Chapter 3

The Conflict of Thumos and Eros in the Hunt

In the First Wave, Socrates initially described the partnership between his male and female guardians as a common hunt (συνθερεύειν, 451d). Although Glaucon’s objections derailed the conversation off into another direction, Socrates returns to the image in the Second Wave, again making the common hunt the activity that is representative of the male and female partnership, where they will rule and be educated together (466d). If Glaucon’s addition to the women’s law is the principle that men be taken as stronger and women weaker, one of Socrates’ most striking counter-contributions is this description of partnership-as-hunt—and yet it’s certainly an odd thing for Socrates to mention. Although hunting is a familiar Platonic symbol for the work of philosophy, from the Symposium to the Sophist, it’s not clear why it shows up at the beginning of Book V of the Republic; one does not think of philosophy in the Republic as associated with the hunt, rather if anything, with the practice of war.

In what follows, I will examine Socrates’ description of the common hunt for his male and female guardians, in the light of his description of hunting as of one of the things that joins his city-building project after Glaucon has rejected the “city of pigs,” as one of the ream of activities present in the newly feverish city which are “not in the city because of the necessary” (373b). Hunting as a Platonic trope has to be distinguished from the question of war and its ends; such distinction allows the reader to consider the extent to which hunting can be pinned down as an erotic venture. Even in the Republic, Socrates allows eros, that notorious aspect of soul as often praised as it is derided, to play a part in his vision of philosophy at its height, and the hunt is a strong addition to other more obvious references to this pernicious yet loveable human quality. I will argue that the presence of the hunt is an early herald of new status of philosophy in Book V, and a foretaste of what Socrates later makes explicit, that women will participate in the philosophic education alongside the men.

Hunting as a trope, of course, is not thought of in conjunction with the Republic in general, and hardly in association with the First Wave in particular. It tends to be thought of as what casts the guardians as merely dogs.1 Dogs are certainly a limited metaphor for what we might ask of philosophical nature: but hunting adds the fascinating element of eros to an otherwise spirited endeavor, and as such, it has the potential to explain the drawing power of the philosophy described in the so-called theoretical books of our work. Now, rather than muddy the waters with 20th-century accounts of hunting, such as Ortega y Gasset or even Michael Pollan, aside from Plato himself I will follow Plato’s contemporary and fellow lover of Socrates, Xenophon, author of On Horses and Hounds and On Hunting. Now, of course, Xenophon is an author with his own ends and rhetorical purposes distinct from Plato; hunting for him is the activity leading to good citizenship, and is a natural antidote to sophistry (On Hunting, 13). But as vivid description of historical practice, and sound advice for the actual practice of hunting with dogs, Xenophon’s work is attested to by no less an authority than Vicki Hearne, horse and dog trainer and essayist par excellence; as such, Xenophon’s descriptions are an invaluable addition to what otherwise threatens to devolve into sophistical image-juggling, particularly ill-suited for a discussion of the hunt.2

Now, any discussion of hunting as a trope in the Platonic corpus calls into question with peculiar force the current battleground among the philoplatones (φιλοπλάτωνες), that is, the lovers of Plato, whether eros, thumos, or reason itself—the three parts of the soul Socrates dramatically implicates in Republic IV as the elements involved in his definition of justice within the soul—which one among them is really to be preferred. Indeed, each part has its partisans. In the Republic, of course, Socrates concludes that each part ought to mind its own business: Reason is to be in charge, with the desires (of which eros is on the level of desire for food and drink) are at the bottom, while thumos or spirit is second in command, enforcing the commands of reason and keeping close watch on the pesky desires lest they break out of order. But in the corpus as a whole, the question becomes more complicated. Those who have read the Symposium have also witnessed Socrates’ avowed preference for Eros, crowned as king of desires, as the motive force for the philosophic life, as well as for knowing itself. Plato’s cosmos forces us to consider radically different images of the same thing; and to learn from the shape of the whole.

The debate as it stands has fallen into something of a dialectical dead-end, by making the argument a choice or a stand for one abstracted part of the soul or the other; and certainly such contrasts help draw out the dangers and difficulties for the lover of any one piece. But to simply to prefer or argue for one or the other is to mistake the elements for the cosmos—not to mention failing to ask the question whether any one part can be said to be fully distinct at all. In what follows, I will use hunting as a prime example of how Socrates’ triad of the just soul is a useful tool, but ultimately still an instrument to help us parse a moment; not a way to categorize something once and for all. (Indeed, it is only fair to alert the reader, who may even be innocent of such warfare, that I consider neither eros nor thumos to be a good without qualification—nor either guilty until proven innocent.) Hunting is a peculiarly good case where both elements are clearly implicated by Plato in the character of its activity as a whole. Investigating the trope of hunting allows us to be thoughtful about the ways these two qualities can be present in one whole human activity, and how careful balance can produce something like a worthy metaphor for the philosophy we would wish to practice—as well as marking out the dangers of what we might nevertheless fall into.

THE HUNTING GUARDIANS

Socrates opens the First Wave with the following:

Do we suppose that the females of the guardian dogs must guard the things the males guard along with them and hunt with them, and do the rest in common; or must they watch the house as though they were rendered powerless through the bearing and rearing of the puppies, while the males toil and have all the care of the flock bestowed upon them? (451d)

Socrates is not wrong to say that we are in a familiar argumentative position: he’s asking us to recall his infamous image from Book II, which describes the rulers as dogs guarding the city, that is, as guardians (375a). There, the dog was the animal whose temperament set the standard for what was desired for the rulers (375e). Possessing at once the qualities of gentleness (πρ®ους) and fierceness (ἄγριοι), they were friendly protectors of the city, philosophic insofar as they could be tame with those whom they dwell with and rough or wild (χαλεπαίνει) to the strange, all of which Socrates identifies as a kind of love of learning (φιλομαθὲς, 376b). Although Glaucon at first saw no way to reconcile the qualities of gentleness and fierceness, Socrates announces that the nature of the dog qua spirited rescues them from this contradiction (375d–e). As noted previously, the guardians in Books II–IV are philosophic in a specific and partial sense. While to love that which is well-known and with what one dwells—even, as Socrates notes, if they have never done one a kindness (376a)—is no small feat, considering the prickliness of certain truths. Yet likewise to bark at that which is unknown and strange is no one’s idea of philosophy in its highest flowering.3 This dog-like state is weighted heavily toward the thumos, and the work of the education of music and gymnastic is to balance and temper this quality (400e–401d; 416d).

In Socrates’ new description in Book V, the guardians are still herding a flock; it’s still their job to be domestic, and tied to their sheep citizens. Hunting, however, is a new addition to their duties; it seems to have the potential to be more than just a synonym for guarding. Nor is this the only time in Book V that Socrates speaks of men and women hunting in common; as I noted in chapter 2, there is a kind of summary of women’s political participation in the Second Wave, where Socrates reminds that the men and women will guard together and hunt together as dogs (466d). This conclusion comes before the subject moves on to warfare in general and away from women specifically; Socrates’ references to hunting, in fact, bookend the women’s law. I noted in the previous chapter, however, that hunting doesn’t form part of the substance of the argument: Socrates abandons talk of hunting as soon as Glaucon pronounces his caveat of weaker and stronger (451d). But the fact that Socrates brings hunting back in his conclusion, making sure he ultimately gets Glaucon’s assent to it—his strongest assent to women’s rule in the book—suggests that hunting has importance to Socrates’ thinking on the subject. Hunting certainly sets a high bar as a model for the political partnership of men and women: the choice of hunting companions is more difficult than that of companions for a feast; there’s more scope for freedom in the choice, more than in that of the shipmate or messmate. Why does Socrates bring hunting up, drop it, then bring it up again?

Hunting is a familiar Platonic trope, known to us as associated with eros and philosophy in the dialogues Symposium (203b) and the Sophist (218d ff.) respectively; because of this, it’s tempting to leap ahead to some symbolic meaning in the dialogue at hand. I wish to move slowly, however, to tease out the precise threads of meaning. First of all, what does Socrates intend to prescribe, on the most literal level, by including hunting as an activity or sport for the guardians? In other dialogues, hunting is much more abstract; but here in the Republic, it begins as a human activity, one among many that Socrates and his interlocutors institute for the citizens in Book II. What role or place does Socrates give hunting in his city?

A first thought on hunting might be that it is the kind of thing done to sustain life, the pastime of the countrified: something needful for continued existence. On this reasoning, hunting would seem to be something fittingly practiced in the most necessary city Socrates describes in Book II, where the citizens appear as practically animals themselves—the city Glaucon famously describes as one fit only for pigs (372d). But instead, hunting is the first proper activity Socrates introduces into Glaucon’s feverish city, along with couches and pastry chefs, poets, and courtesans. In fact, Socrates offers a specific account of what unites this list of desiderata: they are “not in the city because of necessity” (373b). The position of hunting as first in the list is emblematic of this change: the transition from the merely necessary and thus limited existence, to that human state which consciously attempts to mark its freedom from such limitations.4 Socrates, therefore, is describing a very particular kind of hunting: the kind practiced in leisure, the desirable leisure humans attain once necessity can be for the moment put off. This kind of hunting is the sort of thing done in proper style by those who can afford the accoutrements, with horses and hounds; it’s likely how Glaucon himself practices the sport—we learn in the Second Wave that Glaucon has “hunting dogs and countless fighting birds” at home (459a). This is also the sort of hunting the gentlemanly Athenian Stranger speaks of as the only and best kind for all men who wish to cultivate courage (Laws 824a); likewise it is the sort on which Xenophon spends most of his time in On Hunting, recommending the practice to those who would become good citizens possessed of every virtue (On Hunting, 1.18, 13.17). But although Socrates’ hunting is leisurely, he doesn’t give it any specific civic purpose as Xenophon and the Athenian Stranger do; instead, he groups it with things done for private recreation. In any case, such leisurely hunting takes place in a private spot: not the domestic privacy of one’s own (τό ἴδιον), but an isolated (ἐρήμος) locale, a lonely, desolate sort of place; a place privative of cities. Consider Euripides: “Oh for the joy of a fawn [who escapes the hunt] into the blessed lonely (ἐρημίαις) forest” (Bacchae 866–73). For the citizens of the fevered city in speech, such leisurely, private hunting would have to involve going beyond the walls of the city, into the countryside, leaving the other citizens behind.

THE ART OF HUNTING AND THE ART OF WAR

Here I must make an important distinction: in Plato’s writings, war and hunting are often closely associated, and this association might seem in conflict with hunting as a free, private pastime. For instance, in the Sophist, when the Eleatic Stranger defines war as the forcible hunting of tame men, this description tempts even the mild Theaetetus to say, “Beautiful!” (222c). Likewise, the Athenian Stranger speaks of war as a variety of hunting, the land-animal kind; both of these Platonic genealogies preempt Aristotle’s strikingly similar account in the Politics.5 Are hunting and war the same kind of activity, with hunting merely as the more private but no less savage genus? When war and hunting are tied together in this way, they appear largely thumotic; they are associated with the triumph of the catch, or the will to victory, and a subtle bloodlust merely heightens the savagery; indeed, justice seems to make no part of any of it. Is this the significance of hunting in the Republic? Indeed, in Book V, Socrates turns from the image of the common hunt between men and women to their common participation in warfare (466e). The question of the relation between hunting and war forces us to examine our notions of the relation between eros and thumos, the very relationship that the Republic’s entire conversation turns on.

To consider the question justly, attention must be paid to what Socrates says about the relation of hunting and war, in contrast to his two nameless and/or cityless counterparts. In the Symposium, Socrates reports what he claims to have learned about the erotic art from Diotima; there, Eros is described as a deinos hunter:

But on his father’s side he is a schemer after the beautiful and the good; he is brave, impetuous, and high-strung, a deinos hunter, always weaving snares, resourceful in his pursuit of intelligence, a lover of wisdom all his life, deinos with enchantments, potions, and sophistics. (Symposium 203d)

Eros’ peculiar character is finely drawn: a picture emerges of a desirous, wily, scheming sort of thing. Now, that Eros himself is emblematically a hunter is a strong reason to consider that the art of hunting must possess some erotic quality, and so distinct from simply the warmonger. On the other hand, it’s possible that Eros is a hunter because he wants victory over the beloved as hunters do, which may indeed appear to turn the tide back to thumos.6 But paradox aside, this description does tilt the balance toward hunting as first and foremost an erotic art; it’s an art practiced in secret, rather than in the openness preferred by spirit.7 It appears to be a solitary activity: the child of Resource and Poverty does not require a panoply of equipment and attendants, but shoeless and homeless, he schemes alone (203d). The Symposium, of course, is an erotic dialogue par excellence; it’s fitting that what transpires is colored in favor of eros, and so, it’s fitting that hunting appears there in erotic guise. But the Symposium is not the only place Socrates speaks of hunting in this light. In the Lysis, where friendship is discussed not in isolation from eros, Socrates wishes to convince his interlocutor Hippothales not to compose poems on victorious love before he has won the beloved. “Anyone who is wise in the erotic art (τὰ ἐρωτικά),” Socrates remarks, “takes care not to drive away the beloved in this way . . . for what would we think of a hunter who would scare away his quarry in hunting and make it harder to catch?”8 Not much, is the response; by appealing to the good hunter as a model, Socrates persuades his interlocutor to practice the erotic art more carefully, and to delay, downplay, even demote the thumotic victory (205e–206c). The victory is certainly desired in the midst of the activity, but it can’t be allowed to lead the hunt; the good hunter moves more carefully, and it is this which is properly the erotic art—that is, the art Socrates claims to know something about (Phaedrus 257a). Xenophon gives similar advice for the literal and not just metaphorical practice of hunting: “When it comes to tracking the hare, let him not be too zealous. To do everything possible to effect a quick capture shows perseverance, but it is not hunting” (VI.8).

What Socrates says about hunting makes a strong contrast to what other major Platonic characters profess. What does it mean that in Plato’s dialogues, hunting appears sometimes as primarily a thumotic activity, and sometimes as the epitome of Eros and the erotic art itself? We can at least say this: it’s remarkable that the activity of hunting can have two guises at all. Nor can we say, given the evidence, that hunting is either thumotic or erotic merely; potentially, it appears to have elements of both. In contrast to the two Strangers, Socrates stresses its erotic aspect on certain key occasions; moreover, the thumos’ love of victory is turned to the fulfillment of eros’ desire; in Socrates’ version of hunting, eros is in charge: it is the ruler of the thumos. While Diotima speaks of Eros as that wishes to have what it loves exist for it forever, those who love wisdom are caught between knowledge and ignorance, without final capture of the latter (204b); the hunt in this guise is eternal.

THE WAR BETWEEN THUMOS AND EROS

But what of hunting in the Republic? What guise does Socrates give it here, erotic or thumotic, beauty-loving or victory-loving? Let’s consider how Socrates relates hunting to war as a way of opening up the question. In Book II, war arrives in the feverish city not too long after the multitudes of hunters, couches, jewelry, and poets (373b, 373e); this echoes the pattern we noticed in Book V, where war also arrives after hunting (451d, 452a). Again, Socrates’ gleeful multiplication of the professions of the fevered city marks the change from living an animal life bound by necessity, to a recognizably human life marked by the desire to negate that necessity as a sign of our freedom.9 We begin, as Glaucon describes it, as natural possessors of pleonexia, that is, the human desire for more (359c); this “more,” he remarks, is what we “chase” or pursue (dièkein); we hunt for more.10 This pleonexia finds us dissatisfied with what we already have, and so effects the transition from pigs to fever. In fact, eros itself is only recognizable as eros when it is emancipated from mere want; the fevered city gives birth to eros as such.11 Once this movement from the piggish city to the fevered one is made, war that involves the pageantry of the thumos is available, as expressive of the desire for more land and more possessions (373e). But Socrates speaks of war first as part of the most necessary city: it is a danger, alongside poverty, to be watchful of (373c). Again, hunting is the very first activity that Socrates brings in as something in the city not from necessity; war, by contrast, is represented as actually necessary.12 Now, the question of the nature and merit of war is notoriously difficult, and indeed, Socrates announces he will postpone it (373e); indeed, it has been observed that war is never said to be bad without qualification in the dialogues.13 But here, hunting’s nature is less vexed: in Socrates’ description, hunting keeps company with the playfulness of peace, pastry chefs and courtesans, appealing food as well as appealing ladies; hunting accompanies more sophisticated desire. We know from the Second Wave that Glaucon is primed to consider hunting as representative of this sort of graceful pastime among his other citified habits. It’s striking, then, that Socrates makes sure that hunting begins the list of new professions at 357a: he means for Glaucon the hunter to be satisfied that the new city will really give scope to his spirited and erotic longings.14 It’s a clever Socratic move: hunting topically appeals to Glaucon’s expressed concern about the availability of meat, but also speaks to the underlying desire for life on a more civilized plane. Hunting on this logic appears to be about more than meat; it offers something more like the range of desire for its own sake. An initial appeal to the activity of professional warfare, by contrast, would not speak as directly to the eros of this appeal. Even in the Republic, it seems, Socrates makes use of the private, erotic aspects of hunting that he speaks of in the Symposium and Lysis.

It is the common cant, however, that the Republic is no erotic dialogue; eros is ignored, vilified, and abstracted from as much as possible.15 Now, this distinction is certainly dialectically useful; but we should not let it obscure the finer points of Platonic imagery and action. After all, there are places where eros receives attention enough, notably Book VI, and in particular, Socrates explicitly attempts to make use of the erotic attraction of the male and female guardians for each other (468c). But is the hunt of the Republic an erotic hunt? After all, in Book VIII, the timocratic man, that lover of thumos beyond what is fitting, also loves gymnastics and hunting (549a); likewise, hunting is a representative activity of the student who loves hard work of the body and not the soul (535d); and so it seems hunting is present in its thumotic guise. But the fascinating thing is, hunting is not as obviously thumotic in the Republic as one would expect. Socrates never explicitly makes hunting and war part of the same genus, as the two other Platonic main characters do not hesitate to do. It will form a part of the male and female guardians’ activities, alongside battle and guarding (466d), but Socrates does not make the link between hunting and war explicit; although indeed, it might have potentially helped bolster his argument for their participation in war. Xenophon makes it clear that, just as hunting is a task shared by dogs of both sexes, humans likewise of both sexes are practitioners: “For all men who have loved hunting have been good: and not men only, but those women also to whom the goddess has given this blessing, Atalanta and Procris and others like them (XIII.18).”

In contrast to Xenophon, Glaucon accedes more readily to women in war than women in the hunt; when Glaucon appends the further law that the successful warrior has the right to kiss who he pleases, boy or girl, during the campaign, he adds the women to this though Socrates only spoke of boys and youths (468b–c). He also ratifies Socrates’ images of the honor the good men and women receive in war as “beautiful” (468e). In striking contrast, Glaucon announces his initial hesitation immediately after Socrates brings up common hunting; this is the moment at which he agrees that everything be in common, but taking the women as weaker (551e). It’s not hard to imagine that the notion of women’s participation in an activity for which he has special affection, might activate his natural allegiance to his own sex that much more. But in any case, the most telling evidence for the strange lack of hunting’s obvious connection to spiritedness, is that it’s not used as an illustration of the nature of the guardian dogs in Book II, though it would have been easy enough to do so. Fighting, by contrast, is: the dogs have strength to outfight what they apprehend (375a). Something is clearly changing when Socrates adds hunting to the mix in Book V, and bookends the women’s law with this activity.

First, let’s consider the question in terms of temperament, since that’s why the metaphor of dogs was wanted in the first place. As Socrates had it, the activity of guarding required the balance of gentleness and fierceness of spirit (375e). Does hunting require the same temperament as guarding, or something different? In the case of dogs, the answer is clear: far from being temperamentally analogous, Xenophon recommends only certain specific breeds for hunting dogs.16 Herd dogs, those who are excellent at guarding, must be content to stay in one place and limit their imagination to the expanse of the flock, and be friends to the known and enemies of the unknown. Hunting dogs, on the other hand, must have a certain taste and desire for the unknown as such; they have to range forward, always on the lookout for new courses the prey might take, and be keen to follow them out to the end.17 As Xenophon has it,

They will go forward with joy and ardor, disentangling the various tracks, double or triple—springing forward now beside, now across the same ones—tracks interlaced or circular, straight or crooked, close or scattered, clear or obscure, running past one another with tails wagging, ears dropped and eyes flashing. (VI.15)

Rather than bark at the unknown, they must want to chase after it. Nor does it seem like mere hunger that moves the hunting dog; after all, as companions of humans, they don’t often eat what they seek. Even for Xenophon’s hunting dogs, the meat is the nominal or originating end, but the chase itself becomes the true telos; he recommends letting the young dogs break up the hare but not eat it; when older they will refuse to eat it of themselves (VII.11).

What of hunting as a human activity? Is there any analogy between dogs and humans? Seth Benardete remarks that for the Eleatic Stranger, hunting appears to collapse the difference between humans and animals: human hunters are as beasts fighting beasts.18 But what of Socrates’ hunting guardians? We might ask the question like this: do Socrates’ leisurely human hunters hunt for the meat of it? This formulation contains this error: it lumps the hunting of humans in with the merely necessary, or contends that the pastime camouflages the savage urge. The humor this question provokes, however, displays that the mere equation of humans and animal bloodlust strikes one as lacking some essential difference. Now, the practice of war may tempt human beings to consider each other as no more than beasts or even insects, as the Eleatic Stranger seems to intimate, with his insistence between the similarity of the general and the louse-catcher (Sophist 227b); though it’s worth noting that Hegel argued for the opposite effect of a serious fight to the death.19 But whatever the dialectical power or weakness of war, the good hunter—if only because his prey begins at a distance—becomes aware that his prey may elude him. He even must admit that the animal might have the potential to outwit his best stratagems; in this hunting logic, animals become as human, not the other way around. Socrates promotes this human logic even in war: he insists in Book V that Greeks should treat the bodies of fellow Greeks, at least, with respect (469b–470b). Does this logic hold for Socrates’ description of hunting in Book II? The fact is, Socrates gives hunting a place of honor, and takes care to separate it from war; if we take his account seriously, that hunting is not a manifestation of the necessary, animal-like city, then hunting in the city in speech is a peculiarly human activity, and potentially more representative of human freedom than the practice of war. When hunting is the activity of leisure in a fevered city, human hunters have no need to eat what they catch; human hunters, as much as dogs or more, delight in the chase for its own sake. Its practitioners likewise require a taste for the unknown, to leave the city and enter wilder climes, merely for the pleasure of it. This characterization begins to sound like more than thumos is required for the ideal human hunter; only eros loves what is not yet one’s own (Symposium 204a). Whatever the true relation between hunting and war, it appears to suit Socrates to represent it as primarily humanly erotic, even in a conversation where desire is often cast as the enemy.20

Now: should we admit the presence of eros in hunting, it has the potential to explain something important—the familiar use of the hunt as an image for philosophy. Socrates is fond of this conjunction: he speaks of hunting the beings at 66b in the Phaedo, hunting opinions in the Phaedrus at 262c, hunting the good in the Philebus at 20d, hunting for knowledge in the Statesman at 264a, and for knowledge as well at many points in the Theaetetus (198a, 199e, 200a). These instances are a partial catalogue of the verb θηράω/θηρεύω; likewise κυνηγέτης / κυνηγετικὸς (hunter, hunting) appear at Euthyphro 13a-b and Laches 194b; Socrates also uses διώκειν, the first-order meaning of which is to hunt or chase, but is used metaphorically for pursuit or seeking. Nor is hunting just any metaphor for philosophy, but as we saw, it’s an image of Socrates’ own way of doing the work of philosophy—an image of one aspect of the erotic art. From what we’ve learned of hunting, why is it an appropriate image for philosophy in one of its guises? If hunting is an expression of activity beyond the necessary, something that transcends the merely animal, it is a peculiarly human way of taking the necessary activity as something done in the freedom of a chosen activity for leisure, a way of being playful about desire. Hunting as such is a sort of chthonic canonization of desire for its own sake: and anything that holds up desire as loveable for its own sake begins to sound like a worthy candidate for a metaphor for philosophy. In Diotima’s language, one wishes the desired thing to be to or for you forever (205a); but lovers of wisdom must be willing to admit they stand in lack of godlike omniscience (204b).

Now, again, hunting as an actual practice of ordinary human beings often appears as a primarily thumotic activity; as I noted, Socrates also uses it to describe the timocratic man’s predilections (549a). Agamemnon is an excellent example of a hunter who falls to this side; it was his boast that he could beat the hunting goddess Artemis at her game that led to her peculiarly harsh revenge, the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigeneia, before his pursuit of the Trojan War could go forward.21 Xenophon has this to say on the subject: to see a hare “tracked, found, pursued, and caught” is so joyful (ἐπίχαρί) a thing to watch, it makes a man forget his heart’s desire (ἐρῴη, V.33). Consider this: that hunting is often the pastime of the overly thumotic man because it does make one forgetful of eros; and so the soul is over-balanced in that way. Perhaps the difference between Xenophon’s On Hunting and Plato on hunting is, Socrates recommends the practice of philosophy, imagined as a hunt, as the path to the love of wisdom where the goal may or may not be achieved; while Xenophon recommends the practice of hunting, imagined as philosophic, which sets one firmly on the path of wisdom and good citizenship.22 This would explain the crucial pedagogic difference between the two: Xenophon considers that hunting as an activity is peculiarly suited to foment philoponía, love of work itself (I.7, I.12, VI.2); while Socrates specifically considers it as a sound practical measure, that can nevertheless cultivate the thumos too awkwardly if given pride of place (535d, 549a). And so, it is in the midst of an awareness of the dangers of thumotic hunting, that Socrates brings himself to insist nevertheless that the good hunter is a model for one wise in erotics, as in the Lysis (205a). The human model is the hunter who cares less for the number of what he has bagged, than to be once more in the chase itself.

Perhaps the reason why Socrates, in contrast to the Eleatic Stranger and Aristotle, doesn’t conflate hunting and war, is that to do so would blur the lines between dialectic and eristic—the warlike pursuit of victory in speech—which would threaten the good name of philosophy, which Socrates is of course anxious not do. Socrates characterizes eristic as over-manly and warlike in contrast to dialectic in the First Wave at 454a; in Book VII, describing the tendency of the young to fall into contradiction, he remarks “in this way the whole of philosophy comes into disrepute” (539c). And so, among lovers of Plato, the danger and the irony of dismissing one part of the soul, is that we have fallen into a hunting problem; and let our own pursuit of truth fall into an Agamemnon-like wish for triumph of some one idea, at the expense of whatever part of the soul happens to earn our particular ire.23

THE BEAUTY OF THE HUNT

In Book V, when Socrates adds hunting to the duties of the guardians at the beginning of the First Wave, he is doing something remarkable. He is requiring that the temperament of the guardians be different from what he initially described in Book II: their temperament will now contain an element of eros. This widens the possibilities for what they can be taught, and it adds a duty that is at odds with their civic responsibilities. In short, with his addition of hunting, Socrates is signaling a change he will soon make explicit: the Third Wave or Socratic proposal that the guardians will philosophize, and rule as philosophers (473d). Now, as I argued in chapter 1, the relation between the guardian class and legitimate philosophers is problematic; it looks as there will be but few philosophers coming from this educational system (503b), if even more than one; in fact, the city in speech may produce no legitimate philosophers at all, even if a legitimate philosopher would be required to rule it well.24 But the graceful fiction is that in this city, somehow, the constitution will produce philosophers who rule; an initial exploration of this graceful fiction is required in order to ultimately reveal the underlying tension.25 Socrates’ reference to hunting is an early sign of what the guardians will be seeking for, the shape of their new activity.

Now, Socrates never outlines the practice in full practical detail as a human activity, since after all, he doesn’t think it’s that helpful. But both times Socrates refers to it in reference to the guardians, it is to describe the partnership of men and women, figured as hounds (451d, 466d); as a description of what dogs do, it is a sign of difference from what’s previously been promised. Socrates remarked at the beginning of Book V that the question of women and children required him to start the argument over again completely, “from the very beginning” (450a); his new plans involve philosopher-kings ruling the city, and men and women will train for this task together. His brief references to hunting are a foretaste of the culmination of his new plans. While the problematic fact that hunting appears at times either erotic or thumotic likewise displays the guardians’ own struggles with these often competing aspects of soul, recognizing the hunting quality of the guardians is a useful way of thinking through what eros is nevertheless present in the guardians’ philosophizing; nor, as I will next discuss, is this the only time the guardians are represented as in pursuit. But for now, what has been gained is a sense of the change from the philosophic dogs in Book II to the philosopher-kings of Book V: their duties and temperament have been enlarged to include hunting, and hunting provides a crucial bridge between dogs that merely bark at the unknown, and dogs that actively seek it out—and human beings who would one day practice dialectic, together.

NOTES

1.Rosen, PRS, 195, 172.

2.Hearne notes her debt to Xenophon in “Tracking Dogs, Sensitive Horses, and the Traces of Speech” in Adam’s Task: Calling Animals by Name (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007), 84.

3.Contra Strauss, CM, 111. Consider Page: “The goodness of Polemarchian friendship is also the reason why the dogs that bark at those whom they do not know are nevertheless called noble” (“Polemarchus,” 261).

4.In what follows, I am much indebted to Carl Page’s interpretation of the important transition from most necessary to fevered city; he argues that the fevered city is a “more adequate and indeed, more serious, portrayal of the phenomena of human life” than the overly austere most necessary city (“The Truth about Lies in Plato’s Republic,” 7, 3–8).

5.Laws VII, 823b–824a. Aristotle posits that the skill of warfare includes that of hunting, casting war as the hunt of men who, like wild beasts, will not submit (Politics I.8, 1256b23). The switch from the initial ἄγριος to τὰ θηρία, a more humanly wild sort of beast, is suggestive.

6.For the difficulties involved in any clean division between thumos and eros, as presented in the psychology of the Republic, see Ronna Burger, “The Thumotic and Erotic Soul: Seth Benardete on Platonic Psychology,” Interpretation 32, no. 1 (2005): 57–74.

7.As Aristotle describes it at Ethics VII.6, 1149b15.

8.Lysis, 206a.

9.Page points the reader to Bloom, who has it that the precondition for virtue is the “emancipation of desire” (IE, 347).

10.Page has it: “The human negation of the given is comprehensive, totalizing, and thus intrinsically prone to the vice of pleonexia, of wanting more than is sufficient” (“Unnamed Fifth,” 9).

11.As Page describes it, the fevered city “acknowledges the forces of spirit, imagination, and erotic desire” (Unnamed Fifth,” 8); it seems that mere want and aggression become something more recognizably human when this transition is accomplished.

12.In this I differ from Page’s interpretation; he stresses that war is an expression of pleonexia coeval with the “more civilized and noble inflections of indefinite desire” (“Unnamed Fifth,” 9). But what to make of Socrates’ connection of war to the necessary city, but not of hunting? Of course, hunting obviously has its Paleolithic inflection which Socrates is pointedly ignoring; but the difference is striking. One possibility is that hunting satisfies pleonexia on a higher order than war; Socrates suppresses the Paleolithic presence of hunting because he wants to stress to Glaucon, for pedagogical reasons, the primacy of hunting over war and so the primacy of eros.

13.I.M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato’s Volumes (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), i, 182.

14.Page’s reading is all the more noteworthy for his rare acknowledgement that Glaucon’s character contains both these aspects in a manner specific to Glaucon.

15.Strauss, CM, 111; Rosen, (“The Role of Eros in Plato’s Republic,” Review of Metaphysics 18, no. 3 (1965): 453).

16.On Hunting III.1; IX, X.1.

17.See also Vicki Hearne’s discussion of the special virtues and temperament needed for a hunting dog (“Tracking Dogs,” 80–90).

18.See Plato’s Laws: The Discovery of Being (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 228.

19.Hegel describes this moment of recognition as the result of a fight to the death in Phenomenology of the Spirit §178–196; whereas the fighter reaches this moment after the fight if at all, the good hunt begins with this recognition.

20.Benardete calls hunting a placeholder for eros in the Laws (Plato’s Laws, 226).

21.Aeschylus tells this well at Agamemnon 183–257.

22.The final paragraphs of On Hunting abound with the real benefits the hunter will obtain; some of this is dramatic and/or rhetorical flourish, but Xenophon consistently maintains hunting’s utility in improving one’s wisdom, as well as the ability to speak and act beautifully (XIII.10–18; I.18).

23.In this awkward camp I would put David Levy’s blame of eros for its so-called irrational tendencies, which demands that he cast the Symposium and Phaedrus’ accounts of eros as consistent with the Republic’s, rather than intriguingly opposed (Eros and Socratic Political Philosophy, 151ff). Although Eros, which he considers in Socrates’ accounts of it, to be reasonably parsed by the English phrase “romantic love” (1n1), may be a sort of stepping stone to aspects of better wisdom (111), it leaves one with only questionable knowledge of self and of justice (108–111), and ultimately leads to irrational beliefs (such as the “religious” sort (42)); it is itself an “unphilosophic” experience (151). Despite the frequent repetition that love, that is, romantic love which contains a temptation toward the sexual, can sometimes be helpful in certain transitional ways, it remains attached to a “corrupt and brutal pursuit of sexual pleasure” (109), and can only be cured by the chastity that philosophy encourages (Ibid.). And so, his account’s ultimate rejection of eros stubbornly conceived of as merely love to begin with, is nevertheless reminiscent of a sort of Augustinian ire against man’s temptation to fall away from heavenly thought into earthly loves, and stands as an essentially religious rejection of the partial goods of eros, a sort of Secretum Secretorum for the modern age. The temptation to reject a partial good absolutely is something that even Socrates during the course of the Republic’s blame of eros, cannot bring himself completely to do, as seen in his willingness to speak of “true eros for true erotic philosophy” (499d).

24.Socrates dodges the question at 497a–d; on this point see Benardete, SSS, 181; and Rosen, PRS, 210.

25.Strauss has it that is it “required” that the “fiction of the possibility of the just city be maintained” (CM, 129).