Time Loves a Hero
TIME LOVES A HERO
With The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche forever changed my image of Socrates. At first I felt bereaved, though I was loath to admit it. Socrates was my hero and Nietzsche pulled his pants down and spanked his ass.
Afterward, he restored the philosopher to his exalted place and gave credit where credit was due. But my reverence for Socrates was not restored. And I can’t say that I even want to restore it. As I said, I was bereaved at first. I wanted to fully accept Nietzsche’s redemption of Socrates, but I couldn’t unsee what Nietzsche revealed to me.
Then I saw what my problem was. My hero worship of Socrates was based on a myth. Nietzsche was just the myth-buster. He showed me Socrates as Socrates was, not as I fancied him to be. He freed me from my hero worship.
This is how you philosophize with a hammer!
The Gadfly and the Lazy Horse —
One day a Horse was dozing in the shade of a tree when a Gadfly came along.
“Look at this Lazy Horse dozing in the shade,” said the Gadfly to himself. He beat his wings in disapproval. “I will pester him so that he wakes up.” And the Gadfly stung the Horse on the rear to rouse him from his nap.
“What is justice?” demanded the Gadfly.
“Justice,” replied the Horse, “is leaving people alone while they sleep.”
“Examples are not definitions,” corrected the Gadfly and quickly stung the Horse twice on the rear.
“Ouch,” complained the Horse.
“What is beauty?” demanded the Gadfly with a sting. “What is truth?” Sting. “What is courage?” Sting. Sting. Sting.
“Have mercy!” exclaimed the Horse. “I do not like your stings and I do not like your questions. I pull my master’s cart in the morning and in the afternoon I like to doze in the shade of a tree.”
“Ignorant creature,” declared the Gadfly. “You do not know what you think you know. But I have come along to save you from your ignorance, for I am god’s gift to the race of horses. I will never cease with my questioning and my stinging until all are as wise as I am.”
At that, the Horse gave a great swish of his tail and killed the Gadfly.
Moral: Pests get exterminated.
Alternate Universe Symposium —
Alcibiades slipped the potion into the old man’s cup. In doing so, he averted a tragedy of epic proportions. Literally. For the tragedy that would have been, would have been the fruit of the greatest act of hubris the world had ever known. Greater than Eve biting the apple. Greater than Prometheus stealing fire. Greater even than Lucifer defying the Most High.
But thanks to the wily Alcibiades, instead of an epic – which would have been an anti-epic, for it would have told the deeds, not of gods and heroes, but of villains and victims – there was music.
Socrates had not a musical bone in his body. Art was wasted on him. Glad he was when Eryximachus sent away the flute girl and the symposium became a talking contest. Talking was his thing. He was the great rhetorician who masqueraded as a plain-talking common man. He was the great sophist who wore the clever disguise of the anti-sophist. And he was immune to the effects of wine. In vino veritas. But not for Socrates.
Why he did not get drunk was and still is a mystery. Perhaps some abnormality of the brain. Perhaps a tolerance developed over a long life. But whatever the reason, Dionysus held no power over him. Mushrooms, however, did.
Alcibiades, the rogue. Crashed the party and, in the merry chaos that ensued, roofied the philosopher without anyone being aware.
The ecstasy that had eluded the seeker of wisdom for three score years became his. What tragedy could not do, what music and dance could not do, what religious rite and fermented grapes could not do, the mushrooms did. And because of them, and because Alcibiades was the mischief-maker that he was, Socrates did not corrupt the youth of Athens. He did not inspire the Platonic dialogues. He did not drink the cup of hemlock.
Freed from his obsession with the logos – for Socrates had deified the logos five centuries before John – he was no longer driven to martyrdom. Instead he forgot himself in music and dance. A world of art and beauty opened before him. The doors of his perception were cleansed and he knew things that were without words. Like the Orphics and the Bacchantes. Like Sophocles and Aeschylus. Like the satyrs of the Greek chorus and the poets and prophets of old.
Perhaps he even heard a word of approval from that tight-lipped daemonion of his.
Imagine it. But for that draft of magic brew, he would have made the world over in his own defective image.