Experimental Philosophy: The Original Essay

Practicing classical virtue to better experience the contemplative life

By Timothy McClennen and John Paul Asija

For some months now we have been attempting to understand the classical conception of honor and glory through boffer sports. We fight as a single unit often in a formation that resembles a phalanx. We have experienced the desire to break ranks and pursue individual glory when there is a particularly vulnerable enemy. We have also experienced the desire to break ranks and flee when faced with an overwhelming enemy. In our experiments we at most risk a broken nose or a twisted ankle, and those extremely rarely. Nonetheless we posit that we feel a representative shadow of the emotions felt by the classical Hoplite. We enjoy the game, and don't want to be eliminated from it. That desire, to remain on the field and continue playing, leads to a desire to hesitate, to play conservatively, to focus on defending yourself. While our lives are not on the line, that is an analogy (even if distant) of the fear that an ancient Hoplite would feel, and his desire to abandon the battle. But we also desire to achieve a glorious victory, just as the ancient Hoplite did. We must use our courage and our desire for honor to overcome the urge towards cowardice, and to carry out charges against our enemies.

In the homeric era there was no phalanx. Aristocratic heroes were carried into battle on chariots driven by someone else, typically a servant, and they would hop off to duel with aristocrats from the opposing side. This gives rise to praise of the heroic exploits of these aristocratic warriors who are praised for their prowess regardless of what cause they were fighting for. Homeric hero praise has a total disregard for the factors a modern judge would use to classify someone as a hero or a villain.

The Greeks of the classical era pretended to judge each other by homeric criteria but when the substance of the praise is examined it becomes apparent that this is not the case. Where the Homeric authors would praise a man for charging into battle ahead of his fellows à la Achilles at the beaches of Troy, the classical Greeks would condemn a man who succumbs to propeteia (headlong haste, rashness) and breaks the phalanx, leaving his fellow citizens vulnerable to attacks. This same action would be praised by the Homeric Greeks as showing thumos (vigor, energy). The courage of the Homeric era is the courage to charge against an enemy. The courage that is praised by the Greeks of the classical era is the courage to stand together as a bulwark against a closing enemy despite any fear. As part of a formation, an individual's desire for glory is subsumed into a collective desire for glory. In the Homeric era courage was moving forward; in the classical era courage was standing still. The Greeks of the classical era did praise the courage of those who advanced to attack the enemy. But they praised even more highly those who stood to the defense, even when the battle seemed lost. In the Homeric era courage was an unrestrained desire for glory and in the classical era courage was the restraint of fear.

Fighting in a phalanx is equally honorable if you are fighting to aggrandize your city-state or if you are fighting to defend your city from the ambitions of its neighbors. This represents a continuity with the Homeric virtues but now the glory is for the city, not the individual.

Early in this past summer, the nascent core of our club went to an event in New Jersey called "The Contention of Leeds Circle," which attracted over a hundred competitors. Late in the day, after many hours of enjoyable but strenuous fighting, we had a particular experience which was especially representative of our goals. We were fighting as a six-person formation. We had participated in a large attack against our enemy, and many of our allies had been "killed," leaving our formation standing alone. Towards us, the enemy advanced. I've forgotten exactly how many there were, but there were at least nine of them, to our six. The core of this enemy formation was a group of fighters who simulate 9th century Saxon warriors, who have a somewhat uniform look, and who clearly had practiced and know how to fight. They began beating rhythmically on their shields with their weapons, and advancing towards us with unified steps. Our recently formed, inexperienced group quailed before this intimidating show of force. We attempted to retreat in good order, to prevent or at least delay our inevitable elimination from the game. But then we decided that we would fight with honor to the last. We halted our retreat, and held our ground while the enemy closed to engage. We posit that this act of willpower over emotion is a simulation of precisely the type of courage that the ancients were talking about.

Since then we have met twice a month to practice our skills and become better fighters. At this point, we would not be intimidated by that same advancing line of Saxons, and so to perform the same action and stand firm against them would not constitute an act of courage, as Aristotle says in the chapter on courage in his Ethics, when he contrasts the professional soldier to the spirited amateur.

At the end of this summer of training, the most experienced members of our club went to another event of similar size, this one in northern Virginia. One of the scenarios was based on the expedition by Germanicus Caesar into the Teutoberg Forest to recover the Eagles which had been lost by Varus several years previous (as seen in Tacitus Book II). In the midst of this scenario, the four of us, along with a group of allied fighters whom we did not know well, found ourselves needing to use a road which was blocked by a wall of hostile Romans (who happen to be the largest and most well-trained team in the league, but hopefully soon we will eclipse them both in numbers and training). Our allies formed a shield wall just outside of engagement range, and pretended to fight. Then we made a decision. We charged in an attempt to break the Roman line, just as we had done as a drill in numerous previous practices. The four of us expected that in doing this we would be eliminated from the competition, but we felt it would be worthwhile to sacrifice ourselves if our allies could exploit the gap that we would make. At the end of the scenario, we were highly praised by several people for our vigor and the glory of our charge. But this glory accomplished nothing because our allies, who had not trained with us, did not work closely in concert with us to exploit the gap that we created. The Romans, who do regularly practice fighting closely together, were able to quickly reform their wall, continuing the stalemate.

We have learned to control our passions on the field. In both attack and defense we have learned that our greatest chance for victory is when we work as a team and pursue not individual glory but the glory of the unit as a whole.

The lessons we have learned on the battlefield mirror the lessons we learn at the seminar table. At first we are rash and impatient, seeking to gain individual glory for our contributions to the seminar. Over time, with practice and experience, we learn that the best seminars are not those in which everyone vigorously defends their own interpretation, but the ones where the class comes together to pursue a joint understanding of the text.

In Freshman seminar, we talk about words like thumos, andreia, timē, to kalon kai agathon, and others. But most students sitting around those tables have not had the opportunity to experience these things in action. We offer the opportunity to remedy this: to learn the meaning of those words by practice, to feel them in our bodies and not just imagine them in our minds.

We practice every other Saturday at noon by the planetarium. We hope you will stand shoulder to shoulder with us in our phalanx to experience classical virtue first hand.