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THE WALRUS, THE CARPENTER, AND THE PHILOSOPHER

“‘But wait a bit’, the Oysters cried, ‘Before we have our chat; For some of us are out of breath, And all of us are fat!’ ‘No hurry!’ said the Carpenter They thanked him much for that… ‘O Oysters,’ said the Carpenter, ‘You’ve had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?’ But answer came there none— And this was scarcely odd, because They’d eaten every one.” Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

In their discussion concerning what kind of life is most desirable, Socrates and Protarchus come to a conclusion that a life although full of pleasure but that is nevertheless devoid of phronein, noein, and logizesthai would be to live a life as an oyster [to ostreion]—Philebus 21c-d states, “To live not the life of a human but of some certain mollusk or as much as sea-animals living in the midst of oyster bodies.” Such a life is without arrangement, cognition, and a sense of the future, past, or present—in short, it is to be thick-skinned [ostrakodermos] or to be a bone-head, for to ostreion is related to the Greek word for bone to osteion.

Yet, it would be odd indeed if we were to admit that the oyster experiences pleasure, even if unawares. For if we were to admit this, the oyster would be raised to the status of an Epicurean god, who experiences never ending pleasures, and consequently is unconcerned with the world around it. Or perhaps this is exactly what we should be hearing. The cloistered life is fit only for a god or perhaps an animal, while the human life is a life of pleasures and pains, i.e., it is a life lived in community with others. The question before us, then, is what is the philosophical and metaphorical significance of the oyster’s boney exterior?

There are several things to which our attention should be drawn: first, the argument in which this Philebus passage, and the Philebus as a whole, takes place is similar to the discussion held in the first half of the Phaedo, and also the argument throughout the end of the Protagoras, where the need for a measurement of pleasure and pain is made; second, the metaphor of the oyster as an animal encased in a shell is mirrored by the prison in which Socrates finds himself in the Phaedo as well as in the Phaedrus; additionally, we must consider the undersea environment in which the oyster lives; and lastly, just as he does at Apology 38a, Socrates here makes the famous claim that to live with an uncritical disposition toward the world is not a human life.

However let us, for the present, focus on the metaphor of the oyster. The oyster’s hard shell perhaps represents the human body and the soft core that is sheathed resembles the human soul, our precious pearl of wisdom. While the shell provides protection for the vulnerable insides, it does so to such extent that it is encased, distancing it from and distorting the vision of the ‘true’ world around it. A metaphorical read of the oyster in terms of the human seems justified, since in the Phaedo, the body is described as a prison, a calcified casing, blocking light from the external world and distorting it. Moreover, Phaedrus 250c, explicitly likens the body to an oyster, to ostreon, the more common form of the word for oyster. Here, Socrates states, “We being cleansed [when participating in the divine celestial train] and not entombed as now in that which we carry about us and we name the body, to which we have been fettered as is the custom of an oyster.” Given the metaphorical comparison, the question before us now is, given the similarities, i.e., that the human can live a life like an oyster, what is it that separates the human from our crustaceous friends and why are they thought to be so mindless?

As noted, the discussion of pains and pleasures in the Philebus echoes the discussions in the first half of the Phaedo and later part of the Protagoras. These dialogues revolve around the concept of weighing pleasures against pains and the human’s correct relation to them. From Socrates remarking what a strange creature pleasure and pain must be for where one is the other is sure to follow (Phd. 60b) and from how one must master certain pleasures and pain lest one be mastered by them (68e), to Socrates’ argument for ē metrēikē technē (Prot. 356dff), and even to discussing the benefits of the well mixed life throughout the Philebus. Bringing these discussions together, it is revealed that the good life is a life consisting in a well-mixed proportion of opposing forces: pleasures and pains; hot and cold; flux and rest; swiftness and slowness; and the like, and not the life that is unmixed and stale (Phlb.61b). Socrates states that he and Protarchus should be likened to sommeliers [oinochooi], for beside them are wellsprings from which they are to fill their cups, one fount being the fount of honey and pleasure, the other being the sober and wineless fount of thoughtfulness [phronēsis] (Phlb.61c). In other words, one must have a view to what is best for the whole experience of the drink and not focus on one particular aspect, creating a drink that is well balanced like a full bodied but dry wine.

Binding these disparate dialogues is an undercurrent revolving us around the topic of human excellence [aretē]. Despite the differing approaches as to how one is to move toward aretē, what is common throughout these dialogues is the necessity to weigh pleasures and pains. Whatever the particulars of the characteristics of the measuring may be, it seems that this ability allows the human to relate to the whole of aretē in the correct manner and not myopically focusing on one aspect of the human life, thus opening the human to the whole of the ethical world—the world in which justice, piety, self-control, courage, and truth give one the correct disposition toward one’s friends, the gods, the self, one’s enemies, and that which reveals them to us, respectively. Phronēsis, we are told at Phaedo 69b, is the correct medium by which pleasures and pains are to be exchanged. It gives one the proper comportment toward the whole of aretē so that it will appear not as sketch or a rough painting, but in its truth. In other words, phronesis looks to the whole of one’s life, placing pleasures and pains in correct proportion, thus leading us to live life in an excellent manner.

The Phaedo is ripe with undertones of catharsis and top notes of harmony. One must cleanse one’s pallet or soul from the body, i.e., not to become encased in the immediate present. And just as he must invoke the divine’s help to become a sommelier in the Philebus, Socrates, while in his cell, not only puts Aesop’s fables to rhyme but composes the hymn to Apollo to music. For he states that philosophy is the greatest kind of music (Ph. 61a). Like music, then, philosophy is concerned primarily with composing what could be a cacophony into a symphony, for the soul cannot hear harmony if it is covered over, since the sounds echo without rhyme or reason. Phronēsis allows one to become thoughtful in one’s organization, releasing the fetters that fuse those pleasures and pains that do not naturally fit, just as Socrates is released from his physical fetters after composing music in his cell. Consequently, thoughtfulness [phronēsis] is claimed to be a type of catharsis or purification (Ph. 69c). With the help of philosophy, phronēsis shucks the shell to which the body is compared, allowing the individual to experience the world undistorted by the body’s influence. In a play on words, the soul is considered in itself [kath’hautē] by becoming katharē, and viewing the body as a katharma, that which is thrown away during cleansing, it is treated as a castaway, as Socrates states he is freed from the fetters of the body (Ph.67d). Thus, unless one possesses phronēsis, one will be fettered to the body, distorting one’s vision of arete. Certainly, then, the individual who possesses phronēsis will undoubtedly be the individual striving toward aretē. Phronēsis, as a catharsis, opens the shell exposing the tender soul to the light. But as the Republic makes clear, after one is exposed to the light, emerging from one’s cave, one becomes disoriented, experiencing aporia (waylessness). This reveals that one must approach the world without preconceived conceptions concerning the ethical world to which one is now exposed. And as the Socratic dialogues reveal, a consideration of aretē is possible only in dialogue with others—comporting oneself in relation to others, dwelling in the pre-cognitive realm of aporia.

However oysters, due to their shells, are destined to live an isolated and solitary life. Indeed, the verb ostrakizein, to banish by potsherds or shells or to ostracize, is related to to ostreion. And so, to be an oyster is always already to be self-ostracizing. Although oysters lay together in their beds, there is no community among them. Still encased, each is fettered to their own private worldview, not one of them experiences aporia and none possesses phronēsis. Here, we should hear Heraclites’ 95th fragment“To the waking, the world is one and shared, each of the sleepers turns aside into his own private world.” The sleeper is not separated from the world, but rather is exposed to and held in relation to those ethical notions that are in him or her only. And so in this position of exposure, he or she turns away from the shared world found in the common space toward a private world. Lying in their beds, the oysters are asleep in the sense of having a disposition that is not directed toward a shared world, but a private one. One is within the world but nevertheless one is unaffected by the communally shared experience, presumably since they have not undergone aporia. So, when one is unaffected by the phenomena of the communal dwelling place, one cannot be awoken to one’s correct relationship to aretē and thus express phronēsis. Consequently, one is drawn outside of the community into a world that is all of one’s own. Those asleep, thus, take appearances of ‘what is’ as true, a mere paintings. As a result, one cannot respond to the call that the community sends out, and so one cannot place oneself in correct relation to others and therefore one cannot situate oneself in relation to the forms of justice, piety, self-control, courage, and truth.

To further understand the metaphorical oyster, one must look to the environment in which they live, the sea, which for the Greeks is a place dominated by chance. The sea is ungovernable and brings all sorts of unanticipatable and unsavory elements, hence the need for a near impenetrable shell. I wonder whether we may interpret the sea environment in which the oyster lives as a metaphor for the world in which the human finds itself? We are thrown into, or abandon in, a world that constantly frustrates one’s endeavors, as Protagoras’ myth reminds us. Yet while the oyster has by nature a boney shell, the human must, through technē, build itself a shell, e.g., clothing and armor. Technē allows the human to at least have some counterforce against the deluge that chance is. So, is there metaphorical significance between the natural shell of the oyster and the technical shell of the human? In other words, does the human become cloistered and laid to sleep in bed, when it attempts to guard itself against the unforeseeable ebbs and flows of the world. After all, at Pol. X 611bff, in a discuss on the nature of the soul, the sea-creature Glaucus is described. Glaucus’ primordial nature is not easily seen, since its original body has been broken and worn away by sea waves so that oysters, sea-weed, and rocks have begun to encrust it, so that Glaucus is “more like a wild beast than what it was by nature.” The overwhelming force that chance represents can be too much bare and so one develops, or is forced to develop, technē in the form of clothing or armor against it, instead of freely navigating through its ebbs and flows. Is the primordial nature of the human, its phronetic being, covered over and made more beast-like when it must rely too heavily upon technē?

A discussion of whether technē can and to what extent it can be attributed to the ‘nature’ of the human is too great to be explored here. Nor am I suggesting that technē is a plight, but if armor and clothing can, at least metaphorically, be likened to the shell of an oyster that, through necessity, obscures the vision of its tender insides, or acts like the accretions of Glaucus making it more beast than it originally was, then the technē that the human puts on itself obscures its true primordial nature, making it more beast-like. What I am suggesting is that relying upon technē compels one to become myopic in one’s worldview. Relying upon technē lulls one to sleep, making one believe that one has abilities that one does not have, as Socrates makes clear, in the Apology, during his account of his discussions with artisans. They allow their technological knowledge of their particular field to bleed over to the lives as a whole, giving them a false sense of security that they are protected from the world. One need only look to the story of Stesilaus who made a most impressive weapon, which backfired due to lack of preparedness, making him a laughingstock not only for his opponents but for his fellow soldier men (La. 183c-e). Does the over reliance on technical fighting equipment obscure his view of courage? And consequently it may be asked, to what extent does technē in any form obscure our view of aretē with regard to our whole life? To what extent does it make us sleep, believing that we are well cared for and not subject to the whims of chance?

With the above questions in mind, what is the function of Socrates’ art? If it exposes us to aporia, shucking our metaphorical shell, to what are we exposed? The divine, since the invocations to the gods helps to free the human from its fetters? What is the character, then, of the divine; primordial, pre-cognitive, pre-technical experience? Whatever it is, this experience helps one to rediscover one’s nature, paradoxically protecting us from the enchantments of sophistry by opening one, exposing one to the world as it is. It protects us, we oysters, from the two most dangerous sophists of all, the Walrus and the Carpenter—one, a creature from the sea, and the other an artisan. Certainly our salvation, if we wish not to be dined upon, is dependant upon the weighing of pleasures and pains, something oysters, due to their enclosed and isolated life, lack, but what we humans can achieve, only it we are willing to be cracked open, exposing us to other dangers, yes, but dangers that are necessary to transverse if one is to live the life of a human.