Chorus and Cacophony: Philosophy as Khoreia in the Works of Plato

Abstract

Khoreia appears across Plato’s corpus, variously in conjunction with discussions of mousikē, poetry, invocations to the gods and Muses, humnoi, and muthoi. In the Timaeus, the ensouled heavenly bodies revolve in chorus (40c) and Soul is constructed according to mathematical and harmonic ratios (35aff); the divine and best souls in the Phaedrus participate in the divine chorus, and rise to encounter the Forms’ vision, and philosophical logoi are the highest type of mousikē – they exalt truth and are also hymnic odes to the gods (243bff, 246e-247b, 265c). Republic II-IV decries the dangers of educating citizens in bad mousikē, rhythms, and harmonies, and in book X, Er describes the Spindle of Necessity, where Sirens sing in chorus, each sitting on one of the eight circles. The eponymous sophists of the Protagoras and Euthydemus are chorus leaders, who lead their enchanted and entertained pupils in choruses of dubious sincerity, which seemingly parody traditional Archaic choral paideia and the Laws’ own education programme (Prot. 314e-315b, 326a-b; Euthd. 273a-b, 276b-d). However, Platonic scholarship has primarily focused on the Laws’ depiction of khoreia, in particular, why it plays such a large role in a dialogue ostensibly about legislation, and underplayed or disregarded the importance of khoreia across Plato’s corpus, despite its prevalence. In light of this gap in scholarship, my thesis will answer one core question: how does each dialogue I discuss show the different facets of Plato’s engagement with khoreia? The answer requires discussing the mechanisms by which khoreia works (particularly mimesis), how Plato utilises and reorientates traditional khoreia and mousikē for his own philosophical ends, and khoreia’s relationship with harmonics, rhythm, logos, dance, the cosmos, and divinity. The chapters of my thesis will address these questions through focused discussions of key dialogues (Protagoras and Euthydemus, Phaedrus, Laws, and Timaeus), and show why khoreia runs through his aesthetics, ethics, psychology, and cosmology. I argue that Plato does not use choral language metaphorically, but expands khoreia’s semantic field: he takes the traditional meaning of khoreia as a combination of song and dance performed by gods or humans in various contexts (celebration, mourning, praise, etc.) and forms (pyrriche, Bacchic revel, dithyramb, tragic, comic, etc.), and expands it to encompass all beautiful, rational, ordered, harmonic, musical motion, performed in different ways by different media/entities.