Socrates: An image like the ones encountered in ancient mythology, such as Chimera, with parts from a goat, a lion, and a snake; Scylla, a woman, dog, and serpent; and Cerberus, a three-headed dog and snakes, and many others whose bodies contain several images in one.
Glaucon: Yes. I’ve heard that many such creatures have existed.—The Republic, Book IX
We are living through a very strange time. In the future, I wonder what they will call this era. A sickness is spreading throughout the world, and no one knows quite how bad it is or will be. The schools are closed indefinitely, as are many businesses. We “nonessential” citizens have been instructed to stay home. All gatherings, travel and so on have been cancelled until further notice. Some 3.3 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits. Sentences like “We’re two weeks behind Italy” redound. Any news, much of which is prediction rather than reportage, is almost immediately outdated. Amidst all this, our political polarization doesn’t seem to have gotten any better. Emotions are running high. Our age contains “several images in one.”
Earlier this year, before all this started, I read Roberto Calasso’s The Unnamable Present, and some of its ideas have been reverberating in my mind. Mostly, I think, I like the title.
Naming is a form of organization, of theorizing. To organize or theorize, we need to have an understanding of how something fits into the bigger picture. You can’t do this from within a storm. As Orwell wrote, during World War II, “Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted. … Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become the official history.”
In the present, our classifications are always in flux. They may seem monstrous, like Chimera or Scylla. Could it be solace to us that things will become clearer eventually? Or could it be that the proverbial Hitler will have been the one to survive, to write the official history?
A Chimera sculpture from 400 BC, around
the same time Plato wrote The Republic.