Xanthippic Dialogues
Roger Scruton has to be one of the most fascinating, frustrating and thought-provoking of modern philosophers. Along with Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Jonathan Glover and Peter Singer, he is one writer I’ve returned to time and again. I read his Short History of Modern Philosophy to get my head around 20th Century thinkers and learnt a lot (sadly I’ve now lost my copy!). Fourteen years later, in 1996, he published An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Philosophy, another book to help me make sense of some philosophy and some philosophers. He also wrote some stunning books on aesthetics, on such topics as architecture, art and music. Those were the works of the fascinating and thought-provoking Roger Scruton.
However, in 1982 Scruton had become the founding editor of The Salisbury Review, a journal championing ‘traditional conservatism’ as opposition to Thatcherism. This was a key stage in his arguments supporting the Tory approach to government, and that was the side of him I found sometimes, even often, frustrating, the side that took up more and more of his work from then on.
I think I’d prefer to focus on the fascinating and thought-provoking side of his work. In 1993, he published Xanthippic Dialogues, which he described as a ‘philosophical fiction’. This was the book that really grabbed me. It was funny, insightful, and extremely clever. Back in 1993, I was beginning to start thinking more broadly once again (after years of devoted work as a manager, initially the private and government sectors, and from 1988 onwards in the not-for-profit sector). Being an executive was demanding, and strategy was absorbing, but, slowly, I had come to want more. This was the time I found out about The Aspen Institute, and the pull of philosophy was beginning to work on me. All that stuff has appeared in other blogs, but Xanthippe, Xanthippe deserves a whole separate commentary!
Xanthippic Dialogues begins with an Editor’s Preface: after all, we were about to read some fictional dialogues from 2,500 years ago, and the editor wanted a say. Roger Scruton the fiction writer, explains that he had left university thirty years earlier, and his obsession was to write a book that revealed the ‘real’ Plato. Hanging around in Piraeus, watching the boats docking and departing, a chance interaction with gypsy ‘companion’ persuaded him to go to Alexandria. There he ends up in Bair Hind, the House of Hind, and manages to borrow and copy a series of obscure papyrus dialogues, including Xanthippe’s Republic, Perictione’s Parmenides and Phryne’s Symposium. Our traveller returns to England, abandons his weak commitment to the academic world, and translates the material.
If the Introduction hadn’t already focussed my attention, there was a one page ‘Note of Scholarship’. This explains that Aeschines, a pupil of Socrates and a rival of Plato, was claimed to be the author of several Socratic dialogues, but almost certainly they were probably obtained from Socrates’ wife, Xanthippe. In fact, Aeschines was an Athenian politician and orator. It’s always a good idea to keep fictions as close to the truth as possible! The rest of this Note takes us through a tortuous set of surmises, ending with the view that these lost dialogues are “the work of the Cyrenaic school, founded by Arete, daughter of Aristippus (435-350 BC), a pupil of Socrates. She might even have been the author. (Overall, I discovered ‘Arete’ has two meanings. As a concept it translates to the words ‘excellence’, ‘fulfillment’, or ‘virtue’. However, Arete is also a mythological character, the Greek goddess of virtue, goodness, and knowledge).
All this was before we got on to the ‘fiction’ itself, which comprises three dialogues: Xanthippe’s Republic, Perictione’s Parmenides and Xanthippe’s Laws. These three are followed by Phryne’s Symposium (I hope you’re keeping up), which was sent to the author from Istanbul, a Turkish translation of a Greek manuscript, that had found its way into the Sultan of Turkey’s harem. Fortunately, for the author, a translator was available in London, one Šule, who was able to give him Turkish lessons and translate the document! The set of characters in this last piece include Xanthippe, who at this stage was Socrates’ widow (he’d appeared in Xanthippe’s Laws as a ghost), Arete, and Perictione (Plato’s mother), among others.
Roger Scruton was having fun. The first, and shortest, dialogue, Xanthippe’s Republic, takes place in Socrates and Xanthippe home, where Socrates is complaining about how hard he works, Plato’s unreliability as a secretary (he’s failed to make notes on some key discussions), and at the same time explain some of The Republic. He complains of being tired and wonders why. Xanthippe explains:
“Perhaps it is the energy you expend on doing nothing; the concentration required, in order to neglect your wife and your sons at every moment oof the day and night. The incredible calculations needed, to avoid all possibility of an honest job. The sheer sweat of refusing every offer, and all the time posing as a serene philosopher, whom the gods have forbidden to dirty his hands with money. It must be exhausting; I honestly don’t know how you manage it.”
As you might expect, Socrates ignores all this, suggesting that he is a slave, a slave to philosophy! This brief dialogue sets out Socrates’ view of the ideal state, only to have Xanthippe savage it in the final two pages! She suggests the philosophers, those whom Socrates has painted as the disinterested leaders of the State, would have no idea of the interests of everyone else in this ideal society. Indeed, he explains they would have to establish a ‘subordinate class’ of guardians, whose primary role would be to ensure that the ‘common people’ do not fall into praising individuality and voicing concerns over distinction.
In Xanthippe’s view, Socrates’ proposal is the establishment of a state of absolute rule by the guardian party, with labour directed towards the common good, while the philosophers do nothing other than enjoy ‘the meagre fruits of the citizens’ labour’. Socrates can’t get a word in as she continues, observing the only qualification to be philosopher is endorsement of the other guardians. What have these ‘self-styled- philosophers done to deserve their position, what motive do they have to be recognised ? She suggests nothing, adding: “On the contrary, their interest is power, and their intellectual efforts are devoted to enhancing it, extending the network of mendacity into ever-newer regions, so that truth – by which I mean the concrete and particular truth of human freedom – shall never be perceived”. Roger Scruton isn’t keen on self-perpetuating governing classes, and at the end of Xanthippe’s summary all Socrates can do is add “It is a frightening vision, Xanthippe. Is there more wine?”
The second dialogue, Perictione’s Parmenides, is a discussion between Perictione, aged around 50 years old, and Plato, her son, who is just 18 years old. Roger Scruton is about to have some more fun, using this dialogue to explain how Plato came to many of his views. Guess what? He got his ideas from listening to his mother. In this discussion, we learn that Plato’s mother had told Xanthippe about his ideas for a ‘new republic’. In her turn Xanthippe had told Socrates of Plato’s ‘Great Design’, and now Socrates was treating Plato as unsophisticated and naïve.
We learn, as the dialogue progresses, that young Plato is writing a tragedy. After some effort, Perictione gets Plato to tell her how his drama it is developing. It appears he has reached a crucial point, the central speech in the play, and is stuck on the finding the second line. Perictione wants to hear the first line:
Plato: ‘Promise you won’t mock?’
Perictione: ‘Promise.’
Plato; OK, then (clears his throat and recites):
‘Being or not-being; That defines the problematic’
Perictione: ‘Being or not-being; that defines the problematic. Hmm. Promising. Metre could be polished up a bit, I suppose. Still, no, it’s got something. Yes, in the hands of a skilled poet it would make rather an impressive line. So, what then?’
Plato: ‘That’s it. I’m stuck. All the same, I’ve found the only path that is open out of my character’s predicament.’
Perictione: ‘What path?’
Plato: ‘The path of philosophy, the meditation on existence itself, the final negation of all these anxieties and doubts, the exodus into the really real.’
Perictione (sighs): ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Plato, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ …
I guess it is obvious why I love this book. Let me add the last line of this dialogue, when Plato leave the house, sulking:
(Plato exits left. Perictione look after him, sighs, and then picks up his handbag from the floor.)
Perictione: Darling! You’ve forgotten your handbag!
Time to move on to the major dialogue in this fiction, Xanthippe’s Laws. This is a ‘tour de force’, a clever, funny and yet very ingenious discussion between Xanthippe and Plato, taking place in a small hut next to Socrates’ tomb. The hut is Xanthippe’s home, having given her house to her children. The conversation between the two wanders, with asides and teasing non-sequiturs. Roger Scruton must have had fun, always managing to slip in a tiny and mischievous aside. Here’s Plato commenting on his mother in her later years “she got regular news of me from her cousin Crates in Syracuse, and that in any case she had rather taken to the amphora in her old age, and wasn’t much bothered by the world”.
Rather than attempting an overview, I hope you will decide to read the Xanthippic Dialogues at some point, and especially Xanthippe’s Laws. It offers a down-to-earth commentary on the more abstruse ideas we might have read in The Republic. Here is Xanthippe explaining issues to do with the law to Plato.
“I make a great distinction between those who believe justice resides in some distribution of privilege and property, ad who see the law as a means for achieving it; and those of a more Xanthippic persuasion, for who the justice of a state lies in its procedures alone. In my view, a state is just to the extent justice is done in it; and justice is done when impartial judges give judgement according to natural law. In such a state the innocent go free and the guilty are punished; contracts are upheld and obligations enforced. And what distribution of goods may result from this process there is no foreseeing”
2,500 years later, we have Martin Luther King commenting “A just law is a man‑made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” (From Martin Luther King Jr’s 1963 Letter from Birmingham City Jail)”.
Xanthippe explains what she means by natural law. It is body of law established by precedent , each judgement always paying account to the judgements made in previous cases, with judges duty bound to follow decisions made on similar cases. This isn’t Plato’s theory of forms, where meaning is to be found in the non-physical, timeless, absolute, and unchangeable essence of things. In Xanthippe’s world, laws emerge from judgements. It seems she has little time for Plato’s forms. Indeed, she goes on to argue that there is no one ‘solution’ to any social issue, but rather there is an ongoing balance to be found between the state, which is the realm of law, and civil society, which is the realm of free association. Each depends on the other to create a ‘just’ society.
Perhaps I will allow myself to include one more quote! As their discussion continues, Xanthippe suggests:
“There are, I believe, two kinds of state, the personal and the impersonal. In the personal state rights and duties are honoured and upheld. The law holds us to our responsibilities, and every person is acknowledged and respected as such … and this is the kind of state that emerges from natural law.”
Plato asks: “And does your personal state make room for slaves?”
Xanthippe replies “I think not, my dear Plato.”
Finally, when Plato ask her about the impersonal state, she explains this is like a machine “In the impersonal state rights are despised and duties neglected. Men are forced to bend to the plan which governs them.”
It is all so contemporary! However, in later years Scruton was decidedly far less accepting of the benefits of a natural, personal state. By the turn of the century he was arguing that society only held together by the exercise of authority and the rule of law, by which he meant the right to obedience, not by the imagined rights of citizens. Obedience, he wrote, is “the prime virtue of political beings, the disposition that makes it possible to govern them, and without which societies crumble into ‘the dust and powder of individuality'”. He argued real freedom does not stand in conflict with obedience, but is its other side (in Gentle Regrets, 2005).
Roger Scruton died in early 2020. It’s hard to understand why the author of so much excellent nonfiction and fiction in the 1960s and early 1970s became a determined advocate for conservative views. Watching him talking on beauty (Why Beauty Matters, Vimeo https://vimeo.com/1018048600), offers, just like the man, a frustrating mixture. In part, it is a compelling introduction to beauty in visual art. At the same time, it is an excellent critique of the impact of business, and in particular marketing, as he explores how we are presented with visual images, on how utilitarianism dominated so much in the production and dissemination of art. It is an evocative critique of the loss of any sense of spirituality in contemporary art. In the video, he talks with a sculptor and restorer, Alexander Stoddart , who mourns the loss of the link between beauty and sacred. While that seems relevant, at the same time it fails to address the sense of immersion we experience in looking at objects, and that’s where the critique becomes tricky. Like Roger Scruton, I can’t see any real continuing value in Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (a urinal), yet I find Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych oddly compelling.
Sadly, Xanthippe didn’t have the opportunity to comment on either artwork: perhaps she was lucky to have avoided both of them.
