One of Plato's greatest merits will always be that he was able, via the myth of Socrates/Eros, to introduce into the philosophical life the dimension of love - that is, of desire and the irrational. He accomplished this in several ways: in the first place, in the experience of dialogue itself, in which two interlocutors experience a passionate will to clarify a problem together. Qµite apart from the dialectical movement of the logos, the path traveled together by Socrates and his partner, and their common will to come to an agreement, arc already a kind of love. There is a great deal more philosophy in spiritual exercises like Socrates' dialogues than in the construction of a philosophical system. The task of dialogue consists essentially in pointing out the limits of language, and its inability to communicate moral and existential experience.
Yet the dialogue itself, qua event and spiritual activity, already constitutes a moral and existential experience, for Socratic philosophy is not the solitary elaboration of a system, but the awakening of consciousness, and accession to a level of being which can only be reached in a person-to-person relationship.
Just like ironical Socrates, Eros teaches nothing, for he is ignorant. He does not make people more wise; he makes them other. He, too, is maieutic: he helps souls to engender themselves.
It is touching to trace the influence of Socratic Eros throughout history. 107 In third-century Alexandria, for instance, the Christian writer Gregory Thaumaturgus praised his master Origen in the following terms:
And thus, like some spark lighting upon our inmost soul, love was kiml led and bu rNI into flame within us - a love at once for the Logos . . .
ond for 1hiN m1111, ilN friend 11nd advocate .
sometimes he would
.
.
1 64
Figures
approach us in the genuine Socratic fashion, and trip us up by his argumentation whenever he saw us getting restive under him, like so many unbroken horses.108
As Bertram has shown in some splendid pages, 109 we encounter the tradition of Socratic Eros and the educative daimon in Nietzsche. According to Bertram, three sayings sum up perfectly this erotic dimension of pedagogy.
One is by Nietzsche himself: "The deepest insights spring from love alone." 1 10
Another is by Goethe: "We learn only from those we love." 1 1 1 Finally, there is Holderlin's dictum: "Mortal man gives his best when he loves." 112 These three maxims go to show that it is only through reciprocal love that we can accede to genuine consciousness.
Using Goethe's terminology, we could characterize this dimension of love, desire, and the irrational as the "demonic." Plato had encountered this dimension in the person of Socrates himself. As is well known, Socrates'
daimon was a kind of inspiration which sometimes . came over him in a completely irrational way, as a negative sign telling him not to do such and such a thing. It was, in a sense, his real "character," or true self. Moreover, this irrational element in Socratic consciousness is probably not without relation to Socratic irony. It is possible that Socrates' reason for asserting that he did not know anything was that, when it came time for action, he trusted in his own daimon, as he also trusted in the daimon of his interlocutors. In any case, as James Hillman pointed out in 1966, if Plato was able to bestow upon Socrates the figure of the great daimon Eros, it was probably because, in Socrates, he had encountered a demonic man.' 13
How can we describe this dimension of the demonic? No one could be a better guide for us in this matter than Goethe, who was fascinated and troubled by the mystery of the "demonic" all throughout his life. His first encounter with the demonic had probably been Socrates' daimon, as depicted in Hamann's Socratic Memorabilia. 1 14 Socrates fascinated Goethe to such an extent that we find the following extraordinary exclamation in his letter to Herder of 1772: "If only I could be Alcibiades for one day and one night, and then die!" 115 For Goethe, the demonic had all the ambiguous and ambivalent features of Socratic Eros. It is, as he writes in Book 20 of Poetry and Truth, 116
a force which is neither divine nor human, neither diabolical nor angelic, which simultaneously unites and separates all beings. Just as in the case of Eros in the Symposium, it can only be defined by simultaneous and contradictory negations. Yet it is a force which gives its holders an incredible power over beings and things. The demonic represents a kind of natural magic within the dimension of the irrational and inexplicable. This irrational element is the motor force indispensable for 1111 cre11tion; it is the blind, inexorable dynamic which we cannot cscllpl', but muNt r1Hhcr lc11rn how to u11e. In hi11 llm•111·11•, Goet hl' writc!i 1111 follm\'N 11ho11t t ill' "'""'"" of individunlN:
The Figure of Socrates
165
So must you be; you cannot escape yourself .
. . . no time nor power may destroy
Form marked with a seal, which develops as it lives.117
In Goethe, the creatures who most faithfully represent this demonic element take on the features of Eros in the Symposium. As Raabe has demonstrated, this is particularly true in the case of Mignon. 1 18 Mignon, like Eros, is indigent, but she aspires to purity and beauty. Although her clothing is poor and coarse, her musical gifts reveal her inner riches. Like Eros, she sleeps on the bare ground, or on Wilhelm Meister's doorstep. Finally, like Eros, she is the projection and incarnation of Wilhelm Meister's nostalgia for a higher form of life.
Another demonic figure in Goethe is Ottilia, heroine of the Elective Affinities.
She is depicted as a natural force, powerful, strange, and fascinating. Her profound relationship to Eros is more discreetly indicated than in the case of Mignon, but it is no less real. Mention should also be made of the hermaphroditic figure of Homunculus, whose relationship to Eros is emphasized so clearly in Act II of the Second Fausl .119
As an ambiguous, ambivalent, indecisive element, the demonic is neither good nor evil. Only mankind's moral decision can give it its definitive value.
And yet, this irrational, inexplicable element is inseparable from existence.
The encounter with the demonic, and the dangerous game with Eros, cannot be avoided.
3 Dionysos
We shall now return to Nietzsche's odd, amorous hatred for Socrates. To be sure, Bertram has already stated the essential on this point, 120 but perhaps Nietzsche's complex attitude can be better understood by considering some of the less frequently noticed elements which go to make up 'the Socrates of the Symposium.
Nietzsche was quite familiar with the strange seductive powers of Socrates, whom he termed "This mocking and enamored monster and pied piper of Athens, who made the most overweening youths tremble and sob." 121 Nietzsche tries to define the mechanism of this seduction: "I have made understandable how it was that Socrates could repeclass="underline" it is therefore all the more necessary to explain his fascination." 122 Nietzsche then goes on to propose several explanations: Socrates flattered the Greeks' taste for combat with his dialectics; he was a great erotic; he understood his historical role of counteracting instinctive decadence by means of rationality. The truth is that none of these expl11nntion11 iN particularly fascinating. Nietzsche does, however, suggest 11 more 1m1fouml t•11 uNe: the 11eduction Socrates exercised on all posterity came