I once heard a story which I believe, that Leontius the son of Aglaion, on his way up from the Peiraeus under the outer side of the northern wall, becoming aware of dead bodies that lay at the place of public execution at the same time felt a desire to see them and a repugnance and aversion, and that for a time he resisted and veiled his head, but overpowered in despite of all by his desire, with wide staring eyes he rushed up to the corpses and cried, ‘There, ye wretches, take your fill of the fine spectacle!'” “I too,” he said, “have heard the story.” “Yet, surely, this anecdote,” I said, “signifies that the principle of anger sometimes fights against desires as an alien thing against an alien.”'--Plato, Republic, 439a-440a
A key moment in (recall) Amy Olberding's book, The Wrong of Rudeness, is the use of Xunzi to call attention to the significance to our "psychology" of "ornamenting" corpses (see here). Olberding writes that unornamented corpses inspire initial "disgust and aversion." But extended exposure to unornamented corpses can generate "scorn and weariness." The point to ornament is to cultivate feelings that allow us to honor the person and to allow nobler feelings of "love and affection" to be expressions. The more fundamental point lurking here, if I understand Olberding and Xunzi correctly, is that the living also need to be ornamented in the right sort of way so that our desires and norms are properly cultivated to facilitate social life.
I was reminded of Olberding's treatment of Xunzi while preparing a lecture on the Republic when reading the curiously well-attested anecdote about Leontius (Socrates and Glaucon both seems to have heard the story) and the executed bodies. At first sight this has little to do with the Xunzi passage treated by Olberding. For, in the anecdote is that in addition to disgust and aversion, Leontius also feels a fascination or attraction toward the corpses.
But the official point of Socrates' retelling of the anecdote is that attraction toward unornamented corpses expresses a form of spiritedness/anger/Platonic θυμός. This provides evidence for a third element in the Platonic soul (in addition to reason and desire). And the larger argument of the Republic reveals that such spiritedness must be properly cultivated by and be under control of reason in the service of proper order of the soul, and society. The latter suggests that for all their differences Xunzi and Plato may not be far apart.
That there was a battle between aversion from and attraction to the corpses within Leontius is not, I think, the most remarkable feature of his behavior (although perhaps folk with an interest in akrasia or Platonic moral psychology will differ).* The really striking point of the anecdote, is the fact and content of the final exclamation which seems to be directed at his own (previously veiled) eyes; they most take in the impression of the lifeless bodies. Leontius is overcome by his spirit (some commentators think he is overcome by desire), and this spirit insists on (for lack of a better term) educating the senses with the the aesthetic sight+ of corpses.
If the classical Athenians were anything like medieval Europeans, then exposing executed prisoners to the sights of those that pass by is deliberate. The point may be to deter or, more likely, to show that justice or vengeance for wrongs have been exacted. Perhaps, the exposure of the body is part of the punishment. Creon's insistence that the corpse of Antigone's brother Polynices goes unburied is clearly part of his punishment (and public shaming). And while there is undoubtedly a point -- perhaps related to a desire not to sully the purity of the city with corpses and executions -- that the bodies are outside the walls, the point of the exercise is also to make sure that the corpses are visible to its citizens (and visitors).
So whatever else the meaning of his desire to look at the corpses is, by forcing his eyes to look at the corpses, Leontius is, then, conforming to political expectations and submitting and, thereby, cultivating his own body to these. And these, the political norms surrounding the aesthetic of corpses, are, in part, designed to facilitate cooperative living in the polity.
I seperate Leontius' initial (thwarted) desire to look at the corpses (which I associate with the lowest, desiring part of the soul) from the final act of making himself look, which I associate with the spirited part. The spirited part is a species of anger.
That is to say, one of the features that the anecdote about Leontius displays is not just the violence that is exercised in the punishment of criminals, but also in the ways in which we make ourselves submit to the norms of the city (which are, backed up, by reason and violence). These norms simultaneously express and control anger. It seems to me that given that in the well-managed soul and city spirit is present, Socrates teaches that this is intrinsic to political life,.
I note this because much of the very interesting discussion of anger today is focused on either the legitimacy of righteous anger by victims of state violence and/or the disruptive nature of anger among citizens. In a justifiably widely praised piece (despite her unfairness to Nietzsche and Foucault), Callard calls attention to "dark side of morality." She rightly points out that in a bad world corrosive anger is inevitable ("is impossible for humans...to respond rightly to being treated wrongly.'')
In reflecting on Callard's piece, I wondered if she assumed that in a (perhaps impossible, counterfactual) good world anger would be absent. I suspect the thought tempts many who believe in public reason and modern forms of legitimacy. It's possible that Socrates thinks the Athenian practice of exposing executed bodies is itself bad and would ban it in Kallipolis. But if so, it does not undermine the idea that that alongside ornamentation of bodies, the norms of political life and their application to living (and dead) bodies rely on (as Freud discerned) managed and redirected anger.
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