Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 080 - Delphic Utterances - Plutarch.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of King's College London and the Leverhulme Trust, online at www.historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode, Delphic Utterances, Plutarch. This episode is brought to you by the letter E. We'll be discussing topics like evil, eternity, eclecticism, and ethics. But I'd like to begin with the letter E itself, or rather the Greek letter epsilon. It would seem that at the temple of Apollo in Delphi, the ancient Greeks had placed not only statues and inscriptions, such as the famous know thyself and also nothing in excess. They also had models of the letter epsilon, named ei in Greek, fashioned out of materials like wood and bronze, which they left to honor Apollo. Why, you might ask, would they do such a thing? By the age of the early Roman Empire, the answer to this question was lost in the mists of time, and the Greeks themselves could only speculate about the origins of the practice. Among the inquiring minds was a man who had more reason than most to speculate. He was a priest at Delphi, and his name was Plutarch. Plutarch hailed from Chironaea, not far from Delphi and Boiotia, a region in mainland Greece. He was born in 45 A.D. and died in 125. In that time he traveled widely in Greece and beyond, winning friends among the aristocracy of the Roman Empire and even, apparently, being granted Roman citizenship. But he retained a deep attachment to his home, where he was a man of considerable standing. He could trace his family to the archaic heroes of Boiotia. Plutarch was more than an aristocratic priest, though. He was also the author of a huge body of writing. A mere list of the titles makes for interesting reading, and survives as a document called the Lamprius catalog. The catalog lists many works that are, like the motive for devoting the letter e to Apollo, lost to posterity. Still, plenty of Plutarch's output survives. He remains one of the most valuable ancient sources for Greek and Roman history. But for our purposes, his philosophical writings are the main attraction. Many of these have a dialogue form, in imitation of Plutarch's most revered authority, Plato. Plutarch's dialogues include a work called On the E at Delphi. It presents a philosophical conversation set within a dramatic frame, where a character recounts a conversation he heard. The structure is like that of Plato's Symposium, where a similar frame narrative introduces a series of speeches, setting out different viewpoints on a common theme. Here, the issue is not love, as it was in the Symposium, but those mysterious e's at Delphi. Various characters present different theories about the epsilon, in what Plutarch would consider to be ascending order of insight. Thus, we begin with a fairly banal, merely historical explanation, premised on the fact that epsilon was used in Greek to write the number 5, being the fifth letter of the alphabet, just like e in English. According to this story, the epsilon represents five wise men of Greece, the so-called seven sages minus two interlopers who should not have been included in this august company. Before long, though, we are into more philosophical territory. A second speaker takes the epsilon to mean the Greek word for if, also pronounced ei. This speaker wants to highlight the importance of logic, which studies conditional statements of the form if x, then y. A third speaker takes us into Pythagorean territory, preferring to interpret the epsilon as the number 5, and then waxing enthusiastic about its numerological significance. Just as Socrates provides the climax of the Symposium by telling of his philosophical instruction at the feet of Diatima, so here Plutarch gives the final word to his teacher, Ammonius. I should warn you that the name Ammonius is to late antique philosophy what the name Diogenes was to Hellenistic philosophy. The teacher of the great Plotinus was also an Ammonius, as was the head of a school of commentators in late ancient Alexandria. All three of these men were Platonists, all were teachers of more famous men, and all are known mostly indirectly through these more renowned students. Have I mentioned that ancient Platonists believed in reincarnation? I'm just saying. Anyway, when this Ammonius, the teacher of Plutarch, gives his explanation of the epsilon, he begins by distancing himself from the Pythagorean speech about the number 5. Not because he doesn't approve of numerology. To the contrary, his worry is that this explanation would minimize the importance of a different number for Apollo, namely 7. Instead, Ammonius reminds his listeners that the syllable e in Greek can also be a verb. It means you are, and this, he suggests, is the key to understanding the e at Delphi. It is an address to the God. It is appropriate to say you are to the God, because God exists at the level of being, whereas things in our physical realm are subject to becoming. This may remind us of the God in the Hebrew Bible saying, I am that I am, but the contrast between being and becoming is taken straight from the Timaeus. That Platonic dialogue may not be on every reading list today, but Plutarch, and apparently his teacher Ammonius before him, saw the Timaeus as a particularly important Platonic work. As we'll see, Plutarch had controversial things to say about it, but all Platonists of this period would agree with Ammonius that the divine is unchanging and eternal, whereas bodily things are subject to constant flux. Since we are not gods, we dwell in an inferior, ever-changing region. Ammonius concludes, therefore, that the e at Delphi is a kind of partner to the famous Delphic inscription, Know thyself. In saying, ei, you are, we declare to the God that he is exalted beyond our realm, and when the inscription reminds us to know ourselves, it means we should never forget our more lowly station. This combination of bold metaphysics and modesty about human nature and what it can achieve is entirely characteristic of Plutarch himself. He embodies the gradual transition from the skepticism of the Hellenistic academy to Platonic dogmatism, that is, the embrace of positive philosophical doctrines. He is not shy in putting forth theories about the nature of the gods, the intelligible world, the cosmos, and the nature of man. As with other so-called middle Platonists, Plutarch sees such theories as the doctrinal core of Plato's dialogues. Yet, Plutarch will occasionally caution us that he is merely saying what he finds probable, an echo of the academic skeptic Philo of Larissa. Plutarch's caution has a rather different and more metaphysical basis. If reality is divine and immaterial, then material creatures like us should not expect to understand it fully. I remarked in a recent episode that with the rise of dogmatic Platonism the skeptical approach of Philo, Sextus, and so on seems to have died out. That is basically right, but the epistemological modesty of the skeptics does live on in later Platonists like Plutarch, who frequently emphasize that humans cannot grasp divine realities completely. Modesty notwithstanding, Plutarch had no hesitation in nailing his colors to the mast of Platonism. He attacked the theories of other schools, in a treatise Against Colites, an Epicurean philosopher, and in another work called On Stoic Contradictions. He is, in fact, a major source of information about these Hellenistic traditions. Here there's an obvious comparison to Cicero, who likewise preserved precious data about philosophical movements even as he criticized them. But, again like Cicero, Plutarch didn't let his school allegiances stop him from fraternizing with representatives of the other traditions. His own student, Favarinus, had Aristotelian leanings, and Plutarch also consorted with Stoics and Epicureans. Nor is he above drawing on the ideas of Aristotle, especially in ethics. Plutarch's openness to various strands of Greek thought has led some interpreters to describe him as an eclectic, but if this is so, it is only in the original sense of the word eclectic, someone who is deliberately choosing from a range of sources. Plutarch did draw on various sources, but he unambiguously saw the results as good Platonism. Indeed, Plutarch waded into the question of the history of the Academy itself, which had sparked such controversy between Antiochus and Philo of Larissa. From the catalogue of his works, we know that Plutarch wrote a treatise entitled On the Difference Between the Pyranists and New Academics. It is lost, but was presumably intended to show that the skeptical Academy had been within the fold of the Platonic tradition, whereas the more radical Pyranists were no longer part of the family. This goes well with the qualified skeptical attitude Plutarch voices in his own works. But the most obviously Platonist feature of his written legacy is his explicit engagement with Plato's writings. We have a set of brief Platonic questions, in which he resolves difficulties that arise in interpreting the dialogues. More interesting still is a work called On the Generation of Sol in the Timaeus. With this text, we arrive at core issues of late ancient Platonism, indeed, of Platonism in any age. If you are a Platonist, then you believe that the physical world is only an image, an effect, of perfect divine entities. But if this is so, you have to wonder why the world is so far short of perfect. In fact, without wishing to get too depressed about it, we can't help noticing that the world is full not only of moral evil, but also misfortune, deformation of natural things, death, and ugliness. How is it that perfect causes produce such imperfect results? Also, you might wonder about how exactly the causes relate to their results. Do they give rise to them automatically? Or do they choose a first moment to start making the physical universe exist? As we'll be seeing, these are questions that will disturb Platonists for many generations to come. In fact, they will still concern late medieval thinkers whose relationship to Plato is a good deal more indirect than the one Plutarch could enjoy. So Plutarch was making some opening moves in what would be a long-running debate, and those moves are grounded in a careful reading of Plato. His first big claim concerns the question of the world's imperfection. He comes to that question indirectly, though, since his immediate ambition is to solve an apparent contradiction between two of Plato's dialogues. In the Phaedrus, Plato gave a famous proof that the soul is ungenerated and eternal on the basis that it is self-moving. But in the Timaeus, Plato said explicitly that the soul of the entire cosmos is created by a craftsman god or demiurge. So which is it? Is the soul generated or not? Plutarch eliminates the difficulty by saying that Plato had in mind two different souls. There is one ungenerated eternal soul, which is not fashioned by the demiurge. Because it is not the product of a wise and perfect creator, it is irrational, associated with the disordered motions that dominate matter before the demiurge comes along and fashions a well-ordered world. Part of this ordering process is the demiurge's creation of another, rational soul for the entire universe. This is the soul that is said to be generated in the Timaeus. Problem solved. In a roundabout way, Plutarch has answered our first question. The universe is imperfect because it is produced not only by a perfectly wise god, but also by a disorderly soul. It is a joint production, like a work of carpentry made by the master carpenter in cooperation with a particularly incompetent apprentice. Later Platonists will be nervous about the dualism this account ushers into our understanding of the soul. We have not only the good, rational soul, but also an irrational, perhaps even evil, soul. So we'll see them making alternative suggestions about the source of imperfection in the universe. Plutarch already anticipates one of these later ideas, which is to make matter itself the culprit. But he rejects this solution, because matter is purely passive. Without an irrational soul causing trouble, matter would give no more resistance to the demiurge and rational soul than perfectly pliant wood would hinder a carpenter. Besides, Plutarch can point out that Plato himself is committed to a kind of dualism of the soul. As we know, Plato argues that the human soul has a highest rational part and lower irrational parts. For Plutarch, this duality in the human soul merely reflects the duality of soul in general. We share the imperfection of the universe we live in. Yet, we have the option of identifying ourselves chiefly with our rational part, and thus approaching the perfection of the gods. Plutarch's second controversial point in his essay about the Taimias is already implicit in what I've said. The physical universe has not been here forever. Again, Plutarch can point to evidence in Plato for this. At one point, the Taimias says that the universe is generated and has a beginning. Plutarch, along with another philosopher named Atticus, whom we met a couple of episodes back, was notorious among later Platonists for taking this at face value as denying the eternity of the world. Both Plutarch and Atticus took Plato to say that the world was created out of pre-existing matter through the intervention of the demiurge. Plutarch asserted this not only as the correct reading of Plato, but also as the truth. If the world were eternal, we would lose one of the greatest proofs of the power and existence of the gods, namely the divine creation of the universe. Yet, Plutarch's position would turn out to be a minority one among late antique Platonists. Another Platonist named Calvinus Taurus, somewhat later than Plutarch, pointed out that the word generated could mean a variety of things. When Taimias says the universe is generated, he might mean simply that it is subject to generation, in the sense of constant change. Or, he might mean that it has a cause. Much later, we find Neo-Platonists like Proclus seizing gratefully on this point. It helped vindicate their reading of the Taimias as upholding the eternity of the universe, and thus, the orthodox Platonist understanding of how the gods relate to that universe. It's a shame, in a way, that Plutarch came to be associated so strongly with the non-eternity of the world in the minds of Neo-Platonists like Proclus. For he was a thinker very much to Proclus's taste, in that he devoted great effort to marrying pagan philosophical beliefs to Platonist philosophy. We've already seen one instance, the E at Delphi. Another fine example is his essay on the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris. This fascinating text is among the earliest recountings of any such myth, invaluable for the light it sheds on Egyptian religion and Greek attitudes towards that religion. Plutarch bears witness to the interpenetration of pagan belief systems in this period, with the deities of Greece, Rome, and Egypt being united in a common pantheon, or being identified with one another. As Plutarch himself puts it, the gods are common to all men, even if they have different names, just as the sun and moon are the same for all, but are named differently in different languages. Still, he brings a distinctively philosophical sensibility to the myth by seeing the main characters as representing cosmological and metaphysical principles. The Egyptian myth recounted by Plutarch pits a wicked character named Typhon against two heroic lovers, Isis and Osiris. Osiris is at one point torn to pieces so that poor Isis is forced to try to reassemble his body. For Plutarch, these characters personify physical features of the cosmos. Osiris represents life-giving moisture, Isis is nature, and their child, Horus, is the world itself. The evil Typhon, meanwhile, stands for the drought that threatens life. At a higher level, Osiris can be taken to represent the demiurge, with Typhon representing the irrational soul we discussed a moment ago. Plutarch is unapologetic about the dualist tendencies of this reading, which would have appalled a thinker like Proclus, for whom all things must come from a single principle that is purely good. As Plutarch himself points out, his dualist view instead has something in common with earlier thinkers, like Empedocles with his dual principles of love and strife, and even the Zoroastrian tradition. I don't want you to go away with the impression that Plutarch spent all his time thinking about gods and metaphysics, though. In fact, many of his writings are devoted to ethics, often on very specific points. There are entire works on talkativeness, on coping with exile, on undue curiosity. This was not so much moral philosophy as moralizing, with the advice columnist style of the works reminding us of similar texts by Seneca, who, as you might remember, also discuss the appropriate reaction to exile. Like Seneca, Plutarch writes for fellow aristocrats. Unlike Seneca, he is not too demanding. He does not set himself the task of replacing their value system with a new, more philosophical one. Rather, he aims to give useful advice and a bit of perspective on their everyday problems. Plutarch's Platonist psychology could have led him in radical directions, for instance to an utter rejection of wealth and bodily health as valueless. But he tends to lean more towards the Aristotelians here, accepting that external goods do have their place in a happy life lived in accordance with nature. Plutarch's most famous works are ethical writings of a different kind. These are his Parallel Lives, which recount the biographies of Greek and Roman figures. The project begins with Romulus and Theseus, the legendary founders of Rome and Athens, and goes on through other pairings like Alexander and Julius Caesar. The importance of these works for our knowledge of ancient history is beyond dispute, but Plutarch intended them as studies of moral character, and used character to structure the lives. For instance, one of Alexander's successors, Demetrius, is paired with Mark Antony, two famous hedonists. But it wasn't only the ethical purpose underlying Plutarch's lives that made them appealing for later readers. There was also his eye for the telling detail. For instance, Caesar is shown passing by a remote Alpine village, remarking that he'd rather be first in this backwater than second in Rome. Occasionally, Plutarch even shows a sense of humor. In one of his ethical treatises, when stressing the importance of looking on the bright side of things, he gives the following example. If you want to hit a dog with a stone and strike your mother-in-law instead, this isn't so bad either. If the overt theme of the histories is an ethical one, its implicit theme is the relation of Greece to Rome. Plutarch wrote in old-fashioned Attic Greek, already a classicist, though he lived in the classical world. He was a Hellenic patriot, and attacked the great historian Herodotus for daring to paint the Greeks in an unattractive light. For Plutarch, Athens was especially admirable not only for its philosophy, but also for its great military achievements. Yet his world was a thoroughly Roman one. The Romans were now the unchallenged rulers of Greece and the lands beyond, and for all his devotion to play to Plato and to pagan religion, Plutarch's cultural attitudes are more like those of Seneca than of any ancient Athenian. In the second century AD, men like Plutarch were already looking back to the glories of a Hellenic past. But Greek philosophy had plenty of life left in it yet. In fact, before we reach the third century and Plotinus, we need to look at other developments in and around the first and second centuries AD. I'd like to check in with the Aristotelians to see how they are getting along, for instance, but it would not be in excess to spend one more episode on the early imperial Platonists, especially when we have the chance to consult a living oracle of late ancient Platonism. So, join me for an interview with Jan Opsomer next time on The History of Philosophy, without any gaps.