materialistic view, which forces its holders to understand the
higher as nothing but the effect of the lower, or which prevents them
from considering the possibility that there are phenomena which are
simply irreducible to their conditions, that there are phenomena that
form a class by themselves.21

The admiration of excellence is associated with some degree of pleasureas

admiration always isbut it would make no sense to say that we admire
someone so that we might feel pleasure.
In the second passage, from On Tyranny, Strauss states
something not so obvious, something that, taken together with the first passage, speaks directly to the question of why one chooses to philosophize, and
why the determining ground of this choice is not the desire for pleasure.
Socrates ultimately leaves no doubt as to the fundamental difference
between the good and the pleasant. No man can be simply wise; therefore not wisdom, but progress in wisdom is the highest good for man.
Wisdom cannot be separated from self-knowledge; therefore, progress
toward wisdom will be accompanied by awareness of that progress.
And that awareness is necessarily pleasant. This wholethe progress
and the awareness of itis both the best and the most pleasant thing
for man. It is in this sense that the highest good is intrinsically pleasant.What else is the pleasant consciousness of ones progress in
wisdom or virtue but ones reasonable and deserved satisfaction with,
and even admiration of, oneself?22
21
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 128
(emphasis added).

Leo Strauss, On Tyranny, rev. ed., ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2000), 1012 (emphasis added). See 130n43, conclusion. Strauss says there that
justice is not intrinsically pleasant. But is it not the case that the just man, even when experiencing
physical pain as a consequence of his justice, enjoys some measure of satisfaction in knowing that he
has done what is just? And is this anything other than the pleasant consciousness of ones progress in
moral virtue, a progress that gives rise to ones reasonable and deserved satisfaction with, and even
admiration of, oneself? In the last sentence of the paragraph on p. 102, Strauss says that Xenophon in
the Hiero has posed the question as to whether the demands of virtue cannot be completely replaced

22

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What one admires in oneself is not the pleasure of self-admiration, which

would be absurd, but ones progress. The consciousness of progress is the necessary ground or foundation of the pleasure and wholly conditions it. And
one could hardly make progress in wisdom, of all things, without recognizing
both that one is progressing and that this progress is good, intrinsically good.
According to Kant, the pleasure attendant upon doing
ones duty for its own sake is distinct from and founded on the recognition
that doing ones duty is intrinsically good. According to Strauss, if I have
interpreted him correctly, the pleasure attendant upon making progress
in wisdom is distinct from and founded on the recognition that making
progress in wisdom is intrinsically good. In each case the recognition that
something is intrinsically good, intrinsically worthwhile, is both the necessary and the sufficient condition for taking pleasure in it. Making progress in
wisdom, or philosophizing, is pleasant because when we philosophize we are
aware that we are living thoughtfully and that living thoughtfully is how we
ought to live.23 The pleasure to which philosophizing gives rise seems, then,
to fall squarely within the class of what Kant calls moral pleasure.24 Such
is the implication of Strausss suggestion that the pleasant consciousness of
ones progress in wisdom or virtue is nothing other than ones reasonable
and deserved satisfaction withoneself. 25
As for the pursuit of something solely for the feeling of
pleasure it gives rise to, even Kant holds that such a thing is immoral only
when the pursuit happens to conflict with the guidance of reason. Otherwise
there is not anything about the pursuit of pleasure simpliciter that deserves
condemnation, though there is not anything about it that deserves admiration either, to say nothing of respect. The reason why Kant thinks the human
good cannot be pleasure alone is not that it would thereby be something
merely selfish, but that, as a mere feeling of agreeableness, it would not be
something specifically human.
by, or reduced to, the desire for pleasure, if for the highest pleasure. Strauss does not say here how
Xenophon would answer the question that he has posed. But the logic of Strausss impressive interpretation leads one to infer that Xenophon would answer that the demands of virtue cannot be completely
replaced by, or reduced to, the desire for pleasure, even for the highest pleasure.
23

Plato, Republic 352d8; Gorgias 550c38. Cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1140b1719.

Philosophizing gives rise to pleasure, but it is itself not a kind of pleasure. Pleasure is a feeling and
philosophizing is a quest. The concept of pleasure no more enters into the definition of philosophizing, or of philosophy, than it enters into the definition of obligation in general.
24

We note that Strauss does not speak of making progress in pleasure, or of the consciousness of making progress in pleasure, or, least of all, of admiring oneself for having made progress in pleasure.
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3 . An Implication of Asserting That

the Good Is Pleasure Alone
Contrary to what one might initially think, the claim that
the good is pleasure alone does not imply that it is merely selfish. John Stuart
Mill, who really does make this claim,26 reasons as follows. One who understands pleasure to be the good will try to realize as much of it as possible: the
more pleasure the better. But a greater quantity of pleasure can be more fully
realized for a multitude of human beings than for oneself alone. Hence it is
only reasonable for a man who understands the human good to be pleasure,
and the more pleasure the better, to attempt to realize it for a multitude of
human beings rather than just for himself. Indeed, if the only way he can
realize a great amount of pleasure for a multitude of human beings is by forgoing his own pleasure, it follows according to Mill that he should forgo it.27
Starting from the premises that the good is pleasure alone
and that pleasure exists in greater and lesser quantities, Mill concludes in
favor of what one might call altruistic hedonism. Altruistic hedonism is
more rational, because it is more consistent, than ordinary hedonism. Mills
conclusion, however, is not that altruistic hedonism is better than selfish
hedonism because it is more rational than selfish hedonism. For then reason,
and not pleasure, would be the standard of the good. Altruistic hedonism is
better than selfish hedonism only because it produces more pleasure than
selfish hedonism, even if only a rational being can recognize this fact.
Mills conclusion is so unexpected and so apparently paradoxical that one might suspect it of being a sophism. Mill was probably one of
those thinkers whom Nietzsche had in mind when he spoke of the Englishmechanistic doltification of the world (Welt-Vertlpelung) that is motivated
by the desire to minimize pain and suffering.28 But, as Nietzsche must have
realized, Mill was a competent logician. For Nietzsche, the problem with
Mills argument is not that it is formally invalid, but that it is unsound.

Pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends (J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism
[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], 55).
26

The utilitarian standardis not the agents own happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness
altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character is always the happier for its
nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier (Mill, Utilitarianism, 59). By
happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain (ibid., 55).
27

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 252, in Smtliche Werke, ed. Giorgio Colli and
Mazzino Montinari (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag de Gruyter, 1988), 5:195.

28

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Nietzsche resists the conclusion by denying the initial premise. Nietzsche

denies that pleasure is the human good.
The singular merit of Mills argument is that it forces the
determined hedonist who wishes to resist its altruistic conclusion not to deny
but rather to reformulate its initial premise. The human good is not pleasure
simply. Rather the human good is my pleasure.29 It is not easy to see how anyone could reason, in private or in public, to the claim that the human good is
his pleasure in such a way that he would convince the rest of us that he was
right about this. Selfish hedonism can be asserted, just as it can be asserted
that the good is essentially ones own good.30 But reason cannot be enlisted in
support of these assertions. For reason is not a respecter of persons.
4 . Plato and Aristotle on
PleasureSome Observations
In Book 9 of the Republic, Socrates groups human beings
into three types (gen): the wisdom-loving type (philosophon), the victoryloving (philonikon) type, and the gain-loving (philokerdes) type. There are,
he says, three forms of pleasure, one associated with, or underlying, each of
these types.31 Socrates then imagines a disputation between these three types
of men regarding the ways of life they live and the pleasures associated with
them. The dispute is solely about what constitutes living most sweetly, that
29
Robert Bartlett, Platos Critique of Hedonism in the Philebus, American Political Science Review
102, no.1 (February 2008): 150, says that for the hedonist who knows what he is about or who is no
fool, his concern with the good is altogether selfish: the good is indeed pleasuremy pleasure!
Hedonists seek in all things to maximize their own good (the emphasis, the presence of quotation
marks surrounding the good, and the absence of quotation marks surrounding their own good are
in the original). Bartlett says that Mill jumps without argument from the point of view of the selfish
individual hedonist to that of someone concernedwith the good of the whole. Mill indeed leaves his
argument unexpressed in the passage that Bartlett quotes on this page, but the concluding therefore
implies an argument. Mills argument, a simple but nonetheless ingenious one, is spelled out above.
Mill has not just assumed, as Bartlett charges, that the best life will of necessity be a just or moral
one. The real problem with Mills account is that in distinguishing a superior quality of pleasure from
a great quantity of pleasure (Utilitarianism, 5556) he gives the impression of reverting, contrary
to his intention, to something like Kants conception of moral pleasure as founded on a good that is
distinct from pleasure.

It is not clear just what the latter claim, which one occasionally hears these days, is supposed to
mean. If put forward as a definitio boni it is obviously defective in form: the definiendum reappears
in the definiens. If the unexpressed assumption is that ones own good is pleasure, it can be countered
that ones own good consists less in pleasure, or even life, than in integrity. The latter, which is a
matter less of feeling good than of being good, is so much ones own good that, unlike life and pleasure, one cannot be deprived of it without ones own consent. Cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1095b2627,
1169a12.
30

Rep. 581c4. See Adams note on hypokeimena vs. hypokeimenon (James Adam, The Republic of Plato
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902], 2:344).
31

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is, most pleasantly and painlessly, with all considerations of noble versus
shameful, and better versus worse, left to one side.
Socrates says that all three types of men, beginning in childhood, have tasted something of the pleasure associated with gain. They also
have some experience of the pleasure that comes from being honored (presumably for some victory or other), and, up to a point, even the pleasure that
comes with learning (which Socrates momentarily substitutes for wisdom).
But only the lover of wisdom, the philosopher, has tasted the pleasure associated with the beholding of being (h tou ontos thea). The philosopher, then,
is the most experienced judge of the different kinds of pleasure. His judgment
is that, of the three pleasures, the most pleasant would belong to that part of
the soul with which we learn; and regarding the man among us in whom this
part rules, his is the most pleasant life.32 Shortly afterwards, Socrates says
that the pleasure of the other men is neither entirely true, save that of the
thoughtful man, nor pure.33 The thoughtful mans pleasure is entirely true.
Socrates does not say that it is entirely pure. He does argue, powerfully, that
the thoughtful mans pleasure is purer than are the pleasures enjoyed by the
lovers of gain and of honor. But an argument developed in the sequel shows
that the thoughtful mans pleasure cannot be entirely pure.
Pleasure that arises by way of relief from pain, Socrates says,
is not pure pleasure, and this holds for pleasures that attend the filling up
of an emptiness, such as, in the case of the body, hunger and thirst, and in
the case of the soul, ignorance. Compared to the man who moves from the
emptiness of hunger to the fullness that comes with eating, the man who
moves from the emptiness of ignorance to the (relative) fullness of knowledge
participates more in pure being (ousias katharas metechei). For, he says, what
this man knows is immortal and true. Compared to the pleasures having to
do with the care of the body, the pleasures having to do with the care of soul
are associated with a purer object.34
It does not follow, however, that this association with a purer
object causes the pleasures having to do with care of the soul to be purer than
every bodily pleasure. The pleasure of philosophizing is less bound up with
pain than are the coarser bodily pleasures, to be sure, though some of the latter are, while they last, more intense than the pleasure of philosophizing, and
32

Rep. 583a2.

33

Rep.583b34: oude panalths estin h tn alln hdon pln ts tou phronimou oude kathara.

34

Rep. 584c12, 585b8, c2d2.

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in that respect are greater as well. But the preeminently pure pleasures that
Socrates mentions, the pleasures least associated with pain, are the pleasures
of smell. These, he says, without prior pain, suddenly become extraordinarily great and, on ceasing, leave no pain behind.35 The unanticipated smell
of flowers, of pine needles after a heavy thunderstorm, or of autumn leaves is
not preceded by any pain at all.
Is the same true of philosophizing? Not quite. Philosophizing, and learning in general, is a progressing from knowing less to knowing
more. To that extent, it is accompanied by the mixed pleasure and pain of
desire not immediately fulfilled.36 Even the undeniable pleasure of suddenly
apprehending, say, the conclusion of a Euclidean proof is associated with
the preceding effort of thinking through the argument in support of it. It is
thereby associated with pain, which, however so faintly felt, is inseparable
from effort.37 A pure intellect, an intellectual intuition or intuitive intellect,
which would know its object nondiscursively and hence without effort, would
experience a pure pleasure, a pleasure unmixed with any pain whatsoever.38
But that is not the kind of intellect we have.39 In the act of understanding
(nosis), as distinct from the activity of discursive thinking (dianoia) that
characterizes learning, we arguably do experience a pleasure that is not
accompanied by pain. But the effortless act of understanding, as we experience it, is pleasant in part because it is experienced as a relief from the
preceding effort of discursive thinking.40
In choosing to philosophize one chooses to engage in an
activity in which pleasure is necessarily mixed with some measure of pain.
35
Rep. 584b510. See Adams note on a pertinent fragment of Heraclitus (Republic of Plato, 2:351). The
souls in Hades, though purified of what is corporeal through death, still retain the sense of smell.
36

Note the quantifier hapasan at Gorgias 496d4.

The pleasure that one experiences in proving a Euclidean proposition is a pleasure that follows from
recognizing (1) that a certain relationship follows necessarily if unexpectedly from something else,
and (2) that one understands this relationship. Note the enunciation of the final proposition in the
Elements: To set out the sides of the five figures (i.e., the regular solids) and compare (them) with one
another (tas pleuras tn pente schmatn ekthesthai kai sygkrinai pros alllas) (Book 13, Proposition
18; from the Greek text of J. L. Heiberg). The study of the Elements is consummated in the contemplation of a complex truth, and hence also in reasonable and deserved self-admiration for having
managed to apprehend this truth.
37

38

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1154b26; Metaphysics 1072b1424.

After philosophizing at great length, even Socrates becomes fatigued. And fatigue is incompatible
with pure pleasure. See Jacob Klein, About Platos Philebus, in Lectures and Essays (Annapolis: St.
Johns College Press, 1985), 334. Cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1153a20, 1175a4.
39

See Nicomachean Ethics 1173b17 for a possible counterview, depending on how one translates
mathmatikai [hdonai].

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Anyone who thinks that he philosophizes, and struggles to understand what

the great minds have to teach, solely because he longs for purity of pleasure
needs to ask himself why he does not spend his time strolling around an
arboretum or flower garden instead.41
At the beginning of Platos Philebus, the character Protarchus agrees to take over and defend Philebuss thesis that the good is
pleasure and enjoyment,42 in contest with Socratess thesis that thoughtfulness (to phronein), understanding (to noein), and other activities of the mind
are better than and preferable to pleasure.43 Late in the dialogue Socrates
suggests that neither knowledge without pleasure nor pleasure without
knowledge is possible.44 Pleasure could exist without knowing in the deepest sense of the word, though there could be no pleasure, not even a bodily
pleasure, if one were not aware of it at all. On the other hand, knowing cannot exist without pleasure either, for knowing necessarily gives rise to some
degree of pleasure, however slight.
We are reminded here of Aristotles formulation that pleasure
perfects (teleioi) the activity of thought (dianoia) and contemplation (theoria).
But, as Aristotle points out, pleasure does not perfect thought in the same
way that the object of knowledge does. For the known object perfects thought
by turning it from potential understanding to actual understanding.45 Pleasure, however, is a supervening perfection (epigignomenon ti telos).46 When
David Bolotin, Leo Strauss and Classical Political Philosophy, Interpretation 22, no. 1 (1994): 133,
writes, In exhorting ourselves and one another to be virtuous, or to resist the path of easy pleasure,
we tell ourselves and one another that virtue is good for us, or that it is the core of our true happiness
(italics in the original). This sentence occurs in the middle of a complex paragraph that bears reading
and rereading as a whole, as does Bolotins entire essay. I am interested here, however, only in the
expression easy pleasure. For it implies that there are difficult pleasures, and the sentence suggests
that they are more choiceworthy than the easy pleasures. The pleasure of philosophizing is one of the
difficult pleasures. It is not, then, a pure pleasure.
41

The absence of a definite article before good in Socrates initial statement of Philebuss thesis (11b
5; cf. Seth Benardete, The Tragedy and Comedy of Life: Platos Philebus [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993], 12 and n4) is made up for when he restates Philebuss thesis near the end, this time
with the definite article before good (tagathon: 66d78).
42

The Philebus begins with the question concerning the good lifeis it the life of pleasure or the life
of the mind? The conversation reported in the Philebus thus seems not merely to follow from but to
complete that related in the Republic (Catherine H. Zuckert, Platos Philosophers: The Coherence of
the Dialogues [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009], 385).
43

44

Plato, Philebus 63b7: oute pany ti dynaton out phelimon.

45

Nicomachean Ethics 1174b2024.

Nicomachean Ethics 1174b34. Though a pleasure naturally arises from thinking according to reasonand from acting according to reason as wellthe relation between the two is not one of identity
but of founding (thinking) and founded (pleasure). Spinoza seems to posit, I think unconvincingly,
46

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the intellect and the intelligible object come together, there is already a perfection, namely, the perfection of actual understanding. The perfection that
is pleasure supervenes upon, and presupposes as its foundation and occasion,
the perfection that is actual understanding. It is not that philosophizing is
good because it gives rise to pleasure. Rather, it gives rise to pleasure because,
and only because, it is already good.
In the Philebus, Socrates says much the same thing. Pleasures follow upon virtue entire (sympasa aret) as though she were a goddess
and they were her attendants. Socrates calls these pleasures true pleasures.
He notes without elaboration that Philebus has spoken not only of true pleasures but of true and pure pleasures.47 Just as in the Republic, so in the
Philebus Socrates recognizes that certain bodily pleasureshe also mentions
in the latter dialogue the unanticipated pleasures of smellrival the pleasures of the mind in purity.48 In fact, they surpass the pleasures of the mind
in purity, for reasons we have already considered.
The contest with which the Philebus began, the contest
between thinking and understanding (noein) on the one hand, and pleasure
on the other, ends with Socrates declaring neither pleasure nor intellect (nous)
to be the victor. The victor is what he calls measure (metron).49 But Socrates
adds that intellect, which he places three degrees away from measure, is
closer to it than pleasure by the ten-thousandth degree at least (myrii ge),
that is to say, by a virtually infinite degree.50 How is this possible, given that,
as Socrates argued earlier in the Philebus, neither understanding by itself nor
pleasure by itself, but only the two together, comprise the complete human
good? Understanding, the act of the intellect, is virtually infinite in its superiority to the pleasure accompanying it because the recognized goodness of
understanding is the source of that pleasure.51 And so, if someone asks us
something like a reversal of this relation, though he too retains the concept of perfection in his
definition of pleasure (or joylaetitia): Per laetitiamintelligam passionem, qua mens ad majorem
perfectionem transit (Ethics, Part 3, Proposition 11, Scholium).
47

Philebus, 63d164a4.

Phlb. 51e1; cf. 53b9c2: it suffices for us to understand at once that every small and slight pleasure,
cleansed of pain, would turn out to be more pleasant [!], and truer, and more noble than an exceedingly great pleasure.
48

49

Phlb. 66a48; 67a512.

Phlb. 67a11. I have reproduced Benardetes translation of myrii ge (Tragedy and Comedy, 85). LSJ
renders myrios as numberless, countless, infinite (s.v.; see also notes I.4.b. and II).

50

The mixing of thought (phronsis) and pleasure that Socrates undertakes, beginning at Philebus
59d1, is not a mishmash of the two. It is a beautiful mixing (60a2, 61b8, 61d1, 64e6), governed by
measure (64d165a1).

51

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what we are aiming at in our often laborious study of, say, the Republic or the
Philebus, we answer, naturally, humanly, and correctly, that we are aiming at
understanding something important, not that we are aiming at feeling pleasure, even though, again, such understanding as we are able to achieve does
indeed give rise to pleasure.52
Scientia propter voluptatem as a formulation for what motivates philosophizing is as alien to the greatest philosophers of antiquity as is
scientia propter potentiam.53 In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that
there are many things that we would take trouble to possess...even if they
brought us no pleasure at all. The examples he gives are seeing, remembering, knowing, and the virtues.54 It is not the pleasure perfecting these things
that causes them to be choiceworthy, for they are already choiceworthy.55
See Gorgias 521d8. Socrates says that the logoi he engages in are for the sake of the best [pros to
beltiston], not for the sake of the most pleasant [to hdiston].
52

53
Allan Bloom, in the interpretative essay that accompanies his translation of the Republic, writes,
The quest for pure pleasures is the motivation of a higher kind of free man who no longer has to
worry about the necessary. But this quest can only be fulfilled through philosophy.Only philosophy
is pure pleasure (Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato [New York: Basic Books, 1968], 425). Blooms
claims here are dubious. What motivates a higher kind of free manassuming that this is the
philosopher or protophilosopheris strictly speaking not the quest for pure pleasures, or for any
other pleasures, but the quest for wisdom. Contrast Blooms statement with the following statement
of Strausss: the wisemust be compelled [to rule] because their whole life is devoted to the pursuit
of something which is absolutely higher in dignity than any human thingsthe unchangeable truth
(Natural Right and History, 151).

Nicomachean Ethics 1174a46: peri polla te spoudn poisaimeth an kai ei mdemian epipheroi
hdonn, hoion horan, mnmoneuein, eidenai, tas aretas echein. (Cf. 1097b25.) The first three members of this list are, considered in themselves, effortless or almost effortless. This is not true for the
fourth member, the virtues (tas aretas). They are habits (hexeis), and some of them require effort and
thereby a measure of pain to cultivate. Aristotles use of the plural here, without qualification, implies
that the moral virtues as well as the intellectual virtues are intrinsically choiceworthy, independently
of the pleasure they give rise to. Note the expression pasan aretn at 1097b15. Cf. 1040b46.
54

Strauss draws attention to what he calls the open secret of [Platos] Philebus: the highest good:
theoria plus hdon, in Reason and Revelation, in Leo Strauss and the Theological-Political Problem,
by Heinrich Meier (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 162. There is nothing particularly
shocking about this open secret, provided that the character of the plus is properly understood.
Thomas Aquinas would concur with Strauss, though not without a qualification: omnes appetunt
delectationem, sicut et appetunt bonum: et tamen delctationem appetunt ratione boni, et non e converso
(Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 2, art. 6, ad 3). Pleasure is repose in something good, but it is not simply
identical with that good (I-II, q. 34, art. 24). For man, the highest good is knowing the first cause
of things, and this knowing gives rise to pleasure (I-II, q. 3, art. 5; art. 8). Even Kant understands
pleasure to be a constituent of the highest good: morality plus happiness (Glckselichkeitof which
pleasure is, for him, the prime constituent) (Critique of Practical Reason, Book 2, Chapter 2, in Werke,
6:24243). But these two thinkers, and the Socrates of the Philebus and Aristotle too, understand this
conjunction not to be a simple sum, but a relation of cause and effect. The passage I quoted earlier
from On Tyranny, 1012, suggests that Strauss himself does not understand theoria plus hdon to be a
simple sum, but a relation, an irreversible relation, of cause and effect.
55

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Here is another passage by Strauss, in the Restatement appended to On

Tyranny, that speaks convincingly to this issue.
The argument of the [i.e., Xenophons] Hiero implies the question of
whether the philosophic life can be understood in hedonistic terms. It
implies that it cannot be so understood because the rank of the various
kinds of pleasure ultimately depends on the rank of the activities to
which the pleasures are related. Neither the quantity nor the purity of
the pleasure determines in the last resort the rank of human activities.
The pleasures are essentially secondary; they cannot be understood
but with reference to the activities.56

This fine statement is not Strausss last word. He continues it as follows.

The question as to whether the activities or the pleasure are in themselves primary has nothing [!] to do with the question as to whether
someone who engages in an activity is prompted to do so primarily by
the intrinsic value of the activity or by the pleasure which he expects
to enjoy as a consequence of the activity.

Not so. These two questions have everything to do with each other. Perhaps
Strauss suspects that his argument is gravitating toward a species of moralism. And indeed it is.
Earlier in his Restatement, Strauss writes, It is practically impossible to say whether the primary motive of the philosopher is the
desire for admiration [from competent judges] or the desire for the pleasures
deriving from understanding.57 And yet what he says shortly afterwards
implies, correctly, that these alternatives are not exclusive. The philosophers
dominating passion is the desire for truth, i.e., for knowledge of the eternal
order, or the eternal cause or causes of the whole. If, as it seems reasonable to suppose, the philosophers dominating passion is identical with his
primary motive, then this passion is neither desire for the admiration of
others, except as a measure of confirmation that he understands the truth,
nor for the pleasures of understanding, including self-admiration. The primary motive of the philosopher is desire for knowledge of the eternal order,
or the eternal cause or causes of the whole. This knowledge has intrinsic
value for the philosopher.

Strauss, On Tyranny, 204 (emphasis added). See also Natural Right and History, 151, where Strauss
suggests that striving for knowledge of the eternal truth is the ultimate end of man. If striving of any
kind is the ultimate end of man, this end cannot be pleasure.
56

Strauss, On Tyranny, 197. Strauss is engaging with Alexandre Kojves criticism in the paragraph
from which this quotation is excerpted.
57

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Needless to say, we receive pleasure from activities of the

mind that are less exalted than philosophizing, for example, from the study
of mathematics, natural science, history, and other activities that can be
regarded as ancillary or supplementary to philosophizing, But the pleasure
we take in these activities also presupposes the recognition that they are
good. The priority of the recognition that inquiry is good over the pleasure to
which inquiry gives rise is evident upon reflection, though its logical priority
is more evident than its temporal priority. The recognition, or judgment, that
progress in learning is good need not be, and typically is not, made explicitly.
But it is made implicitly, naturally, and rapidly.58
Consider the opening of the Nicomachean Ethics. Though
every choice and every act, as distinct from unintentional motions such as
falling, aim at some good, one does not explicitly judge, much less say, every
time one acts or chooses, that ones act or choice is aiming at some good. In
picking up my coffee cup, for example, I do not say to myself, I am picking
up my coffee cup now because I am aiming at some good. But if Aristotle
is right, then even this little act aims at some good, real or merely apparent.
And he is right. For if I am asked, Why did you just pick up your coffee
cup, I can give a reason, and in elaborating it I will be led to say, sooner or
later, and correctly, that I was aiming at some good. The same is true regarding more deliberate acts and choices, such as setting out to study a Platonic
dialogue. Even there one rarely judges or says, This choice and action aim at
some good. But the judgment is made implicitly, for without it there could
be no aiming, least of all in the case of study. Because the pleasure of inquiry
is a pleasure of the mind and not a bodily pleasure, and because it can even
be experienced simultaneously with bodily pain, the cause that gives rise to
it has to be a mental rather than a bodily cause. And that mental cause is
precisely the recognition that inquiry is good, that it has intrinsic value.59
Thought moves more rapidly than anything else in the world. It is possible, however, to slow
thought down and make ones reasoning explicit. In fact, this is the proper business of logic: not to
speed up thought but to slow it down so that fallacies are less likely to go unnoticed.
58

Note the distinction Socrates makes between pleasures associated with the body, which are easy
to come by and occur immediately (parachrma), and pleasures that follow upon learning and other
activities that involve a measure of effort (Xenophon, Memorabilia II.1.1920, IV.5.1011; cf. Plato,
Protagoras 353c1d4, 355b2, 359d8360a4). Strauss writes that [Socratess] continence regarding
pleasures of the body stems from his awareness of a more lasting pleasure, namely, the pleasure going
with ones belief that one is successful in ones work or that one is growing in virtue (Leo Strauss,
Xenophons Socrates [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972], 28). (Strauss supports this observation with an apt reference to Memorabilia IV.8.6, which is prefigured by I.6.89 and II.1.19, and is
supplemented by IV.8.11.) The belief that Strauss speaks of here is the judgment, or the result of the
judgment, that success in work and growth in virtue are good. Note his contrast between the bodily
pleasures andthe very great pleasures following virtuous activity (115, emphasis added).
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The arguments of Plato and Aristotle that we have been

considering do not add up to a refutation of hedonism across the board but
only of any hedonism, ancient or modern, that commends certain activities
that only give rise to pleasure because they are antecedently recognized as
intrinsically good. Philosophical hedonism, whether ancient or modern, is
particularly vulnerable to criticism on this score. The brute hedonism of a
nonspeaking animal is invulnerable to criticism.60
I am not unaware of the possible objection that I have rather
grossly oversimplified Platos and Aristotles views of the relation between
pleasure and the good. After all, Plato doesnt speak in his own voice, and
most of what he presents Socrates as saying consists of questions posed to his
interlocutors. As for Aristotle, surely it is significant that he employs expressions such as it seems all over the place in his discussion of pleasure (as, in
fact, he does elsewhere as well). Is it not possible that I have read Plato and
Aristotle too literally and therefore not literally enough? Perhaps. But Plato
and Aristotle advance impressive arguments for a subtle but sharp distinction
between the intrinsic good of philosophizing and the pleasure that follows
or supervenes upon it. Unless these arguments can be shown to be unsound
there is no reason to assume that they are not advanced in full seriousness, or
that they are just pedagogically or politically salutary veils concealing a deeper
and not so salutary teaching from inattentive readers and possible persecutors.
6. Kants Disjunction Revisited
Let us return to the claim advanced by Kant that pleasure
and duty are the only possible determining grounds of choice. Plato and
Aristotle seem to be in agreement with him that what motivates one to philosophize is the recognition that philosophizing is intrinsically good, granted
that its goodness is enhanced by pleasure (as a supervening perfection).61 Still,
it might seem odd to say that, for Plato and Aristotle, the choice to philosophize is a matter of duty, for they are not supposed to be moralists. Perhaps
Early on in the dialogue that bears his name, Philebus tries, more or less successfully, to check out of
the conversation (12b1; cf. 19a210, 28b5), and somewhat later may even doze off (Jacob Klein, About
Platos Philebus, 331332). Whether the argument of that dialogue really succeeds in refuting hedonism
is questioned on interesting grounds by David Bolotin, Socrates Critique of Hedonism: A Reading of
the Philebus, Interpretation 13, no. 1 (1985): 1213. I think, however, that Seth Benardete hits the nail
squarely on the head: Hedonism has been so thoroughly refuted that pleasures demotion to fifth place
[culminating at 66c4d2] can only be a sop to Philebus (Tragedy and Comedy of Life, 238).
60

The question whether we would philosophize if we found doing so to be exclusively painful is

wrongly posed. To the extent that philosophizing is accompanied by an awareness of progress in
understanding it is necessarily accompanied by some feeling of pleasure.
61

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Kants disjunction, pleasure or duty, is not exclusive. Are there any possible
candidates for a third determining ground of choice, distinct from these two?
There are not many. One might say that we philosophize
because doing so makes us happy, happiness being what we aim at, ultimately,
in everything we do. And, according to Aristotle, this has to be the truth of
the matter. But then, also according to Aristotle, happiness is an activity of
the soul in accordance with virtue. Pleasure does not enter into his definition
of happiness, but virtue does.62 So, to say that we philosophize because doing
so makes us happy is to say little more than that we philosophize in order to
be in accord with virtue.63 And to try to separate doing something because
it is in accord with virtue from doing something because it is in accord with
duty is to make a distinction without a difference.64
One might say that we philosophize simply because we love
to do so. But that is only to say that we love to love wisdom, and this formulation does not get us very far.65 Aristotle briefly entertains the possibility that
something might be loved simply because it is useful. But he immediately
reduces the useful to some good or some pleasure for which it is useful.66 The
useful is not loved for its own sake. What is loved for its own sake is either the
pleasant or the good. Aristotle, like Kant, presents these two as distinct, and
he does not present a third that is not reducible to the one or the other. Since
he says that we would pursue knowing even if (per impossibile) it brought
us no pleasure at all, and since philosophizing is for the sake of knowing,
Because reason (or rational principlelogos) very much enters the definition of virtue, of moral virtue no less than of intellectual virtue (Nic. Eth. 1106b351107a2, 1138 b22, 1139a517), it thereby enters
the definition of happiness as well (1097a2025, 1098a1318). Aristotle does say that a life of virtue is
essentially pleasant (1099a68; cf. 1098b2023). But, as he makes amply clear, such a life is essentially
pleasant because it is good, and not the other way around (1099a1331). After all, Aristotle says that
pleasure can corrupt (1140b17). To my knowledge, he never says that reason or virtue can corrupt.

62

Because Aristotle defines happiness as an activity of the soul in accord with virtue, and because he
understands pleasure itself to be an activity, one might suspect that he is hinting in his definition that
happiness is pleasure, more precisely the pleasure that accords with virtue, and most precisely the
pleasure that follows upon the best virtue, which is intellectual virtue. But virtue, whether intellectual
or moral, is not an activity. It is a habitus, and the primary activity of this habitus is the virtuous act.
The pleasure one takes in performing the virtuous act is, as Strauss says in a passage we quoted earlier,
essentially secondary.
63

64
Cf. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 163: it is our duty to make the highest activity, as much as
we can, the most urgent or the most needful thing.
65

The formulation that we philosophize because we love wisdom gets us nowhere at all.

Nicomachean Ethics 1155b1720. The same reduction to pleasure or to a good distinct from pleasure
that holds for the useful would obviously hold as well for the advantageous, the helpful, the profitable,
and even the beneficial (from bene-facere).
66

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Aristotle must think that what motivates philosophizing is not a desire for
what is pleasant but a desire for what is good, for a good that is not identical
with pleasure.67 And so we return to the question of what the goodness, as
distinct from the pleasure, of philosophizing consists in.
Aristotle points toward an answer to this question. The man
who most truly loves himself is different from the man who is popularly
reproached for loving himself. The latter, according to Aristotle, is guided
by passion, the former by reason.68 Since to be guided by passion amounts
to making the desire for pleasure per se the determining ground of choice,69
the natural inference is that, for Aristotle, being guided by reason amounts
to making something distinct from the desire for pleasure the determining
ground of choice. Let us call it the good. If this inference is correct, it follows that the good implies rationality as much as pleasure implies feeling,
for Aristotle no less than for Kant. Philosophizing is good because it is an
activity preeminently guided by reason. Aristotle, it seems, is in basic agreement with Kant that thinking and acting in accord with reason, not feeling, is
the unconditioned condition of the human good. Though Aristotle says that
pleasures are activities (energeiai), and hence an end as well, he also says that
certain pleasures have something further as their end. These are the pleasures
of those who are being led [tn agomenn] toward the perfection [telesin]
of [their] nature.70
But, one might respond, perhaps one chooses to philosophize neither for the sake of pleasure, nor out of duty to perfect ones nature
as a rational being, but solely to exult in the overcoming of obstacles to ones
will. In the case of philosophizing, the obstacle to be overcome is ignorance.
Ignorance, however, is an obstacle to the will only because it is an obstacle
to wisdom. Nietzsche writes, Abstract thinking is for many a toilfor me,
on good days, a feast and a frenzy [ein Fest und ein Rausch].71 Why does
Nietzsche experience abstract thinking as a feast and a frenzy? Why wouldnt
any other willfully decided-upon activity be equally a feast and a frenzy?
67

Nicomachean Ethics 1113a30b1, 1174a411. Cf. 1172b2635.

Nicomachean Ethics 1168b281169a18. Note the relation between nous and logos at 1168b351169a1.
The nous is the best part of man (1177a1222). More than anything else it is man (1178a8). And yet the
nous as fully active is not ones own private possession (De anima 430a1025).
68

69

Nicomachean Ethics 1105b2124.

Cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1153a1015, 1153a23. Consider the implications of Socratess expression
follow[!] the logos (Phaedo 107b7; cf. Rep. 394d9).
70

71

Cited by Martin Heidegger in his Nietzsche (Stuttgart: Neske, 1961), 1:4.

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Nietzsche says that philosophy is the most spiritual (or most mentalgeistigste) will to power.72 The philosopher tests his strength and rejoices in
overcoming ignorance. But he feels this overcoming as pleasantas a feast
and a frenzyonly because he recognizes that he has overcome something
that is worthy of overcoming, or in only slightly more moral language, something that he ought to overcome. Nietzsche would, to be sure, object that
ought has nothing to do with it. It is a matter not of ought but of will.
Assuming, however, that this decisionism is reducible to neither the desire
to be in accord with reason nor the desire for pleasurean assumption that
one can doubtits basis, as an act of mere will is fatal to any philosophy.73
In trying to see if there is, contrary to what Kant says, a third
determining ground of choice in addition to the anticipation of pleasure, on
the one hand, and moral principle, on the other, one more possibility needs
to be considered. This possibility is nature. One philosophizes not just for
the sake of pleasure, but not as a matter of duty either. One philosophizes
because it is natural to do so. Fair enough. But what is meant by nature
here? The nature of modern mathematical physics: a nonteleological system
of matter in motion where greater physical force always prevails over lesser
physical force? Hobbess state of nature? Spinozas conatus? Kants complex of
phenomena standing under architectonic laws prescribed to it a priori by the
understanding? Hegels dialectically developed logical idea having gone forth
freely into pure externality? Nietzsches will to power? Those who say that a
man philosophizes simply because it is natural for him to do so probably have
in mind none of these things but something like Aristotles conception of
nature: a general teleological order, of which mans own teleological orientation is but a local though most remarkable manifestation. Since, however, the
conception of nature as an all-embracing teleological order has been seriously
called into question by modern science,74 the claim that a man philosophizes
simply because it is natural for him to do so makes good sense only by referring the choice to philosophize to the nature of man himself, that is, to the
essence of manwhatever may hold for the essences of subhuman entities.

72

Beyond Good and Evil, 10, in Smtliche Werke, 5:22.

Leo Strauss, Preface to Spinozas Critique of Religion, in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New
York: Basic Books, 1968), 25657. The crucial sentence at the end of the first full paragraph on page
256 corrects the somewhat misleading formulation of the same sentence in Spinozas Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), 30. The German translation, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1,
ed. Heinrich Meier (Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 1996), 53, also gets the sentence right.
73

74

Cf. Natural Right and History, 78.

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6. The Appetite of Reason

The essence of man, or human nature according to the
premodern philosophical tradition, is rational animality. Though irrational
animals feel pleasure, they do not philosophize. Mans choice to philosophize is rooted in his rationality. At first glance, philosophizing seems to be
an activity of speculative reason alone. But the choice to philosophize, qua
choice, occurs under the direction, indeed at the instigation, of practical reason. In fact, philosophizing, to the extent that it does not consist solely in the
apprehension of truth, which is wisdom simplicter, but in striving to apprehend truth, is motored throughout by an appetite that is specific to reason,
the rational appetite.
According to Thomas Aquinas, the will is precisely this
appetite of reason.75 Speculative reason and practical reason are not two different powers of the soul, but one only.76 They are one and the same reason
in two different employments, for Thomas just as for Kant.77 According to
Thomas, these two employments are reciprocally related. Practical reason
necessarily employs the speculative principles of identity, noncontradiction,
and the excluded middle in order that its commands be self-consistent at the
most elementary level. And speculative reason necessarily employs the practical precept that ignorance is to be avoided or, put positively, that knowledge,
as constitutive of the good of reasonthe bonum rationis, in Thomass languageis to be pursued.78 To say that one philosophizes according to nature
Thomas Aquinas, Super Sententiis, lib. 2, d. 30, q. 1, art. 3, ad 4; Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 6, introd.;
q. 8, art. 1, co.; q. 56, art. 5, ad 1; cf. art. 3, q. 19, art. 2, co. See Kant, Critique of Practical Reason,
Book 1, Ch. 1, Theorem 3, Remark 1, in Werke, 6:13133. Compare Aristotle, De anima 432b58 and
433a831. According to David Hume, Reason is, and ought [sic!] only to be the slave of the passions,
and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them (A Treatise of Human Nature,
2.3.3.). This view is shared by neither Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, nor Kant. (Socrates seems to
have thought that it is not even possible for knowledge, which is of course an achievement of reason, to
be dragged about like a slave: Nicomachean Ethics 1145b24; cf. Protagoras 351e10352c10).

75

76

Summa Theologiae I, q. 79, art. 8; art. 11.

Devin Stauffer writes of the extraordinary conclusion, in the Republic, that the rule of reason in
the soul, which comes to mean philosophy, is the truest practice of justice. It is also a conclusion that
shows how large is the gap that ultimately emerges between Plato and Kant (Stauffer, Platos Introduction to the Question of Justice [Albany: State University of New York, 2001], 133). Now, whereas Kant
would surely disagree that philosophy alone is the rule of reason in the soul, he would insist just as
much Plato that the rule of reason is the truest practice of justice. The gap between Plato and Kant
would then seem to turn on their different conceptions of reason, its nature, operation, and scope. We
know quite well what Kant meant by reason from the First and Second Critiques and from his lectures
on logic. How well do we know what Plato meant by reason?
77

78
Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 94, art. 2, co. Cf. Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 50 art. 5, ad 3; q. 80, art. 1,
co.; II-II, q. 1, art. 3, ad 1; and Quaestiones Disputatae de Virtutibus, q. 2, art. 2, co.: Nam proprium

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is to say that one philosophizes under the guidance not only of speculative
reason but of practical reason as well.
In fact, the very first concrete precept of natural law that
Thomas Aquinas presents is that one avoid ignorance.79 This precept is
founded in part on the natural inclination we have to know the truth about
God, or as Strauss puts it in a sentence we quoted earlier, to know the eternal order, or the eternal cause or causes of the whole. As rational beings
we have a natural inclination to know minimally whether God exists or not
and, if he does exist, how he is related to our world. And knowing the latter also requires that we know something of the truth about our world. The
precept mandating that ignorance be avoided then mandates not only properly theological inquiries but inquiries into nature, mathematics, ethics, and
related areas as well.80 Few if any people can know the fullness of truth about
these things, and this is the chief reason why Thomas expresses the precept
negatively as avoid ignorance. Avoiding ignorance is, as Kant would put it,
a duty of wide latitude. A lot of discretion is allowed in deciding exactly what
ignorance to avoid. But the latitude that characterizes this precept does not
deprive it of its obligatory character. Through this precept, our own reason
categorically commands us not to squander our capacity for understanding
in idleness, distraction, and the unrelenting pursuit of entertainment. It is
our own reason that commands us to live thoughtfully. And philosophizing,
for those who are able to engage in it, is one way, though it is not the only way,
of living thoughtfully.
By construing the principle of avoiding ignorance as a precept of natural law, has Thomas presupposed a divine lawgiver? He has not.
Our awareness of natural law, and hence of duty as well, is nothing other than
the natural awareness of the principles and operation of our own altogether
natural reason in its practical employment. To be sure, Thomas argues that
our finite reason, in its speculative no less than in its practical employment,
must have Gods infinite reason as its ultimate cause. But that argument
bonum hominis in quantum homo, est bonum rationis, eo quod homini esse est rationale esse.
Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 94, art. 2, co. In this article, Thomas also calls the first principle of practical reason a precept. It is not, however, a concrete precept, but a formal one.
79

80
Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 94, art. 2. This precept does not authorize, much less mandate, pursuing
knowledge about the banal and sordid features of our world, the fascination with which impedes,
rather than complements, pursuing knowledge of the truth about God. On curiositas as concupiscentia
oculorum, see Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 77, art. 5. Curiosity is something quite different from wonder
(admiratio), in spite of being commonly mistaken for it (Summa Theologiae I, q. 12, art. 1; I-II, q. 32,
art. 8; cf. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 36).

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is not the ground of our immediate awareness of the primary precepts of

natural law, including the precept commanding us to avoid ignorance. These
precepts, Thomas explicitly says, are self-evident (per se nota). The existence
of God, on the other hand, is not self-evident.81 According to Thomas, it must
be demonstrated. Our knowledge of the primary precepts of natural law is
then, for Thomas, more cognitively certain than our knowledge of the existence of God, a fact that by itself deflates the received criticism that Thomas
grounds our awareness of these precepts on natural theology, which itself is
only revealed theology in masquerade.82
Natural law is neither a merely agreed-upon or inherited
convention (nomos) nor a revealed commandment (mitzvah) issuing from
the inscrutable, not to say blind or tyrannical, will of God. According to
Thomas, natural law is a rule issuing from natural reason itself, just as the
moral law is for Kant.83 But though the awareness of natural law does not rest
on theological presuppositions, it arguably has theological implications. These
implications are not immediate, however. And they can be resisted; whether
successfully or not is a matter of dispute.
7. The Moral Foundation
Several objections to the whole line of argumentation we
have been following, and the disjunctive syllogism underlying it, suggest
themselves. In the first place, it might be said that the determining ground of
the choice to philosophize is neither the intrinsic goodness of philosophizing
nor the pleasure that is anticipated to arise from philosophizing, nor is it some
third thing distinct from these two. Rather it is these two together: neither by
itself but, rather, both together, intrinsic goodness and pleasure. But Aristotle
81

Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 94, art. 2, co.; cf. I, q. 2, art. 1.

See Strauss, Natural Right and History, 164. I have addressed this criticism at length in my book,
Natural Reason and Natural Law: An Assessment of the Straussian Criticisms of Thomas Aquinas, currently under review for publication.

82

Thomas understands law in general to be a rule of reason, eternal law to be the divine reason
whereby the world is governed, and natural law to be the participation of the eternal law in the
rational creature, who through his own reason is able to govern himself (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 90,
art. 1, co.; q. 91, art. 1, co; q. 91, art. 2, co.). According to Strauss, moral man as such is the potential
believer (Leo Strauss, The Law of Reason in the Kuzari, in Persecution and the Art of Writing
[Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952], 140). Moral man as such is not moral because he is a believer. He is
a believer because he is moral. According to Strauss, then, mans morality is rooted not in his belief
but in something deeper than his belief. According to Thomas Aquinas and Kant, mans morality, just
like his philosophizing, is rooted in his reason and nowhere else. This is true even if mans reason is
created by God, a claim that, to repeat, Thomas thinks can be proved, and that Kant thinks cannot be
disproved.
83

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claims that we would choose an activity such as philosophizing even if it did

not give rise to pleasure. If he is right, then it is confusing at best to assert that
it is the intrinsic goodness of philosophizing only in combination with its
supervening pleasure that determines the choice to philosophize.
A second objection is that framing the issue before us in
terms of the choice to philosophize is misleading if not tendentious. Perhaps one does not actually choose to philosophize at all. Perhaps one just
finds that one must philosophize. Thats what is meant by saying that one
philosophizes neither in order to feel pleasure nor as a duty, but by nature.
Philosophizing happens automatically, like it or not, but in either case as
a matter, not of choice, but of a necessity deeper than any freedom. And
nature is just this necessity.
Now, to be sure, one sometimes gets a philosophical problem on ones mind and cannot let it go. One might even feel tormented by it.
But that only confirms Thomas Aquinass claim that reason has an appetite
of its own. Even the very wonder out of which philosophy is understood by
Plato and Aristotle to originate is possible only for a rational, though finite,
being. Reason is teleological, because reason as such desires knowledge. And
it aims at knowledge of its very nature, unless impeded. Still, philosophizing
as distinct from initial wonder does not take place automatically. It involves
deliberating and weighing alternatives: what books to read, how much time
to give to a particular philosopher and to his critics, whom to talk with about
ones thoughts, and so forth. These things do not just happen to us. We deliberately choose to do them, however this choosing has to be understood.
Without going here into the vexed issue of how choice can be
free, I note only that even Plato and Aristotle seem quite comfortable employing the vocabulary of obligation and ought, such as chr and gerundive-like
expressions such as haireton and prakteon.84 Strauss himself does not hesitate
to use the word ought. And oughtshould as wellimplies not just
can, as is frequently said today. Ought, typically when used with respect
to the past, and almost always when used with respect to the present and
future, implies might not as well, and hence an absence of necessitation.85
The word haireton should sometimes be translated as chosen, simply. But sometimes it can only
be translated as choiceworthy. See Terence Irwins discussion of this term in the glossary to his
translation of the Nicomachean Ethics, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999), 319.
84

This is especially evident when one deliberates about what one ought to do. Though Robert Bartlett
wishes to dissociate Platos teaching from moralism of any stripe (Platos Critique of Hedonism in
the Philebus, 141, 143, 147), he himself says, impressively and in the very first sentence of his essay,
85

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Whatever variant of determinism one might be wedded to as a matter of

theory or faith, one cannot in ones actual deliberation and discourse about
action avoid thinking and speaking as though the future is not fixed, that
it could turn out this way rather than that, and that which way it turns out
is in some measure the result of our choosing.86 This fact hardly disproves
determinism. But it strongly suggests that we do not know, indubitably know,
that determinism is true. And it should go without saying that if free choice
cannot be indubitably known to be impossible, and if the related concept of
deserving something is meaningfuland, as we have seen, Strauss himself
thinks it is meaningfulthen the Straussian critique of the moral presuppositions of belief in revelation, indeed, even belief in the bare possibility of
revelation, loses most of its force.
A third objection to the line of argumentation I have presented is that in locating the choice to philosophize in a precept of natural
law I am overlooking the fact that natural law, unlike natural right, plays no
role in Aristotles ethical teaching, and that it is tacitly ruled out by Plato,
according to whom the rule of wisdom is superior to the rule of law. I am
not, however, overlooking this fact. I am ignoring it. For I am not persuaded
that Plato and Aristotle penetrated more deeply into the principles, evidence,
and operation of practical reason, and the way practical reason sustains the
operation of speculative reason, than did Thomas Aquinas. Furthermore,
though Aristotle indeed says that not only conventional right but natural
right as well is changeable, the whole sphere of right (or justicedik), is limited to ones relation to others.87 It does not, according to Aristotle, concern
ones relationship to oneself. Natural law, then, is broader than natural right,
because it regulates ones relation to oneself as well as to others. Even if all
principles regulating ones relation to others were changeableand such a
thing, though certainly alleged often enough, has never been conclusively
demonstratedit still would not follow that all principles regulating ones
relation to oneself are changeable. That philosophy is the most choiceworthy
way of life for those who have the ability and the opportunity to live it is a
principle that neither Aristotle nor Plato would dispute. Though this principle
is limited in scopeonly some people are in a position to philosophizeit is
that the guiding question of political philosophy is the question, How ought I to live (141). To his
credit, Bartlett does not place the word ought in quotation marks. Cf. Strauss, Natural Right and
History, 5253.
The practical [good] is what is capable of being otherwise (De anima 433a3031). Cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1139a14, b8, 1140a32; On Interpretation 19a7b4.

86

87

Nicomachean Ethics 1134b2434, 1130a38.

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nonetheless exceptionless and unchangeable within its scope. For those who
are able to philosophize, doing so is something they owe to themselves.88
But right on this point a fourth objection can be raised. Even
if it is the case that what motivates the choice to philosophize is the intrinsic
goodness of doing so, it does not follow that philosophizing is engaged in as
a duty. But since Kant has not yet been refuted in his claim that duty and the
pleasure exhaust all possible determining grounds of choice, and since the
second is ruled out by Plato and Aristotle as well as by Thomas and Kant,
we are left only with the first unless, as seems unlikely, a third determining
ground of choice can be found that is as clearly distinct from these two as
these two are from each other.89
However, one might persist, even if the pleasure of philosophizing consists in the awareness that one is progressing, and even if this
pleasure depends on the antecedent conviction that progress in wisdom is
intrinsically good, that still does not mean that this good is a moral good.
But why not? All activities that are pursued for their own sake as intrinsically good rather than for the feeling of pleasure they give rise to, whether
these activities relate to others or to oneself only, are on the same plane by
virtue of the character of their motive, whether we choose to call this motive
moral or not. To do or pursue something because one understands it to
be intrinsically good, independently of whatever pleasure it may give rise
to, is to act in accordance with the dictates of practical reason, for both
Thomas and Kant.90 It is reason itself that tells us, indeed commands us, to
think consistently, just as it commands us to act consistently. Consistency,
whether in thinking or in acting, is integrity. Serious thinking about serious
matters, the thinking that is constitutive of philosophizing, is not without
an ethical motivation, which is to say, a moral motivation.91 There is then an
Without the conception of natural law one could not owe anything to oneself. See Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 100, art. 5, arg. 1; ad 1. Owing something to oneself is not a figure of speech. It is a fact that
we rightly recognize when, if only in the privacy of our own minds, we own up with the appropriate
measure of shame to having thought or acted irrationally (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 87, art. 1, co; cf.
Nicomachean Ethics 1128b28).
88

To the objection that Plato and Aristotle do not have a word for duty (though consider Aristotles
use of to deon at Nicomachean Ethics 109425 and 1107a4cf. Pericless use of ta deonta in Thucydides
2.43), it can be countered that they do not have a word for moralism either.
89

I am inclined to think that Plato and Aristotle would grant this as well. Any solid evidence to the
contrary would, I think, prove only that they did not understand practical reason, or reason in general, as well as did Thomas and Kant.
90

It is generally agreed that Cicero came up with the word moral (moralis). See the opening of De
fato as the text has come down to us. Cicero explicitly equates mores with the Greek thos, and he
91

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underappreciated affinity between philosophy and moralism, even if der

Philosoph liebt die Moralisten nicht.92
Kants general argument that one would not take pleasure
in doing ones duty for its own sake unless one were antecedently convinced
that doing so was intrinsically good is sound. The only reason philosophizing
seems not to be morally obligatory is that it is, on the whole, so much more
pleasant than painful. But this pleasure, as Aristotle persuasively argues, is
a secondary perfection. The primary perfection is the operation of reason
itself, that is, the act of a natural habitus that is distinctive of our humanity.
It is self-evident to a rational being that thinking in accordance with reason
is good; and the same is true of acting in accordance with reason. The two
go together to make up the bonum rationis, which is the proper good of man,
ones own good to the extent that one is rational and not an animal merely.
The very pleasure of philosophizing has a moral foundation. It is moral pleasure exactly as the old moralist Kant defined moral pleasure. For it is, and is
experienced as, deserved pleasure.

uses moralis as an adjective modifying that part of philosophy that is concerned with ethics. Thomas
Aquinas uses moralis and ethicus interchangeably, as does Kant with moralisch and sittlich.
92

Nietzsche, Preface to The Case of Wagner, in Smtliche Werke, 6:11.

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Hermeneutics and Political Theory

283

Hermeneutics and Political Theory1

For Heinrich Meier on his sixtieth birthday
J rgen Gebh a r dt
[email protected]

I . There is only one political science:

hermeneutical political science
A few years ago, the editors of a volume on interpretive
social science propagated the interpretive turn in social science and tried
to inspire practitioners and students of social inquiry to violate the positivist taboo against joining evaluative concerns with descriptions of facts.2
According to the editors, the interpretive turn refocuses attention on the
concrete varieties of cultural meaning, in their particularity and complex texture, but without falling into the traps of historicism or cultural relativism.3
In this respect, interpretative social science involves a reflexive, that is to say,
a theoretical, posture toward sociohistorical reality. This posture is called
interpretation. It is carried out according to specific principles and methodological procedures that, from the multifaceted realm of human existence,
extract a concept of truth concerning the constitution of the sociohistorical
world and the human conditionboth considered in the context of a reflection on reality in the most comprehensive sense of the term.
Interpretive science is, in this sense, hermeneutical science.
As noted above, the interpretive turn in social science is intended to offer
The author would like to thank Charles Butterworth of the University of Maryland for all his help
and assistance on the piece.
1

Paul Rabinow and William M. Sullivan , The Interpretive Turn, in Interpretive Social Science: A
Second Look, ed. Rabinow and Sullivan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 1.
2

Ibid., 6.

2013 Interpretation, Inc.

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an intellectual and scientific alternative to the mainstream social science of

verification. Of course, it remains an open question whether this is not just
another futile attempt to bring an end to normal social sciences domination of the field. But the public standing of the latter may have suffered a bit
more today than in it has in the past owing to its persistent failure in recent
times to predict and understand the fundamental changes of the global
world. In a rapidly changing world, normal political science continues to
misinterpret such important phenomena as the sudden demise of the communist states, the resurgence of politicoreligious movements, and the failure
of democratic and economic experiments in non-Western societies. Many
years ago, Charles Taylor pleaded for an interpretive political science and
argued that the categorical restrictions of mainstream science
are a severe handicap and prevent us from coming to grips with
important problems of our day which should be the object of political
science. We need to go beyond the bounds of a science based on verification to one which would study the inter-subjective and common
meanings embedded in social reality.4

The ongoing frenzy of activity that ranges from more refined theory modeling to attempts to develop still more rigorous methodologies, to repeated calls
for a reorientation in political science, seems to be driven by the unconscious
fear that the discipline is becoming scientifically irrelevant. To the defenders
of a social scientific understanding of politics, hermeneutic science moves
beyond the boundaries of science when it violates the axiomatic belief in the
observer-independent world about which a researcher may systematically
discover true facts and reject false ones. On the basis of such a belief system,
the discipline has turned into a sectarian community of the enlightened. As
American political scientist Andrew Rehfeld recently explained to unreconstructed political theorists:
if political theorists believe that social science cannot be done in the
mode of natural scienceit is unclear why they would want to remain
in a discipline with so many scholars who believe it can be and who
are dedicated to purusing [sic] that aim. So even if the critics are right,
and social science is not science at all, the complexity argument does
not defend political theorys inclusion in a discipline dedicated to a
scientific study of politics: rather it justifies its emigration out of it.5

Charles Taylor, Interpretation and the Sciences of Man, in Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, Philosophy
and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 52.
4

Andrew Rehfeld, Offensive Political Theory, Political Science and Politics 8, no. 2 (June 2010): 477.

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To such notions, Taylor has remarked critically: The profound option of

mainstream social scientists for the empiricist conception of knowledge and
science makes it inevitable that they should accept the verification model
of political science and the categorial principles that this entails.6 This is
true insofar as a conscious decision for a certain scientific understanding of
politics is involved.
But, I would argue, this is only part of the story. The fact is
that this seemingly scientific notion of political science that has crystallized
into the self-interpretation of the discipline is grounded in a general complex of meaning that also harbors far-reaching theoretical interpretations.
Because these interpretations are based on fundamental ideas of Western,
that is, primarily Anglo-Saxon, self-understanding, they precede all empiricist methodological issues. This can be seen clearly in Samuel Huntingtons
sober analysis of the theoretical content of American political sciencecurrently the dominant modality of the discipline:
There is not an American science of politics; there is a democratic science of politics, which developed first and fullest in the United States
because the United States was the first and fullest democracy in the
modern world. That science is a universal science to the extent that
democracy is a universal system of government.7

Huntingtons presidential address of 1987 might overstate the case a bit, but
a closer look at the central theoretical categories that guide even the most
scientific research in the discipline bear out the truth of his interpretation.
The tacit and consequently unquestioned universality of
the hermeneutical underpinnings of mainstream political science is clearly
revealed in the methodologically rejuvenated comparative science of politics
that results in a theory of political development which places the Atlantictype polity at the summit of human political achievement.8 This overlapping
of the self-understanding of Western society and the categories of political
science justifies itself in terms of the canonized history of political theory that
originated in nineteenth-century liberalism and embodied the idea of historical progress from Hellenic beginnings to modern constitutional democracy.
6

Taylor, Interpretation and Sciences of Man, 41.

Samuel P. Huntington, One Soul at a Time: Political Science and Political Reform, American
Political Science Review 82, no. 1 (March 1988): 67; cf. John G. Gunnell , American Political Science,
Liberalism, and the Invention of Political Theory, American Political Science Review 82, no. 1 (March
1988): 7187.
7

Taylor, Interpretation and the Sciences of Man, 42.

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This hermeneutical exposition of a developmental history of political theory

appealed to the historical confirmation of the self-evident truths of the modern Western polity as they were documented by the godfather of the new
Anglo-Saxon academic theory discourse, William A. Dunning, in his History of Political Theories (190220) and reaffirmed by the American George
H. Sabine, author of the Anglophone worlds most popular political theory
textbook, A History of Political Theory (1937). Sabine and the plethora of
authors who followed him proclaimed that
liberalism may be understood, with good historical justification, as the
present-day culmination of the whole Western political tradition and
as the secular form of Western civilization. In this broad sense liberalism would be practically identical in meaning with what, in popular
political usage, is more likely nowadays to be called democracy.9

This self-assertive hermeneutics has an impact on the conceptual apparatus of normal political science andI think rightlyharks
back to the citizen-centric notion of Athenian politics and the attendant
theoretical interpretations of Plato and Aristotle and their Roman and
Christian students. This legacy preserves the more or less tacit assumption of
human nature being the lynchpin of all interpretive understanding of politics
in Western political thoughtat least as far as it resonates with the famous
observation in the Federalist, No. 51: but what is government itself but the
greatest of all reflections on human nature?10
In the course of the scientific advancement of the discipline,
however, the traditional idea of civil government supported by a historicist
hermeneutic was wedded to the classical European state-centered and powercentered interpretation of politics as seen, for example, in Max Webers social
science. In modernity, the state holds the monopoly on the use of force, and
Webers understanding of politics is closely tied to his concept of the political association (politischer Verband) that successfully claims the monopoly
of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Politically
oriented action is social action insofar as it aims to influence the leadership
of the political association in terms of the appropriation, expropriation,
redistribution, or allocation of governmental powers. Postwar American
political science subjected Weber to semantic Americanization (with the help
George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory (London: George G. Harp, 1951), 620; cf. Jrgen
Gebhardt, ber das Studium der politischen Ideen in philosophisch-historischer Absicht, in Politik,
Hermeneutik , Humanitt, ed. Clemens Kauffmann et al. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2004), 4350.
9

10
James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers, ed. Isaak Kramnick
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987), 319.

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287

of Talcott Parsons), but retained his central idea of political rule: the authoritative domination of the ruler over the ruled. In David Eastons functionalist
system-analysis, a democratically watered-down Weberianism establishes
the defining property of politics: a social action qualifies as political insofar
as it is related to the authoritative allocation of values for the whole society
as it is influenced by the distribution and use of power.11 Today authors like
Rehfeld carry this Weberian legacy even further, indeed to the extreme of
claiming that the only genuine object of political theorizing is the use, or
potential use, of power over people.12
Thus, Western political science is remarkably Janus faced:
on the one hand, its commitment to liberal democracy promotes the normative project of a civic culture that sustains the institutional framework
of a self-governing citizenry; on the other hand, it is based on the powercentered understanding of domination and the Weberian epistemology that
goes with itits European positivistic stance merging with homegrown
American scientism. Taylors critique of normal political science is based on
his understanding of a genuine hermeneutical science of politics. But here
my focus is on the more general thesis that we have to deal with an implicit
clash of hermeneutics because the dominant paradigms of normal Western
political science are built on tacitly held and practiced interpretations that
blend the two major historical traditions of the political into a self-descriptive unity, without however differentiating between the two traditions. This
self-understanding of political science identifies itself with the predominant self-interpretation of modern Western society and, with the help of an
empiricist methodology, transforms this societal self-interpretation into an
observer-independent social system that simulates the phenomenal world of
natural science.
Eric Voegelin points to the theoretical fallacy that is at the
base of this interpretative restriction: A theory that insists on discussing
politics in terms of Anglo-Saxon democracy cannot deal adequately even
with the Western national states, and not at all with the political organization, e.g., of Asiatic civilizations. He concludes that it must separate what is
essential from the historically contingent andbreak with the habit of treating the institutions of a particular national state at a particular time as if they

11

David Easton, The Political System (New York: Alfred A. Knopf , 1963), 14546.

12

Rehfeld, Offensive Political Theory, 473.

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truly manifested the nature of man.13 Taylors argument for a hermeneutical

science draws on this anthropological principle, and he writes:
we have to think of man as a self-interpreting animal. He is necessarily so, for there is no such thing as the structure of meanings for him
independently of his interpretation of them; for one is woven into the
other. But then the text of our interpretation is not that heterogeneous
from what is interpreted; for what is interpreted is itself an interpretation; a self-interpretation which is embedded in a stream of action. It
is an interpretation of experiential meaning which contributes to the
constitution of this meaning.14

Meaning-generated experiences translate into intersubjective individual

meanings that in turn articulate shared meanings in terms of the common
reference world that conditions all public life and constitutes the basis of
community. Societal self-interpretation makes up the common world. But
the very idea of something which is in the common world in contradistinction to what is in all the individual worlds is totally opaque to empiricist
epistemology.15 The restrictions of methodological individualism do not
allow for common worlds of meaning and thus they eclipse the ultimate constituents of community building.
Therefore, as Taylor contends, science has to proceed hermeneutically: its most primitive data would be readings of meanings: the
meanings are for a subject in a field or fields; they are moreover meanings
which are partially constituted by self-definitions, which are in this sense
already interpretations, and which can thus be re-expressed or made explicit
by a science of politics.16 But as to the characteristics of this scientific explication of the preexisting pluralist realm of meaning, Taylor confines himself
to the quest for a semantic that would express understanding across cultures
and societies beyond their respective self-interpretations. He argues:
the adequate language in which we can understand another society is
not our language of understanding, or theirs, but rather what one could
call a language of conspicuous contrast. This would be a language in
which we could formulate both their way of life and ours as alternative
possibilities in relation to some human constants at work in both.17
Eric Voegelin, The Oxford Political Philosophers, in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 11,
Published Essays, 19531965 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 25.
13

14

Taylor, Interpretation and the Sciences of Man, 26.

15

Ibid., 40.

16

Ibid., 52.

17

Charles Taylor, Understanding and Ethnocentricity, in Philosophy and the Human Sciences, 125.

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Taylor does not draw the conclusion that explaining the historical field of
human self-interpretations by understanding them would amount to a
hermeneutically controlled philosophical theory of politics. If, as Taylor
maintains, the language of perspicuous contrast were the extended language
of human possibilities, it would have to bring into focus the structure of
human existence, because what is constant in the history of humankind is
human nature itself.
In his radical critique of modern hermeneutics the dissident
Straussian Stanley Rosen poses the question whether a theory of interpretation is possible on theoretical grounds.18 In his highly problematical
and somewhat idiosyncratic reading, the whole hermeneutical enterprise
signals the decay of theory into interpretation, as evidenced by the deconstructive hermeneutics of postmodern intellectuals. Rosen interprets the
history of modern hermeneutics from the vantage point of the specific political and speculative phenomenon of postanthropological deconstructivism in
order to dismiss all hermeneutical grounding of the reflexive, that is to say
philosophical, theory of human affairs.
As the scope of hermeneutics has expandedthe two original sources
of hermeneutical meaning, God and man, have vanished, taking with
them the cosmos or world and leaving us with nothing but our own
garrulity, which we choose to call the philosophy of language, linguistic philosophy, or one of their synonyms. If nothing is real, the real is
nothing; there is no difference between the written line of a text and
the blank spaces between them.19

This suggests a developmental logic of modern hermeneutics that is unwarranted. Indeed without a point of reference, interpreting the common world
of human meaning results in deconstructivist absurdities.
Rosen is correct to say if there is no human nature that
remains constant within historical change, and so defines the perspectives of
individual readers as perspectives upon a common humanity, then reading is
impossible.20 But he is not willing to acknowledge that these perspectives are
part and parcel of an interpretative discourse that links political theory philosophically and historically to hermeneutics in order to understand modernity
in terms of a reflexive modernity. Rosen would deny even the possibility
18

Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 143.

19

Ibid., 161.

20

Ibid., 146.

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of such an interpretative discourse as demonstrated by his critique of Leo

Strausss political philosophy as an Enlightenment-style rhetorica critique
that turns Strauss into a quasi Nietzschean entangled in hermeneutics and
misreading the perennial philosophy that Rosen wants to defend. However,
such a position begs the question whether a philosophical theory of politics,
rightly understood, is not dependent on modern hermeneutical scholarship
that is in the pursuit of the very themes of the perennial philosophy. After
all, over the ages and across cultures, it has articulated some essential truths
about human being and social orderalbeit not in a catalogue of normative
propositions or prescriptions.
II. Hermeneutics and the human condition
It remains to be seen whether the calls for a rejuvenated
interpretive social science will be heard. In view of the current interest in
hermeneutics, a renewed discussion of the theoretical grounding of hermeneutical science may indeed be in order. This requires reflection on the
questions that have been at the forefront of scholarly discourse on the modern
hermeneutical project of Geisteswissenschaft since its beginnings in Germany in the work of Schleiermacher, Dilthey, and the latters students. The
responses to these questions differed and differ in form and substance across
the social and historical fields that derive their disciplinary identity (cognitive, historical, and social) from the hermeneutic modality of the scholarly
pursuit of knowledge which is distinguished from the modalities of research
in the natural sciences. Of course, the conflict is still raging and, as we have
seen, especially in political science.
What is at stake, according to Gadamer, who is without a
doubt one of the most influential proponents of modern hermeneutical science, is the self-understanding of man in the modern age of science.21 This
is because even though in what the human sciences contribute to human
self-understanding they do not approach the natural sciences in exactness
and objectivity, they nonetheless do contribute to human self-understanding
insofar as they in turn are based on human self-understanding.22 Gadamers
seminal exposition of a philosophical hermeneutics revises and reformulates the central tenets of the original German project of a philosophical
scholarship that is epistemologically grounded in a synthesis of philosophical
21

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tbingen: Mohr, 1975), 519.

Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Problem of Historical Consciousness, in Interpretive Social Science,

ed. Rabinow and Sullivan, 86.
22

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291

self-reflection and historical understanding and which purports to reconcile

the idea of objective knowledge with the notion of the irreversible experience
of the historicity of human existencethe hallmark of modernity. Neither
here nor in the closer look at the defining characteristics of a hermeneutical
science of the human that follows am I concerned with the intricate complexities of the hermeneutical paradigm itself. Rather, my concern is with the
question whether the implicitly interpretive science of politics can reasonably
be confronted with the quest for a hermeneutically informed philosophical
theory of politics. The point requires serious consideration because German Geisteswissenschaft never reflected on political reality and consciously
excluded theorizing on the political per se, notwithstanding the fact that it
was bound up with the ancient philosophical tradition. As a result, it was
political only by implication.
The formation of modern hermeneutics as a science in its
own right was loosely connected with the German predicament in the era
of the great revolutions that shattered the traditional political and spiritual
orders and brought forth a realignment of social and political forces. In an
age of widespread moral and intellectual uncertainty, of crumbling authority
and diverging philosophical schools, the cultural elites were confronted with
the disintegration of community in a nation that depended heavily on cultural unity because the attempts at political unity had failed. Hermeneutical
science translated the heterogeneous interpretive claims of theology and classical philology into one unified interpretative science. It was to provide for an
authoritative understanding of the sociohistorical world that would safeguard
the cultural traditions of society and secure the ethical unity of the shared
cultural life by virtue of a universally valid self-interpretation of humanbeing. The specific character of German hermeneutics comes to the fore in
Diltheys original critique of the moral and political sciences. He disparages
the positivistic adaption of French and English social science to the model of
the natural sciences and goes on to diagnose the more fundamental defect of
traditional political science in Robert Mohls science of the statethe German equivalent of western European liberal theory. According to Dilthey, in
the present situation the moral and political sciences acquire true theoretical
relevance only if they develop into a science of ethics (Wissenschaft der Sitten)
in cooperation with other sciences; their practical relevance stems from their
involvement in the struggles, threatening dangers, and volatile movements of
life in society. Dilthey transforms moral and political science into a science

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that, in the last analysis, focuses on the moral world that is grounded in the
scientific construction of an objective system of morality (Sittlichkeit).23
It is beyond the scope of this paper to present Diltheys multilayered and, in many respects, contradictory project of Geisteswissenschaft.
It was intended to reconcile the postulate of objective knowledge with the
historical notion of relativity that was caused by the all pervading consciousness of the historicity of human existence the hallmark of modernity. A
Geisteswissenschaft made up of all sociohistorical disciplines would accomplish this task by means of an epistemological synthesis of philosophical
self-reflection and historical understanding that would produce a unified
hermeneutical logic of research for the humanities. The a priori of any cognition is the coherence of human life (Lebenszusammenhang), as it is given
throughout the whole range of human experience. It comes to the fore in the
sociohistorical world as it emerges from the unfathomable depth of life, in
terms of a common spiritual world of mutual understanding being the pivot
and ultimate object of hermeneutical research.
Dilthey designated this sphere of community as the realm
of objective spirit (Geist) comprising all manifestations of life in the mode
of objectifications of the spirit. This world of the spirit is an interrelation of
effects that permanently generates values, realizes goals, and produces goods
through the interaction of individuals, communities, and cultural systems.
The intellectual world of the spirit constitutes the sociohistorical world in
terms of these structural units in time and space. By turning toward the
sociohistorical world, the reflecting human mind moves in a common spiritual world, thereby enabling man to understand and decipher the historical
sediments of the spirit in the testimonies of the past. Dilthey transposed the
Protestant hermeneutic of textual exegesis and literary and philosophical
hermeneutics into the study of the historical world which he conceived in the
manner of a text to be deciphered: Life and history have a meaning, as do
letters in a word.24 In philosophical self-reflection the sociohistorical world,
expressing the world of the spirit, attains objective knowledge of itself. Thus,
through the hermeneutical logic of research, the virtually formless chaos of
reality is shown to rest on an underlying and structurally ordered meaningful whole.

23

Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1957), 5:73.

24

Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig: Teubner, 1942), 7:281.

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293

History is the most powerful tool for giving expression to ones inner
self and enabling it to speak and explain. Whatever man finds in
himself, he can discover reflected in history because history reveals
everything that is inside of man and allows him to become aware of it.
Self-reflection is the foundation of knowledge about the deepest points
of the status humanitatis and how it influences mans view and knowledge of himself. Thus the Geisteswissenschaften constitute the deepest
points in the essence of mans inner experience.25

Within the open horizon of history, the Geisteswissenschaften disclose to

the modern human being the common ground of human life. In this sense,
they were termed Lebensphilosophie.
The implicit politics of Diltheys hermeneutical science
determined its purpose in the contemporary world: Mans self-reflection,
societys reflection about itself, should help to develop the strength and direction of active intervention in thought and action.26 The urgency of this call
for human agency was motivated by Diltheys conviction that the great
European cultures were in a state of decline: confronted with the imminent double threat of the social-democratic rise to power on one side and the
Slavic barbarian aspiration to conquer Europe on the other. Thus, he saw that
the task of the day was to construct a social epoch which includes the valid
features of individualism in an organized social order. Such a task requires
the participation of philosophy which increases the ability to solve such
problems.27 Diltheys science is devoted to a cultural reform that would realize the very synthesis of spirit and power, the ideal embodiment of which was a
nation modeled upon the Prussian monarchical state.28 Dilthey demonstrates
clearly the primary intention of hermeneutics to be the social reconstruction
of the cultural order of society in order to forestall an imminent decay of the
existing public order, politics and the state being considered epiphenomena
of the cultural world. In a sense, Geisteswissenschaft is a substitute for the
defunct practical philosophy and political theory, but devoid of any clear-cut
notion of the political.

25

Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 19:276.

26

Ibid., 19:304.

27

Ibid., 19:3034.

Cf. the excellent exposition of the problem by Marion Marquard, Die Konstruktion der Hermeneutik aus dem Geist der Politik: Zum Verhltnis von Hermeneutik und Politik bei Wilhelm Dilthey,
in Philosophiegeschichte und Hermeneutik, ed. Volker Caysa and Karl-Dietrich Eichler (Leipzig:
Leipziger Universittsverlag, 1996), 27790.
28

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Dilthey understood his work as a response to the crisis of

the German Empire after 1871, whose integration was threatened by the
ongoing struggle of conflicting Weltanschauungen and the destructive forces
of revolution and democracy. But his Geisteswissenschaft didnt reach the
center stage of intellectual culture until after the defeat of 1918. The profound
political and cultural crisis during the Weimar Republic gave new life to the
quest for the grounding of intellectual lifein reality, in the hope of reaching
a synthesis of learning with the realities of human existence.
The revision and reorientation in terms of Geisteswissenschaft followed, in general, different paths. First, there was Heideggers
analysis of Dasein. Heidegger turned understanding into the primordial
accomplishment of human Dasein as being-in-the-world. The early Heidegger speaks of the hermeneutics of facticity because understanding is an
original mode of the being of human life. Heideggers existential philosophy
dissolves not only politics but also the sociohistorical world in general into
human Dasein. It might suffice to note that the implicit politics of his philosophical project revealed itself in his identification with the national-socialist
movement. But it was Hans-Georg Gadamer, whose philosophical hermeneutics originally derived its theoretical stance from Heidegger, who became
the key figure of twentieth-century German hermeneutics.
In Gadamers work, the classical hermeneutic legacy comes
to the fore. Modern consciousnessprecisely as historical consciousness
takes a reflexive position concerning all that is handed down by tradition.
Historical consciousness does not blindly believe in the voice of the past,
but, in reflecting on it, places it back within the context of where it took root
in order to see the significance and relative value proper to it. This reflexive
posture toward tradition is called interpretation.
This notion of interpretation is considered to be a universal
concept designed to encompass tradition as a whole, insofar as it presents
itself as a linguistic cosmos to be deciphered by the art of interpretation. As
such, it is applicable to whatever is bequeathed to us by history, written and
verbal traditions, spiritual and mimed expressions, as well as to transmitted
forms of human behavior.29 The interpreter encounters human reality, that is,
sociohistorical reality, filtered through tradition and by interpretation discovers the meanings of the past in order to blend them into the interpreters
own hermeneutically informed understanding of the human world. Thus, the
29

Gadamer, The Problem of Historical Consciousness, 9091.

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295

practitioner of hermeneutic science appropriates the traditionally transmitted truth and knowledge and integrates them into his own life practice by
providing them with the ethical know-how of responsible reasonableness,
phronesis in the Aristotelian sensefor Gadamer, the fundamental virtue
that guides communal life. Indeed, Gadamer contends that hermeneutical
philosophy is the heir to the older tradition of practical philosophy and its
main purpose is to justify the way of reason and defend ethical and political
reason against the domination of a technology based on science.30 Aristotles
analysis of ethical knowledge is central to Gadamers interpretative approach
to tradition, which is actually an apolitical Aristotelianism. As such, it represents a particular tradition of German nineteenth-century academic
philosophy: phronesis is not the virtue that prepares the ethically informed
and politically minded citizen for political agency, but a virtue that has been
cleansed of the political and transformed into a hermeneutically reflected
model of ethical reasoning to be applied by the ethical consciousness in
accord with the exigencies of the concrete situation.31 Here, as Gadamers
statement above seems to indicate, implicit politics come to the fore in his
insistence that differentiating the ethical know-how of phronesis from technical know-how as the formative principle of hermeneutical philosophy will
prepare the way for a society to be ordered by practical reason.
But in a critical account of Gadamers appropriation of Aristotle, Richard J. Bernstein points to the strange disappearance of classical
political science as a science of principles: What Gadamer himself realizesbut I do not think he squarely faces the issues that he raisesis that
we are living in a time when the very conditions required for the exercise of
phronesisthe shared acceptance and stability of universal principles and
lawsare themselves breaking down.32 Just as Aristotle saw the continuity
and movement from ethics to politics, one would think that Gadamer would
have seen the necessity for this continuity in his appropriation of phronesis.
But he shies away from the question of what is to be done when the community itself is corruptwhen there is a breakdown of its nomos and of a
rational discourse about the norms that ought to govern our practical lives.33
Bernstein contends that the logic of Gadamers argument requires a probHans-Georg Gadamer, Hermeneutics and Social Science, Philosophy and Social Criticism 2,
no. 4 (1975): 30716.

30

31

Gadamer, The Problem of Historical Consciousness, 12024; Wahrheit und Methode, 29899.

Richard J. Bernstein, From Hermeneutics to Praxis, in Hermeneutics and Praxis, ed. Robert
Hollinger (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1985), 286.
32

33

Ibid., 287.

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ing into what he means by truth and criticism, or the common ethical and
political principles required for the virtue of phronesis, or into the type of
polis or community that it demands which is the thrust of his reflection that
is to lead us beyond philosophical hermeneutics.34
But Gadamer remains under the spell of Heidegger in that
he conceives of human existence in terms of historicity and temporality.
Thus, human-being is imprisoned in a world-immanent hermeneutical
universe.35 It contains all our experiences of the world and our life insofar as
it is bound up with language, on which an ontological primacy is bestowed.
Based on this ontological premise, Gadamer infers an insurmountable linguistic world scheme that predetermines the experiences of art, philosophy,
and history (politics is excluded)in sum, all the cultural traditions that
impart truth to us. The hermeneutical modality of understanding is the
way of Daseins being and is realized in the communicative world of language that entails common reason, meaning, and action. Language is being
in its self-display. True to the hermeneutical tradition, this philosophical
hermeneutics focuses on the written word embodied in tradition. Hence it
postulates the linguisticality of all world and life experiences and treats the
entire human domain as if it were a text.
Gadamer claims that the communicative world of language
embodies reason and common sense actualized in human practice. But, as
proved by his reading of Aristotelian science, this notion of philosophical
hermeneutics as a practical philosophy does not include the political realm
even though it would have to be considered central to a hermeneutic explication of experiences of order.
As Bernstein showed in his analysis of Gadamers appropriation of Aristotle, Gadamer does not think beyond the limits of his hermeneutics
to an interpretative social science, and this despite the manifold insights into
the working of the hermeneutical mind that he gives us. The crux of the
matter becomes clear in Gadamers argument with Leo Strauss, who went
beyond the closed hermeneutical cosmos in order to lay bare the essentials
of the political science of the classic Hellenic philosophers.36 Gadamer rejects
Strausss premise that it is possible to understand the thought of the past
exactly as it understood itself and prior to any subsequent interpretation. But
34

Ibid., 290.

35

Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, vii, xxx.

36

Ibid., 5037, 512.

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297

the thrust of his contention is against Strausss insistence on a hermeneutical

scholarship that takes the classical quest for order seriously and translates it
into a principled understanding of the disoriented present. Gadamer objects
to any normative conclusion being drawn from hermeneutical thinking that
would postulate firm and unchanging standards for human agency in general and political agency in particular.
The hermeneutical philosophy responded to the irreversible modern experience of the historicity of human existence, and it wanted
to counter the notion of the relativity of all human-being by appealing to
the meaning-generating historical spirit as it documents itself in the written
testimony of humankind. But it barely saved itself from the abyss of relativity since it eclipsed the primary sphere of human self-explication that is the
realm of politics that evokes a perennial quest for order counteracting the
forces of historical relativity.
Only the hermeneutic commemoration of the normative
posture of political evocations of order can assert the claim of hermeneutical philosophy to be a practical philosophy in that it uncovers the unwitting
hermeneutical underpinnings of the very science of politics that sustains the
Western idea of order. From the vantage point of a radical hermeneutics, a
more or less well-intended, albeit arbitrary, moralism clothed at best in historicism seems to be left. On the other side, the hermeneutical philosophy
allows for a modern approach to human self-understanding if the interpretative intentions operate on the basis formulated by Taylor that the human
being is a self-interpreting animal, an animal symbolicum per Ernst Cassirer.37
The crucial point I wish to make is that, however motivated,
the systematic filtering all human-being out of the hermeneutical character
prevents the reflexive understanding of the human predicament in terms of
an authoritative interpretation of the human realm and its spheres of order
that goes beyond the historical universe of self-interpretation. Such a reflexive
understanding was and still is the legitimate basis for a science committed
to the critical study of the political as it unfolds historically in humanitys
quest for a true and meaningful order. This quest takes place in the midst of
perplexing experiences of disorder, and it requires that the root of human
self-understanding be disclosed: the human capacity for self-interpretation
and self-actualization in terms of a comprehensive theory of the political.

37

Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1944), 26.

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I II. Political philosophy and the idea of

an interpretive science of politics
Gadamers argument with Leo Strauss marks a critical juncture in the debate on an interpretive understanding of human existence in
modernity. At stake is the paradigm of an interpretive science committed to
a reflective analysis of human self-interpretation in order to regain a sense
of the fundamental concerns of humanity and thus to reestablish the true
meaning of the human condition in the maelstrom of history.
Crucial in this respect was the intellectual movement of
young scholars, among them Diltheys son-in-law, Georg Misch, who reformulated the epistemological basis of a hermeneutical understanding of
sociohistorical reality. In Mischs reading, hermeneutical science was the
philosophical combination of anthropology and history,38 and thus he
signaled a new trend in the discussion of Geisteswissenschaften that finally
resulted in the new theoretical approach of philosophical anthropology in the
late twenties. The publication of the writings of Max Scheler and Hellmuth
Plessner initiated this anthropological turn that claimed to weld philosophy to an empirically grounded understanding of human existence.39 The
protagonists of the anthropological turn argued at a critical distance from
traditional hermeneutics as well as from Heideggerian existential hermeneutics and Schmitts political existentialism.
It was Plessner above all who took a stand against Heidegger
in 1931. He states: The understanding of human being within the horizon
of his historicity centers on the primacy of the political for any cognition
of the nature of man.40 Anthropologyis therefore by necessity political
anthropology.41 Plessner called his Power and Human Nature a contribution
to the science and philosophy of politics designed to clarify the nature of the
political in the midst of an intellectual and political chaos and to provide a
principled guide to the political education of a confused German citizenship.
Georg Misch, Die Idee der Lebensphilosophie in der Theorie der Geisteswissenschaften, in
Materialien zur Philosophie Wilhelm Diltheys, ed. Fritjof Rodi and Hans-Ulrich Lessing (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1984), 135.
38

Joachim Fischer, Philosophische Anthropologie: Eine Denkrichtung des 20. Jahrhundert (Freiburg:
Karl Alber, 2008), 94. Fischer documents in detail the intellectual history of German philosophical
anthropology.
39

40
Hellmuth Plessner, Macht und Menschliche Natur (1931), in Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1981), 5:200.
41

Fischer, Philosophische Anthropologie, 118ff.

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As Fischer remarks, there were only a few scholars who

shifted the focus of hermeneutical research toward the political dimension
of human self-understanding. He mentions Eric Voegelin in particular, who
translated Schelers concept of philosophical anthropology into a Geistewissenschaft of politics in his Rasse und Staat (1933)a critical assessment of the
race ideologies then current.42 These beginnings of a hermeneutical political
philosophy came to an abrupt standstill on account of the national-socialist
Gleichschaltung of academia after 1933. Misch, Plessner, and Voegelin were
dismissed from the university. The majority of the protagonists of the anthropological turn demonstrated the apolitical stance of their scholarship when
Heidegger, Rothacker, Gadamer, Gehlen, and Schmitt among others chose
the path of opportunistic adjustment to the new regime.
It was no accident that other German scholars also departed
from the closed world of classical hermeneutics and moved beyond hermeneutical philosophy to an interpretive philosophy of politics. They reacted
to the political void of a science that had proclaimed itself to be the epitome
of modern human self-understanding and then failed to live up to even the
most modest standards of political and moral reason. A novel social situation comes to light, wrote Plessner in 1937. In the face of the dissolution of
a world marked by Christianity and antiquity, the human beingdeserted
by God and threatened with sinking into animalityis faced anew with the
question of human nature and the purpose of his being human.43
Helmuth Plessner, Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and, last but
not least, Heideggers star student, Hannah Arendt, to name the most prominent thinkers in this respect (the Englishman Oakeshott and other kindred
minds may be added), shared Strausss principled understanding of a science
that reflects mans experience of his humanity in the between of order and
disorder. The crucial issue, asserts Strauss,
concerns the status of those permanent characteristics of humanity, such as the distinction between the noble and the base.It was
contempt for these permanencies which permitted the most radical
historicist in 1933 to submit to, or rather to welcome, as a dispensation of fate, the verdict of the least wise and least moderate part of his
nationand at the same time to speak of wisdom and moderation.
Ibid., 12425; for the Plessner-Voegelin connection, see Eric Voegelin, Review of H. Plessner,
Macht und menschliche Natur, in Klner Vierteljahreshefte fr Soziologie 19 (1931): 25557, and H.
Plessner, Review of E. Voegelin, in Zeitschrift fr ffentliches Recht 14 (1934): 40714.
42

43
Hellmuth Plessner, Die Aufgabe der philosophischen Anthropologie, in Gesammelte Schriften
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983), 8:35.

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The biggest event of 1933 would rather seem to have proved, if such
proof was necessary, that man cannot abandon the question of the
good society, and that he cannot free himself from the responsibility
for answering it by deferring to History or any other power different
from his own reason.44

The reflexive position toward tradition implied the interpretive recourse to

those traditions that allow for a philosophical understanding of the primacy
of the political; for it turned out that the eclipse of the political accounted
for the philosophical inability to come to grips with the crisis that engulfed
European society. There was no Geisteswissenschaft of politics. German
hermeneutics disowned the political traditions of the ancients. But, as
Strauss, Voegelin, and Arendt would argue, they can be recovered by interpretation, not in terms of a dogmatic appropriation of a sterile tradition, but
in terms of the living force of human self-interpretation translated into a philosophy of politics that legitimates a comprehensive science of politics. Again
a quote from Strauss elucidates the theoretical intentions of this science. An
adequate understanding of the principles, as elaborated by the classics, may
be the indispensable starting point for an adequate analysisof present-day
society in its peculiar character, and for wise application to be achieved by us,
of these principles to our task.45
Voegelin agreed with Strauss on the foundational character
of classical political science, but suggested that a restoration of political science must go beyond its classical beginnings.
One cannot restore political science through Platonism, Augustinianism, or Hegelianismby means of a literary renaissance of
philosophical achievements of the past; the principles must be regained
by a work of theoretization which starts from the concrete, historical situation of the age, taking into account the full amplitude of our
empirical knowledge.

He expanded the interpretative horizon of the theoretical enterprise and

included the study of the global plurimorphic modality of human self-interpretation in the analytical framework of a reflexive understanding of human
reality. But in the end, Voegelin also took Plato and Aristotle for his philosophical points of reference. For Voegelin, political science is an interpretive
science. The core of political science is a noetic interpretation of man, society,
Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy?, in What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies
(Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959), 2627.
44

Leo Strauss, Political Philosophy and the Crisis of Our Time, in The Post-Behavioral Era: Perspectives
on Political Science, ed. George J. Graham and George W. Carey (New York: Davis McKay, 1972), 229.
45

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and history that confronts the conception of order prevalent in its surrounding society with the criteria of the critical knowledge of order. In this sense,
political theory emerges from the hermeneutical inquiry into the manifold
of meanings that are articulated in the rich body of human self-interpretation and moves through a process of critical clarification toward a rational
interpretation of human order in historical form. Voegelin argues that the
principle of noetic interpretation evolved originally within the context of
Hellenic philosophy and was called political science, episteme politike.46
At first glance, it seems problematic to view Arendt as
another instance of a thinker who left the cage of hermeneutic philosophy
behind to opt for a hermeneutic theory of politics. Her early scholarship was
also marked by the German hermeneutic tradition, and, owing to her Heideggerian past, she had an ambivalent attitude toward the legacy of classical
philosophy. Following Heidegger, she distinguished between the metaphysical otherworldliness of Plato and the worldly truth of the genuine political
life represented by the Greek polis as it is revealed in Aristotles interpretation
of polis-life. The true meaning of the political is at the center of Arendts
understanding of the essentials of human existence. She is less concerned
with the hermeneutical reconstruction of classical philosophy than with
the reflexive appropriation of the historical experience of classical politics.
Her interpretation of the existential meaning of politics conveys a paradigmatic model of the well-ordered human being in a common world of human
agency. Politics embodies the practical truth of human existence which is the
firm and unchanging measure of civility. Arendts hermeneutical appropriation of the classical tradition differs from the interpretative efforts of Strauss
and Voegelin, but she is a partner in the common enterprise of restating the
classical paradigm of a peri ta anthropina philosophia.
When fate brought the hermeneutic philosophers of politics
to the United States, they presented nolens volens the dominant intellectual
culture within and outside academia with the challenge of a theoretical
counterposition that claimed authority in matters of reason and spirit. The
academy reacted to this challenge with energetic resistance. John G. Gunnell
traced the root of the conflict within political theory, and between political
theory and political science, to
the intrusion of ideas promulgated by the German migrs of the
1930s.These thinkers appeared, in the American perspective, to be
Eric Voegelin, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 6, Anamnesis (Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 2002), 34243.

46

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political theorists, but their ideas had been formed in the context of
German philosophy and the practical experience of totalitarianism.
Many of these individuals represented a position and orientation that
threatened some of the basic premises of American political science
and political theory.47

In effect, Gunnells observation refers to an ongoing clash about the fundamentals of political science within the discipline. Political philosophy
confronts mainstream political science with its own hermeneutical presuppositions in that it brings to the fore the hermeneutical grounding of all
human self-understanding in the political realm. Under the condition of
the present globalization of human experience, political science is called to
reflect upon the diverse complexes of order that determine the global conspectus of human models of political self-expression. This modern agenda
of political science stipulates a comprehensive interpretive political science
as Charles Taylor had requested it. The hermeneutical philosophy of politics
reflects on modernity within modernity and therefore represents a selfreflecting modernity par excellence.
IV. Epilogue
Dilthey (and Gadamer) assert that self-reflection (Selbstbesinnung), because it explores the existential depth of the human being, is the
innermost personal source of human self-understanding and the foundation
of knowledge and reflective historical interpretation. This philosophical core
of hermeneutical science acquired its true and original meaning in the course
of the return to the fundamental experiences of the great spiritual figures of
the founding age of philosophy. The philosophizing scholar preserved the
central idea of philosophical self-reflection by returning to the original existential modality of the contemplative life in critical distance to the life of
politics. According to Strauss, the philosopher provides the critical standards
of order in accordance with the requirements of human excellence, but he
must also transcend the limits of political life in order to pursue the true
happiness of the life of contemplation.48 For Voegelin, the contemplative life
is the very substance of the scholar and philosopher. Contemplation essentially withdraws man from the entanglements in nature and society, makes
John G. Gunnell, Between Philosophy and Politics: The Alienation of Political Theory (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 1314.
47

48
Jrgen Gebhardt, Modern challengesPlatonic Responses: Strauss, Arendt, Voegelin, in Modernity and What Has Been Lost, ed. Pawel Armada and Arkadiusz Grnisiewicz (Krakow: Jagiellonian
University Press, 2010).

Hermeneutics and Political Theory

303

him an external observer of the world of becoming, contemplating its origins,

causes, and forms in order to find its where-from, how, and why.49 In this
sense, the scholar and philosopher is of the world but not in the world. And
Arendt, who often acted as a public intellectual, stated that thinking and
acting are not the same, to the extent that I wish to think, I have to withdraw
from the world.50
See the editors introduction to The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 29, Selected Correspondence, 19241949, ed. Jrgen Gebhardt (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009), 30.

49

See Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World, ed. Melvyn A. Hill (New York: St. Martins,
1972), 308.
50

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Book Review: The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

305

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques

Rousseau. Translated and edited by John T. Scott. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2012, 344 pp., $35.00 (cloth).

G r e g o ry A . M c B r ay e r
Morehead State University
[email protected]

John T. Scotts admirable new edition of Rousseaus major

political writings is likely to become the most widely used English translation of these works among the next generation of scholars and students, and
for good reason. Scott provides masterful translations that are faithful to the
texts and at the same time capture the brilliance of Rousseaus rhetoric. The
edition is thus an excellent choice for anyone who must rely on the aid of a
translator for access to Rousseaus political thought.
One of the principal virtues of Scotts volume is that it is the
first in over a quarter century to bring together the Discourse on the Sciences
and the Arts, the Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality
among Men, and On the Social Contact in a single book. (Hackett Publishing
has just issued its second edition, however, of Rousseaus Basic Political Writings, which, although it offers a new introduction and annotation by David
Wootton, retains Donald A. Cresss translations from 1987 with minor revisions.) Scotts volume follows in the spirit of excellent previously published
translations of Rousseau by Judith and Roger Masters and Victor Gourevitch.
Scott acknowledges his debt to these scholars and further states that any
improvements he has made are at least partly due to their diligent efforts. In
addition, Scott also has had recourse to Heinrich Meiers most recent French
edition of Rousseaus Second Discourse (5th ed.; Ferdinand Schningh,
2001), which was published after the Masters and Gourevitchs respective
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translations. Like his skillful predecessors, though, Scott aims to make clear
the meaning of Rousseaus political writings while simultaneously striving
for great fidelity to the text. Scott tries to be as literal as possible, but, unlike
Judith and Roger Masters, he eschews an attempt to render an English version that corresponds word for word with Rousseaus French. The result is a
marvelously readable translation.
Scott still seeks to translate key terms consistently, artfully
balancing the competing needs for literalness and coherence, and thus allows
the reader to come to terms with Rousseaus peculiar vocabulary, a task
Rousseau himself believed to be indispensable for understanding his thought
(see his letter to Mme. dEpinay from March 1756). For example, in footnote
51 to the Second Discourse, Scott helpfully explains the difference between
amour de soi and amour-propre, translating the former as self-love or love
of oneself and the latter as pride. Although he also uses pride for orgueil,
he makes a note whenever amour-propre occurs so that the reader is able to
keep track of such an important term. Scott similarly notes any departures
from his usual translations of other terms. Moreover, Scott chooses, correctly
I think, to translate homme as man in the Second Discourse, in contrast
to person. While homme could indeed be translated as person or even
human being, Rousseaus usage of the term seems to vary: he undoubtedly
contrasts homme with femme (woman) in the dedicatory letter, but at other
times, as in the very title of the Second Discourse, Rousseau seems to be using
hommes to describe all human beings. Translating homme consistently as
man thus leaves it to the reader to decide which sense of the word Rousseau
intends. At any rate, Scott generally includes footnotes justifying his choice
of translation, allowing the reader to follow along and decide whether his
decision is the appropriate one.
These examples reveal another advantage of Scotts translation: the location and utility of his editorial remarks. Gourevitch, for example,
provides insightful notes, but obscures their accessibility in the following way.
He has numbered every paragraph of the textwhich is a brilliant idea and
extremely helpful for one working back and forth between the original French
and his English translationand the endnotes correspond to these numbers.
There is, however, no indication in the text that a given paragraph contains
one note, several, or none, so the reader must decide whether and when to
consult the aid of the translator. Scotts notes, by contrast, are ready to hand
at the bottom of the page and informative, without being obtrusive. Keeping
his interpretive remarks to a minimum, Scott generally restricts himself to
explaining how he has translated the French, describing Rousseaus examples

Book Review: The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

307

with which the reader may not be familiar, identifying thinkers Rousseau
leaves unnamed, and providing references to books or quotes to which Rousseau alludes or directly points. These notes will be of aid to students, but they
should also help Rousseau scholars make connections and draw insights that
otherwise would come only with effort. In this and in other ways, Scotts notes
conduce to greater understanding of Rousseaus seminal works on ones own.
Scotts introduction will be very helpful for those approaching Rousseau for the first time, and it will also be worthwhile for those
already familiar with him. Scott begins with a brief account of Rousseaus life,
as is appropriate for a philosopher whose life and thought are intertwined
to an unusual degree (xvi). (The same does not hold for all philosophers:
see Jacob Kleins brief account of Aristotles life in his essay Aristotle, an
Introduction). Scott also provides brief overviews of the three works that
are contained in the edition, highlighting the main theoretical and political problems of each text. The part of his introduction called Rousseaus
System of the Natural Goodness of Man is particularly informative, since
here Scott discusses the perennially important question of the consistency
of Rousseaus thought. The paradoxes in Rousseaus thought are undeniable,
but Scott, pace Rousseau, points out that paradoxes only seem to be contradictory: the truth contained within the paradox becomes manifest once
the appearance of the contradiction is resolved (xx). Scott encourages the
readers to attempt to resolve Rousseaus paradoxes, and to seek out the unity
of Rousseaus thought by alerting them to the many difficult issues inherent
in understanding Rousseaus system without dogmatically offering definitive solutions. But perhaps herein lies another paradox: although Rousseau
refers to his system in several works, in the Emile he claims to be a simple
man, a lover of the truth, and one who has no party and no system and who
laments the rage for systems that has taken possession of the writers of his
age (trans. Bloom [Basic Books, 1979], 110 and 204). By raising the issues of
Rousseaus paradoxes in his introduction and encouraging the reader to try
to resolve them, Scott points to the proper starting place for studying Rousseau: he is a powerful thinker who must be reckoned with directly if he is to
be understood.
Scotts volume also contains a helpful chronology of Rousseaus life, and there are two bibliographies. The first lists the standard French
and English editions of Rousseaus works and also contains select secondary
literature divided into the following subjects: Rousseaus life, his thought in
general, and then three separate sections devoted to each of the works that are
included. The second bibliography enumerates current English translations

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of Rousseaus sources that Scott uses in his editorial notes. There is also an
index that facilitates searching important topics, people, and places.
Scotts volume features the original frontispieces and an
English approximation of the original title pagestranslations that omit this
material run the risk of leaving out important indications from Rousseau
himself (the aforementioned Hackett edition, for example, omits the frontispieces as well as Rousseaus Table of the Books and the Chapters of the Social
Contract). Upon seeing the beautiful frontispieces, the image of Prometheus
at the front of the First Discourse and the engraving of a Hottentot from Histoire des Voyages at the beginning of the Second Discourse, one cannot help
but wonder about their significance. Why did Rousseau choose the particular
image that he chose? To take another example from the front matter, why does
Rousseau choose to identify himself differently on the title page of each of
the three works: why does he prefer anonymity in First Discourse, identifying himself only as a citizen of Geneva, why is he Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Citizen of Geneva in the Second Discourse, and why does he call himself J.-J.
Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva in the Social Contract? In all three works, our
esteemed philosopher identifies himself as a Citizen of Geneva, something
he does only on the title page of those works that he believes will do Geneva
honor (Second Preface to Julie ou La Nouvelle Hlose). In what way do these
three works honor Geneva? Including the frontispiece as well as the title page
of these works encourages reflection on these and related questions.
There is one final compelling reason to prefer Scotts edition
to all others: as was previously alluded to, the excellent alternative translations of the Discourses and the Social Contractthe ones by Judith and Roger
Masters, on the one hand, and Victor Gourevitch, on the otherare available
only in separate books. For roughly the same price as purchasing either pair
of those in paperback, one can purchase Scotts hardback, a higher-quality
publication that is sure to last. Since these three principal political writings
are undoubtedly the works of Rousseau that are most commonly taught and
read and since Scott has produced such outstanding translations in a durable,
superior format, his hardback offers significant appeal. The paperback version, which is set to be published by the end of the year and contains a few
minor corrections, will be an even greater value.
All in all, this is an excellent book. Scott, a preeminent Rousseau scholar whose work as editor and translator evinces a deep familiarity
with Rousseaus entire corpus, has produced a translation of Rousseaus three
major political works of which he should be proud and for which we should
be grateful.

Book Review: Reason, Tradition, and the Good

309

Jeffery L. Nicholas, Reason, Tradition, and the Good: MacIntyres TraditionConstituted Reason and Frankfurt School Critical Theory. Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2012, 264 pp., $38.00 (paper).

Ja m e s F e t t e r
[email protected]

In this book, Jeffery Nicholas sets out to argue that reason,

in order to be useful for ethical deliberation, must be both tradition constituted and tradition constitutive. In other words, reason must be defined by a
given tradition, but once so defined, reason can then become a mechanism
for critiquing its own tradition. He argues, as have many philosophers and
scholars before him, that we, as moderns, have lost the ability to judge ends
and are relegated to choosing between various means for best serving the
related ends of self-preservation and domination over nature. Parroting the
Frankfurt School, Nicholas further argues that modernity is characterized
by the reduction of much of humanity, particularly workers, to the status of
mere instruments. He lays the blame for this upon the prevalence of both formal and instrumental rationality, which, he claims, prohibit us from asking
basic questions about the ends of human life and society. Echoing Alasdair
MacIntyre, he proposes tradition-constituted reason as a solution that allows
us to judge ends and to emancipate ourselves from the oppression that Nicholas alleges prevails in our modern world.
Nicholas thus seeks to contribute to two distinct, though,
in his view, parallel philosophical traditions, namely, MacIntyrian virtue
ethics and Frankfurt School critical theory. His ultimate objective, as outlined in the conclusion of the book, is to develop a critical philosophical
anthropology that is both Marxist and Thomistic-Aristotelian, a project that
he promises to bring to fruition in the successor to this work. His project is,
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without question, an ambitious one, and he demonstrates the wide-ranging

command of the relevant texts and debates in contemporary political theory
required for completing this project.
Unfortunately, Nicholass actual contribution in this book
is largely limited to an at times painstaking account of these texts and
debates, and his own positions are often difficult to distinguish from those of
MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and, regarding his critique of modernity, Adorno
and Horkheimer. For those who wish to gain a better grasp of current debates
concerning the nature of reason, its relationship to tradition and language,
and the validity of truth claims, this book may provide a useful starting point. It is, however, much less clear that Nicholas has improved upon
previous attempts, such as MacIntyres, to develop a conception of traditionconstituted reason.
Nicholass first substantive chapter is primarily a summary
of the critique of the Enlightenment and modernity provided by Adorno
and Horkheimer in their Dialectic of Enlightenment and by Horkheimer in
his own Eclipse of Reason. Nicholas accepts with limited effort to justify the
Frankfurt School critique of the Enlightenment and of the supposed prevalence of instrumental rationality in the modern world.
Horkheimer in particular is an odd choice of philosophical
ally and resource for Nicholas, since Horkheimer does not want to replace
subjective rationality with a form of objective reason. He interprets prior
objective ontologies as doing more to legitimize existing social hierarchies
than to give a true account of the universe. As systems of beliefs claiming
universal truth, objective ontologies become part of a social totality in which
they reflect current forms of social domination (50).
Nicholas nevertheless claims that Horkheimer obviously intends that philosophy uncover an objective ontology of reason that
illuminates how reason is part of nature and involves the pursuit of self-preservation among other values (52), a claim that he does not take the trouble
to justify. He also provides very weak arguments for accepting Adornos and
Horkheimers critique of the Enlightenment and contemporary liberalism.
Nicholas claims, for instance, that the rejection of the theory of evolution
on religious grounds (34) in certain segments of American society somehow validates the Frankfurt School critique of the Enlightenment when,
if anything, it would indicate that the Enlightenment project was far less
oppressive and far less successful in stamping out alternatives than Adorno

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311

and Horkheimer claim. He also asserts with virtually no argument that the
Persian Gulf War somehow justifies Horkheimers attack on liberalism as
both tending toward, and allying itself with, fascism, because Kuwait, which
the United States and a very broad coalition of nations fought the war to liberate, was and remains a monarchy (4243). In sum, then, this chapter does
little more than provide a summary of Adorno and Horkheimers critique of
the Enlightenment on the one hand and Horkheimers critique of the modern
use of reason on the other. It does not lay the groundwork for the remainder
of Nicholass project, which is premised upon the supposed inability of reason
to judge ends in the modern world and the undesirable outcomes, namely,
the instrumentalization of workers and alliances between liberalism and fascism, which purportedly arise from this defect in modern reason.
The next chapter is a dense, somewhat convoluted summary
of Habermass conception of communicative rationality, Charles Taylors critique of Habermass conception, and the ensuing debate between Habermas
and Taylor. The ostensible purpose of this chapter is to show that communicative rationality does not constitute an adequate response to Adorno and
Horkheimers critique of the Enlightenment project and, more broadly, of the
use of reason in Western philosophy. This is because communicative rationality, as Taylor, summarized by Nicholas, argues, is based upon an unstated
and undefended commitment to the value of discourse, the equality of participants in discourse, and the search for the better argumentthat is, the
argument that satisfies the intersubjectively valid criteria held by the participants in discourse. These commitments, in turn, are only sustainable within
a more substantive ethical framework than Habermas is willing to accept.
This chapter does virtually nothing to strengthen Nicholass
primary line of argument, for it serves little purpose other than to divert
the reader from evaluating Nicholass case for tradition-constituted reason.
This chapter is, however, a prime example of Nicholass tendency to substitute a summary of the debates between various contemporary theorists for
a straightforward presentation of his own arguments. Those readers interested in the minutiae of the debate between these two well-known thinkers
may consider this chapter a useful resource, but those readers looking for a
cogent case for Nicholass version of tradition-constituted reason would be
well served by skipping it altogether.
In his third chapter, Nicholas begins, after a fashion, to
make his case for tradition-constituted reason. He attempts to defend the
bold claim that only with a tradition-constitutive and tradition-constituted

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reason can ends be critiqued (83). In defending this claim, however, he

fails to evaluate obvious alternatives to tradition-constituted reason, most
notably the philosophical attempt not only to evaluate but to derive the ends
of human life from our knowledge of human nature. He partially rectifies
this glaring omission in the conclusion of this work, in which he promises
to develop a fusion of Aristotelianism, Thomism, and Marxism into a critical theory of society which draws upon our knowledge of human nature,
among other sources, in evaluating ends. Nevertheless, Nicholass omission
of a serious consideration of human nature at this stage of his argument is
particularly striking in light of his assertion that if we continually fail to find
a solution to the problem of reason in modernity, we must look at the realm
of the forsakenwe must seek a solution to the problem of reason in premodernity, upon which the instrumental, Enlightenment critique of objective
reason focuses (88).
Assuming Nicholass case against finding a solution to the
problem of reason in modernity to be successful, this would seem to be the
perfect occasion for Nicholas to begin his argument that Aristotle filtered
through Aquinas, Aristotle by himself, or some other premodern philosopher
or philosophical school provides the best solution for the problem of reason.
Instead, Nicholas takes a different path altogether, choosing to continue his
summary of the debates between various contemporary philosophers who
also discuss reason.
Nicholass focus in this and the following chapters is on
slightly modifying MacIntyres conception of tradition-constituted reason, by
attempting to remedy a defect in MacIntyres thought, namely that although
MacIntyre suggests that an essential tie exists between reason and the good,
he does not elucidate that relationship (84). To justify his earlier treatment
of the Frankfurt School, Nicholas argues in this chapter that MacIntyres and
Horkheimers critiques of modernity largely overlap, even if their responses
to modernitys failings do not. Nicholas points out, for instance, that both
Horkheimer and MacIntyre discuss modernitys promotion of manipulative
social relations and its tendency to blur the distinction between manipulative and nonmanipulative social relations. He also claims that Horkheimer,
like MacIntyre, is centrally concerned with the moral evaluation of ends
(90), a claim he does not succeed in vindicating. Nicholas then turns to a
partial critique of MacIntyres conception of substantive reason. Although
Nicholas adopts much of MacIntyres conceptual framework, he backs away
from MacIntyres insistence that adherents of distinct traditions cannot

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engage in substantive dialogue with one another because they do not share
the same standards of justification. For example, MacIntyre, as summarized
by Nicholas, asserts that Aristotle and Hume would lack a basis for dialogue
with Kant, because they do not accept Kants categorical imperative as a standard of justification. Nicholas attempts to overcome this impasse by arguing
that the task, then, is to lay out more explicitly where they [Aristotle, Kant,
Hume] disagree in their description of the singular phenomenon and to
evaluate which description bears out the truth (99).
Yet this promising start toward philosophical originality is
soon overshadowed by a jarring and poorly articulated shift from discussing
traditions of philosophical inquiry to a treatment of nonphilosophic, cultural traditions. Without explaining the numerous differences between the
arguments of philosophers and the conventions of a given society, Nicholas
discusses practices as disparate as the Lakota prohibition against land ownership and Azande beliefs about witchcraft, treating them all as if they were
reasonable and describing the difficulties that Westerners and, more specifically, Protestant, proto-Lockean Englishmen would have in giving these
traditions their due. His objective in this discussion is to prove that when
two communities meet, communities defined by their canonical texts and
metaphors, neither community has linguistic capacity to represent the beliefs
of the other tradition because it lacks the appropriate texts and metaphors to
do so (104).
Nicholas thus vacillates between accepting and rejecting
MacIntyres incommensurability thesis, but he ultimately seems to come
down on the side of accepting it insofar as it applies to radically disparate
cultural traditions and rejecting or at least questioning it as it applies to the
disagreements between Western philosophical schools. He does not, however, state his position in such terms at any point, leaving it up to the reader
to reconstruct his revision of MacIntyre from various statements he makes
throughout the chapter.
Nicholas then shifts to describing standards of reason and
supplementing MacIntyre with Kuhn. He uses Kuhns idea of paradigms
and disciplinary matrices to explain how differing traditions construct their
worldviews and approach various problems. The objective of this attempted
synthesis is to explain traditions, be they cultural, philosophical, or apparently even scientific, in terms of a framework of ideas or a cosmology
(Nicholass term throughout his discussion of the worldviews of various traditions) that can, in principle at least, transform themselves when confronted

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with situations for which they cannot currently account. Although Nicholas
does not specify which traditions will and will not behave like Kuhnean scientific paradigms, he does argue that at least some cultures and philosophical
schools will alter their most basic values and beliefs when faced with circumstances for which these values and beliefs leave them unprepared. Notably,
however, he does not provide a single historical example of a culture changing in this manner.
Nicholas continues to develop these arguments in his fourth
chapter, the stated purpose of which is to spell out the relationship between
standards of reason and the good, by delving into particular traditions in
order to forge a path out of the modern impasse to a genuinely emancipatory
substantive reason (125). As in the previous chapter, Nicholas frequently
switches between a discussion bordering on anthropological description of
various cultural traditions and a partial evaluation of various philosophical traditions. He further develops his treatment of Azande witchcraft and
Lakota prohibition of land ownership, which is based on Lakota beliefs about
the sacred status of the land. He contrasts the latter with the English/Lockean conception of land ownership, which, as Nicholas understands it, holds
that God gave man dominion over the land for the purpose of cultivating
and improving it, and individual men have the right to claim, cultivate, and
improve untamed land that belongs to no one. He implies, but does not rigorously defend, a strong preference for the Lakota over the Lockean framework.
The central claim of at least the first half or so of the chapter
is that exemplars of reasonof giving and asking for reasonsmight include
a scientific method or the Zande poison oracle, or the method a judge uses in
deciding a case (126). His point is that the scientific method and the Zande
poison oracle, a practice of poisoning a chicken and determining the existence
or absence of witchcraft by seeing whether or not the chicken dies, is, like
the scientific method, a socially accepted manner within its tradition of justifying a conclusion. Nicholas does not, however, provide any basis, either in
this chapter or at any point in this book, for convincing those who live in the
Azande or similar traditions to reject the poison oracle as absurd and accept
the scientific method as a reliable means of assisting us in gaining knowledge,
albeit knowledge of a partial sort that is contingent upon further advances
in scientific inquiry, about our world and cosmos. He does not, for instance,
explain why a member of the Azande tribe should take the slightest interest
in scientific understandings of disease, when he already believes he has an
explanation for this phenomenon, namely witchcraft, and a reliable means of

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detecting it, namely the poisoning of a hapless chicken. In light of his argument against relativism in the following chapter, Nicholas himself likely does
not find the practice of poisoning chickens a credible method for determining anything, and he implies, though cannot quite bring himself to say, that
traditions such as the Azande are based on false beliefs about the cosmos. Yet
he goes to great pains in this chapter and this book as a whole to present even
these traditions as reasonable in some sense and as thus deserving of serious
consideration in a treatment of reason and its relationship to tradition.
Nicholas does, however, recognize what is ultimately at
stake. He acknowledges that traditions entail a view of the cosmos, of
humanitys role in it, and of the relationship of at least the major parts to the
whole. Nicholas then justifies this claim with a partial account of the cosmologies of the English, Lakota, and Azande traditions, in which he explains
why the Lakota prohibition of land ownership and the Azande practice of
witchcraft would appear reasonable to members of those two traditions while
appearing entirely alien and unreasonable to Englishmen and, by extension,
Anglo-Americans.
Nicholas also recognizes the need to get beyond descriptions
of various cosmologies to an assessment of the truth, albeit with a very small t,
of any given cosmology. He argues that cosmologies can and do change when
they are found to be inadequate as a description of the world as experienced
and perceived by those who previously adopted them. To illustrate this point
he mentions, as if they were the same, the ancient Greek inability to conceive
of something like the Christian God, and the Christian belief in the second
coming of Christ, which didnt happen as quickly as most early Christians
believed it would. The first supposed inadequacy to the real world resulted in
the abandonment of the ancient Greek cosmology, and the second resulted
in substantial alterations to the early Christian cosmology (again his term),
enabling that religion to survive despite the absence of a second coming.
After developing and further complicating this picture,
Nicholas then shifts to a somewhat more direct treatment of the relationship
between a traditions conception of reason and that traditions conception of
the good, and he incorporates philosophical as well as cultural traditions into
his analysis. Although his intent is to show that philosophical, like cultural,
traditions have a cosmology, standards of reason, and so on, he makes several
claims which indicate that he has failed to understand these traditions on
their own terms. He argues, for instance, that modern political philosophers conceive of human beings as atoms in a void, but Aristotle could not so

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conceive them (137). In making this claim, he overlooks Aristotles famous

assertion in Book I, chapter 2 of the Politics that, although something like
social atomism is a possibility, it is only a real possibility for a beast or a god
(1253a2528). In other words, Aristotle was fully aware of social atomism as
an alternative to his understanding of human interdependence and the naturalness of the city, but he considered it contrary to human nature. Nicholas
similarly claims that autonomy requires a notion of will that Aristotle lacks
(142), this despite Aristotles extensive discussion of choice and deliberation
in the Nicomachean Ethics.
In other words, he assumes the very thing he must prove in
his analysis of philosophical traditions, namely, that their adherents, including their creators, are limited by the standards of reason that define their
traditions. For Nicholas, it is as if Aristotle were merely one of many interchangeable adherents of the Aristotelian tradition rather than the creator
of that tradition who was perfectly aware of alternative understandings of
human social relations and human agency but chose to reject them for various
reasons. This, it seems, is the fundamental problem with Nicholass attempt
to discuss both philosophical and cultural traditions as if they were roughly
equivalent, and more to the point, this understanding of the supposed limits
of philosophy would also preclude Nicholas himself from transcending his
own tradition and providing the transhistorical, transcultural analysis he
purports to provide in this book.
In spite of these defects, Nicholas does develop in this chapter
a persuasive account of the relationship between standards of reason, cosmologies, and conceptions of the good, an account not found in MacIntyre
and one which serves to buttress MacIntyres understanding of traditionconstituted reason. He explains, for example, how the Lakotas conception
of the land as our sacred mother leads not only to the prohibition of land
ownership in that tradition but also to the nomadic lifestyle of the Lakota
as well as their efforts to limit their hunting of various animals, and use of
other natural resources, to a sustainable level. He thus shows how the Lakota
cosmology, with the land at its center, leads to the adoption of a way of life
that property-owning Americans, accustomed to a higher level of creature
comforts and a lifestyle that has a more significant impact on the natural
world, may find difficult to accept, even as, in his view at least, the depletion
of natural resources may lead them to reevaluate their own tradition and seek
to learn from the Lakota.

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He also recognizes the overriding importance of a traditions conception of human nature to its conception of the good life. In an
Aristotelian vein, he contends that one cannot judge the activity of some
being (human, plant, animal, or planet) as healthy or unhealthy unless one
has some conception of what health is for that particular being (150). This
statement, however, avoids the most important question, that is, whether we
can ascertain what, in reality, is healthy or good for a given being and, if so,
why we ought to examine differing traditions rather than, as Aristotle does,
begin with the common opinions of a given tradition and engage in a dialectical examination of these opinions. Why, in sum, should we be discussing
tradition-constituted reason to the extent Nicholas does rather than using
reason, tradition-constituted though it may be, to interrogate the nature of
various beings? Nicholas does not address this question here, although the
conclusion of this book implies that he may take it up in its successor.
In his fifth and final substantive chapter, Nicholas addresses
the problem of relativism and claims to make the case that adopting tradition-constituted reason does not lead to the adoption of relativism. Instead
of making his case directly, however, Nicholas again undertakes a convoluted
explanation of various debates in contemporary philosophy interspersed with
discussions of MacIntyre and Taylor along with a highly contrived account of
the dialogue between Lakota and Lockeans concerning land ownership. Even
so, Nicholas does have an argument which has the potential, were it more
fully developed and more effectively presented, to be a devastating critique of
the relativist position.
His argument runs as follows. We all have conceptual
schemes, constituted by and constitutive of our traditions, through which we
perceive and make sense of the cosmos. Yet these conceptual schemes must
fit with the world as it actually is, and when they fail to do so, they encounter
epistemological crises, either because a rival scheme/tradition can explain
phenomena which they cannot, or because they run into difficulties on their
own terms. At that point, either the tradition/scheme evolves to explain these
newly encountered phenomena or problems, or the members of the tradition
in crisis abandon it in favor of one which can solve their problem. This process progressively results in us gaining a better, more accurate understanding
of the cosmos. Nicholas asserts that this discussion contravenes relativist
claims that rational progress is impossible and the perspectivist claim that
the concept of truth should be abandoned, while denying the objectivist position of relying on some fixed, ahistorical, permanent ground of reason (194).

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Therein, however, lies the difficulty with Nicholass argument in its current form. Assuming, as he does, that the cosmos really does
exist and that conceptual schemes succeed or fail based on their ability to
give an account of our perceptions of the cosmos, Nicholas ought to accept
a fixed, permanent, ahistorical ground of reason, namely, the nature of the
cosmos itself. None of our traditions may have attained, or may ever fully
attain, a complete picture of the cosmos, but the best of them will continue
to search for it and will respond constructively to whatever difficulties they
encounter in their search. In terms of method, Nicholas has a valid point that
we do not need to have a fully elaborated account of the cosmos grounded
in ahistorical, objective first principles in order to make progress. We do,
however, need to believe, as philosophers from Plato onward have believed,
that the cosmos is fundamentally rational and intelligible to us and further
that we must continue seeking greater knowledge and understanding of it,
whether or not our tradition happens to be particularly amenable to such
constant questioning and knowledge seeking.
To sum up, then, Nicholas demonstrates an impressive command of the contemporary debates concerning reason and its continued
validity in a postmetaphysical world. He attempts, with limited success, to
synthesize the arguments of the Frankfurt School with those of MacIntyre
and Taylor, and he also attempts to show that cultural and philosophical
traditions both constitute, and are constituted by, reason. It is unclear, however, how this claim, and thus this book, amount to a significant advance
beyond MacIntyres similar arguments, except in the very limited sense that
Nicholas provides a more thorough anthropological account of the relationship between tradition-constituted reason and a traditions conception of the
good than MacIntyre does. This book is thus, at best, a marginal contribution
to the debates concerning reason and its grounding in various traditions, and
one can only hope that Nicholass forthcoming elaboration of Aristotelian/
Thomist/Marxist critical theory will constitute a contribution of greater
value to political philosophy.

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