socrates and plato essay

Chapter 2: The Origins of Western Philosophy

Socrates and plato.

Socrates is widely regarded as the founder of philosophy and rational inquiry. He was born around 470 B.C., and tried and executed in 399 B.C.. Socrates was the first of the three major Greek philosophers; the others being Socrates’ student Plato and Plato’s student Aristotle.

Socrates did not write anything himself. We know of his views primarily through Plato’s dialogues where Socrates is the primary character. Socrates is also known through plays of Aristophanes and the historical writings of Xenophon. In many of Plato’s dialogues it is difficult to determine when Socrates’ views are being represented and when the character of Socrates is used as a mouthpiece for Plato’s views.

Socrates was well known in Athens. He was eccentric, poor, ugly, brave, stoic, and temperate. He was a distinguished veteran who fought bravely on Athens’ behalf and was apparently indifferent to the discomforts of war. Socrates claimed to hear a divine inner voice he called his daimon and he was prone to go into catatonic states of concentration.

The conflicting views of the Ionian and Eleatic philosophers of nature encouraged skepticism about our ability to obtain knowledge through rational inquiry. Among the Sophists, this skepticism is manifested in epistemic and Moral Relativism. Epistemic relativism is the view that there is no objective standard for evaluating the truth or likely truth of our beliefs. Rather, epistemic standards of reasoning are relative to one’s point of view and interests. Roughly, this is the view that what is true for me might not be true for you (when we are not just talking about ourselves). Epistemic relativism marks no distinction between knowledge, belief, or opinion on the one hand, and truth and reality on the other. To take a rather silly example, if I think it’s Tuesday, then that’s what’s true for me; and if you think it’s Thursday, then that’s what is true for you. In cases like this, epistemic relativism seems quite absurd, yet many of us have grown comfortable with the notion that, say, beliefs about the moral acceptability of capital punishment might be true for some people and not for others.

Moral Relativism is the parallel doctrine about moral standards. The moral relativist takes there to be no objective grounds for judging some ethical opinions to be correct and others not. Rather, ethical judgments can only be made relative to one or another system of moral beliefs and no system can be evaluated as objectively better than another. Since earlier attempts at rational inquiry had produced conflicting results, the Sophists held that no opinion could be said to constitute knowledge. According to the Sophists, rather than providing grounds for thinking some beliefs are true and others false, rational argument can only be fruitfully employed as rhetoric, the art of persuasion. For the epistemic relativist, the value of reason lies not in revealing the truth, but in advancing one’s interests. The epistemic and Moral Relativism of the Sophist has become popular again in recent years and has an academic following in much “post- modern” writing.

Socrates was not an epistemic or moral relativist. He pursued rational inquiry as a means of discovering the truth about ethical matters. But he did not advance any ethical doctrines or lay claim to any knowledge about ethical matters. Instead, his criticism of the Sophists and his contribution to philosophy and science came in the form of his method of inquiry.

As the Socratic Method is portrayed in Plato’s Socratic dialogues, interlocutor proposes a definition or analysis of some important concept, Socrates raises an objection or offers counter examples, then the interlocutor reformulates his position to handle the objection. Socrates raises a more refined objection. Further reformulations are offered, and so forth. Socrates uses the dialectic to discredit others’ claims to knowledge. While revealing the ignorance of his interlocutors, Socrates also shows how to make progress towards more adequate understanding.

A good example of the Socratic Method at work can be found in one of Plato’s early Socratic dialogues, Euthyphro .

• Here is a link: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1642 .
• Here is Euthyphro as an audiobook: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19840.

In Plato’s dialogues we often find Socrates asking about the nature of something and then critically examine proposed answers, finding assorted illuminating objections that often suggest next steps. In this dialogue, Socrates and Euthyphro are discussing the nature of piety or holiness. Socrates and Euthyphro never conclusively discover what piety is, but they learn much about how various attempts to define piety fail. The dialogue works the same if we substitute moral goodness for piety. Understood in this way, Euthyphro provides a classic argument against Divine Command Theory, a view about the nature of morality that says that what is right is right simply because it is commanded by God.

Socrates would not have us believe our questions have no correct answers. He is genuinely seeking the truth of the matter. But he would impress on us that inquiry is hard and that untested claims to knowledge amount to little more than vanity. Even though Euthyphro and Socrates don’t achieve full knowledge of the nature of piety, their understanding is advanced through testing the answers that Euthyphro suggests. We come to see why piety can’t be understood just by identifying examples of it. While examples of pious acts fail to give us a general understanding of piety, the fact that we can identify examples of what is pious suggests that we have some grasp of the notion even in the absence of a clear understanding of it.

After a few failed attempts to define piety, Euthyphro suggests that what is pious is what is loved by the gods (all of them, the Greeks recognized quite a few). Many religious believers continue to hold some version of Divine Command Theory. In his response to Euthyphro, Socrates points us towards a rather devastating critique of this view and any view that grounds morality in authority. Socrates asks whether what is pious is pious because the gods love it or whether the gods love what is pious because it is pious. Let’s suppose that the gods agree in loving just what is pious. The question remains whether their loving the pious explains its piety or whether some things being pious explains why the gods love them. Once this question of what is supposed to explain what is made clear, Euthyphro agrees with Socrates that the gods love what is pious because it is pious. The problem with the alternative view, that what is pious is pious because it is loved by the gods, is that this view makes piety wholly arbitrary. Anything could be pious if piety is just a matter of being loved by the gods. If the gods love puppy torture, then this would be pious. Hopefully this seems absurd. Neither Socrates nor Euthyphro is willing to accept that  what is pious is completely arbitrary. At this point, Socrates points out to Euthyphro that since an act’s being pious is what explains why the gods love it, he has failed to give an account of what piety is. The explanation can’t run in both directions. In taking piety to explain being loved by the gods, we are left lacking an explanation of what piety itself is. Euthyphro gives up shortly after this failed attempt and walks off in a huff.  If we substitute talk of God making things right or wrong by way of commanding them for talk of the gods loving what is pious in this exchange of ideas, we can readily see that Divine Command Theory has the rather unsavory result that torturing innocent puppies would be right if God commanded it. We will return to this problem when we take up ethical theory later in the course. While we don’t reach the end of inquiry into piety (or goodness) in Euthyphro , we do make discernible progress in coming to see why a few faulty accounts must be set aside. Socrates does not refute the skeptic or the relativist Sophist by claiming to discover the truth about anything. What he does instead is show us how to engage in rational inquiry and show us how we can make progress by taking the possibility of rational inquiry seriously.

Plato (429-347 B.C.) came from a family of high status in ancient Athens. He was a friend and fan of Socrates and some of his early dialogues chronicle events in Socrates’ life. Socrates is a character in all of Plato’s dialogues. But in many, the figure of Socrates is employed as a voice for Plato’s own views. Unlike Socrates, Plato offers very developed and carefully reasoned views about a great many things. Here we will briefly introduce his core metaphysical, epistemological and ethical views.

Metaphysics and Epistemology

Plato’s metaphysics and epistemology are best summarized by his device of the divided line. The vertical line between the columns below distinguishes reality and knowledge. It is divided into levels that identify what in reality corresponds with specific modes of thought.

Here we have a hierarchy of Modes of Thought, or types of mental representational states, with the highest being knowledge of the forms and the lowest being imaging (in the literal sense of forming images in the mind). Corresponding to these degrees of knowledge we have degrees of reality. The less real includes the physical world, and even less real, our representations of it in art. The more real we encounter as we inquire into the universal natures of the various kinds of things and processes we encounter. According to Plato, the only objects of knowledge are the forms which are abstract entities.

In saying that the forms are abstract, we are saying that while they do exist, they do not exist in space and time. They are ideals in the sense that a form, say the form of horse-ness, is the template or paradigm of being a horse. All the physical horses partake of the form of horse-ness, but exemplify it only to partial and varying degrees of perfection. No actual triangular object is perfectly triangular, for instance. But all actual triangles have something in common, triangularity. The form of triangularity is free from all of the imperfections of the various actual instances of being triangular. We get the idea of something being more or less perfectly triangular. For various triangles to come closer to perfection than others suggests that there is some ideal standard of “perfectly triangularity.” This for Plato, is the form of triangularity. Plato also takes moral standards like justice and aesthetic standards like beauty to admit of such degrees of perfection. Beautiful physical things all partake of the form of beauty to some degree or another. But all are imperfect in varying degrees and ways. The form of beauty, however, lacks the imperfections of its space and time bound instances. Perfect beauty is not something we can picture or imagine. But an ideal form of beauty is required to account for how beautiful things are similar and to make sense of how things can be beautiful to some less than perfect degree or another.

Only opinion can be had regarding the physical things, events, and states of affairs we are acquainted with through our sensory experience. With physical things constantly changing, the degree to which we can grasp how things are at any given place and time is of little consequent. Knowledge of the nature of the forms is a grasp of the universal essential natures of things. It is the intellectual perception of what various things, like horses or people, have in common that makes them things of a kind. Plato accepts Socrates’ view that to know the good is to do the good. So his notion of epistemic excellence in seeking knowledge of the forms will be a central component of his conception of moral virtue.

Plato offers us a tripartite account of the soul. The soul consists of a rational thinking element, a motivating willful element, and a desire-generating appetitive element. Plato offers a story of the  rational element of the soul falling from a state of grace (knowledge of the forms) and dragged down into a human state by the unruly appetites. This story of the soul’s relation to the imperfect body supports Plato’s view that the knowledge of the forms is a kind of remembrance. This provides a convenient source of knowledge as an alternative to the merely empirical and imperfect support of our sense experience. Plato draws an analogy between his conception of the soul and a chariot drawn by two horses, one obedient, the other rebellious. The charioteer in this picture represents the rational element of the soul, the good horse the obedient will, and the bad horse, of course, represents those nasty earthly appetites. To each of the elements of the soul, there corresponds a virtue; for the rational element there is wisdom, for the willing element of the soul there is courage, and for the appetitive element there is temperance. Temperance is matter of having your appetites under control. This might sound like chronic self-denial and repression, but properly understood, it is not. Temperance and courage are cultivated through habit. In guiding our appetites by cultivating good habits, Plato holds, we can come to desire what is really good for us (you know, good diet, exercise, less cable TV, and lots more philosophy – that kind of stuff).

Wisdom is acquired through teaching, via the dialectic, or through “remembrance.” Perhaps, to make the epistemological point a little less metaphysically loaded, we can think of remembrance as insight. A more general virtue of justice is conceived as each thing functioning as it should.

To get Plato’s concept of justice as it applies to a person, think of the charioteer managing and controlling his team; keeping both horses running in the intended direction and at the intended speed. Justice involves the rational element being wise and in charge. For a person to be just is simply a matter of having the other virtues and having them functioning together harmoniously.

Given Plato’s ethical view of virtue as a matter of the three elements of the soul functioning together as they should, Plato’s political philosophy is given in his view of the state as the human “writ at large.” Project the standards Plato offers for virtue in an individual human onto the aggregate of individuals in a society and you have Plato’s vision of the virtuous state. In the virtuous state, the rational element (the philosophers) are in charge. The willing element (the guardians or the military class) is obedient and courageous in carrying out the policies of the rational leadership. And the appetitive element (the profit-driven business class) functions within the rules and constraints devised by the rational element (for instance, by honestly adhering to standards of accounting). A temperate business class has the profit motive guided by the interests of the community via regulation devised by the most rational. The virtuous business class refrains from making its comfort and indulgence the over-riding concern of the state. Plato, in other words, would be no fan of totally free markets, but neither would he do away with the market economy altogether.

Plato’s vision of social justice is non-egalitarian and anti-democratic. While his view would not be popular today, it is still worthwhile to consider his criticism of democracy and rule by the people. Plato has Socrates address this dialectically by asking a series of questions about who we would want to take on various jobs. Suppose we had grain and wanted it processed into flour.

We would not go to the cobbler or the horse trainer for this, we’d go to the miller. Suppose we had a horse in need of training. We obviously would not go to the miller or the baker for this important task, we’d go to the horse trainer. In general, we want important functions to be carried out by the people with the expertise or wisdom to do them well. Now suppose we had a state to run. Obviously we would not want to turn this important task over to the miller, the cobbler, or the horse trainer. We’d want someone who knows what he or she is doing in charge. Plato has a healthy regard for expertise. As Plato sees it, democracy amounts to turning over the ethically most important jobs to the people who have the least expertise and wisdom in this area. There is very little reason to expect that a state run by cobblers, millers, and horse trainers will be a virtuous state.

• Socrates and Plato. Authored by : W. Russ Payne. Provided by : Bellevue College. Located at : https://commons.bellevuecollege.edu/wrussellpayne/an-introduction-to-philosophy/ . Project : https://commons.bellevuecollege.edu/wrussellpayne/an-introduction-to-philosophy/. License : CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial

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A Study of The Relationship Between Plato and Socrates

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Bibliography

• Plato, John M. Cooper, and D. S. Hutchinson. Complete Works. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub., 1997. Print.
• Centrelli, Joseph. "Socrates: The Founder of Western Philosophy Never Wrote a Thing?" Unenlightened English . N.p., 13 July 2009. Web. 28 June 2015.
• "Plato & Socrates." Plato & Socrates . N.p., n.d. Web. 28 June 2015.
• "Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy . N.p., n.d. Web. 29 June 2015.

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Virtues of Authenticity

• Alexander Nehamas

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Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates

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The eminent philosopher and classical scholar Alexander Nehamas presents here a collection of his most important essays on Plato and Socrates. The papers are unified in theme by the idea that Plato’s central philosophical concern in metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics was to distinguish the authentic from the fake, the original from its imitations. In approach, the collection displays Nehamas’s characteristic combination of analytical rigor and sensitivity to the literary form and dramatic effect of Plato’s work. Together, the papers represent Nehamas’s distinct and original contributions to scholarship on Plato and Socrates and serve as a comprehensive introduction to the thought of these two philosophers. In the book’s opening section, Nehamas discusses Plato’s representation of Socrates as a model of authentic human goodness, showing that Plato’s Socrates is a more skeptical, troubling, and individualistic thinker than is usually supposed. The papers in the second section form a sustained defense of a new and important understanding of Plato’s theory of the forms and the evolution of that theory in Plato’s later writings. The third section examines Plato’s contention that popular entertainment—by which he meant Greek epic and tragic poetry—misleads its audience into a debased life, an argument Nehamas relates to modern anxieties about television and other forms of popular culture. The collection also includes a discussion of Plato’s use of the dialogue form in his representation of Socrates and carefully examines the combination of literary and philosophical elements in his work. Nehamas argues in the book that Plato’s specific judgments of what is authentic are often flawed, but that his idea of authenticity as the mark of truth, beauty, and goodness is stronger than many modern scholars have assumed. In drawing together Nehamas’s many influential ideas about Plato and Socrates, Virtues of Authenticity is a major contribution to the study of ancient Greek philosophy.

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Plato’s Apology of Socrates: A Commentary

David hernández de la fuente , universidad carlos iii de madrid. [email protected].

As a fundamental landmark not only in the history of Ancient Philosophy, but also for the shaping of western political theory, modern ethics, identity and sensibility, Plato’s Apology has been for many years a basic reading in the syllabus of classicists, historians and philosophers. As this new commentary goes to show, the Apology must still be regarded as an essential text for those who aim at having a command of Ancient Greek language and culture. In the last years, some didactic approaches and introductions to Plato’s dialogues for the use of students of Philosophy and Classical Studies have been published: we can cite, for instance R. Hunters’ work on the Symposium , or W. Stokes’ edition, translation and commentary of the Apology , among the many existing surveys of single Platonic dialogues for first-time and intermediate readers. 1 However, the aim of this volume edited by Paul Allen Miller and Charles Platter goes beyond the usual educational purposes and presents a new and complete commentary on the Greek text with thorough explanations, both of grammatical and content features, and a series of 33 essays, as many as the traditional chapters of the Apology , intended to promote class discussion and further reading and thinking.

The book takes a beneficial approach for “intermediate students of Greek,” (xiii, 3) who can read the dialogue in the original language, solve their language problems—thanks to the abundant apparatus of grammar and glossaries—and reflect upon the main questions of its philosophical, historical and political background. Miller and Platter intentionally chose not to present a detailed survey of the background of the Apology , for which the teacher can refer the students to fundamental works such as Brickhouse and Smith (1990), Slings and De Strycker (1994) and D. Nails (2002). 2 After a short presentation of the aims of the volume, Miller and Platter do offer two concise sections dealing with the historical and socio-cultural Athenian context of the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Section I (pp. 4-6) briefly presents the Athenian trial procedure in the context of the oligarchic revolution and Section II (pp. 7-10) examines the main topics of the Socratic-Platonic approach to philosophy and moral responsibility.

The brevity of these sections, though, means that this may not be an ideal introduction to Plato for absolute newcomers nor a thorough study of the Apology for scholars, who will not find the usual set-up with systematic preface, background, chronology, influence, etc., followed by the Greek text and the detailed commentary at the back of the book. Instead, Miller and Platter have opted for a more convenient format for students and instructors. Readers find themselves right away face to face with the Greek text in a very attractive layout divided in three parts. The upper part of the page has the Greek text, based on that of Burnet’s OCT edition, apart from some twenty departures, which are listed in an appendix (p. 195). The text has a clear traditional structure with page and paragraph numbers from Etienne’s edition in the margins, which allow an easy lookup in the running commentary. Moreover, each of the 33 chapters is preceded by a useful summary as preparation for the students. The middle part has a running vocabulary with the purpose of displaying “less common words and expressions the first time they appear on the text” (xiv). Finally, at the bottom of the page, there is a running commentary including its main features.

Miller and Platter show a very remarkable command of the text and the numerous interpretations of the most discussed passages, as clearly noticeable in both the commentary and the essays. The running glosses present the virtues of the traditional line-by-line commentary. Here the reader can enjoy a rare combination of erudition, both philological (e.g., pp. 52, 99) and philosophical (e.g., pp. 49, 97), and even humor (p. 39). A good instance is the note to 26e1, where Miller and Platter discuss the meaning of ὀρχήστρα , using nine different commentaries (from 1908 to 2002) and convincingly explain the passage to the student.

It is possible to take issue with some parts of the commentary, e.g. the interpretation of ἀλογώτατον in 18c8 at an allegorical level as “unutterable”. 3 It would have been interesting to comment in 33c5 and 39c1 on the influence of the irrational in Socrates’ conception of dreams and oracles, in line with E.R. Dodds, 4 and some further discussion on the daimonion from the point of view of divination 5 would have been useful (though this is partially developed in essay 19). However, these are minor observations, and more suggestions for further analysis in class than criticisms, for, in general, the tone and information are most suitable to both learners and instructors.

Especially worth mentioning as a distinctive feature of this edition and commentary is the series of 33 essays, incorporating not only the latest views on Socrates and Plato’s Apology , but also the basic topics of the dialogue. The discussion thus offers both stimulating perspectives on traditional debates, such as the relation between poetry and philosophy or the use of Platonic myths (p.158) and helpful comparisons between ancient, modern and contemporary topics. Among the latter are references to modern juries and legal systems (p.164) and to the contemporary conflict between science and religion over the theory of evolution (p.151), as well as some thought-provoking discussions about civil disobedience that bring in Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King (p. 186-7). The essays include reflections on the importance of grammar and syntax for the understanding of philosophical contents (p. 172) and accounts of the high-level scholarly debates (e.g. that between Vlastos and Nehamas in pp. 177-8) which make clear at the same time the learning of Miller and Platter and their comprehensive approach to the Apology .

Finally, a concise bibliography of the works quoted in the commentary and accompanying essays (pp. 11-16) and a complete glossary of all the words contained in the running vocabulary (pp. 197-222), conveniently located at the end of the volume, must be also mentioned and should be most welcomed for students. The accuracy of the Greek text is, by the way, very remarkable: we have only found one mistake: φπς instead of φῄς in the gloss to 27d1 (p. 79).

To sum up, this volume in the Oklahoma Series in Classical Literature presents a very valuable tool for its use in intermediate Greek courses. Miller and Platter successfully achieve their goals in a carefully prepared didactic edition and commentary and a challenging collection of essays for class discussion. It is a very advisable acquisition for any department of Classics as a textbook for students of ancient Greek and as a guide for instructors who wish to offer a course on Plato’s Apology .

1 . Hunter, R., Plato , Götingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1963 and Michael C. Stokes, Plato: Apology . With an Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1997. Both of them reviewed in BMCR, cf. respectively 2005.04.54 and 1998.98.4.13 .

2 . T.C. Brickhouse and N.D. Smith, Socrates on Trial , Princeton University Press 1990; S. R. Slings and E. De Strycker, Plato’s Apology of Socrates : A Literary and Philosophical Study With a Running Commentary. Leiden, New York, and Köln: E.J. Brill, 1994; D. Nails, The People of Plato , Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 2002.

3 . Perhaps it is more ironic than allegorical: cf. D. M. Leibowitz, The Ironic Defense of Socrates: Plato’s Apology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 46

4 . E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational , Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1951, 107.

5 . On problems of the daimonic prophesies to Socrates cf. e.g., M.L. McPherran, “Introducing a New God: Socrates and His Daimonion,” in P. Destrée & N.D. Smith, Socrates’ Divine Sign: Religion, Practice, and Value in Socratic Philosophy . Kelowna, BC: Academic Printing and Publishing, 2005, pp. 13-30. On the daimonion as a intermediate between the Socrates and the gods, cf. also the traditional views of A. Tovar, Vida de Sócrates , Madrid: Revista de Occidente 1947, p. 223 ff. and H. Gundert, “Platon und das Daimonion des Sokrates”, Gymnasium 61 (1954), 513-514.

The Trial of Socrates

Lesson Plan

Introduction

In 399 BCE Socrates was tried by an Athenian jury on charges of (a) denying the existence of deities, (b) introducing new deities, and (c) corrupting the youth of Athens.  Socrates was found guilty and ultimately executed.  His trial and death have remained controversial until today.  This activity involves retrying Socrates, using as the sources of evidence relevant Platonic dialogues ( Euthyphro, Republic, Apology ), Aristophanes’ Clouds , Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, and secondary sources such as Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy . The lesson plan below outlines the trial activity and assessment that follow, and includes guiding essential questions for the trial. The supplemental materials at the end provide some study questions for various primary source readings.

Research:   Half the class is the prosecution team (PT) and the other half is the defense team (DT).  Each member of the team must assist in researching and preparing the case for trial.  Each student keeps a notebook containing relevant facts, potential witnesses, and proposed strategies for their team.  These notebooks are turned in as part of each student’s evaluation.

Burden of Proof : For all these charges, the burden of proof rests with the prosecution.  The prosecution must show by a preponderance of the evidence– not beyond a reasonable doubt but with evidence weightier than that presented by the defense–that the defendant (a) did those things of which he is accused and (b) did them with malicious intent or with a callous disregard for the safety of others.

Witnesses:   Each team “creates” four witnesses and prepares those witnesses for testimony.  Each team may prepare exhibits (e.g., timelines, graphs, charts, logs, letters, legal codes) as they see fit.  Exhibits to be presented must be primarily visual in nature; students are not allowed to introduce a book or a photocopy for the purpose of having a witness read it into the record.  Witnesses cannot lie or fabricate events.  They must testify to factual events, or to events that are reasonable inferences of factual events.  Under direct questioning, witnesses will be permitted to use notes but cannot be coached by other members of their team while on the stand. Although students are free to pick your own witnesses, here are some potential witnesses:

Some Potential Prosecution Team Witnesses:

• Meletus: the man who pressed charges against Socrates
• Anytus: prominent Athenian politician who threatened Socrates
• Strepsiades: a character in the Clouds who takes lessons from Socrates with “tragic” consequences
• Pheidippides: son of Strepsiades who learns to make the weak speech stronger
• Euthyphro: character in a Socratic dialogue on the nature of piety or holiness
• Aristophanes: playwright who won a competition for performance of his comedy, Clouds
• Critias, Charmides: participants in Socratic dialogue who later supported the Thirty Tyrants
• I.F. Stone: contemporary writer and critic of Socrates

  Some Potential Defense Team Witnesses:

• Plato: philosopher who documents the trial in The Apology , represents Socratic method in his dialogues (e.g. Euthyphro ), and honors Socrates in his “Allegory of the Cave” from the Republic
• Crito and Charmides: pupils of Socrates
• Alcibiades: Athenian general who can testify to Socrates’ military career and devotion to Athens
• Socrates: the defendant
• Don Nardo: contemporary historian and defender of Socrates
• Pericles: leader of Athens during its “golden age” and early years of the Peloponnesian Wars

Disclosure:   By the end of the third day of work, each team must tell the other which witnesses they will call to testify.  Teams also must share sources of information used to prepare each witness for trial.  This is particularly important to help witnesses and attorneys prepare for cross-examination.

Roles:   Each team should have students performing the following roles:

Coordinator: The coordinator assigns responsibilities (see below) to individual team members, monitors the progress of the team in preparing its case, and troubleshoots when problems arise.  The coordinator ordinarily presents the closing argument.

Opening Statement: The opening statement introduces team members and describes their assigned roles; informs the court of witnesses that will be called; and explains how each witness will strengthen the team’s case. Students who make opening statements also are expected to assist their team as researchers retrieving or photocopying information as needed.

Direct Attorneys: Four attorneys are responsible for direct questioning of their team’s witnesses.

Cross Attorneys: Four more attorneys from each team are responsible for cross-examining the opposition’s witnesses.

Witnesses: Each team will call four witnesses. Students use the sources as well as their imaginations to identify the best witnesses for their cases. See above.

Closing Statements: Each team delivers a closing statement, preferably prepared and presented by the team coordinator. The closing statement should be a persuasive and detailed summary of all evidence presented by the team as well a last chance to respond aggressively to testimony or evidence provided by the opposition.

Judge: The teacher or an outside adult chosen by the teacher serves as the judge, who reaches the verdict on each of the three charges.

Organization:   Team organization during the first two days of preparation will likely determine both the quality and outcome of the trial. After choosing roles, coordinators should divide their teams into three “sets,” each one consisting of (a) a direct attorney, (b) a witness, and (c) a cross-examination attorney.

Trial Procedure:

(PT)  Prosecution Opening Statement

(DT) Defense Opening Statement

Case for Prosecution

P Direct Examination of Witness 1

D Cross-Examination of Witness 1

P Direct Examination of Witness 2

D Cross-Examination of Witness 2

P Direct Examination of Witness 3

D Cross-Examination of Witness 3

P Direct Examination of Witness 4

D Cross-Examination of Witness 4

Case for Defense

D Direct Examination of Witness 1

P  Cross-Examination of Witness 1

D Direct Examination of Witness 2

P  Cross-Examination of Witness 2

D Direct Examination of Witness 3

P  Cross-Examination of Witness 3

D Direct Examination of Witness 4

P  Cross-Examination of Witness 4

Closing Arguments

PT closing argument

DT closing argument

Objections:

The judge will recognize properly presented objections.  If an attorney wishes to object that attorney must (a) rise, (b) and say, “I object to that question, Your Honor,” and (c) then wait for the judge to recognize the attorney.  When the judge recognizes the objection, the judge will ask the attorney for the basis of the objection.  The following are acceptable grounds for objections:

• “ Your Honor, that is a leading question.”

Attorneys on direct examination must ask open-ended questions and refrain from telegraphing the answer; on direct examination yes/no questions are not permitted;  on cross-examination leading questions are permitted.

• “Your Honor, there has been no basis established for the question…the question is irrelevant.”

Attorneys must sequence their questions so that the relevance of each question is established .

• “Your Honor, the witness has no basis for answering the question.”

Attorneys must establish the credibility of each witness before they can offer factual or opinion testimony.

• “Y our Honor, the question has been asked and answered by the witness.”

Attorneys are not to testify on behalf of their witnesses, or to ask complex questions which include evidence and opinion.

Major Themes and Questions Surrounding the Trial of Socrates:

• In what way is Socrates’ story fundamentally a story of the conflict between perennial and axial age beliefs?
• How did the Peloponnesian War set the stage for the accusations against Socrates? (See Nardo)
• What exactly was Socrates accused of? (See Nardo and Plato’s Apology )
• How much merit was there in the charges leveled against Socrates? How did Socrates defend himself against the charges at his trial? (See Plato’s Apology )
• What was Aristophanes’ critique of Socrates? Does the critique have merit despite its exaggeration and caricature of Socrates? (See Aristophanes’ The Clouds )
• Why did Socrates not resist his death sentence? (See Plato’s Crito ).
• How can Socrates be seen as a courageous seeker of truth and virtue who sacrificed his life for the good of Athens? (See Plato’s Allegory of the Cave , Apology , and Crito )

Trial Evaluation

Students are evaluated for both the quality of their preparation and the quality of their arguments and counter-arguments during the trial.  Among the criteria guiding evaluation are contribution to team strategy, diligence, collaboration with team members, thoroughness of research, and command of relevant concepts and arguments.

Written Assessment

Students may choose either the formal essay or dialogue option below. The goal in this assignment is to demonstrate deep engagement with the profound issues raised by the Trial of Socrates. Students must include a bibliography for any sources found in the library as well sources provided in class.

• Dialogue:  Assume the following scenario. A recently discovered fragment reveals that the polling of juries was introduced by Socrates at his trial in 399 BCE. Having tried Socrates for crimes against the state religion and corruption of the youth, the jury, composed of 501 citizens, found him guilty. After noting that he would have been acquitted had thirty jurors voted the other way, Socrates asks the jurors to share their thoughts about his guilt or innocence. A debate among the jurors ensues. (Note: A model dialogue, titled “Socrates Revisited: The Jurors Speak,” by Steven Goldberg, can be found in Philosophy Now , Issue No. 19, Winter 1997/98.)

Students should single-space lines spoken by a single character but double space when you shift from one speaker to another. Dialogues should not imitate normal colloquial conversation or use short one or two-line statements. Students can use any characters they wish (e.g., the jurors, family members at the dinner table, your classmates), but you need to analyze the issues in depth. They shouldn’t sacrifice depth of analysis for cleverness or literary flair. Dialogues should be roughly three to four pages in length. Standard margins and 12 point Times Roman font.

• Essay :  Did the trial of Socrates represent a betrayal of Athens’ values, or did Socrates pose a genuine threat to the Athenian city-state that justified his trial and execution? Represent both sides of the argument and defend your thesis. You should show your command of ALL the primary sources Aristophanes’ The Clouds , Plato’s Euthyphro , Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” Plato’s Apology , and Plato’s Crito ) by analyzing relevant ideas and arguments in depth; and you should draw upon selected secondary sources (e.g., I.F. Stone, Nardo) that were assigned or that you used in your research for the trial.

The essay should address each of the following: Athenian politics, religious tradition, recent history (e.g., Peloponnesian Wars), the role of drama in shaping attitudes toward Socrates, Socrates’ philosophy as represented by Plato, and the conduct of the  trial. Students also might want to draw from biographical information contained in the Apology and other sources. The essay should consider whether the city’s criticism of Socrates was justified, even if you disagree with the verdict or the harshness of the sentence. Please note that, unlike a closing statement, the essay or dialogue should show the complexity of the issue and represent competing points of view. The essay should be double-spaced with standard margins and a 12 point Times Roman font. The essay should include a clear thesis in the introduction and a clear topic sentence for each paragraph that reinforces or develops the argument. Your essay should be roughly three to five pages in length.

  Conclusion

The combination of the trial format and use of primary sources as evidence challenges students to exercise and stretch their intellectual skills. Students synthesize complex ideas from historical (Thucydides), dramatic (Aristophanes), and philosophical (Plato) texts. Working both independently and collaboratively, they analyze and craft arguments and counter-arguments grounded in both historical evidence and philosophical reasoning. And students must follow Socrates’ own example by presenting their ideas in an effort to persuade their peers. A second and perhaps even more important reason for the trial is that it both brings to life for students the historical crisis of Athens over two thousand years ago and motivates timeless fundamental philosophical questions that were brilliantly examined then and that continue to vex us today.

A word of advice to fellow teachers. The trial roles call for specialization and run the risk of giving students only a piecemeal understanding of both history and philosophy. This risk can be mitigated by (a) introducing the relevant texts to the entire class, (b) instructing students to research collaboratively as a team before assigning trial roles (typically only once they have picked their witnesses), and (c) assigning a culminating essay or dialogue that requires students to move beyond their trial role and show command of the larger questions and themes surrounding the trial.

Supplemental Materials:

Guiding Questions on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave :

• What do you think is symbolized by the cave and by the world outside?
• Who are the prisoners and why are they chained?
• What are the shadows? What are they meant to symbolize?
• Who is the one prisoner released from his chains? Did Plato have someone in mind?
• Why is he reluctant to leave the cave? Why is he reluctant to return?
• Why do the other prisoners regard the one who has returned to guide them as mad?
• What does the Allegory of the Cave suggest about education, how humans learn, and the nature of knowledge?
• What does the allegory suggest about who ought to rule the state and why? Speculate: Do you think Spartans would be sympathetic to Plato’s critique? Is Plato’s critique anti-democratic?
• Do you think the Allegory of the Cave relies upon a grim or pessimistic view of human nature?
• Do you think the Allegory of the Cave offers an axial age model of the seeker that embodies the best possibilities in humans?

Guiding Questions on The Apology :

• What kind of speech does Socrates say he will give? How does his speech differ from speeches normally made in court? (17a-18a)
• Who are Socrates’ first accusers?  How does he defend himself against them? (18b-20b
• What is Socrates’ mission? What is his explanation for why he seeks someone wiser than himself? What is the implication for the accusation that Socrates is an atheist? How does Socrates account for growing hostility from Athenians? (20c-23e)
• How does Socrates try to show that Meletus has contradicted himself or made illogical charges on impiety and corruption of the young? Does he make good arguments? Do you think Socrates directly addresses the charges or that he is evasive? (24b-29a)
• Why does Socrates refer to his war record? How does Socrates defend not just himself but his mission to philosophize? How does he argue that as a “gadfly” he actually benefits and improves Athens through his philosophizing? How does Socrates argue that he has put the welfare of Athens ahead of himself? (29a-33c)
• Why does Socrates choose not to seek mercy from the court? What does he see as his purpose in defending himself before the jury?  (34c-35d)
• What does Socrates propose as a counter-penalty? What is his defense of this proposal? Is it reasonable, and why? (35e-38b)
• What is Socrates’ judgment of Athens after he is sentenced with death? Is the sentence just? Why? (38c-42a)

Guiding Questions on Aristophanes’ The Clouds :

Questions about the Plot:

• How does the play show that Socrates denies the existence of Zeus, introduce novel Cloud-goddesses into Athens, and teaches a young man that incest and father-beating are permissible?
• Why does Strepsiades go to Socrates’ “thinkery?” Why does his son, Pheidippides, refuse?
• How does Strepsiades quickly discovery that the Socratic course of instruction goes far beyond training in courtroom oratory?
• After Pheidippides turns out to be a star pupil and drives away his father’s creditors, they get into a heated argument. What is the nature of the argument?
• How does Pheidippides then justify beating his father? What is Strepsiades’
• How does the Socrates of The Clouds (a) differ from the sophists and (b) resemble the philosopher described by Plato?
• How does the Socrates of The Clouds differ sharply from Aristophanes’ Socrates? (For example, does Plato’s Socrates teach people how to “make the weak speech stronger?”)
• How does the Socrates of The Clouds demonstrate the nonexistence of Zeus? Does he see the Clouds as Zeus-like deities, or do they represent the denial of gods and traditional religion (e.g., mere mist, air)?
• Do you see a connection between the view of clouds as governed by natural laws (“necessity” as opposed to the will or choice of gods) and Pheidippides appeal to what is “natural” in challenging traditional family values (e.g., defense of beating one’s mother and committing incest)?
• Does the Socrates of The Clouds show any interest in questions of piety and justice, themes that are important to Plato’s Socrates?
• How is Just Speech, the spokesman for the old-fashioned, traditional way of life in Athens, defeated by Unjust Speech, who shamelessly celebrates decadent self-indulgence?
• Do you think Unjust Speech is a spokesman for Aristophanes’ Socrates, or do you see decisive differences between them?
• Does either Just Speech or Unjust Speech go beyond received opinion or convention? Does either pursue knowledge of nature by learning?

Guiding Questions On Aristophanes’ Criticism of Socrates:

• How does Aristophanes make a serious argument that Socrates is ignorant of, or indifferent to, the fundamental requirements of political life? (Think about what we mean when we say that someone’s head is in the clouds…)
• How does Aristophanes make a serious argument that Socrates is ignorant of the human soul (e.g., (a) overestimating the ability of men to think rationally, as shown by his willingness to reveal his secret teachings to the ignoramus Strepsiades; (b) forgetting the power of human love of family) and man’s need for sacred gods—as opposed to empty air?
• How does Aristophanes make a serious argument Socrates is ignorant about the truth of the gods? Note that although Socrates wants to know the truth about the nature of things, for Aristophanes philosophical speech is like Socrates’ Clouds themselves: pure puffery, mist, smoke that teaches us nothing real, valuable, or sustaining. Perhaps the philosopher’s chief error is to believe that rational speech can guide us to ultimate truths and provide an adequate guide to life.

Guiding Questions on Plato’s Euthyphro

• What is the setting for the dialogue? Why are both Socrates and Euthyphro at court?
• How does Socrates try to restrain Euthyphro from prosecuting his father? Compare to Aristophanes’ Clouds where Socratic influence leads Pheidippides to beat his own father?
• Why motivates the effort of Socrates and Euthyphro to define piety?
• What is Euthyphro’s first definition of piety? How and why does it fail?
• What is Euthyphro’s revised definition? How and why does it fail?
• What is Euthyphro’s third definition? Explain the central dilemma posed by Socrates’ question to Euthyphro: Is something loved by the gods because it is pious, or is something because it is loved by the gods? What is the significance of this question for the trial?
• Note that Socrates shifts emphasis from an essential property of an object to a new model of explanation: relation of part (piety) to whole (justice).
• How does Euthyphro’s attempt to apply this model result in the same confusion as before? How has Euthyphro moved in a circle? Is this due to Euthyphro’s failings or to Socrates’ shortcomings? Explain.
• How does the dialogue end?

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• McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia - Socrates
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• Table Of Contents

Plato , unlike Xenophon , is generally regarded as a philosopher of the highest order of originality and depth. According to some scholars, his philosophical skills made him far better able than Xenophon was to understand Socrates and therefore more valuable a source of information about him. The contrary view is that Plato’s originality and vision as a philosopher led him to use his Socratic discourses not as mere devices for reproducing the conversations he had heard but as vehicles for the advocacy of his own ideas (however much they may have been inspired by Socrates) and that he is therefore far more untrustworthy than Xenophon as a source of information about the historical Socrates. Whichever of these two views is correct, it is undeniable that Plato is not only the deeper philosopher but also the greater literary artist. Some of his dialogues are so natural and lifelike in their depiction of conversational interplay that readers must constantly remind themselves that Plato is shaping his material, as any author must.

Although Socrates is the interlocutor who guides the conversation in most of Plato’s dialogues , there are several in which he plays a minor role ( Parmenides , Sophist , Statesman , and Timaeus , all of which are generally agreed to be among Plato’s later works) and one ( Laws , also composed late) in which he is entirely absent. Why did Plato assign Socrates a small role in some dialogues (and none in Laws ) and a large role in others? A simple answer is that, by this device, Plato intended to signal to his readers that the dialogues in which Socrates is the major interlocutor convey the philosophy of Socrates, whereas those in which he is a minor figure or does not appear at all present Plato’s own ideas.

But there are formidable objections to this hypothesis , and for several reasons most scholars do not regard it as a serious possibility. To begin with, it is unlikely that in so many of his works Plato would have assigned himself so passive and mechanical a role as merely a recording device for the philosophy of Socrates. Furthermore, the portrait of Socrates that results from this hypothesis is not coherent . In some of the dialogues in which he is the principal interlocutor, for example, Socrates insists that he does not have satisfactory answers to the questions he poses—questions such as “What is courage?” (raised in Laches ), “What is self-control?” ( Charmides ), and “What is piety?” ( Euthyphro ). In other dialogues in which he plays a major role, however, Socrates does offer systematic answers to such questions. In Books II–X of Republic , for example, he proposes an elaborate answer to the question, “What is justice?,” and in doing so he also defends his view of the ideal society, the condition of the human soul , the nature of reality, and the power of art, among many other topics. Were we to hold that all the Platonic dialogues in which Socrates is the main speaker are depictions of the philosophy of Socrates—a philosophy that Plato endorses but to which he has made no contributions of his own—then we would be committed to the absurd view that Socrates both has and lacks answers to these questions.

For these reasons, there is a broad consensus among scholars that we should not look to works such as Republic , Phaedo , Phaedrus , and Philebus for a historically accurate account of the thought of Socrates—even though they contain a speaker called Socrates who argues for certain philosophical positions and opposes others. At the same time, we can explain why Plato uses the literary character of Socrates in many of his writings to present ideas that go well beyond anything that the historical Socrates said or believed. In these works, Plato is developing ideas that were inspired by his encounter with Socrates, using methods of inquiry borrowed from Socrates, and showing how much can be accomplished with these Socratic starting points. That is why he assigns Socrates the role of principal interlocutor, despite the fact that he did not intend these works to be mere re-creations of Socrates’ conversations.

Accordingly, the dialogues of Plato that adhere most closely to what he heard from Socrates are those in which the interlocutor called Socrates searches, without apparent success, for answers to questions about the nature of the ethical virtues and other practical topics—works such as Laches , Euthyphro , and Charmides . This does not mean that in these dialogues Plato is not shaping his material or that he is merely writing down, word-for-word, conversations he heard. We cannot know, and it is implausible to suppose, that in these dialogues of unsuccessful search there is a pure rendering of what the historical Socrates said, with no admixture of Platonic interpretation or supplement. All we can reasonably suppose is that here, if anywhere, Plato is re-creating the give-and-take of Socratic conversation, conveying a sense of the methods Socrates used and the assumptions that guided him when he challenged others to defend their ethical ideas and their way of life.

The portrait of Socrates in these dialogues is fully consonant with the one in Plato’s Apology , and it serves as a valuable supplement to that work. For in the Apology , Socrates insists that he does not inquire into natural phenomena (“things in the sky and below the earth”), as Aristophanes alleges. On the contrary, he says, he devotes his life to one question only: how he and others can become good human beings, or as good as possible. The questions he asks others, and discovers that they cannot answer, are posed in the hope that he might acquire greater wisdom about just this subject. This is the Socrates we find in Laches , Euthyphro , and Charmides —but not in Phaedo , Phaedrus , Philebus , or Republic . (Or, rather, it is not the Socrates of Books II–X of Republic ; the portrait of Socrates in Book I is similar in many ways to that in Apology , Laches , Euthyphro , and Charmides .) We can therefore say this much about the historical Socrates as he is portrayed in Plato’s Apology and in some of Plato’s dialogues: he has a methodology , a pattern of inquiry, and an orientation toward ethical questions. He can see how misguided his interlocutors are because he is extremely adept at discovering contradictions in their beliefs.

“ Socratic method ” has now come into general usage as a name for any educational strategy that involves cross-examination of students by their teacher. However, the method used by Socrates in the conversations re-created by Plato follows a more specific pattern: Socrates describes himself not as a teacher but as an ignorant inquirer, and the series of questions he asks are designed to show that the principal question he raises (for example, “What is piety?”) is one to which his interlocutor has no adequate answer. Typically, the interlocutor is led, by a series of supplementary questions, to see that he must withdraw the answer he at first gave to Socrates’ principal question, because that answer falls afoul of the other answers he has given. The method employed by Socrates, in other words, is a strategy for showing that the interlocutor’s several answers do not fit together as a group, thus revealing to the interlocutor his own poor grasp of the concepts under discussion. (Euthyphro, for example, in the dialogue named after him, having been asked what piety is, replies that it is whatever is “dear to the gods.” Socrates continues to probe, and the ensuing give-and-take can be summarized as follows: Socrates: Are piety and impiety opposites? Euthyphro: Yes. Socrates: Are the gods in disagreement with each other about what is good, what is just, and so on? Euthyphro: Yes. Socrates: So the very same actions are loved by some gods and hated by others? Euthyphro: Yes. Socrates: So those same actions are both pious and impious? Euthyphro: Yes.) The interlocutor, having been refuted by means of premises he himself has agreed to, is free to propose a new answer to Socrates’ principal question; or another conversational partner, who has been listening to the preceding dialogue , is allowed to take his place. But although the new answers proposed to Socrates’ principal question avoid the errors revealed in the preceding cross-examination, fresh difficulties are uncovered, and in the end the “ignorance” of Socrates is revealed as a kind of wisdom, whereas the interlocutors are implicitly criticized for failing to recognize their ignorance.

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that, because Socrates professes ignorance about certain questions, he suspends judgment about all matters whatsoever. On the contrary, he has some ethical convictions about which he is completely confident. As he tells his judges in his defense speech: human wisdom begins with the recognition of one’s own ignorance; the unexamined life is not worth living; ethical virtue is the only thing that matters; and a good human being cannot be harmed (because whatever misfortune he may suffer, including poverty, physical injury, and even death, his virtue will remain intact). But Socrates is painfully aware that his insights into these matters leave many of the most important ethical questions unanswered. It is left to his student Plato, using the Socratic method as a starting point and ranging over subjects that Socrates neglected, to offer positive answers to these questions.

Another important source of information about the historical Socrates— Aristotle —provides further evidence for this way of distinguishing between the philosophies of Socrates and Plato. In 367, some 30 years after the death of Socrates, Aristotle (who was then 17 years old) moved to Athens in order to study at Plato’s school, called the Academy . It is difficult to believe that, during his 20 years as a member of that society, Aristotle had no conversations about Socrates with Plato and others who had been personally acquainted with him. There is good reason , then, to suppose that the historical information offered about Socrates in Aristotle’s philosophical writings are based on those conversations. What Aristotle tells his readers is that Socrates asked questions but gave no replies, because he lacked knowledge; that he sought definitions of the virtues; and that he was occupied with ethical matters and not with questions about the natural world. This is the portrait of Socrates that Plato’s writings, judiciously used, give us. The fact that it is confirmed by Aristotle is all the more reason to accept it.

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On the Relationship of Socrates and Plato Luke Shenton College

From historical sources it is known that Socrates was Plato’s teacher and that Socrates was Plato’s elder by at least a few decades. Other than this, things become far less clear when examining the relationship between these two founders of western philosophy. Since Socrates never wrote down anything, scholars have become totally reliant on the works of his students to figure out who he was and what his philosophical ideas were. In Phaedrus , Plato presents a Socrates who says that writing is “inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can be only in the mind” ( Phaedrus 275a). Socrates was a master of oral speech and this was evidently his preferred method of engaging his interlocutors and teaching his students. However, when comparing the works of those who mention Socrates contradictions arise and these works disagree in places. Kierkegaard believes that Xenophon is unreliable because he is shallow, Plato is unreliable because he tries to idealize his teacher, and Aristophanes is too heavily influenced by his nature as a comic playwright.

Despite these inconsistences it is important to look at the works of these three individuals because it is the only way of beginning to understand Socrates. Due to the...

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

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Plato's Protagoras: Essays on the Confrontation of Philosophy and Sophistry

Olof Pettersson and Vigdis Songe-Møller (eds.), Plato's Protagoras: Essays on the Confrontation of Philosophy and Sophistry , Springer, 2017, 235pp., $99.99 (hbk), ISBN 9783319455839.

Reviewed by Evan Rodriguez, Idaho State University

The topic of this book is a timely one. As Olof Pettersson points out in the introduction, the study of Plato's defense of philosophy as contrasted with sophistry is an area with growing momentum and with much left unexplored. Those with a broad interest in Plato or in the Protagoras are likely to find some perspectives and ideas in this volume worth considering, especially in the final contribution by Paul Woodruff. Yet there is relatively little new analysis of the confrontation between philosophy and sophistry.

Plato's Protagoras is indeed an important dialogue for understanding the topic. Its namesake is a famous Greek intellectual and a leading figure of the sophistic movement. The dialogue depicts a lengthy conversation that he has with Socrates, including a series of intriguing methodological twists and dodges. Plato also uses an intricate framing that explicitly raises the question of what Protagoras really teaches, and implicitly raises the question of what a pupil might learn from Socrates instead. The majority of contributions in this volume, with a few exceptions discussed below, opt for a traditional reading whereby there is a clear distinction between Plato's Socrates, a moral exemplar with genuine ethical teachings, and Plato's Protagoras, who simply seeks to hide his hypocrisy long enough to receive a paycheck.

Plato himself seems to have been responsible for the negative associations we still have with the word 'sophist', and many interpreters have been quick to see a rather dismissive attitude towards these figures in the dialogues. Others, however, have highlighted the difficulty of finding a clear-cut contrast (that is, beyond the observation that sophists receive payment for their teachings while philosophers don't, a fact that may give pause to those of us in the present-day academy). Many have been hard pressed to find methodological differences: for example, in the Protagoras Plato's Socrates criticizes Protagoras for giving long speeches only to then give the longest speech of the dialogue himself. Some have looked to aim or intent instead, though this too is complicated by the fact that both Socrates and Protagoras seem ready to win the debate by almost any means. Given these complications in Plato's portrayal, not to mention the underlying historical realities, the traditional assumptions adopted throughout by the majority of the contributors are by no means a given.

The book is also unified by a general agreement in its approach to Platonic scholarship. The authors seek to illuminate the portrayal of Socrates and Protagoras by paying careful attention to details of the dramatic setting. A good example is Gro Rørstadbotten's "Turning Towards Philosophy: A Reading of Protagoras 309a1-314e2", which interestingly draws attention to the relatively young age of Socrates (the second youngest of any dialogue if we follow the dates offered by Debra Nails [1] as Rørstadbotten does) along with dramatic details of the opening scenes. This is a refreshing reminder in a literature that often treats Socrates as a timeless character, born from Plato's pen fully formed with his elenctic armor. Yet here, as elsewhere in the volume, these important clues are taken a step beyond what evidence warrants in the eyes of this reader. According to Rørstadbotten, Plato intends to portray Socrates' very birth as a philosopher: "by assuming that the dramatic date of the Protagoras is 432, this is arguably philosophy's first appearance in the distinctive form of the Socratic activity or Socratic questioning . . . the Socratic awakening in the Hippocrates section is related to the birth of the Socratic activity" (139). Socrates' perplexity at the end of the dialogue is then interpreted as his own self-conscious mystification at his transformation into a philosopher (142). These conclusions are hard to square with the historical evidence that Socrates was not the first to engage in this 'Socratic' activity (as Woodruff recognizes -- see below) and with the aporetic trope found in other dialogues as well.

The emphasis on dramatic context is often, though not always, seen in opposition to an approach that takes into account the success or failure of individual arguments. Knut Ågotnes puts it most provocatively in "Socrates' Sophisticated Attack on Protagoras" when he writes: "An implication of the interpretation I suggest in this article is that a reading of the Protagoras that focuses on the soundness of the exchange of statements and arguments between Socrates and Protagoras in a strict logical sense is less than fruitful" (27). Ågotnes suggests the familiar idea that Socrates' main goal is to reveal hidden contradictions within Protagoras' theory rather than put forward any idea of his own. Along the way he makes some helpful observations. For instance, he highlights the reputation that Callias has for seeking pleasure, which may indeed affect how we read the discussion of hedonism hosted in his basement (38).

In "The Science of Measuring Pleasure and Pain", Cynthia Freeland helpfully cites Jonathan Lavery [2] in distinguishing between 'Democritean' readings of the Protagoras that treat an individual passage in isolation, and 'Aristotelean' readings that look for the function of the passage within the whole. Of course this is not an exclusive or exhaustive dichotomy; a good example of a detailed argument reconstruction paired with a sensitivity to the context, and an exception to the general trend of the book, can be found in Hayden W. Ausland's "The Treatment of Virtue in Plato's Protagoras ". Ausland carefully parses the argument for the unity of temperance and wisdom, revealing its logical structure while at the same time paying close attention to the rather unintuitive order in which individual premises are secured. He quite plausibly suggests that the order of argumentation reveals a strategy for securing certain concessions from Protagoras that might not be admitted otherwise.

As he puts it, Ausland does not defend a single thesis but rather explores various "philosophical-literary pathways not usually pursued" (72). Nonetheless it is a highlight of the volume for its unique perspective backed by textual evidence as well as for helpful points of engagement with the secondary literature. He offers a novel reading of the methodological interlude according to which different virtues are thematized from the perspective of different characters (66-68). Yet some of the matches between a character's contribution and the single virtue given are not entirely straightforward (e.g. Hippias and piety). He also provides an interesting note cataloging in some detail the history of the label 'Great Speech' as used in recent English literature to describe Protagoras' initial display. As it turns out, it was first introduced by Vlastos as an English translation of the German ' grosse Rede ' though that could just as easily be translated 'long speech', with different connotations (52-53). While this in itself is unlikely to change one's understanding of the passage, it is helpful to be made conscious of any presuppositions brought to the text based on the labels we use.

Other helpful observations crop up elsewhere as well. Freeland draws attention to a series of interesting places where the idea of measurement appears before the famous art of measurement towards the end of the dialogue, as when Protagoras asks Socrates about the precise length that his speeches should be (127, referencing Protagoras 334d6-e3). Marina McCoy draws some interesting connections between the Protagoras and Aristophanes' Clouds , in particular the comic door-knocking scenes in either work (157). Vigdis Songe-Møller follows a paper by Marco Quintela in pointing out the surprising number of places where the Greek word 'φωνή' ('articulate sound' or 'voice') appears: the description of Hippocrates, the description of Protagoras and other sophists, the results of Prometheus' gifts to humankind, and no less than five occurrences in Socrates' transition away from the Simonides speech (168-173).

Yet, for the most part, the contributors set aside detailed textual analysis to see what conclusions can be reached by a general overview. Most often this takes the form of summarizing the conversational back-and-forth and drawing from this an interpretation of the characters' main intentions and relative moral standings. The result is often a glowing appraisal of Socrates and a rather harsh assessment of Protagoras. The Socrates that emerges is a skilled debater who is able not only to effortlessly best Protagoras in argument but also to simultaneously control the effect on his interlocutors and instill a proper understanding of true education in Hippocrates and in Plato's readers (e.g. 27-28, 82-91, 100, 119). Even Pettersson, who is less inclined to see a clear-cut distinction between the dialogue's two main characters, suggests that Protagoras is subtly trying to deceive the audience into thinking that his teachings are consistent with democratic principles, and that "Socrates sees it all along" (183). I found that this approach often strays too close to a reading of Socrates as 'Plato's secret agent' that G.R.F. Ferrari cautions against, [3] failing to distinguish between the action of the character, the perspective of the narrator (potentially biased in this case given that it is Socrates himself), and Plato's own crafting of the conversation as author. As for Protagoras, he is portrayed as 'easily distressed' (13), a 'weak debater' (27), 'impotent' (99), 'laughable' (103), 'devious' (39), and an 'enchanting coward' who 'cannot save anyone' (120) despite 'constant apprehension for his own safety' (118). His teachings are said to be 'of little philosophical interest' (24), 'nothing noble' (97) and 'illusory' (174), his speech a mere attempt to cover up obvious moral problems with those teachings (31). He is said to have become 'deeply uncomfortable' (161) and have gained no insight from the conversation (150).

McCoy does draw attention to the fact that Socrates, after criticizing Protagoras for speechifying, gives the longest speech in the dialogue (153; also recognized by Pettersson on 178), and Kristin Sampson points out that Socrates himself appears to argue sophistically, even being mistaken for a sophist by the doorman (200). It may be right that we should hold on to the sharp distinction between philosophy and sophistry by excusing Socrates' inconsistencies and reading his praise of Protagoras throughout the dialogue as ironical. But this is not an uncontroversial position. Why not think that the there is some truth behind that admiration on Socrates' or Plato's part, and see his criticisms and inconsistencies as playful, competitive goads? Why not think that the thematization of Socratic origins at the beginning of the dialogue suggests a Socratic or Platonic debt to Protagoras (as Pettersson hints on the second page of the introduction) rather than a clear-cut contrast? And why couldn't there be a more detailed story to be told about both similarities and differences in method and intent? In this and other respects there is less by way of acknowledging contravening evidence and addressing alternative viewpoints than one might have hoped. Pettersson, for example, offers a minority view in the volume that the conversation is portrayed as a failure, having strayed off its proper course of first addressing what virtue is. He cites Vasilis Politis' relevant 2012 article, but does not engage with Politis' opposing thesis. Politis argues that the question of what virtue is should not in fact have been raised before reaching the sort of aporia they have about its teachability, suggesting that this is in fact an appropriate course for a Socratic conversation. [4]

I also would have liked to see more engagement with the historical Protagoras. An independent understanding of the historical sophists themselves is crucial for the task of "understanding how Plato introduced and negotiated a new type of intellectual practice" as advertised on the back cover. Even for the more limited question of Protagoras' portrayal in the dialogue, understanding the historical Protagoras is still of central relevance. While it is difficult to know exactly Plato's intended audience, his contemporaries are likely to have been more familiar with Protagoras than we are today and to have seen Plato's portrayal accordingly. Noting the resonances and discrepancies with the historical figure might help us better understand Plato's own emphasis and his reasons for portraying Protagoras in the way he did. And Woodruff's mention of Aristoxenus' report that almost the entirety of the Republic was already contained within Protagroas' Antilogiai , [5] along with his plausible suggestion that "Protagoras is the grandfather of what Plato has given us as Socratic questioning", [6] is too tantalizing not to have been explored in greater detail. Woodruff and Pettersson are the only authors to even raise this possibility and it deserves much greater attention.

The editors save the best for last with Woodruff's 'Why Did Protagoras Use Poetry in Education?' In many respects it stands out as an exception to the general trends mentioned above, offering a close reading of Protagoras' use of the Simonides poem informed by the context of the dialogue as well as what we know independently about the historical figure. He argues that Protagoras used poetry to give students experience in creating clear and contradiction-free speech. This involved correcting poets in order to make them say what they really meant to say. The poet's true intention, then, was Protagoras' standard for interpreting poetry; Socrates' standard, by contrast, was the truth itself. He then offers some compelling guesses about how Protagoras used this to advance his own program of moral education, including the famous homo mensura doctrine, and draws worthwhile parallels with the Socratic elenchus . Given the volume's main theme, I would have liked to see the implications that this reading might have for understanding the dialogue as a whole spelled out in more detail.

Finally, a few comments about the overall production. The volume does not appear to be intended nor would it be the best first stop for a reader seeking a comprehensive discussion of or introduction to the topic of philosophy and sophistry in the Protagoras . There is no comprehensive bibliography in the end matter; each chapter contains its own individual list of references. The lists are of varying thoroughness and accuracy; those of Ausland (73-75) and Pettersson (196-198) are the most useful, though the latter is not free from potentially misleading misprints. There is frequent overlap between independent contributions and little acknowledgement of repetitions or connections between different chapters, which can be frustrating when reading the volume cover to cover (though Songe-Møller and Rørstadbotten do helpfully reference one another). The index is not always as helpful as it could be. For instance, it misleadingly lists only five entries under 'virtue' despite its being a frequent topic throughout the book, not least in Ausland's "The Treatment of Virtue in Plato's Protagoras ", which does not receive a single mention.

The volume has a clear and attractive layout, though one encounters a distracting number of misprints. This includes frequent, sometimes systematic misspellings of Greek words (e.g. ' eubolia' for ' euboulia ') and inconsistencies in the ways that Greek terms are referenced. Each author uses different standards for either directly quoting or transliterating the Greek, a single author at times switching from one convention to another (e.g. switching between using 'f' or 'ph' to transliterate the letter 'φ', or between quoting a word in its standard dictionary form vs. the declined or conjugated form in a particular instance). For those who do not read Greek this is likely to be disorienting, as it is then difficult to track when the same word is being used in different contexts. A few misprints may cause more serious confusion, e.g. 'prudence' for 'temperance' in Ausland's argument reconstruction (61) and 'Proclus' for 'Prodicus' (169).

Despite these drawbacks, the volume will hopefully inspire further research on this rich topic.

[1] Nails, D. The People of Plato . (Hackett, 2002).

[2] Lavery, J. Plato's Protagoras and the Frontier of Genre Research: A Reconnaissance Report from the Field . Poetics Today 28.3: 191 -- 246.

[3] Ferrari, G.R.F. "Plato the Writer." Epoché 19.2 (2015): 191-203.

[4] Politis, Vasilis. "What do the Arguments in the Protagoras Amount to?" Phronesis 57.3 (2012): 209-239. See esp. p.211 as well as Politis' book The Structure of Enquiry in Plato's Early Dialogues (Cambridge, 2015).

[5] Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 3.37 (cited on p.214).

[6] This is the closing sentence on p.226. The claim is also supported by Diogenes Laertius' testimony in Lives of the Philosophers 9.53 = DK 80A1.

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Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry

Plato’s discussions of rhetoric and poetry are both extensive and influential. As in so many other cases, he sets the agenda for the subsequent tradition. And yet understanding his remarks about each of these topics—rhetoric and poetry—presents us with significant philosophical and interpretive challenges. Further, it is not initially clear why he links the two topics together so closely (he suggests that poetry is a kind of rhetoric). Plato certainly thought that matters of the greatest importance hang in the balance, as is clear from the famous statement that “there is an old quarrel between philosophy and poetry” ( Republic , 607b5–6). In his dialogues, both this quarrel and the related quarrel between philosophy and rhetoric amount to clashes between comprehensive world-views—those of philosophy on the one hand, and of poetry or rhetoric on the other. What are these quarrels about? What does Plato mean by “poetry” and “rhetoric”? The purpose of this article is to analyze his discussions of rhetoric and poetry as they are presented in four dialogues: the Ion , the Republic , the Gorgias , and the Phaedrus . Plato is (perhaps paradoxically) known for the poetic and rhetorical qualities of his own writings, a fact which will also be discussed in what follows.

1. Introduction

3.1 republic ii, 3.2 republic iii, 3.3 republic x, 3.4 concluding observations about the republic’s “quarrel”, 5.1 rhetoric in the phaedrus, 5.2 rhapsodes, inspiration, and poetry in the phaedrus, 6. plato’s dialogues as rhetoric and poetry, other internet resources, related entries.

A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him —Dylan Thomas [ 1 ]

When we think of a philosophical analysis of poetry, something like a treatise on aesthetics comes to mind. At a minimum, we would expect a rigorous examination of the following: the characteristics that define poetry; the differences between kinds of poetry (epic, tragic, lyric, comic, and so forth); and the senses in which poetry is and is not bound to representation, imitation, expression (which are possible meanings of the classical Greek word “mimesis”) and fiction. [ 2 ] These complicated terms themselves require careful definition. Equally rigorous and systematic remarks about the differences between poetry and other art forms, such as music and painting, would be in order, as would reflection on the relation between orally delivered poetry (indeed, if we are to include performance, poetry that is in one way or another enacted) and poetry communicated through the written word. Aristotle’s Poetics is an early, and now classic, philosophical exploration of poetry along these sorts of lines.

Plato’s extensive discussions of poetry frustrate these expectations. He did not write a treatise on the subject—indeed, he wrote no treatises, and confined his thought to “dramatic” dialogues that are themselves shaped poetically—and the remarks he offers us both meander unsystematically, even within a single dialogue, and branch off in what seem like strange directions, such as into discussions about the corruption of self to which poetry allegedly exposes its audience. And yet Plato clearly thought that something of enormous importance hangs on his assessment of poetry, something that goes significantly beyond getting the details of the subject pinned down in a philosophically respectable fashion. One of the most famous lines in the culminating sections of one of his most famous dialogues announces that “there is an old quarrel between philosophy and poetry” ( Rep . 607b5–6), in support of which Plato quotes bits of several obscure but furious polemics—presumably directed by poets against philosophers—such as the accusation that the opponent is a “yelping bitch shrieking at her master” and “great in the empty eloquence of fools”. [ 3 ] Indeed, much of the final book of the Republic is an attack on poetry, and there is no question but that a quarrel between philosophy and poetry is a continuing theme throughout Plato’s corpus .

The scope of the quarrel, especially in the Republic , also indicates that for Plato what is at stake is a clash between what we might call comprehensive world-views; it seems that matters of grave importance in ethics, politics, metaphysics, theology, and epistemology are at stake. He leads up to the famous line about the quarrel by identifying the addressees of his critique as the “praisers of Homer who say that this poet educated Greece, and that in the management and education of human affairs it is worthwhile to take him up for study and for living, by arranging one’s whole life according to this poet” (606e1–5). The praisers of Homer treat him as the font of wisdom. Plato agrees that Homer is indeed the educator of Greece, and immediately adds that Homer is “the most poetic and first of the tragic poets.” Plato is setting himself against what he takes to be the entire outlook—in contemporary but not Plato’s parlance, the entire “philosophy of life”—he believes Homer and his followers have successfully propagated. And since Homer shaped the popular culture of the times, Plato is setting himself against popular culture as he knew it. Not just that: the quarrel is not simply between philosophy and Homer, but philosophy and poetry. Plato has in his sights all of “poetry,” contending that its influence is pervasive and often harmful, and that its premises about nature and the divine are mistaken. He is addressing not just fans of Homer but fans of the sort of thing that Homer does and conveys. The critique is presented as a trans-historical one. It seems that Plato was the first to articulate the quarrel in so sweeping a fashion. [ 4 ] It is noteworthy that in the Apology (23e), Socrates’ accusers are said to include the poets, whose cause Meletus represents.

It is not easy to understand what Plato means by poetry, why it is an opponent, whether it is dangerous because of its form or content or both, and whether there is much of ongoing interest or relevance in his account. Would his critique apply to, say, Shakespeare’s tragedies? To E. E. Cummings’ or T. S. Eliot’s poetry? These questions are complicated by the fact that Plato was not (or, not primarily) thinking of poetry as a written text read in silence; he had in mind recitations or performances, often experienced in the context of theater. Still further, when Socrates and Plato conducted their inquiries, poetry was far more influential than what Plato calls “philosophy.” Given the resounding success of Plato’s advocacy of “philosophy,” it is very easy to forget that at the time he was advocating a (historically) new project in a context swirling with controversy about the relative value of such projects (and indeed about what “philosophy” means). By contrast, poetry seems relatively marginal in today’s large commercial and liberal societies, in spite of the energetic efforts of figures such as the recent American national Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, whereas media of which Plato knew nothing—such as television, videos, and the cinema, literary forms such as the novel, and information systems such as the World Wide Web—exercise tremendous influence. Television and movie actors enjoy a degree of status and wealth in modern society that transcends anything known in the ancient world. Is Plato’s critique marginalized along with poetry?

In spite of the harshness, and in some ways the bluntness of Plato’s critique of poetry, he not only put his finger on deep issues of ongoing interest, but also leavened his polemic in a number of intriguing and subtle ways—most obviously, by writing philosophy in a way that can, with proper qualifications, itself be called poetic. The “quarrel between philosophy and poetry” is justly famed and pondered: what is it about?

When we turn to the second theme under consideration, viz., rhetoric, we find ourselves even more puzzled initially. What do philosophers have to say about rhetoric? Generally speaking, very little qua philosophers. Like all reflective people, philosophers dislike rhetoric as it is commonly practiced, bemoan the decline of public speech into mere persuasion and demagoguery, and generally think of themselves as avoiding rhetoric in favor of careful analysis and argument. “Rhetoric” tends to have a very negative connotation, and for the most part means “mere rhetoric.” As an object of academic study, the subject of rhetoric seems best left to English professors who specialize in the long history of manuals on techniques of persuasion and such. Consequently, philosophers, especially in modernity, have had little to say about rhetoric. By contrast, Aristotle devoted a book to the topic. And Plato struggles with rhetoric—or sophistry as it is sometimes also called, although the two are not necessarily identical—repeatedly. We recall that Socrates was put to death in part because he was suspected of being a sophist, a clever rhetorician who twists words and makes the weaker argument into the stronger and teaches others to do the same. [ 5 ] Plato’s polemic against the sophists was so persuasive that, in conjunction with a well established and ongoing popular hostility towards sophistry (a hostility of which Socrates was, ironically, also the object), we have come to use “sophist” as a term of opprobrium meaning something like “mere rhetorician.” In Plato’s dialogues there is unquestionably an ongoing quarrel between philosophy on the one hand and rhetoric and sophistry on the other, and it too is justly famed and pondered. What is it about?

Once again, the question is surprisingly difficult. It is not easy to understand why the topic is so important to Plato, what the essential issues in the quarrel are, and whether rhetoric is always a bad thing. We do recognize commendable examples of rhetoric—say, Pericles’ Funeral Oration, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, or Churchill’s rousing speeches during World War II. These were rhetorical, but were they merely rhetorical, let alone sophistical? Still further, Plato’s Socrates is not above speaking to his interlocutors rhetorically at times, even sophistically (some of his arguments against Thrasymachus in book I of the Republic have been suspected of falling into the latter category, and Socrates’ interlocutors are occasionally reported as feeling that he has played some kind of verbal trick on them). And are not Plato’s dialogues themselves rhetorical in significant senses of the term?

These remarks prompt yet another question. However interesting the topics of poetry and rhetoric may be, when we read Plato, why group them together? Few people today would imagine that there is any interesting relation between poetry and rhetoric. To think of great poets as “rhetoricians” seems bizarre; and most (popular) rhetoricians do not seem to know the first thing about poetry. Yet Plato himself associates the two very closely: at Gorgias 502c he characterizes poetry as a kind of rhetoric. Thus Plato provides our warrant for investigating the topics together. This linkage between poetry and rhetoric is of course controversial, and will be discussed below.

Quite clearly, our themes are very large in scope, and indeed nearly every one of Plato’s dialogues is relevant to one or more of them. The present essay will confine itself to just four dialogues, the Ion , Republic , Gorgias , and Phaedrus . I will discuss them in that order, and in the final section of the essay shall briefly examine the famous question of the poetic and rhetorical dimension of Plato’s own writings.

I shall look for connections between our four dialogues, though I do not believe that our chosen texts present a picture of poetry and rhetoric that is altogether unified (indeed, this could not be claimed even of the Republic taken by itself). I will put aside the question about which dialogue Plato composed at which time, along with assumptions about the possible “development” of Plato’s views from “earlier” to “later” dialogues. This is an example of an interpretive (or as it is sometimes called, a “hermeneutical”) assumption; every reader of Plato necessarily commits to interpretive assumptions. The debate about which assumptions are best is an ongoing one, but not germane to the present discussion. [ 6 ] It suffices here to state the relevant assumptions made in this discussion.

The identity of “Socrates” is contested; we have no writings by the historical figure, only writings by a number of authors that in some sense or other—and the senses vary a great deal—are either about him or creatively adapt his name and aspects of his story. In referring to Socrates, I shall mean only the figure as represented by Plato; nothing follows, for present purposes, about the historical accuracy of Plato’s depiction. Further, it is not the case that the views Plato puts into the mouth of his Socrates are necessarily espoused by Plato himself; they may or may not be those of Plato. Since Plato did not write a treatise in his own voice, telling us what his views are, it is impossible to know with certainty which views he espouses (at least on the basis of the works he composed). In several cases, one of which will be examined in the final section of this essay, it seems reasonably clear that Plato cannot be espousing without qualification a view that his Socrates is endorsing. With these principles firmly in mind, however, I shall occasionally refer (as I already have) to Plato as presenting this or that view. For as author of all the statements and drama of the dialogues, he does indeed present the views in question; and on occasion it is convenient and simpler to say he is advocating this or that position (for example, the position that there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry).

Ion is a prize-winning professional reciter of poetry—a “rhapsode”—and of Homer in particular. [ 7 ] Though he speaks his lines with the requisite conviction and emotion, he does not “imitate” his subjects in the sense of act their parts (of course, Homer did not write for the stage). He is a performer but not a (stage) actor. Ion is depicted as superb at making the Iliad and Odyssey come alive, at communicating their drama to his audience and at involving them intimately. We might say that he “represents” or “expresses” the characters, action, and narrative of Homer’s epic poems, and thus in some sense both identifies with his subject and leads his audience to do the same. As he puts it in the dialogue that bears his name: if he has done his job well, he will find himself weeping when reciting sorrowful lines, and expects to see his audience weep along with him (535b1–e6). Both are somehow transported, thanks to Ion’s superb narrative capacity, into the original scene (as Socrates says, Ion is “beside himself” and in the enthusiasm of the moment thinks he is present at the scene he is describing; 535b7–c3).

But Ion thinks himself capable of yet more, for he also claims to be an expert in explaining what Homer means. He’s an exegete (see 531a7) or interpreter par excellence, and this claim especially intrigues Socrates. He does not permit Ion to actually exhibit his skills as a rhapsode, and instead insists that he engage in give-and-take about the abilities Ion claims to possess. This is typical of Socrates’ method; he forces his interlocutor to give an account of his commitments and way of life. As both reciter and exegete, the rhapsode has no exact analogue today. Nonetheless, the implications of the Ion are broad; while Ion is not a poet himself, he bears important traits in common with the poet.

The thrust of Socrates’ initial questioning is revealing. Essentially, he attempts to show that Ion is committed to several theses that are not compatible with one another, unless a rather peculiar, saving assumption is introduced. Ion claims that he is a first rate explicator of Homer; that he is a first rate explicator only of Homer, and loses interest as well as competence if another poet (such as Hesiod) is brought up (531a3–4, 532b8–c2; 533c4–8); and that Homer discusses his subjects much better than do any other poets (531d4–11, 532a4–8). Ion may justly be thought of as one of the “praisers” of Homer referred to in Republic X (see above, and Ion 542b4). Notice that Socrates’s first order of business is to get Ion to agree that a number of claims are being made by him; while this may seem obvious, it is an essential condition for Socrates’ inquiry, and is a distinctive characteristic of the sort of thing Socrates does as a philosopher.

If Ion is an exegete or explicator of Homer’s poems, he must surely understand what the poet means, else he could not explain the poet’s thoughts. This seemingly commonsensical point is asserted by Socrates at the start (530c1–5), and happily accepted by Ion. However, if Ion understands what the poet says about X , and judges that the poet speaks best about X , he must be in a position to assess other poets’ pronouncements about the subject in question. For example, Homer talks a great deal about how war is waged; as an expert on Homer who claims that Homer spoke beautifully about that subject (in the sense of got it right), Ion must be in a position to explain just how Homer got it right and how Hesiod, say, got it wrong, as a series of simple analogies show. If you can knowledgeably (531e10) pick out a good speaker on a subject, you can also pick out the bad speaker on it, since the precondition of doing the former is that you have knowledge of the relevant subject matter. But this seems to contradict Ion’s assertion that he can explain only Homer, not the other poets.

Let us recapitulate, since the steps Socrates is taking are so important for his critique of poetry (it is noteworthy that at several junctures, Socrates generalizes his results from epic to dithyrambic, encomiastic, iambic, and lyric poetry; 533e5–534a7, 534b7–c7). To interpret Homer well, we have to understand what Homer said; to do that, and to support our judgment that he spoke superlatively well, we have to understand the subject matter about which Homer speaks (just as we would in, say, evaluating someone’s pronouncements about health). Further, Homer himself must have understood well that about which he speaks. As interpreters or assessors, we are claiming to be experts judging a claim (in this case Homer’s) to expertise, just as though we were members of a medical examination board considering an application to the profession. So as interpreters we are making claims about the truth of Homer’s teachings about XYZ ; and thus we are assuming that Homer sought to state the truth about XYZ . Given that he discusses the central topics of human and godly life (531c1–d2), it would seem that Homer claims to be wise, and that as his devoted encomiasts we too must be claiming to be wise (532d6–e1). But claims to wisdom are subject to counter-claims (the poets disagree with each other, as Socrates points out); and in order to adjudicate between them, as well as support our assessment of their relative merits, we must open ourselves to informed discussion both technical and philosophical. Technical, because on subjects such as (say) war-making, the general should be consulted about the accuracy of Homer’s description thereof; philosophical because both the method of assessing the whole (the “Socratic method”) and the comprehensive claims about the truth made by interpreter and poet, are properly philosophical preoccupations for Plato.

It is but a step from there to the proposition that neither Ion nor Homer can sustain their claims to knowledge, and therefore could not sustain the claim that the poems are fine and beautiful works. In passage after passage, Homer pronounces on subjects that are the province of a specialized techne (art or skill), that is, a specialized branch of knowledge. But neither the rhapsode nor Homer possesses knowledge of all (or indeed perhaps any) of those specialized branches (generalship, chariot making, medicine, navigation, divination, agriculture, fishing, horsemanship, cow herding, cithara playing, wool working, etc.). Ion attempts to resist this by claiming that thanks to his study of Homer, he knows what a general (for example) should say (540d5). Since he has accepted that this would involve possessing the art of generalship (541e2, techne kai episteme ), his claim is patently indefensible, and Socrates charges that he has failed to make good on his assertion to be “wonderfully wise … about Homer” (542a1).

So Ion, and by extension Homer, are faced with a series of unpalatable alternatives:

• They could continue to defend the claim that they really do know the subjects about which they discourse—in the sense of possess the techne kai episteme of them, i.e., a mastery of the subject matter. Yet if they do defend that claim they will be liable to examination by relevant experts.

(b.1) one would amount to saying that while lacking in technical knowledge (knowledge of this or that craft or skill), they do have knowledge of human affairs—something like knowledge of human nature, of how human life tends to go, of the relation between (say) virtue and happiness, as well as of the natures of both virtue and happiness. To this might be added the claim that the poets and their exponents know the nature of the cosmos and of the divine. In the Republic Socrates in effect allows them comprehensive claims to knowledge along those lines, and then attacks across the board, seeking to show that the poets have got it wrong on all important counts.

(b.2) alternatively, they could admit that they do not have either technical or non-technical knowledge of any of the topics about which they sing; rather, they possess the skill ( techne ) of creating beautiful, persuasive, and moving images of the subjects in question. So when Ion claims that Homer speaks beautifully about X, he just means that Homer speaks beautifully in a rhetorical sense even though he (Homer) does not necessarily know what he is talking about. By extension, poets would (on this interpretation) make the same claim about themselves. That would seem to reduce them to rhetoricians, which in effect is what Socrates argues in the Gorgias , with the further proviso that rhetoric as popularly practiced is not even a techne . Poetry-as-mere-rhetoric is not a promising credential for authority either to educate all of Greece or to better one’s audience; (b.2) is not a position that poets or their rhapsodes would, presumably, be eager to adopt.

(b.3) Ion could admit that he knows nothing about the topics Homer addresses, withdrawing his claim to be a knowledgeable exegete, but maintain that Homer himself knows what he’s talking about. Ion would be liable to the question as to how he knows all that , however; and in any case would at best shift Socrates’ attack to the real target, viz. Homer.

(b.4) Socrates provides a seemingly more palatable alternative in the Ion , one that is echoed in the Phaedrus (245a); this is the “peculiar, saving assumption” mentioned above. It consists in the thesis that Ion recites (and Homer composes) not from knowledge but from divine inspiration. Neither knows what he is saying, but is nonetheless capable of speaking or composing beautifully thanks to the divine. They are like the worshippers of Bacchus, out of their right minds (534b4–6). This creative madness, as we might call it, they share with other Muse-inspired artists as well as prophets and diviners (534b7–d1). This is supposed to explain why Ion can recite only Homer beautifully; he’s been divinely inspired only in that area, and that is all he means when he says that Homer is better than his rival poets. Ion has no argument to support what looks like a comparative assessment; it is just a report to the effect that he is “possessed” by Homer’s magic thanks to the work of a god. A poet, further, is not a knower, but a kind of transmitter of a divine spark; he or she is “an airy thing, winged and holy” (534b3–4). The spark is generated by the god, and is passed down through the poet to the rhapsode and then to the audience. In Socrates’ unforgettable simile, the relationship of the god to poet to rhapsode to audience is like a magnetized sequence of rings, each of which sticks to the next thanks to the power of the divine magnet at the start (535e7–536b4), as though they were links in a chain (as we might put it).

This simile helps to answer an important question: why should we care whether or not the poets know what they are talking about, if we enjoy their compositions? Socrates’ answer is that as the last link on this chain of inspiration, we are capable of being deeply affected by poetry. We “spectators” at the recital too lose our minds, to some degree, weeping or laughing as we enter into the narrated scene, seemingly forgetting our real selves and lives (535b2–d9). In the Ion he doesn’t offer a further explanation of how this effect is supposed to happen—for that, we will turn to the Republic —but the important point is that it does happen. It would seem that the audience is transformed by the experience in a way that momentarily takes them out of themselves. Perhaps it does not leave them as they were, for their understanding of what properly elicits their grief or their laughter would seem to be shaped by this powerful experience, an experience they presumably repeat many times throughout childhood and beyond. Perhaps they too start to believe—as Ion and possibly the poet do—that they “know” something thanks to their contact with the divine, such as how war is to be conducted and for what ends, what fidelity in love means, or the character of the gods. None of this would matter much if superb poetry left us unmoved, or in any case as we were. Plato’s critique depends on the assumption that poetry can and does shape the soul.

The “divine inspiration” thesis resolves some problems for Ion (and implicitly for Homer) while postponing others. One problem is indicated by the last few lines of the dialogue, where Socrates offers Ion a choice: either be human, and take responsibility for unfairly avoiding his questions about the nature of his (Ion’s) wisdom; or accept the label “divine” and subscribe to the inspiration thesis. Ion chooses the latter on grounds that it is “lovelier.” It is an invitation to hybris, of course. How easy it would be to confuse divine and human madness (to borrow a distinction from the Phaedrus 244a5–245c4)! And not all of the contenders for the prize Ion has won could be equally worthy of promotion to divine status. By contrast, Socrates characterizes himself in the Apology as not thinking he knows what he does not know, as possessing human rather than divine “wisdom.” [ 8 ] Finally, since the poets and their rhapsodes both present views about how things are and ought to be, and seek to persuade their auditors of the same, they cannot escape responsibility for the implicit claim to wisdom and authority they make. For Plato, this means that they must be held accountable. It is philosophy’s mission to force them to give an account of themselves, and to examine its soundness. This would mean that they are required to engage philosophy on its turf, just as Ion has somewhat reluctantly done. The legitimacy of that requirement is itself a point of contention, it is one aspect of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry. [ 9 ]

3. Republic , Books II, III, X

In order to respond to the famous challenge put to Socrates by Glaucon and Adeimantus, it is necessary to define justice. Socrates suggests that the task would be easier if justice were first sought in a polis, where it is “writ large.” That strategy accepted, the polis must be created in speech. It turns out that philosophic guardians are to rule the polis, and the next question concerns their education (376e2). The critique of poetry in the Republic grows out of a consideration of the proper education (from their childhood on) of the philosopher-guardians in the “city in speech.” The context for the critique is therefore that of the specific project of the Republic , and this raises a question as to whether the critique is meant to hold whether or not the “city in speech” is possible or desirable.

The concern in book II is very much with the proper education of a citizen, as befits the project of creating a model city. The “myth makers” (377b11; Bloom translates “makers of tales”) who supply the governing stories of the day are like painters (377e2) who make pictures of heroes and gods, and indeed of the relations both among and between the two. From the outset, Socrates treats the poems (those by Hesiod and Homer are singled out, but the critique isn’t meant to be confined to them) as though they contained not just falsehoods, but falsehoods held up as models of good behavior. The poems are taken as educational and thus broadly political texts; persuasion (see 378c7) of a class of the young is very much at stake. The young cannot judge well what is true and false; since a view of things taken on at early age is very hard to eradicate or change, it is necessary to ensure that they hear only myths that encourage true virtue (378d7–e3). The pedagogic motivation in question certainly extends beyond the specific “city in speech” the Republic creates. Thus while the critique of poetry in book II and beyond is in this sense shaped by the contextual concerns, it is not limited to them.

Further, Socrates takes aim at the content of several particularly influential poems, and his arguments against that content do not depend, here, on the project of creating the “best city.” One of his first targets is what he calls their “theology” (379a5–6). Whether in epics, lyrics or tragedies, whether in meter or not (379a8–9, 380c1–2), god must be described accurately, and that turns out to be as unchanging; as good and the cause of only good; as incapable of violence; and as “altogether simple and true in deed and speech,” for god “doesn’t himself change or deceive others by illusions, speeches, or the sending of signs either in waking or dreaming” (382e8–11). For “there is no lying poet in a god” (382d9). In short, the gods accurately conceived are remarkably similar to what Socrates will subsequently call, in Republic V-VII, the “Ideas.” Quite obviously, the dominant “theological” foundation of the world-view prevalent in fourth and fifth century Greece—and also any theological view that does not meet the strictures Socrates specifies—must be abandoned. The scope of the critique is breathtaking.

Along the way Socrates makes yet another point of great importance, namely that the poets ought not be permitted to say that those punished for misdeeds are wretched; rather, they must say that in paying a (just) penalty, bad men are benefited by the god (380b2–6). Socrates is starting to push against the theses that bad people will flourish or that good people can be harmed. The cosmos is structured in such a way as to support virtue. Socrates is attempting to undermine what one might call a “tragic” world view (note that in book X, he characterizes Homer as the “leader” of tragedy; 598d8).

In book III Socrates expands the argument considerably. The concern now is squarely with poetry that encourages virtue in the souls of the young. Courage and moderation are the first two virtues considered here; the psychological and ethical effects of poetry are now scrutinized. The entire portrait of Hades must go, since it is neither true nor beneficial for auditors who must become fearless in the face of death. Death is not the worst thing there is, and all depictions of famous or (allegedly) good men wailing and lamenting their misfortunes must go (or at least, be confined to unimportant women and to bad men; 387e9–388a3). The poets must not imitate (see 388c3 for the term) gods or men suffering any extremes of emotion, including hilarity, for the strong souls are not overpowered by any emotion, let along any bodily desire. Nor do they suffer from spiritual conflict (391c). The rejection of the “tragic” world view becomes explicit: neither poets nor prose writers should be allowed to say that “many happy men are unjust, and many wretched ones just, and that doing injustice is profitable if one gets away with it, but justice is someone else’s good and one’s own loss.” Anybody pronouncing on any of these topics—poetically or not—must say the opposite (392a13–b6). In expanding the scope of the relevant discourse so broadly, Socrates in effect lays down requirements for all persuasive discourse—for what he elsewhere calls “rhetoric”—and makes poetry a subsection thereof.

Having covered the issue of content, Socrates turns to the “style” (“lexis,” 392c6), or as we might say, of the “form” of myth tellers or poets (Socrates again runs these two together). He does so in a way that marks a new direction in the conversation. The issue turns out to be of deep ethical import, because it concerns the way in which poetry affects the soul. Up until now, the mechanism, so to speak, has been vague; now it becomes a little bit clearer. Poetic myth tellers convey their thought through a narrative ( diegesis ) that is either “simple” ( haplos ) or imitative (that is, accomplished through “mimesis”). The notion of mimesis , missing from the Ion , now takes center stage. When the poet speaks in his own voice, the narrative is “simple”; when he speaks through a character, as it were concealing himself behind the mask of one of his literary creations, the narrative is imitative or mimetic. For then the poet is likening himself to this character, and trying to make the audience believe that it’s the character speaking. Some poetry (comedy and tragedy are mentioned) proceeds wholly by imitation, another wholly by simple narration (dithyrambs are mentioned), and epic poetry combines the two forms of narrative.

What follows this classificatory scheme is a polemic against imitation. The initial thesis is that every person can do a fine job in just one activity only. Consequently, nobody can do a fine job of imitating more than one thing (for example, an actor cannot be a rhapsode, a comic poet cannot be a tragic poet, if any of these is finely done). Imitation is itself something one does, and so one cannot both imitate X (say, generalship) well and also do the activity X in question (394e-395b). It has to be said that this thesis is set out with little real argument. In any case, the best souls (the guardians, in this case, in the city in speech) ought not imitate anything.

And were they to imitate anything, every care must be taken that they are ennobled rather than degraded as a result. Why? If imitations “are practiced continually from youth onwards,” they “become established as habits and nature, in body and sounds and in thought” (395d1–3). Unlike simple narrative, mimesis poses a particular psychic danger, because as the speaker of the narrative one may take on the character of literary persona in question. It is as though the fictionality of the persona is forgotten; in acting out a part one acts the part, and then one begins to act (in “real life”) as the character would act. One does not actually take oneself to be the fictional character; rather, the “model” or pattern of response or sentiment or thought one has acted out when “imitating” the character becomes enacted. There is no airtight barrier between throwing yourself (especially habitually) into a certain part, body and soul, and being molded by the part; no firm boundary, in that sense, between what happens on and off the stage. By contrast, Socrates argues, a simple narration preserves distance between narrator and narrated.

Before passing onto critiques of music and gymnastic, Socrates concludes this section of his critique of poetry with the stipulation that a poet who imitates all things (both good and bad) in all styles cannot be admitted into the good polis. [ 10 ] However, a more “austere” poet and myth teller is admissible, for he confines himself to imitating decent people (when he imitates at all, presumably as infrequently as possible), thus speaking pretty much in the same tone and rhythm, and who accurately represents the nature of the gods, heroes, virtue, and other issues discussed in books II and III (398a1–b4). [ 11 ]

This critique of mimetic poetry has struck not a few readers as a bit strange and obtuse, even putting aside the question of the legitimacy of censorship of the arts. It seems not to distinguish between the poet, the reciter of the poem, and the audience; no spectatorial distance is allowed to the audience; and the author is allowed little distance from the characters he is representing. All become the speakers or performers of the poem when they say or think the lines; and speaking the poem, taking it on as it were, is alleged to have real effects on one’s dispositions.

In book II the critique of poetry focused on mimesis understood as representation; the fundamental point was that poets misrepresent the nature of the subjects about which they write (e.g., the gods). They do not produce a true likeness of their topics. In book III, the focus shifts to mimesis understood as what one commentator has called “impersonation”; participating in the “imitation” by taking on the characters imitated was viewed as corrupting in all but a few cases of poetic mimesis. [ 12 ] Surprisingly, in book X Socrates turns back to the critique of poetry; even more surprisingly, he not only mischaracterizes the results of the earlier discussion (at 595a5 he claims that all of poetry that was imitative was banished, whereas only part of it was banished; 398a1–b4), but recasts the critique in very different terms. This is due in part to the fact that the intervening discussion has seen the introduction of the “theory of Forms,” a more elaborate analysis of the nature of the soul, and a detailed description of the nature of philosophy. The renewed criticism leads up to the famous statement that there exists an ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy.

Book X starts us off with a reaffirmation of a main deficiency of poets: their products “maim the thought of those who hear them.” And by means of the following schema, this is now connected to a development of the allegation (repeated at 602b6–8) that poets do not know what they are talking about. Socrates posits that there are Forms (or Ideas) of beds and tables, the maker of which is a god; there are imitations thereof, namely beds and tables, produced by craftsmen (such as carpenters) who behold the Forms (as though they were looking at blueprints); thirdly, there are imitators of the products of the craftsmen, who, like painters, create a kind of image of these objects in the world of becoming. The tripartite schema presents the interpreter with many problems. [ 13 ] Certainly, Socrates does not literally mean that poets paint verbal pictures of beds and tables. Subsequently, the scheme is elaborated so as to replace the craftsmen with those who produce opinion in the city (legislators, educators, military commanders, among others), and the painters with “the first teacher and leader of all these fine tragic things” (595b10–c2), that is, Homer. The poets are therefore “at the third generation from nature” or “third from a king and the truth” (597e3–4, 6–7).

Let us focus on one of the implications of this schema, about which Socrates is quite specific. The poets don’t know the originals of (i.e., the truth about) the topics about which they discourse; they appear to be ignorant of that fact; and even worse, just as a trompe-l’oeil painting can deceive the naïve onlooker into believing that the imitation is the original, so too those who take in poetry believe they are being given truth. Imitation now starts to take on the sense of “counterfeit.” [ 14 ] Unequipped to put claims to knowledge to the test, the audience buys into the comprehensive picture of “all arts and all things human that have to do with virtue and vice, and the divine things too” that the poet so persuasively articulates (598b-599a). The fundamental point is by now familiar to us: “For it is necessary that the good poet, if he is going to make fair poems about the things his poetry concerns, be in possession of knowledge when he makes his poems” (598e3–5). Even putting aside all of the matters relating to arts and crafts ( technai such as medicine), and focusing on the greatest and most important things—above all, the governance of societies and the education of a human being—Homer simply does not stand up to examination (599c-600e). All those “skilled in making” ( tous poietikous ), along with this educator of Greece and leader of the tragic poets, are painted as “imitators of phantoms of virtue and of the other subjects of their making” (600e4–6).

And what, apart from their own ignorance of the truth, governs their very partial perspective on the world of becoming? Socrates implies that they pander to their audience, to the hoi polloi (602b3–4). This links them to the rhetoricians as Socrates describes them in the Gorgias . At the same time, they take advantage of that part in us the hoi polloi are governed by; here Socrates attempts to bring his discussion of psychology, presented since book III, to bear. The ensuing discussion is remarkable in the way in which it elaborates on these theses.

The example which introduces the last stage of Socrates’ critique of poetry prior to the famous announcement of the “quarrel” is that of deep human suffering; specifically, a parent’s loss of a child (603e3–5). How would a decent person respond to such a calamity? He would fight the pain, hold out against it as much as possible, not let himself be seen when in pain, would be ashamed to make a scene, and would “keep as quiet as possible” knowing that none of “the human things” is “worthy of great seriousness.” Being in pain impedes the rule of reason, which dictates that when we are dealt misfortunes, we must be as unaffected by them as possible, preserving the harmony of our souls (603e-604e). Socrates sketches the character of the decent and good person this way: “the prudent and quiet character, which is always nearly equal to itself, is neither easily imitated nor, when imitated, easily understood, especially by a festive assembly where all sorts of human beings are gathered in a theater. For imitation is of a condition that is surely alien to them” (604e). This may be a sketch of Socrates himself, whose imitation Plato has produced. [ 15 ]

By contrast, the tragic imitators excel at portraying the psychic conflicts of people who are suffering and who do not even attempt to respond philosophically. Since their audience consists of people whose own selves are in that sort of condition too, imitators and audience are locked into a sort of mutually reinforcing picture of the human condition. Both are captured by that part of themselves given to the non-rational or irrational; both are most interested in the condition of internal conflict. The poet “awakens this part of the soul and nourishes it,” producing a disordered psychic regime or constitution ( politeia , 605b7–8; compare this language to that of the passages at the end of book IX of the Republic ). The “childish” part of the soul that revels in the poet’s pictures cannot distinguish truth from reality; it uncritically grants the poet’s authority to tell it like it is. Onlookers become emotively involved in the poet’s drama.

Another remarkable passage follows: “Listen and consider. When even the best of us hear Homer or any other of the tragic poets imitating one of the heroes in mourning and making quite an extended speech with lamentation, or, if you like, singing and beating his breast, you know that we enjoy it and that we give ourselves over to following the imitation; suffering along [‘sympaschontes’, a word related to another Greek word, ‘sympatheia’] with the hero in all seriousness, we praise as a good poet the man who most puts us in this state” (605c10–d5). So the danger posed by poetry is great, for it appeals to something to which even the best—the most philosophical—are liable, and induces a dream-like, uncritical state in which we lose ourselves in the emotions in question (above all, in sorrow, grief, anger, resentment).

As one commentator aptly puts it, “on the one hand, poetry promotes intrapsychic conflict; on the other, it keeps us unconscious of that conflict, for the irrational part of our psyche cannot hear reason’s corrections. That is why poetry, with its throbbing rhythms and beating of breasts, appeals equally to the nondescript mob in the theater and to the best among us. But if poetry goes straight to the lower part of the psyche, that is where it must come from.” [ 16 ] Further, the picture of the gods that the Greek poets painted was a projection of the tumultuous and conflictual lower parts of the soul, one which in turn gave sustenance and power to those very same parts of the soul.

The worry, then, is that in experiencing the emotions vicariously—by identifying, so to speak, with the drama—we release emotions better regulated by reason, and become captive to them in “real” life. In a psychological sense, drama supplies what today we would call “role models.” Socrates’ point is not that we think the drama is itself real, as though we cannot distinguish between what takes place on and off the stage; but that “the enjoyment of other people’s sufferings has a necessary effect on one’s own.” Why? “For the pitying part [of the soul], fed strong on these examples, is not easily held down in one’s own sufferings” (606b). [ 17 ] And this applies to comedy as well; we get used to hearing shameful things in comic imitation, stop feeling ashamed at them, and indeed begin to enjoy them (606c). [ 18 ] Socrates quite explicitly is denying that aesthetic “pleasure” (606b4) can be insulated from the ethical effects of poetry. To put the point with a slight risk of anachronism (since Plato does not have a term corresponding to our “aesthetics”), he does not think that aesthetics is separable from ethics. He does not separate knowledge of beauty and knowledge of good. It is as though the pleasure we take in the representation of sorrow on the stage will—because it is pleasure in that which the representation represents (and not just a representation on the stage or in a poem)—transmute into pleasure in the expression of sorrow in life. And that is not only an ethical effect, but a bad one, for Plato. These are ingredients of his disagreements on the subject with Aristotle, as well as with myriad thinkers since then. [ 19 ] He is asserting, though without filling out the psychological mechanisms in the detail for which one would wish, that from childhood up, mimesis shapes our images and our fantasies, our unconscious or semi-conscious pictures and feelings, and thereby shapes our characters, especially that part of our nature prone to what he thinks of as irrational or non-rational.

The poets help enslave even the best of us to the lower parts of our soul; and just insofar as they do so, they must be kept out of any community that wishes to be free and virtuous. Famously, or notoriously, Plato refuses to countenance a firm separation between the private and the public, between the virtue of the one and the regulation of the other. What goes on in the theater, in your home, in your fantasy life, are connected. Poetry unregulated by philosophy is a danger to soul and community. [ 20 ]

The argument in book X cuts across all forms of “poetry,” whether tragic, comic, lyric, in meter or not; indeed, the earlier distinction between imitative and narrative poetry too seems irrelevant here. The conclusion is the same: “We are, at all events, aware that such poetry mustn’t be taken seriously as a serious thing laying hold of truth, but that the man who hears it must be careful, fearing for the regime in himself, and must hold what we have said about poetry” (608a6–b2). So sweeping a conclusion makes many assumptions, of course, one of which is that there is such as thing as “truth” out there, and the theory of Forms or Ideas is part of the metaphysical foundation of that view. The poets have been characterized as making claims to truth, to telling it like it is, that are in fact—contrary to appearances—little more than the poet’s unargued imaginative projections whose tenability is established by their ability to command the applause of the audience. That is, the poets are rhetoricians who are, as it were, selling their products to as large a market as possible, in the hope of gaining repute and influence.

The tripartite schema of Idea, artifact, and imitator is as much about making as it is about imitation. Making is a continual thread through all three levels of the schema. The Ideas too are said to be made , even though that is entirely inconsistent with the doctrine of Ideas as eternal expressed earlier in the Republic itself (and in all the other Platonic dialogues). The suggestion is arguably that the poets are makers (see also 599a2–3, where we are told that poets “produce appearances,” as one might translate), that they move in a world permeated by making. The word “poetry” in Platonic Greek comes from the word “to make” ( poiein ), a fact upon which Socrates remarks in the Symposium . [ 21 ] Making takes place in and contributes to the world of becoming. Philosophers, by contrast, are presented as committed to the pursuit of truth that is already “out there,” independently of the mind and the world of becoming. Their effort has to do with discovery rather than making. Thus stated the contrast is crude, since poets also reflect what they take their audience to (want to) feel or believe—they “imitate” in the sense of represent as well as express—and philosophers make speeches and (as Socrates himself says) they too imitate. [ 22 ] Nonetheless, the distinction suggests an interesting possibility, viz. that the quarrel between poetry and philosophy is finally, in Plato’s eyes, about the relative priority of making and discovery. The making/discovery distinction chimes with a number of the dichotomies upon which we have touched: imagination vs. reason, emotion vs. principle, becoming vs. being, artifacts vs. Forms, images vs. originals.

Nowhere in the Republic does Socrates mention the poet’s claim to inspiration. Indeed, that claim is pointedly omitted in the passage in which Socrates talks about the beginnings of the Iliad (392e2–393a5; see Bloom’s note ad loc ). Socrates implicitly denies the soundness of that claim here. Given his conception of the divine as Idea, such a claim could not be true, since the Ideas do not speak, let alone speak the things which Homer, Hesiod, and their followers recount. The result is that the poets are fabricators even of the appearance of knowing what they are talking about; this is not inconsistent with the Ion ’s characterization of poetry as inspired ignorance.

Does the critique of poetry in the Republic extend beyond the project of founding the just city in speech? I have already suggested an affirmative answer when discussing book II. The concerns about poetry expressed in books III and X would also extend beyond the immediate project of the dialogue, if they carry any water at all, even though the targets Plato names are of course taken from his own times. It has been argued that the authority to speak truth that poets claim is shared by many widely esteemed poets since then. [ 23 ] It has also been argued that the debate about the effects on the audience of poetry continues, except that today it is not so much poets strictly speaking, but the makers of others sorts of images in the “mass media,” who are the culprits. Controversies about, say, the effects of graphic depictions of violence, of the degradation of women, and of sex, echo the Platonic worries about the ethical and social effects of art. At least in cases such as these, we retain Plato’s skepticism about the notion of “aesthetic distance.” [ 24 ]

The Gorgias is one of Plato’s most bitter dialogues in that the exchanges are at times full of anger, of uncompromising disagreement, plenty of misunderstanding, and cutting rhetoric. In these respects it goes beyond even the Protagoras , a dialogue that depicts a hostile confrontation between Socrates and the renowned sophist by the same name. [ 25 ] The quarrel between philosophy and rhetoric shows itself as an ugly fight in the Gorgias .

What is the fight about? Socrates asks Gorgias to define what it is that he does, that is, to define rhetoric. And he asks him to do it in a way that helps to distinguish rhetorical from philosophical discourse: the former produces speeches of praise and blame, the latter answers questions through the give and take of discussion ( dialegesthai , 448d10) in an effort to arrive at a concise definition, and more broadly, with the intent to understand the subject. The philosopher is happy to be refuted if that leads to better understanding; wisdom, and not just striving to “win” the argument, is the goal (457e-458a).

Gorgias is forced by successive challenges to move from the view that rhetoric is concerned with words (speeches) to the view that its activity and effectiveness happen only in and through words (unlike the manual arts) to the view that its object is the greatest of human concerns, namely freedom. Rhetoric is “the source of freedom for humankind itself and at the same time it is for each person the source of rule over others in one’s own city” (452d6–8). This freedom is a kind of power produced by the ability to persuade others to do one’s bidding; “rhetoric is a producer of persuasion. Its whole business comes to that, and that’s the long and short of it” (453a2–3). But persuasion about what exactly? Gorgias’ answer is: about matters concerning justice and injustice (454b7). But surely there are two kinds of persuasion, one that instills beliefs merely, and another that produces knowledge; it is the former only with which rhetoric is concerned. The analogy of this argument to the critique of poetry is already clear; in both cases, Socrates wants to argue that the speaker is not a truth speaker, and does not convey knowledge to his audience. As already noted, Socrates classifies poetry (dithyrambic and tragic poetry are named) as a species of rhetoric. Its goal is to gratify and please the spectator, or differently put, it is just a kind of flattery. Strip away the rhythm and meter, and you have plain prose directed at the mob. It’s a kind of public speaking, that’s all (502a6–c12).

The rhetorician is a maker of beliefs in the souls of his auditors (455a3–4). And without that skill—here Gorgias begins to wax at length and eloquently—other arts (such as medicine) cannot do their work effectively (456b ff.). Rhetoric is a comprehensive art. But Gorgias offers a crucial qualification that turns out to contribute to his downfall: rhetoric should not be used against any and everybody, any more than skill in boxing should be. Although the rhetorician teaches others to use the skill justly, it is always possible for the student to misuse it. This is followed by another damaging admission: the rhetorician knows what justice, injustice, and other moral qualities are, and teaches them to the student if the student is ignorant of them (460a). It would follow that, in Socrates’ language, the true rhetorician is a philosopher; and in fact that is a position Socrates takes in the Phaedrus . But Gorgias is not a philosopher and does not in fact know—cannot give an account of—the moral qualities in question. So his art is all about appearing, in the eyes of the ignorant, to know about these topics, and then persuading them as is expedient (cf. 459d-e). But this is not something Gorgias wishes to admit; indeed, he allows himself to agree that since the rhetorician knows what justice is, he must be a just man and therefore acts justly (460b-c). He is caught in a contradiction: he claimed that a student who had acquired the art of rhetoric could use it unjustly, but now claims that the rhetorician could not commit injustice.

All this is just too much for Gorgias’ student Polus, whose angry intervention marks the second and much more bitter stage of the dialogue (461b3). A new point emerges that is consistent with the claim that rhetoricians do not know or convey knowledge, viz. that it is not an art or craft ( techne ) but a mere knack ( empeiria , or experience). Socrates adds that its object is to produce gratification. To develop the point, Socrates produces a striking schema distinguishing between care of the body and care of the soul. Medicine and gymnastics truly care for the body, cookery and cosmetics pretend to but do not. Politics is the art that cares for the soul; justice and legislation are its branches, and the imitations of each are rhetoric and sophistry. As medicine stands to cookery, so justice to rhetoric; as gymnastics to cosmetics, so legislation to sophistry. The true forms of caring are arts ( technai ) aiming at the good; the false, knacks aiming at pleasure (464b-465d). Let us note that sophistry and rhetoric are very closely allied here; Socrates notes that they are distinct but closely related and therefore often confused by people (465c). What exactly their distinction consists in is not clear, either in Plato’s discussions of the matter, or historically. Socrates’s polemic here is intended to apply to them both, as both are (alleged) to amount to a knack for persuasion of the ignorant by the ignorant with a view to producing pleasure in the audience and the pleasures of power for the speaker.

Socrates’ ensuing argument with Polus is complicated and long. The nub of the matter concerns the relation between power and justice. For Polus, the person who has power and wields it successfully is happy. For Socrates, a person is happy only if he or she is (morally) good, and an unjust or evil person is wretched—all the more so, indeed, if they escape punishment for their misdeeds. Polus finds this position “absurd” (473a1), and challenges Socrates to take a poll of all present to confirm the point. In sum: Plato’s suggestion is that rhetoric and sophistry are tied to substantive theses about the irrelevance of moral truth to the happy life; about the conventionality or relativity of morals; and about the irrelevance of the sort of inquiry into the truth of the matter (as distinguished from opinions or the results of polls) upon which Socrates keeps insisting. Socrates argues for some of his most famous theses along the way, such as the view that “the one who does what’s unjust is always more miserable than the one who suffers it, and the one who avoids paying what’s due always more miserable than the one who does pay it” (479e4–6). And if these hold, what use is there in rhetoric? For someone who wishes to avoid doing himself and others harm, Socrates concludes, rhetoric is altogether useless. Tied into logical knots, Polus succumbs.

All this is just too much for yet another interlocutor in the dialogue, Callicles. The rhetoric of the Gorgias reaches its most bitter stage. Callicles presents himself as a no-holds-barred, bare-knuckled, clear-headed advocate of Realpolitik , as we would now call it. Telling it like it is, he draws a famous distinction between nature and convention, and advances a thesis familiar to readers of Republic books I and II: “But I believe that nature itself reveals that it’s a just thing for the better man and the more capable man to have a greater share than the worse man and the less capable man. Nature shows that this is so in many places; both among the other animals and in whole cities and races of men, it shows that this is what justice has been decided to be: that the superior rule the inferior and have a greater share than they” (483c8–d6). This is the “law of nature” (483e3; perhaps the first occurrence in Western philosophy of this famous phrase). Conventional talk of justice, fairness, not taking more than is your share, not pursuing your individual best interest—these are simply ways by which the weak seek to enslave the strong. The art of rhetoric is all about empowering those who are strong by nature to master the weak by nature.

Callicles’ famous diatribe includes an indictment of philosophy as a childish occupation that, if pursued past youth, interferes with the manly pursuit of power, fosters contemptible ignorance of how the real political world works, and renders its possessor effeminate and defenseless. His example is none other than Socrates; philosophy will (he says prophetically) render Socrates helpless should he be indicted. Helplessness in the face of the stupidity of the hoi polloi is disgraceful and pathetic (486a-c). By contrast, what would it mean to have power? Callicles is quite explicit: power is the ability to fulfill whatever desire you have. Power is freedom, freedom is license (492a-c). The capacity to do what one wants is fulfillment in the sense of the realization of pleasure. Rhetoric is a means to that end.

The quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy, thus understood, ultimately addresses a range of fundamental issues. “Rhetoric” is taken here to constitute an entire world view. Its quarrel with philosophy is comprehensive, and bears on the nature of nature; the existence of objective moral norms; the connection (if any) between happiness and virtue; the nature and limits of reason; the value of reason (understood as the rational pursuit of objective purpose) in a human life; the nature of the soul or self; and the question as to whether there is a difference between true and false pleasure, i.e., whether pleasure is the good. It is striking that while Socrates wants to contrast “rhetorical” speech-making with his own approach of philosophical dialogue, in practice the differences blur. Socrates too starts to speak at length, sounds rhetorical at times, and ends the discussion with a myth. Callicles advances a substantive position (grounded in a version of the distinction between nature and convention) and defends it. These transgressions of rhetorical genres to one side, from Socrates’ standpoint the ultimate philosophical question at stake concerns how one should live one’s life (500c). Is the life of “politics,” understood as the pursuit of power and glory, superior to the life of philosophy?

Readers of the dialogue will differ as to whether or not the arguments there offered decide the matter. The nub of the debate is as current today, both in academic and non-academic contexts, as it was in Plato’s day. [ 26 ] Even though poetry is here cast as a species of rhetoric, a good deal of work would have to be done to show that the substantive theses to which poetry is committed, according to the Republic , are the same as the substantive theses to which rhetoric is committed, according to the Gorgias .

Is all of rhetoric bad? Are we to avoid—indeed, can we avoid—rhetoric altogether? Even in the Gorgias , as we have seen, there is a distinction between rhetoric that instills belief, and rhetoric that instills knowledge, and later in the dialogue a form of noble rhetoric is mentioned, though no examples of its practitioners can be found (503a-b). The Phaedrus offers a more detailed explanation of this distinction.

5. Phaedrus

Readers of the Phaedrus have often wondered how the dialogue hangs together. The first “half” seems to be about love, and the second about rhetoric. A slightly closer look reveals that any such simple characterization is misleading, because the first half is also about rhetoric, in several different ways. To begin with, the first half of the dialogue contains explicit reflections on rhetoric; for example, Socrates draws the distinction between what we would call the “form” and the “content” of a discourse (235a). Still further, it consists in part in three speeches, at least the first of which (“Lysias’ speech”) is a rhetorical set-piece. The other two are rhetorical as well, and presented as efforts to persuade a young beloved. All three are justly viewed as rhetorical masterstrokes by Plato, but for different reasons. The first is a brilliantly executed parody of the style of Lysias (an orator and speech writer of significant repute). The second speech simultaneously preserves aspects of its fictional frame (the first was a paradoxical sounding address by a “non-lover” to a “beloved”), develops that frame (the non-lover is transformed into a concealed lover), and deepens the themes in an impressive and philosophically enlightening way. The third (referred to as the “palinode” or recantation speech) contains some of the most beautiful and powerful images in all of Greek literature. It is mostly an allegory cast in the form of a myth, and tells the story of true love and of the soul’s journeys in the cosmos human and divine. That is, the rhetoric of the great palinode is markedly “poetic.” Especially noteworthy for present purposes is the fact that the theme of inspiration is repeatedly invoked in the first half of the dialogue; poetic inspiration is explicitly discussed. [ 27 ]

The themes of poetry and rhetoric, then, are intertwined in the Phaedrus . It looks initially as though both rhetoric and poetry have gained significant stature, at least relative to their status in the Ion , Republic , and Gorgias . I will begin by focusing primarily on rhetoric, and then turn to the question of poetry, even though the two themes are closely connected in this dialogue.

The second “half” of the dialogue does not discuss the nature of love thematically, at any length, but it does in effect propose that discourse prompted by the love of wisdom—philosophy—is true rhetoric. As the conversation between one “lover of speeches” (228c1–2) and another evolves, the three rhetorical speeches of the first part of the dialogue are examined from the perspective of their rhetorical artlessness or artfulness. Poetry is once again cast as a kind of speech making (258b3) and, very importantly, Socrates declares that “It’s not speaking or writing well that’s shameful; what’s really shameful is to engage in either of them shamefully or badly” (258d4–5). [ 28 ] The proffering of discourses is not in and of itself shameful; what then constitutes honorable speech making?

The answer to this crucial question constitutes one of the most famous contributions to the topic. In essence, Socrates argues that someone who is going to speak well and nobly must know the truth about the subject he is going to discuss. The sort of theory Polus and Callicles maintained in the Gorgias is false (see Phaedrus 259e4–260a4). In order to make good on this sweeping claim, Socrates argues that rhetoric is an “art” (techne), and not just artless practice (the equivalent of the “empeiria” for which rhetoric was condemned in the Gorgias ). How to show that it is an art after all? Quite a number of claimants to rhetoric are named and reviewed, and readers who have an interest in the history of Greek rhetoric rightly find these passages invaluable. We are told here that the extant manuals of rhetoric offer the “preliminaries” to the true art of rhetoric, not the thing itself (269b7–8).

Many rhetoricians have artfully and effectively misled their audiences, and Socrates argues—somewhat implausibly perhaps—that in order to mislead one cannot oneself be misled. [ 29 ] An artful speech exhibits its artfulness in its structure, one that—since in the best case it embodies the truth—retraces or mirrors the natural divisions of the subject matter itself. It will not only be coherent, but structured in a way that mirrors the way the subject itself is naturally organized. In one of Socrates’ most famous images, a good composition should exhibit the organic unity of a living creature, “with a body of its own; it must be neither without head nor without legs; and it must have a middle and extremities that are fitting both to one another and to the whole work” (264c1–5). This will not be truly accomplished if it only looks that way; to be that way, a discourse’s unity should reflect the unity of its subject.

At this point we might want to ask about the audience ; after all, the rhetorician is trying to persuade someone of something. Might not the speaker know the truth of the matter, and know how to embody it artfully in a composition, but fail to persuade anyone of it? Would not a failure to persuade indicate that the speaker lacks the complete art of rhetoric? Socrates in effect responds to this question by postulating that the successful speaker must also know the nature of the human soul, else his skill is just “empeiria” (the term from the Gorgias again) rather than “techne” (270b6). Just as an expert physician must understand both the human body and the body of medical knowledge—these being inseparable—so too the expert speaker must understand both the human soul and what is known about the soul. The reader will immediately recall that the great speech (the palinode) in the first half of the Phaedrus was about the soul in its cosmic context—the soul’s nature, its journeys divine and human, its longings, the objects of its longings, its failures and their consequences, were all part of the same story. Thus it is not surprising that when defining the art of rhetoric Socrates suggests that we cannot “reach a serious understanding of the nature of the soul without understanding the nature of the world as a whole” (270c1–2). The consequence of this approach to rhetoric has now become clear: to possess that art, one must be a philosopher. True rhetoric is philosophical discourse.

But what happened to the question about the audience? “The soul” is not the addressee of a rhetorical discourse. Socrates responds that the artful rhetorician must also know what the types of soul are, what sorts of speeches “work” on each type, and be able to identify which type is being addressed on the given occasion. This last demand is a matter of practice and of the ability to size up the audience on the spot, as it were. The requirements of the true art of rhetoric, which Socrates also calls the “art of dialectic” (276e5–6), are very high indeed. (The reader will find them summarized at 277b5–c6).

If the audience is philosophical, or includes philosophers, how would the true, artful, philosophical dialectician address it? This question is not faced head-on in the Phaedrus , but we are given a number of clues. They are introduced by means of a myth—by a kind of “poetry,” if you will—and they help us understand the sort of discourse a philosopher will on the whole wish to avoid, namely that which is written . According to reflections inaugurated by the Theuth and Thamus myth, the written word is not the most suitable vehicle for communicating truth, because it cannot answer questions put to it; it simply repeats itself when queried; it tends to substitute the authority of the author for the reader’s open minded inquiry into the truth; and it circulates everywhere indiscriminately, falling into the hands of people who cannot understand it. Very importantly, it interferes with true “recollection” ( anamnesis , 249c2), that process described at length and (for the most part) poetically in the dialogue’s “palinode,” by which the knowledge latent in the soul is brought out through question and answer (274d-275b). Writing is a clumsy medium, and thus would not match the potential effectiveness of philosophical give and take, the “Socratic dialogue” which best leads the philosophical mind to truth. This desirable rhetoric is “a discourse that is written down, with knowledge, in the soul of the listener; it can defend itself, and it knows for whom it should speak and for whom it should remain silent” (276a5–7). Dialectical speech is accompanied by knowledge, can defend itself when questioned, and is productive of knowledge in its audience (276e4–277a4). Of course, all this raises the question as to the status of Plato’s dialogues, since they are themselves writings; we will return to it briefly below.

Rhetoric is the art of “directing the soul by means of speech” (261a8). Popular rhetoric is not an art, but a knack for persuasion. Artful rhetoric requires philosophy; but does philosophy require rhetoric? Why must philosophical discourse—say, as exemplified in “Socratic dialogue”—have anything to do with rhetoric? The Phaedrus points to the interesting thought that all discourse is rhetorical, even when the speaker is simply trying to communicate the truth—indeed, true rhetoric is the art of communicating the truth (notice the broad sweep of the discussion of discourse at 277e5–278b4). Rhetoric is present wherever and whenever people speak (261d10–e4 and context). Even when one is not sure what the truth is, and even when one is thinking through something by oneself—carrying on an inner dialogue, as it were—discourse and persuasion are present. [ 30 ] Of course, a philosopher will question assertions that he or she ought to persuaded of X; but that questioning too, the Phaedrus suggests, is part of a process aimed at warranted persuasion, and inevitably involves a mix of the “persuadability” of the philosopher on the one hand, and the truth (or falsity) of the claims on the other. The bottom line is that there is no escaping from persuasion, and so none from rhetoric—including of course from the very problem of distinguishing between warranted and unwarranted persuasion. Self-deception is an ever-present possibility (as Socrates implies here, and notes at Cratylus 428d). That is a problem about which the philosopher above all worries about. It is always a question of “directing the soul by means of speech,” even where it’s a matter of the soul directing or leading itself (or to use a phrase from earlier in the dialogue, moving itself (245e)). [ 31 ]

The Gorgias’ notion that the struggle between (popular) rhetoric and philosophy—or as we might say, unphilosophical and philosophical rhetoric—is one between comprehensive outlooks is clear from the Phaedrus as well. The “great speech” or palinode of the dialogue illustrates the character and range of views upon which the project of philosophical rhetoric (of philosophy, in short) is built. The speech is quite explicitly a retraction of an outlook that does not espouse these views; ordinary rhetoric moves in a very different moral, metaphysical, psychological, and epistemic world. It is an interesting fact that Plato deploys certain elements of poetry (such as myth, allegory, simile, image) in drawing the contrast between these outlooks.

That poetry is itself a kind of persuasive discourse or rhetoric has already been mentioned. It comes as no surprise to read that Socrates indicts rhapsodes on the grounds that their speeches proceed “without questioning and explanation” and “are given only in order to produce conviction” (277e8–9). This echoes the Ion ’s charge that the rhapsodes do not know what they are talking about. But what about the rationale that the poets and rhapsodes are inspired?

Inspiration comes up numerous times in the Phaedrus . It and the related notions of Bacchic frenzy, madness, and possession are invoked repeatedly almost from the start of the dialogue (228b), in connection with Phaedrus’ allegedly inspiring recitation of Lysias’ text (234d1–6), and as inspiring Socrates’s two speeches (237a7–b1, 262d2–6, 263d1–3). These references are uniformly playful, even at times joking. More serious is the distinction between ordinary madness and divine madness, and the defense of the superiority of divine madness, which Socrates’ second speech sets out to defend. In particular, he sets out to show that the madness of love or eros “is given us by the gods to ensure our greatest good fortune” (245b7–c1). The case is first made by noting that three species of madness are already accepted: that of the prophets, that of certain purifying or cathartic religious rites, and the third that inspiration granted by the Muses that moves its possessor to poetry (244b-245a). As noted, it begins to look as though a certain kind of poetry (the inspired) is being rehabilitated.

And yet when Socrates comes to classify kinds of lives a bit further on, the poets (along with those who have anything to do with mimesis ) rank a low sixth out of nine, after the likes of household managers, financiers, doctors, and prophets (248e1–2)! The poet is just ahead of the manual laborer, sophist, and tyrant. The philosopher comes in first, as the criterion for the ranking concerns the level of knowledge of truth about the Ideas or Forms of which the soul in question is capable. This hierarchy of lives could scarcely be said to rehabilitate the poet. The Phaedrus quietly sustains the critique of poetry, as well as (much less quietly) of rhetoric.

Plato’s critique of writing on the grounds that it is a poor form of rhetoric is itself written. Of course, his Socrates does not know that he is “speaking” in the context of a written dialogue; but the reader immediately discerns the puzzle. Does the critique apply to the dialogues themselves? If not, do the dialogues escape the critique altogether, or meet it in part (being inferior to “live” dialogue, but not liable to the full force of Socrates’ criticisms)? Scholars dispute the answers to these well-known questions. [ 32 ]

There is general agreement that Plato perfected—perhaps even invented—a new form of discourse. The Platonic dialogue is a innovative type of rhetoric, and it is hard to believe that it does not at all reflect—whether successfully or not is another matter—Plato’s response to the criticisms of writing which he puts into the mouth of his Socrates.

Plato’s remarkable philosophical rhetoric incorporates elements of poetry. Most obviously, his dialogues are dramas with several formal features in common with much tragedy and comedy (for example, the use of authorial irony, the importance of plot, setting, the role of individual character and the interplay between dramatis personae ). No character called “Plato” ever says a word in his texts. His works also narrate a number of myths, and sparkle with imagery, simile, allegory, and snatches of meter and rhyme. Indeed, as he sets out the city in speech in the Republic , Socrates calls himself a myth teller (376d9–10, 501e4–5). In a number of ways, the dialogues may be said to be works of fiction; none of them took place exactly as presented by Plato, several could not have taken place, some contain characters who never existed. These are imaginary conversations, imitations of certain kinds of philosophical conversations. As reader, one is undoubtedly invited to see oneself reflected in various characters, and to that extent identify with them, even while also focusing on the arguments, exchanges, and speeches. Readers of Plato often refer to the “literary” dimension of his writings, or simply refer to them as a species of philosophical literature. Exactly what to make of his appropriation of elements of poetry is once again a matter of long discussion and controversy. [ 33 ]

Suffice it to say that Plato’s last word on the critique of poetry and rhetoric is not spoken in his dialogues, but is embodied in the dialogue form of writing he brought to perfection.

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• –––, 2008, “Reading and Writing Plato,” Philosophy and Literature , 32: 205–216. Article review of: R. Blondell, The Play of Character in Plato’s Dialogues , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; K. Corrigan and E. Glazov-Corrigan, Plato’s Dialectic at Play: Argument, Structure, and Myth in the Symposium , University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004; D. Hyland, Questioning Platonism: Continental Interpretations of Plato , Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004; D. Nails, The People of Plato: a Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics , Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002.
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• Planinc, Z., 2003, Plato through Homer: Poetry and Philosophy in the Cosmological Dialogues , Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
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• Ramsey, R. E., 1999, “A Hybrid Techne of the Soul?: Thoughts on the Relation between Philosophy and Rhetoric in Gorgias and Phaedrus ,” Rhetoric Review , 17: 247–62.
• Rendall, S., 1977, “Dialogue, Philosophy, and Rhetoric: The Example of Plato’s Gorgias ,” Philosophy and Rhetoric , 10: 165–79.
• Ricoeur, P., 1981, “Mimesis and Representation,” Annals of Scholarship , 2: 15–32.
• Rocco, C., 1996, “Liberating Discourse: the Politics of Truth in Plato’s Gorgias ,” Interpretation , 23: 361–85.
• Roochnik, D., 1987, “The Erotics of Philosophical Discourse,” History of Philosophy Quarterly , 4: 117–29.
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• –––, 1991b, “Stanley Fish and the Old Quarrel between Rhetoric and Philosophy,” Critical Review , 5: 225–46.
• –––, 1995, “Socrates’ Rhetorical Attack on Rhetoric,” in The Third Way: New Directions in Platonic Studies , F. Gonzales (ed.), Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 81–94.
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• –––, 2003, Beautiful City: The Dialectical Character of Plato’s Republic , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 2023, “Review of Malcolm Schofield, How Plato Writes: Perspectives and Problems ,” Society , 60: 1071–75.
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• –––, 1987, Hermeneutics as Politics , New York: Oxford University Press; reprinted, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
• –––, 1988, The Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry , New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall.
• Rossetti, L. (ed.), 1992, Understanding the Phaedrus: Proceedings of the II Symposium Platonicum , Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.
• Rowe, C. J., 1986, Plato: Phaedrus , with translation and commentary, Warminster, England: Aris and Phillips.
• Rutherford, R. B., 1995, The Art of Plato: Ten Essays in Platonic Interpretation , Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
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• –––, 2004, Platonic Legacies , Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press.
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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

Plato: aesthetics | Plato: ethics

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Nicola Moore for her help with the Bibliography, and to Richard Kraut, Marina McCoy, and Stephen Scully for their excellent comments on drafts of the text. I would also like to thank David Roochnik for his help with various revisions along the way.

Copyright © 2024 by Charles L. Griswold < griswold @ bu . edu >

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Xandra the Witch

Socrates was a Witch

Reading plato's last days of socrates + the republic.

You know how happy my nerdy little self was, perusing my local library Classics aisle to come home with a giant book of Plato? SO HAPPY! It reminds me of my days as a rebel teen, hanging out on the floor of the Shakespeare section of Barnes & Noble when I should have been doing chemistry homework for my STEM-obsessed New England prep school. Shakespeare was my punk rock. Shakespeare was what I snuck under the table, reading one more sonnet to stay sane. When the high school drama teacher said Shakespeare was ‘too hard’ for high schoolers, I assembled a troupe of thirty of us to put on a guerrilla production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream 🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻 

When I go into the bookshop to pick up a light read, I leave with essays on integrity. Moral philosophy soothes me. It’s comforting to know that someone’s working on life’s big questions. Someone’s put a lot of thought into this. I’ll lean on that and ask my own questions from there. 

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I would sometimes be shamed for liking ‘high brow’ literature. 2 nerdy 4 skool. You know who else was similarly criticised? Socrates! All I’ve wanted is to read the works of great thinkers and writers and artists, and be a great thinker and writer and artist. I hustled my way into an Oxford to read English to sink into learning literature in the place where much of it was written. While at Oxford, I found fresh ways of rebelling from the curriculum: Sneaking into lectures on transcendentalism that weren’t assigned to me. Specialising in theatre even though plays are shorter, less likely to score well on assessments for being the ‘easy’ choice. Starting a lifestyle blog at the busiest, most serious, most important time of my degree. 

What these rebellions have in common is a desire to further engage with the arts in a way that feels integrated in my life. I’ve steered away from becoming an expert in anything, preferring to live and move with the pages I read. Now, as my 33rd birthday present to myself, I am indulging in my craving to learn as much as I can. I am affirmed by Plato’s multifaceted nature, as philosopher, mathematician, and mystic thinker. Look at how he criticises others’ too-narrow take on geometry:

“They have in view practice only, and are always speaking, in a narrow and ridiculous manner, of squaring and extending and applying and the like — they confuse the necessities of geometry with those of daily life; whereas knowledge is the real object of the whole science ” (The Republic, Book VII)

Yes, exactly, Plato! This is how I felt about my high school (and institutional pressures that informed my high school’s focus), which was all about producing quantifiable results to make students look impressive to college admissions. Ah, Math, how beautiful thou art (“a wonderful thing,” as wise man Dewy Finn once said). I still seek more math-for-fun in my adult life. For years, I’ve been wishing for a workbook, like a sudoko one but for geometry and algebra. A friend suggested I make my own, and maybe I’ll have to. 

I’d never read Plato before. (My English Literature course covered only texts written in English, mostly from England). I was surprised to find Plato to be easy reading, and rather enjoyable! Structured as dialogues, delivered in lecture halls at his Academy, it’s packed with conversational wackiness — even as it handles intense subject matter. I started with The Last Days of Socrates, in which he takes on the perspective of his mentor, who has been sentenced to death for corrupting the youth. For what? Compelling people to think for themselves. VERY DANGEROUS INDEED. 

I gasped in realisation: Socrates was a witch. 

Why does nobody talk about this? The word “witch” derives from “wise” and “wit”. I define a witch as someone who stands in their personal power, and who challenges the status quo. Socrates refused to waiver on his values and beliefs, even and especially when they questioned the power of the state. By asking questions rather than purporting solutions, he led his listeners to develop their own thinking. He was willing to die for this cause. He refused to back down, run away, or lie, to survive. It was too important. 

This is the witch wound. There is a historical precedent for witches to be killed for telling the truth, being themselves, or claiming personal power. Personal power can look like turning people into frogs, but it can also look like Socrates simply saying, I question this. I’m not sure about this. I don’t know. Do you know? Nobody knows. The state is like, what? NO! We know! Listen to us! We’ll tell you what to do. Socrates suggests there’s maybe we should be questioning this, and that alone, was deemed too dangerous to exist.

Plato dwells on his ideas, takes his time over a single thought, lets it mull, explores it from all angles. He does so in conversation, bringing up questions and refutations, and does not often come to a conclusion, but guides the audience to make up their own mind.  In Euthyphro he says, through the voice of Cebes:

“One excellent proof […] is afforded by questions. If you put a question to a person in a right way, he will give a true answer of himself, but how could he do this unless there were knowledge and right reason already in him?”

This alludes to the innate power humans have within. That is the same power I refer to as ‘witchcraft’. I’m not rallying for a conspiracy theory here that Socrates was ‘one of us’ but rather we are one of him. It’s the same energetic thing. Why do we see the death of Socrates and witch burning as separate?

Most of all, I am invigorated by Plato’s delight in learning itself. In Euthyphro, Socrates sees how certain his friend is in his moral understanding, picking his brain in fascination. It’s like when I exchange voice memos with my wise artist friends. You seem so sure, where I lack confidence. How did you know? How did you get there? What are the steps? What does it look like? I love to think, to listen, to explore!

I’m constantly given signs that I’m exactly where I need to be, reading the right book at the right time. Of course I would discover Plato on the other side of my Hellenic studies. It is comforting to see casual references to polytheistic Ancient Greece, including a shoutout to ‘thyrsus bearers’ like me! Seers are taken seriously, and brought up casually. What makes me weird was once normal. The dangers I feel for deep thinking are valid, and rooted in the ancient world.

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What I Want a University President to Say About Campus Protests

By Bret Stephens

Opinion Columnist

As college students return to campus, this is what I hope a university president might say to them about how their school intends to handle future protests.

Dear students,

Welcome back. As you all know, last year our campus, like many others, was racked by protests that began right after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and intensified as the war in Gaza unfolded. We are not going to allow those protests to happen again, at least not in the aggressive, disruptive and sometimes lawless ways in which they were conducted last year.

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But I don’t want to leave it at that, because the reason we intend to strictly enforce restrictions on campus protests has less to do with pressure from the outside and more to do with what we owe to ourselves as an institution dedicated to discovery, scholarship, teaching and learning. Our central concern is not with reputation — how others see us. It’s with integrity — how we remain faithful to our foundational purpose.

What is that purpose? The main clue comes from the word “university,” derived from the Latin “universitas”: the whole, everything, the universe.

We are a university not merely in the sense of being a type of corporation that brings together many programs and departments. We are also a university in that each of us is part of the same truth-seeking enterprise — an enterprise that believes in the universality and interconnectedness of knowledge itself. Here at this school, a historian can learn from a geologist, a neurologist can collaborate with a musicologist, and a freshman student can question and challenge the most senior member of the faculty. Here, students with different backgrounds and perspectives can, with a bit of effort, discuss and debate ideas without descending to name-calling, intimidation or ostracism.

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Plato and Socrates on the Ideal Leader’s Virtues Essay

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• As a template for you assignment

Plato held that philosopher guardians would run a just state. Plato thinks that given their education, talents, virtues, and the way their lives would be controlled in his Republic, such people are the best possible rulers.

In my opinion, Plato is right. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates makes a poignant point on the nature of an ideal leader. Equitable leaders need to be wise. Also, philosophers have a lot of wisdom. Socrates’ assertion resonates with the wisdom of the ages which posits that the best leaders need to have a generous heart and wisdom. His allegory of ‘the cave’ is another excellent illustration of the natural inclination that humanity has to take illusions for reality.

People indeed have remarkably different and mostly incorrect ideas of what constitutes personal fulfillment in life. Some do not even have any idea. They spend their lives experimenting on different agendas trying to quench an inexplicable thirst.

Socrates posits that all of humanity possesses this thirst. It is what drives people through their daily struggles with life. They are seeking a ‘higher’ good. In the context of a community, different factors contribute to the definition of this ultimate success. Therefore, different people have different ideas. This is where leaders come into play. Communities should live in harmony. However, that would not be possible if everybody were to pursue his/her private desires.

Leaders come in to make a collective decision for these people. This becomes a formidable responsibility which the society cannot vest on just any other person. For one to qualify for this privilege, he/she needs to demonstrate the capacity to shoulder the weight of the mantle.

For instance, sacrifice is a critical value that such a person needs to demonstrate. Many leaders fall short of this point because their personal or private needs override their sense of duty to society. People naturally seek personal development. They put the needs of the community after their own. An upright leader should be a master at utilitarianism. Utilitarianism refers to a condition whereby the bosom of society precedes individual satisfaction. This requires a different breed of people altogether.

Intellect is another quality that these leaders should possess. This brings to light the importance of education. In contemporary society, people do not give too much emphasis on the education of their leaders. Most are swayed by the fallacies that these leaders spin during election campaigns. However, it is all propaganda. Consequently, after electing them into their respective offices, they depict their true colors which are often unsightly, to say the least.

Education is a tremendously essential quality in a leader. At the very least, a leader will be in charge of a highly diverse society. He/she will be presiding over people who are likely smarter than him/her. Therefore, the less educated this leader is, the more opposition he/she will face. Similarly, the more discontent there will be in society. It becomes necessary, mandatory even that effective leaders have the education to back them up.

Education denotes an appreciation for history. Ergo, an educated leader is more likely than not to learn from the past mistakes of his/her predecessors. Just as Socrates opines, he/she needs to have ‘memory’ (Kent, 2006, p. 23). Education also means that the leader has a base of Knowledge which serves to inform his/her actions. Such knowledge becomes useful in the deployment of their duties as leaders.

As a result, they will simply be implementing procedures that have proven to be efficient in the past. Leaders acquire this wisdom through training. At this point, Socrates uses the example of an eye attached to the body, thus, requiring the body’s manipulation to turn to the light. The leaders first need to acquire wisdom for themselves, which they will use to teach their subjects. This is important, as people in the community will stand a chance to achieve the higher statuses that they seek throughout their lives. Part of the training that the leaders administer will base on the understanding that material possessions are not the ideal goal in this life. The result of learning this lesson is that people will put less emphasis on selfish private endeavors and instead focus on healthy ventures to seek the truth.

Just leaders should also apply reason in reaching their decisions which is among the qualities of philosophy. In so doing, they will be able to exercise wisdom, thus, distinguishing between illusions and reality. Socrates says, “They will learn the truth about fair, just, and praiseworthy things” (Kent, 2006, p. 23). Part of this quality requires them to have inquisitive minds so that they are teachable. As a result, they will learn the different illusions and what they allude to so that they are better placed to advise their subjects on what to do.

The sacrifice mentioned at the beginning of this paper is a virtue that frowns upon self-indulgence. These leaders need to stay focused on meeting the needs of society. They cannot do this while attending to unimportant personal fetishes. Socrates mentions sex, personal wealth, and food as obvious because if a leader, for instance, is obsessed with wealth, he/she will likely manipulate his/her authority and status amassing this wealth at the expense of his/her subjects.

A philosophical leader is virtuous by his/her education level. The difficulty arises in finding a person who satisfies all these requirements. It is also possible to find a person. However, it may be even more difficult to convince the person to take the leadership mantle, as not all “just people” are interested in being leaders. Therefore, Plato is right concerning this issue.

Kent, J. (2006). Philosophical Discourses on Just Leadership. Philosophy , 1 (1), p. 23.

• John Locke's vs. Malcolm X's Political Philosophy
• Legitimacy in Machiavelli's and Marx's Works
• Plato’s Account of Socrates’ Trial
• Socrates Figure: Based on “The Apology” by Plato
• Analysis of Socrates and Plato Theories
• Louis Althusser on Ideology, State Apparatuses and Interpellation
• Legislative Power, Natural Law and Social Contract
• Karl Marx's Philosophy: Camera Obscura
• Justice and Ideal Society in Plato's Republic
• Globalization in Bentham’s Panopticon and Postman’s "Amusing Ourselves to Death"
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, January 30). Plato and Socrates on the Ideal Leader's Virtues. https://ivypanda.com/essays/plato-and-socrates-on-the-ideal-leaders-virtues/

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IvyPanda . (2021) 'Plato and Socrates on the Ideal Leader's Virtues'. 30 January.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Plato and Socrates on the Ideal Leader's Virtues." January 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/plato-and-socrates-on-the-ideal-leaders-virtues/.

1. IvyPanda . "Plato and Socrates on the Ideal Leader's Virtues." January 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/plato-and-socrates-on-the-ideal-leaders-virtues/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Plato and Socrates on the Ideal Leader's Virtues." January 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/plato-and-socrates-on-the-ideal-leaders-virtues/.

Order ID 401388194 World Literature Essay

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Hubungan Socrates dan Plato: Ikatan Guru dan Murid yang Mengubah Arah Filsafat Barat

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Malang, WISATA - Dalam sejarah filsafat Barat, hubungan antara Socrates dan Plato adalah salah satu yang paling berpengaruh dan mendalam. Socrates, sang guru, adalah filsuf legendaris yang menanamkan pemikiran kritis melalui dialog dan metode bertanya, sementara Plato, muridnya, adalah tokoh yang kemudian merumuskan ajaran Socrates menjadi fondasi bagi filsafat Barat. Ikatan antara keduanya tidak hanya sekadar hubungan guru dan murid , tetapi juga sebuah persahabatan intelektual yang mengubah cara kita memandang dunia dan pengetahuan.

Awal Pertemuan dan Pengaruh Socrates pada Plato

Plato pertama kali bertemu dengan Socrates di usia yang relatif muda, sekitar dua puluh tahun. Socrates saat itu sudah dikenal luas di kalangan intelektual Athena karena metode bertanyanya yang unik, di mana ia tidak memberikan jawaban langsung, melainkan mengarahkan orang lain untuk menemukan kebenaran melalui serangkaian pertanyaan kritis. Metode ini, yang kemudian dikenal sebagai Metode Socratic , menjadi salah satu ciri khas pengajaran Socrates.

Bagi Plato, Socrates bukan hanya seorang guru, tetapi juga seorang mentor dan teladan. Plato terpesona oleh cara Socrates mendekati masalah-masalah moral, etika, dan keadilan . Socrates tidak hanya mengajarkan teori-teori filsafat kepada Plato, tetapi juga menunjukkan bagaimana filsafat dapat diterapkan dalam kehidupan sehari-hari untuk mengejar kebijaksanaan dan kebaikan. Pengaruh Socrates begitu kuat pada Plato sehingga setelah kematian gurunya, Plato mengabdikan hidupnya untuk menuliskan ajaran Socrates dalam bentuk dialog-dialog yang menggambarkan diskusi antara Socrates dan para pemikir lain.

Socrates sebagai Inspirasi Utama Karya Plato

Salah satu kontribusi terbesar Plato dalam sejarah filsafat adalah kemampuannya untuk menyusun ajaran Socrates dan mengembangkannya menjadi teori yang lebih sistematis. Banyak dialog karya Plato yang didasarkan pada percakapan Socrates dengan tokoh-tokoh lain, seperti dalam Apologi , Euthyphro , Crito , dan Phaedo . Melalui tulisan-tulisan ini, Plato tidak hanya menggambarkan ajaran Socrates, tetapi juga mengeksplorasi konsep-konsep penting seperti keadilan, kebajikan , cinta, dan realitas.

Socrates sering digambarkan oleh Plato sebagai seseorang yang tidak percaya bahwa ia memiliki semua jawaban. Sebaliknya, ia melihat dirinya sebagai seseorang yang selalu mencari kebenaran. Dalam Apologi , misalnya, Plato menggambarkan Socrates sebagai orang yang bersedia mati demi mempertahankan prinsip-prinsipnya, yaitu bahwa hidup yang tidak diperiksa (atau hidup yang tidak dipertanyakan) bukanlah hidup yang layak dijalani. Ajaran ini, yang berpusat pada introspeksi dan pencarian terus-menerus akan kebenaran, menjadi inti dari filsafat Plato.

Socrates: Kehidupan Sosial, Pemikiran, dan Hubungan dengan Masyarakat Athena

Socrates: latar belakang keluarga dan pendidikan yang membentuk seorang filsuf legendaris, kunci kebahagiaan menurut socrates, yang masih banyak diikuti oleh masyarakat modern hingga kini, konflik filosofis: apakah kebenaran absolut atau relatif socrates melawan kaum sophis, dari dialog ke doktrin: pengaruh socrates pada filsuf-filsuf besar dunia, filsafat yunani, hubungan guru dan murid, metode socratic, warisan filsafat, kematian socrates, akademi plato, pemerintah gandeng ai untuk tingkatkan layanan publik, pemerintah dorong adopsi ai untuk memacu ekonomi digital nasional, tingkatkan kemudahan pelayanan masyarakat, kini trenggalek punya mal pelayanan publik (mpp), strategi pemerintah indonesia membangun ekonomi yang tangguh dan berkelanjutan, bandar udara letung miliki multiplier effect di berbagai sektor khususnya industri pariwisata, penataan destinasi wisata unggulan tondano selain untuk pariwisata juga untuk perekonomian lokal, resmi gabung oxford united marselino akan tampil lawan nathan dari swansea di efl championship, filsafat islam kontemporer dalam perspektif global: kontribusi dan tantangan, perselingkuhan azizah salsha dan salim nauderer diduga dibocorkan pratama arhan ke rachel vennya, viral video syur mirip azizah salsha di tengah dugaan perselingkuhan dengan salim nauderer, pratama arhan dikabarkan sudah mentalak azizah salsha, sederet bukti kuat perselingkuhan azizah salsha dengan mantan kekasih rachel vennya, bukan haji usia 2 bulan, thariq halilintar trending karena terseret dugaan selingkuh azizah salsha, xiaomi poco x6 5g vs samsung galaxy a35 5g, mana yang lebih layak, dilengkapi teknologi ai, oppo reno 12 f cuma rp 4,3 juta, xiaomi redmi pad se: tablet murah dengan baterai jumbo dan layar luas, muncul dugaan pratama arhan bongkar rumor perselingkuhan azizah salsha pada rachel venya, maarten paes, prakiraan cuaca, transformasi digital, transformasi digital: indonesia menuju era kecerdasan artifisial, indonesia siap menjadi pemain utama di era artificial intelligence, dialog-dialog abadi socrates: bagaimana plato melestarikan ajaran sang filsuf.