Socrates Keeps Everyone Waiting

 3 June 2023

Socrates Keeps Everyone Waiting

“Greek philosophy supplied much of the language and conceptualization of the ascetic life style in Greek and Roman antiquity, especially for aristocratic males.  The borrowing of the term askesis first among Greek philosophers and moralists from the athletic arena in order to convey the nature of the challenge of the philosophical or virtuous life was decisive for the history of asceticism in the West.  ‘We become good by practice’ (ex askesios), a fragment from Democritus (Vorsokr. 242), conveys well the application of the term in philosophical and moral discourse.

“The philosophical life style (bios), the virtuous life, was commonly understood to require forms of askesis – from physical withdrawal (anachoresis) from society and abstentions of various types among the Epicureans, Cynics, and radical Stoics to spiritual and psychological withdrawal into the self (anachorein eis heauton) among the aristocratic Stoics, Peripatetics, and Neoplatonists (sic).  Focus was upon the cultivation of the ethical self, as the reemphasized ideals of sophrosyne and enkrateia demonstrated.”

(Vincent L. Wimbush, editor, Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, Michigan, 1990, page 3, ISBN: 0800631056)

“After some such conversation, he told me, they started off.  Then Socrates, becoming absorbed in his own thoughts by the way, fell behind him as they went; and when my friend began to wait for him he bade him go on ahead.  So he came to Agathon’s house, and found the door open; where he found himself in a rather ridiculous position.  For he was met immediately by a servant from within, who took him where the company was reclining, and he found them just about to dine.  However, as soon as Agathon saw him – ‘Ha, Aristodemus,’ he cried, ‘right welcome to a place at table with us!  If you came on some other errand, put it off to another time; only yesterday I went round to invite you, but failed to see you.  But how is it you do not bring us Socrates?’

“At that I turned back for Socrates, he said, but saw no sign of him coming after me; so I told them how I myself had come along with Socrates, since he had asked me to dine with them.

“‘Very good of you to come,’ he said, ‘but where is the man?’

“‘He was coming in just now behind me: I am wondering myself where he can be.’

“‘Go at once,’ said Agathon to the servant, ‘and see if you can fetch Socrates.  You, Aristodemus, take a place by Eryximachus.’

“So the attendant washed him and made him ready for reclining, when another of the servants came in with the news that our good Socrates had retreated into their neighbours’ porch; there he was standing, and when bidden to come in, he refused.

“‘How strange!’ said Agathon, ‘you must go on bidding him, and by no means let him go.’

“But this Aristodemus forbade: ‘No,’ said he, ‘let him alone; it is a habit he has.  Occasionally he turns aside, anywhere at random, and there he stands.  He will be here presently, I expect.  So do not disturb him; let him be.’

“‘Very well then,’ said Agathon, ‘as you judge best.  Come, boys,’ he called to the servants, ‘serve the feast for the rest of us.  You are to set on just whatever you please, when you find no one to direct you (this method I have never tried before).  Today you are to imagine that I and all the company here have come on your invitation: so look after us, and earn our compliments.’

“Thereupon, he said, they all began dinner, but Socrates did not arrive; and though Agathon ever and anon gave orders that they should go and fetch him, my friend would not allow it.  When he did come, it was after what, for him, was no great delay, as they were only about half-way through dinner.  Then Agathon, who happened to be sitting alone in the lowest place, said: ‘Here, Socrates, come sit by me, so that by contact with you I may have some benefit from that piece of wisdom that occurred to you there in the porch.  Clearly you have made the discovery and got hold of it; for you would not have come away before.’

“Then Socrates sat down, and ‘How fine it would be, Agathon,’ he said, ‘if wisdom were a sort of thing that could flow out of the one of us who is fuller into him who is emptier, by our mere contact with each other, as water will flow through wool from the fuller cup into the emptier.  If such is indeed the case with wisdom, I set a great value on my sitting next to you: I look to be filled with excellent wisdom drawn in abundance out of you.  My own is but meagre, as disputable as a dream; but yours is bright and expansive, as the other day we saw it shining forth from your youth, strong and splendid in the eyes of more than thirty thousand Greeks.’ (Socrates is referring to Agathon having won a prize for his recent play.)

“‘You rude mocker, Socrates!’ said Agathon.”

(Plato, Symposium, translated by W. R. M. Lamb, Plato: Lysis, Symposium, Gorgias, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1925, pages 89-93, ISBN: 0674991842)

1.  I had hoped that the book Ascetic Behavior would have more information about philosophical asceticism, and particularly asceticism in Platonism.  Almost all of the book is about early Christian asceticism.  There is one quote from Porphyry’s On Abstinence, which is better than nothing.  Having said that, in the Introduction, the editor remarks on how philosophical asceticism laid the ground, and provided precedents, for the development of Christian monasticism.  (As an aside, I’m not convinced that these philosophical teachings were received particularly by well-off males as there are examples of women who followed this kind of ascetic way both in philosophy and in early Christianity.)

In a footnote to the quote the editor references the Symposium as an example of philosophical withdrawal.  I thought this was an interesting choice, so I quoted above the passage from the  Symposium.

2.  The theme of ascetic practice is a primary emphasis in the Symposium; it is not the only one as the theme of love takes center stage.  But it is woven into the Symposium, a kind of frame for the discussion of other topics.

3.  The ability for Socrates to fall into a contemplative trance is highlighted in the quote above.  (It is not the only instance of Socrates embodying contemplative states of mind; there is such an episode in Phaedrus as well.  Notice how Socrates falls into what I call a ‘contemplative trance’ spontaneously, while he is walking with a friend to a celebration feast.

4.  It is also significant that Socrates removes himself from Aristodemus and simply walks onto the porch of a house they are passing by.  It might be that Socrates knew the owners, but the dialogue doesn’t say that.  

5.  It is Aristodemus who insists that those in attendance at the party, or celebration, leave Socrates alone.  Aristodemus notes that Socrates enters into these kinds of trances frequently and appears to have seen this kind of behavior before.  Not everyone has seen Socrates behave that way; for example, Agathon seems unfamiliar with it and remarks that his behavior is ‘strange’.

6.  The authors of Ascetic Behavior interpret this as an example of ascetic withdrawal.  I think this is because Socrates is depicted as disengaging from his friend he was walking with, as well as from the festivities of the gathering; preferring instead to seize this moment of contemplation.  Implicitly this depicts contemplation as something that is of great importance to Socrates.

7.  Of course this episode is not like someone becoming an anchorite.  But what I think the editor of Ascetic Behavior is getting at is that such behavior set a kind of precedent for a turning away from social engagement, or indicating that there were in life things more important than celebrations of the kind depicted in the Symposium.  On a symbolic, or allegorical, level, this makes sense; I mean that Socrates here is a symbol of ascetic withdrawal and disengagement.

8.  Interestingly, Agathon seems to understand that the contemplative trance that delays Socrates’s attendance at the gathering has to do with ‘wisdom’.  This implies, I think, that there was among Athenians an understanding that contemplation was central to the philosophical life, and that it was the source of the philosophers’ wisdom.  Agathon hopes to pick up a little wisdom from Socrates by sitting near to him right after Socrates has been in contemplation; kind of like a contact high.  But Socrates, in his signature mocking way, disabuses Agathon of that possibility.

9.  The philosophical life was a contemplative life.  This is central to understanding Platonism.  And a contemplative life is an ascetic life because contemplation is a type of withdrawal into the interior where the soul dwells, where wisdom is found, and where the light of the One clearly shines.