Isagoge (review)

82 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 327a-c). Since Crete is more pious it also is more anti-Socratic than the Athens that tolerated Socrates for seventy years. It is stronger in the ancestral piety that philosophy must discredit but that its ignorance prevents it from discrediting. Philosophy is inseparable from the courage to acknowledge its possible inferiority to its most implacable foe, the civic piety sanctifying the "racist" passions intent upon its extermination (pp. 45--46, 106, 129-30). Nonphilosophic courage, on the other hand, is a form of cowardice, the pious fear of transgressing the morality dearest to one's heart (pp. 19-20, 51, 108-10, 116-23, 154, 180-81). For that pious fear is the nonphilosopher's fortress against "the initial and final terror" (pp. 19, 38--41, 170-71). Because they despise this cowardice, philosophers prefer to confront their worst enemy, civic piety, where it is stronger (Dorians) rather than weaker (Athenians). To be sure, the two Dorians transgress their "law of laws" by abetting a foreigner in his criticism of their divine law (pp. 10-15,143-46). But then no philosophic discussion, however diluted, would be possible with them, unless they become momentarily intoxicated by seductive appeals to their forbidden desires (pp. 15-16, 20-22, 33, 36-37, 167). Strauss notes that the utopia desired by nonphilosophers would eliminate all sources of conflict (crime, poverty, hatred, envy, and so on), and especially philosophy's battle with civic piety. If that conflict is inevitable in human souls, nonphilosophers must yearn for the divine omnipotence required to eradicate philosophy (pp. 37, 40, 58, 112). According to Strauss, the Athenian Stranger sees conflicts between gods as reflections of the struggle against philosophy in the soul (148-50). However, unlike his detractors, Strauss knows the difference between Socratic and un-Socratic courage in his struggle. That awareness is reflected in his only oath, which begs heaven to forbid that pious Sparta should have been guilty of gross impiety (p. 44). This oath reminds one of Thucydides' lament for pious Nicias and his reluctance to blame Sparta for breaking sacred treaties.' Lacking the willingness of Socratic courage to side with its worst enemy, modern scholars generally despise such "pious" scruples. Strauss places the responsibility for this lack on the amazing success of the Laws's efforts to disestablish familial or civic gods in favor of "Socratic" or cosmic gods (pp. 20, 141-50, 172, 183-84). ~As loyal citizens of regimes shaped by that disestablishment, most modern scholars despise Strauss for the same reason that the pious Dorians would have despised the Stranger had he been unwilling to make Socratic concessions to their anti-Socratic piety (pp. 9, 33, 38, 47). Apparently, Strauss believed that Socratic courage demands concessions to the ancient Dorian piety, while concessions to "Socratic" prejudices are un-Socratic. No scholarly work does more to stiffen resist- . . . r . ance to those preJudices than Strauss's interpretation of the Laws. None is more Socratic in its appreciation of Dorian tastes forbidden in souls that experience the Socratic way of life as an answer and not a question (pp. 5, 44, 106, 129-30, 141,180-83). HairY NEtrUAr~N Scripps College Porphyry the Phoenician. lsagoge. Translated with introduction and notes by Edward W. Warren. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1975. Pp. 65. $3.25. Malchus--or Porphyry, as he preferred to be known by the Hellenized form of his Phoenician name- disciple, editor and biographer of Plotinus, author of a defense of idolatrous worship and of a tract in behalf of vegetarianism, began more than he could possibly have intended or expected when he sat down to write a brief introduction (isagoge) to the Organon of Aristotle. John of Salisbury, the same who strove to strike a compromise between the universal claims of the Church and the increasingly absolute claims of the nascent monarchical state ' Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), pp. 150, 176-82, 207-9, 216-17. 5Also Strauss, What/s PoliticalPhilosophy? (Glencor Free Press, 1959), p. 299. BOOK REVIEWS 83 in the doctrine of the two swords of the Policraticus, gives all too clear a picture of what Porphyry...