Gestión de los procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje

In Xenophon’s example (1.1.14), mad activity is explained in terms of disproportionate fears that affect the mad person’s behaviour in two quite distinct spheres: the social (resulting in either public shamelessness or private seclusion) and the religious (resulting in either superstition or atheism). While the practice of religious worship has a clear social context, the beliefs which motivate religious behaviour concern objects that are not usually accessible to human intelligence. The demarcation of these two dimensions, social and religious, helps Xenophon to distinguish between the comprehensively mad and those who, like the scientists, are merely eccentric, because they exhibit symptoms (i.e. disagreement) in only a limited field.

31 _{See Viano 2001, 102.}

Although madness need not always have a religious dimension, Socrates’ relationship with scientific speculation can be considered in terms of the charges of impiety against him.33

Consequently, madness in Xenophon is sometimes seen to manifest as an extreme emotional response to the gods in particular. Extreme fear or extreme lack of fear is, in this religious dimension, productive of either acute superstition or total atheism which affects the practice of worship in extreme ways. Sometimes, then, madness takes the form of extreme impiety, and Socratic activity, by contrast, demonstrates practice which conforms to civic worship.

In addition to its contrast with Socratic piety, mad religious beliefs correspond to the natural scientists’ explanations of the cosmos: in each case, such knowledge is impossible to attain for mortals. What makes the scientists’ behaviour mad-like is the extremity of their views, and this modifies the nature of the scientists’ disagreement. The disagreement involves a systematised failure of knowledge, and the lack of consensus among the scientists serves as an index of the impossibility of attaining knowledge of nature in particular.34 _{The extremity of the scientists’}

positions is shown by antithetical contrasts, and it is the impossibility of attaining this sort of knowledge (i.e. about the workings of the cosmos) which necessitates their ongoing and irresolvable disagreement: the scientists are making presumptuous claims about objects of knowledge which are not available to human beings and therefore not amenable to consensus.

The scientists’ behaviour resulting from their cosmological presumptions is similar to the impiety of the mad person who, because of his extreme and incorrect beliefs about the gods, practises worship incorrectly: in each case, neither recognises the limits of their knowledge. However, social conformity provides a means to distinguish between scientific speculation and mad religious practices: religious behaviour is characterised by established communal protocol (in which disruptions are easily spotted), and worship is typically directed at the state gods;35 _by

contrast, although cosmology is a popular topic among speakers (οὐδὲ γὰρ περὶ τῆς τῶν πάντων φύσεως, ᾗπερ τῶν ἄλλων οἱ πλεῖστοι, 1.1.11), its subject matter is typically esoteric and highly contentious.

33 _{See Viano 2001, 97-119, esp. 102 : ‘dans les Mémorables, toute la question des rapports entre Socrate et l’historiaperi}

phuseôs doit donc être considérée à la lumière de l’accusation d’impiété à l’encontre de Socrate’. 34 _{See Dorion and Bandini 2000, 6 n. 36.}

35 _{The objects of Socrates’ religious practice are also the state gods (ἡπόλις νομίζει θεούς, 1.1.2), contradictingthe charge} that Socrates introduced novel deities (1.1.1).

There are various Socratic objections to the natural philosophers’ scientific pursuits at the expense of human affairs.36 _{The most important is their inability to detect that knowledge about}

the causes of celestial phenomena is impossible (as Socrates explains at 1.1.13), and their madness is characterised, accordingly, as a failure to recognise the limitations of human knowledge.37

Xenophon’s comparison between disagreement and μανία depends on the idea that divine knowledge is impossible for human beings to attain.38 _{In this example, the comparison between}

natural philosophers, who speculate about hidden cosmological causes of things, and the authentically mad has to do with the areas of knowledge involved, and depends on an opposition between θεῖα and ἀνθρώπινα (between divine and human matters).

Xenophon draws attention to this opposition in his discussions of divination (1.1.7-9) and scientific motivation (1.1.15). Human skills can be learnt to practical advantage: those who have learnt a particular skill within the domain of human knowledge (οἱ τἀνθρώπεια μανθάνοντες, 1.1.15) believe that they will be able to practise it for personal ends. Do those who seek divine things (τὰ θεῖα), asks Socrates, imagine they will be able to harness cosmic forces to do their bidding? Or are they content merely to understand their hidden causes with no practical advantage?39 _{The failure}

to recognise the appropriate distinction between objects knowable by humans and those knowable only by gods appears to be a sufficient reason for diagnosing a kind of irrationality, and this is also identified in those who fail to practise divination properly.

Socrates’ treatment of different kinds of knowledge forms part of the defence against the charge of religious non-conformity.40 _{Divine information is revealed to Socrates through the signs}

given by his δαιμόνιον and this is compared by Xenophon to various common divinatory practices through signs (the consultation of birds of omen, sayings, portents and sacrificial victims).41 _Τhe

passage on divination reveals objects of divine knowledge apart from scientific speculation.

36 _{See Vander Waerdt 1994, 81 (the objections are the subjects of 1.1.12, 1.1.13 and 1.1.15 respectively). Cf. Dorion and} Bandini 2000, 6 n. 32 and Gigon 1953, 18-21.

37 _{Vander Waerdt 1994, 81-6, esp. 83 and 86. Cf. Morrison 1987, 16 and Gigon 1953, 19.}

38 _{See Vander Waerdt 1994, 82, words in brackets mine: ‘the logic of this argument (that madness is similar to} disagreement) appears to rely on Socrates’ assertion at 1.1.13 that discovery of the causes of celestial phenomena is in some sense impossible for human beings.’ Vander Waerdt finds this reliance problematic.

39 _{This is probably an ‘ironic question’. Cf. Gigon 1953, 21. But cf. e.g. Empedocles DK 22 B111 in which the philosopher} claims to teach various powers and, possibly, how to control cosmic forces (on Empedocles’ special powers see Kingsley 1995, 217-32, 296-316); cf. also Ar. Nub. 266.

40 _{See Gigon 1953, 21.}

Socrates distinguishes between matters of learning which can be attained by human understanding (πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα μαθήματα καὶ ἀνθρώπου γνώμῃ αἱρετὰ ἐνόμιζεν εἶναι, 1.1.7-8; e.g. the various crafts, including building, smithing, farming, ruling and being a general) and the things the gods reserve for themselves (τοὺς θεοὺς ἑαυτοῖς καταλείπεσθαι, 1.1.8) which are unclear to humans. These unclear things include questions about the unforeseeable in general, and good future outcomes in particular.42

Becoming skilled in the various crafts is available to human learning and understanding, but managing or directing these skillsets ‘for the best’ (καλῶς οἰκήσειν, 1.1.7) requires divination in addition (μαντικῆς προσδεῖσθαι, 1.1.7).43 _{Those who think that particular crafts are wholly objects of}

human understanding and who fail to realise that there are related unforeseeable factors for humans (and fail to realise that these are objects of divine knowledge) are themselves irrational (δαιμονᾶν 1.1.9),44 _{as are those who use divination for the kind of information which is available to}

humans through learning. The message is summarised by Xenophon in 1.1.9: divination should only be used for the things which are not clear to human beings (ἃ δὲ μὴ δῆλα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἐστί, 1.1.9) and those who cannot distinguish between objects of divine knowledge and matters of human understanding are said to be acting unlawfully (ἀθέμιτα, 1.1.9).45

The position of the scientists is analogous to the position of those who practise divination incorrectly; moreover, each of these positions is represented as a set of profound category mistakes in estimation. The scientists either overestimate the extent of their knowledge about human things (believing they have complete human knowledge), and so they turn to objects of divine knowledge, thinking that undiscoverables are discoverable, and that they can know

42 _{See Vander Waerdt 1994, 83.}

43 _{See Dorion and Bandini 2000, 58, n. 25. The idea, that human wisdom (ἀνθρωπίνη σοφία) can be surpassed through} divination, recurs in the Memorabilia at 4.7.10 and features in the Cyropaedia. Dorion notes the similar wording of Xen. Cyr. 1.6.23 (διὰμαντικῆςἄνπαρὰθεῶνπυνθάνομενος) and Mem. 1.1.9 (διὰμαντικῆςπαρὰτῶνθεῶνπυνθάνεσθαι). Cf. Pl. Lach. 198d-199a on the art of being a general being finer than and therefore commanding the practice of divination in respect of military matters and cf. Pl. Alc. I 107a-b. These examples present a different view from that of Socrates in Xenophon: in these Platonic examples, divination, along with the other crafts, has its own discrete epistemic objects. See Labadie 2014, 145 n. 215.

44 _{The similar word brings out the paradox: ignoring the divine objects that inhere in human things is to be mad in a} manner resembling divine possession. Cf. Bonnette 2014, 152 n. 20. ‘“To be crazy” (daimonan) is from the same root as daimonion … and means “to be possessed by a divinity.”’ Cf. O'Brien-Moore 1924, 15-16: ‘to a scholiast on Aristophanes δαιμονικόν serves as an explanatory synonym for μανικόν.’ The reference is to Schol. ad. Aristoph. Plut.

424.

everything about all things; or, they consciously undervalue the importance of knowledge about human things, and so turn to objects of divine knowledge (1.1.12). Those who get divination wrong either overestimate the extent of human knowledge (thinking that undiscoverables are discoverable, and that they can know everything about all things on their own), or they underestimate the extent of human knowledge (thinking that discoverables are undiscoverable, and that they are unable to gain knowledge about human things, 1.1.9).

The parallel example of those making errors in divination contributes to Xenophon’s simile of cosmological madness: just as the scientists present a similar failure to recognise the limits of human experience and knowledge, so they might share in similar modes of irrationality.46

In Xenophon’s representation, scientific speculation is often at the expense of knowledge of human things and the scientists’ failure to properly distinguish between θεῖα and ἀνθρώπινα results in neglect of human concerns and obstruction of anthropocentric efforts (1.1.12). This is directly contrasted to Xenophon’s representation of the Socratic project in which Socrates turns towards human things. With this anthropocentric focus in mind, it is worth considering to what extent Socrates is shown to attach importance to conventional views about madness.47