[Nietzsche Circle][Reviews]

Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in its Cultural Context

Andrea Wilson Nightingale

Cambridge University Press, 2006

Reviewed by Rachael Sotos, New School

At least since Nietzsche’s attack on the (allegedly) singular gaze of Platonic metaphysics, the faculty of seeing has got a bad rap. In the twentieth-century Heidegger and an assortment of philosophers (phenomenologists, genealogists, post-structuralists) have identified the preeminence of the faculty of sight with the intent to dominate, to possess, rule and control. As Andrea Wilson Nightingale argues in Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy however, whatever the worth of these various polemics, they are best directed in modern directions, e.g. against Descartes. In her apologia of classical Greek philosophy we learn that ancient conceptions of philosophical spectatorship, “are much more complex and sophisticated than modern and postmodern interpreters have allowed”(14).

Well-equipped with the tools of cultural studies, Nightingale seeks to enrich our understanding of philosophical “seeing.” She thus elaborates the manner in which the philosophy of the fourth-century found its conceptual ground and social legitimacy in specific institutions of “ritualized visuality,” institutions already traditional in the classical period: including, pilgrimages to pan-Hellenic religious festivals (Mysteries, Olympics, Panathenia); visits to oracular centers (Delphi) and “travel abroad for the sake of learning”(Solon or Herodotus) (41). As Nightingale explains, within these various socially sanctioned institutions of theoria, the seer, the theoros, was not in the first instance an otherworldly spectator. He was rather a spectator with a legitimate place in the world. He was often and importantly a stranger, but not a disembodied faculty of reason completely separate from the objects he viewed. Accordingly, Nightingale discovers Plato, Aristotle and Philip of Opus (a transitional figure key to her account) as thinkers grounded in cultural institutions and political reality. Albeit with different emphases and with quite distinct conceptions of the relation between theory and practice, the philosophers of the fourth-century all draw on the traditionally sanctioned theoros in order to demonstrate their own “cultural capital” and to find a place for the thinker in the world. Nightingale, for her part, draws on the traditional theoros, not only to reveal the sociological underpinnings of fourth-century philosophers, but also to illuminate (ancient and contemporary) debates in ancient philosophy. Her culturally grounded approach is refreshing and at the same sensitive to the motivations of each thinker.

Nightingale devotes three chapters to Plato as he, rather than the pre-Socratics, she insists, “invented” philosophical theoria by giving preeminence to the practice of ritual seeing in intellectual activities. Fascinatingly though, for all of his novelty, when we take to heart the manner in which Plato remains faithful to the ethical, political and religious dimensions of traditional theoria, Platonic philosophy appears liberated from the crudest charges of “Platonism.” It is not possible here to capture the nuance of Nightingale’s detailed readings of the various texts; a few highlights must suffice: the Phaedo, which is “arguably the most body-hating of all the dialogue,” is recast in the theoria of the traveling cartographers, the geographers who map the edges, the eschata, of the earth (144). In this, as in other discussions, Nightingale demonstrates that Plato’s notorious denigration of the physical world is rightly qualified in his effusive affirmation of the physical cosmos as a whole, and particularly of “certain (exceptional) bodies within it”(139). In a related line of argument Nightingale reads the Phaedrus, Symposium and Republic in light of the theoria of religious festivals, convincingly demonstrating that that the numerous allusions to the Eleusian (and other such) Mysteries are not in any sense mere window dressing to the doctrine, but that which must be taken literally. The Phaedrus, to take but one example, Nightingale reads as a “private theoria” akin to a mystic initiate seeking immortality. Significantly, although “private” in orientation, this ritual heritage proves to have a profound ethical implication typically overlooked by those concerned primarily with epistemological and metaphysical questions: not only does the soul witness the divine spectacle of the forms – the theoria that delights the gods themselves, but the beautiful body of the beloved inspires “awe and reverence,” and is thus, like the “agalma,” “the sacred image” of the Mystery ritual, the inspiration for personal transformation, i.e. recollection of the forms (163-5). It must be underscored that “awe and reverence” connects the most important feature of traditional theoria to Platonic philosophy: the transformative experience of encounter with alterity. As mentioned above, the traditional theoros was not in the first instance an otherworldly spectator, but a stranger witnessing something “other” and this experience of “the revered other” is present throughout Plato’s philosophy.

Nightingale’s treatment of the Republic is the most extensive and dramatic discussion of any dialogue. First, the entire dialogue, she reminds us, is framed by the journey of a theoros, Socrates at the festival of Bendis/the Myth of Er. More specifically, Nightingale argues that the Parable of the Cave (and preceding books) is the dramatization of a journey of a theoros in his official, “civic” capacity. She brilliantly maps the key moments of the famous fable (the move from darkness to light, the trauma of disorientation, the experience of epiphany and the necessary return to the city) onto the journey of the city-state sponsored theoros, the man who travels to the pan-Hellenic festival but returns to his native city and necessarily “gives an account,” “logos didonai,” to his fellow citizens. In this institutional frame Nightingale beautifully and compellingly illuminates “the dynamic tension” between theory and practice” and helps us to understand Plato’s sincere conception of a philosophical enhanced political vocation: a “peculiar combination of detachment and engagement allows the Platonic theorist to perform on the social stage in a fashion that is impartial, just and virtuous” (5). While those jealous of their own interpretations of these famous passages might quibble over details, without a doubt this is an original and truly interesting contribution to Platonic scholarship.

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Nightingale’s treatment of Aristotle is “more technical,” and rightly so as the Peripatetic’s philosophical genius is proved in his careful distinctions rather than in any literary talent. As a philosopher intent to appropriate the “cultural capital” afforded by traditional theoria, Aristotle presents Nightingale with a series of paradoxes, paradoxes she explores in detailed discussions of the Protrepticus, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics and Metaphysics. On the one hand, Aristotle is famously the philosopher more at home in the world and more friendly to the political status quo. And yet, as Nightingale reveals, as he abandons the narrative frame of the journey of the theoros, he more radically detaches the philosophical seer from the world than does Plato: “this kind of theoria apprehends, then, is private rather than civic, and is in no way ‘useful’ in the practical or political sphere” (188). Another paradox: while Aristotle’s theoria is a divine activity and an end in itself, valued precisely in being “useless,” and unproductive – distinct from all banausic activities – it is Aristotle who criticizes useless speculation, e.g. Plato’s idea of the Good, and in many texts boldly asserts the supremacy of the philosopher for possessing the master knowledge of the craftsman (197). Likewise Aristotle, who insists on phronesis as a special moral faculty, proves to be a more radical dualist than Plato as he deems theoria in its highest form not to involve phronesis at all (or memory and imagination). Only as the divine faculty of nous, separate from ordinary experience, does theoria qualify for Aristotle as an activity that is “truly freely,” for itself and not for another (206-8). At the same time, as Nightingale discusses in depth, it is absolutely essential for Aristotle to promote the legitimacy of the philosophical enterprise, to find a special place for the philosopher in the world – indeed at the very top of the social hierarchy in the Metaphysics. As we learn in the Politics, “the best polis,” in one devoted to theoria itself, and if not the truly speculative endeavor of “the philosopher kings,” the spectator activity of a “cultural elite” (251). Intent to read Aristotle’s development of spectatorship as generously as possible, she concludes her epilogue with the thought that Aristotle’s (secular) biological writings regarding “animal parts” can be thought with Platonic wonder and thus can found an anti-humanist “ecological theoria” (268). This is somewhat perplexing as she has just reviewed the fact that Aristotle rejects wonder for problem solving and the escape from uncertainty, but it is surely a most constructive line of thinking to follow.

It is likely that Nightingale’s many subtle and sophisticated readings will inspire some readers to push the materials a step further than she herself is wont to go. For instance, while it is true that the rhetoric of aristocracy that shapes Aristotle’s work is already present in Plato, Nightingale’s presentation of the distinctions between the philosophers invites a starker contrast. If we should think through the implications of the difference between Plato’s “rhetoric of estrangement” and Aristotle’s “rhetoric of disinterest,” we might well discover that there is more in common between Aristotelian autarchy and solipsistic Cartesian certainty than she implies. Although she is right to claim that Aristotle retains some vestiges of “sacralized seeing,” his purely Olympian rhetoric preserves not a shred of reverence for alterity and there is no evidence in either the Politics or the Poetics (which she does not consider) that reverence for alterity is a feature of his brand of aesthetics (or his politics, ethics, physics or metaphysics). Rather his secularism, e.g. his famous neglect of Dionysus, points the other way. While Aristotle may famously call the philosopher “the stranger,” the entire drift of his work is to provide a metaphysical grounding, not the preservation of any ontological difference. In this respect, some readers will likely want to take up “the modernist and postmodernist critiques” that Nightingale’s apologia sets aside and bring them back to bear on her many sensitive political analyses.

In this reader’s view at least, the least compelling feature of Nightingale’s overall argument is her unnecessary claim that there is a kind of epochal break in the fourth-century such that it makes sense to consider the cultural-institutional dimension of theoria without reference to either pre-Socratic philosophy or Athenian drama. In order to frame her narrative of the roots of theoria in pan-Hellenic festivals (an investigation which is interesting and would be justifiable on its own terms) Nightingale makes a series of unsustainable claims. As mentioned, she asserts that Plato “invented” the notion of philosophical seeing, claiming that the pre-Socratics uniformly remained with the paradigm of speech, logos; “the emphasis is on discourse and hearing rather than spectating or seeing” (33). Second, she claims that the fact that “Aristotle and other fourth-century philosophers retrojected the activity of theoria onto the ancients” means that these ancients (Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Parmenides) can be left out of the story (193; 29-34). The earlier philosophers, Nightingale claims, did not conceptualize a “spectator theory of knowledge;” “they did not privilege disinterested contemplation over practical activities … [they] did not treat theoretical, practical, and productive wisdom as separate or distinct categories” (29). With respect to the dramatists Nightingale hints via Aristophanes that the question of spectatorship was an issue in the fifth century, but in the main she dismisses Athenian theater as dominated by a “democratic gaze” without pan-Hellenic universality or a relevant experience of alterity (54-60). The conceptual problem underlying each of her claims, however, is the thought that the seventh, sixth and fifth centuries were characterized by homogeneity rather than ideological conflict and cultural contestation. In fact, however, both pre-Socratic philosophy and Athenian drama are institutions in which we have the preservation of the ontological difference and the experience of alterity. If there is not a highly differentiated conception of the practical and impractical, there is certainly an extensive conceptualization of the difference between transcendence and immanence, the secular and the sacred. Accordingly, what Nightingale sees as homogenization in the earlier time is likely already a sophisticated reflection on the relation between theory and practice. Fortunately, her excellent presentation of these issues in the fourth-century is not only fascinating on its own terms, but can serve as an inspiration, if not a ready guide, to those wishing to investigate the earlier times.

Review by Rachael Sotos