Where did
Socrates, the foundational figure of Western philosophy, get the inspiration
for his original ideas about truth, love, justice, courage and knowledge? New
research I’ve conducted reveals that as a young man in 5th-century BC Athens,
he came into contact with a fiercely intelligent woman, Aspasia of Miletus. I
argue that her ideas about love and transcendence inspired him to formulate key
aspects of his thought (as transmitted by Plato).
If the
evidence for this thesis is accepted, the history of philosophy will have taken
a momentous turn: a woman who has been all but erased from the story must be
acknowledged as laying the foundations of our 2,500-year old philosophical
tradition.
A neoclassical
painting by the 19th-century artist Nicolas Monsiau depicts Socrates sitting across
a table from a lusciously dressed, gesticulating Aspasia. The handsome young
soldier Alcibiades looks on. The image captures the standard view of Socrates:
as poor and ugly. The son of a stonemason, he was known from middle age for
going unshod and wearing ragged clothes.
But Socrates
is also said by Plato to have been instructed in eloquence by Aspasia, who for
more than a decade was the partner of Athens’s leading statesman Pericles.
Supposedly a highly educated “courtesan”, Aspasia is shown in the painting
enumerating the points of a speech on her fingers. Her gaze is directed at the
aristocratic youth Alcibiades, who was Pericles’ ward and probably Aspasia’s
great-nephew. Socrates claimed to be enthralled by Alcibiades’ good looks and
charisma, and (as recounted in Plato’s dialogue Symposium) he saved his life at
the Battle of Potidaea in 432 BC.
Does the
painting do Socrates justice? His main biographers, Plato and Xenophon, knew
him only as an older man. But Socrates was once young, and was a direct
contemporary of Aspasia’s. And, from surviving images of the philosopher,
occasional information given by his biographers, and ancient written texts
which have been generally overlooked or misinterpreted, a different picture of
Socrates emerges: that of a well-educated youth who grew up to be no less brave
a soldier than Alcibiades, and a passionate lover of both sexes no less than a
intense thinker and debater.
Socrates was
famous for saying: “The only thing I know is that I don’t know.” But Plato, in
Symposium (199b), reports him as saying that he learned “the truth about love”
from a clever woman. That woman is given the name “Diotima” – and in Symposium
Socrates expounds her doctrine.
Scholars have
almost universally dismissed Diotima as a fiction. She is described in the
dialogue as a priestess or seer (mantis), and she is thought at best to be an
allegorical figure – one of inspired or visionary wisdom who might have
initiated a thinker such as Socrates into the mysteries of Love. But Plato leaves
some curiously precise clues about the identity of Diotima which have never
hitherto been elucidated. In my book I present the evidence to show that
“Diotima” is in fact a thinly-veiled disguise for Aspasia.
Aspasia came
from a high-born Athenian family, related to that of Pericles, which had
settled in the Greek city of Miletus in Ionia (Asia Minor) some decades
earlier. When she migrated to Athens around 450 BC she was around the age of
20. At that date Socrates too was around 20 years old.
A few years
later, Aspasia became attached to Pericles, who was then a leading politician
in Athens – and already twice her age. But a pupil of Aristotle, Clearchus,
records that “before Aspasia became Pericles’ companion, she was with
Socrates”. This fits with other evidence that Socrates was part of Pericles’s
circle as a young man. He would undoubtedly have become acquainted with Aspasia
in that milieu.
Given that he
was part of this privileged elite in his youth, what impelled Socrates to turn
to the life of the mind, shun material success and reorient philosophical
thinking for posterity? No one has ever sought to trace the trajectory of the
younger Socrates, because the biographical sources are scattered and
fragmentary, and appear to say little of interest regarding his thought. But
since Socrates was well known in Athens as a philosopher by his thirties, the
earlier period is where we should seek evidence of his change of direction to
becoming the thinker he was to be. I argue that Socrates’ acquaintance with
Aspasia provides the missing link.
Aspasia was
the cleverest and most influential woman of her day. The partner of Pericles
for around 15 years, she was widely slandered and reviled by the comic
playwrights - the tabloid journalists of their day - for her influence over
him. Part of Pericles’s circle of thinkers, artists and politicians, she is
depicted by Plato, Xenophon and others as an admired instructor of eloquence,
as well as a matchmaker and marriage counsellor.
In Plato’s
dialogue Menexenus she is described as teaching Socrates how to give a funeral
speech – just as she had allegedly once taught Pericles. She was, in other
words, known for her skill in speaking and, like “Diotima”, in particular for
speaking about love.
So. Could
Socrates and Aspasia have fallen in love when they first met and conversed in
their twenties? The fact that Plato accords Aspasia considerable intellectual
authority over Socrates has alarmed generations of scholars, who have largely
dismissed the scenario in Menexenus as a parody of oratorical techniques.
Meanwhile,
they have been happy to consider Aspasia a “brothel-keeper and prostitute” on
the strength of citations from comic poets of the day. At best, scholars have
elevated Aspasia to the status of hetaira – a courtesan. But this appellation
is not once given to her in ancient sources.
If we accept
the evidence that Aspasia was, like “Diotima”, an authoritative instructor of
eloquence and an expert on matters of love – rather than a common prostitute or
even an influential courtesan – a striking possibility arises. The notions
attributed in Symposium to “Diotima” are central to the philosophy as well as
to the way of life that Socrates was to espouse.
The doctrine
put in the mouth of “Diotima” teaches that the physical realm can and should be
put aside in favour of higher ideals; that the education of the soul, not the
gratification of the body, is love’s paramount duty; and that the particular
should be subordinated to the general, the transient to the permanent, and the
worldly to the ideal.
These ideas
may be acknowledged as lying at the very root of the Western philosophical
tradition. If so, identifying the fictional “Diotima” as the real Aspasia makes
for a historically sensational conclusion. In retrospect, the identification is
so obvious that its failure to be seen clearly up to now must perhaps be
attributed to conscious or unconscious prejudices about the status and
intellectual capacities of women.
The time is
ripe to restore the beautiful, dynamic and clever Aspasia to her true status as
one of the founders of European philosophy.
Socrates
in love: how the ideas of this woman are at the root of Western philosophy. By
Armand D’Angour. The Conversation, March
6, 2019.
Using
ancient written sources that have been generally overlooked or misinterpreted,
I recover a lost picture of Socrates as a young man in his teens and 20s. Since
he was already known as a philosopher in his 30s, this earlier period is where
we need to look for evidence of his change of direction to becoming the thinker
he was to be. My new interpretation of the evidence firmly identifies Socrates’
alleged instructor ‘Diotima’ in Plato’s Symposium with Aspasia of Miletus, the
brilliant partner of Athens’ dominant political figure, Pericles. I conclude
that important elements of Socrates’ thinking resulted from his acquaintance
with and admiration of Aspasia, who was close in age to him, when he was in his
20s.
If
Socrates changed direction, what was his direction before? As a boy he was a
pupil in dance and music of the famous teacher Lampros, who had also taught
Sophocles (who was 25 years older than Socrates). As a teenager he studied the
ideas of earlier (‘Presocratic’) thinkers such as Anaxagoras, who was close to
Pericles; and he became the intimate protégé of another important thinker,
Archelaus. Socrates grew up, therefore, in an upper-class milieu, in which
young Athenian men valued intellectual and musical achievements as well as
physical prowess and courage on the battlefield.
This
picture will surprise those who imagine that Socrates was poor and of lowly
background. In later life his appearance was notably unrefined, and he went
around barefoot and in ragged garments; but he is made to say (in Plato’s
Apology) that he chose poverty in order to pursue his calling. The earliest
visual description of Socrates is in Aristophanes’ play Clouds of 423 BC, when
he was 46. There he is depicted not as ugly or paunchy — by his own admission
he put on weight after his fighting days were over in his 50s — but as one of a
group of pale, scrawny, and long-haired thinkers.
The fact
that Socrates is portrayed by Plato and
Xenophon as a man of high education, knowledge, and intellectual authority
compels the conclusion that he was well schooled from youth, and not the
uneducated child of an impecunious father. A regular fighter in Athens’ battles
until his late 40s, he must also have possessed the wealth qualification and
expensive panoply (suit of armour), as well as the courage, physique, and
fitness, to be a hoplite soldier (heavy-armed infantryman) from the age of 20,
when Athenian hoplites were first deployed on the battlefield.
Socrates’
father Sophroniscus was a stonemason, but that may mean a well-off artisan,
perhaps even the owner of a workshop with numerous slaves, at a time when
Athens was commissioning a huge number of stone monuments after the Persian Wars.
Sophroniscus had high-class connections in his native village: his closest
friend there was known to be Lysimachus, son of the war-hero Aristides and a
man of impeccably elite status. Socrates’ first marriage was to Lysimachus’s
daughter Myrto, with whom he had his two older sons. This marriage will have
taken place long before he encountered his later companion, the famously
demanding Xanthippe, in his 50s.
Young
Socrates grew up, then, among young men trained in poetry, music, oratory,
philosophy, dancing, wrestling, and fighting. He too would have wanted to
compete and excel in those spheres. What impelled him to turn to the life of
the mind, shun material success, and reorient philosophical thinking for
posterity?
The
facts recounted above about Socrates’ life are readily available to historians,
even if their cumulative implications have not been given due weight. What has
hitherto gone unrecognized is that, when Socrates says in Plato’s Symposium
that “long ago [i.e. as a young man] I learned all about love from a clever
woman”, we are being told a biographical truth. The woman is given the name
‘Diotima’, and she has long been supposed a fictional character. But renewed
scrutiny of the text of Symposium and of relevant historical evidence points to
‘Diotima’ being Plato’s disguise for a real woman: Aspasia of Miletus.
The
partner of Athens’ leading citizen Pericles for more than a decade, Aspasia was
the cleverest, best known, most influential, and most reviled woman of her day.
Part of Pericles’ circle of thinkers, artists, and politicians, she was known
as being an expert instructor of eloquence and a sought-after adviser on
marital relationships; in other words, someone who was known for presenting a
doctrine about Love, just as Diotima is portrayed in Symposium. In another of
Plato’s dialogues, Menexenus, Aspasia herself is described training Socrates to
give a speech.
This
clever woman must have been a key intellectual influence in Socrates’ early
life, and she didn’t teach him just about public speaking, or only about the
meaning of love:
The notions
attributed in Symposium to ‘Diotima’ are central to the philosophy as well as
to the way of life that Socrates was to espouse: that the physical realm can and should be put
aside in favour of higher ideals; that the education of the soul, not the gratification
of the body, is love’s paramount duty; that we need to define our terms before
we can hope to know what they entail in practice; and that the particular
should be subordinated to the general, the transient to the permanent, and the
worldly to the ideal. Her thinking, no less than what Socrates and his
successors were to make of it, should therefore be acknowledged as lying at the
very root of the Western philosophical tradition.
Unravelling
the identity of ‘Diotima’ makes for a historically momentous conclusion. In
retrospect, however, the identification is so obvious that its failure to be
seen clearly up to now can only be attributed to conscious or unconscious
prejudices about the status and intellectual capacities of women throughout the
ages. The time has come to restore Aspasia to her true status as the woman who,
through her contribution to Socrates’ thought and therefore that of his
successors, may now be recognised as key to the two-millennia old legacy of
Western philosophy.
Socrates
in Love. By Armand D’Angour. Website Armand D’Angour
The
"ladder of love" is a metaphor that occurs in Plato’s Symposium.
Socrates, making a speech in praise of Eros, recounts the teachings of a
priestess, Diotima. The “ladder”
represents the ascent a lover might make from purely physical attraction to a
beautiful body, the lowest rung, to contemplation of the Form of Beauty itself.
Diotima
spells out the stages in this ascent in terms of what sort of beautiful thing
the lover desires and is drawn toward.
1.
A
particular beautiful body. This is the
starting point, when love, which by definition is a desire for something we
don’t have, is first aroused by the sight of individual beauty.
2. All beautiful bodies. According to standard Platonic doctrine, all
beautiful bodies share something in common, something the lover eventually
comes to recognize. When he does recognize this, he moves beyond a passion for
any particular body.
3. Beautiful
souls. Next, the lover comes to realize
that spiritual and moral beauty matters much more than physical beauty. So he will now yearn for the sort of
interaction with noble characters that will help him become a better person.
4. Beautiful laws and institutions. These are
created by good people (beautiful souls) and are the conditions which foster
moral beauty.
5. The
beauty of knowledge. The lover turns his
attention to all kinds of knowledge, but particularly, in the end to
philosophical understanding. (Although the
reason for this turn isn’t stated, it is presumably because philosophical
wisdom is what underpins good laws and institutions.)
6. Beauty itself–that is, the Form of the
Beautiful. This is described as “an
everlasting loveliness which neither comes nor goes, which neither flowers nor
fades.” It is the very essence of beauty, “subsisting of itself and by itself
in an eternal oneness.” And every
particular beautiful thing is beautiful because of its connection to this
Form. The lover who has ascended the
ladder apprehends the Form of Beauty in a kind of vision or revelation, not
through words or in the way that other sorts of more ordinary knowledge are
known.
Diotima
tells Socrates that if he ever reached the highest rung on the ladder and
contemplated the Form of Beauty, he would never again be seduced by the
physical attractions of beautiful youths.
Nothing could make life more worth living than enjoying this sort of
vision. Because the Form of Beauty is
perfect, it will inspire perfect virtue in those who contemplate it.
This
account of the ladder of love is the source for the familiar notion of
“Platonic love,” by which is meant the sort of love that is not expressed
through sexual relations. The
description of the ascent can be viewed as an account of sublimation, the
process of transforming one sort of impulse into another, usually, one that is
viewed as “higher” or more valuable. In
this instance, sexual desire for a beautiful body becomes sublimated into a
desire for philosophical understanding and insight.
Plato's "Ladder of Love". By Emrys Westacott. Thoughtco , April 11, 2018
When the
Athenian politician Pericles delivered his famous Funeral Oration at the end of
the first year of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), commemorating those who
had fallen during the course of the year, a rumour emerged that his companion,
Aspasia was the real author. The claim was made by no other than Socrates,
whose testimony was recorded by Plato. This assertion may not be that difficult
to believe in view of Aspasia’s role in Athenian society.
Aspasia (c.
460-400 BC) was a hetaira, an elite companion or courtesan trained in the arts
of pleasing wealthy, upper-class men. This training included acquiring musical
skills, developing the art of conversation and, of course, being able to
sexually satisfy clients.
While Aspasia
may not have been a typical hetaira, but rather an exceptionally successful and
fortunate one, there is ancient evidence to attest that this class of women was
educated in literary arts, philosophy, and rhetoric. In this sense, they could
converse with men in a way that traditional wives could not, owing to the
limited access to formal education afforded Athenian girls and women of citizen
families.
Yet Aspasia
may not have born into the trade. From a wealthy family from Miletus (in
modern-day Turkey), she seems to have acquired her extensive education through
virtue of their prominence and her father’s decision to allow her tuition. The
circumstances behind her arrival in Athens are debated, although as a resident
alien, Aspasia had little options once there. She could not legally marry an
Athenian citizen, nor could she seek legitimate work.
Other
hetairai, like Neaira, were put into the trade as children and trained for a
life of satisfying wealthy clients. There are comparatively extensive records
for Neaira, who lived in Athens in the 4th century BC, owing to her involvement
in a court case on charges of illegally marrying and passing off her daughter
as a legitimate Athenian. Through the course of the proceedings, Neaira’s life
was detailed, and it tells a very different tale to the comparatively glamorous
accounts of Aspasia’s time with Pericles.
As a little
girl, Neaira was sold to a woman by the name of Nicarete and trained as a sex
worker in her brothel in Corinth (in southern Greece). Accounts of her life as
a child reveal that she was working for Nicarete, along with six other girls
purchased at the same time, before she had come of age (before puberty). As she
matured, Neaira was sold, passed around, and finally found herself in court on
charges of illegally marrying.
The lives of
other girls and women reveal the hardships they faced. In addition to hetairai,
there were those who worked their whole lives (until they were of no further
use) in brothels. The price of women varied according to their age and
condition and the quality (or lack thereof) of the business. As the hetairai
were trained in the skills required to please men, women in brothels were
sometimes modified to suit certain male tastes.
In an extract
preserved from a comic play from the 4th or 3rd century BC, the lengths to
which a pimp would go to alter the appearance and behaviour of new girls is
recorded:
One girl happens to be small? Cork is
stitched to the sole of her
delicate shoes. One girl happens to be tall?
She wears a flat slipper,
and goes out drooping her head on her
shoulders, thus
taking away some of her height. One girl
doesn’t have hips?
She puts on a girdle with padded hips under
her clothes so that
men, on seeing her beautiful derriere, call
out to her.
Comedies,
which regularly dealt with what society deemed as the less salubrious aspects
of life, have provided historians of sex with significant evidence of brothel
life. The passage continues:
One girl has red eyebrows? They paint them with
lamp soot.
One girl happens to be black? She anoints herself with white lead.
One girl is too white-skinned? She smears on rouge.
One part of her body is beautiful? She shows it naked.
Her teeth are pretty? She must, of necessity, smile so that
the men present may see what an elegant mouth she has.
But if she does not enjoy smiling, she must spend the day
indoors and, like something positioned by a butcher
when selling goats’ heads,
she must hold upright between her teeth a thin stick of myrtle;
that way, in time she will show off her teeth whether she likes to or not.thin, fat, round, tall, short,
youthful, antique, middle-aged, or overly ripe …
In another
comedy from the same era, the playwright describes the women on display in
brothels. They are depicted as “sun-bathing” with their “breasts openly
displayed” and “naked for action and lined up in rows.” As with the
modification of the women described above, this passage also discusses the
variety of women available:
From them you may select one for your pleasure: thin,
fat, round, tall, short,
youthful, antique, middle-aged, or overly ripe …
The passage also
includes a statement that explains the popularity of paying for sex in ancient
Greece; namely the safety-net it afforded men who could not even look at
freeborn women for fear of reprisals.
As a woman
aged, the chances of being able to access a means living through sex work
became decidedly more difficult. Turning to a comic play once more, there is a
description of an aged hetaira called Lais and the difficulties and
humiliations facing her, which is evoked by the lines: “it is easier to get an
audience with her than it is to spit”.
Lais was an
actual person who lived around the same time as Aspasia, and was reputed to
have been a stunningly beautiful hetaira. Once courted by elite men, and described
as having a haughty disposition, the aged Lais is depicted in this comedic
passage as roaming the streets, taking on any client she could get, and having
become “so tame … that she takes the money out of your hand.”
The existence
of so-called “temple prostitution” in Greek, Italian and Near Eastern antiquity
has been recorded by several ancient authors, including Strabo in his
Geography, written in the first century BC, which details “temple slaves” in
the precincts of Aphrodite at Eryx (Sicily) and Corinth. Some sources,
including Strabo, imply that the women were dedicated as votive offerings to
the goddess, and that they serviced clients as a form of “sacred sex.”
Nevertheless,
some scholars now question the practice, offering several alternative
explanations, including the possibility of brothels having been associated with
such temples but not strictly related to them, and the confusion over accounts
of women donating to temples of those goddesses under whose divine ordinance
they practised their work.
In addition to
hetairai, lower-grade sex workers who populated brothels from the slave and
resident alien classes and possibly, temple slaves, there were also young men
who serviced clients. Like their female equivalents, young men worked in the ergasterion
(workshop) and the porneion (brothel) at the bottom end of the market, which
were were dismal environments for the porne (harlot) and pornos (rent-boy)
alike.
The word
hetairos (male companion) is also attested in some sources but rarely in its
reference to sexual activity. As with females, youthful men were the most
desired, with a preference for those between the ages of 12 to 17. These young
men also worked alongside the women often referred to as “flute girls” at the
male gatherings called symposia. At these social events, young sex workers
would entertain the guests, serve them food and wine, and if required, service
them.
Outliving
Pericles by almost 30 years, Aspasia was said to have become the companion of
another politician, Lysicles. She was a survivor and experienced an
exceptionally long life as a hetaira. As such, she was a rarity.
Elite
companions, flute girls and child slaves: sex work in ancient Athens. By Marguerite Johnson. The Conversation , December 20, 2017.
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