Sun-tzu's forthright approach to power—his willingness to engage in no-holds-barred combat, his consistent and close attention to detail (such as "devise contingency plans on terrain vulnerable to ambush"), and the clarity of his style—has led in recent years to a new vogue for The Art ofWar, as a handbook of business management. The book itself and many derivative works have made their way onto the bookshelves of boardroom strategists, merger-and-acquisitions lawyers, personnel man- agers, and other modern warriors whose careers, like those of ancient Chinese kings, are fraught with danger and uncertainty.
Samuel B. Griffitfrs translation of The Art ofWar was for many years the standard version; it is still reliable. I prefer, however, the recent excellent translations by Roger Ames and by Ralph Sawyer, both of which incorporate up-to-date schol- arship on the text.
J.S.M.
I I
ARISTOPHANES
448-388 B.C.E.
Lysistrata, The Clouds, The Birds
We mentioned above, in the introduction to Aeschylus [5] and other Greek playwrights, that at the festivais of Dionysus a tragic trilogy was customarily followed by the performance of a comedy. This was not for any reason so trivial as to lighten the mood of the playgoers before they headed home. Rather, because tragedy and comedy alike were viewed as inseparable aspects of the human condition, it was considered necessary and appropriate to enact both at what was after ali a solemn religious occasion. But it is also true that the rites of Dionysus allowed normal bounds of decorum and propriety to be set aside temporarily; the comedies performed during the festival played into that disruption of the normal social rules. Comedy was (and is) "transgressive," to use a criticai term now much in vogue. In his plays Aristophanes hurled barbs of humor that still strike our funnybones today; even if we no longer recognize many of his topical references, we can at least imagine the discomfort of the targets skewered by his wit.
Eleven of the comedies of Aristophanes survive, the only substantial remaining body of early Greek comic plays. He was acknowledged a master of the form in his lifetime, and his rep- utation has remained high ever since, in part for reasons that unfortunately will not be accessible to most of us. He is, I am told, a brilliant stylist in Greek verse; he was also an accom- plished parodist, capable of imitating and burlesquing the styles of Euripides [7] and Aeschylus [5]. These are matters that largely get lost in translation. But those of us who do not read Greek can still appreciate much of Aristophanes^ humor. His basic comedic technique was to set up an absurd situation and then make his characters carry the situation through to its furthest extremes; this is a device that is employed constantly in movie and television comedies today. The Clouds is a satire on Sуcrates and other contemporary philosophers, who are made to seem as airheaded as the clouds among which they dwell. The Birds sets up a fantastic avian utopia when the world's birds decide to free themselves from the snares and arrows of humans; they beat their wings to prevent the smoke of sacrificial fires from rising to Olympus until they are granted their own realm—where they quickly show themselves to be as pompous, vain and fatuous as the humans they are trying to escape. Lysistrata, perhaps now the most famous of Aristophanes^ comedies, has the women of Athens go on strike against their husbands, refusing ali sexual favors until the men call off a war that they are planning. Here we see Aristophanes as a man of principie; a contemporary of Thucydides [9], he risked unpopularity or worse by opposing the Peloponnesian War, and indeed any military ventures that might compromise the republican simplicity of his beloved Athens.
Comedy fails if it is not funny, but as anyone who has ever had anything to do with the theater will affirm, it is also a very serious matter. As Freud [98] has pointed out, humor allows us to confront, and then deflect, taboos that can disturb us deeply at an unconscious levei. Comedy has long had a role in bring- ing unpleasant realities into the light of day, as witness the privileged position granted to court jesters by rulers from Chinese emperors to Ottoman sultans to Burgundian dukes. Aristophanes used his plays to puncture pomposity, ridicule impropriety, and protest against jingoism and warmongering. He was certainly not the first writer to understand the social power of comedy, but he is one of the earliest that we know about, and still one of the greatest.
J.S.M.
12
PLATO
428-348 B.C.E. Selected Works
Plato is less an author than a world of thought. He is probably one of the half-dozen most influential minds in Western civi- lization. Alfred North Whitehead has said that ali Western phi- losophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato, an exaggera- tion (or minimization), but not entirely untrue. The beginning reader cannot hope to explore the entire Platonic world, nor should he attempt it. The readings suggested below enable us to make his acquaintance and that of his master Sуcrates. And that is ali.
A wealthy Athenian who lived through his city-state's great and also declining days, Plato experienced one supremely crucial event in his long life: his meeting with Sуcrates. (Compare Boswell and Johnson [59].) He had many talents, and was drawn, for example, toward both poetry and politics; but Sуcrates determined him to a life of thought, undertaken on many fronts.
The result of this life of thought was a series of "dialogues," long and short, some very beautiful, some dull, and most of them spotlighting his master Sуcrates. The "Socratic method" was part of the atmosphere of the period. Sуcrates questioned ali things, and particularly the meanings men attached to abstract and important words, such as justice, love, and courage. The questioning was real; the truth was finally approached only through the play of minds, that give-and-take we call "dialectic." This mode of thought is exemplified and perfected in the dialogues. They are not mere exercises in mental agility (except occasionally) but works of art in which ali the resources of a poetic and dramatic imagination are called into play. The reader of Plato, no less than the reader of Shakespeare, is reading an artist.
You should keep in mind three central Platonic notions: The first is that, as Sуcrates says, "a life without inquiry is not worth living." That lies at the heart of everything Plato wrote. The second notion is that virtue is knowledge; the sufficiently wise person will also be sufficiently good. The third notion has to do with the kinds of knowledge most worth having. Plato believed in "Ideas," invisible, intangible archetypes or proto- types of things and actions and qualities. These latter, as we know them on earth through the distorting veil of the senses, are but faint reflections of the heavenly Ideas. We call this mode of apprehending the universe Idealism; and Plato is its father.
His philosophy, however, is not a consistent whole, and in many respects it changed as he grew older and lost faith in humanity^ ability to govern itself wisely. I suggest therefore that the dialogues be read, not as systematic expositions of dogma, but as the intellectual dramas they are, full of humor, wit, mental play, unforgettable extended similes called myths, and particularly full of one of history^ most fascinating charac- ters, the ugly, charming, mock-modest Sуcrates.