An inquiry into the philosophical concept of scholê leisure as a political end (Kalimtzis, Kostas) (z-lib.org)

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
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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
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Subjects: LCSH: Leisure--Philosophy. | Leisure--History.
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Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
I.
II.
viii
ix
Introduction
1
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
5
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
5
10
16
17
20
24
24
25
25
26
27
31
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
40
41
45
47
51
53
55
58
vi
V.
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
Making Scholê Practical – Diagôgê, Mousikê and Philia
On some of the differences between diagôgê and scholê
The fallacy of suppressed evidence
Phaeacia: Diagôgê in music as a way of life
Does musical education prepare a citizen for theoretical activity?
How does the music curriculum contribute to preparation for scholê?
To show the role of music for the theoretical life missing
evidence is required
Citizens in charge of their musical curriculum
Why we are attracted to the translation of homonoia as
‘unanimity’ and ‘concord’
Music and political friendship
Homophrosunê in Homer
What can be the cause of homonoia for the end of scholê?
The principle of scholê is God
83
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
62
69
73
76
81
87
91
92
95
98
98
99
102
104
106
111
115
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.
Eth. Nic.
Hist. An.
Mag. Mor.
Metaph.
Pol.
The Constitution of the Athenians
Nicomachean Ethics
History of Animals
Magna Moralia
Metaphysics
Politics
Arnim.
SVF
von Arnim, H.
Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta
Ath.
Deipn.
Athenaeus
Deipnosophistai
Cic.
Fam.
Fin.
Leg.
Off.
Phil.
Rep.
Sest.
Cicero
Epistulae ad familiares
De finibus
De legibus
De officiis
Orationes Philippicae
De republica
Pro Sestio
Clem. Al.
Strom.
Clemens Alexandrinus
Stromateis
Diels, H.
DK
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker
Dio Chrys.
Or.
Dio Chrysostom
Orationes
List of Abbreviations
x
Diog. Laert.
Diogenes Laertius (Lives of the Philosophers)
Epict.
Epict. Disc.
Epictetus
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.
Ap.
Cra.
Grg.
Leg.
Menex.
Prm.
Phd.
Phdr
Phlb.
Rep.
Soph.
Tht.
St.
Symp.
Ti.
Alcibiades I
Apology
Cratylus
Gorgias
Laws
Menexenus
Parmenides
Phaedo
Phaedrus
Philebus
Republic
Sophist
Theaetetus
Statesman
Symposium
Timaeus
Plut.
Cat. Mai.
Luc.
Plutarch
Cato Maior
Lucullus
List of Abbreviations
Marc.
Num.
Per.
Quaest. conv.
Rom.
Marcellus
Numa
Pericles
Symposiaκôn
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.
Anth.
Stobaeus
Anthologion
Xen.
Mem.
Symp.
Xenophon
Memorabilia
Symposium
xi
xii
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
36
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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)
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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?
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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 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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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 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
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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
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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
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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
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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),
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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;
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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)
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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
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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).
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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
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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
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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
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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).
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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
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(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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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:
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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
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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
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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.
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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;
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
178
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.
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
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Notes
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).
See de Heer (1969).
Il. 6.138; Od. 4.805, 5.122 (θεοὶ ῥεῖα ζώοντες = the gods who live at ease).
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’.
Il. 24.526; Od. 6.42.
Albert Camus (2005).
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’.
Il. 4.339. Autenrieth: kerdaleos ‘profitable, advantageous; hence cunning, sly’ and
kerdaleophrôn : ‘with mind bent on gain, greedy-minded; crafty minded’.
Theognis Elegiae 1.705.
Grg. 525e2.
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.
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’.
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
1
2
3
4
5
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).
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.
Xen. Mem. 2.6.4.3.
Anaxagoras, DK Fr. 12.
Socrates’ words in the Phaedo regarding scholê and ascholia offer a good
summation for what has been said thus far:
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
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Plutarch Quaest. conv. 3.718 Ε7–F4.
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).
R. Weiner: ‘Today creativity generally refers to the phenomenon of bringing
forth something new in virtually any realm of human endeavour’ (p. 99).
Matt Ridley (2015).
Plato Menex. 247a1.
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’.
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.
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
2
Notes
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
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
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).
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.’
Pol. 1324a5-8.
For such a conflation of Aristotle (qua ‘objective idealist’) and Kant see J. Lear
(302-308).
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’.
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.’
Plato Tht. 155d3–5. Iris’ father was the sea god Thaumas – Wonder.
Metaph. 980a1.
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.
‘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).
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
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
195
curriculum was as ‘diagôgê for the purpose of scholê’ (see Pol. 1341b40 and
1338a22 respectively).
Eth. Nic. 1177a9 (also 1176b12).
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.’
Arist. Hist. Anim. 534a11 and 589a17.
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).
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’.
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.”
Od. 8.559.
The word is cognate with the verb harpazô, which means to seize, snatch, to rob
or abduct.
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.’
Schoen-Nazzaro (1978: 270): ‘When music establishes a suitable emotional
order in the listener, it can bring enjoyment beyond that found in other
196
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
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 …’
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’.
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.’
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).
Cic. Fin. 5.65.
Cic. Off. 1.59.
Cic. Rep. 2.69.7-19.
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] …’
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
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
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.
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).
Cic. Rep. 3.23.8-13.
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.
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.’
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’.
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’.
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.’
Diog. Laert. 7.37.6: ho diadexamenos tên scholên.
Diog. Laert. 7.185.10; 7.41.4.
Ath. Deipn. 5.42.2; Plut. Luc. 42.1.5.
Epict. Disc. 1.29.34.1–36.1
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:
4
5
6
7
8
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)
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
For the scholarly literature on this phrase and for an extended analysis of
alternative interpretations the reader is referred to Wirszubski (1954).
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’.
Sest. 99–100.
‘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).
Sest. 139.2.
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).
Off. 3.1.9–10, trans. Miller (Loeb edition).
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
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
205
leading man’, the word seditio is an accusation against a particular person who is
fomenting civil war against otium.
Clem. 1.1.8.
Clem. 4.1.4-6.
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.
Sen. Cons. 1.3.7.
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.
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).
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
11
12
13
14
15
Notes
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.
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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