dodds-plato and the irrational

7/28/2019 Dodds-Plato and the Irrational

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Plato and the IrrationalAuthor(s): E. R. DoddsSource: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 65 (1945), pp. 16-25Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies

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PLATO AND THE IRRATIONAL'THEpurpose of this paper is to enquire into Plato's attitude towards a group of relatedproblemswhich at the presenttime have assumedan unusualimportance. By' the irrational'I mean that surd element in human experience,both in our experienceof ourselvesand in ourexperienceof the world about us, which has exercisedso powerful-and as some of us think, soperilous-a fascination on the philosophers,artists,and men of letters of our own day.2That contemporary problems and interests should determine the questions which weaddressto the great thinkers of the past is entirely natural and proper. But he who uses thisapproach needs to be alive to its dangers. Such contemporaryinterests have very frequentlydetermined not only the questionswhich scholarshave asked,but also the answerswhich theyhave put into the mouths of the defenceless dead. Too often we unconsciously dentify a pastthinker with ourselves,and distort his thoughts to make him the mouthpiece of our own pre-

conceptions; or else, unconsciously identifying him with our opponents, we belabour himwith gusto, serene in the assuredknowledge that he cannot hit back. I think such distortionof the past in the interest of the presentto be a kind of trahison esclercs-though it is a treacherywhich we can never be quite certain of avoiding, since we commit it for the most part withoutour own knowledge. Plato has at all periodsbeen one of its principalvictims: he was boundto be, his personality being so complex, his thought so richly various and yet, as we know itin his dialogues, so incomplete-so full of hesitations,restatements,freshstarts,of ideas that goundergroundfor a time to reappear later in a new guise, of lines of argument that seem toconverge,yet never quite meet to form a tidy system. Arm yourselfwith a stout pair of blinkersand a sufficient but not excessive amount of scholarship,and by making a suitable selection oftexts you can prove Plato to be almost anything that you want him to be. By the skilful use ofthis method Plato has been revealed at various times as a complete sceptic and as a completemystic, as a pupil of Hegel and as a pupil of Aquinas, as a CambridgePlatonist and as one ofNature's Balliol men, as an early Christianand as a very early Nazi. Each of these partisanPlatos has his title-deeds,he can produce for you a nice little anthology of texts to prove hisclaim: for all these artificialhomunculiave been constructedout of fragmentsof Plato himself.Let me thereforemake it plain that my object in the present paper is neither to construct afreshhomunculusor to resuscitatean old one, but rather, if possible, to get a clearer view ofcertain attitudesof the historical Plato-a personwho lived at Athens in the fourthcenturyB.C.and could not have lived at any othertime or place, a personwho was unaware of being an earlyanything, and who (being a man and not a homunculus)ermittedhimself on occasionto changehis mind.Let me begin by formulating my questions. The word 'rationalist' is used with severaldistinct meanings. In the theory of knowledge a rationalist is opposed to an empiricist: he isone who believes that reasonand not the sensesprovidesthe &pXaci,he firstprincipleson whichscientific knowledge is built. That Plato was a rationalist in this sense is evident; 3 and Ihave no questionto raise. Secondly, rationalismmay be understoodas the belief that both thelife of man and the life of the universearegoverned by, or are manifestationsof, a rationalplan.That Plato was on the whole a rationalistin this sense also no one is likely to dispute. But Ishall raise the question how far Plato qualified his rationalismby recognisingthe influence of1 A paper read to the Classical Association at its GeneralMeeting, 9th April, 1946. The summary nature of thejudgements which I have ventured to express on severaldisputed questions of Platonic scholarship is, I hope, suffici-ently explained by the paper's purpose: if anything like a

comprehensive picture was to be presented, drastic simpli-fications were unavoidable. Certain topics, such as thetheory of "Epcos,ad to be omitted even so. I am indebtedto Dr. Walzer for some useful comments and references.

2 Future historians will, I believe, recognise in this pre-occupation with the surd element the governing impulse ofour time, the 8aifcovor Zeitgeist which in different guiseshas haunted minds as various as Nietzsche, Bergson,Heidegger in philosophy; Jung in psychology; Sorel,Pareto, Spengler in political theory; Yeats, Lawrence,Joyce, Kafka, Sartre in literature; Picasso and the surrealistsin painting.3 Phaedo65B, 79CD, Rep. 509D ff., etc.

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PLATO AND THE IRRATIONAL 17irrational factors upon the behaviour both of men .andof the world, and how he interpretedthese factors. Thirdly, rationalismmay signify,in the words of the ShorterOxfordDictionary,' the principle of regarding reason as the chief or only guide in matters of religion.' Here Ishall ask whether Plato was in this sense a rationalist, and if he was not, how his religion isrelated to his philosophy.First, then, did Plato realise the importance of irrational factors in determining humanconduct? To this question most people, I think, would answer 'No.' When we speak ofPlatonic ethics, what comes first to our mind is the somewhat bleak pronouncement that'virtue is knowledge,' and that other naive-sounding assertion that o5sE5iSKc(V axpappr&vEu,'nobody does wrong if he can help it.' When we speak of Platonic politics, we think first ofthe Guardians in the Republic-those pitiable victims of a totalitarian system, warped by anarrowly scientific education which has no room for the humanities, deprived of most of thenormal incentives to industry, cut off from most of the normal sources of human happiness,and yet expected to exercise with unerring wisdom unlimited power over the lives of theirfellow-citizens. We marvel that so great a philosophershould have had so little understandingof human nature.

Injudging thus, I think we get the perspectivewrong, and for that reasondo Plato lessthanjustice. In the first place, the intellectualist approach to ethics is not something perverselyinvented by Plato or even by Socrates: 4 it is part of the generalinheritance which came downto Plato from the fifth century, and which he spent his life in criticising and reshaping. NotSocratesonly, but all the great sophists,5conceived moral goodnessas a technique, a -rEXvrfrational living, which, like other techniques,could be acquired by study, providedone appliedsufficient intelligence to the problem. In this they were the counterpartsof our Victorians.Like the Victorians,they had a vision of progress-of the perpetualonward marchof civilisation-and for the same cause: they had themselves n their formativeyears experienced progress,swift and indisputable, holding, as it seemed, the promisethat human life could be lifted by theexercise of reason to always higher levels of material and intellectual achievement. Plato'sstarting-pointwas thus historicallyconditioned. It can be studiedin the Memorabilia,ut muchbetter, as I think, in his own Protagoras, hich in my view still breathesthe atmosphereof thefifth century, with its optimism, its genial worldliness,its simple-mindedutilitarianism,and itsSocrates who is still no more than life-size. To read it otherwise, in order to make Platoa ' consistent Platonist,' seems to me a wilful falsification.6To see what Plato did with this inherited rationalism,we naturally look first to dialogueslike the Phaedo nd the Republic,where we find a very differentconceptionof the nature of thatknowledge or wisdom (qp6vvlis) which constitutes true virtue: it lies not in an enlightenedcalculation of future satisfactions,but in the intellectual vision of eternal Forms. It is thisphase of Plato's thought about conduct which has earned him the reputation of grosslyover-estimating human nature. But we are apt to forget that it is not the final phase, and to forgetalso that Plato never supposed 'true virtue' in this sense to be within the reach of theordinary man. Even in the days of the Phaedoand the Republic e realised that only a verysmall number of exceptionallyendowed personswere capable of achieving that goodnesswhichderives from knowledge of the Forms: philosophic vision is the rarest of all gifts, confined to aqUUEt AiytuTov yivos.7 For the rest-that is to say, the overwhelming majority of mankind-he seems to recognise at all stages of his thought that an intelligent hedonism provides the bestpracticable guide to a satisfactory life.8 But in the dialogues of his middle period, preoccupiedas he is with exceptional natures and their exceptional possibilities-those possibilities which,

4 In the popular sense of the term, at least, Socrates wasfar from being an unqualified 'rationalist': his attitude tohis 5aip6viovs sufficient proof of his respect for that intuitivewisdom whose sources escape the probe of the intelligence;and his intellectualism did not prevent him from being, inFestugiere's words, 'un maitre de vie interieure' (Con-templationet Vie Contemplative hez Platon 73). Cf. alsoJaeger, Paideia II. 65 ff.

5 And, it would seem, Democritus. Cf. fr. 242 DielsTrM'oves &aKialOSt&yaOiyLVOVTarAi&r6 ipalos: fr. 83&cXpaprilnsa'rl i &Apacti"roiUKpcaovos.6 Cf. Hackforth, C.Q. 22 (1928) 39 ff., whose argumentsappear to me unanswerable.7 Rep. 428E-9A, cf. Phd. 69C.8 Phaedo82AB, Rep. 5ooD, and the passages quoted belowfrom Philebus and Laws.JHS.-VOL. LXV. C


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18 E. R. DODDSthroughthe foundation of the Academy, were to be developed systematically or the firsttime-he shows scant interest in the psychologyof the ordinaryman.In his later work, however, after he had dismissed the philosopher-kingsas an impossibledream, and had fallen back on the rule of Law as a second-best,9he paid more attention to themotives which govern ordinary human conduct, and even the philosopher is seen not to beexempt from their influence. To the questionwhether any one of us would be content with alife in which he possessedwisdom, understanding, knowledge, and a complete memory of thewhole of history, but experiencedno pleasureor pain, great or small, the answergiven in thePhilebus 0 is an emphatic ' No': we are anchored in the life of feeling which is part of ourhumanity, and cannot surrender t even to become ' spectatorsof all time and all existence ' 11like the philosopher-kings. In the Laws we are told that the only practicable basis for publicmorals is the belief that honesty pays: 'for no one,' says Plato, ' would consent, if he couldhelp it, to a course of action which did not bring him morejoy than sorrow.'12 With that weseem to be back in the world of the Protagoras nd of Jeremy Bentham. The legislator'sposition, however, is not identical with that of the common man. The common man wants tobe happy; but Plato, who is legislating for him, wants him to be good. Plato thereforelabours to persuade him that goodness and happiness go together. That this is true, Platohappens to believe; but did he not believe it, he would still pretendit true, as being ' the mostsalutarylie that was ever told.' 13 It is not Plato's own position that has changed: if anythinghas changed, it is his estimate of human nature. In the Laws, at any rate, the virtue of thecommon man is evidently not based on knowledge, or even on true opinion as such, but on aprocessof conditioning or habituation--6p05 Ei0eia0at:rrr6TrAvrporniK6VTCOVv0 (653B)-bywhich he is induced to accept and act on certain ' salutary' beliefs. Afterall, saysPlato, this isnot too difficult: people who can believe in Cadmus and the dragon'steethwill believe anything(664A). Far fromsupposing,as his master had done, that ' the unexaminedlife is no life for ahuman being,' 14 Plato now appearsto hold that the majorityof human beings can be kept intolerable moral health only by a carefullychosen diet of' incantations' or slogans (irrc i) 15and myths.Another way in which Plato's later work shows an increased understandingof the partplayed by affective elements is in the account it gives of the causesof misconduct and unhappi-ness. Plato still believes that 'nobody does wrong if he can help it'; 16 but he no longermakes ignorance the sole cause of wrongdoing, or increasedknowledge its sole cure. Side byside with the intellectualist theorywhich he inherited from Socratesand the sophists,he comesto recognisean irrationalfactorwithin the mind itself, and so graduallydevelopsa deeperviewof moral evil as being the result of psychologicalconflict (ord&ti).17 The germ of this is thePythagoreanconceptionof goodnessas a &ppovia, nd the firsthint of it appears n the dialoguewhere the Pythagorean influence on Plato first shows itself-in the Gorgias.18There areoccasionalreferences o such internalordr'Tsn the Republic,19herefreedomfromit makespart

9 Politicus297DE, 3olDE; cf. Laws 739DE.10 2IDE.11 Rep.486A.12 663B,cf. 733A.13 663D.14 Apol. 38A. Prof. Hackforth has lately (CR 59 [1945]I ff.) sought to convince us that Plato remained loyal tothis maxim throughout his life. But though he certainlypaid lip service to it as late as the Sophist(23oC-E), I seeno escape from the conclusion that the educational policy ofthe Republic,and still more clearly that of the Laws, is inreality based on very different assumptions. Plato couldnever confess to himself that he had abandoned any Socraticprinciple; but that did not prevent him from doing it.Socrates' 0EpacTrEiCXfi s surely implies respect for the humanmind as such; the techniques of suggestion and othercontrols recommended in the Laws seem to me to implyjust the opposite.15 In the LawsiTrrcp8nd its cognates are continually used

in this metaphorical sense (659E, 664B, 665C, 666C,67oE, 773D, 812C, 903B, 944B). Cf. Callicles' contemp-tuous use of the word, Gorg.484A. Its application in theearly dialogue Charmides(I57A-C) is significantly different:there the 'incantation ' turns out to be a Socratic cross-examination. But in the Phaedo, where the myth is anftrcit (I 14D, cf. 77E-78A), we already have a suggestionof the part which TrcC8afiere to play in the Laws.16 Laws73IC, 86oD.17 Plato's recognition of an irrational element in the soulwas seen in the Peripatetic School to mark an importantadvance beyond the intellectualism of Socrates (MagnaMoralia I. I, I182a 15 ff.); and his views on the training ofthe irrational soul, which will respond only to an irrational60ti6s,were later invoked by Poseidonius in his polemicagainst the intellectualist Chrysippus (Galen, de placitisHippocratis t Platonisp. 466 f. KUihn,cf. 424 f.).18 482BC.19 35IDE, 440B, 554D, 603D.


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PLATO AND THE IRRATIONAL 19of the philosopher's happiness.20 But the theory is first worked out in the Sophistes,21whereCrd&Tats defined as a psychological maladjustment resulting from some sort of injury (T-rvb68taq0op&~),a kind of disease of the soul, and is said to be the cause of cowardice, intemperance,injustice, and (it would seem) moral evil in general, as distinct from ignorance or intellectualfailure. With this one may connect the saying of the Epinomis, that man will attain unity,which is happiness and wisdom, only when he is dead; bK 'rroXXC`v va yEyov6Trc, E0iatliova TEEEOeaalKCaiopy'orrCov via0 KxaipICaKaplov992B). If Plato did not write the Epinomis, I suspectthat his literary executor found these words in one of his notebooks: they have the true Platonicring. Finally, I would remind you of a striking passage in the Timaeus,22where a wide rangeof emotional disorders, including sexual excesses, irritability and despondency, rashness andcowardice, and even forgetfulness and stupidity, are attributed by Plato to bodily causes overwhich the victim has no control-very much as some physiological psychologists attribute themto-day to a failure of balance in the glandular secretions. Here surely Plato's thinking hasswung to the opposite pole from the intellectualism with which he started. But I find nothingin it which is inconsistent with the rest of his later teaching. He recognises similarly in Laws IVthat the history of human societies is largely determined by physical catastrophes, so that onecould say TXc~rS Ivca cXE~6v arrcIv~T dxepchrtvca -rpdy[Pccra7o9B)-though he is careful toadd that both providence and human intelligence also play a part.Before leaving this topic, I am tempted to urge that, after all, Plato's error lay not merelyin thinking too nobly of human nature, but also in thinking too meanly of it. There are in theLaws one or two very remarkable utterances on this subject. We are told in Book I that manis a puppet whom the gods have made, whether simply as a plaything or for some seriouspurpose we cannot tell: all we know is that the creature is on a string, and his hopes and fears,pleasures and pains, jerk him about and make him dance.23 Further on, in Book VII, theAthenian observes that it is a pity we have to take human affairs seriously, and remarks thatman is God's plaything, ' and that is really the best that can be said of him ': men and womenshould accordingly make this play as charming as possible, sacrificing to the gods with musicand dancing; ' thus they will live out their lives in accordance with their nature, being puppetschiefly, and having in them only a small portion of reality.' ' You are making out our humanrace very mean,' says the Spartan. And the Athenian apologises: ' I thought of God, and Iwas moved to speak as I did just now. Well, if you will have it so, let us say that our race isnot mean-that it is worth taking a little bit seriously (crrrouSijsT1vos&Stov).24Plato suggests here a religious origin for this way of thinking; and we often meet it in laterreligious thinkers, from Marcus Aurelius to Mr. T. S. Eliot-who has said in almost the samewords, ' Human nature is able to endure only a very little reality.' It agrees with the drift ofmuch else in the Laws-with the view that men are as unfit to rule themselves as a flock ofsheep,25 that God, not man, is the measure of things,26 that man is the gods' property (KT-ria),27and that if he wishes to be happy, he should be rcWrrElv6O,abject,' before God 28--a wordwhich nearly all pagan writers, and Plato himself elsewhere, employ as a term of contempt.Ought we to discount all this as a senile aberration, the sour pessimism of a tired and irritableold man, comparable to Mr. Wells' recent pronouncement on the approaching extinction ofhumanity? It might seem so: for it contrasts oddly with the radiant picture of the soul'sdivine nature and destiny which Plato painted in his middle dialogues and certainly neverabjured. But then I remember the philosopher of the Republic, to whom, as to Aristotle'smegalopsych, human life cannot appear important (itya Ti);29 I remember that in theMeno the mass of men are likened to the shadows that flit in Homer's Hades, and that theconception of human beings as the KTr?lTrrcof a god appears already in the Phaedo.30 I recall

20 586E.21 227D-28E.2286B-87B. The passage is quoted by Galen (ScriptaMinoraII. 49. 12 if. Miiller) as showing that Plato recognisedthe influence of body on mind.23 644DE.24 803B-4B.

25 713CD.26 716C.27 902B, 90o6A; cf. Critias IogB.28 716A: for the implication cf. e.g. 774C.29 486A, cf. Theaet. 173C-E, Ar. E.N. I 123b 32.30 Meno IooA, Phaedo62B.


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20 E. R. DODDSalso anotherpassageof the Phaedo,where Plato predictswith undisguisedrelish the futureof hisfellow-men: in their next incarnation some of them will be donkeys,others wolves, while theE'TrpLot,he respectablebourgeoisie, may look forwardto becoming bees or ants.31 No doubtthis is partly Plato'sfun; but it is the sortof fun which would have appealed toJonathan Swift.

It carriesthe implication that everybody except the philosopheris on the verge of becomingsub-human, which is (as ancient Platonists saw32) hard to reconcile with the view that everyhuman soul is essentiallyrational.In the light of these and other passages I think we have to recognise two strains ortendencies in Plato's thinking about the status of man. There is the faith and pride in humanreasonwhich he inherited from the fifthcenturyand forwhich he foundreligioussanctionin thedoctrine of the soul's immortality and likenessto God. And there is the bitter recognitionofhuman worthlessnesswhich was forced upon him by his experience of contemporaryAthensand Syracuse (read the Seventh Letter). This, too, could be transposed nto the language ofreligion, as a denial of all value to the activities and interestsof this world in comparisonwith-rx KEi. A psychologist might say that the relation between the two tendencieswas not one ofsimple opposition, but that the first became a compensation-or over-compensation-for thesecond: the less Plato cared for actual humanity, the more nobly he thought of the soul. Thetension between the two was resolvedfor a time in the dream of a new Rule of the Saints, an!lite of purifiedmen who should unite the incompatible virtuesof (to use Mr. Koestler'sterms)the Yogi and the Commissar, and thereby save not only themselves, but also society. Butwhen that illusion faded, Plato's underlying despair came more and more to the surface,translating itself into religious terms, until it found its logical expressionin his final proposalsfor a Servile33State, to be ruled not by the illuminated reason, but (under God) by customand religious law. The 'Yogi,' with his faith in the possibility and necessity of intellectualconversion, did not wholly vanish even now, but he certainly retreated before the 'Com-missar' whose problem is the conditioning of human cattle. On this interpretation thepessimismof the Lawsis not a senile aberration: it is the fruit of Plato's personal experienceoflife, which in turn carriedin it the seed of much later thought.34I turn now from Plato's view of man to his view of Nature. Here, too, Plato's thinking isrooted in fifth-century rationalism and optimism; here, too, it grows away from its rootstowards the recognitionof an irreducible irrational factor. But the case is plainer here, and Ican be correspondinglybrief. We are told in the Phaedo,and recent research35has confirmedit, that the notion of teleology-of replacinga mechanisticexplanationof Nature by an explana-tion in termsof purpose-is part of Plato'sinheritancefromthe fifthcentury. But its systematicapplication is firstenvisagedin the Phaedo, nd firstcarriedout in the Timaeus. In the Phaedono limit is set to its applicability: physical agencies are recognisedas conditions sine quanonof physical events, but they are denied the name of causes.36 In the Timaeus, owever, besidesthese physicaloavai-riawhich are popularlybut falsely describedas causes,37we meet also witha real cause which is non-rational-the -aXavco~yr airia or Errant Cause, alias 'Necessity,'which shareswith Mind the responsibility or the constitution of the Universe. I shall excusemyselffromsayingmuch about the ErrantCause,since it has been discussedso fillly and lucidlyby Cornford (Plato's Cosmology162 ff.). I take it to represent that element of' cussedness' inNature which is familiar to every farmer and every engineer. This cussedness is something

31 81E-82B.32 pETcraXaCOvTS pElOISov ccpaau&(V ETra( rrCa,XAyos o00ca&vepcbTrov lot. Enn. 6. 7. 6. Cf. ibid. I. I. I I; Porphyryapud Aug. Civ. dei 10. 30; lamblichus apud Nemes. nat.homrn.(P.G. 40, 584A); Proclus in Tim. III. 294. 22 ff.33 Laws 942AB: ' The principal thing is that no man andno woman should ever be without an officer set over him,and that none should get the mental habit of taking anystep, whether in earnest or in jest, on his individual re-sponsibility: in peace as in war he must live always withhis eye on his superior officer, following his lead and guidedby him in his smallest actions . .. in a word, we must

train the mind not even to consider acting as an individualor know how to do it.'34 On later developments of the theme of the unimportanceof -rt vepcPri-vasee Festugikre n Eranos44 (1946) 376 ff. Forman as a puppet cf. M. Ant. 7. 3, Plot. Enn. 3.2. 15 (I. 244. 26Volk.).35 W. Theiler, Zur Geschichteder TeleologischenNaturbe-trachtungbis auf Aristoteles; A. S. Pease, ' Coeli Enarrant,'Harvard Theol. Rev. 34 (1941) 163 ff.36 98B-99C.37 46CD.


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PLATO AND THE IRRATIONAL 21quite real, and the Errant Cause is quite real for Plato: we must reject the unconvincingsubterfuges by which Archer-Hind and Taylor tried to force on him their own belief in divineomnipotence.There are two places in the Laws which throw, I think, some further light on what Platomeant by the Errant Cause. One is the passage in Book IV 38which I have already referred to,where pestilences and bad seasons are mentioned as effects of -rCIXfl r of -rkiXrpE-ra0Eo0. SinceCornford has shown that the 'Necessity' of the Timaeus s virtually synonymous with -rCOxnl,ndsince similar calamities are attributed by the Egyptian priest of Tim. to deviations of theheavenly bodies, I think we may see in them examples of the work of the Errant Cause, whosemisbehaviour God is powerless to prevent, though he tries to turn it so far as possible to goodaccount. The other place is the well-known passage in Laws X, where at least two souls aresaid to be concerned with the governance of the o'pav6&S,ne which works good and one whichis capable of working the opposite." We should not, with Clement of Alexandria,40 salute herethe first emergence of the Devil in Greek thought: for the inferior soul has no more than apotentiality of evil, which it realises, as we are told further on,41 only when it ' associates withmindlessness.' But neither should we, with some modern interpreters,42suppose that the inferiorsoul in question is merely a bad human soul: for this sense can be obtained only (as it seems tome) by mistranslating,43 and is in any case excluded by a later passage, where we learn that theo0pav6s is full of evil things as well as good.44 The inferior soul seems to stand to the good onein the same relation as Necessity to Mind in the Timaeus myth: it is a sort of untrustworthyjunior partner, liable to fits of unreasonable behaviour, in which it produces ' crazy and dis-orderly movements ' 45--a phrase that recalls both the' scared and crazy movement ' attributedto the souls of human infants elsewhere in the Laws 46and the' discordant and disorderly move-ment' of the mythical chaos that preceded the mythical creation in the Timaeus.47 All thesemovements I take to be symbols, not of deliberate evil, but of irrationality, the element both inman and in the K60aposwhich is incompletely mastered by a rational will. The reality andimportance of this element are already recognised in a famous passage of the Theaetetus 8which asserts, without explaining why, that there must always be something which is opposedto the Good, and that therefore evil things haunt our mortal nature and the visible world(-r6v6Er6v -r6-rov)as a result of necessity (? davdyKig). In his later work, at any rate, Plato cancertainly not be accused of yielding to a credulous optimism. We may guess that he has pro-jected into his conception of Nature that stubborn irrationality which he was more and morecompelled to admit in man.49In recent years several distinguished scholars have suggested a different explanation forthis ' ethical dualism ' of the later dialogues: they hold that Plato was influenced by Persianreligious ideas. I shall postpone what little I have to say about this until I have attempted somereply to my final question: did Plato regard reason as the chief or only guide in matters ofreligion ? This question is sometimes answered with an unqualified affirmative: thus one ofour best Platonic scholars, Professor Field, has said that in Plato'sview ' hard thinking was theonly way to arrive at truth.' 50 I cannot myself accept this without considerable qualification.But to avoid misunderstanding I had better begin by mentioning some kinds of irrationalfaith which I do not attribute to Plato.

I. Plato unequivocally condemns, both in the Republic51 and in the Laws,52what may becalled the magical view of religion-the idea that the gods can be influenced by the performanceof certain rituals. In the Laws he prohibits the introduction of unauthorised private cults38 709AB; cf. 677A, Tim. 22CD.89 896E.40 Strom.5. 14- 92. 5 f.41 897B. Cf. Politicus270A.42 e.g., Grube, in his excellent book Plato's Thought,146.43 Grube translates ' Is there only one soul, or are theremore than one?' But the context surely requires us tosupply, not ElVCa,ut -rbvoi0p:avbvolKE~V.44 9o6A.

45 897D.46 791A.47 30A.48 176A.49 For the relation between order in the human soul andorder in Nature cf. esp. Tim. 9oCD, Epin. 982AB.5o Philosophy (1934) 285.51 364B-E.52 905D-7D.


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22 E. R. DODDS(which were often orgiasticor superstitious,and seem, in fact, to have constituted a real socialdanger in the fourth century).53 He also prescribessevere penalties for personswho practisenecromancy or magical attack (KcTrd&SEuS,efixio) this because of the harmful social resultsofthese practices, not because he believed in their magical efficacy; he is one of the very fewancient writerswho had the intellectual courage to express scepticismon that subject.542. Plato frequently,from the Apologyo the Laws,speaksof' inspiration' (iv0oumiacrp6),but usually, I think, with recognisable rony, whetherthe inspirationbe that of seersor of poets.Such mental processescertainlyarousedhis curiosity; but that he doesnot in generaltakethemvery seriouslyas a source of truth seems to be implied by the passagein the Phaedrus5aboutthe rating of lives, where the pav-riSr TrEaEo-rind the poet are placed in the fifth and sixthclasses respectively, below even the business man and the athlete. Such persons are in anycase unable to explain or justify their intuition: 56 for Plato holds, in opposition to earliertheory, that clairvoyance is a function of the irrational soul (as we should say, of the sub-conscious mind), and has its seat in the liver.57 (I would add that the term 'Platonic (orSocratic) mysticism,' if we use it at all, should be applied not to the theory of veovumacrap6s,but to the practice of mental withdrawal and concentration which is recommended in thePhaedo.58Neither this practice nor the Plotinian mysticismwhich derives fromit can, I think,fairly be called irrational.)3. Thirdly, I see little reason, and certainly no necessity, to credit Plato with a seriousbelief in the personalgods of Greekmythology and Greek cult. Some scholarswould disagreehere: Wilamowitz, for example, believed that 'the memories of a pious childhood alwayslived in Plato,' and even grew strongerwith advancing years.59 Unfortunately Plato has nottold us about his childhood; we may, however, recall that the best-known member of hisfamily, his mother's cousin Critias,was not remarkablefor his piety. Any judgement on thismatter is, indeed, apt to be rathersubjective,for it must depend on the impressionmade on usby Plato's scattered referencesto mythological gods. He nowhere casts direct doubt on theirexistence, though he speaks of the traditional theogonies with transparentirony, and allowsSocrates to remarkin the Phaedrushat our conception of such gods is based on no reasonedprinciple: we imagine them without having seen them or intellectuallygraspedtheir nature.60They figurein the myth of the Phaedrus,61herethey contemplate the Forms; they are alloweda subordinateplace in the creation-mythof the Timaeus;62 nd theirworshipis prescribedbothin the Republic nd in the Laws63-for a Greek city was, as Wilamowitz says,64 unthinkablewithout the Greekgods. But I find little or no religiouswarmth in any of Plato's references othem: they arefor him oi Kcrt v6iov 6VTEgSEoi,65 the Church of Hellas as by law established,'and, I suspect, not much more. The traditional mythology he will expurgate so far as ismorally needful,66but he is bored by the ' laboriouslyclever' personswho want to rationaliseit: he prefersto accept ' the received opinion ' (-r6vopl36pEvov).67Similarly he will abstainfrom meddling with any cult that has been founded as the result of an oracle or a divineepiphany: 68 he will leave all that to Apollo, the irrdrpoIposEyrl-ris who sits on the 60"pcka6sfthe world.69 Does this mean that Plato personallybelieved in divine epiphanies, or held thatinfallible truth was communicated to man throughthe lips of an entrancedmedium at Delphi ?We are not bound to thinkso : for we know that he authorisedhis legislatorto lie to the citizens

53 9o09D-IoE. Cf. Harv. Theol.Rev. 33 (1940) I74.54 909B, 933A-E. He clearly disbelieves in necro-mancy; on magic his attitude is agnostic, but seems toincline towards scepticism.55 248D. For Plato's opinion of 1P&v-rEtsf. also Politicus290C, Laws 908D. But he did not reject such peopleentirely: he gives them a function in his State (Laws 828B),and we hear of a pIwrtswho hap studied under him in theAcademy (Plut. Dion 22).56 Apol. 22BC, Meno99CD.57 Tim. 71D-72B. Cornford contrasts Pindar fragm.I3IS. (I I6B.) and Ar. rr.piocr.fragm. Io.58 67C, 8oE, 83A-C. Cf. Festugitre, Contemplationt VieContemplativehezPlaton6I ff., I23 if.

59 GlaubederHellenen I. 250.60 Tim. 4oDE, Phdr.246C. Cf. Epinomis984D, where thetone seems definitely contemptuous.61 247A. But here one may suspect that they have anastral status: see below, p. 25.62 Tim. 41A-D.63 Rep. 427B; Laws 717AB.64 loc. cit.65 Laws 904A; cf. 885B and (if the text is sound) 89xE.66 Euthyphro A-C; Rep. 377D ff.67 Phdr.229C-30A.68 Laws 738BC.69 Rep.427BC; cf. Laws 828A.


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PLATO AND THE IRRATIONAL 23for their good and to forge oracles as required.70 His own attitude to Delphi and to the supposedepiphanies may have been somewhat like that of the modern ' political Catholic ' towards theVatican and towards Lourdes: he may have seen in the former simply a great conservativeforce, in the latter a harmless means of maintaining popular faith. 71

In any case these are surely not the deities whom Plato has in mind when he speaks, forexample, of likeness to God, 6poicooIas s, as man's supreme aim.72 Where then shall we lookfor the God of Plato's personal devotion ? That we should have to look for him, and shoulddiffer about where he is to be found, is in itself surprising and suggestive. If the Second Letteris genuine, as some now maintain, the mystification was deliberate; but the fuss about secrecyin that letter, and especially the use of the Pythagorean term &KOOvapcrra,73ook to me much morelike the work of a forger-part of the campaign to represent Plato. as a Pythagorean initiate. Ishould be more inclined to explain Plato's lack of clarity on this subject,by the cleavage betweenhis mythical or religious thinking and his dialectical or philosophical thinking, and the fact thatthe former was not bound, or not bound in the same degree as the latter, by the requirement oflogical consistency. Mythical thinking is thinking in images, and its logic is wholly or partlythe logic of feeling, like the coherence of a dream or a work of art, not the logic of science orphilosophy. Its conclusions are valid for those who share the feeling, but they cannot compelassent. In this Plato's myths resemble the intuitions of the poet or the seer.74 Plato knewthis, and has warned us of it more than once: 75 it is our own fault if we insist on ignoring thedistinction, and the result is likely to be confusion.Our confusion about Plato's God is, I think, an instance. His philosophical thinking aboutthe nature of goodness and truth led him to posit an Absolute, which is the Form of the Good:this Absolute is hardly a possible object of worship, and he nowhere in fact calls it or any of theForms a God.76 His religious feeling, on the other hand, created the figure of a benevolent andmighty (though not omnipotent) Father-god, father and maker of gods and men and of theworld itself.77 If we try to identify the two, in the hope that they will add up to the equivalent ofone Christian Deity, we make, as I think, nonsense. 7s Yet as an independent figure

the Father-god seems to have no function in the Platonic scheme of things save at the mythical level. If,as the best judges now agree, Plato did not believe in a creation in time, a divine creator seemsotiose. Ought we, then, to regard him as a mere expository device ? I cannot feel content withthis, either: for, like Taylor, I feel that Plato's attitude to him ' is charged with a deep emotionof a kind that can only be called religious.' 79 I incline to see in him the highest God of Plato'spersonal faith, whom we meet also at the end of the Sixth Letter,s0 and whom I should supposePlato commonly has in mind when he speaks of 6 0E65 n the singular without further explanation.But Plato could integrate him into a world-scheme only at the mythical level. I think he meansto tell us as much in a famous sentence of the Timaeus: 'To find the maker and father of thisuniverse is hard; when he is found, to declare him to all men is impossible.' 81Plato, then, if I am right in my general view, admits two types of belief or two levels oftruth, which we may call respectively truths of religion and truths of reason. The formerare, as such, indemonstrable, and he does not claim for them more than a probability that ' thisor something like it' 82 is true. I find nothing surprising in this: most men-including, Isuspect, most philosophers-believe in practice a good many things which they are incapable of

70 Rep. 414B-I5D; Laws 663D.71 On this attitude towards popular religion and itsdeplorable consequences, cf. the remarks of F. W. Walbank,JHS 64 (I944) 14 f. It seems to me, however, misleadingto suggest as Professor Walbank does that Plato's motive' was unquestionably the maintenance of privilege.' Platowas not so simple a character as all that.72 Rep. 500CD, 613AB; Theaet. 176B. Cf. Tim. 29E.73 Ep. II 3I4A.74 Cf. St6cklein, 'Ober die philosophische Bedeutungvon Platons Mythen,' Philol. Supp.Bandxxx. iii (I937)-75 Gorg.527A, PhaedoI14D, Tim. 29CD.76 Unless they are to be identified with the di5iot eEo ofTim. 37C6. Cornford's interpretation of this disputed

passage can hardly, I think, be right: it destroys the anti-thesis between &16icovnd yEyov6s. But eEsvmay be a gloss(Taylor).77 Maker also of the Forms, if we are to generalise fromthe passage about the ' ideal bed' in the Republic 597B-D).78 Cf. Hackforth, C.Q., 30 (1936) 4 ff.; Festugi?re,L'Idjal religieux des Grecs et l'tvangile 187 ff.; Solmsen,Plato's Theology 13 f.79 Mind N.S. 47 (I938) 190.80 323D.81 28C. In this sense I cannot fully agree with Grube'sremark (Plato's Thought178) that there was never, for Plato,any antagonism between his religion and his philosophy.82 Phaedo I 14D.


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24 E. R. DODDSproving. But since Plato preferredto convince his readers by reasoning, if possible, ratherthan by emotive eloquence, he continually tried to transpose his religious beliefs from themythical to the philosophical level, thus transformingthem into truths of reason. This hasthe curious result that his conclusions often emerge earlier than the philosophical argumentsby which they are established: thus his doctrine of the soul appearsin mythical guise in theGorgias eforeit is presentedas a truth of reasonin the Phaedo;the divinity of the stars s casuallymentioned in the Republic 3and assumedin the Timaeusmyth, but only in the Laws do we findan attempt to prove it. Now, it is psychologically understandable that an idea should beintuitively apprehendedon the mythical level before its logical connections are fully grasped:we often seem to ourselvesto know somethingbeforewe know why we know it. But Plato doesnot conceal that the ' hard thinking' which he requiresof us in the Phaedo r in the tenth Bookof the Laws concerns an issue which for him is already prejudged; and it is difficult to resistthe suspicion that his premissesare in fact determined by his conclusion rather than his con-clusion by his premisses. The identification of the sources from which he originally derivedhis doctrine of the soul is a question which I cannot here discuss; but it seems clear from hisown statements that he attributes to them some measure of authority. It :is particularlysignificantthat many years afterthe Phaedo,when, dpropos f Dion's death, he is moved to speakof immortality in the Seventh Letter (at presentaccepted as genuine by almost all the experts),he makes no referenceto his own philosophicalproofs,but says simply, 'We must always trulybelieve the old and sacred doctrines which reveal(pArlvovaov)hat the soul is immortal.' 84 IfPlato the philosopherheld that' hard thinking ' was the bestway to arriveat truth, this passageshows that Plato the man was content to reachit by a different and shorterroute: he rides that'steadier raft ' of ' divine ' revelationwhich Simmiasdesiredin the Phaedo.85I take it, then, as undeniable that certain Greekreligioustraditions,which it is convenientthough perhaps unscientific to label en bloc Orphic-Pythagorean,' deeply influenced Plato'spersonal religious ideas, and through these his philosophical thought also; indeed, I believewith Wilamowitz 86 that about the period when he wrote the GorgiasPlato experiencedsome-thing resembling religious conversion. Was this experience unique in his life? Or was areligiousimpetus communicatedfor a second time to his thought when at a later date he madethe acquaintanceof the Persianreligionof Zoroaster? The latter thesis has been maintained byJaeger,87Reitzenstein,88Bidez and Cumont,89and although it has been little discussed n thiscountry, the names of its sponsorsforbid us to dismissit as a mere whimsy. If they are right,we have here a second instance of a religiousinfluence affecting Plato's thought fromwithout,appearing at first, as did the ' Orphic-Pythagorean' influence, chiefly at the mythical level-in the mythsof theRepublic, haedrus,oliticus nd Timaeus--andinally transposed o the rationallevel in Laws X and the Epinomis. I cannot rule out such a possibility on a priorigrounds,either psychologicalor historical. What has happenedto a man once can happen to him twice;and as early as the Phaedo 0Plato had hinted at his willingness to learn from barbarians aswell as from Greeks. There is alsogood evidence that some information about Persianreligionwas available to Plato, both from a Chaldaean whose name appears in a list of pupils of theAcademy,91apparently in Plato's later years, and from Plato's friend, the astronomer andgeographerEudoxus,who thoughtZoroastrianism the mostbeneficial of the philosophicalsects,'and may have thoughtPlato an' avatar' ofZoroaster.92 Zoroaster s mentionedin the Alcibiadesmajor,93nd we know that both Aristotle and others of Plato's pupils were interestedin him.94

83 5o8A.84 335A. For the sense of prvrC5ovaivf. Rep. 366B.85 85CD.86 Platon I. 234 ff.87 Aristotle131 ff. (English edition).88 ' Plato und Zarathustra,' VortrdgeBibliothek Warburg1924-5, 20 ff.89J. Bidez, 'Platon, Eudoxe de Cnide, et 1'Orient,'Bull. Acad. Belg., Classe des Lettres, 1933, 195 ff., 273 ff.;' Les Couleurs des Planetes dans le Mythe d'Er,' ibid. 1935,257 if.; Bidez-Cumont, Les MagesHellinise's . 12 ff.

90 78A.91 IndexAcad. Herculan.col. iii, p. 13 Mekler.92 Pliny N.H. 30. 3; cf. Jaeger l.c. The avatar idea is aspeculative inference from the 6ooo-year interval said byEudoxus to separate Zoroaster from Plato (cf. the cautiousremarks of Nock, JHS 49 [1929] I 12).93 122A.94 Aristotle frs. 6, 8, 12, 19 Walzer, Met. 1091 b8; Her-modorus, Diog. L. prooem. 2; Heraclides Ponticus, Plut.adv. Col. I4, I I15A.


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PLATO AND THE IRRATIONAL 25So far, so good. But we must note that whereas Plato habitually, if in annoyingly vagueterms, makes acknowledgement to his Greek theological sources-to a ira;kcai~A6yoS or to ot

TrEpiTaShrEE-rdrS-he owhere attributes his doctrine to a Persian source: if we exclude theEpinomis,the nearest he gets to it is the Cretan's remark in Laws X that Greeks and barbariansalike believe in gods,95 which does not take us far, and perhaps the fact, if it is a fact, that Er theson of Armenius has a Persian name (but why in that case does Plato call him a Pamphylian ?).We are thus reduced to observing resemblances between Platonic and Zoroastrian doctrineand deciding, if we can, whether they are too close to be accidental.I cannot attempt to give here a detailed list of such resemblances. The two major pointsof Platonic doctrine which primafacie might suggest Persian or Perso-Chaldaean influence arethe dualism in his later account of man and Nature, and the high importance attached to thesun in Rep. VI and to the heavenly bodies generally in Laws X and the Epinomis. We saw,however, that Plato's dualism, unlike that of Persia, does not go the length of postulating aDevil, a principle which deliberately chooses evil, and that it seems capable of psychologicalexplanation in terms of his personal experience. If it has roots in any earlier doctrine, I shouldbe inclined to look for them, as did the ancients, 96in Pythagoreanism rather than in Persia.As for the sun and stars, Plato asserted that these were the oldest Greek gods; 97 and thoughhe was doubtless mistaken, their claim to veneration (as distinct from cult) was surely nothingnovel. Sophocles knows of philosophers who call the sun yEVVTTrilveECOVKaci rraoTparVTrcov;98Socrates prays to him; 99 Anaxagoras is prosecuted for calling him a stone; to the homelyWatchman in the Agamemnon ertain constellations are haprrpoi uvva&orai,bringing winter andsummer to mankind'; and, much more important for us, Alcmaeon of Croton had alreadyargued, like Plato, that, being in perpetual motion, the stars must be alive, and, being alive,they must be gods.100 Alcmaeon's argument was doubtless much strengthened for Plato byEudoxus' discovery that the planetary movements conformed to a determinate law.101 To ussuch uniform motion suggests a machine; to most Greeks it suggested a god-for the poorthings had never seen a machine.'02 In the circumstances it seems unhistorical either to brandPlato's (and Aristotle's) astral theology as irrational,103or to assume that it necessarily had aforeign origin-even though it was to play an important, perhaps a decisive, part in the dehellen-ising of the religious tradition in the following age.104 What is certainly an importation, and isfrankly presented as such, is the public worshipof the planets recommended in the Epinomis: 105the writer hopes the Greeks will borrow this cult from the barbarians but will adapt it, as theyhave adapted earlier borrowings, 'to nobler ends.' The latter hope was not fulfilled:Platonism had opened the door to astrology, and astrology came in.Some of the details in Plato's later myths appear-so far as a non-orientalist can judge-tohave an oriental colouring: for example, the ' astral influence ' exerted upon the souls of theunborn by the twelve gods of the Phaedrus,who seem to be associated with the twelve signs of thezodiac.106 And I am very willing to believe that in his talks with Eudoxus Plato picked up thisor that bit of Oriental symbolism and wove it into the rich web of his fantasies about the unseenworld This, however, does not make Plato in any important sense a Zoroastrian; and beyondthis, unless the Epinomisis taken as representing his views, we do not at present seem justifiedin going. I do not rule the plea of the orientalisers out of count; but pending the productionof further evidence 107 I think the provisional verdict should be ' Not proven.' E. R. DODDS.

95 886A.9 Theophrastus attributed a dualism of this type to Platoand the Pythagoreans in common (Metaph. 33, p. 322. 14Br.). Other passages in Ritter and Preller, ? 71.97 Crat.397CD.98 fragm. 752 Pearson; cf. also O.T. 66o.99 Symp.22oD (a passage which will hardly be claimedas reflecting Persian influence).100 Diels, Vors. I4 A 12.101 For the deep impression made on himby the newastronomy cf. Laws 82IA-E.102 Cf. Laws 967B, Ar. Tr. qnoo. fr. 21 Walzer; andCornford, Plato's Cosmology 73-

103 Cumont has quoted Renan's remark that 'Avant quela religion filt arrivee a proclamer que Dieu dolt etre misdans l'absolu et l'ideal, c'est a dire hors du monde, un seulculte fut raisonnable et scientifique, ce fut le culte du Soleil '(Dialogues et ragmentsphilosophiques 68).104 Cf. Nilsson in Harv. Theol. Rev. 33 (1940) I ff., whoconcludes that between them 'Greek philosophy andpopular belief paved the way for the lasting and dominatingbelief in the stars.'105 987D-88A, cf. 986E-87A.106 252C-53C, 247A; cf. Bidez, Bull. Acad. Belg. 1933,287 ff.107 Bidez' posthumous work Eos is not yet available to me.

dodds-plato and the irrational

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