The manly frame of mind

Much of what the person who inhabits the manly frame of mind thinks, feels, and does may be attributed to his eagerness to prove to himself and to others that he is a man, whatever that happens to mean in his society.1 _{Typically, he strives to have the qualities of a good soldier:} courage, discipline, physical and mental toughness, a ‘warrior’ mentality, obedience to his superiors, a strong sense of camaraderie, etc. He tries to be extremely loyal to his friends; he tends to be harsh towards his enemies. He also tends to be quite hard on himself and even to hate himself; he is a fighter of internal and external battles.2 He cares about how other people think of him and treat him: he fears rejection; he wants to be respected as an equal; he dreams of being admired. He routinely pegs others as his inferiors, equals, or superiors (in this or that respect) and despises, respects, or envies and admires them accordingly. He possesses a strong sense of honor and shame. He is ambitious and highly competitive. Intellectually, he strives to

1 _{I speak of a man specifically, as opposed to a grown-up in general, because of the stereotypically masculine}

character of this frame of mind, not because it is limited to males; it isn’t.

2 _{Cf. Laws 626de:}

ATHENIAN: And must each individual man regard himself as his own enemy? Or what do we say when we come to this point?

CLINIAS: O Stranger of Athens, . . . you have made the argument more clear by taking it back to its starting-point; whereby you will the more easily discover the justice of our recent statement that, in the mass, all men are both publicly and privately the enemies of all, and individually also each man is his own enemy.

ATHENIAN: What isyour meaning, my admirable sir?

CLINIAS: It is just in this war, my friend, that the victory over self (to nika[i]n auton hauton) is of all victories the first and best while self-defeat (to . . . hêttasthai auton huph’ heautou) is of all defeats the worst and the most shameful. For these phrases signify that a war against self exists within each of us (hôs polemou en hekastois hêmôn ontos pros hêmas autous).

bring to his studies the same soldierly qualities he admires in general: discipline, rigor, perseverance, etc. He likes to belittle and ridicule those who he thinks are less “in the know” than he, and he tends to accept unquestioningly the judgment of those who he thinks know more than he does. Out of a sense of shame, he typically tries to conceal his ignorance; when he is the target of rational criticism, he tends to react as if he were being attacked; he hates the

embarrassing, awkward feeling of being at a loss intellectually. If he loves knowledge, it is mostly because of the sense of power and mastery knowledge provides. As for power in general, he considers it a mark of inferiority to be in the power of others and a mark of superiority to have others in one’s power. He takes pride in his ability to be a good soldier and follow orders, but he would prefer to be the one who gave the orders. If he is a typical ancient Greek, he

acknowledges the authority of the gods over human affairs, but he wishes he could elevate man to the position of highest authority in the universe; he is grateful to Prometheus for helping human beings take a step in this direction.1

Again, consider the person who inhabits this frame of mind with regard to the activity of eating. Such a person will fear being laughed at or criticized for his immature choice of foods or for his inelegant table manners. He will want to eat what adults eat, or what the members of the highest social classes eat, and he will try to copy their manner of eating. In doing so, he may find himself eating foods he does not like the taste of, but which he thinks are finer foods than those he does like the taste of. Among his fellow soldiers on campaign, when food is scarce, he will try to show that he can cope with hunger “like a man.” In short, whichever ways of eating are associated with being grown up or socially superior, these are the ways in which he will try to eat.

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2.2.2.3. The epistemic frame of mind

Whether it is a question of how to think, feel, or act, the guiding ideal of the person who inhabits the epistemic frame of mind is knowledge. He is conscious that many of the horrible things that happen to human beings could be prevented by the guidance of knowledge. When he sees ignorant people engaging in certain activities (e.g., raising children, ruling a political

community) and causing all sorts of unnecessary damage, he is filled with revulsion and tries hard to put these activities under the guidance of knowledge. When knowledge is unavailable, he tries to make it available, whether by bringing in outside experts, if such are to be found, or by trying himself and encouraging others to discover the knowledge first-hand. While the ‘manly’ person strives to have all the qualities of a good soldier, the ‘epistemic’ person strives to have all the qualities of a true lover of wisdom. Like Socrates, he is attracted to people in whom

knowledge seems to be present, and he devises ways of testing to see whether knowledge really is present in them.1 If he thinks that a person does not have the knowledge he claims to have, he tries to point this out to the person and make him admit he was wrong, believing that in this way he will either set this person on the path to knowledge or uncover some misunderstanding of his own. The mistake he fears most is falsely thinking that he knows something important. His nightmare is to confront a bad situation in which people’s very lives or souls are in jeopardy, think that he knows how to come to the rescue, persuade those involved that he knows what he is doing, take control of the situation, and—through ignorance of his own ignorance—make

matters worse.

The inhabitant of the epistemic frame of mind is also a reconciler and composer (as in the phrase ‘compose a quarrel’), both between people who are at odds and between intrapersonal

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elements that are in tension (e.g., beliefs, feelings, words, deeds). He regularly juxtaposes parts of a supposed whole and asks how well they fit, in the intellectual sphere and in life in general. As the ‘manly’ person is good soldier material, so this person is good manager material: his passion for fitting things together and making sure they cohere, which serves him well in his search for knowledge, also makes him suited to the manager’s job of taking in hand a group of people and organizing them into a cooperative unit so as to bring out the best in them. But although he is suited to be a superintendent (epistatês),1 he is very reluctant to serve as one if he does not have the knowledge (epistêmê) that is proper to the job.2

The epistemic frame of mind is also a ‘self-correcting’ frame of mind. Not only do its inhabitants try to correct their thoughts, feelings, and actions so as to make themselves less ignorant, they also tend to become aware of the very mode of thinking-feeling-acting which they inhabit and to ask themselves whether this frame of mind itself might not stand in need of

correction. There might be said to be different versions or specific modes of the epistemic frame of mind, some cruder, some more refined, through which people progress as they become

increasingly expert inhabitants of this general mode of thinking-feeling-acting. The self- correcting, self-improving nature of this frame of mind is itself largely responsible for the confidence its long-term inhabitants have in it.

As for the person who occupies the epistemic frame of mind with regard to the activity of eating, his first step is to ask himself, “What is the knowledge that properly governs this

activity?” He will be cautious about the foods he puts into his mouth and will seek out those

1 _{Epistatês, LSJ, II, 2: “one who is set over, chief, commander . . .”; III, 2: “overseer, superintendent, in charge of}

any public building or works . . . .”; III, 3: “governor, administrator . . . .”

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who seem to him to be experts in this field.1 If he can find no experts, he will attempt to eat in accordance with his best ideas to date, whichever in his view come closest to knowledge. As he reflects upon his eating habits, he may discover that ‘animal’ and ‘manly’ ways of eating are deeply ingrained in him and that they are partly at odds with what seems to him, from an ‘epistemic’ point of view, to be the ideal way to eat. He may ask himself: “How might I best

reconcile these different approaches to eating?” He may attempt to assign to each approach its

proper role in an epistemically-governed hybrid approach. If he does so, however, he will not lose sight of the fact that he does not yet have the knowledge that properly governs the activity of eating, nor will he stop trying to acquire this knowledge.