ABSTRACT
To this day, Socrates continues to embody and define the ancient philosophical preoccupation with the potential of ordinary people to achieve simple virtue and to cope with the demands of society. In the words of Gareth Matthews, ‘being a true philosopher, he wants to know what bravery is, and what piety is, and what virtue is, not just what we can do to develop a consistent belief-set concerning courage, or piety, or virtue. He makes us realize that important conceptual difficulties stand in the way of this project, difficulties that induce perplexity’.1 This continuing capacity of Socrates to instruct and inspire has had a number of historically specific forms. It was because of his devotion to the regeneration of his country, and his desire to pave the way for its national independence (1821-1830), that the Chian humanist scholar Adamance Coray (’Adamavntio" Korah'", 1748-1833),2 one of the greatest figures in the history of European classical scholarship in the nineteenth century as well as specifically of the New Hellenism and the Greek Enlightenment, saw it as his imperative duty to popularize and so simplify for the studious young the teaching of Socrates, as Greece’s moral
ancestor. It was above all in Volume 15 of his JEllhnikh;Biblioqhvkh (Greek Library), published in 18253 and containing Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Plato’s Gorgias, that Coray, who was highly esteemed in scholarly circles both in France and abroad as a critic and editor of ancient Greek literature,4 invoked Socrates and the moral testimony of his philosophy, in order to derive lessons he believed to be indispensable for the education and eventual liberation of his enslaved compatriots. His edition, animated by his vision of a future independent Greek nation state, was dedicated to the free youth of Greece, and envisaged as a practical means to progress,5 since in his view these two Socratic works encompassed the whole of Socrates’ moral and political philosophy.6 The choice of Xenophon’s Memorabilia (Commentarii) and of this particular Platonic dialogue was not a contingent one, but reflected Coray’s ambition to popularize Socrates’ teaching to the greatest possible degree. Xenophon’s recollections, consisting of four books of Socratic discourses and encounters, display to all a practical morality – correct behaviour in relation to the state, fellow-citizens, and the gods – without any perplexing profundity of philosophical thought. In the case of the Gorgias, with its three interconnected conversations, the aporetic structure of the Platonic dialogue aroused Coray’s philological interest in a challenge that was in some way educational without any sacrifice of philosophical exactitude. In this dialogue, an equiry into the nature of rhetoric leads on to the imputation of an alliance between rhetoric and sophistry, and an unmasking of the eternal struggle between the quest for power and dominance over the mob on the one hand, and education in pursuit of moral enlightenment on the other: justice versus injustice, true knowledge versus deceptive and immoral persuasion. In Coray’s view, as much as in that of more recent times, this particular Platonic dialogue constitutes a direct denunciation of immoral and opportunistic politicians. In the Prolegomena to his edition, and the
philological and critical notes that he appended to the two texts, Coray’s keen interest in Socrates and the society in which he lived is evident.7 Calling Socrates ‘paravdoxon’, ‘singular’ or ‘peculiar’, Coray conceived of him as a charismatic and simultaneously controversial figure in ancient philosophy. Though presenting texts of Plato and Xenophon side by side, he evinces no signs of worry about their compatibility, or about the historical reliability of the portrayal of Socrates that they embody. He thus entirely sidesteps, or ignores as irrelevant (or even damaging?) to his pedagogical purposes, the ‘Socratic problem’ already much discussed by the time he wrote, and given its classic formulation by Schleiermacher some seven years before the publication of his edition. The sense conveyed of dealing with a real, accessible historical personage, rather than a problem in source-criticism, is further accentuated by the way in which Coray’s presentation of Socrates as educator draws implicit parallels between Socrates’ activities in relation to the Athenians of the fifth century B.C. and his own in relation to his nineteenth-century Greek contemporaries. The project which he attributes to Socrates, of resisting the moral degeneration of Athens, and of Greece more generally, in its slide towards tyranny and the loss of political independence, matches his own in using Socrates to prepare the rising generation of young Greeks for the moral and political responsibilities of independence regained. This parallel between Coray and his subject was picked up by many of his eulogists and obituarists, as also a little later in the work of Coray’s only biographer until modern times, Dionysios Thereianos (1834-97).8 Thereianos detects an initial similarity in real life between Socrates and Coray, thus preparing the reader of Coray’s biography to find an inner affinity, by asserting that the same relation exists between Socrates and the philosophers who flourished before him, and between Coray and earlier Greek scholars and teachers: they dealt with the heavenly bodies, but he with his anthropological cast of mind turned his thoughts to human nature.9 Though the specific form of this comparison is Thereianos’ doing, and clearly a means of highlighting his perception of the uniqueness of his subject, and of the magnitude of his contribution to Greek education, it takes its cue from Coray’s own implicit self-presentation. In the discussion which follows, I begin by surveying the main emphases of Coray’s presentation of Socrates in the Prolegomena to Volume 15 of the Hellênikê Bibliothêkê, and in comments scattered through his correspondence, with special attention to his evident desire to defend Socrates against any
imputation of negative or dubious characteristics, but with some consideration also of the way he used his philological scholarship to support his overall picture. I then turn to consider some issues concerning the broader context in which Coray’s portrayal was produced: its relation (of similarity or otherwise) to other presentations of Socrates in the New Hellenism (especially that of Alexandros Papadiamantis), and its relation to broader trends in contemporary European scholarship and culture. Socrates and the instruction of the youth of Greece
Reintroducing Socrates to his young fellow-countrymen of the resurgent Greece, Coray presents him as a singular teacher of virtue (‘paravdoxo" didavskalo" ajreth'"’), the best instructor in true rhetoric, a model of philosophy, temperance and continence, as a forerunner of Christianity (‘pro; tou'Eujaggelivou, eujtuvchse na;Katastaqh§/ejrgavth" kai;didavskalo" th'" eujaggelikh'" dikaiosuvnh"’), and as a patriot (‘filovpoli"’) deeply committed to the communal flourishing as well as the individual moral rectitude of his contemporaries. The language that Coray applies to Socrates manifests his certitude that this Socrates is not only a personal paragon but also a highly practical exemplar, study of whom in the course of a literary education would materially advance the regeneration of Greece in the present. At the centre of his portrayal, Coray emphasizes the Socratic mode of reflection on knowledge of the moral idea and of the self, implying a unity of personality in the service of that ideal and thus the integrity of Socratic purpose. This picture of a social and political teacher with healing properties10 can be seen to draw on both the texts to which it is prefaced. Xenophon’s Memorabilia repeatedly highlight their Socrates’ desire to make useful and effective citizens of his young associates, inculcating in them the selfmastery which is a precondition of the proper management of public affairs. Plato’s Gorgias brings two opposite approaches to politics, and their associated (virtuous and vicious) schemes of value, into conflict, focusing the opposition above all in the climatic confrontation of Socrates with the violent and impatient Callicles. Unconvinced by his interlocutor, and reacting to him as to a devil’s advocate, Callicles descends to opportunism and compromise (acceptance of mass opinion)11 because he is eager to yield to worldly temptation and locates true happiness in the indulgence of every natural appetite to the full. Representing the type of young man who believes in the natural right of the strong to rule the weak, he evidently looks forward to a career in statesmanship. The standpoint which Socrates urges in opposition to this clearly appealed to Coray as consistent with his own project of encouraging moral integrity through his activities as
philologist and commentator. Equally, the sense that it is the Sophists and their pupils, like Callicles, and not Socrates (in spite of his prosecution and condemnation by Athens), who were responsible for undermining social cohesion and sound morality, is one which Coray endorses both in this edition and elsewhere in his work. In his essay entitled An Improvised Dissertation Regarding the Notorious Doctrine of the Sceptical Philosophers and the Sophists novmw/kalovn, novmw/kakovn,12 published under the pseudonym of Stephanos Pantazis, he attacks the view of P. Kodrikas13 that the maxim in question belonged to the school of Democritus, insisting that it is instead a stilted Sophistic parody of a Democritean saying, embodying precisely what Socrates found objectionable in their thought. Socrates, subservient always to the unwritten divine law, heals the apparent dichotomy of nomos and physis rather than seeking to assert it; instead of seeking justification for illegal and opportunistic action, he lays down precepts for morally correct action for all office-holders and wielders of political authority.14 It is evident that, in Coray’s view, unlike that of modern scholars (and indeed of many of his own contemporaries), Socrates is to be seen as a living teacher and example, rather than as a bundle of contentious interpretative problems. He believes that, until people become aware of the proper role of justice in their lives, and can cultivate the sense of relative values that stimulates true education in any activity or profession, they should respect the Socratic insistence that when knowledge is sundered from justice and the rest of virtue, it stands revealed as villainy rather than wisdom.15 It goes with this that, in the spirit of both the Platonic and the Xenophontic Socrateses, Coray firmly rejects the understanding of philosophy as a purely theoretical discipline with few practical implications for ordinary life and the day-to-day march of events.16 It is clear also that Coray sees the necessity of social existence as central presupposition of the Socratic message. Human beings realize their humanity only by living among other human beings, and thus must confront the problems posed for communal life by imperfections of character and inclinations towards selfishness and avarice. Coray seems untempted by thoughts of Christian anachoresis as he insists on the need to persevere in social living, rather than opting for a retreat bought at the cost of a full
12 ‘Aujtoscevdio" diatribh;peri;tou'peribohvtou dovgmato" tw'n skeptikw'n filosovfwn kai;
human identity. In this perspective, the key to authentic humanity is justice, the original, tangible form of virtue.17 When a friend asked him to suggest a device for his seal, Coray chose the image of Justice with her scales, surrounded by the Socratic motto that he also used as the epigraph to his edition, that ‘it is not possible to become a good citizen without justice’ – or, if that should prove too lengthy to fit, the ‘ancient proverb’, ‘Friendship [is] Equality’.18 Furthermore, in this version of the Socratic message it is not only basic humanity, but any hope of moral advance and individual fulfillment, that hangs on communal existence; and it is not passively communal existence but positive political engagement that opens the way forward. There are parts of human nature that cannot be fulfilled outside active citizenship. Hence, active citizenship and philosophy should not be constituted as alternative paths; the sole option for humanity is to unite them, and to strive against the forces tending to depict them, if only in appearance, as separate. Self-sacrifice in battle – the glorious extreme of active citizenship – is the truest manifestation of courage and greatness of heart. The relevance of this understanding of Socrates’ teaching and achievement to Coray’s contemporary hopes and plans is obvious. Freedom, the liberation of Greece from the Turkish yoke, could only be built on a widespread readiness for sacrifice (exemplified in the glorious past by such figures as Miltiades and Leonidas),19 and on a true education that was ready to accept even martyrdom, should circumstances demand it (exemplified in Socrates). Socrates then becomes something nobler than a mere historical character, a diachronic paradigm or classic example,20 from whom flow living models of morality.21 His example points to Justice itself as the highest lesson for noble individuals and nations (living historical organisms),22 urging that obedience to law, and talking and hearing about right conduct, is the matter of the truest education.23 The first specific moral attributes of Socrates to which Coray draws attention in his Prolegomena are the temperance and continence (oijkonomiva
kai;ejgkravteia) by means of which he could both make light of his own poverty,24 and demonstrate to his fellow citizens the folly of submission to material desires.25 Although his exposition refers explicitly only to passages from Xenophon’s Memorabilia, it may be suggested that Coray also had the Gorgias firmly in mind here. For temperance as the means (or not) to true happiness is also the issue between Socrates and Callicles, in a confrontation which Coray (like many other commentators before and since) saw as the central element in the dialogue. And this confrontation has an essential political dimension, which relates it closely to Coray’s own educational aims.26 Callicles’s opposition to the cultivation of temperance aligns with a pragmatic,27 opportunistic political project, hostile to democracy, just as Socrates’ concern for justice and happiness28 through right action points to a perception of the political importance of enhancing the citizens’ shared capacity for good judgement. From temperance Coray passes on to the question of Socratic rhetoric. Taking his cue once again both from Plato and from Xenophon, he draws a sharp distinction between the deceitful, showy and irresponsible rhetoric of the Sophists, satirized and attacked in the Gorgias, and the true, if idiosyncratic,29 ‘rhetoric’ practiced by Socrates: the former a corrupting and morally irresponsible knack, glorying at its worst in the ability to ‘prove’ truth to be falsehood and falsehood truth;30 and the latter a ‘power of persuading men to justice with a discourse founded in the true nature of things, and proffering its testimony from the very disposition of the speaker’s soul’. To demonstrate the contrast between them, however, Coray challenges his reader to juxtapose not the styles of Socrates and Gorgias as they are presented in Plato’s dialogue, but Gorgias’s own Encomium of Helen and Apology of Palamedes on the one hand, and Xenophon’s account of Socrates’ logoi in the Memorabilia on the other.
