On Socrates and Persuasion: A Typography of Listening in Plato's Republic
Abstract: I provide a long-form reading of the problem of “listening” in Plato’s Republic. I argue that, in contexts inimical to philosophy, e.g. where the non-philosophical do not listen to the philosophical, it is the task of the philosopher to perform a type of self-listening.
I. Introduction: Listening and Persuasion
It has been suggested that the Republic begins with an act of force and ends with an act of persuasion.[1] That force and persuasion “bookend” the dialogue is not incidental, but bores to the heart of the Republic’s ultimate aims. The dramatization of force, represented early on in Book I during Socrates’ visit to the Piraeus and his encounter with Polemarchus, forecloses much of the dramatic action that sustains the remainder of the dialogue, while the Myth of Er at the closure of Book X stages the theatrical—and, as we shall find, poetic—elements of the dialogue’s rhetorical foundations. A product of 5th century Athens, the Republic frames its response to its historical context precisely through these two poles: the political problem of force was imminently felt through the loss to Sparta in the Peloponnesian war and the ensuing rebellions that stipulated the rule of the Thirty Tyrants and the eventual democratic coup (along with the trial and execution of Socrates), while the growth of “sophistry” throughout the 5th century promulgated novel modes of rhetoric and persuasion for fiscal, popular and political ends.
Amidst this political and social upheaval, and between these two bookends, stands the traditional interpretation of the Socratic intervention: namely, the role of dialectics as promoting a course that steers between the Charybdis of coercion and the Scylla of rhetoric. Socrates’ contribution to Athenian thought was less a new idea or theory, but rather a new mode of thinking entirely, that which would reimagine the role of “idea” and its relation to political practice under the burgeoning auspice of “philosophy.” The definition of the Socratic philosopher, itself staged as an enduring problem rather than answer in the dialogue, exhibits the key capacity to trace out and act upon a “middle ground” that sullies itself neither with the dumb ineptitude of force nor with the unmoored self-interest of sophistry. It is this “middle ground” that has dominated the interest of scholars and commentators since the work’s inception, though it is only recently that some of these more traditional modes of interpretation have given way to more probing and “revisionist” practices of reading.
It is in these analyses that Socrates the authoritarian, whose contribution to western thought as interpreted in the post-war period by Popper et al ultimately reads as a blueprint for totalitarianism (albeit a totalitarianism of reason), is set aside in the interest of exploring a more nuanced Socratic identity—one that takes seriously the democratic ambivalences that punctuate the text.[2] This paper intervenes in the interest of promoting the latter view. A great deal of focus, across both traditions of reading, has been devoted to the manner by which Socratic dialectics are employed and used—that is, on the logos-driven modes of speaking that underwrite the interactions among interlocutors. Much less attention has been given to the modes of reception appropriate for a truly dialectical politics to emerge—or, to put it simply, little has been said on the nature of listening in the Republic.
I shall argue that interrogating the role of listening in the republic is key to understanding the relationship philosophy bears to force and persuasion, as well as grounding a definition of the philosopher as distinct from the sophist. The problem of listening is situated at the juncture of philosophy’s triumphs as well as it failures: it is through proper listening that philosophy is made and remade, while it is in the lack thereof that forces philosophy to confront its own limitations and rely on supplemental devices—images, myths, allegories, etc.—to truly convert hostility into friendliness. The paradox of listening exhibited in the Republic is this: the philosopher has much to say in a deaf world. Justice must speak to injustice, which by definition refuses to listen. The categories are “naturally”[3] self-selecting: those that are willing to properly listen already demonstrate the philosophical qualities that characterize dialecticians, while those who are unable or unwilling to listen exhibit none of the philosophical virtues.
Philosophy is here taken as a way of life, as a regime of behavior as much as it is a theory of ethics and epistemology.[4] The gulf between the elite few and the plebeian many is underwritten by a seemingly insurmountable divide: these categories are drawn from ostensibly “natural” and self-reproducing character partitions that contribute to the chasm between philosopher and non-philosopher. The dialogue’s significance can in part be traced to its attempt to close the gap between these two identities, collapsing and converting the latter into the former. In a powerful way, the attempt to elicit this conversion illuminates the role of fabrication in undoing ostensibly “natural” divisions: the role of education emerges alongside listening as a key to unpacking the various layers of the Republic. The questions as to “how to educate” and “who gets what education” implicate both speaking and listening as dimensions of the true philosophical nature, as well as determine the ability of the philosophical nature to announce change in others.
Much hinges on the capacity to affect this alteration. The Socratic project scrutinizes not only final conclusions, but the manner by which we arrive at conclusions in the first place. Take Socrates’ encounter with Polemarchus in Book I, which augurs the theoretical trajectory the dialogue will eventually take. Socrates, having visited the Piraeus in order to watch the foreign festival of Betis, encounters Polemarchus. Polemarchus’ first injunction is to observe that Socrates is leaving, followed by a bid to stay. Invoking both the nature of force and the nature of democracy, Polemarchus represents an early engagement between Socrates and his theoretical counterpart. Polemarchus’ invitation comes by way of a threat:
‘Do you see how many of us there are?’ he [Polemarchus] asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘you must either get the better of all these people or else stay here.’
‘There is another possibility,’ I said. ‘We might persuade you that you should let us go.’
‘And do you really think you could persuade us,’ he said, ‘if we refused to listen?’
‘Of course not,’ said Glaucon.
‘In that case, make your decision on the assumption that we are not going to listen.’[5]
Polemarchus’ first appearance is characterized primarily by his capacity to command, representing the threat of force by way of numbers and strength. Read as a sound-piece for the power of majoritarianism, this early scene showcases the text’s ambivalent relation to 5th century Athenian democracy, which itself was bound integrally with empire and conquest. That the initial ten interlocutors are named individually and hail from separate city-states is indicative of the precarious historical situation: the conversation that will take place at the Piraeus stands as image and model for inter-Greek relations, with Polemarchus’ intervention a powerful exemplar of relations determined by force.[6]
The question Polemarchus poses quickly dissipates, as Glaucon’s brief response gives way to Adeimantus’ mentioning of an ongoing torch-race on horseback.[7] It is the spectacle of this torch-race that captures the attention and imagination of Socrates, and, while we may trace Socrates’ decision to stay to Adeimantus’ suggestion, it is Polemarchus’ first series of questions that performs the relation and play between force and imagination that will characterize much of the dialogue’s theoretical drama. In this way, answering the question “How to persuade those who will not listen?” operates as an illuminating window into the nature of justice, education and statecraft throughout the rest of The Republic. Unpacking Socrates’ answer to this question, as well of its relevance for reading the dialogue writ large, is the goal of the following paper.
Before we can fully investigate the role of listening in the dialogue, however, it is important to first understand the greater theoretical argument Socrates attempts to delineate throughout the work. We might say that the ultimate aim of the Republic is to justify and evangelize the role of justice in an unjust world. As Gadamer has noted, “Plato’s philosophy springs from the existence of Socrates. Insofar as it inquires about the possibility of what is just in the midst of prevailing injustice, it discovers the ‘just in itself.’”[8] By dint of his actions and beliefs, the character of “Socrates” depicted in the republic foregrounds the entire philosophical problem: not only does Socrates’ existence promote dialectical inquiry through his deliberate actions and conversations, but the fact that he exists is, in itself, a starting-point for philosophical investigation. Explaining the importance of Socrates is consistent with explaining the importance of justice; Michael Oakeshott, summarizing the traditional answer to this question, argues that, for Socrates, “the image of a just man is a man in whom reason rules his other faculties; and that the image of a just polis is a polis whose constitution provides that every man shall do that one work for which he has a special aptitude, and that those whose special aptitude is reason shall rule.”[9]
What I take Oakeshott’s argument to disclose is the relation between thought, action and politics that underscores the Republic. In brief, I read this relation in the following terms: The world is composed of perishable things, whose existences may be divided into categories of the essential and the accidental.[10] The essential is codeterminate with the realm of ideas: it is the natural “thingness” of a thing by which it would not be that thing at all, the positive residual that remains throughout the persistent flux.[11] The relation between accidental and essential is that between particular and general, copy and model. All activity is a copy of a model; to act well is to copy the proper model.[12] Therefore, one must first know what action is before one may act: to act is to act in accord with the idea of action.[13] One must first know the idea of action in order to fabricate action; one must know the idea of justice before one is just. The idea of action, like the idea of justice, is accessible only through the exercise of reason in a dialectical structure. The exercise of reason requires the proper ordering of the self. Knowing the idea of a thing delineates the realm of philosophy; it is therefore in this way that only the true philosopher may be said to act at all, and that only just actions are really actions.[14] Analogous to the individual soul is the structure of the city.[15] A city is composed of naturally distinct parts. For a city to be said to act, it must be properly ordered and act in accord with its most reasoned parts; to the extent that it does so, it not only acts, but acts justly. The most reasoned parts are constituted by philosopher kings. It is only when philosopher kings rule that a city may be said to act or be just.
Unpacking this theory requires minding the moments that complicate and upset the neatness of its rendering. I now turn to accomplish this task viz. a reading of the problem of listening that permeates the Republic.
II. Three Modes of Listening in the Republic
There are two fundamental categories of listening we might interrogate. The first is listening-as-sensory-perception, whereby we read the phenomenon of listening strictly as the experience of hearing. This type of listening is endemic to human speech, and, insofar as one participates in a conversation at all (let alone a dialectical one), we might say: there are those who speak and those who listen. This category of listening is represented throughout The Republic by dint of its representation and dramatization of human conversation: speech only emerges against the backcloth of this category of listening. The first instance of this mode of listening in the dialogue is actually not an instance at all: we read it only indirectly as Polemarchus’ slave approaches Socrates.[16] Behind the encounter of Socrates and slave is the implied act of command: Polemarchus commanded, and the slave listened. It is telling, too, that the slave’s first act is to “tug” at Socrates’ cloak: one of the primary modes of listening in the Republic—tied to this rudimentary, sensory and “slave-like” orientation—is here prefigured in full. Certainly the slave has listened, and to the extent that he acts upon his attentiveness to his master’s commands, he represents, in part, the volition of the master: he has accomplished his given task. But we cannot say that he acted: his listening is linked to a distinct mode of inaction. This category of listening is characterized by a brutish and purely functional capacity to give and receive language.
The second and more relevant category is defined less in sensory and more in existential terms: it denotes an attitude and behavior, a practice that both forges and emerges from the well-ordered soul. We might group this category of listening in family relation to the capacity for attentiveness: listening involves the deliberate employment of one’s attention, the focusing of reason as the pursuit of a patient dedication. Here there is a spectrum, whose extremes negotiate identities between absolute inattention and absolute attention, between a complete failure of listening and its apotheosis. It is this second category—listening-as-attentiveness—that I intend to populate through a reading of The Republic.
The first real instance of listening-as-attentiveness surfaces early on with Cephalus. Cephalus’ invitation for Socrates to consider himself a “friend”[17] discloses a different dialogic orientation than was seen previously in the encounter with Polemarchus and Adeimantus; Cephalus seems willing and wanting to speak with Socrates—and in fact it is the first extended conversation in the dialogue. What this conversation clearly discloses, however, is one of the enduring ironies of the text: neither Cephalus nor Socrates are here seen to listen particularly well. Cephalus, an aging weapons-merchant, is concerned primarily with the status of his soul as he approaches death: his entrance and exit are framed by his engagement with ceremonial sacrifices.[18] The conversation that he is concerned with is less an investigation and more a stage to soliloquize his own fears and findings; Socrates is less interlocutor and more sounding-board. We find in Cephalus’ engagement a type of listening distinct and superior to Polemarchus’ slave, but one still confined by self-interest and habit.
If we take seriously the claim that the Republic is a dialogue that concerns itself principally with the question of justice, then the beginning of the dialogue’s main trajectory begins with a misunderstanding. Socrates introduces the question of justice by ventriloquizing its concern into Cephalus’ monologue on death, fear and debt; his injunction “since you’ve brought up the subject of justice”[19] indicates either a gross overattentiveness or an outright inattentiveness to Cephalus’ speech. Socrates’ questioning of Cephalus is punctured by the “interruption” made by Polemarchus[20]—at which point Cephalus removes himself from the dialogue entirely and Polemarchus is used to introduce the definition of justice as “paying what is owed to another,” expanded into “helping friends and harming enemies.”[21] This conversation is complicated by the problem of appearances, manifest in the propensity to know—and therefore distinguish—one’s true friends from one’s true enemies.[22] The conversation is abandoned as Thrasymachus also interrupts, albeit with a much greater flare of emotion than Polemarchus.[23]
It may appear that Thrasymachus’ intervention is an example of a failure of listening that would fall below that of Cephalus’ or even Polemarchus’, but the opposite is true. The traditional rendering of Thrasymachus is of the gnashing sophist, unconcerned with truth-in-itself and motivated by purely self-oriented intentions: he lacks self-order and therefore knowledge. This depiction is complicated by the provocativeness of Thrasymachus’ claims, both in their content and deployment. Thrasymachus is deceptively attentive: he is the one character that launches the most sustained criticism of Socrates’ method. As Thrasymachus argues against Socrates, “If you really want to know what justice is, then stop simply asking questions, and scoring points by proving that any answer given by anyone else is wrong. You know perfectly well it’s easier to ask questions than to give answers. Come on, why don’t you give some answers yourself? Tell us what you say justice is.”[24]
Marina McCoy has argued that we ought to take Thrasymachus more seriously, and I am inclined to agree.[25] Thrasymachus is not a strict foil to Socrates, but teases out differences between the philosophical and sophistical nature in important ways. Thrasymachus’ push for Socrates to state clearly and concisely his theory of justice proves two things: first, that Thrasymachus has been attentive to the nature of Socrates’ conversations up until now, and second, that Thrasymachus disagrees with Socrates not only on the nature of the good life, but in the manner by which one discovers and proves it in principle. In this sense, Thrasymachus carves out a distinct valence of listening-as-attentiveness; while we cannot claim that he is by any means a philosopher, Thrasymachus’ own incisive role, matched by the dialogue’s recurrent opening of the question as to what truly constitutes the philosophical disposition, prevents the definition of “philosopher” to ever assume a fully stabilized position.
Thrasymachus performs the very incapacity of the non-philosophic spirit to be heard by the philosophic spirit, both in the literal and figurative sense. Taken literally, Thrasymachus repeats the schism first announced by Polemarchus: “How am I to persuade you [Socrates],” he asked, “if you’re not convinced by what I said just now, what more can I do for you? Do you want me to sit here and cram the argument in with a spoon?”[26] The question initially posed is here reversed: how does the sophist persuade the philosopher, who is unwilling to listen? What this question necessitates is a reflection on the division between philosopher and sophist. This reflection leads to the figurative dimension of Thrasymachus’ intervention: he exposes the nature of Socrates’ listening as radically distinct from his own. What Thrasymachus takes as listening is layered upon convincing. In this way, to have listened is to have been convinced. Socrates, by contrast, is attentive to Thrasymachus without conciliating to his points. In dialogue with one another, the conversation between Socrates and Thrasymachus throughout the remainder of Book I (and the associated hypothesis that justice is determined by the stronger) illustrates not only two more modes of listening, but the way these two modes inhabit the same context. That these two processes operate simultaneously is not only a difference of this or that opinion, but symptomatic of distinct worldviews—to the extent that these worldviews are in tension, the drama of the dialogue is set into motion, and consistent confusions emerge.
The conversation with Thrasymachus ends with the conclusion of Book I, and it is in the beginning of Book II that we encounter the final type of listening that will be repeated throughout the dialogue. Here the proxy is Glaucon. Glaucon, unsatisfied with “Thrasymachus’ surrender,” fashions a request for Socrates: “Socrates, do you really want to convince us that it is in every way better to be just than unjust, or is it enough merely to seem to have convinced us?”[27] While Glaucon’s characterization in the dialogue has traditionally been associated with the ocular dimensions of sight and appearance, his representation as a mode of listening is no less salient. Here we encounter the final type of listening that will continuously re-emerge throughout the dialogue’s structure: Glaucon’s invitation to convince is really a proposal on his own behalf to listen. Glaucon desires to really be convinced; his listening so far has only given the appearance of conviction, and this is unsatisfactory. Glaucon’s invitation separates him from the other interlocutors in the dialogue, and it is by no mistake that he becomes, along with his brother Adeimantus, one of the principle conversers throughout the rest of the work.
The typology of listening Glaucon represents is closely associated with Socrates’, and both emerge in close proximity to Thrasymachus. We might deem this the separation between philosophy and sophistry the text attempts to solidify, but this is to overlook key moments of complication. As McCoy has argued, “Plato’s treatment of Socrates in conversation with sophists and rhetoricians indicates that he thought that the distinction between philosopher and sophist was difficult to make. There is no single method or mode of discourse that separates the philosopher from the sophist.”[28] I again think this is correct, as Thrasymachus’ early intervention in some ways remains the most persuasive and incisive critique of Socrates’ argument, not merely substantively but procedurally as well. Not only does Thrasymachus’ position in the text operate constitutively as the “felix culpa” against which the philosophical enterprise will draw its own relevance and identity,[29] but the differences in his mode of engagement are also a nod to what separates the sophist from the philosopher.
What Thrasmychus elides is the nature of the intention that informs one’s attention. As Jurgen Mittelstrass has argued,
If we assume together with Socrates and Plato that being right at all costs is not the basic intention of dialogues, particularly philosophical dialogues, then the eristic, or what Plato…called the sophistic, approach becomes the perversion of an original dialectical intention based on mutual understanding and justification in dialogues….Dialectics is thus characterized both by a practical intention, which aims at mutual understanding and agreement, and a theoretical intention, which aims at justification.[30]
Glaucon’s attempt to elicit Socrates’ argument represents this exact desire for “mutual understanding” and “justification,” whereas Thrasymachus’ eristic drive is purely self-oriented. What motivates Thrasymachus is personal recognition.[31] What separates Thrasymachus from Glaucon and Socrates is not necessarily the manner by which they dialogue, but the motivations and expectations they bring into practice.[32] Here we collude with the definitions of the philosopher found later in Book V, primarily as a “lover of all wisdom”[33] and a “spectator of truth.”[34] Both of these definitions indicate not only the presence but the nature of one’s attentiveness: one approaches philosophy not out of self-love, but out of love for knowledge writ large. There is eros in the philosophical regime, but it is properly corralled and channeled; it does not turn back upon itself, but permanently looks outward. We shall investigate more thoroughly below how this division underwrites the definition of the “true philosopher” that occupies much of the latter parts of the dialogue.
What we have encountered in Book I and the early moments of Book II are the three primary modes of listening represented throughout the remainder of the text. These three categories are as follows:
1. Listening-as-sensory-perception: represented most thoroughly by Polemarchus’ slave, and in some instances by Polemarchus himself, this is the most basal form of listening. What characterizes its presence is a lack of genuine attentiveness matched by a purely self-interested motivation.
2. Listening-as-sophistic-attentiveness: we populate this category with Cephalus and Thrasymachus. What distinguishes this category is the capacity to orient one’s attention effectively, but to do so under the aegis of one’s personal benefit. Attentiveness is tied either to habit, or to self-aggrandizement.
3. Listening-as-philosophical-attentiveness: Glaucon, Adeimantus and Socrates inhabit this category, each carving out a place in the gradation of philosophical attentiveness. What distinguishes this category from the others is not just the presence of genuine attentiveness, but the highlighted nature of proper motivation. The promotion of the self does not stand behind the dialogic momentum, but rather a love of the forms.
III. Listening and Justice
How are we to relate these three categories to the greater argument of the Republic? The central dramatic drive of the dialogue is found in the frictions caused by these three modes of listening: that Socrates is not listened to, or not listened to properly, amounts to the great insurmountable hindrance to the philosophical goal. Read as the philosophical mode attempting to collapse and convert the two other categories, the dialogue’s persistent redefinition of the philosopher and justice highlights the primary problem that began this paper: how to persuade those who do not listen?
In order to answer this question, we must relate the three parts of listening to the three parts of the soul Socrates develops in Book IV.[35] I agree with Gadamer’s reading that “Justice is a being of the soul in relationship to itself and this is the very thing which Socrates means when he appeals to us to care for our souls.”[36] To this end, “An action is just which is in conformity with this inner order of the soul and which brings about and sustains that order.”[37] Taken in light of listening, this means that listening-as-attentiveness is not merely an intersubjective phenomenon, but rather notes its origin in the well-ordered self, and constitutes foremost a self-relation. Corresponding to the appetitive element of the soul is the most basal type of listening; to the spirited element, the sophistic mode of attentiveness; and to the rational element, the philosophical. Those who are unwilling to listen to themselves are not friends to themselves; they are not well ordered, but are driven by blunt desire or animated spirit. They are, in a certain sense, indicative of the “civil war” that emerges through an inability to “put one’s own house in order.”[38] One who does not properly listen is equally at war with others as he is with himself.
Ending this war, or at least electing its conflict into the realm of ideas, is the task philosophy sets itself in the Republic. That is, just as conflict arises within those who are not properly ordered, so does conflict emerge amidst those who are properly ordered and those who are not. How do those who are ordered convert those who are unordered—and how is this complicated if those who are unordered exist, by definition, as those who are unwilling to listen?
The question posed is philosophical, though the answer is anything but. It is here that the category of listening-as-philosophical-attentiveness is upset. While it may distinguish itself from the other categories given both the nature of its attentiveness and the motivations that determine that attentiveness, the philosophical attitude toward listening is determined primarily in its relation to the dialectic. In other words, the problem of listening is both generative of, and embedded in, a theory of education. Whether the nature of this education will be purely philosophical has yet to be determined.
Education in the Republic is characterized by human fabrication remolding natural divisions.[39] Education is thus a practicable art, whose successful deployment is measured by how well one knowingly copies a model. The zenith of this process of education is the dialectic, and the problem of defining dialectics is the enterprise of Book VII. Dialectics is first considered the “journey” out of the cave of ignorance,[40] but quickly gives way to a more robust and nuanced rendering that depicts dialects as a form of “universal” inquiry,[41] a manner of “grasping” the truth,[42] and as a “coping stone” to the process of education.[43] Given that the idea of dialectics represented in the text is grounded as a conversation among lovers of the truth, listening—and the proper employment of attention—is central to the dialectical process. As Susan Bickford has argued, “Listening means ‘I will put myself in his place, I will try to understand, I will strain to hear what makes us alike, I will listen for a common rhetoric evocative of a common purpose or a common good.’ The effort of listening is directed toward figuring out what unites us, and we accomplish this through the exercise of empathy.”[44] Listening, in this way, participates in linking mutual understanding and justification by disclosing a horizon of intelligibility that reaches far beyond one’s self-oriented purview. Without the right orientation to oneself and another, e.g. without a willingness to occupy the correct space of listening, the dialectic is exhausted of its philosophical legitimacy.
Bickford continues: “in listening I must actively be with others. Listening as an act of concentration means that for the moment I make myself the background, the horizon, and the speaker the figure I concentrate on.”[45] It is only through listening-as-attentiveness that dialectical conversation emerges in the first place, as it is precisely this willingness to concentrate on another under the standard of exploring the forms that assigns dialectics its philosophical validity. It is important to note, further, that listening-as-attentiveness is accomplished as one would accomplish any act: one must know what listening is before one can wield it effectively. To this end, Bickford is quick to remind us that
Listening is not passive, nor does it require the assumption of substantive shared interests or the suspension of strategic motives. Rather, it involves an active willingness to construct certain relations of attention, to form an ‘auditory Gestalt’ in which neither of us, as part of the whole structure, has meaning without the other. Listening to another person cannot mean abnegating oneself; we cannot hear but as ourselves, against the background of who we are.[46]
When we listen, we act, and we act only to the extent that we know how to. It is an active displacement, through reason, of one’s spirit and desire; rather than “abnegating” the self, listening in this manner demonstrates the self’s intrinsic ordering. Listening is the practice within the dialectic that links the external to internal, action to ideas. One listens to another in order to properly listen to oneself, and by properly listening to oneself one is able to listen to another. Without this key mechanism the relation between knowledge and action would be mute. The relation here is transparently codeterminate: we might say that this division between those who listen and those who do not is natural and ultimately self-selecting.[47]
But the “natural” character of the philosopher’s reproduction-through-education is upset by the very question education implies: namely, how to convert that which is naturally unphilosophical into that which is philosophical.[48] To this end, it would seem that the role of philosopher may potentially be inhabited by any soul, given that soul has received the necessary education and has correspondingly ordered themselves in line with their knowledge of ideas. It in this light that Grube has observed that
The Socratic elenchus, this test of beliefs, was to Plato an essential preliminary to any real education….The purpose of this education is to make a man see for himself, to teach him what Plato, with his eye always on the life of society, calls the kingly science. For its particular characteristic is that the man who possesses it has sufficient knowledge to be his own master, while people with inferior knowledge can only fulfil the commands given them by others.[49]
Socrates’ focus on education is primarily a consideration of who is to make a man see for himself, and what the characteristics of this “who” and this “man” really are that separate the two identities. Here the conversation begins with an analysis of the guardians and their education at the end of Book II[50] and reaches its apex in Book VII with the allegory of the cave and the delineation of the various educational subjects.[51] As to the question of how this conversion is to occur, Socrates is far more silent.
Nevertheless, the cave allegory offers an important perspective on the marriage between listening and education, which in itself discloses the limits of the philosophical reach. Note how the three primary typologies of listening we derived earlier from the performances in Books I-II are represented in the substantive content of the myth. The first typology of listening we encounter in the cave allegory is the listening-as-sense-perception that characterized Polemarchus’ slave: the “people carrying implements” across the back wall, the creators of shadows, are also talking.[52] Those whose heads and bodies are bound to look against the wall “talk to one another,” “giving names” to the “things they could see passing.”[53] Finally, there are “echoes” that enter the cave and are wrongly assessed as being produced by the shadows flickering on the wall.
Sounds abound in the cave, and listening is endemic to experience in this dream-world. The chained prisoners talk amongst themselves,[54] and the people carrying the images across the wall—taken, in part, as a manifestation of sophistry—equally announce their opinions. But, given the very nature of the sophists’ procession, matched by the chained orientation of the prisoners, this talking is not said amongst equals meeting eye-to-eye in dialectical dialogue, but the blurting of creatures concerned with spectacle. There is no proper listening in the cave, and what one hears is equal parts echo, shadow and opinion. Importantly, though, the sophists do carry images of real things: while fabricated copies that speciously stand for their actual counterparts, these images nevertheless disclose an attentiveness distinct from those who merely watch and comment.
Beyond these two identities, there are those who lose their shackles and exit the cave. Socrates glosses over how exactly this is to be achieved—at most there is an implication. But this implication scalps the philosophic enterprise. Speaking to the prisoners’ release from bondage, Socrates suggests: “When one of them [the prisoners] was untied, and compelled suddenly to stand up, turn his head, start walking, and look towards the light, he’d find all these things painful. Because of the glare he’d be unable to see the things whose shadows he used to see before.”[55] Socrates continues: “If he was forced to look at the light itself, wouldn’t it hurt his eyes? Wouldn’t he turn away, and run back to the things he could see?”[56] And finally: “And if he was dragged out of there by force, up the steep and difficult path, with no pause until he had been dragged right out into the sunlight, wouldn’t he find this dragging painful? Wouldn’t he resent it?”[57]
Socrates’ immediate answer to these questions is that the released man must “acclimatize himself” to the real and sun-lit world. Of course, this is hardly an answer at all: the possibility of his return to the cave and the rejection of the outside world is never examined, and Socrates is silent as to the role philosophy is to play in this acclimatization, which clearly comes prior to the released man’s entrance into dialectical inquiry. Note the language in the above selections: the prisoner is first “compelled to stand up,” he is “forced to look at the light itself,” and he is “dragged up by force.” Release from the cave of shadows is framed in a distinct dialect of violence, as is the philosopher’s eventual reentry into the cave to repeat the cycle.[58] In the context of those whose primary typology of listening is listening-as-sense-perception, or listening-as-sophistic-attentiveness, it is not philosophy that offers resources of conversion, but “compulsion” and “force” that initiates the alteration.
How, we must ask, do these extra-philosophical means of promoting philosophy gel with Socrates’ later observation that “Physical exertion, imposed by force, does the body no harm, but for the soul no forced learning can be lasting”?[59] We here trip upon one of the great paradoxes introduced by Socrates: on the one hand, the natural characteristics of a thing are what make that thing distinct, and it is seemingly due to these natural characteristics that one is in the cave to begin with. Education, which seeks to undo these natural inclinations via philosophical training, cannot begin until one is out of the cave; but one is removed, one does not remove oneself. That is, the type of education one is to receive must be in tune with one’s natural character while simultaneously reforming that character to accord with the philosophical pursuit of the forms. Natural differences, at this initial phase, cannot be trumped by philosophical education—it is rather through compulsion or force that education is first made possible.
Philosophy’s need for auxiliary resources is here laid bare. As McCoy notes, “Socrates is interested in persuading his audience and not always or exclusively through affecting the intellect of his interlocutors. For example, Socrates often attempts to affect others’ senses of shame, anger, confusion, happiness, pleasure, and displeasure….This is because the goals of Socrates’ argument is to affect a person as well as to prove a thesis.”[60] In order to “affect a person,” the philosophical principles Socrates announces must choose proper vehicles of efficacy. These vehicles themselves may not be philosophical in nature, but to the extent that they promote the emergence of philosophy, they are philosophically justified. What authorizes philosophy is not itself philosophical, but something else: authority does not emanate from philosophical principles so much as it is a camouflage philosophy fashions for itself.
This must be the case given Socrates’ commitment to natural differences, especially the recurrent theme of the “many” vs. “the few” that punctuate the dialogue. One such telling instance arrives when Socrates is again attempting to define true philosophers: “Well, I imagine that audiences and spectators can take pleasure in beautiful sounds and colors and shapes,” he tells Glaucon, “and in everything which is created from these elements, but that their minds are incapable of seeing, and taking pleasure in, the nature of beauty itself.” And he finishes: “Whereas those who are capable of approaching beauty itself, and seeing it just by itself, would be few in number, wouldn’t they?”[61] The division between few and many is not incidental, but natural. It is this very capacity to have different types of souls that enables a consideration of the healthy city, and justice therein, to begin with.
To the extent that there are naturally few philosophically-minded people and naturally many non-philosophers, the just city is made possible. As Socrates argues, “each individual should follow out of the occupations available in the city, the one for which his natural character best fitted him.”[62] It is a result of natural differences in character that specialization—and the forging of the three primary classes—is a feasible enterprise. It is in this way that differences of character promote separate individual responsibilities while also determining separate modes of education to be assigned to separate classes. The city is just where each natural character is matched to a corresponding role, and pursues a related education.[63] It is in this sense that Socrates’ true ambitions qua the conversion of non-philosophers is revealed: to the extent that the natural character of the bronze caste precludes a philosophical temperament, the question is less about converting them to philosophy and more about instilling in them a regime of listening-to-philosophy. The aim is an alteration, but rather than creating philosophers it creates those willing to be ruled by philosophers. While we saw in the allegory of the cave how this may be induced through compulsion or force, this also stands as the philosophical origin of the noble lie, which Socrates is keen to refer to as a “necessary falsehood.”[64] The point is not to get those whose character is non-philosophical to become philosophers, but rather to get them to properly listen to those who are. Philosophers, too, are to listen to the many—but their listening will be of a different tone, rehearsing the schism between the way Thrasymachus listens to Socrates and the way Socrates listens to Thrasymachus.[65]
At bottom lies the insufficiency of dialectical reasoning to persuade the philosophically deaf. As McCoy observes, “the non-philosophers in these dialogues have such fundamentally different assumptions about the nature of language and reasoning that arguments alone are ineffective at persuading them of the philosophical standpoint. These non-philosophers have a fundamentally different theoretical stance or vision of the world than the philosopher….Plato knows that no rational account succeeds in persuading the non-philosopher of the commitments of philosophy.”[66]Two aspects of philosophy are illuminated by this insight. On the one hand, Socrates’ manner of listening reifies the division between philosopher and non-philosopher, and it is only through employing non-philosophical means that the gulf that separates the two may be closed. On the other hand, it is unclear whether Socrates really ever intends to fully close this gap in the first place. Rather, it is only when the non-philosophical listen to philosophers that the philosopher may listen to himself and to his fellow philosopher. Otherwise, there is persecution, injustice, the cacophonies of sophistry and opinion: there is war, strife, execution.
The question “how well does Socrates himself listen?” is related to this first proposition, and yields a wide range of answers. Clearly, Socrates is the most attentive speaker and listener throughout the dialogue, and operates as a privileged site of listening-as-philosophical-attentiveness. Like Glaucon in Book I, it is clear that Socrates’ motivations reach beyond self-glory and rest exclusively with the exploration and promotion of philosophy. And yet, Socrates’ relationship to the other interlocutors is marked by distinct ways of listening and responding to their interventions. Even in conversation with Glaucon and Adeimantus, the dynamic includes “interruptions,”[67] emotional outpourings,[68] and even open mocking.[69] While Glaucon and Adeimantus entertain Socrates intellectually, their contributions through the vast majority of the dialogue are positive affirmations of Socrates’ claims—if they push back, it is only to refine principles initially argued by Socrates.
Socrates is not on the same footing even with his most sustained and philosophically compliant interlocutors, and it would be palpably false to suggest that Socrates listens to them in the same manner they listen to Socrates. This imbalance of attention within the structure of the dialogue privileges the mode of listening most often demonstrated by Socrates: that is, self-listening. Indeed, Socrates listens very little to others. The philosopher listens to the non-philosopher only to the extent that his own philosophy may become more cohesive and defensible; the non-philosopher merely operates as a foil of hostility, to lesser and greater degrees, to the philosopher’s claims. In fact, never does a real alternative to Socrates’ thought emerge, save for Thrasymachus’ argument early on; and, as far as sheer volume of speech, Socrates outranks his interlocutors multiple times over.
The reduction of the non-philosopher to mere sounding-board for the philosopher indicates that the philosopher does not listen to the non-philosopher openly—that the course of listening runs one-way, or rather that there are two unequal manners of listening accomplished simultaneously.[70] Attention exists as a scarce resource within the dialogue, and it is not shared equitably: with Socrates clearly arresting the most of it, the quantity of attention paid out is decimated when measured by the participation of his separate interlocutors, even those such as Glaucon and Adeimantus who appear to have some real say in the shape the dialogue takes. True listening only emerges amidst philosophers participating in the dialectic; anything else poses fracture and misunderstanding. It is no surprise, then, that a dialogue that concerns itself substantively with the rule of reason in accordance with ideas devotes so much attention to promoting this image in the character of Socrates, while it is this character that refashions the dialogue around him much as the philosopher king is depicted as a “philosopher by design” between Books V-VI.
Socrates’ manifestation of listening-as-attentiveness is the type of listening that is philosophically consistent but pragmatically open. The type of listening he demonstrates is good-in-itself and good-in-its-consequences; consistent with Socrates’ preference to place “justice” in the “finest class” which is “both for itself and for its consequences,”[71] we may call listening-as-philosophical-attentiveness just insofar as it is the only type of listening one may be said to “do” at all. It is only Socrates who really listens, as his exploration of the ideas is what discloses the possibility of true “listening” to emerge, in the sense that one may marry action to proper knowledge. While listening-as-philosophical-attentiveness achieves philosophical legitimacy through the performance of its proper use, it achieves this legitimacy by also upholding the division between philosopher and non-philosopher as itself “natural” (but ultimately not strictly definable). Rather, far from collapsing the distinction, it suggests what the continued relation ought to look like. The “felix culpa” of the non-philosopher turns into an “incurable disease,”[72] and the philosopher’s status as pharmaka is eternally sanctified. The substance of philosophy’s argument is refracted in its very existence: philosophy requires the sick soul just as much as the sick soul requires philosophy.[73]
Under the permanence of this sedimented relation, what Socrates’ self-listening performs are acts of reasoned judgment in contexts ill with unreason. What this requires is a vigilant attentiveness to oneself and to others. The character of Socrates, itself taken as a model, harbors its own noble lie: noble in the sense that the goal of its employment and reception is the realization of the good, but a lie in the sense that it is an act of poetry that promises phantasms. Socrates’ goal (and the goal of “Socrates”) is to effect change in people’s belief, thus effecting change in their actions;[74] whether this comes in the dialogue is as open a question as whether it succeeds in its readers. Either way, the transmission of the question is affected not merely through philosophical means, but rather through a host of rhetorical and persuasive devices. Socrates, as image, is yet one more of these, a motivational supplement to philosophy’s reason, a poetical flare alongside the Myth of Gyges, the Myth of Metals, and the Myth of Er.[75]
IV. Conclusion: Listening and Democracy
What does Socrates-as-image tell us viz. listening? What can we glean from the problem of listening in the dialogues? Socrates’ version of listening-as-philosophical-attentiveness ultimately performs and promotes self-listening (above attentiveness to others) in contexts in which philosophy is threatened by non-philosophy. Therefore, a philosopher in a non-philosophical world must first and foremost order themselves. But to the extent that they have achieved this, they ought to listen to others, such that, by so doing, they may listen to themselves more thoroughly and properly. Socrates’ interlocutors are grindstones for Socrates, not the other way around; the type of listening staged by the character of Socrates finds ways to practice judgment in a world hostile to its legitimate exercise.
What the character of Socrates offers is an image for how a philosopher might be attentive to non-philosophy without fully compromising the status of either. To this extent, Socrates represents an image of what a practitioner of political judgment ought to look like. What I mean by “political judgment,” taken Socratically, is the exercise of instrumentalist reason in the promotion of a virtue informed by ideas. As McCoy argues, “Plato’s Socrates does not even have a single ‘method’ that could be understood on the model of a techne or science; rather, his choices as to how to use speech are more reflective of a concern with finding the right kind of speech at the right time and the right place. That is, his approach relies more upon phronesis and Kairos than techne.”[76] Switching the focus from the art of philosophical speech to the strategic navigation of Kairos and phronesis highlights the vital role of attentiveness Socrates must pay to the contours and dynamics of his situation. This attentiveness is drawn from a fund of self-attentiveness as well, for “When rules of conduct and categories of identification are in flux and therefore insufficient to give guidance, self-given judgment informed by virtue is necessary not only to discern meaningful differences between friend and foe and to draw inferences based on these discriminations, but also to challenge the authority and reification of such categories and of the rules that set them to work.”[77]
The process of “self-given judgment informed by virtue” in the face of non-philosophy is a constant and open process.[78] For one to know, one must properly listen to others as well as oneself—that is, one must be attentive to one’s own ordering. Proper ordering is the product of proper listening; and proper listening is to look different for the natural philosopher than it is for the natural shoemaker. And yet the reverse is also true, as we only come to listen well once we are properly ordered. He who listens to himself, which is simultaneously a listening to others, thus has the capacity for judgment.
It would seem that, to the question “how does one persuade those unwilling to listen?” the ambivalent answer the text offers is: you don’t. Rather, in order to remake the man, you first must remake the world around him—and you accomplish this through an act of judgment. What does one do with a persistently bad seed? One changes the soil, if one can. Barring this, one remains deeply attentive. The principle paradox of the Republic is grounded in the inability to persuade those who listen through philosophy, matched by the concurrent imagining of what a state fully ruled by philosophy might look like. To this end, the realization of the imagined philosophical model is hindered by the reality it also discloses. To usher in the reign of philosophy seemingly means sidestepping the immediate problem of both the sophist and the incorrigible subject: in order to remake a political world friendly to philosophy, philosophy first must make friends.[79] But this, as we have seen, is precisely the problem—we might see Socrates as pursuing a philosophical attempt to build a world friendly to philosophy without actually making friends. What he is really after seems to be the separation of the chafe from the wheat, and the further justification for the latter to assume a position of power.
In some very palpable sense, Socrates fails to achieve this end, and his own execution is both testament to the triumph of the philosophical way of life and to its utter inattentiveness. This failure is only redoubled in the text, where the specificity of definitions to which Socrates aims is never fully circumscribed, but rather opened and reopened time and again. The failure of the Socratic image to truly carve out a space for itself signals but one failure of authority amidst many; as Jill Frank has noted,
From the philosopher-kings to Socrates, then, the Republic puts on display the failures and authority of figures of authority, including philosophical authority, to meet the conditions of its own justification. In this way, the dialog may be seen to perform a critique of the self-same exercises of authority that it conspicuously advances. In this way, too, the dialog may be seen to open the possibility that city and soul justice alike depend not on an alienation of one’s authority to the reason of another with privileged philosophical understanding, but on a practice of authority exemplified by reasoning for oneself in speech and action, which is to say on practices of self-government in the spaces of appearance.[80]
I agree wholeheartedly that the failures of authority in the dialogue promote the reader to assume a perspective of judgment of their own, exercising the types of attentiveness and reason argued for substantively in the text. I am less convinced of the principle of self-governance derived therefrom—or, rather, I believe that this principle is there, but it is reserved for the philosopher, not just for anyone or—worse—the democrat. While in some technical sense potentially anyone could pick-up the Republic, read it, understand it in these terms, and go on to practice reason as Socrates intended,[81] what the text lays bare is that he who achieves this is most likely a philosopher, and, further, that he is most likely a definitive minority in a world hostile to his enterprise. To this end, I agree with Monoson’s claim that “Plato remains politically and intellectually attached to democratic Athens even as he lays bare what he took to be its inadequacies.”[82] This is true, but Plato was far from a democrat: while the text assumes a certain democratic element in the potentiality of anyone becoming a philosopher, and while the text seemingly eternalizes the status of democracy as a backcloth to philosophy, it is clear that the presence of the non-philosopher is in part what necessitates and legitimizes the philosopher’s political role. I believe that the image of Socrates is indeed intended to persuade readers of the importance of self-made judgments—but that these judgments are perceived to be the business of the few, not the many.
Still, it is important to analyze what the philosophic few, in practicing self-attentiveness properly, forges with the many. When correctly employed, the self-attentiveness of the true philosopher creates trust in those toward which his self-attentiveness is directed.[83] The openness that is implied in the listening-as-philosophical-attentiveness dynamic is constitutive of a greater openness to forge bridges of genuine trust with the non-philosopher.[84] Danielle Allen offers a highly-applicable insight: “The aim,” she observes, “is to develop practices that support vigorous arguments about political disagreements by sustaining the relationships that make it worthwhile to argue with others in the first place.”[85] The existence of the philosopher must in part commit itself to leaving the closure of its own authority an open question.[86] In so doing, it pledges itself to an open attentiveness toward others, while recognizing that “Trust-building requires that citizens turn their attention toward one another.”[87] If listening is constitutive of a type-of trusting, trusting is constitutive of friendship, and friendship is constitutive of justice, then a context that lacks resources of listening equally lacks reservoirs of justice. To this end, “We do not simply float over to another’s position in our heads, we create together a concrete worldly means of getting at each other’s’ perspectives.”[88] The object of philosophy is to create the conditions in which this perspective-sharing is made politically salient—that is, conditions under which mutual understanding and justification may emerge, even amidst dramatic imbalances of attentiveness. The problem of persuading those who do not listen finally gives way to the true question of the Republic: “How does philosophy protect itself amidst non-philosophy?”[89]—it listens in a particular way. To others, yes, but primarily to the well-ordered judgments of the self.[90]
[1] Lewis Pearson, Force and Persuasion in The Republic, p. 1
[2] Monoson and Clay both have statements to this end. For Monoson, “Plato surely does not design structures and practices that democrats, ancient or modern, would embrace. Nevertheless, Plato’s depiction of an ideal city draws on a democratic insight in seeking a route to responsible ruling in the design of the city’s constitutional structure and cultural patterns of life.” (S. Sara Monoson, Plato’s Democratic Entanglements, p. 130); while for Clay, “Within the Republic there are…examples of how the closure of positions taken by the speakers within the dialogue is challenged by a dialogue that refuses to conclude.” (Diskin Clay, “Reading the Republic,” p. 22) Both thinkers carve out a far more open text than traditional readings have drawn.
[3] I take “natural” here to be understood in the Socratic sense of the term. Michael Oakeshott offers a practicable definition: “The ‘nature’ of a thing was that in virtue of which the thing is what it is and not another thing: the ‘principle’ of its character….The ‘nature’ of a thing is its permanent and unchanging character, that which if it were different it would be another thing, that which causes the thing to be what it is.” (Michael Oakeshott, Lectures, p. 134)
[4] As Socrates says, “We are trying to define the whole conduct of life—how each of us can live his life in the most profitable way.” (Republic, 344e)
[5] Republic, 327c
[6] Jill Frank offers a compelling insight on this point. See Jill Frank, “Wages of War,” p. 448: “By modeling interactions among political actors who do not resort to violence against the historical backdrop of an extremely violent war, the Republic depicts a different possible future while also arguing for the conditions necessary for such change.”
[7] Republic, 328a
[8] Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Plato’s Educational State,” p. 83
[9] Michael Oakeshott, Lectures, p. 159
[10] The theory of the forms is not fully articulated in the Republic—it is assumed that the reader is familiar with the theory through other dialogues. Still, the discussion occurs in Republic, 476b-478b
[11] See Michael Oakeshott, Lectures, p. 139: “To understand and to explain are intellectual activities in which the permanent essences or ‘ideas’ of things are separated from the accidental and temporary characteristics of things. Those who aspire to understand and to explain the world must ‘turn away’ from the particularity of things and attend only to permanent essences or ‘ideas.’”
[12] See Michael Oakeshott, Lectures, p. 140: “The natural and the human world is the product of fabrication, making by copying….There is, then, no place in Plato’s world for an activity of ‘free creation’: all is copying, and you cannot copy without a known model.”
[13] Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 41: “Order, in all of its facets of harmony, unity, measure, and beauty, was the positive creation of art; and art, in turn, was the province of knowledge.”
[14] See Christine Korsgaard, “Self-Constitution,” p. 3: “The actions which are most truly a person’s own are precisely those actions which most fully unify her and therefore most fully constitute her as their author. They are those actions which both issue from, and give her, the kind of volitional unity which she must have if we are to attribute the action to her as a whole….action is self-constitution.”
[15] See Republic, 369a: “
[16] Republic, 327a
[17] Republic, 328d
[18] Republic, 328c; 331d
[19] Republic, 331c
[20] Republic, 331d
[21] Republic, 331e-336a
[22] Republic, 334d
[23] Republic, 336b
[24] Republic, 336c
[25] Marina McCoy, Plato, p. 117: “Thrasymachus’ position remains a coherent, if immoral, alternative to the Socratic position that it is better to be just than unjust because his main claim that the unjust person is happier than the just person still has not been addressed….He is not merely a rhetorician set on winning an argument but rather a person with a vision of the good life that is deeply at odds with Socrates’ own vision.”
[26] Republic, 345b
[27] Republic, 357b
[28] Marina McCoy, Plato, p. 3; McCoy continues: “philosophy, as Plato understands it, includes important rhetorical dimensions. While at times Plato associates the sophist with the rhetorician, he also presents Socrates’ philosophical practices as rhetorical.”
[29] See Diskin Clay, “Reading the Republic,” p. 28: “philosophy is to spiritual disease what medicine is to physical malady. And here is the consolation, if it can be seen as that, of the viciousness of the foundation of Kallipolis; without the distemper, which is at the origin of the guardian class, the city would have no need for philosophy: felix culpa.”
[30] Jurgen Mittelstrass, “On Socratic Dialogue,” p. 131
[31] See Republic, 338a: “Thrasymachus clearly wanted to speak, to gain credit for the excellent answer he thought he had ready.”
[32] See Marina McCoy, Plato, p. 5: “Plato differentiates the philosopher from the sophist primarily through the virtues of the philosopher’s soul….The difference between the philosopher and rhetorician is not to be found in a distinctive technique or method, in the absence or presence of rhetoric, or in some sort of foundational knowledge. Instead, Plato’s ultimate defense of philosophy is to be found in the philosopher’s person—that is, in his character and the orientation of his soul to the forms.”
[33] Republic, 475b
[34] Republic, 475e
[35] Republic, 436a-b, 439c; see also Michael Oakeshott, Lectures, p. 152: “A human personality or soul is composed of three faculties or ‘powers’; namely, reason, courage (or spirit), and ‘want’: a deliberative faculty, an executive faculty, and an appetitive faculty….what distinguishes one man from another is, precisely, the proportions in which these three powers are mixed in his soul.”
[36] Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Plato’s Educational State,” p. 87
[37] Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Plato’s Educational State,” p. 86
[38] Republic, 443d-444c
[39] See Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 30: “In confronting the world of nature, man might be at once resigned and curious, for this was an order he could neither create nor change. But in the world of politics, a strong anthropomorphic attitude prevailed: man could be the architect of order. The political world, in short, was amenable to human art.” Also see Michael Oakeshott, Lectures, p. 153: “That these different faculties or powers exist in different mixtures or proportions in different men by nature. In respect of the compositions of their souls men are born different from one another….Nevertheless, by a process called ‘education’ it is possible to modify the structure of a man’s soul. A soul born with a preponderance of courage or of want may become a soul in which reason predominates. There are, of course, limits to what can be expected from ‘education’; but no man is necessarily fixed forever in the character with which he was born.”
[40] Republic, 532b
[41] Republic, 533b
[42] Republic, 534b
[43] Republic, 534e
[44] Susan Bickford, The Dissonance of Democracy, p. 13
[45] Susan Bickford, The Dissonance of Democracy, p. 23
[46] Susan Bickford, The Dissonance of Democracy, p. 24
[47] See Republic, 539c: “Hasn’t everything that has been said so far been said precisely with a view to making sure that only people with orderly and reliable natures are to be introduced to argument? Not like now, when anybody at all, however unsuitable, can go for it.” The self-selecting reproduction of one’s nature seems to gain more ground in the Myth of Er, where in 620a Socrates suggests that souls faced with the choice of lots “For the most part” “matched the character and habits of their previous life.”
[48] See G. M. A. Grube, Plato’s Thought, p. 258: “Living above petty interests in the loving adoration of supreme truth, himself a harmonious being who has risen above all conflict in his own soul, the Platonic philosopher will inevitably seek everywhere to impose harmony upon chaos, which is to change evil into good.”
[49] G. M. A. Grube, Plato’s Thought, p. 242
[50] See Republic, 374e-383a
[51] For these aspects, see Republic, 536d-540c
[52] Republic, 514b: “As you’d expect, some of the people carrying the object are speaking, while other are silent.”
[53] Republic, 514b
[54] Indeed, they even have systems of prizes and rewards. See Republic, 516c-d
[55] Republic, 515c
[56] Republic, 515e
[57] Republic, 516a
[58] Republic, 517a: “As for anyone who tried to set them free, and take them up there, if they could somehow get their hands on him and kill him, wouldn’t they do just that?”
[59] Republic, 536e
[60] Marina McCoy, Plato, p. 4
[61] Republic 476b
[62] Republic, 433a
[63] See Republic, 441e: “In that case, we must remember that each one of us will be just, and perform his own proper task, when each of the elements within him is performing its proper task.”
[64] See Republic, 414c-415d
[65] See Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Plato’s Educational State,” p. 84: “Only insofar as the individual is oriented away from his own class and committed to the political order relating these classes as a whole, is the state possible. This commitment alone changes sovereignty from the mere possession of the power to coerce, to administration of the rightful power of the state.” This colludes with Republic, 342c: “Nor does any art or skill think about what is good for itself—it has no need to. No, it thinks about what is good for the thing of which it is the art or skill.”
[66] Marina McCoy, Plato, p. 17; Sheldon Wolin says something similar: “The task of fashioning souls was not to be accomplished, however, by the ruler working directly on the human psyche. The essential problem was to establish the right influences and the most salutary environment wherein the soul could be attracted towards the Good.” (Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 34)
[67] See Republic, 419a: “At this point, Adeimantus interrupted us.”
[68] See Republic, 519d: Gluacon shouts “That seems very unfair!”
[69] See Republic, 487e: Soc.: “That question calls for an answer by means of an analogy.” Gl.: “Something you’ve never been much in the habit of using, of course.” Soc.: “I see. First you let me in for proving something which is extremely difficult to prove. Then you make fun of me.”
[70] These two simultaneous modes perform what Grube has called the “two kinds of virtue” explored in the Republic. See G. M. A. Grube, Plato’s Thought, p. 226: “Great importance is attached in the Republic to order and harmony in the soul. This is necessary, not only to the philosopher for whom all virtues are truly one since they all inevitably follow from his wisdom and knowledge of the Forms, but even the lowest class must possess sophrosyne and justice which both imply it. We thus have two kinds of virtue, that of the ordinary man, and that of the philosopher.”
[71] Republic, 358a
[72] See Plato’s Seventh Letter
[73] Sheldon Wolin expands this point into the paradox of philosophy’s cure: “Stated in summary form, Plato understood political philosophy to mean knowledge pertaining to the good life at the public level and political ruling to be the right management of the public affairs of the community….the Platonic conception of political philosophy and ruling was founded on a paradox: the science as well as the art of creating order was sworn to an eternal hostility towards politics, towards those phenomena, in other words, that made such an art and science meaningful and necessary.” (Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 39)
[74] Jurgen Mittelstrass, “On Socratic Dialogue,” p. 126: “The philosophical dialogue…is a form of discussion designed to impart philosophical knowledge and to promote both a philosophical orientation and the development of an autonomous (philosophical) subject.”
[75] Myth of Gyges: Republic, 359c-360c; Myth of Metals: Republic, 414d-415d; Myth of Er: Republic, 614b-621d
[76] Marina McCoy, Plato, pp. 14-15
[77] Jill Frank, “Wages of War,” p. 460
[78] Grube offers an insightful comment on this openness: “Nothing was more important for himself [Socrates] or for others than to ask themselves continually what was the good for man and what the peculiarly human arête or excellence which would enable him to attain the good. But it is essential to remember that, as we have seen already, Socrates himself never claimed to have the answer to these questions.” (W. K. C. Guthrie, Socrates, p. 165)
[79] See Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Plato’s Educational State,” p. 75: “Only justice can bring about a solid and enduring state and only he who is a friend to himself is able to win the solid friendship of others.”
[80] Jill Frank, “Circulating Authority,” p. 341
[81] See Republic, 549b: “Reason is the only thing which once it is born in a man, remains with him throughout his life as the protector of virtue.”
[82] S. Sara Monoson, Plato’s Democratic Entanglements, p. 237
[83] Danielle Allen has a lot to say about “trust-building” and sociability. In summary form, Allen’s take is: “trust enables agreement.” (Danielle Allen, Talking to Strangers, p. 57)
[84] See Diskin Clay, “Reading the Republic,” p. 23: “By opening new frontiers of argument, and reopening arguments that had seemed settled by the agreement of the characters within the dialogue, the Republic is an open dialogue. Although it describes as an ideal the closed society of its caste of guardians, the Republic seems to challenge its reader to engage it from without…” See also Jurgen Mittelstrass, “On Socratic Dialogue,” p. 142: “Philosophical dialogue, therefore, also demonstrates the principled openness of philosophical inquiry. It is impossible to take a final stand on a philosophical orientation.”
[85] Danielle Allen, Talking to Strangers, p. 87
[86] See Jill Frank, “Circulating Authority,” p. 335: “…the Republic advances the authority of the ideas to make manifest their compelling power and to expose the source(s) of that power.” Also see Marina McCoy, Plato, p. 19: “part of what is praiseworthy about the philosopher is his simultaneous commitment to the truth and his openness to questioning his own status in relation to that truth. For Plato, this self-criticism requires a continuing discussion of the nature of philosophical logos in light of challenges to it.”
[87] Danielle Allen, Talking to Strangers, pp. 87-88
[88] Susan Bickford, The Dissonance of Democracy, p. 148
[89] See Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Plato’s Educational State,” p. 89: “The real question is not what justice, as the ideal health of state and soul, looks like but how justice has the power to bring itself about and preserve itself.”
[90] We might say, in final and further reflection: to speak to the man unwilling to listen (Wittgenstein’s king game), you produce not a new subject, but a new context in which the subject is remade. Here begins the great project of self-conscious social panning/arrangement, matched only with an applied impatience. Philosophy is: the great impatience with this world, that in itself demands infinite patience (the problem of listening—the still small voice). One might say: the sophists speak well, but do not listen well. In some sense, rhetoric disables the real task of listening—it overwhelms listening with something else. Just as there are separate types of courage, so are there separate types of listening: listening in the dialectical sense draws man into himself, whereas rhetoric draws him out of himself. Compare to Longinus on the sublime. Listening is here linked to friendship as well: A. Bloom, Gadamer, D. Allen.