PART ONE

The General Evidence and Argument for the Reality of Philosophical Esotericism

1

The Testimonial Evidence for Esotericism

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

—SHERLOCK HOLMES

If a long and now-forgotten tradition of philosophical esotericism really did exist in the West, how could we ever prove that? How could we even know it?

The surest way would be if the philosophers themselves told us. And so they have. For what is necessarily secret in esotericism is the content of the hidden doctrine, but not its existence. For a whole variety of reasons, one philosopher may choose to report on the esoteric practices of another. And sometimes, less often to be sure, a philosopher may speak of his own esotericism. He might be moved to do so, for example, to explain to those who would dismiss his text as problematic and contradictory that these defects are not accidental, or to positively encourage his readers to pay closer attention and find the secret teaching if they can, or to give them some small guidance regarding how to go about it. Of course, all of this would be visible to the censors too—but not necessarily in a way that would allow them to prove anything. Moreover, in certain sophisticated times or indulgent ones, such an acknowledgment might even be reassuring to the ruling class, being an open display of the author’s deference to their authority and a declaration of his commitment to hide from the impressionable multitude anything that might be misunderstood or corrupting. There is no necessary inconsistency in speaking openly about secrecy.

Thus, philosophic testimony to esotericism is definitely possible. The only question is: does it actually exist—beyond some isolated instances? Once one makes up one’s mind to go looking for it, it turns out to be surprisingly easy to find. There are hundreds of such statements, stemming from every period and strain of Western thought, testifying to the reality of esotericism.

Since it would be tedious to read a long list of such quotations, I will present here just a brief representative sample running to about thirty passages that roughly cover the span of Western philosophical thought prior to 1800. Many more passages will be found woven into the argument of the chapters to follow. And in an online appendix (available at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/sites/melzer/), I present the full, chronological compilation of the testimony that I have been able to find up to this point. Although certainly not exhaustive, it runs to well over seventy-five pages. Almost every major thinker from Homer to Nietzsche is included, as either the source or the subject of such testimony (or both).

To be sure, quotations of this kind presented with little context will lack the scholarly solidity and persuasive force of more detailed and contextualized presentations. For present purposes, I do not even distinguish among the four different variants of or motives for esoteric writing (although, I do select one example—Aristotle—to discuss in fuller detail). These shortcomings will be remedied (to the extent possible in a synoptic work of this kind) in chapters 5 through 8 with their greater concreteness and specificity.

But for the moment, I rely on the sheer power of numbers. One contextless quotation will lack persuasive power; but if it is followed by another and still another, all making the same general point, the effect becomes cumulative. The effect is also retrospective: the solidity of the whole lends new plausibility to each component part. On a second reading, we are less reluctant to take each passage at face value. Dots can be powerful when connected.

Let us consider the evidence then. Afterward we will press the question of what it does and does not prove.

A SURVEY OF THE TESTIMONIAL EVIDENCE

Perhaps the most obvious way to begin our search for the open acknowledgment of esotericism is to proceed as any schoolchild would: let us look it up in the encyclopedia. That is where one hopes to find, not the possibly idiosyncratic or obscure speculations of some one thinker, but what a larger group, even a given society holds to be general knowledge. Yet, if one looks at contemporary encyclopedias, or even goes back a century, one will not find much or anything about esoteric writing. This is the period of the great forgetting.

But if one goes back to around 1750, to the famous Encyclopedia written and edited by Diderot and other leading figures of the French Enlightenment, suddenly the situation is completely different. This influential work, the centerpiece of the Enlightenment, makes mention of esotericism in no less than twenty-eight different articles, by many different authors, including one expressly devoted to the subject and bearing the title “Exoteric and Esoteric.” The thesis of this article, from which we have quoted before, is that “the ancient philosophers had a double doctrine; the one external, public or exoteric; the other internal, secret or esoteric.”¹ What is more, the author, one Samuel Formey, appears to see no need—and indeed makes no effort—to marshal evidence for this assertion. He treats it as noncontroversial, a matter of general knowledge—which indeed it was. If one consults, for example, the Dictionary of the Academy Française, fifth edition (1798), under the word exoteric one finds a brief definition—“exterior, public”—to which is appended a short phrase to help illustrate the use of the term. The phrase chosen is: “The exoteric dogmas of the ancient philosophers.”

More evidence of this practice as an item of common knowledge will be seen if we continue to work our way backward in time. In England, about a decade before the Encyclopedia, we find a short but perfectly explicit disquisition on esotericism, running to about twenty-five pages, contained within Bishop William Warburton’s Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated (1738), a famous critique of Deism. Warburton argues at length that “the ancient Sages did actually say one Thing when they thought another. This appears from that general Practice in the Greek Philosophy, of a two-fold Doctrine; the External and the Internal; a vulgar and a secret.”² Today it may seem unremarkable that this statement, indeed this lengthy disquisition, appeared in Warburton’s book, which has now been forgotten along with its author. Thus, it is important to recall: this book was one of the single most influential and widely read works of the eighteenth century.³

About twenty years before that, John Toland, an important English Deist and friend of Locke, published an entire treatise on esotericism. A short work, it bore the lengthy title: Clidophorus, or, of the Exoteric and Esoteric Philosophy; that is, Of the External and Internal Doctrine of the Ancients: The one open and public, accommodated to popular prejudices and the Religions established by Law; the other private and secret, wherein, to the few capable and discrete, was taught the real Truth stripped of all disguises (1720). According to Toland, esotericism “was the common practice of all the ancient philosophers.”⁴

A bit earlier, in Germany, we find the philosopher Leibniz speaking along the same lines: “The ancients distinguished the ‘exoteric’ or popular mode of exposition from the ‘esoteric’ one which is suitable for those who are seriously concerned to discover the truth” (1704).⁵

Earlier still, a similar claim can be found in Pierre Bayle’s encyclopedic Historical and Critical Dictionary (1695–97). In his article on Aristotle, he states: “the method of the ancient masters [i.e., philosophers] was founded on good reasons. They had dogmas for the general public and dogmas for the disciples initiated into the mysteries.”⁶

At about the same time (1692), Thomas Burnet, the English cosmological and theological thinker, much admired by Newton, published his Archæologiæ philosophicæ, in which he remarks:

It is well known, that the ancient wise Men and Philosophers, very seldom set forth the naked and open Truth; but exhibited it veiled or painted after various manners; by Symbols, Hieroglyphicks, Allegories, Types, Fables, Parables, popular Discourses, and other Images. This I pass by in general as sufficiently known.⁷

Finally, in 1605, Francis Bacon, while using a very different vocabulary, makes essentially the same point. The ancients, he claimed, employed two different manners of writing, the “Enigmatical and Disclosed.” “The pretense [of the Enigmatical] is to remove the vulgar capacities from being admitted to the secrets of knowledges, and to reserve them to selected auditors, or wits of such sharpness as can pierce the veil.”⁸

In sum, with perfect explicitness, all these early modern writers—spanning three countries and one hundred fifty years—attribute esotericism to virtually all ancient philosophers and philosophic poets and seem to regard this fact as well-known. But what was their view of modern philosophers—regarding whom, after all, their testimony might be held to be more reliable? In keeping with a common practice, most of these writers maintain a discreet silence about thinkers closer to their own time. But this silence is broken by John Toland toward the end of Clidophorus, his treatise on esotericism: “I have more than once hinted that the External and Internal Doctrine are as much now in use as ever.” In another work, he repeats that esotericism is “practiced not by the Ancients alone; for to declare the Truth, it is more in Use among the Moderns, although they profess it is less allowed.”⁹

For example, according to Leibniz:

Descartes took care not to speak so plainly [as Hobbes] but he could not help revealing his opinions in passing, with such address that he would not be understood save by those who examine profoundly these kinds of subjects.¹⁰

Toland’s claim about the virtually universal use of esotericism among the moderns (as well as the ancients) is supported more broadly by an important letter written by Diderot in 1773, which we will have occasion to quote again. It is addressed to François Hemsterhuis, a minor Dutch author whose book—which apparently employed esoteric restraint to avoid persecution—he had just read:

You are one example among many others where intolerance has constrained the truth and dressed philosophy in a clown suit, so that posterity, struck by their contradictions, of which they don’t know the cause, will not know how to discern their true sentiments.

The Eumolpides [Athenian high priests] caused Aristotle to alternately admit and reject final causes.

Here Buffon [the eighteenth-century French naturalist] embraces all the principles of materialists; elsewhere he advances entirely opposite propositions.

And what must one say of Voltaire, who says with Locke that matter can think, with Toland that the world is eternal, with Tindal that freedom is a chimera [i.e., three irreligious theses], but who acknowledges a punishing and rewarding God? Was he inconsistent? Or did he fear the doctor of the Sorbonne [the church]?

Me, I saved myself by the most agile irony that I could find, by generalities, by terseness, and by obscurity.

I know only one modern author who spoke clearly and without detours; but he is hardly known.¹¹

In this remarkable letter, Diderot—who stood at the very center of the Enlightenment “republic of letters”—essentially claims that, with the exception of one writer (he means Holbach, who was, among other things, a more or less open atheist and materialist), all modern thinkers known to him wrote esoterically—including himself. What is more, with extraordinary prescience, he conjectures that future readers, living in a world in which intolerance and persecution will have been overcome, will no longer understand the cause of the curious contradictions and detours they find in these writers and so “will not know how to discern their true sentiments.” In short, he predicts precisely the intellectual “misfortune,” the forgetfulness of esotericism, that, by 1811, Goethe had begun to observe, and that today holds us firmly in its grip. A large part of the thesis of the present book is contained in this one letter.

The ubiquity of esotericism in modern as well as ancient times is also described in numerous passages of Condorcet’s Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind and, as we have already seen, by Rousseau, who speaks of “the distinction between the two doctrines so eagerly received by all the Philosophers, and by which they professed in secret sentiments contrary to those they taught publicly.” Rousseau also openly acknowledges that he himself wrote esoterically.¹²

Resuming our backward march, we hear Erasmus, the Dutch humanist, declare, in a letter of 1521:

I know that sometimes it is a good man’s duty to conceal the truth, and not to publish it regardless of times and places, before every audience and by every method, and everywhere complete.

In this spirit, he criticizes Martin Luther in another letter for “making everything public and giving even cobblers a share in what is normally handled by scholars as mysteries reserved for the initiated.”¹³

Also consider the early Italian humanist and poet Boccaccio who, in his Life of Dante (1357), asserts that all great poets write on two levels—for the “little lambs” and the “great elephants.” The same narrative passage will present

the text and the mystery that lies beneath it. Thus, it simultaneously challenges the intellect of the wise while it gives comfort to the minds of the simple. It possesses [i.e., presents] openly something to give children nourishment and yet reserves in secret something to hold with fascinated admiration the minds of the deepest meditators. Therefore, it is like a river, so to speak, both shallow and deep, in which the little lamb may wade with its feet and the great elephant may swim freely.¹⁴

Moving back to the medieval period, let us briefly survey the big four philosopher/theologians: Thomas Aquinas, Maimonides, Alfarabi, and Augustine. They, again, are very explicit. Aquinas recommends the use of esotericism, arguing (in 1258):

Certain things can be explained to the wise in private which we should keep silent about in public. . . . Therefore, these matters should be concealed with obscure language, so that they will benefit the wise who understand them and be hidden from the uneducated who are unable to grasp them.¹⁵

Similarly, Maimonides, writing in the twelfth century, declares:

These matters [of theology] are only for a few solitary individuals of a very special sort, not for the multitude. For this reason, they should be hidden from the beginner, and he should be prevented from taking them up, just as a small baby is prevented from taking coarse foods and from lifting heavy weights.

Therefore, he openly states in the Guide of the Perplexed that in discussing such matters he will not offer anything beyond what he calls “the chapter headings.” And, he continues:

Even those are not set down in order or arranged in coherent fashion in this Treatise, but rather are scattered and entangled with other subjects. . . . For my purpose is that the truths be glimpsed and then again be concealed.¹⁶

The tenth-century Arabic philosopher Alfarabi states in his commentary on Plato’s Laws:

The wise Plato did not feel free to reveal and uncover the sciences for all men. Therefore, he followed the practice of using symbols, riddles, obscurity, and difficulty, so that science would not fall into the hands of those who do not deserve it and be deformed, or into the hands of one who does not know its worth or who uses it improperly. In this he was right.¹⁷

Finally Augustine, who speaks frequently of esotericism, asserts (in 386) that the pure stream of philosophy should be

guided through shady and thorny thickets, for the possession of the few, rather than allowed to wander through open spaces where cattle [i.e., the “common herd”] break through, and where it is impossible for it to be kept clear and pure. . . . I think that that method or art of concealing the truth is a useful invention.¹⁸

Let us turn, last, to Greek and Roman antiquity. We have seen some solid evidence that the awareness and practice of esoteric writing were quite common in the early modern period and in medieval times as well. Thus, there would be nothing odd if the ancients were also esoteric. Indeed, it would be surprising if they were exceptions to this very broad trend. Furthermore, we have heard the testimony of a wide range of both modern and medieval thinkers expressing their considered view that virtually all of the ancient philosophers wrote esoterically, that the classical world was in fact the true home and original model of philosophical esotericism. Still, the open acknowledgment by philosophers of their own esotericism was less common in the ancient world than it became in medieval and modern times. In view of this fact, as well as the central importance of the classics in the history of esotericism, it will help to proceed a bit more slowly through the big three: Cicero, Plato, and especially Aristotle, to whom I will devote a separate section.

In De natura deorum, Cicero explicitly acknowledges and defends (on pedagogical grounds) his unwillingness to state his philosophical opinions openly. The same point is made in his Tusculan Disputations, where he relates this behavior to that of Socrates. Among the many warring philosophical sects, he states:

I have chosen particularly to follow that one [the New Academy] which I think agreeable to the practice of Socrates, in trying to conceal my own private opinion [and] to relieve others from deception.¹⁹

Indeed, in his dialogues De finibus and The Laws, Cicero presents himself as a proponent of Stoicism and takes on the role of defending it, even though, as we know from other writings, he was actually an adherent of the New Academy—which rejected Stoicism.

Along these same lines, Augustine argues that Cicero was a nonbeliever and sought to convey that view.

That, however, he did not do in his own person, for he saw how odious and offensive such an opinion would be; and, therefore in his book on the nature of the gods [De natura deorum], he makes Cotta [defend this view] against the Stoics, and preferred to give his own opinion in favor of Lucilius Balbus, to whom he assigned the defense of the Stoical position, rather than in favor of Cotta, who maintained that no divinity exists.²⁰

Diderot agrees (as does Rousseau) in seeing Cicero as a particularly transparent esotericist, especially in matters of religion (although he would seem to exaggerate the obviousness of Cicero’s atheism here):

[Cicero’s] books On Divination are merely irreligious treatises. But what an impression must have been made on the people by certain pieces of oratory in which the gods were constantly invoked . . . where the very existence of the pagan deities was presupposed by orators who had written a host of philosophical essays treating the gods and religion as mere fables!²¹

Not only in Cicero, but in almost all classical thinkers the case for esotericism is clearest—indeed, almost impossible to deny—with respect to religion, for in the ancient, pagan world, the gulf between philosophy and the prevailing religion was obviously far greater than in the Christian world. Consider Gibbon’s view of the whole matter, which is fairly typical:

How, indeed, was it possible that a philosopher should accept, as divine truths, the idle tales of the poets, and the incoherent traditions of antiquity; or, that he should adore as gods, those imperfect beings whom he must have despised as men?

Not only were the superstitious roots of the reigning religion more obvious at that time but so was its political use and function. Therefore, Gibbon continues:

The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.

But of course the philosophers—like the magistrates—did not openly display their skepticism. Rather:

Viewing, with a smile of pity and indulgence, the various errors of the vulgar, they diligently practiced the ceremonies of their fathers, devoutly frequented the temples of the gods; and sometimes condescending to act a part on the theatre of superstition, they concealed the sentiments of an Atheist under the sacerdotal robes.²²

And if we look ourselves, we do seem to find that the classical philosophers constantly contradict themselves on the subject of religion, sometimes supporting the official gods, superstitions, and rituals of the city, sometimes suggesting piecemeal reforms, sometimes speaking of an abstract metaphysical god, and sometimes hinting at a still more extreme skepticism.²³

Turning to Plato, we note that the writings we possess consist of the dialogues and some letters of uncertain authenticity, his lectures or treatises having been lost. But in his dialogues, unlike Cicero’s, Plato is never a speaking character, so it is only in the letters that we may possibly find a first-person account of how Plato writes. On the other hand, actions often speak louder than words, and the simple fact that, in almost all the dialogues, Plato has chosen Socrates for his main spokesman surely tells us something about his taste in the matter of communication. In the Republic(337a), Socrates’s communicative habits are described by Thrasymachus:

Here is that habitual irony of Socrates. I knew it, and I predicted to these fellows that you wouldn’t be willing to answer, that you would be ironic and do anything rather than answer if someone asked you something.²⁴

Socrates is famous for his irony—just as Plato is famous for his dialogues. Perhaps Plato (and Xenophon) developed the dialogue form as (among other things) a means of carrying on, in the medium of writing, their master’s notoriously elusive manner of speaking. That, at least, was the conclusion reached by Augustine:

For, as Plato liked and constantly affected the well-known method of his master Socrates, namely, that of dissimulating his knowledge or his opinions, it is not easy to discover clearly what he himself thought on various matters, any more than it is to discover what were the real opinions of Socrates.²⁵

Many others have formed a similar impression. Nietzsche speaks of Plato’s “secrecy and sphinx nature.”²⁶ Montaigne points out the obvious fact that

[s]ome have considered Plato a dogmatist, others a doubter. . . . From Plato arose ten different sects, they say. And indeed, in my opinion, never was a teaching wavering and noncommittal if his is not.²⁷

Finally, there is the well-known passage in Aristotle’s Physics (209b) where he alludes in passing to Plato’s “unwritten doctrines.”

With all of this as introduction, let us turn to the vexed issue of Plato’s letters. There, it turns out that we find openly stated by Plato—and more than once—the same view we have just been discussing. There are several passages in the Seventh Letter and again several in the Second Letter explicitly claiming that he purposely avoided an open disclosure of his deepest thought as something that would be harmful to most people (to “the many”). But, as he implies in a famous statement from the Seventh Letter, he did leave “small indications” for the “few” for whom such hints would be sufficient as well as beneficial. Here is the crucial passage:

If it seemed to me that these [philosophical] matters could adequately be put down in writing for the many or be said, what could be nobler for us to have done in our lifetime than this, to write what is a great benefit for human beings and to lead nature forth into the light for all? But I do not think such an undertaking concerning these matters would be a good for human beings, unless for some few, those who are themselves able to discover them through a small indication; of the rest, it would unsuitably fill some of them with a mistaken contempt, and others with lofty and empty hope as if they had learned awesome matters.²⁸

There is no solid consensus—because little solid evidence—concerning the authenticity of the letters, although the seventh is widely seen as the strongest candidate. It would be dogmatic to simply accept them as real—or to simply dismiss them.

Amid this uncertainty, one way of proceeding is to consider that this letter may be a faithful or knowledgeable account of Plato’s views regardless of who wrote it. In particular, the crucial passage above takes the form, not of a bald assertion, but of a reasoned argument. And each stage of the argument can be seen to be based upon premises well attested in the dialogues. Only the conclusion takes us into new territory. Yet it does so only by showing that these familiar Platonic theses, when connected together and thought through logically, point to this previously unstated conclusion—to the use of esoteric communication—as an almost inevitable consequence.²⁹

The passage begins, for example, with the classic Platonic view that philosophic knowledge is the supreme good of life and that helping others to acquire it is, where possible, an act of the highest beneficence. But the inevitable consequence of locating the human good in something so lofty and difficult, indeed almost superhuman, is that it will be far beyond the reach of most people. It thus leads directly to the very stark distinction, employed in this passage and familiar from the dialogues, between the “many” and the philosophic “few”—as described, for example, in the famous cave analogy of the Republic. As it is put in the Timaeus (28c) (echoes of which one hears in the above passage):

To discover the maker and father of this universe were a task indeed; and having discovered him, to declare him unto all men were a thing impossible.

But the passage goes on to point out that philosophy is not only impossible for most people but also positively harmful and corrupting to them, producing a misplaced contempt in some, an unwarranted arrogance in others. And this idea too—the danger of knowledge in the wrong hands—is a recognizable Platonic theme. It is a crucial element, for example, in his critique of sophistry. As Socrates states in the Republic:

When men unworthy of education come near her and keep her company in an unworthy way, what sorts of notions and opinions will we say they beget? Won’t they be truly fit to be called sophisms? (496a, emphasis added)

And therefore:

“Don’t you notice,” I said, “how great is the harm coming from the practice of dialectic these days?” . . . “Surely its students . . . are filled full with lawlessness.” (537e)

Furthermore, in Plato’s view, this harm and corruption cannot be left unaddressed. Plato famously argues—most memorably in his critique of the poets in the Republic—that to avoid the danger of corruption there must be censorship, including, in the best case, self-censorship.³⁰ And as presented in the passage above, it is precisely such reasoning that caused Plato to censor his own compositions, to refrain from all attempt to “put down in writing for the many” the wondrous things that he knew. This is the passage’s crucial conclusion, which does go beyond anything openly stated in the dialogues—but which does seem to follow with strict necessity from premises that are clearly stated there.

Further evidence for this conclusion can be seen in the aspect of the dialogues from which we began. While they never openly address Plato’s own manner of communicating, they constantly call our attention to Socrates’s—he is depicted as the greatest of self-censorers. Think about it: not only is this great ironist unwilling to talk straight, but he is unwilling to write at all. In the dialogues, Socrates never openly explains the first of these famous facts about himself, but in the Phaedrus (275d–e) he does say why he opposes and avoids writing. And his explanation is essentially the same as the one given in the above passage: a written text is too univocal, it says the same things to all people whether they can understand and appreciate it or whether they would be corrupted by it.

Yet this confirmation of the passage’s central argument points to an obvious puzzle. Socrates duly refrained from writing, but Plato did not. If we follow the above reasoning, this would make sense only if Plato felt that he had overcome the problem of the univocity of writing by finding a form of composition that spoke differently to different people. And that is precisely what is suggested in the above passage when “Plato” implies that committing his deepest thoughts to writing—which he clearly longs to do—would be permissible and beneficial if these writings were fully understandable only to “some few” who might catch on through a “small indication.” This is clearly the view of Plato’s writing held by Alfarabi. Plato, he writes,

resorted to allegories and riddles. He intended thereby to put in writing his knowledge and wisdom according to an approach that would let them be known only to the deserving.³¹

Diogenes Laertius came to a similar conclusion: “Plato has employed a variety of terms in order to make his system less intelligible to the ignorant.”³²

But as strictly logical as all of this might be, someone still might ask—as certain scholars have—whether such esoteric practices were really something that Plato could have conceived in his time. Aren’t we just reading later, Neoplatonist concepts and practices back into his mind?³³

The answer to this question admits of no uncertainty. In several of the dialogues, both Socrates and Protagoras explicitly speak of an earlier tradition of esoteric writing, attributing it to Homer, Hesiod, and several other poets: these writers used the mythical form, they claim, to express their Heraclitean philosophical opinions in a hidden way for the sake of the few. It is, as Socrates explains in the Theaetetus, “a tradition from the ancients who hid their meaning from the common herd in poetical figures.”³⁴ Again, Socrates says something similar of Protagoras himself:

Can it be, then, that Protagoras was a very ingenious person who threw out this dark saying for the benefit of the common herd like ourselves, and reserved the truth as a secret doctrine to be revealed to his disciples?

The answer to this rhetorical question is clearly “yes,” in Socrates’s view, as becomes clear a few pages later when he promises to help Theaetetus to “penetrate to the truth concealed in the thoughts” of Protagoras.³⁵ Again, in the Laws (967a–d), the Athenian Stranger asserts that most of the pre-Socratic philosophers were actually atheists—although they all certainly claimed to be believers of some kind. It is certain, then, that Plato was well acquainted with various forms of esotericism.³⁶

Furthermore, he expresses no disapproval of the practice. On the contrary, the author of the infamous term “noble lie” obviously believed in the moral propriety of socially salutary fictions. And the author of the Apology was obviously very much preoccupied by the great danger of persecution that philosophers typically face. There is no good reason to insist, therefore, that Plato would have stopped short of the logical conclusion of his strongly held beliefs.

At a minimum, it seems fair to say that the above passage of the Seventh Letter—regardless of who wrote it—makes a cogent argument to the effect that various well-attested Platonic views, when thought through together, point directly to esotericism, a practice clearly well-known and acceptable to Plato. But on this basis one might also hazard a further step, for if this minimalist position is true, that also significantly strengthens the case for the maximal one—for the genuine Platonic provenance of the letter—since the main obstacle to its acceptance has always been the putative implausibility of its content.³⁷

THE CREDIBILITY OF THIS EVIDENCE

I have presented here only a small sample of the perfectly explicit statements that can be found attesting to the use of philosophical esotericism. It is important be clear about what this evidence proves and does not prove. Certainly, nothing has been established definitively and beyond question. But many readers, I imagine, will feel reluctant to grant this evidence much credence. Let us interrogate these feelings by examining what misgivings one might reasonably have about the evidence—and what replies can be made.

First and most obviously: these are just bare quotations. There could be significant problems of translation, authenticity, context, and interpretation.

That is all true enough (although, to be fair, most of the statements are rather short, clear, and straightforward). But where there is so much smoke, it becomes increasingly questionable to claim that there is no fire. Indeed, in the full compilation, the numbers are sufficiently large so that even if a scrupulous analysis led one to eliminate—to take an extreme case—fully half the testimony owing to problems of translation, context, and the like, still the remaining evidence would be more than sufficient to show that esotericism was a very real, widely practiced, and frequently discussed phenomenon.

To this one might reply that the sheer quantity of evidence cannot completely settle the issue. Also crucial is distribution. If the testimony, great as it is, primarily derives from a few atypical places, like the late empire period with its mystical tendencies or sixteenth-century Europe with the increased persecution accompanying the Protestant Reformation, then the results would not be generalizable.

But the facts quickly dismiss this concern. The single most striking thing about the testimonial evidence is in fact not its quantity but its universality: it just shows up everywhere. It is there in fifth-century Athens and first-century Rome, in fourth-century Hippo (Algeria), twelfth-century Cordoba, thirteenth-century Paris, sixteenth-century Florence, seventeenth-century Amsterdam, and eighteenth-century London; it is there among the pagans, the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims; it is found with the Platonists and the Aristotelians, the Stoics and the Epicureans, the nominalists and the realists, the mystics and the materialists. It is in fact difficult to name a single major philosopher from any time or place before 1800 who did not somewhere make open and approving reference to this practice, regarding either his own writings or those of others (or both).

Another obvious misgiving one might have is that much of the testimony is in the “third person”: it involves one philosopher reporting on the esotericism of another. In such cases, the reporter can always be mistaken.

That is surely true, but once again one must consider both the large quantity and wide distribution of such reports. Why do so many philosophers in so many different circumstances all agree in attributing this particular practice to other philosophers? This is the phenomenon one must explain—or explain away—if one wishes to overturn the testimony.

The most common candidate, indeed virtually the only one, for such an explanation is the claim that esotericism is a “legend.” The whole idea of philosophical esotericism, the argument goes, was thought up in some particular time and place where it became the accepted view. In the classic version of Sir Alexander Grant, for example:

The writers of the later empire, who were accustomed to the idea of mystical and hierophantic teachings, as professed by the neo-Platonic and neo-Pythagorean sects . . . created the fable that Aristotle had a double doctrine.³⁸

As time passed, this view became an authoritative tradition. Philosophers in later and very different intellectual climates continued to repeat its claims because they accepted the authority of that longstanding tradition whose questionable origins and evidentiary basis had long been forgotten. That is why there now exists this large but mistaken body of third-person testimony to esotericism. As George Boas states, esotericism is “just another legend dating from the time when superstition was taking the place of reason.”³⁹

But there are a number of problems with this argument, any one of which would suffice to refute it. First, the testimony to esotericism long predates Neoplatonism. Second, most of the testimony we have that postdates it concerns forms of esotericism that have nothing to do with mystical, Neoplatonist themes. When, in the letter quoted above, Diderot attributes esotericism to Aristotle, he is imputing to him not a mystical esoteric doctrine but something closer to a materialistic one—disbelief in final causes (something that Hobbes too suspects him of), which, they think, Aristotle has hidden primarily to appease the religious authorities of his time. Whether correct or incorrect, how could this suspicion derive from reliance on early medieval legends of Aristotelian mysticism? In fact, virtually none of the testimony quoted in this chapter thus far is about mystically motivated esotericism. It all concerns the four motives discussed above—defensive, protective, pedagogical, and political (none of which Grant et al. ever acknowledge or evaluate).⁴⁰

Third, not all the testimony to esotericism is of the third-person kind. There are many first-person cases, where philosophers openly acknowledge their own esotericism—such as Rousseau, Diderot, Erasmus, Aquinas, Maimonides, Cicero, Lucretius, Plato (if the Seventh Letter is authentic), and others. Indeed, there are enough such cases to establish on this basis alone the reality and pervasiveness of esotericism—and thereby also to demonstrate that the third-person report of it is trustworthy and no mere legend.

Furthermore, concerning the testimony that is third person, it is implausible to attribute to all these philosophers a blind adherence to ancient legends on a question like this. After all, that is not how the scholars who promote the “legend” theory themselves reason. Here, for example, is what Eduard Zeller, the celebrated German classicist and philosopher, says in his critique of Aristotelian esotericism:

The idea that [Aristotle] designedly chose for [his theoretical works] a style obscure and unintelligible to the lay mind is disproved by the visible characteristics of the texts themselves. . . . Besides it is obvious that any such theory attributes to the philosopher a very childish sort of mystification, wholly destitute of any reasonable motive.⁴¹

Zeller states that he relied on two things for his own assessment of the plausibility of classical esotericism: first, his own reading of the philosophical texts, and, second, his general understanding of what a philosopher is, what esotericism is, and whether there could be any reasonable motive for philosophers to engage in such behavior. This method is only commonsense. And I submit that the many philosophers testifying to earlier esotericism were probably no less sensible.

Such thinkers as Bacon, Bayle, Leibniz, Diderot, and Rousseau were not mindlessly repeating some legend inherited from medieval times about the books sitting before them. They opened those books and studied them for themselves. And when they declared them esoteric with such confidence, that is because they actually found them esoteric. They saw for themselves, that is, the manifest problems and puzzles on the surface of the text. They experienced for themselves the real progress one could make in slowly resolving those problems if one allowed the supposition that the author might sometimes be employing irony and indirection. Esotericism, for these thinkers, was not a “legend”: it was a personal literary experience.

But why, one might ask, did these thinkers have these interpretive experiences of earlier philosophical texts when later readers like Zeller and Grant did not? The most likely answer is that, as Zeller himself emphasizes in the second part of his statement, later readers regarded esotericism as a “very childish sort of mystification” that was “wholly destitute of any reasonable motive.” Similarly, Grant was repelled by “all the nonsense about [Aristotle’s] double doctrine.”⁴² Ingemar During regarded ancient testimony to esotericism as so much “pretentious nonsense.”⁴³ Under the influence of a late-Enlightenment view of philosophy and its role in the world and also a narrow, primarily mystical understanding of esotericism, these thinkers could not really take the idea of philosophical esotericism seriously. If the text they were reading happened to be esoteric, they would be the last to know it.

By contrast, the long line of earlier philosophers who gave their third-person testimony to esotericism seem to have had a broader and more representative understanding of both philosophy and esotericism such that philosophical esotericism struck them as something sensible if not indeed necessary. After all, as we know from the first-person testimony, many of them chose to practice esotericism themselves. It was thus something the value of which—and the concrete workings of which—they understood on their own and from the inside, not from ancient legends. Thus, third-person philosophical testimony to esotericism, while obviously less reliable than first-person confessions, is not to be dismissed as the product of legends or of external guesswork. It is powerful evidence from a genuinely privileged source—especially when there is a large consensus.

What further reasonable objections could be raised against the testimonial evidence for esotericism? There are, to be sure, no absolute certainties here—but that was never to be expected. The issue has always been: is the evidence for esotericism stronger than the evidence against it?

So let us now address the other half: what is the pre-1800 philosophical testimony against esotericism? Which philosophers constitute the “other camp”? Who are the Grants and Zellers of earlier ages seeking to rescue philosophy from this tiresome legend they find repeated all around them? Strangely, that is a question that is never posed. But the answer is: there is no such other camp, and with one or two exceptions, there is no counterevidence. All of the voluminous philosophical testimony to the existence of esotericism throughout history, which we have been sampling, stands more or less uncontradicted.

The one major exception I have found is Adam Smith, who, around 1750, in an essay entitled The History of the Ancient Logics and Metaphysics, angrily denounces the Neoplatonist claim that Plato’s true, esoteric teaching concerning the Ideas was that they are not self-subsistent beings after all but rather thoughts in the Divine Mind. And in this context he goes on to criticize

that strange fancy that, in his [Plato’s] writings, there was a double doctrine; and that they were intended to seem to mean one thing, while at bottom they meant a very different, which the writings of no man in his senses ever were, or ever could be intended to do.⁴⁴

This striking statement—occurring in a footnote to a short essay of his youth which he never published—is the only mention Smith ever makes of the subject. Thus, it is difficult to say whether this continued to be his view in his later years and also whether it involves a rejection of all esotericism—of every kind and degree—or only the more extreme forms found in the Neoplatonists and their followers.⁴⁵ Whatever the case, this brief statement—so far as I am aware—constitutes the whole of the “other side” in this debate.

That is a bit surprising. It is not as if, throughout history, esotericism has not been discussed and debated. One finds plenty of heated disputes on the subject. There are disagreements (for example, between Toland and Warburton, along with their followers) about what has been the primary motive throughout history causing thinkers to write esoterically. There are disputes about the proper technique for interpreting a given esoteric writer and thus also about the true content of his esoteric teaching (as with the nearly universal indignation aroused by the Neoplatonists and their mystical esoteric readings). There are debates about whether esoteric writers merely conceal the truth or tell outright lies (as we will soon see among the Aristotle commentators). Not infrequently, certain esoteric writers will criticize others of their kind for being too open or, conversely, too timid. But there is no evidence of dispute over the historical reality of esotericism.⁴⁶

To be sure, there may well be such thinkers and I have just not yet come across their writings, or these writings may have been lost. Nevertheless, if such thinkers of any significant weight and number existed, surely some sign of it would already have shown up in the myriad writings that we do have on the positive side of the issue: some reference to these naysayers, to the “other side,” and some considered effort to prove them wrong. But, as best I can tell, no such discussions exist either. Books defending the existence of esotericism against its deniers, like those denying it, are a genre unique to our age.

In sum, the testimonial evidence for esotericism—these bare quotations—turns out to be far more solid than one might initially be inclined to think. The reasonable objections that can be raised against it can all be easily rebutted. Three striking features make the testimony peculiarly powerful: it is massive in extent, universal in distribution, and virtually uncontradicted.

ARISTOTLE, THE “CUTTLEFISH”

After so quick a run through two millennia of Western philosophy, it would obviously be desirable, if not obligatory, to pick at least one thinker for a sustained examination. For a variety of reasons, the best candidate for this illustrative exercise is Aristotle.

First, he is, I think, the hardest case, the (pre-1800) thinker least likely to be esoteric. There are philosophers whom one can at least picture engaging in this practice. Maimonides, for example, is so open about his esotericism and so obscure in other ways—so generally “medieval”—that people incline to think that anything is possible with him. But Plato’s writings too are so manifestly playful, poetic, and puzzling that scholars have found it difficult to entirely rule out the possibility of esotericism.⁴⁷ Aristotle is altogether different. He seems to be so straight and literal-minded, so intent on avoiding all misunderstanding, so eager to be clear, precise, and methodical at all times—as if writing for a contemporary philosophy journal—that claims of his esotericism seem utterly absurd.⁴⁸ Being the hardest case, he is also the test case. One feels that if Aristotle, of all thinkers, was esoteric—well, then anyone can be.

On the other hand, Aristotle is also the philosopher with the single largest “secondary literature.” Beginning in ancient times, there has been a long, largely unbroken tradition of commentary on his writings. And up through the early modern period, a near-constant feature of this tradition has been talk of his esotericism. So with Aristotle there is broader evidence and testimony to explore than with any other thinker.

Finally, the combination of these two factors has made modern Aristotle scholarship unique in ways that are crucial to our investigation. Owing to the second factor, modern scholars found that with Aristotle, unlike other thinkers, it was impossible to simply ignore or “forget” the issue of esotericism. The historical testimony was just too explicit, widespread, and long-standing. But owing to the first factor, they also found it impossible to accept this testimony. Thus, for a brief but crucial period starting in the nineteenth century and continuing into part of the twentieth, classical scholars of the first rank felt compelled to devote fierce and sustained attention to the otherwise-neglected issue of esotericism. They sought to apply all the tools of modern philology to the task of dismissing esotericism, once and for all, as a foolish legend. In short, with Aristotle, we have the best and almost the only opportunity to witness an elaborate prosecution of the missing side—the case against esotericism—conducted at the highest levels of scholarship.⁴⁹

For all these reasons, Aristotle is the standout candidate for careful analysis. Having, to this point, conducted a breezy, high-altitude survey of the philosophical landscape, we descend, for the length of this section, to a slow and punctilious crawl. As before, but at greater length, we will focus on the historical testimony to Aristotle’s esotericism. But in addition we will examine the scholarly critique of that testimony. Last, through a brief look at some of Aristotle’s writings, we will try to reach a final verdict on the historical testimony and the scholarly critique of it.

The “Exoteric” vs. the “Acroamatic” Writings of Aristotle

Prior to the nineteenth century, as I have said, there was incessant talk of Aristotle’s esotericism. Indeed, since ancient times, he was seen, not as the hardest case, but as the classic case. In the second century AD, for example, he was so well-known for his esoteric doubleness that this trait is identified as one of his most distinctive characteristics by the Greek satirist Lucian (117–c. 180 AD). In his comic dialogue The Sale of Lives, Lucian depicts a slave auction of philosophers arranged by Zeus, with Hermes as the auctioneer. We pick up the action after the sale of Pythagoras, Diogenes, Heraclitus, and some others.

ZEUS: Don’t delay; call another, the Peripatetic.

HERMES: . . . Come now, buy the height of intelligence, the one who knows absolutely everything!

BUYER: What is he like?

HERMES: Moderate, gentlemanly, adaptable in his way of living, and, what is more, he is double.

BUYER: What do you mean?

HERMES: Viewed from the outside, he seems to be one man, and from the inside, another; so if you buy him, be sure to call the one self “exoteric” and the other “esoteric.”⁵⁰

The initial source and ground of all this emphasis on Aristotle’s esotericism is the once famous and still undeniable fact that on nine distinct occasions in the extant writings, he refers in passing to “the exoteric discourses” (exoterikoi logoi).⁵¹ In the Nicomachean Ethics, for example, he says:

But some points concerning the soul are stated sufficiently even in the exoteric arguments, and one ought to make use of them—for example, that one part of it is nonrational, another possesses reason. (1102a26)⁵²

Again, in the Eudemian Ethics, in the context of a brief discussion of Plato’s doctrine of the ideas and his objections to it, Aristotle remarks:

the question has already received manifold consideration both in exoteric and in philosophical discussions. (1217b20)⁵³

A massive scholarly literature has grown up to interpret these nine brief passages—but without ever reaching a clear consensus. The reason would seem to be that Aristotle does not use the term “exoteric” (literally, “external,” “outside”) with the precision or specificity that we are looking for and that it later came to possess. In some cases (most clearly Politics 1323a22), he is clearly referring to certain of his own writings that are of a more popular, subphilosophic character. But in other cases (see especially Physics 217b31) Aristotle seems to be referring to writings of this kind produced by other thinkers and perhaps even to the informal theories and thoughtful discussions of educated men at large. In most of the remaining cases, it is impossible to say with certainty which of these he meant. Thus, as Grant emphasizes, the only solid generalization that can be made about this infamous term is that, in Aristotle, “exoteric” refers to a simplified, popular, subphilosophic account of some kind, given by someone.⁵⁴ Thus, on this understanding, an exoteric account is not necessarily false or fictional or defined against something “esoteric” in the sense of secret or concealed—although it can be. And by itself, the term tells us virtually nothing about the character or systematic divisions of Aristotle’s writings.

But looking beyond these passages that have stolen so much scholarly attention, we can find more fruitful ground. For virtually everyone agrees, based on much other evidence, that Aristotle’s corpus (putting aside the letters, poems, and collections) was indeed divided into two broad categories of writings: a set of earlier, popular works, addressed to a wide audience (the now-lost dialogues and perhaps some other writings) and the more exacting, strictly philosophical works, addressed to the Lyceum’s inner circle and probably composed, originally, in connection with oral presentation there, which includes virtually all the works we now possess. And the names for these two categories of writings—at least according to later, ancient thinkers and editors—were, respectively, “exoteric” and “acroamatic” or “acroatic” (literally, “designed for hearing only”).⁵⁵

I would suggest that it is possible to further refine this distinction as follows. It seems that the category of “acroamatic” is susceptible of degree, that some works in this grouping are more acroamatic than others. Some works—like the Ethics and Politics—were beyond the reach of popular audiences only through their more advanced and exacting philosophical method, but others—like the Metaphysics and Categories—transcended the popular level also through the abstruseness of their very subject matter. Indeed, we can see for ourselves that the latter two works clearly address a more specialized audience than the well-educated citizenry addressed in the former two, although all alike fall within the acroamatic category. Further evidence for this distinction can be seen in the fact that, so far as we know, Aristotle devoted few if any dialogues or other exoteric writings to these more abstruse subjects (the main exception being the dialogue On Philosophy). But concerning subjects of broader concern—ethics, politics, and rhetoric, for example—he produced extensive exoteric as well as acroamatic treatments.⁵⁶

Two Distinct Forms of Esotericism

All of this is relatively noncontroversial. The critical questions concern both the relation between these two broad categories of works and their internal character. On the most general level, the question is this. Should these works be understood—as modern scholars insist—on the model familiar to us from contemporary thinkers who have written both popular and technical works? Then there would be no question of esotericism—no issue of intentional concealment or secret communication or noble lies. On this view, the two sets of writings would present the same essential doctrine, only the one in a more elementary and popular way, appropriate for beginners or laymen, the other in a precise and scientific manner, suitable for more advanced and dedicated students. Or, alternatively, should the character and relation of these works be understood in terms of esoteric motives and techniques? But here things become a bit complex. There are two distinct forms of esotericism that Aristotle may be employing here, so this general question needs to be resolved into two subquestions (which themselves will have subparts). Much misinterpretation of the historical record has arisen from the failure to make this distinction.

First, do the two different categories of works present, not two versions of the same doctrine, one elementary, the other advanced, but rather—to begin with the extreme case—two altogether different doctrines, one false and the other true: an exoteric teaching for the benefit of popular audiences, which makes crucial concessions to political needs and prevailing prejudices, and an acroamatic one reserved for the philosophic reader, which resolutely rejects every such concession? This first kind of esotericism, however, can also take a less extreme form, in which the exoteric doctrine is different from the acroamatic but only by being incomplete, not positively deceptive: it leaves out or conceals certain ultimate truths deemed harmful to most, but it does not propagate an alternative, mythical doctrine.

Second, one must also raise a question about the internal character of each group of writings, regardless of the relation between them. Even if the teaching of the two sets of writings is fundamentally the same (or if there is only one set), one still needs to ask whether, within each set, that teaching is presented openly or hidden between the lines. Similarly, if the two sets of writings present different teachings, the same question needs to be raised. Do the acroamatic writings, which contain the true philosophic teaching, present that teaching right on the surface or only beneath it? And conversely, do the exoteric writings wholly confine themselves to the exoteric teaching or do even these more popular works also contain something between the lines that would point the careful reader in the direction of the philosophic teaching?

In other words, there are two entirely distinct ways in which a writer may contrive to speak differently to different audiences: either by giving each audience its own separate set of works (although, over the long run, it is nearly impossible to maintain this separation) or by conveying, within the same work, one teaching on the surface and the other beneath it—multilevel writing. Teachings can be separated either by work or by level. In exploring Aristotle’s manner of communication, we need to ask about both techniques, as well as the—not unlikely—possibility that he combines the two (given the inherent difficulties of the first technique).

In what follows, I will argue for the latter possibility, that Aristotle puts forward two distinct teachings, separated by both level and work. The testimonial evidence from the ancient commentators, we will see, is virtually unanimous and uncontradicted in depicting Aristotle as a multilevel writer. It is divided, however, on the question of whether Aristotle assigned distinct teachings to the two sets of works. Yet that question can be answered in the affirmative, I will argue, by consulting the evidence of the texts themselves.

The Earliest Testimony concerning These Questions

One thing making it difficult to answer these questions is that we do not possess any of the exoteric works, but know of them only by report. On the other hand, we are aided by the existence of a huge ancient and medieval literature of commentary on Aristotle. Just the ancient Greek commentaries alone run to over fifteen thousand pages. Yet two problems threaten to undermine their usefulness. They disagree regarding at least one of our questions. And, as modern scholars emphasize, most of them were influenced by neo-Pythagoreanism, Neoplatonism, and other mystical tendencies in the later empire period, which may have significantly biased their views on these questions. We need to consult this voluminous evidence, then—but with caution.

The first clear statement on these issues that has come down to us is found in Plutarch (46–120 AD) and seconded, several decades later, by Aulus Gellius (c. 125–after 180 AD)—both of whom are relying, as the latter indicates, on Andronicus of Rhodes (c. 60 BC), a philosopher and the authoritative ancient editor of Aristotle’s works.⁵⁷ Plutarch claims that the second, less popular category of Aristotle’s writings concerns the “secret [aporrata, not to be spoken] and deeper things, which men call by the special term acroamatic and epoptic and do not expose for the many to share.”⁵⁸ (He is especially speaking here of what I’ve called the “more acroamatic” writings on nature and logic.) He continues that when Alexander the Great, Aristotle’s former pupil, heard that his teacher had decided to publish some of the acroamatic discourses, he wrote to him in protest. Aristotle then replied in the following letter, which is featured in Andronicus’s edition of his writings, and which Plutarch carefully describes and Gellius quotes in full:

Aristotle to King Alexander, prosperity. You have written me about the acroatic discourses, thinking that they should be guarded in secrecy. Know, then, that they have been both published and not published. For they are intelligible only to those who have heard us.⁵⁹

The authenticity of this letter is doubtful. But regardless of who wrote it (During conjectures that it was Andronicus himself), it may well present an informed account of the character of Aristotle’s writings. What we do know is that a thinker and historian of the stature of Plutarch finds the content of the letter accurate in light of his own personal reading of Aristotle. For, as he goes on to explain:

To say the truth, his books on metaphysics are written in a style which makes them useless for ordinary teaching, and instructive only, in the way of memoranda, for those who have been already conversant in that sort of learning.⁶⁰

These statements directly address—if only partially—our two questions. Regarding the first, Plutarch and Gellius (and probably Andronicus, their source) clearly embrace the view that the distinction between Aristotle’s exoteric and acroamatic writings is not simply reducible to elementary vs. advanced, as our scholars claim. It obviously involves something esoteric: a firm desire to conceal from most people certain of his deepest views (by excluding these views from the exoteric works), while also revealing them to others (by including them in his distinct, acroamatic works).

But Plutarch et al. also clearly affirm that Aristotle employs the second, multilevel form of esotericism as well—in answer to our second question. While the “secret and deeper things” are contained only in the separate, acroamatic writings, even there they are not presented openly but secreted behind a veil of artful obscurity. The acroamatic works are both “published and not published”: they are multilevel writings that speak to some people and not to others.⁶¹

Let us momentarily put aside the first question (concerning the two sets of works), since it is the more complicated, and continue to explore the ancient testimony regarding the second question, as well as the critique of that testimony by modern scholars.

The Evidence concerning the Second Question: Is Aristotle a Multilevel Writer?

Several scholars, seeking to impeach this earliest testimony to Aristotle’s esotericism, have attributed it to the influence on Plutarch of neo-Pythagorean ideas prevalent in his time.⁶² It would be as difficult to sustain as to refute such a claim, since Plutarch’s relation to neo-Pythagoreanism is complex and poorly understood. But there appears to be no evidence of neo-Pythagoreanism in the case of either Gellius or Andronicus.

However that may be, Grant also turns to a second, more direct line of attack, ridiculing Plutarch’s reading of Aristotle and his testimony (just quoted) reporting the intentional obscurity or multileveled character of Aristotle’s writing. Grant asserts: “Such a statement does not require refutation.” Here, he is drawing upon the deep and indignant skepticism that, as mentioned at the beginning, is aroused in modern times at the very suggestion of Aristotelian esotericism. Still, to buttress his point, he adds confidently:

After the Renaissance, when the works of Aristotle in their original form were widely studied, all the nonsense about his double doctrine was at once dissipated; and the simple, plain-sailing character of his philosophy was admitted on all hands.⁶³

But here we may say that Grant, in his supreme confidence, is entirely mistaken. The evidence he summons to support his view speaks powerfully against it. From the Renaissance to about 1800, the esoteric character of Aristotle’s philosophy was acknowledged by almost everyone who discussed the subject.

In turning now to the other ancient and medieval commentators on Aristotle we will find exactly the same thing (although, again, modern scholars have tried to argue the contrary).⁶⁴ Simplicius of Cilicia (c. 490–c. 560), who, though a Neoplatonist, is widely regarded as the most learned and reliable of the Greek commentators (after Alexander of Aphrodisias), remarks in his commentary on the Physics that in Aristotle’s acroamatic works, “he deliberately introduced obscurity, repelling by this means those who are too easy-going, so that it might seem to them that they had not even been written.”⁶⁵ He is clearly endorsing as well as elaborating the view reported by Plutarch. Similarly, Themistius (317–c. 390), who was only tangentially related to neo-Platonism, states in his paraphrase of the Posterior Analytics that “many of the books of Aristotle appear to have been contrived with a view to concealment.”⁶⁶ The Neoplatonist Ammonius (c. 440–c. 520), in the first paragraph of his commentary on the Categories, lists ten questions that must be addressed before beginning the study of Aristotle’s book. The eighth is: “Why has the Philosopher obviously made a point of being obscure.”⁶⁷ He gives his answer a few pages later:

Let us ask why on earth the philosopher is contented with obscure [asaphes] teaching. We reply that it is just as in the temples, where curtains are used for the purpose of preventing everyone, and especially the impure, from encountering things they are not worthy of meeting. So too Aristotle uses the obscurity of his philosophy as a veil, so that good people may for that reason stretch their minds even more, whereas empty minds that are lost through carelessness will be put to flight by the obscurity when they encounter sentences like these.⁶⁸

In the Islamic tradition as well, we hear Alfarabi claiming:

Whoever inquires into Aristotle’s sciences, peruses his books, and takes pains with them will not miss the many modes of concealment, blinding and complicating in his approach, despite his apparent intention to explain and clarify.⁶⁹

Alfarabi sees perfectly well what we see—that Aristotle often displays a meticulous effort “to explain and clarify”—but he and the others also see that that is not the whole story.⁷⁰ Among the Greek commentators, artful obscurity was in fact so well established as a major characteristic of Aristotelian writing that, in their discussions and disputes over the authenticity of various manuscripts, they used this quality as a crucial marker of authenticity. Thus, we find the Neoplatonist Olympiodorus the Younger (c. 495–570) arguing:

Some people have condemned the first book [of the Meteorologica] as spurious, in the first place because it goes beyond Aristotle himself and practices clarity [sapheneia]. Against them I shall maintain that there is a great deal of unclarity [asapheia] in the book.⁷¹

If it is lacking in obscurity, it cannot be genuine Aristotle. Similarly, among writers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—including such confirmed non-Neoplatonists as Pierre Gassendi and Joseph Glanvill—it became something of a standard trope to liken Aristotle to a cuttlefish, for, like the squid, the cuttlefish squirts ink as a defensive measure.⁷² In sum, concerning the question of multilevel writing—our second question—there is impressively clear, widespread, and uncontradicted testimony that the use of intentional obscurity to convey different messages to different readers is one of Aristotle’s most characteristic features as a writer.⁷³

The Evidence concerning the First Question: The View of Alexander of Aphrodisias

Let us return then to the first question: is there also a fundamental difference of doctrine between the two sets of writings, exoteric and acroamatic? Thus far, we have seen the partial answer of Plutarch and Gellius (and perhaps Andronicus): Yes, in the sense that only the acroamatic writings contained what Plutarch called the “secret and deeper things, which men . . . do not expose for the many to share.” Yet, this answer leaves unclear the precise character of the difference between the two kinds of writings. Specifically, are the exoteric works simply incomplete—simply silent on the subject of these excluded “deeper things”—or do they go on to present an alternative, fictional doctrine in their place? In other words, do Aristotle’s writings present a full-blown “double doctrine,” one fictional and the other true? On this particular aspect of the first question there is important disagreement among the commentators (in contrast to the unanimity regarding the question of multilevel writing).

The most important statement on the issue was made by Alexander of Aphrodisias (c. 200), and it strongly supports the “double doctrine” thesis. Unfortunately, the work in which he states his view—most likely his commentary on De anima—is not among those that have come down to us. We know his position only from the report of his chief opponents—three Neoplatonist commentators, Ammonius, Olympiodorus, and Elias (sixth century). According to Elias’s account, the latest and most fully elaborated of the three, Alexander claimed that “in the acroamatics, he [Aristotle] says the truth and what seems true to him, but in the dialogues, falsehoods that seem to be true to others.”⁷⁴

This statement carries great weight because Alexander of Aphrodisias is perhaps the most authoritative source we possess on Aristotle after Aristotle himself. Known for over four centuries, among pagans, Christians, and Muslims alike, as simply “the Commentator,” he is the most informed, judicious, and philosophic of the Greek interpreters of Aristotle. His importance regarding our issue is all the greater in view of the fact that he may well be the last commentator to actually have had full and direct access to the exoteric as well as the acroamatic writings.⁷⁵ Finally, he is also the last ancient commentator to be wholly free of Neoplatonist influence. There is no trace in him of either the syncretistic or the mystical and spiritualistic tendencies powerfully emerging in his time.

One would therefore expect that the modern scholars of this issue—having identified Neoplatonist bias as the great obstacle to the accurate assessment of Aristotle’s manner of writing—would seize upon this claim of Alexander’s as the single most important piece of evidence we possess. Instead, most of them completely ignore it.⁷⁶

The great exception is During, who focuses intently upon it—in order to prove that Alexander never made such a claim. We know of this claim, after all, only from the report of the three commentators, who could always be mistaken. Therefore, During makes bold to prove that the commentators, in reading Alexander’s text, grossly misinterpreted it (a text that During himself has of course never seen). His argument proceeds on a conjecture: What Alexander really asserted in his lost commentary is only the obvious point that in the acroamatic writings, which are treatises, Aristotle speaks in his own name, whereas in the exoteric writings, which are dialogues, he includes different characters expressing their own opinions. But Elias, somehow not comprehending this simple point, mistakenly ascribed to Alexander the very different claim quoted above, that in the exoteric works, Aristotle endorses false opinions.⁷⁷ And that is how this erroneous report arose.

During’s conjectural reconstruction of these distant events seems farfetched on a number of counts. First, it is hard to see how the mistake he attributes to Elias could be made by any person of ordinary intelligence, let alone by a brilliant and renowned commentator, rigorously trained in the art of close textual analysis. Second, it is necessary to assume that this quirky mistake was made not just once, but three times, first by Ammonius, then by Olympiodorus, and finally by Elias—since all three give essentially the same report of Alexander.⁷⁸

Furthermore, Elias and Olympiodorus make it perfectly clear that their understanding of Alexander’s view in no way hinges—as During assumes here—simply on the interpretation of a few sentences spoken about Aristotle’s manner of writing. Rather, it is firmly rooted in Alexander’s whole interpretation of Aristotle. As they explain—with stern disapproval—Alexander denies the immortality of the soul and believes that that is also the genuine Aristotelian view. The acroamatic works, including De anima, can (arguably) be interpreted in that manner, but the exoteric works manifestly cannot for they “loudly proclaimed the immortality of the soul,” as Olympiodorus puts it.⁷⁹ Therefore, it is perfectly obvious from the content of Alexander’s interpretation of Aristotle that he did indeed believe that the acroamatic writings presented Aristotle’s genuine doctrine, while the exoteric writings conveyed a fundamentally different teaching, closer to popular beliefs. And this view of Alexander’s is the best evidence we possess concerning the precise relation of the two sets of Aristotle’s writings.

The Great Debate: Alexander vs. the Neoplatonists

Thus, if During and the others want to defend their strict anti-esoteric stance regarding Aristotle, they cannot simply dismiss Alexander’s contrary view with the dubious claim that he did not really espouse it. They will have to confront and refute that view—by appealing to the testimony of the three commentators who explicitly contradict Alexander: Elias, Olympiodorus, and Ammonius (buttressed by some others like Philoponus). But before this confrontation, two initial observations.

First, one must note the great irony that the anti-esoteric scholarly camp, which began by attributing all the talk of esotericism to the malign influence of Neoplatonism, must now stake its whole case on the hope to use these neo-Platonist commentators to refute the one commentator who remained wholly free of Neoplatonist influence.

Second, During seems to believe that, however it turns out with Alexander, at least these three commentators are wholly on his side and against the esoteric interpretation of Aristotle. But even that is not true. If one is looking at the first question—whether the exoteric and the acroamatic writings both teach the same doctrine—then these interpreters do indeed argue for the anti-esoteric answer: the teachings of both sets of writings are essentially the same. But During seems to be unaware or somehow neglects that esotericism can take a second form, multilevel writing. And, as we have seen, there is a very large consensus of philosophers and commentators—pagan, Neoplatonist, Islamic, and Christian—affirming that Aristotle did practice this second form of esotericism. It turns out, moreover, that the three Neoplatonist commentators on whom During must rely are themselves all firm members of that consensus. Indeed, I have already quoted from Ammonius and Olympiodorus above when illustrating that view. As for Elias—of the three thinkers, the most open and fervent critic of esotericism of the first type (different doctrines in different sets of writings)—here is what he says, eleven pages later, concerning the second, multilevel type:

When Alexander [the Great] blamed him for publishing his writing, Aristotle said, “they are published and not published,” hinting at their lack of clarity . . . [which is like] what Plato said [in the Second Letter, 312d8]: “if something should happen to the tablet [i.e., the writing] either on land or on sea, the reader because of its obscurity would not understand its contents.” Thus [one should write] in order to hide; in order to test those fit and those unfit, so that the unfit should turn their backs on philosophy.⁸⁰

Thus, the three commentators whom During considers to be on his side are in fact all firm believers in Aristotelian esotericism—just not the kind that Alexander is speaking of, the first kind.⁸¹ Indeed, the record of commentary on Aristotle is full of heated debates regarding these subsidiary questions of esoteric technique. But, so far as I can tell, there is no debate at all about whether Aristotle was esoteric in some form. That is accepted on all sides.

So in the intracommentator debate to which we now briefly turn, all parties agree that Aristotle uses obscurity to withhold certain higher truths from most readers. The disagreement concerns whether—especially in the exoteric writings, but possibly in the acroamatic to some extent as well—he goes beyond the withholding of truth to the positive endorsement of falsehoods, that is, to the provision of an “exoteric doctrine” in the strict sense of an alternative, fictional teaching, a “noble lie.” To restate the question in terms of its practical meaning: if we are trying to read Aristotle esoterically, should we simply be looking for subtle hints of unstated ideas or should we also be questioning the sincerity of the doctrines he openly affirms and argues for?

The three Neoplatonist commentators all take the less extreme of the two alternatives: Aristotle leaves much unsaid, but what he does say, he believes; he conceals but does not lie. He seeks to exclude part of his audience but not to deceive them.⁸² This view is crucial to the commentators because, as Neoplatonists, they interpret Aristotle in a religious or spiritualistic manner, and themes of that kind figure more prominently in the exoteric than in the acroamatic writings. Thus they are eager to maintain that the former works, although more popular than the acroamatic, nevertheless propound the same doctrine and so are equally valid and in some respects more useful. In their own writings, they certainly make crucial use of them.⁸³ Alexander, by contrast, has a more skeptical, naturalistic interpretation of Aristotle’s ultimate doctrine and thus maintains—as he would have to—that the more spiritualistic exoteric writings contain much that is “merely exoteric” or pious fiction.⁸⁴

So who is right? I have already argued above that, for a variety of reasons, Alexander is regarded as the far more reliable source in general. But perhaps we can also judge between the contradictory claims of these commentators by examining Aristotle’s texts for ourselves. This is difficult to do in a definitive manner since we do not possess any of the exoteric writings.⁸⁵ But we have some knowledge of them and, at least regarding one crucial issue, the immortality of the soul, we are able to make a fairly reliable comparison of how the two different categories of works treat a major philosophical question.

Concerning the exoteric writings, Elias informs us that “the dialogues very much seem to herald the immortality of the soul,” a claim also made by many others, like Proclus and, as we have already seen above, Olympiodorus.⁸⁶ What is more, we possess, in fragmentary form, large parts of the Eudemus, Aristotle’s famous dialogue on the soul and the afterlife, loosely modeled on Plato’s Phaedo. And these fragments clearly seem to substantiate the claims of the commentators. Specifically, Aristotle appears to assert the immortality of the soul, meaning the personal or individual soul, which, as such, includes the memory of one’s former self and life on earth.

But if we turn to the other set of works, we find that nowhere in the entire corpus of the acroamatic writings does Aristotle ever make a comparable assertion. In two famously brief and obscure passages in De anima (408b18–29, 430a23), he asserts the immortality of a small part of the soul, the “active intellect,” but he leaves very unclear what this is and how we know it is immortal. Still, it seems clear from what he does say that, once the body dies, there is no continuation of our personal memory, since this is not an operation of the active intellect. So there is no true “personal immortality.”

If, to gain greater clarity on this crucial issue, we turn to the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s work dedicated to exploring the fundamental questions about how we should live, we find, remarkably, that he never once raises the question. The closest he comes is in book 1, chapter 10, which considers a related but much smaller question: can a man who lives a happy life to the end be said to become unhappy when, after his death, utter ruin befalls his family and estate? With the deftness of a tightrope walker, Aristotle manages to explore all the many ins and outs of this conundrum without ever once tipping his hand on the larger question that it inescapably points to: is there or is there not an afterlife of some kind? In its teasing evasiveness, the discussion seems to show us, without telling us, that he is unwilling to openly address this question. Two books later, however, in a very different context, Aristotle does remark in passing: “Wish [as distinguished from choice] may be for things that are impossible—for example, immortality” (1111b22).

These brief textual observations certainly do not settle the question of Aristotle’s view of immortality. They do suffice, however, to make a fairly strong case for the Alexandrian position in our debate: the two kinds of Aristotelian writings do not present the same teaching. There is a “double doctrine.” On this most important issue of life, the exoteric writings clearly proclaim a quasi-religious doctrine of personal immortality that is more in tune with political needs as well as popular wishes and longings. By contrast, the acroamatic or philosophic works studiously avoid any clear declaration on the issue. At the same time, they also seem to point, quietly and obscurely, toward a much more skeptical view that, whatever its precise details, denies personal immortality.⁸⁷ It seems clear that, in the exoteric writings, Aristotle is indeed willing to endorse fictions, to affirm and even argue for—with all his characteristic earnestness and precision—doctrines that he does not believe.

Still, this argument is not ironclad. How could it be when relying solely on fragments and ancient reports for its understanding of the exoteric writings?⁸⁸ What would be very helpful is confirming evidence of some sort in the texts that we actually do possess. This is not an unreasonable hope since, as we have seen, the acroamatic works are multilevel writings employing obscurity to conceal the truth. It is entirely possible, then, that they also engaged in the further practice—at issue in the current debate—of endorsing, on the surface, doctrines that Aristotle ultimately rejected, either beneath the surface of that same work or in some other, “more acroamatic” work. In other words, we can confirm our suspicions about the lost exoteric works if we can show that the acroamatic works themselves contain a surface layer of teachings that are “merely exoteric.”

Exoteric Teachings in the Acroamatic Works

That turns out to be surprisingly easy to do. Let us turn, for example, to another absolutely fundamental question: is there a god or gods? As everyone knows, in the “theology” discussion of Metaphysics 11, Aristotle answers this question through his doctrine of the unmoved mover: a perfect, unitary, and unchanging being that lives a completely contemplative life—thought thinking itself. But everyone also knows that the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics are full of respectful references to the traditional gods of the city, which describe, for example, who it is that the gods love and reward most (Ethics 1179a23–34), that they are owed honor (Ethics 1165a23), and that one of the most crucial elements of a city, without which it cannot exist, is that part—the priesthood—that attends to the divine (Politics 1328b2–13).⁸⁹ To be sure, Aristotle speaks much less frequently and reverently of the gods than does Plato, and he often does so in a somewhat conditional manner, and occasionally he gives hints of a higher conception of “the god,” but still it is very hard to deny that what he does affirm in these works is in stark contrast to the teaching of the Metaphysics. Thus, Sir David Ross, who begins his classic work Aristotle by dismissing in a sentence the legend that the exoteric/acroamatic distinction involves “the practice of an economy of truth toward the public,” must nevertheless acknowledge later on that in most of these religious passages Aristotle “is clearly accommodating himself to the views of his age.” And even Grant himself is compelled to admit that in these works “there are several popular and exoteric allusions to ‘the gods.’”⁹⁰ To put it in a less grudging and more accurate way, if the Metaphysics presents Aristotle’s true view of theology, then almost the entire treatment of the gods in these two works is “merely exoteric.”⁹¹

If we go on to take up the related question of providence, we see a similar pattern. It has seemed obvious to many of Aristotle’s interpreters, not unreasonably, that since his god is purely contemplative, indeed self-contemplative, there is no basis in Aristotle’s thought for particular providence. But Aristotle himself refrains from ever drawing that conclusion—or indeed any other conclusion on the matter. Here is another major question of life regarding which the Philosopher maintains a studied and nearly total silence. Still, here and there, when he does take a stand, it is not to support the position that the Metaphysics would lead one to expect. Rather, he affirms the existence of divine providence, albeit with a statement so abstract or so hedged with conditionals that it makes a rather weak impression. Thus, in On the Heavens (271a33) he declares: “God and nature do nothing in vain.” In the Nicomachean Ethics (1099b13), he states that happiness comes from the gods—or at least it would be fitting for it to do so. And later (1179a23) he suggests that the gods love and reward the philosophers—if they love and reward anyone. Taking all of this into account, Ross—once again, an esoteric reader in spite of himself—reasonably concludes:

But it is remarkable how little trace there is of this [providential] way of thinking, if we discount passages where Aristotle is probably accommodating himself to common opinions.⁹²

It seems fair to say, in sum, that Aristotle probably rejects providence, but, if he does, he deliberately conceals that conclusion. He generally evades the subject as much as possible, but occasionally speaks exoterically (but tepidly) in favor of providence.

We have now seen the same pattern of behavior regarding three topics—God, providence, and the afterlife. Still, someone might try to object that, as important as these topics are, they do not seem to be central to Aristotle’s philosophical activity. Thus, it would be more impressive and dispositive if we could catch Aristotle speaking exoterically about matters closer to his heart. Let us turn, then, to what is arguably Aristotle’s central theoretical teaching: his doctrine of natural teleology. As is well recognized, a defining characteristic of Aristotelian teleology is that it is an “immanent” or “pluralistic” teleology. “The end of each species,” to quote Ross again, “is internal to the species; its end is simply to be that kind of thing.”⁹³ It is not an “extrinsic” teleology, where one species exists for the sake of another or for the whole, and still less an “anthropocentric” teleology, where all things exist for the benefit of man. Horses do not exist for men to ride. That is the consistent claim of Aristotle’s teaching in all of the acroamatic works.

Except in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics. In the former (1106a20), Aristotle states that the natural excellence or perfection of a horse is to be good at carrying its rider. Similarly, in the Politics (1256b16), he asserts—and even supports his assertion with arguments—that the plants exist for the sake of the animals and the animals for the sake of man. So, even with respect to this theoretical doctrine so central to Aristotle’s whole thought, he clearly seems willing to speak exoterically here, to falsify his doctrine.⁹⁴

Related to this exoteric anthropocentrism in the Politics is an exoteric ethnocentrism. On the second page of the book (1252b4), Aristotle unabashedly endorses the reigning dogma that the Greeks are the natural rulers of the barbarians, that is, of all non-Greeks, because the latter are naturally slavish. (Among other things, this claim is crucial to the defense of his theory—also exoteric I would suggest—that nature has conveniently divided the human species into natural masters and natural slaves.) But later, in book 2, where Aristotle devotes himself to examining the three existing cities that are the best, he quietly includes among them Carthage—a barbarian city.⁹⁵

In conclusion, this brief examination of certain topics in the acroamatic writings lends strong support to the position of Alexander of Aphrodisias in his debate with the three Neoplatonist commentators. Not only is Aristotle a multilevel writer who hides some of his doctrines through intentional obscurity—as all parties are agreed—but he also propagates certain salutary fictions or noble lies. He does so especially—characteristically—in the exoteric writings, but also to some extent in the acroamatic. In short, he deploys a full-blown “double doctrine.”

And this claim, moreover, can no longer be dismissed as Neoplatonist nonsense—as During, Grant, and the others have long tried to do—because, as we have come to see, precisely the opposite is the case. The view of Aristotle as propagating a double doctrine in his two sets of writings is precisely a rejection of the Neoplatonist view.

To us today, Aristotle may seem like the “hardest case” regarding esotericism. But we have now seen how and why through most of history he was seen as the classic case.⁹⁶

THE PREVALENCE OF ESOTERIC COMMUNICATION AMONG NON-WESTERN PEOPLES TODAY

The mounting testimonial evidence for the practice of esotericism, powerful as it is, still faces two tenacious obstacles. First, there is the problem facing all historical as distinguished from social science research: the evidence is all static, rooted in the distant past. There is no opportunity to question, clarify, and cross-examine. And second, whatever the evidence and arguments may say, there is also a voice deep within us that keeps repeating the same thing: esotericism is strange behavior—plain and simple. It just doesn’t pass the smell test.

To address these obstacles, it may help to turn briefly to a very different kind of evidence: recent social science studies of how ordinary people in different cultures communicate. For here the testimony and research are very much contemporary, responsive, and ongoing. And, as it happens, what this living testimony shows is that esoteric modes of communication—strange as they smell to us—are actually part of the daily diet of most of the rest of the world (and this is the case, not simply for rarified, intellectual discourse, but also for plain, everyday parlance). Thus a brief immersion in this field of research may help us to gain some much-needed distance on our ingrained tastes and reactions.

Among the most important ways in which cultures differ is in their modes and styles of communication. Yet the study of these differences has long been neglected. Fortunately, it has recently become a high-priority field, largely owing to the explosive rise of globalization. Research is moving ahead rapidly in an impressively large and diverse collection of disciplines.

On the purely theoretical level, “comparative rhetoric” has become a growing field within comparative literature. In the social sciences, the growing practical concern for cross-cultural understanding and cooperation has given birth to the field of “intercultural communication,” which has become a high-growth industry within sociology, communications, and anthropology. On a still more practical level, business schools and especially the growing subfield of international public relations have also been devoting ever-increasing attention to the great differences in communication styles across cultures. The same is true of international relations programs within political science departments, especially those with specializations in diplomacy. Finally, international volunteer organizations like the Peace Corps have become sources as well as users of our growing understanding of these all-important cultural differences. Ironically, this burgeoning new field—which has arisen to help us correctly interpret and connect with the communicative practices of other cultures—may also help us to correctly interpret and reconnect with the writings of our own past. For the latter, in many important respects, have more in common with non-Western cultures today than with our own.

Perusing this large new literature, one is struck by the fact that despite its great diversity—its dispersal over such widely differing disciplines, with distinct motives and methodologies—everywhere one hears almost the identical characterization of the Western communicative style and its differences from that of other cultures. Anthropologist Edward T. Hall, for example, probably the most famous and influential writer in the field, distinguishes between what he calls “low context” societies like the United States and Europe and the “high context” societies found throughout most of the developing world. In the former, when one communicates with others—whether orally or in writing—one is expected to be direct, clear, explicit, concrete, linear, and to the point. But in most of the rest of the world, such behavior is considered a bit rude and shallow: one should approach one’s subject in a thoughtfully indirect, suggestive, and circumlocutious manner.⁹⁷

The very same contrast is to be found in The Peace Corps Cross-Cultural Workbook. This is a field manual developed by the Peace Corps—drawing upon long years of hands-on experience in many different cultures—to help prepare its volunteers to understand the communicative customs of their host countries. In the United States and other Western countries, it emphasizes, we are accustomed to a “direct” style of communication:

People say what they mean and mean what they say; you don’t need to read between the lines; it’s important to tell it like it is; honesty is the best policy.

But American volunteers need to understand that outside the West, cultures incline, in varying degrees, to an “indirect” communicative style: “People are indirect; they imply/suggest what they mean; understatement is valued; you need to read between the lines.”⁹⁸

This is certainly true among the preliterate Wana peoples of Indonesia, according to George Kennedy’s Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction. Among the Wana, frequently “speakers disguise their meaning . . . and say something indirectly in an elegant way to one who understands.”⁹⁹ As Joy Hendry and C. W. Watson explain in the introduction to their edited volume An Anthropology of Indirect Communication, this kind of communicative style has been documented by many researchers in myriad primitive societies, such as the peoples of Malay, the Trobriand Islands, Papua New Guinea, the Marquesan Islands, Sulawesi, the Azande tribe of north central Africa, and the Wolof people of Senegal.¹⁰⁰ Among the many reasons for this common practice, they list:

To avoid giving offence, or, on the contrary, to give offence but with relative impunity; to mitigate embarrassment and save face; to entertain through the manipulation of disguise; for aesthetic pleasure; to maintain harmonious and social relations; to establish relative social status; to exclude from a discourse those not familiar with the conventions of its usage and thereby to strengthen the solidarity of those who are.¹⁰¹

Examples can also be found in the more developed world. A leading characteristic of Chinese culture, according to communications scholars Ge Gao and Stella Ting-Toomey, is han xu or “implicit communication.” This is speech that is “contained, reserved, implicit, and indirect.”

Han xu is considered a social rule in Chinese culture. . . . To be han xu, one does not spell out everything but leaves the “unspoken” to the listeners.

It follows that, much more than in the West, “the ability to surmise and decipher hidden meanings is highly desirable in Chinese culture.” Indeed, among the main purposes or effects of this style is this:

When the Chinese vaguely express an idea, an opinion, or a suggestion, they expect their conversational partner to be highly involved and to take an active role in deciphering messages. . . . A hesitant and indirect approach serves to grant the listener an equal footing with the speaker in conversation.¹⁰²

Opposite to our Western expectations, ambiguity draws the listeners in. It heightens their involvement, making them complicit in what is being said. An esoteric style, although its most obvious use is as a means for excluding unwanted listeners (its “defensive” and “protective” roles), also functions as a means of inclusion, tightening the bond between speaker and hearer, writer and reader (its “pedagogical” role).

Moreover, this indirect style is practiced, not only in polite conversation, but also in matters of the greatest importance. Henry Kissinger, recounting in his memoirs the momentous negotiations for the opening to China, was quite struck by Mao’s elliptical mode of communication:

His meaning emerged from a Socratic dialogue that he guided effortlessly and with deceptive casualness. . . . The cumulative effect was that his key points were enveloped in so many tangential phrases that they communicated a meaning while evading a commitment. Mao’s elliptical phrases were passing shadows on a wall; they reflected a reality but they did not encompass it.¹⁰³

Switching to a very different part of the world—the Middle East—and to a very different scholarly discipline, public relations, we find a remarkably similar account. In “Understanding Cultural Preferences of Arab Communication Patterns,” published in the Public Relations Review, R. S. Zaharna states that “the Arab cultural preference is for indirect, vague, and ambiguous statements.” The key thing that U.S. public relations professionals working in Arab countries must be brought to appreciate is that

[t]he burden for understanding falls not on the speaker speaking clearly, but on the listener deciphering the hidden clues. In fact, the better the speaker, the more skillful he may be in manipulating the subtlety of the clues. The Arab audience, which is participatory, delights in finding these hidden clues.¹⁰⁴

Again, according to Milton J. Bennett, executive director of the Intercultural Development Research Institute, Japanese culture also tends to demand that

its speakers imply and infer meaning from the context of relatively vague statements—the way it is said, by whom, to whom, where, at what time, and just before or after what other statement.¹⁰⁵

The effect of this ambiguity and indirection is described by Sheila J. Ramsey as follows:

Rather than expressing a judgment or opinion, Japanese often prefer to give the other person space to react and draw his or her own conclusions. This preference is evident in the purely descriptive poetry form of haiku, in which the poet presents experience and observations rather than evaluation. In reacting and filling in the gaps, the reader is drawn in. . . . This emphasis upon the receiver’s role is at the heart of different approaches to media advertising in the two cultures [Japan and the United States].¹⁰⁶

Finally, we may cite an article in the New York Times entitled “Iranian 101: A Lesson for Americans—The Fine Art of Hiding What You Mean to Say.” Foreign correspondent David Slackman finds that

Americans and Iranians speak two different languages. Americans are pragmatists and word choice is often based on the shortest route from here to there. Iranians are poets and tend to use language as though it were paint, to be spread out, blended, swirled.

Thus, in Iran,

“[y]ou have to guess if people are sincere, you are never sure,” said Nasser Hadian, a political science professor at the University of Teheran. “Symbolism and vagueness are inherent in our language.”

“Speech has a different function than it does in the West,” said Kian Tajbakhsh, a social scientist who lived for many years in England and the United States before returning to Iran a decade ago. “In the West, 80 percent of language is denotative. In Iran 80 percent is connotative.” . . . In Iran, Dr. Tajbakhsh said, listeners are expected to understand that words don’t necessarily mean exactly what they mean. “This creates a rich, poetic linguistic culture . . . where people are adept at picking up on nuances.”¹⁰⁷

These examples could easily be multiplied, but the point is clear enough. We in the West are accustomed to a plain and direct mode of speech, which we think of as normal. Indirect speech strikes us as something improbable and aberrant. But outside the modern West, people incline to a kind of esotericism of everyday life. Whether in preliterate tribes or sophisticated civilizations, whether in Asia, Africa, Latin America, or the Middle East, almost everywhere one finds the considered embrace of reserve, indirection, and ambiguity. Whatever the reasons for it (a question to be pursued later), that is the plain, empirical fact.¹⁰⁸

It is a fact, however, that people in the West find very difficult to accept and adjust to. To be sure, we are all good multiculturalists now, and when it comes to most other matters of culture—to dress, cuisine, social mores, religious customs, and so forth—we are eager to respect the customs of others and to imagine how “other” we ourselves must seem in their eyes. But for some reason the issue of speech and communication—perhaps because it is so basic to our humanity—awakens in us a stubborn and atavistic ethnocentrism. As many scholars of intercultural communication have in fact reported, when otherwise open-minded Westerners have to deal with the indirect and ambiguous manner of speaking practiced in, say, China, Mexico, or the Middle East, they tend to react with simple indignation. It is somehow deeply upsetting. This way of speaking strikes them as just plain wrong—as illogical, devious, cowardly, inscrutable, and childish.¹⁰⁹ They almost can’t believe it’s real.

And that, of course, is very much how Zeller and other modern scholars have reacted when confronted with earlier esotericism. Notwithstanding all the evidence, they feel in their bones that it is a bizarre and demeaning practice that cannot be real.

On this issue, there is a stubborn ethnocentrism in us all. Needless to say, it is crucial to overcome it and to penetrate the rhetorical customs of other cultures—crucial not only for Peace Corps volunteers, public relations professionals, and diplomats, but also for students of the philosophical history of the West. The present work is, as it were, a Peace Corps field manual for Western scholars that aims to promote connection with the communicative customs of our distant past.