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AUTHENTIC PRESENCE: A PHENOMENOLOGY OF INITIATION remains something only an individual is able to live and encompass. The latter will give us a clue as to how, in the Platonic dialogues, the two imperatives “know thyself” and “become like God,” are able to stand side by side. IMMANENCE OR TRANSCENDENCE Julia Annas has discussed a tension in Plato’s view of virtue, seldom commented upon in modern times, due to academic classifications of the different topics of the dialogues.* The tension is between virtue in the domain of ethical behaviour, on the one hand, rising above the immediate or conventional understanding of good and bad, pleasure and pain. This constitutes a perception of virtue, we would say, as rational behaviour, good in itself despite any immediate consequences. It is an attitude with an eye for the theoretical as well as the practical; the virtuous person is a person living in the world and changing it by holding a different perspective. On the other hand, we find in Plato’s description of virtue the notion that true virtue is becoming like God, or rather assimilating to God, for example in Iheaetetus 176 a-b." Here the focus is on a transformation of the virtuous person himself or herself, which entails fleeing the world rather than participating in it and affecting it. These at least apparently conflicting understandings of virtue, Annas suggests, can be described as the difference between an ethical and a spiritual strand in Plato’s thinking. Annas does not investigate this difference in depth, apart from stating it alongside her historical research, which shows that in ancient times, among the middle Platonists, this view of the goal of human life, always considered in terms of happiness, was not questioned. The main question that Annas leaves us with is that the ethical perspective seems to disappear if the virtuous is to become of another kind than the human.° But ifthis is the case, why do Socrates, and with him Plato, put so much stress on self-knowledge, when discussing the different virtues, as a prerequisite for understanding them at all? Remember Socrates’ insistence on “care for oneself” in the Alcibiades as necessary for skill in taking care of others, as well as his contention that the discussion of sofrosyne in the Charmides is ultimately a discussion of self-knowledge.’ The latter dwindles through questions about whether and what kind of knowledge it can be said to be. Ultimately it is not Julia Annas, Becoming like God: Ethics, Human Nature and the Divine, Platonic Ethics, Old and New, New York, Cornell University Press, 1999. “But it [evil] must inevitably haunt human life, and prowl around this earth. That is why a man should make all haste to escape from earth to heaven; and escape means becoming as like God as possible (...)” Plato, Theaetetus 176a-b, trans. M.J. Levett, Complete Works, 195. ° Annas, Becoming like God, Platonic Ethics, Old and New, 71. Plato, Alcibiades trans. D.S. Hutchinson, Charmides trans. Rosamond Kent Sprague, Complete Works. Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 253 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:23
