Two of the most influential modern accounts of the relationship between tragedy and philosophy, those of Friedrich Nietzsche and Bruno Snell, present philosophy as, on the one hand, destroying tragedy through its insistent rationalism, or, on the other, as taking over tragedy’s cultural and intellectual role and so rendering it obsolete (Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy [1872] secs. 10-15; Snell 1953, 90-112). In either case tragedy is seen as under threat from the encroaching claims of philosophy. By contrast, this chapter aims to present the relationship between tragedy and early Greek philosophy in a more positive manner. Not only did tragedy continue to flourish long after the foundation of the first major philosophical schools in the fourth century bce, but during its most productive period (in fifth-century Athens) tragedy was deeply indebted to the early Greek philosophical tradition, and much more so than either Nietzsche’s or Snell’s model allows. Moreover, although our focus will be the influence of early Greek philosophical thought on tragedy, we might note at the outset that the impact of Greek tragedy on philosophy was no less important. Even contemporary philosophers, particularly those engaged in ethics, are returning ever more frequently to tragedy and Greek philosophy in order to support and develop their own arguments and ideas (for example, Nussbaum 1986).
To understand the influence of Greek philosophical thought on tragedy, we should first consider the scope of early Greek philosophy. The philosophical tradition before Plato and Aristotle is conventionally divided into two groups of thinkers, the Preso-cratics and the Sophists. It is often said of the Presocratics that their primary focus was the physical constitution of the world. A famous passage of Cicero claims that Socrates primus philosophiam devocavit e caelo (‘‘was first to call philosophy down to earth from the heavens,’’ Tusculan Disputations 5.4.10), rooting it in the fundamental problems of human society and behavior. Although it is true that many of the Presocratics were primarily interested in questions of ‘‘natural philosophy’’ and cosmology, they also reflected on ethics, politics, epistemology, and theology. The same can be said of the Sophists, whose human-centered interests show a remarkable
Affinity with the concerns of Socrates himself (despite Plato’s determination to stress their differences). And these human-centered interests are also the domain of poetry. Although Plato sought to drive a wedge between philosophy and poetry (especially tragedy: see Halliwell, chapter 25 in this volume), poets from Homer and Hesiod onwards show an awareness of the widest range of‘‘philosophical’’ (or perhaps better ‘‘intellectual’’) issues, from the justice of the gods to the origins of human society, so that, with respect to intellectual content, one cannot easily separate the poets from the philosophers. Even Aristotle, in the first detailed report on the Presocratics that we have (Metaphysics 983b-987a), allows that the question of first causes may originate with Homer (Iliad 14.201, 246) and Hesiod (Theogony 116-53).
Although Greek poetry from Homer to Euripides (and beyond) has an important philosophical dimension, there is a considerable difference between the methods of the poets and those of the philosophers. For the philosophical analysis offered by the Presocratics and the Sophists was unlike the explanations offered by such thinkers as Homer and Hesiod, whose ‘‘accounts of things (when they gave them) were primarily mythical rather than rational’’ (Curd 2002, 115-16). The distinction between philosophers or phusiologoi on the one hand, and muthologoi or poets on the other, is found already in Plato and is made even more explicit by Aristotle, as befits his tendency to classify and systematize (Metaphysics 983b27-84a3). Yet we should be cautious about articulating the distinction in terms of myth and reason. As Aristotle himself remarks, after saying that men began to philosophize out of wonder, ‘‘even the myth-lover is in a sense a philosopher, for myth is composed of wonders’’ (Metaphysics 982b18-20). Moreover, philosophers (especially Plato) continued to use myths, and numerous quotations from the poets, despite their hostility to them (Morgan 2000, 17). Thus, while the idea of ‘‘myth’’ as an untrue or unprovable story that was opposed to rational argument did gain currency among intellectuals in the fifth century (for example, Herodotus 2.23, Thucydides 1.22.4), the modern view of Greek culture as passing (in a logical and rational progression) from muthos to logos (classic statement in Nestle 1940) is too rigid: Protagoras, for example, is presented as asking his audience if they would like him to deliver his speech as a muthos or as a logos (Plato, Protagoras 320c; cf. Gorgias 523a).
Despite the common interests of philosophers and poets, the former were not averse to criticizing the latter: Heraclitus attacks Homer (DK42), Hesiod (DK40, 57, 67), Archilochus (DK 17, 42), and the ‘‘singers of the people’’ (DK 104), advertising his own philosophy as a superior source of wisdom and truth. And while poets might make appeals to truth (communicated to them by the Muses, whose knowledge transcends that of mortals: see Iliad 2.485-86; Hesiod, Theogony 26-28), the philosophers regarded only themselves as devoted to its rational pursuit. The Presocratics have, accordingly, long been recognized as the founders of a new style of logical and systematic thought. While they have also been described as healers, law-givers, and traveling mystics or shamans (see, for example, Kingsley 1995 on Empedocles and the Pythagoreans), their crucial role in the genesis of Western philosophy has never been in doubt.
The Sophists, by contrast, have only recently regained respectability as original and important thinkers in their own right. Their negative portrayal by Aristophanes, Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle ensured that from the outset the word ‘‘sophist’’ carried ‘‘connotations of subversive irresponsibility’’ (Silk 2000, 12). Their rehabilitation began in the nineteenth century, when Hegel and Grote rejected such critical views, and since then the Sophists have gradually emerged as more than the spurious and superficial figures depicted by the tradition. In truth a Sophist like Protagoras (or a poet like Aeschylus) had as much right as any other Greek thinker to the title philosophos (‘‘lover of wisdom’’).1 Yet by appropriating the term ‘‘philosophy’’ for his own specialized discipline, and by forming it in opposition to the allegedly bogus wisdom of the Sophists (and poets), Plato ensured that the Sophists were seen as ‘‘lovers of cash’’ (cf. Barnes 1982, 449) rather than ‘‘lovers of wisdom.’’ It is therefore important not only that we see the Sophists as a legitimate part of the early Greek philosophical tradition, but also that we seek to illustrate their relationship to tragedy, which was no less productive than that of the Presocratics.
The traditional (dismissive) view of the Sophists has led to many distortions: most strikingly, perhaps, it has obscured the continuities between their interests and those of the Presocratics. However, it is more illuminating to view the Sophists within the broad intellectual traditions of archaic and classical Greece, even if their emphasis on ethics and political philosophy emerged more strongly than that of the Presocratics. Like many of the Presocratics, the Sophists had diverse intellectual interests, from oratory and law to history, literature, and mathematics: they were not, pace Plato, simply interested in the profits of rhetoric and relativism.
Moreover, like the tragic dramatists themselves, who competed at the dramatic festivals of Athens and other cities, the philosophers, whether Presocratics or Sophists, presented their ideas in performance and in competition with other thinkers. Heraclitus speaks not of reading other people’s books but of‘‘those whose discourses I have heard’’ (DK 108), while the meters used by Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Empedocles (dactylic hexameter, elegiac couplet, and iambic trimeter) were the standard meters of public recitation. As with epic and later dramatic poets, the philosophers traveled from place to place performing their work before (they hoped) large audiences: Xenophanes describes his own ideas as having been ‘‘tossed throughout the land of Greece for sixty-seven years’’ (DK 8). As always in Greek culture, performance goes hand in hand with competition and vying for position. In a single remark Heraclitus disparages the wisdom of Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus (DK 40). That is, he targets a poet (Hesiod) and a mythographer (Hecataeus) as well as two of his fellow Presocratics. Pindar boasts that his sophia is superior to that of other poets (cf. Olympian 1.115b-17); similarly, the philosophers are rivals in the arena of intellectual excellence.
Fifth-century Athens saw not only the growth of tragedy into a massively popular genre with panhellenic appeal, but also the development of a complex and cosmopolitan intellectual culture, which is summed up by the Thucydidean Pericles’ boast: ‘‘We love beauty without being extravagant and we have intellectual interests without being soft’’ (2.40.1). The opening scene of Plato’s Protagoras vividly depicts the impact of their new ideas at Athens, as people flock to the house of Callias to hear the lectures of Protagoras, Hippias, and Prodicus. Comic dramatists were ready to mock Callias, who is said to have spent more on Sophists than anyone else in Athens (see MacDowell 1962,11), but at the same time the Athenians were deeply proud of their city’s reputation as the intellectual center of Greece. Both Sophocles and Euripides present choruses (one Athenian, one Corinthian) who praise Athens as a city of creativity and ideas ( Oedipus at Colonus 691-93; Medea 824-45).
The blessings of intellectual inquiry are further extolled in a lost play of Euripides: ‘‘Blessed is he who has learned the art of inquiry, with no impulse to harm his fellow-citizens or engage in unjust actions, but who perceives from what origins and in what way the ageless order of immortal nature has been formed’’ (fr. 910). The passage may come from Euripides’ Antiope, produced in the late 420s BCE.2 The tragedy featured a debate between the twin brothers Amphion and Zethus over the best form of life to lead, the contemplative life of music, poetry, and philosophy, or the active life of politics and military service. The anapestic fragment would suit the choral ode following the brothers’ dispute, but whatever its precise location, the passage attests to a keen awareness at Athens of the pleasures of intellectual investigation.
Any treatment of the relationship between tragedy and philosophy must confront the stereotypes (of Euripides in particular) presented by the ancient comic and biographical traditions. The picture of Euripides as the ‘‘philosopher of the stage’’ (Athenaeus 561a) is useful only insofar as it points to the tendency of his characters (more than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles) to express ideas of philosophical interest, often in a markedly argumentative manner. The comic poets respond to this aspect of Euripidean theater by alleging that Euripides wrote his plays in collaboration with Socrates (cf. Aristophanes fr. 392 PCG), while the biographers not only treat the plots of comedy as historical evidence, but also make Euripides the pupil of nearly every major philosopher of the fifth century (Kovacs 1994-2004, 1: 9-12). Most famously, Aristophanes’ picture of Euripides the (Socratic) rationalist (Frogs 1491-99) inspired the vitriol of Nietzsche: ‘‘Even Euripides was in a certain sense only a mask: the deity which talked through him was neither Dionysus nor Apollo but a newly born daemon called Socrates’ (Birth of Tragedy sec. 12; see Henrichs 1986).3 In fact, all three tragedians, not just Euripides, had philosophical interests. As we will see, Aeschylus was an innovative and intellectually curious poet, who was ready to incorporate contemporary debates into his work. The depiction of Aeschylus in Frogs as an anti-intellectual conservative is no more reliable than the comedy’s Socratic-sophistic Euripides.
Before we consider the plays and their ideas in detail, it may be helpful to say a few words on the issue of methodology. Various factors make it difficult to decide what constitutes a significant overlap with philosophical thought. The fragmentary nature of the Presocratics’ and the Sophists’ surviving work, and the oracular style of such figures as Heraclitus, make it far from easy to work out their meaning. And even if we do detect similarities of thought and argument, we must beware of wrenching the speaker's words from their dramatic context and so distorting them. In addition, we must not seek to construct a ‘‘philosophy’’ from a series of excerpts, nor attribute sentiments expressed by an individual character in a specific dramatic context to the dramatist himself. The importance of context becomes even clearer when we consider that intellectual statements are found in the mouths of both sympathetic and unsympathetic characters in tragedy (comedy is more decidedly anti-intellectual), so that ‘‘such details were apparently to be received by the audience in different ways in different contexts and not reflexively branded as suspect or immoral’’ (Mastronarde 2002a, 44 n. 73). In the following discussion I treat the interests of dramatists and philosophers in discrete thematic sections. Although the early Greek philosophers themselves had little or no conception of working within separate disciplines (ethics, epistemology, theology, etc.), such a format is useful as an expositional device and serves to remind us of the enormous range of these thinkers’ intellectual interests.
World History
