Paradox and Tragedy: Plato and the Literary Tradition

Lloyd P. Gerson
University of Toronto
1.
One of the ethical claims made continually in the Platonic dialogues is that no one does
wrong willingly ( ). 1 The claim is often included among the so-called
Socratic paradoxes such as that it is better to suffer than to do wrong and that virtue is
knowledge. 2 Taken in one way, this claim is tautologous: to err or to go wrong implies a failed
effort, that is, an effort to hit a target. 3 Of course, no one willingly fails to hit the target at which
one aims. In the contexts in which the claim is made, the relevant target is achieving the
opposite of what would constitute doing wrong. So, anyone trying to do good and failing,
does so unwillingly. And yet the claim is presented as anything but obvious or trivial. In fact,
Socrates interlocutors are frequently astonished at the fact that anyone would believe it.
The reason for this is not far to seek. The meaning of good as a goal is ambiguous: it
can refer to the explicit goal of the person trying to attain it or it can refer to an implicit goal
which may or may not be identical with the explicit one. Thus, as we learn in Gorgias, a tyrant
who is able to force his wishes on anyone he chooses does what seems to him to be good or in
his own interests, whereas in fact it may turn out that such actions are not really in his own
interests, in which case he did not actually attain the good he sought. 4 The mere possibility that
what seems best to the tyrant may not be identical with what he wants turns the putative
tautology into the basis for the paradox. For in his case, if his doing wrong means that, though
he did what seemed best to him, he did not do what he really wanted, surely he did not do wrong
willingly.
I call this the basis for the paradox and not the paradox itself because all that this amounts
to so far is that there is an in principle distinction between what one thinks is good for oneself
and what in fact is so. But no one, including Socrates tough-minded interlocutors like Callicles
and Thrasymachus, ever doubt this. How could they? The simple and obvious fact is that
children often act contrary to their own interests and that adults are not immune from acting like
children. So, distinguishing a subjective judgment about ones own good from an objective
judgment about that good (even one made by the same person at a later date) is unproblematic
and hardly paradoxical. What is truly paradoxical is the claim that it is never in ones interest to
do what is wrong according to some universal standard of good. If that is so, then what
constitutes doing wrong is determined not by failing to achieve ones own explicit goal, but by
1

See Plato Ap. 37A5; Gorg. 488A3; Protag. 345D8, 358C7; Rep. 589C6; Tim. 86D2, E1; Lg. 731C-D.
I am here going to simply avoid the profound question of whether these paradoxes express a Socratic ethical
position that is somehow opposed to or at least different from Platos own. I do not, in fact, believe that there is an
independent Socratic philosophy in the dialogues. Nevertheless, one could take the claim that no one does wrong
willingly as authentically Socratic, that is, as held by the historical Socrates. I am more interested in what Plato
makes of this claim, in particular how his understanding illuminates and is illuminated by the concept of in
Greek tragedy.
3
No doubt, this is why Socrates at Protag.345D5ff, in his interpretation of the words in Simonides poem to the
effect that no one willingly does anything shameful, assumes that he is saying something that all educated people
agree with. See, e.g., Sophocles, Women of Trachis 1123: , the words spoken by Hyllus
regarding her mother.
4
See Gorg. 466A-468E.
2

failing to achieve a goal of which one may be entirely ignorant. After all, a tyrant may in fact
come to regret his wicked life owing to the consequences of his tyranny. And then again, he
might not, owing to his having systematically evaded such consequences. The paradox resides in
the fact that, given the existence of a universal good unaffected by ones own explicit goals, and
given that everyone wants what is actually good for oneself, it is entirely possible that someone
can want something and not want it at the same time. Our tyrant wants to oppress people, but at
the same time he does not want to oppress people if it is true that in oppressing people he does
not achieve his own good. If oppressing people is something that is universally or unqualifiedly
wrong, doing so is wrong for the tyrant. So, he does not want it at the same time that he does.
Perhaps one way to avoid the paradox is to claim that what appears to be a case of
wanting and not wanting something at the same time is in fact a case of wanting something under
one description but not wanting it under another. Thus, the tyrant wants to oppress people, but
he does not want to oppress people if it turns out to be the case that doing so is not in his interest.
So, the paradox dissolves into something else, namely, a conflict between a superficial and a
profound understanding by the tyrant of his own interest. It is the tyrants ignorance of the
latter that makes the claim seem paradoxical. But this dissolution of the paradox requires that we
substitute for the wanting and not wanting at the same time something else, namely, wanting
now versus a hypothetical wanting at some possible later date when the profound understanding
is achieved. In fact, by focusing on the tyrants ignorance, it is not even possible that he should
want to oppress people and not want to oppress the same time for that would require that he be
ignorant and not ignorant at the same time.
It is fairly clear that this cannot be Platos view, at least at the time of writing his
Republic. For in Book Four, the hapless Leontius wants to gaze on naked corpses and does not
want to do so at the same time. 5 He thinks that gazing will give him some pleasure or other and
that this is in his interest; at the same time, he thinks he ought not to gaze because gazing is
wrong and it is not in his interest to do what is wrong. 6 So, it is not the case that the paradox in
Leontius behaviour can be dissolved by maintaining that, though he wants to gaze, if only he
were to come to understand that gazing is wrong, he would no longer want it. The paradox
remains as expressible in the words no one does wrong willingly. Leontius does not willingly
gaze, that is, he does not want to gaze. Yet, he gazes, and there is no indication whatsoever that
he is forced to do so, that is, that he is not doing it willingly.
The depth of the paradox resides not in willing something and simultaneously willing the
oppositesomething that we often characterize as having mixed emotionsbut in believing a
proposition p and in believing not-p simultaneously. One may well question the possibility of
such a thing actually being possible, as, for example, did members of the Old Stoa. On the other
hand, if it is possibleif, that is, Plato has accurately described the case of Leontiusno one
can deny that in some sense one who is in this state is deeply irrational and that if he acts while
in this state, his action deserves to be called something like a mortal sin against reason.
Let us suppose that acratic action, as characterized by Plato, is all too real a phenomenon.
So, we then must say that Leontius unwillingly does wrong in the sense that he acts counter to
what he wills, which in this case is not to gaze on the corpses. And though he gazes because he

See Rep. 439E-440A.

It does not seem to be the case that Leontius thinks that gazing is wrong according to some social norm that he
himself does not accept, because of his evident guilt feelings after gazing. Even if he did not accept this norm in the
sense that he does not believe in it, still he obviously thinks that in some sense it is not in his interest to violate it.

evidently wills to gaze, this will is somehow inferior or alien to his real will which is what Plato
is referring to when he says that no one does wrong willingly.
This still leaves us with an obvious problem. Because this inferior or alien will is still
his own will, it seems that Leontius should bear some responsibility for his action. Only if it is
literally true that he could not help himself would we say, I think, that he is not responsible.
The words could not help himself are, though, unilluminating at best. For we could never in
principle know that they are true. All we do know is that on this occasion, Leontius did not
refrain from gazing. We could never know that, for example, he could not have helped himself if
he had tried harder to do so. There is actually no possible way even for Leontius to know that
this is true, even if he utters the words I cant help myself while he is gazing. I shall return to
this point in due course.
If, however, Leontius is held morally responsible because he manifestly does know that
what he is doing is wrong, is the moral antidote for the chronically acratic to seek to eliminate
his scruples? For if Leontius did not know that what he was doing was wrong, the only willing
discernible is his willing to do what is in fact wrong. But Plato tells us that he does that
unwillingly. Holding someone morally responsible for what they acknowledge is wrong seems
in a way easier than holding someone morally responsible for doing something that he does not
know or believe is wrong. In short, vice it seems is less blameworthy than is incontinence.
But this certainly cannot be Platos position. For example, in Republic X, we read the
famous and portentous claim that the one who chooses is to blame; god is blameless (
). 7 The choice here is a choice of lives and of ones guardian spirit. It is
true that in this passage , the opportunity to choose a life is arranged by lot, so that one chooses
in an order over which he has no control. Any choice of life is said to be capable of bringing a
measure of happiness. But the main point of the passage is that success in a choice of lives
depends on the measure of virtue that one brings to the task. And as is made clear in another
passage, this time from Laws X, we are responsible for cultivating whatever measure of virtue
we possess. In this passage, the Athenian Stranger is considering divine providence. He says
that all our actions are ensouled ( ) meaning, I think that
they are all a function of the state of the soul of the agent. 8 The Stranger then adds that the
King
made responsible the acts of willing of each individual for the generation of the
state of the soul. This is so because in whatever way one manifests desire and
whatever state his soul is in, it is almost always in this way that he acts each
9
time and [this is the way] the state of the soul comes to be.

So, if one is to be held responsible for becoming vicious or, indeed, acratic, and if we continue to
maintain that no one does wrong willingly, whence the moral responsibility? Further, is the
7

Rep. 10.617E4-5. Cf. Tim. 42D. Is Plato here refuting Homer, Il. 19.86-88, where Agamemnon says, ...yet I am
not responsible, but Zeus is, and Destiny, and Erinys the mist-walking who in assembly caught my heart in the
savage delusion ( , ,
)? Cf. Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1487-8: For what thing among mortals is accomplished
without Zeus? What here is without gods assent ( ;
;).
8
Lg. 10.904A6-7.
9
Lg. 10. 904B8-C4: 904.c .
, .

moral responsibility of the vicious person of a different kind from that of the acratic or is it only
a matter of degree? One would think initially that they are fundamentally different because the
source of the unwilling wrongdoing in the case of the vicious person is apparently his ignorance
that what he is doing wrong, whereas the source is different for the acratic. And yet, ignorance
of some sort seems to be the explanation for unwilling wrongdoing in all the passages cited
above. 10
Leaving aside for the moment the possible varying degree of culpability in the acratic and
in the vicious person, the idea of ignorance that is culpable brings me to my central topic. 11 For
as I shall try to show, culpable ignorance is at the core of the ancient Greek idea of tragedy, at
least as both Plato and Aristotle understood it.
2.
In his Poetics, Aristotle adduces the concept of to help explain the nature of
tragedy. He stipulates that the best tragedy should imitate actions that inspire pity and fear.
Upstanding men whose fortune changes from good to bad should not be the subject of tragedy,
for their fall arouses neither pity nor fear, but rather repugnance. Nor should bad men be shown
changing from bad to good fortune, for this, too, arouses neither pity nor fear, nor even
compassion; their rise is the opposite of tragic. Nor should a worthless individual be show to fall
in fortune, since though this might arouse compassion, it does not arouse pity or fear. For pity is
aroused by the misfortune of one who does not deserve it and fear by the misfortune of one who
is like us.
The remaining type, then, lies between these two; and such is the man who, not
different from us in virtue and in justice, and being one of those who have a
great reputation and good fortune, changes to misfortune not because of vice or
wickedness but because of some error, as in the case of Oedipus and Thyestes
and other famous men from families of this sort.12

This famous account of tragedy is full of interest and perplexity. I want to focus on
understanding the central idea, that of a being the source of the tragedy. The contrast
here made between the and vice or wickedness is often supposed to indicated that
there is no blameworthiness in the former. But this is incautious and does not take into account
the fall of upstanding men, which arouses neither pity nor fear. 13 If there is no blameworthiness
10

In the Tim. passage, physiological conditions are acknowledged as an alternative cause of some wrongdoing, but
in this case it is not clear that it is blameworthy.
11
Aristotle, EN 3.2.1110b24-7, clearly distinguishes between acting owing to ignorance ( ) and acting
in ignorance (), where only the latter is culpable. The example Aristotle gives is of someone who gets
drunk and then does something out of ignorance because he is drunk. Cf. 3.10.1115b15-17; 7.6.1148a3.
12
See Poetics 13.1453a7-12: .
,
, .
13
Cf. Rhet. 1.13.1374b2-8, where Aristotle distinguishes from (wrongs) and from
(misfortunes). Although are not vicious, they are nonetheless not blameless. Such would
be the actions of the incontinent. See 3.2.1405a26 where the possibility that the man who has committed a
can be said to have done wrong () presumes that he has done wrong in a way other than the way the vicious
person has, though he has apparently not done it with the same motive.

in the of an Oedipus, are we to suppose that the upright individual is to be blamed?

Aristotle does not indicate so. Then is it the fact that whereas an ordinary individual can be the
subject of tragedy, an upstanding person cannot because he is our superior? If this were the case,
then the would not seem to be essential. But if the is not essential, are we
really supposed to believe that just because an individual is superior in character, his fall will
elicit no pity or fear, but only repugnance?
Clearly, the is essential to the definition, at least of the best tragedy. Why is it,
if it is the case, that the is not blameworthy? Such an act would seem to be the case of
someone who, as we have just seen, Aristotle thinks acts because of ignorance, not in ignorance.
But this puts the tragic figure into a class with someone who mistakenly runs over his infant in
his own driveway or someone who mistakenly shoots a neighbour thinking he is an intruder. Are
these latter cases tragic? Perhaps. I would suggest, though, that they are tragic only to the extent
that they are homicides, not merely accidental deaths. In the case of accidental deaths, there is
no , neither by the victim nor by anyone else. The is essential because it
suggests that somehow the result could have been avoided. The neighbour-killer or child-killer,
no matter how understandable their actions may be, might have acted differently. Is the tragedy,
then, found in the subtle hypothetical gap between what was actually done and what might have
been done under other circumstances? I have already argued, though, that could have done
otherwise is, basically, rhetorical filler. If I take one path that leads to a disaster instead of
another that would have led to nothing, is it tragic just because there was a theoretical
alternative? But this is to make tragedy very close to bad luck, something that not only does
Aristotle reject as falling beneath the standard of the best tragedies, but something which is
completely antithetical to the role of the gods in the agents fall. 14 And in any case, events
attributable to bad luck either leave out entirely, like the accidental deaths, or the
is superseded by the bad luck. 15
Culpable ignorance seems to admit of degrees. We might blame one person more than
another because the things he might have done in order to avoid precipitating a catastrophe seem
easier or more obvious and their omission therefore less forgiveable. But an attempt to grade
blame, say, according to a parents having more or less anticipated all the possible household
hazards that could have been removed seems pointless. Pathos rises to the level of tragedy when
the ignorance regards not particularswhich are in any case infinitebut universals, because
how we react to these more profoundly expresses our humanity. 16 The error regarding particulars
is seen to flow from some prior error regarding universals. 17 The idea that errors arise solely
14

See Poetics 9.1452a4-6.

Cf. N. Sherman, Hamartia and Virtue, Essays in Aristotles Poetics. Edited by A. Rorty. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1992), 178.
16
G. Else, Aristotles Poetics: The Argument (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 380-3, argues that the
type of ignorance Aristotle has in mind is ignorance of particulars, not of universals. So before him, M. Ostwald,
Aristotle on Hamartia and Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus, Festschrift Ernst Kapp. (M. von Schrder: Hamburg,
1958), 93-108.
17
Cf. EN 3.2.1111b28-30 where Aristotle claims that the wicked person is ignorant of what he ought to do and
what he ought to avoid doing. He adds that it is because of such an error ( ) that he acts
15

from the misapplication of well understood general principles seems to be at best naive.
Leontius does not misapply the universal truth that one ought not engage in indecorous or
inappropriate actions. Such errors may, of course, well occur. But apart from blameless
accidents, the realm of plausible drama is most empty of those who do wrong in particular cases
while having clearly before their minds an understanding that in general they ought not to do
what they are doing.
The principal reason for insisting that culpable ignorance, that is, the cause of the
and not the itself should be our focus is that were this not so, Aristotle would
not have begun his account of tragedy by eliminating the good person from the list of appropriate
subjects. For if the is an act of non-culpable ignorance, it would be difficult to see how
the fall, and the appropriate audience response to it, would be different in the case of the good
man and in the case of someone like us. When we are dealing with an error in recognition, so
often a hinge of the plot of a Greek tragedy, the virtue of the protagonist hardly seems relevant.
By contrast, when the error is caused by the state of mind of someone who is other than perfectly
virtuous, that is, someone like us, there is an obvious reason for making the distinction that
Aristotle does make: one is culpably ignorant and the other is not.
Given that culpable ignorance admits of degrees, we should not suppose that there will be
anything like a proportionality between the culpability and the punishment. Indeed, what elicits
our pity and fear is that the punishment overwhelms the degree of culpability in the minds of the
audience. Perhaps it is pertinent to point out that, in fact, the idea of punishment fitting a crime
is an illusion in any case. There is no commensurability in any strict sense. And since we are
dealing here with an error and not a crimereflecting the legal distinction between that which
is tortious and that which is an indictable offenseproportionality or disproportionality is
entirely a psychological matter. The playwrights task is to ensure that the audience feels a lack
of proportion.
Since Oedipus Rex is Aristotles prime example of an excellent tragedy, let us for a
moment consider the of Oedipus. 18 The story is of a man who is approached by a
messenger from the oracle at Delphi. The messenger presents him with a terrible prediction: you
are fated to kill your father and marry your mother. As we know, Oedipus commits his
in fulfillment of the prophesy. Why, though, does he do this? Simply put, he does it because he
tries to escape his fate, leaving his home and his supposed father and mother. But if it was
possible for Oedipus to escape his fate, then in fact he was not fated to be a patricide or commit
incest. Oedipus might have believed that he was not so fated, in which case he had no need to
leave home. Or else, he might have believed that he was fated, in which case it was pointless to
leave. The only explanation for Oedipus leaving home is that he simultaneously believed that he
unjustly and becomes wicked. Here the seems to include both the ignorant state of mind and the action that
flows from it. It is of course possible to separate a mistake about what I ought to do in a particular case from
knowledge of the truth of the universal proposition , that is, by locating the mistake in the application of the
universal.
18
It is worth noting that there are at least ten other ancient Greek tragedies that we know of in which Oedipus is the
subject.

was and was not fated to kill his father and marry his mother. This state of holding contradictory
beliefs is the source of his wrongdoing and this is quite different from the purely accidental
homicide. Oedipus merely had to be rational in order to save himself. In other words,
rationality would have made the truth or falsity of his belief irrelevant because whatever his
belief, he would have saved himself so long as he did not believe the opposite, too. 19
Oedipus seems to be more than merely ignorant; he seems to be culpably ignorant, but
not because he should have or could have known that he was committing patricide and incest. 20
He is culpable because he acted on the basis of an irrational state, one which was not caused by
any discernible external factors. As Aristotle points out elsewhere, forming beliefs is not up to
us. 21 When we believe some proposition p, our coming to believe the opposite of p is normally
one wants to say: almost inevitablyentails giving up belief in p. The state of one who
continues to believe p, though he comes to believe not-p, is impossible to explain precisely
because a putative explanation will need to assume that cases like believing p and not-p at the
same time is an instance of a general rule the truth of which must obtain if any explanation is to
be possible. The only explanation for a contradiction must be another contradiction. To posit
the possibility of contradictions is to forego explanation altogether.
If Oedipus is culpably ignorant, the audience is certainly expected to be horrified at the
outcome of this. But just as in logic, where from a contradiction absolutely anything can be said
to follow, so from the lived contradiction in Oedipus mind the results must be in principle
unpredictable. It is chance, after all, that causes him to encounter his father. In a way, for him,
chance becomes fate, owing only to his culpability. 22
Aristotle sets Thyestes alongside Oedipus as having committed a worthy of a
great tragedy. It is difficult to know the exact version of the story to which Aristotle is referring.
It is often supposed that his is his unknowingly eating the bodies of his children at the
banquet arranged by his brother Atreus. Since Aristotle says explicitly that it is not vice or
wickedness that is the focus of the tragedy, we can set aside the adultery of Thyestes with the
wife of Atreus which suggests that it is not the feast that is the focus. According to another
This analysis of the of Oedipus was originally taught to me by teacher, the late John Crossett. His
analysis is set out in The Oedipus Rex, in Oedipus Rex: A Mirror for Greek Drama, ed. A. Cook (Prospect Heights,
Ill.: Waveland Press, 1963), 134-55. Another good example of the same sort of manifested with respect to
an oracle is in Herodotus Histories, 1.34-44, where Croesus brings about the death of his son Atys by both
believing and disbelieving (because he tries to avoid) the oracle that his son will be struck down by an iron weapon.
20
At Oedipus at Colonus 270-4; 969-99, Oedipus insists that he did wrong unwillingly and that he is not
blameworthy for killing his father in self-defense or unknowingly marrying his mother. This is an entirely
reasonable plea to consider his actions as being performed because of ignorance. The separation of that which is
culpable from the actual itself is essential. The term seems sometimes to be used both for the
mental error and for the deed or its result, the , where the - ending usually indicates a result. Cf.
Antigone 922-4 for a similar exculpating pronoucement.
21
See De Anima 3.3.427b20: .
22
Sherman, art. cit., 186, thinks that it is implausible to claim that there was anything blameworthy in the sequence
of events that led to the disastrous conclusion. See L. Golden, Hamartia, Ate, and Oedipus, Classical World 72
(1978), 3-12, and especially n.7, for references to those, including Golden himself, who view Oedipus as essentially
blameless. If this were the case, then it is difficult to see why Aristotle sharply distinguishes someone like Oedipus
from the virtuous man whose fall is not suitable for tragic art.
19

Euripidean version, the is found in Thyestes unwittingly committing incest with his
daughter, the result of which is the conception of their son Aegisthus. In this version, the grown
Aegisthus is about to kill Thyestes at the behest of Atreus when Thyestes recognizes his son and
his daughter who kills herself with the sword Aegisthus then uses to kill Atreus. We can only
guess why Thyestes ignorance of his daughters identity may be thought to be culpable. Was
Aristotle referring to the case of Thyestes when he described the culpable ignorance of the one
who is inebriated?
The of Oedipus is, according to Aristotle, the paradigm of tragic error. It is,
though, just the limiting case of incontinence. The incontinent person knows or at least believes
that what he is doing is contrary to his best interests as he conceived these, indeed, at the very
moment he is acting contrary to these. Oedipus believes that he can escape the inescapable. One
might suppose that the cases are significantly different because for the incontinent there is a
conflict of appetite or passion and reason whereas in Oedipus the conflict is between two beliefs,
each rational, though in contradiction to each other. In fact, for Plato, at any rate, language like
soul vs. body or reason vs. appetite is metaphorical. I shall return to this point in the last
section. Here I only note that the incontinent Leontius exhibits his rationality in his belief that
gazing on the corpses is an activity that will satisfy him. His rational belief that he ought not to
look could not be in opposition to an incommensurable appetite for looking; rather, it is in
opposition to the rational belief that looking is now satisfying to him. So, Leontius does and
does not believe that looking is good for him.

3.
The impossibility of explaining the lived contradiction of believing and not believing
something at the same time seems to me to provide one avenue for understanding the role of the
gods in Greek tragedy. The fundamental property of a Greek god is, of course, immortality;
indeed, the gods are often referred to as the immortals. But an equally critical property,
adduced especially when gods are brought in somehow to account for human affairs, is their
inscrutability. Since there is no rational explanationwe might as well just say that there is no
explanation at allfor the state of someone who believes and does not believe the identical
proposition, an inscrutable god or gods serves as a quasi-explanation. That is, if we accept that
fact of contradictory beliefs, we are no further along in understanding how it is possible even for
a god to produce this result. The best that the weight of the literary tradition can supply here is
that the god made the man mad, though the madness is of a special sort. It is madness that is
especially insidious because it is manifested in what to all the world appears as rational
behaviour.
In Homer, it is primarily Zeus who is responsible for visiting upon human beings .
This term is notorious difficult to define, but it is can be described as a state of mind in which

one is likely to be led to disaster. In the Iliad, Book Two, Agamemnon announces to his troops
that
23

Agamemnon is referring to the fact that the Trojan War has been raging for nine years without
resolution. But it is not at all clear from this passage, and, indeed, many others, whether it was
Zeus who led him to war and so to the stalemate or whether he, Agamemnon, bears some
responsibility. 24 Scholarly debate has for a long time struggled over whether is caused by
the giver or the receiver. As I have suggested, though, we should not be surprised to find a
systematic ambivalence over this question in the texts, precisely because an irrational state finds
no ready explanation in the person or in an outside force. If Agamemnon is weighted down with
futility, it is because he thinks he ought to stay and fight some more an at the same time that he
ought to return to Argos. Is he responsible for this state of mind or not?
As Dawe shows, the ancient Greeks consistently associated with or
deception. 25 Of course, the sort of deception we are dealing with when we talk about the
possibility of culpable ignorance is self-deception, the self-deception of one who imagines that
the laws of logic are capable of being suspended. He is someone who implicitly renounces his
rationality at the very moment he announces, to himself or to anyone else, a rational plan of
action. And when that plan ends in disaster, he blames fate or the gods or his afflicted
ancestors. 26
And yet, he is pitiable and a source of fear for the audience because everyone can see
how easily his fate could be their own. His culpability is mitigatedthough never obliterated
by the audiences inability to understand how arriving at his irrational state could ever occur
without external influence. The gods make the truly irrational real and the truly irrational is the
essence of tragedy. If the gods were not posited as existing and as being implicated in human
affairs, then the behaviour of Oedipus would be classified as crazy or stupid, but not tragic. But
to reduce that behaviour to craziness or stupidity is virtually an attempt to deny the reality of the
irrationality. The gods provide a means for affirming that reality. 27

23

Il. B.111: Zeus son of Kronos has caught me fast in bitter futility (trans. Lattimore). Cf. Z.356 (destiny);
.287 (disaster); .537 (delusion); .685 (fury); T. 113 (deception). See R.D. Dawe, Some Reflections on
At and Hamartia, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 72 (1968), 95, who gives an array of other passages in
which, according to him, the correct translation may be variously misfortune, forced error, unforced error,
wrongdoing, stupefaction, and penalty. A more extensive study on the connection between and
is found in J. Bremer, Hamartia: Tragic Error in the Poetics of Aristotle and in Greek Tragedy (Amsterdam: Adolf
Hakkert, 1969), 99-194.
24
The ambivalence is evident in Aeschylus, Pers. 93 ( ), 750 ( ); Agam. 386
( ).
25
See Dawe, 100-01, citing numerous passages from Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, and Sophocles.
26
As in Aeschylus, Agam. 1197 ( ).
27
Plutarch, in his treatise On Superstition, 168A11-B5, says,
, ,

In Sophocles, we find a turning point, or at least a beginning of a separation of from

. In Antigone, the chorus, speaking of Creon says,
, . 28

It is clear that Sophocles is beginning to face the possibility of self-deception unexplained by

divine intervention. This is, I think, a brilliant moment in the history of civilization. Imagine
how, without relying on theology or having available anything like an adequate science, one
might proceed to come to grips with the phenomenon of human irrationality.
In Euripides, there are at least two passages in which the speaker is proclaiming the
reality of and using that to explain behaviour. In Hippolytus, Phaedra says regarding
her desire for incest,
, ... 29

And in Medea, Medea is reflecting on the decision to slaughter her children. She says,
,
, . 30

In both passages, the apparently clear acknowledgement of is by the agents themselves.

And though Medea explicitly opposes anger to reason, her anger is, as the play amply reveals,
coldly rational, rooted in her belief that her husband has betrayed her.
Lust in the case of Phaedra and anger in the case of Medea do what was postulated as
doing in earlier authors. In both cases, though, ignorance can hardly be part of the account of
their actions, at least as Euripides sees it. Both women are completely aware of what they are
about to do and to whom. Their culpability is, in the eyes of the audience, presumably a function
of the horrific nature of these acts. And yet, it is entirely natural to suppose that the more
horrific an act the more irresistible it is, hence exculpating claims in such things as crimes of
passion. If Medea was angry and jealous enough to kill her children, perhaps she is no more
culpable than she is ignorant.

, thus implicitly confirming the association of the source of tragedy with the divine.
28
Antig. 1260 (not by some alien , but by his own error).
29
Hippolytus 380 (we understand and recognize the right thing to do, but we do not carry it out). But see 1434:
. (it is likely that humans should err given what they have
received from the gods). The vagueness of the words what they have received from the gods leaves open the
possibility that the gods are either condition or cause of human behaviour.
30
Medea 1078-80. (I understand what evil I am about to do, but my anger is more powerful than all my
deliberations, anger which is the cause of the greatest of evils to mortals). See T. Irwin, Euripides and Socrates,
Classical Philology 78 (1983), who considers the passage a straightforward example of . See G. Rickert,
Akrasia and Euripides Medea, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 91 (1987), 91-117, who claims the
opposite. Rickert argues that Medea exhibits in this passage a conflict of values and not a conflict of desires or, as
I would hold, a conflict of beliefs.

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4.
In this concluding section, I would like to return to Plato and bring together some of the
threads of the argument. The core, paradoxical idea that no one does wrong willingly comes
with the stipulation that the ignorance that produces wrongdoing may be culpable. We have seen
in Aristotle an implicit recognition of this in his identification of the tragic hero as other than the
virtuous man. According to Aristotles analysis, the flawed hero is brought low, but there
nothing like commensurability between the error committed owing to an intellectual flaw and the
punishment. Like Oedipus, the hero may suffer enormously for what may be regarded as an alltoo-human confused state of mind. And with the acratics Phaedra and Medea, their culpability is
clouded if it is true that they do not do wrong willingly. Whether the cause is a god or ones own
appetites, to be overcome is to present the profile of a victim.
Plato, despite his deep reservations about the role of tragic art in civic society, shares the
ethos of tragedy to the extent that he sees an inevitable connection between wrongdoing and
punishment. 31 Conversely, as he argues most extensively in Republic books 8 and 9, the
inevitable reward for true virtue is happiness. Yet, the culpable ignorance that is the source of
wrongdoing is deeply problematic. The very idea of culpable ignorance seems almost to be an
oxymoron: the more we focus on the ignorance, the less inclined we are to affirm the culpability,
and vice versa. Without it, though, no one does wrong willingly is merely a platitude. Worse,
for Plato, instead of being a paradoxical emblem of his radically revisionist ethics, it is available
for appropriation by a Thrasymachus or a Callicles. If people are not blameworthy for the
ignorance that everyone recognizes as the cause of actions that undermine ones own interests,
then the best advice is to remedy the ignorance. But only a benighted philosopher, it seems,
thinks that philosophy is the remedy. The tyrants blunders may well find their correction from
within the tyrants own world view.
Perhaps the principal impediment to appreciating Platos solution to this problem is to
assume that his recognition of the phenomenon of amounts to a claim that within the
human soul there are irrational powers or forces that may or may not be in conflict with our
reason. This interpretation inexorably leads to the conclusion that wrongdoing is blameless. For
if someone is overcome by passion, how is this different from being overcome by a physical or
psychological illness or even by some external power?
This interpretation must somehow account for the fact that, as, for example, is clear in
Phaedo, the disembodied person is an intellect. So, we must supposed that when embodied, that
person becomes something other than a rational agent; he becomes an amalgam of rational and
irrational powers. It is certainly true that the embodiment of intelligible reality does change
things: Helens beauty is not identical with the beauty of a law or institution, even though it is
beauty that is the instrumental cause of her and the law being beautiful. Analogously, the
embodied person, unlike its disembodied paradigm, is the subject of appetites and emotions, but
it does not thereby become something other than a rational soul. In the passage from Republic
31

See Rep. 8.568A-C; Laws 7.817A-B for Platos worries about tragedy.

11

wherein the phenomenon of is acknowledged, the appetite for drink is distinguished

from the appetite for good drink. 32 This distinction has misled many to believe that the appetite
for drink is irrational. But if this were so, the appetite for drink could not be integrated into the
practical reasoning that results in one either drinking or not.
It is true that feeling thirsty is not a propositional attitude whose intentional object is
thirst as pain is not an intentional object to which we can be rationally related. But the
awareness that one is thirsty does involve a subject and an intentional object, consisting of
oneself being thirsty. The awareness that one is thirsty requires one to conceptualize the state
one is in. This is a prelude to formulating a practical syllogism the conclusion of which is the
beginning of the action undertaken to eliminate the thirst. This subject is, for Plato, the
embodied rational soul. The fact that this subject is aware of its own thirst means that embodied
souls are dispersed or divided in the ways first explored in Republic and then set out in detail in
Timaeus. Analogous to the way Helens beauty is extended throughout her body, the embodied
soul is extended throughout the body.
Because the embodied soul is the rational soul, the errors of the acratic and the vicious
person are intellectual errors. To capitulate to ones appetiteswhether or not one regards this
as wrongis to make a rational choice. No doubt, the frequency of the capitulation and the
damage done by capitulating can be graded. It is, of course, possible that a given acratic,
wracked by guilt, is actually less likely to be cured that a particular vicious and guiltless
malefactor. These possible gradations, however, are not our main concern.
Where is the ignorance? Where is the culpability? To put it briefly, the ignorance is of
ones own rational nature and the culpability is made evident by the fact that in employing
practical reasoning or even in offering a justification for ones behaviour in the way that
Thrasymachus or Callicles do, one displays ones rational nature. The immediate objection to
such a view is that such men can insist that reason is purely instrumental and, as David Hume put
it, ever the servant of the passions. That reasoning is used in action no more proves that we are
of a rational nature than does the fact that we use cars to travel prove that we are of a mechanical
nature. But the facts speak otherwise. For a Callicles, who thinks that reason should be
deployed to satisfy every appetite the moment it arises, implicitly acknowledges the authority of
reason. Someone who proclaims that we ought to live for the moment makes a normative
judgment, in this case a normative judgment about how non-normative reasoning should be used.
If one seeks ones true identity, one need look no further than the subject making this judgment.
Indeed, for Plato, there is nowhere else one could look, for the one looking will always be that
subject. 33
For Plato, the culpable ignorance is ignorance of ones true identity. The culpability
resides in the wholly rational activity consisting in the embrace of irrationality. Whereas any
given proposition is not up to us to believe, it is up to us to believe or not the opposite of what
we do believe. The second-order belief about a belief we hold (e.g., I believe that what I
32
33

Rep. 439A-B.
See Rep. 611A10-B2; 612A3-4 where Socrates urges that conflict in the soul is a function of embodiment.

12

believe is false) is, for Plato, not part of the burden of embodiment, but the exercise of the
normative dimension of the true person. That is, one judges that what one believes is false
because one thinks that one ought not to believe it or that it is bad for oneself to believe it. The
normativity evident in these judgments reveals our nature like nothing else. For Plato,
philosophy is a sort of catharsis because it separates the person from the inconstant embodied
subject. It does this by leading one to identify ones own good as identical with the Good itself.
Although the identification is never absolute so long as we are embodied, a truly accomplished
philosopher never succumbs to self-deception. And as we have seen, self-deception is always
wilful; the ignorance it makes evident is always culpable. Shakespeares lover in Sonnet 138
says, When my love swears that she is made of truth/I do believe her, though I know she lies.
If this wilful self-deception leads to emotional shipwreck, it is admittedly a pale imitation of
what befell Oedipus. But it is of a piece with Platos account of .

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