Wondering and Wandering

On Wandering and Wondering: "Theôria" in Greek Philosophy and CultureAuthor(s): Andrea Wilson NightingaleSource: Arion, Third Series, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Fall, 2001), pp. 23-58Published by: Trustees of Boston UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20163840Accessed: 19/07/2009 22:36

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On Wandering and Wondering: Theoria in Greek Philosophy and Culture

ANDREA WILSON NIGHTINGALE

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry its

progress, ignorance its end. I'll go further: There is a

certain strong and generous ignorance that concedes

nothing to knowledge in honor and courage, an igno rance that requires no less knowledge to conceive it

than does knowledge.

?Montaigne

Ahe Greek thinkers of the fourth century bce

were the first to call themselves philosophers, the first to de

fine philosophy as a specialized discipline and a unique cul

tural practice. In addition to developing ideas and arguments,

fourth-century philosophers had to stake out the boundaries

of their discipline. Plato, Aristotle, and other fourth-century thinkers all matched themselves against traditional wise men

even as they developed different conceptions of philosophy in competition with one another. The fourth-century debate

over the true nature of philosophy was lively and con

tentious. This foundational debate generated, among other

things, an extraordinary claim: that the highest form of wis

dom is theoria, an intellectual activity that is neither practi cal nor productive nor political.1 The Greek word theoria

means, in its most literal sense, "witnessing a spectacle." The philosophic theorist gazes with the "eye of the soul"

upon divine and eternal verities. In its most extreme form, which is articulated by Aristotle, theoria is hailed as a con

templative activity that is completely "useless" (achr?ston) in the world of human affairs. I want to examine the emer

gence in the fourth century of the conception of the philoso

pher as a "spectator"?an idea that has had a profound

24 ON WANDERING AND WONDERING

impact on Western thinking. How did the Greek philoso

phers articulate and defend this novel form of knowing? What is at stake, philosophically and politically, in identify

ing the philosopher as a disinterested spectator, detached

from the exigencies of the physical and social world?

Most twentieth-century thinkers, of course, view Greek

metaphysical philosophy with suspicion if not scorn. The

conception of knowledge as theoria is, for some, a cowardly

flight from the world of action and, for others, a pernicious

power-grab posing as disinterested speculation. There can be

little doubt that we "see" differently from the ancients. Let

us grant that Platonic and Aristotelian contemplation was

blind in certain ways; the philosophic contemplative turns

his back, at least for a time, on the physical and social world

to discover metaphysical "truths." But modern and post modern insight has its own blindnesses, its refusals to see.

Thinkers such as Nietzsche and Derrida, in fact, explicitly assert that humans come equipped with "blind spots." Our

vision, they suggest, is not only limited and perspectival but

positively distorted by the operations of desire, the will to

power, the tyrannies of ideology, and the vagaries of lan

guage. One quite prevalent modern mode of "seeing" that

separates us from?and, to some extent, blinds us to?the

Greek philosophers is what we might call "looking with sus

picion." For ancient theoria was rooted in a radically differ

ent orientation to the world: theoria involved "looking with

wonder," an activity in which reason works in conjunction with reverence.

i.

A brief look at Greek conceptions of wisdom in the sixth and

fifth century bce will set the stage for this discussion. In this

period, "wise men" came in many forms: poets, prophets,

doctors, statesmen, scientists, and various kinds of intellec

tuals. None of these men called themselves "philosophers," nor did others refer to them in this way. In fact, the words

Andrea Wilson Nightingale 25

"pbilosophi?" and "philosophein" were very rarely used un

til the fourth century bce and, when they were used, signi fied "intellectual cultivation" in the broadest sense. It was

the title of "sophos" that was coveted and contested in this

period: the early thinkers wanted to be ranked among the

wise. Although different kinds of wise men were clearly seen

to be practicing distinct activities, there was nonetheless a

generalized competition among the different groups for the

title of "wise man."

Consider, for example, Tha?es, a sixth-century sage who

was identified as the first "philosopher" by fourth-century

philosophers. Pre-Platonic sources tell us that Tha?es pre dicted an eclipse; that he engineered the diversion of a river

during a military expedition; that he was a political leader

who fought to create a confederation of Ionian city-states in

a period of war.2 The later tradition reports that Tha?es res

cued his own citizens of Miletus by preventing them from

forming an alliance with the king of Lydia. Finally, we are

told that Tha?es, foreseeing that it would be a good season

for olives, rented all the oil-presses in the region and ob

tained a monopoly on the proceeds.3 These stories portray a

man of many skills. Alongside his astronomical expertise, Tha?es demonstrates a good deal of practical wisdom: di

verting a river, directing political affairs, and exhibiting a

keen understanding of agriculture and commerce.

It comes as a great surprise, then, when fourth-century

philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Heraclides of Pon

tus represent Tha?es as the prototypical contemplative. In

Plato's Theaetetus, for example, Socrates says that Tha?es

fell into a well when he was contemplating the stars; he was

then mocked by a maidservant for being so eager to look at

the sky that he did not see what lay at his feet. As Socrates

goes on to say, this is the lot of all philosophers, since they are focused primarily on the contemplation of higher truths.

In a similar vein, Heraclides of Pontus (a member of Plato's

Academy) wrote a dialogue in which Tha?es claims that he

always lived in solitude as a private individual and kept


aloof from state affairs.4 Finally, Aristotle tells us that Tha?es

possessed a wisdom that was "rare, marvellous, difficult, and superhuman"?a wisdom that was, importantly, "use

less" (achr?ston), since it does not deal with "things that are

good for human beings."5 For Aristotle, Thaies was the first

known philosopher because he claimed that the world origi nated from water; his other skills and activities, we infer, were irrelevant. How, then, do we get from the practical, po

litical, and polymathic Tha?es to an otherworldly contem

plative?from a performer of wisdom in the social and

political arena to a detached spectator of truth?

Let us briefly consider the archaic sages and the culture in

which they lived. How did a sage achieve celebrity in this pe riod? As the Hellenist Richard Martin has shown, what dis

tinguished these individuals was their extraordinary

"performance of wisdom."6 The sages "performed" their

wisdom in different ways?by efficacious actions, by wise

discourses, or by a combination of action and discourse. The

word "perform" is not used here in the sense of play-acting or pretending; rather, it signifies the displaying or enacting of wisdom in any public context. We must remember that, in

this period, there were no schools of higher learning confer

ring authority or credentials. In addition, the vast majority of Greeks were not even literate, since the technology of

writing was only just beginning to take hold in this era. In

the absence of schools and written texts, an individual had

to perform or demonstrate his expertise to the greater public if he was to earn the title of "sophos." He had to bring some

extraordinary discourse or action into the public view.

There is considerable evidence that (in addition to the

sages) the early thinkers who later came to be called "pre Socratic philosophers" were able performers of practical and

political wisdom.7 For example, the Ionian thinkers, who

are most famous for their speculations on the nature of the

cosmos, were seriously engaged with practical problems of

meteorology (Tha?es) and geography (Anaximander was the

first in the Greek tradition to create a map of the "earth").


Pythagoras was part religious guru, part mathematician,

part politician. Parmenides is said to have served as a law

maker in his city.8 In Empedocles, we find not only a natural

philosopher but a religious thinker, orator, and physician. Melissos served as a general for his city of Samos, one of the

most powerful islands in the Athenian league, and even

fought a sea battle against Pericles in 441/0.9 Democritus,

who is now identified almost solely with the theory of atom

ism, was a political leader who had a coin stamped with his

name; he also wrote treatises on medicine, anthropology, and geography, as well as on ethical and political topics. As

Paul Cartledge asks, "Who are we to say whether Democri

tus might not himself have seen his 'scientific' work as fun

damental but yet subordinated ultimately to an overarching and overriding ethical-political project rather than as an in

dependent end and goal in itself?"10 The same question could be posed of other "pre-Socratic" thinkers. Indeed, in

the Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, which was published in 1999, a number of scholars attempt to analyze these thinkers not merely as the creators of the

abstract ideas of "philosophy" but as engaging in therapeu

tic, salvific, theological, and poetic projects akin to those of

many non-philosophical "wise men" of their day.11

Many of the so-called "sophists," too, were important po litical players as well as performers of rhetorical and techni

cal expertise. Some of the sophists even performed political discourses at Olympic festivals and other panhellenic gather

ings. Hippias, for example, performed at an Olympian festi

val with a costume and accoutrements that he had made all

by himself: a ring, oil flask, wax seal, strigil, shoes, cloak, tu

nic, and belt.12 This reminds us that the sophists did not

confine themselves to the higher or "liberal" arts but dis

played a wide variety of manual and technical skills that had

clear practical benefits.13 Finally, there is evidence that the

scientists who were experts in medical theory (the "Hippo cratic" writers) put on their fanciest clothes and set up shop in public places to perform, before an audience of passers


by, surgical operations and procedures as well as rhetorical

discourses on medical topics. *4 It is difficult to overstate the

pervasiveness of performative activities in the public spaces of ancient Athens (e.g., in the theaters, assemblies, courtrooms,

gymnasia, festivals, religious sanctuaries, and especially the

agora)?the antics of Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley come to

mind.

Where, then, does the notion of knowledge as a form of

vision or seeing?as spectating rather than performing? come from? It is a commonplace to say that one of the Greek

words for "knowing" (oida) is the perfect tense of the verb

"to see" (horan). But the fact that a Greek person said?as

we do in English?"I see" to signify "I understand" or

"know" tells us very little, since this was an incredibly com

mon word that had no technical or philosophical associa

tions. In fact, in the early Greek thinkers who were later

called "philosophers," there is little if any evidence that

knowledge takes the form of "seeing" truth. When the pos session or acquisition of knowledge is described by pre-Pla tonic thinkers (which is rather rare), it generally involves

hearing or learning a divine or superhuman logos. The em

phasis is on discourse and hearing rather than spectating or

seeing.15

Consider, for example, Parmenides' famous poem, which

opens with an account of the poet's journey along the "re

sounding road of the goddess." The poet is escorted by the

maiden daughters of the sun, who lead him "into the light."

They then come to the "ethereal gates" at the "threshhold of

day and night," and a goddess opens the doors. At this

point, the reader is expecting nothing less than a revelation.

The movement "into the light" as well as the opening of the

divine doors lead us to expect that the poet will finally see

the truth unveiled. In fact, he encounters a goddess who says to him: "welcome . . . you must learn all things" (frag. i).

There is no description of the appearance of the goddess

and, indeed, no visual detail at all. What the poet encounters

when he crosses the threshold is a goddess who takes voice.


"Come now, and I will tell you," she says, "and, when you

have heard me (akousas), carry my account away" (frag. 2).

Contrast the famous journey in Plato's Allegory of the Cave

(Republic 7), written over a century later. In Plato, the

philosopher moves out of the darkness of the cave and into

the light, where he sees with the "eye of his soul" the beings in the metaphysical realm of the Forms. In Parmenides, by

contrast, the truth is revealed by the language of a goddess who plays the role of muse. There is no "vision" of truth in

this or other philosophical texts of the early period.

2.

In the pre-Platonic thinkers, truth is something that is heard

or spoken, not something that is seen. The philosophers who

developed the "spectator theory of knowledge" in the fourth

century were thus engaging in a novel enterprise which

needed to be defined and defended. In the effort to both con

ceptualize and legitimize this new intellectual practice, these

philosophers invoked a specific civic institution that the an

cients called "theoria.''' Theoria is generally defined as a

journey or pilgrimage to a destination away from one's own

city undertaken for the purpose of seeing as an eye-witness certain events and spectacles.16

In the classical period, theoria came in three different vari

eties. The first two involved pilgrimages to religious oracles

or festivals and, in the third, the theoros travelled abroad as

a researcher or tourist: all three involved a detachment from

one's homeland, an act of seeing or spectating, and (in many

cases) some sort of transformation of the viewer.

In the first and most traditional sense, a theoria was a civic

embassy sent to an oracular center, generally for the pur

poses of consulting the oracle. The ambassador?called the

theoros?was an official envoy whose role was to journey to

the shrine, perform specific sacrifices and rituals, consult the

oracle, and bear witness to the events or activities that tran

spired there. He was then required to return to his native


city and give a complete and honest account of what he had

witnessed and heard. The theoros is thus charged with the

task of communicating to the city what the god has unveiled

to him. The theoros, then, is carrying out a transaction with

divine as well with human beings: this is a mission that must

be done with religious correctness.

A second form of theoria was an embassy of men sent by a city to witness a religious festival. The Olympian, Pythian,

Nemean, and Isthmian festivals drew theoroi from all over

Greece, and they provided occasions for different Greek

cities to interact with one another. Other big festivals such as

the Panathenaia and Civic Dionysia in Athens also drew in

ternational audiences. The the?roi who were sent to these

festivals were, in most cases, elite and aristocratic men who

were important political players in their cities: these men

were representing their city to other Greeks and were ex

pected to make a good showing. The members of this kind

of theoria were also required to return home and give a full

account of what they had witnessed and learned.

Theoria, then, was a cultural practice that brought Greeks

from different cities and ideologies into contact with one an

other in shared religious sanctuaries. This practice had a po

litical as well as a religious dimension. In investigating the

political and ideological valence of the gatherings at reli

gious shrines and festivals, one must look beyond the local

politics of an individual city such as Athens. Most of our ev

idence comes from Athens, however, and thus Athenian fes

tivals provide important data for the study of theoria. In

recent work on the Panathenaia and the Civic Dionysia, scholars have examined the ways that these festivals "repre sent the city to the citizens"; the spectators are generally viewed as "Athenian citizens gazing at their own polis and

its practices." This exclusive focus on the "democratic gaze" of the Athenian citizens?on the local theat?s (spectator) rather than the foreign theoros?has almost completely

eclipsed (what we might call) the "th?orie gazes" of the for

eign visitors. Yet there is abundant evidence that large num


bers of foreign the?roi attended the big festivals in Athens.

The Athenians were well aware that people from different

cities were attending their festivals and viewing the specta cles and events from different ideological perspectives.*7 In

order to understand the big Athenian festivals as "th?orie

events," then, one must move beyond the Athenocentric ap

proach taken by many recent scholars and focus on the

multi- or panhellenic nature of these events.

Since the major shrines, festivals, and oracular centers at

tracted people from cities all over Greece, they brought dis

parate peoples and ideologies into contact. As Rutherford

has argued,

an underlying reason for going to a panhellenic sanctuary was to

assert the voice of one's own polis in the panhellenic community,

and hence to gain recognition and prestige throughout the Greek

world. The panhellenic significance of the great sanctuaries is so

central that we should think of the underlying structure of much

Greek pilgrimage as a symbolic movement not so much from 'sec

ular space' to 'sacred space,' but rather from 'local space' to 'pan

hellenic space.'18

Rutherford is right to place the emphasis on "panhellenic

space": this is one of the defining features of the th?orie

event. But Rutherford is too hasty in dismissing "sacred

space": after all, it is Greek religion and its "spaces" that

provides the institutional and ideological grounding for pan hellenic gatherings. It is precisely the confluence of religion and politics which made the?ria a unique cultural practice and which invested it with such authority and legitimacy.

In the third kind of the?ria, the theoros makes a journey to foreign lands for the purpose of seeing the world. Here, the theoros is a man who travels abroad seeking knowledge and edification. This kind of the?ria differs from the other

two in that it can be completely secular, i.e., is not necessar

ily directed towards a sacred space or religious event.

Herodotus provides several examples of this kind of theoria:


i) Solon, who went abroad for ten years after making laws

for the Athenians (1.30); 2) the Scythian sage Anacharsis, whose the?ria took him on a long journey through Greece.

In one passage, Herodotus tells us that Anacharsis "was sent

to Greece by the king of Scythia to become a student of

Greek ways" and later returned home with a report about

the wisdom of different Greek peoples (4.77). Here, the sage was sent on an official "th?orie" mission by the king and

was expected to return home with a full report. Herodotus

also tells another story about Anacharsis' the?ria: on his

way home, Anacharsis put in at Cyzicus, where he attended

a foreign festival for the Mother of the Gods. In this case, his

subsequent re-entry into Scythia proved fatal since, after he

returned, he was caught performing the rituals for the for

eign goddess and immediately put to death. Clearly, Anacharsis appeared to his fellow Scythians to have been

corrupted by his foreign travels. This illustrates the danger of the?ria, especially when the theoros returns with ideas

and customs that are alien and unwelcome to the people back home.

It should be emphasized that all three kinds of the?ria can

be conducted privately, as well as in the civic context outlined

above. For a person can seek an oracular consultation, attend

a religious festival, or travel abroad in a private capacity. In

these cases, the individual theoros would not have been ap

pointed or funded by the state, nor would he be required to

return home with an official report of what he had witnessed.

Private the?ria and civic the?ria, then, differ in important

ways. For the civic theoros, unlike the private theoros, pro vides a direct link between the th?orie spectacle and his own

city and its affairs. In civic the?ria, the return home with the

official report is no less important than the journey abroad.

In fact, the return of the civic theoros to his city was viewed

as a critical event, since at this time an important news report was broadcast in the community. It was always possible for a

theoros to exploit the situation by imparting false informa

tion; and, if he brought bad news, he was liable to blame and


even punishment. Since private the?ria did not include this

public and official report, it occupies a distinct category. To sum up, the defining feature of the?ria in its traditional

forms is a journey to a region outside the boundaries of

one's own city for the purpose of seeing a spectacle or wit

nessing another kind of object or event. This activity em

phasizes "autopsy" or seeing something for oneself: the

theoros is an eyewitness whose experience is radically differ

ent from those who stay home and receive a mere report of

the news. The activity of the?ria also emphasizes an en

counter with something foreign and different. This en

counter with the unfamiliar invites the traveller to look at

the customs and practices of his own city from a new van

tage point. The journey abroad may end up confirming the

theorist in his own perspectives and prejudices, but it may also function to unsettle him and even to transform his basic

worldview. In the case of the first two kinds of the?ria?i.e.,

journeys to a religious festival or oracular center?the the

oros not only encounters foreign peoples and places but also

interacts with the god who presides over a given festival or

shrine (by participating in the sacrifices, prayers, and ritu

als). Here, the theoros encounters the ultimate and most dis

tant "other," a divine being. Though he does not literally "see" this being, he does look at sacred images and symbols of the divinity and, by way of ritual, enters into a relation

ship with a god.

3.

The fourth-century philosophers were the first to claim that

true wisdom takes the form of the?ria. As I will argue, these

philosophers defined and articulated this new conception of

knowledge by reference to the traditional forms of the?ria

that I have just outlined. By aligning themselves with a ven

erable and authoritative cultural practice, they were able to

introduce, define, and legitimize "theoretical" philosophy and its associated disciplines and activities. This appropria


tion and transformation of civic the?ria first emerges in

Plato's middle dialogues?the dialogues in which he begins to set forth his metaphysical system. The dialogues of the

early period make no mention of the?ria: they depict a

philosopher who focuses almost exclusively on ethical and

political questions and claims to possess no true knowledge or system. Socrates in the early dialogues is a consummate

performer of wisdom who is firmly embedded in his native

city of Athens.

In the dialogues of the middle period, Plato introduces a

new kind of philosopher, a sage whose ultimate goal is to de

tach from the human and terrestrial world and to "see be

ing." In the Symposium, for example, we are told that, as he

was walking to a drinking party, Socrates wandered off to a

stranger's porch to enjoy a period of silent contemplation and that, in the midst of a military campaign, he stood up all

night long "inspecting" a philosophical problem.^ Here, Socrates plays a novel role?that of a contemplative philoso

pher, lost to the world as he labors in thought. We find no

trace of this kind of activity in the early dialogues. Plato, of

course, has not given up on politics or praxis, but he has cre

ated a philosopher who journeys to a higher world in search

of true reality. The Republic contains Plato's fullest explication of philo

sophic the?ria. This dialogue begins with Socrates' descrip tion of his trip to the Peiraeus as a theoros at the festival for

the Thracian goddess Bendis (327a-b). As Socrates says in

the opening lines:

I went down yesterday with Glaucon to the Peiraeus, in order to of

fer my prayers to the goddess [Bendis] and also because I wanted to

see how they would conduct the festival, since this was the first

time they celebrated it. I thought that the procession of the citizens

was quite fine, but the procession sent by the Thracians was no less

fine. After we had offered our prayers and theorized the spectacle

(th?orisantes) we began to head back to the city. (327a)


Here, Socrates describes his the?ria at the festival of Bendis, a Thracian goddess whose worship had just been instituted

in Attica.20 The port city of Peiraeus probably attracted theoroi

from many different places; Socrates explicitly mentions a

procession "sent" by the Thracians (no doubt because Ben

dis was a Thracian goddess), thus reminding us that the fes

tival had international spectators and participants. Indeed

the fact that this was the first celebration in Attica of a Thra

cian festival gives it a peculiar status as both Athenian and

foreign: for while Athens was of course officially instituting and sponsoring the festival, the Thracians played a key role

in "introducing" it and participating in its rituals. The festi

val, then, is not simply a local Athenian gathering but a true

"th?orie event."

There is also a the?ria at the very end of the Republic, for

the famous "myth of Er" is depicted as a journey to a reli

gious festival. In this eschatological tale, a man named Er

plays the role of an official theoros. He is said to have been

slain in battle and taken for dead, but when he was brought home and placed on the funeral pyre he woke up and related

to his own people the spectacle that he had seen on his visit

to the land of judgment. Socrates places great emphasis on

Er's journey and its destination: "Er said that when his soul

departed he journeyed with a great many people, and they came to some sort of divine region" (614D-C). Er, then,

makes a pilgrimage with other souls to a foreign and divine

place?the region where the souls are judged after death. As

Er relates, there he saw the souls coming down from heaven

and those coming up from hell after a period of 1,000 years; these souls "appeared to have come from a long journey and

happily went to the meadow to camp there as at a festival"

(6i4d-e). The gathering that Er witnesses, in short, is de

scribed as a panegyris or religious festival which has drawn

flocks of visitors from distant regions (panegyris is the stan

dard term for a panhellenic festival). The judges explain to Er

that "he must be the messenger to mankind to tell them of

the things here," and they bid him "to hear and to see every


thing in this region" (614a). Er, then, is given the official task

of witnessing the "sights and sounds" in this region. And he

is also required to bring this information back to the human

world, thus performing the duties of the civic theoros.

The?ria, then, is featured at the very beginning and the

very end of the Republic. This is clearly a deliberate strategy

designed to emphasize the importance of this cultural prac tice. As we will see, the?ria also plays a prominent role in

the central books of the dialogue, offering a direct model for

the philosopher's journey to the metaphysical region of the

Forms and his return "home" with a report from this region. In books 5-7 of the Republic, Socrates sets forth a detailed

description and definition of the "philosopher"; from the

very beginning of this description, Socrates identifies the

philosopher as a new kind of theoros. In book 5, Socrates

uses the example of individuals called "lovers of spectacles"

(philotheamones) to help illustrate the notion of the love of

wisdom (475d). Who and what are "lovers of spectacles"? Socrates describes them as people who "run around to all

the Dionysian festivals, never leaving a single one out, either

in the towns or in the cities" (475d). The lovers of specta

cles, then, are clearly defined as the?roi who journey abroad

to religious festivals to witness the events there. Socrates

now draws an analogy between these the?roi and the new

man called the "philosopher." Like the "lover of spectacles," the philosopher loves spectating. But the philosopher is a

"lover of the spectacle of truth" (philotheam?n tes al?theias,

475e). Whereas the "lovers of spectacles" go to festivals to

enjoy beautiful dramas and rituals, the philosopher "goes and beholds beauty itself" (476D-C). The philosopher, then, is a new kind of the?ros: a man who travels to the meta

physical realm to see the sacred sights in that region. The

goal of philosophy, as Socrates claims, is to engage in the

"the?ria o? all being" U86d). Plato depicts the philosophic journey towards the seeing

of being throughout books 6 and 7. There are many refer

ences to vision and seeing throughout these books, but the


most memorable are in the Allegory of the Cave. This story is about a journey from blindness to seeing, from darkness

to light. The narrative begins, of course, in a dark cavern,

which houses all human souls in the terrestrial realm; living in chains, these souls are condemned to watch shadowy im

ages of earthly things flickering on the back wall of the cave.

The philosophic soul is released from bondage and slowly makes his way out of the cave and into the metaphysical "realm" of the Forms (note that the Forms are regularly identified as ousia or "true being"). When the philosophic theoros enters this radiant realm, he is temporarily blinded

by the light in that region. In time, however, he is able to

look at the Forms with the eye of his soul and to contem

plate the Form of the Good. After gazing upon the Forms

and thus achieving knowledge, he goes with reluctance back

into the darkness of the cave. His eyes eventually adjust to

the darkness there, and he becomes able to see in that realm

better than the prisoners within it. If the philosopher returns

to a bad city and communicates his visions to the people

there, Socrates says, he will be mocked and reviled and pos

sibly even put to death: the return and re-entry of the philo

sophic theoros from the foreign realm of the Forms is thus

potentially dangerous. But if the philosopher lives in a good

city, the vision he brings back will provide the basis for gov ernment and politics.

In the Republic, in sum, Plato identifies the philosopher as

a new kind of theoros, an intellectual ambassador who

brings back a vision of a divine spectacle to those back at

home. Plato in fact calls the philosopher's vision of the

Forms a "divine the?ria" (5i7d). And he compares the

movement of the philosophic theoros towards the Forms to

the journey "from Hades to the gods" (521c). In Plato's mid

dle dialogues, the Forms are regularly designated as

"blessed" and "divine" essences, even though they are not

living beings. Thus to gaze upon the Forms is to see divine

being, an act that is replete with wonder and reverence. Like

the civic the?ria which took the form of a journey to a sa


cred shrine or precinct, philosophic the?ria has a religious orientation. It is for this reason that Plato takes as his pri

mary model the second kind of the?ria?where the theoros

makes a pilgrimage to a religious festival?rather than the

third kind of the?ria?where the theoros simply goes abroad

to see the world. Although the latter is associated with the

travels and researches of the sages, it is a secular form of

the?ria which focuses on the human and terrestrial world.

Plato is introducing a new sort of sage, one who must jour

ney to see "the most blessed of beings" (526e). He thus com

pares the philosopher to the theoros who journeys to a

sacred precinct to see the spectacles at a religious festival.

Like civic the?ria, philosophic the?ria also has a political dimension. For just as the civic theoros must return home to

relate the news to his fellow citizens, the philosophic theoros

in the Republic will return back to the city to impart and im

plement the truths that he has witnessed. The ideal city will

train its most gifted citizens to ascend to the contemplation of

reality but will also require and demand that the perfected

philosophers spend part of their lives in practical and political

pursuits.21 This official requirement that the philosophic theoros must return to the city to utilize and disseminate the

vision he has seen is clearly modelled on civic the?ria. The

city, in short, trains the philosophers to journey to metaphys ical regions and see the spectacles in that realm, but it also

commissions them to return back home to share their wis

dom.

The Republic offers the most detailed exposition of philo

sophic the?ria, yet the dialogue has a political orientation

that gives the text a specific bias. It is important to empha size that Plato's philosopher, even in the Republic, is not

seeking truth simply in order to best serve the city. The goal of philosophic the?ria is, first and foremost, to transform

the individual soul, conferring upon it a state of wisdom,

happiness, and blessedness. For, according to Plato, theoret

ical activity is the happiest and most blessed for an individ

ual regardless of whether he is called upon to rule a city. In


addition to being good in itself, however, the?ria provides the basis for all virtuous action on earth, be it private or po

litical; the?ria is not only the highest form of knowledge but

the precondition for all virtuous praxis. Whether the?ria is

conducted in a civic or in a private context, then, it can be

translated into ethical praxis: the philosophic spectator, who

has gazed upon the Forms, will later perform his wisdom (in

word and in deed) in the civic realm. The Platonic theorist, in sum, is both a spectator and a performer: for his meta

physical sightseeing later leads to ethical action.

4

Plato was the first philosopher to forge the link between

civic the?ria and philosophic contemplation. Let me empha

size, however, that there were a number of different concep tions of the?ria set forth by the philosophers of this period: our modern and postmodern contestations of ancient

the?ria overlook the fact that this idea was contested from

the very beginning. Rather than grouping these theories to

gether under the heading of "ocularcentrism" or "the spec tator theory of knowledge"?as twentieth-century theorists

have tended to do?we need to grasp the variety of ancient

concepts of the?ria and the precise points at which they di

verge.22 These divergences present us with different modes

of seeing, different ways of wondering. I do not have time to analyze the fascinating but com

pletely ignored Epinomis, a dialogue ascribed to Philip of

Opus (a member of Plato's Academy). In brief, Philip argues that the?ria is achieved by the activity of astronomy, where

one gazes upon divinity in a visible form, i.e., in the move

ments of the heavenly bodies. The contemplation of the "vis

ible gods" in the heavens, Philip suggests, is a superior form

of knowledge that combines intellectual (especially mathe

matical) expertise with the dispositions of wonder and rev

erence. Nor can I discuss fourth-century thinkers who

opposed the turn towards the?ria and allied themselves with


more traditional modes of wisdom. Isocrates, in particular,

championed praxis and performance over the "useless" ac

tivities of the theoretically-inclined philosophers. I will turn,

instead, to Aristotle, whose conception of the?ria differs

from that of Plato in several crucial ways. Like Plato, Aristotle turns to traditional the?ria in his at

tempt to explicate his own philosophic program. In a dia

logue called the Protrepticus (which survives only in fragments), Aristotle says:

wisdom is not useful or advantageous ... it should be chosen not

for the sake of any other thing, but for itself. For just as we travel to

the Olympian festival for the sake of the spectacle ... and just as we

go as spectators (the?roi) to the Festival of Dionysus [simply to see

the spectacle]... so too the the?ria of the universe must be honored

above all things that are considered to be useful, (frag. 58 Rose3)

Here, Aristotle compares the activity of philosophic contem

plation with that of going as a theoros to the Olympian and

Dionysian festivals. What kind of the?ria is he referring to in

this passage? Certainly not the the?ria in which a city sends

official ambassadors to visit a religious festival and return

home to report on the spectacle. For Aristotle is quite clear

that viewing the spectacle is an end in itself, and that there is

absolutely nothing "useful" in this activity. Rather, he is

thinking of the private form of the?ria that I outlined earlier

(i.e., the second kind of the?ria?the journey to a religious festival?in the private mode). In this kind of the?ria, as we

have seen, an individual attends a festival on his own, simply to see the sights; he is not sent by the city, and is not required to return and report on his findings. This is quite different

from the model of civic the?ria that Plato adopted in the Re

public, where the theoros is required to return to the city with an official report on what he has seen.

Note also Aristotle's repeated claim that the?ria is not

"useful." This discourse of "uselessness" pervades almost all

of Aristotle's discussions of the?ria. Indeed, he regularly em


ploys a stark dichotomy between activities that are "useful"

and "necessary," which he considers "illiberal" and "banau

sic," and activities that are "useless" and "noble," which are

associated with leisure and freedom. Clearly, the Greek word

for "useless"?achr?ston?is not used in the sense of worth

less or unimportant (as the English word is used); quite the

contrary. For Aristotle, an activity is "useless" precisely be

cause it is chosen for its own sake and does not produce any effect or byproduct in the world. The?ria is a pure intellec

tual activity that has as its objects beings that are eternal, im

mutable, or divine: by definition, it does not deal with objects or events that can be produced, deliberated over, or

changed.23 As Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics 10,

"[the activity of theoria] is the only one which is loved for its

own sake; for nothing comes into being from it beyond the

activity of contemplating, but from practical activities we

produce something, be it great or small, beyond the actions

themselves."24 The?ria, then, is "useless" knowledge which,

paradoxically, is the most important ingredient in the happi est human life. 25

This conception of wisdom as useless and nonproductive is

radically new. There is no evidence that, before Aristotle, Greeks valued "useless" pursuits over useful ones. Indeed, the Greeks expected wisdom to be useful and beneficial. In

the late fifth and fourth centuries, in fact, there were numer

ous attacks on sophists and philosophers on the grounds of

"uselessness." The public demanded that intellectuals be use

ful and beneficial to the city; if they did not prove useful, they were denounced as fraudulent. Even Plato insisted that theo

retical knowledge is beneficial to society, vociferously reject

ing the popular charges that philosophers are "useless."26 So

far as one can tell from extant texts, it was Aristotle who first

responded to such attacks by claiming that, yes, theoretical

activity is useless and that this is part of what makes it

supremely valuable. 27 Theoretical knowledge, he claims, can

not be enacted or performed in the human world. It is an ac

tivity of the "divine part of man," which Aristotle calls


"nous." In the theoretical activity of nous, the human mind

engages in the divine activity of the gods. Aristotelian the?ria

is thus a noetic activity that is an end in itself, fully detached

from human affairs and terrestrial events.28

Plato and Aristotle, then, had very different conceptions of

the?ria. Plato, as we have seen, explicitly links theoretical and

practical activities. For Aristotle, by contrast, the?ria is a pure act of "sight-seeing" which is done only for its own sake:

the?ria employs a mode of reasoning that is separate and dis

tinct from practical reasoning and, in fact, cannot lead to

praxis. It is for this reason that theoretical knowledge is "use

less" and fully detached from the political and practical sphere. Is theoretical philosophy, as Aristotle suggests, completely

"useless" and disinterested? Or does it have a direct bearing on practical and political activity, as Plato tried to argue? These issues, articulated for the first time in the fourth cen

tury bce, are still vital in modern and postmodern thinking.

Consider, for example, the problem of the relation of aes

thetics to ethics?the question whether art occupies a disin

terested sphere, independent of social and political norms, or

whether it can or should be productive of specific values and

ideologies (note the recent debate between Alexander Ne

hamas and Elaine Scarry over the nature of beauty and the

question whether the perception of beauty leads to ethical

action). The same sort of questions have also been raised

about the goals of "liberal education." Does this kind of ed

ucation aim at the disinterested pursuit of knowledge and

understanding, or do the "liberal arts" necessarily reflect

and even promote ethical and political values? In our own

examination of these questions, we should attend to the

Greek constructions of the very categories of "useless" and

"useful" activities, "disinterested" and "interested" pur suits. These dichotomies?as well as the strict separation of

theoretical and practical reasoning?need to be subjected to

careful scrutiny.


5

I want to turn, in closing, to one final aspect of the?ria,

namely its connection with wonder. Wonder plays an essen

tial role in the pursuit and practice of the?ria, yet is it rarely

analyzed in scholarly literature. Consider the following fa

mous passage from Aristotle's Metaphysics (982b):

It is through wonder that men originally began, and still begin, to

philosophize, wondering at first about obvious perplexities, and

then . . . experiencing perplexity about greater matters. . . . Now

the man who is perplexed and wonders thinks himself ignorant. . .

therefore, if it was to escape ignorance that men practiced philoso

phy, it is clear that they pursued knowledge for the sake of know

ing, and not for the sake of anything useful.

Here, Aristotle inaugurates what will prove to be a long tra

dition of linking philosophy to wonder. The Greek word for

"wonder" is, in the verbal form, thaumazein or, as a noun,

thauma. In this passage, Aristotle yokes wonder together with perplexity: to wonder is to experience aporia, i.e., to be

"perplexed" or, more literally, "without a path." But the

Aristotelian philosopher generally does find the path that

leads him from aporia to certainty. As Aristotle indicates, the

philosopher "escapes" from perplexity and ignorance by ac

quiring knowledge or, to put it in his words, by "theorizing the causes" (983a!4-15). To "theorize" or "see" the cause

of something perplexing is to move from a state of wonder

to a state of certainty. Philosophy, then, begins in wonder

and ends in the?ria. As Aristotle concludes, the philosopher

begins by wondering why certain perplexing things are as

they are; but when he attains theoretical knowledge, he

ceases to wonder (since he now has the answers) and "he

would be surprised if things were not as they are."2?

This conception of wonder and its relation to philosophy is

accepted as almost a truism in western thinking up through the eighteenth century. To cite a few examples: First, take Al


bertus Magnus, who claims that "the man who is puzzled and wonders apparently does not know; hence wonder is the

movement of the man who does not know on his way to

finding out, in order to know the cause of that thing at which

he wonders. . . . Such is the origin of philosophy."3? Similarly, Descartes says that wonder is the "attention to unusual and

extraordinary objects" which is beneficial insofar as it leads

to knowledge.31 Descartes adds, however, that it is possible to wonder too much and thus to "pervert the use of reason."

We must, he says, try to "free ourselves" from wonder as

much as possible by achieving knowledge and certainty.

Otherwise, we may end in a state that Descartes calls "blind

curiosity," which characterizes "men who seek out things that are rare solely to wonder at them and not for the pur

pose of knowing them." Note in particular the explicit link

here between wonder and curiosity, and the suggestion that

knowledge brings wonder to an end. Francis Bacon argued

along the same lines when he called wonder "broken knowl

edge" that must be repaired by the achievement of cer

tainty. 3* Finally, consider Adam Smith, who claims that

philosophy begins in wonder but, "when we answer the

questions . . . our wonder is entirely at an end."33

This Aristotelian path from wonder to certainty, from

aporia to the?ria is, I think, clear enough. Let me turn now

to a different conception of wonder?Platonic wonder?

which occurs at the end, rather than the beginning, of the

philosophic quest. This kind of wonder has its roots in the

very earliest Greek texts.34 In Homer and archaic literature, the word for "wonder" (thauma; thaumazein) is very rarely used in the sense of puzzlement, perplexity, or curiosity. In

fact, it is never confined to merely cognitive experiences: ar

chaic wonder is both cognitive and affective, intellectual and

emotional, ranging from the feelings of reverence and awe to

admiration and amazement. In this period, wonder is closely connected with the faculty of vision (note the frequent oc

currence of the formulaic phrase thauma idesthai?"a won

der to look upon"). One quite complex form of archaic


wonder is characterized by the feeling of reverence for some

thing that is perceived as both divine and yet also kindred to

the human viewer. Here, a person "looks with wonder" at

something that is both similar and different, both kindred

and strange. An example of this kind of wonder occurs in the famous

scene near the end of the Iliad where the aged Priam visits

his enemy Achilles to offer gifts for the ransoming of his

dead son Hector. When Priam first arrives, Achilles and his

companions "look with wonder" at him and, though they know who he is, pronounce him to be "godlike" (theoei

dea)J5 Priam then appeals to Achilles as a grieving father,

entreating him to be mindful of his own father in his sor

rowful old age (24.486-506). Amazingly, as these two ene

mies look at each other, each is "reminded" of his own

beloved kin. This memory causes both men to weep, Achil

les for his absent father and Priam for his dead son

(24.509-12). When the scene comes to an end, the two men

are still gazing at each other in wonderment: "And Dardan

ian Priam looked with wonder (thaumaz') at Achilles / . . .

for he was like the gods to behold face-to-face. / And

Achilles looked with wonder (thaumazen) at Dardanian

Priam / as he gazed upon his visage" (24.629-32). Here, both Priam and Achilles perceive each other as "godlike" and yet each sees the other as kindred. It is the combination

of the perceptions of kinship and difference that creates this

complex form of wonder. Each knows that the other is a hu

man being and, in fact, an enemy. Yet each sees in the other

both the superhuman strangeness of divinity and the famil

iarity of his nearest kin. The very same object "resembles"

divinity at the same time as it "reminds" the viewer of his

own son or father. This simultaneous experience of strange ness and kinship produces a unique kind of wonder. This is

a wonder that persists from beginning to end?it does not

cease when the perceiver has achieved certainty or solved a

puzzle. It is more like awe or reverence than perplexity or

curiosity. But it is a reverence that does not bow down be


fore the alien presence and power of god. This kind of won

der looks upon what is godlike and alien and finds some

sense of kinship with it.36

As we have seen, in Aristotle philosophy begins in wonder; when the philosopher is able to "see" or "theorize" the

causes, the wonder comes to an end. Plato articulated a sim

ilar idea in the Theaetetus, of course, claiming that wonder

and perplexity are the origin of philosophy.37 (Aristotle no

doubt got this idea from Plato). The Theaetetus, however, does not deal with the?ria. In the Platonic texts that discuss

the?ria, one finds a quite different kind of wonder. Here, the

philosophic journey ends?or, better, culminates?in wonder

(since, strictly speaking, philosophy never comes to an end). For the activity of the?ria?which is the goal of the philo

sophic journey?is characterized by the experience of won

der. Platonic the?ria is not simply a cognitive activity; it has

erotic and affective components that take it beyond a merely intellectual form of "seeing." The?ria leads the philosopher into a state of knowledge, but it also leaves him with a pro found sense of wonder.

Consider the conversation of Diotima and Socrates in the

Symposium, which precedes the description of the vision of

the Form of Beauty. In the course of this discussion, there are

several passages that take a specific and very marked form:

Socrates says that he is "wondering" about something, and

Diotima tells him "Do not wonder" and proceeds to explain the truth of the matter.38 In both of these passages, Diotima

indicates that Socrates need not tarry in a state of wonder, since she can provide the correct answers to his questions. Plato's repeated use of the word thaumazein, and the con

trast he sets up between Socrates' wonder and Diotima's cer

tainty (lack of wonder), alerts the reader to the importance of this theme. The theme recurs at the close of their discus

sion, where Diotima offers a brief description of the end of

the philosophic journey, which culminates in the vision of

the Form of Beauty. At this point, we assume that the appre hension of the truth will banish all wonder. But in fact there


is a new wonder to come: "When [the philosopher] views

beautiful things, one after another in the correct way, he will

suddenly see, at the end, a wondrous (thaumaston) vision,

beautiful in nature, which is the final object of all his previ ous toils" (210e). Here, the activity of beholding the Form

of Beauty?which is the activity of the?ria?is described as a

"wondrous" vision of "divine beauty" (to theion kalon, 21 ie). This experience of wonder accompanies the vision of

the Form. It includes awe, reverence, and astonishment and

is thus quite different from the perplexed form of wonder.

It should come as no surprise that seeing the divine would

evoke wonder?this is the natural response to the sight of

the superhuman. But the Platonic philosopher is not simply

seeing something divine and different from himself: he is

also seeing something that is intimately related to him. For, in many of the middle dialogues, Plato describes the rational

part of the human soul as divine in nature and "akin" to the

Forms.39 Plato regularly uses the language of kinship and

family ties to describe the relation of human reason to the

Forms. There are, of course, essential differences between

the mind and the Forms. Nevertheless, in spite of these dif

ferences, reason and the Forms are said to be kindred (sun

genn?s). Indeed, it is precisely because reason has this

kinship with the Forms that it can apprehend and associate

with them at all. This does not mean that the Forms are

commonplace and familiar. Rather, the Forms are, at the

same time, superhumanly strange and yet akin to the human

viewer. In Platonic the?ria, then, the philosopher achieves a

vision of the Forms and experiences a wonder or reverence

that does not abate.4?

The central speech in the Phaedrus describes the experi ence of falling in love with a beautiful person and the con

frontation with the Form of Beauty that this love affair

brings about. Socrates describes the pathology of this torrid

event in minute detail. When the lover gazes upon the beauty of his beloved, he suddenly remembers that he has seen true

beauty somewhere before. In fact, he has seen the Form of


Beauty in an early period of his psychic history, before he be

came incarnate on earth. For, like all human souls, he en

gaged in the the?ria of the Forms before he was born (even the gods in this text engage in the?ria). The trauma of incar

nation, however, has driven this experience almost clean out

of his mind. It is only the encounter with the beauty of his

beloved that brings the vision back. And, when he begins to

recollect that preincarnate vision, the lover is struck with as

tonishments1 Henceforth the sight of physical beauty trig

gers the philosopher's memory of the Forms and he is thus

led back into the the?ria of Beauty and the experience of

reverence and wonder that accompanies the?ria. As a result, the lover begins to revere his beloved as a sort of divine be

ing who instantiates the Form of Beauty on earth

(25ia-254a). What drives the lover here is not intellectual

curiosity or puzzlement but rather a desire for true beauty as

well as a deep and abiding reverence for its presence. We are

often told that Plato despises and denigrates the physical world: in the Phaedrus, however, the reverence for meta

physical beauty leads the philosopher to revere the embodi

ment of the Form of beauty and to tend to the beloved

person who possesses this beautiful body. Socrates' speech in the Phaedrus returns, again and again,

to the wonder and reverence that the philosopher experi ences at the sight of beauty. 42- This kind of reverence is not

unthinking or dogmatic piety. Rather, it is an experience of

wonderment that accompanies the activity of reason as it en

gages in the?ria. In the activity of the?ria, rigorous philo

sophical inquiry is accompanied by an abiding sense of

wonder. Plato's foundational conception of the?ria, then, is

grounded in a peculiar paradox: when the philosophical the

orist achieves the vision of true being, he experiences both

knowledge and wonder simultaneously. This kind of wonder accompanies, rather than precedes,

the?ria. As I have suggested, this conception of wonder is not

found in Aristotle's discussions of the?ria as the activity of

"first philosophy": there is no indication that the Aristotelian


philosopher experiences wonder when he engages in "first

philosophy" and theorizes divine essence (or "being qua be

ing"). Interestingly, Aristotle does suggest that wonder at

tends the theoretical investigation of animals in the physical world. We may ask whether the Aristotelian philosopher can

in fact "theorize" animals. Although Aristotle sometimes

claims that the proper objects of the?ria are beings that are

"divine" and "eternal," and do not "come into being or per

ish" (NE 6.1, ii39a6-8, 1139^8-24), he offers a more ex

pansive account of theoretical activity in the Metaphysics 6

(1026a). Here, he states that there are three branches of "the

oretical philosophy" (philosophiai the?r?tikai): mathematics,

physics, and theology.43 To be sure, Aristotle identifies "the

ology"?the contemplation of divine and unchanging be

ings?as the highest and the "first" philosophy, but he

nonetheless allows for the?ria in the physical sciences. In the

Parts of Animals?a treatise that examines the material, for

mal, and final causes of the organisms of animals?Aristotle

offers a powerful protreptic for the practice of the?ria in one

realm of physics, namely, that which deals with animals (1.5,

644b-645a). I want to examine this passage in detail, as it in

dicates that this theoretical enterprise includes the experience of wonder. As I will claim, the wonder that Aristotle refers to

here is aesthetic rather than reverential, though it does have

some similarities to Platonic wonder.

Aristotle begins this passage by separating beings which

"are generated and perish" from those that are "eternal"

and "divine." Although the pleasure we experience in com

ing to know divine essences is far greater than that which at

tends the apprehension of animals, we are nonetheless able

to obtain more and better information about the latter be

cause they are "nearer to us and more akin to our nature"

(645a). Aristotle remarks that he has already treated the

subject of "divine things" elsewhere and will now turn his

attention to the nature of animals. He emphatically pro claims that he will not leave out any animals, even those that

are lowly and unlovely. For, as he claims, "even in the case


of animals that are not pleasing to the senses, nevertheless, when viewed theoretically (kata ten the?rian), the Nature

which fashioned these things (d?miourg?sasa physis) fur

nishes incredible pleasures to the man who is able to discern

the causes (tas aitias gn?rizein) and who is philosophical by nature" (645a). By apprehending causal structures and

properties with the eyes of the?ria (so to speak), that which

is ugly to the physical eye becomes beautiful and pleasing.

Having established that some things are visibly ugly and yet

theoretically beautiful, Aristotle now turns to the visibly beautiful to elucidate the the?ria of animals: "it would be

absurd and strange if we rejoice when contemplating

(the?rountes) representations of these things?because then

we are contemplating the art that fashioned them (ten

d?miourg?sasan techn?n suntheoroumen), such as painting or sculpture?but do not rejoice all the more in the contem

plation (the?ria) of those things constructed by nature, when

we are able to see the causes" (645a). Here, Aristotle uses

the example of the the?ria of an artistic representation to il

lustrate the philosophical the?ria of the animal world. Both

artistic and philosophic the?ria involve the "viewing" of a

technical design?i.e., the techn? that has formed the artistic

or natural object. Here, Aristotle draws a direct parallel be

tween "demiourgic" nature and "demiourgic" art, and thus

encourages us to view the animal world as the design of na

ture-as-craftsman (though "nature" does not, of course, op

erate via intentions and purposes). Thus far, Aristotle has indicated that the the?ria of nature

affords a pleasure that is akin to the aesthetic pleasure de

rived from the contemplation of artistic representations. Aristotle now moves to wonder: "therefore we should not

behave like children and recoil from the investigation of the

lowliest animals, for there is something thaumaston in all

natural things" (en pasi tois physikois enesti ti thaumaston). There is, then, something "wondrous" or "to be wondered

at" in all animals and natural forms. Clearly, Aristotle is not

using the word "thaumaston" here in the sense of "puz


zling" or "perplexity-inducing": whatever the natural

philosopher's experience of wonder is, it is not the aporia that precedes the?ria (as in Metaphysics 1), but rather a dis

position that accompanies the?ria. What, then, does Aristo

tle mean when he says that there is something thaumaston in

all natural things? The passage that follows this claim must

be examined in detail:

And just as Heraclitus (it is reported) said to the strangers who,

though they wanted to meet him, came to a stop when they ap

proached and saw him warming himself by the stove?he bid them

to take heart and come in, for (he said) there are gods even here?

in like manner we ought not be ashamed to enter into the investi

gation of animals, since in all of them there is something natural

and beautiful (en hapasin ontos tinos physikou kai kalou, 645a).

This example is rather complicated. For the story of Her

aclitus suggests that what appears to be a humble and lowly scene?a kitchen with its stove?is in fact inhabited by di

vinity and, for this reason, "wondrous." We may be tempted to infer that Aristotle is saying that in the "lowly" parts of

the natural world there is also something divine and there

fore wondrous. But Aristotle does not believe that the sublu

nary sphere (including earth and its inhabitants) is divine or

in any way inhabited by divinity?indeed, as he has said

quite explicitly in the passage that precedes, he is not dealing with divine or eternal beings in this treatise. It is for this rea

son that, when Aristotle turns to explain the moral of the

story, he says that there is something "beautiful and natural

in all animals": this is very different from saying that there is

something divine in them. In the story of Heraclitus, in

short, the visitors are told that they should not hesitate to

enter, since what appears lowly is in fact divine; in Aristotle's

gloss on the story, the readers are told that they should not

hesitate to investigate animals, since what appears lowly is

in fact "natural and beautiful."

I would suggest that the theorist's experience of the animal


realm as "wondrous" is aesthetic rather than reverential. For

Aristotle has argued that the the?ria of animals is similar to

that of the techn? that constructs artistic representations. The example he uses here may seem to emphasize purely vi

sual "seeing," but as in all the?ria (civic and philosophical), the spectating is never simply visual. When one views a

painting or a drama in terms of its technical design, one is

"seeing" how the artwork has been constructed, how its

parts fit together, operate, and make up a whole. This same

sort of technical "viewing" operates in the the?ria of ani

mals, for though their bodies and parts may be ugly to the

eye, they are beautiful in their design and systematic organi zation. Aristotle reiterates this point when he goes on to say that "in the works of nature purpose and not accident is pre

dominant; and the purpose or end for the sake of which

things are put together or generated has its place among

what is beautiful" (645a24ff). He then adds that the theorist

is not primarily concerned with the matter (peri tes hyl?s) that makes up animal bodies but rather the "form as a

whole" (tes holes morph?s). Here, Aristotle emphasizes that

the final and formal causes are the true objects of the in

quiry, and these causal structures (unlike the material bodies

per se) are beautiful to those who can truly grasp them. The

natural scientist experiences the animal world as "won

drous," then, not because he is admiring the physical beauty of animals?much of Aristotle's treatise in fact deals with in

ternal organs and systems?but rather because he marvels at

the beauty and intricacy of their design. Although Aristotle

seems to be borrowing Platonic language in writing this pro

treptic to biological study, he depicts the experience of won

der in terms of beauty rather than divinity (indeed we watch

him make this substitution in his gloss on the Heraclitus

story). Plato does, of course, speak of the Forms as "beauti

ful," but for him the divine and the beautiful necessarily go

together: he sacralizes the experience of beauty and aestheti

cizes the realm of the sacred. As a result of this sacralization, Platonic wonder has an ethical orientation that is lacking in


Aristotelian the?ria. In the Parts of Animals, Aristotle sepa rates the aesthetic from the sacred and thus conceives of a

new form of wonder: an aesthetic wonderment that attends

the theoretical apprehension of the form and design of ani

mals.

6.

What do ancient notions of the?ria have to offer us in this

post-enlightened age? In the wake of the enlightenment,

many thinkers have opted to replace Aristotelian perplexity with the hermeneutics of suspicion, to abandon theoretical

certitude for constructivism or deconstruction. And many,

too, have relinquished Platonic wonder by rejecting religious belief and reverence for the sacred. We may be able to live

without certainty. But can we really do without wonder?

Nietzsche addressed this question when he discussed the op

position between a "world in which we were at home up to

now with our reverences that perhaps made it possible for us

to endure life, and another world that consists of us." Ac

cording to Nietszche, the Europeans of his era were con

fronted with these two options: a world where people live

with reverence and a world in which religion and reverence

are abolished and everything "consists of us." On the one

hand, he says, people who practice reverence are "nihilistic," since they debase life by prostrating themselves before an

other-worldly god. But, Nietzsche adds, to adopt the other

position?to inhabit a "world that consists of us"?also

leads to nihilism. For, when humans abandon reverence and

become the sole masters of an empty universe, they soon

find that the self-aggrandizing ideology of humanism is un

sustainable and lapse into pessimism and self-loathing.44 We

end up, then, in an all-too-human world that is empty and

unendurable.

It may be the case that dwelling in a world which consists

only "of us" is an unsustainable enterprise. But does

dwelling in a world of wonder and reverence necessarily de

value human life? This is certainly not true of Platonic won


der. For the philosopher finds a kinship with the sacred even

as he marvels at its sublimity and strangeness. As we have

seen, Plato articulates the experience of wonder in theologi cal terms?since the objects of the?ria are superhuman and

divine beings. But, as I would suggest, this kind of wonder

can also be conceived in ecological terms. We can look with

wonder at the nonhuman beings in the natural world, find

ing a kinship with the strange and various life forms in the

world around us (Aristotle in fact invites us to turn our gaze towards the natural world, though his wonder is aesthetic

rather than theological or ethical). In its root sense, the word

ecology means "having a conception (logos) of the world as

an oikos or 'household.'" Ecologically conceived, the world

does not simply "consist of us," nor is it completely inhos

pitable and alien to humans: it is, rather, a household made

up of a myriad of kindred members. The contemplation of

the natural world?beholding it with reverence and wonder

rather than as mere material for human use?is at the heart

of many ecological philosophies. This need not take the

form of unthinking piety or na?ve nature worship. Rather,

ecological the?ria can be conceived as an activity in which

rigorous philosophical and scientific inquiry is accompanied

by reverence and restraint. This kind of the?ria, of course, will differ in important ways from the theoretical activities

of the Greeks. But it has its roots in the same sense of won

der.

NOTES

A much earlier and shorter version of this essay was delivered and pub

lished as an Occasional Lecture for the University Professors Program at

Boston University. I am grateful to the University Professors for their many

valuable comments on my talk. I also wish to thank Bob Gregg, Charles Gris

wold, Peter Hawkins, Rachel Jacoff, Josh Landy, Tony Long, Rush Rehm,

and Douglas Wilson for their insightful comments and criticisms on various

drafts of this essay.

i. The notion that the?ria is an activity that is in no way practical or pro ductive was set forth by Aristotle?his position, as I argue, is more extreme

than those of his contemporaries.


2. Herodotus, Histories 1.74-75, 170. Note also that Diogenes Laertius

1.25 reports that Tha?es advised the Milesians to reject the alliance offered to

them by Croesus, which ended up saving them when Croesus was at war with

Cyrus.

3. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 1.26. Cf. Aristotle, who

also reports that this story "is told" about Tha?es (Politics 1.4, 1259a). This

story about Tha?es conflicts with Aristotle's claim in the Nicomachean Ethics

(6.7, 1141b) that Tha?es was a contemplative?a claim that Aristotle makes

in his own voice (in contrast with the story mentioned in the Politics, which

he merely reports as hearsay).

4. Diogenes Laertius 1.25-6.

5. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6.7, 1141b.

6. Richard Martin, "The Seven Sages as Performers of Wisdom," in Cul

tural Poetics of Ancient Greece, C. Dougherty and L. Kurke, eds. (Cambridge

1994), 108-28. For some useful essays on "performance culture" in classical

Greece, see S. Goldhill and R. Osborne, eds., Performance Culture and

Athenian Democracy (Cambridge 1999).

7. R. Thomas, Herodotus in Context (Cambridge 2000) esp. Introduction

and chs. 5-7, offers an excellent discussion of the performances given by in

tellectuals in the fifth century bce (especially the sophists, medical 'scientists,'

and practioners of ''historie').

8. Diogenes Laertius 9.23.

9. D-K30A3.

10. See Paul Cartledge, Democritus (Pheonix 1998), 8 and passim.

11. A. A. Long., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philoso

phy (Cambridge 1999), esp. chapters 1, 10, 11, and 16.

12. Plato, Hippias Minor 368D-C.

13. For example, Hippias' expertise included astronomy, geometry, arith

metic, musical theory, orthography, and an astonishing mnemonic art.

14. See, e.g., the Hippocratic Precepts 10 and On Joints 42; on the per formances and self-advertisement of the medical scientists/practitioners, see

G. E. R. Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom (Cambridge 1987), chs. 2-3 and

R. Thomas, Herodotus in Context (Cambridge 2000), chs. 6-7.

15. To be sure, a number of pre-Platonic thinkers discussed and speculated about the nature and reliability of physical vision; but the notion of knowl

edge as "seeing" truth (i.e., the so-called spectator theory of knowledge) is

not found in these thinkers.

16. M. Dillon, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in Ancient Greece (New York

1997), xviii.

17. In addition, scholars tend to ignore the significance of the fact that

many foreigners came to these festivals to participate in the athletic and dra

matic competitions. Most of the athletic events at the Panathenaia were open to all Greeks, and in the dramatic productions at the Civic Dionysia, the ac

tors, fluteplayers, and even playwrights could be foreigners.

18.1. Rutherford, "Theorie Crisis: The Dangers of Pilgrimage in Greek Re


ligion and Society," Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 61 (1995), 276.

19. Symposium i74d-i75a, 220c-d.

20. Although we do not know the precise date of this inaugural festival, evidence from inscriptions indicate that it was sometime before 429 bce. The

Athenian polis had the power to include and exclude forms of worship in At

tica (which includes the Peiraius), and people who wished to introduce new

cults or festivals had to seek official sanction.

21. Republic 5i9c~52oe, 540a.

22. The modern discussions of "ocularcentrism" and the "spectator theory of knowledge" are numerous and diverse, ranging from phenomenologists such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty to poststructural and psycho

analytic theorists such as Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan, to feminists such as

Irigaray, to pragmatists such as Dewey and Rorty (to name only a few). For

some useful discussions of modern and postmodern attacks on ocularce

ntrism, see Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twen

tieth-Century Thought (Berkeley 1993), and David Levin, ed. Modernity and

the Hegemony of Vision (Berkeley 1993).

23. Nicomachean Ethics 6.1-8, 1139a-! 142a. Aristotle offers a broader

conception of the objects of the?ria in Metaphysics 6.1 (1026a): there,

physics and mathematics are added to "theology" as "theoretical philoso

phies."

24. Nicomachean Ethics 10.7, 1177b. This passage is famously problem

atic, since it seems to contradict Aristotle's claims elsewhere in the Nico

machean Ethics that the activities of practical virtue are chosen for their own

sakes (see, e.g., 1.7, io97b2~5; 6.5,1140b; 10.6, ii76b6~9).

25. Though Aristotle does of course praise the life of practical and politi cal virtue, which he considers second in happiness to the contemplative life.

26. See, e.g., Republic 487d, 489b.

27. This argument appears to have triggered the polemic among members

of the Academy (post-Plato) and the Lyceum over the question whether

"true" philosophy is practical or theoretical: Heraclides of Pontus (a member

of the Academy under Speusippus) and Theophrastus argued that first phi

losophy is theoretical and not practical, whereas Dicaearchus insisted that

only practical wisdom should count as philosophy. See W. Jaeger, Aristotle

2nd ed., trans. R. Robinson (Oxford 1948), appendix 2.

28. Aristotle does acknowledge that the theorist will have to engage in prac

tical activities in order to live a human life (Nicomachean Ethics 10.8,

ii77b-ii77a, 1178b). But, even though the philosopher will need to engage in some kinds of praxis in order to sustain a contemplative life, he will keep these to a minimum, since they can "obstruct" philosophic activity (NE 10.8,

1178b). Correlatively, the man who perfects his practical reasoning and

chooses a life of politics will not have the leisure to engage in contemplation

(NE 10.7, ii77bi-i5, ii78a-b). Aristotle makes it clear that the contempla tive life is superior to the political life, though both are considered good lives.

29. "All begin by wondering that things should be as they are (e.g. with re

gard to marionettes, or the solstices, or the incommensurability of the diago


nal of a square). Because it seems wonderful (thaumaston) to everyone who

has not yet theorized/contemplated (teth??r?kosi) the cause that a thing should not be measurable by the smallest unit. But we must end with the con

trary and better view ... for a geometrician would wonder at nothing so

much as if the diagonal were to become measurable." (Metaphysics 983a). See also Nicomachean Ethics 10.7 (1177326-27) on the difference between

seeking and possessing knowledge.

30. Albertus Magnus, Opera Omnia, Augustus Borgnet, ed., 20 vols.

(Paris 1890), 6.30. The translation comes from J. V. Cunningham, Woe and

Wonder (Denver 1951), 79-80.

31. Descartes, "The Passions of the Soul" part 2, 70-78, in The Philo

sophical Work of Descartes vol. 1, trans. E. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cam

bridge repr. 1978), 362-66.

32. Bacon, "Advancement of Learning," in The Works of Francis Bacon, ?d. J. Spedding et al., vol 6 (Boston 1863), ^6, and in "Valerius Terminus of

the Interpretation of Nature" (29).

33. Smith , "The History of Astronomy," in Essays on Philosophical Sub

jects, eds. W. Wightman and J. Bryce (Oxford 1980), 51. Although Smith's

philosophers, unlike Aristotle's, construct rather than discover the causal

links between phenomena, they nonetheless move from wonder to certitude.

34. R. A. Prier has analyzed the different uses of thauma and its cognates in archaic literature (as well as a number of related words that signify "won

der" in this period) in Thauma Idesthai: The Phenomenology of Sight and

Appearance in Archaic Greek (Tallahassee 1989), esp., 84-97. Prier does not

discuss the form of wonder that I am analyzing here.

35. Iliad 24.483-84. The Greek word for "wonder" here is thambos, which is used (as a noun and a verb) three times in three lines. As Prier (note

34), 87-97, has shown, thambos and thauma are often used as synonyms.

36. Another good example of this kind of wonder occurs when Odysseus sees his father Laertes returning home from the bath, when Athena has made

him appear taller and stronger: Odysseus "wonders" at him "since he looks

face-to-face like the immortal gods" (thaumaze . . . h?s iden athanatoisi

theois enalinkion ant?n, Odyssey 24.370-71).

37. Theaetetus i55C-d. There is no single passage in which he sets forth

the operations of wonder-as-reverence; this can be understood by examining the passages in the dialogues that deal with the?ria or the soul's encounter

with the Forms (or, as in the Timaeus, with the contemplation of the divine

achieved by viewing the circular motion of the heavenly bodies).

38. Symposium 205a-b; 207b; 2o8b-c.

39. For some examples of the assertion of the "kinship" of the rational

part of the soul to the Forms, see Phaedo 79a, Republic 490b, 61 ie, Phae

drus 246d-e, Timaeus 46b-e, 90, 90c-d, and Laws 897c (the word that Plato

generally uses to express kinship is sungenneia and its cognates).

40. Plato articulates this point differently in different texts. In the Repub

lic, he indicates that the philosopher who beholds the Forms will "wonder"

at them and, because he feels this wonder, will endeavor to "imitate" them by


making himself good and divine (5ooc-d). Here, the philosopher's wonder at

what is divine and different leads him to assimilate himself to?and to find

kinship with?this higher reality. See also the Timaeus, which discusses the

contemplation of the stars, which are moved in perfect circles by the divine

reason of god. In this text, Plato says that the vision of the heavenly bodies is

in fact the origin of philosophy (46e~47b). The faculty of vision and, in turn,

the capacity to philosophize was given to human beings "in order that we

might behold the revolutions of divine reason in the heavens and use them to

aid the revolutions of reason that are in us, since these things are akin to each

other" (47D-C). Here, human and divine reason are akin (which allows us to

imitate divine reason). But divine reason is "impeturbable" and "unerring" whereas human reason is "prone to wander" (47c). Our human reason is

thus akin to that of the gods and yet vastly different from it?for human rea

son "errs" and "wanders." Again, we find the philosophic theorist discover

ing both a kinship with and a distance from the divine.

41. Phaedrus 250a. To Plato's description of the fear, awe, and wonder of

the philosopher, compare Heidegger, who at the close of "The Fundamental

Concepts of Metaphysics" calls Dasein a being that "exists, i.e., ex-sists, is

an exiting from itself in the essence of its being, yet without abandoning itself.

Man is that inability to remain and is yet unable to leave his place. . . . Man

is enraptured in this transition and therefore essentially 'absent.' Absent in a

fundamental sense?never simply at hand, but absent in his essence, in his es

sentially being away; removed into essential having been and future?essen

tially absencing and never at hand, yet existent in his essential absence.

Transposed into the possible, he must constantly be mistaken concerning what is actual. And only because he is thus mistaken and transposed can he

become seized by terror. And only where there is the perilousness of being seized by terror do we find the bliss of astonishment?being torn away in that

wakeful manner that is the breath of all philosophizing, and that which the

greats among the philosophers called ienthousiasmos\ . ." (my italics).

42. The most common word for "reverence" in this passage is sebesthai

(250e, 251a, 252a, 254c, 254e), but Plato also uses deima (251a) and its cog nate deid? (254c, 254e) and thambos (254c). As Prier shows (op. cit., 87-91,

107), thambos and sebas are closely related to thauma.

43. "For physics deals with things which are separable (i.e., exist sepa

rately) but not immovable, and some branches of mathematics deal with

things which are immovable, but probably not separable, but present in mat

ter, while the first science deals with things which are both separable and im

movable. . . . Hence there are three theoretical philosophies: mathematics,

physics, and theology" (Metaphysics io26ai3~i8). See also Metaphysics 4.3,

1005b 1-2, where Aristotle says that physics is "a kind of wisdom but not the

first kind."

44. F. Nietszche, The Gay Science, trans. Kaufmann (New York 1984),

286-87.

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