Plato wrote dialogues. While there has been attention to the dramatic elements of Plato’s dialogues by a number of scholars, there has been much less attention to the narrative style of the dialogues. I argue that we should consider whether the dialogues are recited or presented like dramatic works with each character speaking his own words—or as a mixture of these narrative forms. By employing this interpretive tool to read the Republic, I illustrate how paying attention to the narrative style enables us to see a democratic Socrates who undermines readings of the Republic famously offered by Karl Popper and Leo Strauss. Plato appears then as neither a defender of the “closed society” nor an advocate of the elite rule of the wise over the many.
Anne-Marie Bowery, "Know Thyself: Socrates as Storyteller." Philosophy in Dialogue: Plato’s Many Devices, ed. Gary Alan Scott (Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 2007), 82-110, uses the terms "reported" and "enacted" to distinguish between the dialogues (p. 82). Harold Tarrant explores how this distinction might indicate how students and the public outside the academy might have had access to the dialogues given questions of what "reading" might entail in the ancient world, Plato’s First Interpreters (London: Duckworth, 2000).
2.
For a far more elaborate typology of the dialogic style of Plato’s writings, see Holger Thesleff , Studies in the Styles of Plato ( Helsinki: Societas Philosophica Fennica, 1967)
3.
Bowery makes the same claim at the beginning of her essay: "[Plato’s] skillful use of narrative framing techniques has not received significant scholarly attention. This omission is unfortunate" ("Know Thyself," 82). Bowery’s focus, however, is the "narrative markers" that identify settings, such as Philus for the Phaedo, which connects that dialogue to the Pythagoreans; I see these as defining the dramatic setting, certainly critical for interpreting the dialogues, but different from considering whether the dialogue is "narrated" or "enacted." Jill Frank’s essay "Outside Kallipolis: The Position of Poetry in Plato’s Republic" is an important counterexample to my general claim and attends to some of the issues I raise, especially in her discussion of mimesis (American Political Science Association Meetings. Chicago, 2007), but see also Ruby Blondell, The Play of Character in Plato’s Dialogues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Dorrit Cohn, "The Poetics of Plato’s Republic: A Modern Perspective," Philosophy and Literature 24 (2000): 34-48. Bruce Rosenstock, "Rereading the Republic," Arethusa 16 (1983): 219-46, offers a wonderful analysis of the relation between Socrates the narrator and the concluding section where Socrates blends into Er’s narration of his rebirth, highlighting the double narration at the dialogue’s end.
4.
Blondell, The Play of Character , 20 (italics added).
5.
Ibid., 44.
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Bowery, "Know Thyself," 93. I would suggest that Plato was sufficiently skilled at writing the "enacted" dialogues that including such references to the emotions would have been easy, and that we must look beyond this explanation to understand the role of the narrative form. Bowery considers what narration introduces to the dramatic framing of the dialogues, especially how it highlights the emotional Socrates giving the lie to Nietzsche’s "tyrant of reason," and how narration enables Plato to indicate Socrates’ "mind-set," illustrating how he acquires self-knowledge (Ibid., 97 and 103). I am interested in showing that considering how a dialogue is narrated affects our reading of the dialogue. Thus, I am closer to the work of Blondell than Bowery.
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The narrative style of the dialogues has surfaced also as a point of interest for scholars interested in dating the dialogues and putting the Platonic corpus into chronological order. See especially Holger Thesleff, Studies in the Styles of Plato, his Studies in Platonic Chronology (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1982), and his article "Platonic Chronology," Phronesis 34 (1989): 1-26; Thesleff proposes that the difference between dramatic and narrated (reported) dialogues distinguishes between those intended for publication and those written for a limited number of readers. Harold Tarrant goes so far as to measure the percentage of short phrases for "No" and "Yes" to assess the degree to which they are really "narrative" and how this may assist in ordering the dialogues chronologically, "Chronology and Narrative Apparatus in Plato’s Dialogues," Electronic Antiquity 1 (1994). See, though, Rosamond Kent Sprague’s charming review of Thesleff’s 1967 book and her reflections on what is lost (humor and puns) in cataloguing the dialogues according to the frequency of responses from the interlocutors, Classical Philology 64, no. 2 (1969): 128-29.
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Though there have been studies of the democratic Socrates, mostly the Republic has not been read as a "democratic work." See, however, Peter Euben, Corrupting Youth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), chap. 2 on the democratic Socrates in the Apology, chapter 8 on the democratic Socrates in the Gorgias, and chapter 4 on the relation between Socrates’ activities and Athenian democratic practices. Sara Monoson in Plato’s Democratic Entanglements: Athenian Politics and the Practice of Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000) offers the most sustained argument connecting Plato (and not only Socrates) with the democratic environment of Athens. Also see David Roochnik, Beautiful City: The Dialectic Character of Plato’s "Republic" (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). Greg Recco, Athens Victorious: Democracy in Plato’s "Republic" (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), 1, argues that "far from advocating the authoritarian, if beneficent, rule of a naturally superior elite, Plato’s Republic deliberately demonstrates the superiority of the democratic constitutions," supporting this claim by analyzing Book 8 and the place of freedom in the regimes described. John Wallach, The Platonic Political Art: A Study of Critical Reason and Democracy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001) argues that readings of Plato’s political theory as "essentially antidemocratic" are "faulty" and proceeds to connect the skills involved in democratic deliberation to the justice of the Republic (pp. 278ff). He concludes his analysis of democracy in Book 8 writing:
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For Plato, then, it seems that the problems of democracy do not reside in its diversity, its ethic of sympathetic toleration and equal respect, or its high regard for freedom . . . Rather, it results from the absence in democracy itself of any natural direction toward virtue or inherent respect for the law. (p. 294)
10.
Gerald M.Mara focusing on deliberation describes his book as attempt to revise the view of Plato as "an enemy of democracy," Socrates’ Discursive Democracy: "Logos" and "Ergon" in Platonic Political Philosophy ( Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 7.
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Rosenstock notices that the only other dialogues narrated by Socrates in this direct way are the Charmides and the Lysis, "Rereading the Republic," 221.
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This clearly takes stamina. Jacob Howland, though, admires more than Socrates’ stamina, remarking on Socrates’ impressive capacity for recollection remarking that the "narrative structure of the Republic . . . emphasizes Socrates’ appropriation of prior experience through recollection and calls attention to the steps he takes to cast this material into the unified form of a story" and how "the prodigious act of literal recollection by which Socrates preserves the dialogue . . . anticipates the theme of ‘recollection’ in an extended, philosophical sense," The Republic: The Odyssey of Philosophy (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2004), 33.
13.
I use Allan Bloom’s translation of the Republic throughout: The Republic of Plato. (New York: Basic Books, 1968).
14.
This phrase alerts us to Socrates’ control of the narrative; he is editing his story, deciding what parts of the conversation he wishes to report and what parts he remains silent about.
15.
We see such a scene again in the Protagoras when Socrates describes the response of his interlocutor Protagoras the Sophist to his questioning: "At this point I thought Protagoras was beginning to bristle, ready for a quarrel and preparing to do battle with his answers. Seeing this I became more cautious and proceeded gently with my questioning" (333e; Guthrie translation, Plato: Protagoras and Meno, trans. W. K. C. Guthrie [London: Penguin Books, 1956]). We the readers can wonder whether Socrates is indeed "more gentle," but he communicates his own reading of his interlocutor. In a dramatically structured dialogue such as the Gorgias, the tension between Callicles and Socrates must come from the dialogue itself and the portrait of the gloating Socrates must be gleaned from his comments to Callicles rather than to the reader.
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Sprague remarks that in the Charmides, another narrated dialogue, there appears at 154b8 the phrase ô hetaire (O, companion) "indicating that the dialogue is being recounted to a particular listener rather than simply to ‘an unnamed audience’" ("Review of Thesleff," 128), suggesting that it matters to our understanding of the dialogue who the object of the narration may be. Stanley Rosen is alone so far as I know in wondering to whom the Republic is recited. Comparing the Republic to Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Rosen speculates that perhaps "we are meant to infer that the Republic . . . is a book for everyone and no one," meaning that Socrates speaks as a prophet to everyone, thereby constituting the universality of its speeches, Plato’s "Republic": A Study (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 12. Bowery comments, "We do not know where he retells the story, nor to whom he speaks" ("Know Thyself," 86). The reference to "having gone down yesterday" indicates that the narration takes place in Athens.
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See how powerfully this works in Jacob Klein’s reading of the Meno, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1965). Bloom’s "Interpretive Essay" is another obvious example, The Republic of Plato. One could now readily offer a long list of others who illustrate this approach including the essays that appear in Charles L. Griswold, Jr., ed., Platonic Writings: Platonic Readings (New York: Routledge, 1988). More recent examples: Roslyn Weiss, The Platonic Paradox and Its Enemies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006) and the chapters on Plato in Seth Benardete, The Argument of the Action (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
18.
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962 [1947]), 1:vii.
19.
Ibid.
20.
Ibid.
21.
I would argue it is not, but this is not the place for that debate. Rather, see Catherine and Michael Zuckert, The Truth about Leo Strauss: Political Philosophy and American Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Also, Steven B. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
22.
Leo Strauss , Persecution and the Art of Writing ( Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952).
23.
I use the language of "Socrates reports," and "Socrates tells us," throughout this section to remind the reader how Socrates is always present, narrating the dialogue we read. The narrative role is not simply Socrates describing the highly dramatic moments such as Thrasymachus’ blush, but marks the entire work from the opening word to the final "we shall fare well" at the end. I disagree with Bowery who suggests that "the narrative commentary largely disappears after 449a" ("Know Thyself," 87). The commentary giving the dialogue its dramatic qualities may "disappear;" the narration itself does not.
24.
Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 138. The questioning by others, besides Strauss and Bloom in Republic of Plato, of the seriousness of Callipolis as a utopian model has a considerable bibliography. Some of the most prominent questioners include: Diskin Clay, "Reading the Republic." In Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings, ed. Charles Griswold (New York: Routledge, 1988), 19-33; Jacob Howland, The "Republic": The Odyssey of Philosophy (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2004); Greg Recco, Athens Victorious: Democracy in Plato’s "Republic" (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007).
25.
He is making a distinction between poêtai (makers) and oikistai (builders).
26.
Ramona A.Naddoff, from a different perspective on the censorship proposal, sees a similar pattern of undercutting, writing: "If one views Plato as a self-subverting thinker, then the censorship of poetry becomes the locus for his performing dialectics on his own unexamined presuppositions, testing the limits of his philosophical arguments," Exiling the Poets: The Production of Censorship in Plato’s Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 3.
27.
Martha Nussbaum , The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 33-38, develops this theme in her discussion of Agamemnon’s decision to sacrifice Iphigenia.
28.
I build on my discussion of imitation in Arlene Saxonhouse, Fear of Diversity: The Birth of Political Science in Ancient Greek Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 141-45.
29.
Stephen Halliwell notes that "Plato takes for granted normal Greek practices of reading aloud and reciting poetry, practices that effectively make the ‘reader’ into a kind of performer," The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 52. Socrates’ argument, however, carries us from simply the performance to being the character that is the object of mimesis. The "performance" of a role retains the distance between the performer and the "performee" (to offer a neologism) and does not have the psychological power of what happens when we actually become that which we are imitating. For the purposes of my argument that difference will be important.
30.
Halliwell, The Aesthetics, 53. See further discussion of this on pp. 74ff.
31.
There is a vast literature on this section of the dialogue. For the best recent discussions, see especially Halliwell, The Aesthetics, chaps. 3 and 4, and Ramona Naddaff, Exiling the Poets (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), chap. 3; also, Miles Burnyeat, "Culture and Society in Plato’s Republic," The Tanner Lectures on Human Values (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999), 20:215-24, who explores whether there is a difference between the "impersonation" of Book 3 and the mimesis of making a likeness in Book 10. The significance of this difference will appear in my subsequent discussion. I focus on only the aspect of this discussion that relates to the points of multiplicity and unity as I am developing them in this article.
32.
Halliwell, The Aesthetics , 112.
33.
Halliwell reminds us that at Timaeus 19bc the Republic is referred to as a painting (Ibid., 130).
34.
Mogens Hansen suggests that there were "just over 100 magistrates chosen not by lot but by election," Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles, and Ideology (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1991), 233-34. In the fifth century, mostly the military officers were elected; in the fourth century by the time Plato was writing and with establishment of new financial posts, those officers were also elected.
35.
See the discussion of this point in my "Democracy, Equality and Eidê: A Radical View from Book 8 of Plato’s Republic," American Political Science Review92 ( 1998): 278-83.
36.
Clay uses the language of openness in his wonderful reading of the Republic by attending to what he calls the conflict between the "inner" and "outer" dialogue, the internal questioning by the characters within the dialogue which are the "expression of Plato’s intent to bring his reader to interrogate the adequacy of the arguments of the inner dialogue" ("Reading the Republic," 22). It is the "polyphonic" quality of the dialogue with its multiple characters that leads Clay to emphasize the regular reopening of arguments that thus create an "open dialogue," (pp. 22-23). Looking at different aspects of the dialogic form, we agree fundamentally that that form undermines the prescriptive reading of Socrates’ proposals.
