An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê: Leisure as a Political End 9781474237932, 9781474237963, 9781474237956

Citation preview

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

Also available from Bloomsbury Aristotle’s ‘Politics’, Judith A. Swanson The Poverty of Eros in Plato’s Symposium, Lorelle D. Lamascus Taming Anger, Kostas Kalimtzis

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê Leisure as a Political End Kostas Kalimtzis

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2017 Paperback edition first published 2018 Copyright © Kostas Kalimtzis, 2017 Kostas Kalimtzis has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. viii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Catherine Wood. Cover image © Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek Munchen. Photograph by Christa Koppermann. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kalimtzis, Kostas, 1947- author. Title: An inquiry into the philosophical concept of scholãe : leisure as a political end / Kostas Kalimtzis. Description: New York : Bloomsbury, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2016019098 (print) | LCCN 2016031383 (ebook) | ISBN 9781474237932 (hardback) | ISBN 9781474237956 (epdf) | ISBN 9781474237949 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Leisure–Philosophy. | Leisure–History. Classification: LCC GV14 .K28 2016 (print) | LCC GV14 (ebook) | DDC 306.4/812–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019098 ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-3793-2 PB: 978-1-3500-7987-8 ePDF: 978-1-4742-3795-6 ePub: 978-1-4742-3794-9 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction I.

Sisyphus or Scholê? Scholê and its generic cultural attributes The myth of Sisyphus: The curse of busyness The philosophical examination of scholê as a way of life

viii ix 1 5 5 10 16

II. Plato on Scholê and Ascholia Scholê discovers its purpose in scholê The inner demons of ascholia Fear Noise Turmoil Befuddlement Ascholia: From symptoms to permanent traits Deinotês: The self-made shackles of our imprisonment to ascholia

17

III. Catharsis, Scholê and Play Scholê in the second best city Divine play as a political end Problems with Plato’s concept of play as the alternative to scholê as end On theological interpretations of Plato’s theory of play

37

IV. Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê The boldest of all political proposals Three interpretations regarding the practicality of scholê as end Some things that scholê is not What is the activity of nous in the defining sense of scholê?

51

20 24 24 25 25 26 27 31

40 41 45 47

51 53 55 58

vi Contents

The conditions for scholê as end Universality of scholê Self-sufficiency: Scholê as the highest end Practicability of scholê Deviant scholê and the possibility of its reform Practicality of play versus scholê

61 62 69 73 76 81

V. Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia 83 On some of the differences between diagôgê and scholê 87 The fallacy of suppressed evidence 91 Phaeacia: Diagôgê in music as a way of life 92 Does musical education prepare a citizen for theoretical activity? 95 How does the music curriculum contribute to preparation for scholê? 98 To show the role of music for the theoretical life missing evidence is required 98 Citizens in charge of their musical curriculum 99 Why we are attracted to the translation of homonoia as ‘unanimity’ and ‘concord’ 102 Music and political friendship 104 Homophrosunê in Homer 106 What can be the cause of homonoia for the end of scholê? 111 The principle of scholê is God 115 VI. Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty From being ‘in scholê’ to being ‘in the school’ Hellenistic scholê and Rome Cicero: Otium as the security and peace of the republic Cicero: The public and private paradoxes of otium After the republic what should a statesman do with otium? Seneca’s De otio A new context for otium A digression on Seneca’s originality The change in the context between Cicero and Seneca First Principle of otium: Pervasive evil in society Permission for, and service in, otium

121 122 127 130 133 138 140 140 141 142 144 146

Contents

The other-worldly basis for sapientia Fabricating otium’s exempla

vii 152 158

VII. The Disappearance of Scholê The intricate interactions between scholê and otium in the Imperial Age Philo’s footprints Scholasate! The Christian imperative Cutting the cultural links between scholê and ascholia Prayer, catharsis and duty

161

Afterword Leisure as a political end Notes Bibliography Further Reading Index

179

162 165 168 172 173

179 181 211 217 223

Acknowledgements I take this opportunity to thank the two anonymous reviewers who were so gracious as to read through the work and give me much-needed criticism. I also thank Nick Romeo and Xenophon Xiradakis who raised many questions and made many suggestions which I had to consider.

List of Abbreviations Aristotle Ath. Pol. The Constitution of the Athenians Eth. Nic. Nicomachean Ethics Hist. An. History of Animals Mag. Mor. Magna Moralia Metaph. Metaphysics Pol. Politics Arnim. SVF

von Arnim, H. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta

Ath. Athenaeus Deipn. Deipnosophistai Cic. Cicero Fam. Epistulae ad familiares Fin. De finibus Leg. De legibus Off. De officiis Phil. Orationes Philippicae Rep. De republica Sest. Pro Sestio Clem. Al. Strom.

Clemens Alexandrinus Stromateis

Diels, H. DK

Fragmente der Vorsokratiker

Dio Chrys. Dio Chrysostom Or. Orationes

List of Abbreviations

x

Diog. Laert.

Diogenes Laertius (Lives of the Philosophers)

Epict. Epictetus Epict. Disc. Arrian’s Discourses of Epictetus Philo Congr. Decal. Mos. Flac. Gig. Legat. Op. Prob. Spec. leg.

Philo Judaeus De congressu eruditionis gratia De decalogo De vita Mosis In Flaccum De gigantibus Legatio ad Gaium De opificio mundi Quod omnis probus liber sit De specialibus legibus

Plato Alc. Alcibiades I Ap. Apology Cra. Cratylus Grg. Gorgias Leg. Laws Menex. Menexenus Prm. Parmenides Phd. Phaedo Phdr Phaedrus Phlb. Philebus Rep. Republic Soph. Sophist Tht. Theaetetus St. Statesman Symp. Symposium Ti. Timaeus Plut. Plutarch Cat. Mai. Cato Maior Luc. Lucullus



List of Abbreviations

Marc. Marcellus Num. Numa Per. Pericles Quaest. conv. Symposiaκôn Rom. Romulus Sen. Brev. Cl. Con. Cons. Ep. Ot. Prov.

Seneca (The Younger) De brevitate vitae De clementia De consolatione ad Helviam De constantia Epistulae De otio De providentia

Stob. Stobaeus Anth. Anthologion Xen. Xenophon Mem. Memorabilia Symp. Symposium

xi

Introduction

The word scholê (σχολή) might be unfamiliar to the reader until it is pointed out that the English words school, scholar, scholastic, scholarship, the French école, the German Schule, the Italian scuola, the Spanish escuela, the Russian shkola, the Swedish skolan are all derived from it. In Greek, the lexicon1 definitions indicate scholê to be a word with many meanings such as: leisure, rest, ease, to be at leisure, enjoy ease, keep quiet; to have leisure, I have time; plenty of time, at leisure, leisure, rest from a thing, idleness; that in which leisure is employed; a group to whom lectures were given, school …

These definitions, however, do not do justice to the philosophical concept of scholê that Plato and Aristotle reflected upon. These two philosophers wrote on scholê in the context of their theories of human completeness. Given that the common mind associated scholê with happiness it was natural that these two philosophers would have been led to analyse scholê from within their respective views of what constituted the happy life. Thus the varied connotations of having free time and being at ease became a secondary pool of features that were distinguished as necessary conditions for scholê. In practise this meant that the conditions had to be considered separately, as means, from the activities occurring within it. The popular meanings never went away, and both Plato and Aristotle make frequent use of these throughout their works, but this should not make us overlook the new dimensions they gave to the concept, which made scholê one of the most important ideas in their respective works. What, then, is the philosophical concept of scholê? This is the hunt and the subject matter of this book. The concept of scholê has not truly been analysed by scholars and, hence, its possible meanings and its ramifications for politics or ethics or sociology have not been established. This is not to say that there does not exist a voluminous literature that presumes knowledge

2

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

of this concept. For the most part, however, scholê is reduced to intellectual cultivation in leisure and this formulation through repetition has become a sacrosanct, though protean, foundation for any and all types of modern leisure theories. But back to our question: What is scholê? Whatever we say has to be taken in light of its origin in the Socratic question of ‘what type of life is worth living?’2 Socrates praised scholê as the finest of all possessions; his student Antisthenes considered himself wealthy because his way of life rewarded him with scholê; Socrates, on the day he is to die, in a dialogue that defends his way of life and his courage in leading the life he did, speaks of two ways of life, one of distraction and untruth in busyness and another in search of truth in scholê; in the Theaetetus two character types are counterposed, the clever slavish one who is preoccupied with crafting ideas for gain and the other one who seeks the truth in scholê; and Aristotle brings scholê to the centre of his political philosophy when he says that the perfectly happy life occurs in scholê. For these philosophers, discerning the nature of scholê was essential for giving an answer to Socrates’ question. The direction of the answers that they gave can be sketched out here. Scholê is the actualized condition at the apex of human aspiration. Aristotle states that the highest activity, theorizing, occurs in scholê. Plato argues that in scholê we can know the essence of things, and in this state we come to know the essence of ourselves. Scholê is morally free of service to anything; it has no instrumental purpose for the sake of some X. We speak of leisure as the opportunity to choose and consume goods which are to our personal liking. In scholê, nothing in it is consumed because there is no process occurring in it; like eyesight or hearing it is functioning completely – consummated and not consuming. Because it is the condition for the perfected life, it orders all of life for its actualization. Of course, embedded within scholê is the notion of free time and often means nothing more than that. For this reason we may be tempted to define it in these terms just as we do in the case of leisure. But scholê, in its philosophical meanings, overcomes the constraints of time because the activity within it always is in each ‘now’ of its completeness. Furthermore, scholê is free of the temporal economic and social mode that produces the conditions for it. Every society that is reproducing itself apportions free time for leisure

Introduction

3

in specific ways that ensure the mode’s continuity. The field of modern leisure studies investigates the structures in which identities, values, meanings and rituals are forged to sustain the cycle of social reproduction, or conversely where leisure activities, or the personas developed in leisure, come into opposition with the system’s governing norms. Scholê, however, stands above the mode that makes it possible because scholê is what dynamically recasts and reforms the mode so that it is subservient to the free activity occurring within. Scholê, rather than making itself useful, orders all useful aspects of life to serve its useless activities. These activities are unpredictable in their sweep. The community of free persons that partake in it shapes all aspects of their mode of life, including its mode of production, for their ever-evolving activity. Society has no need of making scholê a battleground for ways of life because it invests its economic and cultural resources in making ways of life available for the endless possibilities of consummated activities in scholê. Scholê, once tied to the actualization of discernible powers, is viewed as a prior potential in the biology of the human species and waits to be actualized as a deliberate political undertaking. Thus neither economics nor revolutions nor productivity gains nor any other external condition brings scholê into being, just as no command to produce violins is likely to produce any violinists or violin concertos. Scholê rests upon a moral choice regarding humanity’s end, and it was within this framework that Plato and Aristotle analysed it. Of the two, this study necessarily gives more attention to Aristotle on the grounds that he took the unprecedented step of declaring scholê to be a universal goal for an entire citizenry. Plato’s concept of scholê and the political scope that he assigned to it are examined first, but Aristotle’s claim that scholê, in its defining sense in which theorizing occurs, can be a common end for an entire citizenry calls for detailed attention on the grounds that this claim seems to be at once both inspiring and problematic, if not impossible. The notion that the theoretical life can be a shared end for a political community when placed against the realities of human preferences appears to be far-fetched. Accepting his claim at face value, the question we take up is not whether Aristotle ever proposed such an end, but whether the end which he did propose is politically practical. Was it a flight of utopian fancy that was stillborn from the very start or was it a concept that held out, and continues to hold, promise for guiding humanity through its conflict-riddled problems of existence?

4

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

Having finished with the inquiry into Socrates’, Plato’s and Aristotle’s concepts of scholê, the study could have come to an end for the simple reason that after Aristotle’s death the further development of the concept of scholê abruptly ceased. Yet the inquiry was extended to the Roman concept of otium and to the views of the Greek-speaking Church Fathers on scholê because it was from these sources that the modern-day concepts of leisure have been derived. Our treatment of otium is not complete. It does not do justice to its meanings in poetry, to the politics of leisure in Rome’s sociological practices or to the long career of the concept in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. But the objective of the inquiry into otium is only to demarcate it from scholê so as to avoid the projection of the ideas of leisure, which are derived from the alien framework of Rome’s otium, onto scholê. With this clarification the reader, I believe, will be in a better position to render judgement as to whether the concept of scholê is merely a museum piece or whether it is relevant to the issues now facing humankind.

I

Sisyphus or Scholê? Scholê and its generic cultural attributes As is the case with so many Hellenic philosophical concepts that have moral connotations, the concept of scholê did not have a virgin birth either but arose from the depths of its culture. It would be most helpful for revealing its underlying nuances if we could follow the evolution of its varied meanings. Tracing this history is not possible for two reasons especially: first, there is a lack of sources regarding its etymology and beginnings, and second, philological study as such cannot reveal the continuities between the popular uses and the special meanings that were assigned to it by the philosophers. Dictionary meanings, and even compilations of usages, do not lead us back to a focal image or to a cluster of invariable images that were distributed through many of its meanings.1 Some have argued that scholê may have been derived from the verb ‘to have’ which would signify that some type of possession is embedded at the core of its meaning. Perhaps, but presently we can only speculate on this.2 An oddity that can serve as a starting point for identifying its generic traits is that the Greek term for ‘occupation’, ‘business’, ‘work’ or simply ‘having no time’ is ascholia, a word which is formed by adding the privative ‘a’, as a negation, to the positive state of scholê. To my knowledge no such designation of ‘work’ as a privation of free time activity exists in any other language and this fact, I believe, points to the high value that Greek culture had ascribed to this state. The Roman pair of otium–negotium only apparently follows this paradigm, but as one scholar, Vickers, notes: ‘In Latin otium is not usually opposed to negotium, as many modern writers evidently believed, but to officium or occupationes.’ Another difference between the two pairs is that

6

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

in Rome it was negotium (‘business’, ‘occupation’) that was prizeworthy and never required defending, whereas otium had undertones of corrupt private indulgence, so that one had to distinguish positive senses of otium in order to stay clear of the common biases against it. A privation is also the relative absence of some capacity, such as being born with poor eyesight, or its complete absence, such as blindness. In either case the completely developed form is prior to the privation, whether absolute or relative. One cannot go from the privation to define the completed form. Privative words generally bear this out: we define atheos (atheist) from the positive theos (god), akairos (untimely) from kairos (timely), alogos (irrational) from logos (rational), and so on. The word ascholia thus implies a cultural priority of scholê and this could not have been the result of the intellectual labours of a handful of philosophers. Given that nature impels humans to be preoccupied with their survival before they attend to their leisure, it would seem then that the priority the Greeks gave to scholê was due to a shared cultural insight which gave pre-eminence to scholê as being more natural than its privation. Natural in what way? As something not coerced by nature but a condition in which human nature thrives in freedom. If this is so, it means that scholê was first assigned a plurality of traits and ascholia was then discernible by their absence. The privative makes us wary of thinking about ascholia simply as the opposite of scholê. Rather ascholia presupposes a series of functions whose relative absence is derived from the meanings associated with scholê. This unique pairing of ascholia and scholê provides us with a starting point for inquiring into the moral differences between the two and what these can reveal about the nature of the latter. In the previous century, some scholars attributed this peculiarity of ascholia, as a negation of scholê, to an aristocratic disdain for work, claiming that the Greeks had idealized leisure because they associated labour with slavery. Their first error was in assuming that the two were contraries along the lines of work versus a non-work state of leisure. The Greeks though had other words for work, such as ponos and ergon. Ascholia, though it could mean work, had a broader meaning of preoccupation with one’s business affairs and this could even include being preoccupied with one’s philosophical mission. Their second and more serious error was the assumption of an ancient Greek contempt for work. Subsequent studies showed such a view to be unsupported



Sisyphus or Scholê?

7

by the evidence and that Greeks at all levels of their society held work in high esteem, and placed a stigma on idleness and on what Veblen would have called conspicuous consumption.3 The record shows that Greeks were generally in accord with the view expressed by Hesiod that ‘Gods and men are angered by those who do not work’ or the view attributed to Thales: ‘Don’t refrain from work, even if you are rich.’4 Thus scholê could not have been an opposite to ascholia in the sense of desired leisure pitted against reprehensible work since idleness was socially looked down upon. Placing the two concepts side by side shows that ascholia must have had connotations other than the obvious one of work, and that these were negations of traits that were prized and associated with scholê. Let us start with some of the notions that were associated with scholê. As previously noted, Plato and Aristotle viewed scholê from within the context of happiness. When Socrates and Antisthenes announce their scholê to be their most prized possession, which is to say that it is coordinate with their happiness, we can take it for granted that they are not projecting happiness as a new meaning onto scholê but, rather, are clarifying the nature of the happiness which they experience in a reformulated scholê. We can legitimately refer to the popular religious notions about the happiness of the gods for getting a sense of the common ideas that were associated with this aspect of scholê. The gods, according to Homer, were makar.5 They lived a life of ease and never encounter the frictions and obstacles that humans have to surmount in order to survive.6 The Poet says of Olympus ‘there the blessed gods live in good cheer for days unending’ (Od. 6.46). One could not attribute the makar state of the gods to their not working, for then they would not be gods. They would be deities on welfare or unemployment who are superior to us only in that their benefits are permanent. To be makar implies a positive state of autonomy and self-sufficiency, where being, itself, is complete and self-determined. Furthermore, the ideal that nothing is lacking is combined with that of permanence and security. When the author of the pseudo-Platonic Definitions writes that ‘god … is self-sufficient with regards [his] eudaimonia …’ he is stating a popular view that the gods’ happiness is permanent and secure, and depends on nothing external to their nature. It is not a process dependent on a confluence of incidental factors. Whatever happiness is, it is inherent in their existence. Freedom and self-sufficiency

8

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

were bound together in the very nature of the gods.7 What such free activity might be for humans, aside from the pleasurable gatherings described by Homer, was left for the philosophers to explore. The great divide between gods and humans is that man was thought to be condemned to living a mortal life racked with grief and uncertainty, while the gods are akêdees – free of material and psychological cares because their happiness is not subject to acquisition of goods, to the whims of chance, or escape from the destructive elements that plague humans.8 The Greeks, especially in the archaic age, thought of human happiness as an ephemeral condition that could be turned to misfortune ‘swifter than the turning of the wide-winged fly’ (Simonides, Fr. 32). Humans, to a degree, could share in the blissfulness of the gods, which is to say in their self-sufficiency, but never with certainty and never eternally. That the gods could terminate one’s happiness or that the blows of chance could ruin it was underscored by the poets, but usually to emphasize that living without hubris, with moderation and temperance, was the only course for navigating the vicissitudes of life’s fortunes. Virtue’s relationship to happiness extends to scholê in that it prevents scholê from degenerating into frivolous or even debauched entertainments such as those that tyrants were notorious for. But something more: it shows that aside from securing steadfast material conditions, happiness and self-sufficiency implied possessing character traits that afforded protection from vice and its attendant disasters. As Bacchylides puts it in his Victory Ode, virtue ‘has the greatest glory’; wealth keeps company with worthless men as well and it swells the mind but virtue, in spite of all the twists and turns of fortune, can be certain to bring a person ‘enviable ornament of renown’. What we shall see is that the philosophical concepts of scholê, in which happiness is said to occur, are all inextricably tied to moral virtue and are empty without this condition. Latin writers were always eager to show that whatever they were proposing for leisure (otium) did not imply that they were advocating the curse of inactivity. Scholê differed in this respect in that implications of inactivity, idleness, and the corrupting habits of living in luxury were not part of its root meanings. There were other words for these vices such as truphê (softness, wantonness, luxuriousness) and argia (idleness, laziness) and the constellation of words for living a soft or luxurious or inactive life never became associated



Sisyphus or Scholê?

9

with scholê in a way that would have given the word a moral ambiguity as is the case with Roman otium. Of special interest is the fact that scholê never acquired the implication of inactivity. In English the verb form of ‘leisure’ is non-existent so that one cannot say ‘I am leisuring’, whereas in Greek one can say scholazô. When we speak of a leisured person, ‘leisured’ is an adjective, whereas in Greek one would use the participle ho scholazôn, i.e. ‘the leisuring person’. In English it is always a thing, a condition, whereas in Greek it can be an activity which a person does. Xenophon, for instance, writes: ‘With respect to scholê … [we find that] all men do something’ (Mem. 3.9.9.1). A consequence of this is that the divide which normally arises between activity in work and inactivity in scholê does not exist in Greek without further qualification. If I scholazô, I am actively engaged and there is no implication that the person who is so engaged, i.e. the scholazôn, has withdrawn from activity or has retreated to an asocial solitude. We shall find that when philosophers come to scholê it is with a determination to define it in terms of its activity. The image of withdrawal into oneself and secession from something, which one finds in Christian uses of scholê and Roman uses of otium, are absent in the Greek. Humans can find their happiness in a state that lies between the insecurity, anxiety and lowly preoccupations of earthly life and the life lived by the gods. This in-between condition is captured well by the word eudaimôn (‘wellspirited’), which was the word most frequently used for describing the happy person. The daimôn was neither god nor human, but assisted the former in transactions with the latter. The direction to happiness was unmistakably upwards and no matter how much eudaimonia might have been associated with material prosperity its in-between nature pointed to moral prerequisites that lay beyond norms associated with material preoccupations. By way of contrast, we can point to the US where if one is at work and someone asks them how they are doing, a cheerful response indicating contentment is, ‘I am keeping busy’. Busyness even in antiquity could indicate a condition that could be prized for the benefits it could render, but it could never indicate a subjective state of bliss. The connotations of freedom, self-sufficiency, purpose, human completion and blissfulness which we have ascribed to the meaning of scholê did not occur at once, nor were they present in every instance of the word’s use. Instead,

10

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

like a stone rolling through time and evolving through societal practices, it picked up variegated cultural meanings that we are not privileged to examine because the literary evidence has not survived. A way of recovering some of its layers of meaning is to turn to Greek myths and to tease out from any one of them that has bearing on scholê some of the meanings that became deeply embedded in its common notions. The aim is not to interpret these myths, but to find within the myth practices and meanings of the culture, especially those aspects that Plato and Aristotle took for granted when they developed their own concepts of scholê. A place to search for such meaning is Tartarus, where the Olympians placed various impious offenders whose trespasses posed a threat to the moral order. Some of the Titans, such as Kronus, were imprisoned there; so, too, the Danaids who killed their husbands and forever attempt to purify themselves with water which, however, they cannot collect with their porous sieves. Or Tantalus, who so prized exotic pleasure that he served his son as a delicacy to the gods and was condemned to be eternally aroused by the fruit and water he craves, though these remain forever just beyond his reach. Here, too, we find Sisyphus, who personifies the life of ceaseless activity. He is forever immersed in purposeless labour without any scholê. What will always fascinate is the nature of his ceaseless striving. Why does he keep going on? What passes through his mind and what does he feel in the fibre of his emotions as he struggles and is defeated by iron necessity? Why is he not crushed by despair when he returns to his doomed ascent?

The myth of Sisyphus: The curse of busyness Sisyphus is the hero who tries repeatedly to escape from the fate of death. When Pluto, the god of the underworld, comes to take Sisyphus he is tricked by him and is bound in chains. Humans cease to die and the offerings made to the chthonic gods come to a halt. Zeus then sends Ares, the god of war and Death’s ally, to release Pluto from his bonds and to take Sisyphus to Hades. Yet again, Sisyphus outwits the gods. He instructs his wife, Merope, not to bury his corpse. Sisyphus then persuades Pluto and his wife, Persephone, to allow him to return to his household so that he might arrange his own funeral



Sisyphus or Scholê?

11

and make rich funerary offerings. But when he reaches his palace he seals the doors and celebrates his escape. Zeus next dispatches Hermes to bring him by force to the underworld. For his crime of trying to escape from the fate of death, the gods punish him by throwing him into Tartarus. There are other accounts of why Sisyphus was put in Tartarus. What can be said with certainty is that he was renowned for his cunning. This is the clue that we have to pursue. It was by means of his cleverness that he tried to achieve an unnatural immortality so as to possess, for himself, the happiness and security of the gods. For his transgression he is given an eternal life of sorts in the form of ceaseless ascholia in the land of the dead. He receives everything that he longed for, but as if reflected in an upside-down mirror. He is to haul a large boulder to the summit of a hill, an effort that we can imagine requires great labour and ingenuity. However, just as he reaches the summit, the rock is pushed by ‘Force’, and slipping from his hands it rolls down to the plain below. He is condemned to repeat this cycle eternally. A description of Sisyphus’ travails is to be found in Homer’s Odyssey when Odysseus describes his journey to Hades (11.593–600): I saw Sisyphus suffering fierce pains. He held a gigantic rock with his two hands, pushing with hands and feet he tried to lift the boulder to the summit of the hill. Just as he was ready to go over the summit Force turned it backwards. And again the pitiless rock rolled back down towards the plain. But stretched out and struggling he pushed yet again and sweat flowed from his body and the dust rose up to his head.

Sweat flows from his body and he is tormented with pains as he mobilizes his physical strength to overcome an irrepressible force. Dust comes up to Sisyphus’ head, and here we can recall that in Homer dust and death go hand in hand. Heroes ‘bite the dust’ or they are enfolded in swirling dust as they are killed. What is especially harrowing is his psychological plight. His sufferings have no moral dimension. Unlike the labours of Heracles, which are also imposed, there is in Sisyphus’ case no moral purpose that would make him a better or more complete person. There is nothing for him to learn and there is no prospect of reformation through reflection. There is no criterion that

12

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

might be used to measure his internal self. His labours, like our attachment to technology, are their own justification. Whatever practical knowledge he may gain during each ascent will never relieve him of the ignorance of his enslavement. At best he can become cleverer at conducting his ascent. Compare the moral vacuum of Sisyphus’ exertions to Simonides’ description of how humans can acquire virtue (Fr. 58): There is a tale that Virtue lives on hard-to-climb rocks and that she watches over an undefiled territory of the gods, nor is she visible to the eyes of mortals, unless spirit-devouring sweat pours out from his insides and he reaches the summit of courage.

The ascent to the summit of Virtue, as described by Simonides, requires heartwrenching sweat. But Sisyphus’ sweat does not come from his heart or his spirit; it comes from physical exertion. The internal psychological pains that serve to bring a person’s shortcomings to the fore are absent. Heracles endures the pains of his fate, even the goddess-sent killing of his family, because he has given much to humankind. Theseus in Euripides’ Hercules Furens calls him: ‘a benefactor … and a great friend’ (1252). There is another view of Sisyphus’ plight that has been put forth by Albert Camus in his famous essay The Myth of Sisyphus, in which Camus calls Sisyphus ‘the wisest and most prudent of all mortals’.9 Camus’ rendition of Homer’s verse, however, finds no support whatsoever from the text. The word that Homer uses to describe Sisyphus is kerdistos,10 a superlative derived from the word for ‘profit’ or ‘gain’ (kerdos) which can also have the connotation of a rogue. In Homer we find related words such as kerdaleos (cunning, sly) and kerdaleophrôn (with mind bent on gain, greedy-minded) whose central thrust is craftiness, as we can garner from Agamemnon’s description of King Peteos whom he addresses as one ‘excelling in wiles, crafty-minded’.11 The Byzantine scholar Photius in his Lexicon (157.5) interprets the meaning of kerdistos as panourgotatos, a superlative for someone who is all-clever in the sense of being a knave. In the same vein, Polyainos, a second-century ad writer on military strategy, states, in his Stratêgika (1.5.2), that Sisyphus was the first Greek who introduced ‘fraud and deceit’ into military strategy. ‘Wily, seductive words’, writes the poet Theognis, referring to Sisyphus’ successful



Sisyphus or Scholê?

13

persuasion of Persephone, ‘that bring forgetfulness to mortals causing damage to their mind’.12 Just to emphasize the continuing tradition on this score, we can note that Aristotle, in his Poetics, states that poets use tragic reversals in ways that arouse our sympathy and produce pleasure within us such as when ‘a wise but knavish person, such as Sisyphus, is tricked’ (1456a23). That Sisyphus, in the public’s mind, was a knave is evident since Aristotle can mention him in passing, without further explanation, as one of those types who, when faring ill fortune, arouse sympathy in the audience because justice is being served. Socrates, too, refers to Sisyphus as an example of a despot placed in Tartarus for eternal punishment because his moral flaw was incurable.13 When Socrates at his trial declares that he looks forward to the possibility of interrogating famous personages in the underworld as to who is wise and who is not, we can surmise that he wishes to interrogate Sisyphus as a personification of cleverness with the implication that it would give him the occasion to search out the difference between wisdom and cunning. We can imagine Socrates conversing with him and Odysseus in search of a definition of cleverness with the same exacting elenchus to which he subjected other interlocutors in the Athenian Agora. Of course, craftiness can be used to good ends as is the case with Homer’s Odysseus.14 The poet reserves praise for his being polutropos, ‘shifty’, ‘versatile’, ‘wily’ and for the good results that this trait brings him. But Sisyphus’ craftiness is tied to impious acts, where each episode, in the words of Grimal, ‘is the story of a trick.’15 In one myth he seduces Anticleia, the daughter of Autolycus who conceives Odysseus, and in another he informs on Zeus’ abduction of Asopus’ daughter, not because it would have been just to do so but because Asopus, in exchange for this information, promises to create a spring on the citadel of Acrocorinth, a strategic part of Sisyphus’ kingdom. His cleverness in life was never a wisdom that might have left him with a reputation for excellence in conduct towards others. He achieved mythical notoriety for a self-centred cunning that allowed him to attain his goals and promote his own interests in illicit ways and at the expense of others. This is why in Tartarus it is only fitting that his prized cleverness will become the instrument of his doom. There is no hint that brute strength is one of his traits and he is never imagined to be in the league of heroes known for their physical power. Lacking tools or associates to help him, he will have

14

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

to constantly improvise to overcome the obstacles in his path. But there is a price to pay. Like anyone who is successful with their cunning, be it at cards or at the stock market, the thrill of the knack’s success is addictive. We can imagine that each trek is another opportunity for Sisyphus to do the near impossible. Competition in a race against others is not, as Hobbes described human motivation, what drives Sisyphus on.16 Nor is his psychological compliance to be explained in terms of a passive, stoical endurance to his fate. He is like an addict enclosed in his own stimulations, so that the problems along the way and the reliance on his own means to resolve them, with ever-new successful feats of will, are the sources of his adrenalin. We are all familiar with this thrill from our own addictive return to ever-new challenges in never-ending projects whose finish line is but the point of return to a new challenge that arouses again the same thrills. This is why Sisyphus can never become conscious of this plight; his cleverness is but the thinking phase of his attachments to his gratifications. Plato will later say that we ourselves are our accomplices to the prison bars of our life. The gods have chosen Sisyphus as the eternal example of our self-imposed incarceration. The gods have given him freedom to roam with ever-new missions in a fixed trajectory whose slavery is masked by the chains of his own ingenuity. In this respect, Sisyphus’ punishment differs in psychological quality from that meted out to other offenders in Tartarus. In all other cases the offenders are the passive recipients of an imposed plight that prevents them from satisfying their desire. Tantalus is the paradigmatic case. The fruit-laden branches and the receding waters elude Tantalus’ efforts to quench his hunger and thirst. He does not experience a delusion that his ingenuity might allow him to grab the fruit or drink the water. His motions towards these goods are driven by an incessant appetite that remains forever ungratified. In Sisyphus’ case, though, there is a self-driven hope of success from his creative ingenuity. The greatest horror of his plight is in his ever-present hope of reaching the summit. The means to effect his punishment is embedded in the very character trait that earned him his notoriety. When Heracles comes to grips with his fate he is able to pose the question: ‘Why must I then live? What profit will I have from possessing a worthless and impious life?’17 Such a question can never enter into Sisyphus’ mind. Sisyphus’ acts of will create a delusional framework of freedom which prevents him from ever contemplating suicide in the manner of Heracles.



Sisyphus or Scholê?

15

Another paradoxical aspect of Sisyphus’ plight is the mighty force, personified as Krataiis, who hurls the rock downward. It is both a source of despair and hope. The verb krateô is to ‘rule’, ‘hold sway’ and it is its force that undermines his work.18 The weight of the rock, the very force which he overcomes with energy, creativity and will, is what is turned against him. Homer calls the rock ‘pitiless’ not because the rock has any emotional qualities, but because it is unrelenting and does not let up until it completes its deadly mission. It is as if Homer’s pitiless objects had an Aristotelian final cause attached to them. Homer uses the phrase to describe a missile that is used to kill a Thracian king Diores (Il. 5.593): ‘the pitiless rock struck [his] bones and tendons and utterly crushed them to a pulp’. The flight of the projectile comes to its end in the annihilation of its target. It can never show compassionate regard for its victim. Neither can the pitiless axe cease its work, whether it is cutting the throats of lambs, striking warriors or chopping wood. 19 Though Sisyphus daily overcomes the rock’s force, and seemingly subdues it, he is powerless to exert command over it. Though Force turns against him and, at the very moment of his seeming triumph, crushes his hopes, her coercive necessity also supplies him with the purpose he needs for yet another meaningless ascent. We might ask ourselves what, after all, is wrong with such a life, which in its struggles mirrors the hard-working, ever-challenged and creative modernday consumer-producer? What is wrong with the blind self-addiction which, though it comes from accommodation to something externally imposed and deprives a person of self-direction, proclaims itself as purpose? For the Greeks the answer would have been obvious: Sisyphus has no scholê. One can imagine him having breaks along the way; perhaps even a vacation. But he will remain in ascholia, forever incomplete, forever without purpose, without the moral ability to muse on his own happiness or to set sail accordingly for its realization. And, worse, his freedom is seemingly before him, practical and realizable, though in fact it is forever beyond his reach – an end that will always mark a return to the same slavish beginning. The usual flaw of hermeneutical interpretation of myths is that they conceal a logical ploy that is flagrantly circular. We see this error especially in the allegorical interpretations of the Homeric epics in antiquity, which uncover hidden meanings of the text which always just happen to coincide with the dogmas of the interpreter’s sect. For example, Heraclitus the Grammarian

16

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

interpreted Apollo’s arrows as a metaphor for the Pythagorean harmony of the spheres and Odysseus’ beating of his breast as a metaphor for the tripartite soul.20 A less speculative approach is to raise questions that people in the culture would have raised regarding a myth’s puzzling features. Especially intriguing is why Sisyphus returns again and again to his labours. Is he an unfeeling automaton who merely carries out a prescribed punishment? But if this were so then surely his labours would not be a punishment since robots do not suffer. Iron necessity does not ignite the distress that comes from sensing a shared flaw manifested in our disastrous choices. What is the desire inherent in Sisyphus’ incurable flaw that the gods in their wisdom turned against him? These are logical questions that arise from the facts of the myth and not from an interpretation that is used to lend support to an arbitrary thesis. In any case these were questions that were first taken up by Plato in his discussions related to scholê.

The philosophical examination of scholê as a way of life In the fifth and fourth centuries bc Plato and Aristotle, taking their starting points from Socrates, came to reflect on the varied meanings of scholê. They raised the question: Given the myriad ways of engaging one’s free time, ranging from philosophy to carnal debauchery, was there a unique content to scholê that distinguished it as a condition that was unique to the activity of a free citizen? Or was the mere possession of free time, to be expended in any freely chosen pleasurable activity, sufficient to claim participation in a life of freedom? At first glance it would appear strange to think of these questions as political rather than issues of taste. Yet Plato and especially Aristotle brought scholê into prominence as a central topic of political practice, though admittedly in different ways. Given that scholê was a characteristic of the free person then what was its nature? Assuming that its nature could be determined, could scholê be made an object of political purpose, just as increases in GDP and the like have become, in our day, normal parameters for gauging the effectiveness of political leadership? Could the ideal with its connotations of happiness ever be realized concretely? Was it universal and extendable to all citizens? Or was it simply a utopian myth providing an unrealizable cultural ideal that, at best, might give unity to human purpose? Or was it, as many have claimed, the ideal of pure theoretical reason projected by philosophers onto the rest of society?

II

Plato on Scholê and Ascholia

Oh Theodôre, such is the character of each – the one … nurtured in freedom and scholê … and the other type who is always capable, keen, and at the ready to do servile things. Plato, Theaetetus, 175d7–e2 Because the person desiring victory at the Pythian and Olympic Games hardly has any time (ascholian) for other activities, doubly so will be the life that is correctly preoccupied (ascholias) with the care of the body and the soul for the acquisition of virtue. Plato, Laws, 807c4–d1 the love of wealth … prevents a person from having leisure (ascholon) to look after anything except his private possessions. Plato, Laws, 831c4–5 At first sight, when one reads through sections of Plato’s works having to do with scholê it seems that he has nothing new to say on the subject. In the dialogues, Socrates often uses scholê to mean nothing more than free time. For example, he declares that he will take up a certain matter ‘when we have leisure for it’ or when Echecrates asks Phaedo if he ‘chances to be busy’ and Phaedo replies with the verb scholazô to indicate that indeed he is free to discuss Socrates’ death at length.1 At other times, Socrates uses the words scholê and ascholia almost interchangeably, as if they were synonyms, especially when he describes his full-time dedication to philosophy.2 At his trial he declares that he has no scholê for his own affairs given his preoccupation with his philosophical mission. Later, he states that it would be fitting for the city to feed

18

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

him at public expense so that he might have more scholê to be preoccupied with his philosophical undertaking. The mixing up of scholê and ascholia, and the everyday uses to which he puts these two words, can easily mask the new meaning that Socrates assigned to both of these. Though it is Plato’s Socrates who says these words, there can hardly be any doubt that it was Socrates himself who introduced new meanings to scholê and new purposes that gave it a philosophical career of immense importance. We find these meanings not only in Plato’s dialogues but also in Xenophon’s portrayal of Socrates, so it is highly unlikely that they were a projection of Plato’s views onto his teacher. In Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Symposium, scholê stands morally opposed to the profit-grasping of ascholia. Socrates asks Critoboulos if we are to trust as a friend anyone who, ‘out of love (erôta) for money-making, has no scholê for anything except making some personal gain’?3 Free time is surprisingly not the criterion for drawing the lines between scholê and ascholia. The line is traced along internal subjective features. The busy person might also have ample free time, but being ascholos means that he is psychologically preoccupied even when at rest. Inside, the busy one is thumotically driven or, in Socrates’ words, ‘in love’ with profit-making drives. Ascholia is now an unquenchable motivational preference that has the power to hijack leisure and shape it into a means for its objectives. Opposed to the ascholos is the person who values his scholê, such as Antisthenes, one of Socrates’ philosopher friends. In Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Antisthenes declares that scholê is his ‘most splendid possession’. Irrespective of his personal finances it is his scholê that makes him a wealthy man. In his scholê he is free ‘to gaze upon sights worth seeing and to hear what is worth hearing’ and what is most important for him is that he has scholê for philosophising with Socrates (Symp. 4.44.1). We get an inkling of how something possessed in scholê is not so much the time, for even a well-off loafer can have free time, but the desire and the abilities which, when possessed, allow one to do things that bring happiness. Antisthenes’ scholê, which he uses for philosophical discourse, cannot haphazardly be taken away from him by the twists of fortune and circumstance. We can imagine Antisthenes working for a living but even if this were so, his work would be for his scholê. Ascholia thus acquired moral overtones that the Latin word negotium, or even the English words ‘work’ or ‘busyness’ or ‘business’, never took on. There



Plato on Scholê and Ascholia

19

is nothing wrong with work, but now there can be something base about ascholia. It becomes reprehensible to the degree that it subjectively inhibits scholê and hence what it points to is an internal moral condition. Socrates explains why this is so in the Phaedo where he declares to his friends that truth can only be sought in scholê. Ascholia gives priority to the body’s needs and creates within us the habits that make use of the mind for servicing the body’s varied ends. He argues that the soul’s communion with the body, at least in so far as it bears upon the search for truth, must be eliminated (65a1). In scholê the mind liberates itself from sensation-based realities and from the cravings that originate there. The problem with the self-evident certainties of sensation and those of our desires is that their criteria are body-centred. The intellect that is active for these endeavours, stuck as it is in the realm of flux, cannot contemplate true being and has no desire to do so. Only in a scholê where nous is active can true being become visible to the intellect. As long as we have the body and our soul is confusedly mixed with this evil we will never be able to acquire with any vigour that which we desire. And we say that this is the truth, because the body creates within us thousands of preoccupations (ascholias) to meet the needs of physical sustenance. And if by chance some illnesses befall us they impede our hunt for the true nature of things. The body fills us with intense desires and appetites and fears and fancies, so that, as they correctly say, due to these it is never possible for us to think correctly about anything. Nothing else creates wars, civil disorders, and strife but the body and its desires. Wars are fought for the sake of money. We are forced to acquire money for the sake of the body, because we are in its service … and it is for this reason that we are not preoccupied (ascholian) with pursuit of philosophy. (66b5–d3)

Natural physical needs clearly do not produce all the evils that Socrates attributes to ascholia. These no doubt can be satisfied without wars between cities and internal civil conflicts. The problem arises when ascholia becomes a state whose dominant trait is an unquenchable love for gain and profit. Then one is incessantly preoccupied even when resting because gain now is promoted to a thumotic motivating drive. Unlike bodily appetites that are quenched when satiated, these, upon entering the thumos, operate on a different, motivational, principle. The thumos is the seat of self-esteem and dignity or honour. It is the source of energy and drive. The way values are

20

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

ordered in the thumos push a person towards actualizing the highest value, which in this case is personal gain. Because the desires are tied to one’s sense of self-worth the thumos will respect only those limits that are in accord with its prioritised cravings. The inner restraints can easily become highly plastic since gain is rarely regulated according to need. There is always a bigger house to buy, a more exquisite delicacy, a better wine to savour. At the same time, as Socrates indicates, the properties of ascholia acquire an aggressive resiliency. Anger, which resides in the thumos, acts as a guardian to shut down any rational questioning or demotion of these goals. Anger goes so far as to protect the self from even inquiring into the flaws which have become a beloved part of one’s self-esteem. The thumotic guards of our desires protect the entranceway to the mind and make sure that such critical thoughts never get processed. For scholê to reign, its hegemony would first have to be established in the thumos. The values that are revered there would have to be recast and so, too, the objects that cause it to feel pleasure and pain. Parenthetically, in the Phaedo we have a dramatic display of philosophy’s victory over ascholia’s seductions. In Socrates’ last moments, rather than eat and drink with his friends, the philosopher dies courageously discoursing to the very end in scholê.

Scholê discovers its purpose in scholê Plato founded the Academy, which was later called a Scholê, a ‘School’, whose purpose was the pursuit of knowledge of the essence of things. In this aim the Academy was very different from the Schools of the post-classical period which aimed to produce students who were trained to become dogmatic adherents of their respective sects. At the Academy the aim was to awaken nous into activity through a community of friends specifically organized for this purpose. Nous is often translated as ‘mind’, ‘reason’, ‘intelligence’ but these capture only part of the meaning. Nous is not reducible to a cognitive faculty because it is that power in the universe that is responsible for its abiding order. The eternal Forms are not creative, they do not move, they do not make anything and they do not have a way of imposing themselves on the material universe.



Plato on Scholê and Ascholia

21

It was Anaxagoras who put forth the idea of nous as a cause that controls all things ‘both the greater and the smaller’, ‘nous arranged them all’.4 Nous standing apart from all things, unmixed, arranges all things into a kosmos and each member of the thing into a formal entity. Whether Plato ascribes the order in the world to God or a Composer or a Demiurge does not matter, for these are but different names or metaphors for nous. In the Phaedo, Plato presents his teacher, on the day of his execution, giving a biographical account of his intellectual development in which he recounts the excitement he felt when he came across Anaxagoras’ idea of nous as the intelligent power that brings order to the universe: ‘It seemed right that nous should be the cause of everything, and I reflected that if this is so, nous in producing order sets everything in order and arranges each individual thing in the way that is best for it’ (97c–d). The mental activity occurring in scholê thus apprehends the essence of anything in its best condition. To know what a thing is we must look at its excellent specimens and not its imperfections or its deviations. For Plato to know what anything is, he inquires into what it can become in its best condition. As Plato puts it succinctly in the Philebus, nous governs and orders all things (29d) – of course for the best. The conclusion therefore must follow that scholê’s nature is to be discovered by nous in scholê, while a person is engaged in the search for the defining essence of things. In scholê, nous becomes active and it theorizes and discovers the true nature of scholê. This is strange and unique. Strange because it is self-reflexive where the thing being examined, scholê, is the very means for understanding what it is qua essence and qua best. This can only be explained by virtue of the fact that the activity occurring in it is itself the power of understanding. The defining nature of scholê is discovered when nous theorizes about itself in scholê and ponders over the best condition possible for a human being, and this it discovers to be nous as a conscious goal. This step created an indissoluble moral bond between nous and scholê. Because nous makes itself a goal to be fulfilled, it turns scholê, the condition in which this occurs, into a conscious moral choice for a way of living. Any theoretical insight if conceived solely as a creative intellectual act apart from its moral entailments would be a contradiction since nous entails the best for man. An intellectual finding devoid of such an end cannot be the product of nous. Though scholê involves a quest for truth, this road cannot be journeyed by the morally impure who

22

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

would steer understanding to irrational or evil purposes.5 Thus the ways of scholê and ascholia are both constructed on moral foundations. Despite the differences that were to become manifest between Plato and Aristotle on scholê, this moral link between nous and scholê was to remain a central premise in Aristotle’s concept as well. The quest for true being in scholê does not therefore correspond to scientific discovery. Plato’s view of nous would probably have allowed him to consider such scientific discoveries as possible stepping stones to theorizing about being. Their utility would be in their abstract formulations that uncover causes in permanent mathematical relations and structures, and he would probably have held these findings to be praiseworthy if conducted in the right way with the right moral purpose in mind. Plutarch describes how Plato reproached the Academy mathematicians Eudoxus, Archytas and Menaichmon for constructing a physical model in order to solve, by analogy, the geometric problem of doubling a cube. He told them that they were ‘destroying the good of geometry by going back to the sensibles and not moving towards “the above” and not grasping the eternal immaterial images which is near where god exists and where god is eternally.’6 The moral factor is essential, for otherwise the intellectual activity, however abstract, would fall under what Plato called panourgia and deinotês, two words for cleverness which he uses for characterizing knowledge that has ambivalent moral consequences. On deinotês more will be said. The great research centres of today are funded with self-interested purposes in mind where ascholia and mission goals are primary and the very idea of how their truths might advance humankind’s well-being is absurd unless couched in criteria such as returns, usefulness to the economy and the like, all of which are invariable and timeworn elements of ascholia. Nor is nous what we today identify as ‘creativity’, a word that was introduced into the English language in the late nineteenth century, and it was not until after World War II when the dollar value of giving attention to problemsolving was given an institutional structure that it became a vast enterprise.7 The word came to denote what the ancients would have called deinotês, the capacity of arriving at solutions to puzzles and problems. There are other differences as well. Creativity places a premium on innovation whereas in the polis innovation was not absolute.8 Neôterismos, ‘to make innovations’,



Plato on Scholê and Ascholia

23

was evaluated for its moral, political and social implications and the possible disruptive consequences of the new creation. In modernity creativity tied to innovation resulting in profit is an absolute standard governing over every facet of social life from education, entertainment, to business. Because we are conditioned to think about creativity as an absolute, we are prone to hypostasizing it as a mystical power that is a thing in itself. Plato, however, ascribes creative powers to all types of thinking. For example, apprehension of things through images and not the objects themselves, which he calls eikasia, is the creative realm of the poets. But no amount of poetic inspiration that makes use of the images of things can lead to an understanding of the essence of things. Figuring things out creatively at the level of opinion (doxa) or discursive reasoning he also dismisses as a method for this purpose. We can say the same thing regarding technological innovation. Thomas Edison, the prototype of the inventor-innovator, owed his achievements to creative insights on how to translate knowledge into profitable applications. This, too, would not be nous. As Matt Ridley writes, ‘Most technological breakthroughs come from technologists tinkering, not from researchers chasing hypotheses.’9 If creativity is viewed as a problem-solving, pattern-recognition intelligence that allows one to formulate means to effect practical solutions then, at best, it helps secure the practical conditions for scholê. Creativity is a many-sided word whose distinctions we often pass over, but, in any case, the intellectual processes that are associated with it we can safely conclude do not correspond to Plato’s nous. Even so, it would seem that something is wrong here. The conclusions stated above would seem to deny the scientific genius of a Newton or a Maxwell or an Einstein, in the sense of activity of nous that uncovers universal causes at the highest levels of abstraction. But suppose we were to ask the scientist of our day whether scientific knowledge or technological innovation, for that matter, has ultimately served our salvation, or whether it has produced the very things that are driving us to our destruction. That we live but a few seconds away from nuclear holocaust and that we are in the throes of a technology-driven environmental catastrophe, products of our ingenuity, seems to answer the question. Plato’s words may be the fitting way to describe our plight: ‘All science, when separated from justice and virtue, is knavery (panourgia) and not wisdom.’10

24

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

The inner demons of ascholia The disruptions to our concentration span are naturally ubiquitous and obvious to anyone. Plato goes beyond empirical observations to the causal inner traits which subvert our scholê. Socrates in the Phaedo states that the body fills us with intense desires and appetites and fears and even when scholê exists and we turn to study something ‘the body disrupts our inquiries and creates noise and turmoil and befuddlement so that under its sway we cannot see the truth’ (66d5–7). Appetites and desires as specific causes that are at the ready to drag us away from scholê hardly need any comment. Bestsellers are readily available on the dopamine-producing distractions of emails, smartphone applications and the many other wired ways of our times that undermine the concentration required for penetrating analysis. But fear, inner noise and turmoil, and bewilderment are not obvious at all and require some comment.

Fear Let us start with fear. Plato does not explain how ascholia causes this, but it is not hard for us to imagine how this might be brought about. The following classroom experience might provide some insight into what he means. When students read the early dialogues and first encounter the moral questions raised by Socrates they are often gripped with fear as it dawns on them that the life which they have been brought up to aspire to, the life of success and money-making, may be based on unsound and unexamined principles. The mere questioning of the desires which have been nourished within them since childhood, and the mere thought of not attaining them – if they were to be affected by Socrates’ questions – stir up an insecurity which far outweighs any countervailing fear of the unhappiness that might arise from living an unexamined life. This fear paralyses them and they begin to project onto the text a Socrates that fits their inbred illusions of happiness in ascholia. Socrates is transformed into a set of formulas and comfortable solutions. Leaning on the vast secondary literature that can be googled in digestible chunks, the student’s fear is assuaged and the physical and mental anxieties of living a worthless life, according to ascholias’ criteria, are buried deeply



Plato on Scholê and Ascholia

25

within. Socrates, rather than inspiring inquiry into ways of life, becomes a test question.

Noise The noise or tumult (thorubos) within is caused by the random motion of a body. In Plato’s Statesman a myth is narrated wherein the direction of the world’s revolution is reversed and there is a sudden shock followed by a recovery from the ‘tumults’ to the world’s arranged order (273a5–8). What is the cause of this tumult? Plato answers: ‘The bodily element in its constitution was responsible for its failure.’ The material world resists formal intelligence, and this causes tumult in the same way that noise comes from an irrational mob which is stirred by passion and whose ideas never go beyond sensebound ignorance.11 Paradoxically it is Socrates, the paragon of scholê, who can also cause tumult in a person’s soul, because his persistent interrogation forces a person to question the beliefs that support the body’s priorities.12 The moral catharsis he performs through elenctic interrogation clears a path for testing one’s unexamined beliefs. As Socrates states in the Republic, one has to discern whether the noise or tumult within the soul is caused by going from darkness into light or light into darkness (518a5).

Turmoil Whereas tumult is the direct result of the bodily element suddenly gaining control over the composite, turmoil (tarachê) results from an unbinding at the seams. The composite thing undergoes stresses that tear it apart because its inner order undergoes corruption. A leading cause of the turmoil is that the principle binding the parts together is either inappropriate or for some reason its binding power is eroding. The result is a civil war within, a stasis, a halt to the organism’s normal functions (Rep. 444b). Knowledge coming from the body, or serving it as instrumental knowledge, cannot provide a universal principle for understanding the essence of the thing. Take our impressive environmental knowledge as a case in point. At present there are environmental committees around the world and the number of conferences that have as their subject the protection of the environment is staggering.

26

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

There are international treaties, thousands of educational programmes that are continuously expanding and evolving, and the progress in the biological sciences that deal with such protection advances daily. How is it then possible to have a scientifically based logical awareness of the coming catastrophe with a simultaneous unravelling of ecosystems worldwide? The knowledge we have attained unfolds, at best, as a limiting factor within ascholia and is commandeered by its principles. Consider the following example: If one were to pin NASA satellite photos of the State of Florida taken over the past forty years to a wall, what would one see? Immense swathes of dark grey (or if in colour, then green) wetland areas vanishing and being replaced with ever-expanding whitish-looking concrete – and this in a period when Florida was adopting increasingly stringent environmental legislation and creating a bureaucracy and university programmes for scientifically managing this protection. What the example shows is that ascholia remained unified in its ends whereas science remained fragmented and incapable of providing a unifying principle for preventing the eco-systems from coming apart. This necessarily occurs because instrumental knowledge is by and large not pursued with a respect for ends-in-themselves but is in the pay of ascholia and thus serves greed’s protean ends. The result is a Heraclitean universe without a unifying logos.

Befuddlement Along with fear and tumult comes ‘befuddlement’ or ‘astonishment’ or ‘amazement’ which Plato conveys with the verb ekplêssô. There are two sides to this affection: one is sudden shock and astonishment often filled with terror or fear, and the other is awe or amazement. Plato shows that the two often work together because ignorance of causes makes one susceptible to being awed or amazed by externals and this reverence for the apparent, when overturned by the facts, can cause a shock. The hard fact turns out to be an astounding illusion. However, the one who truly knows is not astonished. For instance, the doctor who examines identical medicines that look and smell different is not fooled at all by their outward differences (Cra. 394b2). When we do not know the essence but rely on externals, we are constantly amazed when the sensory evidence clashes with reality. Socrates poses the question of whose judgement is one to trust for evaluating tyranny – the



Plato on Scholê and Ascholia

27

person who peers into the soul of the tyrant and his regime ‘with thought’ or the person who, like a child, ‘is amazed (ekplêttetai) by the grandeur which these regimes devise’? The first finds tyranny to be an evil, while the second, mesmerized by the regime’s outward displays of magnificence, is foolishly impressed and gives it his approval (Rep. 577a3). No doubt the awe is misplaced and a future shock is in the offing, just as modern-day voters become shocked when events show that the image of their beloved candidate, as fabricated by advertising experts, who once awed them, bears little resemblance to the reality of their candidate’s shocking deeds. To be in ascholia is to be in a constant state of ekplêxis and this, Plato believes, is the unfortunate condition of humankind.13

Ascholia: From symptoms to permanent traits The resistance to scholê is shared by all, given that we all have the same biological needs for food, drink, security and comforts. The symptoms of turmoil and the pull of distractions are universal. Plato, however, goes further in his diagnosis. He differentiates between the passions that arise from resistance to scholê and permanent character traits that mark the person who has been trained and educated for the life of ascholia. Plato calls these character traits simply tropoi and, elsewhere, tropoi psuchês (characters of the soul).14 In the Theaetetus, Plato creates one of the masterpieces of character portrayal with an extended description of two opposing types drawn on the canvas of life’s choices. The first is the one who succeeds in ascholia while the second, who turns to scholê, is a failure at such instrumental things. His paradigmatic types are the orator-lawyer, on the one hand, and the philosopher on the other. The philosopher has been brought up to participate in scholê while the lawyer has been educated to make a living arguing legal cases for paying clients. Plato has carefully picked his examples. As models of ascholia he could have chosen other types who are constantly busy in their craft or their business. He picks two types who are involved with knowledge but in two very different ways. The philosopher pursues it as an end-in-itself and the orator uses it as a tool. With that said, we must avoid the implication that they are both using the same thing, the intellect, in two different ways.

28

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

Discursive reasoning that analyses the facts at hand is also to be found in other animals, but nous is a distinctively human property. Another difference is that though the philosopher can experience nous in scholê, the orator who calculates will never experience nous. He will be unaware of its existence. For him it has no being and thus he can never have before himself, as a choice, the possibility of living a life which aims at its actualization. The philosopher has a character type that is free, while the orator’s is servile. The philosopher’s engagement has no external constraint. The orator’s objectives have been set for him, within parameters that define the range of his thinking. Perhaps one might object that all practical affairs are subject to external constraints. One has to adjust to the scope of the project, the materials at hand, the size of the budget, and the time available to complete it. Does this mean that satisfying needs with craft and skill condemns us to being slavish? Clearly this cannot be so. Plato’s division of types thus has to do with the ends of life that have been engraved into one’s psyche. To focus on one’s work in order to have scholê is one thing, but to order one’s ends for work is another. Philosophers make their discussions in peace when they are in scholê. Their scholê is free of tension and the agonistic state of mind. They would have no need for stimulants, coffee, smart drugs and neuro-enhancers to focus them on their mission. In fact what they require is a detachment that is quite the opposite. The philosopher has to be free to take into consideration outliers and to wander because what matters is ‘that they hit upon [true] being’ (Tht. 172d9). The orators could make good use of such drugs in order to stay focused with the intensity that results-oriented ascholia requires (172e1). They are never disinterested because their legal contests always have to do with pressing interests. They become intense and shrewd (173a1), ever wound up and combative, always calculating how to win. To be submissive to the ends of ascholia in no way implies that one is not competitively aggressive, for bellicosity is a signpost of one’s commitment to ascholia’s small-minded goals. The range within which such types deploy their thoughts squeezes them into a narrow corner defined by the issues that have been assigned to them. They are not permitted (172e1–2) to pursue their ideas in different directions on a broader plain and their speeches are those of a fellow slave towards a master who sits in judgement (172e5).



Plato on Scholê and Ascholia

29

Another dimension of slavishness is that the people nurtured for ascholia become very capable at adjusting or adapting to the expectations of those whom they serve since this is necessary for their success. The culture that prepares them for ascholia trains them to view adjustability and what is often called flexibility as virtues. Of course, today we drug children who are fidgety in class because they supposedly cannot focus. And in later life as grownups we drug them again if they feel a depressing emptiness in their lives which renders them maladjusted. Rather than analysing psychological problems from the inside the tendency now is to manage them from the outside and the criterion for success is a person’s adaptation to imposed norms of conduct. Those trained for scholê (173c4–5) adjust to the truth. Someone might lodge a protest that the knowledge industries of our day despise adjustment and adaptation and instead reward innovation and novelty. Yes, but is this not also an adaptation, just as the orator-lawyer who might have been rewarded for a new and striking turn of phrase, or a new trick, such as pleading with the jury in a novel way, that might have won the case? To innovate, which is the mantra of ascholia in our times, is to be no less subservient than to copy. The two types differ significantly in the scales they use to measure matters. The ascholos measures a thing relative to human interests in which profits and losses can be quantified. The philosopher measures things in eons and galactic spans. The two different scales determine what comes to one’s attention for consideration and how matters are considered. What fills the mind of the orator-lawyer is ignored by the philosopher while what is considered important by the philosopher has no existence for the orator. The philosopher in scholê is drawn to the grand expanse of being and ‘he researches the nature of everything as a whole, never stooping to what is close at hand’ (Tht. 174a1–2). Accustomed to measuring distances in the universe, he can be detached from immediate practical concerns and can examine these issues in a perspective that allows him to reach conclusions regarding the nature or the consequences of a problem. He can arrive at a correct estimate of the worth of a thing based on an understanding of its causes and not its contextual uses. The orators are guided by values that have no correspondence to true being, hence empty. The word Plato uses, which can be translated as vain, is chaunotês (175b3), which literally means ‘porousness’ and, metaphorically, ‘empty conceit’. As a trait, porosity perfectly fits the character whose soul is

30

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

forever leaking in every which way, always in doubt and always searching for new information to refill it. Perhaps an example might be the scientists who are calculating ways to exploit the melting ice at the poles for oil and mineral exploration. This is a truly pressing issue for corporations and nations that want to turn a future profit from control of natural resources, yet all this intellectual labour is ‘porous’ in that it lacks a detached grasp of causes or consequences that pertain to the good of humankind into the distant future. The philosopher searches out the causes of things and brings his values into alignment with true being and not their appearances which are selectively claimed to constitute reality according to their utilities. He stands firm against external impressions of grandeur or the impressive weight of authority: When he hears a tyrant or a king praised he thinks he hears some herdsman of swine or sheep or cattle being praised for milking many animals. He thinks that the animals he herds and milks are more difficult and more treacherous than those [of the herdsman] and of necessity he becomes, no less than the herdsmen, boorish and uncultured due to his preoccupations (ascholias) and he is enclosed in his castle walls just as a herdsman is enclosed in his mountain pen. (Tht. 174d4–e2)

Plato does not seem to be claiming that the tyrant or the king is boorish and uncultured because he lacks free time. We can safely assume that kings and tyrants had plenty of free time at their disposal as we can tell from Plato’s and Aristotle’s writings, which refer to their orgiastic festivities. The tyrant’s ascholia is a state of mind and desire that drives him to milk his populace, something that requires his full-time attention. The tyrant is enclosed inside the walls of his character just as a herdsman is enclosed in a pen with the animals he milks. There is a dialectical relationship between the two: the flock is in its pen so as to be milked and the milking within the pen determines the shepherd’s perimeter of interests and culture. Of the two, it is the tyrant who is worse off because the animals he milks are not as obedient. They can connive and resist, so he must give undivided attention to their scheming even when indulging in orgies in his free time. He must sleep, as the saying goes, with one eye open. A question to consider is this: if such a way of living is miserable why cannot the person living in ascholia break out of his or her pen? What keeps them there?



Plato on Scholê and Ascholia

31

Deinotês: The self-made shackles of our imprisonment to ascholia What is remarkable about ascholia is that our imprisonment within its distorted field of vision is entirely self-induced. We ourselves, says Socrates, are the accomplices of our incarceration. ‘It’s as if each pain and pleasure is like a nail that rivets the soul to the body’ (Phd. 83d4). But we are oblivious to this condition as long as we are within it. Only when we go outside of it, when we turn to philosophy, does our enslavement become apparent to us. Philosophy coming from the outside reveals to the soul the horrors that it has been living with, as if the soul had a hidden malignant tumour that it has brought to light. It reveals to our own soul that it has been forced ‘as if in a prison to study beings through the body’ and the result is that it ‘wallows in total ignorance’ and ‘it perceives that the utmost horror of the prison is due to [its own] desire, as if the prisoner himself were the main accomplice to his own bondage …’ (82e5–83b4).15 The first answer to our question is hereby given in that the person in ascholia is unaware of his misery. The pen in which he is enclosed has been erected and is maintained by none other than himself. The question is why is this so? Fowler’s translation (Loeb edition) of this passage inadvertently gives a misleading answer that aids us in answering the question: ‘the most dreadful thing about the imprisonment is the fact that it is caused by the lusts of the flesh’. This rendition of Plato in the biblical language of original sin does provide a cause but it cannot be the correct one. Plato gives us a hint why this could not be so when he says that we are not the cause, but the accomplices. There has to be something within the sheep-pen of our desires that makes ascholia so pleasurable, so that the very pleasure itself constitutes an addiction that cannot be looked into because it, itself, is fuelling desire for itself. If it was lust of the body, as Fowler translates, then the opposition between thought and the body would be manifest and the alternative for escape would also be in view. But this opposition, mind versus body, in this case, is not there. The only explanation is that our hedonically preoccupied thought is itself the foremost defence mechanism preventing any self-reflective thought into our addictions to ascholia. Plato refers throughout his works to this power of intelligence which he calls cleverness (deinotês). In ascholia it fills us with the thrill of accomplishment.

32

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

It’s as if it were a wave of pleasure which we seek to ride again and again. We are tied to ascholia not merely by way of a work ethic and consumer desires. Plato is ahead of the sociologists who describe and measure the external contextual forms but often stay blind to the inner soul that reproduces the recurring phenomena in diverse contexts. Weber declared the work ethic to be a product of Protestantism but, if so, how does one explain the Meiji Restoration or China’s Communist drive to the same end. Plato examines the elements of the soul that give rise to ascholia and how these traits manage to prevail and how they stay impervious to any self-examination. There exists in deinotês a pleasure internal to thought which blocks thought from ever examining the instrument that is producing its results. The futility of the Sisyphean climb to the summit remains unexamined because the climb itself, and not the summit, is the high. The force of gravity, viewed as the cause, as the challenge to be overcome, is not the punishment, but the thrill-filled saviour. According to the lexicon the adjective deinos refers to something fearful or terrible, but also to something that can be ‘marvellously strong, powerful’; it can indicate a practical skill or the person who has the skill or it can simply point to a person who is clever. The word is filled with ambiguity. There is something awesome in what a skill can produce but there is also something terrible in what unscrupulous cleverness can effect. The word deinotês thus has a double-edged meaning whose status depends on what type of moral filter it passes through. When tied to gain (kerdos) it can be reprehensible; when tied to truth and well-being it is commendable. We have to look no further than Socrates’ opening words at his trial. His accusers, he says, shamelessly warned the judges that he, Socrates, is a deinos speaker, to which he replies that he is not ‘unless the person whom they call deinos is the one who speaks the truth’ (Ap. 17b2–8). And in the Theaetetus he states that it is in man’s righteousness that ‘true cleverness is to be found’ and also the converse, his ‘worthlessness and his cowardice’ (Tht. 176c). Aristotle, writing at a more theoretical level, makes the same point that deinotês is present both in immoral cleverness and in the virtue of practical wisdom. There is a power which they call deinotêta. It is that which directs one’s powers to the underlying purpose so that one may act and attain it. If the aim is noble it is praiseworthy, but if it is base then it is knavish cleverness. For this reason



Plato on Scholê and Ascholia

33

both the practically wise and the clever knaves are said to be deinous. (Eth. Nic. 1144a23–28)

A way to make Plato’s distinction between deinotês that has a just moral content and the type of creativity to which we are drawn in ascholia is to turn to Heidegger who has written an encomium to deinotês. In his analysis of Sophocles’ ‘Ode on Man’ he extols the very properties that Plato finds reprehensible. Deinotês, states Heidegger (2014), violently overpowers power; it surpasses the limit of the familiar, it is what gives humans their being; they burst forth as violent men who use power to become creators, men of action with historical Being. Otherwise men simply get stuck and move endlessly in the circle of ‘seeming, and thus shut themselves out of Being’ (175). But if we were to strip away the mythical presence, the supposed dasein of deinotês, we would be left only with Sisyphus’ labours with its endless rush of thrills that accompany all the creative improvisations required of him for the ascent. Only here the shared deinotês is celebrated as a socially violent Will for ascending to one’s duties. In this way Sisyphus would have now acquired many comrades. Indicative is that in Heidegger’s encomium the word justice is absent. But according to Plato, without justice our accomplishments, whatever they may be, will be that of ‘clever men (deinoi) and rogues’ (Tht. 177a7–8). When Socrates in the Phaedrus recants the otherwise brilliant sophistic speech he makes against erôs he denounces it as: ‘terrible (deinon), Phaedrus, terrible (deinon) this speech that you yourself brought to me and which you forced me to give’ (242d4–5). What is terrible or terrifying or dreadful is not the quality of the speech as a brilliant piece of rhetoric, but its clever chain of arguments for immoral exchanges that do violence to love. Perhaps it would be useful for us to attempt to place Plato’s view of deinotês in a modern setting, if only to destabilize our inbred inclination to relegate his diagnosis to a bygone age. The modern technological captains of industry who are worth billions are intense and focused on their mission, and they take advantage of all the knowledge and technology that has been made available to them. They learn how to make keen use of ideas, some for profit-making dreams and others for fame and repute. They stay awake; they work around the clock; they are driven with a mania to succeed. But there are others as well who are equally driven and have access to the same information and are focused to achieve the same ends. They will thus have to be sharp at exploiting

34

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

the smallest advantage that comes their way, and to be adversarial and aggressive against all their opponents in this race for the commercial laurels of their ascholia. Regarding their inner selves, such people are suspicious and on their guard lest their competitors take advantage of their generosity. When they do succeed, and even on the path to success, the small self that has been squeezed into a thimble-sized soul will feel the pain of its abuse and constraint. Their emotional needs remain famished because their deviant selves, their anger, their indomitable ambition, their jealousies and fears, their graspingness, are what got them the right results. Like tyrants, they can vent their anger and their suspicions without limit. Living with such pain, will they not require some type of drug? When they drown out their pains they call this pleasure. In these moments their inner phantoms are allowed to roam about and this outing is declared to be freedom in leisure. Once they are relieved of some of the burden they carry they are at the ready to once again throw themselves into the fray of ascholia. But the emptiness inside cannot be filled with money or success and, hence, they turn to ever more exotic ways, to Zen one day, to Buddha the next, to relieving their inner humiliation with Primal Screams, starving themselves with one food fad the one day and a new one that will give them spiritual enlightenment the next. These exotic indulgences, which are driven by their desire to escape their inner monsters, are advertised as the mainstay of their leisure. And when these fail there is always the megayacht to be built with the latest science, which surely requires much ascholia for the gratification of one’s empty desires in leisure. One could say here that indeed they have leisure but scholê not one iota. What they are truly good at is the art of serving the unquenchable appetites of their potential customers, and are in effect even worse off than Sisyphus. His moral flaws stopped at being clever at self-advantage, while they are also proficient in using their clever inventiveness for what Plato calls ‘slavish servant business’ or ‘ministering’ to the needs of others.16 They are expert in mustering and applying all the resources at their disposal, material, mental and emotional in order to meet the desires of those whom they serve and on whose whims their livelihood depends. In an authorized biography of Steve Jobs a compliment is given to him by one who knew him well: ‘Steve understands desire’.17 Throughout the passage in the Theaetetus, Plato refers to the upbringing that the two types have received. The one raised for ascholia is riddled with



Plato on Scholê and Ascholia

35

fears. We can surmise that this is because he has been raised in a slavish way that attends to authority even if in later life he chooses to rebel against it. He has not been nurtured in mousikê but most probably with commands and recipes for success which unavoidably breed within him deep-seated anxieties since he must live up to the commandments which he has learned to fear. It would seem that the blue-jeans and T-shirt teenage-looking moguls are anti-conformists who fearlessly ‘think different’ but truly only as long as they conform to serving, albeit in novel ways, the appetites of those to whom they minister. Such, says Socrates, is this type ‘who is always capable, keen and at the ready to do all these [menial] things …’ (Tht. 175d7–e2). When the Athenian Stranger describes this state of affairs in the Laws he is reprimanded by one of his interlocutors for the passion he vents against the ascholia that produces such a pathetic type of human being (832b5). The passionate description of such a leisure-lacking type deserves to be cited: this cause [ascholia in pursuit of money] must be made clear in order to explain why a city has no desire or any serious intention for any good or noble pursuit, but due to the insatiable greed for gold and silver, each man is willing to pursue every art and contrivance, whether fair or foul, if it will make him wealthy; and he will commit acts pious and impious and altogether disgraceful without any qualm, if only he should have the ability, just like any beast, to eat all sorts of things and to drink in a likewise manner and to satisfy his every sexual lust.

The borders of the soul, whose limits, according to Heraclitus were limitless, are, in ascholia, shrunk to that miniscule area catering to the body and the psychological powers that have been commandeered to its service.

III

Catharsis, Scholê and Play

When Socrates asks ‘is the body an impediment or not if in any inquiry one were to take it along as an assistant, in communion with it?’ the answer is never in doubt. The severing of all communication or association, to the degree possible, between body and soul is a precondition for the ascent to truth.1 If anyone wants to know what ‘equality’ or ‘length’ is in itself, they will have to abandon the evidence of their senses. Furthermore, the virtues, such as justice and temperance, are never revealed by sense perception of any type. You will never recognize a just or virtuous person by staring at their external appearance.2 In this section of the Phaedo Socrates puts forth catharsis as the cure to the body-based afflictions of ascholia. He emphasises this with variations and repetitions so that the importance of catharsis for achieving scholê is made unmistakable: ‘if we are to ever see anything purely (katharôs) we must be free of [the body]’. If we ‘stay pure (katharoi) until god releases us and be free of the body’s irrationality … we will come to be with other [pure] beings and we will come to know everything that is pure (katharo) … because it is not permitted by the divine laws of justice for the impure (mê katharo) to come into contact with the pure (katharo)’. (66d2–67b2)

Socrates declares that he is hopeful for what comes after death as every man should ‘whose mind has undergone purification (kekatharmenên)’, because pure (katharôs) wisdom, if it is to be found anywhere, will be found there.3 The search for truth and essence cannot occur without a continuous moral catharsis that frees a person of all those traits born of ascholia. Free time is an important but incidental issue. Even if we cleaned the slate of all preoccupations and locked ourselves in a room, we would not be capable of partaking in scholê if a continuous moral catharsis did not accompany this

38

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

endeavour. Ascholia is carved into us with moral traits and these have to be etched away. Plato describes catharsis as a ‘removal of some evil’, a separation ‘that expels the worse and leaves behind the better’ from the soul.4 On the surface it seems that Plato is proposing a negative purgation, especially when he uses such words as ‘cast out’, ‘taking away’, ‘removal’ and ‘throw away’. But that this cannot be the full story is shown when he claims that the purification is to be effected through the virtues, as if they were the razors doing the shaving away. Here there is a problem. If the virtues are the cathartic precondition to scholê it would seem that one must first be virtuous before one can cleanse oneself of the impurities of ascholia. The purification that is a precondition to virtue requires the virtues as the means for the purification. The circularity of this proposition is blatant. In the Phaedo Socrates shows that he is well aware of the paradox because he discusses it at length before he puts forth a solution. He first sets the stage by saying that he rejects the trading of one passion for another as a way of defining any virtue (69a-e). To suppress intemperate desires out of fear of being caught is not, for him, a virtue. There is only one currency, the practical virtue of phronêsis. The ripping and tearing away is thus a necessary adjunct phase, because phronêsis cannot occur even if all the cravings of one’s bodily sensations were denied. Denial and fortitude could not be exchanged for virtue. The reason why the ‘temperate’ man is ‘happy and blessed’ (Grg. 507c4) is not because he has withdrawn, so to speak, from his body, but because he has brought an order to his soul from which good acts are certain to follow. According to Socrates if the right order is not in place, the crooked order will generate the judgements that are appropriate to its crookedness with unfailing logical justification that will be armed with affective power. Socrates goes on to ask if true virtue is not some type of catharsis of this sort ‘and that sôphrosynê and courage and even phronêsis are itself not a type of purification’. He then cites the mystery rituals which reveal this truth, that one must first be purified if one is to avoid the mire in the afterlife. There are many, of course, who will fail despite their outward pretension, because many carry the rods of the rituals but few are the true bacchants. Then the extended discussion of virtue and catharsis is brought to a conclusion. The way to a successful catharsis, rather than to its outward pretence, comes in the form of

Catharsis, Scholê and Play

39

a personal confession. Socrates, in a moving way, tells us how the very virtues which are the catharsis became available to him for his catharsis: And these [the true devotees] are none other than the true philosophers. It was for the purpose of becoming one of these, to the degree possible, that I did not fail to leave anything undone in my life, but in every way I showed myself to be eager. If I showed correct eagerness and if we accomplished anything [this] will be shown when we arrive [there]. (Phd. 69c1–d5, emphasis. added)

The flagrant circularity, as it turns out, is not resolved by logic. Socrates’ solution was not to offer a logical proof but to live, to the degree possible, a way of life in scholê. In the Gorgias, Socrates creates a myth about the judgement after death which helps us understand his solution more concretely. Under Zeus’ reforms, to ensure justice of rewards and punishments in the afterlife, the only thing visible to the judges is the order of the soul, its inner kosmos. This is the only identifying mark of the soul which otherwise has no name, no body, no earthly trappings with which to impress the judges. It seems that not even one’s actions are recorded there since the actions are the product of the internal order that the actions have etched deeply into the soul. Socrates believes that the order of his soul will pass the test. He does not claim wisdom or knowledge for this confidence. He trusts that proof of his internal order is that he has devoted his life to philosophy. Evidence for his war against ascholia is everywhere. When Phaedrus (Phdr. 229e) asks Socrates to comment on the veracity of myths, Socrates replies that he has ‘no scholê whatsoever for such things’. Time he has, scholê he does not have. This he reserves for inquiry into essence, especially his essence, whether he is a Typhon-like monster within, and this self-examination in turn brings him greater order and ever better cathartic means to engage in scholê. At his death he shows himself to be the model for scholê. As he is dying he tells Crito that ‘we owe a rooster to Asclepius, give it to him; do not neglect the matter’. His final wish is not to eat and drink into the night. He asks that a sacrifice be made on the part of all the friends who had spent the day in scholê engaged in philosophical discourse. It is not death and separation of the soul from the body that holds out the promise of purification and salvation, but philosophy. Following Socrates’ analogy, if the dance of the devotees is more important than the wands they hold, then it must also be the case that the pure state

40

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

of the partners dancing is more important than any paraphernalia. One is driven to the conclusion that friendship between the devotees is a necessary accompaniment to scholê. Even if we put aside all the benefits that come from research in a community, and even if we put aside the fact that inquiry would be impossible without such communion, it would still follow that one would need friends for such cathartic discourse. As far as elenchus goes, we could not look into ourselves without the dialogical bond between friends who examine each other’s beliefs and separate out the false from the true without envy and meanness. When Socrates states that he believes that he pursued philosophy correctly, his statement probably does not refer to any specific ontology or epistemology or method. In all his exchanges he shows a desire to engage in dialogue that will make all participants better. Caring for the other, for the friend, with this purpose in mind, is a way of seeing oneself. Looking into the eyes of the transformed friend one sees the transformation one has brought about in oneself. The arousal of nous in the other is the proof, so to speak, of the devotion to nous within oneself.

Scholê in the second best city In the Republic the education of the philosopher guardians, a small select group, is designed to prepare them, in part, for a scholê in which they will contemplate the true nature of things. Having ascended to such a gaze they will then be qualified to justly rule the ideal city. The education of other sectors of the population for such scholê is out of the question and is never addressed. The hardships of mastering the dialectic through a lifetime of study are presumably beyond their reach. But in Plato’s Laws, his last work, what is being constructed is ‘the second best’ city,5 and here one expects that participation in scholê will be addressed, because the defence of the constitution and its laws are not the responsibility of an idealized guardian class but are entrusted to the entire citizen body. Indeed, when the Athenian Stranger sketches out the city’s civic festivals, he declares that this future city ‘will be unrivalled in prosperity and scholê’. The expectation that more will be said about scholê is dashed when we learn that the free time of the populace will be spent in serious games or serious play. In

Catharsis, Scholê and Play

41

vain will one search this lengthy work to find a discussion of scholê in the way it was presented in the Phaedo. When the word is used it is almost always with its common, pedestrian meaning of free time.6 Plato’s devaluation of the ideal of scholê, as a political aim, cannot but be deliberate and cannot be attributed to oversight. This is shown in the pre-eminence that he assigns to play in the political life of the city, for it is through play that children will be nurtured to citizenship, and it is in and through play that they will solidify their cooperative bonds as mature adults. The questions now are the relationship of play to scholê and what are the implications of the rejection of scholê (in its defining sense) for polis-wide participation in the truth-seeking life?

Divine play as a political end Throughout the Laws, Plato asserts, through the person of the Athenian Stranger, that the legislator will be framing laws regarding play, not scholê, at least not in the philosophical sense described in the Phaedo. From childhood to adulthood, games and play and festivities are to nurture and train people in ways that will endear them to noble practices: First and foremost, education, we say, consists in that right nurture which most strongly draws the soul of the child when at play to a love for that pursuit of which, when he becomes a man, he must possess a perfect mastery. (Leg. 643d)

But Plato is not interested in play that prepares the child for a trade or for some private enterprise. He focuses on the play that will produce the noble adult citizen and this he argues will wholly depend on training in pleasure and pain. This is what true education is all about. Such training, through pleasurable imitations of noble character in music and dance, has the power to instil the internal order from which virtuous acts are to follow. He makes a distinction between normal play and serious play. The former brings neither benefit nor harm, only pleasure (667e), but the pleasure of the latter results from a special type of imitation that strives to make humans like the divine order.7 Music and dance are mimetic and the criterion for their selection is not to be in the pleasure they afford, or in the virtuosity of the performance, but in their correctness to effectively, which is to say sensuously, represent

42

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

virtuous traits of character. The movements in dance and music can be crafted to approximate the traits of the divine model as instantiated in noble persons. It is perhaps from this standpoint that we can approach the Athenian Stranger’s statement that the best part of the human being ‘has been contrived as god’s toy of some sort’.8 In these activities, humans, like children in play, are not aware that the strings of their passions are being pulled towards virtue in song and dance. This guided pulling of the strings of pain and pleasure result in a character that can subdue the impulses of seductive pleasures. The child becomes capable of right conduct because the inner order has trained its hedonic impulses to select, through imitative training, the action that ‘feels right’, and secondly as an adult he will have tamed pleasure and pain to await for the outcome of his rational deliberations so that he will act with right opinion and be able to give a defensible account of his actions. Unlike the views put forth in the Republic, the nurturing in music in play is meant for all segments of the population. Young and old, men and women are to take part in the city’s far-reaching play activities because the city’s future rests on its politically directed training in pleasure and pain. Plato points out the weaknesses in the Spartan system of public education, which emphasized endurance only to pain so that its warriors would excel in warfare and conquest. This education ultimately failed because it did not prepare the children for standing up to pleasure. He concludes that the most important things are to be found not in war but in peace and play, and ultimately games must prepare a child for this: The view at present, I take it, is that they think that serious activities must be for the sake of pastimes. They believe that war is a most serious affair and must be conducted efficiently for the sake of peace. But warfare activities are neither related naturally to play nor again do we consider them to contribute anything worthy – neither now nor in the future – to education, which we consider to be the greatest matter of all. Each person, then, must pass his life in peace in the fullest and best way that he can. What then is the correct way? Each one must spend his life playing, engaged in different types of play, namely, sacrificing, singing, and dancing so that it is possible to win the favour of the gods and defend against enemies and be victorious fighting. The sort of singing and dancing that can bring about these results has been previously outlined, and just as one must follow the roads that have already been cut out, so too we suppose that the poet directs us to the right road when he states that:

Catharsis, Scholê and Play

43

Telemachus, some things you will think yourself, but others the divinity will suggest to you for you were not born and nurtured against the will of the gods. (Od. 3.25–28) In the same spirit, then, our own nurslings, making use of their own intelligence, must think our advice to be sound. The other things, though, regarding the specifics of sacrifices and choric competitions, these the divinity and god will reveal to them, whichever is appropriate to each god and on what occasion. And thus playing and receiving the favour of the gods, they will pass their life in accordance with nature, being for the most part puppets, but partaking in a small way in the truth. (Leg. 803d2–804b4)

People now think that ascholia is serious and that the most serious of all preoccupations is the waging of war in order to secure peace in which they can enjoy leisurely pastimes and amusements. But Plato turns the tables on what is most serious. 9 He cites Sparta in order to show that its constitution was deficient because its legislators failed to grasp that play, and not war, should have been the constitution’s safeguard.10 Play is thus to be legislated with the utmost care and unsanctioned innovations are prohibited.11 The legislator is constantly to examine the varied uses of play and to introduce improvements that will cultivate and test the citizens’ virtue.12 Festivals, taking up half the year, will be designed to heal the wear and tear of ascholia and to set aright the internal order which life’s hardships might fray.13 Warfare and all the preparations that are required for it add nothing to culture for scholê. Plato thus puts forth an important principle that will be adopted by Aristotle. If some type of preoccupation is chosen as the highest value, in this case warfare, the leisure that is secured by it will merely be an appendage to it. Why cannot these values be the guiding principles for play and scholê? The answer seems to be that each type of ascholia selectively makes use of human powers for specific tasks at hand. This is the problem. They cannot provide a solid foundation for the culture that aims to produce the free citizen. The practices of un-freedom no matter how successful at limited tasks will not generate the character traits for freedom. The devotions to duty will leave many human powers raw and uncultivated so that when these are freed from restraint their cravings for pleasure can have destructive results. In the Laws play is the centrepiece of politics. No aspect of ascholia will shape citizens’ character traits. The disorder of ascholia is to be pre-empted

44

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

through play. The city will be organized around its scholê, but scholê itself is for play; it will have an abundance of goods and scholê (828d8) so that it will not repeat the error of the Persian Kings who had no leisure for supervising the nurturing of their children (686b8). The ‘greatest scholê’ (832d1) will be for the cultivation of the virtues, whereas the ‘love of wealth’ which keeps people in a continuous state of ascholia, with no time to spare for the common welfare, will be checked (831c4), and that ‘life-long insatiable greed’ which ‘renders each person busy’ will be systemically combatted (832b1). The statesmen of this city are to their citizens as the Demiurge is to the universe. The former use mimetic play to bring humans into accord with the divine order; the latter brings the heavens and the stars into being as a representation of ‘intelligible living being’.14 But what has happened to the scholê as envisioned in the Phaedo as the condition in which humans find their nature and investigate the causes of things. Plato never entertains this ideal as a universal political end for his second best city. Scholê is there to serve play, not for play to serve scholê. Why play is the end, and not scholê, is indicated in the passage previously quoted: Humans ‘share little in the truth’. Elsewhere, in the Timaeus, Plato repeats the same (51e5–6): ‘We must declare that [of ‘right opinion’] all mankind shares in it, but nous is a property of the gods and of a few men’. The citizens in his second best city are thus trained for calculation of right action with right opinion, but not for the pleasures of nous. Scholê, as presented in the Theaetetus and the Phaedo, is beyond the abilities or interests of most. Coming to grips with this reality, the universal end does not envision citizens partaking in rigours of dialectic. This is not to say that the quests of philosophical wisdom in scholê are abolished. Play’s nurturing need not terminate in the acquisition of right opinion. Nothing prevents play, as a mimêsis of the divine, to be extended to philosophical inquiry. Dialectic and the search for the essence and truth can also be thought of as a form of play, as an imitation of what nous in the universe actually is. Plato calls the dialogue which occurs in the Laws ‘play’. In so far as it is an inquiry into the best regime available it is a mimesis of the divine principle governing all things.15 But such theoretical forms of play are not the norm, nor are they the principle of education for the city’s political unity. The option of a philosophical education is left open for exceptional persons who are to be recruited to the ruling Nocturnal Council,

Catharsis, Scholê and Play

45

where Plato lets it be known that philosophical education, such as that which was occurring at the Academy, is to be pursued.16 Plato is content to note that philosophically minded individuals are to be found in good and bad regimes alike, and that the legislators of the new city must seek out any who might exist within their own city and guide their philosophical studies to public service. In any case, there is no special universal political programme that aims for scholê as a city-wide objective. Plato never calls philosophy play and there is nothing to suggest that some change occurred during his last years that made him view the philosophical quest as a form of play rather than scholê. But, given the importance assigned to play in the Laws for the city’s unity in all phases of the citizens’ life, he seems to have thought of play in a way that it could also include philosophy without incurring a contradiction. Whereas scholê as put forth in the Phaedo can never become play, play in the Laws can include theôria. Play could incorporate the entire continuum from mimetic enculturation in play all the way to philosophical contemplation. When Plato includes philosophy in play he does not imply that philosophy cannot attain to the truth or that it must be content with ever-incomplete representations. Throughout the continuum, in all its phases, the invariant is nous. The play of the philosopher is the activity of nous that defines essence, and the play of the citizen in festivals is based on an imitation of philosophic truths instantiated in civic celebrations. At the lower end of the spectrum, play, as aesthetic mimêsis, is in accord with nous while at the higher end it is nous in activity. The widening of play so as to include theôria protects Plato’s theory of political education from the dangers of incoherence, but at a cost.

Problems with Plato’s concept of play as the alternative to scholê as end There is an evident contradiction in Plato’s concept of scholê. On the one hand scholê entails a human completion in nous but it is not, in Plato’s view, destined that all humankind partake in it. This is not merely his conclusion in the Laws, for one finds the same view emphatically expressed in the Republic as well. The ascent to nous requires such a native talent and such a difficult nurturing and

46

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

life-long education that it is reserved for a very few. The contradiction is that if human completion corresponds to happiness and happiness is the end, then it follows that most of humankind can never be happy. Therefore either nous in scholê is not equivalent to eudaimonia or it is eudaimonia reserved for but a handful of true philosophers. In either case there is a fatal flaw. If it is the latter it is the highest end, but because it is lacking in universality this precludes it from being the end. If the former, then happiness is available to all, at best, through imitation, by way of approximation in play, but then it cannot be the highest end. Another problem is that the connection between moral character and nous, something necessary if nous in scholê is to be for the best and not to be squandered on evil enterprises, is not well founded. What keeps the theoretical works of nous from clever or evil uses is that nous entails the good; hence nous’ operations depend on the existence of the Idea of the Good, for it is the Good and its offspring that assure the justice of the works of scholê. To theorize with nous is ontologically virtuous because one has morally ascended to the contemplation of the divine realm and true being. If the Idea of the Good is questionable then so too is the moral status of nous with respect to its works. What is the guarantee that nous’ grasp of essences is not put to unwholesome uses, such as scientific knowledge for oppressive purposes, the way scientists today work on theoretical projects whose ends are most often dictated by the needs of ascholia as defined by corporations and militarist states? Since the political extension of scholê to the entire society is precluded, then the moral life in play must be the political end. If this is so, then scholê must have play as its primary end, but this conclusion would subvert the defining nature of scholê. There would then have to be two types of scholê: the defining type that inquires into causes and a socio-political type that is devoted to play, where play is an open-ended slew of activities which, in their totality, sustain a society’s cooperative virtues. If this is so then the theory suffers from the same incompleteness as the two-god theories of erôs which are enunciated by Pausanias and Eryximachus in the Symposium. Two types of erôs are required in order to account for erôs’ carnal proclivities in opposition to its cultured manifestations. Instead of a single theory that can account for all the contradictory manifestations of erôs, they try to account for its base traits by way of one god and its noble qualities through another. In the case

Catharsis, Scholê and Play

47

of scholê on the one hand there is scholê for theory and truth and then as a political adjunct there is scholê for play. It seems Plato tried to overcome this problem by suggesting that philosophy itself could be thought of as play, but this is hinted at playfully and the difficulties of this view are never brought forth for extended analysis.

On theological interpretations of Plato’s theory of play Plato’s theories of leisure and play never developed into a tradition that might have studied and tested his ideas in some fashion, or which might have applied aspects to achieve the political results that Plato had in mind. Except for the influence his views had on Aristotle, the political purposes of his ideas on these subjects were to have no impact whatsoever on any of the cultural currents that were to emerge. No statesman from the fourth century bc to the modern era ever attempted to formulate, let alone legislate, a programme of play for nurturing children in order to inculcate moral virtue in its citizens. Instead, edited selections of Plato’s ideas were to have vast influence on aspects of Christian theology and on secular thinkers who worked within the Christian paradigm. Their aim – whether we are speaking of Church Fathers in the East, such as Gregory Nazianzus, Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, or of Fathers of the West such as Aquinas – was exegesis of God’s creation ex nihilo and man’s participation in God’s work of creation.17 Plato’s theory was appropriated by Neoplatonic and Christian thinkers who found it to be a rich source of ideas as to how one could participate, especially through religious ritual, in the mysteries of the divine and in the ineffable will of God. In its offshoot secular versions it gave rise to a variety of modern theories whereby creativity and innovation, whether it be ‘the sculptor engrossed in cutting marble, the teacher intent on imparting a difficult idea, the musician struggling with a score’, are taken to be the hallmarks of leisure.18 One will note here a train of thought whose secular version is firmly embedded in our culture. Play and true leisure are often associated with creativity, with the Promethean-like artist, or the scientist engaged in contemplation. Often these ideas on creative play in leisure are tinged with a mysticism that promises to unlock, either by ritual or inner experience or hallucinogenic substances, the

48

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

secrets of creativity. Ironically, the moderns who hold such views are often unaware of the origins of these ideas or the routes through which they were transmitted to them or how the complicated links between contemplation and play were patched together.19 Given Plato’s authority, his ideas on play were examined and they continue to be examined. They are an enticing source for the discovery of hidden meanings or underlying possibilities which, once teased out from the text by hermeneutical analysis, might offer a way out of what some theologians deem to be a spiritually desolate modernity. In truth, these interpretations of Plato’s theory of play are logically possible, even if not immediately apparent, hence we must consider them, even if briefly. Is there, then, a theological undercurrent in Plato’s notion of mimetic play? Is it possible that Plato meant that in play we become like the Creator of this world who willed it into being, not out of need or lack but in a manner of play? The spiritual range of such a view is breathtaking. From this vantage point the urge to speculate on the god-like traits that are attainable through creative play become irresistible. Catharsis and contemplation and theôria are in one instant near at hand and common to all humankind, to sages and fools, to adults and children, to the learned and the unread, for in creative play all can go beyond the confining bounds of the immediate, the given, the mundane.20 Seeing the world as the product of God’s play sets us free of the shackles of utility and muffles out the noise and busyness of this world. Now it becomes possible to hear the deafening silence of His presence; we can see in the darkness of the night. In play we are now receptive to the signs of His creations which are everywhere, and we ourselves become receptacles of His presence.21 The world ceases to be an instrument or raw material for our paltry egotistical uses. In this spiritual state, we can, for example, when thirsty, savour a glass of water so as to go beyond the matter of the water. This savouring when done in withdrawal from the matter allows one to touch the foundations of the world and to relish in the divine origin of all things.22 There is a mystical feeling as if we, as initiates, are coming into contact with the higher eternal realities of being. In these exquisite moments of wonder and play we are driven to the heights of vision of being, to truth itself and, hence, to theôria. Withdrawn into ourselves we can play by gazing on true being which can only be seen from within.23 This wondrous experience is what we yearn

Catharsis, Scholê and Play

49

for and is available to us if only we might rally ourselves to flee to a refuge, be it religious or secular, where we can reach out and play in communion with or in the presence of God. Since we are the puppets of the gods, it follows that God wants us to play in imitation of His Will. The creator of the cosmos wants us to create here as He does on high24 and for us to bring forms and shapes of every kind to the profane world of matter. Gregory Nazianzus painted in verse the unforgettable image of the world unfolding before us in the providential play of God’s incarnate Logos. Creating other things it remains forever itself, one and motionless, yet forever creative in play. As Maximus was to comment on these lines God comes like love ‘out of himself ’,25 beckoning us ever upward to union with Him.26 Would we not then make use of our scholê, as Pieper eloquently exhorts, to revive sacred festivals in order to affirm His presence?27 Through sacred rites, made ever more sensuous by inspired artists and a common celebratory reverence, we would be affirming His commands and a common will to avoid sin. And could not scholê be the Sabbath as a day free of ascholia? This train of thought opens up endless possibilities that promise to free scholê from its purpose of inquiry into the essence of things. Plato’s view of scholê, grand as it may be, is limited to a select few, while in this reconstruction it is theoretically possible for all to experience that transcendent instant where the dichotomy between subject and object is overcome. In this mysterious unity knowledge of the world flows effortlessly because the egocentric and alienated ‘I’ dissolves into God and God into the transcendent ‘I’. The same can be brought about though rituals that recreate the experience of the oceanic feeling for the faithful. But the ecstatic fervour dissipates as one is drawn back to the text, because in the text, no matter how much one might wish otherwise, one cannot find God the Creator. Plato’s Demiurge, whose literal meaning is the ‘one who works for the people’, is a public servant of sorts. Plato calls him the sunistas, one who ‘composes’ and ‘puts things together’ and notably the ‘skilled workman’ (Ti. 28c6) who crafts according to the eternal paradigm. The Composer received all that was visible, but because he found it to be moving erringly and ‘out of tune’ he brought order to it, thinking that order was ‘the best of all things’ (30a4–6). Working in all seriousness he persuades the wayward causes to follow the order which he arranged in imitation of the Ideal Forms. He never creates ex nihilo; the cosmos or the beautiful order he

50

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

composes is not a product of ecstatic vision, unfathomable and dark, but one relying on his knowledge of mathematics, geometry, harmonics, proportions, astronomy and other difficult-to-master subjects. What makes him a god is that he is the personification of nous. No amount of mystical sipping of water, no retreat to mystically hearing and seeing the beyond, will make the truths of this cosmos known. As for creative play, the Athenian Stranger, in the Laws, is adamant that there will be no creative innovations, save those carefully sanctioned by the legislators, because play is for training in the laws and for ensuring their longevity. Except for early childhood play, which is left up to the children to devise among themselves, the play that will occur in the public sphere as education is hardly random or spontaneous. It is supervised to instil the imitation of noble characters in the sensuous and irrational part of the human being. It aims to bring what Socrates called a logos, an order, a type of knowledge to the disordered pleasures and pains that pull us in every direction.28 Plato’s authority invited Christian thinkers to squeeze his views on play into a narrow interpretative scheme that served theological purposes. But Plato on this score remains the ever-elusive swan. The ecstatic vision, so tempting and so seductive, is at best a phantasmagorical projection appropriate to prophets and seers. The ontology of creation ex nihilo is the source for the quest for salvation in the world beyond and for making mystical contact with the Creator in the here and now through play. But this craving, when intellectually grafted onto Plato, dispenses with his political and moral framework in which play’s purposes were conceived.

IV

Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê The boldest of all political proposals What astounds to this day is Aristotle’s bold assertion of what his teacher had come to reject – and, I would venture to say, something that all political theorists continue to reject – the notion that in scholê participation in theoretical activity, as a way of life, is a possibility for all citizens. To get the full weight of his position, we must emphasize again that the scholê Aristotle is proposing is not that of idleness or play or creative free time, but one whose essence is the activity of nous. There is a tight connection throughout the Politics and the Ethics between happiness (eudaimonia) as the supreme human end, and the identification of theôria as its highest activity, and scholê as the material and moral condition in which completed activity is realized. The following three passages are a mere sampling of the interconnections that are to be found throughout these two works: Being in scholê seems itself to possess pleasure and eudaimonia and the blissful life. This does not exist for the ‘busying’ [persons] but for those engaged in scholê. Because the busy person (ascholôn) busies [himself] for the sake of some end, as not possessing it, but eudaimonia is an end, which exists without pain, and which most people believe exists with pleasure. (Pol. 1338a1–6) If eudaimonia is activity with excellence, then it is reasonable that eudaimonia will exist according to the highest activity. This activity will be the best that exists within us, whether this activity is nous or something else, which is considered to rule over us by nature and which guides us and which has knowledge of good and divine things, or it will be the divine being itself, or the divine that exists within us. This [theoretical] activity and its appropriate excellence would be perfect eudaimonia. (Eth. Nic. 1177a12–17)

52

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê It is believed that eudaimonia occurs in scholê; we work so that we may be in scholê and we make war for the purpose of making peace. (Eth. Nic. 1177b4–6)

Aristotle had arrived at the remarkable conclusion that scholê, in which nous is actualized, must be the regulating principle for political society. This follows from his premise that nous by nature is the ruling power within us and it is that which should guide our life to its ultimate purpose. The question however is whether this ideal which is realised in scholê can ever be a practical universal goal. Nous is a rare accomplishment and theoretical activity was, even in Aristotle’s times, limited to a miniscule fraction of the population. Those familiar with secondary literature on Aristotle’s ethical works may be quick to point out that the practicality of theôria, as the distinguishing trait of perfect eudaimonia for an entire republic, has been taken up by numerous Aristotelian scholars. Indeed the literature is so vast that it has evolved into a specialized field with its own vocabulary for categorizing the various types of interpretations that have been developed and the shades of differences within them. But since this book is not a history of scholarship on the subject of happiness, there is no need to delve into the intricacies of these arguments. The reason is quite simple: if scholê from the very outset is asserted to be practical, then most of the problems taken up in the secondary literature are irrelevant since they deal with whether Aristotle ever truly meant to assert the practicality of eudaimonia. But if scholê’s practicality is itself a first principle then it stands or falls in relation to the premises that flow from it. Do the premises derived from the first principle clash with reality? Does the notion of scholê as political end lead to irreconcilable contradictions? Once we accept that Aristotle views theôria as a practical political end to be realized in scholê, then many of the issues in the secondary literature fade away. In a sense, one acquires an Ockham’s razor which can be used to shave away the conjectures as to whether Aristotle was confused or undecided regarding the best versus the practical political end. The question then is not if Aristotle ever posed scholê, qua theoretical, as an end, but rather in what sense he thought it to be practical, and how it becomes practical once it is chosen to be the political end. Are there contradictions, impossibilities, incoherencies? In order to tackle these queries it would be best, for the sake of clarity, to first exclude a number of interpretations and activities which are often presented as viable candidates for what Aristotle meant by scholê as end.



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

53

Three interpretations regarding the practicality of scholê as end There are three basic approaches to the problems posed by Aristotle’s selection of the theoretical life in scholê as end: The first is to accept the rigours of theôria but to charge Aristotle with incoherency since his political theory would then be impractical. A second way is to dilute theôria into a fuzzy concept implying intellectual activity of some sort, and a third is to claim an equality between theôria and the moral virtues as ends.1 Of course, combinations between the three are possible, and so too are variations. But let us leave those aside and focus only on these three approaches. The charge of incoherency is grounded on the claim that the priority which Aristotle assigns to the theoretical life creates an unbridgeable chasm between the moral and the intellectual virtues. The former are conceivably within the reach of the common man while the latter are the exclusive preserve of a few aristocrats who have the resources to educate and cultivate themselves and make use of unrestricted free time for their theoretical pursuits. From the gulf separating the two an incoherency between the moral and the theoretical life emerges and this chasm results in a monstrous possibility. The mass of the populace would be practising the moral virtues so that a handful of elitist philosophers might actualize their supreme end in leisure at the expense of the rest of society. The justification for this would be that their end, philosophy, is the highest end and therefore the purpose of the lower is to serve them as being the higher. The problem then is what to do with Aristotle’s purported incoherency. One can condemn Aristotle, as does Nightingale, on the grounds that ‘if theôria has no bearing on virtuous praxis then the theoretical philosopher does not have to be an exceptionally good person … Theoretical wisdom, in short, is essentially immoral’.2 Or one might amend the end in some fashion to make it coherent, or to declare the incoherency to be a virtue, as one commentator does, claiming that Aristotle settled for ad hoc ‘horse-trading’ between theôria and virtuous action whereby the former is given prominence but is not given an incomparably higher status than the other.3 Another way around this difficulty is to interpret theôria in a less demanding way that does not define it as a search for causes or first principles. Scholê then

54

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

could be any free time activity that involves nous in some diluted sense, such as any pastimes that make use of a person’s intelligence. Board games, continuing education, art appreciation and other refined ways of spending one’s free time could be included. According to some, even creative employment, one’s work taken as fulfilment, should qualify. Newman, a noted commentator of the Politics, was one of the many who conceived of scholê along these lines. One cannot but notice in the passage below how Newman prefaces theôria with the conjunction ‘and’ to emphasize that theôria is but only one of the many different types of intelligent activities that could comprise the end: [Scholê is] employment in work desirable for its own sake – the hearing of noble music and no doubt of noble poetry; intercourse with friends chosen for their worth; and above all the exercise, in company or otherwise, of the speculative faculty.4 (vol. iii: 442, emphasis added)

As long as the leisure is personally fulfilling, freely undertaken and its pleasures involve the intellect, then the ideal can accommodate a broad spectrum of activities whose common feature is intellectual cultivation. The way is now open for mass participation in theoretical activity, but in this interpretation nous has been removed from the summit and placed in the well-trodden plain below. The issue of whether cultivation of the mind through education might be the purpose of scholê shall be taken up at a later point. For now, let it suffice to be said that the issue centres about Aristotle’s use of the word diagôgê, which is usually translated as ‘intellectual pastime’. Another way around the charge that theôria as end in scholê is impractical is to place scholê in the category of those unrealizable yet motivational ideals, what Kant would have called a regulative idea. Nous, as end, could then be thought of as a transcendental ideal which lies beyond experience, or as a utopian myth whose purpose, like other such ideals such as God or the Good or the Volk, would inspire for supposed noble ends. In support of this view one might cite passages from the Corpus in which the ultimate source of movement in the universe is a divine unmoved mover whose existence is pure self-reflexive noetic activity. God’s life is continuous contemplation of his own perfect ideas. In the same way, scholê might be thought of as an unmoved mover, an erotic object of desire, a transcendental ideality that can motivate as a divine, even if unreal, vision. Though unreal it becomes practical in this way.



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

55

Such a reality beyond human reach can then act as a norm for the practical activities that strive to imitate it. The striving would then be the essence while the ideal would be a hypostasized transcendental.

Some things that scholê is not Literally, diagôgê denotes a carrying across or a passing across, and one of its noun cognates is diagôgeus, a word that appears in association with Hermes, the god who pilots souls across the banks of the river Styx. From its literal meaning of ‘carrying through’ or ‘across to the other side’, the word acquired a metaphorical meaning of taking a person through a subject by instruction such as lectures. Hence, though diagôgê is often used to mean simply ‘pastime’, Aristotle’s use of the word in the Politics on the subject of education for scholê is usually taken to mean intellectual cultivation for the purposes of enhancing or broadening one’s ability to engage in cultivated free time activities. Thus when, according to Rackham’s (1927) translation, Aristotle states that diagôgê ‘is not a thing which is proper for children or the young of a tender age. Those who are themselves still short of their own end cannot yet cope with the ultimate end’5 – this is interpreted to mean that children are too young for intellectual learning. But diagôgê for adults is a different matter. Let us for the moment accept this doubtful translation and let us accept its meaning as presented. Still diagôgê would fall short of scholê. Diagôgê in this sense functions in a transitional role of taking one across the bank, from a state of mere potential, to an opposite bank of fulfilment. If fulfilment occurs in scholê then all learning for professional pursuits or for pleasure would not be included in it. We would also have to exclude courses of continuing education, for these may at best include necessary phases for scholê, but they do not constitute scholê itself. The process of learning itself points to a privation, to something that one lacks or, in any case, to something that is not yet possessed. Learning is a necessary, transitional phase which transports us to the opposite bank where nous will be in operation and ready to function. Scholê, however, is not preparation, but something possessed; as previously noted the word itself is possibly derived from the verb ‘to have’. Learning and its travails and joys are definitely the gateway to scholê and

56

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

would no doubt comprise most of the free time activities of such a culture, but, even so, it has to be distinguished from the end, just as learning to play the violin is distinguished from performing a violin concerto. More generally, no formal compilation of external traits of desirable activities would ever be a safe guide for the recognition of scholê because, as is the case with music, mastery of an instrument can be occurring for the purposes of entertainment or for a professional career as well as for leisure. Learning, or music, or philosophy, or even theoretical contemplation for that matter, when employed as a means, or disconnected from the controlling hand of nous as its moral purpose, do not qualify as scholê despite the refinement associated with these activities. We can broaden our point even more by insisting that scholê has to do with ends, with the highest end. Whatever can be shown to be a means has to be discarded. On these grounds we can dismiss the popular view of the lower Athenian classes who had come to believe that they had made gains in scholê when they obtained subsidies which permitted them to take an active part in the governing of their city. Ruling is not an end; it is a means to a good life. In their case they won the paradoxical right to have subsidized leisure in order to be preoccupied with politics. Likewise, all forms of relaxation are not to be conflated with scholê since they too are means. Scholê begins only after the demands for existence are satisfied. The labours related to sustenance call for strenuous effort as well as anapausis, which is literally a ‘pause throughout’ and would include any type of relaxation that might contribute to the recovery phase so that one may start working again. ‘The activity of play’ Aristotle defines as – and here he is using the word anesis, which means to ‘let go’ or ‘loosen’ – a ‘movement of the soul’.6 If work is a tightening of the soul, relaxation, play and entertainments are its phases of recovery, the soul’s unwinding of its pent up tension. Unlike kinêsis which is always directed to an external unpossessed end, scholê is devoid of movement, it is self-directed activity (energeia) whose end inheres in the activity. It is whole, complete, fully developed and internally possessed. Furthermore, unlike work which must be measured temporally, so that it might be efficient and not squandered with respect to its end product, the activity occurring in scholê seems to be, in a sense, outside of time. When one is in activity there is no process to be measured. The hexis of understanding,



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

57

of nousing, does not proceed in scaled degrees along a continuum. There is no activation of a potential which might then be realized in phases until it reaches its end. Analogously, when we see, we do not see in phases that begin with an activation of the power to see which then culminates in seeing. Eyesight is the activity of seeing. As Christian commentators have pointed out, Plato conceives theoretical activity in scholê to be time independent since its objects, the Forms, are outside of and prior to time. In Aristotle the activity of nous is also, in a certain way, atemporal; it is complete in the now.7 The house that is built by someone possessing the building art is an end that is external to the artisan, but nousing finds its end in itself, in knowing its own thoughts. The activity of nous is thus not defined by its content but by its activity; its own operation is the actualized end, hence complete in every instantaneous now. In a sense it is not right to call scholê free time activity as if to imply that time is the essential attribute of scholê. Time is a necessary condition, just as soil is a necessary condition for an acorn to grow into an oak tree, but soil does not enter into the defining traits of the species that grow on and within it. This is why no amount of free time, not even unlimited leisure, can ever add up to scholê. In Plato the objects of theôria, the Forms, are outside of time. Free time will not be the essential causal factor that will allow a person to gaze upon them. In Aristotle, as well, nous in its activity is not actualized due to having free time, though it does require free time as a condition for it to occur. In scholê what counts is the end for which free time is required as a means. To start with the means, as many leisure theories do, one can never arrive at the end, but from the end one can begin to conceptualize the free time and the resources required for making the end possible and sustainable. Pleasure too has to be dismissed as being the end for scholê, because lying on a beach and sipping one’s cocktail in utter sensual delight cannot exemplify defining traits of scholê, for it would be akin to saying that one’s goal is to eat or sleep, things that can be done quite successfully by one’s pet without experiencing the joy of what is distinctly human. As for play, no matter how enlightened and refined the amusement may be, since it does not actualize the highest in man it cannot but be a means, forever short of the highest end.

58

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

What is the activity of nous in the defining sense of scholê? Before we turn to examine whether nous in scholê can ever become a practical end of politics, it is necessary to say a few words about what Aristotle means by nous and how we would recognize nous in operation, so as to distinguish it from other intellectual activities that have been put forth as the characteristic ends for scholê. The aim is not to give a rigorous account of nous, something not possible here, but rather a descriptive account for the purposes of recognizing it and separating it out from other alternatives to it. In its excellent form nous, as a virtue, is the activity of wisdom and the wise. Sophia combines both nous and scientific knowledge. The latter makes use of a type of reasoning that discloses the causes of whatever subject is being studied and shows that the thing could not be otherwise. Such knowledge can be obtained through a type of syllogistic reasoning that draws conclusions from evidence arranged in a logical fashion. Demonstration, though, if it is to be sound, requires premises which are true, primary, immediate and better known than the conclusions derived from them. The first principles are thus the starting points of science and these are apprehended, not discursively but by nous. It follows then, that the first principle, or the starting point of science, is nous. Anyone who has striven to arrive at first principles for a subject matter knows how difficult and frustrating this intellectual effort is. Yet its reward is that when finally the first causes come, from the activity of nous, it is like a light that illuminates the entirety of the subject matter at once. The subject is transformed from being an object of knowing to being nous itself. Nous, as Randall states, ‘sees’ the truth of the principles in the subject matter itself.8 It is the intellectual vision of the principles that allow one to understand and ‘see’ the things being studied. Nous in its activity becomes what the object is in actuality. Nous when actual is in form what the object is in nature, never fully but certainly complete with respect to the first principles that have grasped that aspect of being. These then become the beginnings for further understanding and for the formulation of new principles that bring deeper understanding. To go from Newton to Einstein, new first principles are needed that are the formal expressions of a deeper understanding of causes. How is this related to Aristotle’s description of divine nous as ‘noêsis noêseôs noêsis’ (thinking is a thinking on thinking)?9 The phrase noêsis noêsêôs



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

59

noêsis is difficult to translate. As if knowing what nous and noêsis mean were not difficult enough, Aristotle repeats the word three times, twice in the nominative and once in the genitive. One has no choice but to resort to some basic syntax in order to get a handle on what is being said. The first step is to ask: what is the first noêsis? Clearly, it is the subject of the sentence and the missing verb is the verb ‘is’, i.e. ‘noêsis is’. What is strange is that the predicate of noêsis is itself noêsis. We do not get very far with this tautology. But there is this genitive noêseôs, which is playing the role of a direct object for some action. The action is revealed to us if we change noêsis into a verb cognate or into a verb with a similar meaning. Hence I am ‘nousing’, I am ‘thinking’ or ‘understanding’ something in this case ‘the mind’ is its direct object. If one were then to pose the question ‘what is noêsis?’ the translation would be: ‘understanding is [the activity that occurs when] I understand [my own] understanding’. How does one understand one’s own understanding? If to understand is to understand the causes, and if all knowledge of causes derived syllogistically and analytically ultimately rests on prior first causes, then our understanding relies on the activity of this capacity which intuitively grasps the first principles from which this understanding is ultimately derived. One begins by inquiring into the material, formal, efficient and final causes of the subject matter. But these causes do not yield a secure understanding without first principles that will anchor them. The first principle from which these causes will gain their proper contents, their scope and their connective relations, has to be hit upon. From this first principle one can then see systemic connections that bind all the elements of the subject matter. Nousing also requires a self-conscious understanding of the logical tools that nous itself uses to reflect on its own understanding, such as the principle of non-contradiction, the principle of contrariety and other logical tools that are involved in the activity of understanding one’s own understanding.10 When the first principles of the demonstrated subject matter are grasped through intuition, one can be said to be fully engaged in the activity of understanding the understanding. A paradox may be raised which is relevant to what theorizing as a political end entails: is it not necessarily the case that when nous theorizes, nothing new or creative is being understood since it is reflecting on existing truths? What more can be said if the truths regarding a given subject have been

60

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

stated? Even if we take it for granted that the account is forever incomplete, given the limitations of the human ability to peer into the infinite complexity of nature, has not the journey of desiring to know come to its end? If so, then is theorizing but a joyous seeing, a celebratory contemplation of previously arrived at truths? If this argument holds then it could follow that nous qua end can be reduced to a celebration through religious ritual which is enriched in all the ways that Plato had in mind, as it gazes upon existing truths. In a way we would have replicated Plato’s theory of play and would have reconciled Aristotle’s theory of scholê with Plato’s theory of divine play. The latter, we shall recall, is an imitation of the divine, but so too would be the ritualized celebration of truths revealed by nous. There is one part of the statement which does appear to be true, namely, that nous reflects on truths already established. But it seems wrong to claim that nous involves no further search because Aristotle distinguishes two distinct phases in the faculty of intelligence. One is the mind that is potentially all things as revealed through discursive intelligence; this he calls passive nous. There is another phase of mind that does not work discursively, though it takes as its subject matter what has been understood discursively. This second entelecheia is the power to see the whole in its unity and to understand that which is known. This maker nous is separate, unaffected and immortal for it is not this or that truth about the subject, but rather it ‘sees’ in theorizing what the object is in nature. The truths previously searched out by passive nous are mortal and perishable and will be buried along with the inquirer, but the products of maker nous are unaffected by time or anything else having to do with the travails of the search. These live on, just as the concepts in Plato’s writings live on, independent of the physical Plato. The light of nous illuminates all the previous causes that have been the object of inquiry and brings them to life, making them known and aesthetically seeable as a unity in their interrelatedness. To bring nous from a passive potential to an actuality requires laborious effort. What the labour creates and brings into being is not nous itself, which is there, but its actuality. From a potential it is developed into a hexis, as a permanent ordering of the power. What is it that is being ordered? Nous works on its own matter, its own knowledge. Nous as maker makes all things, but not in the way that the artist or craftsman makes. It does not produce any product



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

61

external to itself. Rather, it becomes in itself what the being is in actuality, for now it understands its causes: ‘It makes all things as a kind of hexis, like light’ (De An. 430a15); unlike passive nous this is not a process of searching or whatever else we might choose to call the inquiring phase. Maker nous, because it is self-sufficient, cannot be a process, but must be a continuous state, a hexis in which completed activity is occurring. If nous were just an activity of gazing on existing truths, so as to statically revel in the truth of the thing, one could say that it would be engaged in a process external to itself. Passive nous involves a process whose knowledge about the thing is partial and wayward and its connections not truly reliable. It is not in the thing yet. Perhaps an example would be helpful: it is true that pleasure or virtue or theôria are thought to constitute happiness, and the claims of each of these can be analysed and evaluated. But to understand that happiness is perfected activity qua second entelecheia is the work of maker nous. The truths previously known and sewn together with logical chains of reasoning are surpassed because in this state nous is identical to what happiness is. It can see happiness and in this seeing it does not stop to celebrate the known, but it illumines the subject matter so that suddenly aspects of being, such as its relation to scholê, to theôria relative to moral virtue, to political ends, and to paideia are seen in their unity. While nousing one is seeing with the vision afforded by the first principles that nous has brought to light. If this descriptive account holds true then we are in even greater difficulties than before, because if Plato’s concept of play could only be realized through extraordinary training and life-long education in republics led by wise statesmen governing through good laws, then Aristotle’s vision of scholê, as political end, would seem to be beyond laws and beyond humans and, hence, beyond reality.

The conditions for scholê as end The interpretations that aim to dilute theôria, or to expand it, or to make it coherent, or to open it up to negotiations and transactions, all share one common feature – the claim that nous qua end is impractical and, hence, requires surgery to cure it of its disability. And yet the very conditions that

62

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

Aristotle sets for happiness are evidence against such claims because whatever scholê is, it must be coordinate with eudaimonia for the simple reason that eudaimonia is said to occur in scholê. It would be strange if the founder of formal logic were confused, incoherent or inconsistent, or if he were resorting to ends that were derived ad hoc when he formulated happiness as an activity of the soul. What has to be examined is whether the end, theôria in scholê, in some way leads to any contradictions with respect to the conditions Aristotle has set for eudaimonia in the Nicomachean Ethics. Can scholê satisfy the three minimal conditions that Aristotle poses for happiness, i.e. universality, selfsufficiency and practicality?

Universality of scholê The question is whether scholê is the province of an exclusive club of philosophers. Aristotle himself poses the question indirectly when he asks whether the eudaimonia of each person and that of the city is the same. To this he answers: ‘everyone would agree that it is the same’.11 Elsewhere this is further supported by the claim that the conditions for happiness, those that pertain to the daily requirements for sustaining and defending the city and those for scholê, require common virtues. If so, then participation in scholê will not require extraordinary talents or extraordinary resources outside the abilities of the mass of the citizenry. It could, of course, be the case that all citizens will have to be equipped with extraordinary means and that they be of an extraordinary nature but this is a practical matter of securing these conditions for all. Obviously the all, in this case the citizen population, if it were to compose a city, could not be made up solely of philosopher drones. The universal in question must be a concrete universal, one that is embodied in particular activities. It cannot be a utopian construct, a myth, a Kantian transcendental ideal or a religious symbol.12 We should recall Aristotle’s devastating criticisms of Plato’s Idea of the Good on the grounds that, being out of reach, it ‘would not be practical or attainable by man’.13 If nothing is good but the Idea, then it would be devoid of content for the Idea is not in any class of things, and hence the Idea of the Good would be transcendent, unattainable and irrelevant to ethics since it is outside of human practice. Aristotle held that the human good is activity of the soul in



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

63

accordance with virtue. Because this capacity for activity is distributed to all human beings, as potential, he held its actualization to be the aim of the entire polis and not the privilege of some priest-like caste. Comparing Aristotle’s theory to Veblen’s will help us to explain how Aristotle considers scholê to be universal. One might claim that Aristotle’s definition of scholê, which elevates theôria to an end, is itself damning prima facie evidence for Veblen’s claim that leisure’s signature trait is a class bias against labour. In his Theory of the Leisure Class Veblen interprets leisure as a cultivated class bias, an idealization, which projects ‘a value system that honours a culture of abstention from productive work’ (24). From Veblen’s perspective one could view Aristotle’s theory of scholê as an attempt to universalize an ideology of privilege for the purposes of sinister class domination. Veblen reasons to show that leisure’s utility has always, from its primordial origins, served class distinction: ‘wealth or power must be put into evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence’ and hence the display of leisure has always served as an ‘archaic … distinction between the base and the honourable’ (24). ‘From the days of the Greek philosophers’, he argues, ‘a degree of leisure … has ever been recognized by thoughtful men as a prerequisite to a worthy or beautiful or even a blameless, human life. In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilized men’s eyes’ (25). Labour, he states, remains disreputable ‘in the eyes of the community … [and] morally impossible to the noble, freeborn man and incompatible with a worthy life’ (27). One can only surmise that Veblen’s attribution of a class ideology of leisure to Greek philosophers includes Aristotle, since he was the only other philosopher aside from Plato who wrote on this subject. Such a charge, coming from a renowned authority on the sociology of leisure, has to be taken seriously and examined in order to determine if such was indeed the case.14 Also it must be addressed for the simple reason that, generally speaking, this attribution of a class bias inherent in anything having to do with Aristotle’s concept of scholê has, outside of classicist circles, stultified any discussion of the concept. The usual response is: ‘it was the slaves in chains who worked for these philosophers that made all their supposedly noble visions of leisure possible’. At which point the discussion comes to an end. The divide that separates the two thinkers on the nature of leisure is great. Veblen considers it to be a sociological construct, what Marx would have

64

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

included in the superstructure, specifically part of the ideological means that facilitate class control over the means of production. For Aristotle scholê is the condition in which man fulfils his human capacity to wonder. For it is because of their wonder that men now and in the past began to philosophise. In the beginning, then, they expressed their wonder regarding all the inexplicable things that were easy to figure out; then making small steps forward they formulated perplexities about more important matters, such as the changes of the moon, the sun, and the stars as well as the origin of the universe. The person who is perplexed and wonders thinks that he is ignorant (for this reason the myth lover is in a way a wisdom lover, because myth is composed from wonders). Therefore, if, of course, they were philosophising in order to escape from ignorance, it is clear that it was because of knowledge that they were seeking science, and not because they were aiming at its utility. This is testified by what [actually] happens. For, despite the fact that almost all the necessaries had been secured along with things for recreation and ease of life, they began to seek this type of wisdom. It is clear, therefore, that we do not seek this [wisdom] for some other need, but, we assert, just as the free man, who exists for his own self and not for some other, in this way we seek it, because it is the only one of the sciences which is free. Only it exists for the sake of itself. For this reason, and justly so, it would be possible to consider its acquisition as not being human, because in many ways human nature is servile. (Metaph. 982b11–28)

According to Aristotle, wonder is unique to human beings as a species and it is this capacity that potentially links every human being to scholê in which theôria is active. When humans wonder, they are aroused to seek the ‘why’ and the causes. Love of wisdom and love of myth share a common trait in that they are composed out of wonders. Take wonder out of philosophy and it ceases to be philosophy. As Plato puts it: ‘Doubtless this element, the “wondering” (to thaumazein), is the trait that belongs to the philosopher, for the origin of philosophy is none other than this. And it seems well said that the Rainbow (Iris) was born from Wonder.’15 Plato’s wordplay is notable. Wonder, to thaumazein, is related to Thaumas, the god who is the father of Iris, the goddess Rainbow. No doubt philosophy and mythmaking require skills but these are both the offspring of Wonder. There is no thing, no essence that defines philosophy, at least as to its origins, other than the concatenation of wonders that arouse inquiry into causes for no other purpose than the wisdom gained.



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

65

Another universal response to wonder is the immediate realization of one’s ignorance. Perhaps this is the reason why going beyond observation as a way of satisfying wonder is taken only by so few. Ignorance is hard to live with and even harder to admit to. Often, wonder itself is supressed in order to stave off the insecurities of coming to grips with ignorance. Being that the search for causes is composed out of wonders, it is natural for distress and doubt to fester within. Some scratch their heads and live with the ups and downs of the distress, always driven by the hope of finding out the why, while others go about their normal business. Thus not all humans let their wonder evolve into a complex process of inquiry. But, even so, the universality of the activity is shown, as we shall see in the next passage, in the honours that society as a whole bestows upon those who dare to follow the path of inquiry. That distress and pleasure accompany wonder indicates that wonder is hedonic. The thaumazein which causes the awe is a pleasure, whereas the ensuing consciousness of one’s ignorance is a cause of distress. People, Plato says, turned to philosophizing ‘in order to escape from ignorance’. The Greek word he uses is phugê (running away, flight, exile). All animals move in order to pursue a good or to flee from some evil; they seek pleasure and avoid pain. To flee from ignorance is to escape from its pain. Thaumazein seems to belong to the class of mixed passions that include, within the process of its unfolding, both pleasure and pain. There are delights and distresses that often follow, one upon the other, as the answers one finds to the puzzles are challenged by the facts, or as contradictions and other infelicities come to the fore. The distress of wonder is something that the soul, due to its nature, has armed humans with an appetitive drive to eliminate: ‘All humans by nature have appetite to know’ is the first line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.16 Both the pleasurable arousal to know and the pain of the concomitant ignorance are appetitively driven. These hedonics are powerfully threaded into the human species, but they fully emerge only in free time activity. As long as humans are at the level of subsistence and random existence, these movers, though present, do not lead to the habits that will give rise to sustained inquiries. In the course of human history Aristotle finds it natural that ‘maker nous’, which is the quintessence of free activity, at some point gained an institutional footing.

66

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê First it is natural that he who invented any art whatsoever which went beyond the common perceptions should enjoy the wonder of men, not only because some of his inventions are useful but because he is wise and is superior with respect to the others. And because many arts are invented and some of these for the sake of necessaries, though some others aim at [contributing to] the ‘way of life’, it is natural that we always view the latter as wiser than the former because their science does not aim at utility. For this reason, of all the things which up till now have been fabricated, sciences were invented from these which do not have as their aim pleasure or necessaries, and [this occurred] especially in places which first engaged in scholê. That is why the mathematical sciences were first established in Egypt, because there the priestly caste was permitted to engage in scholê. (Metaph. 981b13–b25)

Rather than being a means for class distinction, the men who first pursued such knowledge were honoured because the knowledge which they advanced satisfied wonder.17 This is counter-intuitive because knowledge which solves a practical problem or provides a service is so connected to the basic human need for survival that one would expect it to be a more likely candidate for greater honours. The only explanation for this anomaly is that the desire to know, which begins in wonder, has, by nature, as a matter of species biology, greater importance to humanity than utility. Wonder, and the impulse to address this stimulus with a search for the causes, must arise from a psychological source that is more deeply human than the capacities that attend to utility and, hence, is more indicative of what we are as a species. There would seem to be good reason why that which is truly human is not biologically predominant as a driving force. If it were, we would have probably died off as a species, like Socrates’ cicadas who, when they were originally people and first heard music, could not work or procreate and so died because they were mesmerized by its beauty. Nature’s way of protecting us is also an obstacle to be overcome. What are we to make of Aristotle’s juxtaposing the arts that were invented for the sake of utility and those that contributed to diagôgê (which I have translated as a ‘way of life’)? The contrast between the two immediately raises questions. Knowledge for practical purposes and for necessaries is clear, but what could Aristotle mean by knowledge that contributed to a ‘way of life’ and why would such knowledge be held to be superior to utilitarian wisdom? Here normally we should scratch our heads and wonder as to what Aristotle



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

67

means. Thinking in terms of modern predicates, does this suggest that the heads of Google, Facebook and Apple, all of whom have influenced our way of life, deserve the highest respect and that the knowledge which they advance should be worshipped as supreme? There is an implication that ‘the way of life’ went beyond attachment to the necessary and useful. Many questions race through the mind. But the puzzles of this passage do not generally lead to such questioning because its meaning is taken for granted. The problem has to do with diagôgê having many meanings, but let it suffice for now to note that eminent scholars, such as Ross, one of the translators of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, render diagôgê, in this passage, as ‘recreation’ or ‘enjoyment’ or ‘pastime’.18 But this makes no sense whatsoever. If this translation were correct then Aristotle would be guilty of contradicting himself within the same passage, for he goes on to state that it was precisely those arts and sciences that went beyond the necessaries and beyond the pleasures of recreation that were honoured and admired most. The art that contributed to diagôgê clearly was not for the purposes of recreation as such. As we can immediately see from this one instance, the problem of diagôgê is most important for deciphering the purposes of scholê and for this reason its meaning in the passages related to scholê has to be decided. Since some pastime, some type of diagôgê, is occurring in scholê it will be imperative to decide on what that pastime is regarding scholê as political end. But as we can easily see ‘way of life’ is problematic as well, because it can mean just about anything; after all this was the Socratic question, how to live one’s life. Does one assign the highest values to inventors, such as Thomas Edison, who undoubtedly affected everyone’s way of life in the modern era? The way needs to be determined. The statement itself is not an answer, but a question demanding to be clarified. For a way of life relies on a prior attitude, a stance, a choice according to which one goes on to develop a way of living that conforms to the stance. When the choices regarding that stance are made its values are prioritized accordingly and these then direct the way of life. Aristotle can only mean, here, lest he fall into a contradiction, that the types of knowledge which contributed to a way of life were those that tapped into the infinite expanse of the soul and moulded the powers therein for no other purpose than the activities which they made possible. Though both the utility and the non-utility crafts and knowledge affect the way of life, the second

68

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

occurs outside of work and outside of the recreation that refreshes us for work. The question then is to what type of life is this non-utilitarian pastime contributing? We are told that it is to the life of a free person who is capable of living for himself. But how could this freedom be tied to the type of knowledge which is not a universal activity? That wonder is universal one might grant, but that theoretical activity in scholê might be universal defies the facts. Even more so when we consider that Aristotle himself attributes the origin of theoretical pursuits to a small priest caste. The Egyptian farmers certainly did not engage in mathematical inquiry during their free time. And yet the negative evidence provides the solution. When Aristotle attributes the origin of mathematics to the Egyptian priests, he is careful to say that this occurred because ‘there the priesthood class was permitted to engage in scholê’.19 Aristotle is clearly not referring to leisure as such, but to free time for theoretical activity. The priests, if Veblen is correct, must already have had leisure as free time since this was a normal trait of the ruling class. What they specifically gained, however, was the permission to participate in something that had no utility as its end. As it turned out, and this is the drift of the argument, the privilege to engage in intellectual activity that is not directed to a useful outcome was a great turning point in human history. Later in the Greek cities, what had heretofore in dynastic cultures been a permitted privilege for an elite caste was transformed, through participation in the polis, into a possibility for the good life. Just as knowledge proceeded to make gains in small degrees, so too humans, as citizens living a common life, reached a point where they could choose to live the life of a free person. This occurred with the slow evolution of scholê which made such a life possible, because such a life is not biologically given as actuality but as a potentiality to be actualized cooperatively, which is to say politically, as an essential feature of polis life. The life of the free person, the life lived for oneself as end, and the life in which one seeks the causes of things are interconnected and one. From the above we can conclude that Aristotle’s exalting of the honours people conferred to the persons who acquired useless knowledge is not to be confused with the class snobbery that Veblen so rightly denounced. Actually, Aristotle is proposing to make the actualization of this human impulse, heretofore reserved for priestly castes or for a select few, the principle for a



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

69

common way of life. He is proposing a democratization of wonder, so that the prospect of cultivating this impulse to search out the causes might become a common principle. In a way, his is the inverse of Veblen’s theory, because rather than a leisured class looking downward in contempt of those who are excluded from it, he envisions a shared education as the way of widening participation in it and elevating a population to it. Far from scholê being a good that is put on display for the purposes of subjugation, Aristotle conceives of it as the very essence of freedom. This comes from the depths of the culture, only here it results from a psychological theory that has reflected on the culture and offers itself as a clarified guide to politics. From this prism, Veblen’s theory can be viewed as a study of leisure’s perversion rather than its true nature. His disdain for leisure of a certain type, which he extended over all of history and which took into its sweep Greek philosophers, was woefully inexact. It passed over scholê and thus leaves his theory devoid of any positive quality, save for reforming the excesses of the capitalist ruling class. As stated previously, usually one does not get this far into the argument because those beholden to Veblen’s views and to those of the Marxists, to name but a few, charge Aristotle with hypocrisy, since the freedom of the scholê which he is proposing was based on the use of slaves. These, they say, were the instruments, the human tools that made such scholê possible. But what such charges ignore is that Aristotle points out, and correctly so, that instruments will always be needed for acquiring the free time preconditions for scholê, something that was true in ancient Greece as it is true today. Furthermore, as we shall see, he is ready to renounce the use of slaves if they could be replaced with machines. Given that slavery and domination over others is not intrinsic to the conditions for scholê, it follows that the charge is merely an ad hominem sophistic which, with Jacobin animus, easily shuts down the inquiry into scholê in favour of leisure theories that are more suitable to our unexamined biases.

Self-sufficiency: Scholê as the highest end Eudaimonia, which is the ultimate end, occurs in scholê. It therefore follows that the scholê in which the activity is occurring must necessarily have the quality of self-sufficiency. The line of reasoning is that eudaimonia is an activity of the soul, which has its highest expression in theoretical activity,

70

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

which, in turn, occurs in scholê. There is certainly no controversy regarding this train of thought. We need only refer to Book 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics and selectively quote from an extended passage in which these ideas are presented.20 For this activity is the highest (because nous is the highest activity of all the powers that exist within us, and it deals with the highest objects of all known to us). Furthermore it is the most continuous … Also what is called selfsufficiency could, to the highest degree, be in relation to theoretical activity … also happiness is thought to occur in scholê. We work in order to have scholê and we make war in order to have peace … If then this activity of nous appears to surpass [the practical activities] in importance because it is theoretical and does not seek any end outside of itself, and has a pleasure that is appropriate to it (which contributes to increasing the activity) then this autarky, scholê, and unwearied activity, as far as this is humanly possible, and all other things attributed to the completely happy person, are clearly related to whatever has to do with this [theoretical] activity.

The very clarity of what is being put forth is what is problematic. When one leaves the text and takes the empirical evidence of human desires and preoccupations into account, one finds it impossible to believe that theôria could be the activity of happiness for humankind in general. It might be perfect happiness for a few theoreticians but would it be for the average person? One begins to suspect that the above formulation may be a projection of a philosopher’s pipe dream. The difficulty could be solved though if, with respect to theôria, one of these three possibilities could be shown to be the case: (1) that it is not coordinate with happiness, (2) that it can be watered down to include all sorts of intellectual pastimes accessible to the common man, or (3) that it is on an equal footing with other activities that can be substituted for it. The criterion that Aristotle specifies for examining any proposal for happiness is activity or function, some power that is in operation, which he captures with his neologism energeia [en (in) + ergon (operation, function), hence in operation]. Happiness is not something stored in a vault or in a closet like money or clothes; it is in operation. One is experiencing the exercise of powers in their full maturity. This gives us a way of judging ways of life, for now each way can be evaluated according to the activity that is held to be the



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

71

highest. Activities can be ranked as to their relative merits because it seems proper that the standard for evaluating each activity should be set by the highest possible activity. If eudaimonia is activity with excellence, then it is reasonable that eudaimonia will exist according to the highest activity. This activity will be the best that exists within us, whether this activity is nous or something else, which is considered to rule over us by nature and which guides us and which has knowledge of the good and divine things, or the divine being itself, or the divine that exists within us. This activity and its appropriate excellence would be perfect eudaimonia. (Eth. Nic. 1177a12–17, emphasis added)

Aristotle puts forth arguments in the Nicomachean Ethics to show why the ends of enjoyment and moral virtue fail to meet the criterion of self-sufficiency. The first is shared with animals and therefore fails to give complete expression to the entire human being. It’s as if a person who having been deprived of all culture and never having experienced any of the delights that come from activities requiring rudimentary culture, were to declare that the animal comforts of life constituted the true purpose of life. ‘The many, then, show themselves to be completely slavish, choosing the life of pasturing animals’ (1095b20). Their lives are slavish because they groan in disapproval or cackle with pleasure according to the physical or psychological food they are fed. The moral virtues also fall short of complete happiness because they are not self-sufficient. They require praise from others, some of them rely on external goods in order to be practised, and they are incomplete with respect to the mind. Though Aristotle’s certain conclusion that the life that chooses the divine within us as end is the best, there is a way that one can claim that this is not so, and insist that such a conclusion can in fact be derived from Aristotle himself. One need only turn to any of the standard translations of the Nicomachean Ethics and reread the above-quoted passage. Rackham in the Loeb edition translates the first sentence thus: ‘But if happiness consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be activity in accordance with the highest virtue.’21 This rendering gives priority to the virtue rather than to the activity. Conflating the activity and the virtue allows one to view the selection of the end as something concerning choices between virtues, i.e. the practical versus the theoretical virtues, rather than choices between activities

72

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

as ends. If what is being sought is the highest virtue, then one can claim that since all virtues are practised ‘for their own sake’, then it is possible that both the theoretical and the practical virtues are on an equal footing as ends. We can see that though the infraction in the rendering seems to be small, the confusion it introduces, between activity and excellence, is anything but trivial. That the translation must be flawed, aside from syntactical reasons, can be surmised from the fact that it is the activity of the soul which defines eudaimonia. The flourishing life corresponds to the highest activity in man, and therefore it must follow that the highest virtue will be the excellence of that highest activity – and not the activity a result of the highest excellence. Evidence that this is the right rendering is given two sentences down where the activity is singled out as the highest that is being sought for: This activity is the highest (because nous is the highest activity within us and the objects of nous are the highest of all). (Eth. Nic. 1177a19)

Related to the equality of virtues approach is the one claiming that theoretical activity is a type of praxis and, therefore, that it is on an equal footing with practical political activity. This interpretation correctly identifies theôria as a type of praxis but then, on this basis, creates an equality between the practical life and the theoretical.22 This interpretation illuminates how theôria can be conceived as a type of praxis but it fails to overcome the one big stumbling block, the fact that theôria is the highest type of praxis. Another irony follows from this difficulty. Those who would reduce theôria to praxis cannot go on to explain how, as praxis, theôria might become practical for an entire citizenry. All of these variations regarding the priority of theôria are of course directly related to the question of scholê. What is difficult to accept is that Aristotle truly had thought of scholê for theoretical activity as a political end. Thus the impulse to find ways of correcting this seemingly mistaken view. And yet Aristotle states that the relationship of the practical to the theoretical virtues is one of steward to master. The former manages the estate for the scholê of the master who rules over it. Who then is the master? None other than nous and theôria in scholê. Does [practical reason] rule over all the faculties in the soul, which [indeed] is thought to be the case – though here there is doubt – or does it not? Because it does not seem to rule over the higher things; for instance, it does not rule over



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

73

wisdom. But, it is claimed that practical reason cares for all [the faculties] and is sovereign [over the soul] with its commands. But perhaps this occurs precisely as it does in a household with the steward. Because he has authority over everything [in that] he manages everything. But he does not rule over everything, instead he prepares scholê for the master, so that the master may not be prevented from doing good and appropriate things on account of distractions having to do with daily necessities. Thus, in the same manner, practical reason is, in a sense, like a steward to wisdom and it prepares scholê for wisdom and provides it with the capability to perform its function by controlling the passions and keeping them in disciplined order. (Mag. Mor. 1.34.30–32.5, emphasis added)23

Practical reason and moral virtue are managers; scholê is the master.24 The relationship is one of means to ends. The task of phronêsis is to ensure that the daily needs of life and all the exchanges that these involve and all the wear and tear that go along with them do not absorb the master in ascholia. They ‘prepare the way for scholê’. Phronêsis and its sister virtue sôphrosynê keep the passions free of internal disorder and ready them for action in ways that leave the person fit to partake in scholê for theôria. We can imagine, following Aristotle’s example, the predicament of an estate that expels its steward, declares him to be persona non grata and leaves the master alone to be preoccupied with the daily chores and declares the products of his labour his crowning achievement in life. Analogously, we can also imagine a culture that banishes phronêsis as an enemy and in addition considers the rewards of ascholia to be its crowning glory. Such a society would be building a civilization of objects in the manner of the renowned monumental tomb of Midas, which Cleoboulos praised as being greater and longer-lasting than the ‘ever flowing rivers’. To this, the poet Simonides replied: As for stone even mortal hands shatter it. This is the counsel of a foolish man.25

Practicability of scholê The idea that Aristotle himself wavered between the philosophical ideal and a practical adjustment to the realities of life is unfounded for one very simple reason. He states in the Politics that his conclusions regarding scholê, as end, are based on the evidence of historical failures of the different constitutions,

74

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

which he attributes to their one-sided emphasis on the virtues of ascholia, primarily those that apply to military conquest and commercial gain. His concept of scholê is based on theoretical results from his studies of the human soul, but its practicality arises from a careful consideration of the historical evidence. The empirical facts were gathered most likely in the course of the research project into the constitutions of 158 cities which he directed. He draws upon both the historical record and theory to support the practicality of his concept of scholê. He states, for example, that the views that war and domination are the end are easily refuted ‘by reason and they have now been refuted by the events’. The lawmaker must study matters regarding war in great detail but he must always keep in mind that this is ‘for the purpose of scholê and peace’ a conclusion that ‘is borne out by the events that have occurred as well as by reason’.26 Events and reason together buttress his arguments about scholê and not one or the other but both. Regarding the events and the historical record we only wish that the 158 studies had survived because only hints that apply to scholê remain from this lost project. For instance in the Athenian Constitution he notes the policy of Athenian statesmen to secure leisure for the poorer classes in order to draw them into the imperial enterprise, a policy that ultimately led to the unbridled democracy. There are other such passing observations which taken together call for a special study. The collated evidence would probably show that Aristotle’s research led him to conclude that the quality of scholê decisively affected the survival of constitutions. This he states explicitly as a principle when he cites the case of militarist Sparta to argue that the demise of powerful cities of this type tends to happen in times of victory and ample scholê, and not in times of war and duress: That the legislator must study more in what way he will legislate military and other affairs with the aim of legislating for the purposes of scholê and peace is testified to by the events and reason. Most cities of this sort, as long as they are at war are secure but when they have gained hegemony they are destroyed. This occurs because when peace comes they lose their virility and like iron which has not been put to use they become fragile. The reason is that the legislator did not educate them so that they would be capable of engaging in scholê.27 (Pol. 1334a2–10)

If the constitution promotes the useful and the profitable at the expense of the character that is fit to engage in scholê nobly, then there will be a price



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

75

to pay. The price seems to lie in the fact that the citizens, in their leisure, will unreflectively indulge in the very flaws of their constitution. For example, Carthaginian scholê is, for this reason, singled out for criticism: having made wealth their standard the ruling plutocracy used its leisure to promote the very ascholia that made them rich (Pol. 1273a33–4). As a ruling value wealth cultivated in the rulers a thirst for money and a tendency to corrupt the laws and to run the government for their own enrichment. The scholê that should have allowed the Carthaginians to devise habits to protect themselves from the flaws of their republic was instead used to solidify the wrong principles that were causing its decay.28 There would seem to be a slippery slope in this process. As the flaws of the prevailing values are celebrated in leisure they not only habituate the citizenry further to these practices, but the social authority given to the pleasures being revered will create an impenetrable barrier that will prevent the rulers especially from considering ways to remedy these flaws. Aristotle is especially critical of the Greek constitutions which were reputed to have been the best because they promoted the useful and profitable at the expense of the noble: Of the Greek cities which are now thought to have the best constitutions, and the legislators who framed these constitutions, they did not establish the laws of the constitution either with the best end as their purpose, nor did they draft laws and education for the promotion of all the virtues, but with vulgarity they deviated towards a preference for what was thought to be useful and for that which promoted personal gain. (Pol. 1333b5–11)

The constitutions of the Athenians and the Spartans were geared towards the useful and the profitable; military virtues in the latter and commercial as well as imperial enterprise in the former. In the Politics he singles out the Spartans for criticism, but there can be little doubt that he also has Athens of the golden age in mind as well. One could cite the reforms that gave subsidized leisure to the poorer strata so as to keep them engaged in the imperial enterprise of dominating others. What would seem to have been a great victory of the lower classes after the battle of Salamis turned out to be the very thing that brought about their ruin. Another practical issue is securing the means for scholê. The problem is obvious, since scholê requires a surplus fund for its useless activities. How is a city to secure the economic prosperity and the security for this purpose?

76

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê It is agreed now that the constitution that will be well governed must have scholê from the necessaries [of life], but in what way this will be attained, is not easy to determine. (Pol. 1269a35)

As a preface to the above passage, we should note that Aristotle does not view scholê as an unqualified good. The most obvious case is the idleness of nomads whose free time is due to the primitive nature of their production (1256a32). Their scholê is tied to the productive cycle of their flocks. Scholê instead must result from a surplus that frees people so as to engage in activity for purposes other than production or maintenance of necessaries. How this surplus is to be attained, though, is not easy to determine. Aristotle finds that often the means used were ill-conceived. He is especially critical, as previously mentioned, of the regimes that secured a surplus through dominion over what he calls undeserving others and he upholds the principle that the means being used to secure scholê must not do violence to this end. Scholê is not a means but an end, and the work that secures it requires that it occur according to values that will direct it to its purpose. Seen in this way, even if the habits being developed for work differ from those of scholê, one is never a wage slave or a cog in a machine, but at work and in scholê one is first and foremost a citizen. The values that guide citizen life in both cases are one and the same. The bifurcations that exist when ascholia is the end are dissipated. For instance, the gains from productivity and technological innovations that relieve humans from drudgery are welcomed and integrated into the end of scholê and this on a societal-wide basis, without the hostilities that now occur between the few who profit from such gains and the poverty and degradation that results from those who suddenly find themselves to be superfluous as workers.

Deviant scholê and the possibility of its reform The evidence that Aristotle thought of scholê as a practical end is manifest not only in his general critique of flawed leisure practices in Sparta and Athens but his attention to this issue in other constitutions as well. There is enough said to show that he has a systematic approach not only to criticizing flaws in scholê but also in recommending reforms to it. The attention Aristotle gives



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

77

to reforms in scholê further indicates that his ideas on the subject were not motivated by utopian idealities that were disconnected from actual political experience. For example, his study of tyranny’s flaws also suggests how one would go about introducing healthier types of scholê to deviant constitutions in general. By starting with tyranny, a regime that is an arch enemy of scholê and, hence, a type of regime that consciously aims at its complete suppression, one can see, by way of contrariety, positive steps that would have to be taken in order to bring a regime closer to the ideal. In tyranny there is a total absence of political friendship and the leisure practised is not even of a qualified sort. The tyrants stifle the education of their subjects and ‘do not permit study circles (sholas) or other meetings for engaging in [cultural] leisure’.29 They keep their subjects ‘busy (ascholoi) so that they will lack the leisure in which to plot against them’. They constantly engage the populace in huge projects that ‘have the same aim, the preoccupation (ascholia) and impoverishment of the ruled’ (1313b24–5). ‘And the tyrant is a war-monger so as to keep the subjects busy (ascholoi) and also so as to keep them in need of a leader’ (1313b28–9). Busyness keeps subjects preoccupied with their private affairs and fear keeps them humble and clinging to their rulers for security. We also have cases where scholê is not always a good thing. In the worst type of democracy the poor take part in government because their scholê is publicly financed. They function as a lawless majority, because having a great deal of subsidized leisure they can take part in public affairs to a degree that permits them to rule directly and the result is that they themselves become the law (1293a8–11). Deliberative institutions are weakened because the assembly governs directly on all matters and this happens when a wage is available for those who attend the assembly, for being at leisure they assemble often and decide on all matters themselves (1300a1–4). Where do these revenues come from? The case of Athens was paradigmatic. The Athenian tribute levied on its subject cities was brutally enforced by the Athenians, with the active participation of its poor working classes.30 Yet it was this very leisure and the covetousness that it engendered that was the cause of the Athenians’ rapid downfall. The same held true for the Spartans, whose leisure for their militaristic way of life rested on the exploitation of the helots of Messene. This proved to be unsustainable because the helots revolted repeatedly (1269a38–9). The means used to secure scholê are not, therefore, value-neutral and attaining

78

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

them by subjugating others is not a secure method because it violates the principle that the scholê is to be attained from a shared participation between citizen friends in the virtues that make them capable of engaging in scholê.31 A ruling class or master race can, for a time, secure leisure for its refined activities, but not scholê, which is the activity of the best in man. One might pose the question: is scholê as a political aim not akin to a utopian shoe that supposedly will fit all sizes and satisfy all tastes? If so, then such a concept of scholê would be foolish since no people in its entirety, save a people created in thought experiments, could adhere to one type of life, especially when that life is said to be one devoted to theôria. Even Plato never entertained such a possibility when, in the Republic, Socrates creates the just republic from a clean slate. The citizens of his ideal republic will not be living a theoretical life. Aristotle’s bold solution to this conundrum seems to be to preserve the ideal – the best in man as end – but an ideal framed within the possible. The principle of the best is never abandoned, for then the door would be open to infinitely variable and open-ended contexts. The best is always a concrete best for this possibility here. We find this principle throughout Aristotle’s Politics. He says, for instance regarding eudaimonia, that a polis is a society of persons who, though diverse in talents and inclinations, are similar in that they seek the best life possible in a common way. Though the best life is one of complete activity exercised excellently, some can ‘partake in this only a little bit and some not at all’ (1328a38). Different character types seek happiness in things and ways that suit their preferences and from these come different types of constitutions. These preferences are embedded deeply in people’s psyches and habits. They cannot be ignored or erased and the reformer must take their realities as starting points for reform. People don’t associate for theôria but for happiness. A legislator cannot treat a people as if they were a tabula rasa for philosophical theories. What legislators can do in every form of constitution, and in every way of life, is to introduce reforms that make some participation in complete activity a possible reality. Just as tyranny can be reformed by introducing changes which bring it closer to a lawful monarchy, so too can preferences that honour the lowest psychological powers be amended, so that the higher capacities slowly, like the morning sun, begin to brighten the common way of life. Aristotle seems to be harsh when he excludes labourers and farmers from his ideal polity, and hence from scholê as a political end. This has been taken



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

79

as a sign of his class bias. But should we not judge him by first taking into consideration the effects of gruelling labour on the minds of a citizenry? If someone is drowning in the problems of making ends meet, and stressed by the crises that such a predicament fosters, how likely is it that such a person can partake in scholê? If citizens are humbled and bent by their labour they can never think as free persons; their plight requires them to watch their every step and adjust accordingly to circumstance lest they find themselves out in the street. Also, poverty itself is a time-consuming affair that takes up the bulk of one’s mental powers and leaves very little left over, even for normal cognitive functions. The activities that he proposes for the ideal citizen could not possibly be developed in people labouring under backbreaking conditions. Under demeaning conditions, be they psychological or material, the dimensions of the soul that are characteristically human remain suppressed. In any case we must take note that Aristotle is quite aware that these conditions are contextual and can be overcome by improvements that would make labour less onerous. He entertains the thought of what would happen to slaves and servants if automated machines existed: Because if it were possible for each tool to perform its work when ordered, or to perceive its own work beforehand, just as is said about Daedalus or of Hephaistos’ tripods, which the poet says ‘enter the gathering of the gods selfmoved’, likewise if weavers’ shuttles wove and if a plectrum could play the kithara, then there would be no need either for master-craftsmen to have assistants or for masters [to have] slaves. (Pol. 1253b33–54a1)

But we should not think that the practicality of scholê is determined by economic contingencies. These are the conditions and not the causes. Sudden inventions and miraculous gains that might suddenly produce free time have led to frequent visions of a leisured post-industrial society. It would appear that the emergence of a leisure society should primarily be a matter of economics in that productivity would be a central, if not the most important, factor determining such a course. Along these lines, Keynes predicted that increases in productivity would make leisure the focus of political life by the year 2030. In a famous essay he drew the conclusion that ‘for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure’.32 Many others have followed in his wake. Yet, the great increases in productivity that

80

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

have occurred since the end of World War II have not led to greater freedom from labour but the reverse. The most technologically advanced country, the United States, has produced the overstressed American worker. And while new technological revolutions, from the convergence of the computing power of the internet with science and electronics, are on the horizon, there is no prospect that these will usher in a new era of freedom from the grind of labour and the toils of living for work. Instead these prospects send shudders through a workforce that worries about its ability to survive innovation with its jobs and its standard of living intact. Even if the state were to make leisure available, people would hardly know what to do with their spare time. The financial oligarchies that rule the world would neither have the interest nor the ability to create the conditions for uses of leisure to actualize a person’s humanity. From the dawn of modern capitalism, busyness and avarice, and the small-mindedness that they generate, have been woven into the fabric of social control. If, of a sudden, people were to have free time to spare, the rulers would find ways to provide spectacles that would corrupt the populace and leave them in a debased moral state. The problem of leisure would most likely then be along the lines of the problem of otium in Rome where freemen in post-Augustan times enjoyed 180 days or so of idleness to indulge their vices. It is reported that when Marcus Aurelius took gladiators away from Rome for a military expedition this caused anxiety in the masses. Rumours were spread that he was planning to take away the people’s spectacles and that he was going to require them to study philosophy – a rumour that the Emperor was quick to put to rest by increasing the number of gladiator games.33 As this story shows, the policies regulating otium in Rome were essential for maintaining social peace. The spectacles, baths and taverns channelled the energies of the populace into types of social participation that afforded amusement and averted social strife. In our days, the brave new world of sex, drugs, internet addiction and other carnal delights is the only serious alternative that has emerged as a vision for a post-industrial utopia.



Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê

81

Practicality of play versus scholê That Aristotle has carefully constructed his concept of scholê and has reflected on the issues, let alone the difficulties, for making such scholê practical is further shown in his critique of Plato’s formulation of play in the Laws. Plato rejected military matters and their associated virtues as supreme, but did so on the grounds that they did not contribute ‘now nor in the future … either to play or to paideia’. Aristotle changes the formulation: happiness, he states, ‘is thought to occur in scholê. We work in order to have scholê and we make war in order to have peace’. This small emendation reminds one of the small problems Socrates, at times, introduces which turn out to be sweeping and transformative. Aristotle, in a few sentences and with great economy, shows that the practical principle upon which Plato builds a political solution for noble conduct with respect to the uses of scholê is mistaken. The edifice has to be abandoned. He writes ‘it [would be] paradoxical that our end should be play and that we should labour and undergo pains throughout the course of life for the purpose of playing’; and then comes the devastating conclusion that to labour for the sake of play ‘appears to be silly and very childish’ (Eth. Nic. 1176b28–33). This is not to say that Aristotle is tossing out Plato’s concept and the purposes which play is to serve. Music for the sensuous ordering of the passions and festivities for moral purposes are retained. But these are not ends. Plato organizes political life around mimetic play and this Aristotle finds to be lacking because, even though it is a noble political goal it falls short of the highest human power as end. The good life is not in play but in scholê, and in a scholê in which the highest reaches of humanity can be experienced. The testimony of the historical record shows that, in time, Aristotle’s concept would turn the tables on any would-be detractors on the issue of scholê’s practicality. Looking back at his views, even today, one might think that that his prognosis regarding the consequences of abuses in scholê to be far-fetched. Perhaps also in ancient times someone relishing in the victories of Alexander, that ‘marvelous pan-Hellenic expedition, victorious, dazzling … unrivalled’,34 might have turned to deride Aristotle’s critique of power and its values. But it would have been a short-lived laugh for, in about 150 years, the Macedonian empires, and with them all of Hellas, would be enslaved by Rome

82

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

and by the many other empires that followed it – to no small degree, as the Romans noted, due to degenerate forms of leisure practised in the Hellenistic Kingdoms.

V

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

Nature herself seeks … not only that we be busy in the right way, but that we be capable of engaging in scholê correctly. (Pol. 1337b22) In the previous chapter the subject was in what way Aristotle held scholê as end to be practical. Was it in apolaustic leisure, in the cultivation of practical virtues or in the theoretical life? Now what has to be examined is how the chosen end, theôria in scholê, might be made politically practical. The inquiry can be guided by noting the pride of place Aristotle gives to education for guiding a society to its ends.1 We see this repeatedly in the Politics, such as when Aristotle criticizes the communist measures Plato proposes on the grounds that these measures ignore the inner human being. He argues that changes in property relations, such as the abolition of private property, will not cause human essence to secrete virtue or to be a cause of its moral transformation. That manipulation of relations or any of the coincidentals can make people better is unsound theoretically and has been disproven in practice. Even modern history could easily supply us with a long list of failures in policies that have experimented with redistributions whose aim was to remedy flaws whose origins were political and moral. Within this context education becomes the central element in political justice since it is that which makes citizens conscious of their shared ends and empowers them morally and intellectually to partake in their own fate. Because a polis ‘necessarily is composed out of a mass … it becomes a one through a common paideia’ and a city will become good through ‘customs, philosophy and laws’ and not through property rearrangements (Pol. 1363b35–4a1). This is where we, too, must turn in order to gain insight into how a society whose end is eudaimonia in scholê could have been posited as practical by Aristotle.

84

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

This problem is taken up in the last two books of the Politics, books 7 and 8. There, the premise is established that education will be one and the same for all. Human diversity in character types and preferences, and the diversity of citizens that make up a city are taken as a starting point. Modernity, too, starts from such premises but goes in the opposite direction. Rather than a unifying concept our notion of diversity rests on premises that accentuate human differences at the lowest level of human appetite. The result is fragmentation within the individual since the appetites can never serve as unifying principle. Education then strives to bring about acceptance of one’s flaws and an everwidening toleration for the Pandora’s Box of unforeseen consequences that this breakdown in culture unleashes. The question then is what the role of paideia is for making the end of scholê practical and what curriculum might contribute to this aim. The subjects that are brought up for consideration are those of the traditional Greek curriculum: reading, writing, arithmetic, gymnastics, drawing and music. Reading and writing, learning arithmetic and drawing are all necessary for learning any trade. Gymnastics is necessary for military service and good health. But what about music? Presently, Aristotle says, people take part in it for the pleasure it affords but when it was originally inserted into the curriculum it was for the purpose of scholê (1337b28). He then devotes a large portion of book 8 to the role of musical education with the stated aim of bringing it into line with its original purpose of serving scholê. For now most take part in it for the sake of pleasure. The ancients originally included [music] in education because nature herself seeks, as frequently has been said, not only to engage in ascholia correctly but also to be able to take part in scholê rightly. For [nature] is the principle of all things, so let us speak about matters related to it once again. For if both [business and scholê] are necessary, yet being in scholê and the end are more choice worthy than ascholia – then we must inquire into scholê’s object and the actions through which scholê is brought about. Surely it is not playing, for then playing for us would be the necessary end of life. If then this is impossible, we must make use of play more for work (for the person who labours has need of rest and play is for the sake of rest; ascholia is accompanied with toil and tension). For this reason it is necessary to introduce play with vigilance as to its uses, keeping in mind that it is for the sake of therapeutic recovery. For this movement of the soul is an unwinding by means of pleasure – a relaxation. Being in scholê itself seems to possess

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

85

pleasure and happiness, and blissfulness.2 This property [happiness] does not exist for those in ascholia but for those engaged in scholê, because the ascholos is engaged in ascholia for the sake of some [external] end, while eudaimonia is the [actualized] end, which all believe is accompanied not by pain, but by pleasure. This pleasure though is not thought by all to be the same, but each one reckons it according to their habit; the noble person preferring the noble. Therefore it is clear that it is necessary that we learn some things with respect to scholê in one’s pastime and that we educate ourselves and that this education and this learning be for the sake of themselves, while those which are related to ascholia must be for the sake of other things in that they are necessary. That is why our ancestors introduced music into education, not as something necessary (because there is nothing necessary about it), nor because it was useful (such as letters which are useful for money transactions and household management and for learning and for many activities of civic life, and it seems drawing is useful for judging the beauty of craftsmen’s work), nor yet again like physical training which aims at health (for neither of these occur by means of music). It remains therefore that it is clearly with respect to pastime in scholê towards which they direct it and it is because they believe that it [contributes] to the way of life of free persons that they give emphasis to it. (1337b32–1338a24, emphasis added)

This is a very rich and dense passage. Like any reformer, Aristotle is a critic of the present – music is not merely for play – and he is a visionary of the future – music as a pastime for the sake of scholê. But let us first look at the big picture, at the flow of his argument. If business and leisure are required for life, yet scholê is more worthy of our choice because it is what nature seeks qua human end, then we must inquire into what one must do in order to be active in it. He then considers a number of possible choices. Playing and amusement are considered as possibilities but these are rejected on the grounds that they are not related to scholê but to work. Therefore, and this is the conclusion of the extended argument, it is (a) necessary to introduce learning in people’s pastimes for the purpose of scholê, and (b) that music is to be included in the curriculum for this purpose or to be precise, it is to be included because it is conducive to the way of life of a free person. What is abundantly clear if we follow the if, then, therefore construction of the syllogism is that this book has as its subject the identification of the curriculum of study –‘that we learn some things’ – namely, the things that can make scholê possible as end. The way this passage concludes is puzzling. One expects Aristotle to draw the conclusion that music should be placed in the curriculum because it

86

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

contributes in some way to scholê in its defining sense of theoretical activity. Instead he declares that it contributes to living the life of a free person. Clearly this poses a problem because it implies an airtight connection between music, freedom, and the theoretical life in scholê. We can only expect that Aristotle provides a causal explanation for these connections somewhere, but it does not appear, at first sight, to emerge from the passage quoted above. Why does music contribute to the development of a free personality and in what way does the development of such a character through music contribute to preparing a person for participation in a theoretical life as a political end? These are thorny issues, and there are others as well, and either Aristotle has a solution for them or the door is once again open to the charge that scholê is based on an unsupportable utopian vision. But there is a way around these problems, a way of circumventing them altogether: if one could disconnect scholê, as end, from the theoretical life, without however rejecting some intellectual purpose to scholê, then all would be fine. Based on a survey of the secondary literature this is precisely what has occurred, for there is hardly any interpretation that does not claim ‘intellectual cultivation’ to be the aim of scholê. The line of reasoning supporting this view seems, at first glance, to be correct in that it fits comfortably into our biased view of what leisure ultimately should be. One’s leisure should cultivate the mind so as to make oneself a better person, and this could include activities such as intellectual discussions at social gatherings, reading a book, playing chess, enrolling in a course, meditating, listening to classical music, playing an instrument, educational tours and perhaps even theoretical activity for people with rare abilities. The problem of designating the political end of scholê would thus be solved. People should engage in intellectual activity, whatever that may be. Theory is desirable, but it is but one, and no doubt a miniscule, part of what such activities could be. Music would thus be in the curriculum in order to prepare us to partake in intellectual cultivation of some sort. The case seems to be closed, but there is a small nagging problem that must be confronted. The word being translated as ‘intellectual cultivation’ is diagôgê and if this is an inappropriate rendering then it would follow that music is not preparing us for ‘intellectual cultivation’. If so then the entire explanation crumbles. But it seems to be so because often diagôgê means nothing more than pastime of some type and from this it can be inferred that Aristotle, in this case, means pastime specifically spent in

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

87

intellectually edifying activities. This conclusion, we must emphasise, rests on a particular rendering of diagôgê, which though attractive must be tested. The problem is that the lexicon has a wide range of possible meanings for diagôgê and hence it is difficult to render. Its meanings can span from a way of life, passing one’s time in a certain way, engaging in amusements, learning, intellectual cultivation and even theoretical activity. Newman and Barker, two prestigious scholars of Aristotle’s Politics, sought to narrow down the possibilities by assigning to Aristotle’s uses of the word a narrow and a wide sense. The wide sense included all the connotations of pastime in fun-like amusements and recreations, and the narrow meaning they confined to intellectual cultivation. It is this narrow meaning of intellectual cultivation that they and others consistently use whenever they translate diagôgê in contexts which are connected to scholê. What is the problem with that? The first issue is that the rendering of diagôgê as ‘intellectual cultivation’ has quietly, one might say surreptitiously, changed the entire meaning of the text cited above and, in effect, the entirety of Aristotle’s concept of scholê. The passage now announces research into ‘what ought we to do when at leisure?’.3 And since what we ought to be doing is not primarily play or amusement, then by a process of elimination the pastime for scholê, and indeed its defining purpose, is none other than ‘intellectual cultivation’. Note the shift: whereas what the text had announced was an inquiry into what is required for one to take part in scholê, now we are inquiring into the defining activity of scholê.4 Barker (1946) succinctly sums it up: If it be asked ‘What is the activity of leisure?’ we may answer in one word ‘diagôgê’, or the cultivation of the mind. Scholê is spent in diagôgê … and conversely diagôgê is pursued in and during scholê.5

One could fill page upon page with quotes that repeat the same view of diagôgê as cultivation of the mind in varied diversions.6 If the votes were to decide the issue the case is closed, but, given the stakes, we should look a bit closer.

On some of the differences between diagôgê and scholê If we compare the two words diagôgê and scholê (in its defining sense) it is obvious that the former has a far wider range of meanings. It is noteworthy

88

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

that Aristotle never assigns to diagôgê a defining meaning. There is no diagôgê absolutely or unqualified. It is always of a sort so that each case has to be examined for its possible contribution to scholê or for its possible subversion of it. In diagôgê there is no essential trait which, by itself, might qualify the person or the activity engaging in it.7 Of course, scholê can also range in meaning, but, qua end, its essential meaning is inextricably tied to eudaimonia. In contrast, the end of diagôgê, especially when it conveys the meaning of pastime, aside from the pleasure it affords, is indeterminate. Some types of diagôgai, such as coarse comical conversation, are frowned upon; the diagôgai enjoyed by tyrants are reprehensible and not good for scholê, for ‘human flourishing is not to be found in such pastimes’.8 The relationship of diagôgê to scholê is thus ambivalent. Another difference between the two is that scholê as end carries moral nuances which are absent from diagôgê. The two most important are freedom and self-sufficiency. Diagôgê merely conveys that some pastime is occurring, but how one is partaking in it and the quality of the participation have to be determined contextually. One might even go so far as to say that slaves, too, had diagôgê because Aristotle argues that all types of music have to be permitted to satisfy the relaxation needs of even the lower classes of the polis, including its slaves. But did they have scholê? When Aristotle states that there is no scholê for slaves he adds that this is a proverbial saying. We know of the existence of wealthy slaves in Athens, such as the bankers Pasio and Phormio, and we must assume that their prosperity allowed them free time and the resources to enjoy diagôgê, yet the proverb Aristotle cites would have denied them scholê. Freedom to be self-directed is at scholê’s very core and the means to participate in different types of pastimes will not grant a person this condition. In brief, diagôgê is not an inherent bearer of scholê’s moral traits. We have thus shown that the two, even when their activity is intellectual, indeed even theoretical, are not synonymous and therefore the human end in scholê cannot on these grounds be identified with intellectual cultivation as a type of diagôgê. The surreptitious introduction of intellectual cultivation as the end has to be rejected for other reasons as well. One need only ask: is scholê the pure activity of an already cultivated mind or is it the development of one’s intellectual faculties? The latter would include many powers associated with

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

89

cognition, such as memory and its improvement, logical skills, analytical abilities, acquiring knowledge about any subject matter and much more. The latter is not nous, but could fall under various mental powers such as discursive reasoning (dianoia). But dianoia is for something, it is instrumental; it is reasoning for the acquisition of knowledge, for proof, for arriving at conclusions, for analyses. Regarding such diagôgê Aristotle makes a clear distinction: It is reasonable then that the pastime (diagôgên) of those with knowledge is more pleasurable than those who are seeking it. That which we call selfsufficiency would be found more in theoretical activity. (Eth. Nic.1177a26–28)

Those who are engaged in theoretical activity are not engaged in intellectual cultivation at all. They are passing their time in complete or perfect happiness. Actuality is not a process leading to, or a refinement of, existing knowledge but the actuality of understanding one’s knowledge. This is what separates it from all the other admirable intellectual activities that can occur in diagôgê. Parenthetically, if Aristotle wished to convey the idea that music can be used for intellectual cultivation, then the word dianoia, rather than diagôgê, would have served him well. Indeed he uses this word several times in the passages pertaining to music for precisely this purpose. For instance, when he argues against educational use of the aulos – a wind instrument associated with dithyrambic ecstatic music – he cites the myth according to which Athena rejected the instrument because blowing into it made her look ugly. Aristotle then states (1341b6–8): ‘But rather it is more probable [that the Athenians rejected the aulos] because aulos-playing contributes nothing to intelligence (dianoian)’ or quite simply ‘to intellectual cultivation’. His phrase pros dianoian (‘related to intellectual cultivation’) parallels the same phrasing he uses for ‘related to scholê’ (pros scholên) or ‘related to diagôgê’ (pros diagôgên). If Aristotle wanted to declare that the third use of music is related to or for the purpose of intellectual cultivation he had an unambiguous way of doing so. Finally, a word must be said about the translation of diagôgê as intellectual cultivation in the passage where he deems diagôgê unsuitable for youth if only to draw out the absurdities that follow: On the other hand it is also true that cultivation of the mind is not a thing which is proper for children or the young of a tender age. Those who are themselves

90

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê still short of their own end cannot yet cope with the ultimate end.9 (Pol. 1339a29–31, trans. Barker, emphasis added)

As it stands, the translation has Aristotle saying something that goes against experience. Why is intellectual cultivation in music not possible for children? That difficult study and intellectual exercises cannot be the main way of childhood learning we grant, but that learning an instrument, even for a fiveyear-old, is not an intellectual experience we have to reject. Mastering the symbols, scales, notes, keys and time signatures involves learning. Taking up an instrument requires practice and thought. Another far more serious flaw in the above rendering is that it subtly, by way of translation, contrives diagôgê to be intellectual cultivation and then it states this to be the ultimate end of life. Children are then said to be too young for intellectual cultivation, something that seems non-controversial, and on the back of this premise intellectual cultivation itself has, without notice, been transformed into an end in life. What is actually being stated is something quite different, namely that young people do not have the maturity to decide on the best way of life. The following translation (mine) perhaps helps to clarify the point: But surely, it is not fitting to assign to children at this age [the task of choosing] a way of life (for to no incomplete being is the selection of the end appropriate). (Pol. 1339a29-31)

Because children are still immature and undergoing development they cannot be assigned the responsibility of selecting their way of life and the pastimes that are consistent with an end that is far into the future. They are caught in a paradox of life. They must gain experience as autonomous persons, but with hormones throbbing many of their pastimes will later be evaluated as having been harmful. Giving a child unrestricted freedom to choose its own pastimes, while still under development and under the sway of pleasure impulses, is a sure way to cripple it. The responsibility for providing the conditions for young people to participate in a life fit for a free person belongs to adults who know the end, something that lies outside the child’s realm of possible experience. When the child is still maturing it must be engaged in music meant for a person that it has not yet become. We can safely assume that Homer’s Phaeacians trained their children in music and dance in order to partake in their way of life without, however, asking them to select such a way of life from a list of alternative pathways.

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

91

The fallacy of suppressed evidence The inadequacies that we have mentioned thus far are minor compared to the gaping holes that surface when we begin to consider the other meanings of diagôgê in which a ‘way of life’ figures prominently. Aristotle, for example, writes of fish that spend their time (diagôgas) at the bottom of the sea, and he classifies some animals as land or sea creatures according to where they live (diagôgên) and feed.10 Here, diagôgê designates the place where a species carries out its life’s activities and elsewhere he uses it to characterize how persons spend their time in a given place or with types of people or in certain activities as they bear upon their way of life. For example, he admonishes that the pastimes (diagôgên) of children should be supervised, so as to limit their association with slaves, lest they develop bad habits for their future way of life (Pol. 1336a40). In the Metaphysics, where Aristotle is describing the life of god, he states that its ‘way of life (diagôgê) is similar to the best [way of living] which we experience for a brief time’ (1072b13–15). In Plato’s dialogues, diagôgê as ‘a way of life’ is the prevailing use of the word.11 For example, in the Republic, Socrates asks Thrasymachus if he thinks that the attempt to ‘define a way of living (diagôgên) one’s life’ is a small matter, and in the Theaetetus (177a6) the penalty unjust persons face after death is that they ‘will live forever a way of life (diagôgês) that resembles [their evil] selves’.12 That the rendering of diagôgê as ‘intellectual cultivation’ is arbitrary is quite glaring when we return to the passage which we have cited several times, the one where Aristotle explains why music is to be included in the curriculum: We are thus left with [music’s] value for the cultivation of the mind (diagôgên) in leisure. This is evidently the reason of its being introduced into education: it ranks as part of the cultivation (diagôgên) which men think proper to freemen. This is the meaning of the lines in Homer, beginning …’ (Pol. 1338a21–24, Barker trans., emphasis added)

According to the translation, music was introduced into the curriculum because it contributed to intellectual cultivation for leisure. But the infelicity of this rendering is apparent from what immediately follows. Aristotle quotes a number of lines from Homer which are meant to exemplify music’s role as suitable to the diagôgê of freemen. As one reads these verses from Homer one

92

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

cannot but wonder how, from these, one can conclude that diagôgê means intellectual cultivation. The event described by Homer (see endnote) is a feast where there is abundant food for the guests who are seated in due order; Aristotle notes that Odysseus holds music to be the ‘best diagôgên’ when men gather to hear the bard.13 Now we must ask ourselves: how does this musical gathering celebrate or promote or contribute to intellectual cultivation? This is simply not credible. We might also turn to book 9 of the Odyssey where Odysseus praises his host, King Alkinoos, for a festivity which is identical to the one being cited by Aristotle. Here, guests listen to the singer with tables loaded with bread and meats, and the steward pours the wine. Where is the intellectual cultivation? Is there some lecture in the background that the reader has missed? Aristotle’s choice of a Homeric example is not accidental because it is occurring in a passage in which it is used to exemplify music’s contribution as an activity of free persons. Its purpose is to make concrete the defining function of music and to serve as an instantiation of what music contributes as diagôgê for scholê. Aristotle is writing in an age where he has no need to extend the discussion into Homer because his students would all have probably been able to recite these passages from memory. However, we are not that privileged. Homer’s epics are for us literary works and have nothing whatsoever to do with our ways of life. Thus we must return to Phaeacia where these events which Aristotle cites were set in order to ascertain in what way he thought that music contributes to the life of freemen.

Phaeacia: Diagôgê in music as a way of life The island of Phaeacia has all the conditions for scholê. Their city is truly magical. There are watchdogs made of gold and statues of young men, torchholding robots that spread light throughout the palace. Their land produces crops and fruits effortlessly: ‘pear matures on pear … fig upon fig’ and their greens are ‘lush throughout the season’. Hard labour for mere sustenance seems to be unknown to them. They excel in seafaring, though what they trade in is never mentioned. Their ships have an intelligence of their own; they set their course by reading the minds of the crew and they are invulnerable to

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

93

hazards at sea.14 The inhabitants have unsurpassed skill in the arts which they combine with good character. The women are expert weavers and their minds are noble. Material and psychological preconditions for scholê are all there. The men are the best in driving a fast ship on the sea and they are accomplished dancers and musicians. The Phaeacians come closest, of all human societies described in the Odyssey, to the blessed security and nobility that makes the Olympians supremely happy. Their scholê though is not an automatic outcome of their fairy-tale existence. They have to cultivate the values and the practices that enable each member of their society to partake in their mode of scholê. They are dedicated to being the best at dance and athletics and they take joy in their musical gatherings. When they choose to honour Odysseus, whose identity is unknown to them, they do so with a display of their scholê. Odysseus is never given a tour of their wondrous ships, their spectacular weaving technology or their amazing horticulture. The Stranger’s participation in their pastime has a foreboding aspect in that it aims to test his inner mettle. Their scholê is a display of a way of life which consciously rejects other ways that are opposed to it. The question in full view of the Phaeacians is to which way of life does this Stranger belong? The confrontation between opposing ways of life is shown dramatically in the encounter between Eurylaos and Odysseus. Eurylaos is a brash youth who challenges the Stranger to compete in the athletic contests. When Odysseus refuses the youngster accuses him before the assembled Phaeacians of not being ‘experienced in the competitions’, in effect of being an outsider to their values which are being displayed in scholê. He goes on to censure Odysseus with words that draw sharp lines between two incompatible ways of life. For I do not take you to be, Oh stranger, a man experienced in competitions of the sort and the number now practised by people, but rather [I take you to be] one who roams with a many-benched ship, a leader of seamen, who are merchants, who [only] has his freight in mind, an overseer of merchandise, craving for profits. You do not resemble an athlete. (Od. 8.159–64)

The charges are devastating. They publicly declare the Stranger to be unworthy of hospitality befitting a nobleman. The test of character in scholê has seemingly revealed a character type that is reprehensible to the Phaeacians. Eurylaos calls him harpaleôn (devouring, consuming, greedy),15 and the aim

94

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

of these cravings, says Eurylaos, is kerdos, the desire for gain. His contemptuous characterizations aim to exclude him as someone who has been exposed as underserving of honours from their society. The merchant is only mindful of his cargo; he guards it and is constantly thinking about how to grab or make more. He is an episkopos, a steward to profit’s ledger sheet. The central image of harpazô, to seize and snatch, governs over Eurylaos’ torrent of epithets. Such a person is not expected to be able to partake in competitions as a competitor or spectator or judge. Regarding the Phaeacians, we should note that there is a difference between the scholê they spend in music and dance and in athletic competitions. The gatherings for mousikê have no purpose whatsoever outside of the gathering itself. These festivities are not for moral improvement, for friendship, for recreation, for social bonding or for intellectual cultivation. They are the result of all these factors. One must already be a friend; one must already have the moral outlook and have acquired the abilities to partake. The activity is the culmination, the instantiation of what life is all about and what it should be if one could live like a god. Well, we cannot be gods, but we can at times, in scholê, be free. And this is an end –something to be aimed for by the commons. Let us listen to the words of Odysseus: Alkinoos, Lord, most glorious among men, in truth this is good to listen to a bard such as this one, whose voice resembles that of the gods. For I assert that there is no purpose (telos) more gracious [or more beautiful] than when there is happiness among all the people, the diners sitting in the [palace] rooms in due order listening to the bard near tables filled with bread and meats, and wine, which the wine steward draws from the mixing bowl and pours into the drinking cups. This seems to my mind to be the most beautiful thing. (Od. 9.2-11, emphasis added)

What is most beautiful or graceful is not the music, in itself, that is being played by the bard. We know of another bard, Phemios, who entertains the suitors at Odysseus’ house but in this case the music is not the product of any shared enterprise. Phemios sang ‘out of necessity’ (22.331) because he was forced to entertain violent people of low moral standing, but when the Phaeacians gather to listen to music it is happiness actualized. Their purpose, their telos, has been fulfilled because they have ordered their lives to experience this graceful end. As for freedom, it is patent that gymnastics or athletic

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

95

competitions carried within them possible utilitarian purposes, because they were means for such things as military prowess and physical well-being. The free activity in mousikê however has nothing necessary or useful in it, yet it is this useless aspect of music that is prized. Odysseus, using a superlative, calls this the most beautiful (kalliston) experience that life has to offer. No doubt Aristotle argues for even more beautiful and higher activities, but participation in mousikê is the mark of a common way of life that is lived for scholê. We get the sense from this passage that happiness includes many aspects that result from a way of life. The diners are drinking, eating and listening to songs. Though philosophers may later have searched for the highest activities they never precluded the diverse experiences occurring in the pastimes of free citizens which prepared the way for the most exalted activity. From the Phaeacian perspective it is the merchant who is preoccupied with useless aims whereas their useless end gives meaning to all their work in life. When Eurylaos makes his charges, Odysseus responds as a hero to show his hosts that money and merchandise did not shape his life’s purposes. First he throws the discus, then as a spectator of Phaeacian dance he expresses his awe and later, at the feast, he rivets his audience with the narration of his travels and sufferings. Though he has landed on this island naked and without proof of identity he shows to all his noblest possession, the excellence carved into his character, which successfully navigated him through the trials in scholê.

Does musical education prepare a citizen for theoretical activity? Aristotle states that music is useful (a) for pleasure or entertainment, (b) for moulding of character and (c) for pastimes. If music education contributes to participation in scholê then it must be because of one or several of these three uses. If complete happiness occurs in scholê, and if its determining activity is theory, and if music education is introduced for scholê, then this education must in some way prepare children to partake in theôria. We therefore have to evaluate each of the three candidate uses in order to discern which, if any, of the three contributes to this end and how.

96

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

The first, music for pleasure and entertainment, cannot serve as a means for a theoretical life. The long and arduous study required for theoretical activity is anything but entertaining. The second, which claims that music education for ethical uses can be extended to theoretical activity, holds better promise. Even if one dismisses the possibility that music’s aesthetic function contributes directly to an inclination to become theoretical, one could claim that the imitative power of music might indirectly invoke an intellectual desire in the listener. Perhaps by assimilating its beauty, in the way described by Plato, one might become more open in later life to the beauty of reason. The argument can be made even stronger if one could show that it is possible to give children theoretical insight into how the music which has been selected for their moral betterment produces this wholesome effect. When, however, one tries to stretch music’s uses for ethical training so that it might become a propaedeutic for theory, the hard realities of experience refuse to lend support to this interpretation. Music for moral purposes develops in the child a sensuous grasp of the particular, what Aristotle calls the ‘that’ (to hoti).16 Through imitation it assimilates into its hedonics the beautiful way to act in ‘this here’ circumstance. The child is able to apply the universal, which is the beauty, the measure, the harmony, the singing within, to the particular action or emotion. The abstract comprehension of causes for right action is outside of its range. The child acts rightly not from an understanding of causes but because acting otherwise ‘doesn’t feel right’. To think of music as a way to awaken within the child the power to search out the ‘why’ is necessarily futile, because the music is operating within the sensuous domain of feelings whereas the theoretical operates in the abstract intellectual realm. At best, one can claim that music education remotely affects such activities by disposing a person towards intellectual pursuits because beautiful music has an affinity to the beauty of ideas. Why should music education, such as learning an instrument, create in a person a desire to systematically study the causes of things? This defies experience. Even if we grant an intellectual dimension to musical education we do not see gifted childhood musicians turning into theoreticians. These claims, at best, are guilty of circularity: why does music education dispose us to intellectual cultivation? Because musical education is itself intellectual cultivation. And if one asks further why it is intellectual cultivation, the

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

97

answer one receives is: ‘because that’s what diagôgê means in Greek!’ If the last premise is excluded then the whole argument is shorn even of the respectable mantle of being a logical fallacy. Is it necessary to add that Plato, who thought that musical training is necessary for preparing the soul to accept reason, never embraced such a power for music? Socrates raises the possibility in the Republic (522a2) that ‘maybe it is mousikê’ that will prepare the guardians for theory, and he then immediately rejects this because: music [only] educated the guardians in habits through melodies that produced an inner harmony and rhythm which created inner gracefulness but it did not provide them with knowledge.

The argument that music appreciation can lead one to understand the causes of the moral principles incorporated in one’s music education has more weight because it appeals directly to the possibility that the child might come to understand music’s ethical power. This argument seems to rest on a two-part process. First, the child is unknowingly (mimetically) affected by music and without understanding acquires a sensuous grasp for correct action. In the second and more mature phase the child comes to understand what it is in the music that has affected it in this way, which is to say the causes of why the music that has been selected for its moral education is good. As SchoenNazzaro argues, we intellectually enjoy music ‘because in it there is an order which men like to consider’ and we can come to understand the relationship or the ‘proportion between the development in a musical imitation and the emotion itself ’. One delights, therefore, ‘in contemplating the suitability of the emotion imitated’.17 One might even go so far as to quote Aristotle in support of this claim, to the effect that the student must learn to judge correctly not merely the moral characters that are represented by the music18 but also they must be ‘able to judge what is beautiful [in the music] … because of the study which they undertook in their youth’.19 In this second phase of learning one might claim that what the child is learning is how the music was but a sensuous instantiation of the principles of what imitative music for the common life must be. Furthermore, it might even be possible to introduce advanced education in music on the grounds that some gifted children, at least, can grasp at a theoretical level the cause of music’s beauty with astonishing precision. By cumulatively gazing on music in this way, over time, the

98

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

youth, one might claim, acquire a common experience of mind in action and can thus later defend nous as an institution in public life. It would then seem that we have found a way in which scholê as a way of life can be made practical through music education. This promising solution, though, has its problems. First is the text itself. Aristotle says nothing more than what is advocated by teachers in modernday art appreciation classes. If one takes art classes, over time one comes to know why x, y or z painting is deemed to be beautiful or why certain notes are proper for a funeral dirge and others for a military parade. This knowledge of how musical expression works for moral purposes however does not contribute to experiencing the actuality of mind. When Aristotle states that we should develop critical judgement regarding music’s ethical purposes he does so without suggesting that this ability engages theoretical nous. The Athenians rejected the aulos for education ‘due to the experience they gained, as they became more capable at judging what did and what did not contribute to virtue’ (Pol. 1341a37–39). They relied on experience and made their judgements based on trial and error when they evaluated the suitability of the aulos in connection to its empirical results. But the basic reason against musical education as a propaedeutic to theory is the experience of music and dance teachers who report how difficult it is to teach children even to move with the rhythm. If this is so, how confident can we be that music in the classroom will give children a grasp of the theory behind musical representation of character?

How does music curriculum contribute to preparation for scholê? To show the role of music for the theoretical life missing evidence is required The search for how the music curriculum contributes to the preparation for scholê as a way of life does not seem to have come far. Instead of solutions more problems have emerged. It has been possible to show what the music curriculum cannot be for the purposes of scholê. It is not for the purposes of intellectual cultivation, that much is clear, and it cannot be stretched so as to make it a propaedeutic to theoretical activity. What then does it do? We are

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

99

back to Plato and we can appreciate better the strength of Plato’s argument that musical training and the musical culture in general will be exclusively for the purposes of ethical habituation. To ascribe to music any role beyond this, especially one that would prepare citizens-to-be for participation in scholê as end, runs into seemingly insurmountable problems. There is no possible way to logically deduce the possibility of music’s role in the curriculum for scholê as end. That there is nothing in the day-to-day experience of normal citizens that can endear them to theôria as an end was probably in the back of Plato’s mind when he concluded that such an end is impossible not only for the second best polis but even for the ideal republic. Furthermore, no amount of music of whatever sort that is inserted into the curriculum will endear students to a life that aims at nous’ actualization. If it were so then Plato’s thoroughgoing programme for musical enculturation would automatically, of its own, produce such a result. But Plato has no illusions in this matter. What the music aims to produce is phronêsis in practical matters. But as we have seen, for Aristotle at least, phronêsis is a servant of nous and hence to claim that the servant produces its master is obviously absurd. The chasm cannot be overcome with syllogisms nor does experience seem to provide empirical evidence for overcoming the obstacles. But here one must stop and reflect on the evidence that has entered into the analysis thus far. Has this discussion of music’s power to contribute to theoretical activity in scholê taken all the evidence into consideration? Has something that was obvious to Aristotle or something that was embedded in the governing principles of his ethical and political works been ignored? If so then this study might also be guilty of suppressing evidence that could be used to explain music’s role in the curriculum for scholê.

Citizens in charge of their musical curriculum The weakness of Plato’s mimetic strategy which makes use of scholê for play, as end, is that it never seems to treat the citizenry as full adults. The citizen body as a whole is not thought to be capable of exerting control and supervision over the values that aim to create both the desire and the institutions for a shared participation in scholê. On the one hand, Plato is proposing to use music for cultivating traits of a free person, but, on the other hand, the

100

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

entire programme is top down and the traits of freedom which it desires to shape in each citizen are shaped and regulated for them. This is manifest in Plato’s selection of play as the end of scholê. The norms of this play are established by law and regulated by wise legislators who make use of play to instil character traits through repeated exercise. These traits are for the most part developed and sustained unknowingly. Festivals with their dances and songs and poetry are all predetermined in prescribed ways. One could almost say that the character traits of a free person are to be produced in an unfree way. The citizens, who are to be brought up to live self-directed lives, are even in their adulthood not in command of the emotional habits that are being formed for the most self-conscious of all ends. Plato’s poetic metaphor of humans being puppets or playthings of the divine is perhaps a way of accentuating this point. But even so, knowingly or unknowingly, the music training he proposes has the unmistakeable aim of creating and sustaining bonds of friendship throughout the society. Friendship is one of the primary goals of ethical training through music. This friendship, however, is not a cause but an outcome. We could say that Plato’s concept of political friendship, homonoia, is not causally sufficient if it were to be taken as a principle for explaining in what way music might contribute to scholê as end. Plato certainly does not underestimate the importance of friendship for binding citizens to the polis’ cooperative values, but his concept cannot be stretched further so as to explain how friendship itself might be a leading cause of music’s power to contribute to scholê for the theoretical life. Aristotle, on the other hand, did view friendship as a cause and this difference in their respective concepts of political friendship, though it might appear to be minor, is the very factor that makes scholê as end possible. The concept and practices of political friendship are the missing pieces of the puzzle that must be taken into account because they are not just pieces of left out information. They, as causes, are what explain music’s role in the curriculum. Regarding friendship and causation, in Plato’s view if there is justice there will always be friendship. If citizens’ lives are justly ordered friendship is one of its automatic results. Friendship between citizens is the result of activities that have been justly formulated for them and their well-being. Given that well-being for Plato is a synonym for justice, it follows that homonoia is the result of justice that has come to the citizens in the same way that medical care

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

101

is prescribed to us by experts. Socrates tells Thrasymachus ‘[it is] justice that brings homonoia’ (Rep. 351d6) and Cleitophon states that friendship is ‘always the work of justice’ (Cleit. 409e8). If justice is in force there will be well-being, and as a result there will be friendship between the cooperating parts of the whole, be they citizens of a polis or organs of a living body. Well-being is the result of a unique order which is appropriate to the whole and to the parts out of which it is composed. Agreement and unanimity are not enough. One cannot simply agree with others that smoking three packs of cigarettes is good for one’s health. The accord must be ‘just’ and advantageous to each part that is partaking in the community enterprise. The music befitting the citizenry will also have to be expertly devised and shielded from the harmful novelties of ignorant persons such as the poets and the tastes of the many. The paradox is that the programme of moral training through music in play aims to create free persons who do not as a whole have a share in the essence of freedom, in nous. Practical intelligence, phronêsis, yes, but not the complete person, who might, through a community, order his or her life for actualization of the highest faculty of their humanity. Aristotle took a different approach to political friendship. What puts citizens in touch with the highest capacity within them is not the singing or dancing per se, but the music which they themselves, as citizens, have selected and which they regulate, control, and direct to a specific end. No music created and recommended to passive receptors, for their good, will ever be appropriate for free persons. A mark of free persons is that together they are in control of the mousikê that shapes them for making their end – as a choice – possible. The way of life, their diagôgê, is not the result of habits, but rather the selection of how the habits are to be formed, with the best in mind, is their way of life. Parenthetically, it is of note that the very same lines from Homer’s Odyssey (9.2–11), which Aristotle quotes when he claims that music is conducive to the life of a free man, are also selectively cited by Plato in the Republic, only there Socrates proposes that these lines be expunged on the grounds that they have a ‘most wise man saying that in his view the most beautiful of all things is “tables full of bread and meat”…’ (Rep. 390a8–b1). Plato justifies removing these lines because he claims that they subvert moderation. It would not be speculative on our part to contend that Aristotle must have been well aware of

102

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

Plato’s biting remarks and that his quoting of these same lines, in an approving way, is indicative of a difference that had emerged between the two thinkers as the student moved beyond his teacher’s limited and somewhat mechanistic view of homonoia. For Aristotle the total setting in which music is being enjoyed is an instantiation of a way of life that is being shaped cooperatively and is enjoyed in its actuality by each participant. The question now is whether political friendship was ever practised, as an institution, and whether such practices were among the empirical realities that Aristotle could have turned to in order to support his theoretical vision concerning scholê as end. Did such traditions in political friendship exist? To answer the question one first has to turn to the early poets of Hellenic life rather than to the philosophers who later reflected on life. Secondly, one must justify bringing up the issue of political friendship in this context, especially given that it is universally ignored as a factor relevant to scholê’s practicality. Let us turn to the second question first, because whenever relevant factors are excluded from the causal account, especially when this is done without intent, this suggests that the excluded factors are completely irrelevant to the reference frame through which factors for the purpose of analyses are being selected. By understanding its exclusion we gain insight into the tinted lenses of our age which automatically filter out elements that are alien to our concepts of leisure.

Why we are attracted to the translation of homonoia as ‘unanimity’ and ‘concord’ There is a word in Homer, homophrosunê, upon which all subsequent Greek notions of political friendship were based. Here it would be convenient for the sake of economy to refer the reader to some article on the meaning of this word in Homer and the meanings of the related word homonoia in Aristotle. But alas there is no article or source which to my knowledge accurately conveys their meanings. The lexicon translations of homonoia, which are to be found in all standard renderings, are ‘unanimity’, ‘self-minded’, ‘like-minded’ or simply ‘concord’. The idea that ties of political justice are being forged between friends, ‘together’, with a common end-in-view, is not to be found in the literature. There are two sources for this bias: the first is in the political

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

103

legacy of Rome and the other in the moral inheritance of Christianity. The first viewed concordia as a compact of utilitarian interests while the second viewed it as same-minded beliefs spelled out in a sacred compact. The two converge upon the notion that the binding compact commands what types of action are deemed to be just, permissible and proper. In either case a compact that would make nous in scholê a common end is inconceivable. We can imagine the folly of commanding people to live a philosophical life or a compact declaring theoretical life to be the aim of the constitution. The Romans were very much influenced by the Stoics in their conceptualization of their political institutions. Initially, they had little use for early Stoic views of homonoia.20 During the Middle Stoa, when Stoic sages such as Posidonius and Panaetius became teachers to Roman statesman, the Stoic concept of justice was reconstructed in ways that allowed it to become a fruitful concept for achieving harmony within the Roman order. The Stoics had defined justice as the allotment of what is due to each and social tranquillity was thus conceived as the assignment of proper allotments to each sector of the population.21 This agreement regarding what was due to each party was the essence of concordia and this required an emotion-free calculation of interests which was to be arrived at by adding and subtracting from the expectations of the respective parties until all parties might come to a decision as to ‘how much is due to each person’.22 The result is a blending of the distributions due to each class so that ‘what musicians call harmony in music is concord in the body politic’.23 One will also note that social strife and conflict are taken as a starting premise to be patched up through the compact. Finally, in the Latin word concordia there is no imagery of a reasoned common interest because the word itself at its root designates either ‘of one heart’ (cardia) or ‘agreement of the crowd’ (cors), neither of which suggest a causal link to mind, whereas homonoia has within it a suffix noia which denotes the presence of nous, hence to something that is being reasoned through, requiring knowledge, in this case, ‘together’ (homou). The Christians on the other hand put emphasis on the Covenant, which, for them, was the source of tranquillity and order. Sin arises from doubting or breaking the commands that have been ordained. This is what is being regulated while friendship at best might be added after the fact, as an afterthought that conceives of the same-minded believers as brothers and sisters

104

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

in Christ. What is of the essence is that one heeds the commands.24 That unanimity regarding belief is at the heart of the Christian view of social friendship is patent whenever one turns to the uses of homonoia or its sister homophrosunê in the Hebrew Bible. God tells Moses that if any one of his people gives their child to Molech for sacrifice, God himself will turn against that man and his relatives and ‘destroy him and all those who are like-minded (homonoountas) with him’. Agreement in thought and belief with those who stand against the Covenant is sufficient cause for annihilation just as it is for a myriad of blessings when like-mindedness is in accordance with the Covenant’s commands. Esther prays to God to sway the King of Persia against his advisor Aman so that ‘he and all those same-minded with him be destroyed’ (Esther 4.17s.3).25 How true belief is to be settled and what are to be considered the right commands remain a perennial problem since their source is a mysterious and unknowable Being. And further, how does conformity and same-minded obedience for bliss in the Beyond secure a flourishing life in the imperfect social frameworks of this world? Standing back one can see, at least in outline, that the mingling of these two traditions resulted on the one hand in the idea that concord resulted from just distributions between conflicting classes and interests, and on the other hand it left a craving for otherworldly fellowship rooted in the belief of salvation in the world beyond. The traditions of homonoia and its Homeric forerunner homophrosunê, because they were so alien to the ideas of Rome and Christianity, never made it onto the radar screen and were simply ignored.

Music and political friendship What we have shown is the theoretical possibility of homonoia as an institutional presence through which the life of scholê, as end, might conceivably become practical. But one might argue that this is merely a theoretical construct which is akin to the many other utopias that have been conceived by philosophers. The question then is whether homonoia was a deeply rooted practice which was available to reformers for the purposes that Aristotle proposed. The place to start is the Theogony where the birth and the works

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

105

of the Muses are first recounted. The nine Muses, born of Zeus’ union with Memory, are called homophronas (together-minded).26 Each Muse has her province but they work together according to a common end-in-view. In and through music they make sensuous the order of all things and give us a feel for the way of life of the gods. they joyously sing of the ordinances and habits [or haunts] of all the immortal gods… Zeus well-ordered the domains of each of the immortals and delineated the honours due to each. (73–4)

The purpose of the Muses’ song, the framework of their together-mindedness, is to sing of Zeus’ rule and the jurisdictions and honours that he assigned to other gods as part of the new just order. But the just order is not an empty universal. Humans are often at odds and require specific judgements to correct wrongs. Calliope, the first-born, is given a special function of accompanying the revered judges and pouring dew on their tongues from which honeyed words flow. The order thus reaches into the wellsprings of human action. The disorder within humans is overcome by the seductive tones of the order coming from without. The king-judges are not empty vessels who receive through the grace of God the gift to judge and to persuade. They have acquired the ability to judge well and to ‘turn around things, so as to assuage [disputes]’ ‘with gentle words’ but this power of persuasion that filters through the emotions is a Muse-given gift (88–90). The myth implies that music has the power to instil a moral order sensuously or aesthetically within the hedonic marrow of human beings. Furthermore, it is done in diverse ways that make use of all types of art so that the order can, in manifold ways, reach deeply into the soul’s irrational capacities. Music, dance, poetry and myth are all involved and these transmit the images, the feelings to eyes and ears, to feet and stomach, as to what is right and what is base. As one says in English, ‘you can feel it in your gut’. The commanding powers of the irrational are tempered with a taming gentleness and the music directs these powerful movers to noble and cooperative action. As for how the Muses bring about these results it is patent that no one gives them commands as to what they should compose, or sing or dance, nor do they follow some inflexible code that would coerce them into singing the same

106

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

correct things forever and ever. All they have is the pattern that guides them to their end. To have homonoia could never imply that they are same-minded, because they all have different talents and domains which, on each occasion, they apply to create the music that is fitting to the divine order. Together they cooperatively work to the same end, but in different ways and in different types of works. Their homophrosunê is itself a cause of what they create and it is not their creations which are the cause of it. But one might again lodge another objection that all we have provided thus far is a myth; a fine and suggestive myth, but still a myth. In politics, and this is where political friendship belongs, there are advantages and interests at stake. Contracts, agreements and compacts bind, whereas an emotional amalgam of feelings does not. As Cicero put it, ‘when one fears the other, man fearing man and one class fearing the other and when no one is confident of their strength, then a type of pact is made … [Thus mutual] weakness is the mother of justice and not nature or desire [or affection]’.27 Even if one were to discount Cicero’s cynical view of human bonding, one cannot ignore that interests are what bind a society and not fleeting emotions. It seems that the example we have cited for homonoia, precisely because it binds people through the formation of emotional bonds to just notions of right conduct, cannot be a foundation for political ends because it has not associated the music with cold-hearted interests that bind people to cooperative endeavours. To reply to these charges we must return to the Poet and to what we can learn from his uses of the word homophrosunê, the predecessor to the concept of homonoia.

Homophrosunê in Homer We now come to the second part of our question: Was there a practical tradition of utility friendship whose bonds had a practical purpose and whose values could be tested and their effectiveness ascertained? Did there exist a tradition which combined the cash-in-hand realities of interests and utility with the power of friendly feeling for the associates engaged in the common enterprise? Since we are not attempting to analyse theories of political friendship in Aristotle but rather to ascertain the existence of practices from which the theories were abstracted, we have to turn to the antecedents of

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

107

homonoia, because homonoia was a new word that gained currency only in the last decade of the fifth century bc. However, its antecedents are to be found already in Homer in the form of homophrosunê. This is the friendship that especially describes the bonds between Odysseus and Penelope. By going to the beginning we can see the process from its deep roots and from there it will be easy to grasp its possibilities in the far more complex political framework of Aristotle’s times. Homophrosunê and its cognates appear in Homer.28 The word is usually rendered as ‘unity of mind and feeling’ (LSJ), ‘harmony of mind, congeniality’ (Autenrieth), ‘agreement in thought’ or most often ‘like-mindedness’.29 But these translations one must reject outright for the simple reason that ‘like-mindedness’ and other related meanings are simply too ambivalent and even ambiguous. Enemies can be like-minded for limited purposes and so can brigands plotting a crime or political pariahs who with same-minded attention to duty commit genocide. A way to arrive at its meaning is to first identify what type of thing it is, to what class of things does it belong, second to identify its parts, i.e., the factors that comprise it, and third to examine its functions. To identify the class of things to which homophrosunê belongs we can turn to the first appearance of the word, which occurs in rhapsody 22, towards the end of the Iliad. Achilles has chased Hector around the city walls three times and Hector now decides to stand his ground and fight. However, before he engages in combat he asks Achilles that they both swear an oath, with the gods as witnesses, that the victor will not mutilate the body of the slain opponent. But come now, let us here invoke the gods, for they will be the best witnesses and overseers of our compacts. (Il. 22.254–5)

What Hector is proposing is a pact between them, even as enemies, for the limited purposes of showing respect for the treatment of the corpse that will inevitably be the outcome of their duel. That this is to be a compact between the two is unmistakable in the words that Achilles uses in his response.30 Hector, you, the unforgivable! Do not speak to me of compacts (sunêmosunas)! Just as it is not possible for lions and men to enter into trustworthy agreements, nor wolves and sheep to have a together-minded spirit (homophrona thumos),

108

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

but forever are plotting evils for each other, so too it is not possible for you and me to share affection; nor between us can there be oaths, before one of us falls to satiate Ares, the shield-bearing warrior, with blood. (Il. 260–7)

In his reply, Achilles precludes any compact between them save that one of them must die with total disregard for the norms of piety.31 But such a shared purpose is not a compact, but the elimination of all human restraints with respect to conduct towards another. They are like two species whose biology impels them to kill each other. We gather from this exchange, by way of contrariety (in this case as contradictories), that if there is homophrosunê there is friendship and no enmity and if there is enmity between two parties there can be no homophrosunê. Whatever homophrosunê may be, we can safely conclude that it precludes enmity and hence it must be some type of friendship. Further evidence that homophrosunê is a type of friendship is shown when Achilles declares that wolves and sheep can never have a homophrona thumos. The thumos is the seat of a person’s honour and also the place where the passions, most notably those of anger and friendly feeling, are placed. In this case the enmity of the animals is in their thumos – it is affective, yet it is operating in tandem with the phrenes, an organ or a power often used for deliberating upon the right course of action. The two words taken together indicate that what is meant is not simply an intellectual ‘meeting of minds’ or ‘concord’ (Fitzgerald) nor can it merely be a constellation of interests because its underlying values are affectively shared and thumotically desired. When Odysseus wishes the princess Nausicaa that the gods grant her ‘whatever passionately stirs the mind of [her] desire’ – a husband and a household and homophrosunê – the force of this desire is rendered by the verb menoinas, a verb cognate with the noun menos, which means ‘spirit’ ‘passion’ ‘might’ or ‘force’. On the one hand, because this friendship is based on a compact it is composed of calculated interests and advantages, but on the other hand, the intellectual property that evaluates the interests and judges the compact, whatever this may be, is infused with powerful desire and emotion.32 But there is another condition that must be met. The emotionally infused compact that binds the parties must be accompanied by an actual capacity to act on behalf of

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

109

the friend. Desire and well-meaning intentions are not enough. This condition is dramatically shown in the incident wherein the Cyclops Polyphemos is searching for the men who blinded him. As he stands at the entrance to his cave to catch the perpetrators, he wonders out loud why his ram, though it was always leading the flock and the first to exit, has now remained behind. He imagines that it is now last because it was searching, ‘longing’ or ‘yearning’, he says, for his dismembered eye. Are you longing for your master’s eye? A cowardly man blinded it with his wretched comrades, when they overpowered my reasoning with wine. This ‘Nobody’, in truth, I think has not yet escaped his destruction. If you could be ‘together minded’ (homophroneois) with me and had the power of speech, to tell me where he is hiding from my rage, then indeed his brain would be splattered throughout the cave, smashed to the ground, and then my heart would be relieved of the afflictions given to me by this good-for-nothing ‘Nobody’. (Od. 9.452–61)

In the confused mind of the Cyclops the ram meets one of the criteria of friendship in that it presumably cares for his master in the manner of a friend. But caring is inadequate for fulfilling the conditions of homophrosunê. As Polyphemos states, if the ram could be ‘together-minding’, then it could fulfil the basic requirements of Homeric friendship, i.e., to do harm to one’s enemies and good to one’s friends. The Cyclops’ appeal to homophrosunê at a moment of dire emergency underscores the absence of some friend who can act with him so that he might track down Odysseus and kill him. The problem is not that the ram cannot think like him.33 In fact Polyphemos imagines that the ram has pondered over his plight and has been seeking to find his lost eye. But even in his agitated state the Cyclops cannot imagine the ram acting on his behalf since it lacks speech and other capacities that would have allowed it to translate its affection into action. Homophrosunê demands that the friendly feeling for mutual care be armed with the capacity for effective action on behalf of the friend. Achilles’ rejection of a compact on the grounds that homophrosunê between the two is impossible, points by way of negation to another one of homophrosunê’s most important factors, its institutional nature. To reject Hector’s

110

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

proposal Achilles must place their confrontation outside of all normal human institutions which are bound by piety. Thus homophrosunê appears to be tied to social criteria that pertain to some institution which can be used to judge its purposes and its appropriateness. This prevents the compact from being of a morally arbitrary nature for it is bound to an institutional function that can be evaluated. This institutional framework comes out most clearly when Odysseus showers the Phaeacian princess Nausicaa with wishes for homophrosunê in her future household: May the gods give you whatever passionately stirs the mind of your desire – a man and a household, and may noble (esthlén) ‘together-mindedness’ (homophrosunên) accompany you, for nothing higher or stronger exists than community of mind (homophroneonte) between man and woman governing over their household … (Od. 6.180–5)

The thing to which the friendship between husband and wife is related is their household and the ‘together’ (homou) captures that what is being formed between the two is a special type of community.34 The ‘together’ is not a static point; Penelope and Odysseus show why this cannot be so. The flux, the unexpected, the possibility of separation and the likelihood that each may encounter challenges of differing sorts, specific to their differing roles, make such putative sameness irrelevant for effective common action on behalf of their oikos. The together implies a continuous exercise, by both partners, of shared virtues that bind them to act with affection with respect to the same thing, their household. The homophrosunê has to be noble if the parties are to be able to cooperate with power for good purposes that will be to their mutual advantage. The household is thus accompanied by nobility (Od. 6.181) which is denoted in the verses quoted above with the word esthlos.35 The meaning of noble and its accompanying sense of being advantageous to one’s friends implies that this is a type of friendship that involves utility. Homophrosunê must thus produce benefits that are mutually advantageous to the couple and to their household’s end. Its function is to preserve and advance the flourishing of the oikos, and it is this end that determines the nature of this mode of friendship. Western romantic love on its own, as a binding force, will not suffice to preserve their household because the relationship is towards each other while

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

111

in homophrosunê the relation between the two is to the thing, to the institution that must reproduced through their friendship. What the oikos reproduces in Odysseus and Penelope’s union is a son, Telemachus, who is the proof of their homophrosunê. Penelope and Odysseus may have been separated for many years, but in the most important matter of their union, the reproduction of their household, of a certain moral type outfitted with means, they are in a community of mind, even from afar. It is of note that the Odyssey begins with Telemachus’ coming of age and it is his fate that begins the plot of the poem. On the great matters of their union, the fate of their household, there is never any doubt of how Odysseus and Penelope will choose. Odysseus rejects immortality and other temptations along the way so that he may return to his oikos, and his wife fends off threats to it and to its future as she awaits for his return. We should note here that later, in the late fifth century bc homophrosunê, tied as it was to the household, was inappropriate to the broader requirements of political friendship within the polis and thus it came to be replaced with the concept of homonoia.36 This step transposed all the elements of homophrosunê to the larger canvas of the polis. In a democracy, for example, equality before the law with equal rights for all made for strong ties. The reciprocated advantages that accrued to citizens were infused with friendly feeling. Their homonoia was practical in that each average citizen, legally, had an equal share of influence over matters of far-ranging consequence. Unlike homophrosunê political homonoia had the entire polis and not the household as its ‘thing’, and hence was impersonal. Nevertheless powerful feelings of affection could be expressed for the other, because citizens were bound to a common course towards which they steered under a command and crew of their own making. The friendship ties born of equality made the Athenian democracy incredibly durable despite the many infelicities and disasters that resulted from its excesses.

What can be the cause of homonoia for the end of scholê? This brief survey has shown that there did exist a long tradition of institutional utility-friendship whose ideals were transferred and expanded to accommodate the egalitarian bonds of political friendship demanded by the

112

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

political realities of the fifth century bc. But one could still raise the objection that though the utility and benefits of democracy can be experienced by the average citizen, the experience of homonoia for scholê in theôria has never been experienced. This lack of experience may be pointed to in order to underscore why such homonoia is impractical even on theoretical grounds; it lacks any cause that could give rise to it. Indeed, if every type of association breeds a type of friendship, this type of homonoia for scholê is as devoid of causality as is an empty can devoid of any nourishment. If theôria could be experienced by all as the prevailing good, then it might be a cause of friendship because its cash-in-hand utility would be promoting this good. But lacking any universal participation in theoretical activity and in any desire to universally partake in it, there seems to be no cause for it to happen. To answer this objection one first has to answer whether homophrosunê or homonoia is something inborn and biological or if it is the result of the nurturing that aims to produce it. If the former we could conclude that Aristotle’s proposal is practical based on a biological impulse that sooner or later, under the right conditions, will manifest itself. It would be like the acorn growing unattended into the proverbial oak tree if conditions allow. This possibility we can immediately exclude, for even if we grant that it is rooted in a natural feeling of friendship there are simply too many social requirements, such as compacts, utility and correct judgement, to reduce it to a genetically acquired power. Further proof that it is not biological, except as an affective capacity, is that homophrosunê is not widely present in our society or in many others that have preceded modernity. Hence it must be the case that the partners’ capacity for this type of friendship is shaped through an institutional union. The yearning for this friendship must have been brought about by a prior shaping which aims to bring it to fruition. This brings us back to our problem: how can scholê, as end, ever come to be a practical basis for political friendship given that only a handful ever experiences it. The problem is not solvable formally. If left as a problem of logic then nous, as end, would be an empty idea without a starting point for its practical implementation. There is no possible logical way of deducing the necessity of scholê or its possibility from existing biological or social parameters. All such proofs and arguments are doomed to fail because one cannot deduce the culture required of scholê from the realities of ascholia. It would be like trying to develop a

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

113

theory of health from studying the terminally ill. Scholê must come from without – from philosophy and enlightened statesmen. To think that it might arise from productivity gains or some other factor coming from the prison of our ascholia is futile. As impossible as this prospect may sound, there were precedents not only in ancient Greek cities such as Athens and Sparta, which became great through legislators, but even some modern republics, such as the United States, came into being because of founding legislators who were the principle of the republic’s constitution. Based on such empirical evidence one can conclude that it is the principle of scholê residing in future wise legislators, who might, through education and persuasion, win a populace over to nous as a way of life. This is hard, if not impossible, to imagine happening, but so too was the founding of the American Republic. One might, however, claim that the precedent cited is flawed, because in the case of Solon’s or Cleisthenes’ reforms, or those introduced by the American Founding Fathers, their proposals could be evaluated by the populace and could gain approval in each case because of common social experiences. But given that the experience of nous is rare it would seem that these precedents do not apply. Nous, as a constitutional principle, would seemingly exclude the city’s vast majority from honours and participation, so why would the citizenry support it? And then again, if it were diluted so as to expand participation in it, then one would be creating an open-ended vista for all sorts of activities that would take the place of nous. However, we can say that the relaxation of stringent criteria for citizens to engage in scholê need not entail dilution of nous as a value. One did not reduce tragedy to a low form of burlesque in order for citizens to participate in it. The honours were distributed to all who furthered its flourishing, to the actors, to the chorus, to the benefactors who gave resources and to the common man who could replicate tragedy’s charm in daily life. As to the claim that the high standards of nous would exclude virtually the entire populace from participation in political life, we can state that participation need not assume that every member of the political association, as an atomic unit, will possess the property of nous to an equal degree. This would be unrealistic. But here we can note that neither did the Athenian democracy, in which tragedy functioned as an indispensable component of political friendship, require that all citizens be able to write tragedy in order to partake in it. Though not everyone embodies

114

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

theoretical wisdom, all citizens would be sufficiently cultured within their practices and habits of association to recognize and to show respect for nous’ presence. They would be encouraged through the polis’ standard for reverence and honour to imitate the role models that the just persons provide and to assimilate these models into their practices. Even if all do not possess it fully they could all recognize it and uphold its values. That many of us swim or jog and train for events without any hope of ever making it to the Olympics does not mean that we reject participation in the activities whose standards are set by the excellence of remarkable athletes. There are neighbourhood clubs, amateur teams, competitions for the serious and the weekend dabblers alike, communities within communities in which participation is possible for all, even though at all levels we marvel at those who have reached the heights and show us the way. In athletics, since it pertains to the body, this is easy to comprehend. But when it comes to the possibility that this can apply to the mind as end, we find it difficult to even process the thought. There is another piece of evidence that augments the case for homonoia as an explanation of how music contributes to making the theoretical life practical. Surprisingly, nowhere does Aristotle sketch out a course of studies that would take a student from sense perception and opinion to the highest reaches of theoretical understanding. Though he states repeatedly that activity in scholê is the end, he never reveals what the curriculum is for educating citizens for this end. Perhaps the right conclusion to be drawn from this omission is that the road to participation in the life of theôria in scholê is not laid out as if it were an autobahn. It is not ‘out there’ but ‘in here’ – in the everresourceful internal powers of free persons. Nowhere do we find a discussion in the Politics along the lines that we find in Plato’s Republic where Socrates lays out studies in numbers, geometry and astronomy, as necessary steps to theoretical gazing.37 We will not find in Aristotle any such compilation of studies that should comprise the contents of scholê. Why? Here we can only speculate, but we can do so judiciously. If the childhood curriculum aims to cultivate free persons who will choose scholê as a way of life, must it not follow that scholê, by its very nature, is not reducible to any prescribed activities that would aim to craft its operations? To do so would be contrary to the freedom inherent in scholê and it would limit its ever-evolving scope and contents. The

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

115

curriculum that prepares a citizenry for scholê cannot come from a handbook. When humanity decides to cross the threshold of its adolescence into its maturity and seek out a life of nous, it will have to rely on the moral training that has prepared it to choose such a life. There is no art of scholê as there are arts of leisure. It is more correct to state that there is a science of scholê which falls under psychology – the actualization of nous – and that there is a distinct science and art, that of politics, which aims to enable citizens to select, sustain and engage in scholê. If there is no art of scholê then we can rest assured that music is not being selected for education as an art that will train us for mastering it. More likely our participation in the control of our culture for the common end and our shared participation in that culture, in its music, are what prepare us for a way of life in which selection of scholê becomes practical.

The principle of scholê is God A way to summarize the problem of complete happiness in scholê is to turn to Aristotle’s most explicit recognition of the difficulties his proposal faces. No doubt he is well aware of the great obstacles that everyday mortal existence poses to his vision of scholê in theôria. His words come at the very end of the Nicomachean Ethics when he takes up again the question of what constitutes happiness and whether this is to be found in the theoretical or the practical life: If then nous is something divine in comparison to man then theoretical life is divine in comparison to human life. One who is human ought not to think only of human things as recommended by those who give such advice, nor in the same manner should mortals think only of things related to their mortal nature, but [one should think] in what way it is possible to become immortal and to do all that is possible for living a life according to the best of all the elements that exists within [humans]. For nous, though it is small in magnitude, in power and worth it exceeds all other powers to a great degree. One might claim that each person identifies himself with this element, if of course this is the predominant and qualitatively superior element within [each person]. For it would be absurd if one were not to choose [to live] one’s own life but someone else’s. That which was said previously is also relevant now, namely, that what is appropriate to the nature of each thing is also the highest [faculty] and the most

116

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

pleasurable for that species. Thus for humans, the highest and most pleasurable is the theoretical life, if indeed humans are primarily defined according to this property. Hence this [theoretical] life is also the happiest.

And after he has compared, again, the theoretical to the practical life he concludes: Hence the activity of god, which surpasses [all others] in happiness could be theoretical [activity]. And of all the human activities, this, the theoretical, which, of all others, is by way of relation the closest to divine activity, could lay claim to [a life of] complete happiness. A sign of this is that the other animals do not partake in eudaimonia because they completely lack this theoretical activity. None of the other animals partakes in eudaimonia because they do not partake at all in theory. Because theory extends in time so too does eudaimonia and thus whatever beings contain the element of theory also contain that of eudaimonia, not coincidentally, but due to theoretical activity, because this is what has value in itself. Hence eudaimonia could be some type of theoretical activity. (1178b21–32)

In each of us there is the divine, by nature. The activity of nous is a prior potential for each member of the human species. Being divine, it is beyond our composite nature and cannot be actualized as long as we are tied to our composite nature. Here Aristotle is in agreement with Socrates. As long as we live a life that services the body and its needs, such a life is impossible. Since we cannot transcend the body biologically then does this mean that such a life is out of reach? Aristotle admonishes us not to listen to those who tell us that because we are merely human we should tone down our aspirations in order to live the life of a mere human. He urges us to ignore them. Instead he exhorts us to realize that this divine power is what is most human about us. If happiness, as the ultimate end, lies in the fulfilment of our nature, then the divine, the most natural within us, ought to be the compass for directing life. This clearly is not meant to be an inspirational flourish. It comes at the end of the Ethics in that part of the work which is shaping up as an introduction to his Politics. Perhaps the meaning is that the divine, though well-nigh impossible on an individual basis for the mass of humankind, is not impossible as a cooperative aim. What is impossible for each of us in isolation is possible within a community of together-minded friends. The carpenter, the postman, the professor, the housewife can be together-minded with respect

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

117

to sharing in the highest activity in scholê. What makes this practical is that the institution of homonoia includes within itself an institutional intelligence that transcends the limitations of the isolated individual. Within it there is a type of knowledge of what to respect and value, what to strive for and how to conduct oneself with respect to others. Furthermore, institutions as moral vessels have the power to bring out the best and the highest within us. Another sign of the uniqueness of theôria as a way of life is that no other animal can have a share of eudaimonia. Perhaps, as has become fashionable, one might find grounds to dismiss this claim as an anthropocentric gaffe that would place humans on a privileged plane separate from other life forms. If anything, Aristotle was a pioneer in asserting the continuities between plant, animal and human life forms. He explains why eudaimonia is precluded for them. If the divine is the paradigm for happiness then partaking in it must be a self-sufficient activity free of temporal and spatial constraints. Theôria is the one immortal element within us that is separable from the composite. The body perishes, yet the works of nous live on. An animal perishes and it is dead forever, and, furthermore, it cannot live a life which has participation in immortality, apart from procreation, as an end. Returning to humans, one need not become an original thinker giving rise to works born of nous to share in this immortality, just as one need not have been a Homer or an Aeschylus to share in epic or dramatic poetry. Finally, one might still raise a protest that theôria, no matter what arguments are formulated to advance its cause as end, defies the empirical history of human social life. Aristotle himself recognizes this as an ultimate principle when he states that ‘the truth in practical matters is to be judged by works and by life itself, for it is in these that one finds the deciding criterion’ (1179a17–20). Does not experience show that spending free time in theoretical pursuits defies the evidence of life? Here we must again clarify that scholê as end could never imply that scholê would be spent exclusively in theoretical pursuits. There is a difference between securing all the preconditions for scholê as end and the defining activity occurring within it. The former requires busyness and work to secure the goods that will make scholê possible. It also mandates that most of scholê, as the fund of society’s surplus energy, would be committed to cultivating the moral virtues and to providing citizens with the opportunities and choices for education and culture. These are necessary

118

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

phases of scholê that prepare a person for scholê as end or perhaps here it would be more appropriate to say that there would be vast allocations for the cultural diagôgê that would have as its purpose citizens partaking in scholê. As historians of philosophy have noted, the Greeks often spoke of God as a predicate rather than a subject. The archê, the beginning and the cause, whether it be Air or Nous or the Unbounded, could be God if it could be shown that any of these was the bearer of the traits assigned to the divine. Given this tradition there is nothing mystical in Aristotle’s formulation. Nous, the highest faculty within us, exists as first entelecheia in every human but, as end, can only be realized deliberately through a community of friends who take the divine in human identity as the first principle of political life. But try as we might we can never become divine completely. Nous as a continuous natural condition is impossible for humans, just as it is impossible for us to be makar, permanently blessed, as are the gods. Humans can only be ‘wellspirited’, which is to say experience the divine for only limited periods. The activity takes too much of a toll and it tires the person so engaged so that it has to be stopped or, which is more probable, nousing itself comes to a halt. Since it can never be permanent in each individual it requires institutions which aim at its continuous presence in spite of its absence at times or its complete absence in those who have chosen other directions in life that fall short of nous. But there is something that does give the divine within human beings permanence. Political friendship whose utility is the actualization of the divine transcends each individual just as a constitution transcends the laws that flow from it. This friendship keeps the divine alive as a flame whose light glitters in a distributed way throughout the corners of the entire society. This light does not come from the beyond. It is in the compact that agrees to make the light available to all as a choice, and as a way of life, to keep it burning through common efforts. If theôria as an end in scholê is to be practical as a distributed end, it will require a prior shared desire for such an outcome. Homonoia in its defining sense cannot be a case of one-way benefactions no matter how enlightened and well-meaning and charitable these may be. For this reason friendship’s binding force cannot lie in a passive acceptance of rational prescriptions that might issue commands to citizens for living the good life. The thing to which homonoia aims differs in the different constitutions, but in the best constitution

Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia

119

its aim is activity in scholê. The best entails a community of mind, armed with affective power, to make the highest capacity possible. Musical culture would then be in the hands of the citizens for this purpose. True, citizens will call upon experts to advise them, they will need much deliberation and constant overview, but who is in control and what is being controlled are not in doubt. We see such possibilities even today in normal everyday practices. In environmental practice, for example, one marvels at the field ecologists who painstakingly take water samples from a mosquito-infested wetland and, despite the distress of heat and insect bites, throw the turbid water back as they try again and again to take a better sample for the lab. There is no one standing over them to order them in this matter. There are no Kings of Science that dictate to them. Rather they share in the values that bring them into a cooperative bonding with all those others dedicated to preserving the ecosystem in its best possible state. Furthermore they have developed the habits under the guidance of mentor friends who have come before them and they have assimilated through these social interactions a moral outlook that allows them to put these values into practice. The field technicians and the biologists who accompany them are not noted academics or theoreticians at the top of their field. But they are all linked together in search of the causes. This is shown even more clearly later, when the same technicians become involved in writing reports and in taking part in committees in which they will contribute alongside others whose knowledge in these matters may be far superior to theirs. But then again, those with such knowledge are indebted to the field personnel. Parenthetically, we can surmise that Aristotle too must have been grateful to those who collected the fish and animals and dissected them for his studies. Proof that he held in high regard all those who contributed to the search for causes is shown especially in Aristotle’s commemoration of Hermias of Atarneus, with a ceremony at the Lyceum for which he wrote a hymn. It was probably due to Hermias’ patronage that Aristotle’s field research at Assos was made possible. Long after the tangible benefits of the patronage had faded away Aristotle continued to praise Hermias, an action which led to his indictment in Athens and his flight from the city. The evidence strongly suggests that the search for causes in the biological domain, though established on theoretical principles, evolved in and through practical social relations between together-minded persons in which each contributed what

120

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

they could, thus creating a process that culminated in the creation of science as an institution. With this the inquiry into the concept of scholê has come to an end. Perhaps inconclusive and unsatisfactory, but hopefully it at least has placed the concept of scholê where it belongs, in the domain of practical politics. We now turn to the Hellenistic World and Rome in order to distinguish scholê from the leisure concepts which have been passed down to us.

VI

Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

To what industrious man is leisure not a punishment. (Sen. De prov. 2.3–3) Continuously, until the very end of life we will pursue action. (Sen. De otio 8.1.4.2) What am I doing in my leisure? I am healing my wounds. (Sen. Ep. 68.8) During the Hellenistic period, under the domination of Macedonian potentates whose models for political rule were taken from the dynastic lands they had conquered, it was inevitable that eudaimonia, as a political end, came to an end. What ultimately replaced it were the values of the empires over which they ruled. The process of orientalization was articulated and elaborated in Greek and inevitably it came to prevail within philosophical thought. The process would culminate in the Imperial Age when the personal cravings for salvation in the world beyond came to predominate. In late antiquity philosophy itself, one of the greatest accomplishments of Greek civilization, evolved into a theurgic vehicle for union with a mysterious and unknowable god. Under these circumstances it was natural for scholê, qua end, to disappear from the field of political philosophy and to become unthinkable as a possibility for political practice. The topic of scholê is not to be found in any of the post-classical philosophies as a subject matter in its own right. There is no book, or even a chapter, written in Greek entitled ‘On scholê’ by any of the philosophers of this period, and the topic is generally to be found in their works only as a passing side-issue. The word scholê and cognate words are

122

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

used in various ways to describe the diverse learned pursuits of the new age, especially in connection to the philosophical Schools. Intellectuals of these schools had no interest in the concept of scholê because the political and moral issues that had been raised by Plato and Aristotle were alien to their psychological yearnings. So alien, in fact, that though most other central concepts inherited from Plato and Aristotle were transformed and given new meanings to meet the needs of the new age, scholê was left orphaned and ignored. As Rome gained ascendancy another process was to occur in which the fading concept of scholê in the Greek-speaking world was overshadowed by the emerging and dynamic Roman concept of otium. Any inquiry into the philosophical concept of scholê must comment, even if in a cursory way, on these developments. First, because the concepts of Stoicism, Scepticism, Neoplatonism, Epicureanism, Cynicism and Christianity were the channels through which Greek philosophy filtered into the modern Western world, it follows that the attitudes of these various sources towards the concept of scholê were to affect whatever was passed down to modernity on this issue. Second, because otium became the central source for the concept of leisure in the West it has often been conflated with or projected onto the philosophical concept of scholê so that scholê is generally viewed through the prism of otium. To avoid such a distorted view of scholê it is necessary to demarcate it from scholê. Looking ahead, it is also necessary to show why in the Greek-speaking Byzantine East scholê became such a superfluous concept that the word itself fell into disuse, so much so that ultimately it disappeared from the Greek language.

From being ‘in scholê’ to being ‘in the school’ Two words suffice to show the transformation in the concept of scholê that occurred in Hellenistic period. For Aristotle the words in scholê meant the actuality, the being in the activity, of eudaimonia, while for the Stoics, who were the predominant philosophers of that age, the phrase in scholê denoted that which is being learned or taught in the School. From the activity of the highest capacity scholê now became a place for formal learning. In Aristotle, learning is a precondition for scholê whereas in the Schools it becomes the



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

123

essence. We thus have an inversion: scholê for theôria is transformed into the learning of dogmas through which all things can miraculously be known. Generally, scholars and others, when they refer to this evolution of the word σχολή into Σχολή, as ‘School’, emphasize the intellectual content of the term and then go on to note that this dimension of meaning distinguishes it from the Latin-based term ‘leisure’. But this aspect of scholê’s new meaning, which emphasized learning and the place of learning, true as it may be, masks the fact that the transformation also expunged the philosophical meanings that Plato and Aristotle had given to the word. In the Hellenistic period, scholê, as School, came to mean any place in which lectures and learning are occurring, or any group that congregates for such purposes.1 The house of the teacher or the student, a gymnasium, a public arcade, a temple, could all serve as schools and the coursework could range from learning the alphabet to philosophical or scientific lectures.2 In the Stoic writings, scholê is associated directly with the lectures and teachings of the Stoics: ‘in scholê’, ‘at scholê’, ‘out of scholê’, ‘to the scholê’ all refer to the School where lectures are given by a Stoic teacher.3 Cleanthes, for example, is referred to as a successor ‘in the School’ (scholên);4 Chrysippus holds his open-air school (scholên) in the Lyceum; and the lectures of Posidonius are referred to as his scholai.5 A scholastêrion for example can be a library or a place for reading or discussion.6 The locus for scholê’s meanings centres on the place of learning and the activities associated with that place. Given the systematic nature of Stoicism, where all parts of their theory are interconnected, one would have expected that the doctrines associated with the School would have been the basis for the reconstruction of the concept. Because participation in their School and the learning of their doctrines in one’s free time was not considered to be the essential proof of one’s education, the Stoics did not connect ‘being in the School’, as such, to the quest for truth or to any other defining activity. Instead we witness quite the opposite. Usually Epictetus’ use of the terms ‘being in school’ or ‘in the lecture room’ have a pejorative meaning suggesting that a person may have mastered the words but has failed to internalize their moral purpose. To learn the doctrines is to be able to apply them outside the School in true life situations.7 The signpost of true education is displayed in a person’s control over the external impressions, so that one’s chosen disposition or actions selected are decided only

124

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

by one’s inner reason in accordance with Nature. One is tempted to draw the conclusion that, for Epictetus and the Stoics, the true purpose of scholê is to spend one’s time practising to remain unaffected: ‘This is what the youth leaving the school should [be able to] demonstrate’ (2.1.36.2). But such a conclusion would be speculative because it finds no support in the text. Search as one might, there is no passage in the extant works which might lead one to a Stoic doctrine of scholê. Probably the reason why there is no defining type of scholê in Stoicism is because scholê is not associated with an activity to be engaged in as much as with a body of doctrines to be assimilated through continuous practice. In this endeavour, scholê plays but a small part. The balance shifts to busyness because one must remain busy even in one’s leisure. The activity words that gain prominence in the Stoic vocabulary are gymnastikê, askêsis and meletê (exercise, training and study) that prepare a person for overcoming life’s hardships with indifference. Who is the man in training (asketês)? ‘The one who exercises against the pull of his appetites’ (3.12.8.1). One must be in continuous training to ensure that one’s rational capacity remains completely unaffected in judging the impressions that come to it. In order to remain unaffected ‘I will strain and exercise my sense impressions to this end’. One must have the dogmas at hand ready for implementation rather than having them on one’s tongue for display in learned conversations. External hardships and obstructions, which previously were considered to be disruptive to scholê, are now welcomed as opportunities for testing one’s ability to remain unaffected: ‘the person who insults me becomes my trainer; he exercises my patience, my control over anger, my gentleness’. These occasions are not distractions at all. They afford the opportunity for the training to live unperturbedly. Distraction becomes the training ground for overcoming distraction. Learning principles without hard practice is akin to a person with a weak stomach who cannot digest his food.8 Free time in learned pursuits can be a form of distraction if it keeps the newcomer to Stoic philosophy away from exercising the dogmas. The wrong dogmas, after all, according to their teaching, are the causes of dispositions and actions. Epictetus recommends that the aspiring student become scholastikos and devote his leisure to learning and reflecting upon the dogmas according to which he leads his life.9 But mere study of dogmas and principles can also



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

125

make a person scholastikos in the bad sense of a quibbler who splits words without attending to implementation of their contents. The guiding principle is that one must acquire the ability to retreat to the dogmas and to apply them so as to remain unaffected by the tumultuous twists and turns of life. The word Epictetus uses on several occasions to show the spirit with which the student must come to the dogmas and the lectures is euscholeô. The verb euscholeô (‘to have abundant leisure’) is used to describe leisure spent in intellectual pursuits which is free of tumult and pain.10 Ironically these leisurely activities must come only after one has successfully gone through the hardships of mastering the dogmas in action. First one should undergo the pain and tumult of freeing oneself from one’s vices. Once one frees oneself from the influence of the externals over one’s judgements, then one may safely turn to study abstract subjects. Hence, given this end, Stoic lectures should never be a carefree experience. As Epictetus’ teacher, Musonius Rufus, used to say: ‘If you have the peace of mind (euscholeite) to praise me, then I am speaking to no purpose.’ Accordingly, he spoke in such a way so that each one of us sitting beside him believed that someone had reported our flaws [to him]… such was his grasp of these matters that he placed the vices of each person before their eyes. (3.23.29.2–30.1)

Rufus’ lectures were paradigmatic of the unease and discomfort that all Stoic lectures should cause. If the student left the lecture in a tranquil state of euscholia then the lecture was considered to be a failure. The lectures should bring to the surface the wrong dogmas underlying the intellectual habits of the student. But since the wrong dogmas are the source of one’s vices, becoming aware of them and getting rid of them is a painful cleansing process. To become free of pain one must undergo pain. Thus euscholia points to a training phase that the neophyte must pass through before he is fit to study theoretical subjects such as logic.11 These can be taken up only when one has become unaffected and has acquired inner peace. Ironically, the philosopher’s Scholê, as a School, is not a place for scholê. The Stoic school is a hospital where pain and exercise and toil are required for curing the false beliefs lodged in the intellectual part of one’s soul.12 Another novel idea that emerges is the notion that one withdraws to scholê. Withdrawal, as an attitude required for assimilation of the dogmas of the School (scholê), now begins its long history.13 Withdrawal to be in scholê

126

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

replaces the previous notion of activity in scholê. This change is due to the fact that moral progress requires that one ‘withdraw (apostas) from the externals’ (1.4.18.1). However, the withdrawal being demanded is not one of ascetic inactivity into a secluded life. Withdrawal is not in order to flee from action but rather its purpose is to prepare a person to stand aloof from externals so that he may act rightly according to reason.14 Epictetus warns the prospective student that he cannot withdraw from the challenges and hardships of life as he might withdraw from martial arts training after suffering an injury. But there [in the pancrateion] one is allowed to bring it to an end so as not to be beaten, though here, in real life, if we stop philosophizing, what is the benefit? What then must one say to oneself in the face of each adversity? “It is for this purpose that I exercised; it is for this end that I have been practicing.” (3.10.6.5–8.1)

Withdrawal for duty and action was a notion that was especially attractive to the Roman elite and there is evidence that this view was to be found already in the writings of earlier Stoics, such as Panaetius, who had close ties to ruling circles in Rome. We have a hint of this from Cicero’s De officiis which was written under Panaetius’ influence. In this work, Cicero frowns upon studies that draw a person away from the active life of duty and he extols public service against the life of leisure in retirement.15 But such a call to duty is absent from Epictetus’ work. What stands out in his writings is the absence of a political context for gauging the purposes of scholê. What consequences withdrawal might have on political stability, if it were to become a model for youth destined for public service, is not taken up. Perhaps this is because the Stoics held that internal strife belonged to the sphere of either indifferent matters or was brought about by desire for externals (such as wealth or power), which should have been treated apathetically as indifferents. [And what of] wars and revolutions, and the loss of human lives and the destruction of cities? And what is so important about these things? Nothing! What is so important if a great number of cattle and sheep die and many nests of storks and swallows are destroyed? Are these [destructions] not of the same sort? Exactly the same! Bodies of humans were destroyed and so too those of sheep and cattle. Human houses were burned and stork nests. What is so great or terrible about that?’ The difference between the stork and man is not in their houses or nests but in human intellectual qualities. If the intellectual capacities



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

127

are compromised then these losses are ‘great things’ for they destroy the true human being. (1.28.14.2–22.1)

This demotion of civil strife to the status of an ‘indifferent’ was consistent with the tenets of Stoic dogma and, in truth, they could not have treated this political subject otherwise without causing a gaping paradox in their philosophy.16 But these views could not possibly have been shared by the philosophically minded statesmen at the helm of the Roman Empire. For them, factio, seditio, tumultus were the greatest threats to the political order and were thought of as the greatest of all evils in and of themselves. There was no leeway that would have allowed any Roman politician to introduce the idea that factio or seditio could be good or bad relative to context and occasion. More generally, it does not appear that the Stoics ever considered scholê or the issues that were related to it, such as withdrawal, as having any bearing on political stability. This was so because leisure and business were both considered to be indifferents and thus an ingrained preference for one or an aversion for the other were treated as cases of flawed judgement. One person says ‘I do not want leisure; it brings me loneliness’, while another says ‘I do not want the crowd; it causes me turmoil’. To the former Epictetus recommends ‘converse with yourself … work on your sense impressions’ and to the latter he advises ‘say to yourself that it is a sporting event, a festival, a holiday and try to celebrate along with the others’.17 Leisure and un-leisure, retirement and engagement, are indifferents since the realm of true action, one’s power to choose, is within.18 There is no defining scholê that is ever held to be intrinsically good and it is indicative that of the nearly 100 chapters in Epictetus’ Discourses there is not one devoted to scholê. The Romans, though, had their own concept of leisure, otium, which they were to bring to the forefront of politics.

Hellenistic scholê and Rome There is one unique feature of Hellenistic scholê which must be noted because of its enduring influence. For the first time the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt introduced scholê for theoretical research under the auspices of the state. This unleashed a remarkable process that created nothing short of a revolution

128

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

in science. Though the Macedonian dynasts were insensible to the political ramifications of Aristotle’s concept of scholê they were not oblivious to nous. Two thousand years before Francis Bacon was to declare that knowledge is power, Ptolemy I, the founder of the dynasty that was to rule Egypt until Cleopatra’s death, made theoretical research one of the cornerstones of his imperial scheme. Briefly, these are the bare facts of the process that led to theoretical scholê being exported to Alexandria. In 343 Philip, King of Macedonia, invited Aristotle to come to Mieza to take part in the education of his thirteenyear-old son Alexander and other court youth in Alexander’s entourage. Out of the spotlight there was another future King at Mieza, Ptolemy, son of Lagus. Ptolemy was a boyhood friend of Alexander and was one of his seven bodyguards. After Alexander’s death he seized Egypt and created the Ptolemaic dynasty. Unlike all the other generals who inherited parts of the empire, Ptolemy decided his rule would in part be based on intellectual institutions that would attract the best minds of the Greek world to do their research in Alexandria under his auspices. These institutions were to be directly controlled by the court whose purposes they were to serve. He invited Theophrastos, Aristotle’s heir at the Lyceum, to bring the entire school to Alexandria. Theophrastos did not come but his successor, Strato of Lampsacus, did come and during his stay held the post of tutor to Ptolemy II. Fortuitously, a distinguished student of Aristotle’s, Demetrius of Phaleron, also made his way to Alexandria. The advice of the latter was to replicate Aristotle’s Lyceum library in Alexandria and to expand it by gathering books on all subjects of culture and knowledge. Ptolemy was attracted to the idea. Within a few years the bookshelves were overflowing, and under Demetrius’ direction the Library and the Museum were created. At the Museum, with its vast lecture halls, meeting rooms and reading areas, mathematical, astronomical, philological and natural science studies were conducted. At these premises Euclid wrote his Elements; Aristarchus calculated the diameter of the sun and developed the heliocentric theory; Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the earth and its angle of inclination and created the first maps which placed cities on a system of latitudes and longitudes; Herophilus discovered the function of the brain, spinal cord and nervous system and laid the foundations for neuroscience; Diophantus developed number theory;



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

129

Archimedes was educated there and he corresponded with Alexandrian researchers on numerous subjects. Philology and its methods were born – and the list goes on. 19 Science in the palace was not ever meant to be science in Aristotle’s vision. Alexandrian science was, metaphorically speaking, akin to a genie, as a rational power of infinite expanse that was enclosed in the bottle of imperial power. This became the model for modern-day research centres which also weld theôria to the hub of the military industrial complex. Not only the hard sciences but also the means of social control, which we find in the psychological, philosophical, sociological and anthropological disciplines of our day, were practised there in an embryonic way. The most notable example was the creation of the full-blown religion of Serapis which involved collaboration of the court, intellectuals at the Museum and priests from the Elysian Mysteries. The vast translation projects from which the Septuagint emerged, and the amassing of important cultural works from the conquered areas, were also in line with these purposes. The impetus that this gave to technologies related to military and religious uses is a topic that we know very little about. The huge siege ships built in Alexandria, the devices built by Archimedes and the findings of the Antikythera mechanism are pieces of evidence that show the tracks of such developments. We are racing through a complex chapter of our intellectual heritage and lest we give the one-sided impression that mind within the citadels of power was effectively caged, it would be more proper to say that the problem of limiting nous and preventing it from spilling over into the moral and political realm came into being. Aristotle’s notion that all resources are to serve the flourishing of nous was transformed so that nous qua instrument served the court. But even so there was always the danger that the instrument might elude its fenced in circumstances. Where this process would have ended had political developments taken other turns is impossible to say. What can be said with certainty is that in this warped way Aristotle saved science for the world. Perhaps we would still be in darkness of the superstitions that were later to prevail whenever civilization collapsed. Ancient science did come to a halt when Hypatia, a famed mathematician, the daughter of the last head of the Museum, Theon, was flayed alive by a Christian mob in 415 ad; it revived only with the rediscovery of Hellenistic science in the Renaissance. The

130

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

point to be made is that this aspect of scholê, supporting theoretical intellectuals within the palace for power purposes, was never copied by Rome because they could not understand the importance of theory. There were no translations of the great theoretical works of Alexandria or Antioch or Pergamum into Latin. There was no effort to assimilate this aspect of Hellenistic power. The simple reason is that the Romans never experienced nous in their culture and were not interested in inquiring into it, and, hence, they missed out on the potential uses of its insights for purposes of state power. Francis Bacon and other sages who ushered in the modern age did not repeat this mistake. With this brief digression we can now turn to Roman otium.

Cicero: Otium as the security and peace of the republic Otium, the Latin word for leisure, appears frequently in Cicero’s writings during the crisis years of 63 to 43 bc. As the clouds of civil war gathered, leisure must have been the furthest thing from his mind. Thus his preoccupation with otium most certainly had to do with another aspect of its meaning. The events that he lived through and the issues they raised must first be sketched out in order to have the political context of otium in mind. In 63 bc Cicero was elected consul and his suppression of the Catiline conspirators during his year in office earned him the title of father of his country.20 Just as he was priding himself as the architect of a lasting concordia between the orders, the entire constitutional fabric of Rome unravelled. The following years were anything but peaceful. In 56 bc he was sent into exile by the Triumvirate, and five years later he was dispatched by his enemies away from Rome to Cilicia as a proconsul. In 48 bc he suffered the humiliation of being pardoned by Caesar for his participation in the alliance against him. He was forced out of public affairs again though he briefly reappears as a leading statesman in the power vacuum following Caesar’s assassination in 44 bc. In the next round of the civil war his inspired Philippics against Mark Antony were not forgotten and on orders from the Second Triumvirate he was proscribed and killed with his head and right hand nailed on the Rostra in the Forum Romanum. Amazingly, this tumultuous period of successive exiles, life-threatening persecutions and full-scale civil war was the most



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

131

intellectually fertile of Cicero’s life. The flood of writings produced just before his death established the presence of philosophy in the Latin language and his political treatises inspired virtually every political theorist and statesman well into the modern period. During these years, otium appears as a central political topic in Cicero’s writings. The question that immediately comes to mind is what, if anything, could the turmoil of the civil war have to do with leisure? On the face of it nothing, until we realize that otium had both private and public spectra of meanings. Regarding the private sphere, a person’s free time could mean leisure and freedom from business, but it could also mean idleness (inertia), laziness (ignavia), sloth (desidia), voluptuousness (luxuria) or hiding one’s decadent way of life (vita otiosa) in the privacy of one’s estate.21 On the public side of its meanings otium described a state of peace and security free from the threat of civil war.22 Regarding the private meanings, otium never enjoyed the mostly positive status that scholê had within Greek culture. Romans both high and low were suspicious of it and wary of its seductions.23 Unlike scholê, otium often carried images of laggards and shirkers who indulged in it to avoid service. For instance, the notion that leisure, as practised by most, may be a threat to the established order is repeatedly stated in Seneca’s works: Great generals, when they see their soldier in a bad way, keep him busy labouring away and they restrain him [from mischief] with assignments. [Thus] he never has time for lounging around because of his duties and there is nothing more reliable for crushing the evils of leisure than work. (Ep. 56.9)

The view that Hannibal had lost the Second Punic War because his army was corrupted by indulging in ‘prostitutes, baths and otium’ during his winter encampment in Capua, a city known for its luxurious excesses, was commonplace.24 The ideal was the active industrious man, the honestas, who carries out his duties to the res publica. When Cicero tries to portray the Epicurean Piso as an enemy of the state, he reports him as having declared that an idle life (otiosa vita) of decadent pleasure is preferable to one devoted to public service (Sest. 23.10). The political meanings of otium that Cicero attributed to the term did not share any of these negative connotations. When Cicero declares that he

132

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

will speak of Sestius’ ‘devotion to the public welfare and otium’, he is in effect praising him for his contribution to the peace, security, and stability of the republic.25 Otium’s social and political meanings sharply differentiate it from scholê. The latter was never a term for peace or concord, nor was it ever an antonym to civic turbulence and internecine war. It could never be used as a word characterizing a political regime as Cicero uses it to identify a desired form of republican constitution. Peace is a condition of scholê; without it scholê cannot occur, but scholê is an active state and cannot be reduced to its precondition. The concept in Greek that captures this civic aspect of otium is hêsuchia, which meant quiet, peace and the absence of subversive movements. During the archaic period hêsuchia stood for political harmony whereas its antipode tarachê (disorder, tumult) was a watchword for internal conflict, but these shades of meaning never penetrated into scholê.26 Though, in philosophy, the Romans were, for the most part, eclectic copiers of the Greeks, when it came to the concept of otium this was not the case. Whatever the Greek philosophers wrote about scholê, especially as a quest for principles regarding ways of life, was buried with them. Cicero was not reflecting on the subject through the lenses of his Greek teachers, be they Academics such as Philo of Larissa, or Stoics such as Posidonius or Panaetius. His thoughts on otium were not ruminations on scholê translated into the Roman idiom of otium. The concepts of Plato and Aristotle never filtered through the impenetrable barrier of Rome’s foundational moral outlook. Otium, and not scholê, was at the base of their culture. André (1962) conjectures that the original antithesis was not between otium and negotium, between leisure and work, as was the opposition between scholê and ascholia, but between otium and war and that otium may have originated as a military term denoting a respite from the toils of conscription and war. Whatever the case may be, otium had such deep roots in common experience that it never allowed itself to become a vehicle for meanings derived from the philosophical concept of scholê. Aristotle’s principle that activity in scholê was the purpose of political life had about as much influence on Cicero as Diophantus’ writings on number theory. Rather than reading Cicero’s views on otium within the framework of philosophies inherited from the Greek world, it is closer to the truth to read these in the context of a Roman statesman caught up in the political malaise of seditio. What is at stake is placing the Roman writings on



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

133

otium in their proper context, and a mistake here can be similar to trying to apply axioms that hold true for a flat surface to a sphere.27 Cicero’s views on otium, as a political concept, fall under the rubric of what the Greeks would have called theories of stasis or what we today call theories of conflict and revolution.28 Though Cicero did not have a worked-out theory of constitutional transformations, he did have a vision of a correct regime and this gave him a reference point for identifying seditious movements that posed a threat to this order. His writings during the crisis years show a preoccupation with how to bring about otium for the republic. How was the otium communis to be preserved and by whom? How were the virtuous men to predominate in the state? How were the morally vicious to be excluded? When the dictatorship finally wins out and the republican institutions have been torn apart, he will next pose the question, how he, personally, as a statesman banned from politics, is to make use of his forced leisure in a way that will not compromise his devotion to duty. The first round of questions reveal the unique political dimension of otium and how it differs from scholê, while the second question points to the future of how he, as a Roman leader, under a regime of dictators, should make use of his personal otium for the public good. His personal predicament presaged a universal problem for those who came after him and wanted to enter public service when the avenues for ambitious striving, outside the imperial court, had been closed off.

Cicero: The public and private paradoxes of otium During the crises years, it is the public aspect of otium that preoccupies Cicero. In his oration Pro Sestio (98.1–2) he rhetorically asks the judges: ‘What then is the aim of the governors of the commonwealth to which they must give attention and towards which they must steer their course?’ The question is the same as that raised by Aristotle in his Politics, the hunt for the hou heneka, the final cause, or the end of politics. Aristotle’s answer to this question was actualization of the soul in scholê, while Cicero answers with the phrase cum dignitate otium (political tranquillity with honours).29 For both thinkers, leisure terms – scholê for Aristotle and otium for Cicero – are used to define the ends of political life, but their meanings, qua ends, are worlds

134

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

apart. Even so, they are ends and we should not lose sight of this because, as the possibilities for otium qua end vanish for Rome, otium will evolve into a means. This process will become clearer when we later turn to Seneca. Cicero lists a number of the structural elements, the fundamenta, which taken together lay the grounds for otium. These include ‘the provinces, our allies, the glory of our dominion, the military, the treasury’.30 Lest one become carried away with Cicero’s inspiring rhetoric and begin to interpret his formula for otium as a Stoic-influenced vision of a rational order imbued with the common interests of humankind, we should keep in mind that the structural components of otium are those that are essential to the expansion and preservation of the empire. These include the military, the treasury’s revenues from war and tax-farming, the dominion and the allies that keep the conquered pacified. The common interest for Cicero is always congruent with the stability of the empire inclusive of the means which are required to manage it. Cicero conjoined otium with dignitas, by which he meant the influence and glory that should be bestowed upon those worthy men who secure otium for the commonwealth (98.10). By bringing the two concepts into a causal unity he was expressing the notion that the standard for public office should be devotion to public security. Cicero, as Wirszubski has documented, was well aware of the inherent tension between otium and dignitas. On the one hand, a status quo equilibrium can suppress competitive striving, while on the other hand the competitive politics associated with the pursuit of honours can ignite sedition. Unbridled ambition in pursuit of power and honours was among the factors that had led to the civil war. Cicero assails leaders who wish otium without dignitas and he condemns those who aim for dignitas at the expense of otium. Pursuit of distinction without respect for the public peace leads to internal war, and peace, i.e. otium, when secured through a dictatorship, can bring an end to ambitious striving. Cicero goes on to propose a specific constitutional framework which at once will achieve otium yet constrain ambitions and limit the competitions for personal laurels. The structure he proposes is an arrangement primarily between the Senatorial aristocrats and the equites, later expanded to include the people, which he calls the harmony between the orders. This concord and its elements are the objective criteria for guiding statesmen to their political end.



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

135

Cicero is not concerned to develop a theory regarding otium. He is in the heat of battle with the republic at stake. He is a statesman bent on halting sedition and civil war. He makes proposals and not abstract theories regarding otium. Also, there was no intellectual tradition of political theory in this domain that he could build upon, and the Romans, despite their readings of Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics, did not draw upon Hellenic theories of constitutional transformations. Probably because these were developed out of comprehensive theories of justice which had no bearing on Roman realities, they were bypassed altogether. Aristotle, in books 5 and 6 of the Politics, for example, developed a comprehensive theory that brought all the causes of stasis under a single purview. His theory of constitutional transformations gave an account of the formal traits of fractious movements; the disaffections that produce and sustain them; their aims; and the causes that ignite the disaffections into political movements and how these causes could combine to produce what we would call a revolution. His research into the 158 constitutions allowed him to draw upon a rich trove of such events and these allowed him to demonstrate the wide-ranging possibilities that Greek factions bent on radical change had as alternatives to their city’s established norms. However, the competing ways of life, founded on distinct principles of equality, which he analysed as live political options for transforming a constitution, were alien to the Roman experience. The Roman constitution was one and only one. After the overthrow of the monarchy, Rome remained an oligarchical state even though checks and balances evolved within it which allowed for expressions of the class demands of other strata. But the idea that competing forms of equality with their accompanying ways of life could be legitimately available for transforming the constitution was unthinkable and unacceptable. As a result, in the absence of a theory, Cicero attributed sedition and revolutions to ethical causes. Revolutions, he claimed, are caused by moral flaws within members of the elite.31 For, in so large a body of citizens, there exists a large multitude of those who, either because of fear of punishment and being conscious of their transgressions seek revolutions and political transformations; or who, either because of some inherent mania in their soul feed on discord and sedition; or because of their tangled affairs prefer to burn in a general conflagration … These people, when they, by chance of circumstance, find guardians and leaders for their passions they incite great turbulence in the commonwealth. (Sest. 99.3)

136

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

The moral flaws of those who feed on sedition, he goes on to show, are bred in one’s private otium and these flaws can spread to disrupt the otium of the republic when they are permitted to enter public life. He emphasises this point and even goes so far as to criticize Plato saying that it is not changes in music that transform the constitution for the worse, but rather changes that corrupt the mores of the nobility which then go on to infect all of public life with vice. The bad examples set by the members of the elite are worse than their actual transgressions (Leg. 3.32.1–9). To prevent such corruption from entering public life Cicero places private otium under the reins of public otium and from this vantage point he is in a position to lay down the proper role between the two. The basic principle is that the otium of those in public affairs must be devoted to the otium of others.32 The men at the helm have to use their private otium to prepare themselves for acting with virtue on behalf of the public’s otium. The degenerate types are left free to enjoy their otium in private with the understanding that it has been secured for them by these virtuous men.33 The latter ‘work hard to defend the common advantage’; they are not afraid of the ‘tempests for the sake of the republic’, and they are at the ready to take on ‘the insolent, the vile and the oftentimes powerful’, not with words, but ready ‘to fight [them] with weapons’.34 Cicero warns the corrupt to stay in their private dens of leisure or face the swords of those who know the seditious dangers their personal corruption poses to the republic’s otium. Cicero himself draws upon the exempla of past leaders of Rome who used their otium for public business.35 Without saying so directly, he introduces or gives voice and name to a new virtue that he believes should become a standard for conduct within the elite. Among his exempla is Publius Scipio (Africanus) who used to say that ‘at no time was he less idle than when he was in leisure, and never less lonely, than when he was alone’ so that ‘even in leisure he was thinking about public business’; thus ‘the two things that bring inactivity to others, leisure and solitude, spurred him on’.36 Another model is Marcus Cato, who could have lived in ‘delightful leisure’ at his Tuscan estate, but instead preferred, even in old age, to be ‘tossed by the waves and tempests of public life’.37 All men, states Cicero, have an innate desire to defend the common safety over and against the allure of pleasure and the life of ease (1.1.20), hence what type of activity is the best is on this basis settled resolutely.38 He is ready



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

137

to acknowledge exceptions to the rule of nature, especially invalids or great minds drawn to theoretical pursuits whose theories have benefited human society. But he qualifies this praise to emphasize that the impulse to act politically, on behalf of the common good, is a fact of nature and, hence, prior.39 In a revealing passage, where Cicero asks which type of path to prudentia should be chosen if one had to select between leisure devoted to noble studies or political action for the commonwealth, he replies: surely the life of the statesman is more deserving of praise and more conducive to fame; by such a life the greatest men win honour; as for example Manius Curius, ‘whom none could overcome with sword or gold …’ (Rep. 3.6)

There are many such statements on the priority of action throughout his works. But this example of Manius Curius Dentatus is especially telling. When a Samnite Ambassador offered Curius bribe money he was said to have replied that he preferred to rule over those possessing gold rather than possessing it himself. Cicero personally knew many Greek intellectuals from conquered lands who served in Roman households. Their academic prowess and their lectures on prudentia, or those of Posidonius and Panaetius on duties, were no doubt valuable, but these intellectual products could be purchased whereas the moral steadfastness of Africanus, Scipio, Cato and M. Curius were prudentia in action. No amount of gold could budge these men from their steadfast course, upon which Rome’s greatness depended. Unlike ideas, these traits could not be purchased. They were honed by moral types of a certain sort in the heat of action and battle. As the crisis deepened, the convergence of public otium with its private meanings became increasingly apparent in Cicero’s orations and writings.40 If the impulse to serve the public good in action is superior by nature, and if Roman statesmen have implanted a compass in the form of a mixed constitution to guide this impulse to otium, then it must follow that the statesman will struggle for the public peace and devote his private otium so that it will be at the service of the otium of others. The fatherland, he says, has given us otium for action: ‘our talents are for the sake of public otium and it leaves for our private otium only what it does not require for its overriding purposes’ (1.8.1–8.9).

138

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

After the republic what should a statesman do with otium? Under the new regime, Cicero was stripped of his honours and forced out of public life. He cannot follow the exemplum of Africanus, who used his otium to better prepare for practical politics. Cicero’s otium is coerced. In the De officiis, written during his final exile, Cicero asks: ‘what am I able to do in the Senate or in the Forum which is worthy of myself?’ (3.2.8–3.3.2). The activities that bring honour are closed to him. He searches for a way to handle the adversity as an indifferent, which, once overcome, can sharpen his virtue. He uses his nature, his predicament and what is possible under the circumstances to produce literary works for the future of Rome. His own example is a paradigmatic case of what the Middle Stoics called the secondary virtues. These were duties and virtues that could be practised by mere mortals who fall short of perfect wisdom. His defence for writing philosophical works during his forced leisure occurs in the introduction to Book 3 of De officiis. The subject of Book 3 is Panaetius’ concept of ‘mean duties’ and in this reference frame Cicero works out for himself how he should make use of his otium under the dismal political conditions that banned him from politics. The older Stoics held that moral goodness was the exclusive possession of the wise and that all others, at best, could only have a semblance of it. Panaetius reworked the theory to take into account the practical needs and possibilities of Roman leaders. He held that there was an intermediate path, an approximation, to moral goodness. Cicero emphasizes that the duties which he is discussing in this work are of this second rank type that belong to all humankind rather than to the wise men who have perfect knowledge of the interconnected causalities of the universe (Off. 3.17). Cicero then reflects on the worth of his leisure activities when they are conceived as second degree duties. He proceeds from his actual predicament. He tries to comprehend what action is according to nature in general, and he then turns to his particular status as statesman, taking into account his talents, and then reviews these factors with respect to the principle of cum dignitate otium. What meaning could this principle now have, given that the State’s otium was in the hands of dictators and the road to dignitas had been closed? In one of his letters to Lentulus he declares that all one can pray for is otium that will avoid civil war and nothing else. The Senate, the courts and the institutional fabric of Rome have been shattered.41



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

139

In this unparalleled situation, rather than making a symbolic act of defiance, as Cato had done at Utica, Cicero chooses to give an account of his otium. The literary works from his private otium are, in his estimate, of lesser worth than the active uses to which Africanus applied his otium. The latter never wrote anything. He remained alone with his thoughts and directly converted his thoughts into action. Cicero instead is forced to channel his activity into books and letters. His solitude therefore takes the form of those high-souled persons who benefited humanity through their ideas. This remarkable confession explains Cicero’s iron-willed commitment to his service and how he was able to produce so much in such a short time and in a tumultuous and life-threatening period that would have paralysed others into inaction. Whatever Cicero writes about otium in this period is from the marrow of his political being. Cicero never universalizes his own example to suggest that his otium is a paradigm for leisure with dignity, or that it is a new way for carrying out one’s duties in otium. He writes a work on duties not because it was his duty to use his leisure in this way, but because he was coerced into inactivity. He holds that his writings cannot bring him the dignitas of a Roman statesman. He addresses his plight as an abnormal situation and because he conceives it as such he cannot reflect on his predicament as a universal condition. What he deemed to be an anomalous dilemma was soon to become the norm for the entirety of the Roman elite. The Senate, the Consuls and the courts will continue to operate but only under the complete control of the Emperor. Otium, in the public sense, had been bought at the expense of dignitas. Under these new circumstances the question was bound to present itself: if private leisure could not be a means for political action on behalf of others, as it had been for Scipio Africanus, for Cato, for Cicero, then what was its utility? Did otium have any purpose aside from personal gratification? Why not simply retreat into languor and solitude as the moderns are doing today? Looking at Cicero’s dilemma from our modern perspective may be useful. Africanus used his leisure for action on behalf of the public good – no doubt for Roman imperial aims – while in our times leisure is for self-engagement. A social commitment to leisure as a preparation for serving the public good, if it does exist, is at the margins, given that the public good is heralded to be a summation of individual plans of life. Modernity is, in a way, an inversion

140

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

of an inversion. The Romans turned the Greeks on their heads when they claimed that the purpose of leisure was the virtues, while the moderns have turned the Romans upside down, claiming leisure as an end for antisocial self-gratification. Prized types of leisure are considered to be independent of their social consequences, and what counts are their delusional gratifications. Cicero never thought through the role of otium in the new emerging reality. He was too caught up in the transition. But he posed the questions and he provided a context for reflecting on the problem. Seneca, though, who lived under the autocracy, did bring the question forward with full force. In his work De otio he developed what has turned out to be the only political alternative to scholê. He reflected on the use of leisure in a regime in which human fulfilment was not a premise to be considered, where tyranny ruled over the masses and where the populace was hopelessly inclined towards vice. Under these conditions what, if any, could the prospects be for otium cum dignitate? Clearly, none. Either the political concept of otium had to be removed from public life or it had to be reformulated to give new meaning to its purposes.

Seneca’s De otio A new context for otium Approximately eighty to one hundred years separate Seneca’s essay, De otio, from Cicero’s writings on otium. Cicero had devoted his efforts to making the concordia between the orders the guarantor of the peace, whereas under the autocracy the guarantor was solely the deified emperor whom Seneca declares to be ‘the bond by which the commonwealth is united’, and if his reins were to slip ‘this fabric of the mightiest empire will fly into many parts’ (4.2). This transformation of the republic into an autocracy reopened the problem of a relationship between private and public otium. A society that is to last must have leaders who are imbued with ideals that propel them into purposeful action with a shared end in view. With what enthusiasm, then, could one devote one’s private otium to serving an imperium that was exhibiting ever greater moral degradation? Of course, the empire, domination over others, and unmitigated greed remained strong motivators. But power and



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

141

domination were shown to be insufficient for guaranteeing the longevity of tyrannies and empires. The rule of Greek tyrants was notoriously brief and so, too, the rule of the Hellenistic Kings.42 Tyranny was abhorred by Romans and even the autocracy was shrouded in ideological dressings that viewed the tyrant as a lawful princeps serving the traditional institutions and orders of Rome. Unifying myths and beliefs for a common destiny in the service of a common good were required if the elite was to stave off an inevitable decline. This ethical framework for a moral rearmament had already been established by Augustus, but it was Seneca who was to reflect anew on otium and its purposes within this new setting.

A digression on Seneca’s originality Regarding Seneca’s De otio, when one compares this work to the writings of his contemporaries who were influenced by Stoic philosophy, yet wrote nothing on scholê or otium, one cannot fail to be impressed by the author’s originality. Epictetus, as we have seen, had nothing special to say about scholê; likewise Dio Chrysostom, who belonged to the next generation of imperial court intellectuals (40 to 115 ad). Since Dio was writing after Seneca one would expect his works to at least describe what the moral framework of scholê should be. Given that Dio was a student of the Stoic Musonius Rufus, who also taught Epictetus, and given that he was one of the foremost intellectuals of his age who was steeped in the Stoic classics, one can only conclude that if there was anything important in the Stoic school on leisure it would have shown up in one of his eighty orations that have come down to us. Because Dio was an eclectic who was drawing from a variety of Greek sources, his silence on scholê can be taken as added evidence for the lack of anything significant in the writings of the Schools on this subject. The closest Dio comes to a discussion of scholê is in his twentieth discourse, On Withdrawal. He states that withdrawal must be tied to one’s obligation, to one’s work; otherwise withdrawal is desertion from duty. Withdrawal, argues Dio, must occur in a subjective state that seeks leisure as an escape from trivial and unprofitable affairs (Or. 20.3.1–4); it is not the place that one withdraws to that is important, but the ability to be occupied with one’s self so as to retreat to one’s own things, to one’s job, when one so wishes (20.7).

142

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

To withdraw is simply to retire to one’s work, whatever that may be. Flutists, children learning in the tumult of the streets, acrobats and jugglers – all of these are unaffected by the surrounding noise because they are withdrawn to their tasks.43 The discourse goes on to show the evil effects of withdrawal when it marks a departure from one’s work. With rhetorical flourish he castigates Paris who fantasized, with disastrous consequences, on how to possess the most beautiful woman alive rather than attending to his flocks. One need only compare this discourse to Seneca’s De otio where withdrawal (secedere) to otium is defended with a moral theory in support of its defining goals. On the matter of otium, Seneca was not the captive of Stoic doctrines or of any other School. He was most certainly not writing as a ‘party member’ who is beholden to the dogmas of a single school, for this, he says, would make him a member of a faction.44 The concerns in the back of his mind are those that Cicero had bequeathed him, namely, the political survival of Rome and not the issue of whether contemplation in withdrawal was better than the active life.45 The latter issue had already been resolved by Cicero. Seneca is driven to carve out a formulation of otium for preserving Rome’s empire under conditions in which its institutional framework held no promise for inspiring its elites to the call of duty. With that said, what he passed on had nothing to do with scholê.

The change in the context between Cicero and Seneca In anything we consider, the conceptual framework will determine how we reflect on it. A piece of paper with a picture of a US president on it is thought to be of great value for someone in New York while a tribesman cut off from global commerce may look at it as worthless garbage. In Cicero’s orations and writings, otium and concepts related to it are centred about political stability and averting civil war. In Seneca that framework has undergone a radical alteration. The great change that has occurred within the brief time span that separates the two statesmen can be shown by looking at the alterations that certain political concepts underwent within their respective intellectual environments. The word seditio, for example, signified plotting against the common interest and subverting civic peace. When Cicero declares that common people, having ‘suffered so many grave serious insurrections



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

143

(seditionibus) … welcome peace (otium)’, the word seditio rings out with the immediacy of a present danger and otium is an actual political formula on the table for the prevention of civil war.46 In Seneca’s writings, however, seditio is not used to describe any current or specific political threat to internal peace. The closest he comes is when he uses the word to describe the endemic condition of the mob over which Nero rules. He calls this multitude ‘discordem, seditiosam, impotentem’ (discordant, rebellious, unbridled). 47 Gone are seditions led by notables organized into discernible factions that pose a threat to otium. Any hint of opposition had become a treasonous crime. Seneca states that the emperor was the sole ‘bond by which the commonwealth is held together; he is the life-giving breath which these many thousands inhale’.48 To go against the emperor was to threaten the foundations of Rome. For this reason, Seneca’s uses of seditio make no reference to anything current in his days. He uses it to refer to political turmoil in the distant past or as a bland synonym for psychological perturbation such as turmoil in the soul.49 When he does refer to political sedition it is to incidents that occurred over 200 years ago, such as when Cato the Elder stood up to a lawless mob (seditiosae factionis)50 or when Scipio Africanus was preoccupied with ‘the discords (seditiones) of citizens’.51 As for otium, the public meanings which were so prominent in Cicero are gone. This is a remarkable change if one considers that Seneca, as orator, must have been nourished on the orations of the grand master Cicero where such uses of otium are pervasive. The typical otium meanings in Seneca are (a) leisure and pastime, (b) mental or physical states of rest or idleness, (c) peace or quiet and (d) pejorative meanings of sluggishness, inactivity and sloth.52 There is a passage where Seneca does use otium to designate the civic peace, but its use proves, rather than negates, the stripping away of otium’s public character. In Seneca’s tragedy Thyestes, King Atreus feigns friendship and he expresses a desire for civic peace to his brother Thyestes. The Chorus rings out: This sudden concord (otium), after so great a conflict, – what god has brought this about? (560–1)

Otium, in this passage, describes a civic peace in a mythological setting and in a play that was never performed. The public meaning of otium was still there as a concept, but its use for describing political concord as an urgent solution

144

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

to political turmoil had ceased. Why would this be so? We can only speculate that under the autocracy it would seem unlikely that one could charge, as Cicero did in his orations, a political figure with threatening the public otium. After all, could there be political opponents to the princeps? Display of political differences would have been tantamount to treason against God and the father of Rome. Such treason could wipe out an entire family and its extended network of relatives and friends. The question itself seems ludicrous given that so many nobles were murdered, executed or driven to suicide for reasons that had more to do with the greed and the insanity of the various emperors, let alone differences in policy. Given that conflict and public peace were not the commanding notions for framing the public meanings of otium, we have to ask whether otium still had any social purpose. If civic conflict was not the frame of reference then what, if any, was the new frame?

First principle of otium: Pervasive evil in society Following in the tradition of Cicero, Seneca too starts with political premises abstracted from the realities of his times. He is living in an Imperium, the emperor is God and reform is precluded. Whatever role otium is to play he will consider from within these new and unprecedented conditions. He proposes otium as the sphere in which persons may strengthen their moral choice so as to act rightly, in the public’s service, irrespective of any dismal political setting. The opening line of his De otio, as we have it, rings out with memorable declaration of the abysmal moral condition of humankind: with utmost unanimity [people] recommend the vices to us

Rather than declaring the autocracy as morally depraved he elevates the depravity of society to a first principle. The rest of this essay is a ring composition that flows from and returns to this premise. The former, the depravity of the state, is judiciously left unstated, but it too is subsumed in the universality of the latter. People actively foist their perversions on others so that their evils infect society as a whole.53 We are surrounded by vices that weaken our resolve. Like a many-headed hydra the vices of humankind mutate and men cleverly find innumerable ways to rationalize their departure from rightminded duties. The rest of the essay is an extended plea for leisure as a moral



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

145

retreat which can cure a person of such vices and make one fit for action. The sorry state of humanity is the very principle that serves to eliminate all excuses for inaction. If evil is everywhere then the corruption of the state cannot be an alibi for avoiding public service. On the contrary this is what beckons one to duty. The principle of pervasive evil is to be found throughout his works. He states, for example, in his De ira that society is an assembly of wild beasts.54 Seneca does not even grant community status to society; he calls it a conventus, an assembly or a gathering of ferocious beasts (ferarum). The brutes that compose it are primed to tear each other apart. If one advances in this heap it is only because someone has fallen behind. In his eyes we are worse off than animals because, whereas they are driven by natural impulses, which limit their attacks to their actual needs, we are driven by unquenchable desires arising from false opinions. Men, he says, ‘delight in destroying other men’ (Ep. 103.2). And not just the multitude, but the elite as well, for what is prohibited in private, homicides and the like, is mandated in public by the acts of the Senate and the people.55 His writings are peppered with striking examples of evils coming from common citizens in bathhouses to past generals and emperors who savagely destroyed entire cities in paroxysms of anger. Malaise is taken as a prevailing condition even if Seneca grants the Stoic doctrine that man is a social animal born for the common good. The premise of evil allows Seneca to argue that living a virtuous life in public service must be possible even under the bleakest conditions, since such conditions have to be taken for granted at the outset.56 All earthly cities are corrupt and not worthy of the name ‘city’ at all. When he refers to the earthly cities, he lumps in Athens with Carthage, the former the city that many Romans revered and the latter one that they hated. The inclusion of Athens on the list of unsalvageable cities could not be accidental. With one stroke he eliminates any expectation of a model city or an approximation of one in this world.57 As a reformer of otium he will develop his arguments based on a position that looks at any and all cities in the here and now, in the past and in the future, as inherently evil. The true city, a harmonious order completely in tune with Divine Reason, is in the heavens.58 Seneca, of course, will hold to the Stoic doctrine of the two cities, the ones here on earth and the perfect one there, in the heavens. But his emphasis on evil is not a parroting of Stoic

146

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

doctrines. There is something unmistakably new in his emphasis on evil as an endemic condition. The Stoics emphasize the natural bonding of humanity as the impetus for duty to the cosmopolis, while Seneca emphasizes the vices which threaten to tear any and all societies apart. Based on the universal evil of society and its sway over the morality of the individual, he will argue for the curative aims of otium. This is new. Seneca is exclusively concerned (as was Cicero) with the effect of these evils on the notables who are charged with maintaining the order in society. In his De clementia he exhorts Nero to cast his eyes ‘upon this vast throng, discordant and factious, unruly, ready to run riot alike for the destruction of itself and others if it should break its yoke’.59 Nero, though, was unsalvageable and the deified emperor who was beyond Seneca’s reach could not be the audience that he was appealing to. The persons whom he could influence were the elite members of the orders who, in the past, were called upon to serve Rome. If these persons were to be infected with vice then there would be no way back since the natural proclivity to vice would have been made impervious to correction. In De otio he exhorts and lobbies for the institutionalization of otium as a political necessity for recruiting the notables to public service. If the premise of all societies is their pervasive evil then leisure can never reach a point of completion. There will always be a new symptom and a new evil that has to be combatted in the field of action. It is as if one were a Knight of the Round Table being summoned ever anew to fight against some demon with no Holy Grail in sight. At best, one can forge some new institution to put a brake on the mass but this will last only for a while until some new evil breaks through the barrier. Scholê is the condition of completed activity; otium occurs in incompleteness to prepare for ever-new callings that stretch ahead into the ages. But the mission, if it is to be effectively carried out, also requires a method. Before Seneca turns to laying out the method, he takes the careful step of arguing for permission, for the legalization of otium, so to speak, as the institutional antidote to political decay.

Permission for, and service in, otium One might think that Seneca was merely repeating Cicero’s formula of private otium for the sake of others. The words might, here and there, be the same



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

147

but the political surface on which Seneca draws his figures is radically altered. Cicero did not have to ask for permission to engage in otium. The idea would have been absurd. Public and private otium were bonded together for the greater good. Once the bond between the two was slashed because public otium was founded on the person of the Emperor, the purposes of private otium were left morally uncertain. In order for otium to be re-established as a norm, permission to withdraw to it had to be granted. There could be only one basis for such withdrawal, public service and duty, but for this to occur its purposes had to be clarified within the imperial framework. Even if we attempt nothing else that might be salutary, even so, through itself, [leisure] will benefit us to withdraw (secedere). We will become better alone. Why [is it that] alone we will become better if it is permitted to us to withdraw to the company of the virtuous and to select from among them some other model in order to apply it to a way of life? Unless this [model] cannot be realised in leisure – [i.e. except for this special case] – then someone can obtain forever that which he desires, [the condition wherein] no one interferes so as to pervert, with the help of the multitude, our up-till-now weak opinions. Then life, which we tear asunder with diametrically opposed intentions, will be able to advance with constancy and with an unvarying course. (8.1.1.1–2.1, emphasis added)

The supports to otium have shifted away from the institutional elements (what Cicero called the fundamenta) that must be present in order to secure peace and security. Otium should promote our health (salutare) by protecting us from the evils surrounding us. It will make us better when we are alone, away from the mob, because then, in our seclusion, we can enter into the company of the virtuous who will come alive to us in our readings. From among these men we are to select our models for a way of life. The moral examples that will inspire us in our withdrawal must, necessarily, be free of the evils that taint the mortals surrounding us. In our leisure we should be able to translate the exempla into lessons that can be replicated by us, otherwise our withdrawal will be for naught. In so doing we become impervious to interference from those around us who actively aim to corrupt us. We often have the right dogmas for conduct but these are weakly held and we are seduced by the pleasures that the mob’s opinions present to us. We become divided within, our resolve is weakened and evil takes over. We cannot stick to our correct opinions. In Cicero’s orations this drama is played out on the

148

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

tableau of Roman politics. Seneca’s call to action is through the culturally ambiguous portals of withdrawal to one’s private otium. He will have to argue his case, remove the ambiguities, and establish otium as a good and finally win permission for withdrawal to it. Seneca poses the question of permission as a general question, but he masterfully clothes it in the many ways in which service to the Imperium could be displayed. Should not any person be permitted to withdraw to the company of virtuous persons? Should not the wise man be permitted to withdraw from the field of action when the conditions are inimical to his contribution? Should not the man who has fulfilled his tour of service be allowed to withdraw so as to perform services anew in leisure? Should not the man committed to service be permitted to withdraw so as to prepare for the storms ahead? In each instance permission is interwoven with otium’s utility for public service. What Seneca is, in fact, requesting is that otium, once stripped of its moral uncertainties, be recognized as an institution with a specific political purpose. We must stop to analyse this issue of permission. Besides the obvious fact that the granting of permission for otium is not an incidental or minor issue in Seneca’s essay, we must also inquire into it in order to gain insight into the origins of our concept of leisure, since the word leisure is derived from the Latin licet – an impersonal verb, which means ‘it is permitted’, ‘it is lawful’. The prevailing view in the literature is that the etymological connection between licet and leisure underpins the connotation of freedom that we associate with leisure. As one scholar writes: Etymologically, the English word leisure seems to be derived from the Latin licere, meaning ‘to be permitted’ or ‘to be free’. From licere came the French loisir, meaning free time, and such English words as license … and liberty. These words are all related; they suggest free choice and the absence of compulsion.60

Another writes: I shall assume that leisure is something desirable, being a kind of freedom … The word itself says this, coming as it does via French from the “licere”, to be permitted. (Broadie 2007: 185–6)

Through repetition, the assertion that the word leisure, through its etymological links to licet, embodies a notion of freedom is generally taken to be a



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

149

self-evident truth. But when we go to the actual Roman texts we find that the uses of licet in association with otium do not have the connotation of freedom that the Greek concept of scholê has. To be permitted is to be granted a liberty by someone. Such is also the case with the impersonal Greek verb exesti (ἔξεστι), among whose meanings also are ‘it is permitted’ and ‘it is allowed’. It is worthy of note that exesti is cognate with the noun exousia (ἐξουσία) which means ‘power’, ‘authority to do a thing.’61 To be permitted is to be given the licence to perform some action in a restricted domain by someone who has power. ‘It is possible to do’ and ‘one is free to do’ only to the extent that one has been given permission by the authorizing power. Permission to engage in leisure thus implies some form of coercive rule that explicitly prevents such activity or allows it under limited, regulated circumstances. The coercive political nature of licet is embedded in the impersonal nature of the verb. The identity of the person who is giving permission is missing, which is to say that the permission is coming from an impersonal force such as the state or custom which has an enforcing power behind it. Our modern uses have assimilated the Roman nuance of permission embedded in leisure, but as a hidden premise. Someone however may protest and say that we today, at least in the liberal democracies of the West, are completely free to choose whatever leisure we wish to engage in without anyone’s permission. And so it would seem. I can buy a skateboard, a bike, take lessons in this or that, travel, dance or sing with others – the possibilities for uses of my free time are unquestionably endless. All this is true, until we pose the question of leisure from the standpoint of human completion. Have we ever been given permission to be protected from the sensory assaults that continuously shape our predilections for pleasure and pain from the time of birth? When we were growing up, was permission given to protect us from the banality of TV or the sexual bombardment of the media? Did anyone grant permission that we grow up free of the cacophonous music and the ugliness of the sensory environment of most urban settings? Were we ever given permission to prepare ourselves for engaging in a culture of nous? Permission remains a central problem of leisure and it is merely habit that prevents us from seeing that engaging in leisure in the sense of scholê is a right that is not granted. Better for one to be a revolutionary threatening class war than to intervene in the culture that limits permission to choices regarding one’s mode

150

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

of maze-like freedom. I am free to choose without permission the leisure which the maze allows for, but not for the scholê that I would have picked if I were nurtured with the capacity to be a free person. Actually, the predicament of leisure is worse than the rat maze. At least in the maze the vertical walls are transparent to the eye and the direction whose end points have been predetermined can be chosen. In leisure, the selection of other alternatives is out of the range of one’s consciousness. Though one is virtually free to select from among a variety of activities in leisure, one is coerced into moving along the invisible walls that lead to the gratification of inculcated desires. The powers that would have to pursue higher human longings have been suppressed and deadened. In the culture of Aristotle’s times, these possibilities were there and one would not have had to ask permission to attain these rights; instead, what was needed was conscious reflection on the existing culture to select activities within it that would have made participation in scholê a societalwide possibility. The tradition of gaining permission for freedom to is inaugurated by Seneca. His plea for permission to engage in leisure is clear and noticeable because he is at the beginning of what will become a cultural staple. In time, the coercive framework of this model will be obscured because the compulsion which is built into the political order will be taken as the norm; its very ubiquity will be its means of concealment. Once it becomes endemic it will be as unnoticeable as the air we breathe. At this juncture, however, Seneca knows that permission will only be granted if he can show that otium itself is a form of service to the political order; that it has great utility. He introduces an interlocutor who forcefully poses to Seneca the question of service, reminding him of the Stoic commitment to duty in action (Ot. 1.4): What are you thinking Seneca? Are you abandoning your duty?62 Is it not your own Stoics who say that until the very end of life, we will pursue action; we will not cease to labour for the common good.63

He even quotes Virgil’s famous line that in the face of duty ‘our white hair we will cover with [our] helmet’ (Aeneid 9.612). Through the demanding voice of the interlocutor Seneca delineates the conditions that his proposed otium must satisfy if it is to be permitted. Service, duty, obligations (stipendia, officia, partes) form the central-most requirements. In otium, he says, ‘life, which



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

151

we fracture with diametrically opposed intentions, will be able to advance with constancy and with an unvarying course’ (1.7–9). Otium then involves a moral choice to act alone, away from the herd, for the sole purpose of becoming morally better to serve others. The idea that what he is advocating is a withdrawal to the joys of contemplation is misplaced. Seneca is an advocate of action – even contemplation must be a form of action that will benefit the commonwealth: This is what man examines so that this [i.e. otium] may be useful to humans; to benefit many people if it is possible, if not, then a few, and again if this possibility does not exist, [to benefit] those who are close by, or at least himself. Because every time he makes himself useful to others he is busy advancing the common good. (1.3.5)

Otium must always be useful to others, under all possible conditions. What is under discussion is not the general problem of how man should be of benefit to his fellow men but, specifically, how otium itself can be of utility to others under every possible circumstance, even those held to be debilitating.64 Seneca is here giving a defining condition for otium and it is this that gives justification to the permission to withdraw. In otium we must always be busy, very busy, at being useful, ‘because every time [man] makes himself useful to others he is working for the common good’ (3.5.4). Whether this is through contemplation that will assist others for moral action or whether one uses otium to prepare for military or political service is merely a matter of inclination and circumstance. Lest anyone misinterpret his position, he elsewhere hurls an accusation against himself that he is proposing otium as a withdrawal into his private affairs. And to this accusation he replies: Do I give you the impression that I am praising inactivity? I have hidden myself in this place and the doors are shut so that I can be of benefit to the greater number. I have not spent any day in idleness. In a great part of my nights I give battle with my studies. I do not have time for dreaming and I am set upon by sleep and my fatigued eyes which are closing I keep them busy as guardians over my work. I keep a distance not from men, but from the things and first of all from my own affairs: I am preoccupied with the future generations. For them I write other things which can be beneficial to them. (Ep. 8.1–2)

When Seneca communes in this way with himself he is more useful than if he were engaged in public affairs: ‘Believe me those who seem to be busied

152

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

with nothing are busied with the greater tasks; they are dealing at the same time with things mortal and things immortal’ (8.7). In otium the paradoxes between things mortal and things immortal are overcome. The realm of the perfect, eternal and the serene, which is grasped by a reclusive mind and the tumultuous field of practical action, converge in that both are working to help the greater number. Otium is the link between the two. Parenthetically, just to indicate the power of Seneca’s message, we need only turn to Marcus Aurelius’ exhortations to himself. In one of his meditations the call to leisure’s military duty is unmistakable. The emperor is writing in Greek but his message is imperial Roman: As a Roman and as a man, at each moment take care, with strong resolve, to accomplish whatever comes to hand … with unaffected dignity and freedom and justice and leisure (scholê) within yourself [that frees you] from all other [external] impressions. (2.5.1.1–4)

He calls on himself to be in leisure in order to be psychologically prepared for action. The expression ‘scholê within yourself ’ is stated here for the first time. The evolution of the concept shows that it has been filtered through Seneca’s notion of otium as psychological withdrawal. From a political end in Aristotle’s hands it is now synonymous with a withdrawal that armours a person from externals in order that he may rally himself, as a man and as a Roman, to the call of duty and military action.65

The other-worldly basis for sapientia A significant feature of Seneca’s arguments for otium is that ultimately he rests its moral foundations on the exalted model of the sapientes, those ‘wise’ men of action who brought glory and dominion to Rome. In turn, these models for leisure are infallible guides because the inner state from which their actions arise originates from another-worldly, and hence perfect, source. We shall recall that Cicero locates the fundamenta for otium in the political resources and institutional alignments of Rome. Seneca, as previously noted, holds that all cities and empires are inherently flawed and all will fade away in time: ‘some shall be ruined by wars, others shall be wasted away by inactivity and



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

153

by the kind of peace which ends in sloth, or by that vice which is fraught with destruction even for mighty dynasties – luxury’ (71.15.6–8). Seneca thus cannot build his foundations for the wise man of action on any city here. The sapiens draws upon something else. His source of wisdom is a deified and purposeful nature that wilfully pushes humans to a certain type of otium that accords with her will. Earthly political action that is coherent with the model of the sapiens can only be founded on unimpeachable values radiating from a providential beyond. Union with this divine occurs in the sapiens who, for this reason, is an alien human being, a foreigner whose inner strengths are not derived from any earthly source. His virtue comes from contact with something that remains ever pure and unaffected by any earthly contamination. This he states most forcefully in one of his letters: Exactly as the sun’s rays touch the earth but continue to be at the point from which they are sent so too a great and sacred mind [i.e., the sapiens] which has reached such a point so that we can recognise it as almost divine, it is with us but it remains indissolubly tied to its source of generation. It depends on it and towards that place it has turned its attention to it, and strives towards it, so much does it differ from us in its superiority. What then is the nature of this soul – the soul that does not shine for any good save for itself? Because what is more foolish than to give praise in honour of a man [i.e. the sapiens whose qualities have come] from a foreign place? (Ep. 41.5)

The source for the sapiens’ virtue is outside. Like the sun’s rays, the place from which his soul acquires its divinity is outside and beyond. In withdrawal we, too, can commune with this spark and in so doing follow the exemplum of the sapiens, the prototype for emulation. The sapiens, the man who is perfect in action, overcomes the problems of corruption in this world because he is in communion with the source beyond. His sapientia, though, has nothing to do with either nous or theoretical wisdom. Philosophy as the domain of nous is useless to him. The reasons have to do with the differences between Greek sophia and Roman sapientia. The word sapiens is derived from the verb sapio which means ‘to taste of, smack of; have a flavour of ’. Perhaps it was from the here-and-now contextual certainties of sensing that its cognitive meanings, such as ‘to discern’, ‘to know’ and ‘to understand’, were derived. But these were later meanings which were tacked on under Greek influence.66 The sapiens in Roman eyes was first and foremost the practical man of action. He could

154

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

be further elaborated, under Stoic doctrine, as the one who has thoroughly assimilated the correct principles so that he can flawlessly apply them to any circumstance. Philosophy is the study of the laws or principles or dogmas of nature, but sapientia has to do with the commands or the decrees (the decreta) embodied in action. The job of philosophy is twofold. It must produce precepts derived from the study of nature and it must heal so that one may apply the ordinances derived from these. The resulting union of the dogmas with the commands is the sapiens. As Seneca puts it: ‘the [philosopher] strives toward the goal which [the sapiens] has already reached’ (Ep. 89.4). This union occurs in the sapiens because he has succeeded at submitting to the right precepts. His will is in line with nature. There is no opposition between him and nature. The weak wills of others that make them forget the dogmas is thus overcome. The reason that we cannot submit (obsequens) to the precept being put forth is because our mind is filled with perverted ideas. We have never fully assimilated the dogmas and cannot therefore submit to the commands that flow from them. We block, so to speak, on the precept which should be at hand for execution. In vain do we attempt to apply the precept when ‘distorted opinions besiege the soul’ (95.4.5–95.5.1). Precepts, says Seneca, are the leaves, and the dogmas, which encompass the entirety of life and how it should be lived, are the branches that support them (95.60). The sapiens is a type of person whom Aristotle and Plato would have rejected as a prototype of wisdom.67 But it is also the case that Seneca likewise rejects every notion of sophia ever put forth by these two Greek sages. Who, we might ask, is the model for action? Not surprisingly, he is not a philosopher. According to Seneca he is none other than Cato the Younger, the leading opponent to Caesar’s imperial plans. Cato was an alumnus, a pupil of the gods. He performed his duties out of pure will. He is the man of action who was always withdrawn to his principles; he is the man who, rather than recognize Caesar’s power to grant him his life, pulled out his own intestines, remaining true to his principles.68 He, and not Plato or Socrates, or Aristotle, or Chrysippus, is the model for sapientia. He is militantly committed to service here but his values come from there: The wise man, as well as the seeker of wisdom, is no doubt dependent on his body, but he is absent with respect to that greater part of himself [i.e. his body] and he directs his thoughts to the higher things. Just as the person who has taken



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

155

an oath for the life he leads, which he believes is the fulfilment of his military service. And he has been moulded in a way so that he does not have either love or hatred for life; he endures mortal things despite the fact that he knows that he will go beyond [superesse] his [mortal] self to more magnificent things. (Ep. 65.18.1-19.1, emphasis added)

The military analogy seems to be this: the soldier signs up and endures hardships and overcomes them. He has taken an oath of allegiance to his country, to Rome. The wise man endures all the failures and successes of life because, in his case, he has sworn allegiance to something greater than any earthly city. He serves the divine, something that lies beyond (superesse) which is the source of his inner constancy to duty. It is the service that prevents any and all external weapons of any sort to pierce his soul (65.21–22). We have already noted the analogy to the sun’s rays which come from a sun beyond. Otium, having been tied to the sapiens, who in turn serves the divine beyond, thus becomes the citadel that protects the man of action from being affected by evils of this world, just as a soldier makes his country impregnable to foreign invasion. It can do this because what the sapiens gazes upon and strives towards is pure and alien to this world. Paradoxically, it is we and not the sapiens that has need of otium. The latter has no need of otium to practise the dogmas, for he is at all times withdrawn to his principles. He lives in this state while those who aim to approximate it need to exercise philosophy’s curative principles in their otium.69 The sapiens is in permanent withdrawal, either like Zeno or Chrysippus who never took part in public affairs but contributed to ‘improving men’s existence and framing laws for the human race’ (Ep. 14.14), or like Cato who was in the thick and thin of the actions that rocked the Roman Republic. Cato is the better example because he is closer to the Roman ideal. He is in politics, he is in the fight forging reality to his will, at all times unaffected, whether he is spat upon, beaten by the mob or threatened with death. For the rest of us, philosophy is necessary for awakening us to our faults, but it can’t be practised when we are preoccupied. The very things that motivate and make us successful in our preoccupations, such as greed, brashness or anger, are the source of the illness in our soul. One can never perceive the illness when making use of it to be successful, thus otium is necessary for moral progress (Ep. 53.9): ‘Throw away all impediments and

156

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

be unoccupied at leisure for [the purpose of] a sound mind.’ For action to be right it must be free of preoccupation because preoccupation is a synonym for being affected by externals. In otium, nothing should distract us (56.11.1–3). The sapiens may be involved in any type of action or work, but he will be free of preoccupation in the sense that his principles are unshakeable within, while those who fall short of perfection will be distracted and affected (Ep. 72.4.2). The externals merely remind the sapiens of his mortality but they never enter into him so that the supreme God within is left untouched. Otium, one could say, is not a necessary condition for virtue, because the sapiens has no need of it any longer for moral improvement, but it is required for others who are still struggling to devalue the importance of externals in their lives. Seneca is hardly arguing for contemplation against action. In peace and tranquillity the sapiens is always at work: ‘Store this within you, the wise man is never more active than when divine and human things have come to his attention’ (Ep. 68.2). One is here reminded of Cicero’s remarks concerning Africanus, namely, that he was least idle when inactive, and was least lonely when alone. ‘Believe me,’ writes Seneca, ‘those who seem to be busied with nothing are busied with the greater tasks’ (8.6). He propounds the same idea in De otio when he takes up the subject of the division between contemplation and action: I will live according to nature if I devote myself entirely to become her admirer and servant. Nature, though, wanted to make me fit for both, i.e. to act and to have free time for contemplation. But I do both because there is no theory without action. (5.8)

Rather than choosing one over the other, the two have to be mixed. The good that comes from contemplation in leisure is ‘imperfect and weak’. He calls it a shattered virtue that is good in theory but impotent in practice, because it ‘never displays that which it teaches’. ‘Who denies that [virtue] must test its products in action, not just to think what must be done but also to apply its hand [in practice] and to make real those things that it has meditated’ (6.3.3–4). The virtuous person thinks, then transforms his thought into action and the work product is the truth. The type of work product, he seems to be saying, is contingent on the person and the circumstance. For example, the wise man may be ready to act but society may not allow him to act:



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

157

would you not [then] permit him to be by himself? In what frame of mind will the sapiens withdraw to leisure? He knows that even then he himself will be acting through these [products of his leisure] so that he may benefit future generations. (6.4.1–3)

Even if contemplative thoughts do not immediately lead to action, ultimately they are contributing to right action. All of otium’s particular products, be they intellectual or political, must, in the final analysis, be actions in the service of the common good. The utility of philosophy, in general, is preparation for such action. Seneca asks ‘why is it important that we say these things?’ i.e. the intermingling of action and contemplation: ‘So that it may be shown that theory is liked by all, some seek it [as an end], for us it is an anchorage and not a harbour’ (7.4). Theôria is clearly not the end, not even in the bowdlerized form in which Seneca conceives it; it is a mere mooring point. Otium is a haven from the storms in which one can practise philosophy to better prepare for action without the influence of externals. Plato, who wrote most on the evils of ascholia, thought of the virtues as a cathartic means to a theoretical end, while in Seneca this has been inverted so that theôria is the means to moral action. Is Seneca suggesting that anyone lacking in leisure to pursue philosophy would be incapable of carrying out their duties? If this were so, then would not Seneca be deprecating the contributions of all those who laid down their lives for Rome without ever having read a line of philosophy? And would he not be granting a lofty stature to philosophers, a breed mistrusted by most Romans and banished from Rome by Cato the Censor, one of Rome’s paragons of virtue? Seneca, at once, is able to uphold philosophy as leisure’s defining activity and to fend off both of the counter-arguments just mentioned. He can do so only because he applies a special meaning to philosophia which will restrict its purposes to action. Of course, he himself contemplates and he lauds contemplation, but ultimately even contemplation will find its justification through its connection to action. Seneca treats philosophia as a means, and sapientia (wisdom) as the end. One need not have studied philosophy to achieve sapientia. Cato the Censor, that man of virtue whose life was tied to the greatest days of Rome, certainly in no way could be said to have owed any of his actions or virtues to the study of philosophy. No one had to recommend otium to him for virtuous action. It would seem that when he lived, republican

158

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

Rome was throbbing with the institutions that allowed for virtue to develop in the field of action. In Seneca’s lifetime these needed inspiration and life support and a private space to savour and practise the dogmas radiating from this divine source.

Fabricating otium’s exempla If the sapiens is the model for shaping otium’s purposes then it is remarkable that the role model Seneca selects had little resemblance to the actual person. His Cato the Younger, who he says ‘surpasses our exemplar’ (Cons. 7.1),70 is not the man notorious for his drunken bouts, who was said by some to have prostituted his wife, for possible incest with his sister, for unseemly grief, nor is he the statesman who failed to legislate, who never reformed his ailing constitution, who was implacable in the face of opportunities for compromise. In Seneca’s writings, Cato’s leadership is ever free of even a hint of such failures; they are never mentioned, never considered. Thus the model for emulation in one’s otium is a contrived prototype that is fitted to the abstract ideal. Perhaps it was necessary for Seneca to create a Cato who transcended all possible experience if the prototype was to inspire anyone in a regime of the type Seneca was trying to salvage. Seneca’s model spans the ages. Unlike Christ who is a saviour to a world beyond this one, Cato is a model for persons struggling for political salvation in this world but who are in need of inspiration from above. Cato is a sage who, in the field of action, overcame all his earthly frailties. Rome may have been flawed and perverse, but Seneca’s exemplum for duty stands apart and untainted; his body is here but ‘he is absent’ (Ep. 65.18.3). He lives withdrawn in ideals drawn from the heavens. This was a model that could inspire to the call of duty, just as Seneca’s Cato inspired Washington and his bedraggled army to endure and to put aside all their dissatisfactions at Valley Forge. In a previously cited passage on the sapiens, Seneca says that he is the person who knows that beyond duty ‘there is something that is superesse’ (Ep. 65.18). Seneca seems to be stretching the Latin language in order to give expression to a reality beyond experience: to what the Neo-Platonists will later call the ‘beyond’, and which the Christian Fathers will call, using the same words as



Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty

159

Seneca, superesse or, in Greek, hyperousia, the hyper-essence that is beyond essence.71 The mystical glow in Seneca’s concept of otium saved his concept from being reduced to an instrument for moulding virtue for public service. Such a utilitarian purpose for leisure would not have survived its own limited utility and would not have made it into the emerging world of late antiquity (let alone beyond it). Just as Cicero, at the end of the republican era, tried to look over the horizon to foresee otium’s future, so, too, Seneca is writing in a period undergoing transformation and he too peers into the future. But, unlike Cicero, the future that he is peering into is already tainted with mystical cravings. He is writing in a period where the yearning for deliverance from earthly ills is gaining political ground. There is, in Seneca’s concept of otium, a faint promise of redemption. In order to grant reality to the Beyond, to the ultimate and reliable source for values and action, the ontology of being and the very language used for investigation of causes and understanding underwent a radical change. Seneca locates the source for otium’s values in a divinity that radiates throughout the universe. However, he does not go as far as the Christians. In his view, however divine we may become when we release our power of choice from the influence of externals, our internal divinity is never one and the same with the source. In this sense, he does not belong to the Salvationist theories and religions that were already making headway in Rome. However, his source beyond is receptive to the religious cravings for Salvation. His vision of otium could be easily reformulated to allow for any dogmas whose purported call to duty in this world could be motivated by the promise of salvation in the eternal world beyond. Furthermore, his linkage of contemplation of the beyond to utilitarian action here made it congenial to Christianity. So, too, did its paradigm of miraculous exempla for our salvation. Like a multi-faceted diamond, his concept of otium could capture light from many directions. Like a diamond, it could survive into the ages because it was meant to mould virtue for action in empires and corrupt regimes of pervasive evil.

VII

The Disappearance of Scholê

When someone today opens a Modern Greek dictionary to look up the word σχολή they will be in for quite a surprise. They will discover that both the word and the concept have been eradicated from the language. If we trace out the history of the word during the Byzantine years we would find a tension in the writings of the Church Fathers between pejorative and praiseworthy uses of scholê. A detailed study into this tension would be fascinating but is far beyond our interests. All we can say for certain is that the tension surrounding scholê is brought to end with scholê on the losing side of the outcome. The word, in the sense of implying leisure, ultimately fades out of the Greek language. Sometime in the Byzantine period the accent was moved from the last syllable, σχολή, so as to fall on the first syllable σχόλη. With change in accentuation came a tectonic shift in its meaning. The new word came to mean ‘festive holiday’. In this form it has survived into the present with the connotation of a feast day or holiday or simply pleasurable entertainment. There is a Greek pop song which says it all: ‘Only if all of life were just Sunday, holiday and schólê …’ The disappearance of the word is evident in Modern Greek dictionaries. The Babiniotis Dictionary of Modern Greek offers six meanings for scholê, not one of which has the meaning of leisure. Here is an abridged summary of the definitions given; 1. An institution that provides specialized learning; 2. The highest institution for third level education; 3. Permanent institutions located in a host country for archaeological research; 4. The building that houses an institution of higher learning;

162

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

5. The totality of those teaching and studying at an institution of higher learning; 6. The totality of researchers who share a common view. At present the idea that scholê may mean leisure, let alone leisure of a special sort, has disappeared from the language. ‘Leisure’ in modern Greek is rendered with such words as ‘relaxation’, ‘free time’, ‘idleness’, ‘without haste’, ‘amusement’, ‘entertainment’, but there is no term to signify any continuity with one of the grandest concepts in the history of the Greek language. There is not a single term in Modern Greek which can even be used to render the nuances of leisure or loisir. Since the Greek terms reduce the meaning of leisure to amusement, recreation or just free time, when the English meaning goes beyond these renderings, the translator usually has to resort to unsatisfactory wordy approximations. The fact that the language in which the concept of scholê was sculpted cannot translate into its idiom the English word ‘leisure’ boggles the mind. It is highly likely that the disappearance was due to the fact that in the emerging Christian culture there was less and less place for the concept of scholê. Obviously we are opening the door to a complicated chapter of intellectual history and it would be out of place to try to take up such issues now, as we come to the close of our study. However, perhaps by taking up a single question of why scholê disappeared in Greek yet otium was never banished by the Latin Church Fathers from their vocabulary we can at least provide clues to the causes of scholê’s obliteration.

The intricate interactions between scholê and otium in the Imperial Age According to one of Seneca’s biographers, Seneca might have spent as many as ten years in Alexandria sometime in the 20s ad recuperating from the lung disease which afflicted him.1 During that period another approach to scholê was being developed in that city along religious lines. Whether Seneca had any contact with these developments is unknown and in any case is not of the essence, since the mystical philosophical currents of Alexandria were gaining influence during this period in the cultured circles throughout the



The Disappearance of Scholê

163

Mediterranean. The prestige that was later allotted to Thrasyllus, Tiberius’s court philosopher, and to Ammonius, Plutarch’s teacher at the Academy, are just some of the many testimonials that could be cited to point out the strong imprint of philosophers who hailed from Egypt. It was here, in the first fifty years of the first century ad, that Philo Judaeus wrote his allegorical interpretations which recast Hellenic philosophical concepts along the lines of the Torah’s teachings. On the surface it would seem that the two thinkers had little in common. Seneca developed his concept of otium from Roman traditions while Philo took, as his starting point, the Greek philosophical concept of scholê. The former fashioned otium for political ends while the latter approached scholê with religious moral purposes in mind. The intersection between the two is that they both drew upon a divine, extra-terrestrial source for their respective ideals. Seneca posited a divine being whose perfection gave certainty to the mission of otium while Philo refashioned scholê as means for submitting to the Law and God’s will. Though the gulf between the two would appear to be unbridgeable, the distance narrows when we look at their respective views on leisure from the standpoint of their convergence in the future. Constantine’s New Rome was still three centuries into the future, but the religious foundations of scholê’s political uses for imperial aims had already been formulated during Seneca’s lifetime. The Will of God, the Wrath of God and the Will of the Emperor were to go hand in hand. Otium for service or scholê for communion with God’s Will were to merge into one. But as they did it was only natural that scholê would gradually fade away since the communion, as an act of faith, no longer depended on theôria but on mystical experience grounded on the existence of a hyper-essence beyond. God, having created the world out of a mysterious omnipotent Will was unknowable and beyond human intelligence. What we are tracing, therefore, is the slow, but inevitable death of the concept of scholê. Its philosophical birth occurred with the discovery of nous as its end and its death naturally came when its object became contemplation of an unknowable being. The techniques introduced by Philo, and adopted by the Church Fathers, which made use of scholê for rallying believers to their duty, were to prove superior to the methods proposed by Seneca. The latter had to spell out difficult exercises that one had to practise in otium so as to have the dogmas ready at hand for action. Religious scholê rejected this elitist approach, though

164

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

it did incorporate some of its features and retained its commitment to duty. A striking difference between the two approaches is that Roman otium was in fact divided into two: refined otium for the elite and otia, such as circuses and taverns, for the people. Christianity, on the other hand, redefined scholê as a religious mystical experience open to all. The drama of Salvation permeated every facet of life and this, along with the fear of retribution, was sufficient for converting dogmatic commands into principles for action. In scholê, which is to say in communion with God, one, indeed any layman could become a soldier in service of the faith. Scholê became the condition in which God’s commands could be permanently etched within a person’s soul and thus prepare a person for dutiful action according to God’s Will as channelled through his earthly dynasts. As Rome expanded into the East, the East made its way West and in the process of this cultural migration the very word scholê disappeared, since it was alien to the culture of the new arrivals. The interactions between the reformulated religious concept of scholê and otium are complicated and the history of this development has not been written. A fascinating aspect that stands out is how Seneca’s concept of otium finds its way into the scholê of the Church Fathers. Usually one traces Greek influences on the Romans though here it seems that it is the other way around. We can say with some certainty that the Fathers were building on Seneca’s vision of otium for service, for the simple reason that the idea that scholê is, or should be, the means for reforming conduct for duty to the state is not a notion that can be found in Greek philosophy. There is not a sentence in Plato or Aristotle to suggest that scholê’s ultimate purpose is moral duty. We shall recall that when Plato proposes that the legislators provide ample free time for moral cultivation of the citizenry he calls these activities play, not scholê, and that Aristotle classified the moral virtues to be the servants of scholê. The difficulty in tracing out these developments, aside from the loss of sources, is the complexity of the intermingling that resulted in this strange and fascinating cultural novelty. On the one hand, Seneca’s Roman otium became the paradigm for Greek scholê and, on the other, this paradigm, assimilated into a religious culture, was elaborated within the doctrine of scholê that had been crafted, albeit in outline, by the Greek-speaking Philo. We have no literary evidence as to how all this transpired and there is no



The Disappearance of Scholê

165

evidentiary trail that would link Seneca’s otium to, for example, St Basil’s or St Gregory of Nyssa’s attitudes towards scholê. But absence of a source is not decisive given that historians now have a clearer picture of the many interactions between Roman and Greek elites in the Imperial period. The Roman names taken on by Greek aristocrats, and the Greek names adopted by second generation Roman bilingual immigrants, have been documented. We now have a much clearer idea of how Augustus’ moral rearmament programme, which conceived of classical Greece as an inspirational model for morality, prompted Greek intellectuals to selectively scan their own heritage for the purposes of crafting the moral and religious paradigms that would address this calling. Greece’s glorious past was to be a narrative, whether in art or rhetoric or myth, for the values that would prevent Rome’s moral decline. Along this cultural path, the road from Rome to Athens and back again was well traversed by many well-known intellectuals, such as Polybius, Plutarch, Herodes Atticus, Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides and many more who were not so distinguished. In this process the renewed interest in scholê which emerges in the religious writings of Philo and the Fathers could not have come from the Stoics or the other Greek-speaking Schools. The refashioning of scholê to serve religious goals and to make it amenable to imperial purposes was due to the influence of Roman otium. It was as if the concept of scholê were a palimpsest whose new superimposed writings were for a handbook on moral duty; though the letters and the concepts being etched were in Greek, the text was coming from one or several of the salvationist religions of the East and the aim of the republication, so to speak, was duty. The result of these alterations was concepts of scholê that were vastly different in aim and content from the philosophical ideas developed in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, and hence they should not be confused with them, an error that is pervasive, especially in textbooks and survey books on the history of leisure concepts.

Philo’s footprints A good starting point for sketching out Philo’s accomplishments is his interpretation of scholê as the proper activity for the Sabbath. On this day he held that scholê should be spent for philosophy, which he conceives of as a moral activity

166

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

devoted to communion with God.2 On the Sabbath one should withdraw from the turbulence of public affairs and consciously devalue all such earthly concerns for this end. He exhorts the faithful to come to God like Moses with a naked mind, free of passion. Moses’ passions have been completely removed through the grace of God and Reason dwells (enscholazein) within him permanently. But in most people these dogmas have not been stamped permanently into their soul. Reason, the logos, which exists in man but comes from God, does not constantly spend its time in communion with its divine source.3 The price to pay for this breakdown in the communion is vice and sin. When one, however, contemplates God, either the dogmas find a dwelling place in the soul, even for a while, or the person, like a slave, will obey God’s commands out of fear (Op. 45–47). When we are close to God it is as if we are close to a ‘good ruler that straightens out whatever is beside it’ (Op. 49). Scholê, on the Sabbath, presumes a moral stance devoted to imitating the Creator who put aside the seventh day to contemplate (theôrein) his own works (Decal. 98.1–99.1). On this day, one’s scholê must be devoted to theôria, indeed to philosophy, a discipline which in his writings is devoted to religious duty: [Moses] ordered all those [faithful] who intended to live under this form of government just as in all other things, and so in this also, to follow God, tending to their work for six days and ceasing on the seventh in order to philosophize and theorize in scholê about all things related to Nature, and to examine if they committed any impure acts in the preceding six days, receiving into the council chamber of their soul the words and scrutinizing what they said or did, with the Laws sitting in Council and in Judgement for the purpose of correcting whatever errors have been overlooked, thus guarding against future sins.

In Seneca’s view philosophy was described as the tree branch that gives support to the moral commands – to the leaves of the tree. As he put it, philosophy cures judgement and unblocks the mind so that the commands for action will be at hand. Philo’s view of philosophy relieves a person of these difficult studies and constant training exercises. True philosophy is in the turning to God and His commandments as stated in the Law. On this day people are ‘to devote [their] time to only one thing, philosophizing for improvement of their morals and the control of their conscience’.4 The laws, as revealed in the Torah, have to be glued into a soul (Spec. leg. 160.3); a spiritual



The Disappearance of Scholê

167

leader should write them out ‘at his leisure (kata scholên)’ so that they may become firmly inscribed. The danger is that the laws will ‘slip away’ (160.4) and this, as we are told elsewhere, is due to the turbulence of life that distracts and scatters one’s thoughts. Another paradigmatic case of scholê’s purposes occurs in Philo’s description of the annual pilgrimage to the Temple. The holy site provides the setting for the pilgrims to come ‘to a resting place from the busyness and tumults of a harried life’: the pilgrimage culminates with ‘people engaging in scholê (scholazousi) in the most necessary scholê of worshipping and honouring God’ (Spec. leg. 1.69.4–70.2). Whenever scholê or its cognates is used to describe the state of withdrawing from work and public affairs in order to turn to God, it is scholê in this special mystical sense of communion. Persons ‘who have turned away from the aimless crowd have scholê for contemplating things in Nature, vowing to correct life, as far as is possible’ (Prob. 63.5–7). When Philo speaks of Nature he is of course referring to the Law and the Pentateuch and theôria is realigned to this purpose. Following the Law and contemplating it is the road that leads to communion with God: ‘for the mind with great ease to spend its time and its scholê dwelling in the contemplation of wisdom’ (Prob. 122.1–3). The bonds between scholê, theôria, the search for truth and the moral state indispensable for such an enterprise are all retained. What has changed is that all these connections that in the past gave meaning to scholê have been transferred to a mystical chariot whose destination is an unknowable God. One might pose the question: Is not theôria then castrated of its power to know if its object is unknowable? Philo would probably have responded that God has graciously made whatever knowledge he permits of Himself available through prophecy, revelation and commands. In a way, Philo’s use of scholê is a living paradigm for the proper use of scholê in that he theorizes about the Law and draws out the hidden meanings that God has revealed in allegorical ways. As he contemplates he pierces through the allegories to the hidden truths and in this way comes into communion, indirectly, it would seem, with Him, or at least with His ideas and the Logos through which he rules. Looking ahead, we can note that though the Church Fathers were to follow Philo’s footprints as to the way scholê was to be aligned to salvation, we can already suspect that they would be inclined to alter the path according to the new destinations of their new times. They were building a Christian culture to

168

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

support the faith and the new Roman state. Contemplation in scholê centred about the Pentateuch was inadequate for obvious reasons. There was Christ the saviour and most importantly the theurgic institution of the Church had now grown to maturity with its rituals, liturgies, prayers and sacrosanct interpretations of His Word. What role could scholê play in this setting? Could the truth be left to one’s own moral state, to one’s own gazing upon the Law? Could the overcoming of ascholia be relegated to a scholê that did not take the theurgic practices of the Church itself into consideration? In summary one can say that Philo both widened and narrowed the field of scholê. Scholê, on the one hand, became open to all, but the ‘all’ was narrowed to the faithful who are devoted to contemplation – to the scholazein of God. All can engage in philosophy, but philosophy is narrowed to mean the truths of the Torah. Though Philo will use the term scholê in many ways, some of these as a pejorative synonym for indolence and vice, he assigned to it a sense that delineated its supernatural mission.5 When the Christian Fathers followed the mystical path he had laid out it seems that they became aware that it could not lead them to an exploration of the further possibilities of scholê but instead that scholê posed the danger of leading them and their flock askew.

Scholasate! The Christian imperative What was the concept of scholê in the writings of the Church Fathers? There is no study that would serve as a reference for us, so the best we can do is to indicate, by way of an example, the turn scholê took during this period of cultural transformation. We can escape the fallacy of exemplification if the example is taken only as a means for elaborating the religious concept of scholê. A way to approach the problem is to pose a question that will take us straight to the reformulated view of scholê: if Seneca’s model for otium was the sapiens and the highest virtue was sapientia, who was the Church Fathers’ model for scholê? The person who serves as the model for scholê will also reveal the highest functions and purposes of scholê. Just as a Cato or an Africanus does something in a certain way for the ‘common good’ of Rome, so too must the Christian model reveal scholê’s new purposes and the way it fulfils them. One of the works that offers an answer to this question is St



The Disappearance of Scholê

169

Basil’s Sixteenth Homily on Psalm 33. There he singles out as the exemplum for scholê the praos – the person who is ‘humble’ or ‘meek’– and meekness he identifies as the ‘greatest of all virtues’. If we ask what it is that brings about such meekness we find that it is a product of scholê. In the words of Basil: Meekness is the greatest of all virtues … Those who are subdued in character and are free of all passion, because they have no tumult in their souls, these are called meek. For this reason Moses has been acknowledged to be the meekest of all people on earth’. (29.356.25–45)

But this virtue he states is most difficult to possess: Because one mind and the efforts of one man are not sufficient, even for a brief time, to grasp the grandeur of God, all the meek in communion together are involved in this effort. One must therefore direct all scholê away from the confusion of the external world and once it produces in oneself absolute quietude, in the hidden council chamber of one’s heart, in this way one will devote oneself to the contemplation of truth … One must withdraw from the matters of this world and neither through the eyes nor through the ears nor through some other of the senses should one introduce alien thoughts into the soul. (29.357.21–36, emphasis added)

The praos has no tumult in his soul because he has ‘attained certainty and constancy of the soul’ and has shaken off ‘all sluggishness and drowsiness for the execution of duties’ (29.357.3). To become praos one must, as Philo tells us of Moses, completely uproot all passion from the soul. In Moses this miraculous feat occurs through the grace of God. St Basil and other Church Fathers make it clear that the praos is not a product of training or education. Gregory Nazianzus underscores this with his show of contempt for the mythological symbol for such training, the Centaur Chiron, whom he calls a boastful ignoramus (alazôn). Given the difficulty of the task and given that the Christian praos is not the product of thumotic training, he implies that the effort to become praos requires the effort of many who stay in communion together, no doubt through the Church, so that they may fight off ascholia and remain in communion with Him.6 When Basil uses the notion of the ‘meek’ as the model for scholê’s purposes, we should not have in mind contrite ascetics withdrawing in humility to the gentleness of their other-worldly concerns. The praos, like the sapiens, is primarily a man of action. In Basil’s view the praos must use his scholê to

170

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

prepare for action in the service of God, whether such action is intellectual, religious, moral or political. To be meek is not to be soft, or weak, or passive and all-forgiving. The model of the praos for Philo, and subsequently for the Church Fathers, is Moses, who is declared to be the meekest of all persons and is described with the superlative praotatos.7 The example for acting as a praos and the paradigm for the virtue of praotês is the slaughter which Moses orders. In a display of righteous wrath he commands the Levites to kill the idol worshippers, many of whom are their kinsmen, for violating the Covenant. His anger is a demonstration of how the meek should act in carrying out judgements against sinners.8 The nature of scholê is further shown in St Basil’s commentary on Psalm 45. The verse that he wishes to explain (45.11) is usually translated as follows: ‘Be still, and know that I am God’, where the word being used for ‘be still’ is the imperative of the verb scholazô. Here, only context can direct the translator to the meaning. Scholasate can mean ‘stop what you are doing’ or ‘stop whatever you are preoccupied with’, but from what follows it transpires that scholazô in this case has a specific meaning. He is urging the faithful to engage in scholê, by which he means that they stop being preoccupied with externals. At first glance it would seem that St Basil is entreating the faithful to create little Sabbaths along the way for communion with God, but upon closer analysis his exhortation is shown to be for something far more sweeping and radical. In effect, he is proclaiming that one can be in scholê at all times since it signifies a subjective moral condition of one’s conscience, a state of moral withdrawal to God. Basil thus draws the lines between two states, scholê and ascholia and in a way poses the choice in the form of either A or B, with no middle path between the two. One has to choose and the choice will decide whether one can be hopeful of salvation or whether one will be preoccupied with earthly matters that will immerse one in sin. Basil declares that as long as we devote ourselves to things external to God, we cannot find a dwelling place for the knowledge of God’ (29.428.37–39); if we ‘spend our scholê on things outside of God we cannot ‘withdraw to the knowledge of God’. If we are preoccupied with ‘worldly matters and deeply immersed in distractions of the flesh’ we cannot ‘pay attention to words about God’ nor understand ‘the grand objects of contemplation’ (16.8). What then can scholê offer the believer?



The Disappearance of Scholê

171

Basil exhorts the faithful to practise the right type of scholê which will let the unclean spirit depart. Here we must point out that Basil makes a distinction between two types of scholai and provides a telling example as to how one can distinguish between the two. The evil one ‘was the scholê of the Athenians’, which is dear to the ‘unclean and the wicked spirits’. The other is a ‘good and beneficial scholê that produces quietude for incorporating the teachings about Salvation’. It was the pernicious scholê of the Athenians that prevented them from accepting the teachings of Paul when he preached to them at the Areios Pagos. Their souls were impure and filled with turbulence. This class of sinners in scholê is expanded to include others of a heretical bent who make use of ‘the leisure of life to always invent some new teachings’. But even the correct scholê does not sufficiently guarantee that the evils of ascholia will be overcome. He warns that making use of scholê to cleanse evil from one’s spirit is not permanent, for the threat remains that the evil will return and when this happens, though it ‘finds the house there empty (scholazonta) and swept clean’ the evil will try to regain entrance. ‘May we not allow our scholê to open the doors to our opponents, but let us preoccupy ourselves (ascholêsômen) in our house within, when we have established within it beforehand the spirit of Christ’.9 The right scholê is the one that brings God into the room and it His presence that keeps the ‘house’, i.e., the soul clean of the sins that would otherwise come into it.10 One senses in Basil’s comments that he has not fully resolved how scholê, given the difficulties of staying in this state, will prevent Satan from re-entering one’s soul. The juxtaposition of scholê proper to scholê in a pejorative sense could hardly have been accidental. Perhaps this was St Basil’s way of updating, within a new context, the Roman contempt for that Greekling otium which Cicero associated with indolence and sloth and other evils. Spending time on frivolous displays of learning is just another type of ungodly ascholia. Basil cleverly opposes the two meanings, even within the same sentence, in order to stress the disjunction between the evil and the good way of scholê. We have noted that otium was tinged with pejorative meanings and that scholê could also have pejorative meanings but not in its root imagery. One would have to describe the specific type of scholê as unworthy or debauched. What is of interest though is that many, if not most, of Basil’s uses of scholê are negative, even though the good scholê is no doubt given a noble mission. What this tends to show is that he

172

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

is not working in the Greek philosophical tradition and that he is consciously departing from it in order to accentuate the cultural divide separating religious scholê from anything that came before it. There are two probable sources for his negative colouration of scholê. We find negative views of scholê in the Hebrew Bible when it is used for accusing one of laziness (Ex. 5.8.3; 5.17.1) or when we are told that the farmer who tills his land ‘will be filled with bread, but the person pursuing scholê will be filled with poverty’ (Proverbs 28.19.2). Another source for the pejorative uses of scholê, as previously mentioned, was the Roman view of otium, which bilingual writers or writers familiar with both languages, such as Plutarch, had imported into the Greek language.11

Cutting the cultural links between scholê and ascholia According to what has been presented thus far it would seems that the Church Fathers had settled on a distinction between good and evil types of scholê and on a clear demarcation between scholê and ascholia. Scholê was for communion with God and ascholia included all the earthly preoccupations that distracted a person from turning to God. But this conclusion cannot be right, for if it were then the word scholê would have survived. Though its new meanings would have been unrecognizable to Plato or Aristotle its denotation of a state of mind and activities for salvation would have been retained. A clue to follow for our search into the causes that led scholê to disappear from the language is the fact that ascholia did not suffer such a fate and continues to be used in everyday Modern Greek. To ask someone today what they do for a living one can pose the question: ‘with what are you preoccupied (ascholeisai)?’ The survival of the privative and the eradication of the positive suggests that something happened which conceptually destroyed the relationship between the two. Since the two had always existed as a pair it would seem likely that the keeping of the one and the loss of the other could have only occurred if ascholia was paired with something other than scholê. A work that offers insight as to how the conceptual relationship between scholê and ascholia may have been destroyed is St Gregory of Nyssa’s Five Orations on the Lord’s Prayer.12 Throughout this masterpiece of Christian oratory Gregory castigates ascholia with worldly affairs. But what is more



The Disappearance of Scholê

173

important is that he puts forth the antidote to it, and this, as it turns out, is not scholê. What replaces ascholia is prayer. Caught up in ascholia, people forget that it is God who made the sea that allows ships to sail and that it is God who made the hands of the craftsmen who produce the artefacts. Be he artisan, orator, defendant, or judge, ‘each one is entirely inclined to the work at hand and has forgotten the work of prayer, judging preoccupation with God to be damaging to the task before them’ (204.11–16).13 Psychological attachment to bodily concerns, he says, inhibits ‘preoccupation with the … heavenly things’ (204.28); and the soul is alienated from God because it is ‘preoccupied with the phenomenal’ (288.34).14 Αscholia is thus not an obstacle to scholê but an impediment to prayer and prayer is the activity through which one remains in communion with God. Most telling for tracing out the transformation that is occurring is the fact that Gregory never pits ascholia against scholê. Only once does the word scholê appear and when it does it is used as a synonym for ascholia to mean ‘we have no time for God’. The philosophical knot between scholê and ascholia was based on their distinctive moral traits, whereby the latter was derived from the privation of the former. In this homily the conceptual link between the two is cut because the moral traits of ascholia were no longer set against scholê but against prayer. It was the activity of prayer that cured the soul of ascholia because it was prayer that brought a person into union with God. Scholê was viewed as morally ambiguous given that, according to Philo and the Fathers, it could have good or bad results. The theurgic role of prayer seamlessly reorders the constellation of scholê-related concepts, so that theôria, for instance, even in its mystical senses, is put on the margins.

Prayer, catharsis and duty Because Gregory’s oratory is mesmerizing and the imagery he uses never loses its grip over a believer’s emotions, it is easy to miss how methodically he supplants and retools, so to speak, the prior connections that existed between (a) catharsis and scholê that were still in use in the Greek-speaking world and (b) the connections between otium and duty in the Latin-speaking world. In the paradigm put forth by Gregory catharsis begins with prayer which in turn causes a communion with God so that one’s will acts according to the Will of

174

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

God. In this state one is able to carry out one’s duties. The complex relations between the concepts of catharsis, scholê, prayer and duty that intermingled through Roman, Greek and Judaic cultural interactions find their seamless reconstruction in this work. Gregory starts his oration on the Lord’s Prayer with the ringing decree that one must pray: ‘The present congregation’, he states, ‘needs to be taught not how it must pray, but that it must, in all certainty, pray’ (202.115). Prayer is a duty. Given that prayer is the antidote to the evils of preoccupation, scholê for contemplation gives way to the duty to pray. Scholê in this way it would seem became irrelevant to the Church Fathers and it was natural that even the marginal role that had been assigned to it would become superfluous. The key here is duty. The Church Fathers, even if they wished, could never have linked scholê as a necessary preparatory step for producing a generic type of orthodox conduct. This would have been impossible for the simple reason that scholê had never acquired an underlying exhortation to duty. But why was it that, in the West, the word otium not only survived, but its use flourished in the writings and sermons and practices of the Church? The answer is patent. In the West, where Christianity was constructing its new culture in Latin and on Roman moral antecedents, without carrying within it the burden of a Hellenic heritage, the purposes of otium were to be maintained all the way into the Renaissance. Historically, the ambivalence of otium had made the Romans distinguish between types of otium deemed to be corrosive to public duty and types that contributed to carrying them out. Thus, with some modification, it could be put to use for political action in a theocratic state since the connection between withdrawal in otium and duty to the state was deeply woven into the Roman political fabric and its cultural psyche. But in the Byzantine East it was prayer that filled this role, and to do so it had to be both end and means. On the one hand it was an end, since while in it, provided it was true prayer and not babbling, one could find salvation in communion with Him; on the other hand it was the means through which such communion was brought about. The notion that scholê might be a means for such outcomes could no longer have standing. What is the duty? Clearly, to overcome the evil that surrounds us. The purpose of prayer is to become like God, to stand upright against evil in all one’s actions. In prayer, one does not prepare the way for action as much as



The Disappearance of Scholê

175

one now is transformed so as to exude the traits of character necessary for right action. There is no need of exercises for virtue or even of the exemplum of the sapiens. If the praying is correct then there will be communion with God which will lead to a flow of right actions and deeds. Otherwise the prayer is just ‘babbling’ (212.25). Do you see to what heights the Lord elevates those who hearken to the words of the [Lord’s] Prayer, transforming, in a way, human nature, bringing it closer to the divine and ordaining that those who approach God become gods? He says why do you come to God with servility, cowering in fear, flogged by your own conscience? Why do you exclude [godly] virtue from yourself, which inheres in the freedom of the soul, and which from the very beginning has been inherent in human nature? Why do you flatter with words the one who is not open to flattery? Why do you introduce slavish and flattering words to the one who looks [only] to the deeds? (292.27–294.7, emphasis added)

In Gregory the act of praying is itself inseparable from action and duty. It is not an in-between step. The actions against evil follow upon God’s Will that is flowing through the veins, so to speak, of the person praying. In prayer one is prepared for action here because of communion with the there. In prayer one becomes ektos, outside, because God is inside. What then does this teaching of the [Lord’s] Prayer command us to do? To go outside, to be disengaged (ektos) from the things of this world … Surely the person who wishes to be freed from evil will of necessity emigrate from this world. For temptation cannot touch the soul unless some bait, in the form of worldly preoccupation (ascholian) is wrapped around an evil hook and dangled in front of the gluttonous.

One must be outside and spiritually detached as if one were an émigré from earthly affairs. Here Seneca would agree, and they both converge in different ways to a common point. For Seneca, one becomes detached by assimilating the dogmas within, while for Gregory, one mystically brings God’s Will within. In both cases the source for the power within is the divine without. In prayer one states: ‘May your Will come to pass also within me’ (270.7; 270.17). ‘When your Will comes to pass within me every evil and absurd motion of my will is transformed into nothingness.’ True prayer and the presence of God within are proven when prayer translates itself into action. The Will of God becomes one’s own will and to will is to act. In a sense Gregory gives a direct

176

An Inquiry into the Philosophical Concept of Scholê

answer to the Socratic question. In prayer one does not request a way of life, but one lives a life in God. The Christian concept of catharsis now blends with mystical theurgy. The division between the practical and the theoretical, if we are to stretch the word ‘theoretical’ as Gregory does so as to include mystical experience, is done away with. In prayer, the Will of God may govern within us without hindrance (276.19–28). The problem of overcoming the premise of pervasive evil, which had so preoccupied Seneca, is thus resolved. The Fathers go much further than Seneca did in underscoring evil as a premise of moral and social life. For them, evil is a permanent, indelible stain acquired from the Fall. But, unlike Seneca, the Church Fathers hold that overcoming evil is open to all. In prayer, the soul is cleansed of evil and through prayer’s theurgic powers a person, of a sudden, is made ready for godly action. Anger is assuaged, temperance gained, fear overcome, and greed reined in. In true prayer His Will flows within us; evil is expelled and the virtues are instilled. It was natural, henceforth, to emphasize the mystical power of prayer over scholê. The latter could at best only be a condition for prayer, but even such an adjunct role had its problems. It could cause confusion given that it might suggest types of leisure that were different from, or which could take one away from, God. In prayer there was wisdom and virtue, in scholê there was …? Well not divine wisdom, for sure.15 That this concept’s disappearance is far more complicated, and that we have only skimmed the surface in order to show the nature and the direction of the process, can perhaps be indicated by referring to an exhortation of St Basil regarding prayer in scholê. As a founder of monasticism in Byzantium it was to be expected that Basil would have identified, in some fashion, monastic withdrawal with scholê. Thus he states, ‘it is necessary to be “un-occupied” (scholasai) with things having to do with the works of marriage so that we may have scholê for prayer’ (29.429.27). Here, one might pose the question: how can a society survive if it abandons preoccupations related to marriage and adopts celibacy for other-worldly Salvation as a norm? Clearly, it cannot if the principle is made universal. The failure of its universality shows once again the wisdom of Aristotle’s conclusion that societies often collapse because of the wrong ends they assign to their leisure. The practices that a society raises to the highest pedestal for guiding its moral energies makes these practices, even when destructive, ever harder to correct. The reformulation of



The Disappearance of Scholê

177

scholê for religious withdrawal to God ultimately led to political movements of reactionary zealots dedicated to quietude and withdrawal who militantly subverted successive modernizing efforts. But one might make the counterclaim that the religious devotion fostered by faith of this sort was essential to Byzantium’s ability to survive for over 1,000 years. Perhaps one might make a counter-claim by pointing to another type of scholê that existed side by side with this and in opposition to it – the scholê inherited, albeit in diluted forms, from the Alexandrian court. Byzantium, we must recall, was the repository for the manuscripts of Hellenistic science and Hellenic wisdom which, when they made their way West, ignited a scientific revolution and a renaissance in learning. Perhaps this is further proof of Aristotle’s dictum that scholê is inextricably tied to the survival of regimes. Time and again, Byzantium selectively turned to the Greek heritage buried within it in order to devise policies that allowed it to overcome its internal crises. We need only mention the restoration of the icons which brought an end to the bloody iconoclastic wars, very much through a reformulation of Aristotle’s theory of artistic representation. Even in Byzantium’s dying moments, Plethon Gemistos, among many other intellectuals, turned to this heritage, which had been made available to them in their scholê, for political salvation. And when they could no longer revive the moribund theocracy, they laboured to bring the fruits of their scholê to the receptive minds of the awakening West. But we have already moved far away from our subject and must bring this topic to a close.

Afterword Leisure as a political end Throughout the book, special care has been taken to leave scholê untranslated so as to make clearer the difference between it and subsequent concepts of leisure. For this reason an afterword is needed in order to explain the book’s subtitle: Leisure as a political end. The notion that leisure can become a political end seems contradictory given all that has been said about the differences between scholê and leisure. It would seem that a catchy ploy is being used in the title to spark an interest in scholê by presenting it in contemporary terms. The title, however, is meant to emphasize that if Aristotle’s concept of scholê has any meaning for our times, then reflections about its practicalities have to start from existing institutions and the existing modes of life. In politics, even as one gazes upon the ideal truths for direction, one must start from the possible. Among the realities of leisure is that the values that frame it are the same as those that direct the system’s preoccupations so that, even when one rejects these values, what is being questioned or torn down are its values. These are not replaced even when there are tides of protest or when leisure is given a cultural dressing and ameliorated with parks, recreation and access to some learning. The sauce is changed but the salad remains. The prospect that these values could be replaced by new ones automatically springing up from the tensions within the mode of production and its superstructures has proven to be false. The belief that radical movements would arise in leisure from the sublimated repressions of the oppressed, especially the youth, has been shown not to be the case. Negation and opposition are of little concern and hardly a threat. Negation of the commodity culture, for example, is itself a commodity. Projection of one’s individuality and individual plans of life, whether in cultivated, crass or hedonistic ways, is precisely what fits into the fragmented atomic patterns that

180 Afterword

contribute to the ceaseless reproduction of purposeless ascholia. When these fail, the alternative route has been to project mystical unifiers such as the Volk, rootedness, solidarity or the world beyond as objects of leisure. A culture that would give polyphonic presence to the manifold psychological powers that have no utility is absent, and no amount of radical celebration of sublimated repressions will ever bring them into being. Leisure as a political end is the conscious, cooperative development of these powers, with the highest human power as the beacon guiding and lighting the way. This would not be leisure as we know it. It would be something redefined and reformulated. Scholê, as a way of life, never was, nor does it seem that it ever will be, determined by economics or technological progress but from political and moral choices. Presently, it is indeed difficult, if not impossible, to imagine how the ideal of leisure might ever be transformed into scholê so as to stand up to the Sisyphean forces which are in command of human ingenuity and human passions. But this should not be a cause for dismay and should not lead one to abandon reflection on its possibilities, because, speaking of practicality, it is easy for anyone to imagine the alternatives. Given our present course, it is possible that we, with our powerful technologies and ever powerful states, may yet fall victim to Aristotle’s warning that republics unable to live a life of scholê are destined to collapse from the busyness of their misdirected pastimes. By the same token it is also possible that thinkers take seriously his view of scholê as political end, which was already enunciated in his early work Protrepticus (20.1–2): Pythagoras has said it well that every human being (pas anthrôpos) has been created by god for the purpose of knowing and theorizing.

Notes Introduction 1 2

All references to ‘lexicon’ and to LSJ are to H. G. Lidell and R. Scott (1968) A Greek-English Lexicon. Grg. 492d5 (emphasis added): ‘I beseech you [Callicles] do not stop in any way so that it may become crystal clear how one is to live (pôs biôteon).’* * All translations unless otherwise indicated are by the author.

I: Sisyphus or Scholê? 1

2

3

For a review of etymological issues and the various meanings of scholê and ascholia in the classical Greek literature that has come down to us, see Anastasiades (2004). R. Beekes: ‘[scholê is] derived from the aorist stem σχ- (see ἔχω [I have]) …’ Anastasiades: ‘although its etymological relationship with the verb ἔχειν is obscure, σχολή may be understood as equivalent to ‘possession’, in this case ‘of time’ …’ Anastasiades provides a useful note on previous scholarship. He cites L. Meyer (Handbuch der griechischen Etymologie 4 [Leipzig, 1902] who ‘regarded its provenance from ἔχειν as incontestable – as indeed, did E. R. Wharton before him – and concluded,  on the basis of Homeric meanings of ἔχειν, that the original meaning of σχολή was ‘das Sichenhalten, Ablassen, Ausruhen …’ (60). Babiniotis: ‘uncertain etymology; perhaps derived from the second aorist [infinitive] root of σχεῖν…’ Anastasiades: ‘However, a study of work in ancient Greece does not always seem to support modern scholars who maintain that the ancient Greece writers idealized σχολή as a result of their disdain for work…’ (2004: 58). M. Balme in his study of attitudes to work in ancient Greece writes (1984: 151): ‘My final conclusion is that most Athenians would have come down heavily on the side of the Puritan ethic; they believed that work was both virtuous and necessary, and, indeed, that work was virtuous even if it was unnecessary … idleness was vicious under all circumstances.’

182 Notes 4 Hesiod, Works and Days 303; Thales in Stobaeus 3.1.172.59. One may find a similar view on work in a fragment from a lost comedy where one is warned to learn a trade even if wealthy: ‘Not even a poor person can live his life securely without learning a trade. But you say: “we have money, property and houses”. These though are quickly lost; do not fail to understand the turns of fortune, which can make the rich man poor the next day’ (Stob. Anth. 3.30.4.77–9). And: ‘God does not stand at the side of those who do not work’ (Anth. 3.306a1). 5 See de Heer (1969). 6 Il. 6.138; Od. 4.805, 5.122 (θεοὶ ῥεῖα ζώοντες = the gods who live at ease). 7 The word autarkeia (self-sufficiency) is made up of the two words autos = ‘self ’ + arkeia derived from the Homeric verb arkeô = ‘to ward off, protect’ and later ‘to make good, achieve’. On the evolution of autarkeia see P. Bosman (2015: 18–20). A striking instance of the connection of autarkeia to freedom occurs in Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers (757) wherein the nurse states that ‘children’s young inwards work their own (autarkês) relief ’ (trans. H. W. Smyth, Loeb edition), or as R. Lattimore translates: ‘Children’s young insides are a law to themselves’. 8 Il. 24.526; Od. 6.42. 9 Albert Camus (2005). 10 Homer, Il. 6 153: ‘There is a city, Ephure in innermost Argos, which nurtures horses. There lived Sisyphus, son of Aiolos, who was the slyest (kerdistos) of men’. Kerdistos is the superlative of kerdiôn (‘more profitable’) and when used of persons has the connotation of ‘most cunning or crafty’. 11 Il. 4.339. Autenrieth: kerdaleos ‘profitable, advantageous; hence cunning, sly’ and kerdaleophrôn : ‘with mind bent on gain, greedy-minded; crafty minded’. 12 Theognis Elegiae 1.705. 13 Grg. 525e2. 14 We find the words kerdiôn and kerdaleon used to describe actions of Odysseus (Od. 6.145, 148) but here it is not in the sense of a plotter who seeks to commit an impious act or is aiming to deceive his hearers. Rather, his speech is crafted to secure his advantage by adjusting it to the person and to the occasion, in this case to reaching the heart of Nausicaa whom he must persuade to take pity on him. 15 Grimal (1986: 422). Also in the same entry Grimal, staying close to the evidence, describes Sisyphus as the ‘most cunning and the least scrupulous of mortals’. 16 Thomas Hobbes in his Elements of Law Natural and Politic (IX.21) compares ‘the life of man to a race’. To be ‘outgone is misery … to outgo the next … is felicity. And to forsake the course is to die.’

Notes

183

17 Euripides Heracles (1301–2). 18 Krataiis, a personification derived from the same root for ‘power’, the same root that one finds in words such as autocratic, bureaucratic, democratic. 19 Il. 3.292; Il. 12.427; Od. 14.418. 20 See Heraclitus (the Grammarian), Homeric Problems.

II: Plato on Scholê and Ascholia Ti. 24a1, 38e2; Phd. 58d; Leg. 771c6. A matter is taken up because luckily ‘we have leisure’ (Leg. 781e1) or that he would prefer listening ‘in leisure’ (scholê) rather than be preoccupied with business (ascholia) (Phdr. 227b8). 2 In the Phaedrus, he has, he says, no leisure for inquiring into the historical veracity of myths because, presumably in his leisure, he is too busy inquiring into himself (229e3). In the Protagoras, Kallias’ doorman announces to Socrates and Hippocrates that his master has ‘no leisure’ to meet with them, even though inside there is a gathering of sophists, led by Protagoras, who are displaying their knowledge, seriously preoccupied in leisure! In the Laws, Plato’s Athenian Stranger declares that if athletes who train to compete have no leisure (ascholian) for anything else, the citizens of the just city will be doubly unleisured because their training of body and soul will be a full-time preoccupation requiring much leisure (Leg. 807c–d). In the Euthyphro (6c9), though Socrates is engaged in a philosophical hunt for the definition of piety, he says that he does not have scholê to hear Euthyphro’s views on the gods. 3 Xen. Mem. 2.6.4.3. 4 Anaxagoras, DK Fr. 12. 5 Socrates’ words in the Phaedo regarding scholê and ascholia offer a good summation for what has been said thus far:

1

But in fact it has been shown by us that if we intend to obtain clear knowledge of something, we must free ourselves of the body and contemplate these things only with the soul itself. Thus it seems, as our discourse shows, that it is upon death that we shall acquire that which we desire and which we accept [as true] when we say that we are lovers of wisdom. But as long as we live, never! Because if it is not possible to have clear knowledge of anything whatsoever with the body then one of two things must hold: either it is impossible to acquire any knowledge or we shall acquire it only when we die. Because then the soul exists by itself,

184 Notes without the body, but not prior to this. It seems then, as long as we are alive we will come close to knowledge in this way: The less we associate with the body or communicate with it, except when there is absolute need and we do not pollute ourselves with its nature, but stay unaffected of it until our god dismisses us, and thus freed from the folly of the body, as is natural, we will be together with other pure beings and know everything that is pure. Without a doubt this is the truth. For the gods, according to the divine laws of justice, do not permit the impure to come into contact with the pure. (66b1–67b2) 6 Plutarch Quaest. conv. 3.718 Ε7–F4. 7 See R. Weiner (2000, p.1). ‘Indeed, the word “creativity” did not exist before 1870 and was not widely used until about 1950. The concept, and the positive value we attach to it, might in fact be seen as hallmarks of our modern, secular, democratic, capitalistic society.’ ‘It was following the war that the word became common and appeared in most English-language dictionaries’ (p. 97) and became ‘a largely unquestioned value of great importance’ (p. 98). 8 R. Weiner: ‘Today creativity generally refers to the phenomenon of bringing forth something new in virtually any realm of human endeavour’ (p. 99). 9 Matt Ridley (2015). 10 Plato Menex. 247a1. 11 Ti. 42d1: ‘the tumultuous and irrational’; Leg. 659a5: a judge should not be swayed by the ‘tumult of the many and their lack of education’. 12 See Symp. (215e6) where Alcibiades reports that upon hearing Socrates’ speeches his soul was in ‘tumult’ and he came to believe that his own way of life was not worth living. 13 Though ekplêssô can have a neutral meaning of just being amazed, the passages in which the verb is used to describe the state of being confounded by sensory evidence supports our interpretation of the Phaedo passage. For example, he states in the Gorgias (523d1) that Zeus thought that the judges in the underworld are ‘confounded’ (ekplêttontai) because the rich are able to cover over their internal wickedness by dressing up in fine clothing at their trial. In the Philebus (47a8) Socrates argues that the intensity of the sensory pleasure felt ‘causes great amazement’ (ekplêxin) and in turn becomes a cause for serious misjudgement of an event. The ekplêxis is caused by a person’s ignorance regarding the good or bad consequences of the pleasure being experienced. In the Protagoras (355b1) the same point is made when Socrates argues against the idea that men’s better judgement is ‘confounded’ or ‘overwhelmed’ (ekplêttomenos) by pleasure. He states that in these cases one is led not

Notes

185

by knowledge that the thing being felt is bad, but rather by the ignorance which places trust in the sensory evidence being felt. The trait of explêxis, an accompaniment to ascholia, does not augur well for the epistemic content of the latter. 14 In the Republic (445c10), Plato states that there are as many constitutions as there are ‘characters of soul’ (psuchês tropoi) and that bad constitutions are accompanied by a corresponding ‘formation of the character (psuchês tropou) of the individual soul’ that is not good (449a4). 15 The passage is given below: and when philosophy receives their soul tied and riveted to the body – forced as if in a prison to study beings through the body and not alone by itself, and to wallow in total ignorance, and when it perceives that the utmost horror of the prison is due to [its own] desire, as if the prisoner himself were the main accomplice to his own bondage … – when philosophy receives the soul in this condition she gently exhorts her and seeks to unbind her by pointing out that inquiry through the eyes is full of deception, and there is deception through the ears and the other senses, persuading her to depart from these to the degree she has no need of them, and exhorts her to collect and gather herself in herself and to trust in nothing else but in her own self, because she can understand by herself true being in itself. She should not believe that there is anything true in whatever inquires by means of other [powers] into a thing that varies, for such a being is sensible and visible whereas the other is grasped by the mind and is invisible. (82e5–83b4, emphasis added) 16 Tht. 175e3, 175e6, doulika … diakonêmata, diakonein. The word is familiar to English readers from the word deacon (diakonos) who ministers or provides some type of service in the Church. 17 W. Isaacson, Steve Jobs, p. 677.

III: Catharsis, Scholê and Play 1 2

Phd. 65a9–b1. See also 65c8, 66a6, 67a4, 80e3. Phd. 65e6–66a8: Whoever though reaches the point of studying these beings, as purely as possible, only with the mind … having freed themselves from their eyesight and their ears, and in short from the whole of their body,

186 Notes because these bring disturbances and do not allow the soul to acquire truth and wisdom as long as it communes with it – is it not this person Simmias, more than anyone else, who will achieve the goal of [finding the truth] about the nature of things? Phd. 66d8; 67a2–b2; 67c3; 68b4. Soph. 226d5–7. Also see Leg. 735b–736b for a political application of the method of separating the better from the worse. 5 Leg. 739a4–6. 6 A partial selection of the uses of variants of scholê that appear in the Laws shows an absence of the uses that we find in the Phaedo and the Theaetetus. For example: the Persian kings did not have free time (mê scholazein) to educate their children (694e2); landholding must be studied in leisure by the legislator (738b2); municipal officials must have free time (scholazontas) for public affairs (763d5); the population size selected could be shown to be correct ‘if one had free time’ (kata scholên) (771c6); the interlocutors have free time (scholês gar) to inquire into the laws (781e1); the athlete who prepares for competition lacks free time (ascholian) for other activities (807c5); the supervisor of the children, ‘will not have much free time’ (scholên) (813c3); older people should pass their free time (scholais) in pursuits that are worthy of them (820c9); the new city will be unrivalled in free time (chronou scholês) (828d8); the love of money keeps people busy (ascholon) (831c4, 832b1); citizens with free time (scholên) can follow the trials (855d7); the interlocutors have free time (scholên) to select the materials for their legislation (858b5,7); one might want to inquire in their free time (scholên) into the way of life of foreign cities (951a7). 7 Ti. 80b7. Plato explains that imitations give a pleasure when they are in accord with the universe’s divine order. 8 Leg. 803c4–5. 9 See Leg. 803c2–804b4: ‘Every man and woman must live their entire life in accordance with this way, playing the noblest games possible, contrary to the way that people now think.’ 10 Leg. 797a7–9: ‘I assert that no one in any of the poleis has any perception that the types of games children play are supremely important for legislation and for determining whether or not the laws will be permanent.’ 11 See Leg. 798d. Any alteration of the approved games is to be treated with the same seriousness as if one were proposing to modify the constitution. Such changes, states the Athenian, will lead a child, as it grows up, to seek ‘out a different way of life’, and to ‘desire other customs and laws’ and these unexamined innovations will result in ‘the greatest of all evils’ to the cities.

3 4

Notes

187

12 Such uses include the ‘playful testing’ of one’s virtue in wine drinking (649d9). 13 Trophê (nurturing) is, for Plato, that childhood phase of education that brings right order to the passions and to pleasures and pains. Because the mind is not yet mature, trophê necessarily occurs in play and without conscious learning. Plato however intends to extend this nurturing in play into a lifelong enterprise (Leg. 653c7–d5): ‘Well then, because the correct nurturing of pleasure and pain, which is truly education, becomes slack in human beings and is corrupted in great measure during a lifetime, the gods pitying the race of humans, which was born to suffer, ordered celebrations for paying honour to the gods as a way of relaxation from these pains. And they gave the Muses and Apollo, their music leader, and Dionysius as co-celebrants so that [humans] might “reset themselves aright”. Thus humans are nurtured in festivals in the company of the gods.’ 14 Ti. 39e2. 15 Referring to a philosophical inquiry as play occurs elsewhere as well: in Rep. 536c1 Socrates reminds himself that in their discussion about justice they are ‘playing’. In the Laws the Athenian tells his interlocutors that as they walk they will ‘play an old men’s wise game of lawmaking’ (685a7), and later again he refers to their discussion about the laws as a ‘serious game for elders’ (769a). Parmenides (137b2) takes up Socrates’ questions about plurality as ‘playing a laborious game’ and in the Timaeus (59d2) inquiry into the origins of the world is spoken of as ‘a type of play’. 16 Leg. 968d, 818a. 17 G. Ardley (1967) in his article ‘The Role of Play in the Philosophy’ states that: ‘Play has no temporal end beyond itself, but it reaches upwards atemporally; it is fecund, it partakes of creatio ex nihilo. Indeed, there is a school of theologians with a long lineage, which endeavours to interpret the creation of the world in terms of play … It is to this school of theology that Plato belongs, and Aristotle after him’ (234–5). In what way does Plato have common ground with these theologians? His philosophy releases us ‘from the chains which before held us bound in pseudo-seriousness, [and we are now] able to play the tragic-comic game of life’ (235). 18 See for example, Skidelsky and Skidelsky (2012): ‘Still, insofar as action proceeds not from necessity but from inclination, insofar as it is spontaneous, not servile and mechanical, toil is at an end and leisure has begun. This – not idleness – is our ideal. It is only our culture’s poverty that leads us to believe that all creativity and innovation … needs to be stimulated by money.’ And elsewhere ‘the sculptor engrossed in cutting marble, the teacher intent on imparting a difficult idea, the musician struggling with a score …’

188 Notes 19 The Christians also owed a great debt to Plotinus, who established the more profound foundations for a reinterpretation of Plato’s theory of play. Given that the universe is itself the outcome of successive levels of contemplation of the emanations pouring forth from the One, it follows that to contemplate the One was for Plotinus an act of creation. His mimetic paradigm for creation is the artist who enriches the universe with true Being by crafting intelligent Forms onto imperfect objects of nature. He is surpassed only by the philosopher who is even more of a maker in that he never creates anything with matter. He was thus able to link contemplation, theôria, with creation and play: Supposing we played a little before entering upon our serious concern and maintained that all things are striving after Contemplation … in the play of this very moment am I engaged in the act of Contemplation? … Yes; I and all that enter this play are in Contemplation: our play aims at Vision; and there is every reason to believe that child or man, in sport or earnest, is playing or working only towards Vision, that every act is an effort towards Vision. (Enneads 3.8.1–15, trans. MacKenna) 20 S. Steel (2014) in his book on education writes: Theôria ‘is not an activity beyond the scope of children, inasmuch as it may be characterized as a form of play’ (152); it is not ‘an elitist affair for the most spiritually refined and capable adepts. Rather theoria is a quality of existence enjoyed and enjoyable by all human beings even at the level of sensory perception … [and is] open to all students of all ages’ (55). 21 J. Huizinga (1949): ‘The Platonic identification of play and holiness … exalts the concept of play to the highest regions of the spirit’ (38). 22 J. Pieper (1998) offers an example of theoretical contemplation arising from a disposition which finds its objects in everyday sensation: ‘A man drinks at last after being extremely thirsty, and, feeling refreshment permeating his body, thinks and says: What a glorious thing is fresh water! Such a man, whether he knows it or not, has already taken a step toward that “seeing of the beloved object” which is contemplation. How splendid is water, a rose, a tree, an apple, a human face – such exclamations can scarcely be spoken without also giving tongue to an assent and affirmation, which extends beyond the object praised and touches upon the origin of the universe’ (84, emphasis added). 23 St Thomas Aquinas, Expositio libri Boetii: De ebdomadibus (Proemium): Aquinas states that contemplation of wisdom is like play in ‘that play is pleasurable’ and ‘contemplation of wisdom affords the greatest pleasure’. Just as play is not for something else, and not directed to anything external, so too

Notes

24 25

26

27

28

189

contemplation ‘has the cause of its delight within itself ’. Connecting play to contemplation has no other purpose then to emphasize the creative nature of theôria since it is in this state that we come close to the creative source of all being. St Gregory Nazianzus, Carmina moralia 624.13. Maximus the Confessor Ambigua (Patrologia Migne, 91:1412C), in interpreting Gregory of Nazianzus’ lines on the logos at play, makes a parallel to Dionysius the Areopagite: ‘In play where there is a motionless flow, a creative flux from an immovable God, so too in His erotic goodness’ He creatively ‘comes out of Himself ’. Maximus the Confessor Ambigua (Patrologia Migne), 91:1412C: Maximus uses the word theôthêsesthai (deified by hypostatic union) (Lampe) through His grace. See Blowers (2012: 205–10). J. Pieper (1999): ‘There can be neither festivals nor fine arts without that prior affirmation [i.e.‘the praise of Creation’], the nature of which is perhaps best conveyed by the great word love’ (54–5). Generally, in ‘celebrating festivals festively, man passes beyond the barriers of his present life on earth’ and through it ‘the celebrant becomes aware of, and may enter, the greater reality’ (43). ‘Man craves by nature to enter the “other” world, but he can attain it only if true festivity truly comes to pass’ (59). David Miller (2013) in contradistinction to other theologians is closer to Plato’s intent, even though he refers to his ideas on play pejoratively as a utilitarian ‘Coca-Cola philosophy’ which are hostile to the transcendent quests of Christian theologies of play: ‘That Plato is the source of the Coca-Cola philosophy of play can be seen both in the Republic and the Laws … [where] he argues that the primary function of play is in the education of youth … for Plato play served the higher end of the law and the republic …’

IV: Aristotle: On the Nature of Scholê 1

Depew (1991) has put forth what is perhaps the best defence of this interpretation: ‘My view is that in Politics 7.1–3 Aristotle does not intend to privilege and politicize the contemplative life, but to redefine it stipulatively as an active life’ (352). Depew concludes that once the contemplative is seen as praxis then both types of lives are ‘worth pursuing for their own sake’ (353). As types of praxeis both are on an equal footing. When the politician is open to contemplation and the contemplative person is open to politics than

190 Notes

2

contemplation can be pursued within a political social framework: ‘The two lives arise within the common framework and diverge only as a function of each citizen trying to realize his own highest capabilities’ (359). Nightingale has put forth an interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of theôria in scholê which criticises it as impractical, incoherent, and immoral: Here is what it at stake: if theôria has no bearing on virtuous praxis then the theoretical philosopher does not have to be an exceptionally good person … In fact, even if the philosopher does practise some virtues to live well overall, he will be organizing his life around the pursuit of a noetic activity that is neither practicable nor political. Aristotle’s philosopher is not obliged to report back to people … he does not interact in the social or political world. Theoretical wisdom, in short, is essentially immoral. (2004: 222)



3

4

5 6

7

The view is widespread and not original. See for example J. Lear (1988): ‘To be blunt: the contemplative life is socially parasitic.’ (314); ‘The contemplative life is by nature unethical.’ (315); ‘One can imagine a latter-day Aristotle arguing that the divine element in man is his creativity. The artist, like God, is a creator, so if one is able to choose between the artistic and the ethical life, one should choose the artistic.’; ‘contemplative man leaves his social commitment to his fellow-man behind…’ (316). Ackrill (1980), for example, claims that Aristotle’s theory of eudaimonia is incoherent and that this is its virtue. He holds that Aristotle posits theôria as a supreme end, but that he held back from a unified theory that would have led to ‘monstrous’ conclusions if it were elevated to a dominant end for which all other virtues were to be practised. Ernest Barker, writes: ‘If it be asked, “What is the activity of leisure?”, we may answer in one word, diagôgê’, or the cultivation of the mind. Scholê is spent in diagôgê.’(1946: 381) Pol.1339a26–29. Pol. 1337b38–1338a1: In this passage Aristotle is exploring the relationship of work and play to leisure. He writes that life’s purpose cannot be play in our time of leisure ‘for then the purpose of life for us would be play … rather play is useful in relation to work, because the labouring person needs relaxation [a ‘pause’, anapausis], thus play is for the sake of anapausis. Work always involves toil and tension … that is why we have to introduce play into life, selecting the appropriate times for its use as a type of restorative medicine.’ Eth. Nic. 1174b9.

Notes 8 9

191

Randall (1960), pp 44-45. Metaph. 1074b35, trans. Ross. Other translations are ‘and its intelligence is the intelligence of intellect’ (trans. Hope); ‘and its thinking is a thinking of thinking’ (translation Tredennick). 10 This has been well stated by J. Anton (1957: 166): ‘The extraordinary thing about intelligence as a process is that as a going concern it matures and fulfils human beings through knowledge of the world and the acquisition of self-consciousness. Intelligence knows its contents and its operations.’ 11 Pol. 1324a5-8. 12 For such a conflation of Aristotle (qua ‘objective idealist’) and Kant see J. Lear (302-308). 13 Eth. Nic. 1096b33–34. Aristotle calls this the ‘practical good’ (1097a23), the good that is attainable through human action. All human action is undertaken to secure some good. Thus he states: ‘if there is something that is the telos of all things, then this would be the practical good’. 14 Some modern commentators have attributed a class bias to Aristotle’s theory of leisure and its supporting norms of paideia. For example, Nightingale (2004: 191): ‘His educational system reflects and reinforces the supreme status of theôria as well as the aristocratic value system that defines its superiority’. Also Burger (1995: 91): ‘What is held up in Book X as the highest human good is the image of the theoretical life as perceived from the outside – unwearied, independent, utterly useless. Its victory over the practical life, as a ranking of leisure and freedom from business and necessity, is expressed in categories that belong to a political class structure.’ 15 Plato Tht. 155d3–5. Iris’ father was the sea god Thaumas – Wonder. 16 Metaph. 980a1. 17 Thaumazein in addition to meaning ‘wondering’ can also mean ‘admiring’ and thus thaumazein in and of itself, whenever it occurs, introduces a value and denotes that the thing being wondered at is of worth and is something to be honoured. Aristotle draws a connection, especially in the Rhetoric (1379b24, 1381a28, 1381b11) between thaumazein, in the sense of admiration, and honour. 18 ‘But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life, others to recreation, the inventors of the latter were naturally always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former’ (Metaph. 981b17-19, Ross translation, emphasis added). 19 Metaph. 981b24-5: ‘for there the priestly caste was given permission to engage in scholê’.

192 Notes 20 Eth. Nic. 1177a18–1177b4. The entire passage extends from 1177a12–1179a30. 21 Ross translates along the same lines: ‘If happiness is activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be that of the best thing in us.’ Irwin also: ‘If happiness is activity according to virtue, it is reasonable for it to accord with the supreme virtue …’ 22 The textual support for this interpretation is to be found in the Politics where Aristotle is arguing against two extremes, one that separates theory from all activity and one that identifies political aggrandizement in relation to others, especially for the purpose of control over externals be it empires or wealth: ‘But the active life is not necessarily active in relation to other men, as some people think, nor are only those processes of thought active that are pursued for the sake of the objects that result from action, but far more those speculations and thoughts that have their end in themselves and are pursued for their own sake; for the end is to do well, and therefore is a certain form of action.’ (1325b14–21, trans. Rackham, 1927) 23 Though many scholars reject the Magna Moralia as part of the corpus there is no need to take up this issue here, because the concept in the passage quoted is also expressed in no uncertain terms in the Ethics. 24 Aristotle juxtaposes the verb dioikeô (manage, administer) to the verb archô (to rule, govern, command) in order to show that moral virtue manages according to purposes set for it by the ruler. 25 Diog. Laert. 1.89.10–90.11. 26 Pol. 1333b14–16 and 1334a4–6. 27 Also Pol. 1271b3–6: ‘Therefore they remained secure as long as they were at war, but when they gained hegemony they were destroyed due to the fact that they did not know how to engage in scholê nor were they trained in any exercise [deemed] more important than training for war.’ 28 Pol. 1310a20ff. Aristotle argues that to be educated in the constitution ‘does not mean to do things that give pleasure to [its] adherents’ and here he singles out oligarchy for indulging in luxury and democracy where liberty is interpreted as ‘doing whatever one likes’. 29 Pol. 1313b4–6: ‘and they use means which keep people as much as possible strangers to one another (for acquaintance increases the trust between people)’. 30 Aristotle, in his Constitution of the Athenians reports that Aristides the Just (circa 470s) had urged the Athenian people to transform their agrarian way of life and to ‘assert their leadership, and to leave the fields and live in the city: there would be maintenance for all, some on campaign, some on guard duty,

Notes

193

others attending to public affairs; and by living in this way they would secure their hegemony’ (Ath. Pol. 24.1.1–2.1). 31 Pol. (1269b10–11): ‘It is clear then that those cities that have serfs have not found the best way of dealing with them’. 32 John Maynard Keynes (1963): I draw the conclusion that, assuming no important wars and no important increase in population, the economic problem may be solved, or be at least within sight of solution, within a hundred years … Thus we have been expressly evolved by nature – with all our impulses and deepest instincts – for the purpose of solving the economic problem. If the economic problem is solved, mankind will be deprived of its traditional purpose … Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well … 33 Historia Augusta, Marcus Aurelius 23.5.1–3. 34 C. P. Cavafy (Poems) ‘In the year 200 bc’.

V: Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia 1 2

3

This cultural moulding of the inner person which we render as ‘education’ was called paideia by the Greeks. On paideia see W. Jaeger (1939-44). Barker’s (1946: 395) note on this passage in his commentary is helpful: ‘The argument here is that occupation has no intrinsic pleasure, but has to be supplemented by an extrinsic pleasure derived from subsequent play. Leisure, on the contrary, has an intrinsic pleasure, which is felt in the very act and moment of its use.’ Trans. Jowett. In different ways the same is repeated by many other scholars: Rackham (1932): ‘we must inquire what is the proper occupation of leisure.’ Barker (1946) : ‘Our problem, therefore, is to find modes of activity which will fill our leisure.’

194 Notes Kraut (1997): ‘… one must investigate what it is that people should do in their leisure.’ Ellis (1895): ‘and by all means we ought to learn what we should do when at rest …’ Newman (1887): ‘The answer which is gradually given to the question in what activities leisure should spent is, as we shall see, “in activities desirable for their own sake” (p. 512, vol. 3).’ 4

To see the pervasiveness of this view it will suffice to quote Barker (1946) who reduces and equates Aristotle’s concept of scholê to the narrow meaning, ‘intellectual cultivation’, which he then assigns to diagôgê. (1) 1334a17: ‘The qualities required for the use of leisure and the cultivation of the mind (diagôgên)’; (2) 1338a10: ‘with a view to the proper use of leisure in the cultivation of the mind (diagôgêi)’; (3) 1338a22: ‘We are thus left with its value for the cultivation of the mind (diagôgên) in leisure’; (4) 1339a25: ‘There is still a third possible view-that music has some contribution to make to the cultivation of our minds (diagôgên) and to the growth of moral wisdom’; (5) 1339a29: ‘On the other hand it is also true that cultivation of the mind (diagôgên) is not a thing which is proper for children or the young of a tender age’; (6) 1339b14: ‘In which of the three ways previously distinguished does [music] act – the way of education [or the giving of tone to the character], or that of amusement, or that of cultivation of the mind (diagôgên)?’

5

6

7

One will find many instances (far too many to cite here) of the view expressed by Spariosu (1991: 225): ‘As a rule, diagôgê is translated as “cultivation of the mind” and indeed, in the Politics, the term usually refers to intellectual or cultural diversion …’ (trans. Jowett). For example, Rackham, the Loeb translator of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, adopts the same view of diagôgê: ‘The term διαγωγή, ‘pastime’, is idiomatically used of the pursuits of cultured leisure-serious conversation, music, the drama.’ (Politics footnote (a) on page 650). Aristotle himself repeatedly has to qualify it, such as when he says that one of the uses of music is ‘diagôgê for the purpose of entertainment and relaxation of tension’ and, in another passage, that the reason music was included in the

Notes

195

curriculum was as ‘diagôgê for the purpose of scholê’ (see Pol. 1341b40 and 1338a22 respectively). 8 Eth. Nic. 1177a9 (also 1176b12). 9 Rackham translates along the same lines: ‘Nor yet moreover is it suitable to assign intellectual entertainment (diagôgên) to boys and to the young; for a thing that is an end does not belong to anything that is imperfect.’ 10 Arist. Hist. Anim. 534a11 and 589a17. 11 One could go further afield and cite passages from even Christian writers such as St Basil who, in a letter (94.1.42), writes of arts that contribute to ‘a decorous way of life’ (pros euschêmona biou diagôgên) or from his brother, St Gregory of Nyssa, who exhorts us to pray so that we may achieve a likeness to the ‘heavenly way of life’ (tês ouranias diagôgês) (De oratione dominica 276.21). 12 A few more instances: in the Republic (344e2) Socrates asks Thrasymachus ‘do you think attempting to define a way of living (biou diagôgên) one’s life an insignificant thing, whereby each of us could lead a way of life (diagomenos) that is the most advantageous to live?’ In the Republic (558a 2) Socrates, after describing the liberties available to a citizen in a democracy, asks Adeimantus if ‘this way of life (diagôgê) is not divinely sweet and pleasant?’ Elsewhere (Tht. 174b1) he speaks of the person who searches for true being and ‘whose way of life (diagousi) is philosophy’. 13 The passage (Barker [1946] translation) is given for reference. The lines in double quotes are from Homer:   “Such are they who alone should be called to the bountiful banquet”, and continuing (after a mention of various guests) with the words,   “With them they call a minstrel, to pleasure all men with his music”, Again, in another passage, Odysseus is made to say that music is the best of pastimes when men are all merry, and  “They who feast in the hall lend their ears to the minstrel in silence, sitting in order due.” 14 Od. 8.559. 15 The word is cognate with the verb harpazô, which means to seize, snatch, to rob or abduct. 16 Eth. Nic. 1095b6–8: In matters of conduct ‘the principle is the “that” [i.e. the correctness of the action] and if this be sufficiently apparent, there will be no need in addition to search for the “why”, because a person [who has been nurtured well] has, or can easily acquire, these principles.’ 17 Schoen-Nazzaro (1978: 270): ‘When music establishes a suitable emotional order in the listener, it can bring enjoyment beyond that found in other

196 Notes imitations. Not only will a man be pleased by seeing the relation between the imitation and the reality, but he will also delight in contemplating the suitability of the emotion imitated. He has added pleasure in realizing that he is being moved in a way which is in tune with the feelings of a virtuous man …’ The ‘intellectual enjoyment of music is beyond the grasp of children. Musical education can only prepare children for the intellectual enjoyment they will have when they grow up …’ 18 Pol. 134016a–18 (trans. Rackham): ‘there is obviously nothing that it is more needful to learn and become habituated to than to judge correctly and to delight in virtuous characters and noble actions’. 19 Pol. 1340b35–39 (trans. Rackham): ‘it is therefore proper for the pupils when young actually to engage in the performances, though when they get older they should be released from performing, but be able to judge what is beautiful and enjoy it rightly because of the study in which they engaged in their youth.’ 20 Zeno, the founder of their School, taught that friendship between the wise is complete and all-encompassing and that it had none of the characteristics of impersonal utility friendships. Zeno and other Stoics described it as an intense involvement of the wise who are friends only between themselves and the gods. The ties were deemed to be so powerful that this friendship, according to Zeno, is nurtured by Erôs – the one who ‘prepares the way for homonoia’ (Ath. Deipn. 13.12.3). This is a form of friendship that is clearly not possible for an entire citizen body, since erôs in its intensity can only be shared between lovers or as it is here between a few wise men (Stob. Anth. 2.7.11m.32-33). Enmity and mutual injury describe the relations between base persons, which comprise virtually all of humankind, because they not share in this wisdom (Clem. Al. Strom. 2.9.42.2.2-3). Thus the Stoics rejected the notion that there could be reciprocation of benefits either between the unwise or between the unwise and the wise, for according to Chrysippus ‘those who are base are not benefited when they obtain these things, nor are they well treated …’ (SVF 3.672). 21 Cic. Fin. 5.65. 22 Cic. Off. 1.59. 23 Cic. Rep. 2.69.7-19. 24 Take for example the instructions of Apostle Peter (Epistle 1.3.8.1) that the faithful ‘should be homophrones’ and then he issues imperative commands: ‘Do not return evil for evil … Stop the tongue from evil [words] … Avoid evil [deeds] …’ 25 A few more examples: Psalm 82.6.1 announces the evil alliance that has: ‘devised a unanimous plan (en homonoia)’ against the people of Israel and its God and it

Notes

197

calls upon God to destroy them. When the nations created an ‘evil conspiracy’ (homonoia ponêrias, Solomon 10.5.1), they were punished by God who derailed their accord by creating a medley of different languages between them. In Solomon 18.9.2, the true believers recited in ‘like-mindedness’ (en homonoia) the Law and the others, the unbelievers, were punished with death. A similar yet more refined transformation of homonoia into a union resting on belief in the Law, as given in the Torah, is to be found in the works of Philo Judaeus. 26 Typical translations of homophronas are: of ‘one-mind’ (West and Lombardo), ‘who are harmonious spirits’ (Loeb translation, Hugh G. Evelyn-White), being ‘the same in heart’ (Lekatsa translation in Modern Greek). 27 Cic. Rep. 3.23.8-13. 28 These are: Iliad 22.263: ὁμόφρονα θυμὸν ἔχουσιν; Odyssey 6. 181: καὶ ὁμοφροσύνην ὀπάσειαν ἐσθλήν; 6.183: οὐ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ γε κρεῖσσον καὶ ἄρειον, ἢ ὅθ’ ὁμοφρονέοντε νοήμασιν οἶκον ἔχητον ἀνὴρ ἠδὲ γυνή; 9. 456: εἰ δὴ ὁμοφρονέοις ποτιφωνήεις τε γένοιο εἰπεῖν, ὅππῃ κεῖνος ἐμὸν μένος ἠλασκάζει; 15.198:  ἥδε δ’ ὁδὸς καὶ μᾶλλον ὁμοφροσύνῃσιν ἐνήσει. 29 For example: Helene Foley (‘Penelope as Moral Agent’): ‘Most important, in Odysseus’ mind the ideal couple shares the same mental outlook (6.180–85). Homophrosynê (like-mindedness) is the quality most to be desired in a marriage. A husband and wife homophroneonte noêmasin (like-minded in their thoughts) are a grief to foes and a delight to well-wishers.’ 30 The word being used for ‘compact’ or ‘agreement’ is harmonaôn, the same word from which harmony is derived in English. The verb harmozô means to ‘fit together’ ‘to join’ and is cognate with other words implying some type of joining together, such as arthron (joint), harmos (fastenings), and is the same root for ‘arm’ in English. Autenrieth defines the word harmoniê, which appears at Odyssey 5.248, as: ‘the bands, slabs, one side flat, the other curved, serving to bind together the raft of Odysseus’, and this helps to illuminate our passage (Il. 22.255) in which it takes on the figurative meaning of a ‘bond’ or a ‘compact’. 31 The word that Achilles uses for agreement in this verse is sunêmosunas, which is derived from the verb (suniêmi) whose meaning is to ‘bring together (especially in hostile ways)’, and in its middle voice (suniemai) ‘agree, covenant’. 32 In Homer homophrosunê is both affective and intellectual. In this regard, we can speculate that Homer in all likelihood would have disagreed with Democritus who held that ‘homophrosunê creates friendship’ (Fr. 186), for it would be more correct to say that homophrosunê is friendship. The problem is this: If indeed Democritus is correct and homophrosunê creates friendship then it must be the case that either homophrosunê is not affective since its function is to create

198 Notes affective ties or it is some type of emotion but not that of friendship. This latter possibility we can reject because it bears no resemblance to any other emotion save that of friendly feeling. If it is not affective then it must be some type of intellectual capacity which when repeatedly exercised between two persons is productive of friendship. But how can an intellectual property become an emotion? This appears to be a rare case in which the Poet trumps a Pre-Socratic philosopher one of whose purposes was to correct and reform the moral tenets of epic poetry. 33 Lattimore, ‘to think like us’; ‘to think like me’, Maronitis. 34 In the verses quoted the first homophrosunê is usually rendered so as to convey the meaning of ‘harmony’ between the married couple while the second instance of homophrosunê is taken to mean some type of agreement between the husband wife, either in mind or in both mind and heart. Let us take these renderings, one at a time. ‘Agreement in all things’ simply will not do. Experience does not allow us to conceive that it is possible for two independent persons who enter into a compact with respect to their household to ever be same-minded in all things. The division of labour and diversity of knowledge and skills and interests makes this impossible. Socrates remarks in the Alcibiades I (126e–127b) that if it is the case that only those who have common knowledge about shared activities can be like-minded, then those activities that are carried out solely by men or solely by women, in which neither the activity nor the knowledge is shared, then in these cases, there can be no homonoia. Yet, at the same time he reminds Alcibiades that homonoia is generally thought to exist where the cooperating parties do not meddle in each other’s affairs. These paradoxes indicate that the notion of homonoia as ‘like-mindedness’ probably existed in Socrates’ times and that these mental puzzles were meant to free one of such a notion. To these brain twisters one might add the following. If a couple were to agree to live a spendthrift or dissolute life or that they should join a cult, would any of these agreements lead to their happiness? Plato points out this flaw, stating that homonoia is not ‘same-mindedness’ (homodoxia) because often ‘having the same opinions results in something harmful, though he agreed that friendship is good and is always the work of justice’ (Cleit. 409e4–10). Greek tragedy is filled with cases of ‘same-minded’ friendships which turn out to be evil. Euripides’ Medea and Sophocles’ Philoctetes are cases in point. 35 The two words opaseian and esthlên (opazô = make to follow and esthlos = brave stout, noble, useful) are of the very essence, since what Odysseus wishes for Nausicaa is a household in which homophrosunê will have noble and advantageous outcomes. The word esthlos usually means ‘noble’ and ‘brave’ but

Notes

199

often carries with it the hue of having utility, such as when Patroclos sprinkles ‘soothing and useful (esthla) medicines’ on a warrior’s wounds (11.831) or when Diomedes receives ‘useful information’ (esthlas aggelias) from a captive (10.448). 36 The noble character of homophrosunê could not be projected onto a democratic city in which the friendship had to involve friendship between all classes. Also the class biases tied to archaic meanings of esthlos (‘good, noble, fine’) were inappropriate. One example suffices: Plutarch, in his Life of Themistocles, states that Themistocles gave the following reply to those who looked down on his plebeian background because ‘he could not tune the lyre and did not know how to play the harp [marks of aristocratic upbringing of an esthlos]’. What he did know is that ‘he received a city which was small and undistinguished and rendered one that was grand and glorious’ (2.4.4-6). Furthermore, it was not at all evident what homophrosunê’s utility nature might be for an entire city or what types of values would nurture and sustain it. On homonoia in general see Kalimtzis (2000) chapter 4. 37 In the Laws however Plato clearly shows himself to be Aristotle’s teacher in this matter when the Athenian states that regarding the curriculum of the philosophically minded guardians who will be recruited to the governing council: ‘it is not easy to find out what they should learn nor will it be easy to find someone who can be our teacher … it will be futile to give written rules [regarding these studies] (968d3–6).

VI: Otium: Withdrawal for Action and Duty 1

2 3

The meaning is not original to the Stoics. We already find scholas (Pol. 1313b3) as possibly meaning places for intellectual activity in Aristotle when he states that tyrants prohibit scholas and syllogous (assemblies). Cribiore, p. 20. The following are examples taken from Epictetus’ Discourses: 1.29.34.1 ‘some youngster who leaves the school (apo scholês)…’ 1.29.57.2 ‘so that we may not use old examples in the school (en tê scholêi)…’ 1.30.2.3 ‘what were you saying in the school (en tê scholêi)…’ 2.8.15.1 ‘when we send a youngster out from the school on some errands (ek tês scholês) …’ 2.13.21.2 ‘what else did you study in the school (en tê scholêi)?’

200 Notes 2.21.15.1 ‘no one benefits at the school’ 2.21.22.6 ‘bring [your mind] undisturbed into the school (eis tên scholên).’ 3.21.11.1 ‘this person lectures (scholên echei) why shouldn’t I?’ 3.23.30.2 ‘the philosopher’s school (scholeio) is a medical clinic …’ 4.1.142.2 ‘Philosopher, you say other things in the school (en tê scholêi).’ 4.5.37.4 ‘Lions in school (en scholêi), but foxes outside.’ 4 Diog. Laert. 7.37.6: ho diadexamenos tên scholên. 5 Diog. Laert. 7.185.10; 7.41.4. 6 Ath. Deipn. 5.42.2; Plut. Luc. 42.1.5. 7 Epict. Disc. 1.29.34.1–36.1 8 Epict. Disc. 3.20.9. and 3.21.3. That the lectures have been digested is shown in the active display of Reason’s control over the responses to the external impressions, just as ‘athletes show their shoulders as the result of having trained and dieted’. 9 Epict. Disc. 1.11.39.1 and 4.138.4. 10 As Marcus Aurelius puts it (4.18.1.1–2): ‘How much inner peace (euscholian) is gained by anyone who does not see and does not concern himself about what their neighbour has done or thought, but only what he has done himself …’ And again (4.24.1.6): if you abandon the unnecessary ‘you will be more at ease (euscholôteros) and more unperturbed’. 11 In this condition it is acceptable for a student to engage in learned studies: You possess golden objects, but your logic, your dogmas, your assents [to the sense impressions], your impulses and appetites are made of clay. When I have brought these into accordance with nature, why should I not take up logic? For [then] I have the right disposition (euscholô) for leisure, [for] my mind is not distracted. (3.9.18.5–19.3)

In another powerful exhortation he declares that the student should leave theoretical subjects aside as long as he is affected by passions and to take them up only after having advanced to the unperturbed state of euscholia: Poor fellow, don’t you want to leave aside the things that are nothing to you? These must be left for those who can study them free of turmoil, those who are permitted to say “I am not subject to anger, to pain, to envy... I am in leisure (euscholô); I have tranquility [within me]. Let us consider how to deal with equivocal premises … let us consider how, when we adopt a hypothesis, we can avoid an absurd conclusion.” [Only] to these persons are [such studies] appropriate. (3.2.16.5–18.1, emphasis added)

Notes

201

12 Epict. Disc. (3.23.30.1–2): ‘Gentlemen, the philosopher’s School (scholeion) is a hospital.’ 13 The verb that Epictetus uses to convey various senses of ‘withdrawing from’ or ‘giving something up’ is aphistêmi. The LSJ gives the following meanings: ‘in the passive stand away from or aloof from’. 14 Epict. Disc. (3.10.7–8): ‘What, then, must a [philosophizing] man say to himself at each of the harsh difficulties [that he may encounter] ? “It was for this that I was training, it was for this purpose that I applied myself.” God says to you, “Give me proof that you have competed lawfully, if you ate whatever was necessary, if you exercised, if you obeyed your trainer.” And later, when faced with the moment for action, you become soft?’ Also 4.5.28.2. 15 Off. book 1.18 and 19; 70 and 71. 16 Elsewhere (1.22.15.1) Epictetus writes that attention to the indifferents (things outside our control) ‘is the cause of wars, civil wars, tyrannies, conspiracies’. 17 Epict. Disc. 4.4.25.4–26.1 and 4.25.4–27.1. 18 A little further down Epictetus emphasizes that it is not the noise one hears but the judgement one holds about the noise (4.4.27.2–28.5): ‘For a man who loves his fellow men what pleasanter spectacle is there than the sight of many men? We see herds of horses or cattle with pleasure; we are delighted when we see many ships; when we thus see many people we are distressed? “But they deafen me with their shouting.” So it is your hearing that is being bothered. What does that have to do with you? Is your power to make use of your impressions affected? And who prevents you from making use of your power of desire and aversion, impulse and refusal according to nature? What noise is capable of doing that?’ 19 For these developments see L. Russo, The Forgotten Revolution. 20 Off. 1.77.6: ‘For never did the republic face greater danger nor was there ever a more profound peace (otium).’ 21 Seneca will say of Vatia, a person who was ‘known for nothing else but his leisure’, that, in truth, what he knew was not how to live but ‘how to lie concealed’, indicating that he used the privacy of his villa as a curtain to conceal his dissolute life (Ep. 55.3). 22 Wirszubski (1954: 4) writes: The word otium has always been known to denote, inter alia, peace, and ‘pax atque otium’ appears as a household phrase in Plautus. Although sometimes used as the opposite of bellum, otium seems more often to signify internal tranquillity as distinct from peace on the frontiers. It is also to be noted that in some of the instances where otium is the

202 Notes opposite of bellum, the latter, as the context or circumstances imply, is to be understood as civil war. The meaning of otium is well brought out by the fact that it is, on the one hand, associated with pax, tranquillitas, quies, concordia, and salus, while, on the other hand, it is opposed to tumultus, seditio, and novae res. Thus it appears that otium, in the sense of commune otium, is conceived, by Cicero at any rate, as public tranquillity born of undisturbed political order. 23 There exists an extensive literature on Roman suspicions of otium and its effect on bringing about moral decay. For a summary of the literature see Brian Vickers (1990), “Leisure and Idleness in the Renaissance: The Ambivalence of Otium”, Renaissance Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1. He cites, for instance, the otium entry in the Thesaurus Lingua Latinae: ‘This account of the spread of meanings of otium, based on more than a thousand instances, is strikingly different from other dictionary entries in giving priority to the pejorative associations. Otium is to be understood most frequently in opposition to the active life expected of a Roman citizen, when it connotes idleness, luxury, the “easy life” in a context where the mark of the good man is to be active, and is therefore treated with vituperation’ (5). 24 Livius, Ab urbe condita 23.18.12.2. In Ep. 51 (5–6, trans. Gummere, Loeb edition) Seneca writes: ‘A single winter relaxed Hannibal’s fibre; his pampering in Campania took the vigour out of that hero who had triumphed over Alpine snows. He conquered with his weapons, but was conquered by his vices. We too have a war to wage, a type of warfare in which there is allowed no rest (otium) or furlough.’ 25 Sest. 2.5. 26 Edmunds (1987: 8) states that ‘In the fifth-century literature, the noun tarachê is a standard way to designate civic discord.’ It is ‘the opposite of an ethical attitude that can be summed up in a word hêsuchia’ (20). However, one has to be careful in drawing facile parallels between Greek and Roman political terms. The causal factors that were tied to the Greek quietude-disorder terms were related to views about injustice spreading from the ethical flaw of polupragmosunê (‘meddlesomeness’) while quietude was in part attributed to apragmosunê (doing one’s own thing, not meddling) and hence apragmosunê could serve as a synonym for hêsuchia (Ehrenberg 1947: 47). These ethical factors that were held to be principal causes of political stability or internecine strife are not part of Cicero’s views on the causes of sedition. 27 De Grazia for example writes that Seneca ‘comes close to the contemplation of Aristotle and Epicurus’ (19).

Notes

203

28 On theories of civil conflict (stasis) and constitutional transformations (metabolai politeiôn) see Plato’s books 8 and 9 of the Republic and Aristotle’s books 5 and 6 of the Politics. For discussion of these theories see Kalimtzis 2002. 29 See also Letters to Friends 1.9.21.17. 30 Cicero does not leave this end abstract. The entire passage in which he puts forth the ‘bases’ or the ‘components’ for otium with honour is given below: Moreover, this peace with honour (otiosae dignitatis) has the following bases or components, which the civil community’s foremost men must watch over and protect even at the risk of their own lives as citizens: the sources of religious scruple, the auspices, the magistrates’ formal powers, the senate’s authority, positive law, the ways of our ancestors, the law courts, the authority to pass judgement, the validity of one’s word, the provinces, our allies, the glory of our dominion, the military, the treasury. (Sest. 98.10–14)

For the scholarly literature on this phrase and for an extended analysis of alternative interpretations the reader is referred to Wirszubski (1954). 31 Private otium is a grave danger in that the elites in their retreats can hide from the norms regulating their public behaviour. There is no guarantee that their leisure will not succumb to the pleasures of inertia, sloth, softness or voluptuousness, the type of idleness (otiosum) which the Romans contemptuously ascribed to the ‘Greeklings’. Cicero makes this charge against Clodios, his nemesis, who sent him into exile (Sest. 110.10): ‘he himself wanted to be reckoned as a “Greekling of leisure” and suddenly devoted himself to the study of literature’. 32 Sest. 99–100. 33 ‘They believe that they have been born for pleasure from their very nature. That is, if those who are drawn to pleasures, and have surrendered to the charm of sin … and are not interested in the affairs of the republic, let them be content to enjoy the ease of life (otio) that has come to them from the toils of strong men’(Sest. 138.14). 34 Sest. 139.2. 35 Cicero clearly considers himself to be one of these men. He says of himself that, given his talents, he could have withdrawn and have benefitted from the fruits of private leisure (ex otio) and devoted himself to literary studies, ‘yet I could not hesitate to expose myself to the severest storms, and I might almost say, even to thunderbolts, for the sake of the safety of my fellow citizens’, for the sake of ‘security (otium ) for all the rest’ (Rep. 1.7.11). 36 Off. 3.1.9–10, trans. Miller (Loeb edition). 37 Rep. 1.1.10–11, trans. Miller (Loeb edition).

204 Notes 38 Cicero is ready to acknowledge that great minds may be drawn to theoretical pursuits rather than to a life of action, and he is willing to show respect for the contribution of rare intellectuals whose theories have benefited human society. He praises the men who have the ability to ‘participate in a gathering of most learned men, finding delight in their discoveries and writings’ (Rep. 1.28, trans. Miller). But he qualifies this praise when he states that the impulse to act politically, on behalf of the common good, is a fact of nature and hence prior. 39 Political activity for the preservation of the state is the closest to the divine (Rep. 1.12, 3.4). The unity of the state is more important than contemplating the nature of celestial orbs (1.32) and in any case philosophers who contemplate these wondrous things are impotent when it comes to preventing evil people from taking over the state (1.10–11). These thinkers, in fact, seem to have devoted their leisure for the benefit of those engaged in public service (Off. 1.156.6). Private otium should rightfully serve negotium, and the aim of negotium is the otium of the state. 40 Phil. 10.3.6 and Rep. 2.43.17. 41 Cicero Fam. (1.8.4.1-9) written in 55 bc during the Triumvirate’s ascent to power. The whole situation of the Senate and the republic has been transformed in its entirety. We must prefer otium (civic peace) because those who are in control of political affairs seem that they will prevail. If of course people can patiently endure their political power, there is no reason for us [any longer] to think about the Consular dignity of the courageous and persevering Senator … 42 See J. de Romilly The Rise and Fall of States According to Greek Authors. 43 A flute player amidst a noisy throng or children being taught their letters in the streets remain unaffected by the clatter around them: ‘and not a single one of them prevented anyone else from giving his full attention [to his work] and performing the task at hand’ (Dio Chrys., Or. 20.9–10). 44 Ot. 3.1.4–5: ‘Because if someone always follows the view of a single person, then he is not in the Curia but in a faction.’ 45 The view of Seneca as a loyal Stoic is put forth, among others, by Cooper and Procopé in their introduction to their translation of De otio. The authors state that Seneca ‘advocates the private life in terms of what the Stoic wise man, the fully perfected human being, rather than ordinary mortals like … Seneca himself, should be doing’ (168). Indicative is their rendering of the title as On the Private Life which, from the outset, skews the translation to support the view of a Stoic Seneca arguing for withdrawal to a private life in order to contemplate. 46 Sest. 104.9. Also (110.16) when Cicero points his finger at Clodius and asks his audience if there has ‘ever been any sedition (seditio) in which he was not the

Notes

205

leading man’, the word seditio is an accusation against a particular person who is fomenting civil war against otium. 47 Clem. 1.1.8. 48 Clem. 4.1.4-6. 49 The following are typical: a soul in ‘fractious turmoil (seditio) must be soothed’ (Ep. 56.8.2); ‘we disorder [our] life with turbulence (seditiosi) (Ira. 3.42.4.1); the same thing being loved by two people ‘becomes a source of discord’ (seditionis) (Ira. 3.34.2.6); Livius Drusus, a ‘troublesome boy’ (puero seditiosus), grows up to become a danger to the republic. 50 Sen. Cons. 1.3.7. 51 Sen. Brev. 17.6.6. Seditio is at times used as a descriptive term for civil discords (domestica seditio) which cause exiles (Con. 7.4.4), or the seditio ‘which was constantly present’ in Carthage (Ot. 8.2.6), but none of these refer to any public conflict in his own time. 52 Excessive leisure (nimio otio) weakens already weak natures and makes them susceptible to violent motion and, hence, anger (Cons. 10.3.1). ‘Indolent leisure’ (iners otium) makes one weary of life and dulls the urge to survey the universe and the divine (78.26.3). 53 We will find the same principle underlying the many Freudian approaches to leisure. In Seneca it is the sapiens who sets the example and stands firmly unaffected by the evils of the mob. Freud develops a theory of civilization on the same template of pervasive evil. In his Future of an Illusion he writes: It is just as impossible to do without control of the mass by a minority as it is to dispense with coercion in the work of civilization. For the masses are lazy and unintelligent; they have no love of instinctual renunciation, they are not to be convinced of its inevitability by argument, and the individuals support each other in giving full play to their unruliness. It is only by the influence of individuals who can set an example, whom the masses recognize as their leaders, that they can be induced to submit to the labours and renunciations on which the existence of culture depends. 54 See Sen. Ira. 2.8.3. 55 In one of his letters Seneca states: We display madness not only in private but also in public life. We curb manslaughter and individual murders. But why are there wars and the much praised slaughtering of entire tribes? Neither greed nor cruelty knows any measure. And these things, as long as they occur hidden away and each one done separately are [thought to be] less harmful and less monstrous:

206 Notes The Acts of the Senate and the plebeians impose ferocious deeds and mandate publicly things that are forbidden to individuals.’ (Ep. 95.30–31) 56 We can see how close to the moderns Seneca was when we quote Hume on the same issue: ‘in contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave’. (Part I, Essay VI Section 1 Of the Independency of Parliament). 57 See Wimmer (2012: 24). This study sparkles with insights that stem from the author’s view that on the issue of otium Seneca wrote first and foremost as a Roman statesman, and not as a disciple of Greek philosophical trends. 58 This was time-worn Stoic doctrine. Human habitations were held to be human agglomerations or heaps and not a true society. Dio Chrysostom, in several passages of his 36th Oration, references the dogmas of the early Stoa concerning the polis, wherein no earthly polis can be called a city: ‘just as no one who is lacking in reason is called human, so too no city [is called a city], if it chances to be lacking in law’ (36.20.6–7). The term city should only be used for the one that has ‘utmost prudence, and is adorned with a noble Kingdom under Law with complete friendship and concord’ and this is what the wisest lawgiver ordains, he that is ‘the oldest ruler of heaven and master of all Being’ who ‘offers his own administration as the paradigm for happiness and blessed well-being’ (36.31.8– 32.5). Clement of Alexandria, a Christian theologian of the late second century ad, also cites the Stoic doctrine (Strom. 4.26.172.2.1–3): ‘For the Stoics claim that heaven is the polis in the truest sense while the cities here on earth are not [true cities]. They are said to be, but they are not. For the [true] city is morally good and its government is well-ordered and [composed of] a multitude governed by law…’ 59 The noun iugum (yoke) is associated with images of humiliation, defeat and bondage. 60 Maclean, D., et al. (2005: 33). 61 An example of the meaning of authority and power embedded in exousia (which is derived from exesti) is shown in Thucydides when he reports Diodotos saying that ‘exousia (political power) brings desire for a greater share of things due to hubris and arrogance’ (3.45.4.4). 62 One of the meanings of pars in the plural (partes) is ‘to execute one’s duty’, ‘work, duty’. Basore (1932) in the Loeb edition translates: ‘Are you deserting your party?’ Though ‘party’ might be meant here, what is being emphasized is the Stoic doctrine of dutiful public service and not Seneca’s loyalty to the Stoics per se. Seneca finds it important to point out that he is beholden to no specific philosophical school, for that would make him a factionary. (Ot. 3.1.4–5). 63 Also Prov. (2.7.1): the good man ‘even if he has fallen he fights upon his knees’.

Notes

64

65

66

67

207

The primacy of action is heralded throughout Seneca’s writings. In the work cited he poses the rhetorical question: ‘to what industrious man is not leisure a punishment?’ (2.2.5–2.3.1). In the most oft-cited translations (Basore; Cooper and Procopé) this passage is rendered in a manner that makes the subject of the sentence not this leisure, which ‘man must examine’ so that it (i.e. the leisure) might be useful, but rather that man must be useful – that ‘he’ be of benefit to the many, or to a few, or to himself. No doubt this is a principle that Seneca would agree with, but it is not what the text states. What is being explored is how otium is to be spent so that it can be useful to others and not how man, in the abstract, may be useful to others through use of otium. Further down Marcus Aurelius asks himself whether he is ‘distracted by the external things that befall him’. When he next advises himself to ‘provide scholê’ to himself he clearly does not mean that he furnish himself with more free time, but to ‘stop roaming around’ and to avoid the state of others who foolishly ‘labour in in the busyness of life without any aim that might guide every impulse and ever idea towards it’ (2.7.1.1–5). Seneca’s view of scholê for action and duty now finds its articulation in Greek. See, for instance, Luck (2000: 75): ‘The word sapientia appears for the first time in the 3rd century bc, at a time when Greek philosophy already colors the Latin vocabulary. We have no literary testimonies for sapientia that are not influenced by Greek σοφία. To find out something about the etymology of the word we have to appeal to linguistics … The word sapientia is derived from sapio, sapere. Sapio means “I taste, I have a sense of taste”. It can also mean “I smell”. It first denoted the function of smell and taste and later the functions of all the 5 senses. Later it came to mean I judge correctly as well (perhaps from the normal functioning of the senses). The meaning of “I am wise” reflects the later meanings affected by the importation of σοφία into Latin.’ As Aristotle’s definition of the sophos shows, the Roman sapiens bears no resemblance to its Greek philosophical counterpart: [The sophos] must not only know those things that follow from his principles, but also he must know the truth concerning these principles. Thus it follows that sophia must combine ‘mind’ (nous) with scientific knowledge, a scientific knowledge that stands at the head and is of the most exalted things. For it is absurd for someone to believe that political and practical wisdom are the greatest [types of knowledge], if man indeed is not the loftiest thing in the universe. (Eth. Nic. 6, 1141a16–22)

68 Seneca writes: ‘There is no reason for you to say, Serenus, as your habit is, that

208 Notes this wise man of ours is nowhere to be found. He is not a fiction of us Stoics, a sort of phantom glory of human nature, nor is he a mere conception, the mighty semblance of a thing unreal, but we have shown him in the flesh just as we delineate him, and shall show him – though perchance not often, and after a long lapse of years only one. For greatness which transcends the limit of the ordinary type is produced but rarely. But this self-same Marcus Cato … I almost think surpasses even our exemplar’ (Cons. 7.1, trans. Basore, emphasis added). 69 ‘Leisure without learning is death and a burial for the living man’ (Sen. Ep. 82.4).To withdraw without philosophical effort to remove false opinions will be in vain for the turmoil will follow the person wherever he goes, wherever he tries to withdraw and hide. 70 Lucan, Seneca’s nephew, in his epic poem The Civil War, has Brutus exalt Cato along lines that Seneca reserves for the sapiens (2.242–4). Faith in virtue, which has long ago been driven from all lands and has been exiled, has found its support in him: such was the unbending personality of the indomitable Cato – to serve the world, and to maintain measure, and to follow nature, and to consume time from his life for his country and to believe that he was born not for himself but for the whole world. (2.380–383) 71 The word hyperousion appears to have been first introduced by the Neo-Platonists. Plotinus probably paved the way with his frequent use of the preposition huper (‘over, above, beyond’) when he refers to the One, as the ‘essence beyond’ (epekeina ousias), who defies all predication. We thus find hyperkalos = beyond good and huper to zên = beyond life. Hyperousios appears, perhaps for the first time, in an anonymous commentary In Platonis Parmenidem (c:2.1), which some scholars attribute to Plotinus’ student Porphyry. Later, it is widely used by other Neo-Platonists such as Proclus and Damascius (the last Scholarch of the Academy). Among the Church Fathers we find the word already in Athanasius, and later in Cyril of Alexandria (fifth century) and many others, so that by the time we come to Dionysius Areopagite hyperousia has become such a staple for God that it appears well over 100 times in his works.

VII: The Disappearance of Scholê 1 2

Wilson (2014: 62). Mos. 2.211–212. The true philosophy has nothing to do with study of externals:

Notes

209

‘not that [philosophy] fashioned by the wordsmiths and sophists who export [their] dogmas and syllogisms as some other commodity for purchase’. 3 Gig. 52.2. This word, enscholazô, appears only once in Aristotle and is absent in Plato. In Aristotle it simply means a place, in this case the upper part of the agora, which is set aside for passing one’s time (enscholazein) for necessary business transactions (Pol. 1331b12). In Philo it is the dwelling place of Reason within the soul. 4 Op. 128.8. 5 For pejorative uses in which Philo uses scholê to describe laziness or an idle condition in which persons are drawn to evil and mischief see: Mos. 1.89.3 (bad habits of relaxation that bring softness), 1.322.1 (laziness); Spec. leg. 2.101.5 (addicted to idleness), 3.93.2 (idle time used for plotting evil); Prob. 69.3 (pernicious idleness); Flac. 33.2 (the idle mob), 37.1 (delinquent youths), 41.3 (habitual idleness); Legat. 128.1 (time spent in idleness). 6 In Plato’s and Aristotle’s writings the praos is the person who has brought excellence to his thumos, that is, to the spirited part of his soul, to the seat of motivation where the passions and anger reside. This thumos is the guardian of justice and for this reason Plato devotes a large part of his Republic to the education and training that will bring praotês into being. However one chooses to translate their uses of praotês the one word that will certainly not do is ‘meekness’. 7 Philo Mos. 2.279.1–2 ‘the gentlest … and calmest’ (praotatos … kai hêmerôtatos). 8 Philo. Mos. (2.280.1): The coupling of the gentlest of men with an order to slaughter transgressors marked a complete break with the Hellenic concept of praotês. This new sense of the praos as both meek before God and a zealot in the service of His wrath was to guide the Church Fathers. See St Basil, Against the Wrathful (31.368.20-47). 9 On the 45th Psalm 29.429.1–19. 10 St Basil and Gregory of Nyssa’s exhortations to prayer probably also owe a debt to Plutarch, an author whom the Church Fathers knew very well and from whom they borrowed on occasion to enhance the imagery of their orations. The themes of no distraction, freedom from all preoccupation and withdrawal in scholê in order to devote one’s full attention to prayer as the highest of duties, are to be found in Plutarch’s Numa. Numa, he states, ‘used his scholê for himself not for pleasure and money-making but to serve the gods and to contemplate through Reason their nature and power’ (3.6.4–7); he would pass his time near the temple of Vesta ‘engaged in sacred functions, teaching priests or engaged in his leisure (scholazôn) in the better understanding of the divinities’ (14.1.6) and he ‘believed that the citizens must neither hear nor see anything regarding the Divinities in a

210 Notes

11

12 13

14

15

careless or inattentive way, but have scholê from all other preoccupations to turn their mind’s attention to the religious ceremony as to the highest duty’ (14.2.7). Vickers (2008): ‘Although later Greeks, especially bilingual writers like Plutarch and Polybius, might use scholê in the pejorative sense of “idleness” or “time-wasting” this is a kind of back-formation from the negative side of otium’ (6). To my knowledge, there is no special study on this matter, but Plutarch’s Parallel Lives provides evidence of such importations of Roman otium into the language of scholê. Romulus and Remus ‘lived and passed their time in freedom, thinking that a life of ease (scholê) without toil was not fit for a free man …’ (Rom. 6.5.2). Pericles rids the city of its ‘busy-bodied leisured mob (scholên…ochlou)’ (Per. 11.6.2). Marcellus ‘filled [the Roman people] with leisure (scholê) and idle talk about art and artists’ (Marc. 21.6.8). Cato the Elder never falls into ‘inactivity and ease (scholê)’, but devotes his free time to public business (‘leisuring in public business’) and when he retires he ‘would leisure’ in farming [!] and the writing of books (Cat. Mai. 11.4.5, 8.16.1, and 24.11.10). These give but a flavor of what Vickers appropriately calls the ‘back-formation’ of otium meanings that were projected onto scholê. De oratione dominica. People are ‘forever preoccupied’ with the unnecessary (280.25); the man who prays for material goods is ‘preoccupied (ascholia) with the ephemerals’ (290.8); the root of so many evils is ‘preoccupation with the gullet’ (304.21); ‘worldly preoccupation’ is the evil hook of temptation (312.27); and the devil admonishes us ‘to preoccupy ourselves with the life of pleasure …’ (302.3). ‘Each devotes his whole self to what is at hand and forgets the work of prayer.’ ‘In a similar way other occupations, through care for material and earthly things, cut off the soul’s engagement with what is better and heavenly. It is for this reason that life is engulfed by sin.’ And a bit further down: ‘One who does not unite himself with God through prayer is separated from God. Therefore, it is necessary first to learn from the word of Scripture that we “must always pray and not grow weary” (Luke 18:1).’ Bishop Synesuis is close to the truth when he quotes Aristotle (from an unknown work) in support of his view that those Christians who came to truth through mystical apprehension had ‘no need of learning something, for they accomplish this by way of passion and disposition through which they become fit [for such immediate apprehension]. And this fitness is irrational … reason has no part in preparing it’ (Synesius, Dion, 8.41-45). Because Christian culture was able to make the disposition for mystical experience pervasive, the scholê that Synesius, and perhaps others, proposed as a middle course, namely, to arouse nous for contemplation of God in scholê, (Dion, 9.30), seems to have become a view with dwindling influence.

Bibliography Ackrill, J. L. (1980), ‘Aristotle on Eudaimonia’, in A. Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 15–33. Aeschylus (1926), Aeschylus, with an English Translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, in 2 vols. Vol. 2, Libation Bearers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann). Aeschylus (1960), The Libation Bearers, trans. Richard Lattimore, in D. Grene and R. Lattimore (eds), Greek Tragedies, Vol. 2 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press). Anastasiades, I. (2004), ‘Idealized ΣΧΟΛΗ and Disdain for Work: Aspects of Philosophy and Politics in Ancient Democracy’, The Classical Quarterly 54 (1): 58–79. André, J.-M. (1966), L’otium dans la vie morale et intellectuelle romaine des origines à l’époque augustéenne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). Ardley, G. (1967),‘The Role of Play in the Philosophy of Plato’, Philosophy 42 (161): 226–44. Aristotle (1957), Aristotelis Politica, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Aristotle (1957), Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea, ed. I. Bywater (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Aristotle (1957), Metaphysica, ed. W. Jaeger (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Autenrieth, G. (1987), A Homeric Dictionary (Norman: University of Oklahoma). Balme, M. (1984), ‘Attitudes to Work and Leisure in Ancient Greece’, Greece & Rome 31 (2): 140–52. Babiniotis, G. (2008, 3rd edn) Lexiko tês Neas Ellênikês Glôssas [Dictionay of Moodern Greek] (Athens: Kentro Lexilogias). Basil, Saint, Bishop of Caesarea (1974), Basileiou Kaisareias tou Megalou: Hapanta ta Erga, 1–10 [St. Basil the Great of Caesarea Collected Works, 1–10] (Thessaloniki: Paterikes Ekdoeseis Gregorios ho Palamas). Barker, E. (1946), The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Basore, J. W. (1932), Seneca: Moral Essays, 1–3, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Beekes, R. [with the assistance of L. van Beek] Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden: Brill).

212 Bibliography Blowers, P. M. (2012), ‘On the “Play” of Divine Providence in Gregory Nazianzen and Maximus the Confessor,’ in C. W. Beeley (ed.), Re-Reading Gregory of Nazianzus: Essays in History, Theology, and Culture (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America), 183–210. Bosman, P. (2015), ‘Ancient Debates on Autarkeia and our Global Impasse’, Phronimon 16 (1): 16–28. Broadie, S. (2007), Essays on Metaphysics and Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Burger, R. (1995), ‘Aristotle’s “Exclusive” Account of Happiness: Contemplative Wisdom as the Guise of the Political Philosopher’, in May Sim (ed.), The Crossroads of Norm in Nature: Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics and Metaphysics (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers). Camus, A. (2005), The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. J. O’Brien (London: Penguin Books). Cavallo, G. (2006), Lire à Byzance (Paris: Les Belles Lettres; Greek edition, Athens: Ekdoseis Agra). Chandler, T. (translator) (2012), ‘Seneca on Leisure’, Colloquy 23, Monash University. Available online: www.artsonline.monash.edu.au/ecps/colloquy/files/2012/11/ seneca.pd Clement of Alexandria (1995), Collected Works [Hapanta ta Erga] (Thessaloniki: Gregorios ho Palamas). Cooper, J. M. and J. F. Procopé (1995), Seneca: Moral and Political Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Cribiore, R. (1996), Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press). De Grazia, S. (1964), Of Time, Work, and Leisure (New York: Doubleday and Co.). Depew, D. (1991), ‘Politics, Music, And Contemplation’, in eds D. Keyt and F. Miller A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Inc.), 346–80. Dio Chrysostom (2006 [1940]), The Discourses in Five Volumes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Edmonds, J. (1931), Elegy and Iambus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Edmunds, L. (1987), Cleon, Knights, and Aristophanes’ Politics (Lanham, MD: University Press of America). Ehrenberg, V. (1947), ‘Polypragmosyne: A Study in Greek Politics’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 67: 46–67. Ellis, W. (1895), Aristotle’s Politics: A Treatise on Government (Manchester: George Routledge and Sons). Evelyn-White, H. G. (trans.) (1936), The Homeric Hymns and Homerica / Hesiod (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

Bibliography

213

Fagles, R. (1991, The Iliad, trans. R. Fagles, Intro. and Notes B. Knox (New York: Penguin Books). Frazer, R. M. (1983), The Poems of Hesiod: Translated with Introduction and Comments by R. M. Frazer (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press). Freud, S. (2013 [1928]), The Future of an Illusion, trans. W. D. Robson-Scott (New York: Horace Liveright). Goodale, T. and G. Godley (1988), The Evolution of Leisure: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives (State College, PA: Venture Pub.). Gregory of Nyssa (2011), Complete Works [Hapanta ta Erga] (Thessaloniki: Gregorios ho Palamas). Grimal, P. (1986), The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, trans A. R. Maxwell-Hyslop (New York: Basil Blackwell Ltd). Heer, C. de (1969), Μάκαρ – Ευδαίμων – Όλβιος – Ευτυχής: A Study of the Semantic Field Denoting Happiness in Ancient Greek to the End of the 5th Century B.C. (Amsterdam: Hakkert). Heidegger, M. (2014), Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. G. Fried and R. Polt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Heraclitus (2005), Homeric Problems, ed. and trans. D. Russell and D. Konstan (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature). Homer (1984), The Iliad, Translated by Robert Fitzgerald (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Huizinga, J. (1970 [1949]), Homo Ludens: A Study of Play-Element in Culture (London: Paladin). Hume, D. (1994), ‘Of the Independency of Parliament’, in K. Haakonssen (ed.), David Hume, Political Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Irwin, T. (1999), Aristotle, Nicomachean ethics: Translated with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary by Terence Irwin (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company). Isaacson, W. (2011), Steve Jobs (New York: Simon and Schuster). Jaeger, W. (1939–44) Paideia and the Ideals of Greek Culture, 1–3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Jowett, B. (1943), Aristotle’s Politics: Translated by Benjamin Jowett with an Introduction by Max Lerner (New York: The Modern Library, Random House). Kalimtzis, K. (2000), Aristotle on Political Enmity and Disease: An Inquiry into Stasis (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). Kalimtzis, K. (2013), ‘Aristotle on Schole and Nous as a Way of Life’, Organon 45: 35–41. Keynes, J. M. (1963 [1930]), ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’, in Essays in Persuasion (New York: W. W. Norton & Co.), 358–73. Lampe, G. (1961), A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

214 Bibliography Lattimore, R. (2007), The Odyssey of Homer (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics). Lear, J. (1988), Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Lewis, C. T. and Short, C. (1955), A Latin Dictionary: Revised… by Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Lidell, H. G. and R. Scott (1968), A Greek-English Lexicon: Revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones with the assistance of Roderick McKenzie (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Lombardo, S. (1993), Hesiod: Works and Days and Theogony (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co.). Lucan (1928), The Civil War, with an English Translation by J. D. Duff (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Luck, G. (2000), Ancient Pathways and Hidden Pursuits (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press). McLean, D., A. Hurd, N. Rogers (2005), Kraus’ Recreation and Leisure in Modern Society (Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers), 33. Magie, D. (1921), Historia Augusta (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library). Marcuse, H. (1978), The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics (Boston, MA: Beacon Press). Maronitis, D. (1996), Odusseia Rapsodies [The Odyssey Rhapsodies], 1–2 (Athens: Kastaniotes Publications). Miller, D. L. (2013 [1970]), Gods and Games: Toward a Theology of Play (Stillpoint Digital Press). Newman, W. L. (1887–1902), The Politics of Aristotle, 1–4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Nightingale, A. W. (2004), Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in its Cultural Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Oldfather, W. (2000 [1926]), Epictetus: The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, the Manual, and Fragments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Owens, J. (1981), ‘Aristotle on Leisure’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy: 713–23. Pieper, J. (1998), Happiness and Contemplation (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press). Pieper, J. (1999), In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity, trans. R. and C. Winston (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press). Plato (1958–72), Platonis Opera: Recognovit Brevique Adnotatione Critica Instruxit Ioannes Burnet, 1–5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Plato (1966), Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 1 (Phaedo), trans. H. North Fowler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

Bibliography

215

Plotinus (1969), The Enneads, trans. S. MacKenna (London: Faber and Faber). Plutarch (1975), Parallel Lives [Βίοι Παράλληλοι], 1–8 (Athens: Papyros). Plutarch (1995), Moralia [Ηθικά], 1–32 (Athens: Kaktos). Rackham, H. (1927), Aristotle’s Politics, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Ridley, M. (2015), ‘The Myth of Basic Science’, Wall Street Journal, 23 October. Romilly, J. de (1977), The Rise and Fall of States According to Greek Authors (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press). Ross, W. D. (1924), Aristotle’s Metaphysics: A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford: The Clarendon Press). Russo, L. (2000), The Forgotten Revolution: How Science was Born in 300 bc and Why it had to be Reborn (New York: Springer). Sakales I. (1985), Gregoriou tou Theologou Apanta ta Erga [Collected Works of Gregory [Nazianzus] the Theologian] (Thessaloniki: Paterikes Ekdoeseis Gregorios ho Palamas). Sakales, I. (2008), Dionusiou Areopagitou Suggrammata [Collected Works of Dionysius Areopagite] (Thessaloniki: Pournara Publications). Schoen-Nazzaro, M. B. (1978), ‘Plato and Aristotle on the Ends of Music’, Laval Théologique et Philosophique 34 (3): 261–73. Skidelsky, R. and E. Skidelsky (2012) How Much is Enough? Money and the Good Life (New York: Other Press). Spariosu, M. I. (1991), God of Many Names: Play, Poetry, and Power in Hellenic Thought from Homer to Aristotle (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Steel, S. (2014), The Pursuit of Wisdom and Happiness in Education: Historical Sources and Contemplative Practices (Albany, NY: SUNY Press). Stobaeus, I. (1995), Ioannes Stobaios Eklogai, Apophthegmata, Hupothekai [Anthologium] (Athens: Kaktos). Synesius, of Cyrene, Bishop of Ptolemais (1944), Synesii Cyrenensis Hymni et Opuscula, ed. N. Terzaghi (Rome: Typis Regiae Officinae Polygraphicae). Tredennick, H. (1933), Aristotle, The Metaphysics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Veblen, T. (1994 [1899]), The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Dover Publications). Weber, M. (1930), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. T. Parsons (London: Allen and Unwin). Weiner, R. (2000), Creativity and Beyond: Cultures, Values, and Change (Albany, NY: SUNY Press). West, M. L. (2008), Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford University Press).

216 Bibliography Wilson, E. (2014), The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Wimmer, J. (2012), ‘Lend Me Your Voice: Discovering Romanity in Seneca’s De otio and De brevitate vita’ (Theses, Dissertations and Capstones. Paper 255). Available online: http://mds.marshall.edu/etd/255 Wirszubski, C. (1954), ‘Cicero’s Cum Dignitate Otium: A Reconsideration’, The Journal of Roman Studies 44: 1–13.

Further Reading Angier, T. (2010), Techne in Aristotle’s Ethics: Crafting the Moral Life (London, New York: Continuum). André, J-M. (1962), Recherches sur l’Otium Romain (Paris: Belles Lettres). André, J.-M., J. Dangel and P. Demont (1993), Les Loisirs et l’Heritage de la Culture Classique, Actes du XIIIe Congrès de l’Association Guillaume Budge. D’Angour, A. (2013), ‘Plato and Play: Taking Education Seriously in Ancient Greece’, American Journal of Play, 5(3): 293–307. Argyle, A. W. (1974), ‘The Ancient University of Alexandria’, The Classical Journal 69 (4): 438–50. Arnold, S. (1991), ‘The Dilemma of Meaning’ Goodale, in T. and P. Witt (eds), Recreation and Leisure: Issues in an Era of Change (State College, PA: Venture Publishing), 5–24. Austin, N. (1975), Archery at the Dark Side of the Moon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Baldon, P. V. D. (1969 [2002]), Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome (London: Phoenix Press). Belfiore, E. (1984), ‘A Theory of Imitation in Plato’s Republic’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 114: 121–46. Benveniste, E. (1951), Sur l’Histoire du mot Latin Negotium (Florence: la Nuova Italia). Bodéüs, R. (2000), Aristotle and the Theology of the Living Immortals, trans. J. E. Garrett (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). Bollert, D. (2001), ‘Plato and Wonder’, in Extraordinary Times, IWM Junior Visiting Fellows Conferences, Vol. 11: Vienna. Bolmarcich, S (2001), ‘Homophrosyne in the Odyssey’, Classical Philology 96 (3): 205–13. Broadie, S. (2007), Aristotle and Beyond: Essays on Metaphysics and Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Burnyeat, M. (2008), Aristotle’s Divine Intellect (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press). Byrne, P. (1997), Analysis and Science in Aristotle (Albany, NY: SUNY Press). Caston, V. (1999), ‘Aristotle’s Two Intellects’, Phronesis 44: 199–227.

218

Further Reading

Charlton, W. (1987) ‘Aristotle on the Place of Mind in Nature’, in A. Gotthelf and J. Lennox (eds), Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 408–23. Cox, H. (1969), The Feast of Fools (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Cunningham, H. (1980), Leisure in the Industrial Revolution (London: Croom Helm). Defilippo, J. G. (1994), ‘Aristotle’s Identification of the Prime Mover as God’, The Classical Quarterly, New Series, 44 (2): 393–409. De Koninck, T. (1994), ‘Aristotle on God as Thought Thinking Itself ’, The Review of Metaphysics 47 (3): 471–515. Diamandis, P. and S. Kotler (2012), Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think (New York: The Free Press). Dougherty, C. and L. Kurke, eds (1993), Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Dunham, J. (1947), The Religion of the Philosophers (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press). Erskine, A. (1995), ‘Culture and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt: The Museum and Library of Alexandria’, Greece and Rome 42 (1): 38–48. Fagan, G. (2006), Leisure, in D. Potter (ed.), A Companion to the Roman Empire (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell) 368–84. Foley, H. (1995), ‘Penelope as Moral Agent’, in B. Cohen, (ed.), The Distaff Side (New York: Oxford University Press): 93–115. Ford, A. (2004), ‘Catharsis: The Power of Music in Aristotle’s Politics’, in P. Murray and P. Wilson, eds, Music and the Muses: The Culture of ‘Mousike’ in the Classical Athenian City (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 309–36. Friedländer, P. (1965–69), Plato, trans. H. Meyerhoff (New York: Pantheon Books). Fritz, K. von (1974), ‘Nous, Noein, and their Derivatives’, in A. Mourelatos (ed.), A Collection of Critical Essays: The Pre-Socratics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 23–85. Gini, A. (2003), The Importance of Being Lazy: In Praise of Play, Leisure, and Vacations (London: Routledge). Golden, L. (1969), ‘Mimesis and Katharsis’, Classical Philology 64 (3): 145–53. Goldhill, S. and R. Osborne, eds (1999), Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Gray, C. (1998), ‘Paideia, Schole, Paidia: Then and Now’, Paper presented at 20th World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, Massachusetts. https://www.bu.edu/ wcp/Papers/OApp/OAppGray.htm Griffin, M. (1992), Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press).



Further Reading

219

Griffin, M. (2013), Seneca on Society: A Guide to De Beneficiis (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Groarke, L. (2009), An Aristotelian Account of Induction: Creating Something from Nothing (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press). Gurtler, G. (2003), ‘The Activity of Happiness in Aristotle’s Ethics’, The Review of Metaphysics 56 (4): 801–834. Heitman, R. (2005),Taking Her Seriously (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan). Hemingway, J. (2009), ‘Leisure and Civility: Reflections on a Greek Ideal’, Leisure Sciences 10: 179–91. Hepburn, W. (1984), ‘Wonder’, in Wonder and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Heschel, A. (1951), The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux). Highland, J. (2005), ‘Transformative Katharsis: The Significance of Theophrastus’s Botanical Works for Interpretations of Dramatic Catharsis’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63 (2): 155–63. Horkheimer, M and T. Adorno (2002), Dialectic of Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Hunnicutt, B. (1990), ‘Leisure and Play in Plato’s Teaching and Philosophy of Learning’, Leisure Sciences, 12 (2): 211–27. Iso-Ahola, S. (1980), The Social Psychology of Leisure and Recreation (Dubuque, IA: Brown Company Publishers). Kahn, C. (1997), ‘Greek Religion and Philosophy in the Sisyphus Fragment’, Phronesis 42: 247–62. Kal, V. (1988), On Intuition and Discursive Reasoning in Aristotle (Leiden: E. J. Brill). Kaplan, M. (1991), Essays on Leisure: Human and Policy Issues (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses). Katz, M. (1991), Penelope’s Renown: Meaning and Indeterminacy in the Odyssey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Kivy, P. (1980), The Corded Shell: Reflections on Musical Expression (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Kivy, P. (1990), Music Alone: Philosophical Reflections on the Purely Musical Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Koeplin, A. (2009), ‘The Telos of Citizen Life: Music and Philosophy in Aristotle’s Ideal Polis’, Polis: The Journal of the Society for Greek Political Thought, 26: 116–32. Kosman, A. (1992), ‘What does the Maker Mind Make?’, in M. Nussbaum and A. Rorty, eds, Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima (Oxford: Clarendon Press) 343–358.

220

Further Reading

Kosman, A. (2000), ‘Metaphysics Λ 9: Divine Thought’, In Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda: Symposium Aristotelicum (10th edn: 1996: Oxford), in M. Frede and D. Charles, eds (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 307–26 Kraut, R. (1991), Aristotle on the Human Good (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Kraut, R. (1997), Aristotle Politics, Books VII and VIII Translated with a Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Kuic, V. (1981), ‘Work, Leisure and Culture’, The Review of Politics 43 (3): 436–65. Kurke, L. (1999), Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold: The Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Kurzweil, R. (2005), The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (New York: Viking, Penguin Group). Laidlaw, W. (1968), ‘Otium’, Greece & Rome 15 (1): 42–52. Lesher, J. (1973), ‘The Meaning of ΝΟΥΣ in the Posterior Analytics’, Phronesis 18 (1): 44–68. Levin, F. (2009), Greek Reflections on the Nature of Music (New York: Cambridge University Press). Llewelyn, J. (1988), ‘On the Saying that Philosophy Begins in Thaumazein’, in A. Benjamin (ed.), Post-Structuralist Classics (London: Routledge). Lonsdale, S. (1993), Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press). Mamo, P. S. (1970), ‘Energeia and Kinesis in “Metaphysics” θ. 6’, Apeiron 4 (2): 24–34. Marrus, M. (1974), The Emergence of Leisure (New York: Harper Torchbooks). McMahon, D. (2006), Happiness: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press). Meikle, S. (1995), Aristotle’s Economic Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Menn, S. (1992), ‘Aristotle and Plato on God as Nous and as the Good’, The Review of Metaphysics 45 (3): 543–73. Meyer, S. (2003), ‘Plato on the Moral Dangers of Labour and Commerce in Plato’s Laws’, in L. Brisson and S. Scolnicov (eds), From Theory into Practice. Proceedings of the VI Symposium Platonicum, International Plato Series (Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag), 207–14. Miller, A. M. (1983), ‘N. 4.33–43 and the Defense of Digressive Leisure’, Classical Journal 78: 204–5. Miller, D. L. (1971), ‘Theology and Play Studies: An Overview’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 39: 349–54. Murray, P. and P. Wilson, eds (2004), Music and the Muses: The Culture of ‘Mousike’ in the Classical Athenian City (Oxford: Oxford University Press).



Further Reading

221

Neulinger, J. (1974), The Psychology of Leisure (Springfield, IL: Charles Thomas Publisher). Neville, G. (2004), Free Time: Towards a Theology of Leisure (Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press). Norman, R. (1969), ‘Aristotle’s Philosopher God’, Phronesis 14: 63–76. Nortwick, T. von (1979), ‘Penelope and Nausicaa’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 109: 269–76. Oehler, K. (1974), ‘Aristotle on Sef-Knowledge’, Proceedings of the American Philological Society 118: 493–506. Pecchi, L. and G. Piga, eds (2008), Revisiting Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Philo Judaeus (2000), Philôn Apanta [Works of Philo] (Athens: Kaktos). Pieper, J. (1963 [1952]), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, trans. A. Dru (New York: Pantheon Books,). Polansky, R. (2007), Aristotle’s De Anima (New York: Cambridge University Press). Rackham, H. (1932), Nicomachean Ethics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Rackham, H. (1935), Eudemian Ethics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Randall, J. H. (1960), Aristotle (New York: Columbia University Press). Reeve, C. D. C. (1992), Practices of Reason: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press). Rojek, C. (1985), Capitalism and Leisure Theory (London: Tavistock Publications). Rojek, C. (2000), Leisure and Culture (New York: Palgrave). Roochnik, D. (2009), ‘What is Theoria? Nicomachean Ethics Book 10.7–8’, Classical Philology 104 (1): 69–82. Russell, B. (2009 [1935]), In Praise of Idleness (London: Routledge Classics). Rybczynski, W. (1991), Waiting for the Weekend (New York: Viking). Sadlek, G. (2004),Idleness Working: the Discourse of Love’s Labor from Ovid through Chaucer and Gower (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America). Schor, J. (1991) The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (New York: Basic Books). Scott, D. (1999), ‘Primary and Secondary Eudaimonia’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 73: 225–242. Shaw B. (1985), ‘The Divine Economy: Stoicism as Ideology’, Latomus 44: 16–54. Shiffman, M. (2002), ‘Teaching the Contemplative Life: The Psychagogical Role of the Language of Theoria in Plato and Aristotle’ (Unpublished Dissertation: University of Chicago). Simon, E. (2007), The Myth of Sisyphus: Renaissance Theories of Human Perfectibility (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press).

222

Further Reading

Solmsen, F. (1964), ‘Leisure and Play in Aristotle’s Ideal State’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 107: 193–220. Sparshott, Francis (1994), Taking Life Seriously: A Study of the Argument of the Nicomachean Ethics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). Spracklen, K. (1990), The Meaning and Purpose of Leisure: Habermas and Leisure at the End of Modernity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Stocks, J. L. (1936), ‘ΣΧΟΛΗ’, The Classical Quarterly 30 (3–4): 177–87. Tarán, L. (1981), Speusippus of Athens: A Critical Study with a Collection of the Related Texts and Commentary (Leiden: E. J. Brill). Temelini, M. (2002), ‘Cicero’s Concordia: The Promotion of a Political Concept in the Late Roman Republic’ (Unpublished Dissertation: McGill University, Montreal). Toner, J. (1995), Leisure and Ancient Rome (Oxford: Polity Press). Van den Hoven, B. (1996), Work in Ancient and Medieval Thought: Ancient Philosophers, Medieval Monks and Theologians and their Concept of Work, Occupations and Technology (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben). Veal, A. J. (2009), The Elusive Leisure Society, Third Edition, School of Leisure, Sport and Tourism Working Paper 9 (Sydney: University of Technology). Veblen, T. (1994 [1899]) The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Dover Publications). Vigarello, G. (2011), L’Empire des Loisirs: L’Otium des Romains (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Voegelin, E. (1936 [1990]) ‘Anxiety and Reason’, in, eds, What is History? And Other Late Unpublished Writings, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 28 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press). Wallace, R. W. (2004), ‘Damon of Oa’, in, eds, Music and the Muses: The Culture of ‘Mousike’ in the Classical Athenian City (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 249–67. White, M. (2004), ‘The Problem of Aristotle’s “Nous Poiêtikos”’, The Review of Metaphysics 57 (4): 725–39. Wiedermann, T.(1992), Emperors and Gladiators (London: Routledge).

Index Ackrill, J. 190 n.3 anapausis (rest), 56, 190 n.6 Anastasiades, I., 181 nn.1, 2, 3 Anaxagoras, 21 André, J., 132 anesis (relaxing), 56 Antisthenes, 2, 7, 18 Aquinas, Thomas, 47, 188 n.23 Ardley, G., 187 n.17 Aristotle on constitutional transformations, 135, 203 n.28 on homonoia, 101–2, 112 interpretations of theôria for scholê 53–5 on play, 56 on scholê boldest proposal, 51–2 and diagôgê see diagôgê and divine, 58, 71, 115–18 and musical education, 95–8 and nous see nous practicality of, 73–6, 79 reform of, 76–9, 85, 104 self-sufficiency of, 69 and slaves, 79 and time, 57, 60 universality of, 62 and wonder see thauma ascholia (busyness, want of scholê) in Aristotle and music, 84–5 opposition to ascholia as end, 74–6 and phronêsis, 73 not a principle for homonoia, 112–13 and tyranny, 77 broader than work, 6–7 not equivalent to otium vs negotium, 5–6, 19, 132

its moral content, 18, 37–8 in Plato and catharsis as its cure, 37–9 and play 43–4 as state of character, 27–30 and prayer, 169–73, 175, 210 n.13 as privation of scholê, 5–6 and Sisyphus, 11 versus scholê 183 n.2 autarkeia, 182 n.7 see self-sufficiency Balme, M., 181 n.3 Barker, on diagôgê 87, 91, 190 n.4, 193 nn.2, 3, 194 n.4 Basil, St., on scholê and praotês (meekness), 169–71, 176 Blowers, P., 189 n.26 Bosman, 182 n.7 Broadie, S., 148 Burger, R., 191 n.14 Camus, A., 12 catharsis by means of the virtues, 38–9 for communion with God, 173, 176 cure for ascholia, 37 necessary for scholê, 37 and phronêsis, 38 and Socratic elenchos, 25 and theological play, 27 Cato the Elder, 136, 139, 143, 157, 210 n.11 Cato the Younger, 139 as model for sapiens, 154–5, 158, 208 nn.68, 70 Cicero importance of otium in his works, 130–3 public and private meanings of otium, 133–7, 202 nn.22, 26, 203 nn, 30, 31, 35, 204 nn.38, 41, 205 n.46

224 Index concord, as lexicon translation of homonoia, 102–3 and otium, 132, 134, 143 concordia, 103, 140 contemplation, 28–31, 33, 35, 37, 91, 96, 99–101, 105–7 Cooper, J. 204 n.45, 207 n.64 Cribiore, R., 199 n.2 cum dignitate otium, 133, 138, 140 see also Wirszubski, C. De Grazia, S., 202 n.27 deinotês (teribbleness, shrewdness), 22, 31–3 Democritus, 197 n.32 Depew, D, 189 n.1 diagôgê, as ‘intellectual cultivation’, 54–5, 86–92, 94, 96, 194 n.4 literal meaning, 55 relation to freedom and self-sufficiency, 88–9 and scholê differences, 55, 87–90 as ‘way of life’, 87, 91, 101, 195 nn.11, 12 dianoia (discursive reasoning), 89 dignitas, 134, 138 see Wirszubski, C. Dio Chrysostom no writings on scholê, 146 on withdrawal, 141–2 duty absent from meaning of scholê, 164–5, 174 and prayer in Gregory of Nyssa, 104–5 relation to otium in Cicero, 138–9 relation to otium in Seneca, 142, 144–7, 150, 155, 157–9 and religious scholê, 163–6, 173–5 as Stoic ideal, 126, 146 and superesse, 155, 158 and withdrawal in Dio Chrysostom, 141 Egypt, 66, 68 ekplêssô (to be amazed), 26–7, 184 n.13 ektos (outside), 175 eudaimonia (happiness), 7, 9, 69 perfect, 51, 71–2 and theôria, 51–2, 62, 71

Evelyn-White, H., 197 n.26 free persons, and homonoia, 60 and music, 85–6, 92, 99, 100 and scholê, 16, 68, 79, 114, 150 free time and catharsis, 37 and leisure society, 79 otium meanings, 150 in play in Plato’s Laws, 40 and as prevailing meaning in the Laws, 41, 186 n.6 and scholê, 1–2, 5, 16–18, 30, 51, 53–7, 65, 68–9, 76, 79–80, 88, 117, 149, 207 n.65 and Stoics, 123–4 freedom in Aristotle, 68–9, 86, 88, 114 and Plato’s concept of scholê, 43, 100–1 as trait of leisure, 148–50 trait of scholê, 6–7, 9, 16 Freud, S., 205 n.53 Gregory of Nazianzus, 49, 169, 189 n.25 Gregory of Nyssa, scholê and ascholia in the Lord’s Prayer, 172–6, 195 n.11, 209 n.10 Grimal, P., 13, 182 n.15 harpazô (snatch up), 94, 195 n.15 Heer, C. de, 182 n.5 Heidegger, M., 33 Heraclitus of Ephesus, 35 Heraclitus the Grammarian, 15 hêsuchia (quietude), 132, 202 n.26 homonoia (political friendship), 60–4 in Aristotle, 101–2, 104 in Christianity, 103–4, 196 n.25 inborn, 112 and institutional intelligence, 117 and the Muses, 105–6 new word, 107, 111 in Plato, 100–2, 198 n.34 reasons for mistranslation, 102–4 in Stoicism, 103, 196 n.20 homophrosunê (Homeric togethermindedness), 102

Index in Homer, 106–11, 197 nn.26, 28, 29, 32, 198 nn.34, 35 and Muses, 105 replaced by homonoia, 68, 199 n.36 in Scriptures, 104, 196 n.24 see also together-minded Huizinga, J., 188 n.21 intellectual cultivation see diagôgê Irwin, T., 192 n.21 Kalimtzis, K., 199 n.36, 203 n.28 kerdos and cognates (gain, profit) and denotês, 32 in Homer, 12, 94, 182 nn.10, 11, 14 Keynes, John Maynard, 79, 193 n.32 kosmos (order), 21, 39 Lattimore, R., 183 n.7, 198 n.33 licet (it is permitted), 148–9 like (or same)-mindedness, as translation of homonoia and homophrosunê, 102–4, 107, 197 nn.25, 29, 198 n.34 see also homonoia Lombardo, S., 197 n.26 Lucan, 208 n.70 Luck, G., 207 n.66 makar (blessed), 7, 118 Manius Curius Dentatus, 137 Marcus Aurelius, 80, 152, 200 n.10, 207 n.65 Maronitis, D., 198 n.33 Maximus the Confessor, 49, 189 nn.25, 26 McLean, D., 206 n.60 Miller, D., 189 n.28 mimêsis (representation) and mimetic, 41, 44–5, 48, 81, 97, 99, 188 n.19 Muses, 105, 187 n.135 music curriculum for scholê, 84–6, 91, 98–100, 195 n.7 for intellectual cultivation, 86, 89–91 and mimêsis, 41 for way of life, 95, 98, 101–2 negotium (business, occupation), 5–6, 18, 132, 204 n.39 neôterismos (to make innovations), 23 Newman, W., 54, 87, 194 n.3

225

Nightingale, A., 53, 190 n.2, 191 n.14 nous (mind) in Alexandrian Court, 128–30 defining sense in Aristotle, 58–61 divine, 115–18 and homonoia, 62 and musical education, 98–9 and phronêsis, 99, 101 in Plato, 19–23, 28, 44–6, 50 and sapentia, 153, 207 n.67 in scholê as end, 51–2, 54–6, 58–61, 70–2, 112–15 Odysseus cited by Aristotle for diagôgê, 92–5 compared to Sisyphus, 13 describes Sisyphus in Hades, 11 in Odyssey homophrosunê passages, 107–11, 197 n.29, 198 n.35 officium (duty), opposed to otium 3, 91 see also duty otium (leisure) and negotium, 3 and withdrawal, 5 Roman concept independent of scholê, 75, 78 in Seneca, see Seneca panourgia (knavery), 12, 22, 23 permission Egyptian priests permitted to engage in scholê, 68, 191 n.19 to engage in scholê under tyranny, 77 for otium in Seneca, 146–51 pervasive evil in Church Fathers, 174–6 in Freud, 205 n.53, in Seneca, 144–6, 159 Phaeacia, Phaeacians, 90, 92–5 Philo Judaeus, 163, 165–8, 197 n.25, 209 nn.2–5, 7, 8 phronêsis (practical wisdom, practical reason), 38, 73, 99, 101 Pieper, J., 49, 188 n.22, 189 n.27 Plato on constitutional transformations, 203 n.28 on diagôgê as ‘way of life’ in the dialogues, 91

226 Index difficulties with Plato’s concept of scholê for play, 45–7, 100 on evils of ascholia, 19–22, 24, 26, 27–35, 185 n.13 on homonoia as product of justice, 100–1, 198 n.34 on moral catharsis for scholê, 37–9 on music for moral nurturing, 41–2 on nous and scholê, 20–2 praotês in Plato, 209 n.6 rejects music for education in theôria, 97 on scholê and search for truth, 19–22 on scholê for play see play on shutting down the mind, 20 on wonder, 64 play in Aristotle, 56–7, 190 n.6 difficulties with Plato’s concept of play, 46–7 in Plato, especially the Laws, 40–5, 186 nn.9, 10, 187 nn.12, 13, 15, 17 Plotinus on play, 188 n.19 rejected as end by Aristotle, 81, 84–5 theological interpretations of Plato’s concept of play, 47–50, 188 nn.20, 21, 23, 189 nn.25, 28 Plethon Gemistos, 177 Plotinus, 188 n.19, 208 n.71 Plutarch, 22, 163, 165 pejorative meanings of scholê, 72, 210 n.11 scholê for prayer, 209 n.10 political friendship, 77 and music, 104–6 practicality, 100–2 see also homonoia Polyainos, 12 praos (humble, meek), 169–70, 209 nn.6, 8 prayer, and scholê 172–6 Rackham, H., 55, 71, 192 n.22, 193 n.3, 194 n.6 Romilly, J. de, 204 n.43 Russo, L., 201 n.19 sapiens, and otium, 154–7 as model for otium, 158 Schoen-Nazzaro, M., 97, 195 n.17

scholê (σχόλη) (festive holiday), 161 scholê (σχολή) (free time activity, leisure) in Aristotle see Aristotle in Gregory of Nyssa see Gregory of Nyssa in Plato see Plato in Plutarch see Plutarch in Socrates see Socrates in St Basil see St. Basil in Stoics see Stoics what it is not, 55–7 Seneca otium as a cure for vice, 144–6, 157, 164 differences with Cicero, 140, 142–3 for acquiring sapientia, 153–4, 157 models for, 152, 154, 158 his originality, 86 pejorative meanings, 80, 124 nn.153, 154, 126 n.183, 129 n.214 permission for see permission and religious scholê, 98, 101, 103, 105–6 see also otium Sisyphus Aristotle on, 13 and ascholia, 11, 15 and fraud and deceit, 12–13 the myth, 10–11 Skidelsky, R., 187 n.18 Socrates new meanings given to ascholia, 18–19 and scholê, 2, 17–19 and Sisyphus, 13 Spariosu, M., 194 n.5 Steel, S., 188 n.20 Stoics having no special interest in scholê, 124, 141–2, 165 and the heavenly city, 206 n.58 and homonoia, 103, 196 n.20 and meanings given to scholê, 77–9 secondary virtues, 138 and Seneca re otium, 145–6, 150, 207 n.62, 208 n.68 superesse, 155, 158–9 thauma (wonder), 64–5, 191 nn.15, 17

Index theôria and the divine, 115–17 highest activity, 51, 190 n.3, 191 n.14 as instrument, 129, 157 and music curriculum, 95 and phronêsis, 72–3 political practicality of, 52, 83, 99, 112, 114, 117–18, 190 n.2 as praxis, 72 replaced by mystical experience, 48, 163, 166–7, 173 and scholê 45, 64, 69–70, 72–3 thorubos (tumult), 25 together-minded (homonoia), 103, 105, 109–10, 116, 119 see also homonoia Veblen, T., 7, 63, 68–9

227

way of life and diagôgê, 66–7, 85, 87, 90, 91–3, 95, 101–2 and nous as, 113, 117–18 and otium, 131, 147 and scholê, 2, 16, 21, 30, 39, 51, 77–8, 98, 114–15, 180 Wilson, E., 209 n.1 Wimmer, J., 206 n.57 Wirszubski, C, 134, 201 n.22, 203 n.30 withdrawal in Dio Chrsostom, 141–2 not in scholê, 9 for otium, 147–8, 151–3, 155, 205 n.45 religious, 48, 170, 174, 176, 209 n.10 in Stoics, 125–7 wonder, 64–6, 68–9 see also thauma