Vladimir Solovyov - Plato's life drama (1898). Abstract

Life drama of Plato

( Feature article)

Having undertaken a complete Russian translation of Plato, I first of all faced the question: in what order should Platonic dialogues be translated and published in the absence of a generally accepted order? Convinced of the impossibility of firmly establishing and consistently conducting a chronological order given the insufficiency of historical data, the precariousness and inconsistency of philological considerations, and at the same time finding it both inconvenient and unworthy to squeeze a living picture of Plato's creativity into the wooden framework of school divisions on abstract topics and disciplines of later origin, I had to look for the inner principle of unity, embracing the totality of Platonic creations and giving each of them its relative significance and place in the whole.

Such a beginning of unity for Plato's works was already sought by many of his publishers, translators and critics throughout the nineteenth century, but none of the existing attempts to define and draw such a beginning throughout Plato seems to me satisfactory. In a special treatise that will accompany my translation, I will analyze in detail the main of these attempts, and now I will point out for example only the two most striking - Schleiermacher and Munch.

According to Schleiermacher, the order of the Platonic works is established in advance by Plato himself, his thought and intention; all dialogues are only the consistent execution of one program or one artistic-philosophical-pedagogical plan, drawn up by Plato in his youth and more and more clarified in particulars throughout his philosophical activity.

According to this view, every big dialogue (after the first - Phaedra) is a direct, predetermined by Plato himself, a continuation or completion of its previous one and preparation for its next one, and this main stem of ideological growth is accompanied, as it were, by offshoots, several small dialogues, also deliberately written to clarify one or another secondary issue related to the subjects of the main dialogues . The whole of Plato is thus presented as one a priori constructed system of philosophical ideas, a course of philosophy, artistically presented.

With Munch, the matter is taken in a more lively way. Plato's task was to depict the life of an ideal sage in the person of Socrates. Behind the first introductory dialogue Parmenides, where Socrates is an inquisitive youth, three successive groups of dialogues follow, in which Socrates acts first as a fighter for the truth against the prevailing sophistry, then as a teacher of truth and, finally, as a martyr for truth; the last dialogue, of course, is Phaedo, containing the dying conversation of Socrates and a description of his death.

The failure of both views is striking. Schleiermacher directly suggests something psychologically and historically impossible. Of course, such a purely head philosopher and armchair writer as, for example, Kant, would be more suitable for Schleiermacher's presentation. If we recall the centuries-old development of a purely formal power of thought - from the first scholastics to the Leibniz-Wolfian philosophy, which brought up the author of three critics; if we take into account the national character of the German mind, the personal character and way of life of Kant himself - a life completely closed in a close circle between a desk and a university audience - then, regarding him, one could perhaps admit that the totality of his writings is only methodical execution of one pre-compiled program. However, we positively know that there was nothing of the kind here either. Kant's mental productivity passed through at least three very different stages, which were not at all a direct continuation or preparation of one another: we know about the long "dogmatic sleep" of his mind in the cozy cradle of the "Leibniz-Wolfian system; we know how he was awakened by a strong push Hume's skepticism to the discovery of critical idealism, and how, then, impulses of a different order led him to create an ethic of absolute duty and a religion within pure reason. did not think about a definite plan for a new moral and religious construction.If even Kant - the personification of a priori and methodicalness - could not only complete, but even conceive, his half-century mental work according to one pre-composed program or a definite plan, then what can be said about Plato? To begin with, there were no academic offices in Ancient Greece, and therefore, there could not have been office rooms. chenyh. But the main thing is the personality of Plato himself. A man who lived a full life, not only open to all kinds of impressions, but thirsty, looking for them, a man at the beginning of his career who survived one of the greatest tragedies of world history - the death of Socrates, who then fled from his father's city, traveled a lot around the world, entered into relations with by a mysterious Pythagorean union, repeatedly and for the last time already in extreme old age, closely approaching powerful rulers in order to create an exemplary state with their help, such a person could in no case be a methodical executor of one pre-established philosophical and literary program throughout his life.

From the view of Schleiermacher, only that general truth remains, that there is an internal connection between all the creations of Plato. But this connection did not lie in the deliberate design of a complete philosophical course. Plato had no such intention. He also had no intention of devoting his life to an idealized biography of his teacher. According to Munch, it turns out that the image of Socrates as an ideal of wisdom and truth completely and with unchanging power completely dominated Plato's mind and was objectified in it in such a way that the order of Platonic creations expressed the course of life not of Plato himself, but only the recollected and reproduced course of Socratic life. But in reality this is not the case. In some dialogues, Socrates really owns the work of Plato and is embodied in him with all the fullness of artistic truth, and Socrates' speeches here are real speeches, only passing through Plato's thought directly open to them, receiving from it, perhaps, several new features and colors, but retaining their entire being. However, in others - in most of the dialogues - Socrates is only a literary device accepted once and for all, the usual pseudonym of Plato - a pseudonym sometimes unfortunate - when he has to say such speeches that the real Socrates not only did not speak, but could not speak: for example when the imaginary Socrates seriously discusses metaphysical and cosmological questions, which the real Socrates recognized as sterile and unworthy of attention, but in which Plato became especially interested long after the death of his teacher and under other diverse influences. What kind of biography of Socrates is this, even an idealized one?

Vladimir Solovyov

XIX. A few, but consistent evidence of antiquity says that Plato, before his meeting with Socrates, wrote love poems, which he burned when he was carried away by the speeches of "the wisest of the Hellenes." Several erotic poems that have survived and come down to us with the name of Plato, if only they were genuine, would indicate the actual relationship of the future philosopher to certain persons of one sex or the other. This in itself is likely both psychologically and historically. But it is not these unconscious manifestations of instinct that are interesting, but the erotic crisis consciously experienced by Plato in the middle of his life and immortalized in the Phaedrus and the Feast.

I will not talk about the external biographical circumstances of this incident for many reasons, and mainly because we know absolutely nothing about it. But if history is silent about the personal details of this interesting novel, with whom and how it happened, then the two named dialogues sufficiently testify both to the fact itself and to what Plato learned from it. This unknown but necessarily assumed fact alone provides the key to the subsequent change in Plato's worldview, and it alone can explain the appearance and character of the Phaedrus and the Feast. These two works, both in terms of the bright, cheerful mood reflected in them, and in terms of the plot itself, stand out sharply from other writings of Plato; and is there any possibility of admitting that the philosopher, who before that looked at all human affairs and interests as "non-existent" and was occupied with the most abstract reflections on epistemological and metaphysical questions, suddenly, for no reason at all, without much real and vital excitement, dedicates his best works to love - a subject that was not at all part of his philosophical horizons - where he sets out a new theory that has no support in his previous views, but leaves a deep and indelible, although indirect, trace in his entire future image thoughts? The content of the Phaedrus and the Feast, theoretically unconnected and incompatible with the detached idealism of the "two worlds", can only be understood as a transformation, a progress in this idealism, caused by the demands of new life experience. In saying this, I assume that these two dialogues belong to the middle epoch of Platonic life and work. This is accepted by the majority of reputable scientists. True, Schleiermacher recognized "Phaedrus" as the first, youthful work of Plato, although we do not find any attempt to really prove this basic proposition for him. And on the other hand, the modern philologist Konstantin Ritter finds it possible, for philological reasons, which, however, did not seem convincing to anyone except him, relates the same "Phaedrus" to Plato's old age. These two paradoxes cancel each other out and leave the general view unchanged.

At the first serious acquaintance with "Phaedrus" and "Feast", the modern reader should experience some confusion and bewilderment. The natural lining of erotic feelings and relationships here is not at all the one that is generally accepted as normal in modern life and literature. Where we assume one series of relationships, the ancient Greeks, corrupted by Asiatic influences, allowed at least three.

One of the surviving odes of the famous poetess Sappho of Lesbos begins with such an appeal to the goddess of love: Poikiloqron? aqanat ?Ajrodith, i.e. variegated immortal Aphrodite! It is this diversity of Aphrodite, assumed by Plato, that confuses his modern reader and admirer, who is accustomed to referring well-known objects not to philosophy and poetry, but to psychiatry, on the one hand, and to the criminal code, on the other. Of course, the actual anomalies in this area are even more colorful with us than in the classical world, but we are amazed that the main ones were considered by the Hellenes not for painful deviations, but for something simple and natural and even preferable to what we now recognize. for the only natural.

But to blame Plato for this reprehensible feature - I mean, Plato the philosopher - would be unfair not only from a historical point of view, but also in essence. Finding the “variegated” Aphrodite as a fact legitimized by the general opinion, he himself, in principle, rejected her entirely, without distinction of her types. Any carnal love, regardless of one form or another, is recognized by him as something vulgar and base, unworthy of a true human calling; this is Ajrodith Pandhmos, literally "nationwide", in the sense of cheap, worthless and in contrast to the true, or heavenly - Aphrodite Urania, who is worth a lot and great.

True, for an earthly person both have the same root, grow out of the same material soil - but what of this? We know that the most beautiful flowers and the most delicious fruits grow from the earth, and, moreover, from the most unclean, manured earth. This does not spoil their taste and aroma, but it does not impart a fragrance to manure, which does not become noble from those noble growths that it serves.

XX. It is interesting for a specialist agronomist to disassemble various varieties of organic fertilizer. Only two truths are of general importance here: firstly, that every kind of this commodity is equally a product of the decay of life, and that only worms, and not people, can live and eat in this decaying environment, and, secondly, that people can and must, by their spiritual work, extract beautiful flowers and immortal fruits of life from this dark rot.

Light from darkness! Above the black hole
Could not ascend
The faces of your roses
If in the gloomy bosom
Didn't get drunk immersed
Their dark root...

Yes, of course, this is the law of the earth. But does it follow from this that darkness itself is already light, or at least that light is a direct natural product of darkness, a product that appears without struggle, without labor, from this dark matter alone, without the action of another, more akin to it paternal principle? , - without decisive subordination of the lower to the higher?

Not in vain, not out of a naive misunderstanding, the idea of ​​​​high and pure, ideal, in a word - Platonic love is connected with the name of Plato. From the erotic silt, which, apparently, sucked into the fatal time, but could not drag his soul for a long time, Plato grew, if not the living fruits of spiritual rebirth, then at least the brilliant and pure flower of his erotic theory. Let us recall this theory: it will help us understand and evaluate the median fracture in the life drama of its author.

XXI. Under the influence of the death of Socrates, which opened before the eyes of his disciple the whole abyss of worldly evil, he developed, as has been said, a dualistic idealism, directly in essence opposing all our living reality to what truly is and should be. In bodily and practical life there is nothing genuine and worthy; everything authentic and worthy is in its pure ideality, beyond this world of ours: it is "transcendent" - there is no real bridge between the two worlds. Man himself, although he belongs to both worlds, does not, however, form an internal link between them: dualism also abolishes the unity of man. The two heterogeneous halves of our actual being are welded together only in an external random way. In a genuine or normal person, i.e. wise and righteous, his true being - the contemplative mind - is turned exclusively and entirely to another, transcendent light; such a person truly lives only in the cosmos of ideas, and on earth his illusory life, shared with other people, is for him only dying. When this chronic dying ends in an acute one, the accidental connection breaks completely and unconditionally, and the philosophical mind freed from the prison of life, shaking off the dust from its feet, completely and without looking back passes into the ideal cosmos and enters into communication with other pure minds residing there.

I have always been struck by the dialogue "Phaedo", where this dualism is especially pronounced, a characteristic feature of naive heartlessness and indelicacy, which, I am sure, should be attributed to Plato, and not to Socrates. In one place of the conversation, the dying sage makes it clear, and in another, he directly tells his weeping disciples that separation from them does not upset him at all, since in the afterlife he expects to meet and talk with people much more interesting than they are. I think that if illness had not prevented Plato from being himself among these weeping disciples, then out of pride alone he would have been careful not to put such unceremonious consolation into the mouth of Socrates. But although in this particular case dualistic idealism could be expressed in a more subtle and elegant way, its essence was sufficiently determined in the mind of Plato, and it is quite clear that in this view there is no logical foothold for establishing a positive connection between the two worlds.

XXII. The ancestor of idealism did not find any connecting path between the essence of truth that dwells on intelligible heights and the local vale flooded with a stream of sensual deceptions. There was no connection between the perfect fullness of the gods of ideas and the hopeless emptiness of mortal life. There was no connection for the mind. But something irrational happened. A middle power appeared between gods and mortals - not a god and not a man, but some powerful demonic and heroic creature. His name is Eros, and his position is to build a bridge between heaven and earth and between them and the underworld. This is not a god, but the natural and supreme priest of the deity, i.e. the intermediary is the maker of the bridge. The younger brother and heir of Greece - the people of Rome - expresses the identity of these concepts in one word "pontifex", which means both a priest and a bridge builder - of course, not through ordinary rivers, but through the Styx and Acheron, through Phlegeton and Cocytus; and the same universal people preserved the tradition that the true name of his eternal city should be read in a sacred, or pontifical way - from right to left, and then it turns from strength into love: Roma, read in the original, Semitic way - Amor. Without the mediation of this mighty demon, nothing living can do; one way or another it has passed and will pass over his bridge. The only question is how a person will use this help, what share of heavenly blessings he will bring through the sacred building into mortal life.

When Eros enters an earthly being, he immediately transforms him; the lover feels in himself a new power of infinity, he has received a new great gift. But here inevitably there is a rivalry and confrontation between the two sides, or the aspirations of the soul - the higher and the lower: which of them will seize for itself, turn the mighty power of Eros in its favor in order to become infinitely fruitful, or giving birth in its own area and in its own direction. The lower soul wants endless generations in sensual immensity - a negative, evil infinity, the only one accessible to the victorious matter: the constant repetition of the same disappearing phenomena, perpetuated thirst and hunger without saturation, a living emptiness without filling, the infinity and eternity of Tantalus, Sisyphus and Danaid. The sensual soul pulls down the winged demon and puts on a blindfold over its eyes so that it maintains life in the empty order of material phenomena, so that it preserves and puts into action the law of evil infinity, so that it works as a service tool for the senseless immensity of material desires.

But what will the infinite power of Eros give to a higher, rational soul? Will it turn her to a mental contemplation of the truly existing, ideal cosmos? But this is already characteristic of the mind by its own nature and is done by it without the help of Eros. He himself, in his own essence, therefore, in the higher soul, is not a theoretical, or contemplative, but a creative, infinitely begetting force. What is and what gives the endless birth of Eros under the rule of the lower, sensual soul, is sufficiently known not only to people, but also to animals and plants. But what does it bring forth for that soul which has risen above the service of mortal life? Where can her offspring be, not from Apollo, not from Hermes, but from Eros? Not in the world of ideas and pure divine minds, for only the invariably true-existent lives there, which does not need and cannot be born in its own eternal realm. And to give birth in a non-existent is not befitting a winged and sighted demigod, when he is free, and not in captivity of the lower physical soul, which takes away both his wings and his eyesight. This means that for his true creativity there remains that place of contiguity or contact between the two worlds, which is called beauty.

According to Plato's definition, the true work of Eros is to give birth in beauty. What does this mean? If it were possible to attribute to Plato the point of view of the latest "esthetes", then this definition would be understandable as a somewhat stilted designation for artistic creation, or for the pursuit of arts. But such an understanding is completely inconsistent with the way of thinking of our philosopher in various epochs of his life. Art - and then only in a certain, elementary part of it - he could recognize as a secondary, preliminary manifestation of Eros, but by no means his main and final matter. From his ideal city, he banishes the most important forms of poetry, as well as all music (in our sense), with the exception of war songs. Nowhere does he show any interest in the plastic arts. "Birth in beauty" is in any case something much more important than the occupation of the arts. But what exactly? We will not find a direct answer in Plato. In the brilliant speech of Diotima, transmitted by Socrates in the "Feast", but belonging, of course, not to Diotima, and not to Socrates, but to Plato himself, he comes to the logically clear and promising thought that the work of Eros and in the best souls is an essential task, just as real, like a belly-fighting birth, but immeasurably higher in value, according to the true dignity of a person, as a rational being, as a sage and a righteous man - having reached this point, Plato seems to go astray and begins to wander along obscure and hopeless paths. His theory of love, unheard of in the pagan world, deep and bold, remains unsaid. But what he gives in it, combined with something that the world learned after him, allows us to finish the speech of Diotima, and thereby understand why Plato did not finish it. And having guessed the true reason for this understatement, we will see how it affected the further fate of Plato.

XXIII. If Eros is a positive and essential connection of two natures - divine and mortal - separated in the universe, but connected in man only externally, then what else can his true and final deed consist in, if not to make mortal nature itself immortal? After all, according to Plato, with the highest side of his being, with his rational soul, a person is already immortal - there is no business or task, and Eros has nothing to do with it. The erotic task can only consist in imparting immortality to that part of our nature that does not have it in itself, which is usually absorbed by the material flow of birth and death. Logically, Plato should have come to this conclusion. In both the Phaedrus and the Feast, he clearly and decisively distinguishes and contrasts the lower and higher deeds of Eros - his deed in the animal man and his deed in the true, super-animal man. At the same time, it must be remembered that in the higher man Eros acts, creates, gives birth, and does not think and only contemplates. This means that here, too, its direct subject is not intelligible ideas, but a complete bodily life, and the opposite between the two Eros is only the opposite of a moral and immoral attitude towards this life, with a corresponding opposite of the goals and results of action in it. If animal Eros, obeying a blind elemental attraction, reproduces life for a short time in the bodies of those who are constantly dying, then the highest human Eros should have its true goal of rebirth or resurrection of life forever in bodies taken away from the material process.

The Greek language is not poor in words denoting love, and if such a master of thought and word as Plato, philosophizing about the highest manifestation of human life, uses precisely the expression that applies to the lower, animal passion, then it is clear that all the opposition is in the direction of these two spiritual movements - spontaneous-animal and spiritual-human - does not abolish the real community in their basis, the nearest subject and material. Love, like erotic pathos - in a higher or lower direction, it doesn't matter - is not like love for God, love for humanity, love for parents and homeland, for brothers and friends - it is certainly love for corporeality, and one only asks - for what. What does love actually strive for in relation to corporeality: whether to repeat in it the same elemental facts of emergence and disappearance, the same hellish victory of ugliness, death and decay; or to inform the corporeal real life in beauty, immortality and incorruption?

Since Plato defines Eros' own task as birth in beauty, it is clear that his task is not resolved by the physical birth of bodies to mortal life - in which there is no beauty - and that he must turn to the rebirth or resurrection of this life to immortality. Plato does not say the latter, but it is precisely with this silence that his theory of love is a beautiful terry flower without fruit.

XXIV. If Eros, the son of Poros and Pania (divine abundance and material scarcity), when he is overcome and captivated by his lower maternal nature, in this fall and captivity wastes his strength in vain in her empty immensity and can only cover up the ugliness and perishability of her creatures with an instant view of life and beauty, then what does he do when the paternal principle overcomes the lower nature in him - what does Eros the conqueror do? But what can his very victory consist in, if not in the fact that he stops the process of dying and decay, fixes life in the instantly living and dying, and with the excess of his triumphant power revives, resurrects the dead? The triumph of the mind is in the pure contemplation of truth, the triumph of love is in the complete resurrection of life.

If Eros is the real mediator and pontifex - the maker of the bridge - between heaven, earth and the underworld, then his true goal is their complete and final connection. Where can this limitation come from for his work: give beauty, but only apparent beauty, superficial beauty of a fallen coffin; give life, but only a momentary, smoldering and dying! He could have had such poverty from his mother, but is he not the son of a rich father? What is this wealth, if not in the abounding fullness of life and beauty? Why does he not give them in full measure to everything that needs them, to everything that is dead and corruptible? And the nobility of his father's origin will not allow him to take back his gifts.

The real task of love is really to perpetuate the beloved, to really save him from death and decay, to finally regenerate him in beauty. The fatal erotic collapse of the philosophy of love could only consist in the fact that, having approached this task in thought, he stopped before it, did not dare to fully understand and accept it, and then, of course, actually abandoned it. Having experienced the strength of both Eros in a sense and recognizing with his mind the superiority of one of them, he did not give him victory in deed. He was satisfied with his mental image, forgetting that, by the very meaning of this thought, it is inextricably linked with the duty of its fulfillment, with the requirement that it not remain only a thought; forgetting his own consciousness that Eros "gives birth in beauty", i.e. in the tangible realization of the ideal, Plato left it to give birth only in speculation.

What is the reason for this failure? The most general: and he, having risen in theory above the majority of mortals, turned out to be an ordinary person in life. The clash of high demands with real weakness is more dramatic in Plato precisely because he was more clearly aware of these demands and could have overcome this weakness with his genius more easily than others.

XXV. And hell, and earth, and heaven, with special participation, follow a person at that fateful time when Eros inhabits him. It is desirable for each side to take for its own cause that excess of strength, spiritual and physical, which is revealed in the meantime in a person. Without a doubt, this is the most important middle moment of our lives. It is often very short, it can also be fragmented, repeated, stretched out for years and decades, but in the end no one escapes the fatal question: what and what to give those mighty wings that Eros gives us? This is a question about the main quality of the life path, about whose image and whose likeness a person will take or leave behind.

Five main paths are clearly distinguished here. The first, hellish path, which we will not talk about. The second, less terrible, but also unworthy of man, although quite common to him, is the path of animals, accepting Eros from one of his physical sides and acting as if the mere fact of a certain attraction is already a sufficient basis for his unlimited and indiscriminate satisfaction. Such a naive way of thinking and acting is quite excusable on the part of animals, and a person who indulges in it, in the end, is successfully likened to the corresponding creatures, even without undergoing the afterlife metamorphosis accepted by Plato. The third, truly human path of Eros is the one on which a reasonable measure of animal instincts relies - within the limits necessary for the preservation and progress of the human race. If we imitate the root words of Plato's Cratylus, then the word marriage could be derived from the fact that in this institution a person rejects, rejects his immediate animality and accepts, takes the norm of reason. Without this great institution, as without bread and wine, without fire, without philosophy, humanity could, of course, exist, but in a way unworthy of a human being, the custom of an animal.

XXVI. If a person in his essence could only be a person, if the so-called "human limitation" were not only a fact, but an indispensable and final law, obligatory for everyone and everyone, then marriage would forever be the highest and only way consistent with human dignity. love. But man stands out primarily among other creatures by this, that he wants and can become higher than himself; its distinguishing feature is precisely this noble instability, the capacity and aspiration for infinite growth and elevation. And we know that at first the history of not all people was satisfied with purely human ways and ways of life - this one was not satisfied either - generally necessary, respected and blessed, but basically only the natural, purely human path of Eros-Hymene, if not in beauty, then in the law of giving birth and raising new generations for the preservation and continuation of the human race - as long as it needs such a continuation. Dissatisfaction with this legal path among others for the most part - led to a sad return to the lower, lawless paths abandoned by human education - returned people to the prehistoric bestial custom, and even to the antediluvian "depths of Satan."

But some, deviating from the human path of marriage, honestly tried to replace it not with the lower lawless, but with the higher or super-lawful ways, of which the first (in general, the fourth) is asceticism (sexual, or celibacy), striving more than to limit the sensual drives, - to their complete neutralization by the negative efforts of the spirit in abstinence. Asceticism is a matter of very early historical origin and universal distribution, if not in the sense of success, then at least in the sense of intention and enterprise. It is remarkable, however, that the most complete historical organization of this path—Christian monasticism—is already accompanied by an involuntary realization that, for all its lofty dignity, this is not the highest, final, superhuman path of love.

Monasticism itself considers and calls itself the rank of angels, a true monk wears the image and likeness of an angel, he is "an angel in the flesh"; for the greatest monk of Western Christianity, St. Francis of Assisi, remains the nickname pater seraphicus, etc. But from the Christian point of view, the angel is not the highest of creatures: he is lower than man in essence and purpose, - man, as he should be and happens in certain cases. The representative of Christian humanity is recognized as the queen of angels, and in the Apostle Paul we read that all true Christians will judge angels as well. Angels do not judge people, but only perform the service of God in their presence.

If a person in essence and advantage is the image and likeness of God, then wearing the image and likeness of a ministering spirit can be for him only a temporary, preliminary honor. Those same Eastern Church Fathers who both praised and established the "angelic order" - monasticism, they also recognized the highest goal and lot of a person as a perfect union with a deity - deification or deification.

Indeed, asceticism cannot be the highest path of love for a person. Its goal is to protect the power of the divine Eros in man from being plundered by rebellious material chaos, to keep this power pure and intact. Keep clean - but for what? The cleansing of Eros is useful and necessary, especially when over the long centuries of human history they have become so terribly polluted. But purity alone is not enough for a son of divine abundance. It requires full strength for living creativity.

So, besides and above the four indicated paths of love - two cursed and two blessed - there must be for a person a fifth, perfect and final path of truly regenerating and deifying love. I can only indicate here the basic conditions that determine the beginning and the goal of this higher path. The Eternal God created man, in His image and likeness: He created them husband and wife. This means that the image and likeness of God, that which is subject to restoration, does not refer to half, not to the sex of a person, but to the whole person, i.e. to a positive union of masculine and feminine principles - true androgyny - without external confusion of forms - which is ugliness - and without internal separation of personality and life - which is imperfection and the beginning of death. Another principle of death, eliminated by the higher path of love, is the opposition of the spirit to the body. And in this respect, it is about the whole person, and the true beginning of his restoration is the beginning of the spiritual and bodily. But just as it is impossible for a deity to spiritually and bodily regenerate a person without the participation of the person himself - it would be a chemical way, or some other way, but not a human one - it is just as impossible for a person to create superhumanity out of himself - it's the same as lift oneself by the hair; it is clear that man can become divine only by the real power of not becoming, but eternally existing divinity, and that the path of higher love, which perfectly unites the masculine with the feminine, the spiritual with the corporeal, must already at the very beginning be a union or interaction of the divine with the human, or is there a divine-human process. .

Love, in the sense of erotic pathos, always has corporality as its object; but corporality worthy of love, i.e. e. beautiful and immortal, does not grow by itself from the earth and does not fall ready from the sky, but is obtained by a spiritual-physical and divine-human feat.

XXVII. The three indicated concepts that define the highest path of love - the concepts of androgynism, spiritual corporeality and God-humanity - we also find in Plato, although only in a vague form.

The first - in the myth put into the mouth of Aristophanes ("Feast"), the second - in the definition of beauty ("Phaedrus"), and the third - in the very concept of Eros, as a mediating force between the Divine and mortal nature (Diotima's speech in "Feast") . But in Plato these three principles appear as fleeting fantasies. He did not bind them together and did not put them in the real beginning of the higher life path, and therefore the end of this path - the resurrection of dead nature for eternal life - remained hidden for him, although it logically followed from his own thoughts. He approached the concept of the creative work of Eros, understood it as a life task - "birth in beauty", - but did not determine the final content of this task, not to mention its implementation.

Plato's Eros, whose nature and general purpose is so beautifully described by the philosopher-poet, did not fulfill this purpose of his, did not connect heaven with earth and hell, did not build any real bridge between them, and indifferently flew away empty-handed into the world of ideal speculation.

And the philosopher remained on earth - also empty-handed - on an empty earth where truth does not live.

Plato did not master the infinite power of Eros for the real cause of the rebirth of his own and alien nature. Everything remains as before in reality, and we do not see Plato himself approaching the divine, or even the angelic rank. But a particle of that abundance remained in him, which the son of Poros inherited from his father. Plato could no longer return to that estranged idealism that does not want to know life. Not without reason, with all the strength and depth of his individuality, he experienced and rethought that feeling, which already in itself, already as a subjective state, removes at least for a while the unconditional line between the ideal world and real life, builds at least an air bridge between heaven and earth.

"The Life Drama of Plato" is a work by Vladimir Solovyov, referring to the late period of his work. It was written in 1898 - just two years before his death. It is known that until his death Solovyov worked on the translation of Plato's dialogues, but he did not have time to complete this work. Interest in Platonic idealism can be seen in Solovyov during his years of study at Moscow University. The idealism of Plato and the Neoplatonists had a huge impact on the worldview of this Russian philosopher. Perhaps, of all the famous Russian thinkers of the 19th century, there is no one who would be as well versed in ancient philosophy as Vladimir Solovyov and would make as many borrowings from it. All Solovyov's teaching about God-manhood is permeated with the Platonic spirit and, including many heterogeneous and often contradictory elements, is based on the idea of ​​the Supreme Good. Therefore, Solovyov's reading of Plato's philosophy, his interpretation of the genesis of the views of the ancient philosopher helps to clarify many aspects of his own teaching.

The starting point of Plato's Life Drama was the question of the chronological sequence of the dialogues of the Greek thinker. First of all, Solovyov critically analyzes the options for periodization of dialogues put forward by European researchers - Schleiermacher and Munch. These hypotheses, in his opinion, are too schematic - both researchers are trying to put all of Plato's work in the Procrustean bed of the student's scheme. Solovyov objects to such a formal approach, arguing that the philosophical system is not so much the result of speculative constructions as the fruit of the life experience of a particular person. Therefore, V. Solovyov proposes to look for the key to solving this problem in the personality of Plato himself.

In order to reconstruct the portrait of this ancient thinker, Solovyov refers to the figure of his illustrious teacher, Socrates. As you know, the influence of this witty dialectician, the seeker of universal virtue and the martyr of philosophy, on his student, Plato, was enormous. Not without reason in the vast majority of Platonic dialogues the main character bears his name. According to Solovyov, in addition to deep respect, Plato also felt for his teacher a feeling akin to filial love.

But, the stronger this feeling was, the more terrible the blow for Plato was the harsh sentence handed down by the inhabitants of Athens to his beloved mentor. Here Solovyov proposes to figure out why Socrates was still tried, and how it happened that the most talented person of his time was sentenced to death.

According to Solovyov, the death of Socrates was one of the most tragic and significant events in the entire history of the ancient world. What is the historical role of this philosopher? To answer this question, Solovyov turns to the foundations of the political and social structure of ancient Greek society. He emphasizes that the law of the ancestors and paternal religion (Θειος νομος - νομος Βασιλευς) lay at the basis of the entire polis statehood of ancient Greece. The stability of the polis structure depended entirely on their stability, just as the sky over the Oecumene rested on the shoulders of the Atlanteans. However, the development of philosophy has significantly shaken the ancient authorities. Philosophers, motivated by the love of wisdom, at the same time acted as the overthrowers of the old gods and detractors of the established order. Pious antiquity was replaced by scientific skepticism, and the “universal fullness of the gods” of Thales and the “Mind” of Anaxagoras began to encroach on the place of the Olympians.

Solovyov notes that the origin of philosophy in the Greek colonies and its further flowering in Athens were natural phenomena. Only at the meeting place of different cultures, in the conditions of the proximity of different beliefs and ways of life, could critical thinking be born, aimed at searching among all this diversity for truly universal knowledge. Generation after generation, from harmless lovers of wisdom and eccentric natural philosophers, this critical thinking has developed into the highest forms of skepticism represented by the sophists.

Solovyov emphasizes that by the time of Socrates, the sophists, who embodied the highest manifestation of skepticism, were ardent critics of the traditional social order. However, between them and a kind of "conservatives" who stood guard over the laws and religion of their ancestors, there was much in common when a third party appeared in this dispute in the person of moral philosophers. Socrates, according to Solovyov, most consistently pursued the strengths of both opposing sides. On the one hand, he perfectly mastered the art of dialectics, and on the other hand, all his thoughts and actions were an expression of the highest piety. And yet it was he who was destined to become a target for both opposing parties.

The main reason why Socrates acquired many enemies in both camps, according to Solovyov, was banal envy. After all, unlike the "conservatives", he did not confine himself to lengthy discussions about piety and the inviolability of laws, but also embodied divine morality in his own life. He excelled the Sophists in that he not only and not so much practiced the art of argument, but used his dialectics in search of Truth. Unlike his opponents, Socrates had ideas based on the idea of ​​the Greater Good. Faith in this Supreme Good was for Socrates faith in the rationality of the laws that govern the world, and in the ability of a person to partake of this Good by excluding everything that prevents him from comprehending it. Here Solovyov draws a parallel between the famous aphorism of Socrates "I know that I know nothing" and the main theme of the Evangelical Sermon on the Mount - the principle of "poverty in spirit".

However, the ignorance of Socrates was not the self-satisfied ignorance of obscurantists and sophists. His ignorance has become the starting point of the search, a kind of origin, from which a person aspires to the Truth. The lofty ideals of Socrates, his lively mind and talent as an orator aroused envy both among the champions of morality and among the keepers of dialectical art. And the result of this envy was, no less, a death sentence. It is this sad ending of the life of Socrates that Solovyov serves as the plot of another play - the life drama of Plato.

Vladimir Solovyov draws an interesting parallel between this tragic event and the murder of the father of Shakespeare's Hamlet, which, in turn, has a prototype in the ancient Greek myth of Orestes. Solovyov notes that in Shakespeare's tragedy all the action revolves around the personality of Hamlet; and in the myth of Orestes, the protagonist becomes a plaything in the hands of fate. Plato's situation, according to Solovyov, is a unique case in world history. Here both a strong personality and inexorable fate are equally manifested. On the one hand, the death of Socrates was the result of a clash of two opposing elements - the inertia of traditional society and the free spirit of rational morality. But, at the same time, at the heart of this historical confrontation was one of the most extraordinary people of his time and a talented heir to Socratic morality.

The death of Socrates, according to Solovyov, was a severe shock for Plato. And, in addition to deep sorrow, it caused a whole conceptual revolution in his soul. Here Solovyov continues his parallel with Hamlet, paraphrasing the famous question of the Danish prince: “ For Plato, the question was: to be or not to be truth on earth ...» Note that here Solovyov enters the area of ​​assumptions. His main guess is that the death of Socrates brought Plato not only natural mental pain, but also a new philosophy.

From the point of view of Vladimir Solovyov, Plato's deep shock and contempt for the world that killed his beloved teacher, on the one hand, and Socrates' idea of ​​the Supreme Good, on the other, gave rise to the Platonic doctrine of two worlds. To the mortal world, the world of sensory phenomena, Plato opposed the other world - the space of the ideal and eternal.

Developing the idea of ​​dividing the worlds, Plato, according to Solovyov, came to the Eastern ideal of asceticism. His travels to Asia and Egypt, as well as his great interest in the sciences, became a kind of escape from the ephemeral, vicious, imperfect world to the eternal, divine and perfect world.

However, after some time, Plato's ascetic principles receded into the background. Solovyov, as before, is looking for the reason for this change in the vicissitudes of the life of the ancient philosopher. The key to resolving this issue, in his opinion, lies in two dialogues that stand out from the rest of his work. We are talking about "Phaedra" and "Feast". It is in them that Plato first addresses the theme of love.

The love that, according to Solovyov's bold intuition, embraced Plato after a long period of his intellectual seclusion, brought his worldview to a new level. Feeling helped the philosopher to comprehend the universal law, which he still could not comprehend. Arguing in his "Feast" about the essence of Eros, he emphasizes the binary nature of this productive force. Love for him is divided into carnal love, the symbol of which is "Aphrodite of the People" (Αφϱοδιτη πανδεμος), and perfect, ideal love, the only possible one for a true philosopher.

Vladimir Solovyov briefly touches on the topic of homosexual love, which in the above dialogue is given preference over heterosexual love. Here is an excerpt from The Feast: The Eros of the heavenly Aphrodite goes back to the goddess, who, firstly, is involved only in the masculine principle, but not in any way in the feminine - it is not without reason that this is love for young men - and secondly, she is older and alien to criminal insolence. That is why those obsessed with such love turn to the male sex, giving preference to what is stronger by nature and endowed with a greater mind. (Plato. Pier, 181,b) From Solovyov's bashful allusions, one can guess that the object of Plato's love, as he suggests, was a man (or a young man). However, Solovyov tries to obscure this embarrassing circumstance rather, turning to philosophical content that has nothing to do with impartial (and from the point of view of Christian morality - sinful) moments of Plato's biography.

So, according to Solovyov, in the person of the god Eros, Plato finds a reconciliator and mediator between the two worlds - the earthly world and the heavenly world. Only through communion (by analogy with Christian communion) with divine love does the human soul have the opportunity to avoid the evil infinity of birth-death inherent in everything earthly. Only love can overcome the suffering and death that reign in our world.

However, what is the task of Eros in human life? Indeed, according to Plato, for the contemplation of the Highest Good, every soul needs its own mind. The soul also does not need immortality, since it already possesses it. In the same "Feast" Plato defines the main task of Eros as a birth in beauty. Here Solovyov claims that the ancient philosopher was never able to bring his reasoning to its logical conclusion. Solovyov himself, developing the unfinished thought of Plato, comes to the idea of ​​an absolute victory over death. For Solovyov, the main goal of divine Eros lies precisely in the abolition of death as a phenomenon, as well as in the acquisition of spiritual integrity and physical immortality by a person, in the achievement of God-humanity.

Here we are faced with a theme that plays a key role in the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov. For him, the choice of the soul between heavenly Eros and earthly Eros corresponds to the traditional choice in the Christian tradition between life in God and life in the world. He gives his five paths of man in Eros: the infernal path, the path of animals, the path of man, the path of the ascetic, and, finally, the path of the god-man. God-manhood, in Solovyov's philosophy, is the goal and crown of human history. It is both a return to the roots and the finale of the world drama. The God-man is the new Adam, the perfect androgyne, who has regained his former unity and absolute perfection.

Slightly digressing, we note that the development of this theme can be found both in the work of Russian symbolists and in the philosophy of Nikolai Berdyaev. In his article "The Metaphysics of Sex and Love" he writes: " In Plato's heavenly Aphrodite, one already feels the breath of Christian Eros, mysterious to this day, medieval romanticism and the deepest, possible only after Christ, the teachings of Vl. Solovyov about love as a way to individual immortality» . The desire for the androgyne as the goal of mankind brings together the worldviews of these two Russian philosophers. It is curious that the very concept of androgyne (ανδρόγυνος) comes from Greek mythology, and the story about it is present in the same Platonic "Feast".

So, not having reached the logical end in his reasoning, not daring to think of the most important thing, Plato directs his creative energy to transform the world around him according to some ideal model. He becomes the architect of utopia. Moreover, according to Solovyov, utopias are mediocre. He takes samples for his monumental structure from the same imperfect world (for example, he borrows some features of the political system of ancient Sparta). In the interpretation of Solovyov, the spirit of heavenly Eros, which awakened in him the initial creative impulse, leaves the thinker. Plato constructs a state designed to embody an "earthly paradise", but as a result he invents a military dictatorship based on a rigid caste system and self-organizing through clearly regulated legal norms.

As a result, all Plato's attempts to implement his project of an ideal state in Sicily fail. Solovyov notices the tragic mockery of Plato's fate - by the end of his life, he actually justifies the death of Socrates. After all, having invented the law that anyone who criticizes or shakes the authority of domestic laws, both in relation to the gods and in relation to public order, must be executed, Plato takes the side of the once so hated murderers of his beloved teacher.

In this Solovyov sees the tragic finale of Plato's life drama. With bitter pathos, he proclaims: If Socrates brought philosophy down from heaven and gave it into the hands of people, then his greatest disciple lifted it high above his head and from a height threw it to the ground, into street dirt and rubbish.» .

In "The Life Drama of Plato" we are faced with the interpretation of a philosopher who is accustomed to thinking, first of all, eschatologically. Solovyov cannot approach historical events in a neutral way, engaging only in the analysis of facts in isolation from historical dialectics. For him, the time of Socrates and Plato is, first of all, a tragic break of two epochs - the world of traditional values ​​and the world of universal humanity that follows it. The premonition of a new worldview, which was later fully revealed in Christianity, becomes in the eyes of Solovyov the main motive for the activity of these pagan philosophers.

This collapse of established values, oppressive in their fragmentation and incompleteness, is marked by the search for Divine Wisdom, the main attribute of the One God, in which the world split into parts can find salvation. The doctrine of Sophia the Wisdom of God, which runs like a red thread through all the work of Vladimir Solovyov, is reflected in the Platonic image of Heavenly Aphrodite, presented in Plato's "Feast". Philosophy, as love for wisdom, turns out for Solovyov to be precisely love for Sophia, for Heavenly Aphrodite. And it is not for nothing that the theme of love in Plato's work, bypassed by many of his other researchers, comes to the fore with Vladimir Solovyov.

Bearing in mind the ardent, amorous temperament of Plato, Solovyov points to two turning points in his worldview, connecting each of them with the deep personal experiences of the philosopher. The first point is the tragic and significant death of Socrates, which, according to Solovyov, has a tremendous impact on Plato, giving rise to a radical rejection of the existing order of things and plunging him into the search for a universal Good, eternal and independent of the vagaries of fate. The second turning point is the return to life under the auspices of a new love, love for Heavenly Aphrodite.

Vladimir Solovyov emphasizes the personal and even intimate nature of Plato's mysticism, seeing the explanation for the main turns in the development of his worldview in the vicissitudes of the life of the ancient philosopher. Moreover, the life of this man is a special moment in the historical game, which ended, in the end, rather sadly. The image of Heavenly Aphrodite appears in Plato's life only for a short time, and then he is carried away by the senseless search for a rational formula for human happiness, embodied in a political utopia. At the end of the play and at the end of his life, Plato is so far from the ideals of his teacher that he can easily be transferred to the camp of his opponents and murderers.

As noted earlier, Plato's Life Drama, despite the academic status of its author, is difficult to consider as a strictly scientific study. Rejecting a purely rational approach, Vladimir Solovyov uses his usual method of philosophical reflection, which allows for strong simplification, free interpretations, and unfounded assumptions. The historical research of Vladimir Solovyov is full of dogmatism. He not only leaves out the specific features and originality of the culture under consideration, but also repels in his eschatological interpretation from a very specific perception of reality, which is alien even to many representatives of orthodox Christianity. For example, the main mistake of Plato in his vision of the Heavenly Aphrodite, according to Solovyov, follows from his inability to understand the main function of this face of the Divine as a force that restores to man his integrity and leads to the dominance of Eternal Truth, the final victory over death and the triumph of God-manhood. Discussing the principles of androgyny, spiritual corporeality and God-humanity, Solovyov writes: “ But in Plato these three principles appear as fleeting fantasies. He did not bind them together and did not put them in the real beginning of the higher life path, and therefore the end of this path - the resurrection of dead nature for eternal life - remained hidden for him, although it logically followed from his own thoughts.» . Outside the Christian paradigm, such a reproach may seem highly dubious.

As for Solovyov's reconstruction of Plato's life itself, here we observe several unsubstantiated assumptions that enhance the dramatic effect of the narrative, but do not have any significant substantiation. These include the assumption that Plato was close to suicide after the death of Socrates, and his sudden love, which brought him out of the ascetic phase of life, and, by the way, the presence of this very period of solitary asceticism. The deliberate inflating of the theme of love, which in Solovyov's interpretation becomes the core of all Platonic philosophy, sometimes looks like wishful thinking. In such moments, the Russian philosopher can be likened to some of the fathers of the church, who, when writing their works, are guided, first of all, by their own mystical experience. Therefore, representing an exceptional aesthetic value and a wonderful material for studying the history of Russian philosophy, "Plato's Life Drama" can by no means be accepted as a historical study.

However, such reproaches are not entirely justified, since dry academicism has never been close to Vladimir Solovyov. To his contemporaries, he seemed more like a Christian mystic, a preacher of the religion of God-manhood, than an impartial researcher.

Thus, it makes sense to consider all of Solovyov's work, including the monograph under consideration, in its entirety, without subjecting it to a critical assessment from the standpoint of rationalism. The life path of Plato in the interpretation of Solovyov is not so much a reconstruction of real historical reality as an experience of philosophical reflection based on a deep religious feeling.

In addition to a direct reading, "Plato's Life Drama" can also be considered as a kind of autobiography of Vladimir Solovyov. Of course, the autobiography is involuntary. After all, the portrait of Plato, painted in it by Solovyov, in some ways resembles the image of the author of the work himself. For example, Solovyov, like his Plato, is hard pressed by the fact of the fragmentation of the world and, consequently, its imperfection. The whole movement of his philosophy is aimed at uniting, spiritualizing and deifying the world.

Of course, the biography of Vladimir Solovyov as a whole is not similar to the life story of the ancient thinker he outlined. Nevertheless, one can find in it a period of wandering in search of Sophia (we are talking about his English studies, Egyptian adventures and travels in Europe). There is the same craving for asceticism, the preaching of high morality and mystical experience. In addition, Vladimir Solovyov turns out to be similar to his Plato in that he vehemently condemns him. Namely, in unsuccessful attempts to translate their teaching into reality. After all, one can see much in common between Plato's Sicilian adventures and Vladimir Solovyov's project to unite the churches.

But it is not in these common searches and failures that the main similarity between Vladimir Solovyov and the portrait of the ancient Greek thinker he painted lies. They are united by a single, all-consuming impulse for love, love for God and through God - for the world. And philosophy in their worldview appears in its original sense of love for Sophia, the Wisdom of God.

Solovyov Vladimir Sergeevich. Life drama of Plato // Collected works: In 10 volumes. St. Petersburg, 1911 - 1913. T. 9. S. 198.

Solovyov Vladimir Sergeevich. Decree. op. S. 216.

Solovyov Vladimir Sergeevich. Decree. op. 224

Plato. Op. in 4 volumes. St. Petersburg, 2007. Vol. 2. S. 109

Berdyaev N.A. Eros and Personality: The Philosophy of Sex and Love. M., 1989. S. 23.

Solovyov Vladimir Sergeevich. Decree. op. S. 240.

Solovyov Vladimir Sergeevich. Decree. op. S. 235.

Vladimir Sergeevich Soloviev, two years before his death in 1898, completes the philosophical study "Plato's Life Drama", after which he publishes the most important essay "The Life and Works of Plato" (a preface to the publication of the "Creations of Plato" translated by him from Greek), where he comprehends the translated by him a collection of Plato's works and depicts his life and creative path. In addition to a new explanation of the well-known plot of Plato's life drama, caused by one of the greatest tragedies in world history, the death of Socrates, Solovyov considered it necessary and important to show on Plato's dialogues the deployment of subsequent stages of the drama that thickened and grew in his life and work, up to the catastrophic completion of the path of the great Greek philosopher. Vladimir Frantsevich Ern attributed Solovyov to those who managed to free Plato from the heaps of scholastic rubbish of Platonic literature in the 19th century and begin to read his works “with their own understanding and with sympathy for “congenial” comprehension,” which previous researchers were not very successful at.

Statement of the problem by Solovyov

While translating Plato's texts, Solovyov asks himself the question: in what order should they be considered. At that time there was no generally accepted order, but only a few theories, the theories presented by Schleiermacher and Munch deserved special attention. Solovyov believed that by finding out the chronological or logical sequence of Plato's works, he would be able to penetrate much deeper into his philosophy. As Solovyov himself writes about this: "I had to look for the inner principle of unity, embracing the totality of Plato's creations and giving each of them its relative significance and place in general." Schleiermacher believed that all Plato's dialogues are part of one whole, while Munch argued that the task of all creations equally is the idealization of Socrates.

Solovyov was not satisfied with these explanations, since their inconsistency immediately becomes obvious to him, caused in many respects by the "cabinet" approach to the issue. Solovyov sees the direct integrity of all Plato's dialogues, since he believes that the life of the philosopher himself, like that of any person, is integral and is a kind of drama. It is precisely this drama that Solovyov deals with in his essay, which we will examine in as much detail as possible below.

The researcher of Solovyov's philosophy Abramov in his article "V. Solovyov's Philosophy of Unity and the Traditions of Russian Platonism" draws attention to the frequency of Solovyov's use of the phrase: "the starting point of Platonism", Abramov believes that this phrase is the key in many philosophical and theological treatises of the writer, and in Plato's Life Drama, this phrase is "in the very style and tone of philosophizing"

Introduction

The work of Vladimir Solovyov reviewed by us contains in many respects a Christian background. Solovyov, among other things, draws many parallels between ancient Greek philosophy and Christian teaching. Indeed, the reflections of the first philosophers on the nature of the gods lead them to positions that would later be recognized and approved by Christianity. So, Solovyov notes that the first Greek philosopher - Thales of Miletus - claims the divinity of everything that exists: "everything is full of gods." And, as we can see, the next generation of philosophers are already coming to the idea of ​​monotheism. Heraclitus introduces the concept of the Logos as a single world cosmic law and, weeping from universal delusion, becomes a hermit, like future Christian monks; Socrates accepts innocent death as truth and fights for the morality of people. Solovyov notes that in the relationship between the philosophy of the Hellenes and Christianity, the philosophy of Plato occupies a special place. It is Plato who sums up all these "divine" theories and creates a new, practically Christian view of the surrounding world and its spiritual background. Plato, continuing and developing the work of his teacher, discovers the perfect world of ideas opposite to impermanent matter. Plato also traces the qualitative difference between the One and the world of matter, which is an absolutely Christian idea and is opposed to pagan emanation. This idea is important for our essay also because it emphasizes a certain "Christian vector" of Plato's teaching, which Solovyov considers.

Among other things, in the "Life Drama of Plato" Solovyov examines in detail that part of Plato's teaching, which subsequently led to its significant contradiction with Christianity.

Let's try to highlight a few main ideas in the text of "Plato's Life Drama":

Plato and Socrates

Studying the life of Plato, it is impossible not to pay attention to the role that Socrates played in it. It is Socrates, according to the author, who "dramatizes" the life of Plato and is the "corner stone" of almost all of his theories. Speaking about Socrates in his narrative, Solovyov pays special attention to how Socrates contrasts the theory of universal relativity of the sophists and the "lazy dark faith" of the guardians, his own sighted wisdom and bright faith. Socrates comes to the conclusion that not only truth, but also morality is the same for all people, and such a decision is very constructive. If you follow the sophists, then all the foundations of the state and morality collapse, which inevitably entails absolute chaos.

However, Socrates was engaged not so much in science as in the development of human morality. Plato also begins to engage in moral teaching, but due to an error in reasoning about the actions of Eros, his morality collapses as a result. Solovyov, indignantly, notes the provisions of Plato, outlined by him in the "Republic": the defense of slavery, the presentation of hostility between the barbarians and the Greeks as the norm, the preaching of "animal" sex relations, the call to kill free-thinking poets and weak babies, in fact becoming the first ideologist of totalitarianism.

Plato, shocked by the death of Socrates, goes through a period of solitude in Megara, however, after a few years, he suddenly begins to be very active: he tries to build an ideal state, establishes the Academy, takes part in political life, thinks about social theories. Solovyov in his essay seeks an explanation for such a diametrical transition and sees the reason for the contradiction between the philosophy of Plato and Christianity. Thus, Solovyov points to the direct connection between philosophy and the life of a thinker, finding in their connection the cause of "Plato's drama".

Platonic dualism

It was the death of Socrates that contributed to the emergence of a dualistic character in the worldview of Plato, Solovyov notes that such a division is a kind of justification for the non-ideality of our world. We will touch on this issue in more detail below.

Eros, "giving birth in beauty"

Plato ceases to see the impossibility of the coexistence of the ideal world with the material one and finds a certain transition between them. This transition is carried out through the demigod Eros. In the dialogues "Feast" and "Phaedrus" Eros is presented as a creature whose business is "to give birth in beauty." We are talking about eternal life, which Eros is able to give. Inhabiting a person in love, he transforms him and bestows immortality if the latter chooses the right path. Solovyov notes five possible paths: two unworthy people (“devilish” and “animal”), two befitting people (asceticism and marriage) and the last, possible only with God, path of deification. By "deification" is also meant immortality.

Here Solovyov sees precisely the moment at which Plato "stumbled." After all, if the rational component of the human soul already belongs to the world of ideas - that is, it is immortal - and it does not need the action of Eros, then the material component of a person just needs it. This idea of ​​the resurrection of the flesh is preached by Christianity. And it is precisely in this question that the essence of his disagreement with the Platonists lies, who, completely denying the value of the bodily, could insist both on an ascetic way of life (without deification, of course), and on the path of debauchery.

Text review. Narrative analysis

Let us delve into the text in more detail and try, following the author, to analyze what he has stated.

Philosophy originates in Greece, in his text Solovyov, based on ancient Greek mythology, calls it the miraculous gift of Hermes Trismegistus. The term "philosophy" is literally translated from Greek as "love of wisdom", it is a spiritual trait, while the goal of philosophy is the pursuit of the Good, the knowledge of Truth. According to Solovyov, philosophy at that time can be regarded as a kind of alternative to paganism close to Christianity. The philosophy presented in this way, if not rejected, then in many ways distorted generally accepted views and could not but cause a corresponding reaction from others. Various oppositions to philosophy appear and several "anti-philosophical" groups emerge, such as the Guardians and the Sophists. The Keepers blindly rushed to defend the "tottering holy laws of the community", not possessing the Truth, they did not want to possess it. According to Solovyov, their faith was “dark, lazy and immobile.” Sophists, not possessing the Truth, argue that the Truth does not exist at all, proving their point of view, although eloquent, but not skillful from a logical point of view, reasoning, full of mental traps Almost all pre-Socratic philosophers were interested in the fundamental principles of being, the first Ionians saw the fundamental principles first in matter, later in various non-material forces, such as the "World Mind" of Anaxagoras, the atoms of Democritus, etc. Solovyov considers pre-Socratic philosophy to be largely relative and incomplete, although he agrees with the fact that there is some truth in all these teachings.

Solovyov believes that Socrates was closest to the Truth. It was Socrates who most clearly illustrated the division into truth-seeking philosophers and those who consider relativity as a universal principle of the sophists. The Sophists did nothing but deny almost everything, while Socrates, objecting to them, acted as an educator, although he was regarded by many as a rebel. Socrates proves the absurdity of the points of view of his opponents and their mental failure in general. Quoting Solovyov: "He [Socrates] himself was a living insult to bad conservatives and bad critics - as the personification of truly protective and truly critical principles." Socrates proved the complete failure of the sophists and conservatives, while, if not for Socrates, these parties would have been completely self-sufficient. The main problem for the conservatives was that in dealing with Socrates they had to prove their own blind faith as opposed to the sighted faith of Socrates. To quote Solovyov: "The faith of the obscurants is only a deceptive mask put on their real unbelief." Socrates saw them wrong not in their reasoning and criticism, but in the fact that this reasoning and this criticism were clumsy and bad. Realizing their wrong and the impossibility of destroying Socrates spiritually, the obscurants decide to do it physically.

Socrates believed in the existence of Pure Reason, in a certain existence of the Unconditional Good, and his faith was largely rational. Socrates argues his point of view with the words: "you can not look for something if you do not believe that it is." From this we can conclude that philosophizing requires the so-called spiritual poverty (the awareness of one's ignorance and the desire for knowledge), which Christ will later speak of in His Sermon on the Mount.

Socrates can be called a supporter of Platonic philosophy, however, not his philosophy itself.

Now let's move on to Plato himself. Plato was one of the students of Socrates. The death of a teacher was a real shock to Plato. Solovyov compares Plato with Shakespeare's Hamlet, who loses his father and, being bound by difficult circumstances, is forced to make a difficult moral choice. Before Plato becomes a much more serious choice, in which he, like Hamlet, was involved in cruel circumstances. Plato asks the question "is Truth capable of existing on earth?". Indeed, whether the society that mercilessly cracks down on its bearer is capable of accepting the truth is obviously not capable. It is this discovery made by Plato that is a kind of apogee of his life drama.

After such a tragic discovery, Plato had a choice: either to submit to the cruel reality, or to find some way out of this situation. Plato considered both options.

The first way was passive. Shocked by what has happened, Plato leaves for Megara and seriously contemplates suicide. After some time, Plato begins to see suicide as a manifestation of weakness, and just as, realizing that Socrates would not support him in this, he refuses to commit suicide.

Solovyov writes that Plato had a thought: either there is no place for the righteous in our world, or a huge space for action opens before him. Realizing this, Plato begins an active philosophical activity. The so-called "active" path provided for several options for getting out of the situation: either to punish the murderers of justice, as it would seem, justice requires, or to resort to "resignation", as the Christian point of view would require. Let us first consider the path of revenge: again, Solovyov here again cites the example of Hamlet, who was clothed with the law of blood feud, and was in somewhat similar circumstances, and, nevertheless, did not at all consider such a decision to be the only correct one. The loss of Plato is much more tragic, "by the will of the fatherly city, he lost not his blood father, but his spiritual father." And Socrates was executed not for a crime, but precisely for his virtue: "he was killed precisely for her, for the truth, for the determination to fulfill a moral duty to the end." Standing on the verge of death, Socrates says very revealing words: “I respect and love you, men of Athens, but I will listen to God more than you, and as long as there is breath and strength in me, I will not stop philosophizing and exhorting you and denouncing you with my own words. speeches." It would be logical for Plato to immediately punish the perpetrators of such flagrant injustice with the most severe methods, but he chooses a different way to solve this situation. He decides to approach the problem philosophically.

And again the author compares Plato with Hamlet. Only if Hamlet's speeches are artistic, then Plato argues fundamentally. He builds a whole theory that no one has considered before him. He presents a completely new and unusual worldview, which simultaneously proves the existence of Good and Truth and, at the same time, their absence and impossibility in our usual conditions. That is why Plato's philosophy was of a dualistic nature and implied the existence of two worlds: ours, an inferior, imperfect world and a bright and ideal "world of ideas". With the world of ideas, we can sometimes come into contact weakly, engaging in philosophy and reflection, but it is infinitely far from our alien reality, and it can only be reached after death. From this arises the view of philosophy as a constant dying. Solovyov notes that Socrates taught about the good as a part of our being, while Plato considered good as the complete opposite of our being.

Let's take a closer look at Plato's philosophy. For the emergence of this philosophy, Soloviev sees at least two premises: a large one and a small one. The "big" premise in the teachings of Socrates, the "smaller" one in his death. It is thanks to his genius that Plato notices this "lesser" premise, it was he who realized that the influence of the dead Socrates is much stronger than the influence of the living Socrates, since the spiritual legacy left by him is truly invaluable. Devoted to the highest spiritual interests, Plato overcomes personal anguish and takes on fruitful actions. The death of Socrates gives rise to a completely new view, called "Platonic Idealism". The world where the righteous die is definitely impossible to call correct and real, by the murder of Socrates the world proves once again its negative essence, the existing order rejects goodness. If Socrates projected his philosophy from heaven to earth, then Plato does the opposite. Calling the bodily life a “coffin” and a “dungeon for the spirit,” Plato calls on a person to renounce all earthly affairs. The dying of earthly interests gives way to a mind contemplating something unconditional in itself. Society not only does not carry wisdom and truth, but when confronted with it immediately buries it. If Socrates considers the Good, trying it on society, then Plato considers only its theoretical existence. Such a desperate view of society is especially strongly expressed in the works "George", "Menon", "Phaedo" and the second book of the "State".

Having passed the first stage, Platonic philosophy passed into the second, at this stage the view of society is much less biased. In the works "Phaedrus" and "Feast" we see his already held view, these works, probably, can be called the best of Plato. From this, the question may well arise: why does Plato begin to consider love, while his philosophy does not come into contact with its study in any way? However, if we look at the teachings of Plato in more depth, we will notice that love most clearly proves its action by its example. Plato, according to his dualistic teaching, divided love into two types, moreover, he believed that Aphrodite also had two bearers of this love. The first earthly Aphrodite is the personification of vice and base attraction, while the second Aphrodite Urania is the image of high and pure love, which, however, is not achievable.

The author notes that, faced with such an example, one should obviously think about the real essence of everything, because many things can have both high and low qualities at the same time, does it follow from this that darkness generates light and vice versa? This question marks the so-called middle drama of Plato. It is this mutual transition of things that proves the impossibility of the existence of a bridge between the light and our worlds. Even a person, belonging, to some extent, to both of these worlds, is not at all a link between them. A real person has a mind that contemplates, searching for the truth, but one can truly be close to the Truth and truly contemplate it only after death.

A kind of mediator between the two worlds, a kind of crucible of purification, is Eros. Touching something earthly, Eros transforms it, like the mythical king Midas. However, Eros is also the bearer of unjustified expectations and disappointments. Only the sensual soul is able to control the actions of this demonic creature. Plato says: "The true business of Eros is to give birth in beauty," in other words, to create beauty. It is beauty that is the contact of two worlds. However, Plato is limited to this characteristic and does not fully reveal the essence of Eros. The action of Eros on a person is the message of immortality to those of his qualities that, by their nature, are deprived of it. The action of Eros is absolutely different in a person with an animal soul, and in a person with a rational soul. The result of an erotic action depends entirely on the attitude of the person. Speaking of love, Plato uses the most repulsive term that exists in the Greek language for it. However, he still, albeit unwittingly, considers it from a Christian position as love for neighbors and love for God. Eros brings love as an absolute resurrection of life, blessed immortality. However, with all this, being the son of Penia, Eros is in many ways deeply untenable, which is caused by unjustifiably high expectations in his address.

When Eros inhabits a person, he becomes open to hell, earth and heaven, this is the most important stage in our life. Plato sees several ways in which Eros can lead a person: hellish, the path of animals (taking from Eros his physical side); the human way, where attraction is restrained; absolute abstinence, asceticism, similar to Christian monasticism, and the latter, achieved with the help of God, is the path of worthy love.

Solovyov sees Plato's life drama as a kind of throwing in search of truth, and speaks of his philosophy as "deep and bold." Being an idealist and dreaming of the common good, Plato argued that to achieve it, it is necessary to “regenerate the nature of man himself”, he creates a whole doctrine about this and offers a number of extremely bold advice and theories, but no one supported him in such radical views. Plato himself “stumbles”, does not bring his thought to a final, completely Christian conclusion, this is the main thing, but the fact that Plato’s philosophy was a shock to the Greeks was already at the beginning, and is not so important. Plato is in crisis.

Solovyov draws our attention to the fact that Plato's philosophy is inseparable from his life drama, they are intertwined and dependent on each other. One invariably gives rise to the other, and one underlies the other.

Subsequently, the teaching of Plato will be considered by various Fathers of the Church, since his teaching is most organically suited to Christian teaching, and he will be given the most contradictory characteristics. Plato's teaching will form the basis of many Christian and philosophical teachings: he is called both the father of scholasticism and "a Christian before Christ." It is from Plato that we can compare the concepts of "philosopher" and "Christian" and say, like Augustine, that "philosophy is the connection of the divine."

Conclusion, personal observations

Literature

Solovyov V.S. Life drama of Plato. C. 1.

Greek philosophy is considered by many to be the beginnings of theology. This idea can be found both in Socrates, Plato (the desire to develop philosophy for moral purposes) and Aristotle ("the first philosophy" - theology), and in the Church Fathers. Soloviev points out that "philosophy for the Hellenes had the same meaning as the law for the Jews" (Soloviev V.S. Plato's life drama // Solovyov V.S. Works: In 2 vols. T. 2. M .: Thought, 1988.)

Solovyov himself speaks of the primacy of Thales in philosophical thought among the Greeks.

This fragment of the teaching of Heraclitus is appropriate to compare with the beginning of the gospel from John.

This greatest discovery of Plato, in addition to the general influence on the formation of world philosophy, finds its recognition among some scholastics, such as Gregory of Nyssa, Thomas Aquinas and Anselm of Canterbury.

“Eros is spilled throughout nature” (“Feast”); in this he can be compared with the “god of Xenophanes” spilled by nature.

Solovyov, Plato's life drama. S. 29.

It is deification that is presented as the goal of human life in Christian teaching.

This choice is made through the soul of a person (by means of his choice in favor of one of the sides of the soul). Plato's doctrine of the soul as an immortal idea is comparable to the Christian one.

Solovyov V.S. Life drama of Plato. S. 11.

Solovyov, Plato's life drama. S. 18.

Solovyov V.S. Life drama of Plato. S. 29.

Having undertaken a complete Russian translation of Plato, I first of all faced the question: in what order should the Platonic dialogues be translated and published, in the absence of a generally accepted order? Convinced of the impossibility of firmly establishing and consistently conducting a chronological order, with insufficient historical data, with the precariousness and inconsistency of philological considerations, and at the same time finding it both inconvenient and obscene - to squeeze a living picture of Plato's creativity into the wooden framework of school divisions on abstract topics and disciplines of later origin , I had to look for the inner principle of unity, embracing the totality of Platonic creations and giving each of them its relative significance and place in the whole.

Such a beginning of unity for Plato's works was already sought by many of his publishers, translators and critics throughout the nineteenth century, but none of the existing attempts to define and trace such a beginning throughout Plato seems to me satisfactory. In a special treatise that will accompany my translation, I will analyze in detail the main of these attempts, and now I will point out for example only the two most striking - Schleiermacher and Munch.

According to Schleiermacher, the order of the Platonic works is established in advance by Plato himself, his thought and intention; all dialogues are only the consistent fulfillment of one program, or one artistic-philosophical-pedagogical plan, drawn up by Plato in his youth and becoming more and more clear in particulars throughout his entire philosophical activity. According to this view, each large dialogue (after the first - "Phaedra") is a direct, predetermined by Plato himself, a continuation or completion of its previous one and preparation for its next one, and this main stem of ideological growth is accompanied, as it were, by offshoots, several small dialogues, also deliberately written to clarify one or another minor issue related to the subjects of the main dialogues. The whole of Plato is thus presented as one a priori constructed system of philosophical ideas, a course of philosophy, artistically presented.

With Munch, the matter is taken in a more lively way. Plato's task was to portray the life of an ideal sage in the person of Socrates. The first introductory dialogue of Parmenides, where Socrates is an inquisitive youth, is followed by three successive groups of dialogues in which Socrates appears first as a fighter for truth against the prevailing sophistry, then as a teacher of truth, and finally as a martyr for truth; the last dialogue, of course, is the Phaedo, which contains Socrates' dying conversation and a description of his death.

The failure of both views is striking. Schleiermacher directly suggests something psychologically and historically impossible. Of course, such a purely head philosopher and armchair writer as, for example, Kant, would be more suitable for Schleiermacher's presentation. If we recall the centuries-old development of a purely formal power of thought from the first scholastics to Leibniz-Wolf's philosophy, which brought up the author of three critics; if we take into account the national character of the German mind, the personal character and way of life of Kant himself - a life completely closed in a close circle between a desk and a university audience - then, regarding him, one could perhaps admit that the totality of his works is only methodical execution of one pre-compiled program. However, we positively know that there was nothing of the kind here either. Kant's mental productivity passed through three, at least very different stages, which were not at all a direct continuation or preparation of one another: we know about the long "dogmatic sleep" of his mind in the cozy cradle of the Leibniz-Wolfian system; we know how he was awakened by the strong impetus of Hume's skepticism to the discovery of critical idealism, and how impulses of a different order then led him to create an ethic of absolute duty and a religion within pure reason. During his dogmatic sleep, Kant, of course, did not dream of his destructive criticism, and when he made it, he did not think about a definite plan for a new moral and religious construction. If even Kant - the personification of a priori and methodicalness - could not only complete, but also conceive his half-century mental work according to one pre-composed program or a certain plan, then what can be said about Plato? To begin with, there were no study rooms in ancient Greece, and therefore there could not have been desk scientists. But the main thing is the personality of Plato himself. A man who lived a full life, not only open to all kinds of impressions, but thirsty, looking for them, a man who at the beginning of his career survived one of the greatest tragedies of world history - the death of Socrates, then fled from his father's city, traveled a lot around the world, entered into relations with a mysterious Pythagorean union, who repeatedly and for the last time already in extreme old age closely approached powerful rulers in order to create an exemplary state with their help - such a person could in no case be a methodical executor of one pre-established philosophical and literary program throughout his life .

From the view of Schleiermacher, only that general truth remains, that there is an internal connection between all the creations of Plato. But this connection did not lie in the deliberate design of a complete philosophical course. Plato had no such intention. He also had no intention of dedicating his life to an idealized biography of his teacher. According to Munch, it turns out that the image of Socrates as an ideal of wisdom and truth completely and with unchanging power completely dominated Plato's mind and objectified in it so that the order of Platonic creations expressed the course of life not of Plato himself, but only the recollected and reproduced course of Socratic life. But in reality this is not the case. In some dialogues, Socrates really owns the work of Plato and is embodied in him with all the fullness of artistic truth, and Socrates' speeches here are his real speeches, only passing through Plato's thought directly open to them, having received from it, perhaps, several new features and colors, but retained their whole being. However, in others - in most of the dialogues - Socrates is only a literary device accepted once and for all, the usual pseudonym of Plato, - a pseudonym sometimes unfortunate - when he has to say such speeches that the real Socrates not only did not speak, but could not speak: for example when the imaginary Socrates seriously discusses metaphysical and cosmological questions, which the real Socrates recognized as sterile and unworthy of attention, but in which Plato became especially interested long after the death of his teacher and under other diverse influences. What kind of biography of Socrates is this, even an idealized one?

It is clear that Socrates can be accepted as the focus of Plato's creations not in itself and not in the events of his life, but only through the place that he occupied in the life and thoughts of Plato; and this place, for all its importance, was not all-encompassing; the personality and way of thinking of Plato were formed under the predominant influence of Socrates, but were not absorbed by him. This means that the proper beginning of the unity of Platonic creations must be sought not in Socrates, as Munch believes, and not in the abstract theoretical half of Platonic being, as it turns out according to Schleier-macher, but in Plato himself, as a whole, living person. Of course, real unity is here. Ages changed, attitudes and requirements changed, spiritual moods and the very points of view on the world, but all this changed in a living person, which remained itself and connected all the works of its creativity with its inner unity.

Plato's dialogues most closely express, of course, his philosophical interest and the philosophical work of his mind. But the property of the philosophical interest itself, obviously, also depends on the personality of the philosopher. For Plato, philosophy was above all a vital task. And life for him was not a peaceful change of days and years of mental labor, as, for example, for Kant, but a deep and complex drama embracing his whole being. The development of this drama, about which we partly have direct evidence, partly we guess from indirect indications, was reflected and immortalized in the dialogues. So, Plato himself, as the hero of his life drama, is the real principle of the unity of Platonic creations, the order of which is naturally determined by the course of this drama.

Without any doubt, the plot of Plato's life drama is given in his relationship to the living Socrates - in the first act, and the memory of the deceased Socrates sounds back, like a kind of leitmotif, in subsequent acts. What is Socrates, what is the very essence of his meaning? Socrates was the tertium quid, the third sought-for and seeking side of Greek life shaken in its foundations, the just, impartial side, reconciling the other two warring sides and therefore irreconcilably hated by both. It was about the very principle of human life. Initially, ancient Hellenic, like all pagan life, rested on a double, but inseparable foundation of religious and state law. Qeios nomos, nomos Basileus. The fatherly gods and the fatherly way of life are only two expressions, two sides of one vital principle. The root is common: the shrine of the hearth with the cult of ancestors inseparable from it. When the family-clan, home community was included in a wider and more powerful civil community, when the city became higher and stronger than the clan, naturally the gods of the city community became the gods of the highest, instead of tribal and brownies.

Modern times are trying, although not always and not everywhere successfully, to take away the police function from the deity, and the divine sanction from the police. The task is difficult. In those days, she was not put. This very fusion of primitive religion with politics, or the police, was so peculiar, so modified both elements, that it is almost impossible for us to form a living idea of ​​it. Just as water in its specific properties is not in the least like either hydrogen or oxygen taken separately, so the religious-police system of ancient life did not at all resemble either religion or police in our sense of the word. And if the main paternal gods were essentially city guards, then the human guards of the city (julakes of Platonic Polity) were essentially divine, even more, of course, than the "divine" swineherd Eumeus of Odysseus.

Such an untouched, heavenly wholeness of vital consciousness could not be durable. It rested on the fact of people's direct and unaccountable faith: in the reality and power of tribal and city gods, in the holiness and divinity of their native city. And from whichever of the two ends one shakes this double faith, the whole building collapses at once. If the gods of the fathers are not real, or powerless, then where does the holiness of the fatherly laws come from? If the laws of the fathers are not holy, then what is the prescribed or paternal religion based on? So, it is necessary that the double faith, on which the everyday way of life of a given society rests, be completely inviolable. But how can this be done? Faith, when it is only a fact accepted through tradition, is an extremely fragile, unstable thing, always taken by surprise by everyone. And thank God it is. Exclusively factual, blind faith is inconsistent with the dignity of man. It is more characteristic of either demons who believe and tremble, or dumb animals, who, of course, accept the law of their life on faith, "without reflection, without longing, without fatal thoughts, without vain, without empty doubts."

I spoke about demons and animals not for the beauty of the style, but for historical reminder, namely, that religions based on one factual, blind faith, or refusing other, better foundations, have always ended in either diabolical bloodthirstiness or bestial shamelessness.

Blind and unaccountable religion is offensive, first of all, to its subject, to the deity himself, Who does not demand this from man. As an infinite Good, free from all envy, although it gives place in the world to both demons and animals, its joy is not in them, but in the "sons of men"; and in order for this joy to be complete, it imparted to man “a special gift that demons envy and about which animals know nothing. Important, of course, are those gifts through which the initial external image of human superanimal life was created - what we call education It would not exist without fire and agriculture."The great benefactors of mankind are Prometheus, Demeter and Dionysus. But thrice the greatest is called and is our father Hermes Trismegistus. In the bodily image of human community, he put his living soul and the engine of life - philosophy - not so that a person would receive eternal truth and bliss for free and in finished form, but so that the human labor path to truth and bliss would be protected from two sides. - and from superstitious demonic trepidation, and from stupid animal lack of accountability.

That is why people who have succumbed to this or that dark force, people who have become darkened and who are trying to darken others - for which they are justly called obscurantes - they concentrate their constant and stubborn, although fruitless hatred precisely on philosophy, which allegedly undermines all faith, while, in truth, philosophy undermines and makes impossible only the obscure faith, lazy and immovable. This merit of philosophy was highly appreciated by the bearers of the true bright faith, who, as is known, had the same meaning for the Hellenes as the law for the Jews, the meaning of providential guidance in the transition from the darkness of paganism to the light of Christ, and they admitted that in In paganism, not everything was only darkness. For the dark faith, Greek philosophy, like later the Christian religion, seemed atheism.

Meanwhile, already the first ancestor of this philosophy, Thales, as the ancient news says, declared that "everything is full of gods." But for the zealots of the patristic religion it was too much. Why do they need this fullness of the gods? They revered only their civil and military gods, necessary for the current life, and they absolutely did not care about the divine content of "everything". Their paternal traditions and laws vouched for their gods, but what vouched for the fullness of the universal? Thought Thales? But the thought of other philosophers - Xenophanes, Anaxagoras - goes further and discovers something else. They reject any plurality of gods, and in its place a deity appears in the first - as absolutely one, and in the second - as the creative mind of the universe. For the protective mind of the crowd and its rulers, this was already a clear shock to the foundations and caused a corresponding opposition.

Philosophers were the first to produce a significant split in Greek life. Before them, only parties could exist in the cities, so to speak, material ones, arising from the collision and struggle of purely factually formed social groups, forces and Interests. There was no fundamental contradiction between them, for all equally recognized one principle of life - paternal tradition. No one attempted on him, and in the absence of principled destroyers, principled guardians could not appear either. They inevitably appeared as soon as the philosophers touched upon the sacredness of the patristic law and criticized its very content. Everywhere in Greece there are two formal parties: one, on principle, protects the existing foundations of community life, the other, on principle, shakes them. The first victories everywhere belonged to the guards. Their principle was based on the instinct of self-preservation in the masses of the people, on the full force of counteraction of social organisms, although already moved, but not yet decomposed. The very nearness of decay intensified the protective desires with fear for their failure. "Don't you dare touch this, or it will fall apart." "But is it worthy of protection?" - "Do not rush to ask! It is worthy already because it exists, that we are used to it, that it is ours; and as long as we are strong - woe to the philosophers!" They could answer this: "Great is the truth, and it will overcome!" - but in anticipation of this, Xenophanes wandered all his life as a homeless wanderer, and Anaxagoras only thanks to personal connections escaped the death penalty, which was replaced by exile for him. But in the fate of Anaxagoras there is already a premonition of the victory of philosophy.

This main predecessor of Socrates, from the Ionian Clazomenes in Asia Minor, who came to Athens, where he gained both fame and persecution, marks the transition of ancient philosophy, from its place of birth in Greek trading colonies, to the true center of Hellenic learning, where, despite the persecution , philosophy became a real social force of all-Hellenic, and then world-historical significance.

It was not by chance that Hellenic philosophy arose in the colonies, but flourished in Athens. If the seafaring merchants, by whom the swarm of Greek colonies were founded and lived, inevitably broke the isolation of the traditional paternal way of life and, bringing to their native city acquaintance with many and varied strangers, gave capable minds material and excitement for a comparative assessment of "one's own" and "alien", to necessary judgment and possible condemnation, which in any case undermined the immediate belief in the unconditional significance of "one's own" as such and caused the philosophical striving for inner truth, then from the other end such an action of thought, excited by the comparison of the various laws of life coexisting in the known expanse of the world, - such a critical action of the nascent thought received new strength and new justification where the exclusivity of the reigning law of life was also broken in the order of temporary change - the approval and abolition of legal provisions according to the changing will of the multitude of the people - as it was in the mobile Athenian democracy.

To the colonial Greeks, the conventionality of paternal law was revealed in space, to the Athenians, in time. If an inquisitive navigator began to be skeptical of the traditional domestic system because he saw too much of another different thing in a foreign land, then an Athenian citizen, without leaving his native walls, and without looking at "alien", had to doubt the dignity and significance of "his own ", as it changed too often before his eyes and even with his own participation. This does not prevent us from loving our homeland, perhaps even intensifying love for it, as for something very close, burning; but the religious reverent attitude towards the laws of the people, as something higher and unconditional, must certainly fall under the first blows of critical thought. Here, the biblical writer's mockery of an idolater, who with his own hands will take a piece of wood, marble or metal, make a statue of it, and then bring sacrifices and prayers to her, as to a god, is quite applicable. The law, as a product of the unstable will, opinion and whim of people, is no more worthy of worship than the material product of human hands.

All the power of that criticism, which is the most ancient, i.e. pre-Socratic philosophy turned to the gods and paternal statutes, can be expressed in one word - relativity. “What you consider unconditional and therefore inviolable,” the philosophers said to their fellow citizens, “is in fact very relative and therefore subject to consideration and judgment, and in its imaginary unconditionality, condemnation and abolition.” As is well known, the work of philosophers was not limited to this accusatory and negative task. Their attempts to define the truly unconditional were associated with their critique of the allegedly unconditional. Rejecting or relegating to the background these traditional foundations of human life, they affirmed the fundamental principles of world, cosmic life discovered by the mind - from the water and air of the first Ionians to the balance of the unifying and separating forces of Empedocles, to Anaxagoras of the world mind and Democritus atoms and emptiness.

There was truth in all this, but in order to find it among such diversity, in order to understand and evaluate all these diverse and apparently contradictory ideas as parts of an emerging mental whole, a rare gift of speculation and synthesis was needed, which later appeared in the person of Plato, Aristotle and Dam. But first, in a natural way, the more accessible negative side of the philosophical process experienced by the Greek mind stood out and stood apart. For two centuries of intellectual movement in Greece, a whole class of people was born with formally developed mental abilities, with a literary education and with a lively mental interest, people who had lost all faith in the shattered traditional foundations of folk life, but at the same time did not have the moral genius to give themselves with all their heart the search for better, true norms of life. These people, whom the perspicacity of social consciousness immediately connected with philosophy, and separated from it by the special name of sophists, greedily seized on that concept of relativity with which the philosophers undermined the dark faith; raising this concept into an unlimited universal principle, the sophists turned its edge against philosophy itself, taking advantage of the apparent inconsistency of the multiplying philosophical teachings.

If an experienced acquaintance with foreign overseas countries and the experience of democratic changes at home made it possible to know the twofold relativity of traditional life norms in place and time and thus caused philosophers to criticize them negatively, then the experience of philosophy itself in the diversity of its systems forced, apparently, to it should apply the same criticism and, from the relativity of philosophical constructions, conclude that all conceivable norms, or any defining principles of being, are untenable. Not only the beliefs and laws of the cities, - the sophists proclaimed, - but everything in general is relative, conditional, unreliable; there is nothing good or bad, true or false in essence, but everything is only by condition or situation - ou jusei, alla qesei monon, and the only guide in any matter, in the absence of essential and objective norms, remains only practical expediency, and the goal can be only success. No one can absolutely vouch for the truth of their aspirations and opinions. This means that the only real content of life is to seek practical success by all possible means, and since this goal for an individual person is achieved only with the support of others, the main task is to convince others of what is needed for oneself. Therefore, the most important and most useful art is the art of verbal persuasion, or rhetoric.

The sophists, who believed in luck alone, could not be defeated by reasonable arguments, but only by the actual failure of their cause. They failed to convince Greece of the correctness of their absolute skepticism and failed to replace philosophy with rhetoric. Socrates appeared, who managed to ridicule the sophists and open new and glorious paths to philosophy. The hostility of the sophists to Socrates is understandable. But at first glance, it may seem strange that in this enmity another party turned out to be in solidarity with the sophists and surpassed them.

Enmity between those would seem natural. those who stood for the inviolability of traditional beliefs and norms of life, and those who, like sophists, were deniers par excellence, denied without exception all the defining principles of community life, fundamentally rejected the very possibility of such principles, i.e. any foundations of life and thought. And, of course, there was enmity between the guardians and the sophists, but it did not take a tragic turn at all. In the end, the Sophists prospered, and the whole burden of protective persecution fell precisely on the philosophers of the most positive trend, who affirmed the good and true meaning of the world and social order - first on Anaxagoras, who taught that the world is based and controlled by the supreme Mind, and then and especially on Socrates. Before him, the superficial hostility between the guardians and the sophists subsided, and the two former opponents joined their efforts to get rid of the equally hated personification of the highest truth. They were bound by what they were wrong about.

Meanwhile, on the part of Socrates there was no unconditional, irreconcilable hostility either to the principle of the sophists, or to the principle of the guardians of paternal tradition and law. He sincerely and willingly admitted those bits of truth that both of them had. He really was the third, synthetic and reconciling beginning between them. Together with the sophists, he stood for the right and for the necessity of critical and dialectical research; like them, he was against blind, unaccountable faith, did not want to accept anything without a preliminary test. For this critical inquisitiveness, which was most conspicuous, both the crowd and such bad thinkers as Aristophanes directly confused Socrates with sophists. But, on the other hand, he recognized the meaning and truth both in popular beliefs and in the practical authority of domestic laws. And his piety, and his patriotic loyalty, he showed in practice to the very end. One cannot suspect his sincerity in the deathbed sacrifice to Aesculapius, and by refusing to escape from the dungeon, after the death sentence, he placed his duties to his native city above the preservation of life itself.

In the absence of direct principled antagonism on both sides, what explains this irreconcilable hatred of Socrates on both sides? The point is precisely that the antagonism here was not fundamental in the abstract-theoretical sense, but vital, practical and, one might say, personal - in the deeper sense of the word. In the indirect, and sometimes direct meaning of his speeches, Socrates told both sides things that were completely intolerable for them and against which they had no reasonable objection.

To the guards, Socrates seemed to say this: “You are absolutely right and deserve all praise for wanting to protect the foundations of civil society - this is the most important thing. It’s great that you are guards, the only trouble is that you are bad guards: you You know and don't know what to protect and how to protect it. but from your stupidity and ignorance." - What can be the answer to this, except for the dungeon and poison?

And Socrates said to the sophists: “You are doing great that you are engaged in reasoning and subjecting everything that exists and non-existent to the test of your critical thought; it’s only a pity that you are bad thinkers and do not understand at all either the goals or the methods of real criticism and dialectics.”

Socrates pointed out, and most importantly, proved in an irrefutable way, the mental inconsistency of his opponents, and this, of course, was an unforgivable fault. The enmity was irreconcilable. Even if Socrates never directly denounced the Athenian fathers of the fatherland as bad guardians, and the sophists as bad thinkers, this would not change the matter: he still denounced both of them by his very personality, his moral mood and the positive meaning of his speeches. He himself was a living insult to bad conservatives and bad critics, as the personification of truly protective and truly critical principles. Without him, if both parties were dissatisfied with each other, then each was imperturbably pleased with itself.

As long as the protectors could see godless and impious people in their opponents, they were aware of their inner superiority and triumphed in advance: it might actually seem that they stand for faith itself and for piety itself; there was the appearance of a principled, ideological dispute in which they represented the positive, right side. But in a collision with Socrates, the situation completely changed: it was impossible to defend faith and piety as such against a person who himself was a believer and pious - one had to defend not faith itself, but only the difference between their faith and Socratic faith, and this difference consisted in the fact that that Socrates' faith was sighted, while theirs was blind. In this way, the poor quality of their faith was immediately revealed, and in their striving without fail to affirm precisely this strong blind faith, its weakness and insincerity were manifested. In the name of what could they stand precisely for the darkness of faith? Is it in the name of the fact that every faith must be dark? But here Socrates was present, clearly refuting such an assumption by the very fact of his bright, sighted faith. It was clear that they stood for darkness not in the interests of faith, but in some other interests alien to faith. And indeed, the Athenian guards of that time - at least the more educated between them - were unbelieving people. It couldn't be otherwise. Once a mental movement has begun in a certain environment, philosophy has arisen and developed, direct faith, which requires an infantile mind, becomes impossible for every person affected by this movement. What is lost cannot be guarded, and the faith of the obscurantists is only a deceptive mask put on their real unbelief. Among the people who are more alive and gifted among the Athenian guards, for example. in Aristophanes, the true feeling breaks through the mask: denouncing the imaginary wickedness of the philosophers, he immediately manifests his own - in a gross mockery of the gods. What was guarded by such guardians and what motivated them? It is clear that not even the fear of God, but only fear for the old, familiar everyday system that was historically associated with this religion.

Socrates, by the very fact of his positive and at the same time fearless and bright faith, denounced the internal worthlessness of such an unfaithful and rotten conservatism. And again, by the very fact of the unconditional critical and at the same time completely positive attitude of his thinking to real life, he denounced the internal inconsistency of sophistical pseudo-criticism. As long as the sophists had against themselves either the masses of the people, or even people of the highest class, but little involved in the philosophical movement and unskilled in dialectics, it could seem that sophistry represents the rights of progress against popular inertia, the right of thought against mental underdevelopment, the right of knowledge and enlightenment against dark ignorance. But when the "wisest of the Hellenes" armed himself against the sophistical destruction of all the principles of life, a man in any case of greater mental strength and dialectical skill than they, everyone saw that the purely negative character of their reasoning did not depend on the necessity of human thinking, but on the best In the case of the incompleteness and one-sidedness of their views and methods, it became clear that the reason here is not in thinking and criticism, but only in bad thinking and bad criticism.

So, the fault of Socrates, in addition to any direct polemic against preservers and destroyers, consisted in the fact that his very point of view revealed the ideological nakedness of both.

In it was a ray of true light, revealing both itself and alien darkness. In the face of false guardians, who claimed that one must unconditionally, without any reasoning, accept popular beliefs and obey paternal statutes only because they were given and established, laid down before us - and in the face of false thinkers who taught that no unconditional there can be no duty, that one should not obey anything at all, but only seek one's own benefit and success, - in front of this double lie, Socrates asserted both in words and in his life: there is an unconditional duty, but only to that which is itself unconditional, which in essence and therefore, always and everywhere is good or worthy; and there is it, this unconditional, there is an essential norm for human life, there is Good in itself. It alone is truly desirable, or is the highest good for man, the basis and measure of all other goods, and on it alone, as on the unconditional truth and criterion of all that is fair, human community must be built. If the beliefs of the people and the statutes of the fathers are consistent with or can be associated with the unconditional norm of life, they must be accepted and obeyed. It means that a clear assessment of everything given is required, reasoning, criticism is required, not as art for art's sake, but as a search for truth, in order to really find it.

That there is an unconditional Good, and that there really is only that which is worthy of being - Socrates believed in this, but his faith was not blind, but completely reasonable, firstly, because it was actually faith in reason, requiring, so that what exists is consistent with it, has meaning, or is worthy of being; and, secondly, the faith of Socrates had a rational character also because it sought its fulfillment or justification in everything, and for this it certainly required the consistent work of a thinking mind.

Believing in the existence of the unconditional Good, Socrates did not supply it in advance with any immediate definitions; it was for him not given in finished form, but sought; but you can't look for something if you don't believe it's there.

According to rational faith, the unconditional Good is in itself; but its possession is not given to man unconditionally, but requires the necessary conditions. The goal is ahead, and a process is needed to achieve it. Socrates assumes only a general concept that, being good in itself, can make everything else good. In order to really achieve that which alone is worthy of attainment, the first condition is to reject everything that is not, to impute everything else to nothing. "I only know that I know nothing" - for this confession, as Socrates thought, the Pythia proclaimed him the wisest of the Hellenes. The first condition of true philosophy is spiritual poverty. An amazing anticipation of the first Gospel commandment, the amazing agreement of the Delphic oracle with the Sermon on the Mount, noticed even by the church fathers of the first centuries of Christianity!

The declaration of one's spiritual poverty in the midst of seeming wealth is, of course, a spiritual feat. But this is a feat that loses all its value if you stop at it, as skeptics do, in whom the humble consciousness of their insufficiency turns into the opposite - into complacency and pride. For such a transition, a small addition is required, alien to Socrates and the gospel: "I know nothing, and it is impossible and unnecessary to know anything." The consolation is decidedly based on nothing. True spiritual poverty is not comforted by itself; between it and consolation lies sorrow for one's condition: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." And this gospel lament was not contradicted by the laughter of Socrates, who expressed not joy at his poverty, but only condemnation of imaginary wealth. The announcement of his ignorance was for Socrates only the first beginning of his search, spiritual poverty caused him spiritual hunger and thirst. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied" - a new agreement between true philosophy and true religion, Hellenic and Jewish wisdom.

If Socrates had limited himself to confessing his ignorance, he would, of course, have been the most pleasant person both for the guardians and for the sophists. The obscurantism of the former and the chatter of the latter equally demanded ignorance, ignorance of what is essentially desirable and obligatory, what is worth and should be known. “We don’t really know anything,” the guards said, “so you need to blindly believe in the father’s charters.” “Yes, you can’t know anything,” the sophists confirmed, “therefore, you need to strive for your own benefit, success, and for any power that gives profit and success.” Both of them hastened to arbitrarily and dishonestly elevate actual ignorance into a law in order to deduce from it what they wanted, in order to justify and impose on others their obscurity and their idle talk.

And they would have succeeded in this - so their conclusions flattered spiritual laziness and all the lower sides of human nature, and so, apparently, they were justified by the inconsistency of philosophical doctrines that contradicted each other. It seemed easy for both the guardians and the sophists to get rid of the philosophers who let themselves down with such contradictions. But they "counted without a master" - without the Logos-Hermes and his age-old gift to man. Neither the persecution of the cities, nor the contradictions of the philosophers themselves frightened philosophy, which, through the mouth of one person, drowned out the dark and empty speeches of the many-headed crowd. Embodied in Socrates, on the streets and squares of Athens, she raised her voice and, proving to everyone that he knew nothing, deduced from here restless, but the only conclusions worthy of a person: “He who knows his ignorance already knows something and can know more; If you don’t know, then find out; if you don’t have the truth, look for it; when you look for it, it is already with you, only with your face covered, and it depends on your mental labor that it be revealed.

This demand of inner feat from a person, with the tireless spiritual asceticism of Socrates himself in the search for truth, denouncing the dark inertia of the guardians and the idle movement of the sophists, took away the opportunity for both of them to be self-satisfied. And whoever encroaches on the complacency of dark or empty people is at first a restless person, then intolerable, and finally, a criminal deserving death.

Socrates is accused, as you know, that "he does not honor the gods revered by the city, but introduces other, new deities," and also that he "corrupts youth." These false accusations clearly show the true nature of the case. One could not simply accuse Socrates, like Anaxagoras, of atheism; his piety was evident. And for the accusers, it was not about the gods in general, but only about those whom the city honors or legitimizes. And the real meaning of the accusation was not that Socrates did not honor them - in fact, he honored them, by the way - but he honored them not because the city recognizes them, but only because, or insofar as in in truth there was or could have been something divine - he revered them in essence, according to their inner connection with the unconditional, and not according to the condition. This was his crime. It was strengthened by the fact that he "introduced other new deities." And here comes true evidence of the positive character of Socrates' teaching and especially of his attitude to religion: he did not diminish the capital of popular piety, but, on the contrary, added to it. But even this increase in faith was a crime, because here, too, Socrates acted essentially, not coping with the external circumstances of the true divine manifestations he recognized, whether they were old or new, whether they were revered by the city or not. The third crime was that Socrates was listened to, that he had an effect on living, not yet petrified minds and hearts. He corrupted the youth by undermining their trust and respect for dark and empty leaders, for the blind leading the blind.

Socrates had to die like a criminal. Here is the tragic blow at the very beginning of Plato's life drama. Like some ancient tragedies, as well as Shakespeare's Hamlet, this drama not only ends, but also begins with a tragic catastrophe.

But how much deeper and more significant is historical reality than poetic fiction! Take the work of Shakespeare. At the suggestion of coarse personal passions, the villain kills the father of young Hamlet. The natural feeling and the natural duty of tribal revenge demand that the killer be punished, and this duty is complicated for Hamlet by the criminal participation of his mother in a terrible deed. Secret fratricide, muicide, regicide, theft of the throne, double, triple betrayal - all this is in the immediate life circle of the hero, and in his own being - a hopeless contradiction of consciousness and will, feelings and temperament. Here is an undeniably magnificent example of a tragic situation, worthy of the strongest of poets.

But note that although the drama takes place after many centuries of Christianity, it makes sense only on the basis of a purely pagan concept of tribal revenge as a moral duty. The center of the drama lies precisely in the fact that Hamlet considered it his duty to avenge his father, and his indecisive temperament delayed the fulfillment of this imaginary duty. But this is only a special case; there is no general and essential need for a person who professes a religion that forbids revenge to retain concepts and rules requiring revenge.

Take away this natural in the pagan and completely unnatural in the Christian idea of ​​obligatory revenge, and what will be the basis for the drama? A man's noble father was murdered in the most vile way, his mother was taken away, and he himself was pushed aside from the hereditary throne. A high degree of grief and distress! But suppose that this person stands with deep conviction - I won't even say a Christian, but at least a Stoic, Buddhist or Tolstoyan point of view; then only one simple and purely internal obligation follows from his woeful situation - resignations. He can courageously accept this duty, or cowardly grumble at it, but in either case no obvious and necessary action, and consequently no tragedy, follows from his misfortune. It is clear that it is absolutely impossible to create a real tragedy from the position of a person who meekly, or at least with a murmur, endures his disasters, no matter how great these disasters are and no matter how genius the poet is.

In order for the magnificent tragedy that we know to emerge from Hamlet's miserable situation, Shakespeare had to create special conditions that do not follow from the essence of the situation, namely, firstly, it was necessary that all the horrors committed in Elsinore should fall on the head of a person, who, despite his factual affiliation to Christianity, sincerely believes in the obligation of blood feud for himself; were it not for this blind faith, if Hamlet doubted his imaginary obligation to take revenge, and if he remembered even for a moment his real obligation to forgive enemies, the tragedy would disappear, and the deplorable fact would have only one meaning of a life test. But was there any inner need for Hamlet to believe so strongly in the law of tribal life experienced by the higher human consciousness?

But, secondly, and having assumed in Hamlet the accidental force of this historical experience, we see that the tragedy would still not have happened if Hamlet had directly fulfilled his imaginary duty by killing the villainous usurper and rightfully occupying his throne. Then all he had to do, as in Sumarokov's alteration, was to marry Ophelia, and the performance, instead of Fortinbras's stately departure, would have ended with Ophelia's tender words:

Go, my prince, to the temple,

Reveal yourself among the people

And I'll go and give

The last debt to nature.

So, in addition to Hamlet's accidental belief in the law of blood feud, another condition was required for the tragedy - Hamlet's inability to fulfill any law at all, it was required that this person be only a thinker, or, if you like, a reasoner, and not a doer - it was required, in a word, that character, which I will not analyze, so as not to repeat his well-known and excellent analysis in Turgenev's brilliant essay: Hamlet and Don Quixote.

This means that external chance received a tragic interest only due to the individuality of the hero. But, they say, that's the way it should be. Not really. There were tragedies in poetry, based mainly on internal necessity, although not absolute, but due to objective historical forces, and not to an individual subjective character.

Little is usually noticed that the plot of Hamlet is only a renewed plot of the ancient Oresteia. In Orestes, as in Hamlet, the noble father is killed by a kindred villain with the main participation of the victim's own wife, Orestes' mother. But here the situation itself creates a tragedy, regardless of the personality of the hero. Humility, resignation, forgiveness of enemies are completely impossible for Orestes - such a concept did not exist in his time. The natural "law of tribal life still dominated all consciousness, but the tragedy was that this very law was bifurcated on the eve of its fall. The clan is omnipotent, but who represents the clan: mother or father? Which natural union is the real one: matriarchal or patriarchal? Center of gravity tragedy is not in the personality of Orestes, but in the objective historical clash of two laws that pressed each other in natural humanity - the law of gynecocracy and androcratic. Tragedy here takes place in essence, no matter what character and whatever thoughts Orestes may have, it makes no difference: these two the objective laws of paternal and maternal law present their contradictory demands to him, collide in his breast.

But, it will be said, from this advantage of ancient tragedy follows its important disadvantage, namely, the weakness of individual and subjective interest. Of course it is; and aesthetics has long distinguished here two kinds: the ancient tragedy of general necessity and the new tragedy of an individual character. But is the essence of what is tragic in the life of mankind exhausted by this opposition, is there an inner basis for the fact that in tragedy

If either this side or that side inevitably predominated, is it not possible such a tragic situation that the most significant and universal clash of objective principles acting in the world showed its strength on the most powerful and profound individuality?

There is no inner necessity for the drama to be necessarily one-sided. But where is this supreme, synthetic and complete drama? In poetry, I don’t know such a thing, but in real history it has happened, and we are now talking about such a vital drama, surpassing both the ancient Oresteia and the new Hamlet.

Although it took place earlier than Christianity, the situation in it is already determined on spiritual grounds. The father was killed, but not by blood, but by spirituality, an educator in wisdom, the father of a better soul. This is still a personal, albeit high attitude. But here is something super-personal: a righteous man has been killed. He was killed not by a grossly personal atrocity, not by self-serving betrayal, but by a solemn public verdict of the legitimate authorities, by the will of the native city. And it could still be an accident if the righteous man was legally killed for some cause, although innocent, but outside his righteousness. But he was killed precisely for her, for the truth, for her determination to fulfill her moral duty to the end.

The fate of Socrates was decided by his following words to the judges: “I respect and love you, men of Athens, but I will obey God more than you, and as long as I have breath and strength in me, I will not stop philosophizing and exhorting and denouncing you with my usual speeches ".

The tragedy is not personal, not subjective, not in the separation of a student from a teacher, a son from his father. Socrates didn't have long to live anyway. The tragedy lies in the fact that the best social environment in all of humanity at that time - Athens - could not endure the simple, bare principle of truth; that public life has proved incompatible with personal conscience; that the abyss of pure, unalloyed evil opened up and swallowed up the righteous; that for truth, death turned out to be the only destiny, and life and reality receded into evil and falsehood.

How can one live in this realm of evil, live where the righteous must die? See how much this "to be or not to be", which Plato had to say over the corpse of the legally and obviously poisoned Socrates, is deeper and more significant than Hamlet's "to be or not to be", caused by the lawless and secret, essentially accidental, poisoning of his father?

Of course, only such a high and rich individuality as Plato could consciously experience the main force of the tragedy of this situation; but the very source of tragedy is not in individuality, not in the subject, but in this deep, fatal and objective collision of the deepest evil with the embodiment of truth. And this clash is not determined by the historical stage of social development, as in Orestea, - it is unconditional and universal, as the very principle of the highest truth proclaimed by Socrates: "I must obey God more than you" - and as the answer of evil: "You must die for the life of society is incompatible with the truth of God and of man.

When Hamlet says his "to be or not to be", he means - to be or not to be me, Hamlet? - a personal question, and the whole monologue is filled with a personal element: blows of fate, weeds of the garden of life, dreams beyond the grave. For Plato, the question was: to be or not to be truth on earth - a universal question, although, of course, only a great personality could vividly feel its significance - this is the true correspondence, a real synthesis of the universal and individual, subjective and objective principles in drama, - and this synthesis, not invented by any poet, has taken place in actual history.

Having explained or emphasized with the help of a new comparison the well-known plot of Plato's life drama, I must now move on to its further development and to that final tragic catastrophe, which, if I am not mistaken, has not yet paid sufficient attention.

Both Plato and Hamlet, from the terrible situation at the beginning of their lives, both endured, in fact, only a series of conversations. Hamlet's conversations are thoughtful and witty. The conversations of Plato, with the objections and additions of Aristotle and the Stoics, and with the conclusions of the Neo-Platonists, created a whole mental world called Greek philosophy, and entered the historical development of Christianity as its main basis. And yet we have to say that Plato's life tragedy had not only a terrible beginning, but also a deplorable end, as it should be for a real tragedy. He came out of his life test, though not without glory, but without victory. Like Shakespeare's Hamlet - unlike Sumarok's - he could not marry his "Ophelia": she drowned. In the end, Plato, like Hamlet, turned out to be a failure, although, of course, the failures of a great man give the world much more than many of the most brilliant successes of ordinary people.

One can imagine what effect the death sentence on Socrates had on such a student of his as Plato, who managed to become firmly attached to the charming personality of the teacher and imbued with the high spirit of his speeches, but already by his very age (28 years old) was unable to easily put up with the triumph of evil. - and what a celebration! The sweet habit of existence, which makes people, in order to save life, forget and lose its meaning and true reason - that for which it is worth living - propter vitam vital perdere causas - such a habit could not yet develop in Plato. The strength of the moral shock was expressed in a serious illness, which prevented him from participating in the dying conversation between the teacher and the students. Then he had to move to Megara and there, at a sad leisure, decide his "to be or not to be"?

There is reason to guess that Plato also had the idea of ​​suicide. In any case, the reasons why he could not dwell on it are quite clear. The essence of Socrates' teaching, enthusiastically received by his student, consisted, as we know, in the fact that, regardless of any facts and provisions, there is an unconditional, essentially good, meaning of being; and by recognizing this, such an act of despair as suicide is expressly excluded. Because of the tragic death of Socrates, to abandon the very truth to which Socrates devoted his life would be both a logical contradiction and a psychological impossibility. A dilemma was logically inevitable: either Socrates really was a teacher of truth, and therefore one should have obeyed him and not killed himself contrary to his teaching; or he was not a herald of the truth, and then his death, no matter how sad, lost its special fundamental and fatal significance, was only the death of a good and wonderful, but lost, wrong person, and there was no reason for hopeless despair; in the first case, suicide would be an impermissible act, in the second it would be an act without sufficient reason.

And from the psychological side, both the fact of the death of the teacher, and the height of moral dignity, discovered by him in the circumstances of this death, should have increased Plato's enthusiastic and reverent love for the deceased to an extraordinary degree, and this did not allow him to either doubt the truth of the teaching, or betray it to the faint-hearted despair. If not forever, then at least for the first time, the influence of the deceased Socrates should have been even stronger than the influence of the living, to act on the conscious decisions of his student.

Another psychological reason would not allow Plato to commit suicide. Let me explain it with a comparison. Everyone recognizes it psychologically impossible for a person, devoted, for example, to material interests, to decide to lay hands on himself as a result of the death of a person close and sincerely loved by him, when this person, dying, left him a rich inheritance. It is clear that the desire to use this inheritance will overcome in such a person his grief over the loss of his heart. Plato was a different kind of person, but the attitude remains the same. Plato was devoted to the highest interests of the spirit, and the death of Socrates, in addition to great grief, left him a great spiritual heritage, even multiplied by this very death. The fullness of young mental forces, saturated with the abundant ideological content of Socrates' life and death and raised to new heights by all the tension of reverent and mournful love for the deceased, demanded a positive creative outlet and, occupying Plato's whole soul, did not leave in it those empty places where desperate decisions nest. . And the very fatal question about the life and death of truth, with its supra-personal, universal meaning, led the thought out of the dull and narrow personal anguish, fraught with suicide, into the scope and light for fruitful action.

The death of Socrates, when Plato was ill with it, gave rise to a new view of the world - Platonic idealism. The first foundation, the "great premise" of this view, was contained in the teachings of Socrates; the lesser premise was given by his death; the genius of Plato drew a conclusion that remained hidden to the other students of Socrates.

The world in which the righteous must die for the truth is not the real world. There is another world where truth lives. Here is the real vital basis for Plato's belief in a true-existing ideal cosmos, different from and opposite to the illusory world of sensible phenomena. His idealism - and this was generally little noticed - Plato had to endure not from those abstract arguments with which he later explained and proved it, but from the deep spiritual experience with which his life began.

Socrates taught about unconditional or self-existing goodness, but he took it mainly not as an opposite, but as a presupposition of our reality. For Plato, the reality in which the death of Socrates was not an accidental fact, but an expression of the law, a phenomenon of the norm of life - such a reality was presented primarily from its negative side, as a contradiction to goodness and truth! Previously, the opposition between "being in essence" and the ghostly "happening", seeming, or phenomenon - earlier than this dialectical and metaphysical opposition, Plato felt, under the influence of the teachings and especially the death of Socrates, the ethical opposition between the proper and the real, between the true moral order and building this hostel.

And to Plato, as to Hamlet, the world seemed like a garden overgrown with weeds; but his pessimism was produced not by personal calamities, but by the fact that in this world there was no room for truth and the righteous.

For Socrates, the order of real life was conditional - good if it agreed with the good in essence - bad if it contradicted it. But in the death of Socrates himself, the question actually received a general solution in the negative sense: in fact, it turned out that the existing order is fundamentally contrary to good, that it is essentially bad. This means that it is impossible to take an active part in it for a person who is not looking for external success at all costs, not for seeming pleasure and not imaginary benefits, but for true good, or virtue. Although it does not follow from such a view, for people of truth and goodness, the impossibility of life in general, it does, obviously, imply the impossibility of a practical, active life.

We see some historical dialectic (in the Hegelian sense), which was expressed in Plato involuntarily and imperceptibly for him. Socrates abandoned the theoretical speculation about the universe, which his predecessors were engaged in, and reduced philosophy from heaven to earth, to human society - and his spiritual heir, the successor of his genius and glory, must first of all renounce life and public affairs, must precede in principle, the ideal of Eastern monasticism.

The whole world lies in evil; the body is a tomb and a prison for the spirit; society is a coffin for wisdom and truth; the life of a true philosopher is a constant dying. But this dying of worldly interests does not give an empty place, but a better life for the mind, contemplating that which is unconditional in itself. Good is what Socrates was looking for as a moral norm for practical, social life, but what for Plato has now become a subject of purely theoretical interest, as the supreme idea, the focus of another "intelligible" world.

Plato had to flee from the world by conviction; this was associated with a forced flight from his native city. He settles for several years in Megara with other Socrates and, away from all sorts of affairs, indulges in pure theory, mathematical and dialectical problems and exercises. In all likelihood, Plato undertook his first overseas journey - to Cyrene, Egypt, and perhaps further, to Asia - from Megara, before returning to Athens. Be that as it may, and returning to his homeland (five years after the death of Socrates), he continued at first to lead the life of a philosopher,; away from public affairs. With an extremely pessimistic view of society and public activity, which is expressed in the dialogues "Gorgias", "Menon", "Phaedo", the 2nd book of the "State", the nature of some other dialogues is also consistent, which, by the very nature of their tasks, testify to a detached idealism of Plato at this time ("Cratylus" - "about the nature of words; "Feetet" - about what knowledge is; "Sophist" - about the relationship between existing and non-existent; "Parmenides" - about one and many, or about ideas).

If this idealism, which rests on the basis of the opposition between the intelligible realm of the truly existing and the deceptive stream of sensory phenomena, as "non-existent", to which all everyday and social practice belongs, - if such a detached point of view is directly compared with Plato's subsequent aspirations for social -political transformations, with its stubborn attempts not only to determine the true norms of social relations, but also to embody these norms in the structure of a real exemplary state, then a clear contradiction, an impassable abyss, appears. It is not made up for by those refined dialectical considerations in the Sophist and Parmenides, by virtue of which existence is recognized in a certain sense even for the "non-existent". The attitude of the philosopher towards this semi-existence remains here also decisively negative, incompatible with any serious practical aspirations in this deceptive world. To fill this abyss, it is not dialectical entertainment that is needed, but a new point of view, which we find in the two central dialogues of Plato - "Phaedrus" and "Feast".

A few, but consistent evidence of antiquity says that Plato, before his meeting with Socrates, wrote love poems, which he burned when he was carried away by the speeches of "the wisest of the Hellenes." Several erotic poems that have survived and come down to us with the name of Plato, if only they were genuine, would indicate the actual relationship of the future philosopher to certain persons of one sex or the other. This in itself is likely both psychologically and historically. But it is not these unconscious manifestations of instinct that are interesting, but the erotic crisis consciously experienced by Plato in the middle of his life and immortalized in the Phaedrus and the Feast.

I will not talk about the external biographical circumstances of this incident for many reasons, and mainly because we know absolutely nothing about it. But if history is silent about the personal details of this interesting novel, with whom and how it happened, then the two named dialogues sufficiently testify both to the fact itself and to what Plato learned from it. This unknown but necessarily assumed fact alone provides the key to the subsequent change in Plato's worldview, and it alone can explain the appearance and character of the Phaedrus and the Feast. These two works, both in terms of the bright, cheerful mood reflected in them, and in terms of the plot itself, stand out sharply from other writings of Plato; and is there any possibility of admitting that the philosopher, who before that looked at all human affairs and interests as "non-existent" and was occupied with the most abstract reflections on epistemological and metaphysical questions, suddenly, for no reason at all, without much real and vital excitement, dedicates his best works to love - a subject that was not at all part of his philosophical horizons - where he sets out a new theory that has no support in his previous views, but leaves a deep and indelible, although indirect, trace in his entire future image thoughts? The content of the Phaedrus and the Feast, theoretically unconnected and incompatible with the detached idealism of the "two worlds", can only be understood as a transformation, a progress in this idealism, caused by the demands of new life experience. In saying this, I assume that these two dialogues belong to the middle epoch of Platonic life and work. This is accepted by the majority of reputable scientists. True, Schleiermacher recognized "Phaedrus" as the first, youthful work of Plato, although we do not find any attempt to really prove this basic proposition for him. And on the other hand, the modern philologist Konstantin Ritter finds it possible, for philological reasons, which, however, did not seem convincing to anyone except him, relates the same "Phaedrus" to Plato's old age. These two paradoxes cancel each other out and leave the general view unchanged.

At the first serious acquaintance with "Phaedrus" and "Feast", the modern reader should experience some confusion and bewilderment. The natural lining of erotic feelings and relationships here is not at all the one that is generally accepted as normal in modern life and literature. Where we assume one series of relationships, the ancient Greeks, corrupted by Asiatic influences, allowed at least three.

One of the surviving odes of the famous poetess Sappho from Lesvos begins with such an appeal to the goddess of love: Poikiloqron¢ aqanat ¢Ajrodith, i.e. variegated immortal Aphrodite! It is this diversity of Aphrodite, assumed by Plato, that confuses his modern reader and admirer, who is accustomed to referring well-known objects not to philosophy and poetry, but to psychiatry, on the one hand, and to the criminal code, on the other. Of course, the actual anomalies in this area are even more colorful with us than in the classical world, but we are amazed that the main ones were considered by the Hellenes not for painful deviations, but for something simple and natural and even preferable to what we now recognize. for the only natural.

But to put this reprehensible