KNOW THYSELF
rationality betrays a state of emergency: one was in peril, one had only one
choice: either to perish or—be absurdly rational.... The moralism of the
Greek philosophers from Plato downwards is pathologically conditioned:
likewise their estimation of dialectics. Reason virtue happiness means
merely: one must imitate Socrates and counter the dark desires by produc-
ing a permanent daylight—the daylight of reason. One must be prudent,
clear, bright at any cost: every yielding to the instincts, to the unconscious,
leads downwards. (Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-
Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale [London: Penguin Books, 1990], 43)
- There are also numerous references to wildness, anger, and agitation
throughout these dialogues. See Euthydemus 272e– 273c, 294d, 295d– e; Republic
336b– c; Charmides 153b, 162c; Protagoras 310b, 314c, 333e.
- Geier, Plato’s Erotic Thought, 74 – 75.
- Burger, Plato’s Dialogues, 14 0 n10.
- See Charmides 169d.
- Miller, Plato’s Parmenides, 6. The Eleatic Stranger offers an excellent
articulation of the positive dimensions of aporia: “Then we’ve now given a com-
plete statement of our confusion. But there’s now hope, precisely because both
that which is and that which is not are involved in equal confusion. That is, in
so far as one of them is clarifi ed, either brightly or dimly, the other will be too.
And if we can’t see either of them, then anyway we’ll push our account of both
of them forward as well as we can” (Sophist 251a).
- See also Protagoras 335b.
- Howland, The Republic, 33– 34, makes this point quite forcefully with
respect to the Republic.
- In the Lysis, Socrates simply begins by reporting on his actions, rather
than his state of mind: “I was walking straight from the Academy to the Lyceum,
by the road which skirts the outside of the walls, and had reached the little
gate where is the source of the Panops, when I fell in with Hippothales, the son
of Hieronymus, Ctesippus the Paeanian, and some more young men, stand-
ing together in a group” (203a). He soon turns toward a refl ection of his own
state of mind: “He answered only with a blush. So I added, Hippothales, son of
Hieronymus, there is no longer any need for you to tell me whether you are in
love or not, since I am sure you are not only in love, but pretty far gone in it
too by this time. For though in most matters I am a poor useless creature, yet
by some means or other I have received from heaven the gift of being able to
detect at a glance both a lover and a beloved” (204b).
- See also Euthydemus 295e; Republic 329e and 357a.
- See Gary Scott, Does Socrates Have a Method? Rethinking the Elenchus in Pla-
to’s Dialogues and Beyond (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
2002), 6.
- Tom Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith, “The Socratic Elenchos?” in Scott,
Does Socrates Have a Method? 14 5 – 57.
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross, rev. J. L. Ackrill and
J. O. Urmson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 35.
