This picture of Plato’s theology has much to recommend it. For those who have studied Plato, it has a certain familiarity. It is fairly coherent, and fairly consistent with what Plato says otherwise. It is fairly rational, or at least at once morally acceptable and rational enough to allow us to forgive Plato for having adhered to it. But, at the same time, it is misleading. And perhaps the single most important reason for this is that it is based on a rationalized literal reading of Plato. But we may not be entitled to read the dialogues in such a way. Closely connected with an understanding of a philosopher’s philosophy is an understanding of his language. This is especially relevant here since some of the philosophers most relevant to the study of ancient Greek theology, and Plato foremost among them, consciously developed their own terminology and moulded their language to convey their thought. A few reflections on language and literary form shall therefore precede the outline of Plato’s philosophy needed for an understanding of his theology.
It may be best to begin with an analogy. In his book The Universe in a Nutshell, the sequel to A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking, the distinguished physicist who holds the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge, states: ‘‘the reason general relativity broke down near the beginning of the big bang is that it did not incorporate the uncertainty principle, the random element of quantum theory that Einstein had objected to on the grounds that God does not play dice. However, all the evidence is that God is quite a gambler. One can think of the universe as being like a giant casino, with dice being rolled or wheels being spun on every occasion’’ (Hawking 2001:79). From this, in conjunction with some other remarks scattered throughout the book, one could conclude that Hawking, like Einstein, believes in God. The only difference between the two physicists, one may think, is that, unlike Einstein, who thought that God does not play dice, Hawking thinks that God is a gambler; Hawking, though, is unsure whether God gambles at dice or at roulette or, indeed, plays some other game that involves an element of chance. This latter uncertainty is expressed in the phrase ‘‘with dice being rolled or wheels being spun,’’ and also with the word ‘‘like.’’ In fact, the word ‘‘like’’ suggests that Hawking does not really think that the universe is a casino; he just compares the universe to a casino to make his belief in a gambling god more vivid. This interpretation would, of course, be quite mistaken. A reading of the book in its entirety makes it quite clear that if Hawking believes in God or a god, he has kept this belief out of his argumentation; moreover, the repeated, explicit statement that he is a positivist suggests that if he believed in God, that belief would be quite different from anything a traditionally believing Jew, Christian or Muslim would recognize as related to their theistic faith.
When Hawking speaks of God as a gambler, he is using an image. His language is characterized by comparison, metaphor, and allegory. In the clause ‘‘one can think of the universe as being like a giant casino,’’ Hawking is talking about the universe. The comparison with the casino is made because universe and casino are alike in one respect, namely in respect of chance or randomness. In the clause ‘‘God is quite a gambler,’’ one can take the phrase ‘‘being a gambler’’ as a metaphor for ‘‘admitting chance’’ and ‘‘God’’ as a metaphor for ‘‘the universe with its history and laws of physics.’’ But it may be better to speak of allegorical usage, as the whole clause tells one story and invokes one image, and that story and image together stand for something quite different: the clause ‘‘God is quite a gambler’’ as a whole conveys the thought ‘‘the universe admits of chance’’ as a whole. In the philosophical use of allegory, it is often a single metaphor, for example ‘‘gamble’’ for ‘‘chance,’’ that gives rise to more sustained allegories. The example also teaches another important feature of metaphor and allegory: they propagate. Einstein said that ‘‘God does not play dice,’’ and he was of course not the first who used religious metaphor to illuminate and convey concepts of natural philosophy or physics; but whether Einstein himself did or did not believe in the god he speaks of, that he, Einstein, speaks of God is the reason why Hawking speaks of a gambling God. What Einstein actually believed, however, is irrelevant to the interpretation of what Hawking wants to express.
By using these and other metaphors and allegories, Hawking is situating himself and his book in the long tradition of Western thought and culture that stretches from the literature and philosophy of archaic Greece to cultural expressions in a diverse spectrum of media in the modern world. This example demonstrates that an author can use an array of well-established metaphors and images some of which serve the serious purpose of illustrating a specific point, while others are written in a playful tone that makes it much more difficult to determine their intention. But with neither type of metaphor is there any risk of losing the reader. Whatever the precise purpose of Hawking’s allusions, if that purpose can be determined at all, there is no danger that anyone will misunderstand the text by attempting a literal interpretation of each and every detail.
Ancient myth and metaphor composed and written at the advanced stage of cultural development of the late fifth and early fourth centuries should be approached in the same way. Plato’s project was similar to that of Hawking to the extent that he wanted to present an objective view of the world in which we live. His purpose was different, in that his starting point and his end point alike was the problem of how best to lead one’s life in the light of this view of the world. His aim was to provide a foundation for the objectively good life for human beings which would be able to defend itself and withstand all attack by argument. There were accordingly some things Plato could not rely on, including traditional, unreasoned notions of justice, piety, and decency. He could neither rely on the goodness of these characteristics and ways of the soul, nor could he rely on a common understanding of the terms in the first place. In his dialogues, he therefore steps back and looks for what is good in the first place.
This search for the good underlies the questioning of inherited values and inherited morality, nomos. Part and parcel of nomos, however, was inherited religion with its traditional gods. Indeed, one Greek word for ‘‘believing’’ is nomizein, i. e. ‘‘to go with what is handed down by nomos, custom.’’ In the normal course of events, what is handed down by custom need not be analyzed or questioned. But in the climate of late fifth-century Sophistic debates, nomos was one of the most thoroughly questioned concepts. The opposition set up by the Sophists was that between custom and nature, nomos and physis. Socrates’ questioning of common concepts portrayed in Plato’s dialogues thus forms part of a wider trend which had called traditional beliefs and traditional belief into question. In particular, the anthropomorphic nature and the human behavior of the gods had already been criticized by the Presocratic philosophers, be it in jocular fashion, as in Xenophanes’ humorous reductio ad absurdum of the belief in gods that look like men which culminates in his peculiar henotheism (D-K 21 B 11, 12, 14, 15, 23-6, 34), or be it in the serious abstract considerations of Heraclitus, who concludes that ‘‘the wise which is one thing alone does not want and does want the name of Zeus’’ (D-K 22 B 32).
World History
