By this argument, the dialog is the continuation of the public cult of tragedy and Plato is the spiritual
successor of Aeschylus. Socrates’failure, attested by his trial and execution, thus raised an
additional question: to whom is the symbolic form of dialog addressed if the jury and the citizens do
not wish to listen?
Because“the law of the dialog cannot be enforced,”the order of Athens could not be restored by
Socrates or Plato.“Socrates had to die in the attempt. AndDikeachieved no victory. Is the dialog a
futile gesture after all?”Plato’s answer, according to Voegelin, is that the dialog is continued in post-
existence and is evoked by the myths of judgment inGorgiasandRepublic. Moreover theApology
is“itself amythical judgment.”The Socrates of theApologyleaves his judges in no doubt that others
will ask the questions that they tried to escape by sentencing him to death. The“others”have come.
And the dialog is the continuation of the“trials”starting in the Academy and continuing to the
present.^48
Granted that the symbolic form of the dialog including its mythical dimension, was the successor
to the symbolic form of tragedy, what is the place of comedy in this complex? Voegelin did not
address this question directly though something of an answer can be constructed from his remarks
on fifth-century Athenian spirituality. Let us start from an observation of Strauss:“The Aristo-
phanean comedy certainly presupposes tragedy; it builds on tragedy; in this sense, at any rate, it is
higher than tragedy.”^49 This remark does not enable us to conclude that, if philosophical dialog
builds on comedy, as we have argued it does, comedy is closer to philosophy than is tragedy. But it
does mean that (to use Voegelinian language) the differentiation of philosophy makes a recovery of
comedy, anda fortioriof tragedy, impossible. Once the insight afforded by philosophy has been
gained, it cannot be un-learned, though the non-philosophers are under no compulsion to share it.
From a Voegelinian perspective, here is where matters become more complex. In theFrogs, for
example, Aristophanes is able to represent the tragic dramas of Aeschylus and Euripides in a
“naturalistic”way as representatives of the Athenians rise to greatness during the Persian Wars and
decline into sophistic fraud and effeminate indulgence. As Voegelin observed, such an attitude is
akin to reading Mann’sMagic Mountainas a story about life in a sanatorium. The point, however, is
that Aristophanes can take the“naturalistic”attitude of the audience for granted.^50 A generation
later, with Aristotle’sPoetics, tragedy and comedy are simply literary genres with the former being
more complex because it achieves catharsis through the vicarious experiences of pity and fear.
When drama is reduced to a kind of psychotherapy, however, it is clear its spirit has fled.^51 By this
reading, philosophy expressed in the symbolic form of dialog is indeed obedience to the god who
survived the death of the Olympians.
In practice, Socrates abandoned the conventions ofaidos, shame, and practiced the comedic
exposure of its inadequacies everywhere, in public and in private, by exercising the free speech
(parrhesia) for which the Athenians were famous. The“examined”life that Socrates pursues is“a
life dedicated to uncovering, to searching for a truth that lies behind the veils of customs, behind the
public and private facades, behind the hierarchies established only by tradition.”^52 The Socratic
practice ofparrhesiadissolves privacy and undermines the unexamined life that he says is not
worth living for a human being even though such a life is the life of a conventionally pious human
being. Such a human being, it needs hardly be said, would consider his or her life quite worth living,
perhaps even worth living it as long as possible.
The deployment ofparrhesiaagainstaidoswould be irresponsible and unjust if the philosophers
had nothing with which to replace conventionalaidos. Among other things, this is a problem
explored in theProtagoras. There Protagoras argued thataidoscomplemented the art of politics
thus enabling human beings to live together. In contrast, Socrates argued thataidoswould limit
wisdom and so had to be excluded from his famous discussion of the unity of the virtues, which
named separately, include: wisdom, moderation, courage, justice, and holiness (Protagoras, 349b).
As Saxonhouse noted, moderation has replaced shame for philosophers because, unlike shame,
moderation is not limited by tradition and convention and thus by the gaze and opinions of others.
28 Barry Cooper