Plutarch on Old Age and Philosophy

2 December 2023

Plutarch on Old Age and Philosophy

“. . . here is Antiphanes’ story, which somebody has recounted and applied to Plato’s close acquaintances.  Antiphanes said humorously that in a certain city words congealed with the cold the moment they were spoken, and after, as they thawed out, people heard in the summer what they had said to one another in the winter; it was the same way, he asserted, with what was said by Plato to men still in their youth; not until long afterwards, if ever, did most of them come to perceive the meaning, when they had become old men.  And this is the general experience with philosophy as a whole until the judgement acquires a healthy stability, and begins to find itself in accord with principles productive of character and breadth of mind, and to look for the kind of discourse whose footprints, in the words of Aesop, are turned toward us rather than away from us.  For as Sophocles said, that only after handling with a light touch the turgidity of Aeschylus and next his harshness and artificiality in composition, did he, as a third step, change the character of the language, which has the most to do with moral character and goodness, so, in the same way, when students of philosophy pass from the ostentatious and artificial to the kind of discourse which deals with character and feeling they begin to make real and unaffected progress.

“Observe, then, not only when you are perusing the writings of philosophers and listening to their discourses, whether you do not give more attention to the mere language than to the subject matter, and whether you are not more on the alert for passages which involve something difficult and odd rather than for those which convey something useful, substantial, and beneficial; moreover, when you are busying yourself with poems and history, you must watch yourself to see whether anything escapes you among the ideas which are suitably expressed and tend to improvement of character or alleviation of emotion.  For as Simonides says of the bee that it flits among the flowers, ‘Making the yellow honey its care,’ while the rest of the world contents itself with their colour and fragrance, getting nothing else from them, so, while the rest of the world ranges amid poems for the sake of pleasure or diversion, if a man, through his own initiative, finds and collects something worthwhile, it is reasonable to expect that he at last, from force of habit and fondness for what is beautiful and appropriate, has made himself capable of appreciating it.  In the case, for example, of persons who make use of Plato and Xenophon for their language, and gather therefrom nothing else but the purity of the Attic style, like dew and bloom, what can you say of them, save that they are the sort of persons that content themselves with the sweet odour and bouquet of medicines, but have no desire for their sedative and purgative virtues, nor the power to discern them?  But those who are making still more and more progress are always able to derive benefit, not only from what is said, but from what is seen and done, and to gather what is appropriate and useful therefrom.”

(Plutarch, Moralia, Progress in Virtue, translated by Frank Cole Babbitt, Plutarch: Moralia Volume I, Progress in Virtue, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1927, pages 421-423, 79A-79E, ISBN: 9780674992177)

1.  I liked this passage from Plutarch’s essay because it describes my own journey.  As a young man in University, and a philosophy major, I was introduced to Plato in the way most young people are.  But I went a step further and took some seminars on Plato which I enjoyed; but looking back I didn’t really understand the teachings of Plato, or the Platonic tradition in general.

It was only many years later, after I had spent time studying and practicing in other traditions such as Buddhism, that I returned to Platonism and found that tradition meaningful in a way I wasn’t able to access when I was young.  I’m not saying this is the case for everyone.  But it intrigued me that Plutarch described this trajectory many centuries ago and it fits very well my own history.

2.  “. . . not until long afterwards, if ever, did most of them come to perceive the meaning, when they had become old men . . .”  Notice that Plutarch acknowledges that some never do arrive at an understanding of Platonism with the aside ‘if ever.’  That has been my observation.  I think that when first being introduced to Platonism something has to ‘click’ or something has to attract the curiosity, in order for these teachings to bear fruit in old age.  It is like a seed falling on fertile soil, but a seed that takes decades to sprout.  But if the seed falls on concrete or falls onto an uncongenial ecology (such as that which modernism provides), it will be almost impossible for a seed to sprout under those conditions.

3.  I think that young people are naturally engaged with the sensory world and the world of relationships.  This makes it difficult to access a teaching such as Platonism that seeks to minimize sensory stimulation and to withdraw from such stimulation.  Again, this is natural, though there are likely some exceptions due to exceptionally good karma.  It is possible for young people to be attracted to asceticism and they might try it out for a weekend retreat.  Such an experience can later blossom into a way of life.

The tendency today, though, is to see retreats like this as a tool for increasing one’s ability to be materially successful.  For example, mindfulness is often taught in a context that encourages this practice because it increases one’s ability to be productive at work.  Or such a retreat is often understood in psychological terms; that is to say as a means for overcoming neuroses or negative personality traits.  Looked at in this way, the transcendental door that a retreat like this can offer, is closed.

4.  As an aside, I was a bit amused by all the name-dropping that Plutarch uses in this quote (Antiphanes, Plato, Aesop, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Simonides, and Xenophon).  This is characteristic of Plutarch’s writing; he was deeply literary and of broad learning and he liked to show it.  On the other hand, such a string of allusions and quotes gives the reader a sense of the ancient Greek literary world and how it was woven into Greek philosophy.

But Plutarch has an ambiguous relationship to that literary heritage.  For example, Plutarch suggests the importance of reading Plato with comprehension.  To do this Plutarch argues for putting aside reading for the purpose of pursuing stylistic elements; I think he means that the reader needs to go beyond a fascination with literary style.  I can see this arising when reading Plato because Plato was a great literary stylist; for example, Plato’s use of allegory remains unsurpassed.  For a certain kind of mind, a mind that is primarily interested in literary pursuits, it is possible to get lost in that aspect of Plato’s writings and forget about, or simply miss, the meaning that Plato is communicating.

In modernity something similar happens while reading Plato that Plutarch doesn’t mention and that is to get caught up with formal analysis in a philosophical sense.  This is what happens to some analytic philosophers when they read Plato; they sometimes get enmeshed with structures of inference and whether or not a particular inference found in Plato falls in with what analytic philosophy has determined to be ‘sufficient’ or ‘sound’ or ‘true’ or ‘meaningful’ by the standards that analytic philosophy holds.  This closes the door on the possibility of seeing the shortcomings of analytic philosophy, of learning from the broad sweep of Platonic argumentation.

5.  “But those who are making still more and more progress are always able to derive benefit, not only from what is said, but from what is seen and done, and to gather what is appropriate and useful therefrom.”

I like the way Platonism is often depicted as a path that is walked step by step (Socrates uses the phrase ‘step by step’ towards the end of Phaedo when instructing his followers.)  It is an optimistic view of spiritual practice as it does not rely on spectacular experiences or moments of ecstatic insight.  It more closely resembles learning a craft or skill, something that interests you and because of that interest you are willing to work on it day by day, step by step.