The Philosopher's Stories: The Role of Myth in Plato's Pedagogy

Abstract

In this essay I will argue that Platonic myths are a useful tool not only in the education of the ignorant but for the philosophical mind as well. To do this I will first examine the limitations and problems that Plato sees in written communication, and I will then argue that myths avoid these problems by undermining their own validity. If they are to avoid the problems that plague the written format, myths must show themselves for what they are: inadequate tools for giving a complete account of a particular subject. Myths, I will argue, are those shadows (to use the term from the story of the Cave in the Republic) that show their own shadow-like nature. In this way the myth is able to work hand-in-hand with dialectic to educate philosophers.

Notes

1. I am not using the term ‘dialectic’ here in the technical sense used in such dialogues as the Sophist and Statesman, but merely to refer to those conversations in which we actively subject our own knowledge to rigorous questioning to probe the limits of our understanding.

2. Unfortunately, a discussion of what Plato makes of the contrast between mythos and logos is beyond the scope of this article. For a more extended discussion of this division, see Luc Brisson, Plato the Myth Maker, trans Gerald Naddaf (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998), and Kathryn Morgan, Myth and Philosophy from Presocratics to Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

3. All quotes from Plato's dialogues are from the relevant translations in John Cooper, ed., Plato: Complete Works (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1997).

4. Hegel, in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy Vol. 2, trans E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simon (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench and Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1894), 19–20, calls this the “pedagogical stage of the human race, since it entices and allures men to occupy themselves with content; but as it takes away the purity of thought through sensuous forms, it cannot express meaning of thought.” Such a stage is still useful in the education of young children, but Hegel extends this stage to include an entire historical period, whose death throes begin en force with Plato himself.

5. In the Republic (2.376e–3.392e) Plato tells us that these figures are the proper subject matter for myth.

6. Brisson, Plato the Myth Maker.

7. It is interesting to note that though most commentators mentioned here (including Hegel) think that myths have some role in educating the ignorant, and though most attempt to show that they play a role in the education of philosophers also, Ludwig Edelstein, in “The Function of Myth in Plato's Philosophy,” Journal of the History of Ideas 10 (1949): 463–81, makes the unique claim that Platonic myths are so rich and complex that they are appropriate only for the education of philosophers.

8. Notably, Gregory Vlastos has made this claim regarding the Timaeus in “The Disorderly Motion in the Timaios,” The Classical Quarterly 33 (1939): 71.

9. M. F. Burnyeat, in his article ‘Eikos muthos’ in Plato's Myths, ed. Catalin Partenie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 167–86, also suggests that Timaeus’ monologue as a whole is a myth, but also argues that, although it does not aim at argumentative rigour, it is a text that philosophers ought to consider seriously.

10. Though it is important to note that a story with elements of ‘fantasy’ is not necessarily fantastical. The former term implies that the story has as its subject matter imaginary beings such as gods, spirits and heroes, or even, as would be more familiar to a modern context, talking animals and objects.

11. I am borrowing this term from Eugenio Benitez, “Philosophy, Myth and Plato's Two-Worlds View,” The European Legacy 12 (2007): 225–42, although it is important to note that what I have here called ‘fantastical’ image-making Benitez simply calls ‘fantasy.’ My definition of ‘fantasy’ is therefore different to the one Benitez gives.

12. In “Philosophy, Myth and Plato's Two-Worlds View” Benitez makes this claim, though it is important to note than neither he, nor I, asserts that myths can bring us all the way into the realm of truth. They cannot do this because they act only through the imagination, not through reason.

13. Sister Mary John Gregory, “Myth and Transcendence in Plato,” Thought 43 (1968): 273–96.

14. Gerald Stormer, “Plato's Theory of Myth,” The Personalist 55 (1974): 216–23.

15. Robert Zaslavsky, Platonic Myth and Platonic Writings (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1981), 1.

16. At several points Plato makes the (familiar) claim that someone can only claim to have knowledge of F if they can give an account of what makes F what it is. If the ultimate end of Plato is to have knowledge of the good, then myth cannot lead us to this end because myth cannot offer an account, as it works only with sensuous images, and not reason.

17. The so-called ‘Philosophical Digression’ of the 7th Epistle (340b–345c) contains an extended criticism of writing which raises many points which are similar to those advanced in the Phaedrus, but because of the controversy concerning the authorship of this document I will omit discussing it here.

18. This criticism extends to speeches as well, in the case that the speaker has no intention of elucidating points afterwards, except in reiterating previous points which may have been missed. Through these arguments Plato is attempting to draw a distinction between passive methods of communicating and receiving knowledge (as in those who read books and listen to speeches), with active methods of education, typified in dialectic.

19. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV, 830.

20. John Fisher, “Plato on Writing and Doing Philosophy,” Journal of the History of Ideas 27 (1966): 164.

21. For a fuller exposition on these points, see Benitez, “Philosophy, Myth and Plato's Two-Worlds View”; Morgan, Myth and Philosophy from Presocratics to Plato, 182; and Thomas Gould, Platonic Love (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), 89.

22. As Robert Scott Stewart argues in “The Epistemological Function of Platonic Myth,” The Classical Quarterly 33 (1989): 265, “the simple possession of truth without the knowledge of that truth has either a negative value or no value at all.”

23. An example of this is shown in the Symposium (216e–217a) where Alcibiades describes a sudden glimpse of “godlike” and “utterly amazing” things when in discussion with Socrates.

24. The difference between merely following an idea and truly understanding it is shown at the end of Socrates’ discussion with the slave boy in the Meno (85c–d). Here Plato distinguishes between opinions that have been “stirred up like a dream” and the rigorous understanding that can only come from intense questioning.

25. In the Republic this process is described as a battle: “Unless someone can distinguish an account [of X] . . . [that] can survive all refutation, as if in a battle, striving to judge things not in accordance with opinion but in accordance with being, and can come through all this with his account still intact, you’ll say that he doesn’t know [X]” (Republic, 4.435b–c).

26. Stormer, “Plato's Theory of Myth.”

27. The Gorgias, Phaedo, and Republic all end with myths, and though myths do not conclude the dialogue as a whole, myths conclude (or sometimes constitute) important discussions in the Symposium, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Republic, Statesman, Timaeus, and the Laws.

28. All writing, I believe, can perform these three tasks, but it is unique to myth, in the particular sense, that it performs these tasks through fantasy.

29. Almost all scholars who have written about Platonic myth agree that furnishing these two things is a central role for myth. See especially Edelstein, “The Function of Myth in Plato's Philosophy,” and Janet Smith, “Plato's Use of Myth in the Education of Philosophic Man,” Phoenix 40 (1986): 20–34.

30. In “Philosophy, Myth and Plato's Two-Worlds View” Benitez outlines how this happens in three steps. First, we are shown an image of the way the world is; second, this image is shown to be false; and third, we are furnished with an image that better reflects reality. This process is best shown in the Myth of the True Earth in the Phaedo, or the Myth of the Cave in the Republic, as our old world-views are replaced with new world-views. We do not access reality through our senses; we access it through the mind's eye, the objects of which are as different as shadows in a cave from objects illuminated by the light of the sun.

31. Homer, though coming under some attack in the Republic for presenting confused images of heroes and gods, is an admirable poet in other respects because his characters are all true heroes: Achilles is the bravest man alive, Nestor the most wise, and Odysseus the most cunning.

32. The authors who place the highest priority on play are Smith, “Plato's Use of Myth in the Education of Philosophic Man,” and Morgan, Myth and Philosophy from Presocratics to Plato.

33. Even the concluding myth of the Gorgias, the least fantastic of Plato's myths, is about people being judged in the afterlife, naked, before the court of the gods.

34. John-Francois Mattei, “The Theatre of Myth in Plato,” Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings, ed. Charles Griswold (New York: Routledge, 1988), 66–83.

35. Though myth does this to a far more exaggerated degree, all proper writing does this also, in that it may raise us to the world of truth but it cannot fully explain what is there.

36. This is not to say, however, that this is not still very dangerous for readers, as the bigger the gaps the more chance we have of making mistakes. But we will see how Platonic myth addresses this concern when we come to discuss the third role of myth.

37. Playing with ideas is an important element of education for Plato. For an extended discussion, see Book II of the Laws, in which Plato argues that alcohol is an important pedagogical tool for the elderly in that it makes their minds more “malleable,” that is, more open to new ideas, and more prepared for play.

38. This is the central assertion made by Smith in “Plato's Use of Myth in the Education of Philosophic Man.”

39. Morgan, Myth and Philosophy from Presocratics to Plato, 173, argues that unrestrained play is the realm of eristic, rather than philosophical myths. Whereas the former discussions aim for amusement and the pleasure of victory, the latter treats both their interlocutor and their subject matter (and, therefore, their entire discussion) quite seriously.