Hermanubis, Vatican Museum

3,402 words

(Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, Part 8 here, Part 9 here, Part 10 here, Part 11 here, Part 12 here, Part 13 here, Part 14 here, Part 15 here, Part 16 here, Part 17 here, Part 18 here, Part 19 here.)

Socrates the Dog

At the end of our last installment, Socrates has announced that, if forced to choose, he prefers death to dishonor.

Apropos of the topic of death, Socrates then says that the worst thing is to arrive in Hades with one’s soul full of injustices. He proposes to illustrate this point with a speech (logos). In the context of the Gorgias, a speech is contrasted with the back and forth of dialogue. But the Greek logos does not just mean “speech.” It also has the connotation of “rational account” as opposed to something irrational. Thus Socrates says that Callicles will regard his logos as a myth (mythos). But Socrates insists that it as an actual logos and offers it as true.

Socrates’ rational myth is about the judgment of the dead in the afterlife. Socrates often swears an oath “by the dog.” In the Gorgias, at the beginning of the conversation with Callicles, he makes clear who the dog is. He says, “by the dog, the god of the Egyptians.” Socrates is swearing an oath to a foreign God. This is the sort of behavior that got him accused of impiety and executed.

Who is the dog, the god of the Egyptians? His name was Anubis. He was depicted as a black jackal or as a man with a jackal’s head. The jackal was associated with the desert where the Egyptians buried their dead. In Egyptian mythology, he ushered the dead before the throne of Osiris, the god of the dead, where they were judged fit to enter the afterlife. Their hearts were weighed against the feather of ma’at (righteousness). Those whose hearts were heavy with wickedness were devoured by a monster. Those whose hearts were light entered the afterlife.

The Greeks later identified Anubis with Hermes, the psychopomp, or the “guide of souls” to the realm of the dead. They even created a syncretic deity, Hermanubis, a dog-headed rather than jackal-headed god. Socrates identified himself as a psychagog, a “leader of souls,” which is a related concept. Now Socrates is taking on the role of Hermanubis and leading Callicles into the underworld to face judgment.

Socrates’ story is basically this. The previous age was ruled by Kronos. Human beings had foreknowledge of their time of death. When they were approaching death, they would go to a mortal judge who would assign them their place in the afterlife. Those who led good lives would be sent to the Isles of the Blessed, which was basically Heaven. Those who lived evil lives would be sent to Hades/Tartarus, the equivalent of both the Christian ideas of Hell and Purgatory, where they would be punished.

But the system didn’t work. The life one leads is inscribed on one’s soul. But because people were judged before they died, their souls were still in their bodies. But the internal and the external don’t always match up. There are people with beautiful faces and sterling reputations whose souls are corrupt and rancid. And there are decent men who have ugly faces and bad reputations, like Socrates. Moreover, because men knew when the end was near, they could live lax or wicked lives, right up to the end, then put on their best possible appearance of virtue before approaching the judges. Finally, the dying were judged by living beings, who could not see through the body, its reputation, and its behavior to the soul underneath. Thus inevitably some good people were sent to hell, and some bad people ended up in Heaven.

When Zeus overthrew Kronos, he divided the world between himself and his two brothers: Pluto took the underworld; Poseidon took the seas; Zeus ruled over the rest. Then Zeus rectified the judgment of the dead. Zeus decreed that men no longer have foreknowledge of their death, so they can’t live laxly then prepare for judgment at the last minute. They must be prepared for death and judgment at any time, so they must be virtuous all the time.

Zeus also decreed that men be judged after death, when their souls were stripped of their bodies, so their virtues and vices were plainly visible to all. On the assumption that “like knows like,” the judges must also be dead, so that naked souls judge naked souls, all external appearances and pretenses stripped.

Zeus then appointed three of his dead sons as judges of afterlife. Aeacus judged the dead of Europe. Radamanthus judged the dead of Asia. Minos presided over both and had final say in case of disputes.

Under the new system, the high and mighty in this world fared very poorly in the next world if their souls were corrupt. Even the Great King of Persia entered the afterlife stripped of his pomp and reputation, with his soul naked and his sins visible to all.

This is what happens when Rhadamanthus, the judge of Asia, encounters the soul of “the Great King or some other king or potentate”:

[He] sees nothing healthy in his soul, but finds it whip-marked and full of scars from the perjuries and injustice imprinted on his soul by his every action—everything misshapen from falsehood and boasting, and nothing straight—the result of an upbringing devoid of truth. He sees a soul filled with asymmetry and ugliness as a result of its license, luxury, insolence, and lack of control over its actions [all things praised by Callicles] ; and when he sees it, he sends it away in disgrace, straight to prison. When it gets there, it will have to endure the things that are appropriate to it.

Here prison means Hades, also called Tartarus. Hades is divided into two different levels. One corresponds to the Christian idea of Hell, the other to the idea of Purgatory. Both are places of punishment. Purgatory is where those who can be redeemed by punishment are sent to expiate their crimes, after which they might graduate on to Heaven. Hell is where irredeemable souls are sent to be tortured and punished for all eternity as an example for others.

Of the unredeemable, Socrates says:

Archelaus [King of Macedon] will be one, if what Polus says is true, along with anyone else who is a tyrant of that kind. In fact, I think the majority of these examples will come from tyrants and kings and potentates and those who have engaged in political life. They are the ones who have the opportunity to commit the greatest and the most unholy crimes. Homer is evidence of this, representing those who are being punished in Hades for the whole of time as kings and potentates—Tantalus, Sisyphus, Tityus.

Socrates then explains why the high and mighty are more likely to be incurably corrupt than common men who lead private lives. Just as ugliness protects the virtue of women, poverty and obscurity protect the virtue of men, even the men who act wickedly. Great men sin greatly, because they have the means and opportunity to do so.

Small men sin pettily, because they lack the means and opportunity to do worse. Therefore, they are more likely to be redeemable. Socrates continues:

No one has represented Thersites, or any other private individual who was wicked, as being in an incurable, held fast in the grip of severe punishments. He didn’t have the opportunity, I suppose, which is why he was more fortunate than those who did.

Socrates speaks here of good and bad “fortune,” but he inverts the common understanding. Most men, including Callicles, think that the Great King is the most fortunate man of all, whereas a man who is humble (the opposite of the kalon) and unknown (the opposite of kleos)—in short, the opposite of Callicles, whose name basically means noble + famous—is unfortunate. For Socrates, however, the Great King is unfortunate and Thersites is fortunate, for great men have more opportunities to ruin their souls than humble men.

But Socrates’ analysis here leaves out something very important: wisdom. Both the great and the humble in Socrates’ account take the cards they are dealt by fortune and play them badly. And, as Socrates argues in the Euthydemus, foolish men are better off with fewer advantages, so they have fewer opportunities to behave badly. But the reverse is also true: wise men are better off with more advantages, because they can do great things with their resources. The big question is: How can wise men acquire the resources to do great things?

Socrates continues:

No, Callicles, it is among the powerful that the really wicked people are to be found, though even among them there is nothing to stop good men coming into being, and they are entitled to great admiration when they do. After all Callicles, it is hard for someone who is born with great opportunities for acting unjustly to live his life justly. He is entitled to great credit. But people like this rarely do come into being. Here and elsewhere there have been, and no doubt will be, gentlemen with this virtue of dealing justly with whatever is entrusted to them. [Here Socrates brings wisdom into play, in the form of the virtue (arete) of justice (dike).] One in particular, Aristides the son of Lysimachus, has become very famous all over Greece. But, with all due respect, the majority of those who exercise power turned out bad.

Aristides (530–468 BCE), nicknamed “the just” (dikaios), was a freeborn Athenian of moderate fortune who became a general and political leader during the Persian Wars. In short, he was born in the right stratum of society to attain power and influence without a long, corrupting climb up the greasy pole of democratic politics. Yet when he attained power, he had the wisdom to use it rightly. Aristides was truly noble and won just fame, again components of Callicles’ name.

The Schofield and Griffith edition of the Gorgias points out that Aristides was ostracized in 483 BCE. Earlier in his conversation with Callicles, Socrates claims that the ostracism of Themistocles and Miltiades were signs of their failure as statesmen.[1] This does not, however, alter Socrates’ point. Aside from the fact that Aristides was soon pardoned and resumed his leading role in Athens, Socrates might have believed that Aristides was ostracized despite his wisdom (which cannot wholly overcome bad fortune), whereas Themistocles and Miltiades might have been ostracized due to their lack of wisdom. But, contra Socrates’s earlier claims, simply being ostracized is not sufficient evidence of a failed political career.

After discussing the justice meted out to men like the Great King, Socrates then turns to the fate of men like himself:

Sometimes there is a soul which has lived a holy life, in company with truth, a soul belonging to some private individual, or somebody of that sort, or most likely, as I maintain, Callicles, the soul of a philosopher who has minded his own business in life and not poked his nose into the affairs of others. When [Rhadamanthus] catches sight of one of these [these would be philosophers from Ionia and other places in Asia], he is filled with wonder, and sends him off to the Isles of the Blessed. Aeacus does the same [with men from Europe, such as Socrates] . . .

So ends Socrates’ speech, which he finds convincing.

Then Socrates turns to the question of the practical implications of this belief:

Well, for my part, Callicles, I am convinced by these accounts, and my concern is how I can present my soul to the judge in as healthy a state as possible. So I shall say goodbye to the honors most people are interested in, and in the practice of truth try both to live and, when I die, to die as truly the best person I have it in my power to be. And so far as lies in my power I invite the whole of the rest of mankind and you in particular, returning your invitation [namely, Callicles’ invitation to pursue power in the public realm], to this life and this struggle, which I maintain is more important than all our struggles here.

Here Socrates is returning to the theme of the choice of lives: the public life of pursing power or the private life of pursuing wisdom, which means the care of one’s own soul. The public pursuit of power offers certain rewards, including the ability to perform well if dragged into court. But Socrates also points out that this life has spiritual costs. To gain power over the public, one must become like it, which means that one’s soul will become corrupt. As long as one keeps one’s corruption hidden, one will suffer no punishment.

But in the afterlife, one faces a different court. One’s soul stands naked, stripped of its body and its worldly rank, one’s vices visible to the judge. Socrates is confident that he will acquit himself well before such a court. Then, with evident relish, he turns the table on Callicles by forcing him to consider how he might fare in the same position:

My criticism of you is that you will not be able to protect yourself when you meet the judgment and verdict I’ve just been describing. You will go before that judge the son of Aegina [the nymph who bore Aeacus to Zeus], when he seizes hold of you and brings you before him, and you will go dizzy and stand there gawping, you in that place no less than I in this. Who knows, you may be given a punch in the mouth and be well and truly trampled on.

It would be easy for Callicles to dismiss Socrates’ speech as a mere myth, so Socrates immediately addresses this question:

Of course, you may regard this all this story all this as a story, an old wives tale, and treat it with contempt. And there’s nothing so very surprising about being treated with contempt, if we had somewhere else to turn in our search for better and truer answers. But as it is, you can you can see that you three—you, Polus, and Gorgias—who are the wisest of the Greeks alive today, and not able to demonstrate that we should lead some other life than the one which is so clearly in our best interest in the world beyond also. Among so many arguments, while the others are proved wrong, this argument alone stands its ground: that we should more beware of acting unjustly than of being treated unjustly, and that more than anything, what a man should practice both in private and in public life, is not seeming to be good, but being good. And if someone turns out badly in some respect, he should be punished. All flattery, whether directed at oneself or others, at few or many, is to be avoided. That is how rhetoric should be employed—always aiming at the just—as should any other activity.

Earlier in the Gorgias, Socrates claims that he does not know that it is better to suffer injustice than to do it. This a very strong sense of knowledge as final and unrevisable. But Socrates is willing to claim that he knows it in a weaker sense, namely that he has good arguments. But Socrates remains open to hearing counter-arguments. Until he hears a better argument, however, he will live his life according to the principle that it is better to suffer injustice than to do it.

Socrates has a similar attitude toward myths about the afterlife. He does not claim that they are absolute and unrevisable truths. How could he? He has not been there. But he thinks that his myths have a lot to recommend them, namely their psychagogical usefulness. So until he hears a better story, he will accept his myths as rational and live accordingly.

In my lecture, “The Myths of Plato,”[2] I discuss at some length Socrates’ practice of taking up traditional Greek myths and reworking them. In the Gorgias, Republic, and Phaedo, for example, Socrates gives different accounts of the fate of the soul after death.

There are two questions here. First, what licenses Socrates to transform Greek and other myths and to be somewhat cavalier about making them all consistent? Second, what makes these myths rational and true? They certainly aren’t rational in the sense of logical consistency. They certainly aren’t true in the sense that they have been verified by experience, since Socrates was speaking on this side of death.

I think the same answer suffices for both questions, because the goal of these myths is the care of the soul. The Greek word psychagogy means “leading the soul.” In Socrates’ case, it means leading it to virtue. Socrates tells these stories about the afterlife to make the soul better. What makes them “rational” and “true” is being effective means to the end of teaching virtue. Myths don’t have to be logically consistent or factually correct to have positive effects.

Thus Socrates creates the template followed by later writers like Pascal, Rousseau, Kant, and William James, all of whom offer arguments for belief in the afterlife and in the moral order of the universe based on pragmatic considerations: ultimately the care of the soul.

Socrates ends his speech and the dialogue as a whole by inviting Callicles to follow his way of life: “Listen to me, then, and follow to that destination where, when you arrive, you will be happy both while you live and after you die, as the logos clearly indicates.” If forced to choose between doing injustice or suffering it, Socrates bids Callicles to suffer it, since it cannot harm the most important thing: namely his soul.

Only once they have practiced virtue can they consider turning their hands to politics. Socrates makes clear that their political involvement will consist solely in counsel. He also emphasizes that neither of them is in a position to give political advice now, and if they were to try, they would look ridiculous.

Let us now return to the question of how wise men might acquire the power and resources to do great things, the greatest of which is to establish a just regime. In the Republic, Socrates suggests two basic paths: philosophers must become kings, or kings must become philosophers. More broadly: wise men must pursue power, or powerful men must pursue wisdom.

In the terms of the Gorgias, the first path is an illusion, particularly in a democratic society like Athens, for there is no way to become great without pandering to the mob, and there is no way to pander to the mob without becoming like them, which corrupts one’s soul and is thus self-defeating. Thus the only realistic path is for powerful men to pursue wisdom.

Socrates says it is difficult for the great and powerful to become wise and just. In the case of Aristides, it is not clear how it happened. Maybe he was just a freak of nature, a stroke of good fortune.

But here Socrates suggests a more reliable way for the great and powerful to become wise: listening to the counsel of the wise. Of course, Socrates isn’t just talking about it, he’s been doing it throughout the Gorgias. Moreover, he is not just addressing Callicles but also a large group of other upper crust Athenians who gathered to hear Gorgias speak.

According to the argument Socrates has followed and defended, the best way of life is “to live and die practicing righteousness and the rest of virtue.” Thus he invites Callicles and everybody else to follow it. Socrates concludes with brutal frankness: as for the public life in pursuit of power, “it is worthless, Callicles.”

It is easy to get caught up in the drama of the Gorgias, assume that this conversation actually happened, and wonder what Callicles might have said in response. But maybe the fact that Callicles left no mark on history except his appearance in the Gorgias indicates his answer: he chose to live a private life.

Notes

[1] Plato, Gorgias, Menexenus, Protagoras, ed. Malcolm Schofield, trans. Tom Griffith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p.112, n126.

[2] Greg Johnson, “The Myths of Plato,” in From Plato to Postmodernism (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2019).