Lesser mysteries

“You’re a happy man, Callicles, in that you’ve been initiated into the greater mysteries before the lesser. I didn’t think it was permitted.” -Socrates

In Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, Socrates eventually ends up squaring off against a young man named Callicles, who challenges him severely. Callicles oozes contempt for Socrates, and is in some ways the most dire opponent he faces anywhere in Plato’s dialogues. Not only does Callicles argue against Socrates’ ideas, in various ways—he takes aim at the very idea of being a philosopher. One example of the insults Callicles throws at Socrates: “This man will not stop talking nonsense! Tell me, Socrates, aren’t you ashamed, at your age, of trying to catch people’s words and of making hay out of someone’s tripping on a phrase?”

Callicles takes aim at both philosophy itself as a practice, and the kind of people who dedicate their lives to it—and so by extension, to Socrates himself, an old man who spent his whole life doing nothing other than engaging in philosophical discussions wherever he went.

Callicles is full of this kind of fighting spirit, and it extends to his ideas as well—he says that moderation is a sign of weakness, and that the strongest people should indulge their appetites and desires as much as they can; that any moderation on pleasure is just a gesture to appease the masses, who do not have the means to indulge their pleasure as much as they want, and so a powerful man who limits his pleasure is trying to get the masses to like him—to make himself seem like them.

Callicles thinks this is weak and stupid; that a strong man—a tyrant—should just openly indulge his pleasure as much as he wants; and that if they had the means, the masses would as well.

This is just one of Callicles’ ideas, offered in rebuttal to Socrates’ contention that pleasures should be moderated, and that pleasure is not always good. Callicles has a tendency to charge full-throttle, to not want to waste time with building up long arguments and making subtle distinctions; he thinks this way of doing philosophy is a waste of time; that common sense demands obvious answers, and the over-subtlety of philosophers like Socrates just confuses everyone from seeing what the obvious truth is. Reality is simple, and philosophy just confuses people.

This is the context for the Socrates quote above: “You’re a happy man, Callicles, in that you’ve been initiated into the greater mysteries before the lesser. I didn’t think it was permitted.” This is a prime example of Socratic irony—that Callicles, who never bothers paying attention to the smaller parts of arguments, only ever wanting the bigger picture, has evidently been granted access to the greater mysteries straightaway, never having had to pay any mind to lesser mysteries along the way. (Socrates means this ironically, of course, and doesn’t believe that this is actually the case for Callicles—he has in fact skipped the lesser mysteries and so is now blind to the greater mysteries he claims to have mastery of). Plato returns to this theme—that lesser mysteries must be mastered before moving on to the greater mysteries, in many places; for instance, Plato’s Laws begins with a dialectical analysis of alcohol policy in a society, because that is a less important topic, and a perfect way to build up to the greater sociopolitical mysteries that come later on.

In Socrates’ words, Callicles is rushing into the “greater mysteries” before the lesser mysteries. It’s interesting how Socrates uses the terms “mysteries” and “initiated”—it points to the esoteric, hermetic, gnostic, occult background of Plato’s thought (but that’s a story for another time).

This is the best way to understand Socrates and Plato though—as figures in the development of hermetic thought; which Pythagoras, a major influence on Plato, exemplified, with his cult. For them, philosophy was a way of living, so as to get the universe to disclose its deepest mysteries; and, importantly, they all operated under the belief that these mysteries could be known; indeed, the whole point of human beings was to know the mysteries of the universe; we are uniquely equipped for it.

So philosophy was an initiation ritual—any process of learning great mysteries, hidden secrets, requires initiation into it; you can’t just rush in and expect to understand the deepest mysteries of the universe. And you get initiated into the lesser mysteries first—learning how smaller things in the universe work, how God reveals himself through this or that small thing; and then you work up from that, to the greater mysteries—to the essence of truth itself, from smaller principles to the highest principle, the principle of principles. This is ultimately what Plato sought, and what all hermetic, gnostic thought aims at—the principle of principles, the logic by which all logic is made possible, the unifying thought that all lesser thoughts emanate from.

Jumping directly into the big picture ensures that you miss it—you have to train your eye to see the smaller things first; you have to train your mind to grasp the lesser mysteries; and then eventually all will be revealed. This is why Socrates is such a stickler for small things in arguments—for getting definitions of minor terms straight; of examining every nook and cranny, of twist and turn, of every logical possibility raised by every argument; often to the exhaustion of his interlocutor (the guy he is doing dialectics with). But that’s the point—if you are exhausted, frustrated, and turned off by this process of initiation into the lesser mysteries, then you will have no right, and no ability, to understand the greater mysteries you seek.

Callicles has to be all but dragged along as Socrates goes through the minute details of the argument in the dialogue (I won’t get into the finer details here…ironic I know! But I don’t want to get off track or make this post overly long). There’s a running joke in the dialogue of Callices’ exasperation with Socrates: “How you keep on saying the same things, Socrates!” Then later Callicles tells Socrates: “I’m going along with you, both to expedite your argument and to gratify Gorgias here.” (Gorgias has become an observer in the dialogue named after him, watching Socrates and Callicles spar; and he prods them on, telling them he wants them to continue until they reach an end). But the funniest one comes towards the end: “Couldn’t you go through the discussion by yourself, either by speaking in your own person or by answering your own questions?” Callicles tells Socrates to just answer his own questions, because he is sick of doing it. Socrates, of course, obliges, and ends the dialogue by asking himself annoying questions, which he then answers. It’s very funny. But the effect is to show how unsuited Callicles is for initiation into the higher mysteries—how unfit he is for gnostic, hermetic, esoteric, occult pursuits, despite his evident passion for truth and ideas. And this is the contradiction—Callicles does have an active, passionate mind, and he can grasp ideas, as if evident if you read the dialogue; but even so, he is unable, and more importantly unwilling, to undergo the initiation process, to endure the monotony of the lesser mysteries; and so his larger ideas will always fall short.