On an initial reading of Plato’s Republic, three major areas of contradiction were apparent to me. The first two linked to Plato’s overall strategies of philosophical argumentation while the third related to the conception of just social identity developed in the Republic.
- How can Plato both condemn writing and mobilise it to preserve the properly oral character of philosophical discussion?
- How can Plato justify expelling the poets from his ideal polis while still regularly employing narrative-poetic devices?
- How is it that the philosopher-rulers, with their wide training and holistic perspective, are exempt from Plato’s concept of justice, which hinges on the requirement that each person adhere strictly to their own specialised area of expertise?
Now, having considered each of these more closely, I’m less convinced that they represent straightforward contradictions. They are less logical mistakes that threaten to unravel Plato’s philosophy than aspects of necessary complexity within it. If Plato appears not to address these complexities directly, it is partly because an ironical tone already anticipates them and partly because they demonstrate integral tensions within his thinking of society, politics and philosophy.
Writing
If, as Derrida argues, Western philosophy, and particularly the philosophy of Plato, is dedicated to phonocentrism – if it is committed to the continuity and putative self-presence of the spoken word – then why does Plato bother trying to write everything down? Why does he try to preserve some memory of the arguments of Socrates and his oral dialectical method? What point can there be in any of this if the written supplement preserves nothing, if it represents a corrupted and corrupting version of internal memory? Derrida recognises this as a sign that writing is always there at the outset of philosophy – that it represents less a purely subsequent thing than a groundless ground for thought itself. Of course, this is to conceive writing in metaphysical terms, ignoring for instance the actual historical relation between orality and literacy and focusing instead on the transhistorical play of differance. Yet, even acknowledging this general point, recognising, for instance, that the experience of self-present identity is complex and constitutively mediated, does this still highlight a fundamental contradiction in Plato’s philosophy? Does is it represent some vital and illuminating omission or blindness? Or could it signify something else? Another attitude? Perhaps one of ambivalence and irony? Without taking an entirely Straussian view, without seeking some esoteric meaning behind the ostensible surface of Plato’s arguments, we can recognise that Plato writes during a period of profound cultural change. Plato writes philosophy as old orally framed social forms and cultural institutions are affected by new literate political conditions. The long-standing integrity of traditional means of social cohesion and reproduction – myth, ritual, systems of customary social division, etc. – are coming under increasing strain in the face of growth, conflict and new systems of social order. Plato’s dialogues represent an effort to reconcile these tendencies – to mediate effectively between them. More particularly, Plato conceives the polis as a composite and complex whole. Traditional authority is no longer guaranteed either in a particular class or as anything integrally and communally experienced. Instead virtue must be internalised and trained. It must function even while everybody ‘minds their own business’. This new justice depends upon new means of cultural reproduction that at once retain the memory of oral cultural forms while enabling them to operate at greater scale and employing flexible and inventive systems of mediation. Plato’s dialogue form represents precisely just such a cultural adaptation.
The written dialogues are interesting politically because they demonstrate an uncertainty of readership. On one reading, Plato is an entirely conservative figure committed to an inequitable philosophy that preserves the conditions of political oligarchy. This would make sense if his work was only directed to those who trained at his Academy – if it was reserved for the privileged classes that have time for philosophy and that are being groomed for leadership. But that Plato writes his work down suggests at least some thought of a wider readership. Hardly, of course, any genuinely democratic body of readers. The dialogues are not directed towards slaves, artisans or shopkeepers – or, more generally, anybody unable to read. They are still directed to the few, but with the sense that the boundaries of this select community are no longer so clearly determined – that they extend more broadly and uncertainly to include members of society who are not ordinarily entitled to philosophy. Even if this wider community is not precisely delineated, even if it lacks coherent social identity, Plato’s commitment to writing – and the alienation from Socratic immediacy this represents – provides an indication of his recognition and summoning of emerging, less strictly oligarchic forms of social being.
Plato’s writing is not a contradiction. Rather it represents an experimental and ironic means of exploring new possibilities of social coherence that can function beyond the obsolescence of any intimately organic paradigm. The justice of the polis is no longer the justice of Homer. It is no longer the thread of the way things are and how they have always been. Instead it represents an articulated relation to parts, the goodness of which is only properly evident to those who can recognise these new holistic conditions. This capacity demands not only an internalised sense of virtue but also a preparedness to read. Indeed these two things are closely associated.
Myth
At one level, Plato rejects poetry (Homeric myth specifically), while at another level, despite his privileging of philosophic rationality, Plato regularly employs narrative myths to convey philosophical arguments and as means of ideological manipulation. The myth of Er provides an example of the former, highlighting the role of enlightened rational choice in the virtuous progress of the soul. The myth of a stratified, autochthonous basis for social differentiation (ordinary people created from iron, guardians from silver and philosophers from gold) provides an example of the latter. It is conceived as a compelling but plainly false alibi for social hierarchy. Surely, these recourses to myth contradict Plato’s ostensible preference for dialectical argument. Arguably, they demonstrate either a deep and unacknowledged adherence to literature within philosophy or a failure on Plato’s part to be thoroughly philosophical.
However, there are other options as well. For a start, Plato’s critique of poetry has a double aspect. It has both an ethical and epistemological basis. In terms of the former, Plato criticises Homeric myth for arousing immoderate emotions and representing the gods as humanly flawed. Poetry is subject to ethical condemnation both for what it summons within us and in terms of the poor models it provides for virtuous conduct. In terms of epistemology, poetry is condemned for passing off shallow copies of reality for the truth. Instead of penetrating to the actual form of things, through the agency of properly abstract philosophical reasoning, poetry peddles beguiling illusions ‘thrice removed’ from truth. Here, however, it is important to recognise that poetic mimesis is criticised not only for copying, but also for its wayward attitude. Rather than remaining properly focused on its own area of expertise, poetry has the temerity to vary its gaze – to freely describe all manner of things. In this respect, it veers from and threatens to undermine the cohesive logic (justice) of the social order, which hinges on each citizen being entirely focused on their own business (with the exception, of course, of the philosopher rulers). This straying from singular focused attention represents a crucial layer of ethical wrong within what may appear to be a purely epistemological strand of weakness. If we recognise that poetry is condemned chiefly on ethical grounds then Plato’s use of myth appears less contradictory. Indeed Plato argues that the poets can be readmitted to the Republic as long as they mend their ways and communicate more edifying models of identity and action. In these terms, the myth of Er is plainly poetry in the service of philosophy. So too is the metallurgical myth of the human soul. It clarifies the difference between appetitive, spirited and rational-philosophical being and assists in the promotion of a rationally differentiated social order. As long as myth plays this subservient role, as long as it serves properly ethically and philosophically guided interests, then it is permitted and strategically mobilised.
It is worth noting, as well, that the tone of these two examples of Platonic myth is very different. The myth of Er has a serious quality. It summarises the overall theme of descending into the underworld to discover the true basis of justice. At the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates descends with the light of philosophy to the port of Piraeus and discussion with the sophists. Later, he describes the ascent from the cave of common illusion towards the light of formal truth. At the very end of the dialogue, he recounts the myth of Er to identify the trajectory of the virtuous soul. The ideological myth of autochthonous social differentiation has a different character. It has a playful sense of artifice and absurdity. It delights in its own confusion of philosophy and customary narrative. Regarding this myth as contradictory demonstrates a deafness to Plato’s regular attitude of irony.
Expertise
Justice is defined in terms of absorption within expertise, yet philosophy appears to have an intrinsically general orientation. Why are philosophers exempt from the fundamental principle of justice – that people should remain focused on their own area of expertise?
How can we conceive the expertise of philosophy? What is its area of distinct and specialised activity? Arguably, it entails no specific subject but rather relates to the field of rationally elaborated thought itself. From this perspective, philosophy represents a meta-level expertise focused on the method of properly understanding anything whatsoever. Yet, this can hardly have an entirely abstract character. There is the need to engage with specific philosophical topics. Hence the guardian must not only become fluent in the formal logic of dialectical discussion but also demonstrate a nuanced understanding of features of wisdom, virtue and the good life. Furthermore, any particular meta-philosophical skills must be augmented by wide-ranging gymnastic, musical and mathematical education. Altogether, philosophy hardly represents a single, restricted form of expertise. Instead, it has a distinctly general character. This breadth informs not only the guardian ruler’s capacity to philosophise but also to govern. Wise governance demands an holistic understanding of society, of how particular activities and interests can be reconciled with the overall good. This understanding is precisely, in principle, withheld from the general populace, who are far too absorbed in their narrow field of expertise to attain any comprehensive philosophical view of the social whole.
The philosophers then are conceived in terms of an exceptional identity. They fall outside the constitutive rule of the complex and composite polis in order that they can recognise its integrity and govern it effectively. In this respect, their position is inherently and necessarily contradictory. Philosophy has a complex identity. It exemplifies the proper justice of the human soul, with our rational selves ruling over our spirited and appetitive impulses. It also supervises the weaving together of the discrete, disarticulated justice of particular citizens into the cohesive unity of the social whole. It accomplishes this, however, by withdrawing from the texture of the social fabric – not only through its representation of an unspecific expertise, but also via its rejection of property and ordinary family relations. The philosopher guardians are both rulers and exiles. This takes shape less as a contradiction than as an essential paradox of the composite polis, which can only conceive its unity from a place that escapes its internal, particularly absorbed machinations.
If there is a contradiction here it is that the notion of justice obtains a double character. At one level it is associated with the restricted focus of individual citizens. At another level it represents the macro-level logic of the well-composed society. As a rule and as a practical guide for living it has a determinedly local identity, but as a recognition of holistic integrity it occupies an awkward, impossible position. The justice of the philosophers depends upon their underlying status as pharmakoi – ritual exiles. They mark through their exclusion both the justice of the whole and the repressed justice/injustice of its limits. The contradiction here hinges not so much on this complex doubling of justice – how this paradoxical field informs Ancient Greek cultural experience – but on how it affects our own understanding of justice. Are we cast in the role of myopic citizens or estranged, holistically inclined philosophers? And if we are more geared towards the latter, what does it mean to see justice as whole? What are we seeing precisely? Can we even without contradiction conceive a determined whole that does not already incorporate an aspect of injustice – of including some things and excluding others? In this sense, wouldn’t the macro level contemplation of justice also be affected by an aspect of blindness. This is the contradiction that affects us as we try to make sense of Plato’s conception of justice and imagine its relevance to our own world.