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Overview
The institutionalization of philosophy in the modern world has come at the cost of its most vital concern: the achievement of life wisdom. Those who have ceased to grow (those who think they know) close their ears to the wisdom of strangers—and Socrates, who stood face to face with death, is the archetypal stranger. His avowal of ignorance, Lawrence suggests, is more needed than ever in an age defined by technical mastery and expert knowledge.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780810131699 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/30/2015 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 232 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Socrates among Strangers
By Joseph P. Lawrence
Northwestern University Press
Copyright © 2015 Northwestern University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8101-3169-9
CHAPTER 1
Socrates in Japan
When entering a foreign land, one does well to take along a healthy respect for our common humanity. In the language of the contemporary academy, one should not "construct" an image of the other on the basis of a binary opposition, concluding, for example, that Westerners are active and "Orientals" are passive. This does not mean, however, that one should pretend there are no strangers, for one's kin can be strange enough. Indeed, the first stranger, as Socrates reminds us, is the stranger each person already is to him- or herself. The Delphic command "know thyself" is a significant command only to the degree that we are strange to ourselves. Even the great Socrates, who lived his entire life under the obligation of the command, conceded that he still did not know for sure whether he was a complete monster or a mild and good man (Phdr. 230a). Strangely enough, both may have been true. To fear the stranger is to fear what is strange within ourselves, the freedom to be both one and the other, a freedom that grows monstrous until bad faith itself appears as duty. "There is much that is strange," chants the chorus in Sophocles's Antigone, "but nothing surpasses man in strangeness."
The acknowledgment of the uncanniness of being human is perhaps the explanation for why Socrates, on the day of his execution, advised his disciples to search among the barbarians for a wise man to replace him (Phd. 78a). This is a strange thing for any Greek to say, doubly so for Socrates, famous for having left Athens only when he was conscripted into military service. Why would the very Socrates who preferred death to exile outside the city (Cri. 50d–51c) advise his disciples to search even in foreign lands for a master? Was it because he himself was so soon to embark on the strangest journey of all by taking up his cup and drinking the poison?
The journey into the foreign was, of course, only half the story. After advising his disciples to go outward into the world, he went on to say that in the end they would have to search among and within themselves (Phdr. 230a). Curiously, what lies hidden within is first made manifest outside us. Any person is potentially what other people already are. Indeed, even the natural world outside us is the world that human beings long ago crawled up out of. The extent of the world is the extent of the unconscious self — unless perhaps the unconscious is (as having conjured up the world) yet larger than the world. All knowledge, Socrates says, is recollection (Meno 82b–85b).
The world without is the mirror of the world within. It is in this spirit that I place Socrates in Japan. The reason I choose Japan is because Japan chose me — in the very specific context of what I perceived in the face of an earthquake. But as it turns out the passage of the years has only served to heighten the contrast I initially observed. Thus, on the one side, the hysterical response in the United States to the events of September 11, 2001, which resulted in a costly and immoral war. On the other side, the stoic response in Japan not only to the Kobe earthquake of 1995 but also to the even more devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011. Between the two I place Socrates, famously calm as he drank his poison. I ask myself where he would be most at home — in the United States, the apotheosis of what Nietzsche called the Socratic modernity of the West? Or in a land east of anything he could have imagined as "east"? A strange question, posed by my younger self, immersed in a study of Socrates, now dazed by an earthquake. I had been thrust into an encounter with the uncanny. Could Socrates still be my guide?
A question about Socrates, it was also a question about Japan. I looked at my neighbors and found myself admiring an entire people. I was aware, of course, that I was likely enough romanticizing them, confusing resignation for courage and resolve. Ganbatte, often translated as "try harder," was a word I had often heard as a prod to young students. Why, in the aftermath of the earthquake, did it seem to take on such depth and significance? For months I had encountered my neighbors as a rather superficial and unphilosophical people, as proudly pragmatic as most Americans. Why did I now suspect that they had deeper spiritual resources at their disposal than are available to Americans, so many of whom are self-consciously (and even loudly) religious?
The issue had simply been thrown at me when the earthquake struck. Wandering about the ruins of a devastated city, I contrasted my own sense of panic first with the mythical image of Socrates, calm in the face of death, and then with the very real calm I encountered on the faces of my Japanese neighbors. Because there were a number of Christian missionaries in the neighborhood, mostly from the United States and Canada, I had ample opportunity to carry out a simple cross-cultural comparison, made all the more dramatic because we Westerners were the ones who, immersed in philosophy and religion, claimed access to the eternal. I am aware, of course, that these are decidedly impressionistic observations that invite random and subjective reflections about the conflict of "worldviews." Even so, I offer no apology. The philosophical quest begins where we happen to find ourselves, trying to make sense of the world as we ourselves experience it. If philosophy should provide us with glimpses of truth, it should also show us what truth might have to do with life. If we regard ourselves as having grown too sophisticated to search for life-wisdom, we should consider the possibility that we have simply insulated ourselves from the always looming catastrophe of our mortality.
"Calm and courage" are virtues that wisdom would secure. What if there were a culture that could secure them as well? Would the question posed in the Meno, whether virtue can be taught (70a), thereby be answered? Or what of the parallel question that is so central to Plato's Republic: can desire itself be educated? and, if so, can this education be extended to an entire society? The Japanese history of ritualizing all aspects of life until virtually everything becomes a matter of convention is clearly an attempt to achieve just this. It seems, however, that it would result in a tyranny of normality totally antithetical to the Socratic spirit of inquiry and self-examination. Aristotle, with his notion that the cultivation of good habits is the key to virtue, might be pleased with the Japanese approach. But Socrates? On the face of it, it seems an unlikely match. His mission was to encourage individuals to question both their own decisions and the traditions that informed them. But what if conventionality were the manifest "outside" of a more reflective "within." If conformity to a college binge-drinking "culture" (or simply to the culture of consumption) reduces interiority, wouldn't conformity to a civilized culture enhance it? Idle chatter is little more than noise, but thoughtful speech conveys the gravity of what it keeps silent. This is the moment I was seeking, the moment where Socrates, destroyer of convention, might be viewed as intersecting with the spirit that gave birth to Japanese conventionality. One enters a Zen temple and discovers the highly formalized archetypes of the most everyday customs (such as what to do with one's shoes when entering a Japanese home). And in the zendo, or meditation hall, that constitutes the center of the temple, these archetypal forms are reduced to a bare simplicity, clearing an empty stage for emptying — and thereby freeing — the mind. This is the context in which I found myself wondering whether consistently placing one's shoes "just so" could really provide depth to one's character (an idea that my wife rather liked). More than that, I wondered whether it made sense to regard ritual as the path to freedom. The goal of Zen meditation is spontaneity of spirit. Even so, its practice involves very exacting ritually prescribed ways of sitting and breathing, even to the precise placement of one's fingers and toes. The practice is in fact so difficult and demanding that it requires the supervision of a man who carries a stick, ready to pounce on any slackers. What could such a strict regime have to do with the achievement of spontaneous thought and action? The idea seems profoundly paradoxical, though it is really not that foreign. A pianist, after all, practices by playing scales over and over, in the hope of one day playing music. Repetition and spontaneity are not necessarily opposed. What is foreign is the way the discipline impacts the average Japanese household. How much, one wonders, can a spiritual exercise accomplish its goal in the context of everyday life? Are there really cultural conditions for the achievement of something like courage in the face of death?
One thing that would awaken skepticism is the problem I alluded to before. How does one know that what one sees is really courage? How is one to distinguish it from weary resignation? And as for spontaneity, what if it were just another word for reckless action? I remember a Japanese friend of mine telling the story of an elderly man who survived the Kobe earthquake. Years before, he had survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Leaving the ruins of that city, he moved on to Nagasaki, arriving just in time to survive another atom bomb. It was an amazing story of good and bad fortune. I would have forgotten it, however, if in passing I had not observed that an earthquake is a very different kind of catastrophe from a bombing, for an earthquake leaves us with no one to be angry at. Earthquakes are horrific, but they are not acts of evil — they are not acts that could have been and should have been otherwise. Given that most of my fellow Westerners were indeed angry (someone should have gotten the water and gas back on; the train lines should have been fixed as soon as possible), I think I expected to be applauded for making a good point. As a result, I was a bit taken aback when my friend disagreed, making it clear that, from his point of view, natural and political catastrophes amount to pretty much the same thing. Neither of them should really be called evil.
It touched on something I had already noticed. If for the Westerners in the neighborhood anger seemed an appropriate response to an earthquake (there must be someone to blame), my friend was reminding me that the Japanese do not regard anger as an appropriate response even to acts of war. This shed light on one of the most exasperating things I knew about Japan: the Japanese failure to express guilt about their own atrocities in World War II. Given that they also assigned little blame for the atrocities they themselves endured, I concluded that the Japanese have a very weak conception of evil. Morality, if one can call it morality, will have to be centered on something beyond good and evil. In this context, the achievement of spontaneity could interchangeably constitute the virtue of a Zen saint or of a kamikaze pilot. One meticulously follows social norms in the hope that, by doing so, one will gain enough strength one day to break free of them entirely.
If the Good as Socrates understood it was best represented by the image of the sun (Rep. 508b), the only good that makes sense in the Zen context would be a bolt of lightning flashing forth from a storm cloud. Westerners eagerly take up large-scale political projects that require stable and lasting illumination. The Japanese are similarly masters of design, but their best works tend to be small things that mirror the fragility of cherry blossoms. Politics is pursued in the name of enduring ideals and shows itself as the will to govern from above. Culture engenders ideas and insights enough but gathers its strength from below. Meaning unfolds from images long before it attains the sun-clear transparency of concepts and ideas. The question that is raised by placing Socrates among the strangers of Japan is where indeed does he belong. Was he or Plato responsible for the ideal of an overarching Good that has given us the modern state and the attempt to achieve a political solution to the problem of justice? Who is the thinker of the Good thus conceived — the man who was prepared to drink his poison? Or the younger man who called in sick on the day of his death (Phd. 59b)?
A country noted for its weak political ethos, Japan is nonetheless a highly disciplined society. Violent crimes are rare. The insulation of its private households from the power of the state does not translate into an epidemic of family violence. Searching for this reason is what forges the connection to Socrates: Japanese discipline derives not from government decree but internally, from its culture.
Culture in the West has suffered encroachments from both the state and the market, becoming so atrophied in the process that it fails to accomplish its task. When "culture wars" erupt and embattled culture has its say, there is usually little to hear beyond nostalgia for the old or self-satisfied affirmation of the latest trend. Yet culture cannot simply be rejected or dismissed as idle distraction. Even the most perfectly organized political and economic systems, while sustaining life, shed no light on its meaning. Quite the contrary, they resolve the question of meaning by making us forget why we have come to ask for it. By the time the deathbed renews the question it is too late. A life secured in bad faith (the pretense that a normal life is a good one) can deliver itself from the need for self-examination, but it will be vulnerable to external manipulation. Only a strong sense of meaning, something we understand from within, opens the arena for free action. Without it, one does what one is told — or, even worse, one does what is done. It is understandable when worried humanists liken the marginalization of the humanities to the end of civilization. Culture matters.
It would be a mistake then to read a libertarian impulse into Socrates's skepticism about the political life. His goal was not to give free rein to desire, but to educate it. His commitment to this idea transformed him into the gadfly of the Athenian democracy. In this role he sometimes appeared as the admirer of Sparta. Against the Athenian lack of order, he found virtue in Sparta's barracks, its stoic simplicity, its rigid discipline, and its strict enforcement of law. The Athenian "luxurious city" of the Republic (372e) had to be purged to Spartan levels (416d–417b) before Socrates found it acceptable. He would have appreciated the austerities of the Zen monastery.
Socrates's skepticism about the political applies, however, to Sparta even more emphatically than to Athens. Devoted as he was to the freedom of thought, he could embrace the Spartan ideal of discipline only in the form of a culturally conditioned self-discipline. One restrains one's desires not for the sake of the state but for the sake of the Good. The same holds for Japan, which has also at times been conflated with Sparta. Once culture has degenerated, discipline that is essentially cultural in nature (and thus fully compatible with freedom) is interpreted as if it were political. Given that Western democracies have traditionally made their appeal to the superiority of Athens over Sparta, and given that those same democracies have largely been stripped of their own inner life by the excesses of the marketplace, it is hardly surprising that the appearance of a strong culture awakens suspicion, if not repugnance. When advertisers are given free rein to "lead us into temptation," any talk of discipline beyond the need to work and produce will be greeted with suspicion. Strange that the Japanese hold on to old customs.
For all that, Japan is a Western-style democracy, closely akin to the constitutional monarchies of Western Europe. Those aspects of its culture that might appear Spartan gray are also recognizable as bound to virtue: stoic resolve, a readiness for self-sacrifice (we do like their work ethic), a capacity to live in harmony even under crowded conditions, and the refusal (so strange for the Westerner) to fully yield to capital's demand for consumers.
If one considers the role of women, perhaps the most typical contemporary standard for evaluating other societies, what we find in Japan is interestingly ambiguous. A basic point Julia Kristeva noted some years ago in About Chinese Women holds for Japan as well. When Western women automatically assume that women in Asia are victims, they do so on the basis of a questionable standard. To the degree that emancipated women in the West have "freed themselves" by entering into the symbolic order of the father, they have entered into a man's world and play at a man's game. Educated women from the upper classes end up perpetuating a patriarchal system that arguably exploits women on a more massive level than ever before. For every woman who "gets" to work, there are scores of women who now suddenly "have" to work. The family that once could manage on forty hours of labor now barely gets by on eighty. In this context, Kristeva idealizes Asian women, suggesting that they may still retain a feminine subjectivity that Western societies long ago destroyed. Her thesis is, of course, not a popular one — and would almost certainly find few supporters among highly educated Chinese or Japanese women today. Nor, for that matter, would the grand patriarchs of politics and business like anything she has to say. Regardless, much of it strikes me as both true and of real importance. She is a Socratic kind of presence.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Socrates among Strangers by Joseph P. Lawrence. Copyright © 2015 Northwestern University Press. Excerpted by permission of Northwestern University Press.
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Table of Contents
Preface ix
List of Abbreviations xvii
Introduction: Beginning in Silence 3
1 Socrates in Japan 21
2 Socrates beyond the Academy 48
3 The Education of Socrates 73
4 Socrates and Alcibiades 94
5 Love and Philosophy 118
6 Standing in Death 139
7 The Resurrection of the Body 162
Epilogue 183
Acknowledgments 185
Notes 187
Index 211