On Owing a Cock to Asclepius (The Death of Socrates)

The Death of Socrates - Jacques Louis David (1787)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY)

I have long accepted Nietzsche’s interpretation of the last words of Socrates in The Gay Science (IV 340); accepted, that is to say, that the latter passes a final terrible judgement on life characterized as a disease from which one is cured by death. This despite the fact that such an interpretation obliges one to overlook everything else that Socrates said, or suspect that beneath his cheerfulness he was secretly a pessimist and a decadent.

But Foucault has persuaded me to reconsider this issue and give Socrates the benefit of the doubt; to accept that the above interpretation simply doesn’t hold good philosophically, even if it’s a wicked and polemical pleasure to think it true. If we examine the textual evidence carefully, then we simply cannot go along with Nietzsche and imagine that Socrates has, at the very last moment, broken down and suddenly revealed his hidden nature.

Rather, Socrates is affirming what has always been manifest in his teaching: the disease for the cure of which Asclepius is owed a cock, is that of false (often popular) opinion – not life; a disease of thinking that corrupts the soul. He tells his friends and followers who ask for posthumous instruction: ‘Don’t do anything new or different, just do what I’ve always told you to do: take care of yourselves.’

But then he adds one further remark; acknowledging his debt of gratitude to Asclepius and the need for the sacrifice of a cock. Contra Nietzsche, Foucault reads it thus: Socrates wants to give thanks for the god’s assistance, as a healer, to all those who have undertaken care of the self “For we should not forget ... that if we are concerned about ourselves, it is to the extent also that the gods have shown concern for us.” 

In an important and persuasive (rather moving) passage, Foucault continues:

“So you can see that Socrates’s death, the practice of his parrhesia which exposed him to the risk of death ... the practice of his truth-telling, and finally this devotion to inducing others to take care of themselves just as he took care of himself, all form a very closely woven ensemble ... whose threads come together for the last time in the sacrifice of the cock. It is the mission concerning the care of oneself that leads Socrates to his death. It is the principle of ‘caring for oneself’ that, beyond his death, he bequeaths to the others. And it is to the gods, favourable towards this care of oneself, that he addresses his last thought. I think that Socrates’s death founds philosophy ... as a form of veridiction ... peculiar precisely to philosophical discourse, and the courage of which must be exercised until death as a test of the soul ...” 

  - Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 113-14. 

However, there are of course many other readings of the final section (section 118) of the Phaedo - including that by Eva C. Keuls, who, in her 1985 study of sexual politics in ancient Greece entitled The Reign of the Phallus, understands the last words of Socrates as a crude joke; a reflection upon one final death-defiant erection, caused by the action of the poison, that he uncovers to the amusement of his friends.

If Nietzsche's is the most malicious and Foucault's the most touching, perhaps this interpretation by Keuls is the most amusing and in keeping with Socrates's reputation as a bit of a satyr.

A Nietzschean Message for the New Year: Amor Fati

For me, the greatest and most touching of new year blessings and resolutions remains the one with which Nietzsche opens Book IV of The Gay Science (written January, 1882):

"Today, everybody permits themselves the expression of their dearest wish. Hence, I too shall say what it is that I most desire - what was the first thought to enter my heart this year and what shall be for me the reason, guarantee, and sweetness of my life henceforth: I want increasingly to learn to see as beautiful what is necessary in things, so that I may become one of those who makes things beautiful.  

Amor fati - let that be my love from now on! 

I do not want to wage war against that which is ugly; I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to judge those who judge. Looking away shall be my sole negation. For some day I wish to be one who says Yes to life as a total economy of the whole."

This is what the phrase torpedo the ark means to me: love fate; find pleasure in things as they are; don't judge; look away from that which offends one's taste, but nonetheless affirm everything (even the cockroach that obscenely scuttles across the floor, or lies on its back kicking its legs in the air).

Happy New Year to torpedophiles everywhere ...      

Note: The above text by Nietzsche is a modified version of Walter Kaufmann's translation in The Gay Science, (Vintage Books, 1974), IV. 276.

Happy to be Hopeless this Christmas

In his 1886 preface to the second edition of The Gay Science, Nietzsche speaks of the gratitude of the convalescent and by which he refers to the rejoicing of one who has resisted a terrible ordeal or period of sickness without complaint, without submission, and, crucially, without hope. 

I have to say, I find this idea - an old Norse idea - very attractive this Christmas; the refusal not only to give in or give up, but to accept the consolation of any teaching that promises a better time to come. It's easy - or at any rate, easier - to endure great hardship or pain if you believe that tomorrow will bring relief or even some form of reward (if not in this life, then in the next). 

It takes a more cheerful form of bravery and a more philosophical bent, to abandon all hope and put aside all trust in those ideals and sentimental illusions in which we may have formerly found our virtue and our humanity. 

For Nietzsche, we are born into what he terms the greater health when we realise that it is often sickness, suffering and, indeed, wretched failure, which best liberate the spirit; that is to say, it is pain and loss that make us not exactly better souls, but almost certainly more profound thinkers. 

Of course, it's true that such a pessimistic teaching means that one is no longer able to trust in life and life's goodness - that life itself becomes problematic (becomes a question of evil). Yet one should not assume that this makes gloomy or unable to love; on the contrary, love remains possible, but one must love differently "with a more delicate taste for joy". 

At the bottom of Pandora's box lies the unopened gift of hope - it can stay there!

Note: this post is dedicated with affection to Princess Kiran who thinks differently on this issue ...

Philosophy For Everyone and No One (Not For All)

Owl logo of Philosophy for All:  

pfalondon.org

Philosophy for All: a phrase and a London-based, non-profit organization designed to dismay or make laugh those perverts who value the fatal love of wisdom, just as it flatters those who subscribe to the moral ideal of equality and the notion that all souls might know Plato.

From the PFA Secretary I receive news of a masterclass [!] that teachers and would-be teachers of philosophy are strongly encouraged to attend; a class that promises to show how philosophy can be made accessible, inclusive and relevant to people of all ages and from all backgrounds.

Prospective students on the day-long course are also assured they will be taught how to deal with the tricky questions that often arise within philosophy and which can cause some students a great deal of difficulty. 

Now, as regular readers of this blog will know, as a post-Nietzschean philosopher I'm all for models of thought invested with an ironic, joyful element. But la gaya scienza doesn't mean dumbing-down in the name of democracy, nor attempting to make thinking fun in a manner that robs it of all seriousness, all challenge, all danger.  

When Zarathustra speaks, he speaks to everyone and no one, never simply to all. And he expects his listeners to have first grown new ears ...

Note: Readers might be interested in Anja Steinbauer's position on this question which can be found in an article published in Philosophy Now, issue 22. Click here. Dr Steinbauer is founder and president of Philosophy for All and co-founder of the London School of Philosophy.  

Just Say No

Viktor and Rolf: A/W 2008

 

'You're always so negative and critical', she said - rather ironically by way of criticism. Like many of the things that came out of her mouth, it wasn't entirely true. But, even if it were, so what?

For just as in saying yes to something in particular we automatically say no to everything else in general, in saying no to things - particularly things, ideas, or people which we once loved uncritically in the past - we say yes to the future and a strange new unfolding of the self. 

Nietzsche writes:

"When we criticize something, this is no arbitrary and impersonal event; it is very often evidence of vital energies in us that are growing and shedding a skin. We negate and must negate because something in us wants to live and affirm - something that we perhaps do not conceive as yet."

- The Gay Science, Book IV, 307.

To want to have done with judgement and make an affirmation of life as it is, does not mean depriving oneself of any means of distinguishing between modes of existence; nor does it mean renouncing one's critical faculty as born and developed not within the ideal realm of higher values, but within a beating heart that knows of love and hate.

 

Towards a Doctrine of Non-Necessity

Whilst I'm perfectly happy for philosophers to discuss the concept of necessity (be it logical, empirical or transcendental in nature), or spend many long hours thinking through related ideas of determinism and contingency, it increasingly seems to me that many of the malicious and often murderous stupidities that confront us in this life are, for want of another word, completely unnecessary. 

Nationalism, racism, homophobia, misogyny, sectarianism and all those forms of what Nietzsche memorably termed "scabies of the heart" [GS 377] are things that we could happily do without and the absence of which would instantly make the world less ugly and unpleasant.

Hopefully it's clear that I'm not speaking here as a liberal idealist of some description. For as Nietzsche also says, one has to be "afflicted with a Gallic excess of erotic irritability" [GS 377] to dream of embracing all humanity with fraternal affection and, despite having been born in Paris, I'm simply not French enough.

So no, I do not love mankind. If anything, it's because I'm too indifferent and ultimately too uncaring to spend time hating that I'm led towards a nihilistic doctrine of non-necessity. It's insouciance and a certain cool irony that saves us from that violent rage and ressentiment that grips those who subscribe to a puffed-up politics of identity and self-assertion.