18 On Encountering Antiquity (Ⅱ)

The wealthy Roman of the upper classes wanted to enjoy his “luxury” (however one might care to define that). This essentially meant that he should be well-educated. His children received, from private tutors mostly originating from Greece, the best education one could imagine: one that remains, to this day, one of the best of any era. Even in Plato’s time three fundamental areas were to be covered by such an education: the natural sciences, including mathematics and astronomy; literature, including languages, history, and philosophy; and the arts. This included a practical education in music, as well as personal hygiene including nutrition and sports.i

To be educated likewise meant that one should be able to keep up with public affairs in politics and the “intellectual” life. Even Caesar, in the midst of his confrontations with Cicero, had managed to publish a treatise on the logic of language. This discourse, likewise important for the concrete exercise of politics, played out mostly in institutions of philosophical learning, which one could attend for a fee. The most famous of these institutions remained, naturally, the Academy of Athens. Founded by Plato himself between 387 and 367BCE, it experienced rather dramatic ups and downs. Finally, around 220 BCE, it was fully institutionalized through the establishment of three permanent (today we would say “tenured”) faculty positions held by expert teachers. The Academy was finally dissolved in 529CE by the emperor Justinian—a nearly thousand-year tradition all the same.

The internal developments of this institution and its doctrines is likewise interesting: at first primarily dedicated to the transmission and handing down of Platonic thought, it effaced the eponymous dogma rather quickly—already by the time of Arcesilaus (268BCE)—and drifted instead towards the doctrines of the Skeptics who, though holding no chairs at the school, were and remain nevertheless very influential throughout the various philosophical schools of the time (though often admittedly primarily as the antithesis to those dogma). Lastly, in the late Roman Empire the Academy was reduced to but a refuge for doubt and inquiry. Under Plotinus, in the 5th century CE, it was briefly permitted to kindle once more the ancient Platonic and dogmatic traditions.

It is precisely these ideological schools—as they could merely be accepted ironically by Lucian and yet comprised the whole of the Hellenistic genesis, possessing a long tradition—impressed me greatly. I found yet many inquiries which even today—though oftentimes in another language—remain relevant were already dealt with then, and considered to the finest details. And yet the authors were forgotten, as were their thoughts, their provocations, their responses.

Lastly and finally I landed, again and again, upon the Greek literary sources, those that would have propagated between the Axial Age (the Classics around 450BCE) and the late Roman Empire, which formed a sort of foundation of Greco-Roman philosophy, and which consequently may have been the influential exemplars of Cicero. I was especially struck by the two-volume work of Diogenes Laërtius, the “Lives and Beliefs of the Famous Philosophers” from the second half of the third century CE.ii Only a few decades ago, in 1967, the first complete critical translation into German was undertaken by Otto Apelt and appeared for the first time in print in the modern era. It is the only good and almost completely preserved philosophical-historical document from the Classic Era. Many works even of Aristotle only became known in the West through transmission of Arabic translations, which then rapidly germinated philosophical discourse in the Middle Ages to the present day.

The collection of texts, more collated than written by Diogenes Laërtius—the majority of the texts he only transcribed or cited—is an odd muddle of biographies, gossip and scandal stories, poetry, wedged-in text citation, and philosophical “deep dives.” They terminate at the Epicurean School—that is the age in which the author himself lived, though Diogenes was rather more properly affiliated with the Academic School.iii

I also discovered in this Hellenistic Literature, as it is called, ever more often the ideas and thoughts of early Christianity, with all its influential—and relevant to the present day—operative implications. Even the current and “eternal” debate between the Roman Catholic Church and the materialist or Freudian orthodoxy—should our lives be governed by the spirit, or by our desires?—can be found again and again in this context, each time addressed according to the School in question. Materialists stand for pleasure and enjoyment, the Freudians would rather sublimate desire in creative endeavors and for the well-being of society, while the Catholic Church stands instead for the spirit and only accepts desire out of necessity to preserve the species. The spirit-desire dichotomy remains bound up with the dilemma of the legislator: how should a good and just state as such be built and led? It remains a leading intellectual subject in the present day.

We nevertheless still find ourselves, with my remarks and explanations, in Plato’s imaginary Academy. It lives on, no longer as an institution of public discourse, but rather subliminally and accessible only through laborious anamnetic study. Even among us are many who have stepped away from dogmatic true belief (such as that of Christianity or Marxism) towards a skeptical balance, and thence perhaps back again.

Are not the works and theses of Plato’s fascinating, even when they seem antiquated? Do we no longer wish to believe in timeless values like truth, beauty, and justice, even though these terms can always collapse into their opposites, or become relativized by airy neo-sophists? – Who or what is God? – Is our State a just one? – And can the concept, the “idea,” of justice ever find an end in human society; now, at the end of language, thinking, and writing?

At this point in time in an age of disorientation, however—remember, we are in the late Roman world of 200BCE!—the questions, theses, and speculations over truth, beauty, justice, or the gods—so well-founded by the philosophers—were already well resolved. They were replaced by new, “scientific” counter-images, by more or less convincing contrary opinions which arose in the general philosophical discourse.

All of this apparently left, as it dissolved into an equivalence of arguments, theories, and hypotheses, a great helplessness in its wake. The questions of wither, and wherefore, and why, and whence, remain yet open.

Perhaps they are simply irresolvable.

iThe present-day ideal of education, by contrast, seems to concern itself much less with a comprehensive education, and rather restricts itself to the mastery of specific technical faculties, such as computers, language, the arts, or mathematics.

iiThis source book of the history of Classic philosophy has two further surviving titles, which are however somewhat more cumbersome to read: the “Lives and Beliefs of Those Who have Made a Name for Themselves in Philosophy,” and the “Collected Doctrines of the Various Schools of Thought in Brief.”