Alexander At the End of the World: the Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great, by Rachel Kousser, published in July, 2024, is a biography of Alexander the Great that picks up his life story from his conquest of Persia through to his death. The focus of the narrative is, of course, on Alexander himself, most particularly, his military and political actions. The story is told well, and makes for a captivating read.
As Ataraxia or Bust! is a blog about philosophy, this review will focus on the tiny part of the book that concerns philosophy. The key facts in this story are that Aristotle personally tutored Alexander for several years when Alexander was a teenager, and all during the period covered by this book, Alexander had with him in his traveling court several philosophers, most notably, Callisthenes, Aristotle’s nephew; Onescritus, the Cynic; the Democritean philosopher, Anaxarchus, and his protege, Pyrrho; and for a couple of years, Kalanos, an Indian philosopher.
As other reviewers have noted, the choice of subtitle, “the forgotten years” is strange. As Steve Donoghue points out, “there’s nothing ‘forgotten’ here, since every single bowl of gheymeh Alexander ever slurped during those years has been the subject of multi-volume studies over the last 2000 years.” These were the years where Alexander was at the pinnacle of his success. How can they be said to have been forgotten? For the purposes of this review, a better subtitle would be “The Years of Forgetting Aristotle.”
Alexander’s approach to virtue and eudaimonia could scarcely be more different from that prescribed by Aristotle. Aristotle counsels moderation. Alexander’s motto could be said to be that there’s nothing worth doing that’s not worth doing to excess. In choice after choice, Alexander would make wild swings from one extreme to the other. It makes for entertaining reading, but it was rough going for his counselors, nearly all of whom eventually got sidelined, or worse.
One bit of direct advice Aristotle gave Alexander for his campaign was “to deal with the Greeks like a leader, and barbarians like a despot; to treat the Greeks like friends and fellow citizens, but to behave towards the rest like they were animals or plants.” This advice Alexander firmly rejected in favor of multi-culturalism and cultural fusion. His first act of embracing cultural fusion was, following his successful conquest of Persia, to give his counselors sets of high-status Persian clothes. Perhaps this was to signal to Alexander’s new subjects the high regard in which these men were held. Whatever the motivation, the counselors were having none of it. They were disgusted and bewildered (pp 54-55). This was the beginning of their fall from Alexander’s grace.
Worse happened to the Aristotelian philosopher, Callisthenes. When once called upon to use philosophy to exhort Alexander out of self-loathing, for having killed one of his generals who had drunkenly taunted him, Callisthenes’ philosophy was not only of no use, it appears to have been so bland and lame as to have not been memorable. In contrast, the brief exhortation of the Democritean philosopher, Anaxarchus, was not only recorded, but it broke the spell that had come over Alexander. (This story is told in full in a prior article).
As Alexander started incorporating Persian customs into his court, Callisthenes openly resisted them. Eventually, Callisthenes was implicated in an assassination attempt on Alexander. He was imprisoned and died before he could be shipped off to Greece to be tried (pp 132-140).
It’s not that Alexander was bereft of philosophy. He just rejected Aristotle’s new-fangled ideas and instead embraced the long-standing ideals found in the Illiad. The Illiad was not only Alexander’s favorite book (p 15), he kept it next to him when he slept (p. 27). It was not Aristotle’s ideas of virtue and eudaimonia that moved him; it was those of Achilles. In this, he succeeded.
One advantage the Democriteans had over the Aristotelians in these circumstances was that they lacked the kind of prejudice Aristotle had. Democritus’ father was friends with the king of Persia. When Democritus was young, he was tutored by Magi and Chaldeans. In his search for wisdom, Democritus traveled widely, visiting Egypt, the Persian empire, and perhaps even as far as India. (And not to miss an opportunity to criticize Aristotle along these lines, Aristotle was not just prejudiced against non-Greeks. He thought women were naturally inferior to men and that slavery was the natural role for some men.)
Particularly sympathetic to Alexander would have been Pyrrho. One of Pyrrho’s friends used to say that Pyrrho was most fond of Democritus, and then of Homer, admiring him and continually repeating the line “As leaves on trees, such is the life of man.” (Illiad, vi. 146). Pyrrho also admired Homer because Homer likened men to wasps, flies, and birds. Pyrrho would quote this verse as well: “Ay, friend, die thou; why thus thy fate deplore? Patroclus too, thy better, is no more (Illiad, xxi. 106 f). He would also quote the passages from Homer that dwell on the unstable purpose, vain pursuits, and childish folly of man. (Diogenes Laertius, Life of Pyrrho, 67).
Having had a front-row seat to Alexander’s final years, as chronicled in Alexander At the End of the World, Pyrrho knew what he was talking about.