Metaphorically Speaking

First portion of Ship of State Metaphor, Book VI, the Republic

                   

One of the projects I have picked up this Fall is to re-read Plato’s Republic in an en face manner as much as possible. Although I have worked through several other texts in the original, the Republic is one that I had done in a more cursory way, spot-checking specific passages as I went primarily through the English versions I have.

However, six weeks ago, I did pick up Paul Shorey’s Loeb edition and have been steadily working through it and have thus far made it to book six, which is where to many the “real” philosophy begins after the first five books being mere build-up for many philosophers.

A curious thing happens with Plato at such junctures. Inevitably, in every Socratic dialog, a familiar, and in my mind, counterproductive argument arises amongst philosophers, literature people, and Classics folk.

When I was in Graduate School, I participated in each of these fields, always as the half-breed, outsider Comparative Literature student. I was never fully accepted in any of the fields because I (gasp) looked beyond the borders of mere departmental lines drawn in the sand.

The first group would bemoan and chastise Plato’s literary flourishes and dramatic aesthetic and usually just skip to the “philosophical” argument, even if it meant skipping the entire first half of a work as voluminous as the Republic. No need to waste precious grey matter on mere literature…

The second group would focus almost exclusively on style or literary conceits in Plato’s texts, but all the while would shun from engaging in actual discussion about the content, specifically the philosophical sections because, well, Plato is just a dead, white guy, and at best he could serve as a straw man for literary criticism (unbeknownst to them that most of it came from Plato)…

The final group would usually sneer at the literature neophytes because they usually were reading a pale translation, as were the philosophers. And, even if the philosophers were reading it in the original Greek, they usually gave no heed to the nuances of particles such as between ∂η  and ∂ε , for example, or whether it was a perfect or an aorist. Both groups, they would assert (and rightly so), were taking it out of context. However, the Classics’ clan would seldom delve into the actual semantics, but would focus much more on the grammar and syntax. No time for clever word play and literary devices…

What’s wrong with this picture?

For me, it is a snapshot of a much larger phenomenon, both within academics and without, namely, we specialize so much that we cannot speak across borders, but cling so tightly to our rigid divisions so as to completely cut off communication. This was seen just recently in the infamous American Governmental Shutdown. Though the larger crisis was avoided at about 11:15 before midnight, the problem remains, we fail to communicate outside of our comfort zone of expertise, for fear of being wrong, or, god forbid, seeing things in a different light.

Plato is the first Western Philosopher, par excellence. Plato is a master of the Greek language and semantics as a literary genius, hands down. Plato commands the grammar and syntax of the Greek language to an extent that never truly was matched afterwards.

In other words, Plato did not respect the boundaries that we have since placed upon him, and a multitude of others who are either sifted into the pile of writers or philosophers, but seldom both.

What is most striking about re-reading the Republic for me this time is Plato’s patience with the metaphor, or, ε ι κ ο ν . In modern times, we don’t have time for extended metaphors. At best, we’ll throw in a simple “like or as” simile and rush on to the next Tweet or Status posting. However, Plato will extract literally pages from a single image in sometimes what amounts to a minutiae of detail to make his point via Socrates. As Derrida points out in the Post Card, writing was no easy task in Plato’s time. It required the dexterity of both hands and was a painstaking process.  And yet, Plato will draw it out, patiently and precisely, never repeating himself and often using a variety of synonyms and literary sleight of hand to make the metaphor not only “fun” to read, but nuanced on multiple levels.

At the beginning of Book Six, there is an extended metaphor relating the governance of the State to the captaining of a ship. As in fact, our word Governor is from the Greek,  κ υ β ε ρ ν η t η σ , or ship’s captain. Ultimately, the metaphor is the argument that the “true” helmsman is often seen as a daydreamer for staring at the skies and stars (namely, astral navigation), and deemed worthless, while the masses praise the man who grabs the rudder, though has no knowledge of navigation, thus driving the ship off course. It is an interesting conceit, that we seem to champion a person of immediate action, rather than one who takes time to reflect and who actually knows what he or she is doing. Times indeed have not changed.

What is also striking in this exercise I am undertaking this Fall is truly how long it must have taken to physically write this text, and this is merely one text of dozens attributed to Plato. It has been a good exercise in patience and I am stopping at times to copy out the extended metaphors, and though they are scarcely a scratch on the surface of the text at large, it is good to slow down and literally go letter by letter through the metaphor. A metaphor specifically means “to carry over” an idea or concept, from one form to another. For me, I see that it also can carry an idea across the illusive boundaries of Philosophy, Literature, and Language, something very few writers have done with the depth and breadth of Plato.