Per Caritatem

As Socrates unfolds his city-in-thought, the so-called perfectly just city of the Republic, he speaks of the need for the rulers to promulgate the notorious “noble lie” (414c).[1] The noble lie consists in two parts.  First, the citizens are told that their true parent is the earth, that is, the city or polis (414d).  This part of the noble lie is designed to promote a kind of sold-out commitment to the polis-a loyalty willing to forsake even the closest (traditional) familial ties.  When this aspect of the noble lie is embraced, the citizens view each other as brothers and sisters who are all connected to a common parent, the polis (“Father/Motherland” themes come to mind).  Second, the citizens are presented with the “myth of metals.”  According to this myth, each citizen is born with one of three kinds of soul:  gold, silver or bronze.  As you might expect, the citizen’s worth and function in the city is determined by what kind of soul s/he possesses.   The myth of metals is created to promote strict class separation and is an attempt to eliminate factionalism.  The gold-souled people are best-suited to rule, the silver-souled people (the warrior class) assist the rulers in their plans for the city, and the bronze-souled people are simply to obey.  In addition, the classes must never intermarry, as those who “by nature” are superior cannot be tainted by a lower class.  For the good of the polis, the bronze-souled people must come to recognize their natural inferiority to the silver and gold-souled classes and be willing to obey and carry out their orders-after all, they are intellectually inferior to gold-souled rulers and cannot properly direct their own lives without the guidance of their natural superiors.

Of course Plato is not giving us a blueprint for an actual city (contra Popper); however, Socrates’ “building plans” strike a similar chord with modern racist projects.  (There are, no doubt, significant differences between the two projects; I’m not claiming that a one-to-one correspondence exists.  Nonetheless, the commonalities are worth pondering).   Drawing from the insights of historian Kenneth Stampp, Floyd W. Hayes III describes the ways in which slave-owners in the American ant-bellum south attempted to “create a good slave.”[2] The following are five common strategies employed by slave-owners in the process of making and managing a slave class.

First, those who managed the slaves had to maintain strict discipline.  One slave-owner said, “Unconditional submission is the only footing upon which slavery should be placed.”  Another said, “the slave must know that his master is to govern absolutely and he is to obey implicitly, that he is never, for a moment, to exercise either his will or judgment in opposition to a positive order” [Stampp, The Peculiar Institution:  Slavery and the Ante-Bellum South, p. 145].  Second, slave-owners thought that they had to implant in the slave a consciousness of personal inferiority.  They deliberately extended this sense of personal inferiority to the slave’s past.  Slave-owners believed that in order to control black people, the slaves “had to feel that African ancestry tainted them, that their color was a badge of degradation” [to use Socrates' language, they needed to feel that they were mere "bronze" souls] (ibid.).  The third step in the training process was to awe the slaves with a sense of the slave-owner’s enormous power.  It was essential, various slave-owners declared, “to make them stand in fear” (p. 146) [following the Republic, to show them the force of the warrior class/silver-souls if they decide to overstep class boundaries].  The fourth aspect was the attempt to “persuade the bondsman to take an interest in the master’s enterprise and to accept his standards of ‘good conduct’” (p. 147) [you must believe our "noble lie" and embrace the solidarity and customs of the city-after all, it's for the good of the city, which is our Mother].  Thus the slave-owner sought to train slaves to accept unquestionably his criteria of what was good and true and beautiful.  The final step, according to Stampp’s documents was “to impress Negroes with their helplessness:  to create in them a habit of perfect dependence upon their masters (ibid.)”[3]

Notes

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[1] On my interpretation, the city-in-thought is not a kind of blueprint for an actual city.  Rather, by showing the impossibility of such a (totalitarian, calculation-oriented) city, Plato highlights the theme of eros (broadly construed as “love”, “desire”, “longing,” etc.) as that which constitutes human existence and which cannot be controlled or managed by mathematics, calculated reason, eugenics etc.  In other words, all humans are lovers of something and these various loves, desires and longings are what drive us and direct our lives, actions and decisions.

[2] Hayes, Floyd W. III.  “Fanon, Oppression, and Resentment  The Black Experience in the United States,”  in Fanon:  A Critical Reader.  Gordon, Lewis R., Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean, and White, Renee T. eds., (Cambridge:  Blackwell, 1996), p. 16.

[3] Hayes, p. 16.

Increasingly, I think that a good way to read the Republic is to see it as highlighting the failure of mathematics/calculation to control human eros (e.g. the failure of the marriage number/lottery), as eros is constitutive of what it is to be human.  Here eros is understood in a broad sense as desire or longing for something.  For example, the philosopher is a lover of wisdom.  In that sense, s/he is erotic.

In book VII of the Republic, Socrates describes life immersed in the visible realm as a life of slavery.  For example, the people who are in bonds in the cave are lovers of sights and sound.  So we have a critique of lovers of sights and sounds, and the implication that freedom comes in the study of essences.  Hence, only the philosopher is truly “free.”  The philosopher, because he knows “true” reality, the essences, must then go back into the cave (the polis) and rule.  However, there are a number of tensions with this account.  Does knowing the essences of x make you better at doing x? Or is it that knowing the particular x makes you better at doing x?  For example, someone could have an excellent grasp of the essence of music theory, yet be tone deaf and completely unable to make music.   Glaucon, whose shortcomings we often highlight, actually seems to have an insight on this point.  In other words, Glaucon’s attempts to bring Socrates down to the visible world seems reasonable because he sees correctly that Socrates is setting up an educational system that produces people who are not comfortable in the cave or the city; they don’t like it; they want to be contemplating the essences.  Some scholars attempt to resolve this tension by appealing to the ancients’ communal sense over against a more modern, individualistic leaning, which makes what “I” want more important than the needs of the city.  However, that doesn’t seem to solve the issue, because I’m suggesting that it would not be better for the city for the philosopher to rule, as knowing x does not necessarily make one better at doing x.

Plato’s Socrates is of course incredibly subtle and often leads us in one direction simply to show us that that particular path is a dead end.  Perhaps that is what he is doing here.  For example, Socrates is aware that the philosophers who have come out of the cave and glimpsed the light of the Sun (the Form of the Good) will not want to go back down (just as Socrates didn’t want to go down to the Piraeus at the beginning of book I).  At 520d Socrates intimates that a democracy would not be the best regime because the leaders all want to rule and are power-grabbers. Later in the Republic in his discussion of the different regimes, he shows how each character type is conflicted and deficient in his erotic attachments (e.g., oligarch is a money-lover).  Since the philosopher is also erotic-a lover of wisdom (Cephalus’ being the foil, as his lack of eros disqualifies him as a potential philosopher), to rule would cause him to live in a disordered state, as he would have to (at least part of the time) turn away from his love of contemplation.  In other words, the philosopher would be conflicted.  This confliction is not exactly parallel with the internal tension experienced by the oligarch or timocrat; yet, it is a genuine tension because he is pulled away from what he loves and does best and is forced to engage in something for which he has no erotic attraction.

Though Plato’s Socrates makes several critical statements concerning the democratic regime, it just might be the case that he is actually ambivalent to democracies.  For example at 557, he states, “It [the democratic regime] is probably the fairest, the most beautiful of all regimes.”  Then at 557d, he says, “It is probably necessary for the man who wishes to organize a city, as we were just doing, to go to a city under a democracy.”  Here in effect Socrates is saying, if we want to do what we are doing right now (i.e. engaging in philosophy), then maybe we have live in a democratic regime.  Consider the “clues” that we’ve been given that his might be the case.  A basic feature of democracy is the protection of privacy.  With regard to our present concern this means there is no compulsion or obligation to be political.  This is the opposite of what we find in the parable of the cave, where the philosopher is forced to return to the cave; hence, he is forced to be political.  We see this mimicked at the very beginning of the Republic when Socrates is “forced” metaphorically to stay in the Piraeus.  Thus, in contrast to Socrates’ supposed perfectly just city, in a democracy, because privacy is assured, a person could pursue philosophy, as there is no compulsion to be political.  If, as I believe it is, the city in thought is a failure, a purposed reductio ad absurdum, and eros is constitutive of humans and cannot be controlled by mathematics (which has a kind of necessity to it), then a democracy is in fact the best (although imperfect human-all-too-human) regime for the politician and the philosopher.  Why?  It allows the eros of the politician to be satisfied because s/he is doing what s/he is best suited to do.  The same thing goes for the philosopher.  Whether this works out for the artisans (and for their ultimate good) is another question, which will have to wait for another time.

A short essay of mine entitled “What makes music beautiful” has just been posted on The Church and Postmodern Culture Blog (hosted by Baker Academic and coordinated by Geoff Holsclaw and Jamie Smith).  If you are interested, please join the conversation.

As was mentioned in a previous post, Socrates was vehemently opposed to musical innovation of any sort and claimed that there was some kind of direct connection with changes in music and changes in the law. Though it is not entirely clear what he means by this, presumably the danger in changing laws would upset or destroy the stability of the city. We also noted that according to Socrates only the dorian and phrygian modes are acceptable, as the ionian and lydian are too “effeminate.” Though it is the case that the exact structure and sound of these harmoniai are unknown, we do know that each harmonia was understood as expressing a specific type of character.[1] It was once thought that Aristoxenus’ Greater Perfect System was reflective of the Greek harmoniai. However, scholars now believe that Aristoxenus’ system was likely a successor to the older harmoniai, and it does not retain the individuating distinctives of the older modes.[2]

“This being the case, musical harmoniai cannot be conceived of as tonal patterns whose identity and character remained stable throughout ancient Greek history. In pre-Platonic times, when the Pythagorean doctrines that eventually influenced Plato were most predominant, harmoniai may indeed have been sharply individuated, contrasted with each other in easily discernible ways. As they were absorbed into a body of common practice, though, they became increasingly standardized, losing much of their former disctincitiveness. Thus, it is possible that the expressive character Plato imputes to the harmoniai had already eroded to a significant extent, and that the qualities and influences he attributes to them, though once apparent, were becoming less discernible. This gradual process of dissolution would make for ambiguity that would help explain Plato’s seemingly prudish attitude toward musical innovation.”[3]

In light of the fact that it is not simply the intervallic relations of the Greek modes that give them their distinctive qualities, but rather it seems that their distinguishing aspects included particular rhythmic features, ornamentation, melodic cliché, timbre and so forth.[4] If this is the case, then one has to question whether Socrates’ insistence on the dorian and phrygian modes is anything more than mere preference given his time and place in history.

Though (in my previous post) I questioned Socrates’ rigid distinction between the phenomenological experience of music and the mathematical reality “behind the music,” I am not claiming that there is no relation whatsoever between the two, nor that do I want to simply write off the socio-political concerns that Socrates has in regard to the possible negative effects of certain kinds of music on the polis. Socrates time and again warns that music’s affective power on the soul is both useful and dangerous. For example, the pleasure produced by music, if taken as an end in itself, will deceive people into believing that music’s goodness or beauty derives from itself and its ability to produce pleasure. For Socrates, such a view would be tantamount to the status of the chained prisoners in the cave analogy who took shadows to be reality. Moreover, the wrong kind of music may even depict that which is bad or corrupt as that which is good and worthwhile. Given the power that Socrates attributed to music (i.e., its ability to make strong impressions on the soul), one could become habituated by such music to believe that things like disobedience to authority and disrespect for the laws of city are not only acceptable but desirable. (Contemporary studies on the effects of certain kinds of heavy metal music in connection with violence and drug abuse among teens suggest that Socrates’ concerns are not unwarranted). A related concern in light of music’s affective power and its resultant pleasure is that people may come to value hedonistic pleasure over rational and moral values.[5]

“The emotional excitement it [music] affords may act in tandem with its imitative function to develop the wrong kind of character, rendering people susceptible to beliefs and actions that are morally bad. Immoderation and hedonism are at odds with rationality, and indulging in musical pleasure for its own sake disposes people to value personal pleasure over the broader social good, sensual gratification over reason. People ruled by pleasure are disinclined to defer gratification for seemingly austere values like truth and justice, a state of affairs that poses a serious threat to social stability. […] The possibility of sense taking the upper hand from reason, feeding and watering the passions instead of cultivating the higher values of mind and reason is obviously of great concern. Like mimesis, music’s esthetic power can serve forces of both good and evil. It can strengthen the soul, individual character, and society at large, or it can weaken them.”[6]

Again in order to strengthen Socrates’ account, one might appeal to the powerful role that Wagner’s music played in Hilter’s strategies[7] or the ways in which music is used in religious cults to arouse certain emotions and actions. All these possibilities granted, we are still left wondering how such restrictions might be implemented and who exactly is qualified to separate the “good” music from the “bad” music. Socrates himself seems to suggest that only the most rational and most highly educated people should are capable of discerning the best music for society as a whole. Here one might be tempted to think that the philosopher-king alone is qualified for such a role. However, Socrates (himself a philosopher) says that he does not know the modes and must rely on Damon’s expertise.[8] Presumably, an expert like Damon not only understands the theoretical aspect of music, but also has a developed taste for the aesthetics of music and is perhaps a musician himself. Someone possessing such a developed understanding of music would likely have music as his or her sole focus and thus could not possibly serve as a ruler. Whoever the rulers are, it is clear that they will have to trust and believe (themselves not having the necessary knowledge required) the musical experts as to what kind of music is best suited for the polis. Perhaps this is why Socrates’ (hyperbolic) account stresses the simplicity and sameness of music. Such simplicity does not require one to be an expert in music and would allow the rulers to regulate the musical and lyrical content without possessing the requisite knowledge of a Damon.

Notes
[1] Republic, III, 398e1-399c4, pp. 77-78.
[2] Wayne D. Bowman. Philosophical Perspectives on Music, p. 33.
[3] Ibid., p. 33.
[4] Ibid., p. 33.
[5] Ibid., p. 42.
[6] Ibid., p. 42.
[7] See for example, Michael H. Kater. The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999).
[8] Republic, III, 399a4, p. 77.

Plato, using Socrates as his mouthpiece, manifests what appears to be an ambivalent relationship to music. On the one hand, Socrates tells us that music is superior to the other arts because “rhythm and harmony most of all insinuate themselves into the inmost part of the soul.”[1] On the other hand, because he believes that music has a mysterious power to stir the emotions and to move one in either a positive or negative moral direction, Socrates suggests that music must be strictly regulated by the rulers of the city.[2] In particular, Socrates strongly denounces any musical innovation, exhorting the overseers of the city not to allow

“innovation in gymnastic and music contrary to the established order. […] For they must beware of change to a strange form of music, taking it to be a danger to the whole. For never are the ways of music moved without the greatest political laws being moved.”[3]

It is interesting to note that this passage comes directly after the shocking announcement that all things—including women and children—must be shared in common.[4] Continuing in this same vein, in book V Socrates informs us that male and female guardians will train together. Consequently, “they’ll be led by an inner natural necessity to sexual mixing with one another.”[5] Glaucon responds by distinguishing between geometrical and erotic necessity. Given that erotic necessity is uncontrollable, Socrates suggests the idea of a lottery arranged by rulers, which is an image of geometric necessity supposedly controlling erotic necessity.[6] As the just soul and city are thought to be controlled by reason, here too (mathematical) reason is presumed capable of controlling human desire. Given the radical nature of this idea, perhaps Socrates speaking hyperbolically, i.e., he is pointing to the impossibility and utter illusion of any attempt to mathematically control human desires.

If this is the case, then perhaps Socrates’ overly rigid strictures on music are also hyperbolic. Plato’s philosophy of music, if taken at face value, seems riddled with conflicting accounts. From one perspective, actual music making itself and the sounds one experiences become completely irrelevant, as the most important reality lies “behind” the sounds. In other words, music as that which is sensual and irrational is given rational status because of its relation to mathematics. “Since the highest reality lies beyond the particularity of empirical experience, harmony is better grasped through mathematical relation and proportion than through musical sounds and practices.”[7] Yet, Socrates also seems to suggest that actual music making, though less in status (intellectually speaking) than harmonics or philosophy, is able to shape the soul and hence one’s character in a way that reason alone cannot.[8] So reason alone is insufficient for the overall true education of the soul, and in some mystical way music making is thought to affect the soul (whether for good or evil) in a way that reason cannot. Here is it interesting to consider certain trends in contemporary classical music. If it is the case that the most important or most true or most accurate aspect of music reduces to purely mathematical considerations, then we are faced with a number of interesting paradoxes in conjunction with mathematics and music. For example, Pierre Boulez and John Cage, both well-known twentieth century composers, have two fundamentally different conceptions of music. Boulez is a strict adherent and promoter of total serialism, which is a compositional method that organizes music according to mathematical patterns. In contrast, Cage is the champion of what is called “chance music,” where true to its name, just about anything turns out to be music. Jeremy Begbie, who has done extensive work in the area of musicology, has analyzed the music of both composers and makes the following astute observation. Begbie first points out a deficiency in Boulez’s music noted by Boulez himself, viz., that in his music the excess of order tends to produce the perception of disorder when heard. Then he writes, “[a]lthough a piece of music does not have to yield all its meaning in perception, a modicum of perceptual intelligibility would appear to be necessary to apprehend it as music. Total serialism seemed to engender a kind of ‘entropic’ anarchy. Boulez came to describe his Livre pour Quantuor as an ‘accumulation that springs from a very simple principle, to end in a chaotic situation because it is engendered by material that turns in on itself and becomes so complex that it loses its individual shape and becomes part of a vast chaos.’ The prescriptive determinacies of notation coincide with sonorous effects which are largely indeterminate.”[9] The point being that though these composers are more or less on the opposite ends of the spectrum, Boulez representing overly rigid mathematical calculation and Cage representing chance music in the extreme, when one listens to the music of Boulez, its unnatural, machine-like mathematical precision ends up sounding as indeterminate as Cage’s random chance music. Here a number of questions arise when Begbie’s findings are brought to bear on Socrates’ account of music. First, how is it that something so mathematically precise seems to produce that which sounds like mere chaos? Perhaps Socrates would claim that this is in fact proves his point, viz., the senses can led one astray and thus we must listen only to reason. But Socrates has also conceded that music making is able to shape the soul in a way that simply understanding the mathematico-theoretical intervallic relationships of music cannot. He has also claimed (on at least one reading) that the best music is that which most closely imitates the Forms. If this is the case, then we again have to ask how such mathematical precision (the reality “behind” the imitations) can produce that which is indiscernible from something as random (and aesthetically unpleasing) as chance music? In other words, shouldn’t that which participates in the Forms reflect those Forms in a clear and evident way? At any rate, Begbie’s findings seem to highlight Socrates’ conflicting account. In short, the rigid distinction between the phenomenological experience of music (somehow being irrational and mystical) and the mathematical reality “behind the music” (the true and rational aspect of music) appears to be wrought with problems and is in need of further explication.

Notes
[1] Alan Bloom (trans). The Republic of Plato. (New York: Basic Books, 1968); IV, 401d6-7, p. 80.
[2] Ibid., IV, 398d12-400a3, pp. 77-78.
[3] Ibid., IV, 424b3-424c6, pp. 101-102.
[4] Ibid., IV, 423e4-8, p. 101.
[5] Ibid., 458d1-4, p. 137.
[6] Ibid., 459c1-460a8, pp. 138-139.
[7] Wayne D. Bowman. Philosophical Perspectives on Music, p. 35.
[8] Ibid., p. 36.
[9] Jeremy Begbie. Theology, Music and Time. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), p. 188.

Socrates’ seemingly excessive strictures on music (particularly in the Republic) have engendered a number of interpretative rejoinders. One such response is the idea that music’s persuasive and cognitive powers cannot be sharply delimitated. This argument has been developed by Julias Elias and claims that music is essential for even the most rational among us (not just for emotively moving or controlling the masses)

“because of the fundamental limitations of propositional, logical, conceptual knowledge. As Elias has argued, music (or, more broadly, expression that is poetic rather than prosaic) has the capacity to convince precisely where reason alone would fail.”[1]

Interestingly, Plato himself seems to imply something along these lines when he employs myth, poetry, and invokes the muses as if to say that rational argumentation has its limits.

“All systems, Elias explains, rest upon foundational ‘givens’ that cannot be logically proven or scrutinized in terms of the system’s own framework. All thought and reason rest on indemonstrable presuppositions, assumptions which cannot be established propositionally because they themselves constitute the ground on which one stands in accepting or rejecting assertions within the system of rationality. Plato’s myths are not shortcuts to ends he might have achieved by logical, expository means. ‘[E]very system proposed,’ argues Elias, ‘must contain some terms which are primitive, indemonstrable, asserted on faith; and because no rules can be given for their invention a touch of the poet is necessarily found in every such system.’[2] Although Plato sought a purely rational knowledge, universal, self-sufficient, independent of a knower, and untainted by belief, his reliance upon poetry shows he did not find it. And this, urges Elias, is the strongest possible Platonic defense of things like poetry. Since all knowledge is supported at critical points by belief and commitment secured by this ‘poet’s touch,’ music plays an indispensable role in creating and sustaining cultural cohesion and stability.”[3]

Notes
[1] Wayne D. Bowman. Philosophical Perspectives on Music, p. 46.
[2] Julias A. Elias. Plato’s Defense of Poetry. (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1984), p. 233. [3] Wayne D. Bowman. Philosophical Perspectives on Music, pp. 46-47.