Literature

Plato departed from philosophical tradition, in which experts treated arcane subjects in technical treatises that had no appeal outside small circles of fellow experts. Joining the burgeoning trend of artistic prose composed for a literate public and treating ethical problems of universal relevance, Plato devised a literary medium and a literary style that demonstrated to the reading public what philosophy was and sought to convert readers to philosophical values. In accord with the argument of the Phaedrus, Plato’s dialogues are rhetorical compositions in the service of philosophy, aimed at readers whose reception of philosophy would be enhanced by discourse shaped to their needs and abilities.10 The literary qualities evident across the corpus - vividness, unpredictability, the dramatic interplay of complex characters who care strongly about their views and provoke strong reactions in the reader - contribute to basic educational goals: contesting conventional values, inculcating philosophical method, and establishing Socrates as a model.11

In the Republic, Plato’s most ambitious work, Socrates attempts to convince his interlocutors, Glaucon and Adimantus, that it always pays to be just under all conditions. Plato is making the same case to his readers, urging them too to adopt a just way of life under the guidance of philosophy. As a work of philosophical literature disseminated in the public realm, the Republic constitutes an attempt - an improbable one, but nevertheless a serious one - to foster the very situation that would enable the just city to come into being, namely, the situation in which the public understood, and therefore accepted, that its welfare depends on handing political power over to philosophers like Plato. Beyond the argument on justice that constitutes the foundation of the work, the Republic contains the most concentrated use of rhetorical art in Plato’s corpus.12

The artistic assault begins with the Republic’s justly famed opening line: ‘I went down yesterday to Piraeus with Glaucon, the son of Ariston’ (327a). The line is utterly innocent and shockingly offhand. The effect of this line and the opening scene (327a-328e) is to lull the reader into accepting the momentous conversation on justice that follows as arising naturally in consequence of a chance, everyday encounter. Disarmed by the naturalness of the conversation and intrigued by its unfolding drama, the reader is tricked into following closely the very argument that may ultimately change his values. Over the course of the work a variety of rhetorical devices are used: the just city that makes it possible to see the justice of the soul ‘writ large’ (368c-e); the similes of the sun (506e-509c) and the divided line (509d-511e); the images of the ship of state (487e-488e), the cave (514a-517b), and the soul as conjoined man, lion, and manyheaded beast (588b-589b); the vivid descriptions of the timocratic, oligarchic, democratic, and tyrannical men (Book 8), which by contrast palpably demonstrate the superiority of the just man; and the myth of Er (614b-621b).

These devices are a shortcut for readers who are not up to the rigors of unadulterated argument on abstract concepts. The simile of the sun, for instance, substitutes for an argument on the good that Socrates cannot give now, but hopes to give on another occasion (506e-507a). These devices utilize the affective potential of rhetorical art to inculcate not philosophical knowledge but philosophical values. They correspond to the sanitized myths, graceful rhythms, and noble lies that inculcate not philosophical knowledge but philosophical values in the young, future guardians of the just city (discussed above). While these devices lack the necessity bestowed by reason, to compensate for that lack they are vivid, novel, and memorable, and possess narrative resonance, qualities that do more to persuade non-philosophical readers than the tedium of an argument they could not comprehend. These devices are also not without effect on philosophically sophisticated readers, who are presumably not immune to rhetorical art.

One rhetorical feature of the Republic goes beyond these conspicuous devices. In Book 5 Socrates speaks of three ‘waves’ that he fears will overwhelm the interlocutors (457a-c, 472a, 473c-d): the common training of men and women, the holding of wives and children in common, and philosopher-kings. These features of the just city are entailed by the argument, but they are ‘waves’ because they are so ‘deeply contrary to belief’ (473e) that the interlocutors will likely find them ridiculous and impossible to accept. If the just city is merely a fantasy that bears no resemblance to life (450d), how can one find in justice the good that outweighs all the other goods that clearly are available in this life? No matter how compelling Socrates’ argument is considered on its own, if the interlocutors and readers are reluctant to accept it because it strikes them as impossibly far-fetched (450c-d, 457d, 473c), how can the interlocutors and readers be encouraged to overcome their reluctance and accept the argument anyway? After all, the point of the entire endeavor is not merely to know the truth about justice, but to know it and to live it (621c). This is a problem of the will and is properly attacked by rhetoric.13

Socrates’ demonstration that the just city is not a fantasy, but a real if necessarily remote possibility (473b-502c), is part of the answer to this problem. But only part: what threatens the argument is a feeling, or perhaps an intuition, that philosopher-kings are simply preposterous. Among Plato’s readers, that feeling would be tenacious and not entirely allayed by yet another argument (473e-474a, 487b-d). Plato’s task was to convey not just a counter-argument, but also a counter-feeling, that philosopher-kings are, or at least could be, natural. The image of the cave (514a-521a) contributes to this task. The cave image depicts conventional values as unnatural, and it explains the fact that the unnaturalness of these values has generally gone unnoticed. The cave image also portrays the acquisition of philosophical values as a natural process, akin to the healthy physical process of rising to the light and air, of gaining mobility and sharpening the powers of perception.

But this rhetorical moment has another dimension, which is directed not at the interlocutors, but just at the reader. The very spectacle of these Athenian gentlemen coming to accept the naturalness of philosopher-kings (along with the rest of philosophy’s unconventional values) allows the reader to feel, or at least imagine, that perhaps he too can withstand the ‘waves’ and come to accept philosopher-kings as natural. The ground is prepared when Plato creates all the literary fuss - the wave metaphor, the raised tensions, the calculated delay - that precedes the announcement of philosopher-kings. The fuss assures the non-philosophical reader that his own highly skeptical reaction is not inappropriate and not being ignored. Yet after Glau-con admits that many people will react violently to the notion of philosopher-kings (473e-474a), it comes as a mild surprise that he and Adimantus calmly listen to Socrates, follow the argument, and ultimately embrace it with little difficulty.

Philosophically sophisticated readers of the Republic have often found Glaucon and Adimantus too deficient in critical faculties, too ready to accede to Socrates' argument, and therefore ineffectual as partners in dialectic. But Glaucon and Adimantus serve a different purpose. Though they are interested in philosophy, they are not philosophers themselves. They are sufficiently conventional in their values that Socrates has reason to worry about how they will react to the ‘waves’. They display conventional attitudes on luxury (372d) and happiness (419a). After Socrates has completed his argument that justice always pays in and of itself (end of Book 9), he adds a demonstration of the good consequences of justice (608c-614a), a line of reasoning that appeals to Glaucon and Adimantus not as philosophers but as men of the world. Glaucon and Adimantus are sufficiently critical to make Socrates work to convert them and to give readers the impression that their conversion is a significant accomplishment. But they are neither so critical nor so recalcitrant that they will not be won over to Socrates’ view of things.

Contrast Plato’s earlier, shorter dialogues, in which Socrates’ interlocutors are left uncertain what, if anything, has been established with regard to whatever question is at hand. And in the Gorgias, for instance, though Callicles wavers for a moment (513c-d), he refuses to accept Socrates’ radical views on justice even though those views have been secured, as Socrates says, ‘with arguments of iron and adamant’ (508e-509a). These dialogues demonstrate the critical faculty at work and nurture it in the reader, a clear philosophical priority. But it is not clear in these dialogues whether the gulf between philosophy and non-philosophers can possibly be bridged. Some characters in these dialogues are intrigued by philosophy; some are repelled; none is, so to speak, converted. Whereas the sympathy for Socrates’ project evinced by Glaucon and Adimantus in the Republic hinders their critical faculties, it allows Plato to demonstrate that his endeavor is, like the just state itself, not a fantasy but entirely possible, however remote it may seem. Glaucon and Adimantus are not and do not become philosophers in the course of the Republic. But they submit themselves to philosophy's rule, and they do so for the right reasons, thereby becoming exemplary for Plato’s readers in the public domain.