This section purposes to inspect two only too noticeable tropes deployed by Cicero and Boethius in TD and CoP alike: the figure of medicine and that of femininity. They serve fundamentally to further disillusion the two authors’ reverence for Platonism. Unlike the surface differences above, these tropes are the rhetorical undercurrents in the narrative design of the dialogues that speak for philosophy as in ventriloquism. Surely they do not constitute ventriloquism merely because of being tropes; their articulation by proxy is possible because they transgress methodological integrity. To account for such subtle displacement, this study will then resort to Roman Jakobson’s model of the speech event.
The consolatory aspect of philosophy is, to begin with, cast in the language of medicine. It is also in Book 3 of TD—where correct beliefs are sought to ease emotions aroused by unsound opinions—that Cicero uses the trope of medicine on this process. As he grumbles to Brutus before the third dialogue begins,
Seeing, Brutus, that we are made up of soul and body, what am
25 The stress on ethics is in reality a sustained concern for Cicero. As C. E. W. Steel argues, Cicero has tried to fashion the idea of “morally upright Romans” with a view to delivering Rome from deterioration (226). Such also echoes Cicero’s “deification of the perfect speaker”—bearing philosophical knowledge—in DO (Wardy 100), who seems capable of reviving the Senate in the final period of the Republic.
I to think is the reason why for the care and maintenance of the body there has been devised an art . . . whilst on the other hand the need of an art of healing for the soul has not been felt so deeply . . . . (TD 3.1.1)
The art of healing the soul, as he indicates to Brutus later, is unquestionably the practice of “philosophy” (TD 3.3.6). Sustaining this trope, M expounds that just as physicians think that they can cure a disease upon finding the cause, so too philosophers think that they can alleviate agitation by identifying the cause of distress (TD 3.10.23). The theme of Book 3 runs then that the
“pathogen” of worrying emotions originates from defective beliefs. So, the soul will persist in the limbo of grief if it fails to grasp philosophical teachings (TD 3.6.13). In sum, in order to withstand popular beliefs amidst the necessity of feeling sadness on some occasions, M stipulates three steps within philosophy: realizing that there is no evil, discussing common or individual fortune, and showing the folly of grieving to no avail (TD 3.32.77). The exercise of reason to fight annoying emotions is encapsulated as the “Socratic remedy” (“Socratica medicina”) in Book 4, where other forms of mental disorders are also discussed and philosophically treated (TD 4.11.25). All these instances show that Cicero has fused philosophy and medicine together at the textual level: medical terminology is used to contextualize philosophy at the same time that Cicero “Latinizes” Platonism.
In the case of the CoP, Lady Philosophy does not come just to comfort Boethius; her consoling process is literally also a practice of healing. The following statement may well explain the purpose of Lady Philosophy’s visit:
This welter of disturbed emotions weighs heavily on you; grief, anger, and melancholy are tearing you apart. So in your present state of mind, you are not as yet fit to face stronger remedies.
For the moment, then, I shall apply gentler ones, so that the hard swellings where the emotions have gathered may soften under a more caressing touch, and may become ready to bear the application of more painful treatment. (CoP 1.5.11-2) Note that Lady Philosophy translates Boethius’ condition into a medical context in which emotions as tumors have to be treated. Moreover, the process is divided into two phases squaring precisely with the two movements before
and after the narrative partition. The “gentler” treatment refers to the pacification of emotions while the stronger one to the understanding of the harmony among chance, free will, and Providence. What lies behind this trope, however, is a studied application of medicine to the philosophical context. For, firstly, this ancient medicine is practiced in the belief of “mild medicine first”
(Chadwick 228). Next, before the prescription, Lady Philosophy has diagnosed Boethius’ degenerate condition as “loss of energy” (CoP 1.2.5)—which is “associated with bodily disease” (CoP 1.2.5n). Then in the first step, Lady Philosophy sets out to ask Boethius some easy questions (to find out whether his beliefs are correct) “so as to probe and investigate” his mind (CoP 1.6.1)—exactly what a physician does before prescribing medicine (CoP 1.6.1n). Therefore, the affinity between philosophical teaching and medical treatment is conspicuous enough to make philosophy almost an instance of medicine.
The trope of femininity impresses, too. Let us turn to Quintilian first. As mentioned above, when the union of rhetoric and philosophy is discussed, this study cites Quintilian as an example. In particular, he advocates that a would-be orator should be taught philosophy by his nurse lest the formation of his character render him incompetent as an expert at speech. This scheme changes into a trope whereby philosophy is a gendered embodiment in TD and CoP: it is maternal and feminine. Regardless of grammatical gender, M makes a grandiose claim that philosophy is “the mother of all arts” (“omnium mater atrium”) (TD 1.26.64), signifying the Quintilian scheme in which philosophy is the foremost subject to be taught (though his anxiety overturns this by transferring everything to rhetoric). Also, in keeping with the consoling process, philosophy as a mother figure is fittingly a nursing one as well.
However, it seems that Boethius’ CoP best exemplifies the trope of femininity.
Steeped in woes, Boethius is surprised to find a lady overlooking him from high above), “most awe-inspiring to look at” and “so advanced in years” (CoP 1.1.1). This woman, after wiping Boethius’ tears, turns out to be his “nurse Philosophy” (CoP 1.3.2). In the case of CoP, Lady Philosophy is even an interlocutor speaking directly to Boethius. The trope of femininity thus forms the setting in which a male Roman (perhaps an orator) exchanges views with a Greek woman (philosopher).
The above tropes certainly imply a host of interpretations, but, with a view to their intertextuality with Platonism, one is first obliged to focus on a
particular aspect of the Socratic dialectic. Before a dialectical conclusion can be reached, it is usual with Socrates to adopt “analogical apparatuses” to deliberate over definitional questions. For instance, in the Gorgias, Socrates seeks to pin down the subject dealt with by rhetoric by bringing up a series of analogies such as weaving and music. The stalemate confronting Gorgias is that he cannot offer a satisfactory answer as to what rhetoric relates to—unlike weaving, which concerns the making of clothes, or music, which handles tunes (Gorg. 449D). Even when Gorgias answers that it relates to speech, Socrates refutes him yet again by pointing out that there are still other arts besides rhetoric which are concerned with speech (Gorg. 450B). These analogies thus serve as a basis for locating another definitional entity. Each term that Socrates attempts signifies accordingly a “type”—representative of the eidos. Socrates then finds it presumptuous when Gorgias blatantly prides himself on being able to be appointed physician with a doctor present (Gorg.
456B). Each analogical apparatus signifies an ideal form but here Gorgias transgresses the epistemic boundary by displacing one with the other. It is why Socrates opposes rhetoric: instead of trying to track down the type of a term, an orator might very possibly designate any type for a term as long as the argument is persuasive. Dialectical logos is thus indicative—in contradistinction to the designative rhetorical logos. It is in this respect that this section argues mainly that the tropes of medicine and femininity as marshaled in TD and CoP function outside the terrain of analogical apparatuses. They have been used to designate a logos that is not their own. In particular, the medical treatment offered by Lady Philosophy muddles the line between the medical and the philosophical, a line which Socrates has tried to maintain in face of the challenge from Gorgias with its metaphorical transposition. The feminization of philosophy, therefore, also confuses the analogous but hardly compatible types.
In a further sense, the antimony between analogical apparatus and metaphorical appropriation can be affirmed by Roman Jakobson’s theorization of the poetic function of language. By it, a speech event is characterized as the semiotic caliber of messages (Jakobson and Halle 70). Jakobson opposes it to the metalingual function of language, which features, firstly, the code whereby communication is maintained, and secondly, the suggested or manifested predications that define a linguistic sequence (Jakobson and Halle 69). These two functions then represent two “diametrical” maneuvers: while the
metalingual achieves an equation by setting a sequence, the poetic exploits an equation to create a sequence (Jakobson and Halle 71). For instance, “rose” as a symbol of secrecy and silence alludes to Cupid’s presenting Harpocrates with a rose to solicit his silence concerning Venus’ love affair. This sequence obviously leads to an equation between rose and secret. But, when “under the rose” (sub rosa) is used in sentential construction, the “rose” points to an equation now employed to build a sequence with the meaning of secrecy in it.
There is thus the distinction between “selection” and “combination”
(Jakobson and Halle 71): while the poetic function relies heavily on the former for the salience of signs, the metalingual relies on the latter for patterns of reference. In a like manner, dialectical logos is seen to engage in the construction of patterns of reference and forms the major feature of Socrates’
reliance on the metalingual function of language for episteme. Conversely, rhetorical logos is for the most part antithetical to metalanguage; it aims at reference by choosing patterns of reference as chance sees fit. The medicalization and feminization of philosophy in TD and CoP give way to such an operation of rhetorical logos in that their narrative sequences are created foremost by dint of the equation between philosophy and medicine or a woman figure, which, nevertheless, are placed at the analogical level by Socrates. Transgression occurs, naturally, by substituting combination for selection.
A smaller yet equally important example of such transgression is Cicero’s and Boethius’ interpretation of “virtue.” One recalls that Plato’s Meno starts with Meno’s question regarding the teachability of virtue that is nevertheless transformed by Socrates into an inquiry into the definition of it.
For, if one fails to grasp the eidos of virtue—to build a sequence—it is impossible to know whether it can be taught or learned. In order to demonstrate the fortitude with which virtue can endow a person, M should point out the consanguinity between virtue (virtus) and man (vir) and claim that the manly aspect of virtue can aptly serve men in scorning death and pain (TD 2.18.43). This claim is, as Socrates might judge, brought about by rhetorical logos to argue by equation. The avoidance of combination is again evident in TD 5.5.12, where M fails to pinpoint the definition of virtue by directly redressing A’s argument that virtue is insufficient to create a happy life—truly ironical, since Meno has been explicitly mentioned early in the first Book (TD 1.24.57). To encourage Boethius, Lady Philosophy too confuses
two types in relating virtue (virtus) to strength (vires) (CoP 4.7.19). Altogether, these two texts have implicitly manufactured a semiotic network in which the equivalence between virtus, vir, and vires predominates over the metalingual aspect of each word in their syntactic structures and constitutes therefore a transgression of the Socratic dialectical logos, which sets out to maintain the integrity of each predication in accordance with their signifiers.
Ironically, the semiotic network itself engenders another tension at the textual level: in the feminization of philosophy, both Cicero and Boethius simultaneously devise an exhortation to be virile so as to comply with virtue.
Being virtuous, then, signifies a manly spirit unharmed by effeminacy. This implication immediately brings one back to the problematic complex in which oratory includes and excludes philosophy almost in the same instant, thus being symptomatic of the Roman anxiety. The anxiety, as shown here, appears rephrased as misgivings over the intactness of a male identity so that philosophy becomes marginalized again—as feminine—in the strange and overworked union. The not-too-positive envisioning of femininity is testified by Cicero’s incessant association of emotions with womanishness in Book 2—on failings in the endurance of pain (TD 2.20.46, 2.21.48, 2.22.52, 2.23.55, 2.24.58). Boethius is not clear in this respect, but let one turn to his depiction of Lady Philosophy. As he is writing his lamentations,
. . . a lady seemed to position herself above my head. She was most awe-inspiring to look at, for her glowing eyes penetrated more powerfully than those of ordinary fold, and a tireless energy was reflected in her heightened colour. At the same time she was so advanced in years that she could not possibly be regarded as a contemporary. Her height was hard to determine, for it varied; at one moment she confined herself to normal human dimensions, but at another the crown of her head seemed to strike the heavens, and when she raised it still higher, it even broke through the sky, frustrating the gaze of those who observed her. Her robe was made from imperishable material, and was sewn with delicate workmanship from the finest thread.
She had woven it with her own hands. . . . But. . . a film of dust covered it, like those ancestral statues that are grimy with smoke. At the lower edge of the robe was visible in embroidery the letter Π, and the neck of her garment bore the letter Θ;
between them could be seen the depiction of a ladder, whose rungs allowed ascent from the lower letter to the higher. But the robe had been ripped by the violent hands of certain individuals, who had torn off such parts as each could seize. In her right hand she carried some books, and in her left a scepter.
(CoP 1.1.1-6) The Boethian portrayal of Lady Philosophy is too indispensable; it gives rise to a host of pictorial illustrations of philosophy in the Middle Ages, especially features such as Π and Θ and a ladder overlapping the body of Lady Philosophy. The Greek letters, as Crabbe specifies, stand for practical and theoretical philosophy respectively and symbolize the way Boethius will take as Lady Philosophy leads him from ethical to metaphysical inquiries (243). Θ, however, as Chadwick indicates, can also signify death (“thanatos”) since it is a Roman custom to place this mark on prisoners (225). The ladder is then a passage for Boethius to reach Platonic metaphysics and, simultaneously, demise. In spite of the regal overtones of the portrayal above, Boethius also finds this Lady’s robe covered with “a film of dust”—echoing Cicero’s claim that “Philosophy has lain neglected to this day” (TD 1.3.6)—and ragged because “the mobs of Epicureans, Stoics, and the other schools did their best to plunder his [Socrates’] inheritance” (CoP 1.3.7). The violence done to the Lady is reflective too of the Roman hostility to Socratic philosophy, as cautioned by Epictetus: “Nowadays this activity [of practicing dialectic] is not very safe, and especially in Rome” (2.12.17). In general, these images show that philosophy is powerless and it gains power only when Boethius promotes it. That is to say, the seeming competence of Latin philosophy derives fundamentally from Boethius’ putting Platonism “in Latinam formam.”
Otherwise, philosophy, as a woman, is further enfeebled in face of a Roman male.
Repeated negotiations between male and female identities play a crucial role in Roman culture. On an appropriate day, freeborn boys are led by their fathers to the “forum Romanum,” donning “toga virilis” for the first time in a rite of passage, and the very day “links the male body with place, dress and male bonding” (Richlin 92).26 Moreover, as the Roman forum is a place
26 The boys exchange “their boyhood toga bordered with purple for the white toga worn by men”
(May and Wisse 7).
where rhetoric is practiced, that change of dress also marks a palpable association between man and oratory. Under this circumstance, Cicero’s indirect censure of femininity and Boethius’ too vivid picturing of Lady Philosophy in tattered clothes can be seen as reasserting the authority of “Sir Rhetoric”: the gaze that sees a devastated philosophy is from a man wearing
“toga virilis.” The two texts are thus framed in a grander cultural context—because Boethius, though separated from Cicero by more than five hundred years, still sees philosophy neglected. Their attempts to revive it are not only futile, but misdirected by rhetorical logos in its glossing over of discrete domains of types. The “forma” promised by Boethius for Platonic philosophy turns out to be effeminate, ripped, and incapable, no better than Quintilian’s description of the philosophers he sees: “they sought to disguise the depravity of their characters by the assumption of a stern and austere mien accompanied by the wearing of a garb differing from that of their fellow men”
(IO 1.pr.15). These images reflect a desire to speak for philosophy—since disabled—in “toga virilis,” just as Gorgias has done for Helen in his Encomium of Helen.
The Latin “forma,” specifically, represents the rhetorical forms that implicitly work to empower the debilitated philosophy, hence facilitating philosophical discussions. For Cicero, underlying the philosophical dialogues is “a declamation of my old age,” as he reveals to Brutus (TD 1.4.7). Namely, he regards the following dialectic between M and A as the rhetorical declamatio, whereby, given a theme, school children are required to deliver a speech for an imaginary audience. The narrative effect is, rather than a mixture of forms, indicative of subversion and subsumption of Greek philosophy since the ensuing dialogues are defined beforehand as rhetorical.
Besides, the use of declamation has a double implication. Firstly, due to the fact that it is a form of school practice, declamatory speeches are usually not taken seriously and might possibly undermine the serious intent of TD. Yet, also due to its nature as an exercise, declamation serves as a method by which one has to practice arguing all sides of a case to be a competent orator in the future. Therefore, according to Erik Gunderson,
Declamation offers fantasies of transgression and reparation. In declamation we learn not about reality at Rome but rather about how one plays with that reality in order to negotiate or to refigure one’s imaginary relationship to that reality. These
fictive dramas are thus also rehearsals of the real drama of Roman subjectivity. (19)
The reality confronting Cicero is a depraved Rome. The half-hearted tone of declamation provides obliquely a proposal to save Rome from evils:
philosophy can make men happy, and at the extra-textual level, it is also redeeming. The exhortation to philosophy in TD then comes to be an attempt to rethink Romanness by way of the Ciceronian accent on virtue, which remains, as it seems, incongruous with the Roman way of life. In other words, philosophy still fails to make an entry into the Roman forum, and the only thing that can ensure its mere presence is the declamatory form, which
philosophy can make men happy, and at the extra-textual level, it is also redeeming. The exhortation to philosophy in TD then comes to be an attempt to rethink Romanness by way of the Ciceronian accent on virtue, which remains, as it seems, incongruous with the Roman way of life. In other words, philosophy still fails to make an entry into the Roman forum, and the only thing that can ensure its mere presence is the declamatory form, which