KAUFMANN’S OEDIPUS AND PLATO’S SOCRATES
In Chapter Four of his book, Tragedy and Philosophy , Walter Kaufmann claims that Sophocles’ play
Oedipus Rex is one of the greatest tragedies ever written in part because it presents so vividly five characteristics of human life which make our existence so tragic. The purpose of this paper will be, first, to present Kaufmann’s view and, second, to apply these same characteristics to Plato’s dialogues in general and to the characters in Plato’s dialogues, particularly Socrates. Unfortunately, Kaufmann would disagree with me. He argues throughout his book that Plato is anti-tragic. This paper will not address Kaufmann’s argument, although much that is said here is an attempt to refute his reading of Plato.
The most striking claim Kaufmann makes about Sophocles’ play is, “Sophocles constructs his whole plot around Oedipus’ relentless quest for truth, although the old story was not a story about honesty at all…The central spring of the action of Sophocles’ tragedy is not, as it well might have been, fate, but rather Oedipus’ imperious passion for the truth…All the conflicts in the tragedy are generated by the king’s quest for the truth
(121-123). I would add that it is not a quest for truth in any sense, but a quest for selfknowledge, which drives Oedipus and which ends when he finally comes to know who he is. Oedipus is presented as a man who follows the Delphi oracle, “Know thyself” to its bitter end.
This very quality in Oedipus lends itself to a natural comparison with Socrates. It was Socrates in the Apology who is also portrayed as a man trying to satisfy the Delphi oracle’s claim that “no one is wiser” than Socrates (21a). It was Socrates who said that if this was true in any sense, it was because of his knowledge of himself, “when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser…to this small extent, that I do
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not think I know what I do not know” (21d). Socrates’ life, also, came to a bitter end: the Athenians accused him of not believing in the city’s gods and of corrupting the youth; he was sentenced to die.
Although I cannot go into detail, I will list the five themes Kaufmann believes are implicit in tragedy and how Sophocles’
Oedipus fits so well into these themes:
1.
Mankind’s radical insecurity, “[Oedipus] falls suddenly and unexpectedly into utter misery and destruction, and this teaches us that none of us can be sure how he may end” (115).
2.
Human blindness, “The immense irony of Oedipus’ great curse consists in his blindness to his own identity…his blindness includes those he loves most…their identity and his relation to them” (117). Kaufmann points out how common this kind of blindness is among all human beings, “even the wisest and most intelligent men who understand the human condition better than anyone else fail typically to comprehend those who are closest to them and whom they love the most, because they are too involved with them emotionally” (117).
3.
The curse of honesty, “Oedipus…is outstanding in his honesty. His is not only extraordinarily wise, he is no less imposing in his relentless desire for knowledge and his willingness—no, his insistence upon taking pains to find out what is true”
(121).
4.
The inevitability of tragedy, “Whatever he does in the situation in which
Sophocles places him at the beginning of the play, he incurs a terrible guilt.”
Again, Kaufmann points out that this is not a mere literary devise on Sophocles’ part, it is the playwright’s attempt to place a particular character in a particular
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position which reflects the condition of all people, “More generally, it is a chronic feature of the human condition that we cannot please and benefit all, any more than Oedipus can, we cannot satisfy all the claims that we should meet” (126,
128).
5.
Tragedy forces us to reexamine our notions of justice and injustice. At the beginning of the play Oedipus believes he is the most just man, but by the end it is clear that he is not. Kaufmann remarks, “And is not this another way of questioning man’s justice—to remind us how the facts are easily misunderstood, and punishments that to the righteously indignant seem to be unquestionably just are often anything but that?” (131).
Besides these themes in tragedy, Kaufmann does an extensive analysis of particular tragedies and concludes that any tragic piece of writing must include: a) the description of an action which is: a) “serious” ( spoudaios ); b) describes a particular event but also has universal meaning; c) focuses on a situation of tragic conflict, where conflicting duties lead to guilt and suffering; and d) involves an experience of reversal of fortune and recognition, or learning. The emotions the author wants to draw from the audience are a) pity for the characters involved in the conflict; b) the audience member’s own fear at recognizing his or her own vulnerabilities, which would turn pity toward the characters into self-pity; and c) a purgation of pity and fear, so the audience can experience both a heightened awareness of human frailty as well as greater courage to face life without selfpity or fear. I will argue that Plato’s dialogues can be, and should be, classified as
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tragedies, because they use the same literary devices to direct their readers to these same factors inherent in the human condition and to draw out the same emotions.
PLATO’S DIALOGUES AS TRAGEDIES
In order to read Plato’s dialogues as tragedies, however, one must read them within their historical and dramatic contexts. One must also recognize what Plato was trying to teach his readers about the relevance of his dialogues for people living in any place and time. Further, the characters in Plato’s dialogues do not themselves experience the reversal and recognition. The characters remain ignorant. Readers must recognize what Socrates’ interlocutors did not recognize; they must allow themselves to be taught by Socrates those lessons which the interlocutors could not learn. After all, if we were to take the dialogues literally, Socrates always fails. He interlocutors never learn. How could a man reputed to be one of the greatest teachers who ever lived be at the same time a man who is described, if the dialogues are taken literally and at face value, as nothing but a failure? It is the effect of Plato’s dialogues over the centuries, the lessons learned by his readers, which has given Socrates the reputation for being a great teacher.
Obviously, a literal reading will not get us to the main message of Plato’s texts. Let me go through Kaufmann’s five themes and apply them to Plato’s dialogues in general and to the character of Socrates and some of his interlocutors in particular.
First, mankind’s radical insecurity. Many of Plato’s early and middle dialogues are set in Athens before the loss of the Peloponnesian war, the rule of the Thirty tyrants, the restoration of democracy and Socrates’ trial and death. The dialogues are set when
Athens is still politically powerful and proud of her cultural institutions. Political and intellectual freedoms are a source of great pride. But the reader knows that this power and stability will not last long.
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These dialogues show the reader what was going on in Athens at the time, what kinds of people were controlling the social and political climate and what opinions they held about what makes life worth living. Book VIII of the Republic claims that democracies in general, not just Athenian democracy, are always in danger of becoming too permissive, which leads first to social disorder and eventually to the need for a powerful ruler. More specifically, within one generation, Athens went from a seemingly invincible example of the value of democratic institutions to social chaos and the election of a dictator. Clearly, if one aspect of a tragic worldview is the recognition of the radical insecurity of human life, Plato’s dialogues reflect this view. Plato’s personal experience of living through the collapse of Athens led to a desire to create a body of dialogues which show their readers what the Athenians did and believed which led to the loss of political and intellectual freedom. Plato wants his readers to: a) pity the Athenians for their ignorance; b) fear for their own capacity to pursue immediate pleasure gratification, accumulation of wealth, or personal ambition, assuming that their societies will remain stable without anyone taking on the responsibilities necessary to preserve social order; c) to have a purgation of pity and fear; and d) to go out of the theater with a heightened awareness of human vulnerability as well as a greater motivation to act temperately, courageously and justly. Plato wanted readers who live in societies which grant political and intellectual freedom to become conscious of what they need to do to preserve that freedom and, conversely, what they should avoid doing because it will undermine those two, most important, kinds of freedom. By recognizing the tragic and vulnerable nature of the human condition educated people can become wiser and the societies they live in, hopefully, will become more stable and less vulnerable.
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Since societies as a whole are unstable, and individual stability depends on social order, individual’s lives are even more radically unstable. Although the characters in the dialogues do not experience suffering while the dialogue is taking place, the reader knows that not long after the dialogues take place the characters suffer greatly. Many of
Socrates’ interlocutors are wealthy and highly respected. They are very ignorant of their own vulnerabilities. They do not understand the ways their actions and opinions are contributing to the fall of Athens. If Socrates points this out, they deny it. These mistakes lead to their own downfall and the downfall of Athens.
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