I was rereading “Elusive Knowledge” today when I noticed Lewis is one of the many people who take the Scylla and Charybdis story to be a metaphor for any situation where it takes skill to plot a middle ground between two dangerous edges.
We are caught between the rock of fallibilism and the whirlpool of scepticism. Both are mad! … Better fallibilism than scepticism, but it would be better still to dodge the choice. I think we can. We will be alarmingly close to the rock, and also alarmingly close to the whirlpool, but if we steer with care we can – just barely – escape them both.
This is, I think, exactly how the story is most commonly used nowadays. But of course it isn’t the story Homer has Odysseus tell. In that story it’s just taken as a given that you can’t escape them both. Any path that takes you out of Scylla’s reach leaves you vulnerable to the whirlpool. The only thing to do is to cut your losses, sail past Scylla’s shore, trim the sails for high speed and don’t put up too much of a fight, and you’ll get by only losing 6 or 12 men.
That’s more or less exactly what wise Odysseus does. The only difference is that brave Odysseus does put up a fight. It’s not clear this is rational, and it isn’t entirely clear, at least to me, why he does so, since Circe told him not to do so, and in all other respects Circe’s advice proved sound. (The other option, which Odysseus took on the way back, is to stay out of sight and hope to sail right under Scylla’s nose. That works too, if a God has got your back.)
As I read it, it isn’t a story about finding the tricky middle ground at all, but about learning to cut your losses and move on.
Ironically enough, I think the story in its Homeric version actually serves as a perfect metaphor in the epistemological case. Lewis’s literary sensibilities are sharper than his epistemological sensibilities here. You shouldn’t try and sail between fallibilism and scepticism, you should just head for the fallibilist rock and hope the losses aren’t too great. There are costs, but they are managable. (The empiricist skipper, or at least the internalist navigator, will be lost to the fallibilist monster.) Try and steer a middle course, as Lewis does, and you end up basically being a sceptic, albeit one who has earned (or at least bought) the right to sing out “But in some contexts I can truly say I know what food penguins eat” as you are sucked into Charybdis’s whirlpool. If there’s one thing that Charybdis can do well, you see, it’s change the context.
Book XII of Homer’s Odyssey translated by Richard Butler, from the Internet Classics Archive
“‘Of these two rocks the one reaches heaven and its peak is lost in a dark cloud. This never leaves it, so that the top is never clear not even in summer and early autumn. No man though he had twenty hands and twenty feet could get a foothold on it and climb it, for it runs sheer up, as smooth as though it had been polished. In the middle of it there is a large cavern, looking West and turned towards Erebus; you must take your ship this way, but the cave is so high up that not even the stoutest archer could send an arrow into it. Inside it Scylla sits and yelps with a voice that you might take to be that of a young hound, but in truth she is a dreadful monster and no one- not even a god- could face her without being terror-struck. She has twelve mis-shapen feet, and six necks of the most prodigious length; and at the end of each neck she has a frightful head with three rows of teeth in each, all set very close together, so that they would crunch any one to death in a moment, and she sits deep within her shady cell thrusting out her heads and peering all round the rock, fishing for dolphins or dogfish or any larger monster that she can catch, of the thousands with which Amphitrite teems. No ship ever yet got past her without losing some men, for she shoots out all her heads at once, and carries off a man in each mouth.
“‘You will find the other rocks lie lower, but they are so close together that there is not more than a bowshot between them. [A large fig tree in full leaf grows upon it], and under it lies the sucking whirlpool of Charybdis. Three times in the day does she vomit forth her waters, and three times she sucks them down again; see that you be not there when she is sucking, for if you are, Neptune himself could not save you; you must hug the Scylla side and drive ship by as fast as you can, for you had better lose six men than your whole crew.’
“‘Is there no way,’ said I, ‘of escaping Charybdis, and at the same time keeping Scylla off when she is trying to harm my men?’
“‘You dare-devil,’ replied the goddess, you are always wanting to fight somebody or something; you will not let yourself be beaten even by the immortals. For Scylla is not mortal; moreover she is savage, extreme, rude, cruel and invincible. There is no help for it; your best chance will be to get by her as fast as ever you can, for if you dawdle about her rock while you are putting on your armour, she may catch you with a second cast of her six heads, and snap up another half dozen of your men; so drive your ship past her at full speed, and roar out lustily to Crataiis who is Scylla’s dam, bad luck to her; she will then stop her from making a second raid upon you.
…
“Immediately after we had got past the [Sirens’] island I saw a great wave from which spray was rising, and I heard a loud roaring sound. The men were so frightened that they loosed hold of their oars, for the whole sea resounded with the rushing of the waters, but the ship stayed where it was, for the men had left off rowing. I went round, therefore, and exhorted them man by man not to lose heart.
“‘My friends,’ said I, ‘this is not the first time that we have been in danger, and we are in nothing like so bad a case as when the Cyclops shut us up in his cave; nevertheless, my courage and wise counsel saved us then, and we shall live to look back on all this as well. Now, therefore, let us all do as I say, trust in Jove and row on with might and main. As for you, coxswain, these are your orders; attend to them, for the ship is in your hands; turn her head away from these steaming rapids and hug the rock, or she will give you the slip and be over yonder before you know where you are, and you will be the death of us.’
“So they did as I told them; but I said nothing about the awful monster Scylla, for I knew the men would not on rowing if I did, but would huddle together in the hold. In one thing only did I disobey Circe’s strict instructions- I put on my armour. Then seizing two strong spears I took my stand on the ship Is bows, for it was there that I expected first to see the monster of the rock, who was to do my men so much harm; but I could not make her out anywhere, though I strained my eyes with looking the gloomy rock all over and over
“Then we entered the Straits in great fear of mind, for on the one hand was Scylla, and on the other dread Charybdis kept sucking up the salt water. As she vomited it up, it was like the water in a cauldron when it is boiling over upon a great fire, and the spray reached the top of the rocks on either side. When she began to suck again, we could see the water all inside whirling round and round, and it made a deafening sound as it broke against the rocks. We could see the bottom of the whirlpool all black with sand and mud, and the men were at their wit’s ends for fear. While we were taken up with this, and were expecting each moment to be our last, Scylla pounced down suddenly upon us and snatched up my six best men. I was looking at once after both ship and men, and in a moment I saw their hands and feet ever so high above me, struggling in the air as Scylla was carrying them off, and I heard them call out my name in one last despairing cry. As a fisherman, seated, spear in hand, upon some jutting rock throws bait into the water to deceive the poor little fishes, and spears them with the ox’s horn with which his spear is shod, throwing them gasping on to the land as he catches them one by one- even so did Scylla land these panting creatures on her rock and munch them up at the mouth of her den, while they screamed and stretched out their hands to me in their mortal agony. This was the most sickening sight that I saw throughout all my voyages.”