Feldman 1
Aaron Feldman
Professor Kennedy
Humanities 500
14 August 2010
Conceiving Thumos as Self-Value and Its Importance for Plato’s Ethical Theory as Found in Symposium
Symposium is perhaps not only Plato’s best work, but his most important (De Botton 679). In it, he lays down what might be considered his theory of value by defining the meaning of the Good as infinite, absolute Beauty (Plato 746). A central concept which plays in to his theory of value is thumos, a complicated concept which covers a wide range of emotions concerned with self-concept or self-esteem. Plato highlights its importance throughout Symposium, especially in the speeches given by Phaedrus and Alcibiades. In proposing the hints of a theory of values concerned primarily with thumos, Plato might have given us a very provocative theory of values. Instead, he rejects the central role of thumos and replaces it with the concept of absolute Beauty as being the most important for understanding the Good. The argument of this paper will be that thumos could have been understood as playing this most important role despite Plato’s numerous and powerful objections. Finally, this paper will end by trying to reconcile a thumotic understanding of value with Plato’s stranger theory of equating the Good with the form of Beauty.
The Plot
Symposium is a tale told by Apollodorus to an unknown listener, wherein he relays the story told to him by Aristodemus of a night years before when a group of friends sat on couches in Agathon’s living room, each drinking wine and taking his turn praising the god of love, Eros. The idea is dreamt up by Phaedrus, who laments that of all the gods Eros is most deserving of praise, but receives none (Plato 704). Since it was his idea, he goes first, followed by Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, and Agathon. Socrates, whose turn is next, rejects the flowery but empty praise of Eros given by those who went before him, and instead tells the group what he learned of Eros from the priestess Diotima. This discussion is widely believed to express Plato’s own views on the nature of love (White 366). Alcibiades is last to go, and he refuses to praise Eros altogether, choosing instead to eulogize Socrates.
Love is the theme of Symposium, but it is broadly conceived, “at one end descending to animals and plants, and attaining to the highest vision of truth at the other” (De Botton 687). A recurrent theme in many of the speeches is the struggle to understand love as being something more than just a selfish desire. Plato seeks to raise love above being good for the individual himself to the level of being Good in the absolute sense. His basic definition of love as “of the good” lays the foundation for this enterprise (Plato 740). The argument contained in Diotima’s speech is an attempt to show that the Good transcends temporary, earthly goods to reach something permanent and everlasting.
Thumos in Symposium
In Symposium, a single recurrent concept encapsulates much of selfish emotion and behavior. The Greek concept of thumos has been described as “the spirited part of the soul which seeks honor, resents injury and resists injustice” (Purviance 1). For “The Homeric Greeks… it was also the seat of such things as hunger, joy, fear, will, and thought. To be undecided about something, for example, was to have a divided thumos” (Skinner 780). For Aristotle, thumotic emotions were “self-assertive feelings connected with anger and pride” (Kahn 79). The term conveys “quite definite judgments of a moral sort”; it is the part of us “which gets angry when it thinks it (the individual) has been wronged” (Kahn 85). Thumos is the motivating force behind emotions such as pride and shame, competitive drives (the will to win), and philotimia, or love of honor (Fussi 238). Thumos is used by Plato to stand for feelings of selfish pride, honor, indignation, and the desire to win over others in competition. “Thumoeidetic emotions – love of victory, love of honor, a strong sense of shame, admiration of courage, and, in general, a keen sense of what could be taken as signs of disregard and unjust treatment – figure prominently in the Symposium” (Fussi 260).
Plato thought that our emotions should be controlled by reason. He saw thumos as wild, uncontrolled, and often irrational urges which could just as easily do harm as well as good. “Plato reduces and localizes thumos to the flaw of thumoietic, irascible, character. Such short-temperedness and irascibility… (makes) the person more fit for battle than for peace and takes away the patience and good will needed for the philosophical pursuit of truth” (Purviance 2). Yet thumos seems to have an important role in moral motivation. Though Plato saw thumos as wild and irrational, it is also associated with virtually all of our emotions which deal with our relationships to other people, including taking “actions for the sake of one’s moral and political dignity and for the moral dignity of others” (Purviance 1).
Among the many concepts thumos conveys, its role in identity formation is perhaps the most important. In fact, thumos seems to account for virtually all of our emotions which deal with how we conceive of ourselves and relate to other people. As Fussi remarks:
Thumos in the Republic is something in-between a raw drive (the sheer aggressiveness of the lion, 588d) and a cluster of complex emotional responses, such as anger when one is convinced of having been wronged or belittled… a longing for competitive success… and strong desires for glory and honor… If properly educated, thumos gives rise to the virtue of courage… Thumos is ultimately a motivational source rooted in the agent’s self-image and emotionally linked to the esteem one earns from others (238).
Symposium appears to be Plato’s attempt to show how we can escape the selfishness and relativity of values and to make them selfless and absolute. Yet his arguments revolve around the emotions encapsulated by thumos. This paper focuses on the central role that thumos plays in forging our self-concept and the necessity of a self-concept for a theory of value. It will also examine Plato’s objections and his proposed alternative to such a theory of values. In the first speech by Phaedrus, Plato builds up the case for thumos as the motivational force for virtuous behavior, and in the last speech by Alcibiades, he vigorously undermines this position.
Phaedrus’ Speech
In the speeches of Phaedrus and Alcibiades, thumos plays the central role (Fussi 239). Plato uses Phaedrus’ speech to build up the case for using thumos as the central thrust for a theory of values. “Phaedrus… shows the positive side of thumos: it can inspire courage, it is malleable with education, it can side with reason” (Fussi 261). Phaedrus begins his speech in Symposium by making it explicitly clear that it is philotimia which is basic to goodness:
The principle which ought to be the guide of men who would nobly live – that principle, I say, neither kindred, nor honor, nor wealth, nor any other motive is able to implant as surely as love. Of what am I speaking? Of the sense of honor and dishonor, without which neither states nor individuals ever do any good or great work. And I say that a lover who is detected in doing any dishonorable act, or submitting through cowardice when any dishonor is done to him by another, will be more pained at being detected by his beloved than at being seen by his father, or his companions, or any one else (705-6).
Love of honor is such a powerful motivator in Phaedrus’ account that if it is properly channeled it brings out the very best in a person. He gives four notable examples to support his argument that philotimia is the best force for good in the world. The first is an allusion to the Sacred Band of Thebes, a group of homosexual warriors who were so fierce in combat that they were regarded as an ultimate fighting force, a sort of Navy Seals for the ancient world (Crompton 25). The reason for their fierceness in battle is attributed “to their erotic bond, (wherein) lover and beloved feel shame at acting shamefully and love of honor in acting nobly” (Fussi 240). Phaedrus exalts:
And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonor, and emulating one another in honor; and when fighting at one another’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome all men… The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time; Love would inspire him. That courage which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the soul of heroes, Love of himself infuses into the lover (706).
Alcestis was given as the second example of the nobility of acting thumotically. Because “she was willing to lay down her life on behalf of her husband, when no one else would, although he had a father and mother… she was one of the very few to whom the gods have granted the privilege of returning to earth, in admiration of her virtue” (Plato 706-7). Orpheus, however, because he “did not dare to die for love, like Alcestis, but contrived to go down alive to Hades”, was not well-rewarded by the gods (Plato 707). The example given by Phaedrus of Achilles is of the highest form of nobility, since Achilles was willing to sacrifice himself though Patroclus was already killed, compelling the gods to “(send) him to the Islands of the Blest” (Plato707). That Achilles acted out of revenge is not only noted but praised by Phaedrus, possibly revealing Plato’s intent to show the darker side of thumos (Plato 707).
A key element of thumos brought out in the speech of Phaedrus is the experience of shame. “Philotimia goes hand in hand with another thumoeidetic motivation in Phaedrus’ speech: (shame)” (Fussi 242). Alcestis, Achilles, and the warriors in the Sacred Band of Thebes acted courageously out of fear of what their lovers would think of them. The acts of courage were made more noble and heroic if the lover acted independently of whether their lover were still alive and able to return their deeds and affections. But it is the presence at least in spirit of the lovers on which Phaedrus’ account of love’s motivation depends. “Phaedrus’ speech (has) its emphasis on the lovers’ mutual desire for recognition, the exaltation of courage as the central virtue, and the emphasis on shame as the most fundamental key to virtue” (Fussi 239). Someone who loves honor, Phaedrus’ argument goes, feels shame when he does not defend the spirit of those he loves, and it is this which motivates him to act rightly.
Alcibiades’ Speech
Alcibiades’ speech is where Plato provides his most powerful objections against a thumotic understanding of love and value. Alcibiades bursts in drunk from a night of partying, having missed the discussions of those who went before him. When he happens upon Socrates, he is startled, and immediately begins accusing Socrates for taking what he thinks is rightfully his, in this case, a seat by Agathon, “the fairest of the company” (Plato 749). The extremes of selfish, thumotic behavior are made all too evident through his arrogant, petulant behavior.
There is, firstly, his inebriated state. “Alcibiades does, in part, represent Dionysus himself” (Holowchak 424). Plato portrays Alcibiades as uncontrolled and subject to irrational behavior, the very model of someone ruled by his thumos. And, as the examples of virtue in Phaedrus’ speech, he is consumed with the desire to look good in the eyes of others. This is evidenced by his disclaimer to the group, “And if I were not afraid that you would think me drunk, I would have sworn as well as spoken to the influence which (Socrates’ words) have always had and still have over me” (Plato 752). “The man, Alcibiades, who fully embodies love of honor in the Symposium”, is manifestly worried about what the others will think about him, and reveals that he is concerned most of all with what Socrates thinks of him (Fussi 253). But even though he is ostensibly willing to take the opinion of others as his own opinion, he prefers the taste of victory rather than the opinion of others as the proof of his honor and virtue. “Alcibiades’ main concern (is) the desire to prevail” (Fussi 261). It is the desire to have power over others that makes Alcibiades Plato’s exemplar of the thumotic man.
When Alcibiades hears others speak, he is unaffected by their words. “My soul was not stirred by them, nor was I angry at the thought of my own slavish state” (Plato 752). Socrates alone has the power over Alcibiades to make him feel “as if I could hardly endure the life which I am leading… For he makes me confess that I ought not to live as I do, neglecting the wants of my own soul” (Plato 752-3). Alcibiades claims to know “that worst of pangs… the pang of philosophy”, and seeks after Socrates to learn the ways of virtue (Plato 755). But, “Alcibiades was not inspired to the philosophical ascent when he caught a glimpse of divine beauty in Socrates” (Fussi 253). For him, philosophy, like virtue, is still wild and unobtainable. Just like thumos, philosophy, for Alcibiades, “will make a man say or do anything” (Plato 755). Alcibiades claims to desire virtue, and he offers Socrates “All that I have and all that my friends have, in the hope that you will assist me in the way of virtue, which I desire above all things, and in which I believe that you can help me better than anyone else” (Plato 755-6). But what Alcibiades really has in mind is to bring Socrates under his power as his lover. “In the prosecution of this design”, Alcibiades attempts to use his physical beauty to seduce Socrates (Plato 754). If he succeeds, that would only support his image of himself as conqueror of everyone else, turning even the virtuous and unassailable Socrates into his servant.
When Socrates refuses Alcibiades’ advances, he asks the group, “What do you suppose must have been my feelings after this rejection at the thought of my own dishonor?” (Plato 757). Alcibiades feels what no other person had before or since been able to make him feel: shame. “And he is the only person who ever made me ashamed, which you might think not to be in my nature, and there is no one else who does the same” (Plato 753). The virtually shameless Alcibiades, when catching sight of the one thing which, according to Phaedrus’ account, could turn him into a better person, does exactly the opposite of the noble and heroic acts which Phaedrus claims philotimia would lead to – he runs away like a coward. Plato is trying to say that the shame brought by the lover through philotimia doesn’t lead to heroism, but actually leads to its opposite, cowardice. The solution for Alcibiades’ wounded pride is to turn to other people who will continue to praise and adore him according to the inflated image of himself which he clings to. “When I leave his presence the love of popularity gets the better of me. And therefore I run away and fly from him, and when I see him I am ashamed of what I have confessed to him” (Plato 753).